Nostophobia

Prologue

Any warnings will be made at the beginning of the appropriate chapter. Skipping one won't affect the rest of the stories, these are kind of like oneshots.

I know that Yonaga refers to everyone by their first names, but in this fic, she refers to them by surnames to make things less confusing. You'll see what I mean in the next chapter.

Chabashira and Gokuhara will still talk in the third person but will use their surnames.

Prologue is shorter than future chapters.

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The mastermind hunched over her desk, seething with rage. It had been a month, and no one had died inside this killing game. She was supposed to run the best season of Danganronpa ever, but so far, it was a big fucking failure. Shirogane Tsumugi wanted to be the best, she needed to surpass all of those other phoney masterminds who did it for fame. Someone needed to fill the world with such gut-wrenching despair.

Shirogane coded everything to be nothing other than perfect. Every little detail, each murder attempt, everyone's alibis, they were going to be perfect! She was going to have the best ratings out of every Danganronpa season!

Akamatsu Kaede needed to kill Amami Rantaro to start the game, and then everything should fall into place, but she wasn't fucking doing it! If she could make her kill, or kill him using a method that would make Akamatsu frameable, Shirogane knew that the game would continue perfectly.

The first plan involved Akamatsu using books to create a ramp leading from a vent to a particular spot. Theoretically, a shotput ball should've rolled nearby and, if it missed, Shirogane could wait behind a secret door to kill Amami herself. Unfortunately, something went wrong and the ball knocked part of the book ramp over, landing nowhere near Amami and destroying Shirogane's chance of murder.

Luckily, she had a backup plan. She planted evidence for Akamatsu to find that would incriminate Amami falsely of being the mastermind since everyone already knew one was present thanks to Saihara Shuichi's deductive skills. Originally, Akamatsu would find the evidence and then cave in Amami's skull with a desk lamp. Unfortunately, Akamatsu decided to confront him in front of everyone and they managed to deduce his innocence within the hour.

Afterwards, Shirogane waited for Akamatsu to offer to help Tojo Kirumi - the Ultimate Maid - cook a meal. The mastermind - who posed as the Ultimate Cosplayer - planted some poison in a bottle that would be used. Amami was the only person who had an egg intolerance, so Tojo offered to make him a special meal. That way, Shirogane knew how to poison him easily. Tojo, the observant woman she was, noticed the strange appearance of the ingredient and stopped Akamatsu from adding it.

At this point, Shirogane ran out of ideas. She needed to have an alibi for each one, something plain that would make her invisible. The woman wrote three notebooks worth of backup murders, alibis and evidence for the game's protagonist to find. Considering nothing had gone to plan yet, Shirogane wasn't excited to try another method.

Killing other contestants would destroy the future trials so Shirogane knew who to kill. Trying to get Akamatsu to kill Amami wasn't going to work soon, so she knew she needed another plan and fast. She needed to keep ratings high, she needed to exceed the view count of past seasons! Maybe she could be the next mastermind too (in disguise, of course)!

She flicked through her last notebook and landed on a motive, grimacing at the title. The phobia motive was one she remembered well. Instead of destroying everyone using their worst fear, the group bonded through shared trauma which created more relationships.

Flicking to the next page, Shirogane hummed in thought. The nostophobia motive. It was similar to the original phobia motive, but it threw people's biggest regrets, rather than a fear of the future. She smiled and slammed the book closed, happy with trying it. "Monokuma!" Shirogane shouted into the empty room.

The robot bear popped up out of nowhere. Ah, the magic of a fictional reality. Speaking of which, you wanted this, readers. Any suffering is the fault of everyone who wanted this story and the author regrets nothing.

Now, enough of the fourth wall breaking. Shirogane would like to continue trying to make people kill each other.

"Monokuma, set up the nostophobia motive. Make sure to wipe everyone's memories about the last motive, especially Ouma and Saihara's." The half-white and half-black bear nodded before disappearing again.

Shirogane slipped from her hidden lair, hurrying to close the door that morphed into the wall. She found herself in the unoccupied female bathroom, leaving the hallway with a smile on her face like nothing odd ever happened.

A loud chime filled the academy, making the woman stop and stare at a large screen with two obnoxious speakers attached. It flickered a few times before Monokuma's face appeared. Even though no one was around, she intently listened to keep up appearances as Monokuma demanded that the students assemble in the Ultimate Academy's gymnasium. Not like they had anywhere to be. Shirogane trapped fifteen of them in the setting closed off by an impenetrable glass dome.

She hurried down the hallway to the gym. Soon enough, the other Ultimates joined her. Monokuma popped into existence with his five children that Shirogane regretted making. Each one was half-white, but the other half was another colour - either red, blue, pink, yellow or green. They weren't important.

"None of you are killing each other!" Monokuma complained in his high-pitched, robotic voice. "How disgusting! I thought a whole month would get you all slicing and dicing!" People grimaced. "Whatever, you'll all kill each other this time!" He disappeared again, leaving the teenagers to stare at each other in terror and confusion.

Before anyone could ask for each other's thoughts, a wailing wafted from the closed gymnasium doors. Everyone frowned, some barely able to hear. It sounded like a young child, but the group knew that no one else was on the academy grounds. They all rushed from the gym, using the Ultimate Robot - K1-B0 - as a tracker since he had the best hearing. Eventually, they found themselves in the dining room.

As everyone entered, they paused and did a double-take. In the room was a crying child with fluffy, light-green hair. They looked like the spitting image of Amami.

Monokuma appeared again, becoming as annoying as a prizeless whack-a-mole game. "Looks like you all found Amami! Well, it's probably easier to call him Rantaro. You know, to make things easier for the readers!"

"What readers?" Shirogane asked with a frown.

"No one important! Don't interrupt me! Now, welcome to the nostophobia motive!" Shirogane resisted the urge to bash her head through a wall if she heard that word one more time. "Each day, a new child or two will appear, which are all you lot in the past! Have fun keeping them alive!"

Some students froze, knowing that their turn would come with a lot of despair. Compared to other motives in the past, they never predicted something like this. The group spent so long brainstorming possible encounters to be wary of and this wasn't on the list. Those that took longer to adapt didn't know how to respond.

This would be fun.