haunted

blood craved bear

haunted

chapter seven: blood craved bear

6:00 am

"Ishida" stared at his watch impatiently. Wasn't it time to get the fuck out of that place? Dumbasses – they shouldn't be fucking LATE of all things, especially if it meant getting away from that ugly-ass teddy bear. He scoffed. Motherfuckers. Lateness wasn't going to be tolerated, not that it was the kind of thing he usually cared about. But the longer those lazy asshats took to get here, the longer they'd be stuck with Evil Bear McKillington and he'd had enough of that scene.

Yeah, there were things he had to DO now that he had a body again.

"Ishida" finally saw one of the other students – Yamada, who'd apparently been hiding in the corner or something. What had he been doing back there, anyways? They had important things to attend to, damn it! "Tch! About fucking time!" he yelled. "Do you have any idea how long I've had to wait here for you?" He pointed at his watch angrily, the fire in his eyes flaring. "Three minutes! EVERYONE is a whole three minutes late! Now go get the others so we can get the fuck out of this place!"

Yamada wasn't listening to him. He was too busy raising the hammer over his head.

6:03 am

It was the first moment of clarity Kiyotaka had had since Mondo's death – the sight of Yamada swinging for his head. The world froze as the other him, the other him that he'd convinced himself was his brother, began to fall apart. He was aware of everything – his heart beating, the clamminess of his palms, his short, rapid breaths. The fear of death had chased Ishida away, leaving just Kiyotaka Ishimaru behind.

It had been too easy to forget himself. Firstly, this hadn't been the first time he'd been kidnapped – the last time had been when he was little and he'd been snatched from a playground and held hostage for three days. He'd had nightmares about the incident for years, and was honestly shocked Monokuma didn't use that as his "dark secret" during his second motive. Perhaps their tormentor didn't know about it, or felt he wouldn't kill anyone to keep it buried.

When he'd awoken in this situation, he'd barely managed to keep a straight face for the other students as fear and panic set in, especially once he learned why they'd been kidnapped. At least when he was a child he knew he wouldn't be harmed as long as his parents paid the people holding him prisoner money. Here? That wasn't an option. His parents probably didn't know where he was, and even if they did, they had no money to give, not anymore, and even if they still did, he doubted Monokuma would want any.

The bear wanted blood.

And he'd gotten it. So far, five people had been killed; two of them murdered, one of them impaled for trying to fight back, and two of them executed for their crimes right before Kiyotaka's eyes. He was hurting. He was terrified, and exhausted from trying to hide that fear. And when the only real friend he had in this horrible place was taken away from him . . . he couldn't function. Somehow he'd been able to keep it together up until that trial, but watching the bike spin out of control and watching Monokuma . . . eat . . . his best friend's liquefied remains had been his breaking point. Watching the bear slobber him down, the butter dripping down his mechanical chin as bits of pancakes fell out of his mouth as he shoved more and more in . . . he hadn't been able to sleep with those images in his head.

At some point he'd lost himself – the real him, Kiyotaka Ishimaru, had succumbed to despair and allowed that alternate him, that Ishida character, to take him and use his body for whatever he felt like. And he'd been too broken to fight back. He couldn't handle being a kidnap victim again. He couldn't handle watching anyone else die.