Danganronpa Extra Life

Despair Has Been Defeated!?!?

The killing game was like a trainwreck; you wanted to look away, but you couldn't. Chiaki would have suspected that Enoshima was using her brainwashing techniques if Kamukura-kun hadn't already assured her he detected no signs of subliminal messages. She had, he suspected, grown bored of and discarded them. No, it was sheer desire to know her underclassmen would be alright that kept her watching.

Enoshima's next motive was threatening to spill their deepest secrets to the world, and Chiaki's hands balled into fists, red-hot rage flaring. She didn't doubt that the model had coaxed those secrets out of her classmates during their two years together, just for this purpose. How can she throw something as precious as friendship aside so casually?

And once again, despite all the assertions to the contrary, a corpse turned up.

She didn't know who could have killed someone as sweet as Fujisaki-san in such a cruel manner. She took some comfort that the Monokuma File reported death as instant, so the poor girl hadn't been forced to endure the crucifixion.

Throughout the investigation, she listened to Togami-kun lay out all the data gathered about Genocide Jack—the message in blood, the method of killing, the theory that he was a high school student with dissociative identity disorder. He clearly suspected Jack was responsible for this murder, which meant Hope's Peak had willingly let a serial killer in. Chiaki couldn't find it in her to be dismayed. She was just angry, angry that the academy she'd so loved had proven itself to be so rotten to the core, something like this didn't surprise her.

When the investigation period ended, Chiaki fled upstairs. She'd wanted to watch the trial, for support if nothing else, but remembering the panic that had seized her upon seeing the elevator...she knew she wouldn't be able to watch them actually arrive. So instead she waited in her room until Kamukura-kun came up and told her they'd left the elevator behind.

Returning downstairs, she took in the sight of the room with disturbed curiosity. Enoshima had actually set up a trial room, with podiums arranged in a circle and a judge's seat and everything. Among the podiums were portraits of the deceased, large red Xs—which she hoped wasn't blood—slashed over their faces. It was, she realized as Naegi-kun shuffled to his place, trying not to meet any of the painted gazes, just another way to make the students uncomfortable and depressed.

The trial, she thought as she watched it unfold, went about as well as could be expected of high school students. Which was to say not very well. It was nothing like the structured trials of Ace Attorney, where evidence was presented and dissected in an orderly fashion; it was a scrambled mess of overlapping voices and jumping to conclusions and general, pointless arguing. Only Naegi-kun, Kirigiri-san and Togami-kun seemed able to steer it in any one direction, and with their guidance progress was gradually made.

She felt so bad for poor Fukawa-san, having her secret outed like that. Unnerved when Genocide-san made her appearance, scissors snipping away and tongue waggling. Shocked when Fujisaki-san turned out to be Fujisaki-kun. And then furious when Togami-kun claimed to have altered the crime scene.

"Why would you do that, you idiot?!" she yelled at the screen. "You put everyone's lives at risk!"

"Most likely, he had a failsafe in place for a worst-case scenario," Kamukura-kun droned in his soft voice. "Some decisive evidence to oust the culprit. Togami is not a suicidal person."

"Even so...just why?"

"If he already knew who the culprit was, he would have found this case boring. Ergo I calculate the most likely reason to have been making it more interesting. Understandable, if a pointless endeavor when he knew the end result."

Incredulity welled up in her. "But they're his friends!"

"No, they are not. They are individuals who, as far has he knows, he has been acquainted with only recently. He has no emotional attachment to them and ergo no need to be concerned about their well-being."