Truth, Perjury, and Sacrifice

Missing Links

Picture after picture, Karen continually shook her head. "I'm sorry, Kyoko, I don't recognize any of these kids. Is it weird to call them kids?"

"I mean, they're younger than us," Makoto said, shrugging. "What should we do?"

Kyoko sighed, shuffling the photos back into a neat pile. "I need to ID all of them before I can make assumptions. In the meantime, I'm not sure what else we can do."

"Well, we have to find Komaru. Do you have any other leads we can work off of?" Karen asked. Kyoko paused for a moment, the two stared at one another. "What is it?"

"This is hypothetical, but consider the possibility that...these are the members of the Ultimate Hunt," Kyoko explained, tapping the stack of photos. Byakuya, Makoto, and Karen stared at Kyoko. "That would explain why the Rem...Hajime and the others focused on these people. They are all of high school age, approximately. If you haven't noticed, they appear to know each other." Kyoko spread the photos out again, piecing together a select collage of pictures. A boy seen hiding his eyes with his hat was shown with a blonde girl in one photo, a blue-haired girl in another, and with the blonde girl and a purple-haired boy in another. The blonde girl was shown with another blonde, slightly taller girl in one photo and a brown-haired girl with pigtails in another.

"Can Alter Ego ID them?" Karen asked, picking up a photo focused on the blue-haired girl.

"We can give it a shot, but we shouldn't get our hopes up," Kyoko said. "Are you okay?" she asked, watching Karen stare at the photo.

"I'm fine, but this girl gives me a weird feeling. It's probably nothing though," She said, handing the photo to Kyoko. "They all have a very odd demeanor about them, but that's probably because they lived and survived in a world that completely fell apart."

"That sounds like a fair assessment," Kyoko nodded. "Are you coming with us?" She asked Makoto. He nodded, grabbing his jacket and followed us out.

"Oh, Kyoko." Karen spoke up.

"Don't worry. I already took care of it. Actually, you and Togami should also toss your phones in the incinerator." Kyoko glanced back at Makoto.

"What do you think is going on?" Mahiru asked, glancing around the room. Everyone had gathered in the apartment lobby, in anticipation of Peko's return.

"We fell for Karen's dumb idea because of this idiot!" Fuyuhiko pointed his thumb towards Nagito. "I'm starting to think you two split up because you fed into each other's bad luck."

Nagito thought about what Fuyuhiko said and began to nod, "Yeah, sounds about right."

"Don't ever say that to her face," Hajime muttered, covering his face with his hand. "Anyway, we don't know exactly what's going on because Karen told us to not accept calls from any of them or try to contact them."

"But why? I-is she ma-mad at us?" Mikan asked.

"Well, one of us," Hajime glanced at Nagito, "but I think she's trying to protect us for the moment."

"Oh, by sheltering us? How the hell does Togami put up with this?!" Fuyuhiko blurted.

"Dude, Peko is fine, she can take care of herself. Stop taking your worrying out on all of us!" Kazuichi said.

"Don't fucking talk about Peko like you know her!"

"Alright, enough!" Mahiru blurted. "We can still contact Peko, and we need to wait for her to respond. But Nagito, why didn't you tell Karen that you involved Komaru? That's Makoto's sister and Toko's girlfriend."

"I don't think the relationship matters. Look at us," Nagito pointed at Hajime and himself. "We're together and Karen wanted me to put my life on the line. She's done it, Byakuya's done it, Makoto's done it, and so has Kyoko."

"Your point?" Hiyoko scoffed.

"My point is that you're focusing on the wrong part of the situation. If I had told Karen, this whole thing would've taken far longer."

"So...you let Komaru get kidnapped and Karen take the fall....because you wanted to speed this along?" Hajime asked, seriously contemplating why the hell he had feelings for a sociopath.

"It wasn't my goal, but hey, it worked." Nagito shrugged.

"You should be the one to tell Fukawa that Komaru was kidnapped." Akane spoke up from the floor, stuffing a whole fried chicken leg into her mouth.

"That's a great idea," Hajime shoved his cell phone into Nagito's hands. "I'm sure Karen wouldn't oppose to breaking the rule for this."

"What do you want?" Komaru repeated. The strange men had taken her to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Once inside, she met more strangers dressed in white uniforms. Was this the anonymous group Kyoko and Makoto were talking about? No one had spoken a word to her or acknowledged her presence. What was the point of kidnapping her if they were just going to ignore her? Komaru realized this was actually a better outcome and went back to glancing around.

Every so often, one of the uniformed strangers would enter or exit through the door closest to her. Komaru couldn't see much through the door's window at her angle (being tied to a chair made moving difficult), but she could tell something inside was reflecting light onto the ceiling. She stared intently, waiting for someone to come out or go in.

"Damn it! How'd they get these stupid machines to work?" A boy in a uniform said.

"They had a brain idiot! And some AI program. At least, that's what the girl said."

Are they talking about Alter Ego? What machines? And who was the girl they were referring to? Komaru's thoughts flew at a mile a minute, trying to focus on the door, yet easily distracted by the conversation.

"I told you this is not what D.I.C.E does!" A shrill voice screeched in a room farther away. Dice? Komaru was confused now; if this wasn't the Ultimate Hunt then...who were these "dice" people?

"We're not going to hurt her, Ouma, we just need her long enough to spur up some trouble. And that's what you do best, right?" A voice responded, sounding closer with each syllable. "A plain girl like me couldn't possibly accomplish something like this." The voice emerged as a girl wearing the same white uniform with the accompanying mask and her blue hair tied up into two pigtails. A shorter figure followed her in silence in similar appearance, only he wore what Komaru assumed to be captain's hat and a cape. The pair walked towards Komaru, glanced at her, then entered the mysterious room.

Komaru gasped, seeing the exact same machines that had saved the others from despair's grasp.