Scramble 16 Round 3: Twister

[u/OddDirective]

EDIT: Round 3 has concluded! While there are no competitive rounds (and thus, no strict need for a voting form), we have put together a form to vote on your favorite round/who you think will win. Please check it out HERE!

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Round 3: Twister

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Hub Post

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Bracket

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DAY 5

The mission for today seems oddly easy for your Players. “Enter Tower Records. You have 8 hours. Fail, and face erasure.” They don’t wake up too far from the entrance, and the time limit is very generous. But hey, they’ve been fighting for their lives for a fair bit, so they’re glad to have something of a cakewalk to get to the next day.

That’s not what this is.

The Game Master has decided that the gloves are coming off now. They’ve set a simple task to their Reapers; eliminate every Player you can get your hands on. Not only that, but they’ve set up an ambush right in front of the one way to get to Tower Records, featuring some hand-picked assassins- the enemy team. For whatever reason, your Reaper can’t or doesn’t let your Players know- if they’re the Game Master (or even if not), they might have decided that your team has reached the end of their usefulness, or they could be trying to dodge the Game Master’s suspicion to avoid erasure themselves.

Whatever the case, as your team walks into the trap, they come across a lone Player, one who’s lost the rest of their team. Whether it’s because they’re still fighting, or because Players without a team can’t have gotten this far, your Players are tipped off- just in time for the enemy team to come in. To save their life, your Players form a pact with the solo Player, and prepare to face off in a battle for everyone’s second chance…

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Scramble Rules

Let ‘Em Know Who You Are: Every participant this season received four characters on their team, but many of them might not be a household name. To aid with readability, please give a brief introduction and summary of your characters, with enough information so the average reader can get excited for your team before starting. That includes your adopted character this time, too!

This World Ends With You: Your writeup will depict a scenario where your team succeeds. Even if your team has a one in a million chance of overcoming the odds, show what they’d need to do to come out on top against the challenge in front of them!

Everybody Has Their Own World: Writers are allowed to make changes to their characters in their narrative to fit their story, such as allowing power stealers to gain more powers, teaching martial artists new techniques, or having characters gradually grow in strength between rounds. However, you are not beholden to following what your opponent is doing. When facing another team, you are only required to write their characters as they were submitted. This is to help with ease of research, and make things more fun for both sides.

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Round Rules

Setting: This round’s original setting is Tower Records, an iconic music store that outlived its American main branch, located in the heart of Shibuya with shelves stocked with all the latest music, in CD or vinyl. The important parts of wherever the location is is that it’s recognizable by the members of the team, and it can be set up for an ambush. There’s also more than enough time for your team to mess around and do whatever their heart desires before going into the ambush, so you can include other locations as well.

Key Points: The main idea of the round is the following. The Game Master wants to eliminate a whole load of Players, and so sets up a seemingly-easy mission to keep the Players off guard. This gives your Players time to do things other than the mission, but when they do pursue the mission, they meet a lone Player, with whom they extend their pact to stay as a team. During this, they are ambushed, and have to fight against the enemy team for their lives.

Union X: Adoptions! That’s right, it’s the adoption round. We’ve decided to be pretty open about this; there are two possibilities for who you can adopt. The first is that any Player on a team that has already been eliminated is available to adopt. We have also curated a list of unpicked backups that you can choose from. All available adoptions are HERE, and be sure to look through to find someone you’ll enjoy writing.

Post Limit: For this round, writers will be limited to 8 posts, or 80k characters. While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be automatically disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup.

Due Date: Writeups will be due at 11:59 PM CST on EDIT: Sunday, November 27th. That’s about two and a half weeks. At that point, the thread will be locked, and voting will go up for a few days afterwards.

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Flavor Suggestions

Incongruous: Your team members might be suspicious of such an easy mission. After all, the people in charge of this don’t really want you to win, do they? Would they see this as a chance to take a break, and do things casually? Alternatively, would they rush headlong into the ambush the Game Master set up?

Dancer In The Street: Whoever you’re adopting, your team is going to be meeting them in a difficult situation, either in combat or just having come from it. But you can’t just sideline them, you’ve gotta make sure they shine! What do they bring to the table in terms of synergies? How do they fight when they’re backed into a corner? And importantly, how would your team react to finding someone on their own?

[u/Proletlariet]

Archer and Komachi retired to the second storey to discuss their deal in private.

That left the rest of them cooling their heels amidst the merchandise.

Cooling was the last thing Edward felt like doing. He was hot with fury.

She was right here. The woman who had rendered him this possessing wraith stuck in a world where he didn’t belong living a life he didn’t deserve. The one woman who could fix this and let him sleep. And she’d passed him over for some mechanical mockery of life.

Edward stewed maybe ten minutes as 21 tried to show him more of that awful music from those discs before he’d given him the slip and left 21 alone with Huey Lewis And The News.

He kept his profile low as he made his way surreptitiously up the stairs, sticking to the edges of the steps so that they wouldn’t bend and creak beneath his weight.

As he slunk from display to display Edward quieted his breath---both to avoid detection and to better focus his keen ears. He picked up on their muffled conversation from across the room---seven aisles across, down a short hallway, and behind a door.

Their words grew clearer as he approached.

“...wasn’t part of the agreement lady.”

“Too bad. I want them all.”

“The robot’s a threat to global security.”

“The android is a walking talking miracle. A universal memory host! Even somebody as dense as you should be able to see how much she can do for the human race in the right hands.”

Edward ground his teeth. Even in private all of their attention was on the machine. Were her other victims nothing but sideshows?

“Yeah, or how much damage she could do in the wrong ones. Oh wait---that's who you built her for. You already agreed the best thing to do was destroy her before Ultimate Despair works out how to make more of her independent of the pirate’s brainwaves and destroys what’s left of the free world.”

Finally, some recognition. But even then in context of Karai. What was so special about Edward’s brain that merited such dire talk?

“I know what I said.” Komachi snapped. “But I can’t. Call me sentimental. The dead need to have a voice.”

“Fine! We’ll shoot Edward then.”

“NO! I need them both for my work. At least until I figure out how to replicate Kenway’s brain patterns.”

At least she was standing up for him. Even if it was for purely barbarous reasons.

He heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor, followed by the faint scuff of shoes he assumed was one of the two standing up.

“Shit! Whoozat?!”

BANG!.

Edward’s heart jumped. Had they heard him? He got ready to sprint for it.

Then Archer swore under his breath. “Stupid box.” 21 relaxed. He heard Archer grunt as he hefted something and set it back down. “Huh. What are these, magnets? Actually these’re pretty cool. Where was I?”

“You were standing indignantly.”

“Oh right. We’ve given you all the wiggle room we could for your mad science schtick. Hell, we don’t even give Krieger this much give and that Nazi sonovabitch works for us. We’re already letting you walk away with all your other little experiments intact. So you don’t get to bring your favourite toy. Tough titties. If you don’t like it, fine, you don’t get this.”

A sound of rustling paper. A sharp intake of breath from Komachi.

“Give me that!” She hissed.

“Ah, ah! No deal, no presidential pardon. But hey go ahead and leave without one. I give you half a second before your brains are blown out by government snipers. You don't have a choice”

Komachi was silent for a very long time.

“Actually, I do.”

Edward managed to get behind the opening door right as Komachi burst out of the room.

She marched across the room with Archer on her tail.

“Hey! Where are you going?” He cried. “Lady, didn’t you hear what I said?”

“I did. And if you’re not going to let me finish my life’s work out there, I’ll just have to finish it in here.”

21 made to follow them and bumped face first into Karai walking out the same room they had been in.

“You!” He hissed. “What were you doing in there?”

“Hanging from the window eavesdropping on them. Same thing I assume you were doing.”

Edward shook his head. “It’s sheer madness what they’re saying. The two of us together could destroy the world?”

“Why should you care?” Karai frowned. “Your big plan is giving up and letting your descendent deal with the problem.”

He clenched his fist so tight the nails drew blood from his palm.

“I won’t stand here and listen to this. Now come on, I think that madwoman’s looking for us.”

---

“You listen to any music?” 21 tried.

Hob gave a noncommittal grunt. “Don’t like it.”

21 had been trying to make conversation ever since Karai disappeared and Edward ditched him. He had been… obnoxiously resistant.

“How is that even possible?!” 21 demanded.

“It’s all written for human ears.” Hob said. He seemed to be studying the front entrance intently, though 21 couldn’t see what it was that held his attention. “All just sounds like white noise.”

“Dude, look, I’m just trying to make smalltalk here since the fucking wonder twins went off and dumped us.” 21 huffed. “Do you do anything besides complain about humans?”

“Well let’s see.. I look for tripwires ‘steada standing around looking like a-- Aha!” Hob’s eye narrowed in like he’d spotted a twitching string. His paw shot and snatched a small black speck off the rim of the glass doorway. He showed it to 21 proudly. “Bingo. Must’ve stashed dozens of these all over the place. Really didn’t wanna get snuck up on.”

“I guess that’s pretty standard for spies.” 21 admitted. “Still, I didn’t expect that kind of professionalism from a guy who binge drinks and plays air guitar on the job.”

“Mm.” Hob grunted again. His stone face faltered a little. “Tell the truth, he freaks me out. Either he’s good enough that he can get blitzed and still merc us all before we blink or he really is as shitty as he looks and he’s the best the outside world has got. I mean.. what with the state New York’s in…”

“Who knows what’s even left out there?” 21 finished.

It was an unsettling thought. Part of the reason 21 was hesitant to put any stake in Archer’s promise of freedom. If out there was as bad as in here, maybe there was no escape from this. Was this what Edward felt like that made him want to just stop thinking and let someone else take over?

Every second of silence was a second more to dwell on it.

“You know they actually make music for pets.” 21 told Hob.

Hob eyed him sceptically. “No shit?”

By a stroke of fortune they found a novelty record and set it up in the listening area to play.

It sounded like a bunch of atonal bird chirps to 21 but Hob seemed utterly transfixed.

A single tear welled up in his eye. “I get it now.” He said passionately. “It’s so beautiful.”

“HEAR ME!”

The entire building rocked with sudden impact. The tremor jolted the record player off the counter and Cat Tunes Vol. 3 shattered into vinyl shards.

“The hell?” Hob barked.

“I know right?” 21 agreed. “Rude as shit.”

“No I mean her dummy!”

Hob pointed.

Komachi floated at the centre of the room in a swirling haze of ethereal energy. Spectral forms and howling faces warped and twisted within its flow. Records flew off shelves as the haunting winds picked up around her.

Holy shit was this actual magic? 21 was pretty sure it existed given that one self-proclaimed wizard Dr. Venture hung out with but he’d never seen anything on this scale.

Archer, Edward, and Karai came racing down the stairs. Archer clutched the sides of his head in exasperation.

“Damn it lady, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Making an ultimatum.” She said cheerfully. Her voice resumed its boomer tenor. “IF THIS BIG JERK---” he pointed her scythe accusingly at Archer “---WILL NOT CONSENT TO RELEASE ME AND ALL OF MY SUBJECTS, THEN AS IS MY DUTY AS A GUARD OF THIS PRISON, I WILL SUBJECT YOU ALL TO MY PUNISHMENT!”

“What kind of punishment?!” 21 shouted into the ghostly cyclone.

“A TEST OF COURAGE! AS THE ULTIMATE SHINIGAMI, I FERRY THE SPIRITS OF THE RESTLESS DEAD TO FIND NEW HOSTS. YOU WILL BE VISITED BY THREE VENGEFUL SPIRITS, EACH MORE TERRIBLE THAN THE LAST.”

“What like A Christmas Carol?” 21 asked.

“NO not like A Christmas Carol!” Komachi pouted. “They’re gonna try to kill you!”

“No, that really just sounds like A Christmas Carol.” Archer said. “Oh god, am I Scrooge? Way to be antisemetic.”

“You’re Jewish?” 21 asked.

“I could be. One of my dads might be Buddy Rich.”

“One of your?--- Oh nevermind! ENOUGH!” Komachi released a shockwave of energy that rippled across the shop floor. A wall of purple flames lit the windows with an eerie glow. “The Narrow Confines of Avici have sealed you in. You have one night, got it? Either Secret Agent Man gives me what I want or I’ll drag you all down to the afterlife!”

She vanished without so much as a puff of smoke. The unnatural flames died down.

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

21 looked to the others. They seemed about as baffled as he was.

“So.. what do we do?” He asked.

“I’m gettin’ the hell out.” Hob said. He made for the entrance.

“But the magic barrier thing.” 21 called after him.

“That was all a buncha hologrammes. I’m not gonna let her spook me into stickin’ around.”

He took a defiant step out the door. Then another. Then another.

“The hell?!” He cried.

Hob was still standing in the doorway. Every step he took travelled the normal distance and yet no matter how many he took the gap between the entrance and the outside never shrunk. It made 21’s head hurt trying to comprehend the impossible stretching of space.

Eventually he gave up and slunk reluctantly back inside. “Okay. It’s real. But it’s still not magic!” He gave them all an insistent sour look.

“Whatever devilry it is, we aren’t leaving.” Edward said.

“He’s right.” Karai agreed. “We should prepare for the worst.”

“Yo, Archer. You’ve got this place all trapped up right?” 21 asked. “So we should be safe.”

Archer rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah see. I had a bunch of trip mines and C4 and stuff. But I kinda.. Used them.”

“What the fuck was so important you had to use them all up?” Hob exploded.

“Let me put it this way. There’s a reason you don’t seen any ska punk albums on the shelves.” Archer chuckled to himself. “More like Destruction By Demolition.”

Hob wiped his paw down his face. “Everybody in the world and I have to meet the fucking idiots. Alright whadda we got?”

“What do we have. And micro-cameras, laser tripwires, motion sensors in every room, oh yeah and I put a bucket of paint over the back door that’s a classic.” He took out his fob again and waved it at them. “Basically, as soon as anybody comes in here, I know where they are.”

The fob buzzed.

“Shit!"

---

Rock paper scissors. They played rock fucking paper scissors to decide who went to check out the break in upstairs Archer’s gizmo had detected.

Old Hob was working with a bunch of children.

Logically, he agreed with Archer’s argument they had to leave somebody on the ground floor in case another of Komachi’s goons tried to sneak in through the front and pincer them while they were on the stairs. But still it was the principal of the matter. The guy acted like a big spoiled alcoholic child.

21 moved to pass him. Hob extended an arm to block him.

“What gives?” He complained.

“I’ve got a gun and you’ve got a pair of novelty wrist blades. You run in first and get yourself killed, where does that leave me?”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“Don’t push it.”

It was pitch dark on the second storey. A single fluorescent light still flickered above their heads. It hummed, brightened, and burst as they passed beneath it.

Hob crept between the aisles sweeping each one with his pistol. Something glinted from behind and he spun about. 21 was fiddling with a miniature butterfly shaped flashlight from his utility belt.

“Give me that!” Hob hissed. He snatched it away and frantically switched it off. “You’ll give away our position.”

“We won’t be able to find his position if I can’t see a thing!” 21 whispered angrily.

Hob was about to retort that he could see just fine when he remembered humans didn’t have night vision. Just another reason he preferred working with mutants.

Hob handed him back his flashlight. “At least cover the lens.”

21 flicked it back on. It illuminated a shadowed figure hanging upside down from the ceiling. The creature dropped right in front of them, arms spread wide and fingers curled. Two enormous green eyes glinted in the light.

“RAAAAAAGH!”

“AAAAAAAH!” 21 screamed.

“Oh you piece of shit.” Hob sighed.

Archer clawed a pair of night vision goggles off his face and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.

“God DAMN IT! This happens EVERY TIME!” He shouted.

“What the hell are you doing here?” 21 demanded.

Archer shrugged. “The wonder twins were getting weird so I climbed up to the second storey through the vents.”

“Why didn’t you use the stairs?” Hob asked.

“Because the world’s greatest secret agent doesn’t just use the stairs.” Archer said in a way that suggested he believed the answer to be entirely obvious.

A scratching noise cut through the silent dark. It was followed by crackling fuzz.

“Was that you again?” 21 asked.

“No.” Archer said. “Wait.. That’s record static.”

Off the Florida Keys

There's a place called Kokomo

Mike Love’s warbling dulcet tones wafted through the dark like a portent of doom.

The each spun frantically about, 21 swinging his flashlight beam across the shelves casting light dancing across the sea of album covers. The glossy portraits of a hundred celebrities leered out of the dark in its cone of light. The face of an attacker could be hiding among any of them.

That's where you wanna go

The beam finally settled on a demo player in the far corner of the room. A single disc spun lazily on the table. There, to its left, a tall, dark, cloaked figure stood swaying to the tropical melody.

The cloak flapped and the figure blurred away into the darkness like static on a bad TV.

“Where’d he go?!” 21 demanded.

A pale hand with painted nails like claws seized 21’s shoulder from behind.

“Way down in Kokomo!”

A handsome man with piercing eyes and an immaculate beard smiled at them with teeth that came to two glinting points.

“I wrote that.” he sighed proudly.

And then with a clean jerk of his arm, he threw 21 through the ceiling.

---

Laszlo Cravensworth, Ultimate Vampire

Occupation: Vampire.

Crimes: Stalking, Aggravated Murder, Every Single Kind Of Sodomy.

---

Powdered plaster rained down on them from the gaping hole in the roof. In the full moon’s spotlight his fangs glinted wickedly.

“Shoot him, damn it!” Hob shouted. Archer drew his gun and screamed incoherently.

They fired over and over. Bullets riddled his body, the impacts jerking him into an involuntary dance.

“Ouch.” He enunciated. “Oof.”

Hob took a second to line up a shot and planted one right in the monster’s skull. He lurched backwards and dropped like a stone.

He lay still. Archer put a few more rounds into his chest just to be certain.

Archer turned to look at Hob, confused terror writ across his face. “Can you believe Mike Love was a vampire?”

“What are you talking about?” Said Hob.

“You’re right. In retrospect it makes a lot of sense. It really explains his parasitic relationship with Brian Wilson and the other Beach Boys.”

“Who the hell is Mike Love?” The corpse asked, sitting upright.

“You’re not dead?!” Hob cried.

“You’re not Mike Love?!” Archer cried.

“Yes, actually, twice now. And no, I’m Lazslo Cravenswortth. I wrote that song for my lady wife on our honeymoon in 1907.” He stood, brushing off the front of his cloak. Bloodstained bullets tinkled to the ground. “Perhaps you’d know me better for my pornography.”

Archer’s eyes widened in recognition. “Holy shit you were in SeinFuck!”

“Ah! A fan!” He brightened. “Which makes this next part harder. Ah well.”

He hissed and bared his fangs.

They opened fire again, but Laszlo leapt into the air.

“BAT!” He shouted. Laszlo’s body shrunk into a tiny flapping thing just in time to avoid the oncoming hail of bullets.

He was so small and flew so erratically that Hob couldn’t draw a bead on him, and he wove acrobatically around their bullets as he made a beeline for Hob’s face. At the last second, Laszlo resumed his human form and tackled Hob with all the momentum of a speeding bat.

They bulldozed through shelf after shelf, scattering record sleeves every which way as they brawled. Hob scratched and bit at every available patch of bare skin but Laszlo’s grip on him was too firm to break. Hob jammed his gun against Laszlo’s temple but the vampire swatted the weapon out of his hand and sent it skittering across the floor.

“Archer!” Hob called. “Could use some goddamn help.”

But Archer was backing away and shaking his head. “No way. Not me. I don’t do bats. Do you know how many people die of rabies every year? You guys have fun. Let me know who wins.” And with that he turned and sprinted off as fast as his legs would carry him.

Useless.

“Man what an awful friend.” Laszlo told him sympathetically.

Hob punched him in the face.

Laszlo punched him right back.

Hob felt the floorboards crunch and splinter as the back of his skull was driven through them. His head rang. Mutagen had toughened Hob’s bones and quickened his healing, but his brain was just as vulnerable to concussions.

Hob scrambled for something he could use. He had a few grenades in his coat if he could reach them, not that he was willing to set one right on top of himself. He patted the floor around him desperately for his gun, an improvised club, anything. He found an album sleeve.

He grabbed it anyway. Love Symbol by The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Hob was struck with a fevered idea.

He thrust the album cover violently into Laszlo’s face.

“The power of Christ compels you to fuck off!”

Laszlo violently recoiled with a frightened hiss. The hiss petered out into a confused hum as he gave the symbol a second look.

“Is.. is that a crucifix? No, maybe it’s an ankh.” He mused. “Frankly I have no idea what that’s supposed to be.” He finally admitted.

“Neither does anybody else.” Hob groused.

“Hm. Anyway.”

Laszlo sunk his fangs into Hob’s neck.

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

He’d hardly bitten a half a centimetre when he drew back and spluttered.

“UGH! That’s foul. For fuck's sake man you taste like a sewer. Pleh! Pluh!”

He began attempting to wipe Hob’s blood off his tongue with his hands.

“Your blood isn’t like a mortal’s at all.”

He gave Hob another once over.

“Hang on a tick, are you a werewolf? You legally have to tell me if you are.”

“Wuh?”

Hob was still a little woozy from having his skull used to punch a hole through the floor and the blood loss didn’t help.

“Uh yeah.. Sure? Is that good?”

Laszlo immediately let go of him. “Damn. Rotten luck.” He sighed. “Ah well. Treaties are treaties. We wouldn’t want to go and start another civil war would we?” He stood Hob up and brushed him off.

“There. Good as new. Now we don’t need to go bringing this little incident up to the Vampire tribunal, eh?” He elbowed Hob painfully in the ribs and winked.

With that he trotted off.

“Where are you going?” Hob called after him.

“I’m going to go eat one of your friends.” Laszlo said matter of factly. “You did spill quite a bit of my blood.”

“They’re all werewolves too.” Hob said quickly.

“But it’s the full moon. Why aren’t they hairy like you then?” He asked.

Hob fumbled for a lie.

“Jet lag?” He offered weakly.

“Ah.” Laszlo nodded. “Shame. Well I have to eat somebody. I suppose I could…” He resumed his exit, stroking his thick beard.

Hob took a moment to get his bearings. Vampire were, apparently, very real. Even if magic was still a bunch of bull. How could ancestral memory give somebody vampire powers anyway? None of it made sense.

Then Hob realised what made the least sense of all.

Why hadn’t 21 fallen back down yet?

---

One minute 21 was sailing up into a sky full of stars. The next, the sky folded up with him inside it like a newspaper. Or maybe one of those cocktail weiner pigs in a blanket.

He felt his body jolt through space and suddenly he was standing with his feet on the ground in a small side office converted for storage. A bunch of signed albums hanging in frames on the wall told him somebody was a huge metalhead---”Master of Puppets”, “The Ozzman Cometh,” “Appetite for Destruction.” It also told him he was somewhere inside Tower Records.

“Hi!” Komachi said brightly.

21 leaned his weight against a stack of boxes near the window. Getting thrown through a roof really gave a guy some bruises.

“What am I doing here?” He asked her.

“Do you want the mechanical explanation or the motivational one?” Komachi asked.

“Both.. I guess.”

She clapped her hands together. “Okay! First of all, I just compressed space. I have pretty much as much control over this jungle as Monokuma does over the rest of the city, so I can change it around as I like. All I had to do was pinch things a little so that up there was down here.” She pointed from the ceiling to the floor. “I used the same thing in the opposite direction to make it so you guys couldn’t leave the building.”

“Like a foldspace drive.” 21 realised. “Wait, so you guys, a bunch of random high school terrorists, figured out how to pull off FTL travel? You made Star Trek and the best thing you can think to do with it is to run a death game?”

Komachi shrugged. “Our glorious leader has her priorities. Just like I have mine. I want you to do something for me.”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t turn you down immediately?” 21 asked her.

“I could put you back in the room with the vampire.” Komachi offered.

“Fair enough.”

“I’ll dangle the carrot first.” She said. She reached out with her scythe and tapped it against 21’s forehead.

And then there were three of them standing together in the room.

21 blinked and rubbed at his eyes but the newcomer would not go away.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen his dead friend. Before him stood the same ghost that had haunted him a full year and a half before he realised it was never there at all.

“24?” He asked finally. “Is that really you this time?”

“Nooooo, I’m actually a demon borrowing his form to screw with your heeeaaaaad.” The apparition warbled. “Of course it’s me dummy. As much of me as you can remember.”

“Dude, I’ve already gotten over this.” 21 tried to shake the spectre from his sight. “You’re not real. You’re just my stupid head processing, like, grief. I guess? I already moved on. Dead is dead.”

“If that’s true, then why was I still in here?” 24 asked. “Me and Skippy and numbers 26 through 37 and all the other guys who got killed while you were around. It’s getting crowded up there dude. You can pretend like you don’t feel it, but you aren’t some badass Vulcan Stoic. You’re more Wesley than Spock.”

“Come on, that’s not fair..” 21 pleaded. “You’re not even gonna give me Bones?”

“Bones wouldn’t have to ask to be himself.” 24 tutted. “You’re a Wesley through and through.”

Despite himself, 21 actually laughed. For a second he let himself pretend they were shooting the shit again like old times. That he was talking to the real thing.

“You’re way out of your depth, aren’t you?” 24 asked him.

“I miss you man.” 21 said.

“I just hope you make the right decision.”

The vision of 24 dissipated.

21 turned on Komachi. “What was that?” He demanded. “You’re trying to psych me out aren’t you?”

Komachi shrugged. “I don’t even know who it is you saw. I just let them out for a minute. That’s all I can do for you right now, but give me a relative and I can give you the original.”

“What? No! I can’t just, zap 24 into someone else’s body to get my friend back.” 21 said. “I mean look at how miserable Edward is. I don’t---”

“You don’t want to lose 24 again, like you’re going to lose your new friend too once he figures out how to purge himself from his host?” Komachi finished. “But you don’t have to. You think Project R is only able to load up one dead woman?”

“That’s.. You mean Karai, right?” 21 asked. “I don’t want to replace her either.”

“So don’t. All I need is time and I can make another body for both of your friends. It doesn’t even need to be permanent. If Edward or 24 or whoever it is decide they want to move on after you two talk it out, then that’s his choice. But shouldn’t he get to make it?” She looked at him gravely. Komachi’s voice wavered with a vulnerable sincerity. “All I want to do is give people a little more control.” She said. “But I can only do that if you do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“I need you to kill Sterling Archer.”

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

“Why didn’t we tell the others what we know?” Edward demanded.

Karai kept her eyes trained on the front doors.Attackers could come busting them down any second. Did Edward not get their priorities?

“We can’t tell anybody. We don’t know what they’ll do if they find out what we’re supposed to be capable of.”

“You don’t know that!” Edward said. “We could talk to them. I’m sure if we just explained, they would---”

“They would understand you.” Karai said coldly. “You heard Archer. His first thought was to kill me, not you. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a living person, you can’t deny you’re wearing one. Even I don’t know what to think about whatever I am right now. How can I expect empathy from a human?”

But Hob wasn’t a human, a niggling voice in the back of Karai’s head told her.

Then again, he also wasn’t an empty metal casing trying to play a person using someone else’s thoughts for a script.

A clatter from the back of the building alerted them both. Karai’s hearing singled in on the the sound of liquid spattering the ground, the precise viscosity of which she was able to immediately determine as paint.

“What’s important now is survival.” She told him. “You’re not so dead set on self termination you’re going to give up on me, are you?”

Edward sprung his hidden blades from his sleeves. “Don’t count on it. It’s not my life to lose. I owe that much to my living relative.”

“And what of the dead?”

Out of the maze of shelves appeared a tall man with a great fur cloak he wore over his shoulder with an air of regal certainty. Like Old Hob, one of his eyes was covered in a patch. At his side he carried an enormous polearm no smaller than Guan Yu’s. The intimidating figure he cut was only slightly undercut by the bucket’s worth of yellow paint splashed over his robes.

---

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Ultimate Avenger

Occupation: Deposed King

Crimes: Attempted Regicide, Mass Murder, Blocking His Own Name In The Intro Picture. Jerk.

---

“What of them, friend?” Edward asked. He kept a wary distance from the cloaked man.

“Do you carry them with you?” He set his spear upon his shoulder and began to approach one slow deliberate step at a time. “Like me, you are not of this age. I am Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, once-king of Faerghus. I have lived to see my kingdom fall, but not her people avenged. I carry the burden of their hate.”

“Edward Kenway. If I’m to represent a nation, I suppose mine would be Nassau and her Republic of Pirates. Fallen too, sad to say. And the brave souls who made it. I suppose as her last citizen, I do carry them as you say.”

Edward said. His finger tapped persistently against the blade of the knife on Karai’s side, which she took as a signal to surreptitiously creep about to Dimitri’s flank while he was distracted in conversation.

“Then we have both been wronged.” Dimitri said. “Tell me, Edward of Nassau, what will you use this second grip on life to accomplish if I don’t take it from you?”

Edward shrugged. “No life, this. I’ll carry on only long enough to put my descendent back at the wheel. Then I’ll join the dead in rest.”

Dimitri’s grip on his spear tightened such that karai could hear his knuckles pop. “Then you are worse than a coward. I have no mercy for you.”

Dimitri practically exploded into action. He aimed his spear for Edward’s chest and lunged. There was no acceleration to his charge: he simply pushed off of the ground and erupted forwards like a bullet from a gun. The floor beneath his feet caved into a crater and the racks of vinyl on either side were sent airborne by the resultant wave of pressure.

Edward, to his credit, was ready. He opened his palm to reveal one of Karai’s smoke bombs. That pickpocketing sneak!

He lobbed it up in front of him underhand and rolled aside. The spear punctured the smoke bomb in place of Edward’s chest. It burst in his face leaving him choking in a haze of powder.

Karai seized the opportunity. She slipped in through the smoke and buried her sword deep into his side. His heavy cloak and the armour beneath offered some resistance, but not enough to stem her newly untapped machine strength.

Dimitri gave a muted grunt and blindly swung his spear for the source of the pain. Karai wasn’t just stronger now. She could sense each and every minute disturbance to the air around her. She tracked his swings as over 300 km/h---as fast as Guan Yu’s attacks. Fortunately they had none of the precision---especially while his eyes were still stinging from the smoke bomb. Karai slid uncannily between his strikes. She found herself passively calculating distance; minimising her own dodges to give herself the maximum amount of space to avoid the next onslaught.

The air filled with splintered wood and vinyl as his wide swings slashed whole aisles’ worth of shelves and merchandise to ribbons. The angrier Dimitri got the more rapid the attacks came and as his vision cleared he was starting to get closer. Karai fell onto her back to narrowly limbo beneath a low sweep, only for the king to aim a boot squarely at her face. His spear was so prominent she’d made the error of considering him as a single limb.

Karai caught the stomp in her hands. The force transferred through her body to the floor, which gave out into a second gaping crater. She fought to stand against the pressure he exerted and with a great heave, she lifted up his leg, shoving him back and off-balance.

Just as Dimitri was about to recover, Edward appeared at his side for an opportunistic thrust of the knife. He caught Dimitri just below the ribs drawing out a spray of red.

The mad king grimaced.

“That’s twice we’ve stuck you..” Said Edward. “Give it up.”

“An insect’s sting compared to the pain of the dead.” Dimitri told him. “I’ll skewer you both in one thrust.”

Dimitri caught Edward by his hood before he could pull away and hurled him at Karai.

At the same time as Karai caught his tumbling body, Dimitri readied another charge---one aimed to follow through on his threat.. It was practically a feat of contortion to twist her spine out of the way of the tip while also hefting Edward out of harm’s way.

The spear may have missed them, but the prince himself was another story. He leaned into his shoulder and rammed into Edward. Edward, in turn, was swept along by the king’s charge and smashed into Karai’s front, no doubt inflaming his injured back more than it hurt her. The end result was that all three of them careened across the room like a three car pile-up clear through a dividing wall.

Karai took the brunt of the impact in the small of her back. She’d been driven through about 15cm of cement and two layers of drywall. Somehow, she reflexively knew that such an impact would inflict minimal stress on her carbon fibre chassis, but only if it was dispersed over a wide enough area. If it’d been his spear instead of his shoulder she’d have gotten to see whatever Komachi had stuffed inside her in place of organs.

She tucked reflexively in on herself as she sailed across the space on the other side---some sort of showroom for outdated sound systems. If she landed well, maybe she could be back on her feet before Dimiti had time to capitalise on their vulnerability.

Karai never landed at all.

Instead, space seemed to fold around and catch her like a glove.

She found herself in the side office where she’d eavesdropped on Archer and Komachi.

The latter stood across from her. Smiling.

“Hello Project R. How would you like to kill Sterling Archer?”

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

The powers that be in the universe apparently had it out for Edward’s back.

He landed as best he could under the circumstances, which was into a sloppy somersault that ended with him staring up into the ceiling.

His streak of fire down his back made him question whether he could even stand up right now. He was pretty sure the impact had reopened the wound if not torn it even wider. Ironic that Karai was both his downfall and his only possible salvation.

“Karai, I need your help to stand.” He called.

But she was nowhere to be found.

“Damn you.” He hissed between his teeth. But there was no time to be cursing his vanishing ally.

Dimitri loomed.

He brought his spear down with unflinching swiftness. Edward rolled aside and immediately regretted it. The spearhead shattered only tile, but Edward might’ve felt less pain if he’d let it hit him.

Edward pushed himself up onto his forearm so that he could look Dimitri in the eye.

“Why do you do Komachi’s bidding?”

Dimitri savagely kicked his arm out from under him.

“The woman means nothing. I fight for those unjustly slain who lack the power to avenge themselves.”

“Wait.” Edward coughed. He raised a hand weakly. “I’ve done your people no harm. You won’t avenge them by killing me.”

Dimitri lowered his head. “You are nothing but a stepping stone. As is Komachi. In return for this meaningless violence she has promised to raise the spirit of Faerghus’s oppressor. So I can finally kill Edelgarde. So I can finally take the vengeance I was denied in life.”

“You’d kill one person just so you could kill another?” He said incredulously. “What wrongs are you righting? Both of you are dead! What right do you have to spill blood in a world that’s already moved on?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand curr.” Dimitri planted a boot on Edward’s back and forced him to hold still. “You don’t feel their anguish like I do. You can’t hear them screaming for somebody, anybody, to give action to their anger.” He raised his spear. “Here is your ‘rest.’”

CLANG!

Dimitri’s spear halted. A pair of crossed blades stood in its path.

“That’s twice now.” 21 told Edward. “Keep making me save the day and I’m gonna lose my villain cred.”

“Are you some sort of clown? Am I supposed to laugh?” Dimitri’s nostrils flared. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. I’ll gut you both.”

They traded blow after blow. With 21’s twin blades, he was able to catch and guard against the spear, but the length of the shaft gave Dimitri’s blows power in leverage. Every blocked strike drove back 21’s footing.

On the next thrust, he pivoted and caught the spear below the head. Taking advantage of Dimitri’s forward momentum, 21 yanked him in towards himself and delivered a powerful headbutt that left the mad prince reeling. 21 followed it up by driving his elbow down hard into his skull.

For a moment Dimitri looked dazed.

“No!” He shook off the impact, refusing . “The dead must be sated!”

“Dude, how is any of this supposed to make your dead buddies happy?” 21 asked. He deflected a wild thrust off the curve of his left stinger.

“They died screaming with hate on their breath!” He roared. “They can’t rest until I’ve killed the one who did it.”

“If they died shittily, why would they want to see more blood?” 21 asked him. “Look dude.. I’ve been there. I found and killed my best friend’s murderer. Well, pending new evidence.”

21 waited for another attack and speared Dimitri through the off-shoulder, driving him back to pin him against the outer wall. His stinger easily pierced flesh, drywall, and cement and lodged there.

Dimitri let out a frenzied roar but 21 skewered his other shoulder faster than he could raise his spear one-handed.

“No. Shut up. You’re gonna listen.” 21 chastised him. “I’ve done the whole revenge quest thing and it turns out the only one who thought they wanted it was me. You know what the dead really want? ‘Cause it’s not blood and guts dude.” He turned and shot a glare at Edward. “And it’s not giving yourself a brain bleaching either.”

“Ha! Then what would you have me do to quiet the voices of the dead?” Dimitri demanded. ”Nothing?”

“If they can see what they’re doing here in.. whatever afterlife they had in whatever weird part of history you came from, then you should show them stuff they didn’t get to experience. Live well. Dude, I’m in the middle of a death game in a post apocalyptic city with no idea whether anyone I know is alive and I still somehow found the time today to teach a cat how to enjoy music. That’s the kind of shit my buddy would want to see. Not misery and gore. Unless it’s Mortal Kombat that game rules.”

Dimitri was silent.

“But the anger---”

“Is all yours dude.” 21 told him. “Edward’s just as dead as you are. Does he seem like he wants blood?”

Edward tried to speak and instead groaned in pain. “I want a bloody drink is what I want.”

“See?” He slid his blades free of Dimitri’s shoulders. “We can keep kicking each others’ asses if you want but if you really wanna do this, I’m gonna fight just as hard for my dead friend to keep living just as hard as you will to murder people for yours.”

For a moment Dimitri seemed his hesitate. His eyes flicked to his spear as if he was waiting for it to guide him. He let it drop.

“Your way is not mine. But you speak with conviction.” Dimiti sighed. “You haven’t swayed me from my quest, but this is not how they would want me to do it. Out of respect for your loyalty to those you’ve lost, I yield.”

Both Edward and 21 let out the breaths that neither knew they were holding.

“So we’re in clear waters again, at last.” Edward sighed. 21 helped him up and he rubbed his still-aching back. “I don’t know if I could take another scrap with my spine like a bloody matchstick.”

21 laughed. “Finally showing your age, huh?”

“Hah! Jealous that I wear 300 years better than you do 30.” Edward teased.

“I’m only 25!” 21 complained. “I just look older because I’m husky.”

Dimitri folded his arms. “Both of you are far too quick to relax. Did you forget that Komachi sent three warriors?”

A brilliant golden light flashed through the windows. A howling wind picked up in his wake and soon through the rattling windowpanes Edward could see trees in the distance crashing to the ground. One was uprooted and hurled a hundred metres into their clearing landing up against the glass. Something was making its way through the jungle.

Dimitri stooped to pick up his spear. “Get ready.” He told them. “She saved the worst for last.”

---

“You want me to kill him.” Karai repeated.

“Do I need to check your audio processors Project R?” Komachi asked mildly.

“If I kill anybody, then Monokuma will call another of his trials.”

“Oh, he can’t see anything in here.” Komachi laughed. “This whole jungle is a blind spot I backdoored into his plans for the city. As long as I’m recognised as the primary administrator here, I can keep him from getting anything but a vague sense of what’s going on. Of course that means I still have to play my part and pretend to participate in his little game. Hence my three visitors.”

“Alright..” Karai hesitated. “Why do you want him dead?”

“Well I did work for the most wanted terrorists on the planet. Even if it was only to finish my work.” Komachi admitted. “Honestly, none of this would be happening if those silly people at Abstergo hadn’t stopped me from finishing my gift to humanity---that’s you, Project R.”

Karai’s synthetic muscles clenched. “Stop calling me that.” She said. “I don’t want to be anybody’s project.”

Komachi tilted her head. “Oh? Would you prefer Karai?”

“Yes!” Karia shouted. She shook her head. “No! I.. I have no idea. I don’t know how to think of me.” She made a fist and punched a hole through the drywall. “Why did you make me like this? I’m not like Edward or Guan Yu or any of your other experiments. I have her memories, but I can tell that I’m not her.”

Komachi’s eyes softened. “Maybe…” She reached out and gentle placed her hand on Karai’s head. Karai’s computer brain reflexively processed the most efficient way to snap her wrist in several places but for some reason she stopped herself from following through.

Komachi opened the disk drive in her forehead. She pulled out a second disc from her grim reaper robes and quickly made the switch. “There. That could help.” She closed the drive.

As soon as her body had read the information on the disc it began to change. She could feel her skelatature shifting, metal vertebrae sliding and compressing to fit a different bone structure. Her face shifted---more angular. Reactive artificial pigment in her skin and hair transitioned abruptly to a different hue. Even without looking at a mirror she knew she was a redhead now.

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

“Ultimate Despair was going to do it all in house but we just didn’t have the right resources stateside.” Komachi said, almost apologetically. “So Karai---the real Karai---made a deal. The Foot Clan would steal any materials I needed. In exchange, I’d bring her grandfather back. Of course the process wasn’t perfect then. It still isn’t to tell you the truth, at least not in real world applications---”

“Get to the point.” Karai who was not Karai and was certainly not anymore felt abuzz with nervous energy. She wanted to break something, she wanted to hold very still.. She wanted to scream, she wanted to listen intently. “Tell me what happened.”

“Well, I needed a direct relative to be the host.” Komachi said. “And given all the family backstabbing the Oroku clan seems to enjoy, well, there was really only one left.”

“So you put Shredder’s memories into Karai’s body.” She concluded.

“He wasn’t happy with that situation either. Believe it or not the soft old fool actually wanted his granddaughter back. Not enough to stop living in her body though. So the Foot made Ultimate Despair another offer.”

“And that resulted in me?” She asked.

“He demanded the first prototype of Project R be of his daughter. And I…” Komachi sighed. “Well I had other plans. But that bitch behind the bear made me go along with it. Still; I never destroyed my original code.”

“...”

It took her a long time to come to the question.

“...who was she?”

Komachi smiled again. She turned her scythe to show her new face in its reflection.

“She was a friend. The Ultimate Songbird. She was the only one in Ultimate Despair who made any sense. The only woman I--- Well nevermind.” Komachi stopped herself. “Her name was Dorothy. Dorothy Sold---”

“No.” Said Dorothy. “You don’t get to name me. Not all the way.”

Komachi seemed to take this in stride. “Of course.” She agreed.

“I was born from your love for your friend and from Shredder’s for Karai. In a way, I’m part of both of them. Oroku Dorothy. Or Dorothy Oroku if we use the Western order.”

“You weren’t just for us.” Komachi said. “I told you that you were my gift, right? Those aren’t the only memories you can keep. You could help so many people, Dorothy.” She clasped Dorothy’s hands in her own. “It never stood for ‘Robot’ like those idiots thought. Did you know that in over a hundred different cultures Ravens are said to be able to carry messages from the dead? Project Raven, that’s you! I built you for my own closure, sure, but think about a world where nobody’s spirit is ever really gone forever. And all I need is a little time.”

Dorothy let her hands slip out of Komachi’s grip. She turned away from her.

“I don’t even know if that’s a responsibility I want.” She told her. “I can’t end a man’s life for it.”

“End his life?” Komachi’s voice flooded with confusion. “Wait, you haven’t figured it out yet? We’re all---”

Dorothy heard a sharp, sudden hiss. Something impacted the floor.

She knew what it was before she turned around. Komachi lay slumped over on his side. Her artificial senses registered breathing and a steady heartbeat. So she wasn’t dead, at least not yet. But she might be if Dorothy couldn’t figure out where---

A pair of hands grabbed her from behind. Something slapped against her forehead and all of Dorothy’s senses melted together.

Dead pixels erupted across her vision like fireworks. All she could hear was fuzz and the frantic whirr-click of her own internal processors trying to keep up with the bursts of jarbled sensory information.

Behind him, Dorothy watched as the indistinct blob she knew to be Komachi silently struggled up to her feet. The attacker whirled around, just in time to narrowly pull back as Komachi swung her scythe. The figure raised their arm up, too slowly and deliberately to be a punch. Komachi caught them by the wrist. Dorothy heard a crunch---bone? No, too brittle.

She tried to move her limbs to attack him but found they had locked up.

Behind him, Dorothy watched as the indistinct blob she knew to be Komachi silently struggled up to her feet. The attacker whirled around, just in time to narrowly pull back as Komachi swung her scythe.

That was all she was able to make out before her vision became to scrambled to distinguish between the vague blurs of motion around her.

At one point she felt something brush against her forehead. Her senses slowly began to clear. First her hearing. Then her sight.

“I won’t let you.” Dorothy heard Komachi say.

Glass shattered. A heavy thud somewhere distant. Below her?

She struggled to her feet. Her limbs felt like lead. Dorothy dragged herself over to the shattered window and peered down.

Komachi’s body lay sprawled out across the ground. Blood seeped lazily from the back of her head. Even from this distance with the lingering fuzz around her senses, she could tell she wasn’t breathing.

Dorothy ran.

She sprinted across the winding aisles of the second storey. She had to find people---two other people. The trial could only start once three people had discovered the body. The longer she took to find witnesses, the more time the murderer would have to prepare.

No time to think, to feel, those were luxuries the murderer had robbed her of. Just survival. More survival.

She nearly ran headlong into tall man in a blue priest’s habit who suddenly rounded the corner ahead of her.

“Oh.” He said. His tone was mild but it betrayed more surprise than he let on. “You.. aren’t who I was expecting to see. Is Lady Onozuka…?”

He let the question dangle.

“Dead.” Dororthy answered him brusquely. “She’s dead. Get the others.”

“Yes of course. Ah, but first---I should reintroduce myself. I am Kotomine Kirei. One of the late Miss Onozuka’s coworkers.”

---

Kotomine Kirei, Ultimate Priest

Occupation: Ultimate Despair Chaplain

Crimes: Murder, Kidnapping, Devil Magic

---

Hob descended the stairs to find a scene of absolute destruction.

The entire ground floor looked like it’d been swept over by a hurricane. There wasn’t a shelf left intact. Both the wall of the building and the interior dividing wall had a massive hole shattered through it. Nearly every surface, including the impressively sized stereo systems on display, had been pincushioned by a random assortment of swords, daggers, scimitars, and every other bladed implement a man could think of.

In the middle of it all a man in golden armour sat atop a heavy duty upright speaker. It didn’t make a very convincing throne, but the man more than made up for that with his own imperious presence.

He saw Hob and lifted up a hand idly. Another dozen weapons were conjured out of thin air.

Hob held up his palms in surrender.

“Nope. Nah. You got me. I ain’t beating that.”

The weapons vanished.

“You are a low breed of thing.” The man sniffed. “Yet unlike the other mongrels, at least you have the sense to know it.”

Hob noted the three bodies at his feet. 21, Edward, and some guy in a big fur cloak and an eyepatch like his own who Hob didn’t recognise.

“Yeah I’m thinkin’ that’s the right call on my part. Didja kill ‘em?”

As if in answer the guy in the cloak groaned and tried to stand up.

Gilgamesh ground the heel of his boot against the back of the man’s head.

“Worthless little king, did I give you permission to stand in my presence? You don’t even have the right to kneel before the King of Kings. I am Gilgamesh. Fall before that name and know that it will never die.”

---

Gilgamesh, The Ultimate King

Occupation: King of Heroes

Crimes: None. For he is flawless.

---

“Okay.” Hob backed away slowly. “I’ll just remove myself from your presence then your majesty.”

He swore he nearly had a heart attack when he bumped into Laszlo coming down the stairs in the opposite direction.

“Oh. Hullo again.” He said. “Have you seen anyone with blood that doesn’t taste awful?” His eyes brightened when he saw the bodies at Gilgamesh’s feet.

“Ah. The noxious leech.” Gilgamesh turned up his nose at Laszlo.

“The Mesopotamian prettyman.” Laszlo greeted in kind. “Are you doing anything with those?”

“I have executed beings thrice your superior for laying a hand on my meanest treasures.” Gilgamesh said.

Archer strode in carrying a paper carton under one arm. He glanced at Hob and Laszlo in turn. “Oh hey you’re both alive.” He acknowledged. “Who’s blondie?”

Hob expected Gilgamesh to punish him, but instead his just clapped his hands together in mild amusement.

“Hoh. All have gathered in my court.” He crowed. “Once more, fortune flows into my storehouse.” He rose from his makeshift throne. “Follow your king at a deferent distance. My lesser part has told me that a murder has occurred.”

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

---

Ding, Dong! Bing, Bong!

”A body has been discovered!”

After a certain amount of time, which you may use however you like, a class trial will begin!

---

It wasn’t any less jarring the second time.

They stood gathered over Komachi’s lifeless body. Hob examined the faces of the gathered eight. Three he knew. Five, total strangers, including a woman he’d never seen before. Where was Karai?

“Yep. She’s dead alright.” Archer said.

“Dude!” 21 shot him a disgusted look.

“Just confirming it.” Archer shrugged.

Hob studied the strange red-headed woman’s conflicted expression. “Karai?” He guessed.

She nodded. “Dorothy now.”

“Alright.” Hob said. “Dorothy. How’re you holdin’ up?”

“I know even less about how to feel about that woman than I do about myself.” Dorothy admitted. “But I don’t think she deserved this.”

Just what’d happened between then and now? Hob knew better than to pry when they had limited time but he couldn’t help but wonder.

Edward’s face remained stern. “She stole the lives of who knows how many and gave them to the dead unasked for. It’s a sorry fate, but only to be expected from such madness.”

“Madness is greatness by another name.” Gilgamesh remarked. “She had an arrogant dream to change the face of death. For that, I admit to some admiration. I have no such praise for you, mongrel.”

The man wearing priest robes spoke up. “I think what we’re really getting at is that her actions influenced a lot of people. Many of us have understandable motives to do this. That makes this a complicated case.”

Hob took that as his time to enter the conversation. “Then let’s break it down.” He said. “We’ve got a much bigger area to search this time, so we’re all gonna have to split up.”

Laszlo raised his hand. “Yes, I would like to investigate the body while it’s still fresh and full of blood.”

“Absolutely not.” Said Hob. “21, you wanna take the body again since you did it last time?”

“Fine.” 21 grumbled.

“The killer may have made use of the surrounding woods.” Edward volunteered. “I’ll see what I can find. If my spine’s up to the exertion.” He shot a meaningful glower at the man with the fur cloak.

The man sighed. “If it’s entirely necessary, then I shall assist as repentance.”

“Yeah I’ll come too.” Archer agreed. “I’ve got some stuff I left out there anyway.”

“Dorothy and I were the ones closest to the murder when it happened.” Said the priest.

“Yes.” Dorothy said. “We should retrace our steps and see if we can learn anything from that.”

“Very well.” The priest agreed. “Gilgamesh, would you like to come?”

“Mm? Are you tethered to me Kirei?” Gilgamesh smirked. “Run along. A King does not do a peon’s labour.”

“Great. Another case where somebody’s doing nothing to help.” 21 muttered.

“Insolence! You are unworthy of the service I am providing.” Gilgamesh snapped. “By my golden fortune, all precious items find their way to me. In this case, I shall allow the most valuable clues to come into my arms. Rejoice, mongrels. It is a rare day a king shares his treasures.”

“So you’re gonna stand here and wait for the murder to solve itself.” 21 summarised.

“And supervise you that you shall not taint the evidence.” Gilgamesh added. “You are not such a lowly insect that I do not consider you a suspect.”

It wasn’t a bad point, if badly delivered.

“Alright. I’m gonna make a map of the area and where we were all standing at the time. If we’re doing groups of two, that leaves me with…”

Laszlo waved happily at him.

“Jesus Christ.” Hob swore.

Laszlo hissed.

“Sorry, sorry.”

---

As it turned out Laszlo was actually a really useful partner.

Other than never shutting up anyway.

As a bat, he could get an excellent overhead view of the rooms. Plus, he was able to easily fit into the vents and traverse them in record time. Soon enough they had a rough but ready map of Tower Records in hand.

“Well look at us. A vampire and a werewolf working together.” Laszlo said happily, slapping Hob on the back. “What a win for diversity, eh?”

“Yeah sure. Nice work.”

Hob tried to reckon what to do with the spare time they had. They had the map already. Maybe it was time to get started on locations and alibis.

“Hey pal, what exactly were you doing up until we bumped into each other again?” Hob asked.

“Mm? I was wandering about the second storey. Sort of like a labyrinth of music up there. A musical labyrinth.”

“Alright.. Were you looking for anything in particular?” He asked.

“More of my songs for one.” He answered. “D’you know ‘Chum On Irene?’ One of my favourites, that one. They had a version but all the lyrics were wrong. Must’ve been a parody.”

“Not a music guy.” Hob brushed him off. “You said for one. Anything else you were doing?”

“After a while I got a bit peckish. Lost a lot of blood in that scrap with you, like I said. So went looking for someone good to drink. That’s when I bumped into you.”

Hob sighed. It wasn’t exactly an alibi. But he wasn’t inclined to disbelieve it either. It’s not as though his own was any better. As far as he could remember, he’d tussled with Laszlo, come to whatever weird understanding they had now, and come downstairs to find Gilgamesh had literally wrecked shop.

Maybe a visit with Dorothy and her new priest friend would shed some light on things.

He grabbed Laszlo and dragged him along with him. “Come on. I’m not leaving you unsupervised with a fresh corpse outside.”

Dorothy and the priest---Kirei, Gilgamesh had called him---were examining a stack of brown cardboard boxes in a small side office.

Hob cleared his throat and the two turned around.

“Ah.” The priest greeted him. “This is the room Lady Onozuka fell from. Dorothy and I were examining traces the killer may have left.”

Dorothy held up Komachi’s scythe. “She was disarmed before she was killed. No blood on the blade itself, so she didn’t land a hit.”

“There’s more.” Kirei said. He pointed at one box, stacked on top of two others. The slats hung open, revealing a pile of strange symbols. Hob considered that they might be stickers at first, but when I went to pick one up he felt cold metal. Fridge magnets.

Another box lay on its side. It’d spilled its contents across the floor; hundreds of novelty pens tipped with miniature celebrity bobbleheads.

“Think they mighta gotten bumped in the struggle?” Hob asked.

“It’s my working theory.” Kirei agreed. "Though I wonder how an impact opened the magnets without spilling the box as well."

“Could you two tell me what you were doing betore the murder?” Hob asked.

“It’s hard to recall.” Dorothy said. “I was there when it happened but…”

Hob shot to attention. If they had an eyewitness that could be the key to cracking this thing.

“What’d you see of it?” He asked. “Didja get a read on their height, their build?”

“No.” Dorothy shook her head. “No. My senses weren’t responding. Something struck my head and everything went into a haze. I could only make out the motion. Two people struggled, then my sight died entirely and when it came back, she was bleeding outside.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “I feel like if I concentrated, I could put it together, but when I try to replay it it’s broken. I’m sorry.”

Hob put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be. Listen, the last thing we need is you drivin’ yourself in circles over this. Clear your head the best you can. We’ll figure it out. Both of us’ve got experience with mind screws, right?”

Dorothy smiled. “If you can call spending the first part of your life thinking about nothing but naps and tuna mentally taxing.”

“You wound me.” Hob joked. “String was pretty high up there too.”

Kirei coughed politely. “If I could give my account, poor as it might be. I left Gilgamesh to handle the three men in the sound system showroom and headed directly to meet with Lady Onozuka.”

“Why’d you want to meet with the boss so badly?” Laszlo asked contemptuously. “Were you going to try to brown nose her? I already had that idea.”

Kirei laughed. “No Laszlo. I merely felt something off upon arriving. That’s as far in depth as I’ll go before the trial.”

“There was one more thing.” Dorothy said. “I need another eye for this. Kirei and I disagree.” She indicated one wall where a group of signed albums hung in frames. “Do those look a little off to you?”

Hob studied them. “I guess they’re hung kinda far apart.” He shrugged.

“We’ll talk about the matter more if it comes up.” Kirei interjected. “They look fine to me anyway.” Hob caught a twinge of annoyance in his voice like he was miffed at him for agreeing with her. Seemed even priests could have their petty moments.

Laszlo cleared his throat. “If we are done here? Standing within six feet of a priest causes my skin to melt very slowly.”

Hob caught the whiff of burning flesh and gagged. “Yeah, let’s get outta here.”

They found 21 hunched over the body on the grass. He’d cleared the shards of glass from the window into a little pile to avoid stepping on any.

Gilgamesh stood aloof off to one side watching him.

Archer was there too. Evidently he’d gotten bored of jungling. He clutched his carton under one arm and a very large rifle under another.

21 looked up. “Oh great. You here to watch me do the worst job too?”

“I would’ve happily done it.” Laszlo pouted.

Hob knelt by 21. “There. We’ll be autopsy buddies. Done complaining?”

Hob pulled up the Monokuma File on his prison handbook.

---

The victim died instantly from blunt trauma to the back of the skull. The victim also suffered minor lacerations from glass shards to the face and hands. There are two evenly spaced 3cm puncture wounds in the victim’s neck.

---

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

“That all check out?” Hob asked.

21 nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird though. All the cuts are on her front, even though she’s laying on her back.”

“Maybe she did a flip?” Archer offered.

“Maybe, but there’s not really enough of a fall from the window for that to happen on its own.” 21 said. “She’d have to have done one on purpose, and nobody would want to land on their backs.”

“I don’t know about that.” 21 said hesitantly. “But then again, a lot just doesn’t add up. Look at her right hand.”

Hob did. He winced. “Ouch.”

“Right?” 21 agreed.

A sliver of glass was lodged deep into her thumb.

“The solution is too simple even for the likes of you.” Gilgamesh said. “The glass was broken before she fell.”

“That doesn’t happen unless you’re putting pressure on it.” Hob said.

“Exactly what I was thinking.” 21 agreed. “So maybe Gilgamesh is right.”

“Of course I am.” Gilgamesh scoffed. “Were your unworthy labour not necessary to this task, I would claim your heads for doubting a king.”

Hob examined her other hand. “Huh.”

He pried open her grip and removed the item. He handed it to 21. “You know what this is?”

“That’s the Van Halen logo.” 21 said.

Archer chuckled. “Hey, I guess she figured ‘I Might As Well Jump.’” He was met with blank faces. “What? Hey! That was a good one!”

Hob rolled his eyes. “I don’t care whose stupid band it’s from, I mean where do you think it she got it?”

“One, Van Halen rocks.” Archer said. “Two, probably from the big box of ‘em in the office she fell out of. I knocked it over earlier when I was uh. Doing stuff.”

World’s greatest secret agent, huh?

Archer’s testimony was suspicious, but probably not for the case itself. If he’d given it away so freely he probably didn’t consider it relevant to the murder.

Hob changed gears. “Whatcha got there?” He asked, indicating the two loads Archer was carrying.

Archer hefted the carton. “Figured I’d grab the classics for the road.” He opened it and showed it to Hob. A bunch of old albums, including some of the ones Archer had been playing when they’d first arrived.

“You’ve got some screwed up priorities. But alright.” Hob said. “And the gun?”

“Stashed that in the jungle just in case.” He set down his records and hefted the gun in both hands. It was a heavy duty sniper rifle. Glossy black gunmetal and a smooth wood stock.

Hob whistled. Everything was high end from the scope to the screws.

“Ray’d kill for a chance to fire this baby.” He marvelled. The Mutanimals’ resident sharpshooter was a crack shot with every form of alien energy weapon they’d looted, but Man Ray had always had a soft spot for heavy percussion.

“It’s sexy as hell right? And check this out.” Archer enthused. “Y’see that palm?” He braced the tripod against the ground, lined up the trunk in his sights, and fired. The bullet struck the tree and burst. An entire circular chunk of the wood was virtually deleted in a brief flash of powder.

The severed tree seemed to suddenly realise it wasn’t standing on anything and toppled, spilling Edward out of its leaves.

He fell out of the tumble standing and shook a fist at Archer. “Give a man some warning! 21, take away that cannon before he puts a hole in me as well.”

Dimitri hurried out of the treeline as well. “What was that explosion?” He demanded.

“A crude and noisy weapon to mimick the natural power of a king.” Gilgamesh answered.

Somehow without even reaching for it the gun had appeared in his hands.

Archer fumbled with the air for a second, confused. “What? How? I hate stage magic.”

“I have said it thrice now. Pay attention.” Gilgamesh scolded. “All treasures find their way into my hoard. Even such inelegant things.”

“Really? Wow!” An all too familiar bouncy voice piped up. “All guilty lil suspects find their way into my court.”

Monokuma had appeared behind them when they weren’t looking as he always did. This time he wore a khaki safari outfit complete with pith bucket helm.

“Sorry I’m late folks! I had a real heckuva time getting through that jungle. I think once we’re done here, I’ll clearcut it and build a statue of me kicking a pile of dead elephants. That’ll show ‘em who’s boss.”

“Stuff it.” Hob told him. “Are you here to whisk us off or not?”

“You got it!” Monokuma said cheerfully.

And with that the world once more went white.

---

The second she felt the shift start Dorothy hyper focused in on her positional data. She found that by concentrating, she could extend the fraction of a second the transition took into a relative minute from her perspective.

When Monokuma moved them to his courtroom, there had to be some trick to it. If she could just just figure out how he got around, maybe they stood a chance at escape.

She sensed movement alright. This wasn’t strictly teleportation. But they weren’t moving in any direction she could put a name to in three dimensions. It was almost like rising upwards but.. lateral.

She wasn’t given time to dwell on it.

The white marble of the courtroom rendered before her. Once again, her circuit-speed processing let her adjust to the sudden change faster than the others.

They stood around nine podiums in a ring.

Dorothy. Archer. 21. Edward. Kirei. Gilgamesh. Laszlo. Dimitri. And Hob on her left to complete the loop.

“Well now! Exactly one day and you’re all back in here with me.” Monokuma chortled. “Hey Karai---”

“Don’t call me that.” Dorothy said.

“---Hey Karorothy. Betcha feel pretty stupid for taking that bet now, huh? Seeing as the only one who could’ve killed without you losing is the victim here. I guess I can just take Eddy boy’s brain and we’ll call it quits.”

Dorothy squeezed her hand into a fist and pictured driving it through Monokuma’s chest. He wanted a reaction. If that was her final avenue of resistance, then she wouldn’t give it to him.

“Puahahaha! I’m just yankin’ yer chain.” He grinned. “I’m still gonna let this thing play out. Heck, I won’t even penalise you for leaving the game area. Boy that Komachi really tried to cheat me, huh? And you guys too! You almost didn’t get to play my killing game! Whoever the blackened is, I’ll have to thank them for getting rid of her.”

Dimitri---the one-eyed spearman---pounded an armoured fist down on his podium.

“Stop acting as though you don’t know exactly who it is. This is a farce. Punish the one who robbed me of my chance to kill Edelgarde or I’ll do it myself.” He brandished his spear.

Gilgamesh laughed. “Hoh, the mongrel king Dimitri is out for blood. Is it truly wise to declare your desire to kill in the middle of a murder case?”

“My words mean less than your actions.” Dimitri growled. “Anybody who would attack their own ally can speak nothing but poison.”

“If you do not wish to be trod upon like gravel, don’t stand before a king’s path.” Gilgamesh smirked.

“Is this really who you are?” Dorothy said. The two squabbling men looked up at her. “Honestly, you’re faced with a problem and instead of solving it you start goading each other?”

“The lady’s right.” Said Laszlo. “Not least because I feel very uncomfortable standing between this. Would anyone like to trade podiums?”

Monokuma banged his gavel. “No trading allowed!”

“Oh damn.” The Laszlo said pitifully.

“We have to start somewhere or we’ll end up going nowhere.” Dorothy said. “We should open with what everyone was doing.”

“Well? Get going.” Archer tapped his watch. “It’s already been---” He glanced at its face. “Wait a sec, this thing is broken. Hey bear did you mess with my watch?!” He shook the cracked face at Monokuma emphatically.

Monokuma cocked his head. “Huh? Me?”

“Yes you! This thing cost more than your bounty buddy, so I’ll have to get creative to make up the difference after I turn you in.”

“Ulp! I don’t wanna be a bearskin rug!” Monokuma shuddered. “But really, I moved you here as gentle as a mama picking up her cubs. It must’ve happened before the trial.”

“Alright, get back on track!” Hob snapped. “I swear, why the hell do people say it’s like herding cats when it’s always humans getting caught up on bullshit? I’ll start off our little timeline.” He took a moment with his eye squeezed shut and then continued. “Alright. Me, Dorothy, Edward, and 21 all got here earlier in the day. Archer was already in the building drinking himself to death to the worst music I’ve ever heard in my life. Then Komachi surprised us coming down the stairs---”

“Meaning she was already in the building before any of us.” 21 surmised.

Archer shook his head. “No way. I had sensors set up everywhere. Plus I scoped the place out when I was putting them up. If she was there, I would’ve known. She must’ve poofed in with magic.”

“Right now, not important.” Hob said gruffly. “21 and I hung out downstairs. Edward and Dorothy snuck off somewhere. I’m guessin’ to eavesdrop on Archer and Komachi.”

“Correct.” Dorothy nodded.

“Won’t deny it.” Edward agreed.

“Hey! Not cool!” Archer complained.

“You’re a secret agent and you didn’t expect that?” 21 scoffed.

“I was trying to negotiate getting you guys out of here.” He said. “Don’t you think I deserve a little benefit of the doubt?”

Dorothy would’ve loved to wipe that smug self-righteous look off his face by revealing what she and Edward had heard. But that would mean revealing what she’d learned about herself too.

She traded a brief exchange in looks with Edward, who seemed to be having much the same thoughts.

“Could she really have allowed us to escape?” Edward asked.

“Yup!” Monokuma nodded emphatically. “That little sneak was involved with the planning stages so she knew this place inside and out. She was probably the only other person in Despair City who could’ve set you free.”

“Damn it all.” Edward swore. “So it’s an even greater loss.”

21 looked to Edward sympathetically. “Hey. It’s not over yet, right?”

He let out a long breath. “I don’t know.”

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

“It isn’t if we don’t give up now.” Dorothy urged.

“Right.” Hob continued. “Komachi announced her little Scrooge gambit thing. Not really sure what she was thinkin’ there. That’s where you chuckleheads come in.” Hob indicated the four Komachi had sent after them.

“The order that showed up as far as Dimitri, Archer, and I were able to piece together was the vampire Laszlo, who was confronted by Hob, 21, and Archer. Then Dimitri, fought by myself and Kar-- Excuse me. Dorothy. 21 came down to assist in the final moments after Dorothy vanished. Then Gilgamesh.” Edward said. “Although I admit to being unconscious for his appearance.”

“Hmmph.” Gilgamesh folded his arms. “None of you were able to stand against even a fraction of my radiance. I count it as a favour to Kirei I even bothered to deal with you at all.”

“Hang on,” 21 cut in. “So where does Kirei come into things?”

“If you will allow me.” Kirei bowed his head. “I suppose I have only told Dorothy this, but I am not one of Komachi’s experiments. I am a member of Ultimate Despair. The Ultimate Priest.”

Edward and 21’s faces twisted into looks of disgust. Hob scowled, but it held little anger in it.

“You seem to be a reasonable man. At least moreso than others of that group we’ve met.” Edward said. “Why would a man of the cloth be drawn to a group that preaches nothing but misery?”

The priest looked up at Monokuma, seeming to be waiting for some sort of sign. If the bear’s split expression gave one away, then Dorothy couldn’t see it.

“I won’t ask you to understand.” Kirei said. “Suffice to say; I was born wrong. Positive emotions don’t give me any pleasure. So I looked for it in what I was able to feel; despair.”

“What the hell kind of reason is that to blow up a city?” 21 demanded.

“I know it’s not a very complex motivation. But it’s mine.” Kirei said simply. “I wish to feel things that will help me understand myself a little better.”

“If a city cannot stand against the crusade of an ambitious few, then that city is worth less.” Gilgamesh concurred. “That is something Kirei Kotomine understands.”

As totally removed from any logic as their convictions were, Dorothy found that she could empathise with Kirei at least. Even after Komachi’s explanation, she still felt out of sync with her own thoughts and feelings. She could easily envision what sort of lengths that feeling might drive her to if she let it get to her.

Gilgamesh, too, she could understand. He was arrogant, but absolute arrogance was a rare and comforting certainty in a world without answers. That was what Karai’s memories centred on when Dorothy thought of the Shredder---the real one.

“Would you quit it with the might makes right fortune cookie crap?” 21 grumbled. “Geez, first Shredder now you. I used to think those kinds of supervillain speeches were cool.”

“Getting back to the topic,” Kirei said, “Komachi wanted to try working with an exceptionally powerful ancestor but she knew she couldn’t hope to possibly control Gilgamesh. So used me as a kind of anchor. We’re pairbonded. Each one of us are constantly aware of where the other is. If I die, he dies. He can’t disobey a direct command from me---though I know better than to try giving one.”

“So in other words, what’cher saying is you’ve got a damn strong motive to off Komachi.” Hob concluded.

“Do not confuse this link to be a binding leash.” Gilgamesh countered. “It is only in place because I consented to it. Kirei Kotomine is a sufferable companion. I find his insights entertaining.”

“Okay. So now that we understand your relationship, let’s try to piece together all these moving parts.” Dorothy said. “Archer’s alarms told us that Laszlo was upstairs.”

“Ah. Yes. I flew up to the second storey as a bat.” Laszlo explained. “But then I realised the window was closed and bats don’t have thumbs. So I had to wait for Komachi to open it for me.”

“Which window?” Dorothy asked.

Laszlo hummed. “Actually, I believe it was the same one she fell out of.”

“So that’s where you entered?”

“No, she shouted at me to use another window instead and called me a lot of rude names.” Laszlo said. “So I did.”

Dimitri folded his arms. “That was utterly pointless.” He said.

Was it really? Dorothy thought over the details.

“Hold on a moment.” She said. “You said she let you in. Was that true for everybody else?”

“Yes.” Dimitri said grudgingly. “When I approached the door I found that I could not enter. I had to wait for a signal from Komachi before I could pass the threshold.”

“I let myself in.” Gilgamesh boasted.

“Ah, but your entrance through the wall was at the same time Lady Onozuka let me through the front entrance.” Kirei interjected. “It seems more likely that she let down the barrier all at once.”

“Do you imply, Kotomine, that I could not have demolished her pathetic wards with but a thought?” Gilgamesh challenged.

Kirei smiled. “Not at all. Just that you weren’t given a chance to prove it.”

“Hmph.” Gilgamesh nodded. “Your tact is pleasing. As always.”

“Get a room already.” Archer catcalled.

They really did deserve each other.

“I think we’ve gotten a better understanding of how the barrier worked.” Dorothy concluded. “Komachi had to lower it every time somebody entered. As far as we’re aware, nobody broke or bypassed it.”

“So everyone stayed inside the whole time, right?” Archer asked. “So what was the point of checking out the jungle?”

“Think about it.” Hob explained. “Once she’d been offed, she couldn’t’ve kept the barrier up. The killer would’ve been free to run off and hide evidence.”

“Which we’ll discuss after we’ve covered what everyone was doing.” Dorothy said. “So 21, Old Hob, and Archer engaged with you Laszlo?”

He nodded. “Well really, they shot me with lots of bullets. Ah, but before that I threw the fat one through the roof so I suppose I earned it.” He mused.

“He never did come back down.” Hob muttered to himself. “Where exactly did you wind up?”

21’s eyes shifted behind his tinted goggles. “Not really sure I wanna get into that.”

“Oh I can tell you exactly what he was getting up to.” Archer said smugly. He drew out the fob to his surveillance devices and thumbed through a series of switches. A playback crackled from the miniature speaker.

“All I want to do is give people a little more control. But I can only do that if you do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“I need you to kill Sterling Archer.”

“I set up a bug in the little office thingy where I negotiated with Komachi.” Archer said. “Wound up picking up this little gem as well.”

It felt like a switch had been flicked in Dorothy’s head. She hadn’t even been Komachi’s first choice. Just what was going on here?

All eyes turned to 21. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Oh come on, why do I keep getting put in the hot seat?”

“Maybe because it’s fun to watch you squirm?” Monokuma suggested.

“Look,” 21 said, “I clearly didn’t act on it, okay?” He gestured frantically to Archer. “I mean he’s still alive right?”

Archer slowly shook his head with his lips melodramatically pursed. “Tisk tisk. I thought you were cool man. We shared Night Ranger together.”

“We can draw any conclusions about 21 from this!” Edward interjected. “He came down to help me, not to go look for Archer. Besides; he, Dimitri, and I have the only alibis.”

“It is a shameful one, but it is true. I have an alibi.” Dimitri grudgingly admitted.

Hob’s eye flickered with recognition. “Hey that’s right. Your little slumber party down there. How exactly did that happen?”

Dimitri grunted. “Not much to explain. I arrived through the side entrance in the room with the large mesh boxes---”

“You mean speakers?” 21 asked.

Dorothy shushed him.

“---I entered the other half of the ground floor and announced myself to Edward and the one who now calls herself Dorothy, and who Komachi called Project R. We fought. The fight carried us through to the half of the building I entered from. Then Dorothy vanished. I assumed at first that she was hiding from me, planning to stab me in the back. But she never appeared.”

“Right, yeah. And after that weird meeting with Komachi, she put me back downstairs and told me to make sure you didn’t kill anyone.” 21 added on eagerly. “And then Gilgamesh kicked our shit in and that’s all I can remember except the bruises.”

"During that time, Komachi abducted me and gave me a similar offer as 21." Dorothy said. "Which is why I was there in the room with her when it happened."

Edward rubbed his chin. “Hang about. Do we really know whether all three of us were unconscious the entire time?”

“I can assure you, I allowed no one to rise.” Gilgamesh said. “I stood vigil over my conquests to ensure none would come to claim them from me.” He shot a look of abject loathing over at Laszlo.

“I only asked for one.” Laszlo complained. “Bit greedy hogging them all to yourself.”

“Squawk at me not, buzzard.”

“Look, I’m willing to accept they were all out cold for the entire time.” Hob said. “They sure looked like they’d taken a beating. What I wanna know is, how can we be sure Gilgamesh didn’t go anywhere.”

Kirei politely rapped his podium to draw their attention. “I can vouch for him.”

“Because of your supposed link, right?” Dorothy asked. It was a little tough to swallow. Considering she’d witnessed her creator perform what could only be described as magic, maybe that was being unfair. “Could you demonstrate this?”

Gilgamesh sneered. “A king does not need to demonstrate anything. Take my word as unconditional truth or challenge me and die.”

“He did know that a murder had occurred without leaving the room.” Laszlo ventured.

“Yeah, dumbass, which he could’ve known if he was the one who committed it.” Archer retorted.

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

Kirei sighed. “Gilgamesh, would you accept it if I gave them proof?”

“Do as you like.” Gilgamesh told him.

“Old Hob, the entire time that you were in the room with Gilgamesh he did not get up from his seat. The only movement he made was to lift one leg to step on what I assume was somebody’s head.”

“Mine.” Dimitri growled.

Hob hesitated, then shrugged. “Fine. I buy it now. So Gilgamesh and Kirei are each others’ alibi.”

“Did I say that?” Gilgamesh asked haughtily. “If Kirei wishes to prove his innocence he shall do so on his own merit.”

“Don’t you die if he gets executed?” Hob pointed out.

“If he can’t defend himself, I will not tolerate to be bonded to him.”

“Alright.” Kirei nodded. “I am afraid I don’t have an alibi. I could have easily done the deed, left down the hall, and then returned pretending to be unaware.”

“Would Dorothy not have seen you?” Edward asked.

“Yes, I find that quite odd.” Laszlo said. “Suspicious even. If you truly were a witness, why haven’t you fingered a man yet?”

“Phrasing.” Archer coughed.

“Before attacking Komachi, the killer struck me in the head.” Dorothy explained. “The attack disrupted my vision and my other senses. I’ll give my best to provide a detailed account of what I saw.” She ran over the smear of events in her thoughts one more time. “Komachi brought me to her to try and convince me to kill Archer as well. I had my back to Komachi when it happened. I heard a hissing sound, and then when I turned around, she was on the floor. That’s when I was struck on the forehead. After that, I saw Komachi get back up and try to attack the killer. There was a struggle. Something else struck my head, but much lighter that time. Then I heard glass shattering and when my senses came back online I saw her dead on the ground outside the shattered window.”

“And you didn’t see the attacker clearly at all?” Kirei mused.

“I didn’t.” Dorothy was struck with a sudden realisation. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

She turned to Hob. “Can I see your map for a second.”

Hob shrugged and handed it over.

“Look---we were facing each other throughout most of the conversation. She fell after I turned away from her.”

She sketched out the scene.

“But if the killer came through the door, there is no possible way I would have missed them.”

“Then what about the vents?” Hob suggested.

“Yes, or the window. The way I came in.” Laszlo pointed out.

“Both were right next to me.” Dorothy countered. “The killer wouldn’t have been able to attack Komachi first without being seen.”

“Besides, the window would’ve been a no go because of the barrier, right?” 21 asked.

“Exactly.” Dorothy pulled her mouth taut. “There must be something going on here.”

“You mentioned a hiss.” Edward said. “Could that have had something to do with it?”

“I think we know exactly who’s going around hissing at people here.” Archer said. He jerked his head at Laszlo.

“Yeah, you did do that, didn’t you?” Hob said.

“Yes, I have been known to hiss on occasion.” Laszlo agreed cheerfully. “Hate to prove the stereotypes correct but--- Wait just one moment are you accusing me?”

“It all fits.” Edward said. “The woman was found with a pair of puncture wounds on her throat---bite marks. You could have easily descended upon her as a bat from the vents, then flown over Dorothy’s head to strike her from behind.”

“Plus, when you left, you were whining about how thirsty you were!” Hob struck a fist into his open palm. “Shit, I knew I should’ve followed you. Of course you went looking for the nearest source of blood.”

“It could’ve been anyone who bit her.” Laszlo said defensively.

“Are you stupid enough to think we would believe that?” Dimitri growled. “None of us have fangs.”

Kirei spoke up. “What if the marks were made.. Without fangs?”

21 gave him an incredulous look. “I inspected the wounds myself dude. No way they were made by any kind of blade. And a bullet would’ve gone all the way through.”

“How about a pen?” Kirei ventured.

Dorothy thought back to the boxes they’d found.

“Of course.” She said. “There was a box of pens in the room itself. Anybody could’ve grabbed one and stabbed her.”

“But they would have had to know the pens were there first.” Kirei challenged. “The rest of the boxes were closed. There were only two open, remember?”

“Then the stabbing must’ve occured during the struggle after she got back up.” Dorothy realised. “That makes sense too. Otherwise, how would she have fought back when she was losing that much blood?”

21 furrowed his brow. “Wait, but if she got stabbed after she’d already fallen down, then… what made her fall?”

“Sometimes people just do that.” Laszlo said. “I had a young cousin once when I was a boy. He was born with the yellow jaundice, and so he had one leg significantly shorter than the other and he’d just tumble over at random. Tumble Down Edwin we called him.”

“No,” Dorothy frowned, “it definitely had something to do with the killer.”

Edward considered something. “What if the killer never touched her?”

“A ranged weapon.” Dimitri mused. “It would be befitting a coward who attacks from behind.”

“Yet we found no wounds indicating a dart or bullet.” Edward pointed out.

“Yeah, besides. How’d you aim through a vent when she was standing on the other side of the room?” Hob added.

Gilgamesh snorted. “Must I assist you? Is this truly not an idea that would occur to your simple minds? Not all weapons must be aimed.”

“Let’s put a pin in that.” 21 said. “We don’t really have any evidence to go talking about some mystery wonder weapon. Let’s narrow our list and look at who could have done it.”

“Which means we’re looking at the time after Dorothy got snatched to chat with Komachi but before Gilg called us all over to see the body.” Hob summarised. “Lemme see if I can draw this out…”

He sketched a map of everybody’s starting and ending locations.

“Lessee.. I wrestled Laszlo for a while then we split. He came downstairs a little while after me. Ed, Dor, and Dimitri fought for a bit. Dorothy got swapped out for 21. Gilgamesh shows up and none of them move a muscle after that. Kirei, you said you used the front entrance?”

“I did. I climbed the left staircase and met Dorothy in the middle of the second storey.”

Dorothy watched Hob work over his shoulder. “You’re a lot worse at this than Tita was.” She remarked.

“You want fast, or you want pretty?” Hob grumbled.

They studied the finished map.

“Hey waitasec. Where did Archer go?”

Hob looked up at him expectantly. “Well?”

“Went back down the same set of stairs you guys used to come up.” Archer shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”

Hob drew it in.

He looked up at Archer again. “And then you did.. what exactly?”

Archer shrugged. “I dunno. Grabbed some records for the road I guess.” He patted his carton.

“You’re asking us to swallow bilge mate.” Edward said sternly. “You couldn’t have hung about forever without us noticing you. Especially not once the fighting started. Dimitri sliced apart every one of those shelves. Even if you tried to hide from us, there’d be nothing to do it behind.”

“And I certainly did not see him on my way in through the right side entrance.” Dimitri said. “Or I’d have torn him to pieces.”

“So where precisely did you go?” Edward demanded.

“I think I can answer that.” Kirei said. “Gilgamesh, if you’ll recall our discussion about the barrier.”

“Hmph.” Gilgamesh adopted an obliging grin. “I’ll humour you this time Kotomine. Your pet theory was that she could only maintain or dismiss it all at once, correct?”

“And if that’s true,” Dorothy realised, “then there was actually a span of time where someone could’ve left the building.”

“And I know exactly where he would have gone as well.” Edward declared.

“As do I.” Dimitri agreed. “In the forest, we found a hunting platform and a harness. Nearby is where he recovered his rifle.”

“You mean this?” Gilgamesh produced the enormous gun from seemingly nothing. “I told you all of the most valuable clues would find their way to me.”

Archer threw up his hands. “Alright. Fine. Whatever. So I left the building. Nobody got shot, so who cares?”

“I care.” Kirei said. “In fact, I think it establishes something very important. You were planning to kill somebody.”

“Yeah? I wasn’t the only one pal.” Archer pointed at 21 and then Dorothy. “Both of you were conspiring with the Ultimate Shinigami. Conspiring! Running off into the woods to get my big ass gun was a perfectly reasonable reaction.”

“I don’t think you ran to get the gun for self-defence.” Dorothy said. “You couldn’t have listened to that recording of Komachi and 21 without alerting me and Edward where you were.”

“You were sneaking off to try something you had already been planning to do anyway.” Edward’s eyes narrowed. “You were going to try to kill Dorothy.”

“What? Pfft. No way.” Archer laughed nervously. “Why the hell would I want to do that? I’m here to help you guys escape, right?”

Dorothy hesitated. She could prove it. But if they knew how supposedly dangerous she was, it’d be exposing herself to unknown consequences. Even Komachi herself had spared them from that, never actually pointing to Dorothy as the sticking point in the agreement.

Dorothy didn’t want the weight of the world on her shoulders. But she also didn’t want to keep running from herself forever.

“You said it in that meeting.” Dorothy said. “You called me a threat to global security. Go ahead. Play back the tape for everyone since you already admitted to recording it.”

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

Archer’s eyes bored into hers. “Fine.” He muttered. “Fine, fuck you. I was gonna do this quietly. Nobody would even have to know why.” He spat. “But if that’s what you want.” He defiantly pulled out the fob again and entered the playback.

“The robot’s a threat to global security.”

“The android is a walking talking miracle. A universal memory host! Even somebody as dense as you should be able to see how much she can do for the human race in the right hands.”

“Yeah, or how much damage she could do in the wrong ones. Oh wait---that’s you built her for. You already agreed the best thing to do was destroy her before Ultimate Despair works out how to make more of her independent of the pirate’s brainwaves and destroys what’s left of the free world.”

“I know what I said. But I can’t. Call me sentimental. The dead need to have a voice.”

Archer pulled a flask out of his suit jacket and allowed himself a swig.

“You people have absolutely no idea how bad things really are.” Archer said shakily. “This mission? Eye of the storm baby. This is not the danger zone, it’s fresh cut flowers compared to what’s out there and I’ve been making the best of it. And if she makes it out of here alive.” He jabbed a finger at Dorothy. “Then Hurricane Bitch is gonna swallow up the whole wide freakin’ world.” He drained the rest of the flask and tossed it at Monokuma. It bounced off the bear’s head.

“You really think I can do that much?” Monokuma said dreamily. “Wow, wow, wow! It feels great to have people believe in you. I’ll have to remember to thank you when I give my self-congratulation speech once I’ve stripped away everything on this happy go lucky little planet.”

Archer wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and belched.

“Alright. Whatever. Yeah I was gonna shoot her. Doesn’t prove anything except I’m doing what needs to be done.”

“Well.” A subtle smirk crept across Kirei’s face. “I think that outburst gave us enough to work with to determine how Archer might have acted.”

“Hold on.” 21 raised his hand. “Why didn’t you shoot her?”

“Oh, I know this one.” Laszlo said. “It’s because the barrier would stop the bullets.”

“Ehhh.” Archer imitated a buzzer. “Wrong answer Count Douchula.”

“You mean, you could have shot her.” Hob clarified. “But.. how?”

“He could have the same way he got out.” Dorothy said. “By timing the shot for the same moment the barrier was lowered for Gilgamesh and Kirei.”

“Could he actually have made that?” Dimitri wondered aloud.

“I told you guys I’m the world’s greatest secret agent. I would’ve saved the world and it would've been sick as hell, but somebody got in the way.”

“You mean, Komachi moved me to the office.” Dorothy said. “Wait, you mean you didn’t want to risk hitting Komachi too?”

“Catch 22. Needed HE rounds to punch through your creepy android body. Couldn’t hit you without also blowing up my ride out of here.” Archer set his jaw. “So yeah, I was gonna shoot you. No, I couldn’t do it in the end. I’m more of a ‘money and bragging rights’ kinda guy than a ‘die for the mission like an idiot’ one.”

Hob buried his face in his hands. “So that’s it. We followed all the leads we had and we wound up with a plot to kill the wrong victim that didn’t go anywhere?”

“We could always go back to the bat in the vents theory.” 21 suggested helpfully.

“If I’d known I was going to be blamed for it anyway, I might as well have drank her blood.” Laszlo complained.

“No!” Dorothy said. A little more forcefully than she’d meant to. “We need to think this over. What would Archer have done next? Would the world’s greatest secret agent really just give up after one failed attempt?”

“Eh. Sometimes.” Archer shrugged. “Depends on my mood.”

“If he couldn’t kill from a distance, he’d have to do it up close.” Kirei continued. “Meaning he’d need to get into that room.”

“But we already ruled out the vents and the door.” 21 pointed out.

“He would not have had time to make it to either of them anyway. And not without being seen.” Dimitir added.

This was it. The do or die moment. Dorothy wracked her brain for anything. The slightest detail could nail down their suspect or leave them wallowing in even more confusion.

She walked through the scenario in her own head. In the same situation, what would she do?

“You used the window.” She said. “The same way you used the door. You hung from the sill like I did when I was eavesdropping on you and waited for Gilgamesh and Kirei to arrive so you could sneak through.”

“And do what?” Archer challenged. “Take on a super strong killer robot with a pistol and my good looks?”

“Everything you needed was already in that room.” Kirei answered him. “There’s more than one way to kill a machine.”

21’s eyes widened. “The magnet!” He exclaimed. “Dude, he was gonna deformat you to death.”

“When I was struck on my forehead, that was you sticking a magnet on me.” Dorothy explained. She got a funny feeling as she realised what followed from that. “And then, the second time I was hit.. Komachi was taking the magnet off of me.” She shut her eyes for a moment. Komachi had saved her life, and condemned it to be eternally complicated by her own ambitions. Now she’d have to sort out what to think of the woman alone.

She shook herself back to reality.

“You had the perfect opportunity to pick one up when you knocked the box over during your meeting.”

“I heard it too.” Edward agreed. “But we’ve agreed I had an alibi.”

“In fact, you were the only person who knew they were there who could’ve done it!”

Archer grimaced. His eyes flashed between each member of the jury as though searching for a weakness. Somewhere he could deflect. Distract. He found nobody but Dorothy.

Archer slicked back his hair and cocked a half smirk. “Nah.” he said. “You’re not boxing me in that easily. Two other people knew about those magnets. I’m lookin’ at one of them.”

“Why would she stick a magnet on herself?!” Hob demanded.

Archer shrugged. “Could’ve faked it. Nobody actually saw her get messed up like she claims she was. Maybe she planted it in Komachi’s hands to look like a victim. Maybe Komachi tried to use it to defend herself when her own creation went Frankenstein on her ass. I mean come on, she expects us to believe Komachi just ‘fell down’ out of nowhere?”

“I hate to say it, but he has a point.” Dimitri said. “This whole time we have accepted for granted that you were a victim. But we have not seen any proof.”

Dorothy looked to Kirei. “You were there. Can’t you tell them the state I was in?”

“I’m afraid Dimitri shares my judgement.” Kirei said.

“I believe you kid.” Hob told her. “But you’re gonna need to fight for this one.”

So close. She had been so close and now that arrogant, smug little man was going to claw back victory from the throes of defeat. The Karai part of Dorothy seethed with anger. All this would have been so much more simple if she could only get her hands around his neck and twist until she heard a crunch.

A crunch.

She had heard a crunch.

“How did your watch really break?” Dorothy demanded.

“Huh?” Archer squinted at her. “How should I know? I thought Monokuma did it.”

“Nope! Not me!” Monokuma tittered. “You oughtta take better care of your things buddy. And yourself. Talk about liver failure!”

“Me and my liver have a perfectly functional relationship!” Archer snapped.

“Earlier, when you were talking to Komachi, she seemed to flinch when you were touching your watch.” Dorothy said.

Archer shifted slightly. “Well yeah but she was a crazy person who joined terrorist groups and made weird memory robots.”

“No, I remember that.” Hob cut in. “You said it wasn’t loaded. I figured it was a joke but---”

“---but then you kept bragging about being the world’s best secret agent.” 21 finished.

“Okay so it may or may not be a spy watch.” Archer admitted. “Your point?”

“My point is that that’s how you knocked Komachi down without touching her.” Dorothy said. “Laszlo told us that at first he tried to get in through the office window. He never said that Komachi ever closed it all the way.”

“She didn’t!” Laszlo said. “Very irresponsible. Breathing in too much night air can cause the yellow jaundice. That’s what happened to cousin Edwin.”

“You did something to her. Maybe a dart, or a gas.” Dorothy continued. “Something that didn’t affect me.”

“Alright.” Archer forced a laugh. “Are we gonna be using any proof on this one or do I get to make up weapons for you too? Like, you murdered her with your built in space laser.”

“The last thing I saw before my vision went out was when you grabbed her arm and I heard a crunch. That was the glass watch face breaking wasn’t it?”

“Aaand still not hearing any proof.” Archer said. He made a show of cupping his hand to his ear. “I’m really listening for it but it’s Just! Not! There!”

“How’s this for proof?” 21 said. “Dorothy’s testimony lines up perfectly with the shard I found lodged in her thumb.”

“When we looked at it, we said it looked like it couldn’t only been pushed up there if she put pressure on it.” Hob agreed. “Which is exactly what would’ve happened if she broke it by gripping it too hard.”

“Wait Gilgamesh was right again.” 21 blinked. “How did you know that the glass was broken before the window? Or that the gun would wind up being the most important clue?

“Absolute certainty is the hallmark of the King of Heroes.” Gilgamesh said. It was sort of an answer. Maybe.

“And the reason she grabbed for the watch was to stop him from using it against her a second time.” Dorothy concluded.

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

21 elbowed Archer. “Really running out of room to squirm pal. You wanna make this easy on yourself?”

“Never!” Archer shouted.

He seemed to take stock of the situation. His brows furrowed as his frustrated mind tried to come up with a last gambit. Finally he seemed to give up. Instead he spread his arms wide and gave them all a mellow grin.

“Look, alright, maybe it could’ve been me. But that’s not such a big surprise right? I mean I could use my skills to kill any of you. But could isn’t did. I’m not admitting to anything.” He pointed lazily at Laszlo. “Hey, we still haven’t ruled him out right? Spooky vampire is right here to blame. So why does it have to be me, huh?”

This was it. The final nail. Karai found the taste of desperation at the end of a long chase to be exhilarating. Dorothy just found it sad.

Maybe it was the relief of pressure but this time, the answer came to her without effort.

“Komachi told us herself it couldn’t be him.” Dorothy said to him.

“Have you blown a circuit already?” Archer asked. “Maybe that stupid magnet backup plan worked better than expected. She’s dead.”

“But we’ve still heard her words.” Dorothy said. “Laszlo, what did she say to you when you tried to enter through that window?”

Laszlo pondered. “Well I’m not actually sure how to pronounce some of the vampire slurs she used, but the jist of it was, she said I was an idiot and that if I went through that window she would watch me die in agony.”

“What, like you said you’d melt if you stood too close to Kirei?” Hob asked. “No offence.”

“None taken.” Kirei said. “If I’m telling the truth, I’m actually exhilarated that my presence could hurt somebody like that.”

“Hob, when I asked you to look at the wall you said it looked like there was too much space between the hanging album covers.” Dorothy said. “I think I have a decent idea of where those went.”

Archer clutched his carton a little tighter to himself.

“Why would he steal albums?” Laszlo asked. “Especially the rubbish knockoffs they’ve got here.”

“When he tried to frame you, he needed to do two things,” Dorothy explained, “make it look like you did it---that’s what the marks he made with the pen were for. The other thing he needed to do was make it looked like you could do it. Just like he said. Could and did. Archer, I’ll make you a bet. Some of those records you have in that box are broken. If I can get all of them right, you’re guilty. If I can’t, then you can blame whoever you want.”

Archer shrugged. “Hey, if I’m screwed either way. Might as well make a game out of it.”

He offered the carton to Dorothy. She opened it and scanned through each album sleeve. She plucked four without even glancing at the others.

Guns ‘n Roses - Appetite for Destruction.

Black Sabbath - Headless Cross.

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ozzman Cometh

“See a pattern?” Dorothy asked. She showed them to Laszlo, who instinctively hissed and recoiled.

Dorothy opened each album to reveal that each of the records within had cracked or shattered. “These were the ones you had to throw out the window. You couldn’t climb back down again with a box under your arm.”

“I was tempted to try but I think falling and breaking my ass bone would’ve looked even worse than this does.”

“You fucking moron.” Hob growled. His claws sprung out of his paws and curled peeling strips of wood away from his podium. “You killed our only chance of getting out of here.”

Archer adjusted his tie. “Yeah pretty much. Would it make you feel better if I said she did it to herself?”

“If you won’t even take credit for your crime, dog, then I have nothing more I wish to hear from you.” Dimitri spat. He grabbed his spear and screamed a fervored battle cry. He made it within a hair’s breath of impaling Archer before mechanical hands descended from the ceiling and hauled him up and out of sight.

“This is my show! Tut tut!” Monokuma scolded. “Nobody should get the idea they can take away hosting Punishment Time from me. It’s pretty much all I do.”

“Where’d you take him?” Archer asked idly.

“Puhuhu! Oh, just a temporary time out.” Monokuma chortled. “He’ll be come back with a better temper. Not that you’ll be around to see it.”

Archer held up a finger. “Ah, wait. Don’t I get to explain my crime first so it hits harder when you do me in?”

“Hmm good point!” Monokuma agreed. “That is a fine tradition in this game. Alright go ahead. But make it quick!”

Archer addressed the group. “Yeah I’ll be the first to admit the mission bombed harder than Operation Eagle Claw. Do I regret my actions? No way, I did nothing wrong. Heck I’d shoot you right now if Golden God over there didn’t take my gun.”

Gilgamesh preened.

“But like I said, technically I didn’t actually kill her. She saw me coming for you to finish the job and she tackled me out the window. Sure I flipped her so she was the one who hit the ground. But that was self defence.” He shrugged. “I went out of my way to hit her with sleeping gas. If she’d stayed down, she’d still be alive. Probably. So if you think about it whose fault is it really?”

“Still yours!” 21 snapped. “What’s so dangerous about Dorothy that it was worth dooming us all? What is she secretly a nuke?”

“You got surprisingly close.” Archer said.

“What the hell does that mean?!”

Archer checked his broken watch.

“It means, see you suckers ‘cause I just bought enough time to signal for an emergency evac.” Archer crowed. “Any second now!”

Monokuma guffawed. “Oh! He’s in denial! I love these ones!”

“Aaanny second now!” Archer repeated!

Monokuma raised his gavel gleefully. “Okay everyone, let’s give it all we’ve got!”

“Any second now?” Archer flicked his watch. “Come on, it had a signal a minute ago--wait, there we go!”

Mechanical arms wrapped around Archer’s limbs and pulled them to his side. They dragged him away from his podium and back across the floor.

“IIIIIIIT’S PUNISHMENT TIME!”

[u/Proletlariet → u/Proletlariet]

Archer found himself unceremoniously dumped into a pit with high featureless walls made of reflective stainless steel.

He watched in horror as an industrial vat was gradually winched into place above the mouth of the pit. Archer slammed his watch again and again.

“Come on! Damn it! What is taking them? Any second now baby, let’s go!”

Over the vat tipped. Thousands of ice cubes rained down on his head. Archer was nearly buried alive before the avalanche abated. He stood there shivering, buried up to his neck.

Another vat appeared. This time, a cool clear liquid splashed over him, soaking his custom tailored suit completely through. Archer spluttered and coughed and then the liquid touched his lips and he lit up.

“Wait! Is that gin?” He tasted it again. “Oh my god you’re trying to punish me by drowning me in alcohol. Do you even know who I am?”

Archer relaxed and floated on his back. His overworked liver had long ago rendered him immune to alcohol poisoning. Archer could practically breathe in this stuff.

A shower of vermouth followed next. He laughed and splashed in it, gulping down enough to elevate his comfortable buzz into pleasant drunken warmth.

The olives were a little gross but at least they were soft. Way better than the ice.

By the time martini ingredients were done pouring onto his head the level had risen enough that Archer judged he was able to reach up and grasp the edge.

The stainless steel was a little slippery, but after a while he managed to get a solid grip.

Good thing too. He didn’t want to be caught in there whenever the giant swizzle stick made its appearance.

A enormous shadow loomed over Archer’s head. He looked up just in time to see the other half of the cocktail shaker slam down.

Shaken, Not Stirred

The huge metal cylinder jolted up and down, up and down, with such rapidity that the seams holding it together began to buckle.

The metric tonne of ice cubes inside make a terrific clatter against the steel.

Finally, the shaker slowed and came to a halt. It flipped over on its head.

Monokuma walked underneath it holding a normally sized cocktail glass.

A comically miniscule amount of liquid poured from the shaker barely filling the glass an eighth of the way.

Monokuma angrily pounded the side of the machine. With a wet ‘plop’, the shaker disgorged a very soggy, very broken watch.