Cartoonfan130 - Cartoon Fan/Carson - Tumblr Blog

I apologize for what I am going to say to you, but I have to. I am Ahmed from Gaza, married with two children. We live in the shadow of war and destruction. I lost my brother, my home, and most of my relatives. We have nothing left. I ask you to help, even a little, so that we can survive and protect my children. Any amount, even a small amount, will save our lives.

https://gofund.me/991535b1

I wish you the best, man 🇵🇸🍉🍉

jailed on charges of being a silly lil guy, spreading joy and whimsy, and excessive girlbossing

Also 3 consecutive counts of attempted homicide

Some people would be like "UGHH they are so evil! They are literally the devil and worthless and deserve to die!" Ma'am, that is a twelve year-old girl. And a fictional character.

God dammit, I hath been outtricked again! Cursed thee, Buff Kitties!!!

I wanted to set down my Danganronpa headcanons, then I realized, literally every character is autistic. Literally every one. Name a Danganronpa character that isn't autistic, you can't.

I should have caught on to Chiaki being an ai sooner, you can't spell Chiaki without ai!

Then it goes full circle with me being hyperfixated on Danganronpa

I wanted to set down my Danganronpa headcanons, then I realized, literally every character is autistic. Literally every one. Name a Danganronpa character that isn't autistic, you can't.

Couldn't have said it better myself

I wanted to set down my Danganronpa headcanons, then I realized, literally every character is autistic. Literally every one. Name a Danganronpa character that isn't autistic, you can't.

I wanted to set down my Danganronpa headcanons, then I realized, literally every character is autistic. Literally every one. Name a Danganronpa character that isn't autistic, you can't.

:(((

Surprise! STUDIO INVESTIGRAVE team will be participating in a month-long game jam Spooktober VN Jam this year with a project titled 🌴🍸 ROT IN PARADISE 🌊🚱 , which will be a horror visual novel game about a vacationist named June and her friends on a weekend getaway at an island resort where they have no choice but to go with the tides. The game will be released in late September 2024, so later this month! Stay tuned 🌞

I'm really excited for episode 3 to release. It's going to be very silly, but also will probably scare young children, so all you parents out there better screen this shit before subjecting your five-year-olds to it.

Drew the sillys!!

He's such a silly little guy!

The Bill Cipher apocalypse has begun

Makoto Naegi Fic Recs

Due to my love and appreciation for Makoto Naegi, I’ve made a list of some of my favorite fics involving him. A few aren’t from his POV but I enjoyed how he was portrayed. I hope this gives you all a newfound appreciation for him or amplifies your already existing affection for him.

Keep reading

Chapter 23

ohhh baby we back in it now

SEE HERE FOR GENERAL WARNINGS AND FIC SUMMARY

Some pre-chapter notes:

byakuya pov finally

bonus headcanon coming into play here: byakuya being Wasian

shoutout @digitaldollsworld for helping me conceptualize byakuya's mom! both of us are Sick about her

Content warning tags: wall-punching, grieving/mourning, unreality (dreaming)

< previous - from start - next >

There’s a woman standing in his office.

Byakuya stands behind the cracked-open doorway, peeking through - though, part of him does rile up with the indignity of having to spy into his own office - at the intruder, standing in front of his desk, back facing the door.

He can’t see her face. But he can see her flax-yellow hair, tied back with a wrinkled, silken scarf that’s probably the most expensive thing she’s wearing. Her cotton jumpsuit is so stained and faded that hardly any of the original blue is still there. Her canvas shoes are discolored with mud.

She would look more out of place, if the shabbiness of her hadn’t seeped into her surroundings. The carpet is splattered with crusted clay, and shards of stone stick out of the plush threads like thorns. The mahogany surface of his desk is creaking and bent under the weight of a large cube of fleshy, white marble, splintering under the lacquer.

As he watches, she lifts her bare hands - ugly, roughened, thickly muscled fingers, nails cracked and filthy - like a conductor before an orchestra. She pauses, head tilted like a bird, thinking, and Byakuya inexplicably finds himself holding his breath; and then, she places her palms against the stone.

The surface of it warps and distends beneath her touch, first like a swollen balloon, and then like clay, twisting and following her hands like a swimming fish. And he watches, fascinated despite himself, as she bends and shapes it, twisting pieces off, smoothing edges down. She pinches out a piece in the middle for a nose, smoothes down a sharp edge for a sloping curve of a cheek, flicks her nail sharply beneath the brow to pull out a crease for an eyelid.

It’s magic. In seemingly no time at all, there on his desk is a bust; the head of a man brought to life, caught in a soft, gentle expression. The sculptor pauses, and steps backwards to take in her work.

There’s something reverent about it, and Byakuya suddenly has the feeling that he’s witnessing something not meant for him to see.

But he creaks the door open slightly more to get a better look, finding it strange how he was more curious than angry, even despite the intrusion. As he approaches, the bust’s eyes suddenly flick towards him, and immediately the serenity is replaced by a solemn, pinched brow, the smile replaced by a severe slash of a frown. And Byaukuya realizes he recognizes this face.

The marble-wrought head of Kijo Togami is sitting on his desk, scowling at him.

“Byakuya?”

He turns to the woman. She’s facing him now, though she has no face to speak of - it is blurred and unfocused, like a distant background character of an impressionist oil painting, the features mere shifting smears against a flat plane - but he knows her. He knows her.

“Byakuya,” She repeats, the syllables awkward on her tongue. She’s speaking French, and she sounds distant. Muted, underwater. But her voice still has the same, oddly musical quality to it that he remembers, making everything she said sound like a lullaby. “Bijou. Did I not tell you to stay out of my studio?”

Her studio?

“This is my office.” He protests back. He can’t tell if he’s speaking Japanese or not; every word feels clumsy and foreign, like he’s just learned how to talk. “What are you doing here, Mother?”

She just sighs. Shakes her head, her featureless face. There’s no anger in it, no loving exasperation either; just a neutral disapproval of his presence. His unwanted existence in her space. “Bijou,” She says again, and the nickname irritates him. A sweet-sounding endearment that was ultimately empty, a placeholder for her to refer to him by, because his own name was too clumsy to speak with her accent. “When did you become so grown? When will you stop being so cold?”

The stone Kijo Togami is still frowning at him. In this instant, both the man he calls ‘Father’ and the woman who had birthed him - one painfully-detailed stone, the other indistinct flesh - stand before him. One silent and forever displeased, the other sweet but hollow-sounding and entirely uncaring that they shared any blood at all.

“How strange it is, that you look so much like me,” She sighs, raising a hand to his face. He flinches away from it, the sandpaper sharpness of her palms, the filth that stains the creases of her skin, the heat that comes off of it like a kiln. “And yet, you are so much like him.”

—

He wakes up with a gasp, eyes snapping open.

He’s greeted with the pitch darkness of his ceiling, cut through with a thin slash of white from his bathroom light, streaming through the cracked-open door. A reminder he had taken to preparing for himself before he went to bed, that his eyes were still there, and he sighs and presses a palm to his chest as he stares up at it. Feeling his heart pounding beneath his fingertips, then slowing, in time with his breaths.

A dream. He can’t remember the last time he dreamed so vividly, but he had been subjected to some unpleasantly…shocking events the last few days (he won’t call them traumatic, he’s witnessed far worse in his life). The details of the dream are already slipping away as he tries to recall it, like sand between his fingers. It’s hardly important.

He lies in bed a moment longer, trying to see if sleep will come, but even with the adrenaline fading he’s wide-awake. Annoying, but not surprising, considering how he had spent much of the day before napping in short, fitful bursts. He pushes himself upright, reaching under his pillow for his handbook; may as well make use of the time.

The clock on his handbook reads: three AM. His neglected stomach gurgles as he squints at the dim glow of the screen, and he sighs. He hasn’t eaten since Celeste’s little tea party the day before, and he might as well go to the kitchen now. There likely wouldn’t be anyone wandering around to disturb him. And with Ishimaru gone, there was no one left to seriously uphold the nightly curfew; he drags himself out of bed with a grunt, grabbing his bathrobe off the end of his bedpost as he goes.

He’s not expecting the trap that he finds when he opens the door, however. The first step he takes past the threshold is accompanied by a loud, startling crunch, and he jumps backwards, just barely stifling a shriek. He throws his hand against the light switch, digging it into his palm as he flicks in on, and at once the yellow glow streaming from his room illuminates the something round, brown, and somewhat deflated sitting in the hallway.

For a moment, he thinks it's some kind of rodent, dead and trodden under his foot. But closer inspection reveals it to be packaged bread, only slightly crushed in its plastic wrapper. There’s no note, but he can guess who the offering is from.

He sighs, picks it up by the corner, and tosses it behind him towards his trash can as he leaves.

The hallways are dim, and almost silent if not for the dull hum of the school’s inner machinery. The whoosh of air conditioning, the muffled clang of pipes. None of the construction that Hagakure had reported days ago, not even when he strains his ears.

But he does catch the quiet murmur of conversation as he passes the bathhouse, and he pauses, staring at the light that streams from behind the curtain, the quick-flicker of shadows moving from inside.

“It wasn’t your fault!”

He freezes, standing just outside. That was Chihiro’s - no, Alter Ego’s - voice. 

“I know Master wouldn’t resent you.” It continues, earnest and bright. “And based on my data…I don’t think Kiyotaka would blame you either!”

“But it was my fault,” Mondo’s voice is strained and hollow, grieving still. “If I hadn’t left them alone - if I’d tried to just talk to him -”

Byakuya shifts slightly. He doesn’t want to be here, to have to witness Mondo’s continued breakdown. He still hasn’t forgiven the other boy, but having to see him stuck in the depths of misery was…unpleasant. And he’s not so petty to want retribution while the target of his ire was in such a state.

He tiptoes past, giving the bathhouse entrance a wide berth. From inside, he hears more indistinct voices, one low and gravelly from crying, the other electronic and gentle. And then-

“Brother, what are you looking so down for?” This one was new, but chillingly familiar. Loud and overeager and belonging to someone who was supposed to be dead. “You-”

Crash.

The sound of crunching metal. In the quiet of the hallway, it’s as loud as an explosion, and it makes Byakuya jump. Before he can reconsider, he’s sprinting into the bathhouse, throwing aside the curtain.

It takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing. Owada is standing, partly-hunched, one hand punching against the wall of lockers hard enough to warp the thin metal door. Someone is standing beneath him hands raised in self-defense - it takes Byakuya a moment to recognize that it’s Makoto, dressed in the white and dark blue of his pajamas, lacking the signature green of his jacket - and from somewhere behind Makoto, there’s a dim, neon-green glow, and a confused, worried voice.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-!” 

“Don’t do that,” Owada snarls, drowning out Alter Ego’s stuttered apology. The locker door rattles where his fist is pressed into it. “Don’t just- wear his face, don’t you dare-”

“M-Mondo, it didn’t mean to! It was just trying-” Makoto breaks off, apparently noticing Byakuya. “B-Byakuya-?!”

Byakuya was immediately beginning to regret his decision to involve himself in the first place. “What is going on here?” He demands, crossing his arms and glaring imperiously.

Instead of replying, Owada pulls away, withdrawing his hand and retreating to slump over on the bench, despondent and unresponsive once more. Makoto twitches, turning between Owada, then Alter Ego, and back to Byakuya. “Um…”

“It’s not their fault!” Alter Ego pipes up hurriedly, its voice echoing tinnily from inside its locker, and Byakuya could feel a corresponding vibration from the handbook tucked in his shirt pocket. “It seems Mondo wanted to ask me a question, and Makoto was just helping to convey that-”

“I don’t care.” He snaps, and Alter Ego falls silent. “Neither of them are supposed to be here in the first place, and especially not after hours. Are the two of you trying to draw Monokuma’s suspicion? Endanger Alter Ego?” Makoto flinches a bit at that. Owada doesn’t even move. “Don’t you care about getting out of here at all?”

He’s not really expecting a reply, so he’s surprised when Owada speaks up. “ ‘Course not.” He rasps, so low and hollow that it was like he was speaking from the depths of a pit. Or maybe he was the pit, swelling with black-matter misery. “I…don’t care about anything anymore.”

Well. That’s to be expected. But even despite that, he finds himself a bit rattled. He’s been at the receiving end of anger, venom, screaming anguish and even vehement hate at this point. But this emptiness Owada is exhibiting was new; It seems like this school is insistent on teaching me new things, he thinks, and feels his lip curling up with the bitter irony.

“So you’re content to waste away? Throw away that anger that you were so proud of?” He raises a scathing eyebrow. “Go ahead and do that, then. I won’t stop you. But at the very least, spare the rest of us the dramatics of your little episode.”

“Byakuya!”

He twitches a bit, irritated. Makoto’s voice is shrill despite being hushed, and laced with anger; he’s standing stiffly next to Alter Ego’s open locker, hands trembling at his sides.

“What, Makoto.” He snaps, and only belatedly realizes that this was the first time he’s actually spoken to the other boy since the trial; in his irritation, he went and broke his own self-imposed vow of silence against him.

He doesn’t respond immediately, but doesn’t immediately shrink away either at the acidity of Byakuya’s tone. If anything he stands up a little straighter. “It’s only been a day since…you know.” He says, and his words are slow and careful, meticulously chosen. Like he’s in a trial again, trying to soothe skittish tempers - though Byakuya feels the exact opposite of ‘soothed’ by it - “Mondo asked to talk to Alter Ego. I went with him. It got a little heated-”

“A little? Is that what you call this?” He points at the locker next to his head; the one that Mondo had punched, the dent a clear, dark blotch of shadow in the middle of the flat green surface.

“That -” Makoto winces slightly. “We weren’t really expecting-”

“No, clearly not. And not thinking either, I imagine.”

“I-”

“I suppose safety and logic took second priority over trying to be helpful, hm? Since that’s all that’s important to you?” He’s not sure where these words are coming from, filled with acid. But it feels good to talk, to spit out every miserable thing that he’s feeling, that he’s felt because of Makoto. “You were so very kind to help me during that trial, after all.”

“Okay, that’s not-”

“That must be why you’re here now, I imagine. Sneaking out at this late hour past Kyoko, just so you could babysit this useless mess.” He sneers. “Did you decide to make Mondo your next pet project, trying to be his little assistant like you were mine?”

“Oh, for-” Makoto takes a deep breath, presses his hands to his eyes. “Can you shut the fuck up?! For one second?”

Whatever else Byakuya was about to say, dissipates like smoke out of his slack-jawed mouth. Even Owada seems to twitch up at this, the only sign of surprise he could give, compared to Byakuya’s shock.

Makoto is quiet for a few seconds, and the only sound is the quiet hum of pipes, and the sound of his breathing, shaky but slow. He pulls his hands away from his face after one more shuddering breath. “Okay. I’m okay now.” He says this part quietly, as if it were more for himself than anyone else. Then:

“It’s not fair,” He addresses Byakuya, and his voice is almost steady. “I’m trying my best, I’m trying to keep us all alive.”

“Yes, and you’re doing-”

“No! Shut up! Just listen!” He snaps, and Byakuya’s teeth click as he shuts his mouth, effectively cutting off the rest of his sarcastic remark. “Right now, the best thing we can do is to survive together. We’re just going to play into the mastermind’s hands if we can’t trust each other. Why doesn’t anyone get that?!”

His voice actually cracks on the last syllable, and he sounds close to hysterics. Byakuya simply stares, dumbfounded for a moment, before:

“...You’re going to say that? After what just happened?” It’s so ridiculous he could almost laugh. Trust? In this school, in this game? After everything that’s happened? “We all trusted Ishimaru. Where did that get us? Where did that get Chihiro?”

No sooner has that name left his mouth, does he try to bite it back. Feeling all at once mortified that he would stoop so low, that he would let himself be pushed to such a level. But it’s too late to take it back - at the sound of those names, Owada jerks again, and Makoto actually takes a step backwards, as if struck - so Byakuya keeps going. “This isn’t some-some fairy tale where everyone can learn to get along by talking about our feelings. None of us have any unity left - if even Ishimaru can snap, then there’s no telling who might strike next.”

“Stop,” Makoto grits out. “Taka - it was an accident. Just a stupid accident.” And that was the worst part, wasn’t it? That none of this was supposed to happen at all; if the coincidences hadn’t lined up terribly, horribly perfectly. “He didn’t mean for Chihiro to die!”

And Chihiro didn’t mean to get killed either. But he manages to swallow that thought, bitter and heavy in his throat. “His intentions didn’t change the outcome.” He says instead, cold and flat and utterly, completely empty.

Silence falls on the room. The lights buzz, the pipes hiss; the old, outdated screen of Alter Ego’s computer hums softly, contemplatively. There’s the muted, metallic thump of the water heater, somewhere inside the wall.

And then Owada speaks up.

“What should I do?” He asks hollowly. He’s looking up now, directly at him. His hair is limp, pompadour undone and falling over his face, obscuring it in streaks of dirty yellow. “I…they’re dead. I couldn’t-” He takes a slow, shuddering breath. “It was my fault. But I don’t know what to do.”

His words are pleading and genuine, as if Byakuya could give a proper answer; he hesitates, still uncertain of what to do with this…empty shell of a punk.

He glances towards Makoto, and then the dim green glow still emanating from the open locker. “Do you care what you do with your life at this point?”

“Byakuya…” Makoto starts warningly, but Owada interrupts him.

“No.”

“Then use it to protect Alter Ego.” If Owada has any sort of misgivings or protest about this, Byakuya ignores them. “That’s Chihiro’s last work, after all. It’s the least you can do to guard it.”

“Is…” Owada’s head turns towards the locker, then back. “Is that…okay?”

His hesitation is understandable. Even if Alter Ego was nothing more than a clever program, it did still wear the face of the boy who Owada’s friend inadvertently killed, and whose corpse Owada had tried to conceal. And that wasn’t even considering if Alter Ego would be cooperative in being protected by him, though there wasn’t much it could do about it.

But Alter Ego is the one who speaks up. “I hope we get along well, Mondo!” It chirps, a smile clear on its voice. And Mondo simply stares for a moment, before burying his face in his palms, and begins to cry.

__

“Are you going back to your room?”

He stops, and turns. They’ve left the bathhouse, Mondo departing first after sobbing his eyes out, and Makoto insisting he go rest in his room - though he probably would’ve ended up staying in the bathhouse all night if he could’ve gotten away with it - and Byakuya, having ended up spending an hour more than he wanted to dealing with it all, is tired once more..

“Where else would I be going?” He scoffs. Makoto is standing just in front of the bahthouse curtains, his face entirely concealed by shadow.

“I…” He takes a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “I noticed you didn’t really…eat a proper meal yesterday. I could go make you something?”

It’s tempting, for a moment. Byakuya clenches a hand in his robe, pressed against his stomach to stifle any unwarranted growls. “No.” He says firmly. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Oh…are you sure? Because-”

“Makoto.” He falls silent. “I told you that there’s no need for us to uphold the deal we made. Your assistance is no longer needed.”

“...But, this isn’t because of the deal, I just-”

“I’m not so low that I’d need charity from you.”

He goes quiet again. Quiet and still, and there’s something off-putting about how he looks. Outlined by the yellow lights of the bathhouse but otherwise completely in darkness, his silhouette sharpened without his jacket. “...Is it really that hard, trusting someone?”

For as angry as he’d been in the bathhouse, now he’s more like his usual self. Quieter, and unsure. The one person out of place in this school, designated unremarkable and then made remarkable because of that.

An unremarkable life. No wonder he couldn’t understand.

“You’ve never had to worry about it before,” He says. “I imagine your life is like a sheep’s. Completely oblivious to the danger around you, as long as you stay inside the fence.

“But the world isn’t as kind as you think it is. And people can always be swayed, no matter how much you trust them, or how much you think they trust you.” He’s seen it happen. He’s exploited it himself, even. “At this point, it would be safest to stop associating with anyone. If you had any brains at all, you would do the same.”

Makoto lets out a sigh that’s almost a laugh, though it’s bitter and mirthless. “Kyoko said the same thing,” He mutters, half to himself. “So you won’t feel safe unless you’re alone? Even though there’s only ten of us left?” He shakes his head, and the motion is a little dizzying, the messy shape of his hair blurring into a dark mass. “How many more people need to die for you to feel safe?”

He sounds angry again, but it’s a colder kind of anger. Resentful and resigned. When did you become so cold?

“...I won’t be safe until I’m out of here.” Byakuya replies steadily, though the hand clenched in his robe tightens slightly. “Even if I could keep everyone in my sight, it’s not like it’d be easy to tell if they were holding a weapon.”

Silently, he adds: And thanks to you, they know that as well.

Makoto doesn’t say anything in reply, so Byakuya leaves. Quickly, in case his stomach threatens to grumble again; his hand doesn’t leave his robe until he’s safely inside his room, door locked behind him.

He almost treads on the bread again, stepping on a corner of the packaging and jumping at the sharp, crinkling sound. It takes a little bit of fumbling in the dark until he finds it, squeezing it through the plastic.

He’s tempted, for a moment, his fingers already searching for the serrated edge to tear it open. But the image of Makoto standing at the bathhouse entrance jumps to his mind; still and shrouded in darkness. A strange, statuesque parody of his usual self.

He throws the bread across the room and climbs back into bed.

< previous - from start - next >

What sexuality/romantic identity is Micheal? We all know he's a boy kisser, but what flavor I might ask?

He is bisexual and demisexual

What sexuality/romantic identity is Micheal? We all know he's a boy kisser, but what flavor I might ask?

He is bisexual and demisexual

this is a really loose and hardly thought out idea but what if an au where Kokichi found a way out?

like he figured out how to get past end wall, and everyone thought he was hiding or dead, but in reality he was out and getting back with DICE, grabbing reinforcements to break everyone else out.

maybe Monokuma figured out Kokichi got out and told everyone after blocking his exist, making everyone think Kokichi had abandoned them, only for them to get the shock of their lives when he comes back with clowns and a swat team

like i said, very loose idea, hardly thought out, i think someone could use this to make some better sense tho

I CANT FUCKING BELIEV ETHIS

Everyone read this fic, it has devoured my whole brain and has been eating all my thoughts. I don't have anymore. Only this fic

Chapter 21.5

im still on hiatus but this was for funsies...a break away from byakuya's pov for a moment hehe

SEE HERE FOR GENERAL WARNINGS AND FIC SUMMARY

Some pre-chapter notes:

this is just like wizard of oz if the wizard was junko enoshima. pay no attention to the girl behind the monitors....

featuring a special surprise guest!! :) (:

@digitaldollsworld (^^)//

Content warning tags: passing mention of surgery and blood

< previous - from start - next >

“I am done.”

The voice behind her is dull and gravelly with lethargy, belonging to someone both young and aged. Junko Enoshima hadn’t heard the door open, but she’s hardly startled - she’d been expecting him, after all - and with a flourish, she leans back from the grid of monitors before her and shoves off the desk to spin her chair, knees tucked up to her chest. One, two, three clockwise spins later - a new record, nice - and she slows to a stop, angled perfectly to face the man before her.

And she smiles, as she notes the blue latex gloves still on his hands, the blood splattered up his arms to the rolled-up sleeves of his white dress shirt. “Aw, thanks Zuzu! You’re a treat,” She winks and blows an exaggerated kiss, to no reaction. Not even a half-raised hand to try and catch it. “Was it hard?”

Izuru Kamakura doesn’t respond at first. He’s wiping off the blood - still shiny and slightly wet - off of his pale arms with a stained handkerchief, his hair swaying like a dark curtain around him. “...Not particularly.” He replies in his usual monotone, as if the whole ordeal had been terribly boring to him. ‘Not particularly’ he said, as if the whole process hadn’t taken several weeks, with multiple surgeries - including one where he had left the operating table with his scrubs still on to find a better donor, because the one she had on hand just happened to not be a very good match. “If that is all, I will leave now.”

“Noo, come on! You just got here,” She complains, childishly, needling, despite knowing full well that he’d been here far longer than he originally intended already. Well, it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be, and all the action was here anyways.  “Don’t you wanna see how your precious juniors are doing?”

He doesn’t reply, but she knows he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered turning up in the first place, whether she requested his help or not; they’re just like each other, in that way. Reaching behind her, she grabs a remote, and points it at one of the monitors, and immediately its previous image of the empty second-floor hallway fizzes out, replaced with a replay of the day’s highlights, edited and cut by hers truly.

It opens with a theme song. A lovely little leitmotif that she composed, one for each of her dear classmates, this one full of violin and koto. A quick intro montage of photos they had taken throughout their high school careers, and then-

“No need.” He deadpans, interrupting the opening credits she’d bullied Ryota Mitarai into making. “I know what happened already.”

“Geez, but I made this special for you!” She whines, though there’s no real bite to it. She expected this outcome, so it wasn’t like she made her edits particularly interesting either. “Wish you’d play along a little. Come on.”

Instead of replying, he snaps off his gloves and flicks them and the towel into a nearby trash can without looking. He spins her chair to grab his jacket, pinned between her back and the seat, and tugs it so sharply it actually lifts her up a bit.

“Hey, that’s no way to treat a lady,” She sulks, tucking her skirt back down. “I was keeping it warm for you.”

Her only response is an impassioned glance, as he shakes the garment out with a sharp snap.

She watches him prepare to leave, rolling down his sleeves and smoothing out his shirt, pulling the jacket on with a practiced, mechanical grace. “Is it really that much better, being out there?” She grumbles. Outside was a wasteland, shattered remains, rot and destruction. The few people still alive were either on the edge of death, or insane with despair - either way, they’d fallen into a dull, predictable pattern. Starving, stealing, killing, dying, wailing. So much wailing. How strange it was that even these things became uninteresting after so long.

“They all behaved exactly how I expected.” He says, in an approximation for an explanation. He adjusts his cufflinks, thumb swiping over the polished brass. They’d been shaped like Hope’s Peak’s logo, but countless passing touches had nearly buffed out the enamel inlay - they were little more than tiny mirrors now, if she leaned forward and squinted she could almost see herself in them, check for stuff stuck in her teeth-

“Why did you not confront them after they discovered the AI?”

The question interrupts her train of thought, and she blinks, then grins, utterly delighted. “Why? Did I surprise you?”

He levels her with a look, a dark stare from those bloody, bloodshot eyes. “There are several reasons to possibly explain why you behaved this way.” He continues. “The most simple reason, you were distracted-”

“Nope. Glued to the cameras the whole time.”

“The most predictable reason, you wanted them to think they had a chance.”

“Hmm...mayy-be?” She pulls her legs up to sit criss-crossed in her chair, and rocks side to side, hands resting on her ankles as she thinks. “I mean, there are ten of them left. Would be a shame if they gave up already, right?”

“...And, based on your current interests. You thought it would make for a more interesting development. Especially in regards to Togami.”

She smiles, teeth splitting her face. “Congratulations, a hun-dred points to dear Mister Kamakura,”  She sings in an exaggerated falsetto, and claps her hands in mock applause. “I was thinking about it, but then he and Kyoko went and had that absolutely lovely little heart-to-heart in the hallway…how could I possibly interrupt my dearest friends?”

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes narrow slightly, the corners of his lips pulling into a thin line. A look that screams - or maybe just mutters, in his case - ‘what the hell are you talking about.’ “He smashed her hand in a door. She belittled him for his blindness.”

“Yeah, and? Don’t you know what foreplay is?” He doesn’t scoff, but the just-audible exhale he lets out is pretty close. “Oh, shush. Like you would know anything,” She sniffs. “But anyways, I definitely wasn’t expecting them to reach this stage already. I thought it’d take a few more years at least!” She lets loose a laugh, a sharp, bright sound that gets swallowed up by the dense, packed-foam soundproofing around them. “Letting them get away with Alter Ego was totally worth the show!”

He doesn’t look like he agrees, but then again, those old Hope’s Peak scientists hadn’t included ‘Ultimate Clear Emotion Conveying’ among his repertoire of talents, so maybe he was jumping for joy on the inside right now. “Togami’s blindness was an unexpected development,” He agrees. “But that is all. He hasn’t demonstrated any behavior that couldn’t be predicted.”

“You were pretty intrigued by him before though, weren’t you?” She’d had her suspicions from the start, when Byakuya’s first day after waking up was spent squinting and fidgeting with his glasses, but he couldn’t be called an Ultimate for nothing. If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she might’ve even been halfway fooled. 

And the best developments were the ones that hadn’t been planned beforehand. Watching him walk away from the A/V room without even playing his motive disc was such a fun twist that had her raising her brows, even as Mukuro had gotten all pissy, after all the work that she had put into capturing that old butler alive. Even better than that was his breakdowns, when Junko watched him fall into a sinking spiral in his room, muttering to himself and pacing before finally passing out. The difference between his usual hoity-toity self and his total helplessness made for an absolutely delectable kind of gap moe.

“I have no interest in him. Rather, the source of his blindness is what intrigues me.” Izuru corrects her bluntly. “It is unclear what might have caused it. He never displayed symptoms of it prior to the game’s beginning.”

And if she had to be really honest, she wasn’t sure either. “Who knows?” She shrugs. “Spontaneous genetic condition? Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow morning and be totally bald?”

“The Togami family is obsessed with genetics. Sudden cataract development, or anything of that nature, would have weeded out long ago.” He rebuts. His eyes, a deep, ugly, unnatural red that could make Celeste jealous, fix on her for a moment, and then travel up to look at the monitors, pupils shrinking like a cat’s as they dart from screen to shining screen. “Could it have something to do with the memory wipe?”

“No way!” She snaps back to him immediately, almost affronted. “My process is totally perfect. Do you know how many people I tested it on?” Sure, she’d had plenty of lab rats get seizures, comas, go crazy or just straight-up die, but none of them went blind. “If you don’t believe me, you wanna try it yourself?”

Now that was an idea. Maybe if she could induce an artificial amnesia in Izuru, and completely make him forget how he became this way - gosh, but that could be interesting. An Ultimate Hope who didn’t know what his purpose was? Or, better yet, a Hajime Hinata who didn’t know what he really was?

She could almost drool over the idea of it. Seeing the man, the boy in front of her, twisted, despairing, and utterly ruined - how thrilling would that be?

“Do it to yourself.” Izuru replies sullenly, shattering her daydream in an instant, and she pouts. Spoilsport.

They fall into a comfortable sort of quiet for a moment, as Junko turns back to the screens. Without her sister around, she had to take the role of surveillance onto herself, and that was a 24/7 ordeal. But at least it was something to do, she supposed.

Byakuya was making his way to his room from the cafeteria, apparently completely oblivious to how Toko was stalking him from a few meters behind. Hina and Sakura were working off their post-trial grief through vigorous physical activity - swimming, because of course it would be - Celeste was being comforted by Hifumi, and Hiro was chasing after Mondo, who apparently had given up on trying to eat anything and was now meandering aimlessly through the halls, the dead look on his face evident even through some of the grainier footage. Makoto was wandering, probably trying to repair his broken heart by distracting himself with some good old-fashioned adventuring, or maybe Kyoko.

Waaaait a minute. She frowns suddenly, leaning in closer to scan each of the monitors in quick succession, starting from the camera feeds of the third floor, and working down. Wait a damn minute. There was a suspicious lack of pale, skulking figures in her peripherals - just where was her darling detective?

She feels a little thrill of a delicious dread run up her spine. She went through all this trouble to give Kyoko a full wipe - to clean out every last memory that might give the detective a clue to her own identity - and yet here she was, managing to crawl under Junko’s skin like a centipede, a stubborn parasite. There were only so many unsupervised places that Miss Headmaster’s Daughter could be hiding, and Junko couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face; she could always count on Kyoko to make things interesting.

“Hey, Zuzu. You wanna make a bet?” She hums to Izuru. No Kyoko, but Makoto’s pointed cowlick was coming into view on one of the stairway cameras leading into the second floor, soon accompanied by the rest of him. 

“On what?”

“Oh, anything. Which one of them will die next. If one of them will snap and start trying to kill the rest of them…” She rewinds through the camera recordings of the last hour, speeding through the frames until they’re all mere blurs of color and light. Her eyes dart, and spy the pale, round shape of Kyoko’s head, as she walks into the dark entryway of the second-floor boy’s bathroom, not even half-an-hour ago. “If they manage to figure out the details of Togami’s blindness.”

Another bet. Another meaningless wager on top of the hundreds, thousands, millions of other ones that she’s made and won, but this one might actually surprise her for once. She hopes it will.

“How pointless.” He sighs. But despite that, he hasn’t turned to leave yet. And actually, the fact that he responded at all meant that he was, even just a little bit, curious. “What would we wager? We have nothing of value, and nothing we value enough.” “Hmm, true…and it’s not like we care about either of our lives either.” She fast-forwards the cameras, and watches as Makoto looks left and right, nervous eyes casting up and down the hallway, before he enters the second floor boy’s bathroom. She needs to get moving now, if she was going to make sure her darling detective didn’t go and ruin the game too early, and she shoves aside some empty snack wrappers, the pieces of an unfinished puzzle, a book so dog-eared and worn it was on the brink of disintegrating, and Monokuma’s controller to grab the authentic luchador mask that was hanging off the edge of the table. “We got all the time we need to figure that out, after all. So in the meantime, how about you stick around and see how it goes?"

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Doodle time!

Hey cartoon fan? Can I draw Giant Sephiroth's rampage city please?

Anyone, please don't ask me to do fetish art. I'm a minor, and even if I wasn't, it's just not something I'm comfortable with.