Archive of Our Own ^beta

(She feels a little bit bad for what she did to her father but, well, daddy dearest never understood. He wasn't born with a deathwish, tiring of a world already hurtling towards its end. Poor, dear daddy who tried to stop her and tried so hard to get in her way, she gave him a send-off fit for a king. It's only right, after all; wasn't he the good king, the too-righteous Knight Templar who tried to overthrow the despot queen apotheosised upon her throne of despair. I'm sorry daddy, she wants to say when she retrieves his bones and gazes into the screens arrayed before her, turning his skull over and over in her hands and digging her nails into the hairline fractures across his cranium. It wasn't meant to be this way; maybe they'd have ruled together. Maybe.)

Kyouko Kirigiri has never cried. Maybe she feels like she's missing out a little, because she's never made those small, despairing, hurting noises before. Maybe one day her carefully-built world will collapse around her like so much confetti; maybe she'll feel enough despair then, to cry. Oh, how wonderful it'll feel, she thinks, to feel so utterly small and hopeless and powerless to act against fate.

She'll build him up for that, her herbivore boy brimming with hope.

.

Too bad, too bad, she really has to start small with him.

Naegi is no Kamakura. So plain, so ridiculously average, so hopelessly naive without a skill or talent to his name. He's got luck, and luck's what got her to notice him. Luck, Kirigiri thinks, is the best for toying with because it's like roulette; it can go both ways, like a game of Russian roulette that can lead straight to hope or despair.

Maybe she'll build him up to break herself down. Maybe she'll forge the very weapon that'll kill her. Maybe she'll create a legacy in her name and in her image. Maybe she'll mould him from a kitten boy to a lion-hearted one, instead.

.

"I know what you have planned," she says to Sayaka Maizono and she watches the colour drain from her face. "You're going to kill him, aren't you?"

"No," Maizono says instinctively. Kirigiri smiles thinly. "It's useless hiding that from me; I can read minds," she hisses and smiles, slow and beatific. How pretty Maizono looks when she's cornered, with that haunted look in her eyes. How ugly she is inside, to think about killing poor, innocent, naive Naegi, to want to gut him like a fish on a slab with her knife. How ugly her thoughts must be, to want to take advantage of a hapless boy's blind trust.

"I just have good intuition," she says slowly and Maizono's jaw clenches. 

"Get out of my room," she says. "Get out, get out, get out!"

Too bad, too bad. Maizono's despair was beautiful to behold, she thinks. Too bad she doesn't know how to defend herself. Too bad she doesn't know joint locks or the location of pressure points, Kirigiri thinks dispassionately when she jabs her fingers into Maizono's solar plexus. 

Maizono swallows. She whispers, "please, I'll do anything."

.

The next most dangerous is Kuwata because he's a wildfire boy, a wildcard boy who's far more dangerous than he looks, too rash and impulsive for his own good. She won't put it past him, to assume Naegi's the culprit just because he's next door to Maizono. There are too many blunt objects around, for him to use.

She'll have to take care of him, she thinks as she curls her fingers around Maizono's cold hand and begins to write.

.

"I can't believe it," Naegi says. Oh, yes, the firsts are always unbelievable. First kisses, first loves, first executions, the first time you see your classmate dying before your eyes. 

"Right now, all that matters is surviving," she tells him. "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Naegi's mouth curls, downcast. He says, "I don't even know who to trust."

.

Fujisaki is too smart. Oowada is a liability.

"So you want to be strong," she says, thinking of Oowada and his secrets, all the skeletons in the closets just waiting to be bared to the world. She'll make him show his bones.

She thinks of the secrets and the lies and the cover-ups; the deceptions holding Oowada's gang together. They're gone now, washed away by her tide of strife but he doesn't know that, he thinks he still has something left to live for. How laughable, she thinks, that he'll die for nothing. How laughable that they will all die for nothing, that they'll die believing there's still a world out there for them when they leave with their friends' blood on their hands.

"You should train with Oowada-kun," she tells Fujisaki. "He can help you with everything you need."

"Thank you, thank you so much, Kirigiri-san," Fujisaki says earnestly. "I'll really take your suggestion to heart."

.

Maybe she can kill two birds with one stone. She drives the scissors into Fujisaki's thin wrists and spreads them; the blades snag against radius and ulna and jam in the bone. What fine bones Fujisaki has; how thin and delicate they are. Bloodstain fever, Kirigiri scrawls on the wall behind Fujisaki and leans back to admire her handiwork. Syo is next; the genocider will become the genocided.

.

Syo doesn't fall into her trap but it's all right. Kirigiri has plenty more opportunities to dispose of her.

.

The gambler of fate, the queen of liars, she's the first to notice something amiss.

"It's you, isn't it," Celestia says. How pretty she looks, in the mastermind's black-white-red. Maybe she's dissatisfied with just being a queen of falsehoods, a leader of the deceivers; maybe she believes she was meant to live for so much more. "It's not me, it's you."

Kirigiri smiles. "How could you tell?"

Celestia's lips quirk into a wicked smile; it bleeds across her face, a vicious lipstick slash. "I have good intuition. You're not the only one here who knows things they shouldn't."

How old, how staid, how tired her act is, Kirigiri thinks. She hates those words, mind-reading and intuition. Intuition has never saved her. Intuition has never solved a case. Celestia's fingers skims her knuckles. "How about it, then? You and I, we get into this together and we shall rule, side by side. In exchange, I'll keep quiet about your secret. I don't think the others will take kindly to knowing the one who helps to solve all the cases was the one who put them here in the first place, do you?"

So be it, so let this be her game, a gamble where Celestia hangs her sword of Damocles over Kirigiri's head. Whose head will be served on a platter, Kirigiri wonders. Who will play the role of Salome.

Everything about Celestia Ludenberg, Taeko Yasuhiro -- it's carefully formulated, a sham designed to mislead and beguile. Fake, everything about her is fake from the scarlet of her irises and her thick lashes, from her black-lacquered nails her voice, soft and whispery and rising to a feral snarl far too easily when Kirigiri sidesteps her and says, "maybe".

.

Later Celestia goes to her room and they compromise; a compromise means, an alliance, a proposition in the form of a show of dominance. They fuck like they want to kill each other and maybe, maybe they do. She allows Celestia to claw a panel of red down her back only because, because, she'll burn her later, the witch who thinks the world bows at her feet. Kirigiri envies her because, oh, how unfair, Celestia will get to feel that despair, the despair of being betrayed and played all whilst thinking she's the puppetmaster.

.

"I don't know who to trust, I really don't," Naegi says in one of the rare moments they have that doesn't construe inspecting corpses and condemning their friends with damning evidence. He gives her something from the school shop, a token present which she accepts. Despite that, despite everything -- maybe the distance between them is growing. Maybe he's smarter than he looks; herbivores are always on the lookout for predators, aren't they. Herbivores sleep with one eye open, ready to flee, don't they. He doesn't smile any more; there are long shadows across his face, like he's losing all that hope and belief that made him want to survive, that made him want to believe the best of everyone even as they slaughtered one another behind his back.

That's the ultimate despair, isn't it, to be betrayed by everyone and everything. It's all very fitting, because when she's finished with him that's exactly what he'll be.

She keeps her voice bland. Almost there, she thinks, just a little longer. "I understand," she says.

.

She tells Asahina, "there's a mole within our ranks" and Asahina believes her and she crumbles. She was always the easiest to break, the easiest to manipulate because, it seems, she can't comprehend betrayal.

She tells Hagakure, "we'll never escape, we'll all die in this place if we don't find the mole and get rid of them" and he keens desperately and bellows at her to shut up. Later in the dead of the night she sends Monobear units to his room with the promise of freedom: the mole is Sakura Oogami, do whatever you want with that knowledge. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

.

"Sakura Oogami is the mole."

Maybe, she thinks to herself, this is the second most despair-inducing incident in the history of Hope's Peak Academy.

.

The next day they wake up to what looks like a double suicide. It's tragic because when they discover Asahina and Oogami they're huddled together and Asahina doesn't look haunted, not any more; Oogami cradles her protectively, as though she can shield her from the cruelty of their reality. They're their own worst enemies; humanity itself is its own worst enemy and human nature is fragile and has betrayed them. Hagakure thinks he did it, Hagakure thinks he got possessed in his sleep and killed them and, well, isn't it unlucky for Hagakure because she's got the footage to back him up, she's got the used syringes in the garbage disposal and the hallucinogens in her inventory. She's got the videos of him hitting Oogami in the head; she's got the videos of him poisoning Asahina; it's all on tape, irrefutable evidence she presents with a flourish.

"I did it, I killed them," he says and believes all the videos and the lies she and Celestia spill out. They catch one another's eyes over Naegi's head and smile, sharp as knives, sharp as two cats over an injured mouse. Celestia tilts her head and gazes at her from beneath lowered lashes. Your move, she seems to say, your move. Draw, Kirigiri.

"I'm innocent, I didn't do anything, I swear, I wasn't myself, you've got to believe me!" Hagakure says suddenly but of course, he's already dug his own grave. She can still hear him howling as doors A and B flee from his aimless pursuit; she can still hear the brittle crunch of his bones as the third door disposes of him, clean as can be.

Naegi retches, quietly. She pats his shoulder. What a pity, she thinks, that after all these murders and executions he still can't stomach them.

.

Ishimaru retreats further into himself, after that; no, no, that's wrong because the destruction of all order has broken him from the inside out. He goes mad; the next day he welcomes in chaos in the form of a program wearing Oowada's face that preys on his weaknesses, and calls himself Ishida instead. 

It was only a matter of time until his mind splintered itself further. It was only a matter of time until they found Yamada dead and Ishida proudly confessing his crime.

"I'm ridding the world of those who do not follow the beauty of order!" he bellows and points at them from his podium. "You all are next!"

In his mind, he dies a martyr, she thinks as Monobear levels the sniper rifle. Her morgue grows unsightlier by the day.

.

Time's running out; it's fine, all fine because she intends to leave witnesses and survivors to carry the tales of the despair in Hope's Peak Academy to the outside world. It's fine because she'll still be playing, long after she's checkmated. For that, she saves Celestia for last.

"Who should we kill next?" Celestia asks her one night. "What do you think is the worst way to die," Kirigiri replies.

Celestia turns the question over in her mind for a while. "Who knows? It depends, doesn't it?"

So it does. So it does. Kirigiri knows how she wants to die, beautiful and poised like some macabre piece of installation art. Celestia never saw it coming, not even when Kirigiri ties her up, trusses her in silk ribbons and lace like an offering on an altar; she doesn't even realise, not until she sighs and allows her head to loll back and Kirigiri kisses her throat. 

She does, though, when Kirigiri brings out the silver knife and cuts her open.

.

What a sorry band of survivors they make. The others are shaken enough, as it is -- the resolve to kill their friends was lost, it seems. When she surveys them amongst the empty stands they look every bit like the shell-shocked children they are.

"None of us could have done it," Togami snarls. Kirigiri raises her brows and smiles thinly. "You hold admirable resolve in your own words. Have you got the reasoning to back it up?"

He falters, fleetingly. Enoshima laughs, a sharp, unkind sound. "We're good at battles of attrition. Or, battles in general," she adds as an afterthought. Beside her, Ikusaba doesn't blink. "We've already proven that it couldn't have been any of us."

Naegi's been so quiet, lately. He hasn't said a word, throughout the whole trial. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," he says, and looks right at her. "That's what you told me, wasn't it."

"What do you mean?" 

"I've, I've been thinking. It couldn't have been anybody but the mastermind. Who else would have the resources to - to do what they did to Celes-san? The more I think about it - the more I can't deny it, even though I want to."

"Who, indeed," she echoes. The others are silent, watching their exchange. "And what are you suggesting?"

Naegi stares down at his shoes. "I have reason to believe," he says and falters. "I have reason to believe that you're the mastermind, Kirigiri-san."

.

He's right, of course. It only took him a few weeks. He's learning, her little herbivore boy, he's learning betrayal and how sweet it can be.

"Congratulations, just your luck," she says and smiles as she looks him in the eye. "You've got that right."

.

"I'll kill you," Togami says flatly, evenly. He's the first to recover, the first to regain his composure; as is befitting his title, she assumes. What a poor actor he is, he can't even disguise the edge in his voice. Enoshima only looks vaguely amused; perhaps, Kirigiri thinks, she should have chosen Enoshima instead. Enoshima or Ikusaba, who had no such delusions about the sorry state of the world; Enoshima and Ikusaba, the survivalists. Fukawa's eye flick between them, like the wary gaze of a cornered animal.

"What's the matter, Naegi-kun?" Kirigiri asks. "Don't like what you see, even after everything I've done for you?" He gazes up at her and shakes his head, mutely. Still painfully weak, despite her attempts to build a successor. Still painfully weak, even after she's presented him with all the evidence he needed to condemn her, a breadcrumb trail she left for him that would only lead him straight to her.

"How does it feel to overcome those flimsy shackles you call trust and friendship? Do you realise, now, how meaningless they all are?"

"I wish I was wrong," he says.

"Lucky you, that your accusation was grounded; after all, you could be dead were it a misstep. A false accusation. An error in judgement. People are tools," she tells him. "Emotion governs action. Surely you realise that now, after watching all your friends kill each other in the futile hope of liberation. Freedom is an illusion, Naegi-kun; just as hope is."

She spins on her heels and faces the others. How soothing it is, to be swathed in red, white and black; the colours of murder and deceit and morality make for a pretty picture. She won't make it easy; or maybe she shall. Maybe it's an easy choice, for some. "So, my judgement awaits. This time, there's a caveat, of course, as so much is on stake now. No longer are we voting on a culprit; rather, we are wagering on your fates."

Emotion predicts action. She can see it in the narrowing of Ikusaba's eyes and the birdlike cant of Enoshima's head; in Fukawa's restless stare and Togami's thin-lipped fury. "Two choices," she says. "Hope and despair. If even one of you were to choose despair -- you are free to continue life within the school, free from the chaos outside; however, that means leaving Naegi-kun to my care."

Naegi doesn't move, doesn't say a word. And why would he, when all the hope's been stamped out of him, when he's finally understood everything she's told him, all the cryptic clues she's left for him to find and piece together. 

"If all of you choose hope, you will be forced out and free to face whatever ruined world awaits you and I will admit defeat. You shall have my head."

"Your condition," Ikusaba says. She was always a person of few words, Kirigiri thinks, one who believed in the economy of movement and action. She won't do Ikusaba the favour of answering, not when she can work it out herself.

Kirigiri shrugs. "I still get my way. You will leave here with the knowledge that I will return through Naegi-kun as my proxy. You will live with the knowledge that you couldn't prevent his metamorphosis into the apotheosis of despair. Even better than I ever was," she adds. "It could a year, maybe ten; the threads of fate are already being spun, and there is only one logical conclusion. It's time to vote."

.

Draw, she thinks as she watches their hands hover over the buttons. 

Either way, they've lost even before they begin. She'll leave despair in good hands.