Chapter Text
The first murder is less important than—
No.
Not less important.
The first murder in a killing game is always important. Always. It sets the tone for everything that comes later. It tells you who falls first to the mastermind’s machinations. It is the first point of weakness – the flaw, the vulnerability that the mastermind can use to their vile purposes later. If they fell, then who’s to say no one else can fall? If that motive succeeded, then who’s to say this one won’t?
So on and so forth.
But sometimes the first murder is less important than the person who stands up against the mastermind and is killed for it.
You know this as Mukuro Ikusaba, feigning her role as Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Fashionista.
But neither of them have a part in the overarching game of these murders, and neither of them are the body lying on the floor of the gymnasium right now.
Let’s look in, shall we?
Several days have passed since the assorted Ultimates found themselves locked within Hope’s Peak’s old building, several days since Togekomo first introduced himself as their new headmaster, several days since his thorny whip wrapped around the first of their own who dared to try and harm him. The Ultimate Baseball Star still wears those marks on her arm, wrapped so tight that sometimes they don’t notice the thin pricks of blood still showing beneath it. More often than not, that arm hangs limp at her side, but if one of her classmates pays close enough attention, they can see the grit of her teeth, the way her jaw sets, or the piercing of her teeth into her bottom lip as she keeps from crying out due to some barely contained spasms.
Death, Togekomo said, will not be a fitting reminder of what I might do to you, should you try to harm me again. Something that lingers just on the edge of your sight, however, can never be forgotten.
That doesn’t stop Kirumi Togami from speaking out after the first of her classmates falls, a victim more to Togekomo’s machinations than the classmate who murdered them. “You vile creature,” she hisses, her soft voice cutting through the raucous clamor the rest of her classmates make, gathered in the gymnasium, told that they must find the murderer or lose their own lives. “You were not completely honest with us.”
“Honest?” Togekomo, that giant plush-like spider, turns to her, the rosy ribbons on his top hat fluttering in the breeze of his whirling. “My dear, whoever said that I must be honest? It is your headmaster’s prerogative to tell you just what you need to know at any given moment. No more, no less. If I have kept something from you, dear one, it is only because—”
“Because you knew no one would risk their own lives to murder one of our own!” A fire lights beneath Kiumi’s skin. She feels a hand on her arm – Rantaro’s, trying to hold her back – and can almost hear his voice trying to stop her, but she doesn’t heed it. “You wove a trap for us, you…you….”
Togekomo doesn’t back up. He’s so much smaller than she is – a spider, who only needs to be stepped on to be squashed. His one deep violet eye peers up at her, and in that moment, he seems weak. For a Togami, any weakness can be exploited. And in this moment—
Kirumi squashes a bug.
“My lady, no!”
And in the moment before the web of thorns wraps her in its cocoon, Byakuya Polanski pushes her out of the way.