A/N: Seriously, guys, thanks for all the love you're giving this fic. Y'all are fantastic 3

Elf Collaborator: That becomes even more humorous when you recall Junko accused him of being a tsundere XD

I don't consider him a tsundere in the typical sense of the word—he's not the type to get flustered and go "I-It's not like I LIKE you or anything, baka!" I do consider him a tsundere in that while he does have emotions, he'll try to rationalize them away and explain things as "Helping you was just logical" even when he has an emotional stake in them. Think Sherlock Holmes (who, fun fact, was part of my inspiration for writing Izuru).

Guest: I think everyone wants Junko to stay Ryouko forever XD

doremishine itsuko: I can't fit the entire 78th class in, but we maaaaaaay be due for some cameos from the survivors in the future. Just maybe :P

Someone came up with a really good guess for their ages on Tumblr—the 78th class should be 20/21 by the time of DR3, and the 77th class 21/22.

Nanami's pupil was small, contracted so as to not be blinded by the light shining into it. But when Izuru waved his hand in front of her eye, it did not track the motion. He gently released her eyelid, turning off the pointer light and setting it aside; his daily examination was finished.

He hadn't left the gamer's side again since his encounter with the amnesiac Enoshima two weeks ago. Physically, her injuries were mostly healed by now; the scabs had fallen off, leaving healthy scar tissue in their wake. He massaged the muscles in her limbs to keep them from atrophying, but she would still be very weak, and unfortunately there was no way for Izuru to test whether she'd suffered any neurological damage. Not until she regained consciousness.

As he'd predicted, Nanami's brain had slowly started showing signs of activity shortly after his trip outside. She experienced a somewhat irregular sleep-wake cycle, and her face would sometimes twist and grimace without cause. But she did not respond to outside stimuli; verbal commands were ignored, and any movements she made were instinctive, involuntary, not purposeful. She couldn't eat or speak. She was neither fully aware nor fully unconscious, but halfway between.

Logically, Izuru knew there was no pattern to someone in a persistent vegetative state waking, and that all things considered her recovery was progressing well enough. But he still couldn't help feeling slightly impatient. That itch inside him, that need to know her, to see her fully recovered, was becoming difficult to ignore. Mentally, he rifled through his archive of knowledge and talent for any possibility he might have overlooked.

Ah, here. Medical studies reported that speaking to vegetative patients sometimes helped them leave the state; the sound of voices stimulated certain nerves in the brain, making it more alert and active. Theoretically, that helped spur it to wake up faster, and apparently offered some modicum of comfort besides.

…well, he supposed he could try just to see what would happen.

"Nanami," he began, and halted. Interesting—attempting to speak now was making him feel foolish. Was it because of the person he was speaking to? No, he hadn't been struck by this emotion either of the times he'd spoken to her before. Then it had to be because of the situation. Understandable; for all his talent, idle conversation was not his forte. He spoke only when he saw reason to, which was rarely, and couldn't recall ever speaking casually with anyone in his existence. His teachers had only spoken to him to test him, in questions and answers and riddles, and Enoshima was perfectly content to just talk over his silences. What was he supposed to say to someone unable to respond?

Play to his strengths. State the facts. It was in man's nature to find the unknown frightening; logically speaking, then, facts were reassuring. "…You are safe," Izuru continued, fingers of discomfort crawling like spiders up his spine, "your body has healed well, and the one who wished you ill does not know you are alive. I have been tending to your recovery for the past five weeks."

She did not respond. Of course she didn't, it was foolish and illogical to assume she would magically awaken at the mere sound of his voice. This was real life, not a romance novel.

He searched for something else to say, and remembered what he'd watched only a few days ago: Enoshima, stabbing Matsuda and then stomping on his corpse until it was nothing but pulp. "…You have nothing to fear from me. I am not going to harm you."

Her brow crinkled, then smoothed over. An automated response caused by the irregularities in her brainwaves, nothing more.

Izuru rose, fingers automatically curling around her hairpin in what had quickly become a habit. "…Take as much time as you need to recover. I will not leave you."

He spoke to Nanami's body a few more times after that, but before long stopped—he simply ran out of things to say, and the embarrassment that came with it became boring. It was months before Enoshima called on him again, months since her experiment had come to an end. He'd watched it all with boredom, seen the panic of the school board and the bloody corpses of the Steering Committee left in Ikusaba's wake. The Despair Sisters were back in action; the Ultimate Soldier was currently out doing dirty work for her sister, but he still locked and trapped Nanami's door before leaving.

Enoshima was waiting for him in the room she'd held Mitarai in, spinning around in a chair and still dressed in the outfit she'd adorned during her amnesiac phase. He came to a halt inside the doorway, waiting until she slowed enough to see him. A large grin spread across her face, and she stuck a foot out, stopping the motion of the chair.

"Kamukura-senpai!" the strawberry blonde gushed, leaping up. "Ohmygod, it's been so long! Tell me how you've been! Did you miss me?"

Flatly, coldly, he answered, "No."

He'd barely thought of her when he wasn't monitoring the school, truth be told. He'd quickly grown bored of being angry at Enoshima—he was not going to act on it, and without some form of catharsis the state became stale and dull—but to his vague interest, that anger was resurfacing just by looking at her. Additionally, it had fundamentally altered his perception of her. Rather than slight dislike combined with tolerance, as he had previously felt, he now held just dislike, which he had to forcibly reign in.

She sniffed, crocodile tears welling in her eyes and…mushrooms somehow appearing on her head. "How could you be so cruel? We're supposed to be partners, you know! It's been months since my loss and you're only just now visiting—and then you say something like that! Don't you know it's appropriate to comfort a girl when she loses her lover, not scorn her? My poor Yasuke-kun…" She wiped away a calculated tear.

"If you did not want him dead, perhaps you should not have killed him."

Enoshima tossed her head back and barked out a laugh; the mushrooms went flying away. "Oh, but where would the despair in that be? Love is pain and pain is despair, so love is despair! I loved my beloved Yasuke-kun so much. I loved him right 'til death do us part, and it hurts so much that he's gone…" Her arms wrapped around her body, red painted fingernails digging into her skin as she let out a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. Interesting—for once, Izuru couldn't tell whether she was feigning it or not.

But if the emotion was genuine, it vanished in the next second as, with a definitely fake wail, Enoshima buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved with overdramatic sobs. He stared at her with apathy, watching as she wept theatrically, occasionally peeking up at him through her fingers.

"Y'know," she finally cooed, lowering her hands, "this is the part where you're supposed to hold me close as I cry into your chest about my lost love."

Izuru let his scornful silence and minute narrowing of his eyes be his answer. Enoshima laughed again, abandoning her weeping widow act. "You really are completely dead inside, aren't you? I wonder, were you born that way, or did my despair do that to you?"

Her last idle comment reminded Izuru of one of the conversations he'd eavesdropped between her and Ikusaba, amidst his monitoring of the school. The soldier had asked why she didn't just hand him over to the Reserve Course; Enoshima had laughed, condescendingly explaining how if she did, their anger would dissipate. Letting the storm build was much more profitable. She'd finished up with a statement that he was definitely in despair now because of her, so it wasn't as though he were a real threat anymore, which had been almost amusing to him.

It meant one of two things. Either she was lying to placate her sister—doubtful, given what Izuru had observed of Enoshima's past treatment of her—or else she was greatly deluded about how much impact she had on him. Even before he'd discovered Nanami and her hope, he hadn't been in despair. Just bored and curious. So for Enoshima to think she was that influential over his mental and emotional state…it was almost amusing.

Still, while the woman herself was boring and predictable, the ideas and experiences she brought were not, and that was what prompted him to ask, "What does it feel like? Not just losing the man you loved, but knowing you are the reason he is dead."

A manic grin overcame her face, even more crazed than her usual ones. "Eh?! Kamukura-senpai's asking me to share my feelings with him?! Oh, how I've awaited this moment! How could I refuse such an offer?"

She began roaming her hands across her body, eyes half-lidded as she began, "It's like someone's ripped my chest open and stomped on my heart. Like the sky's falling down around me and the ground's swallowing me whole. It's been months now, and this despair is still so despairingly strong…so despairingly beautiful…so despairingly orgasmic!" A deep blush spread on her cheeks, and she moaned, long and drawn out. "It's hard to imagine I could ever feel a despair more despairful than this! And maybe that's the greatest despair of all!"

Killing the ones you loved was supposed to be the peak of despair…? Izuru tried to imagine killing Nanami, and the image it brought did make his stomach roil—but not at all in the pleasant way Enoshima described.

If the end goal of despair was murdering your loved ones…wasn't that…predictable? Simply all roads leading to the same point in the end? But the actions taken on the way weren't predictable at all.

Did unpredictable actions outweigh the fact that they led to a predictable future? Or would the apparently unpredictable actions prove to have patterns in them as well, ones he hadn't yet discerned but eventually would? Or would he find that more than one variation of the future was available through despair?

While he'd been musing, Enoshima had shifted into her teacher guise, adjusting a pair of glasses as she propped up a comically large corkboard. "Now, to what's next on our itinerary as Ultimate Despairs." There were several printed out photos, charts and graphs on the board, and she tapped a pointer against a photograph of herself and five children. "Direct your attention here, if you would."

Izuru's eyes drifted over the children in the photo—three boys and two girls, about ten or so in age. All had brightly-colored hair, except for one whose appearance was hidden beneath a handmade leather mask. The model tapped the pointer against the photo again, as if for emphasis.

"While you've been ignoring me for the past few months, I've been out making more connections. Meet Towa Monaca-chan and her little friends, the self-proclaimed 'Warriors of Hope'." Enoshima scoffed and tossed the glasses aside. "Ugh, isn't that just the most disgusting title you've ever heard? But hey, they're kids. Give 'em even the slightest bit of affection and they'll lap it right up. They can call themselves whatever they want, as long as they call themselves mine in the end."

The name she'd mentioned triggered a flash of recollection, information fed into him by his teachers. "Towa…as in Towa Takuichi? She is related to him?"

"Bingo! Little Monaca-chan's his brilliant but unwanted bastard. She's actually the chief executive of the Towa Group's robotics branch—at such a young age! That means she's got access to all their materials…all their resources…all their robots." Enoshima rubbed her hands together gleefully. "And since I've been such a great friend to her, she's agreed to take a commission for me. Soon, I'll have enough robo-bears to cover the world…I'm thinking 'Monokuma' sounds like a good name for them.

"And that's not even the best part, oh no! See, there's this kid in my class, Fujisaki Chihiro, the Ultimate Programmer, who was invited to work on this rather fascinating project at the start of the school year with Yasuke-kun and some other chick. After lots of talking to Fujisaki-kun and looking through Yasuke-kun's now-available notes, I've finally analyzed just exactly what it is. And lemme tell you, it holds some rather delightfully despairful possibilities!"

She tapped a large sheet of paper giddily. Izuru examined the information there, a spark of interest flickering in his chest. A therapeutic program intended to help those suffering from PTSD and other traumatic events; technology and techniques that, theoretically, could cure mental manipulation; a peaceful, unassailable virtual reality as the stage...

"You want to get a leg inside this program somehow," he theorized, "and corrupt it so it will further spread your despair. A virus of some sort, inserted beforehand, is the logical conclusion. Then you will test the program via a proxy to see how well it works."

"Someone give the man a prize!" Enoshima cheered. "You got it in one! I took the liberty of making it already—a nice little Junko 2.0, who will infect everyone in that program with my loveable personality. Even if I die, I will live on…ah, how wonderful.

"Now, this is only a last resort, in case something happens to me—which means something happened to my sister too. The ugly little pig wouldn't know how to live without me. And with the way my brainwashing works, most of my despairs would also fall apart. So that leaves only you to fetch my AI and upload it in the event of my untimely and tragically despairful death. Would you do that for me, Kamukura-senpai?" She fluttered her eyelashes.

An AI. A mind-altering program. A virtual reality with no outside interference or influence, only what existed within.

A way to see which was truly stronger, truly more unpredictable, hope or despair.

The first fragments of a plan began forming inside Kamukura Izuru's mind.

"I shall," he said, and Enoshima squealed in girlish delight. "Ah, I knew I could rely on you! My AI's going to be in Towa City, so if you ever need to pick it up just mosey on over there!"

She locked her hands behind her back and smiled, rocking back on her heels. "All the pieces have fallen into place, and soon the show's going to start! Graduation day… that's when it all goes down. You can wait until then, can't you, Kamukura-senpai? I promise it'll all be worth it…"

Sure enough, only a few weeks later, at the end of the school year, Enoshima launched her plan. The fall of Hope's Peak Academy had been a senseless slaughter, buildings set alight and both students and faculty cut down in a variety of creatively painful ways. Then the mass suicide, the talentless Reserve Course students leaping out of buildings or running into flames, their purpose served. It was both boringly predictable—everything went exactly according to Enoshima's plan—and unpredictably chaotic. The behavior of the Main Course students was interesting to watch, to try and see which of them would break down and cry; which would try to fight back; which would run; which would stay with their friends; which would abandon them to save their own lives…

Truly…the final confrontation between hope and despair will be a sight to see. One that would hopefully—finally—provide him with the answer he sought. Provide him with freedom from this monotonous existence.

He'd entertained Enoshima and her sister for the final time, listened to her monologue, double-checked that she'd erased the 77th class's memories of him, and then come back down to the complex to finish preparations for his departure. First, he did as he said he would and removed his memories of the 77th class. He predicted that Nanami would want to know about their fate, so he'd only erased his knowledge of their personalities, not what they had become. This also allowed him to retain his ability to deduce which areas they would flock to, and avoid them—while he wished to make his next encounter with them more interesting, he also wished it to be on his terms, and those terms did not include having an unconscious Nanami in harm's way.

No sooner had Izuru finished erasing his memory before he was off to fetch her and take her away from this place. Transporting her presented a slight conundrum—the stairs leading up and out meant he could not simply push her around on the cot. Proper medical procedure was for her to be moved to a stretcher, which would be carried by a team of at least two. For all his talent, he was still only one person. However, he was one person with a far greater amount of strength than normal.

He'd long ago determined through x-rays that her spine was uninjured, and enough time had passed that the rest of her wounds had scarred over. Thus, carrying her without fear of further injury was plausible. He unplugged the girl from her IVs, carefully picked her up, draped her over his shoulder, and left the complex. He emerged into the aftermath of a battle; bodies of the Reserve Course students littered the ground around him, red slowly seeping into the pavement and grass. The mass suicide had put an end to all the fighting on the Academy grounds; all was deathly silent, except for the sounds of a chopper's whirring blades. His eyes slid up, to where he could see the news helicopters hovering in the air above, spotlights shining down and highlighting the gruesome carnage.

Avoiding them was child's play—he simply calculated the areas the reporters would be most focused on (the areas with the most death and destruction, in addition to anything largely symbolic), as well as the angles, sizes, and speeds of the beams, to deduce where and when the lights would be sweeping. Using that he navigated a quick, easy and unseen path to the gates, which had been torn down by the Reserve Course; Izuru deftly stepped over the twisted metal and headed to the ambulance he'd stolen the day beforehand and parked further down the road, hidden from view.

He quickly hooked Nanami back onto the IVs awaiting her. She had neighbors in piles of other supplies, necessities for her survival and his that he'd moved here the day before. His laptop was safely in its bag, sharing space with the consoles and games Izuru had, after a bit of thought, packed for the Ultimate Gamer. Everything was tied down securely so it wouldn't go flying and hit Nanami—or so she wouldn't go flying. Then he slid into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition, one hand already pulling up the GPS on his phone.

Staying at the academy was an option he'd considered, but discarded—Enoshima had gleefully confessed plans for another killing game before they'd parted, telling him to stay tuned to the news. He didn't know when Enoshima would start it, but when she did the entire area was going to become a battlefield as people predictably tried to break the doors down to rescue the students. One misplaced bomb or landmine could cause part of the complex's ceiling to collapse, potentially on top of them. Furthermore, food and supplies would eventually run out, which meant he would have to leave to fetch more, and everything the school had had been repurposed inside the shelter for the 78th class. Stealing it from them would be more trouble than it was worth.

So no, this time the most logical thing to do was seek out civilization. He had no intention of mingling with those within any more than what was necessary to restock, but the choice of location mattered. It had to be large enough to provide easy access to the supplies he and Nanami needed, but small enough to avoid catching the Ultimate Despairs' eyes. Izuru had scouted out several locations that would suit his purposes just fine, and made his decision based off his analyses of where despair would be slowest to strike, how populous each place was, what supplies it offered, natural location, distance, and other factors. He was confident in his selection; there, he would wait out both her recovery and the time to finalize the details on his plan.

And so they drove off, leaving the dying academy behind.

Time passed.

Despair continued to spread across the world. Enoshima Junko bided her time in the shelter of Hope's Peak Academy, waiting for the chance to spring her game. The Ultimate Despairs, among them the 77th class, committed unspeakable horrors in her name, their minds broken and twisted into believing they were doing good. The Future Foundation was born in the face of this conflict, struggling to fight back. Miles away from it all, Kamukura Izuru arrived at a quiet little town and quickly set up a place to live. Occasionally he left to travel to large cities and observe the chaos there, but for the most part he was a ghost on the fringes, a shadowy protector for the girl within their sanctuary.

Until one day, Nanami Chiaki's eyes fluttered open and met his.

A/N: Izuru just did not want to cooperate with me this chapter. It's going to be so nice writing Chiaki's POV.

Screw the Neo World Program and screw trying to figure out when it was created. The best I could deduce was that it probably wasn't made specifically for the Remnants of Despair, because all the equipment and that whole lab on Jabberwock Island would probably have taken months to build. So production probably started in advance. And it sounded like the sort of extracurricular work a student might take on, so…

Also, Junko's using male pronouns for Chihiro because, given her Ultimate Analysis, she's probably already figured out his secret—assuming he hasn't told the class by now.