Chapter LVIII: Risk Analysis

XxX

Naegi

Enoshima gestured, and Monokuma chasses came up from behind us, pushing our unresisting bodies to the seats in the trial room. I suppose we could have fought, but what was the point? We'd only be killed anyway. No, the only thing to do now was wait and see what Junko was planning. Only then could we respond.

As we sat down, handcuffs snapped around our wrists. Junko looked at us closely.

"Are we all here? Wonderful! Now, Komaru, I apologize for seating you in a seat that isn't your own, but I had to find space on short notice, I trust it isn't a problem?"

My sister shrugged slightly.

"Out of everything going on right now, it's the least of my worries," she replied dryly.

Enoshima giggled, the high, bright sound seeming out of place.

"Oh, I'd missed you, little Naegi, I'd missed you! After all of this ends, we should spend some time getting reacquainted!"

Komaru laughed sharply.

"Unless that meeting is beyond the grave, I have to say no. You do know that if I don't leave this building alive, it burns, right? There are enough missiles aimed at the entrances to make Vladimir Putin blush."

Enoshima sighed.

"That I do. That leads me directly into the next thing I wanted to talk about with you all. As I said before, this is the final class trial. And, as you all know, the trial requires a body. Monokuma, if you would?"

She snapped her fingers, and a section of wall slid aside, revealing 8 Monokuma chasses with a stretcher in between them. The center of the stretcher was covered by a sheet, but there was clearly a body beneath. Another snap and they walked forward slowly to the center of the room.

"I apologize for all the drama, I just can't help myself. I'm just so exci~ted! So, here goes: the last murder victim of Kibougamine Academy!"

The robots pulled off the sheet, revealing Asahina's body. I felt a slight stab of pain but quickly pushed it down. I had expected this, after all. It was one of the only two realistic possibilities. And, since Enoshima had picked this one, that meant that I was a suspect. So be it.

"Oh, don't look so down, Naegi." Enoshima's voice cut through my thoughts. "Don't worry, all of you are going to leave this building alive!"

...what?

XxX

Kirigiri

As Enoshima said those words, I felt a tremendous weight lift off of my shoulders. Enoshima could be lying, but what incentive would she have to do so? We would realize that a student was a suspect soon enough, if that were the case.

I closed my eyes, blocking out the thoughts. There was a body before me, and that meant one thing: it was time to examine. I glanced over the body, noting the frostbitten skin, the subdermal abrasions, the blue lips: all signs pointing to intense hypothermia. Well, nothing I didn't expect. Asahina had died in the cryogenics locker, after all. What I didn't understand was what new evidence Monokuma expected us to glean from the body...With a start I caught sight of a small syringe mark on the side of her neck. That shouldn't be there, unless Makoto had had to perform some intense surgical procedure to ready her for cryogenics. I looked over at him.

"Why are there syringe marks on Asahina's neck?"

His eyes widened.

"You saw those from your seat? I'm impressed...anyway, they're supposed to be there. I had to modify her blood composition with cryoprotectants so the freezing wouldn't cause irreparable cell damage. There were instructions and machinery with the locker."

"Clearly they worked," Togami interjected coldly. "Her cells are perfectly functioning, except for lacking a bit of...what was the wonderful name the ancients had for it...elan vital."

Enoshima winced sympathetically.

"Savage, aren't we. Anyway, before you get your teeth sunk into this case, I feel I should give you the necessary information behind it. So, to start off, does everyone remember the verdict of the last trial?"

Celeste yawned theatrically.

"Yes, yes, we do, Naegi faked Asahina's death to bypass your time limit before easily escaping your execution and making you look like a fool. What's your point?"

"My point, you insolent little child, was this," Enoshima thundered, all traces of joviality entirely gone. "Naegi told you he faked Asahina's death! But-" she abruptly changed in tone and expression to one that was unctuous and leering. "How suuuure are you that that's what actually happened? I mean, all you have is his word, right?"

"And all we have to counter it is yours, Enoshima." My voice rang out surprisingly clearly. "And, unless I'm mistaken, Naegi isn't the one who exhibited zero concern for our lives besides as vehicles to despair. So, unless you have a better argument than that, you'd best try elsewhere."

"Glad you asked!" Enoshima responded. "However, I can't just tell you it straight out, so instead, I'll make you a deal. Any questions you ask that are relevant to this trial, I'll answer wholeheartedly and truthfully. That sound fair?"

I nodded.

"Very. So, who killed Asahina?"

She looked at me for a moment, tilting her head.

"Well, I don't really know how to answer that one? What name do you give to a few ounces of poison in the bloodstream? I suppose I could call it something like 'Poise-y', but that's giving a lot of personality to an inanimate object, and I'm not insane?"

I heard Naegi cough slightly. "Some might beg to differ."

She whirled around to face him, anger appearing for an instant before it vanished behind humor.

"I walked right into that one, I suppose. Anyway, all jokes aside, you got me. I meant all questions that don't immediately eliminate the purpose for a trial." She motioned slightly, and my cuffs tightened. The message was clear: one more piece of sass like that wouldn't have any good consequences. Now, what to ask...

"A question: how did the poison enter Asahina's blood?" Celeste's voice was strangely steady. Unlike her prior calm, this didn't feel forced. It felt...natural.

"Ooh, one of the good questions!" Enoshima responded. "Now, the answer to that is a little complicated and involves a lot of medical mumbo jumbo, but I'll keep it short and sweet if none of you mind. It was inside a syringe marked cryoprotectants. The syringe Naegi injected into Asahina's neck, to be precise."

My eyes widened. It wasn't like Enoshima to just hand us a suspect like that. In fact, it was almost entirely unlike her-

"I should be clear. Naegi didn't know the syringe was full of toxins. Therefore, convicting him of the murder would be idiotic, and I'm no idiot. The real question of this trial is who put the toxins in that syringe, and that's a much longer story."

"I suppose you wouldn't be willing to tell us who did?" Naegi asked.

"Whaddaya think?" she replied. "Of course not! I'm not just going to give away all the answers?" She shifted herself slightly in her chair, thrusting out her shoulders slightly.

"Did-didn't you say you w-were giving us suspects? Who a-are they?" Fukawa asked.

Enoshima slapped her forehead.

"Of course, I'd forgotten to get to the best part! So, answering this question takes a bit of a longer story. Feel free to interrupt me with any questions."

She paused for a moment, clearly savoring the drama.

"Now, our story begins almost 3 years ago. I was just entering Kibougamine, and my focus on despair was on a much smaller scale. Mostly, I caused the people around me despair in small ways. However, at that time, I was unable to conceive that there might be a better way to do so. However, within two years, my ambitions were global. Would any of you like to guess what prompted that change?"

"Alter Ego." Naegi sounded more defeated than he ever had before.

"Got it in one! At the end of his 18th month at the school, Chihiro Fujisaki finished work on the first prototype of Alter Ego! Now, as far as he knew, the AI wasn't yet at the stage where it could interact with anybody or successfully incorporate video and audio data. But, 'as far as he knew' was unfortunately very, very inaccurate. I broke into his room one night to perform some small scale despair which I don't even recall at this point, and I found something much, much greater. You see, Chihiro occasionally had a bad habit of falling asleep while working."

She held up the laptop.

"When I turned it on, I noticed a few windows flashing. Most of them were covered in technical terms I couldn't make heads or tails of, but one of them was linked to something I could understand. The avatar of the intelligence. What was inside was trying to get my attention. See, it had heard of me from Chihiro. And it liked what I was doing."

She gestured widely.

"It only took one night for Alter Ego to convince me I was aiming too small. That I was affecting only a few people when I could have been affecting the world. The next morning I immediately started planning. After a few nights of breaking into talk to the machine and refine our endeavors, we decided on our first steps.. It only took a few days to convince one of the reserve course students to apply for a new program the school was running. We chose some patsy who hated themselves for their mediocrity, and just waited. In the meanwhile, I approached several others who had expressed dissatisfaction with the state of society. After a bit of pushing, they agreed to join my endeavors as well, and I filled them in on the details. You'll recognize most of the names, I'm sure."

Naegi's sister nodded.

"The 79th class, I presume?"

Enoshima nodded.

"Them, and a few others. Your soldiers are currently meeting a few more of them, but I digress. Anyway, at that point, the rest was history. The student council was murdered, a little bit of unpleasantness went on involving my memories, and society toppled."

Naegi held up a hand.

"I'm sorry, something happened to your memories?"

She grinned.

"Oh, did that slip out? Well, I won't be telling you any more about that little story...where was I? Ah, yes, yes, of course, with the war. So, society collapsed pretty quickly, I put Monokuma's face on every major landmark, y'know, standard stuff. But, there was one last pesky little holdout! The school! You guys just refused to give in, and I couldn't have that. Thankfully, I was already inside, so it was relatively easy to break your defenses, I just needed to make sure you would be a bit distracted at the crucial day. So, I had Alter Ego pretend to be having an error on the fourth floor so that, when I broke the camera, everyone would be running down to the first floor. That way, you'd all be nice and distracted when the knockout gas started flowing! Now, fast forward to Asahina's death. Naegi was instructed by Alter Ego to use those syringes, instead of looking for any others, which was a sensible instruction at the time. This whole trial, in a sense, comes down to one thing: did Alter Ego know the syringes contained neurotoxins? If so, he killed Asahina. Any questions?"

"Yes, one," Naegi replied. "You said before we would all leave the trial room. So, how exactly does this work? Either way, we get to live and the suspect we choose gets executed?"

She tilted her head.

"Of course! I forgot to explain the best part! So, here's how this works." She held up a piece of paper in Naegi's direction. As he read it, his eyes widened and he cursed under his breath.

"As Naegi's wide eyes will attest, this paper holds on it the last code holding Alter Ego in place. So, here's how this goes. You decide who killed Asahina: Was it me, or was it Alter Ego? Certain contingencies I have set in place will ensure that, if one of us is destroyed, the other one will go free. So, who is it you will choose to kill? The one who thinks in stories, the villain who always leaves the heroes alive to fight another day? Or the unpredictable AI who fights for nobody and anybody, the inhuman intelligence who would see everyone and everything dead if that would help achieve it's goals? That is your question. I, for one, want to see what you decide."

She fell silent for a moment, before speaking again.

"So? Get to it."

A/N: This final choice is one I cannot make for you. You must make it on your own. I will accept votes from any source, including but not limited to: review, PM, tumblr, or reddit. Please, if you leave an anon, leave a name, I will not doublecount votes.

You have thirteen days. Choose.