Terror Infinity Side B
Chapter 2, Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Hours before Shin met up with the heroine of "Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls", Komaru Naegi, Team Japan arrived in the Mission World. The seven of them; Shin, Hikari, Aqua, Shuai, Connor, Jin, and Kisara woke up on the fenced rooftop of a large building within a city with no people, or even the noise of people commonly found in a city. There was not a sound to be heard, similarly to a ghost town. With no people in the city, the place was silent as a grave. As they stood up and looked around they were unsettled by what they saw as they wished for normal scenery even if they had to struggle in this world to just keep their lives and the lives of their comrades.
They sky that should be blue, orange, or black depending on the time of day was dyed red the color of blood and shined down a darkness that made the city nothing less than ominous. They were transported to a modern city, yet this modern city had been half destroyed upon closer examination as they beyond the rooftop. Buildings had collapsed, some on fire, and if one looked down at the streets through the metal fence of the building they would find the reason for why the city was as quite as it was. There were countless corpses scattered throughout in bloody heaps. Putting all this together the city was in a state worse off than if it was caught up in a war zone in the real world.
Shin: "...Yep. Really lives up to the very image of Despair having woken up within the city. And then there's..."
Shin looked towards his feet now. It was the other something that caused his comrades and his own heart to sink once they understood what it meant. There were thirteen bodies on the floor. They were all still alive, but half of Shin wished that they weren't and were just a part of the setting as dead bodies, yet the reality was that they were there. These thirteen individual of the floor of the rooftop, unconscious, and had the same watches on their wrist like the others of Team Japan.
New Players, or nicknamed Newbies in God's Dimension's Team Japan. With each new mission New Players would arrive to replace those that died or just to fill up the team's maximum occupation of 20 Players. It was a good thing as Team Japan only had seven active members and could use new blood if within a new batch of Players there were those who could become a part of the team, yet it came at a steep price. On a mission assigned to a team by God the lowest number of Players possible for a team was seven and the highest was twenty, and this number directly correlates with the difficulty of any mission assigned to them by God.
Shin saw it like this:
◆ 7- 9 Man Mission - An easy mission that can be survived by just following the plot.
◆ 10-13 Man Mission - A difficult mission, but can be survived by understanding the plot and accepting a high level of danger.
◆ 14-17 Man Mission - A higher difficulty with a high likely hood of a change of plot such as the story, or the strength of enemies increased dramatically. Also, plot holes would have been completely fixed and still wishing to make use of them means accepting a very high level of danger.
◆ 18-20 Man Mission - The most extreme level of difficulty. It's a mission where God predicts that there's a very high chance of a team wiping out with their current abilities. Plot changes, increased dangers, extremely difficult adversaries, or extremely difficult objectives are but a few of the possible dangers one could face and-
Shin: "A Twenty Man Mission. The highest possible level of danger for the Main Mission."
I recalled my own past experiences with such difficulties. Apocalypse Alice was a twenty man mission like now. No one from the core team died, but it was a mission almost impossible to complete as we were randomly teleported within the Labyrinth and without the assistance of the main characters who were elite combat magicians, it would have been impossible to clear the Labyrinth and defeat the final boss. The previous Hunter X Hunter - Greed Island was an eighteen man mission that didn't appear to be that difficult at first, but that was only because of our passive methods in dealing with the Main Mission and having Team Germany being in the limelight, singled out by the residents of the island and accepting the difficulties in our stead, leaving Team Japan to complete the mission in the shadows of that island. Depending on the Main Mission and methods used by the team any mission can be complete and avoiding the main dangers, yet if one could not find such methods...
Hikari: "..."
Shin: "So how is it Hikari? What's the situation within the city?"
Shin looked over towards Hikari who already had out her Persona Adrasteia. He had Hikari summon her Persona to increase her Psyche Force abilities and scan the city. Recently Hikari had vastly strengthened her searching prowess by gaining the standard Psyche Force Scan which melded with her Persona abilities. That's why Shin expected quite a detailed description from Hikari... but instead she fell to the floor and threw up. The others were shocked by this and thought that something was wrong with her, but Shin only needed a moment to understand what was going on.
Shin understood what has happened in this city, Towa City in the world of Dangan Ronpa and couldn't blame her. Anyone who knew what was going down within the city, what was done to the adults and what the brainwashed children were doing to both the living and the dead was... it just wasn't something anyone could handle. Even war veterans who had survived the most tragic of wars and seen what kind of hell it brings... even they wouldn't be able to stomach what was done here. Only those with no respect for the living, or care for life and death would be able to look at all the Despairing tragedies within Towa City with a cold, unfeeling heart. Lacking a human heart would be another way of saying it. That's why Shin simply moved over to Hikari side and rubbed her back to make her feel better and apologized for not given her fair warning. Then feeling better Hikari gave a brief summary of the things that she had seen and the others no longer blamed Hikari and now looked sickly themselves. Not even Connor who had experienced the most horrors having grown up as a child solider could keep up his usual poker face.
Hikari: "Its, its... just as I've said. Anyways, I've scanned the city and created a map for you all that's highly detailed. As for the other things that I... you just have to see for yourself to believe it."
Kisara: "...You must be exaggerating, right? Kids... little kids wouldn't do such things!"
Shuai: "I don't think it's a joke Kisara. As a shaman connect to the other world... I can literally hear it! The horror and regret filled screams of the dead adults unable to accept death. Not even in the distorted space of the Labyrinths of Apocalypse Alice or the mass casualties from the last mission ever made me feel so sick to my stomach. I just want to cry! I swear, if I was alone in the city I would lose my mind!"
Connor: "Just... just what is this world? Is this really the world of a video game and not a horror film? Who would play this sick game?"
Shin: "I'm guilty of playing this sick game you know. Sure, it's one of the most gruesome games that I've ever played, but from the outside it's extremely compelling to play. It just isn't fun to play from within at all."
Aqua: "If you say so Shin. Anyways, explain this world to us. We need to know just what we are dealing with here in this fucked up city. Shit, I need a smoke. I've never hated my heightened senses as much as I do now. It’s as if I’m swimming in a river of death just by standing in this city."
Shin: "I feel the same even if not to the same extent. Hey, what about you Jin? Have you played this game before?"
Jin: "Unfortunately no. I was playing a holiday event and later going on a number of raids in XXXXX when the game came out, so I forgot to buy it. I played the first two games, but not the one that diverged in game play from 1 and 2. I'll leave it to you Shin to explain things to us."
Shin: "Okay then. I'll start of by saying Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is the story that connects Dangsn Ronpa 1 to Dangan Ronpa 2. I'll give you summaries of their plots."
Hikari: "Shin... do we ABSOLUTELY need to know what happened in the other games to survive this game?"
Shin: "...Yes (Well, not really Dangan Ronpa 2, but you should still know... although I won't say that.)
Hikari: "...Continue."
Shin: "Okay, but beware. These are extreme spoilers. EXTREME SPOILERS EVERYONE!"
Aqua: "Just get on with it terminal otaku!"
I then began to explain the plots of Dangan Ronpa to date. The Dangan Ronpa 3 the Anime (Both Hope and Despair arcs) and the V3 the game have yet to come out, but it shouldn't be too important to our mission here in Another Episode.
◆ Dangan Ronpa, Trigger Happy Havoc : The story is shown from the perspective of the protagonist, Makoto Naegi, who starts a new year at the elite private Hope's Peak Academy, a government-funded school which is renowned for educating students that are top of their expertise, talent, or ability. These students are given the title of "Ultimate". However, every year the school hosts a raffle in which every average student nation-wide is enrolled in, and a random student is selected to enter the school as the "Ultimate Luck" - as is the case with Makoto Naegi, and is shown through the short story, "Makoto Naegi's Worst Day Ever".
The story revolves around fifteen students who are trapped in the school under the control of a sadistic monochrome bear named Monokuma. They are forced to live a communal lifestyle together under a set amount of rules (included in the e-Handbook) for the rest of their lives, although it is possible to "disrupt the peace" in order to escape. In order to do this, a student must "graduate" from the school by murdering a classmate. After a body has been discovered, the rest of the students must work together to discover the culprit, who is known as the "Blackened", while the innocents are on the side of the "Whitened," playing off of Monokuma's monochromatic color scheme. If the culprit can fool the rest of their classmates, then they alone can graduate the school while the rest of the students will be punished (executed). However, if the classmates uncover the true culprit, then the culprit alone will be punished with a gruesome execution while everyone else remains unharmed, but are forced to continue with their imprisoned lifestyles.
In each chapter, Monokuma releases motives to encourage students to commit a murder. During this time, the students attempt to uncover the secrets of the school, including why they were trapped there in the first place, as well as other ways to escape the school other than the graduation clause. At the end they confront the true mastermind actually hidden among them, or was thought to be Junko Enoshima, but even this was always part of her plan. Every event, even the ones that the main characters believed to have outsmarted the mastermind were all in her predictions for the most part.
As it turned out everything was pointless. Due to The Tragedy or also called The biggest, most awful, most tragic event in human history the world had basically come to an end. The school they were imprisoned in was actually a shelter to protect them from the mad rioters outside and polluted air making everyone sick. They had all agreed to possibly spend their entire lives within the school so they could survive... yet they just forgot all of this. Junko Enoshima had just stolen their memories of the past two years when all these events were going on for the sake of her final game of Despair. She had broadcasted the events that had happened in the school to show that Hope, the Ultimate talents of Hope's Peak Academy could fall into Despair and would chose if given the chance to spend the rest of their lives in the school they had all so desperately wanted to escape from. In the end Makoto Naegi and the others chose to leave the school anyways and accept the Despair ridden world believing in Hope over everything else. This act forced the Despair incarnate mastermind Junko Enoshima to commit suicide and the surviving main characters exited the school.
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◆ Danganronpa 2, Goodbye Despair: Following a similar premise to the previous game, Danganronpa 2 puts players in control of Hajime Hinata, an amnesiac boy who has just become one of Hope's Peak Academy's 'Ultimate' students, alongside fifteen others. The students find themselves taken to a remote tropical island called Jabberwock by their alleged teacher, a small, rabbit-like mascot named Usami, who claims it to be a simple field trip. However, things turn out to be too good to be true as Hope's Peak Academy's notorious principal, Monokuma, announces they are stuck on the island for life unless they can murder another student and get away with it. If the students can determine a murderer in a Class Trial, that culprit is executed, but if they make the wrong assumption, then the killer walks home free whilst everyone else, the innocent are sentenced to death.
Over the course of the game, several students are murdered, and thanks to Hajime's investigative skills, their killers are found out and executed. However, Hajime begins to realize something isn't quite right with the world, and discovers a terrible truth. He and his fellow students are in fact the surviving members of Ultimate Despair, a group led by the first game's antagonist, Junko Enoshima, whose sole purpose was to spread Despair to the world. They managed to instigate a worldwide rebellion that caused society to collapse. However, one group, called the Future Foundation, has been attempting to undo the damage Ultimate Despair caused. They captured the surviving members, but instead of executing them, decided to try and rehabilitate them by erasing their memories and putting them in a virtual reality program.
Upon finding out that they are in a program and that all of the students are merely artificially constructed avatars, Hajime is then contacted by Makoto Naegi, the protagonist from the first game and now a member of the Future Foundation. He warns Hajime that an artificial intelligence copy of Junko Enoshima, based on the "Alter Ego" AI from Trigger Happy Havoc, has hijacked their program, and is trying to manipulate events so that once the surviving students "graduate", she can possess the bodies of the deceased students, which are still intact in the real world. Alter Ego Junko's ultimate plan is to download herself into every person on the planet. Makoto tells Hajime that if the class votes not to graduate, it will allow him to reset the system and purge Alter Ego Junko. However, that also means that the student avatars will be deleted, along with all of the memories they gained while in the simulation and will return to their former Ultimate Despair personas that had potentially ruined their bodies as well.
Junko attempts to convince Hajime by revealing that he was formerly the genius leader of Ultimate Despair, Izuru Kamakura. He and the other students hesitate, afraid of reverting to their original personalities. However, Hajime eventually finds the inner courage to thwart Alter Ego Junko's plan, and convinces the other students to refuse graduation, saying that they will create a future where they do not have to forget. Makoto then resets the system and deletes Alter Ego Junko. In the epilogue, Makoto, and fellow survivors and Future Foundation members Kyoko Kirigiri and Byakuya Togami look on as the students decide to return to the island. They muse that they are already vastly different from their original Ultimate Despair personalities, choosing to stay behind on the island to look after their comatose friends who were "killed" in the simulation. Even though the chance is extremely small, Makoto is confident that the students will find a way to revive their friends.
◆ Dangan Ronpa Another Episode, Ultra Despair Girls: The game takes place half a year after the events of the first game, prior to the events of the second game. Komaru Naegi, the younger sister of the first game's protagonist, Makoto Naegi, has spent the past year locked inside an apartment complex in Towa City, unaware of the events that have gone on in the outside world. She is suddenly forced to flee when was she attacked by deadly Monokuma robots and comes across Future Foundation member Byakuya Togami, who gives Komaru a special Hacking Gun that can fight against the robot and orders her to escape the city. However, Komaru's escape fails and she is captured by a group of elementary-school children known as the Warriors of Hope, who seek to create a utopia for children by murdering all the adults with their robots. They force Komaru to join their "Demon Hunting" game and drop her into the city, where she meets Toko Fukawa, a survivor of Hope's Peak Academy who now uses a stun-gun to control her murderous split personality, Genocide Jack. Learning that Byakuya may have been kidnapped by the Warriors of Hope, Toko agrees to team up with Komaru to find Byakuya and escape the city. Along the way they encounter a resistance group, run by Haiji Towa, and meet a white bear robot named Shirokuma.
As Komaru and Toko go on their journey, fighting against the Warriors of Hope and encountering much Despair along the way, they learn that the Warriors of Hope are in worship of Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Despair responsible for bringing about the end of the world, and seek to create a successor. Confronting the group's leader, Monaca Towa, and defeating their advisor Kurokuma, Komaru is given the choice of destroying the Monokuma Controller, which would stop all the robots but at the cost of sacrificing all the children wearing Monokuma Kid masks. Monaca then reveals that her goal is to turn Komaru into the next Junko Enoshima, trying to coerce her into destroying the controller by allegedly revealing her parents were killed. However, Toko, having learned a great deal from travelling with Komaru, slaps some sense into her and together they overcome Despair in order to defeat an out-of-control mech. As Monaca is inevitably rescued by Nagito Komaeda, who encourages her to become the next Junko herself, it is revealed that both Shirokuma and Kurokuma were controlled by the real Junko's AI, who has Izuru Kamukura carry out the next part of her plan. Meanwhile, after rescuing Byakuya, Komaru and Toko decide to stay behind in Towa City to help out those who need it.
Shin: "Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls... This should be our current mission. I also suspect that we are on the rooftop of the hospital building Komaru drops down to after being forced to parachute from the Warriors of Hope's air ship. If we just stay here we'll be able to join up with the main characters, but I wonder about that."
Shuai: "Why?"
Shin: "Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls has another main character who joins Komaru on her adventure. The Ultimate Writing Prodigy Toko Fukawa, also known as Genocider Syo, the Ultimate Murderous Fiend, an individual with split personalities. One normal book worm girl who's a bit weird by even my standards, the other a homicidal maniac who loves to kill good looking and handsome men (I'm in danger). Both are in love with the rarely seen character in this game that was a main character from the first game, Byakuya Togami. She's a fighter with strength comparable to summon who has unlocked up to the Second Stage of the Genetic Constraint, but just without any enhancements."
Hikari: "So... have we've taken her place is what you want to say? If our mission is to protect her then it makes since we took the spots of the characters who did the same thing."
Shin: "Who knows? I would say you are right... but we can't know for sure. We have nothing to go on yet."
It was as Shin said as he reconfirmed with his Players Watch. It was a watch given to all Players by God which gives details of the Main Mission, Side Quest, Penalties, and any additional information that a team needed to know. Shin sighed loudly as he looked at his watch for who knows how many times, yet it has not once changed. Shin's own watch and the watches of all the other members of Team Japan were blank. There was no information for them to go on. Not where to go, what to do, or anything else of importance. They were indeed within a mission assigned to them by God as they have already tired to leave and were stopped. There was a invisible barrier around the roof top. One could not leave through the rooftop door of the hospital building or scale down the building by jumping over the fence.
Kisara: "What is going on? Also, what was the red beam of light that we had to enter? Is that normal?"
Aqua: "Far from it. I've been here the longest and this is all a first for me. The beam is always the same color and has never been red before. Something must be going on and we need to-"
???: "There is no need for that... at least for six of you anyways. Not all of you will be participating in this mission after all."
Shin: "!!!"
Shin and the others heard a dark, unknown, yet powerful voice from the confirmed rooftop door that should have been impossible to open and saw an unknown individual joining them by opening that door. A lone man in a black suit, a black tie with a white shirt inside, and wearing black loafers stood by the door. The man had long flowing black hair and red eyes that cut through the darkness (Not unlike the Sharingan) with symbols resembling target radars running across his pupils. The man then looked over the members of Team Japan one by one and crooked his head to the side, not impressed yet not too disappointed.
???: "...I'll guess you guys will do. Well, it isn't my decision in the end to gamble on Team Japan of all teams, but... you all are the chosen ones after all."
Shin: "You, you are..."
Yes, Shin recognized the man in front of him. In a place where he shouldn't be and at the very beginning of the story instead of the ending where he only appeared. One of the most prominent characters of the Dangan Ronpa series and sort of the main character of Dangan Ronpa 2... Hajime Hinata. That is this characters real name, but the name of the the man in front of them right now is different. He is currently one of the only two Ultimate Hopes, one embodying figurative meaning, and he the other embodying the literal meaning as the result of the false dreams and Hopes of the teachers of Hope Peak Academy had in creating the ultimate talent. That's right. The name of this man is...
Shin: "...Izuru Kamukura!"
Izuru Kamukura: "Yes, you can call me that. I am both Izuru Kamukura and one of the Guides created by who you all call God in this dimension. Nice to meet you, members of Team Japan. Welcome... to the first Guide's Test in a long time."
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Authors Note:
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Proofread by Azarza.
I actually hinted at this development back in the Real World arc with Shin and Sozin's training chapters.