Chapter Text
Panting, wild-eyed, and drenched in sweat, Nagito Komaeda awoke.
It took him at least a full minute to settle, and even then he was trembling under the stress of phantom pains. Slowly, he became conscious of the fact that none of his panicked movements revealed the telltale ripping sensation he had come to associate with stretching many flesh wounds at once. There was no agonized burn in his hand– in fact, his hand felt numb. There was no feeling at all, past his wrist. Wait, was that the left side, or the right? Not the same hand…or was it? It had to be, right? Had he damaged the nerves so badly that they had stopped giving him pain? Or was the lack of feeling a result of being so close to death?
He couldn’t smell smoke anymore.
What could he smell?
Latex. Faintly.
He was breathing. That wasn’t right. He distinctly remembered inhaling a fatal toxin; he remembered the caustic smell and how quickly it had chased away everything else. Why was he breathing?
His limbs…weren’t actually tied down.
From there, his panic had yielded enough to his curiosity that he was able to take in larger amounts of information at once, reaching the belated revelation that this was not the warehouse and he was not dead. This news would have annoyed him tremendously, if he were still in a place he recognized, but he wasn’t. And so it only made him more curious. He swallowed back a growing dread. If he had woken in the hospital, then that would mean he’d simply failed to destroy the despair on the island; he would have hated himself all the more for it, but at least he would know generally how to feel and what to expect. This was too strange for comfort.
He lifted his hands to raise away the surface that was spread above his body like the lid of a coffin. It opened out, and the light of the larger room he was occupying illuminated his outstretched hands.
Nagito’s breath caught in his throat, as the sight of the grotesque thing at the end of his arm blindsided him, first with shock, and then with recognition.
I remember.
He gritted his teeth against it. He didn’t want the memories. He didn’t want an even filthier self to supplant the filth he already was.
But he remembered. He remembered. He threw both arms over his face to block out everything else as the last few years overtook him.
Chiaki.
And…
A laugh started to spill out of him. It felt as if it scraped his throat, going out. His hands lowered to his belly, as he shook with laughter. The way the disgust of his younger self mingled with the understanding of his current self, the way all of it was flavored by the repulsive high of despair…He laughed until he was close to panting again.
“Hello?” a voice said. “Who’s there?”
Nagito stopped laughing and sat up, absentmindedly removing tubes from himself in the process. He couldn’t see anyone else in the room. No one else awake, that is; the room was full of more oblong pods like the one he was still sitting inside. He could see the shadows of his classmates within them. Despite his regained memories, he could feel the same animosity that had driven him to the warehouse. It made sense; that resentment, that naive disappointment, was the fresher memory now, after all. His lip curled slightly.
“Oh,” the same voice was saying. “It’s you! Nagito Komaeda! You’re awake!”
It sounded like it was coming from a speaker. Nagito climbed out of his pod and followed the sound to the console in the center of all the pods. It was covered in screens, each depicting an area of Jabberwock Island. All but one, that is: one lone screen was monopolized by a different view.
“You’re the artificial intelligence created by Chihiro Fujisaki,” Nagito observed, with a polite smile for the programmed likeness which was facing him from about a foot below eye level. “What an honor to make your acquaintance.”
“Hello, Nagito,” the AI replied. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Relative to the fact that I expected to be dead by now, I suppose so,” he answered cheerfully. “Are any of the others awake?”
“No. I truthfully don’t know why you are; from what I can tell, some kind of glitch took place when Kyoko and Byakuya entered the simulation at the same time, and it just…ejected you. I’m sorry, but I really can’t explain it.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Nagito soothed, as the AI began to realistically simulate what it looked like when its maker began to tear up. “I’m sure I just got lucky. It’s hard for a computer program to account for something as inelegant as luck, I’m sure.”
“It is strange,” the AI agreed. “Your luck existed within the simulation. I was sometimes able to observe the way the probability of random events was warped around you. To perceive it in that way...”
Nagito’s gaze drifted away from the screen and swept once again over the room he was in. To be honest, he didn’t find the current topic of conversation terribly interesting, in the scheme of things. In his distracted state, he just barely mustered the courtesy to say, “Pardon me,” to the AI (interrupting it as it spoke, but it was only a computer program, after all) before he began to wander.
He stared into each pod, saw each sleeping face. He paused as he stood over Mahiru. The pod cover wasn’t fully transparent, but he could see the red of her hair, and he could see the subtle movements that showed she was breathing.
“So, none of them died?” he said.
“Their bodies didn’t,” the AI answered.
“Will they wake?”
“That’s still being decided.”
And then, a low chattering sound that he had been half-conscious of suddenly grew into audible speech, as the AI remotely increased the volume. Nagito heard the voices of his remaining classmates; he turned toward the screen just enough to see a trial ground and then turned away again to look at Mahiru’s supine form.
“Is that my trial?” he asked.
“No. The trial for your murder happened a while ago.”
“Then it looks like I lost."
“You were the victim. How can you have won or lost?”
Nagito shook his head and didn’t bother answering. In truth, it felt like his younger self and his older self were processing different information separately, and it required a bit of mental effort to force them to compare notes.
He’d had a lot of respect for Mahiru, in the game. Her determination had been admirable, and…she had taken the time to check on him when he was tied up. But that was her younger self, before she had proven her susceptibility to despair. The person in this pod was nothing but a vessel for Junko Enoshima’s treachery. Not a symbol of Hope, not even a powerful enough despair to serve as a productive challenge to those who fought for Hope. She was nothing.
Still, he hadn’t had to confront this in the simulation. (He hadn't really had to confront it in real life, either.) She had already been dead by the time he’d learned the truth, and as a rule he didn’t go out of his way to think about those who were already dead. (Meanwhile, in real life, the influence of despair on himself and his classmates had made them more focused on the world around them, and how they could best sow chaos into it, than each other.) Now, he had to think about all of them. All despair. And himself, awake.
He moved on to another pod and found that he stood over Akane. She was still alive in the simulation, but here she was just as vulnerable as the rest. Her form was altered by malnutrition; that would be an unhappy surprise, when she woke up– that she couldn’t just eat what she wanted, or she would experience refeeding syndrome.
If she woke up.
Looking at her, he expected to feel only contempt. But he hadn’t quite made it to pure contempt, even when he was in the simulation, no matter how hard he’d tried. In truth, his first thought, upon seeing her, was of riding the rollercoaster beside her. It probably meant nothing to her, but getting to sit next to a classmate during a fun activity like that…getting to hear someone else’s excitement in his ear while he was excited, too…During the rollercoaster’s sharp turns, their bodies had jostled into each other. Casual physical contact with other people…It meant something to him.
The second thought he had was of her hands around his throat. Being physically attacked was a kinder pain than that of being alone and excluded, but Akane was very talented; of course she was able to pack both into one action. As his pulse had raced under her hands, Nagito had looked into her eyes and understood something about her: those who Akane loved became her family. Akane was protecting her family. And he, Nagito…he was the boogeyman she planned to protect them from.
I guess I still am.
He wandered away, gazing into different pods (The deadweight of the filthy distortion he’d grafted onto himself soured the sensation of swinging his arms as he walked.) and not stopping until he stood over one that was filled with long, dark hair. A thicker frame than Mikan’s, and longer hair besides.
He couldn’t clearly see the face framed by that hair, and he couldn’t remember what it had looked like on the boat, obscured by shadows, but he believed he knew what face would greet him if he lifted the cover. Funny. He’d gotten to see the before and after, and now he didn’t know what to think.
Hajime had…talked to him. Even after the first trial, he’d chosen to talk to Nagito. To try to understand him. He…Nagito caught himself splaying his good hand over the pod, peering hard, practically admiring. He liked pretty people; it was a fault of his. That didn’t make the character of Hajime any clearer.
He’d had such a calming presence, in the simulation, and such an alienating presence, on the boat. Either way, talking to him had been…enticing. Since he was still alive in the simulation now, that meant he hadn’t been the traitor; he’d been despair with the rest. But he hadn’t been a part of their class; what was a reserve course student doing here? And could the person from the boat really be from the reserve course, of all things? Or had it been a lie on Monokuma’s part? That would be embarrassing.
Nagito was saved from trying to reach any conclusion when another voice spoke up, on the live feed of the simulated trial: a voice that his returned memories recognized. Nagito turned sluggishly away from the person in the pod and then swiftly moved to the console to see the relevant screen up close.
The world’s hero. He was in the simulation with them now. The way he spoke, the conviction and the earnest investment, felt like new air was filling Nagito’s lungs, quieting all the quibbling uncertainties, silencing all the background reconciliations of memory discrepancies. He listened to the Ultimate Hope as he explained…
…as he explained…everything.
Nagito understood now.
The Ultimate Hope, true to his character, was trying to invoke the better nature of even the Remnants of Despair. Nagito tilted his head, overwhelmed by a kind of reverence and wonderment. Pure hope was so trusting, so naive. That must have been why it attracted people like Kirigiri and Togami to its side– Oh! And there they were. The AI had said that they had entered the simulation, hadn’t it?
They were there with him. The ribs protecting the heart. The callouses protecting the skin. Hope gravitationally pulled protection to itself. What an honor it must be...
Ultimate Hope could never be Nagito. He was embarrassed by his younger self’s arrogance. No, Ultimate Hope was this: a beautiful thing, which fought to replace despair with hope wherever it could be found.
To take such a risk, over people who meant so little…
Hope could be so reckless.
Of course, Hope was supposed to be reckless, but the risks were supposed to be grand and meaningful. When Hope inevitably vanquished despair, it should be on a grand stage, before the eyes of the world. Nagito was not surprised by the Ultimate Hope’s impulse to restore the Remnants of Despair to Symbols of Hope, and he wasn’t surprised that Makoto Naegi had seen this objective as a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself, but those around him should have known what a wasted risk this was. This setup was not at all worthy of him.
Nagito was surprised at Togami and Kirigiri. The only way he could imagine them feeling justified indulging this plan, in its current form, was if they either genuinely thought the recovery of their corrupted senpais was a task that meant something, or if they underestimated the risk and assumed their victory would be quick, easy, and insignificant. Had they perhaps spent so much time in the presence of the Ultimate Hope that they forgot what normal people were like? Or was there a more sinister reason for their failure to protect him?
Staring hard at the screen, Nagito could see no signs of duplicity from them. But (give or take Togami's temper) they were as known for their stone faces as Naegi was for his trusting, forgiving nature. Were they his next Maizono?
“Um, excuse me?” the AI spoke up. “Nagito? I know the pod kept your body well-nourished while you slept, but we have real, solid foods in one of the attached rooms, if you’d like to eat something.”
Nagito didn’t look away from the screen. Naegi had just flung his arm out to point an accusatory finger at the Ultimate Despair herself. Nagito’s insides stirred with hatred and excitement, seeing her. Hajime had been the one to bring her AI, hadn’t he?
He supposed that didn’t matter now.
Listening to the impassioned words of the Ultimate Hope, Nagito raised both hands– his real one and the dead one –and pressed them to either side of the screen. The image of his hand and Enoshima's hand framing the onscreen Naegi snapped him out of his reverie.
This confrontation was happening in the virtual world. He was in the real world.
While the danger of placing Naegi at the mercy of Enoshima’s AI and the Remnants’ conscience was very real, Nagito could have no role in that fight.
His luck had woken him, and he was making no use of this extraordinary fluke.
“I really shouldn’t be awake,” he noted, having heard enough of Enoshima’s explanation to know that much.
“I can’t explain it,” the AI said again, nodding its head. “It was a glitch.”
“Right.” He wandered away from the console and found the pod which contained Naegi. “Is there anyone awake here, besides me?”
“No,” the AI told him. “Kyoko and Byakuya were the last ones awake, and they went in six minutes ago.”
The AI was absurdly trusting, too. Nagito had no ill-intent toward their resident protagonist, but if he had been anyone else, it would have been extremely dangerous to give him such information.
“Thanks,” was all he said. He allowed himself to lean over Naegi’s pod for a moment, though he did not allow himself to breathe on it.
The Ultimate Hope’s protectors were…if not failing him outright, experiencing an incredible lapse in judgement. But it was without a doubt that it was people like them who should be the closest to him. That had fallen into place too naturally to ignore. Of the talented, Ultimate Hope drew in the cold, intelligent, and pragmatic to his inner circle. His two very closest allies. The next-closest were Asahina, Hagakure, and Fukawa: the ones who felt passionately, even irrationally. The volatile ones.
All of them, talented.
Where did an untalented enthusiast like himself fit in? What was his place?
Nagito glanced around for a door, for one of those attached rooms the AI had mentioned. There were three doors leading out of this room. The first, he found, led to a little kitchenette. The second led to a hallway; there was more building to explore, it seemed. He would get to that later. The third led to a little maintenance closet full of boxes.
He opened each box and found the last one to be full of industrial-grade wire ties.
Perfect.
And the fact that the things he was looking for had turned up in the last place he’d looked was a good sign; his luck was evening out. Better to compensate for his earlier good fortune now than later.
He brought the box of wire ties back into the main room and got to work fastening the pods shut. Even if the occupants did awaken, they wouldn’t be able to get out, like he had. He secured all the despairs, starting with the Ultimate Impostor.
He had saved Nagito’s life, in the simulation.
Nagito decided three wire ties should be enough. These things were made for holding together machine parts, after all. There was no way he could get out.
Next, he tied Teruteru’s pod shut.
“Nagito?” the AI said. “What are you doing?”
“It’s not much,” he said modestly, “but I just figured we should have some insurance in place, in case another glitch happens while everyone’s asleep. We don’t want one of those despairs waking up and killing someone while they can’t defend themselves, right?”
“Oh! I hadn’t thought about that.”
Nagito hummed, tying up Peko’s pod and then Nekomaru’s in rapid succession. He had started the process in order of simulated deaths, before coming to his senses and deciding to tie shut the pods with the most dangerous occupants before bothering with someone like Mahiru or Hiyoko. In such fashion, he locked up Akane, Fuyuhiko, Gundham, Mikan and all the rest of his classmates…and then arrived at the pod which contained the mysterious stranger from the boat.
Maybe he should have tied that one up first. Hajime hadn’t seemed particularly dangerous in the simulation, but this person was different. He didn’t yet have a sense of how different; only his instincts and what little had been told to him. Still, he used four wire ties on this pod, just in case.
Then he arrived at the final three. Kirigiri, Togami, and Naegi.
Of course, he wouldn’t lock Naegi in. The other two…
In truth, he really couldn’t get past his disappointment in them. If he believed he could trust them to have the Ultimate Hope’s best interests at heart, then he wouldn’t even think of locking them in, but as it stood, he needed a little more time to evaluate them.
That was it. Just a bit more time. Better to lock them in now, while they couldn’t do anything about it, than deal with some power struggle later. After all, without the intervention of his luck, he was certain he couldn’t best either of them in a physical fight.
“Nagito?” the AI inquired, as he started fastening the wire ties to Togami’s pod.
“Huh?” he asked. Then, rather than give the AI time to question him about his actions, he digressed, “Was Hajime really a reserve course student?”
“If I’m following the trial correctly, it sounds like he was a reserve course student, until the Kamukura Project.”
“The Kamukura Project. Tell me about that.” He tied Kirigiri’s pod shut as he spoke.
“It sounds like Hope’s Peak Academy wanted to create the Ultimate Ultimate, and so they took a reserve course student and imbued him with every talent they’d found, using invasive surgeries, among other things.”
“I see. And the project was successful?”
“Every resource at my disposal says that it was. Apparently, the resulting paragon of talent was called Izuru Kamukura, after Hope’s Peak’s founder.”
“But in truth, he was Hajime Hinata.”
“Yes.”
Nagito sighed. Well, that explained the behavior and attitude of the guy he’d spoken to on the boat. He was so deep in thought, he left a big enough gap in the conversation that the AI was able to say:
“Nagito, I notice that you’ve-“
“Where are they in the trial?” he interrupted. “What’s going on now?”
“It seems like your classmates are…dissociating. And Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya are trying to help them understand what they need to do.”
“Of course they are,” Nagito drawled, having not expected better from the survivors of his class. But rather than dwell on this and give the AI another opportunity to question him, he put on a smile and said, “Excuse me for a minute. I’d like to explore the facility a little, to get an understanding of where exactly I am. I remember being on the boat, but I still don’t have a great idea of what’s going on here.”
“You remember being on the boat?” the AI repeated, sounding alarmed. Ah, right. The people who woke up were supposed to either be wholly despair or wholly rewritten by the simulation. This mixture thereof, in which he was rewritten by the simulation but still remembered being despair, was not the expected result; for him to remember being on the boat, the AI might have come to the conclusion that nothing from the simulation had done anything to change him.
Which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“Don’t worry,” he said, on his way toward the door which led to the hallway. “My hope isn’t distorted like it was before. The program worked; I’m all better now.”
“All better?”
“Of course.” He could have explained further, but he believed there was only so much effort to be expended making sure the AI was on the same page. So, he started down the hallway so see what else was at his disposal, before anyone else awoke.
…
“At least…this wasn’t the ending prepared for them. This was...the ending they created.”
“Are you saying they’re moving towards such an uncertain future on purpose?”
“Even so, the only thing we can do now is leave it to them. This game world is going to end soon. There is nothing more we can do.”
“Regardless, there’s no need for us to do anything.”
And with that, the world that was already unmaking itself also unmade him. It was like, when his mind decided that he would no longer be part of the simulation, his grip on it vanished. It was a wipeout. He was swept up and away. Light overtook his senses; it pulsed behind his eyes, brighter than was comfortable.
And then it passed.
Makoto opened his eyes and saw the cover of the pod he had climbed into earlier that same day. With a tentatively-optimistic smile, he pushed the cover aside and sat up.
The immediate presence of someone looming over him startled him almost out of his skin.
He had expected Kyoko and Byakuya to be waking up around the same time as him, but it surprised him that someone was already up, and the identity of the person towering over him was an even bigger surprise.
“Oh good,” the (former?) Remnant said cordially. “You’re awake. And you clearly aren’t possessed by Enoshima's digital recreation. Naturally. Of course, nothing of her could ever truly make purchase on someone like you, even if things had gone her way. Ah, sorry; we haven’t been formally introduced, have we?”
“Nagito?!” Makoto exclaimed. He glanced around the room, but every other pod was closed and, from what he could tell, still full.
“It seems the program spat me back out,” the older guy explained, standing back as Makoto warily clambered out of his pod. “Your AI says that a glitch took place when Kirigiri and Togami entered the simulation. Pure chance, as per usual. I wish I had a more interesting explanation. But are you feeling alright?”
Makoto stared at Nagito for a few seconds. He didn’t know him well and hadn’t interacted with him pretty much at all before now. He had heard a bit about him from Toko and Komaru– namely, and unhelpfully, that he was kind of a "creep" –and been involved in getting him onto the ship with the other Remnants. Watching the simulation from outside had been Makoto’s real introduction to what Nagito was like. Witnessing Nagito’s role in things had been…kind of frustrating, to say the least. Most of what had happened in there had been Junko’s fault, but Makoto couldn’t pretend he hadn’t wanted to pull his hair out when he’d found out that Nagito not only didn’t tell his classmates about the password inside Nezumi Castle, but also deliberately erased it.
All of that said, the frustration didn’t just come from watching Nagito casually bat away the tools they’d left in place for everyone’s safety. Makoto had found, very frequently, that he was most frustrated that he couldn’t talk to Nagito himself. Couldn’t tell him to stop talking about himself so cruelly, couldn’t point out the obvious flaws in his view of the world, couldn’t stop him from plotting the death of his classmates, couldn’t tell him that his atonement for despair didn’t have to be inflicting horrific torture on himself. Nagito was like all of the Remnants of Despair: deeply hurt and confused and in need of help. The simulation just showed them that he had been that way for longer. At the expense of many, including himself. Including Komaru and Toko and Byakuya.
And now he was standing right beside Makoto, staring at him with rapt attention. Was this the Nagito who had just stabbed himself with a spear, or the Nagito who had just taken a mysterious boat ride to a mysterious island? It was impossible to tell from his expression. Technically, either one had enough information to recognize Makoto (as he clearly did), especially if he’d been awake long enough to watch the trial.
Taking everything into account, he supposed a better version of the same question was: Is this the Nagito who most recently forced Komaru to take part in a hope vs. despair battle for his own entertainment, just for being the sister of the “Ultimate Hope”, or the Nagito who most recently demanded to be known as the Ultimate Hope, himself?
“I feel fine,” Makoto said. “How do you feel?” Without taking his eyes off Nagito, he started moving in the direction of Alter Ego’s console.
“You really don’t have to concern yourself with the wellbeing of someone like me,” Nagito answered brightly. He made no move to follow Makoto, but his gaze was locked onto him.
“Everyone’s wellbeing is worthy of concern,” Makoto answered, having been experiencing a buildup of these retorts ever since hearing Nagito speak in the Impostor’s trial. “Alter Ego?” he added, when he reached the screen where his virtual friend’s face looked back at him. Alter Ego was moving their mouth– already moving their mouth, like they had been trying to talk for a while now –but no sound was coming out.
“Oh, I disconnected the speaker system,” Nagito confessed. “Not the speakers for the trial, of course; just for the AI. To be honest, it was beginning to bug me a little. Do you want me to reconnect it?”
Makoto stared at him, mildly astounded. “Nagito, you muted Alter Ego?”
“I’ll reconnect it, then,” Nagito answered with a smile. He plugged a cord back into its port and ran his fingers deftly over the trackpad for the user interface. It felt weird, letting him do these things, but Nagito had had unimpeded access to the console before Makoto had woken, anyway, and he moved with such a matter-of-factness that Makoto didn’t have time to decide whether he should put his foot down until the task was done and Alter Ego was saying:
“Can you hear me?”
“Alter Ego,” Makoto sighed, relieved. He tried not to be overly conscious of Nagito lurking beside him. “Yes, I can hear you. What’s been going on?”
“Well, Nagito woke up. I can’t explain the glitch; I know that it must be a product of his luck, but luck is so strange. I know so little about it.”
“Yeah. Me, too,” Makoto said quietly. He glanced at Nagito and then quickly away. He was staring at him so intensely.
“Since he woke, he’s been exploring the facility, watching the trial, wire-tying the others’ pods shut, and gathering various supplies.”
A chill crept up Makoto’s back. “Hey, what was that third–?”
As if to answer his question, a bang sound erupted from one of the pods, causing an irrational panic to shoot through him, before he identified the sound's source.
“I figured Kirigiri should have awoken at around the same time as you,” Nagito mused. “Did that sound more like a punch, or a kick?”
Makoto ran to Kyoko’s pod in time to see her deliver another kick to the lid. He tried to open it for her, only to see that Alter Ego was correct; the pod was wire-tied shut. He would need some kind of tool to cut the ties.
“Whoa,” Nagito said, when Makoto almost bumped into him, trying to run for the maintenance closet.
Somewhat cowed by his upperclassman’s height and general demeanor of calm, Makoto took a few steps back and asked, “Why did you do this?”
“Well, I originally planned to only lock in the despairs, but then I thought, just to be safe, I might as well cover everyone I was unsure about.”
“Unsure?”
“Of course, someone like me has no room to pass judgement…”
There was a repeated rapping from inside Togami’s pod. Not like Kyoko’s kicks, intended to break her out, but rather a plaintive sound, as if Byakuya thought the pod was just being annoying, rather than having been tampered with, and was grudgingly requesting assistance. Makoto's shoulders tensed, as the repeated knocking sped up his pulse.
“Makoto?” Kyoko was calling from inside her pod. Her voice was muffled pretty badly, but not past the point of recognition, with him standing this close. “What’s going on?”
“Uh, Nagito all tied the pods shut, except mine,” he explained. “He’s awake because of a…lucky glitch.”
“Don’t worry,” Nagito said, with an air of profuse earnestness. “I’m not polluted by Enoshima’s despair the way I was before. Your plan was a resounding success.”
"Makoto, are you alright?" Kyoko asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
“Is it just him awake?”
“Yes.”
“What does he remember?”
“The simulation,” Nagito answered. “And the past few years. I remember both. The simulation gives me some…clarity, with which to reflect on the last few years.” Subconsciously, it seemed, he held his hand balefully away from himself. Makoto knew the nature of that hand, but he was surprised by what was now covering it.
“Is that…? That looks like one of Kyoko’s gloves.”
“Is it? Oh, jeez. I found it, while I was searching the facility. Sorry about that. Normally, I wouldn’t be bold enough to borrow something of hers without asking, but…I just hate looking at this thing.” He continued to hold his hand away from himself and eyed it with disdain, as though it were made of…well, of a rotting corpse.
Byakuya’s rapping on the pod grew more irate.
“Uh, Nagito,” Makoto spoke up. “If you’re really not despair anymore, then you should probably let the others out of their pods.”
“Oh, right. I forgot to explain that. While I am more than grateful for what you three have done for me and my classmates, I have to admit, I find it a little weird that Togami and Kirigiri were willing to risk the Ultimate Hope on this kind of scheme.”
“It was a risk we were willing to take, to save you guys from despair,” Makoto said.
“Of course,” Nagito said easily, his smile encouraging and bright and…kind of reverent? “And being willing to take the risk is your calling, as the Ultimate Hope. But ensuring that the risk you’re willing to take is a well-calculated one…that was their job. And far be it from me to ever insult their capabilities, but I found their work lacking, this time. It’s enough to make one question their motives.”
Makoto stared at him for a second, perplexed more than anything. That was...such a far-fetched thing for Nagito, of all people, to say! Calculated risk? After all the unnecessary danger he'd subjected Komaru to in Towa City? After so many of his plans in the simulation had utilized luck and random chance as a major, game-breaking component?Makoto understood that Nagito believed in his luck, but he was supposed to believe in hope, too, wasn't he? It was a little hard to understand.
“Is that Komaeda?” Byakuya demanded, from inside his pod. Though he distrusted all the despairs, he especially disliked Nagito, for a variety of reasons including, in order of decreasing importance, Nagito having held him prisoner in Towa City and Nagito having spurred the start of the simulated killing game.
“Yeah,” Makoto answered. “Just…give me a minute, okay?”
Byakuya kicked once at the lid of his pod, but fell silent besides.
“Nagito, I appreciate your concern, but Kyoko and Byakuya didn’t let me do this to hurt me or something. I rushed into it, and they came along to help.”
“I’m sure they did,” Nagito agreed. “I’m sure I’m just being overzealous, as usual. Just for my own peace of mind, though, I’d like to perform a kind of…auditing process. To make sure all is well and there won’t be any more inappropriate risks, in the future.”
And what does that process entail? Makoto wondered nervously.
“What gives you the right?” Kyoko asked. She delivered the question flatly, but Makoto knew her and knew how she felt about insults to her competency, of all things.
“Huh?” Nagito walked closer; the pods really did muffle sound. “What was that?”
“Why do you consider yourself qualified to say what is and is not appropriate? Given your track record, one might expect you to defer to someone else’s judgement in such matters.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you for your much-deserved reproach. As I said, I’m sure I’m being overzealous. I would never even entertain the idea that I'm operating on the same level as any of you. All the same, can you really say my concerns are unjustified? I mean, if we are discussing everyone's track record, you’ve both come much closer to getting Makoto Naegi killed, in the past, than I ever have.”
“That’s not fair,” Makoto protested, stunned that Nagito could say something so pointed and still have a peaceable smile on his face. “They can’t be blamed for Ikusaba’s first trial; Junko rigged it. It was an impossible situation.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s fair to Miss Kirigiri to suggest that the situation was impossible, or even particularly difficult,” Nagito said, with that same breezy, toxic levity. “She had simply to sacrifice either you or herself, and she chose to sacrifice you. Fortunately, your luck protected you from the consequences of her decision.”
“Alter Ego saved me, not my luck. And, it’s because Kyoko acted the way she did that we all survived and defeated Junko. And, none of this is a good reason to lock her in her pod!”
“That’s true; I didn’t really hold her behavior in that trial against her. It was before she knew you were the Ultimate Hope, after all; someone like me, who was pathetic enough to fall to despair, has no room to begrudge her the time it took to realize–"
“Stop that!”
"Ah, I'm sorry. I don't mean to excuse what she did."
"Th-that's not-!"
“Um, Makoto?” Alter Ego called. “The survivors are about to exit the simulation, too.”
Oh. Uh-oh.
“I hope none of them are claustrophobic,” Nagito said mildly.
“You really want to leave your classmates in their pods?” Makoto said.
“They succumbed to despair. Aren’t the pods the safest place for them?”
“If you woke up remembering the simulation, and we woke up remembering the simulation, then they must have, too.”
“Not necessarily. And even if they do remember, who’s to say they don’t choose despair once they’re awake? Doubling down is the easy road, after all. They shouldn’t be trusted lightly.”
“I think the versions of them who got through that simulation have more than proven their willpower. They didn’t kill, and they didn’t accept Junko’s temptation. They’re not despair anymore, Nagito. And distrusting them, treating them like prisoners…it isn’t going to help them stay that way.”
Nagito looked mesmerized. “You seem so certain. And I suppose you would be the expert on those kinds of things. I wonder–"
A clamor of repeated banging sounded in one of the farther-away pods.
“That’s probably Akane,” Nagito sighed.
Her or Fuyuhiko, probably.
Really, depending on what state they were waking up in, it could have been any of them!
A second banging started, and then a third. They were waking up, alright.
Makoto ran toward the Remnants' pods, leaving Kyoko’s and Byakuya’s for the time being, and this time Nagito did follow him.
“They sound pretty worked up. I’m not so sure they’re safe.”
“Of course they’re worked up; they’re trapped in little cases that are barely any bigger than their bodies." He ran a hand through his hair. All that banging was really stressful.
"Hey," Nagito said, his expression serious as he took in Makoto's increasingly frazzled disposition. "Maybe we should get you away from all this noise."
Suddenly, one of the pods which had been silent up until now flew open– entirely open, the lid clattering unhinged to the floor.
Nagito’s whole body twitched as if he were about to run toward it, but then he froze and just stared, spellbound.
With a matter-of-fact grace, the pod’s occupant swept his legs over the side of the pod and landed soundlessly in a standing position. Dark hair cascaded in waves, reaching past his knees. ‘Izuru Kamukura’ stared at Nagito and Makoto, both momentarily frozen in shock. Took in the scene around him, with a blank expression. Betraying none of his thoughts.
He tilted his head and said, “I see.”