Ko Takenaka's Story

Ko opened her eyes.

Before her, a beautiful lake stretched as far as she could see. The water shimmered like a sea of crystals, the sun reflecting off of them in the most perfect way. A gentle breeze blew, lightly rocking the leaves of all the tall green trees. Ko smiled, breathing in the fresh air.

Waking up to nature was one of the best sensations in the world. That she didn't remember coming to this lake didn't really matter, because she knew she'd find her way back. Maybe she'd taken a trip to ease her nerves? Or perhaps she was just in the mood for a midsummer nap. Either way, it was nice.

"Hey!" An unfamiliar voice called out to her--she turned onto her back, glancing in its general direction. A park ranger?

"Hi," Ko said back, softly.

"Hey," the girl repeated, strangely out of breath. She brushed her blonde hair out of her face, jogging the rest of the way to Ko and looking down at her with surprisingly hard eyes. One thing was for sure--this girl was too young and too good-looking to be a park ranger. "Who are you? Where are we?"

Ko glanced back at the water, then up at the girl. "...A lake. Why?"

The girl stomped her foot, huffing. "Well, duh. What lake? I'm freaking out here, alright? I don't have any idea where I am, my stuff's missing, I've been wandering here for who knows how long and you're the first person I've found so tell me where we are, d*mmit!"

Her stuff is missing?

Experimentally, Ko tucked a hand into her own pocket--it was empty. She blinked, checking her other pocket, back pockets, and where her purse should've been, but everything was gone. Speaking of, did she even recognize this lake?

Ko glanced around, scanning the local shrubbery. No. No, I don't recognize this place...

Becoming more and more alarmed the longer she thought about it, Ko slowly rose to her feet, willing several different reasonable explanations to pop into her head.

"Hello? Are you even listening?" The girl asked impatiently.

"I'm listening," Ko said meekly. "I don't know what's going on either. Have you seen any buildings? Maybe a center for this reserve?"

"Reserve?" She echoed. "What's that?"

"A nature reserve," Ko explained, walking forward. The grass crunched beneath her feet. "They're meant to protect places with a lot of greenery, like this. I guess I shouldn't assume that's what this is...have you seen any buildings? Or maybe a path?"

The girl followed behind Ko, hands on her hips. "What? No. If I'd seen a building, I would've gone into it, dummy. Are you even listening to me?"

"Yes," Ko said. She paused, glancing around once more. "Um...which way did you come from? If you haven't seen any buildings yet, we should go the other way."

"That way," the girl said, gesturing to the left. She started toward the right. "So we go this way. Do you have a name, weirdo?"

Weirdo? Ko sighed slightly. "Takena--uhm. My name is Ko Takenaka."

Now leading the way, the girl nodded. "Cool. I'm...Setsuko. Let's try to find someplace or some other people before I get bored of you."

Ko kicked a pebble along as she walked. Every now and then Setsuko would snap at her to keep up, so she'd end up walking just a bit slower on purpose. At some point, Setsuko seemed to realize that Ko was getting slower and started to yell even more, to which Ko replied "sorry" and finally sped up.

"Do you have an Ultimate?" Ko asked suddenly, wondering if her being a student at Hope's Peak had anything to do with the strange situation.

"What? I mean...yeah," Setsuko said after a moment, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "Of course I do. I'm the Ultimate YouTuber, duh. Can't believe you haven't heard of me. ...What's your Ultimate? If you've even got one, I mean."

Ultimate YouTuber? Ko's eyebrow raised slightly. You think people would subscribe to someone a bit nicer than her. She paused, then reached up to feel for her necklace, which was--thankfully--still there. A small wave of relief washed over her and she sighed. "I'm the Ultimate Naturalist."

"'Naturalist'? What does that even mean?" Setsuko asked, glancing back at Ko.

"I like plants," Ko explained in a way she would understand.

Setsuko thought for a moment, then turned back around and kept walking. She scoffed. "Lame."

Everyone likes their own thing. Ko began to fidget with her necklace.

She and Setsuko walked for a bit longer until they came upon a building. Setsuko sprinted toward it and Ko followed, albeit a bit more slowly than Setsuko would've preferred. They scanned the side for a door, and then--"Found it! Says it's a gym!"

"Coming," Ko called as Setsuko swung the door open, hinges squeaking. They both stepped inside, scanning their surroundings and finding themselves standing in a completely normal and totally empty gym. Setsuko huffed, walking further inside. Ko hung around by the door.

"Great. So we found a place, but no one's here. What does that solve?" Setsuko asked.

"We have shelter if there's a storm?" Ko proposed. "And look. There's a camera in that corner over there, so that means there's probably someone watching us, right?"

"What?" Setsuko whirled around to face the camera Ko had pointed out. It stared back at them, almost eerily. "Weirdos! Gosh, this place just keeps getting worse and worse..."

Creepy warehouse, spiderwebs in the corners, most likely a spider hanging from the cieling waiting to fall on him, cameras, and a crazy person running around gathering parts to build a bomb?! This had to be a nightmare, right? Whenever he'd have panic attacks like this his mother would always tell him that it was all in his head and to take a deep breath.

Take a deep breath, take a deep breath, take a deep breath--ahh, I-I can hardly even breathe!

By the time he finally noticed the two new strangers, he full-on screamed. He pressed himself up against the wall and began inching toward the door, holding a wrench he'd found earlier and pointing it at them as if to say "stay away, I'm armed!" But with his trembling chicken arms, it came off more as "scared little rat in the corner is scared."

He swallowed. "Wh-where--wh-where am I?! Wh-who are you?! Wh-what do you want with me?!"

I'm a total dork, He almost added. There's no point in kidnapping me, s-so just let me go! Oh gosh, wh-why, why, why...?! I want my mom!

Quincy bit his lip, glancing between the kid with the bomb and the two pursuing him. His eyes briefly flickered up to the camera in the corner of the room. From the moment he woke up and saw it, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. If there was a camera, that meant someone was watching him through it, which made things 100x scarier. Was this an experiment? Some prank show? Or some serial killer pattern?!

---

Ko and Setsuko had decided to search the gym. Swinging closet doors open, poking around the stage, and checking everywhere either of them could think to, they came up with nothing helpful--only things one would normally find in a gym. Various sports balls, especially.

"Wanna play a game of basketball?" Ko asked, experimentally bouncing one of the basket balls she'd found. It bounced too hard and hit her in the face. She rubbed her eyes.

"Ew, no. Too sweaty," Setsuko replied. Figures. "Why are you even thinking about that at a time like this? Aren't you at least a little worried?"

"Not really," Ko admitted. "We found a gym. Gyms are buildings that people make, so that probably means there are people somewhere around here. And we're right next to a lake. That's a water source. Animals come to those to drink, so if we get desperate, we can kill those animals and eat them to sustain ourselves until we find our way home."

"...Did you just get even weirder? Ugh, whatever. So long as you dont cook me and eat me so you can 'sustain yourself', we can still be on speaking terms," Setsuko muttered, brushing some specks of dirt off her skirt. "Alright, so we looked through the gym and found nothing. Let's keep going, maybe there are some other buildings around here."

"Right." Both Ko and Setsuko walked back toward the entrance--as they did, the doorknob jiggled, and both froze. It swung open, and a girl their age with white hair and sky blue eyes stood in the doorway, blinking. "Oh. Hello?"

"Hello," Ko said.

"Hello," the white-haired girl repeated, now smiling. She stepped in fully, then gestured for a taller man behind her to follow. "Looks like we've found new friends! How are you today, friends?"

Ko shrugged lightly. "Pretty alright. What about you?"

"Pretty good! Thank you for asking. May I ask your name and Ultimate?"

"I'm--"

"That's Ko, she's the Ultimate Naturalist. I'm Setsuko, Ultimate YouTuber. And who are you?" Setsuko butt in, putting a hand on her hip.

"Eos Yanagi, Ultimate Gunner." She briefly bowed, then gestured to her companion. "And this is Kaiden Reaper, Ultimate Gunslinger! Funny how our talents align, huh?"

Admittedly, Juri wasn't surprised by the poor kid's reaction. It was scary enough to wake up not knowing where you were, but considering she had seen this same scenario play out twice before...things were only about to get worse.

"It's okay, stay calm," she soothed in the same tone of voice she used to comfort her younger brother. "You're in a warehouse in the middle of what appears to be some sort of...campgrounds. I'm Juri Himura and I'm the Ultimate Big Sister. We're all..."

Students at Hope's Peak? No...but I'm not.

"...Well, we're all Ultimates. I'm not going to do anything to you, I just wanted to come introduce myself and find out your name and maybe we can travel together. There's about to be an announcement that'll give some horrible news but we're not going to listen to it. Oh, this is Bastion, the Ultimate Lucky Student."

Bastion waved politely. "Howya?"

---

Waking up in unfamiliar corners of the woods was weirdly familiar to Kaiden.

And not because he was often drunk--in fact, his alcohol tolerance was unbearably high and getting drunk at all was practically a struggle--but because he had a habit of getting himself into some...questionable circumstances.

It was almost a comfort, really.

He waved to the two women he and his new best friend had run into. "Lovely to meet you, ladies. Yes, you heard correctly! It seems our dear friends at Hope's Peak have made a bit of a mistake."

Not that he was in Hope's Peak, of course--he was too old for high school. There was no need for a twenty-one-year-old man who already had a steady job working with an organization against Hope's Peak to get involved with that school. Which could mean only one thing, of course:

He was in a killing game.

The prospect was more exciting than anything else. There was someone out there who thought it was a good idea to throw a trained assassin and clever half-detective into a game where you got away with murder and on top of that, whoever did it may have had a connection to the man who killed Kaiden's dearly beloved father. That much was enough motivation to win.

But there was no need to alarm anyone by letting on that he knew as much as he did. For all they knew, he was just as lost as they were.

"Do you have the slightest idea where we are? I'm afraid I'm utterly lost. We had a chance to ask someone else for directions earlier but I already shot him for being too annoying."

...Still, no reason not to have fun with it, right?

Quincy blinked, staring at Bastion for a moment. "What? N-no, but...but I thought I'm the Ultimate Lucky Student? O-or maybe I'm just the Ultimate Unlucky student and I just read it wrong...g-gosh..."

Admittedly relieved that these two strangers--Juri and Bastion, they'd introduced themselves as, right?--didn't seem immediately dangerous, Quincy let himself collapse to the ground, holding back tears. Was it pathetic to cry in this situation? Well, yes, but for all he knew the crazy kid in the corner was two seconds away from blowing them up and he'd been too afraid of what was beyond the warehouse door to run for his life. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down.

"S-sorry," he squeaked. "I...hi. M-my name's--m-my name's Quincy."

---

"Sorry. We don't know," Ko said with a light sigh.

"Wait, what, you--you shot them?!" Setsuko cried, stepping back. "You have a gun? D-did you not lose your stuff like we did? What--what the f*ck is going on? Where are we?! Why am I here?! I'm--I'm stuck at this place with a psychopath! Oh my god, I'm going to die!"

Ko looked over the pair in front of them as Setsuko freaked out beside her, expression mostly blank. The "shot a man" remark was a joke, that much was clear. And if it wasn't a joke, well, it was probably best not to freak out too loudly in case of being considered "annoying" too. Smiling mildly, Ko laid a gentle hand on Setusko's shoulder. "Calm down. If you don't, you'll be next."

Setsuko shrieked. Eos stared at her in confusion. "Is something wrong?"

"YOU--!" Setsuko stopped midsentence, seeming terrified. She opened her mouth as if to say something, stood there for a moment, then closed it and turned around with a huff. Storming off, she went to seemingly fume in the corner of the gym. Ko watched her for a moment, then turned back to Kaiden and Eos, shrugging.

Ko would have been completely content to let these two new people steer the conversation and direction of their investigation, but no--just as Eos moved to talk, a strange sound came from the speakers mounted on the gym walls. Static. Ko shoved her hands into her pockets, glancing around.

"Ahem!" The sound of a cute voice clearing its throat. How strange. "All Hope's Peak students, please report to the gym immediately! I repeat, all Hope's Peak students, please report to the gym immediately! I don't feel like waitin' around, ya hear?!"

The cute voice was not a very nice one, Ko observed.

"Aren't we already in the gym?" Eos asked airily, tapping her chin. She looked back at the door. "At least, I think we are. That's what the sign said when we came in...right?"

That's what I saw, yeah, Ko agreed in her head. I wonder how big this place is?

Juri's protective instincts quickly kicked back in. Two Lucky Students? It was unusual--certainly it hadn't happened ever before if the accounts of her family were anything to go off of--but maybe it was a clue to why Juri herself had ended up here. How many more of these kids had nothing to do with Hope's Peak?

"It's alright," she insisted. "Well...that's definitely weird, but I'm...not really supposed to be here either, so maybe there's just some kind of mix-up. We'll figure it out--"

"Ahem!"

The loudspeakers crackling to life made Juri jump. She noticed Vaughn stiffen, seemingly caught off-guard.

Oh no. It's starting.

"All Hope's Peak students, please report to the gym immediately! I repeat, all Hope's Peak students, please report to the gym immediately! I don't feel like waitin' around, ya hear?!"

Dear God, please don't let me die here.

Juri took a deep breath, offering a hand to Quincy. "...Let's walk over together. Um, this is the announcement--that voice is a bear named Monokuma and...well, you'll see, I guess."

"This that arsehole who's gonna tell us to kill each other?" Bastion asked.

Vaughn suddenly looked over, seemingly attentive.

Juri took a deep breath. "Yes. But we don't need to listen to him. There is a way out--there always is--so we just have to find it and things will be fine! Ready to go?"

Deep in her heart, she wasn't entirely certain of their safety.

---

Ah, yes. That's the reaction I wanted. There was something amusing about a mouse taking the bait--seeing people lose their minds at one little jab was almost a hobby for Kaiden.

But more importantly...that voice felt oddly familiar. Maybe it was from the tapes he'd seen.

Oh. I see. You must be Monokuma.

"Well."

Knowing what to expect made the game a bit boring, but playing along might make it fun again.

"Look at that! We must be the ideal students, arriving before the teacher even calls for us. Shall we look around a bit while we wait for any other possible students?"