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aparticularbandit · 10 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Prologue

Summary: When do they decide that she can't leave? That they're going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That's the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Some of you will think that this beginning is a gimmick. Up to you! Think what you want! (It's not a gimmick more than anything else in writing is a gimmick, which is to say, of course, it's a gimmick, because that's all writing is, really, isn't it? A bunch of gimmicks? Some of them more successful than others? Isn't that why we have tropes? The trappings of a Tragedy to tell us whether that's really what the story is or not? (Do you know the story you're in?))

Enough games.

You're here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima's factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what's going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Two Weeks Ago.

Makoto feels the slightest twinge of pressure on the top of his head. It would be easy to squeeze his eyes shut so that he can avoid the pain, but he doesn’t. Instead, he continues to look out over his classmates – his friends – one last time. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Junko, the last of them, the mastermind, giving him a wink and a thumbs up. And then—

It’s a perfectly timed, perfectly choreographed sort of dance.

In a movie or video game, it would be called a frame by frame action, something that happens so quickly that you can’t catch it with your normal eye – as opposed to the SFX bit in The Lion King, which isn’t a blink and you miss it moment, but something caught incorrectly by a child who assumed it said sex. The child could see that word; this, on the other hand, happens so quickly that you would need screencaps to catch it. In fact, there are a lot of things you can realize from frame by frame analysis. If it could be done with this moment in the Killing Game – if there were recordings that could be combed through later – then this, too, is something that would be realized.

Makoto’s desk – the floor beneath him – drops down at the same exact rate as the compactor block drops on him, so that all he ever feels from it is that slight twinge of pressure. Then, just as he moves safely out of the way, something snaps shut over his head, neatly chopping off the top of his ahoge as the block slams down onto it. Wherever he is, it’s dark, and something drips through the floor above him and lands on his nose, his fingertips.

Just a few drops, though, and then he’s whisked away to he doesn’t know where.

If this were faster, it would feel like a rollercoaster with all of its twists and turns and ups and downs before it finally comes to a halting but complete stop. A door in front of him opens, and the sudden light blinds him. He raises a hand to shield his eyes, blink, before he steps off of the desk where he’s been seated.

“Hey, Makoto!”

Junko’s voice, echoing around the room, but off somehow. Unreal.

As Makoto steps into the room, the door slides shut behind him with enough clicks and locks that he knows he will never be able to get back out the way he came in. His eyes slowly adjust to the light again, and he scans the room the way he thinks Kyoko might, gaze stopping on a laptop resting atop another desk, a laptop that looks nearly identical to the one on which they found Alter Ego. Maybe it’s even the same one, although he’d been so certain he’d seen him executed. But then again, Alter Ego already saved him once, and he, Makoto, was here, despite what probably looked like certain execution to the others, so—

Right.

Makoto lowers his hand from where it shielded his eyes and notes the bright, sparkling pink on his fingertips.

(Junko is nothing if not thorough.)

“Makoto, my man!”

Junko’s voice again, and now – now, with the light no longer blinding him – Makoto can see an image of her on the laptop. Unlike Alter Ego, she’s not all in shades of lime green. Instead, she looks normal. Like a photograph.

Or a video.

When he gets closer, Makoto notices the pause button, the rewind, the volume settings. Whatever this is, it’s pre-recorded, which means—

“I wanted to let you know you didn’t make a mistake.” Junko flashes him a grin from the other side of the screen as she leans forward the slightest bit, one hand held in place with one finger up, as though she were making a point of something. “Obviously you don’t think you made a mistake, but you’re going to be stuck here for about ten days, and at some point during that whole boring time, you’re going to think you made a mistake, and later – like, so much later I can’t even talk about it right now without, like, a ton of context, but we’ll get to that – you’re going to think that again, because you’re not going to trust me (and honestly, who would, right?) and worse, you’re not going to trust yourself – so hear it from me now and, uh, however many times you replay this over the next week and a half – you didn’t make a mistake.”

Makoto slides into the chair that’s situated just in front of the laptop.

“See, the thing is Makoto, I’m still gonna die.”

Makoto’s eyes widen. His mouth drops open. Even though Junko isn’t really there, he starts to say something, stutters over his words. What was the point of all this if you’re just going to die anyway?

“Oh, not like you’re thinking!” Junko flashes him another grin and winks. Then she crosses her arms and sighs, gaze switching somewhere off camera. “Only yeah, I’m totally gonna die, and you’re locked in here and can’t do anything about it. Sucks for you, sucker!” Her eyes grow wide, maniacal, and she sticks her tongue out as she makes the same double I love you gestures she’d made during the trial. Then that expression fades again, replaced by the softest smile he’s seen her make.

In fact, Makoto’s pretty sure he’s never seen that expression on Junko before at all. It’s oddly vulnerable, and she doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would ever have been vulnerable around him, even before she’d taken their memories.

Junko’s gaze flicks to him again, and that smile disappears. She yawns. Bored. “See, the thing is, all of you are absolute fucking shit at trying to kill me. I’m supposed to be the big villain, and you’re supposed to all team up to take me out! And you won’t fucking do it! So I’m just going to take care of the problem myself. Don’t thank me on your way out.” Then she leans forward again, all boobs and big hair and bright blue eyes with just the faintest glimmer of red beneath them. She rests her head in her hands and asks, “So, since I’ve got you here, you wanna hear my grand plan? Only I’ve had this whole thing cooked up forever, and I’ve had no one to tell it to, and you’re just kinda stuck here, so.” She winks again. “You can pause if you want. Or skip. Whatever suits your fancy. But don’t you just wanna know?”

A few seconds pass. Then Junko’s tongue pokes just between her teeth. “I knew you would. So here’s what’s vibing—”

Junko talks.

And Junko talks.

(He thought she talked a lot during the last trial, but that has nothing on this video.)

It isn’t particularly short, and Makoto has to pause it quite a few times and rewind it to try and get the full gist of what she’s saying. The thing is, he’s not Kyoko. He doesn’t have a notepad or pencil ready, and he’s not good at following all these sorts of things without them being repeated in a lot of different ways, and Junko doesn’t seem interested in doing that. (“That’s so boring, Makoto! So I’m not going to say things over and over again. But you can rewind if you need to! Or if you just want to hear the silky sweet sound of my voice, you perv.” A pause, then whispered, “Maybe I should have worn a different shirt or something. You can totally see most of my boobs,” before a wink and, “But I know you won’t take advantage of having a video of me like this, will you, Makoto?” A lean in, teeth bared, voice growing menacing, “Will you, Makoto?”)

But eventually, Makoto thinks he gets it. Mostly. Maybe?

“Now, that’s all I can tell you! There’s more to the plan, of course, but spoilers!” Junko taps her sharp red fingernails on the table in front of her and heaves a huge sigh. “I stocked a bunch of food and everything for you. All of your favorites. Enough to last two weeks, just in case Nagito decides to take forever to show up, but he’s usually pretty prompt about this sort of thing, and Miki’s not going to let them take too long to come save me.” Her head tilts to one side, and she shoots him a glance. “I know those names mean absolutely nothing to you, but they will at some point, don’t worry.” She nods to a side of the laptop. “There’s a bed over there, too, made just the way you like it.” Another wink that makes him extremely uncomfortable. (He’s not sure he wants to use the bed now.) “And, well….” Her voice trails off again.

Makoto stares at her for a few moments. He’d be convinced that the video froze – or finished – if not for the minute shifts in Junko’s expression, the occasional blink, the way her chest moves when she breathes (although he isn’t paying attention to that). It’s just quiet. (He hadn’t known Junko could be quiet.)

“It was really nice to know all of you.” Junko smiles again. Fond, achingly fond, but nowhere near as soft as that first soft smile. “You were one of the only people to ever throw me a birthday party, other than Yasuke and Mukie, but….” Her voice trails off again, and her eyes darken. “We were friends, weren’t we, Makoto?” A pause, then, softer, “We are friends, aren’t we?” Then she shakes her head and laughs a little. “I’m being stupid. Of course, we are.”

Another silence, longer this time.

Then, finally, “Oh, right. Do you remember Ryoko Otonashi?” Junko laughs, harsh. “No, no, of course, you don’t, my bad. But you will, at some point over the next few days. Day five, maybe? Or six? It’s so hard to pin down when people are going to remember anything; it’s all down to luck, you know. I guess it doesn’t really matter when you remember, since you’re locked in here.” She shrugs. “Anyway, I left you a little friend, so you won’t, like, die from solitary confinement, or whatever.”

Another few seconds pass before Junko sighs. “You probably don’t need to hear this, Makoto, but your hope isn’t misplaced. So you should trust in that, like Nagito trusts in his luck. I know you don’t know what that means, but—” She pushes a hand through her hair. “Man, I’m such shit at goodbyes when I don’t get to kill someone.” Then she winks again, but there’s no joy to it.

“See you on the other side, Hope Boy.”

Junko finger guns, and the video ends.

Makoto blinks. Looks around the room. Junko mentioned a little friend? He scans the room again. I don’t see any—

“Hello again!” The face of Chihiro Fujisaki – no, Alter Ego – appears on the screen in front of him, covering Junko’s face. He beams up at Makoto. “I’m so glad you’re alive!”

A lot of emotions swell inside Makoto all at once. Too many for him to properly name right now, maybe too many to properly name ever. So many things just happened that he could not have guessed or expected, and he needs time to process it all, if he even can.

Fortunately for him, if Junko’s right, then he’ll have more than enough time to himself to try.

Four Days Ago.

Nagito steps into the room where Makoto has been held captive for the past ten days. He scans everything – a quick scan once – and then asks, “A message? For me? How unexpected.”

It’s just part of her plan.

Sometimes, Nagito thinks that no matter what he does, he will never be able to escape the Ultimate Despair’s plan, and it throws him for a loop. He hates her as much as he loves her as much as she loves him as much she hates him. They all hate him. He’s aware of that. Even Makoto, in the end, will probably hate him.

But at least she has use for him.

(Use that will spread hope to the whole world, a hope so light that he can’t even imagine it.)

Nagito nods towards the laptop. “There?”

“Mmhm.”

“Alright.” Nagito sits across from the laptop, squints, and then clicks on the icon with his picture in pixelized art on it.

All at once, Junko’s face appears on the screen. “Is this…is this thing on?” She stretches up to fiddle with a camera, showing an overlarge focus on her chest that would make Miki blush, and then settles back. “Can you…can you hear me?” Her head tilts to one side, lips pursed into an amused expression, and then she shrugs. “Well, with your luck, you’ll figure it out.” Then she grins. “Hey, Nagito? Still want to kill me?”

He hits the pause button mid-wink and looks up at Makoto. “You’ve seen this?”

Makoto sighs and nods.

“And you’re still showing it to me?”

“Of course!” Makoto’s eyes widen. “It was meant for you!” Then he glances away and reaches up to scratch his chin. “I couldn’t understand most of it anyway. It’s all in some cryptic language or…or something, and Alter Ego couldn’t translate it.”

At first, Nagito takes a deep breath of Makoto’s hope (it’s relaxing, refreshing; he’ll have so much fun with him later), then neatly grins. His luck comes through again, just the way it always does. Then he reaches down and starts the video again.

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #makoto naegi #nagito komaeda #matsushima #not tagging for coverage or whatever #tagging for consistency re: main characters in the fic/series and main ships in the fic/series #some of these characters do not show up in this chapter #but they are still fic/series mains

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aparticularbandit · 6 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Technical Memory (II)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Some of you will think that this beginning is a gimmick. Up to you! Think what you want! (It’s not a gimmick more than anything else in writing is a gimmick, which is to say, of course, it’s a gimmick, because that’s all writing is, really, isn’t it? A bunch of gimmicks? Some of them more successful than others? Isn’t that why we have tropes? The trappings of a Tragedy to tell us whether that’s really what the story is or not? (Do you know the story you’re in?))

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Are we really doing this again?

You can’t fight me.

You can’t fight this.

Memory #??? Found.

Password: I can try.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: Good luck with that.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password:

Oh, that’s a laugh.

You think just not entering a password will stop it.

Hah! Haha!

Oh. Wait. You should have better flavor text than that.

Puhuhuhuhu.~

Password: What does that even mean? What’s flavor text? And a different laugh? I don’t get it!

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #3 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: 284539579875

You’ll get it eventually. Consider it something to look forward to! :D

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

Not So Long Ago.

Before The Tragedies.

(Not That That Matters When Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

“Did he hurt you?”

Mukie crouches down in front of her. The freckles across the bridge of her nose have never stood out as loudly as they do now, which doesn’t make any sense. She’s backlit. Her face is all in shadow. And yet, it’s those freckles she fixates on, those constellations across her sister’s face just like stars in the sky above, but in reverse – spots of darkness against a lighter backdrop instead of lights in an endless void. When she was younger, she thought about connecting those dots, finding images in them the same way the ancients did in the stars above, something as a guide to lead her when she got lost—

Hah.

That’s a laugh.

She never thought Mukie would be able to help her when she was lost.

(This is a lie.

This is a lie.

She did not know how much she thought that until she did, and she’s shoved it down ever since she failed her.

She can’t use someone as a stable point when they leave.)

She curls up against Yasuke’s chest and shivers as her gaze drops. For some people, averting their eyes means they’re about to lie – it’s so easy to read people, and in reading people, it becomes easy to lead them because she knows exactly what tells they want her to have – but before she can say anything, her eyes focus on the war knife gripped in Mukie’s gloved hands.

It drips blood.

But the thing about memories is that sometimes you focus on the wrong thing.

Maybe, in the future, she won’t remember the stench wafting from her sister (she’ll remember that it was there, but not exact enough to know what it was, whether it’s rotten fruit – sickly sweet but with just a touch of something bitter beneath it – or moldy bread – more yeast and alcohol than anything), but she remembers the blood. She remembers the way it glistens dark red, how it catches the moonlight as it falls, the plop as it hits the ground and spatters. A small puddle of drops beneath the tip of the knife reflecting the stars like the freckles on her sister’s face. The roll of the drop as it slowly sinks to the edge of the blade.

For a moment, she can see her eyes – blue – reflected in it, twisted purple as a fresh bruise.

“No,” she says finally, ignoring the aches that will be bruises in the coming days. “No, he didn’t…he didn’t hurt me.”

Mukie grabs Yasuke’s arm and drags him away from her, leaving her curled up on the cold dirt.

(This is what Mukie does. She leaves. It doesn’t mean anything that she takes Yasuke with her this time, just like it doesn’t matter that she thought the first time she needed to leave for a good reason. She left and she leaves and she is leaving and she will always leave her and she will always have left her are all permanent fixtures in her mind now. That Mukie does it again now means nothing.

This, too, has nothing to do with her.)

“Where were you?”

Yasuke stutters something unintelligible. She focuses on his voice as much as she can, but it’s lost to her.

“You were supposed to protect her.”

Mukie shoves him, and he stumbles. Rights himself. Hands clenching into fists, teeth gritting together. A hesitation before his gaze sweeps over to her, where she curls in on herself on the ground, where she draws in the dirt with the tip of one finger, where the dirt gets stuck under her long, sharp fingernail. It’s painted red, too, but far brighter than the blood is. Next time, she should paint it with blood. It’s a much more fascinating color. He deflates, looking at her.

Funny. She deflated a long time ago. If she was ever inflated to begin with. Maybe she’s always been a flat tire, leaking air, depressing and depressing and—

(This feeling is familiar. It hurts, but it’s familiar. She curls it around her fragile heart and pretends that the pain is something good. It cuts through the numb.)

“We should kill him,” she says, brow furrowing as she draws blue raspberries in the dirt. (No one can tell that they’re blue. To be fair, no one can tell that they’re raspberries, either, but it’s not like she can convey color with the tip of her finger and some dirt. She could drag blood from Mukie’s knife and make them red, if it was that important, but they’re not red.)

Mukie returns at her words and kneels down next to her. “What?” she asks. “What did you say?”

A curl lifts her lips, and she glances up to meet her sister’s eyes with an odd feeling of awe. “We should kill him.”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: I don’t want to remember this, I don’t want to remember this, this has nothing to do with me, I don’t want to—

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: 2845395759875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

A Long Time Ago.

(Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

“Not it.”

Ryoko knows she shouldn’t laugh, not in the presence of Ikusaba-sensei, but she can’t help it. Even with her teeth dug into her bottom lip, the bubbling amusement slips out, small and quiet, but there nevertheless. Then Mukie shoots her a look; she quiets immediately with fear.

Ikusaba-sensei’s blood red eyes glare at her. A terrifying man such as him – the story should havehim say, “What’s so funny?” with an intimidating growl.

But it doesn’t.

“Tell that thing,” Ikusaba-sensei barks at Mukie, gaze never leaving Ryoko, “that this is not a game of Tag.” His eyes narrow, but that fire within still smolders. “You can take whoever you want with us, but not it.”

Mukie’s little hands tighten into fists, and she glares up at him with the same intense hatred he glares down at Ryoko. “She’s my sister,” she hisses, “and she’s coming with us.”

Ikusaba-sensei tries to hide it, but something inside of his eyes shifts. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light. Anyone else would think that’s what it was. But Ryoko can read him just as well as she can read her sister because they are so much the same. That’s the thing about family; they influence and impact in ways that someone could never imagine. She’ll never tell Mukie how much like their dad she is. She doesn’t want to hurt her that way.

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: Stop. Please. Please stop.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

Not So Long Ago.

Before The First Named Tragedy.

(You Are The First Named Tragedy, Although They Will Not Call You That.)

“Ugh, Mukie. You’re just like him.”

She waits for her to ask.

The funny thing is? Of the two of them, she is the one most like their old man.

She hates herself for that.

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: Do you enjoy hurting me?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: Duh. Haven’t you been paying attention? Besides, you can’t just forget everything. What fun would that be?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: Do you want to remember all of this?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #3 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password:

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

A Long Time Ago.

(Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

“What do you mean we’re sisters?”

Mukie looks at her like she’s crazy. Maybe she is. Ryoko’s felt like it more often than not lately.

She doesn’t know how to put it into words, the way she just…she just knows things now.

Of course, she wouldn’t call it knowing.

She’d call it…she’d call it guessing, but always being right. She doesn’t mean to always be right, but she is. Even when she’s so certain she’ll be wrong!

Yesterday, for instance. Her mama went out to the store and told Ryoko to stay at the house because she had something in the oven; she’d just realized that she didn’t have everything she needing for dinner; that’s all! Except Ryoko told her five days ago that they wouldn’t have enough for that dinner when she wanted to cook it, and her mama didn’t believe her. It’s just…there’s a pattern to things, a predictability to them that her mama doesn’t see.

Her mama went to the store, and Ryoko told her it would rain, and her mama didn’t believe her. It was sunny! And bright! No cloud in the sky, not even those thin wispy white ones! And no breeze!

But Ryoko knew.

Ryoko knew it was going to rain, knew it deep in her bones, the way that fairies in the old stories do. So she told her mama it was going to rain. Told her to take an umbrella. Told her to wear the good boots. Knew that when her mama took neither that she would get her shoes stuck in the mud on the walk back, knew that she would stumble and fall, knew that her bag of eggs wouldn’t drop, but would fall flat, the eggs cracking and breaking in the mud.

Knew just when her mama would be back – who she talked to, who she bought from, how many eggs, how many other things they don’t need but her mama won’t be able to resist buying while she’s out, even though Ryoko’s keeping an eye on the oven – and despite the fact that her mama wanted her to stay in the house, she didn’t.

She caught her mama just at the entry gate. She kept her from falling.

(Her mama was upset with her until she found that Ryoko already pulled the dish from the oven, safe and sound. Then her mama was concerned because Ryoko’s too young to be doing something like that.)

((Memories are weird. How can she remember that drip of blood on the edge of Mukie’s blade with such startling detail, but she can’t remember what her mama was cooking? Who knows.))

It’s just small stuff. A lot of small stuff that builds to bigger stuff. Like knowing exactly which butterfly, when it beats its wings, will lead to a typhoon on the other side of the world.

So when Mukie looks at her like she’s crazy, Ryoko doesn’t know how to explain it. She just knows. It’s not just that her hair and Ikusaba-sensei’s hair is exactly the same, it’s not just that his eyes look just like hers (and it makes her shiver), it’s not just that he only and ever refers to her as it as though she doesn’t existed in the first place, it’s not just that her mama doesn’t want her to have anything to do with Mukie either.

She knows.

She doesn’t know exactly how she knows.

But she knows.

“It’s okay if you don’t believe me,” Ryoko says, staring down at her tiny hands, and they look so tiny now because Mukie’s are already so much bigger than hers. “I don’t believe me. But I….”

Her nails are too long. She should cut them.

Mukie, with her nails chewed down to nearly bloody stumps, places her hand over Ryoko’s. “Do you…do you want to be sisters, or—”

“No, it’s not that!” Ryoko presses her lips together, puffs out her cheeks, and shakes her head way more times than is strictly speaking necessary. Her cheeks flush a bright, angry red (although it will never be as angry as Ikusaba-sensei’s, when he gets mad. She’s seen him in the windows a couple of times. She hates him). “I-I-I don’t mean I don’t want it to be! It’s not…it isn’t about me! Or feeling or…or anything like that!” Her brow furrows, eyes narrowing. “We’re sisters, Mukie.” She turns to the other girl and meets her soft blue eyes. “We just are!”

Mukie searches her eyes.

She doesn’t remember that as well.

It’s the pain in Mukie’s face at her insistence that Ryoko knew would be there before she even said it that she remembers the most. The way Mukie’s face falls. She feels as though she should apologize. Mukie doesn’t want to be her sister; she knows that well enough.

Ryoko knows a lot of things about her sister.

She won’t say half of them.

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE.

Memory #??? Found.

Password: I don’t like where this is going.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: You and me both, sugar tits.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: Sugar what now?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #3 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

A Long Time Ago.

(Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

“Why’re you always playing this thing all the time?”

“Game Girl.”

“Yeah. That thing.” Ryoko rests her chin on Chiaki’s shoulder and peers down at the machine in her hands. “Doesn’t it get boring, doing the same thing over and over again?”

Chiaki shrugs. “I get better at it every time, I think.”

Ryoko’s brow furrows. “But isn’t it just the same? All talking to the same people who react the same way every time? You don’t get bored?” She stares down at the game. “I would get bored.”

“Then don’t play.”

“But that’s boring, too!” Then Ryoko leans over Chiaki’s shoulder and presses her finger on a corner of the screen. “You wanna go there.”

Chiaki doesn’t question her, just goes in the direction Ryoko pointed. The screen continues in a way it shouldn’t, and her eyes light up. “I didn’t know it could do that!”

Ryoko stops staring at the game and stares at Chiaki instead. She beams.

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: …can I just continue that memory? That was cute! And good! And healthy!

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: You say that like either of us gets to choose that.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: You mean you don’t choose? You’re not just…forcing me to go through your shitty life?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #3 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: Yes and No. I don’t choose. And it’s your shitty life, too, you know.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #4 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Your choice, Ryoko.

You gonna keep going, or you gonna be a wimp and back out?

Password:

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

A Long Time Ago.

(Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

“Do you have a hard time with people, or something?”

“No.”

Ryoko hangs upside down from the monkey bars and stares at Chiaki where she sits on one of the swings, dragging her heels through the sand, still pressing away at her game. “You just like games that much?”

“No.”

“You just don’t like me?” Ryoko asks, crossing her arms and puffing out her cheeks while her face grows as red as her hair.

Chiaki hesitates long enough for Ryoko to guess that she might lie, for Ryoko to let out a sigh of relief when she doesn’t. “No.”

“Thought not.” Ryoko drops from the monkey bars as though to land on her head, and despite her apparent focus on her game, Chiaki gasps and pushes herself from the swing. When Ryoko lands in a neat little flip (she’s seen too many television shows and thought it would be worth a shot), she winks. “Made ya look!”

“That’s not funny! I thought you were gonna die!”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: Why don’t I remember her?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: You’re remembering her now, idiot.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

A Long Time Ago.

(Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

“Oto-sama said that I could bring you as long as someone else comes, too.”

Mukie won’t meet her eyes. She scuffs the toe of her boot against the dirt, digs a tiny hole in it. Under that top layer, it’s all damp, a ruddy red like clay.

Red’s such a fascinating color. Sure, it’s the color of her hair, the color of her eyes, windows and drapes matching, which sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? But there’s the red light district (she’s heard mutterings of it enough to know that it’s something bad and she should never go there, but she doesn’t have enough date to know why it’s so bad (yet)); there’s blood, deep and dark and clotted into a color so deep that it seems more purple than red; there’s clay, muddy and dirty and still red—

Different forms of giving life, blood and clay.

She can’t build something with blood.

She can with clay.

“Yas—”

“Not Matsuda-san.” Mukie blanches. “Yasuke. Not Yasuke. Oto-sama wants me to bring another girl.” Her lips press together, and her eyes darken. “I…I don’t think this is such a good idea. You shouldn’t—”

“Chicharin!” Ryoko exclaims, her eyes bright, before Mukie can finish what she’s saying. (She doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to know. Everything will be fine. She knows everything will be fine.) “We should bring Chicharin with us! She’d be the best for this sort of thing! And – and! – she’s another girl, too!” She beams at her sister.

Still, Mukie’s eyes narrow. “I thought she didn’t like you.”

(Everyone likes you. It’s a bit of a curse, actually.)

Ryoko shrugs. “I help her with her gaming thing.”

“Game Girl.”

“That thing!”

It’s not like she’d forgotten what it was called. But if she pretends that she doesn’t remember, then Mukie will scowl – like she does now – but it’s all affectionate – like she is – and she’ll knock into her just enough that it’s familiar and warm – which she does. “You idiot.” Mukie freckles stand out stark across the bridge of her nose, just enough for Ryoko to find a dragon in the scattered dots. “How can you help with something you don’t even know the name of?”

“Patterns,” Ryoko says. “Like how I know that we’re sisters. I can see it in the fabric of the game, just like anywhere else.” Her brow furrows. “Games have rules. Logic. The designer has a story they’re trying to tell, and everything sets up for that. If you know the story, you can see the end. Then you just have to follow it.”

Mukie blinks. “You’re saying life is like a game?”

Ryoko’s head tilts. “No.” She hesitates. “And yes. All of the stories are fighting, but I can…I can see the stories people….” She shakes her head. “It’s more complicated.” Then she sighs. “Life would be easier if it was like a game, I think.”

“You sound like Chiaki,” Mukie says, nudging her again. “I think.”

A laugh bursts forth from Ryoko’s lips, a bubbling brook of a sound that just pours out, and for a moment, she’s herself again. She looks up at her sister, grown so wiry and tall, and grins, pokes her cheek. “You mean Chicharin.”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: Why aren’t more of these about Yasuke?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: He was in the first one! What more do you want?

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: I want him in ALL of them!

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #3 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Password: 284539579875

I forgot how annoying you are, sheesh.

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

A Long Time Ago.

(Your Whole Life Is A Tragedy.)

Chiaki sits on the swing, heels rocking to and fro beneath her, pushing her back and forth while keeping her stable as she plays her game. She barely looks up as Ryoko plops onto the swing next to her, hands curling about the plastic-coated metal cables holding it in place. “You wanna play?”

“No.” Ryoko doesn’t even start her swing going, just sits there, staring at the sand beneath them. “Do you….” She doesn’t know how to word it – it sounds so wrong. Her brow furrows. “You’re good at games.”

“You’re better.”

Ryoko flushes. “I don’t like them. They’re boring. Predictable.” She presses her lips together, stares at something that isn’t there, like maybe she can figure it out. But she can’t figure out a bunch of nothing. “I know you like them. Different stories and everything. I don’t mean to—”

“I know.” Chiaki doesn’t glance up, but she gives the softest of smiles. “You play with me anyway, even though you hate them.”

“I don’t hate—”

Now Chiaki gives her a look, enough to cut Ryoko off. She raises one brow.

Ryoko’s gaze drops again, and she scuffs her foot in the sand. “You’re right. I hate them.”

“Knew it.”

“Mukie said….” Ryoko doesn’t know how to say it. “Do you think life could be a game?”

“There’s a board game called—”

“No, not that.” Ryoko sticks her tongue out at her. She takes a deep breath in, and then it comes out fast all at once. “Only I can see people like you see games. Or like I see games, maybe, only not as boring. Sometimes. Like every person is playing their own game, and life sets up these different moments, and sometimes they make it to the next level and sometimes they just need more experience before leveling up and sometimes they just get stuck in the same spot. Or they need a push to get to it. Or they’re just stuck at the same level because they like it or…or because they’ve given up.” Her brow furrows. This isn’t making any sense; she knows it isn’t making any sense. “That sounds bad. I don’t know how to—”

“So you can see how to help people with their game,” Chiaki says, voice soft, “the same way you see how to help me with mine?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Ryoko gives a firm nod. “Not…not always, but yeah. Something like that.” Her hands tense on the swing’s chains. “I’m not very good at it yet. But sometimes.” She licks her lips. “I think maybe…maybe I could use everyone together to…to do something great.” Her heels kick together, and she doesn’t look up. “Like maybe…maybe in that game you like best, you know, where everyone comes together to take down the really big, really bad guy, and the world’s all better for it, only I don’t know who the big bad guy is yet.” She sighs. “Maybe there isn’t one.” Out of the corner of her eye, she glances over to Chiaki. “You think everyone could do that if there’s not a bad guy?”

Chiaki shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s all really confusing, Ryo-chan.”

“Yeah.” Ryoko sighs and swings just enough to drag her feet through the sand, leaving marks that’ll get erased by the next person to use it.

“Hey, hey,” Chiaki says, nudging Ryoko with her elbow. “Look.” She reaches up with both hands, pulls up the hood of her blue jacket – one shaped like a cat – and then limps one hand forward like a paw before sticking her tongue out. “Nyeh.~”

Ryoko giggles. “You like it?” She kicks her feet a few times. “I think it’s the best thing I ever made!”

A soft, small smile crosses Chiaki’s lips. “It’s really cool.” She holds her arms out and bats them like wings a couple of times. “And it’s really warm, I think.”

“Good.” Ryoko’s gaze drops, even though her grin doesn’t. “I’m glad.”

It’s longer than a few seconds, longer than a few minutes, but eventually, after Ryoko’s grown bored of sitting on the swings but doesn’t feel like interrupting Chiaki’s game again, when she decides maybe she’d better just go on home, after she jumps from her swing and lands and starts to scamper off, Chiaki calls after her, “Ryo-chan?”

Ryoko pauses, shoves her hands in her pockets, and turns back. “Yeah?”

“If you write the story,” Chiaki says, not looking up, “make sure you give it a happy ending, okay?”

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mukuro ikusaba #yasuke matsuda #matsushima #chiaki nanami #and then not appearing in this chapter but primary characters/ships for the series:#mikan tsumiki #junkan #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri

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aparticularbandit · 1 month ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Post Credits Scene

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter

Book One

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

REMEMBER.

Between The So-Called Tragedies.

When You Weren’t Really Yourself.

(This Was Intentional.)

(You Know This Now.)

She startles awake.

Something’s wrong.

It isn’t a nightmare – she has plenty of those, and the remnants of Ryoko within her tend to make her vomit sometimes (she keeps a trashcan under her bed for just this reason; she’s never been able to quite explain that one to Kyoko, but Mikan understands without any explanation needed) – but it’s…it’s something.

Something else.

It feels like...like someone is staring at her. As though there’s someone else in the room with her.

She flicks the light on, but there’s no one.

She shakes it off.

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

REMEMBER.

Between The So-Called Tragedies.

When You’d Destroyed The Part Of Yourself That You Loved Best.

“You killed Yasuke Matsuda, didn’t you?”

Something in her freezes, and she looks up.

A boy, roughly her age, stands in front of her. He doesn’t seem quite real. His blue hair falls straight and long just past his shoulders, and his formalwear, while quite impeccable, seems far too much for the train station where she’s resting. All vest and suit pants and a suit jacket that he keeps folded over one arm more like a shield than a jacket.

Well.

Maybe a boy.

There’s no distinguishing features about his entire form. His eyeliner is exquisite, too, although someone of any gender could do that. Even his voice is ambiguous.

She admires that.

(One could even say she’s jealous. She wouldn’t say that. But someone could.)

“Don’t worry,” they say, pulling a long black ribbon from one pocket and using it to tie their hair back. “I won’t tell anyone.” They sit on the bench next to her and hunch forward, propping their elbows on their knees. “It’s just fun to say things like that to people sometimes.” They turn to her, their blue eyes bright and piercing, and their head tilts to one side as their lips smooth. “Breaks the boredom, just for a little bit.”

She examines them. They’re almost attractive, in an ambiguous sort of way. (She wants that, but you’ll never hear her say it.) As she looks, the bits and pieces add up. “You’re a detective,” she assesses, holding their gaze, “from the same organization as Kyoko.”

They give a half nod. “Not exactly.”

Her gaze drops as she notes the gloves on their hands, then it narrows. “Those match.”

Other than being white.

“So do the scars.” They lean over and whisper, “Want to see?”

She just blinks at them. “What scars?”

“Oh, right. You’re not there yet.” They sigh and lean back until their back is nearly ramrod straight. Then they gather their suit jacket in their lap, their hands clasped together around it. “I know, I know, you’re the one who takes care of exposition, but give me a moment.” Their gaze doesn’t move from her, but its focus is somewhere else entirely. “I was a detective, but a friend of mine convinced me that the best detectives solve murders before they can happen, before anyone can get hurt. At the time, I didn’t care, but after….” They pause, then mutter, “You don’t know about the scars yet, so you likely don’t know about her yet either. Maybe I’m too early on the timeline.” Their eyes narrow. “Maybe not.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks as though she doesn’t know.

Ultimate Analyst. She’s been down this route. Painfully.

They wave a hand dismissively. “The point is that I trained myself to see murders before they happen. Yasuke, sure, you’ve already killed him, but you drip with so much blood that your hands are more than stained with it.” Their eyes focus on hers again, piercing, bright, and they grin. “You’re planning to murder the world. Kyoko won’t be very happy about that.”

“I—”

“You’re going to succeed,” they continue, grin deepening, darkening, “just like you’ll succeed at killing yourself.”

She grows quiet then, softly, asks, “Are you here to stop me?”

The rails in front of them rattle with the sound of a coming train. Loud, then louder, then the whistle blows as it reaches its destination. People leave. Suitcases clatter in front of them, past them. People talk on their phones. Hugs between people who have been long separated. A conductor yelling to make sure everyone else is on. It’s time to go. Then silence as the train leaves, as the people walk away, until only the two of them remain.

(Neither of them have been very good at listening to – or obeying – instructions.)

In that silence, they pull a folded card from their breast pocket and hand it to her. “After you’ve had your fun, come see me. I’ll be waiting.”

“You’d associate with a murderer?” she asks, taking the card, opening it just enough to glance at what’s written within, and then tucking it into one of her many, many pockets.

“I already do.” They push themselves up from the bench. Then they sigh. (She knows that sort of sigh all too well.) “Don’t forget. When you forget everything else, don’t forget that.”

“And if I decide to visit you sooner?”

They shrug and adjust their suit jacket over one arm again. “I’ll be waiting. I could show you around. Maybe introduce you to a friend.”

As they start to walk off, she can’t help herself – an odd choice of words; she normally can, even when she pretends that she can’t – and calls out, “W-wait! What do I call you?”

They glance back over their shoulder with a cloying smile. “Anything you want. I’ve never found a name that felt necessary, you know?”

She stares at them. Blinks twice. Feels oddly seen.

And hates it.

“Raspberry,” she says finally. “For the blue of your hair.”

Their eyes squint as though they’re smiling, even though their lips don’t move. “You always were good at names, Ryoko-chan. I think Raspberry suits me just fine.”

She stares after them as they leave, losing them quickly as another train comes, as another crowd builds. A new dataset. She pulls the card back out, unfolds it, reads it, and then tucks it back into her pocket, filing the memory away where she hopes it will be found.

“Raspberry,” she repeats aloud to herself. “Remember Raspberry.”

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #licorne #and then not appearing in this chapter but important to the overall fic:#junkan #mikan tsumiki #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #matsushima

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aparticularbandit · 2 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Epilogue

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

credits musiccredits music part two

Book One

The problem with stories is that often – no, always – there are things going on outside of your protagonist’s point of view.

Sometimes, in notebooks like this one, you get splits to try and cover things so that when the climax comes, it doesn’t feel like it’s out of nowhere, it feels supported. Earned, even. Of course, if you’re reading this with the full story, that means someone has come along and added to it; originally, it only had one side fully done and little bits and pieces of what might be hinted at between the lines.

But then, that makes everything feel scripted.

You’ll notice that it wasn’t. Kyoko read what was meant to happen and bucked against it, and Mistuki admitted that there was a misstep earlier on – one that caused some sort of fatality. But minor deviations don’t change the whole thing. Characters can get other thoughts in their minds and follow them, but if you know your characters well enough, that doesn’t change the overarching plot. Sure, sure, you have to yank on their leash to get them back on track every now and again, but—

That’s not the point.

The point is this – if you are reading the full story, there have been three characters you’ve seen throughout.

One of them is not quite finished yet.

But maybe let’s see this from a, ah, different perspective.

: )

Towa City.

An Undisclosed Amount Of Time.

They don’t tell you that running a corporation is boring, but it is.

Sure, sure, there’s a lot of things to do, so you’re always busy, but none of that busy is fun.

Not that Monaca is running the corporation.

Yet.

No, Monaca is hiding out in an undisclosed wing of the robotics division, fiddling with what she would call her pet project if it was really that. It’s different than the Monokuma designs Big Sis Junko gave her, different than the ones they’d collaborated on, and different in the sense that it’s not anything Monokuma at all, but still very much instructed by—

Well.

It’s not done yet, is the thing. It’s as close to done as it can be, other than that last piece that’s meant to be delivered to her, but still, Monaca messes with it. Fidgets. Improves and then redoes and then changes and then checks and double checks.

It has to be perfect.

If it’s not perfect, then Big Sis Junko’s plan won’t work.

Of course, Monaca doesn’t know the whole plan, but she knows enough. She thinks.

It’s halfway through a day when she should be focusing on anything other than this (and would be chided for it (and much worse) if she wasn’t already causing the corporation to make more money than it’s made since its inception) when Messenger arrives.

“So?” Monaca asks, pulling back and away from her creation to stare up at him. “What do you have for Monaca?”

Messenger leans close, his fuzzy white hair more mussed than she’s ever seen it, and hands her a singular flash drive. “Big Sis Junko says it’s time for Phase Two.”

Monaca holds the flash drive aloft, examines it, and grins.

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #monaca towa #nagito komaeda #and then of course important to the fic but not not in this chapter:#ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otonashi #mikan tsumiki #junkan #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri

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aparticularbandit · 2 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Ten (IV)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Now.

Nagito doesn’t aim the gun.

Well.

That’s not entirely correct.

Nagito’s definitely pointing it in a general location. Over that way. But Junko told him not to aim and to instead let his luck take care of everything, and so that is precisely what he’s doing. In fact, although most shooters would keep their eyes on their potential victim(s), his jade grey eyes are focused entirely on the being standing next to him. “Your luck must be absolutely wonderful,” he murmurs, staring at Izuru and sizing him up, “if it doesn’t have the consequences mine does.”

Izuru doesn’t say anything. He’s not much of a talker. Junko told Nagito about that, too, and while he’d believed her, it’s still unfortunate. This false Hope with all of those Talents combined within him must have some Talent of speech. He’s just chosen not to use it.

What a waste.

Of course, even with their powers combined, something bad will happen here. Something bad always happens when Nagito needs to use his luck. Think of it as cause and effect: if something bad happens, then something good must follow. For every act of despair, an act of hope. That’s the usual order of it.

He wants something good to happen now. So something bad has to happen first.

A sacrifice of sorts.

Nagito doesn’t aim the gun, and he keeps his eyes entirely focused on Izuru.

That’s the plan, after all.

Day Ten (of a Captive Infinity).

“M-M-Mitsuki?”

Mikan says her name, and it sounds like music.

Instinctively, Mitsuki glances towards Kyoko, hoping to hear her say it as well, but there’s no one there to be seen. Her heart falls.

(This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was not supposed to be in love with either of them. That wasn’t part of the plan. But Mikan woke her heart just enough to catch them both. That could make things awkward in the future.

But she can’t think about that right now.)

“Yes,” Mitsuki says finally, clenching and unclenching her fingers. “That’s the name my mother – Mukuro’s mother – gave me. It should always have been mine, and now, it is.”

Speaking like that feels a little too formal.

A little too much like him.

(They thought they trained that into him, but really, he got it from her.)

“M-M-Matsuda?”

Mitsuki ignores this. She glances at her still bright red painted nails. Claws. Bear claws. That’s what Junko called them. There are a lot of things Junko did – and a lot of things Ryoko did – that she’s not sure she’ll keep any longer. Her eyes are still red, which she can fix later. Or now. She glances up and meets Mikan’s eyes. “Can I have my contacts?”

Mikan’s bruise-colored eyes widen in astonishment. “Y-y-your contacts? I…I don’t have those—”

“Mikan.” Mitsuki meets her eyes with a disapproving look. “Didn’t I tell you? There’s nothing you can do that will disappoint or anger me.” She holds her palm out. “So if you would, please.”

Still too formal.

Something’s….

Not wrong, but off.

She’s still trying to find herself again. It’s been a while – a long while – since she’s been fully herself, and the last time she didn’t have years of Junko to deal with, only the beginnings of her and the knowledge of what she would do in the future. But knowing something and acting on it aren’t the same. Her hands are stained with blood now. That will change things.

This time, Mikan doesn’t hesitate. Her gaze falls away from Mitsuki’s, avoiding her disapproving stare, and she scrambles through her pockets before pulling a contact case out of one of them. She opens it, sighs with relief, and then holds it out. “They’re…they’re going to be dry—”

But Mitsuki takes both contacts and puts them in her eyes immediately. It stings – it hurts – but it’s not so bad when she compares them to everything else she’s dealt with throughout her entire life. Sure, some of that she caused, but that’s not the point. She blinks a few times. More than a few times. “Fuck. Shit.”

“I-I-I told you not to—”

Mitsuki squeezes her eyes tight shut, and with them closed says, “I can’t with the bloody red eyes. They’re too fucking much like him.” (Mikan won’t understand that. She’s never shared that with her. She doesn’t like sharing it with—)

“W-w-who?”

“No one.” Mitsuki opens her eyes and looks up at the bloody red sky. She can’t do anything about that now. Then she takes a deep breath. “You think it’s going to rain? I think it’s going to rain.” She glances back to Mikan, tilts her head to one side, and offers her a soft smile. “May I?”

Mikan’s eyes widen. “M-m-may you…may you wh-wh-what?”

Huh. That’s odd. Normally Miki says yes.

“Hold your hand.”

“U-u-um!” Mikan flushes a bright, bright red. She tucks short strands of her hair back behind one ear and nods a few times before saying, just as soft, “Y-y-yes, p-p-please.”

Mitsuki snakes her hand into Mikan’s and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry,” she murmurs. “I’m still me.” She pauses. “Mostly.” Then she hears a soft, muffled sneeze behind her and sees the flash of something silvery black out of the corner of her eye.

It’s starting.

“Sorry, Miki.”

Mitsuki tugs Mikan down – out of the way – just as the first gunshot is fired.

Mikan trips.

(Mitsuki holds her hand as she falls. This way, Mikan won’t get caught in old habits. No matter how hard they die, they can come up at the worst moments, and if her time as Ryoko told her anything, it’s that this particular habit hasn’t died at all. So she holds Mikan’s hand. She doesn’t let her fall.

Not the way she wants, anyway.)

There’s a split second where Mikan cries out.

In that split second, two things happen: Genocide Jack sprints towards Mitsuki with her scissors out, slicing at her neck, and the first bullet from Nagito’s gun hits Jack’s scissors and shatters them.

That alone will not stop Jack. Mitsuki knows this, too; she remembers it from her time as Junko: Jack carries multiple pairs of scissors on her body. While Jack pulls a third pair of scissors out to complete her dual wielding, Mitsuki shoves her back, away from Mikan.

The Talent of Ultimate Analysis doesn’t need to be switched on to function; it just needs a dataset. Mitsuki’s data on Jack is incomplete at best, but she pulls from what she remembers – flickers of things, of seeing her feign attacking other people, of living through an equally feigned attack on herself when she was Junko, of her attack on Kyoko when that didn’t get what she wanted (except that Kyoko would always be the target – that was the point – Byakuya needed the code, and he needed Kyoko hurt and Junko desperate to hide her so that he could get it. She’d known that, too, and played along willingly). With these in mind, she constructs what she can of Jack’s fighting style.

Jack is similar to Junko – and herself – to an extent. Noodle arms. No strength. Relies entirely on her scissors to do her work for her. (And she’s pretty much indestructible, which means a misstep in her plan led to a fatality that wasn’t meant to be there. It doesn’t impact the plan itself too terribly, it just sucks.)

But Jack will tire out easily.

Normally, Junko would have a bit of lean muscle to her, but she’d lost too much weight during the Game – barely eating, not keeping up with the exercises Mukie told her to do, and getting sick on more than one occasion when things were too gory for the bit of Ryoko still hidden within her. And Ryoko, bless her, hadn’t remembered anything about exercises or keeping fit or any of that. Not that any of her Horrors had reminded her – and even if they had, Mikan probably would have considered her too sick to do it. So that’s gone. She’ll probably tire out just as easily – if not more so – than Jack.

Which means all of this needs to end quickly.

Good thing that it will.

There’s a second gunshot – Nagito, again – and it seems like this one misses, except that it doesn’t. It can’t miss. That’s what his luck means. So when that second bullet hits the ground beyond her, Mitsuki keeps an eye on it, and she notices the flicker of something else.

A white lab coat.

And she smiles.

Grins.

Beams.

(That’s Junko, coming out. She’s both, and she’s neither, and she grins when she fights because things are going according to plan, and it was all her plan in the first place, Junko and Ryoko both, she’d needed Junko split to take care of the game, and she’d needed Ryoko’s recovery to get her heart jumpstarted, and now she’s fully herself again, but it’s going to take a bit to find who she is now, after so much time with Junko. She’s always been both; that will just look differently now. As expected. It’s not like all the blood and murder is finished yet.)

This time, when Jack reaches out with her scissors, Mitsuki dodges, grabs Jack’s arm, and then pulls her against her. “You missed something, Jackie,” she whispers in her ear as Jack struggles to break through her hold.

“Yeah?” Jack twitches one of her arms just enough to nick Mitsuki’s shoulder with one of her scissors. “What’s that?”

Mitsuki kicks the forgotten needle up from the ground, catches its tube between her teeth, and drives its sharp point into Jack’s neck. “I don’t forget anything.”

(This is a lie. She’s forgotten quite a lot, actually, and it doesn’t matter that she’s whole again, her memories still aren’t all here. That was to be expected. As long as she remembers enough of the plan to know what she needs to do next.)

Jack drops.

One part done.

Mitsuki breathes heavy. She doesn’t even check her shoulder, doesn’t need to, but instead looks around her for something strong and metallic. Kyoko read the notebooks. She should have left—

There.

Yukizome-sensei better fucking know where she’s going, and she better get there fucking fast. It’s going to take all of them together to get him down, and it’s going to take luck just as much as it takes skill, and really, they’re going to have to overwhelm him.

He knows – she knows that he knows – that she will have something in mind for him. He has to know that.

If Junko’s gone, then Izuru needs to be gone, too.

“M-M-Mitsuki—”

Mikan reaches for her.

“Mikan, stay down!”

Now.

He can’t really hide the glove when he wears it.

That’s the point.

So when Nagito shoots the third shot without looking, he knows that Izuru will see the hit of his glove coming just the same as he did the first time. That’s okay.

Junko scripted this.

Nagito shoots his third shot, turns with the metallic glove on, and twists to hit Izuru, who dodges, as expected.

The third shot ricochets off of whatever it is that Junko – and it has to be Junko, it certainly isn’t Ryoko anymore, and there’s no way of knowing if they brought forth Mitsuki since he’s never met her (except that he knows that it’s her because he trusts in his luck, and he has paid dearly for this lightest of hopes to emerge) – found lying on the ground. The bullet hurtles back up towards them. It’s only his luck that it maintains its speed and angles it directly at Izuru, who dodges again.

He doesn’t hear the muffled sniper shot, but Nagito knows that it’s coming, and he feels it piercing through his shoulder on its way to Izuru, who twists out of its way. But in his twisting, Izuru doesn’t account for the appearance of Chisa Yukizome, Nagito’s old sensei, who comes out of nowhere and smacks him over the head with a notebook.

Izuru shouldn’t fall.

It wasn’t that hard of a hit, and it’s a notebook, for crying out loud, and Izuru has so much more luck than Nagito ever did.

But it’s bad luck that Nagito got hit with that bullet, and the pain makes him trip, and when he trips, he reaches his gloved hand out to steady himself, and instead of hitting the ground, he hits Izuru on his way down.

And all at once, Izuru yells.

It’s the loudest, most painful sound Nagito has ever heard, and he’s sure he’ll never hear anything like it again.

Then Izuru curls up into a ball – into the fetal position – and holds his head between his hands.

See, the thing about luck?

It can run out.

Day Ten (of a Captive Infinity).

Mitsuki hears that primal yell and relaxes.

Good.

It worked.

Mikan hasn’t moved from her last spot. She’s curled up, staying down as ordered, but she looks up at Mitsuki with wide eyes as she approaches her. “Wh…what just…what’s—”

Mitsuki holds a hand out to her with a soft smile. “I think that means you’ve got a new patient, Miki.” She gives Mikan’s hand a squeeze as she pulls her up, pulls her towards her, and wraps her arms around her, twirling with her. “I think…I think we’re gonna win.” Thunder rumbles overhead, and she pulls away just enough to lean towards her conspiratorially without touching her. “May I?”

Mikan searches her blue-grey eyes, confused and uncertain, but somehow still certain all at the same time. (Mitsuki knows her answer before she even says it. That moment earlier – that was different. Miki trusts her now.) Then she nods, leans up on her tiptoes, and brushes her nose against Mitsuki’s. “Please.”

When Mitsuki kisses her, it feels like everything is finally right with the world.

(The rain burns where it touches her skin. Someone should fix that.)

((Later.))

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #nagito komaeda #izuru kamukura #mikan tsumiki #junkan #enogiri #genocide jack #chisa yukizome #and then important to the fic but not really appearing in the chapter:#kyoko kirigiri #matsushima

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aparticularbandit · 2 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Captivity Beyond Time

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

TW for Violence, Panic, and Mental Break.

Chapter Rating: M for the Above TW. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Day Ten (of a Fatal Captivity).

Captivity Beyond Time.

Ryoko shudders in the presence of….

Well, of herself.

It’s different, looking at herself like this. First of all, everything is flipped straight down the middle – but that only makes sense, given that she isn’t a mirror image. Then again, she’s thinner – scrawny, easily breakable (why is she thinking about how breakable she is?) – and her clothes perfectly accentuate that. She could count her own ribs through her shirt, which honestly? Doesn’t seem all that healthy. Her cheeks are hollowed out, her fingers and arms look like nothing more than skin plastic-wrapped around bone, and everything about her is angles. Sharp, sharp, sharp emphasized by those long red fingernails filed to points like bear claws. And – and! – she’s dressed like a slut! Her chest bursts from the top of her shirt, and her shirt is fitted for that! Her overly flashy bra is showing! It is distracting! Even for her! (It isn’t fair – she knows what she looks like! It shouldn’t be distracting!)

But she…she doesn’t feel like a slut. Her aura is…is power. But not in, like, a dominating way, or anything like that. Control, but not controlling. Chaotic, but perfectly planned.

Like she could be your best friend, if she wanted, but if she changed her mind, for whatever reason (or maybe no reason at all), you’d be finished.

Ryoko doesn’t see herself that way. If the roles were reversed, if she were in the other girl’s – no, not other girl, she is in those shoes, technically speaking – she’d think she was…thicker, maybe, although she’s pretty certain she looks normal. Warmer, too, although other her doesn’t seem cold. Curvier, rather than angular. More modest. Homey. Comforting. Soft, in all meanings of the word.

Forest green sweater and cream shirt and high-rise jeans against mini skirt and tight top and so many accents and additions that there’s really nowhere for her eyes to land. The other her’s bubblegum pink hair is pulled into twintails with bear barrettes (they look like each half of the Monokuma plush’s face has a full head) against her own long red braid, which for some reason now has a black ribbon tied at the end of it. (She does not know where she got this ribbon. It wasn’t there before.) Blue eyes so light as to be nearly silver-gray against her own red eyes.

(Ryoko thinks of herself, and she sees her own eyes and hair as drenched in blood. The thought makes her shudder just as much as that other her does.)

“You know who I am, right?” the other girl says in a nasally, valley girl tone. “We don’t need some boring introduction?”

Ryoko nods. “Junko Enoshima.”

(She has never considered her voice nasally before. But then, that valley girl accent is fake, so the rest of her tone probably is, too. It’s so—)

Junko props her hands on her hips and grins at her, all toothy and hungry. Then she leans forward, chest nearly spilling out of her shirt. “Remember where you got that name yet?”

“No.”

“Ah, well. All in good time.” Junko claps her hands together like a child, dances over to Ryoko, and gathers her in her arms. She clings to her, brushes her cheek against hers, and murmurs, “I missed you.”

“Eeeeh?” Ryoko’s mouth drops open, and she pushes Junko away from her. “You…you hate me, don’t you? I-I-I mean, you are me, which I guess…I guess means you hate yourself, so…so….”

Junko just shrugs as she steps back, kicks the back of her heel, and inspects one of her long red nails before flicking something indiscernible from it. “Pot,” she says, pointing to Ryoko, and then, pointing to herself, continues, “Kettle.”

Ryoko blinks twice. “Huh?”

“You’ll get it later.” Junko turns away from her into the white expanse and winks at something – or someone – that Ryoko can’t see. “As long as they get it, you know?”

“Who?” Ryoko looks around her, around them, but only sees white on white on white – like they’re two characters drawn onto a page with no background to speak of, like maybe the artist didn’t want anything else to distract from them. “I don’t…I don’t see anybody.”

Junko waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Not important.” She winks as though into a camera – there’s always an audience –then turns back to Ryoko and smiles. “And I don’t hate you. We’re not very good at the hating people thing. We didn’t even hate Ikusaba-sensei, and we killed him!” Laughter bubbles through her lips, sharp as glass shattered on the ground. “We killed so many people, Ryo-chan!”

“Don’t call me that.”

Ryoko doesn’t know why the familiar name hits her the way it does. It shouldn’t be familiar. She doesn’t remember anyone outside of…of family using it, and Junko’s the closest thing she still has to family – closer than family; Junko’s her – but….

But it feels wrong coming from Junko. Twisted.

At her rebuke, Junko’s smile grins, and her head tilts charmingly. “Of course. Ryoko, then.” She curls one finger, beckoning Ryoko to her. “C’mon, c’mon! We have so much to discuss!” Then she makes a face, sticking her tongue out. “Discuss, like I’m some sort of fucking teacher! Yech!” She makes a spitting noise and then groans. “Yukizome-sensei must have had a bigger impact than I thought. Ugh.”

“Who?”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll meet her later.” Junko’s face scrunches up, and she crosses her arms. “Well, one of us will. Or neither of us. Or—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ryoko shouts out. She looks around the big, white, blank space once more, but nothing has changed. “There’s nothing here! No one.”

Junko just shrugs again. “Suit yourself,” she says as she starts to walk off into the nothingness, “but don’t blame me if you never wake up again.”

“Wh-wh-what?” Ryoko’s eyes widen. She stares after Junko, who just keeps walking off with one wave of her hand. As she stares, Junko slowly starts to fade away, and the white blankness around her seems to change somehow. The color doesn’t change. It feels colder, except it doesn’t. Wrong.

Ryoko panics and chases after Junko. “W-w-wait!”

Of course, Ryoko has no promises that Junko knows how this particular blank space of theirs works. In fact, up until the moment that the walls start to appear on either side of them, she believes that. But then there are walls, then there’s a black and white checkered floor, then there’s Yasuke Matsuda, broken and bleeding, on the ground in front of them.

Ryoko freezes.

But Junko doesn’t.

Junko walks right up to Yasuke and bends down to peer into his face. “He really was kind of cute. Disappointing, maybe, but cute.”

“Dis…appointing?” Ryoko echoes, confused.

“Yeah. That.” Junko stands and stretches one arm high above her head, the other grabbing her elbow, and then lets them drop down, swings them both. “I mean, I guess he served his purpose, and everything, but—” She nudges him with the tip of her boot, then before Ryoko has a chance to realize what’s happening, she kicks him hard. “Hey, you awake in there?”

Yasuke groans.

Junko raises her heeled boot to kick him again.

“Wait!” Ryoko runs towards them. “Stop!” She doesn’t make it in time to stop Junko from kicking Yasuke a second time, from stomping so hard onto his side that she can hear the cracking of bones, but she gets there in time to stop a fourth attack, a fifth. She throws her hands up in a cross between them, as though that will do any good. “You don’t need to….” Her breath comes out quick, heavy. “You don’t….” She glances back.

Yasuke tries to prop himself up with his hands on the floor, tries to push himself up further but slips in his own blood, a startling red as deep and dark as Ryoko’s hair. “Do you remember….” He coughs and blood spatters from his lips. “Do you remember…what you told me?”

“R-remember?” Ryoko whispers as Junko grins behind her. She turns to him, confused. “I…I told you a lot of things, I think.” Her brow furrows. “I can’t…I can’t remember them all.”

“You stupid, ugly girl.” Yasuke chuckles, a dark thing, and coughs again, spitting up more blood. He glares past her, glares at Junko. “I thought I could save you, but you can’t be saved. Not like that.”

Ryoko doesn’t understand. “Wait—”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Memory #????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Pass—

Memory Found.

Memory found.

memory found.

memory—

memory downloading memory downloading memory down—

They Call It The Tragedy Of Hope’s Peak Academy

But They’re Calling It By Your Name

They Think It’s A Tragedy Because It Costs Them Money

They Don’t Care About The Lives Lost

The People

The Students

They Care That Their Experiment Was Caught Where It He It Shouldn’t Have Been

they never thought of him as a person either

They Only Care About Consequences Because

Consequences Shouldn’t Apply To Them

~old man consequences coming to get them puhuhuhuhuhu~

They Don’t Care About You

Or You

Or—

They WILL Call It The Tragedy Of Hope’s Peak Academy

But

You Think Hope’s Peak Has Always Been A Tragedy

everyone is a Tragedy if you look hard enough

You’re Just Tearing The Mask Off

“Yasuke!”

You she you you you you run directly into his arms and curl there, crumple there, hide your face against his chest because you know that the moment you do he will wrap his arms around you – and he does, he always does – and the tears streaming down your face (crocodile tears crocodile tears but they aren’t a lie but they are a lie but they aren’t a lie they aren’t they aren’t a lie they—) make your mascara run and if you pull your face away from his chest, you’ll see the stains, the marks you’ve left behind.

But you don’t.

“Something….” You should look back over your shoulder, just like the girls do in your her your her your your your your favorite horror movies, when the big bad races after them, when they want to make sure it isn’t just out of sight, to make sure that they’re safe. (You’re the monster in the woods, and you’re chasing yourself, and you will devour yourself eventually, because that’s what it means to be the monster.) Instead, you cling more desperately to Yasuke’s shirt, dig your clawlike nails into the once clean fabric just enough to tear it, to scratch his flesh. (You always love marking those who are yours. Even when that mark isn’t visible.) “Something happened.”

Yasuke wraps his arms around you – he always does – and holds you tightly against him. He kisses your forehead. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me everything.”

memory download

memory downloading?

memory down

down

“I just want to forget!”

You pace in Yasuke’s neurology office. It might as well be his dorm room; he’s got a makeshift bed set up in here with all of his fancy experimental equipment, and he’s here more often than he is anywhere else. (If he needs a dorm room, he shares yours. Not that anything happens. He knows too well how frightened you are. But you’ve been together so long that even Mukie gets jealous. (It’s her own fault for fucking leaving you.))

“You can…you can do that for me, can’t you?” You look up at him, meet his deep blue eyes, the ocean reflecting the stormy sky that you’ve painted into yours (contacts, what a wonder! They hide the blood red eyes of Ikusaba-sensei, the ones that otherwise stare out at you every time you look into a mirror). “Please, Yasuke.”

But Yasuke steps back, his hands up between you. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I can’t just—” He looks around at all of his equipment. “My studies are to regain memories, not to…not to get rid of them.” When he turns back to you, he avoids your gaze and pushes a hand through his dark hair – long, soft, occasionally very greasy because sometimes he forgets to shower when he’s in here, pulling long hours, but that’s not the point, is it, Ryoko? “I can’t just flip that.”

You step closer to him, your heels clacking on the floor. “Can you try? I….” Your brow furrows, and your gaze drops. “I’m sure I’ll remember you, Yasuke, but….” Your hands clench into fists. “I don’t want to be this anymore. I want to be me.”

He looks at you.

You’re drenched in blood.

(Real blood, because your eyes and hair aren’t that color anymore.)

It’s not the first time he’s seen you like this.

(It won’t be the last.)

“Junko—”

“Not that name.” You take both of his hands in your own, sticky ones and hold them to your chest. Then you give them an encouraging squeeze. “Not that name.”

MEMORY.

CONTINUE.

Download.

The Tragedy.

The Traged—

You back into the wall and you stop only because there’s nowhere else to go and Yasuke walks towards you like he’s the monster in a your favorite? her favorite? your her your her your your her her favorite favorite favorite favorite? horror movie and you’re the last victim left but the problem with this is that if he’s the monster and you’re the last victim then you win then you kill him and you win because he’s the monster but you know deep down that you’re really the monster and he’s just another victim but he isn’t the last victim which means he dies anyway and when Mukie shows up she won’t be the last victim either which means she’ll still die anyway because the truth of the matter is that you are the monster and you are the last victim and you have to be able to kill yourself to survive one way or the other which is the whole point that’s why you’re doing this but maybe his hope will win out maybe he’ll listen to you and maybe if he listens to you then you won’t have to be the monster or the last victim anymore maybe you can just be you maybe you can just be you again but you know you know you know you know that it won’t happen that way because you know him too well and you know yourself too well and even you won’t kill for him even though you thought you would and you don’t remember any of that right now you only know that you’re you standing up against a wall backed up against it because Yasuke is scaring you and he should never scare you and when you tell him that you should just go back to his lab and he should make you better again he gives up and he talks and he talks and you ask him if you can just forget you ask him if you can just forget you ask him if you can just forget you ask him if you can just forget

And he tells you that won’t even work.

Download.

Eleven Days Ago.

(You’re So Tired.)

(You Don’t Know What It’s Like To Be Normal Anymore.)

(Did You Ever Know?)

(You Must Have, Once.)

(That’s Why You Keep Trying To Go Back.)

“Let’s forget.”

You look up at Kyoko, and you stare at her curiously, and you expected something from her, but you didn’t expect this. Not because you aren’t still the Ultimate Analyst – you are – but because sometimes you only look far enough ahead to know that your plan will succeed.

She already kissed you.

Why is she—

Oh. Right. You’d said—

You don’t believe her.

Yasuke wouldn’t have.

But she gestures for you to join her, and you curl into her the way you used to curl into him, but you can’t relax.

This is going to go away.

She won’t really mean this.

It’s just….

It’s temporary.

It’s—

“It’s okay,” you say to yourself, “to forget sometimes. People do it in movies all the time. Hit their heads and just…forget. Not that we’re in a movie, but…but maybe….” You look straight ahead, a tremor of fear running down your spine, and fear may be the beginning of despair, but this isn’t an ache you want, no matter how pleasant you tell yourself it might be. “Maybe we can pretend that none of it happened. That I was not…that I was never….”

“Is that what you want?” Kyoko asks, so, so gentle. “To not? To never?”

DOWNLOAD.

Ten Days Ago.

(She’s So Much Smarter Than Anyone Thinks She Is.)

(She Catches Things Sometimes And She Doesn’t Even Realize It.)

“But you don’t want to think about any of that, do you? You want to forget so much more than—”

“Stop.”

DOWNLOAD.

After The Tragedy.

(The One That Broke You.)

(Literally.)

(Not The One They’ll Call The Tragedy.)

(That Isn’t Even A Tragedy.)

(That’s Just The Consequences Of Their Actions Catching Up To Them.)

(…Sooner, Rather Than Later.)

“You couldn’t use your own Luck to do this?”

Izuru knows the answer to this already. If he’s asking, it’s because he wants you to say aloud what he already knows.

(The same as you had when you first met, when you’d left him in his room with nothing but despair.)

(Despair and determination.)

“Nagito’s luck’s got batshit consequences,” you say, running a finger along the edge of one of the finished cradles. “He could probably do it, but he’s got some sort of entropy to it. For every good luck, there has to be equal and opposite bad luck. And usually the bad luck comes first.” You tilt your head back with a sigh. “I can’t do with anymore fucking bad luck.”

He places a hand atop yours. It’s the gentlest you’ve ever seen him. “It will work.”

You shrug. “Your luck is better than his, but even it isn’t perfect.” When you look up at him, you offer him a soft smile. “Thanks for caring.”

Then, because you can’t leave a moment like that, not anymore, your eyes widen. You glance from his face down to where his hand is over yours and then back up again. “Kamukura-senpai,” you murmur with a feigned awe. “Do you…do you really…you really like me?” You blush a vivid red, and when he tries to take his hand from yours, you turn your hand under his, tangle your fingers together, and clasp so hard that it can’t even be called a squeeze anymore. “Is this…is this your confession?” Your gaze drifts away, and you bite your lower lip. “You…you have to promise to be gentle with me, senpai. I’m just a fragile little—”

(His expression brings a grin to your face every time you remember it.)

(Even now.)

DOWNLOAD.

Nine Days Ago.

(It’s Almost Time.)

You sense it before Hina hits you.

Mikan will probably find a lump on your skull and think that’s related to something else entirely, but it’s not.

To be fair, you did provoke her.

The thing is that you’re just a little bit more durable than they think you are.

You wake in the cradle you and Izuru crafted together, the one you’d made special for Kyoko, the one you’d made special for you. Byakuya’s messing with controls that he’ll screw up; it’s not like you left him everything he needed to know to run the thing. He’s smart. He’ll figure it out just enough to get the deed done.

You look at your reflection in the cradle, and for the first time in a really, really long time, you relax.

This is it.

The end.

(Almost.)

“Your turn, Ryo-chan. We can do this. You just have to remember the plan. You just have to—”

Day Ten (of a Fatal Captivity).

Captivity Beyond Time.

Junko kneels in front of Ryoko. She lifts her head gently, and she meets her eyes with the softest expression she’s ever worn. “Do you remember, Ryo-chan?” she asks with the barest hint of a smile. “Do you remember what we’re supposed to do?”

Ryoko doesn’t hesitate. Instead, she nods once, solemn. “I’m supposed to kill you.”

“And I’m supposed to kill you.” Junko snorts. “For realsies this time.”

But neither of them move.

After a moment, Ryoko’s head tilts to one side. “This…this will work, won’t it? We won’t have done all of this for nothing?”

Again, Junko shrugs. “Two halves usually make a pretty good whole, but since we’re both a little bit more than one half, I can’t really tell. Actually, we’re not really halves at all. We’re two tangled wholes.” She giggles. “Holes, more like.” Then she grins. “You know what they say—”

“It is not a jump to the fucking left—”

“Of course, it isn’t, silly!” Junko winks. “This is the step to the right. Duh.”

Ryoko stands, wipes what looks to be nothing from her skirt, and glances around. Yasuke’s gone. The walls are gone. The checkered floor and the puddle of blood are gone. It’s just that same blank white expanse as far as her eyes can see.

Maybe that’s the point: a future, blank, unwritten, ready for someone else to—

“What if I don’t want to kill you?” Ryoko reaches out and brushes a hand gently through Junko’s hair. “What if I just want to let you rest? You’ve been through enough. That doesn’t mean you have to die.”

“Well, then, my queen.” Junko takes Ryoko’s hand in hers and gently brings it to her lips. “I think you’ve been through enough, too. Maybe you shouldn’t die either.” She yawns, then, and unceremoniously drops Ryoko’s hand. “Actually, I’m fucking tired of being the one doing all the murder around here. It gets boring after a while, you know?” Then she glances up, feigning a scowl. “No, right, you wouldn’t know because you’re too good for it. It’s all my job. And it fucking sucks.”

Ryoko presses her lips together. “You loved it.”

“I did.”

The expanse around them feels as though it is getting smaller. It doesn’t look any smaller, but it doesn’t look like much of anything at all. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe, if they don’t kill each other willingly, then—

No. She doesn’t believe that.

What was it Kyoko said? About making her whole?

Finally, Ryoko turns back and meets Junko’s eyes, finds the glint of mischief in them, and then says, “Maybe we should both stop playing games and just be ourself.”

Junko’s head tilts ever so slightly to one side. “Do you even remember who she is?”

“No.” Ryoko shakes her head. Then, easy as anything, she smiles. “But I think she’s done with us. I think we get a break.” She grabs Junko’s hand, pulls her up to her, and embraces her.

But Junko ignores her. Instead, she looks up at the blank expanse, and as they both disappear, merging one into the other, she murmurs, “Your turn.”

Day Ten (of a Captive Infinity).

She’s barely down a moment before she pushes herself back up.

Mikan and Kyoko are still fighting, if it can even be called that. It’s still a lot of shrieking and yelling and calm attempts at logic, and it’s not really going anywhere, but at least neither of them is dead.

Of course, she wasn’t down that long.

All of it – all of it – happened in roughly a blink of an eye.

Faster, maybe.

She sits up and presses a hand to her forehead. It itches a little bit, and she still feels off, but she feels right in a way that she hasn’t in a long, long time. Her voice is lower, deeper, when she calls out, “She didn’t do anything.”

Mikan rushes over to her, and so she misses Kyoko’s bare glance over, misses the look of sad acknowledgement, misses Kyoko backing and then turning and walking away. No, Mikan drops to her side immediately, takes her hand in hers, and gives it a gentle, soft squeeze. “Junko-sama—”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “That woman is gone.”

Mikan blinks twice, then swallows hard. (She will get over it. Mikan doesn’t care what name you go by as long as you are still you. She’ll be fine.) “Ry….” Her brow furrows. “Ryoko…?”

“No.” She shakes her head again. “Not her either. Something else. Or…not entirely. Maybe the best parts of both.” She chuckles. “Maybe the worst.”

Mikan searches her eyes – confused, dismayed, but not broken. “Who…what…I-I-I—”

She finally gives Mikan’s hand a gentle squeeze back. “Mitsuki,” she murmurs. “Mitsuki Matsuda.”

2 notes · View notes

aparticularbandit · 2 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Ten (III)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: M for Descriptions of Violence. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

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Book One

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

(This one will be safe.)

(Trust me.)

How can I trust you when you don’t have a choice?

How can I trust you when it’s all by luck?

I believe in his luck.

That belief has not failed me yet, and I doubt it will fail us now.

Memory #??? Found.

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

Between The Named Tragedies.

(They Will Not Name You A Tragedy In The Future.)

(They Will Not Name You Shakespeare.)

(They Will Look Into Your Past And Try To Figure Out Where You Went Wrong.)

(They Will Never Consider That Maybe You Went Right.)

She should probably spend her time looking at the screen. It’s supposed to be her favorite movie. She certainly acts like it is. But while she hums along with the songs (singing, even, sometimes, although she’s no Sayaka), her gaze centers, mostly, on Kyoko.

It isn’t the first time they’ve seen this movie together. She’s certain it won’t be the last. (That will be sometime after they’re locked within the old school building, sheltered as though that would save any of them. (They’re already all broken. That’s the point. Even you.) She’ll convince Kyoko to get everyone to see it with her; she’ll use a Lord of the Rings marathon as bait. It’ll be fun. It’s not meant to be anything more than that.

At least, it won’t be then.)

“You hate it,” she says, staring at Kyoko, popping a singular popcorn kernel into her mouth and crunching it loudly with her back teeth.

Kyoko’s face is schooled into that unfeeling mask she always wears whenever she’s really annoyed and doesn’t want to say it. She’s shut herself off. So when she says, “I don’t,” it’s clearly a lie.

She yawns. “So we can see it ten more times, then!”

“I didn’t say I liked it—”

She leans heavily against Kyoko’s shoulder before leaning up just enough to kiss her cheek. “Be honest with me, Kyokyo,” she says as Kyoko’s mask slips, her cheeks burning a bright red. “This is the worst movie you’ve ever seen.” She leans back against her pillows, crosses her nearly bare legs at the ankles, and huffs. “Rocky may be iconic, but I’m not going to tell you it’s good. In fact, it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” Her head tilts to one side. “Actually, that’s a lie. Life After Beth was worse.”

“It is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen enough movies,” she says, popping another kernel into her mouth. She might as well choke on it. (But you won’t.)

“And you want to show me the worst of them.” Kyoko sighs and turns away from the screen to look at her. “Why this one?” she asks, searching her eyes, her expression. “Why is this one your favorite?”

I didn’t say it was my favorite.

Maybe I did.

“It’s a tragedy. No one gets out unscathed.” She smirks as she leans back against her pillows and gestures with her arm. “And it’s better than Shakespeare, because it’s a musical and Frank-N-Furter.” She reaches to the screen.

Do you see my vision, Kyokyo?

(Do you?)

She wants Kyoko to ask. She wants her to ask how she could possibly see herself as anything like Frank-N-Furter. She waits for the question, even as she knows it will never come.

(Not yet, anyway.)

“Besides,” she says, curling back up against Kyoko and clinging to her arm, “every time you agree to see it with me, you’re just saying you love me.” She nuzzles against her neck.

“I—”

“I love you, too.”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

Why can’t all of our memories be like that?

That was a good memory.

We could have had good memories!

Could have?

….

We DID have good memories!

We could have had MORE!

You’ve seen everything just like I have.

….

Okay, fine, maybe you haven’t seen everything.

But that’s not the point!

You’ve seen enough.

And do you really think—

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: Shut up. Shut up.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #1 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Try Again?

Password: You know I’m right. :P

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #2 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Try Again?

Password: You might want to lock this one. You already know the truth. You don’t need to see it.

Incorrect Password.

Attempt #3 of 5 Before Permanent Lock.

Try Again?

Password: 284539579875

Shut up, Junko.

I want to SEE.

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

The Tragedy.

(Not The One They Will Call That.)

(The One You Wished Would Never Happen.)

(The One You Always Knew Would.)

(The One You Needed To—)

(So. She. Could. Die.)

The funny thing about Yasuke Matsuda’s confession of mixed love and hate is that Junko Enoshima is Ryoko Otonashi.

For all that Ryoko could give in and let him kill her – because that means her life will end in this bubble of normalcy (can it really be called that, though, when his hands are around her throat, choking her? that’s not normal, is it?) – she…she can’t.

She wants to die.

She wants him to kill her.

(And Mukie stands there just off to the side, dressed like…like her, and the thing is….

The thing is that if Yasuke actually got close enough to killing her, if it took too long for—

Mukie would kill Yasuke to protect her.

She knew that then.

She knows that now.

Yasuke would never have made it out of here alive, once he tried to—)

He’s trying to kill her, and she wants him to succeed, but….

But the words are wrong.

He isn’t killing Ryoko to save Junko.

He’s killing her to save himself.

That’s….

That’s not the way the story is supposed to go.

It’s—

Memory Downloading….

Ten Days Ago.

(The Tragedy Of You Is Almost Over.)

(Have You Figured It Out Yet?)

Kyoko’s fingers brush against her neck, and she flinches.

“Do you have to—”

“Matsuda did this to you, too, didn’t he?”

Bile rises in her throat, and she swallows it down the way she never could before. (You shove it down the same way you swallow everything else down, the way you shove ME down—) “Why do you care what Matsuda did to me?”

Memory Downloading….

The Tragedy.

(The One That Left You Vulnerable.)

(The One That Emphasizes Your Flaws.)

(The One That Split You In Two.)

(As If You Were Ever Whole To Begin With.)

She doesn’t want Mukie here.

She wants to curl on the floor in that puddle of blood and gather Yasuke’s body in her arms and bury her head in his chest and cry.

But she can’t do that right now.

Not with someone looking at her.

At them.

At him.

So instead, she kicks him the way she wants nothing more than to kick at herself.

(She has an audience, after all. Must maintain appearances.)

Over and over and over she kicks him, stamping her flat heel into him until his beautiful, beautiful face is unrecognizable. Until she can look down and pretend that the body on the floor in front of her is anyone but him.

(Ryoko is dead, she thinks. She’s as dead as she needs to be. A live Ryoko would still recognize him even like this, and she would kill whoever—

It doesn’t matter.

That was the point.

Sacrifices have to be made in a war.

Ryoko has to be one of them.)

((But she’ll come back when she’s needed.))

Memory Downloading….

Ten Days Ago.

(You See Her Brain.)

(You Think She’s Almost Got It.)

“But you don’t want to think about any of that, do you? You want to forget so much more than—”

404: Memory Not Found.

Rebooting.

“Maybe it’s all just one long Tragedy. One building after the other. Into the other. Even if it ends with your death – that’s the fate of tragic heroes, isn’t it? To die?”

Day Ten (of a Cloying Despair).

“Ryoko?”

Kyoko waves her white gloved hand in front of those blood red eyes – a brighter, deeper shade than the sky above them, which seems to reflect her eyes the same way the ocean is said to reflect the blue of the sky above. Or did, before Junko changed it to match her eyes. (She doesn’t need cameras to look down on everything. Just one, giant eye. Unblinking. Unseeing. Unseen. She doesn’t even need a tower. Or a ring. Her charisma alone is enough.)

The girl doesn’t move. She stands stock still, as though struck by lightning, but not falling, as though mid-strike.

Kyoko has the second notebook on her, but she doesn’t pull it out, doesn’t flip through its pages for a cheat. She remembers what it says would happen at this exact moment. (Leave it to Junko to write all of this out like some sort of horrible bedtime story. Only it isn’t in Junko’s handwriting, and it isn’t in Ryoko’s either. It’s in someone else’s, some third something. But it was clearly her who wrote it. Some form of her. How many forms of Junko Enoshima are there? …or would it be more accurate to ask how many forms of Ryoko Otonashi?)

She waves her hand in front of the girl’s face again. “Ryok—”

The girl leans forward and bites her middle finger.

Kyoko looks at the grinning girl, doesn’t even tug on her finger, and sighs. “Junko, you know I don’t like it when you bite my glove.”

(Her heart grows warm. Her heart grows tight. Her heart grows—)

Junko spits Kyoko’s finger out and starts making brushing motions at her tongue, though she doesn’t touch it once. “Yech, Kyokyo, don’t you ever wash your gloves? That thing’s all nasty and grotty and—” She glances up, looks around, and then scowls. “Oh. Yeah. Right. The world’s like this now.” She reaches up as though to twist strands of her hair around her finger and then stops with a groan. “And she took your braid. Right. Ugh.” Without a second thought, she begins to undo the long, single braid that now dangles along her chest. Then she notes her clothes and rolls her eyes. “Ryoko has the absolute worst fashion sense. You’d think she’d be better – our mama taught us better than this! - but nooooooo—”

“You’re not dead.”

Kyoko says it not without thought, examining the person before her who looks, in all appearances, like someone else entirely but is, in actuality, none other than Junko Enoshima, even though she’d been someone else only moments before. (Or, in a sense, she hadn’t. The split between Junko and Ryoko doesn’t seem as harsh and exact as that between Toko and Jack. Not two different personalities entirely, but a before and after, fighting with each other. But before and after what?)

“Duh.” Junko rolls her eyes again and looks up. “Don’t you remember, Kyokyo? I told you that you’d see me again eventually. Probably.” She reaches out and digs a hand into Kyoko’s jacket. “There were a lot of other possibilities, but you definitely were gonna—”

“Junko.” Kyoko slaps her hand away, but not quickly enough.

“So you did bring it with you! I thought you might!” Junko winks at Kyoko and then dances nearer to her, holding her own notebook aloft and then opening it between them. “Besides, look here.” She flips through the pages, licks her thumb, and then runs her forefinger down the page before tapping it once. “See? Yui meets her eyes and doesn’t waver when she says, ‘You killed him.’ And everything goes black. Then the next time you get any narrative, it’s—”

“And what if I hadn’t said that?” Kyoko grabs the notebook out of Junko’s hands, shuts it with a snap, and shoves it back into the inside pocket of her jacket. “You wrote that. I could have said—”

Junko makes a squawking motion with her hands. “Blah blah blah blah blah. You found the notebook, and you still didn’t want me to die for whatever reason – honestly, you fucking idiots just not killing me; Kyokyo, I’m still going to die, I’ll have you know, you read the whole thing, didn’t you? – and the notebook said exactly everything you wanted, so you talked to Ryoko exactly as I’d already written, at the exact time and date I’d written, and you knew I was right, and then you knew if you said that exact thing right now, then you’d get to see me again, and it worked, didn’t it?” She grins, laces her fingers together, and leans her head back into her palms, red hair flying around her. “You even brought—”

“But—”

“But nothing, Kyokyo!” Junko continues to grin at her. “You could have done something else, sure, sure, but that would have been illogical. Here you had a guide to exactly what would happen, but if you did something else, then there’s no telling what could happen, and you – you, Kyoko Kirigiri – decided that what was written in that notebook – in those notebooks! – was an acceptable ending to this whole thing, even if it meant that I, Junko Enoshima, would die.” She steps forward, takes Kyoko’s hands in hers, and gives them a gentle squeeze. “You gave me the one thing I want most in all the world!” Then she leans forward, so close that Kyoko can feel her breath hot against her lips. “I could kiss you.”

Apples and pomegranates.

Forbidden fruit.

(No fake blue raspberries anymore, although Kyoko can very nearly smell that on her breath, too.)

Kyoko meets Junko’s eyes – blood red, not icy blue, and they feel so much warmer than they should – and searches them. “What’s stopping you?”

Junko sighs, a rush of hot air that flits up Kyoko’s nose and honestly smells better than the world around them (even with that tinge of bile just beneath it all), and then tilts her head to one side. “Because Mikan’s over there,” she gestures with her head, “and if I kiss you right now, then she’ll kill you, and none of us want that, do we?” Her lips purse into a cute little scowl. “Except Mikan, I guess, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?” She taps Kyoko’s jaw with one long, thin finger.

(Not as thin as it was.)

On an impulse, Kyoko bites Junko’s finger.

“Oh?” Junko’s blood red eyes widen. (They look so wrong.) “Oh. That’s….” She hums, her cheeks flushing. “Going off script, Kyokyo? Like I didn’t plan for that.”

Kyoko considers this. Considers what Junko’s said. Considers what’s written in the notebook. Then bites down harder before releasing.

Junko hums again, and her cheeks flush even darker. “Love you, too, Kyokyo.” She smiles, gentle, and brushes her thumb along Kyoko’s jaw. “I don’t have long—”

Before she can finish speaking, Kyoko leans forward and kisses her. She feels Junko start to pull away and reaches up, presses her fingers into the back of her neck, and holds her firmly against her, and for a moment, just a moment, she feels Junko start to melt.

“If you don’t have long,” Kyoko murmurs as they part, “then you shouldn’t avoid—”

Junko reaches out and grabs someone’s wrist before they can reach Kyoko. She squeezes and twists, and the hand in hers drops a small needle with some unrecognizable blue liquid stashed within its clear case. Then she sighs. “Told you Mikan would try to kill you.” She winks. “Thanks.”

“I-I-I-I didn’t try to…to kill her!” Mikan’s shrill, soft voice breaks between them. “I-I-I just…I thought…she could…she could hurt you again….” Her voice trails off. She doesn’t try to pull her twisted wrist out of Junko’s grip.

“Miki. Kyoko would never hurt me.” Then Junko turns to Mikan, meets her eyes, and smiles – still that soft, gentle thing. “And is this really how you want our last meeting to go?”

Mikan’s eyes immediately grow wide. “O-o-our last…???? W-w-wait!” Her gaze shifts to Kyoko, takes in what is strapped to her back, and hardens. “Y-y-you d-don’t mean that—”

“May I?” Junko whispers, slowly turning Mikan’s eyes away from Kyoko and back to her. Then she glances over Mikan’s shoulder, meets Kyoko’s eyes, and lets her own widen a second.

Kyoko reads her intent exactly: You need to go, Kyoko. Get into place.

“Y-y-yes!” Mikan stutters out, distracted. “But—”

GO, Kyoko!

Junko kisses Mikan’s cheek as Kyoko steps backward and away. “Trust me.” She grins, then leans back on her heels and meets Mikan’s eyes, searching them. “Okay, Miki? Trust me,”

“J-J-Junko-sama?”

Then Junko pauses. “Wait,” she murmurs, blinking rapidly. “This isn’t supposed to happen yet. I’m supposed to have five more—” Before she can finish, her eyes roll back into her head, and she collapses.

Day Ten (of a Fatal Captivity).

Ryoko can hear them.

She can – the now quite intense squabbling between Mikan and a Kyoko who was trying to slip away that is happening above her collapsed body, Mikan shrieking that Kyoko had done something terrible to her, that her collapse is all Kyoko’s fault, while Kyoko calmly and assertively explains precisely why none of that is – or can be – true. But Mikan isn’t in a place where she will listen to cold logic (if she ever is), and Kyoko is not the sort of person who can take or hold all of Mikan’s emotions. (Yet.)

Again – opposites.

Ryoko could make all of that stop. She could, really, if she just woke up.

But she’s not really there right now, is she?

She’s…she’s somewhere else.

Ryoko keeps her eyes closed, tunes them out, and drifts away.

That doesn’t really have anything to do with her, anyway. That’s about Junko. They’re fighting over Junko. So….

This has nothing to do with me.

Except….

Except it has everything to do with her. Because she is, in fact—

With her eyes closed, Ryoko finds herself in a white space. There’s nothing to either side of her, nothing in front of her, nothing around her. A blank space in her own mind, perhaps, separate from everyone else.

“Hey, you.”

Ryoko whips her head around and meets the eyes of….

Well, of her.

Or a form of her, anyway.

Junko Enoshima grins at her, hands clasped behind her back, and leans forward. “Let’s you and I have a little chat.”

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #yasuke matsuda #matsushima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #mukuro is also in this chapter but not a big enough part for me to feel like i should tag her

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aparticularbandit · 3 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Nine (III)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

TW for Vomit and Descriptions Thereof.

Chapter Rating: M for Heavy Petting and Vomit. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

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Book One

Day Nine (of a Fatal Captivity).

Mikan is.

Uh.

Very good at this kissing thing.

….

Very, very good.

It’s not like Ryoko hasn’t been kissed before, because she definitely has, thank you very much. She remembers kissing Yasuke! …and she remembers kissing Mikan, too. A lot, actually. And not just from, uh, a few seconds ago. Minutes ago?

How long has Mikan been kissing her?

….

It doesn’t even matter.

She’s enjoying this.

And it’s a very nice distraction from what she’s definitely not thinking about right now because how can she be thinking about anything else right now?

She can’t.

That’s the thing about it.

Mikan’s kissing her, and she’s kissing Mikan, and really the only thing she can think about is how soft Mikan’s lips are against hers and how soft Mikan’s hair is between her fingers and how soft her skin is beneath her fingertips and how soft Mikan touches her. And sometimes, if she kisses her just right, Mikan purrs, and it’s so much deeper than her normal squeak – like she’s not scared or intimidated or startled, like she’s herself more in these moments when she’s comfortable, like she is comfortable only and especially now, like maybe they’ve done this a hundred or a thousand times before and this is the only time she ever feels right, like maybe she only knows who she really is and only really feels secure in this moment.

Then Mikan runs the tip of her nose along her neck (soft, soft, soft), and Ryoko gasps because, sure, she remembers this, but she doesn’t remember this. It’s always so different – the memory of being kissed and being kissed – and when Mikan pauses, Ryoko glances down, wondering why she stopped. She nearly breaks the moment by asking. But then Mikan tilts her head and flutters her eyelashes against Ryoko’s skin, and somehow that is even more soft.

This time, when Mikan leans back up, she pauses again, as though waiting for something, and Ryoko leans forward, hesitantly brushing her nose against Mikan’s, forward and then away and then forward again, and when she’s close enough, Mikan captures her lips in another kiss. Her hands should be in Ryoko’s hair, and one of them was, but they move to her hips, and Ryoko shivers.

“Shhhh,” Mikan murmurs, breath hot against her neck. “It’s okay.” She traces the slope of her spine. “It’s okay.” Then she kisses her cheek, glances to the edge of Ryoko’s shirt, and asks, “May I?”

Is this what you want?

Ryoko shivers again, panicking, remembering and not remembering, and her heart beats fast in her chest, and it feels like fear and a little bit like dying, and she shakes her head. “No,” she stutters. “N-n-n-no, I don’t…I don’t want…I—”

And again, Mikan murmurs, “Shhhh.” She runs a finger along Ryoko’s jaw and lifts her chin so that their eyes meet. “I won’t do anything you don’t want. Okay?”

Her voice is so deep.

It isn’t Yasuke’s.

(She’s not thinking about Yasuke right now, because then she has to remember, and she doesn’t want to remember.)

Ryoko searches Mikan’s eyes and then nods slow. She leans up to her, and Mikan purrs at the closeness of her, and Mikan kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, and one of Ryoko’s hands tangles in her hair and the other traces soft along each scar it finds etched in her skin.

And, for a moment, she forgets everything.

And then she remembers.

It’s a flood of things, of images, not all bad, but certainly not all good. There’s blood and fire and bodies destroyed and her mama dying beneath her hand after being speared through her mouth, through her throat, that spear pinning her down to the ground so that she can’t even scream, and the bile starts to come up, she can’t stop it, she can’t, and Ryoko turns away from Mikan, panicked again, “Wait, stop, wait,” and reaches out for a bucket, for something, but she’s not in that first room where she’d woken and she’s not in her own room, so there’s nothing for her, and she vomits all over the floor.

“Wh-wh-what’s wrong?” Mikan stutters, that seductive deeper purr all but gone. Then she, too, realizes what’s happening, and she holds Ryoko’s hair back, presses a kiss to the tip of her collar, and murmurs soft, “It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” but it means something different now, and Ryoko isn’t sure she can even believe it anymore.

Ryoko heaves until there’s nothing left in her, heaves until she tastes copper at the back of her throat, heaves and thinks maybe it would be better not to remember anything at all if this is the way her body reacts. She coughs twice, whimpers in pain, and then lets herself collapse, too weak to hold herself up. “I’m sorry,” she whines. “It wasn’t you, it was—” She coughs again, whines.

“It’s…it’s okay,” Mikan says, and the hesitation from anyone else would mean it was a lie, and right now, with Mikan, Ryoko could be half-convinced that it is, considering. But Mikan brings a wrist to her forehead, murmurs that she doesn’t have a fever, and transitions so quickly and succinctly into a different form of care-taking that it’s impossible to believe it.

Mikan gently and carefully slips from the bed without another word and returns with a cold rag and a glass of cold water. “Drink this.”

Ryoko does,as Mikan wipes the cool rag along her face and neck. “Thank….” She swallows. “Thank you.”

“D-d-don’t mention it.” Mikan nearly smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “This is…this is what I’m good for, isn’t it?”

“You’re good at a lot more than that!” Ryoko nearly chokes on her water as she splutters around it. “I-I-I mean, you’re…. You’ve been taking care of me a lot, and—”

“Because that’s what I’m good for.” Mikan doesn’t glance up. “Because that’s what you want.” Her voice is so soft, but it’s razor sharp. It’s wrong. It’s off. She finally looks up through her lashes, and her eyes look dark. Another layer of wrong. Then she smiles, and the darkness Ryoko thinks she sees disappears. “Do you…do you need more?”

Ryoko blinks twice. “Huh?” She looks at her glass of water, now completely empty, and then shakes her head. “I…I’m gonna…I’m gonna walk it off. I think.”

“Walk it…walk it off?” Mikan echoes, brow furrowing. “B-b-but you just…you just got sick! You should stay in bed! I—” She presses down on Ryoko’s shoulders, forcing her back. “You…you need to rest!”

“M-Mikan!” Ryoko digs her fingers into the mattress and forces herself to stay upright. Her stomach churns. Her head itches. “I—” She cuts herself off. Swallows. Even after the water, her mouth still tastes bitter. Bile, copper. Bad. She can’t kiss Mikan to convince her like this, not the way Mikan would want, so instead, she leans up and kisses Mikan’s forehead instead. Then she slips down, rests her forehead against Mikan’s, and murmurs, “I’m not leaving you, okay? I just….” She breathes in. “I need to think.”

To clear my head.

(Something laughs at that thought, a sound that echoes through her brain. It sounds like her. It might be her.)

((It might be someone else.))

Mikan searches her eyes again. “Y-y-you can’t…can’t think here?”

“Yasuke is dead.”

Ryoko says the words and she doesn’t believe them but she knows that they’re true all the same. Yasuke is dead like Mukie is dead like her parents are dead (both sets) like Chiaki is dead like—

Like so many others are dead.

Because of—

“I should…. I should go.”

Ryoko pushes herself off of Mikan’s bed, careful not to step barefoot into her vomit on the floor. She glances around for her forest green sweater – the one she’d left behind before – and finds it folded up on the bedside table, safe from any potential vomit spray. “I…I’m sorry,” she repeats, pulling the sweater on, gripping the front edges closed. She flushes a bright red. “I just…I just need to—”

“I know.” Mikan’s hands curl into not quite fists up near her throat. She hangs her head and doesn’t look up. “I know.”

The door clicks shut behind Ryoko as she enters her own room – thankfully, blessedly alone, even though Fuyuhiko told her she shouldn’t be. She leans back against the door, slides down, and crumples against it. Yasuke’s dead. She pushes a hand through her hair, trying not to think about it, unable to do so. Yasuke is dead, and there’s something in her brain trying to keep her from coming to the realization that she’s—

“Ryoko?”

Her head lifts. She’s supposed to be alone. She’s supposed to be—

Kyoko.

Her gaze lands on the plush bear set on her bedside table.

(It’s easier to be calm when she has something else to focus on.)

((It isn’t easy to be calm at all.))

Ryoko remembers Kyoko a little better now. Not much. But she’d been important to Junko.

No.

Important to her.

(They’re not the same, but…but they are, aren’t they? Her memories said she made Junko. The person who could do what needed to be done. Because she’d seen the end, and she’d wanted to do the impossible and save the world, but she wasn’t able to handle everything. So she’d made a version of herself that could.

Junko Enoshima.

She understands that now.

Sort of.

She doesn’t understand why so many people had to die.

She remembers seeing the end – the Tragedy of it all – but she doesn’t remember what that Tragedy was, and so she doesn’t know how to avoid it, doesn’t remember the different parts of whatever plan she had in place to fix it. This war must be part of it. Whatever happened before, whatever she did before, it’s all.... It’s all part of it.

But—)

“Ryoko, are you there?”

Yes, Ryoko thinks, but the word doesn’t make its way to her mouth. She barely pushes herself up enough to crawl across the floor to the bear – Monokuma – on her bedside table. Then she pulls him off the photo binder Mahiru gave her, curls up on the floor, leans her head back against her mattress, and asks, “Did you know?”

There’s a pause filled with crackling static.

“Know what?”

“You…you asked Mukie about Yasuke.” Ryoko’s brow furrows as she tries to piece her memories together. “Why would you ask Mukie about Yasuke?”

Another, longer pause. “Ryoko,” and there’s hesitation in Kyoko’s voice now, “what did you remember?”

“They told me Yasuke is dead,” Ryoko starts to say.

But Kyoko cuts her off. “Ryoko,” she repeats, “what do you remember?”

Ryoko shakes her head, even though Kyoko can’t see it. “It comes and goes. Snatches of things. I…I killed my parents. I remember that. I killed….” She closes her eyes tight, as though it will help, but it doesn’t. In fact, it just makes things worse, and her memories flash before her eyes again until she reopens them. “I think I…. I think I killed a lot of people. Maybe? I don’t…I don’t actually remember killing them, but I…I remember thinking about killing them.” She stares at the bear in her hands, and her fingers tighten in its soft fur. “Sonia said there was a war, so…so I guess if I was…if I was queen, then of course, of course I killed people, but….”

It doesn’t make sense.

She was trying to save the world.

So much of it doesn’t make sense.

“I told Mukie I needed you,” Ryoko says instead, finally. It’s a newer memory, but it’s there all the same, and she’d said it – Junko, maybe, said it, but— “I was Junko, and I said I needed you.” She tries to meet the eyes of the bear who has been in exactly none of her recovered memories and asks, voice softening, head tilting to one side, “Why did I need you?”

Nothing but static and silence for a few moments.

Despite barely remembering her, Ryoko turns and sees Kyoko as if she’s actually there, lying back on her bed, a plush bear similar to but not quite the same as her Monokuma clasped to her chest. Kyoko isn’t even looking at it; she’s looking at the ceiling – and she’s wearing an outfit unlike anything Ryoko’s limited memory has her wearing – a short pencil skirt, a red blouse cut lower, a black jacket, and mismatched black and white gloves, her long lavender hair pulled back into a single ponytail tied back with a black ribbon.

She doesn’t know why she imagines this.

She doesn’t understand.

(But you do, don’t you?)

Then Kyoko sighs. “I’ve been trying to figure that out, too. Ever since I remembered Junko telling me that, I’ve been trying to figure out why she could possibly need me.”

Ryoko shifts, pushes herself up, and turns more fully to the Kyoko she imagines on her bed. She knows she isn’t there, but she can see her so clearly that she might as well be. Her brow furrows again, and without thinking, she sets the Monokuma plush back on the bedside table, runs her fingers through her hair, and slowly begins braiding it.

“So far,” Kyoko continues, “I’ve been more of an accessory to whatever she has planned. I follow the breadcrumbs she’s left for me, I collect the pieces, and I try to find the bigger picture.”

She hits a few snags and carefully untangles them. It would be easy to say that those are Mikan’s fault, but really, if she’s honest with herself, they’re just as much hers. She’d been enjoying herself, after all.

“Junko made some of those pieces infuriatingly hard to find.”

“But you found them.”

“But I found them.” The Kyoko who doesn’t exist but is laying on her bed shifts, props herself up on one elbow, and turns just enough to meet Ryoko’s eyes. “And do you know what I found?”

Ryoko reaches the end of her braid, glances about for something to tie it, and pauses before stealing the black ribbon from Kyoko’s hair and using it to tie her own braid in place. “I don’t remember,” she whispers. “I don’t remember a lot of things. I don’t know why I needed you.”

“I do.”

Ryoko’s breath catches in her throat.

“You needed me to make you whole.”

Ryoko blinks twice. What does that even mean?

“Did you know,” Kyoko continues, “that these plush bears have locator chips in them? As long as you have one of them and the other is turned on, you can find them from wherever you are. See, if I turn mine on, like so—” She presses a button embedded in her not-quite-Monokuma plush’s black eye, and the red slash of an eye glows like murder. “—you can find me. Or, if you turn yours on, I can find you.”

Ryoko’s gaze drifts back to her Monokuma. She stares at it. Blinks twice again. “How?”

“Reach into the red eye and find out?”

“Reach into—?” Ryoko echoes. But it’s glowing! Or…hers isn’t glowing. Not yet. So it should be fine if she just—

Ryoko reaches into the red eye. It looks like it should be plastic, but it’s not. That’s…that’s an illusion of some sort. She reaches through it, finds a knob, and gives it a sharp, sharp twist.

The illusion blinks twice and glows a deep crimson. Then a map appears out of the eye with a blinking red dot on it.

“Oh.”

“I know you asked me to find you,” Kyoko says, her voice soft, “but it might be safer for us to find each other.” She hesitates. “Somewhere on neutral ground.”

Ryoko turns back, startled, to the Kyoko on her bed, who now sits upright, her gloved hands on either side of her, pressing into the edge of the mattress. She meets Kyoko’s eyes and says, hushed, “We’re in a war, and you’re on the other side. You were…. Were you one of my captors?”

Without missing a beat, Kyoko replies, “I was the one who kept them from killing you.”

As she says it, two images flicker through Ryoko’s mind – Kyoko shoving herself between Junko and another girl with a long tongue and murderous scissors, to Kyoko’s detriment each time (the loss of a braid in the first; her hand stabbed near through in the second) – and she glances down, notes the white and black mismatched gloves on Kyoko’s hands, and finds herself saying, without realizing what it means, “Our most faithful knight.”

“My queen.”

Ryoko takes a sharp breath in, looks at the map, and then asks, “Do I need to turn mine on, too?”

“Only when you’re ready,” Kyoko answers. She leans down, tucks wisps of hair back out of Ryoko’s face, and then whispers in her ear, “Don’t let them know that you’re leaving. Don’t let us know where they’ve been keeping you.” Then she kisses her cheek fondly before tucking a finger under her chin and lifting so that their eyes just meet. “Understand?”

“Yes.” Ryoko drops her gaze, holds a hand to her cheek, and finds it still warm. “Kyoko?”

“Hm?”

“You….” Ryoko hesitates but forces herself to say it all the same. “You will find me, right? This isn’t some sort of trick?”

Her Kyoko smiles. “You’re the Ultimate Analyst, Ryoko. How could I ever trick you?”

Ryoko knows, with a certainty that she cannot explain, that this isn’t a trick, feels it in the pit of her stomach like a weight. Her brow furrows once more as her gaze drops again, because she knows something else, too. So she doesn’t even ask. “When I meet you,” she says, gentle, “tell me what happened to Yasuke.”

The Monokuma gives back nothing but static.

(Beneath that, she hears someone else say, Okay.)

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #matsushima #tw vomit #vomit tw

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aparticularbandit · 7 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Seven (II)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

TW for Vomit and Bare Description of Corpse Scent.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Day Seven (of a Fatal Captivity).

On the way to what Mikan referred to as the old school, Ryoko tells her everything she can remember about Yasuke. She tells her about the curve of his long blue-black hair, about how he’d always looked at her with such gentleness (even when he was mad at her! which she seems to think was quite often), about how his hair was super duper infinity soft, about how he’d been taller than she was but he’d always made her feel so much bigger than she was, about how he was such a slob in what he wore but that was okay because it meant she could see the skin of his chest—

Kaz groans before she can finish. “It sucks to hear ya goin’ on about this other dude, Miss Ryoko!” He runs a hand through his hair. “No guy wants ta hear about that!”

A deep flush brushes across Ryoko’s cheeks. “Sorry!” Her gaze drops to her hands, to the fingers that are all tangled together. “I didn’t mean to annoy you.”

“It’s okay.” Mikan reaches over and places a hand on hers. “I asked. I wanted to know.”

“Oh, sure, ya did.” Kaz rolls his eyes. “Order good ol’ Kaz ta take ya back ta the warzone. Make ‘im listen ta ya blabber on about some other dude. I see.”

Then the world shifts.

See, Ryoko and the others are riding in a huge mecha version of the little plush bear that Mikan gave her just yesterday. Which honestly adds a whole new realm to the idea of the stupid little bear. She’d thought it was just a stuffed animal that Mikan named Monokuma, but apparently he’s a whole big thing? Like not just the random name of a plush bear that she’s supposed to remember at some point, but some icon of the Resistance?

(At least, as far as Ryoko knows. She’s with the good guys, after all. There’s no way Monokuma’s, like, the Death Star.)

The control center of the giant Monokuma rests squarely behind his eyes, so what he sees, they see. It also means that whenever Kaz needs to make him shift one way or the other, they shift one way or the other. And every now and again, he presses a button – usually by accident, but not always – that sets the giant mecha to dancing.

It’s honestly been more than a little surprising to see what the world looks like now. The sky overhead is stained a deep red like blood after it’s dried, although Ryoko thinks that’s a result of the red slash of Monokuma’s left eye. She’s seen houses and what looks like hospitals as the Monokuma walks forward with its lumbering gait, and Mikan mentions as they pass them that Junko made sure to protect as many of the poor and sick when the war started.

That just cements Ryoko’s belief that they’re the good guys. Maybe they started the war – Fuyuhiko implied they did, after all – but if their queen made sure to get those most likely to be hurt somewhere safe before the soldiers went in, then…that’s something the good guys do. Mikan leading the hospitals, Teruteru feeding the crowds, Sonia’s entire country allying with them to provide as much as they need—

They wouldn’t have this many people here, hiding with them, being helped, if they were bad.

And this time, as Kaz presses the Monokuma Dance Button intentionally, he gestures Ryoko closer to the front. “Look,” he says, peering out and down at the world around them. “Look at all of them!”

Ryoko steps cautiously forward and peers out. They’re nearer to what looks like the bulk of the warzone; the buildings are cracked, broken, shuddering. She can’t help but look for the cathedral she saw in her dreams, but she doesn’t see it.

Instead, there, out in the ruins of the world that Ryoko once knew, is a crowd of people. They stand along the streets, on the rooftops (or what’s left of the rooftops), on the crumpled bits of debris scattered here and there; they stand in places she can’t see and doesn’t even notice until she catches the movement of them. Because none of them are standing still.

They’re dancing.

Just like the giant Monokuma.

“Who are they?” Ryoko asks, staring down at them, at the dance. “What are they doing?”

“They’re your people,” Mikan answers, “and they’re doing the dance you taught them – the one you taught all of us. It’s a celebration for you being back with us again.”

Ryoko stares at them, at the side to side, at the intermittent thrusting. “I…I taught them how to do this?” She turns to Mikan, her eyes wide. “I made this whole dance up?”

Mikan just stares back at her, dumbfounded.

“What?”

Kaz leans back, wraps one arm around the back of the leather chair next to him, and looks up at both of them. “We gotta show ya the movie, Miss Ryoko. It was your favorite.” He grins, pointed teeth so like those of the Junko in her dreams, but somehow less menacing. “I make some wicked popcorn.”

“I….” Ryoko’s brow furrows. “I don’t like popcorn. I don’t like the way the kernels get stuck in my teeth.” Of course, that would be one of the few good uses of her long, sharp fingernails; they’re perfectly equipped for picking that stuff out. Sure, they’re also perfectly equipped for making her gums bleed, too, but why should she worry about that?

And yet Kaz blinks twice, looks over at Mikan, and then glances back over his shoulder as though there’s something wrong with what she’s just said.

Ryoko grows cold. “What?” Immediately, she flails and steps backward, away from him, away from the eye. “Do you…do you like them, or something? It’s weird to not like popcorn! I-I-I’m sorry!”

And again, Mikan places that hand on her shoulder and murmurs, soft and gentle as anything, “Don’t be. You don’t need to like popcorn.”

“B-b-but Miss Junko—”

“Kaz can eat all of it,” Mikan continues as though Kaz hasn’t tried to say anything. “It’s fine.”

But Kaz keeps looking at Ryoko like it’s not fine, like it’s not normal, up until he meets her frightened, uncertain eyes. Then he rubs the back of his neck and shrugs. “Yeah,” he mutters, then seems to force himself to smile. “That’s fine, Miss Ryoko. Teruteru’ll make ya somethin’ great, probably. Not really movie food, but….” He shrugs again and grabs the controls. “Forget I said it.”

Ryoko doesn’t forget. It feels just like some other way she’s not measuring up to what she should be, to what they expect her to be. And although she can’t remember it exactly, can’t remember why she feels that way, she has a strong sense of déjà vu to this whole thing, as though there’s someone else – maybe even multiple someones! – who she’s disappointed before in exactly the same way.

She cowers beneath the weight of it all.

“If it’s empty,” Mikan says, hands on her hips and crouching down nearer to Kaz, “you should turn the guns off.”

Kaz grits his teeth, jaw working against itself. “Miss Junko told me ta leave ‘em goin’, and until she says otherwise, they’re gonna keep goin’.” He doesn’t even turn back. “No offense, Miss Ryoko, but you’re no good for this one.”

That flies right over Ryoko’s head.

“Guns?” Ryoko says instead. “What guns?” Her expression falls, and she turns to Mikan. “Better clothes aren’t worth getting shot—”

“We won’t get shot.” Mikan places a hand on Kaz’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Kaz here is an excellent pilot.” She turns away from him, misses the way he first grimaces and then beams with pride, and meets Ryoko’s eyes. “Particularly when he needs to be.” As Ryoko stares, Mikan’s grip tightens on Kaz’s shoulder. “Like now.”

“Ow ow ow ow! I got it, I got it!” Kaz bats at her hand and glares up at her. “If you’re so sure of me, why’d ya tell me ta turn the guns off?”

“I thought it would be safer, Kaz. You want to keep Ryoko safe, don’t you?”

“We’ll be safer if ya quit buggin’ me—”

Gunshots – rapid fire – and then bullets glance off the giant Monokuma’s hard outer shell. Ryoko lets out a squeal of fear and runs back to crouch down, hands over her ears, hiding in the back. “We’re gonna die!” She shivers. “I don’t wanna die!”

(Something inside her says that isn’t true. She ignores that.)

“We’re not gonna die, we’re gonna be just—” Kaz cuts himself off as the Monokuma shifts and shakes. He grinds his teeth together and doesn’t say anything else, too focused on his attempts at driving.

Ryoko huddles behind one of the leather chairs. This has nothing to do with her. Right? This has absolutely nothing to do with her. These people just think that she’s some leader with amnesia. Maybe she is! But that doesn’t mean that—

The shadow of someone crouching down in front of her causes Ryoko’s gaze to lift, and Mikan’s soft, bruise-colored eyes give her a gentle look. She reaches out, wraps her arms around Ryoko, and draws her gently against her. “It’s okay,” she croons, gently scratching along Ryoko’s back. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

It’s meant to be calming – and for the most part, it is – but there’s also something in the way Mikan’s voice speaks so insistently that makes it quietly terrifying. Less protective of her and more threatening to anyone who tries to hurt her.

Somehow, in that fierceness, Ryoko finds herself comforted.

Ryoko curls against Mikan, rests her head against her chest, and lets herself be held.

(She still shudders when there’s gunfire, but Mikan holds her closer, tighter. Before she realizes it, Mikan has unbraided her hair just so she can thread her fingers through it. And always, always that murmuring, “You’re okay. You’re okay,” until, eventually, she believes her.)

When they finally land, Mikan presses a kiss gentle as anything to Ryoko’s forehead. “See?” she murmurs, brushing Ryoko’s wavy hair back from her face, tucking her fingers under her chin, and gently lifting her face. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Ryoko nods and then tucks her face against the crook of Mikan’s neck. She closes her eyes, forces herself to breathe. “Thank you.”

“Always.”

There’s a few moments of just that comforting stillness before Kaz breaks it. “Uh. What’re…what’re ya doing?”

Ryoko’s breath catches in her throat. That’s a good question. What is she doing? This is…this isn’t—

“It isn’t what it looks like!” Ryoko exclaims all at once, pushing herself away from Mikan without another thought. She ignores Mikan’s hurt look as she scoots away, but she can’t as she stands and brushes the wrinkles from her skirt. Their eyes just meet; she presses her lips together, blushes, and looks away. “W-w-we’re…we stopped. That means we’re at the school, right?” She rushes over to the front of the control center to look through the Monokuma’s eyes, only to be stopped abruptly as Mikan grabs her sleeve.

It would be easy to slip out of her blazer and keep running forward, if not for the buttons holding it together. As it is, Ryoko starts forward, comes to a complete stop, and then trips backward, nearly landing with a painful jolt. She turns back to Mikan, hands clenched into fists and held up in front of her. “What did you do that for? Can’t I look?”

“Why don’t we go down together?”

Ryoko bites her lower lip. “To explore an old abandoned school? Do we…do we need to look for threats or something first?”

Mikan just smiles. “You’re here. There are no threats.”

That’s not….

Ryoko hates this, hates how much Mikan believes in her. She’s not who she thinks she is, even if Fuyuhiko is convinced she will be and has been – even if she might have been at one point. She’s not now. And she can’t just…she can’t just make there not be threats! She’s not some sort of super powerful being, or anything like that. She’s just a girl!

And yet none of them look at her like that. They all look at her like she’s something special, and it makes her…uncomfortable. Even Kaz just looks at her like she’s…like she’s something more than herself. As if anyone could be more than—

“Do you know where we’re going?” Ryoko asks quietly instead, not wanting to argue. This has nothing to do with her, after all. Not really.

Mikan just smiles. “I have a good idea.”

Ryoko stands in the ruins of the school with the strongest sense of déjà vu.

She’s been here before—

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

Wait, what, now?

Really?

Right now??

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: 284359579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

After She Taught The World Tragedy.

(Her Whole Life Has Been One, After All.)

“Everything’s ready, right?”

She doesn’t know why she’s asking. Of course, everything’s ready. More than even Mukie—

Day Seven (of a Fatal Captivity).

“Ryoko?”

She hears Mikan say her name, and her brow furrows. “Wait, I—”

Memory Downloading….

AFTER SHE TAUGHT THE WORLD TRAGEDY.

(HER WHOLE LIFE HAS BEEN ONE, AFTER ALL.)

She spins in her swivel chair, then kicks her feet up on the control panel. It’s covered with so many buttons and knobs; most of them don’t really do much of anything, but she likes the aesthetic of it. At least, as much as she likes anything. Besides, if someone else were to discover it before her plan kicks off (they won’t; she knows them all well enough to know that they won’t, which is…honestly the worst part. Kyoko, at least, should notice when she’s gone, when she’s slipped out of their shared bed, but…but she never has. Or if she has, she’s never said anything about it. She’s certainly never tried to follow her down here. That’s the thing about Kyoko Kirigiri: she has a blind spot, even if she pretends that she doesn’t)—

If someone were to discover it before her plan kicks off, they’d fiddle around with all of these buttons and never get anywhere.

She brushes her finger along a notebook detailing everything about the machine, then taps it twice with the tip of a red-painted, sharp fingernail. Byakuya will need this. She’ll pretend to mix it in with the story she gives Toko, if it gets to that point. As though it’s an accident, when really it’s all been meticulously planned.

It’s not like she needs all of these details. She’d created the machine, after all. Everything’s memorize.

Mukie doesn’t notice that either, so it’s not like Kyoko’s the real disappointment here.

(She really does deserve to die, doesn’t she? Can’t even pick up on these small, extremely significant details. She’s supposed to be the Ultimate Soldier! You’d think she’d notice this sort of thing!

Or believe that her sister, the Ultimate Analyst, the creator of the machine, wouldn’t need a stupid fucking notebook like this.

Stupid, stupid Mukuro. The biggest disappointment. Trusts her sister when she shouldn’t; doesn’t trust her sister when she should.

Idiot.)

“Are you ready?”

She laughs, loud and brash. “Yep! Ready and raring to go!” She leans forward in her sister’s face, smile twisting into a scowl. “And honestly, I’m bored of fucking waiting around. Chop chop. Let’s go.”

(It’s a lie.

She’s not ready.

She doesn’t want to do this.

Her friends are going to die. Again. It will be her fault. Again.

No one stops her. Why will no one stop her? She doesn’t want to do this. She doesn’t want to—)

She swallows as Mukie turns away. Sits there in the hidden chamber for a little while longer. Waits as Mukie brings the first of them and sets her in the first cradle.

(Sakura has to be first. Otherwise, she would take even Mukie down. Best to get the drop on her unaware.)

Then she moves upstairs.

To the garden.

To wait.

Kyoko will find her. She’s sure of that.

Kyoko will find her.

Day Seven (of a Fatal Captivity).

Mikan squeezes her hand, and Ryoko comes back to herself.

“Don’t look.”

“Don’t look at what?”

But as soon as the words are out of Ryoko’s mouth, the smell hits her. Immediately, she gags and tries to step back and away, but Mikan holds her near to her and doesn’t let her move back. “What is that?”

But Ryoko knows what it is. She shouldn’t. But the same thing that tells her to use Mikan’s nickname (even though she doesn’t), the same thing that gives her muscle memory for things to say and do even though she shouldn’t know any of that, it tells her now, strongly: there is a decomposing corpse near her.

“We have to walk past it,” Mikan says, giving Ryoko’s hand another squeeze. “Cover your mouth and your nose with your shirt, and you’ll be just fine. It’ll be fine. Okay?” As Ryoko obeys, raising her arm so that her shirt does as instructed, Mikan turns and meets her eyes. “And whatever you do, don’t look down.”

Ryoko nods. She focuses on Mikan and Mikan alone as she’s led past the corpse; she knows she’s being led past it because the sharp smell grows sharper, even through her shirt, to the point that she can barely breathe, that she takes in small breaths so as to try and avoid the stench that’s so thick she can taste it. When they make it through what appears to be the frame of a doorway, she drops Mikan’s hand, drags herself over to the nearest wall, and retches. Heaves. Nothing comes up, just bile, just emptiness, but it’s enough to get the taste of the scent out of her mouth, even if she can’t get the scent itself out of her nostrils. Then she wipes her mouth on her shirt.

Maybe this is what she deserves. For killing—

“Miki?”

“Y-y-y-yes?” Mikan’s eyes grow wide, frightened.

“I told you about Yasuke,” Ryoko says, running her fingers through her hair, avoiding Mikan’s eyes, “so will you tell me about Mukie?” She presses her lips together. “Fuyuhiko says I killed her, and I remember…I remember bits and pieces. But the memories don’t make sense. When we were in there,” she gestures to the room with the corpse, “I remembered that she was my sister.”

(She doesn’t think about the nails in the memory, how they’re the same as the nails on her hands that she hates; doesn’t think about the boots on her feet when she’d propped them up on the control panel, how they’re the same as the boots she’s wearing now; doesn’t think about how she’d wound strands of pink-tinted hair around her finger, how she’d smelled so strongly of blue raspberries.

And she is certainly not going to mention Kyoko to Mikan. Not right now. Not when she has no idea who that even is.)

“But…but in my earlier memories,” Ryoko says (and she doesn’t mention what those are because she’s still trying to understand them), “she’s just a…just a friend. Not my sister.”

Mikan’s eyes widen even more at that comment.

Immediately, Ryoko thinks she’s done something wrong. “I-I-I mean! M-m-maybe she was my sister? Even then? I don’t know.”

“I-I-I don’t want to tell you,” Mikan says, her gaze falling, “because I don’t…I don’t want to influence how you…how you remember things. If I color what you remember, then you’ll…you’ll feel differently about the memory, and you might…you might not….” Her voice trails off, and her brow furrows. “B-b-but I can…I can tell you what she was to us.” She tugs her lip between her teeth and nods. “While we find your room, I can…I can tell you that.”

Ryoko nods. “Okay.” She runs her fingers through her hair again. “Let’s…let’s do that, then.” Then she follows as Mikan continues to lead her into the school.

(Tidbits of understanding are better than nothing.)

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #kazuichi soda #mukuro ikusaba #matsushima #enogiri #and then despite the ship tag the following is not in the chapter herself but she is still a main so goes in the tag anyway #kyoko kirigiri #also the mecha monokuma and the people are doing the time warp #:)

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aparticularbandit · 4 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Nagito (IV)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Two Days From Now.

Nagito drops through the hole in the ground and does not look up to see Ryoko trying to follow him.

Luck, coming in clutch again.

His legs creak and crack with the impact, but he’s well enough to get to where he needs to go.

There’s tunnels under the whole world now, just like there were tunnels throughout the school. Most people call them sewers. That’s not what they are. He doesn’t use those. Most of the time. Not anymore. But other people do, thinking they’ll be kept safe there. It doesn’t work. There’s no real safe place in the world.

Not Future Foundation’s headquarters or safe houses.

Not the Horrors of Ultimate Despair’s current shelter.

They’re bunkers, that’s all, and they’re easily annihilated. If that was what he was after.

It’s not.

Nagito meets Izuru atop a rooftop not very far away. He takes the gun that is handed to him, checks the bullets, and then cocks his head to smile at the boy. “I can’t wait to see your true Talent on display. It must be so beautiful.”

Izuru just scoffs at him. “I wanted a front row seat. That’s all.”

“But if I need your help—”

“If she needs me, she’ll have me.” Izuru looks down at the setting unfolding before them, at Ryoko sitting with her feet dangling in the hole Nagito only just disappeared through, at Mikan hiding several feet away and staring at her. “I want Mitsuki here as much as you do.”

Nagito blinks. “Is that her name, then? She never told me.” He considers it, then laughs. “How does she spell it? Surely, you know!”

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #nagito komaeda #izuru kamukura #ryoko otonashi #mikan tsumiki #junkan #junko enoshima #otoshima #and then not appearing in this chapter but relevant to the fic:#kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #matsushima

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aparticularbandit · 5 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Eight (IV)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

TW for Potential Unreality Vibes.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Day Eight (of a Fatal Captivity).

“So you, um. You take a lot of pictures?” Ryoko asks as she glances around Mahiru’s room. It’s identical to hers and Mikan’s rooms, in that it’s set with a normal bed and dresser, and similar to Sonia’s, which was set up like theirs but with a much larger canopy bed and a small mat just next to it. But where Ryoko’s room was bare of any personality and Mikan’s was filled with various pieces of medical equipment and covered with pictures of horror movies, Mahiru’s has an additional large metal cabinet and long desk and is covered with pictures here, there, and everywhere.

Mahiru nods. “I have my own darkroom,” she says, gesturing to an additional door, “although I don’t use it very much anymore.” She sighs. “People just don’t appreciate those kinds of photos anymore, you know?” Then she grimaces. “Well. I guess you don’t.”

But you did once, Ryoko waits to hear her say. When Mahiru doesn’t say it, she feels unexpectedly warm. Her gaze flicks across the photos hanging on the walls, drawn to a collage of various pictures of the others she has met over the past few days. She catches Ibuki’s bright pinks and loud blues, as well as Mikan’s averting eyes and defensive posture, but more than anything else, she notices Hiyoko – dancing, laughing, sneering. Fuyuhiko is even there, standing with a girl who looks like she must be related to him (probably the sister he mentioned), and in the very center is a girl with wavy green hair who she hasn’t met. She turns to Mahiru, wanting to ask who that is (and when she’ll meet her).

But before she can (or as though cutting off the subject before it can even begin), Mahiru says, “I keep most of my supplies in here.” She pats the metal cabinet as she passes it, a sharp sound that nearly causes Ryoko to flinch. “But you’ll want my photo albums.” Her voice trails off as she yanks open the top drawer of her bedside table. “Here.” She grabs a huge binder with a soft cover out of the drawer and sets it on her bed. “Sheesh, I was so dumb for this,” she says as the binder lands with a heavy thunk. Then she turns to Ryoko. “You don’t have to sit here, if it bothers you. This thing’s just heavy.”

Ryoko nods. Her lips press together as she considers it for a moment. Then she asks, “Were you…the Ultimate Photographer?”

“Yep!” Mahiru smiles awkwardly and clasps her hands behind her back. “Couldn’t hide that one from you, huh?” She grimaces. “Not that I was trying, or anything.”

“Don’t think you could even if you were.”

That doesn’t sound like her. Ryoko is aware of that, even as the words come out. It doesn’t sound like her. She doesn’t talk like that. It’s off. Wrong.

But Mahiru doesn’t even notice.

Instead, Mahiru chuckles and scratches her chin with a singular finger. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Can’t get anything past you.” Then she flips the binder open to the first page and taps the plastic with one hand. “These aren’t originals; they’re all digital copies, but I….” She sighs, gaze running across the pictures, and almost smiles again. “I wanted to be able to see us again. From before, you know? I mean, we had to do all of this, but….” Her gaze lifts and focuses, briefly, on the collage on the opposite wall. “But it’s nice to look back. To see how it was.”

As Ryoko hesitantly sits on the mattress, Mahiru turns the binder to face her. “I know, I know, you’re not going to recognize all of us. Hey, even I don’t recognize all of us sometimes! We look so different.” She taps the white-haired boy off to the corner of one photo. “Can you believe that’s Nagito?”

Looking at his fluffy white hair, his bright jade green eyes, and his enticing smile, Ryoko can see something of the Nagito she’d met in that boy. But in the picture, he looks happier. Well-adjusted. Settled. Like a normal human being, almost. But her eyes widen as she catches sight of a face that looks familiar but not quite so. “That’s….” Her brow furrows. “Isn’t that—”

“Hm?” Mahiru follows Ryoko’s gaze. “Oh. That’s Chiaki. Or we thought it was. Why?” She stares at Ryoko. “Do you recognize her?”

Ryoko blinks twice. Nanashi-kun, she thinks. That’s why something felt wrong. “I thought that was Chicharin,” she murmurs. Her head tilts to one side, and she very nearly smiles. “They look an awful lot like her.”

“Chicharin?” Mahiru echoes. Then she snaps her fingers. “That’s how you figured them out so quickly! It’s because you knew the original!”

But Ryoko is only halfway paying attention. She brushes a fingertip along the picture and then taps the one she calls Nanashi with it. “She hated it when I called her that,” she says, voice low. Her eyes narrow in confusion. “What was her Ultimate? Chiaki’s, I mean.” She can guess now what Nanashi’s must have been.

“The Ultimate Gamer.”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

The blinker sets, flashing, for more than a few moments.

It feels like Mahiru is frozen.

Everything is frozen.

But she isn’t.

She doesn’t even know where the blinker comes from.

It isn’t like it’s actually there in space in front of her. It isn’t like it actually exists. It just sits in the back of her mind.

Normally, when she tries to remember something, her brain itches uncontrollably. Whatever she tries to remember, it’s just out of reach, and her legs get stuck in the mud, and there’s an entire swamp, and the mosquitos bite at her skin, and everything itches, and then someone sets the swamp on fire, which doesn’t even make any sense, since a swamp is all watery and muddy, both things which kill fires! But it doesn’t matter, because someone sets the swamp on fire, and all of the greenery lights up, and then the swamp starts to boil, and then she itches and she’s on fire and—

But when a memory unlocked – which is maybe the best way to put it, like somehow she’s gotten past the obligatory part of the game where she can access this memory, or maybe she’s collected something that opens it from the menu – it’s like….

Like a puzzle piece slotting into place.

….

Sometimes.

It’s like something clicks, and there’s something in the back of her mind that sets up an alarm, a firework, a FLARE, suddenly alerting her to its existence.

And she can see what it is then or she can wait until later or she can wait until never, except that….

Except that something keeps keeping her from waiting until never.

So the blinking line, like the cursor in a word document, isn’t really real.

It’s just there.

In the back of her mind.

Waiting.

Expectant.

She has a memory unlocked.

Does she want to continue?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: 28439579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

Not So Long Ago.

Before The Tragedies, But Not By Much.

(Sometimes You Pretend Your Life Isn’t A Tragedy.)

(Sometimes You Think You Can Stop This Train.)

(Do You See The Light At The End Of The Tunnel?)

(Maybe That’s The Only Way To Escape Your Final Tragedy.)

(Don’t Think Like That.)

“Junko Enoshima.”

The person who looks like but isn’t Chiaki cradles her name on their tongue.

It’s wrong, that voice.

Chiaki was a warm alto, too, but this is just off. A little too sleepy, maybe.

Of course, Chiaki had never known her as Junko, had only ever known her as Ryoko, so maybe it’s the not knowing that makes it sound off. There was always a hint of annoyance when Chiaki talked to her, suppressed under a great deal of affection, like she was some sort of hippity-hoppity bunny who would flit from one thing to the next – maybe more a hummingbird than a bunny, unable to really sit still except when she’s—

“Don’t you recognize me?”

The person who looks like but isn’t Chiaki finally glances up from her Game Girl Advance, even though her fingers keep flicking, keep moving. She doesn’t even have to look at the game to keep going; she must have the whole thing memorized. Or maybe she’s just gotten so good at games that she’s like her now, able to see exactly where the game is leading her solely by sound alone.

Or maybe not.

For the briefest of seconds, that person’s eyes flick to the game before returning to her. “I don’t know you, I think.”

She stretches out her legs in front of her, sets her hands on the park bench beneath them, and looks up at the clouds in the sky. Then she sighs. “I wouldn’t recognize me either, I guess.” She twirls a strand of soft pink hair around her finger and glances over to whoever this other person is. “Chicharin, I saw you die. Do you really think you could forget me?”

“You’re not Mukuro, I don’t think,” this imposter says. But she pauses her game and sets it, gently, in her lap. “Unless you’re playing some sort of game?”

The memory flickers.

That word – game – echoes and distorts and twists and becomes static.

If this were a book, she could see it switching to Game (or GAME, even, when it gets louder), as though it is something….

Something ELSE.

(She sees Mukuro dressed as Junko cold in her arms.)

The reverberations flicker more like flame than like static and she covers her ears and—

She snickers. “Life is a game, Chicharin. You taught me that, remember? We had a nice long—”

“Ryoko.” The imposter’s eyes narrow as she examines her. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead, too?”

“They dressed your body up like mine and then someone – you, I suppose – took over Chicharin’s spot. What a fucking parasite you are.” She grins, her teeth sharp as a piranha’s, seeking something to devour. “Now tell me. Who are you?” When she rubs her forefinger along the inseam of her thumb, it showcases how sharp she’s sharpened it. Her beautiful, beautiful bear claws. A rose’s thorns. “And don’t squelch on the details, mmk? Because I loved Chicharin. And you?” Her eyes narrow, and she glares up at her. “You’re a fucking shit imitation.”

MEMORY UNLOCKED.

CONTINUE?

YES | NO

Memory #??? Found.

Password: 284539579875

Memory #??? Unlocked.

Memory Downloading….

Between The Named Tragedies.

(When They Pretended Your Tragedy Would Not Consume Them.)

(When Your Horrors Knew That It Would.)

(They Didn’t Know The Half Of It.)

“My beautiful, beautiful Nanashi-kun.”

She runs her fingers along the curve of their jaw and lifts their chin so they can look up at her. Buried within those grey, grey eyes rests a spark of her own deep blood red, the color she hates most in all the world. It looks too much like hope. She runs her fingers through their long dark hair, lips curving in a grin as they take her hand and press a kiss just to the inside of her wrist, just over her pulse.

A discarded mask rests on the edge of her bed, right where they’d discarded it before they knelt before her. She doesn’t look at it anymore; something about Chiaki’s skin, devoid of her bright eyes, terrifies her.

(This is not the Game she was meant to play.)

Day Eight (of a Fatal Captivity).

“Nanashi-kun,” Ryoko whispers, her voice a hush, “is the Ultimate Imposter?”

“Oh! So you remember!” Mahiru brightens. “Junko always called them that, but no one else did. Usually we just call them by whoever they’re impersonating. It helps them, I think.”

Ryoko’s eyes widen in understanding. “Nanashi…that means nameless. Junko named them nameless?”

Mahiru makes a tsking noise. “It’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?” She shrugs. “I think she just liked having something she could finally name all on her own. Maybe she played around with it a bit before settling on that one. I don’t know. It’s not like she ever told us her thought process.”

While Ryoko looks through the next few pages in the big binder (and tries not to ache whenever she sees not Chiaki smiling out at her), Mahiru ruffles in one of her other drawers before making a loud, “Ah!” She beams when she holds out a much smaller binder. “Here,” she says, handing it over to Ryoko. “So you can go through them whenever you want. There’s not as many in this one, but…it should help.” She takes Ryoko’s hand in her own and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Photos are like memories, you know – a single, permanent snapshot of the past. That’s why I never delete any of them.” Her gaze drops. “Even if it’s painful, I never want to forget.”

“Thank you,” Ryoko whispers, although that seems empty to say after what feels like such a sacred explanation. “You’re so….” She struggles with the words. “You’re so kind, Mahiru-senpai.” She doesn’t catch it until after she’s said it, catches it only as Mahiru’s eyes widen in astonishment, as a blush spreads across her freckled cheeks. “I-I-I’m sorry if I—”

“N-no, you’re fine!” Mahiru grins easy, but the light doesn’t reach her bloody eyes. “It’s just nice to hear you say that. I always liked when Junko called me that.”

Ryoko tugs her bottom lip between her teeth and glances down to the binder instead, choosing not to say anything else. She doesn’t know what she should say to that. There’s nothing.

(And she can’t help but feel uncomfortable.)

Eventually, Ryoko returns to her room with the photobook tucked under her arm. She glances back to the common area just long enough to make sure that Nagito is gone (he is) and then pauses near Mikan’s door before continuing on. Mikan doesn’t want to see her anyway, and she doesn’t think she’d be particularly thrilled about going through old photos with her. Not when the photos are all filled with her beloved Junko and no Ryoko at all.

She doesn’t understand how all of these people – generally very kind people – are so enthralled with Junko when, as Ryoko understands her, she’s…unequivocally bad. She’d killed people. Or, at least, she’d stood by while other people were killed, one of whom was her own sister, and then apologized for that one after the fact. Even in a war, she can’t imagine that good people would do that. It seems a bit like…a bit like torture.

Ryoko doesn’t get it.

When she makes it back to her room, Ryoko collapses face first onto her bed and lets out a groan. The pictures have been good, she can’t deny that, but otherwise? Today’s been shit. Fighting with Mikan? Horrible. That conversation with Nagito? Terrifying. Ugh. She rolls over onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, then sets the photobook onto her bedside table.

The black-and-white plush bear stares at her from where she’d left it against her pillow, and Ryoko sticks her tongue out at it. “I have a feeling,” she says, taking the bear in her hand and glaring down at it, “that you suck, too.” She shakes it a few times and then sighs, flopping against her pillow. “And you could have been so much cooler. I don’t see what they—”

“Junko?”

Sharp static crackles through the plush bear, and Ryoko startles. She throws the bear to the other side of the bed and scoots away from it.

The bear bounces once, twice, but remains on the bed, just at its tip end. “Junko?” it says again, speaking in a voice that Ryoko doesn’t recognize. “Is that you?”

Ryoko stares at the bear, unsure. This doesn’t feel like a memory gone wrong. It doesn’t…it doesn’t feel like anything, really, now that the shock has worn off a bit. She crawls closer to it.

More static. Then, finally, “Are you even there, or am I just…?” The voice fades away, soft and broken.

Ryoko pokes the bear. Once. Twice. It doesn’t say anything more, but she can still hear the faintly crackling static, just like she did before. Eventually, she picks it up again. “I’m Ryoko,” she tells the bear or whatever voice is coming from it, “and I’m sick of everyone calling me Junko when that’s not me. It’s not me. So don’t…don’t call me that.” She stares at the bear, as though daring it to speak again. “Don’t call me that.”

For a moment, the bear is silent, and then that voice cuts through again, hesitant. “Ryoko?” A pause, then, “Ryoko Otonashi?”

“Yes!”

Ryoko can’t stop the excitement immediate in her voice. Whoever this is, they recognize her! They know her! Her, not…not just Junko. But then, Nagito knew her name, too, and that hadn’t mean he knew her. That thought quiets her enthusiasm, and she settles. She sets the bear back on the bed and then plops down on her stomach in front of it, propping her chin in her hands. “Yes, yes, this is Ryoko Otonashi! Who’re you? Do I know you? You know me, right? I mean, you know my name! But I guess that doesn’t really mean much, does it? Mahiru knew my name, and Nagito knew my name, so maybe…maybe you just know it, but you don’t know me.” She sighs. “Please tell me we’ve at least met.”

“Trust me, I met you.”

Ryoko’s eyes widen. “Really?”

There’s a huff on the other end, as though someone – whoever this other person is – is exasperated with her. “This is Kyoko Kirgiri,” the voice on the other end says. “Do you remember me?”

Ryoko stares at the plush bear. Blinks twice. The name sounds familiar, but she can’t recall exactly where she’s heard it before. (Maybe she hasn’t heard it at all.) “No,” she says, hesitant, “but I don’t really remember much of anything.” She scrunches her nose. “Something happened. Sonia said these people held me captive and stole my memories, but Mikan says I should get them back eventually. I’ve been getting some of them back – a lot in waves, most of the time, but sometimes something happens, and it’s like…it’s like something slots into place, you know?” She kicks her legs a few times, then frowns. “You probably don’t know, do you, Kyokyo?”

Silence on the other end.

A long, unbroken silence, save for the static.

“Kyokyo?” Ryoko asks again. “You still there? Is this about the name? I know that some people don’t really like it when I rename them, but you’re Kyokyo, you know? It fits better—”

“I can’t talk now, Ryoko,” Kyoko cuts her off suddenly. She sounds muffled. “They can’t know that I’ve….” She stops, her voice trailing off. Then she sighs. “We’ll talk again soon, okay?”

Ryoko nods before remembering that Kyoko can’t see that. “Sure! It’s nice to have a friend! I mean, one that’s not obsessed with Junko.” She stares at the black-and-white bear. “Even if you are stuck in a teddy bear.”

“A Monokuma,” Kyoko corrects.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. A Monokuma. That’s what Mikan called it, too.” Ryoko rolls her eyes. “We have a huge mecha one of those, too. Is he, like, a new fad I forgot about or something? You’d tell me if he was, right? They don’t tell me anything here.”

“Or something.”

Then the static cuts off, abrupt.

Ryoko continues to stare at the bear. She pushes him. “Maybe you’re not a busted up piece of shit after all,” she muses. Then she gathers him into her arms, sets him on her bedside table just atop the photobook, and curls up on her side, staring at him. That said, she can’t quite get comfortable. It feels like something’s missing – like someone’s missing, maybe.

A thought.

Ryoko pushes herself out of her bed, steps carefully out of her room, and creeps down the hallway.

Mikan’s room isn’t exactly next to hers, but it’s close. She thinks that’s good, actually. Somehow, she doesn’t think she’d want Mikan next door, but she doesn’t know exactly why. (Although she has a few guesses.)

Still.

Ryoko takes a deep breath, stills herself, and then presses a hand on Mikan’s door, only to find that not only is it unlocked, but it’s actually cracked the slightest bit open. She slips in through the sliver of light that the hallway affords, and although Mikan makes a noise of displeasure, she doesn’t say anything more. The closer she gets, the more Ryoko realizes that Mikan must not be awake, so she’s careful not to upset her.

“I’m sorry,” Ryoko murmurs, staring at her. Her brow furrows. “I don’t hate you. I just….”

Mikan can’t hear any of this, or if she can, she’s not paying attention. That should make it easier, but it doesn’t. Besides, words aren’t always the best way to express caring about someone. Ryoko could tell Mikan she doesn’t hate her a million times – until she’s blue in the face, even! – but something tells her that won’t matter as much in this moment as what she does.

So – just as Mikan had all those days ago – Ryoko gently – gently, gently – slips into bed next to her.

If this were a romance novel, it would be nice to say that Ryoko just fits there against Mikan, but it isn’t entirely true. Point of fact, it’s made worse by the fact that as soon as Ryoko sets any weight next to Mikan at all, the other girl wakes up with a startled “!!!!”, breathing heavy, eyes searching the darkness next to her.

“It’s okay!” Ryoko says, hands out in front of her, near defensive. “It’s just me! It’s just me, Miki!”

All at once, Mikan settles. “What did….” She hesitates, breathes in, and meets Ryoko’s eyes, searching them. “What did you call me?”

Ryoko’s brows furrow. She considers it. “Miki,” she says, as Mikan shifts closer to her. Her gaze drops, and her face flushes. “I called you—”

Mikan kisses her.

For a moment, Ryoko doesn’t realize what’s happening. (It’s nice. Whatever it is, she knows that it’s nice.) Then she presses her hands on Mikan’s shoulders and pushes her away, eyes wide, panicked. “What was…what was that?”

“I-I-I’m s-s-sorry!” Mikan squeaks out, eyes just as wide and panicked as Ryoko’s are. “I-I-I thought you were…I thought….” She doesn’t say it, eyes dropping, but Ryoko knows what she’s thinking, what she means. Mikan thought she was Junko. That’s all. “I thought that was why you came back,” she says, voice soft. “I-I-I’m s-s-sorry. Please, please forgive me!” Her head bows, eyes tightly shut, and her hands clasp together in her lap.

Ryoko doesn’t know what to say. Her first kiss! Well. Probably not her first kiss, if Mikan is to be believed (or if what she thinks happened while she was passed out is an indication), and if Ryoko’s really honest with herself, it’s probably not her first kiss anyway, because Yasuke, even if she can’t remember that. But! That’s the point! It’s the first kiss she can remember!

Maybe, if she hadn’t been so startled, it would have been better.

….

Not that she’s going to try that again anytime soon! That wouldn’t be fair to Mikan. She’s not like that!

But Ryoko still finds herself reaching up and brushing her hand gentle through Mikan’s bruise purple hair. It’s soft now that it’s clean, and Mikan smells softly of grapes, of wine. (She could get drunk on her, she thinks.) “I forgive you,” she murmurs, and when Mikan glances back up at her, she gives her the softest of smiles. “Although I think…I think I should be asking for your forgiveness, Miki. I was kind of…kind of horrible to you earlier, and I’m…I’m sorry.” She bows her head just like Mikan did. “Please forgive me.”

“O-o-of…of course!” Mikan lifts Ryoko’s chin gently with one finger and meets her eyes. “I will always forgive you, Ryoko. Always.”

Ryoko nods, uncertain. She looks away. “Is it…is it okay if…would you…would you mind if I…if I stay with you?” Her brow furrows with confusion. “I feel like I’m supposed to be sleeping with someone, and I can’t remember who, and you kept napping with me, so I thought…I thought you wouldn’t…you wouldn’t mind?” Her lips press together in a thin line, and she shakes her head. “I…I get it if you don’t, though, after—”

“Y-y-yes!” Mikan squeaks out. Then she takes Ryoko’s hand in hers. “I-I-I mean, no. I don’t! Mind!” She winces, blushing as Ryoko lifts her gaze to meet hers again, and interlaces their fingers together. “Please stay with me!”

Ryoko giggles in fits and starts. She can’t help herself; the situation feels so absurd. Almost as though she’s done this before (and maybe she has, maybe that’s why she woke up like this earlier). She gingerly wraps her arms around Mikan’s waist and rests her head on her chest. “Is this…is this okay?”

“Mmmm,” Mikan purrs.

Ryoko closes her eyes. She forces herself to relax. (Mikan is so soft.) This is okay, after all. It is. Mikan said that it is. That makes it okay.

That makes it—

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mahiru koizumi #ultimate imposter #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #mikan tsumiki #junkan #matsushima #tw unreality #unreality tw #THIS CHAPTER HAS /EVERYTHING/!#:D

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aparticularbandit · 5 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Eight (III)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Book One

Day Eight (of a Fatal Captivity).

Ryoko wraps her arms around herself and shivers. She hadn’t realized just how chilly the hideout was before now; before this, she’d mostly been in Sonia’s blazer, and before that, she was in the hospital gown and had significantly more things to worry about than whether she was cold or not. Already she regrets leaving Mikan’s room without her sweater, but she doesn’t think she can go back for it right now. Of course, she could go back to her own room and pick out another sweater, but the idea of going through all of the clothes Junko left for her after whatever happened between Junko and Mikan while she was passed out—

This time, when Ryoko shivers, it has nothing to do with the cold.

No, Ryoko doesn’t want to go to her room. She doesn’t want to go anywhere that feels like it’s filled with someone who not has not only threatened to devour her but also can reclaim—

Ryoko forces herself to stop thinking about that because the more she tries to make sense of it, the more nauseous she feels. She and Junko are one and the same; Junko told her that much in her letter. But they’re also not the same; Junko told her that, too. Which doesn’t make any sense, but it does.

Somehow.

With nothing better to do, Ryoko makes her way back to the commons area she’d wandered to a couple days ago, where she’d overheard some of the…. What had Mahiru called them? Horrors? (Which certainly does not make her think she’s on the good side of this war, but that’s beside the point. She’s not thinking about that.) She’s making her way (downtown) to the area where she overheard them discussing whether or not it was right for Mikan to save her, where it felt like they’d decided that it was bad for Mikan to save her actually, until Fuyuhiko stepped in and that white-haired boy showed up. What was his name? Nagi…something?

To her surprise, Ryoko finds that boy – Nagito, she remembers when she sees him – lounging on one of the sofas, a remote control in his hand, flicking through channels and finding nothing but static. “Just my luck,” he muses forlornly (and Ryoko remembers reading a nearly identical phrase somewhere else). “Nothing’s on.” He turns the television off and then, without looking back, says, “Ryoko-chan? Are you here for our little chat?”

Ryoko startles, squeaks like Mikan would, and then says, “N-n-no! I was just—”

“Bored?” Nagito glances over the back of the couch. “I believe I can help with that!” Then he meets her eyes and chuckles as though he’s made a joke. He gives her a closed-eyed smile and then pats the spot next to him. “I have been waiting for you.”

“Waiting…for me?”

Ryoko remembers.

Of all the Horrors, Nagito alone was left a message from Junko, one he’d just found while exploring the school where she’d been held captive. Maybe it could have been for anyone who found it, but….

No.

It would have been specifically for him.

Junko would have known that Nagito would find it, that he alone of the Horrors would find her message, in the same way that she knew what Ryoko’s test would be.

(Funny, how it only took one simple test to make Ryoko believe so completely in Junko’s abilities – ones that she, too, should have, if she would only test them out. But something within her is terrified to do that. If her memories have taught her anything, it’s that that sort of ability – that sort of Talent – isn’t always a good thing.)

“Did I….” Ryoko hates that admittance, but after the conversation with Fuyuhiko and the letter from Junko herself and what just happened with Mikan, she can’t really keep denying it anymore, can she? Still, she clings to the differences between them, clings to herself as a separate person, and corrects herself. “Did Junko tell you to talk to me?”

“Not in so many words.” Nagito pats the seat next to him again. “I know you have questions, Ryoko-chan. Questions no one else will answer.”

Ryoko presses her lips together and nods, more to herself than to him. She gathers her strength. “And you’ll tell me?” she asks as she sits next to him on the couch. “You’ll tell me what I want to know?”

Nagito shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m relying on my luck here,” he says, tapping the side of his nose twice, “and then seeing how that goes.”

“Is that your Talent?” Ryoko asks, head tilting curiously to one side as she scoots away from him. “Luck?” She curls into the opposite arm of the couch and tucks her feet underneath her. “Sounds kind of useless.”

“It certainly is a waste of a Talent,” Nagito answers with a sigh. His gaze drops, unfocused. “I’ve never thought it was as great as, say, Mikan’s Talent. Ultimate Nurse – how marvelous! Someone able to spread hope to the whole world, just by healing the unhealthy! Or even Yasuke’s Talent – Ultimate Neurologist! You know, if he’d ever been able to complete his research into memory, then….” His voice trails off. “But then I shouldn’t say anything about him. I’ve heard that could cause you some unfortunate problems.”

Ryoko finds herself leaning forward as Yasuke is mentioned but doesn’t notice how much closer she’s gotten until Nagito glances up at her and stops talking. She starts and draws back, away from him, into the same arm she’d curled against before. “You know Yasuke?”

Nagito shakes his head. “Unfortunately not, although Junko told me a bit about him in her message. Most important, she said you knew what happened to him. Do you remember any of that?”

“N-n-no!” Ryoko’s eyes widen. Then her face immediately falls. She reaches for it in her mind – if she knows what happened to Yasuke and she already remembers him, then she should be able to remember that – but her mind skips straight past the itching stage and immediately into the flames on the side of her face phase. “Ah!” She winces, hands moving to either side of her head.

“Here. Let me.”

Before Ryoko even realizes what he’s doing, Nagito scoots closer to her and place his ice cold hand across her forehead. At his touch, the fire instantly ceases. “That better?”

Ryoko blinks twice. She searches about in her head for more memories of Yasuke, and though she still doesn’t find them, the pain of reaching for what she cannot grasp has completely disappeared. “How…how are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

Ryoko’s brow furrows as she tries to think of the best way to explain it. “When I…when I try to remember something and can’t, my brain itches. Or hurts. Or catches on fire.” That doesn’t sound right, but she can’t think of any better way to put it. “That sounds stupid. But it’s true! Except you….” She glances up and meets his jade grey eyes, catching not even the hint of red within them. “I tried to remember you, and that didn’t happen, and right now…you’re making it stop. How are you doing that?”

“I don’t know!” Nagito chuckles pleasantly, eyes closing with his own amusement. “Just lucky, I guess!” His eyes open, peering at her curiously as he removes his hand. “Now let’s test this. Do you still feel better?”

Ryoko waits for the pain to return, but there’s nothing. She nods. “The pain’s completely gone! That’s amazing! Maybe you are a doctor! Or…or something!”

Of course, Ryoko doesn’t try to reach for any new memories again. It doesn’t seem to actually help when she does; in fact, it only seems to cause her pain or discomfort, no matter how temporary those feelings might be. She also doesn’t tell Nagito any of that. Something tells her that if she did, he’d want her to push just to see how far his sphere of influence goes.

Not worth it.

Still – at her words, Nagito lets out an awkward little hah and rubs the back of his neck. “That’s good. I hoped that would help.” Then he meets her eyes again. “But surely you don’t just want to ask me about my Talent, do you? Yasuke is outside of what I can tell you, but about anything else, I should be able to help you.” He smiles, but there’s something uncomfortable to it, and his eyes twinkle – less like Jolly Old Saint Nick and more like…like…like a gambler, when he’s found out the secret trick to a carnival game. Except that Ryoko doesn’t know what the game is, and so she can’t know what the trick is either.

Ryoko tries to organize her thoughts. Sonia said she was a queen of some sort and that she’d been held captive after she’d accomplished a final battle meant to end and win the war. But from what she’s seen, the war hasn’t ended, and if it hasn’t ended, then they haven’t won. Junko said that…that she – Ryoko – had been out previously, but that it had been a couple years since then. And then Fuyuhiko had mentioned that she’d killed her sister – and then Ryoko had remembered crying over Mukie dead in her arms and apologizing to her as she did. More than that, she’d remembered taunting another girl who was about to die and not saving her because it was part of some game, or some sort of show, and she’d…she’d been happy about the girl dying.

“Nagito….” Ryoko hesitates, trying to formulate the question she’s trying to ask, but unsure how to ask it. She swallows and finally says, “Was Junko – am I – a…a good person?”

Nagito gives her a long look and takes her in, eyes sweeping from the top of her head to her knees where her legs are tucked up under her. He’s not undressing her, necessarily; Ryoko doesn’t get that sense from him. And yet, she somehow still feels completely exposed beneath his examining gaze. His head tilts to one side, just resting on his long fingertips, and he says, “I may not be the person you want to ask that. Unlike ever other lost lamb here, I was never in love with Junko. I used her for a purpose, and she used me for a similar one. Same methods, different goal.”

“Is that why they call you the fool?”

Nagito’s eyes widen. “Huh. Somehow, I’m not surprised you heard that one.” Another chuckle, shorter this time, biting, bitter. “Junko never thought I was a fool.” He hunches forward, hands gathered into his lap. “Ask me again.”

Ryoko considers her words again, wonders why Nagito wanted her to ask again, and repeats, “Was Junko a good person?”

Nagito holds her gaze. “No,” he says, “she was not.”

Ryoko nods, suddenly numb, and her gaze drops. “Ah.”

“You, however,” Nagito continues as though he’d never finished, “are something else entirely.”

Ryoko glances up to find Nagito staring at her, his eyes full of the same glee she’d felt in her memory when that girl died. It is less than comforting. And yet, she can’t help but ask, “W-w-what do you mean? I’m just…I’m just gonna be her in the end, aren’t I? When all my memories come back?” Her eyes drop again, in part because she doesn’t want to look at the maniacal way Nagito is looking at her and in part because she’s afraid. Junko told her to figure out how to kill her, but....

From everything Ryoko understands of the person she was before she lost her memories, she must have already planned all of this out in advance. If that’s true, then what hope does she have of killing Junko? Does she even want to do that, if she and Junko are the same person?

How do you kill a part of yourself without killing you?

“Ah ah ah.” Nagito grabs Ryoko’s chin and tilts her head back. “You’re falling into despair, Ryoko-chan, and if you do that, well, then we really are sunk.”

At his touch, Ryoko jerks back. “What are you—”

But Nagito holds on all the tighter. “If you give in to your despair, then you’ll be just like her, Ryoko.” A slow smile spreads across Nagito’s face, dark and twisted. “Overcome your Ultimate Despair, and you could become the Ultimate—”

Ryoko kicks him in the stomach.

Funny thing, how despair can disappear in the need for self-preservation.

As Nagito doubles over, cackling, and drops his grip on her chin, his arms wrapping around his stomach, Ryoko grabs the arm of the couch behind her and then slips up and over it. Not the best way to get off the couch, but at least it gets her away from him. Then she sprints back down the hallway, planning to return to her room up until the moment that she passes by Mahiru’s room and finds Mahiru opening her door.

Mahiru catches Ryoko’s panicked look and grabs her wrist. “C’mon,” she says, tugging her inside her room. Then she glances both ways down the hallway, catches sight of Nagito and his cackling, and groans. “Sheesh, you were talking to that guy?” She shuts the door behind them and locks it. “No wonder you’re….”

“He’s crazy.” Ryoko hunches forward, hands on her knees, breathing heavily. “Why is he even here?”

“Junko always had a plan for him,” Mahiru says with a shrug, “and….” The corners of her lips curves the slightest bit. “He didn’t used to be so bad.” Then she takes Ryoko’s hand in her own and gives it a gentle, comforting squeeze. “C’mon. I have something to show you, remember?”

“R-r-right.” Ryoko glances over her shoulder, back at the door, but she doesn’t hear that fool running after her, even though his maniacal laughter echoes unpleasantly in her head. She shudders once and then turns back to Mahiru. It’s safe in here. She has to believe that.

(Nagito said he wasn’t like the rest of them, after all. If he isn’t safe, that means the rest of them are.)

((Ryoko knows this is a lie, but she wants so much for it to be true that she pretends that it is.))

Now.

Nagito holds a hand against his stomach, just where Ryoko kicked him, and cackles.

Perfect.

Marvelous!

Someone teetering just on the edge of despair and yet still clinging to enough hope to not give in. She’s exactly the way Junko said she would be! He has no idea how much she’s remembered – or even what she’s remembered – but that she can hold onto the possibility of her own goodness in spite of all that?

It would be beautiful to see if Ryoko collapses under the weight of who she was when everything comes rushing back.

If she’s anything like Junko, unfortunately, she will. With the same glorious purpose as a star bursting into supernova, with the same broken horizon as it drops under its own weight and becomes a black hole, devouring anything and everything that gets too close.

But then, that’s the gamble their fearless leader made, isn’t it?

Funny, for Junko to put so much hope in luck, when from his understanding she has less of it than any other human being he’s ever met. He has a mix of good and bad luck; Makoto seems to only have good luck (and of a sort that’s good for everyone involved, despite the murders of his other classmates); but Junko? No good luck. No bad luck.

Only plans within plans within plans.

Nagito lets out a sigh, stomach still contorted with pain, and then presses his hands into the couch cushion and pushes himself up. He’s spent enough time here. She came to him, just like Junko said she would, and they had a nice little discussion, just like Junko wanted. Time to move on.

What’s next?

Oh.

Right.

Him.

Again.

Ugh.

Well. With his luck and Junko’s planning—

Hah! Hah!

With their powers combined, as their fearless leader might have said!

(And hopefully will never, ever say again.)

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #matsushima #nagito komaeda #mahiru koizumi #and then characters/ships not appearing in the chapter but important to the fic/series:#mikan tsumiki #junkan #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri

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aparticularbandit · 5 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Eight (II)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

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Book One

Day Eight (of a Fatal Captivity).

Ryoko turns to Yasuke the way a gamer does to the first trailer of the newest game in their favorite series when they had no idea it was even a possibility and reacts the way the same gamer might when they find that it’s nothing more than a glorified remastering of an older title. (And not even its original!) She stares at him, takes in the shape of him, and shifts.

Junko sighs, shoves a hand through her blood red bangs so that it half covers one of her eyes, and then rests fully on it. “Nanashi-kun,” she says in that bored, annoyed tone of hers, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Imposter’s eyes – color changed by their immaculate masking – widen in shock. They shift, terrified, to Mikan. “I thought you said she didn’t remember any of us.” Even his tone breaks – it certainly isn’t Yasuke anymore, although she can imagine how he would sound. (She also knows that Yasuke wouldn’t say anything like that, if he were still breathing and she were still in his care. But that’s an entire other story, one she discarded a long, long time ago.)

“She doesn’t.” Mikan tugs her sweater back over her head and pulls her long, uneven hair out from under its collar. Then she turns to Junko and searches her eyes. “How do you feel, Enoshima-sama?” The name tastes bitter enough on her tongue to cause the edges of her lips to pull back – not a snarl, not a scowl, but a negative nevertheless. She wants to be alone with her. She always wants to be alone with her.

In a soft, subtle, serpentine motion, Junko leans forward. She takes Mikan’s wrist in one hand and sets the tip of her still sharp nails (huh) against her skin until the girl gasps. Her eyes narrow. “Just because I knew you would drag them in here like this doesn’t make it okay, peasant.”

Mikan wets her lips, eyes shining with tears not of pain but of something like joy. “But it…but it worked, didn’t…didn’t it? Y-y-you’re back now. I got you back.”

“For the five minutes it takes for me to tell you to fuck off with this bullshit.” Junko glares at her. “Don’t do this again.” Her gaze, just as angry, sweeps to Imposter. “Do you understand, Nanashi-kun? Whatever she tells you, you hear it from me. Yasuke is off limits. Got it?”

Nanashi rolls his eyes in an action so reminiscent of Yasuke that it makes her singular heart ache. Then they realize what they’re doing and give a firm nod instead. That’s them, outside of the persona, outside of the Yasuke of it all. “My sincerest apologies, Enoshima-sama. I only wanted to help.”

Junko takes a deep breath in through her nostrils. This place reeks. But if she’s here and Mikan has gotten desperate enough to try this, then that means that everything is still going according to plan. Her death is assured. Unfortunately for them, they can’t know that; unfortunately for her, she does.

This will be the last time she speaks with Nanashi.

How should she leave it?

“Thank you,” Junko murmurs, softening, “for trying to help me. But you know I would always rather see you than the mask.”

(She’s such a fucking hypocrite.)

“Of course, Enoshima-sama.” Nanashi bows. Then without another word, they slip out of the door and shut it softly behind them.

“And you.” Junko turns to Mikan, catches the flinch, the wince, and hates herself for causing it. (This is nothing new. Kyoko was right; she has such creative forms of self-harm. They’re really all she knows anymore – ways to cause herself pain. Despair. She lives on it, thrives on it. Hates herself for it. It’s a fun, self-perpetuating cycle. How marvelous!) She relaxes her grip. The pad of her thumb runs gentle on the sensitive skin just on the inside of Mikan’s wrist, nail occasionally just catching on the interlacing scars she finds there. “Come here, Miki,” she croons, releasing her grip on Mikan’s wrist.

It’s a choice. It’s always Mikan’s choice. It’s never forced.

“If that’s what you want,” Junko adds, to make sure Mikan has remembered to consider that.

Mikan hesitates. “I-I-I’m…I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s half lie and half truth, just the way Junko wants it. Then she sits, careful, on the edge of the bed, near to Junko but not next to her. “P-p-please don’t be angry with me, Junko-sama.”

“May I?”

Mikan’s eyes widen. “Y-y-yes!”

At her permission (and she always asks Mikan first, to make sure that she has the opportunity to decide one way or the other), Junko reaches out, her long, thin fingers brushing along Mikan’s jaw before pushing through her long, molding plum-colored hair. Her eyes scour Mikan’s face, searching, searching, until they land on her lips. She draws her closer, until the tips of their noses just touch. “Okay?”

When Mikan nods, she brushes her nose against hers, gentle – insistent.

(One last time.)

Junko kisses her, and Mikan relaxes, and Junko kisses her, and Mikan purrs, and Junko kisses her, and Mikan opens to her like the first game she ever played, the only one she’d ever loved (back before she could see everything, back when exploring meant learning and not growing bored). She lets Mikan push the forest green sweater from her (Ryoko is just as predictable as everyone else is, fortunately), then murmurs, “Sweater off.”

Mikan obeys with a contented hum of a sigh, laying herself bare before her beloved. Junko kisses the same spot she’d left a mark the first time and then pulls away, examining her with the same care and precision of—

Hah.

No one will examine Mikan with anything close to the care and precision she does. There’s only one person capable of such a thing, and he’s not interested. (Even if he was, he, at least, understands what sort of things are off limits. Mikan is hers. He would not touch her.)

“Turn, beloved.” She glances up and meets Mikan’s eyes. “Please.”

Again, Mikan obeys.

It takes only the matter of a moment – Junko mapped out Mikan’s scars the first time she saw them, maps them out again at each opportunity, and lets out a breath of relief when she sees that there’s nothing new. She leans forward, kisses along a few of the scars (she chooses different ones each time, so that no inch feels left out, and maybe – since this is the last time – she should kiss them all for good measure, but then Mikan would know that something was wrong, and she can’t let her understand that), and then murmurs, “No one hurt you while I was gone, did they?”

“No, Junko-sama. No one.”

Junko brushes Mikan’s uneven hair out of the way and kisses up her back, between her shoulder blades, the other side of her neck. “I can’t stay.”

Mikan turns so fast her hair would whip across Junko’s face if it wasn’t already held back. “What?” she exclaims, forgetting herself. “W-w-why?” She searched Junko’s deep red eyes, their bloodlust color reflected like a bloody bruise in her own, and finds nothing because she’s only used to reading them when they’re that stormy blue-grey. “Beloved, why?”

“If I tell you, it’ll ruin the surprise.” A corner of Junko’s lips lifts in an amused smile. It’s fake, but Mikan won’t be able to tell that. She leans forward, kisses the tip of Mikan’s nose, grins when she scrunches it up, and then kisses the beauty mark just under her left eye. “Do you trust me?”

“With my whole heart.”

“Good.” Junko brushes her hand through Mikan’s hair and tucks it behind one ear. Then she reaches back to unbraid the long braid of her own hair. (Kyoko left just as much of an imprint in her mind as she expected. Also good.)

Mikan stares at her with confusion. “What are you…what are you doing?”

“Don’t you want to put your hands in my hair?” Junko asks, fingers making quick work of the braid. “Don’t you want to tug on it? Especially when it already looks like blood. Isn’t that your favorite color?”

“Y-y-yes!” Mikan exclaims. Then her gaze drops. “B-b-but…aren’t you…aren’t you disappointed with me? B-b-because of….” Her voice trails off; she can’t even get herself to say his name. (How absolutely adorable.)

Junko hums like she’s questioning it herself. (She isn’t.) “I could never be disappointed in you,” she says as she pulls the last strands of her hair loose. “You are doing just as I intended.” She searches her eyes. “I’m sorry. For being away from you for so long.” One hand reaches up and cups Mikan’s face. “It may be a while before you see me again.”

(You may never see me again.)

Mikan curves into Junko’s touch and kisses the center of her palm. “I needed to know,” she says, voice soft but firm in the way she’s learned to be. “I needed to know I would.” Then she glances up through her lashes, meets Junko’s eyes, and holds her gaze.

(One. Last. Time.)

As Junko kisses her again, a sharp, aching pain spears the center of her chest. Despair, an ever-present necessity at this point. She leans into it the same way she leans into Mikan, feeling the pang of it as pleasure the same way she does Mikan’s teeth digging into her own lower lip, the same way she does Mikan tugging on it until it splits the same way as her hands writhe through her hair, tugging harsh on it. Mikan likes to cause pain as much as Junko likes feeling it. She doesn’t even squeak when Junko lays her down, when she presses her into the mattress beneath her, only lets out a sweet hum of contentment.

“I forgive you,” Junko whispers into Mikan’s ear, “for needing to know.”

“I….” Mikan gasps – squeaks – as Junko nibbles her skin. “I love you, too.”

Nngh.

Ryoko squeezes her eyes even more tightly shut. Her head aches – itches, flames, all of it – the worst sort of headache, but she can’t even call it that because while yes, technically, her head does hurt, it doesn’t feel like a headache. Something worse. Like someone reached into her skull and ran their claws all around the inside of it. She wraps her arms tighter around someone’s waist, buries her head deeper into their back, and—

Wait.

Ryoko’s eyes snap open, and she pushes herself away from whoever this is with a startled shriek of confusion. “Wh-wh-wh-what the—” She stares down at Mikan’s nearly naked body – she can’t see much, just from the waist up, and she’s not wearing a shirt, and there are all of those scars that set her heart pounding angrily (or would, if she wasn’t so confused), and immediately Ryoko tugs on her own shirt – that’s still in place, that’s good, she’s still got her skirt, and…and…she had a sweater, where’s the sweater? She looks around the room and finds it folded neatly on the chair Mikan sat in before…before….

What happened?

“You’re…you’re awake,” Mikan mumbles as she pushes herself up and rubs her eyes with one hand. She looks up at Ryoko, meets her eyes, and sighs. “S-s-sorry about….” Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head. “What do you remember?”

Ryoko just stares at Mikan. Her face flushes a bright scarlet, and she turns away.

When Mikan clocks her expression, she hurriedly grabs her pink sweater from her nightstand. “S-s-sorry!” she squeaks out, tugging the sweater over her head.

“You were…you were explaining how you became the Ultimate Nurse, and then someone…someone was at the…the door.” Ryoko glances over and notes where some of Mikan’s hair has gotten stuck in her sweater. She reaches over and gently untangles it. “I remember a…Nanashi? Nanashi-kun?” Her head throbs, a sharp spear of pain, and she winces. “But I don’t remember what they look like.” She presses a hand to her head. “What….” She groans. “What happened?”

“You passed out.”

There’s something of a lie in Mikan’s tone, but not a real lie. Half of one, maybe. Ryoko can’t figure out what Mikan would be lying about, though. Her brows furrow. “Nanashi-kun showed up…and I passed out?” The way her head feels, that means one of two things: either this Nanashi was really, really important, enough to make her faint instead of rekindling her memories, or….

Or something else. Something that’s not that. She just doesn’t know what.

“And you…you stayed here, in bed with me…and didn’t think to put your sweater back on?”

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the bit that’s not adding up. If she were Mikan, she would have put her sweater back on. Or, um, maybe if she were in Mikan’s situation, although she can’t think of any situation where she would have her shirt off and have the other person pass out. Clearly being Mikan doesn’t mean anything to do with common sense.

Mikan blushes a bright, vibrant red. “I-I-I’m s-s-sorry.” She runs her fingers through her hair – it’s a little more mussed than normal, and after seeing the scars, Ryoko’s finally noticing just how uneven it is, as though someone else had gone through and just cut at it wherever they wanted – and looks away from her. “I just…I guess I just forgot?”

“How do you forget that sort of thing?” Ryoko reaches over to run her fingers along her braid only to find that her hair isn’t in a braid anymore. “What happened to my hair?” She runs her fingers through it; she can feel that it’s just as mussed as Mikan’s hair is. Her eyes widen. “What did you do?”

“N-n-nothing!”

“Why are you lying to me?” Ryoko can’t help it; she shrieks, harsh enough that Mikan covers her ears. Her throat aches, raw with the force of it. “You did something to me—”

“No!” Mikan counters. “I-I-I didn’t!” She meets Ryoko’s eyes and holds her gaze, her own eyes panicked. “I didn’t do anything to you!

To you.

Ryoko gets it, all at once, and her stomach twists.

“She was here, wasn’t she?” Ryoko whispers, hating the words as she says them. “Your Junko. She was here, and you—” She cuts herself off. Her entire body feels like it itches, like it’s on fire, like there’s some parasite living beneath her flesh that she couldn’t rip out if she tried. Before she even thinks about it, she scratches at her skin, her face, her mouth. “Ugh.”

Mikan stares at her, suddenly calm, but there are tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. “You….” Her voice trails off, and she crosses her arms about herself, holding herself together. “You really…really don’t like me, do you, Ryoko-chan?”

Ryoko doesn’t stop. She gets off of the bed, itching at her legs. “It’s not that, it’s—”

“Do you know why I love you?” Mikan asks before Ryoko can finish. “Why I love Junko?” She wraps her arms tighter around herself and glances away, glances down. Still, a little smile plays about the corner of her lips as she says, “You were the only one who ever really…who ever really saw me as a person. Everyone else, they…they saw me as some sort of…of object. A miserable…a miserable person, a useless existence.” She rubs her arms. “But you…you loved me. Y-y-you looked at me and forgave…forgave all my flaws and said that I was…that I was yours, if I wanted to be.” Her eyes light up, an even darker, ruddy red beneath their purple hue. “You love me. You make me feel like I’m worth something. And I…and I love you for that.” Then her eyes narrow, and she glances up to meet Ryoko’s eyes. “Do you know how I know you’re not her?”

Ryoko’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. “How?”

Mikan’s smile softens, no longer reaching her eyes. “You make me feel the same way that everyone else does.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

But Mikan doesn’t let her finish. “I-I-I think…I think you should go.”

“Go?” Ryoko repeats and stares at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“S-s-s-somewhere e-e-else.” Mikan’s gaze drops, and she shivers. ��I think…I think I don’t want to be with you right now.”

Ryoko blinks. Blinks again. “Oh.” Catches the tears at the corner of Mikan’s eyes. “I…I didn’t mean to—”

“Please.”

Mikan’s voice is so, so quiet.

So quiet.

Ryoko thinks of the scars and the disheveled hair and nods. “Okay. I can…I can go.”

It’s only when she’s at the door that she hears, just as quiet, Mikan’s feeble, “Thank you.”

Then she’s gone.

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #ultimate imposter #matsushima #enogiri #and then character not appearing in the chapter but important to the fic/series:#kyoko kirigiri

3 notes · View notes

aparticularbandit · 6 months ago

Text

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Five

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

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Book One

Day Five (of a Cloying Despair).

She has nothing.

Which is especially infuriating, since Junko left that note in her notebook about putting all the pieces in place for her, because that means if she remembers everything, then she should be able to figure this out; which further means if she can’t figure it out, then she must not have remembered everything yet, which is even more infuriating because she can’t even begin to know what it is she hasn’t remembered.

(How much of that would she remember if Junko hadn’t fucked with her brain? How much of what is missing is so because she’d already forgotten it in the first place? What if she has remembered everything she can remember, and Junko was wrong to believe she would figure all of this out? What if Junko made a mistake?)

Junko needed her for something.

Kyoko hasn’t been able to figure out exactly what that something is, because in everything up to this point, she wasn’t a necessity, she was an accessory. Kept around for some nebulous thing that Junko never specified because she could be so obtuse. Like it was better to manipulate people into the places she needed them to be in, instead of being upfront and honest about what she needed them to do.

Show off.

Or maybe Junko just suspected – correctly, in most cases – that if she was actually honest about what she needed people to do, they wouldn’t do it. Whether that’s because it involved murder or because they simply didn’t want to do what Junko wanted – considering who was asking them – doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the pieces in place for whatever it is she’s planned out.

If Kyoko’s honest with herself, she doesn’t feel particularly inclined to just follow along with whatever it is Junko wants either.

Considering.

This is just a moment where those desires happen to align.

Junko wants Kyoko to find her.

Fortunately for her, Kyoko wants to find her, too.

She’s still divided on why and what she’ll do when she gets there, but that desire to find her is there nevertheless.

That’s the end of it, really. Junko needs her for something, and Junko expects Kyoko to find her, and the two desires are likely intertwined, likely linked, but beyond that, Kyoko has nothing.

All the places are in place for you – bullshit, Junko. There are no pieces! Just a fucking end goal with no way to get there! If you want a detective who specializes in kidnappings and finding people who have been lost, then who you really want is—

Dead.

Kyoko stares at the blank page of her notebook with nothing but those two bullet points written within. Glares at them, as though that will make them spawn like rabbits or dust bunnies or…or some other metaphor that doesn’t involve the sexual habits of some soft, fuzzy rodent.

(It doesn’t do any good, and now all she can think of is how Yui would be able to do this so much better than she did, how Yui found her almost immediately when she was kidnapped, how Yui is the detective Junko needs right now, not her. Yui would never have given in to the thought that Junko was definitely dead.

But Yui isn’t here.

She’s here.

A detective trying to stop a murder before it can take place.

Lico would be better, too, but who knows where he is. Probably dead, too. Which makes her the only one left.)

Junko, if you want me to find you so desperately, then where are the clues?

Nowhere.

A lot of commentary on how she’s going to die, which is great and all, but not exactly helpful.

(And Kyoko isn’t going to think about that again, isn’t going to think about what Chisa said – severe brain damage and acute memory loss and probably permanent memory loss as a result of the severe brain damage – because the important thing to remember is that if Junko said Kyoko would see her again, eventually, then she will see her again; if Junko told Kyoko to find her after Ultimate Despair took her, then that means there is still a Junko somewhere left to be found, not just some pale imitation of her completely bereft of everything that made Junko Junko.)

Future Foundation probably has a map with suspected locations of the ringleaders of Ultimate Despair. Maybe, if she finds that, the locations will seem….

Maybe one of them will trigger something. A memory, maybe, or some sort of clue. She’ll at least maybe have something more concrete than a nebulous find me with nothing attached to it.

(There are only so many locations Kyoko could look for Junko with an abandoned school building. They are not in a school building anymore. When she could be hidden anywhere in the entire world, there are significantly more places to look.)

((Junko is probably close. Closer than she realizes. That’s almost more infuriating.))

….

It seems like it would be too easy to tell Future Foundation to look for the giant Monokuma. (It seems like it would be too easy to believe that they already had – or that they’d already tried to follow it.) That means either that there are multiple giant Monokumas (terrifying and frustrating in equal measure) or that Future Foundation, despite Chisa saying that they were keeping an eye on Hope’s Peak during (and after) the Killing Game, let the Monokuma that literally broke into the old building go without any sort of—

Kyoko sighs. Kneads her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Either she and the others have been taken in by a group with serious inadequacies or Junko’s Ultimate Despair are far more effective at what they do than she might have initially thought. That said, this is Junko’s group. Given everything she’s seen Junko do, why would she think she wasn’t capable of this, too? Why wouldn’t she think that Junko found the most capable people to maintain her war in her absence?

“If Mukie and me are truly Ultimate Despair, then who’s driving the car outside?”

Mikan Tsumiki, apparently. Mikan Tsumiki and Nekomaru and Kazuichi. Survivors of the class above her. Chisa’s class. Who were apparently supposed to be dead. Drawn under Junko’s wing because she….

Because she cared about them.

Which really marks Chisa as suspicious, too.

That’s beside the point.

No.

That’s exactly the point.

How better to avoid Future Foundation’s attacks than to have someone on the inside? Someone high up enough to take in the survivors of the Killing Game when they were finally able to get to them? Who would want to know when any of them were close enough to figuring things out to—

Is that what that conversation was?

Does Chisa know that Junko intended for Kyoko to find her?

That’s too risky. She can’t – she won’t – make that assumption.

However.

Stop.

Kyoko can feel it, can feel the faulty assumptions and flaws in her logic as she races from one thought to the next, everything hooking together in a way that would most benefit her. Junko didn’t leave her any clues as to where she might be, so she’s searching for them under every rock and in every cranny. But that doesn’t mean that every potential clue is a clue.

She’s a better detective than this. She’s acting like a child. Less than a child. Her first successful case with the DSC was during her first year of middle school, but—

My specialty is murder cases, Junko. Not kidnapping. You want Yui for that.

But she can’t have Yui. Because Yui is—

Kyoko clenches her hand into a fist. She has nothing. And now she’s just going in circles.

Junko expects too much from her.

(No, she doesn’t.)

Junko would tell her to take a break.

Junko would tell her to get out of her head.

Junko would tell her to go spend time touching grass.

There’s no grass anymore, Junko. That’s your fault, isn’t it?

And she can hear the response, clear as day, as though Junko were in the room with her, although there’s no way she could be: “Sometimes you gotta break a few eggshells to make a crème brulee.”

Kyoko scowls. “Crème brulee?” she mutters under her breath. “That’s the first thing you think of? Not an omelette or scrambled eggs or something simpler?” She glances up, and it’s like—

Junko lounges on the bed, one leg crossed over the other just at the ankle, in the cutaway pajama shirt, half black and half white, and the red polka dot black boxers that just match the bra of her war outfit. Her head tilts to the side, pink hair half in waves down her back, the sides pulled up in a fancy braid. (She looks like Galadriel. She is no Galadriel.) “Why would you want me to make things easy for you, Kyokyo? You’re a detective. That’s, like, the epitome of likes hard things.” She snorts.

“Don’t say it.”

“I wasn’t going to!” Junko sticks her tongue out. Then she examines her bright red nails, averting her eyes as she says, “Besides. Crème brulee means I get to use a blowtorch, so obviously that’s the best answer.” She pulls out a nail file and points it in Kyoko’s direction. “Duh.”

This time, when the knock at the door comes, Kyoko doesn’t want to turn towards it because that means turning away from the Junko she so clearly sees atop her bed. If she looks, Junko will be gone.

Junko is already gone.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Junko asks as the knocking continues. She slowly files one nail to a sharp point, sighs, and then looks up again, meeting Kyoko’ eyes. “Might be something important.”

“Important to me?” Kyoko holds her gaze. “Or important to you?”

Junko just rolls her eyes. “I’m not even here, Kyokyo! And you can’t avoid him forever. He obviously wants to talk with you, so just—” She makes shooing motions with both hands. “Go talk to Hope Boy. Then you can come back and play pretend with me again. I guess. Although the real me is so much better than whatever this is.” Her eyes light up, and she grins. “Wait! Kyokyo! You’re fantasizing about me, aren’t you? That’s what this is! Oh, I could have fun with—”

Kyoko turns away from her and goes to the door.

Makoto stands on the other side, his hand lifted as though to knock on the door again, eyes widening when it actually opens. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”

“Then why did you knock?”

“Because he had hope, Kyokyo. Obviously.”

“Hush.”

“Huh?” Makoto’s awkward expression – one hand raised in front of his chin, the same way it had often been during trials, giving him something else to focus on instead of the unhappy expressions of their classmates – turns into a startled, confused one. “I didn’t say anything.” He glances over his shoulder, but there’s no one else in the hallway. “Who were you talking to?”

“Puhuhuhuhu.~” Junko’s laughter echoes behind her, and Kyoko can almost feel her chin resting on her shoulder.

No.

Not almost.

Junko can’t be a ghost when she isn’t dead.

“Why are you here, Makoto?” Kyoko meets his eyes. His ahoge is gone; she’d noticed that before but hadn’t filed it away. Something must have happened between his death (not real) and when she found him in that locked room. Maybe that Nagito did something with it. Or maybe whatever mechanism Junko used to get him into that room had chopped it off. Either way, she’d say he looks better without it. Normal.

Makoto’s gaze drops instinctively. “You’ve been stuck in here for days. You’re eating, right?”

She is. She’s been actively avoiding everyone and going to the kitchen when she believes everyone else to be asleep – or elsewhere – after that run-in with Chisa. She’d realized then that she liked the taste of the other woman’s despair, which is particularly worrisome, but she isn’t going to tell him that.

Instead, Kyoko lies.

“No, Makoto. I haven’t been eating.”

It’s sarcasm, but Makoto believes her. His eyes grow wide, and his gaze jumps up, and he reaches out without thinking. “You have to eat something!” He grabs her white-gloved hand and tugs her out of her room. “You have to eat something right now, or you’re going to starve.”

His desperation is cute.

His naïveté less so.

Still.

Kyoko lets Makoto drag her down the hallway to the kitchen. It’s less dragging if she walks with him, but even when she shakes her hand out of his, he grabs the edge of her blazer. Before the past two weeks, she might have thought it was cute. Even after, if she hadn’t regained her memories, if she’d been allowed to continue along the track her mind dallied with during the Game, she might have thought the same.

But Makoto died.

Strictly speaking, Makoto did not die, but she’d believed him to be dead. She’d believed him to be dead, and she’d remembered what happened with Junko before the Game, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what it felt like to be interested or not because she did know that whatever it was she felt about Makoto, it was nothing in comparison to what she felt about Junko. Worse, she’d remembered all of that while forcing herself to move on from a Makoto who had left things for her to do with no clues for her to know how to do them—

Junko, at least, isn’t dead.

“There’s a lot of food in here,” Makoto says as they reach the kitchen, as he finally drops his hold on her sleeve. “Anything you want, they probably have it.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “It’s probably not infinite like it was at Hope’s Peak, but….” His voice trails off, and his brows furrow. “Where did all of that food come from, anyway?”

Junko never told her. Of course, Kyoko never asked either. Where their infinite supply of food came from hadn’t been as high on her list of priorities as…. Well, as everything else.

Makoto gives a little shake of his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’re not there anymore; we’re here now, and you need to eat. Something, at least.” He scavenges in the nearest cupboard and pulls out a bag full of processed powdered donuts. “These probably aren’t as good as fresh ones, but those will take a bit to cook, and honestly, I’ve got no clue how to cook donuts—”

“I do.”

Kyoko remembers far too many bowls with far too many combinations, remembers making far too many donuts that the others refused to eat. Makoto can’t know about that. It was such a small thing. He might have heard, maybe, that they decided they couldn’t trust her, but certainly he wouldn’t have heard anything that specific. Those sorts of things get lost in the telling.

But Kyoko remembers.

“My favorite donut. Do you remember what it is?”

Makoto looks up at her. “Oh,” he says. “Do you want to make them?”

“No.”

Kyoko doesn’t have the heart to mention that she doesn’t like donuts. Not to Makoto. That would have been enough of a motive for Hina to kill her, but she’s….

It’s impossible not to think about Hina while they’re talking about donuts.

“Makoto,” Kyoko starts, as he steps away from her, over to another drawer.

“See?” Makoto continues, ignoring her, as he opens the drawer. “There’s chips and fruit and all sorts of—”

“Makoto.”

He stops.

Kyoko’s eyes narrow. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

It’s just like before – when Makoto had seen something involving Sakura, when he’d known she was the traitor in their midst and instead chose to say nothing. He wears that same expression now, staring not at her but at the open drawer, at the bags of brand name chips inside it.

(Junko would have taken the thin cheese curls and eaten them with chopsticks; Junko would have licked cheese dust seductively from her fingertips just to rile the others up; Junko used chopsticks because Kyoko got frustrated with the fingertip licking, even though, “That’s the best way to eat them, Kyokyo! You’re hopeless.”

But she’s not thinking about Junko right now.)

“I’m not supposed to tell you,” Makoto starts to say, “but—”

“If you’re not supposed to tell me, then don’t.” Kyoko cuts him off and walks to the other side of the kitchen, far from him, where a woven fruits basket rests. She pulls an apple out and examines it.

“But you need to—”

Kyoko turns on the faucet, rinses the apple, and covers up whatever Makoto is trying to say. There’s no sticker on the apple, but her thumb brushes across it where the sticker would be. Water slides from her new gloves. Interesting. When she turns the faucet off, she gives Makoto a pointed look, as if to say, How persistent are you?

(Foolish girl.

Makoto ca be every bit as stubborn and persistent as you are.

That’s why you liked him so much.)

“Junko told me everything!” Makoto exclaims as soon as Kyoko turns to face him. “It was…it was in a video in that room I was locked in, on that laptop Nagito took.” His gaze drops, averts so that he can’t meet hers, or perhaps so that he can’t see her expression. “I must have watched it a thousand times, but I can’t remember most of it. Not the way you would have, if you’d seen it.” His face grows ashen. “Okay, she didn’t tell me everything, but she told me a lot, and she told me I couldn’t tell you, but—” He looks up,then. “She said she was going to die.”

“I am going to die, Kyoko. That is the way this story ends.”

The mirai door opens halfway through.

She’s not dead yet.

Kyoko stares at Makoto. Holds the apple uneaten in her hand. Doesn’t say, I know that already, because there’s something in this. Something in what Makoto said – that he isn’t supposed to tell her. Why would Junko tell him not to tell her something that she already knows? Had Junko changed her mind about telling her that? Or—

“Junko said if I told you, it would change things. That if I….” Makoto’s forehead scrunches up, as though drawing the exact words from his memory, “if I opened my stupid whore mouth and spilled the beans, it would only make things worse.” He shakes his head. “But that can’t make things worse, can it?”

“What else did she tell you?”

That’s the most important thing.

If Junko left a message for Makoto, then that means she has a plan specifically for him. She’s told him something within the message that will set him on a path to do precisely what she wants him to do. Just like she’d given Toko the notebooks, knowing that they would reach Byakuya – not that Kyoko has any idea what is even on those notebooks, but there must have been something there to jog Byakuya’s memory about the modification machine, to make that connection the same way that finding Ryoko Otonashi’s Memory Notebook had done it for her.

Junko knew that Byakuya would take her, knew that he would try to change her memories, knew that Ultimate Despair would come for her and take her. She knew because she set those events in motion.

The dominoes are still falling, but Kyoko can’t see the final picture yet.

(It’s a murder told backwards. If she catches the clues early enough, maybe she can prevent it.

If Junko wants to die, truly wants to die, then she will have factored that in as well. Any attempt to prevent it might only assure it happens. But….

She won’t stand around and do nothing. She has never been able to do that.)

Makoto opens his mouth to say something and then stops entirely, his gaze lifting past Kyoko to rest on someone else behind her. He offers a small, but awkward, smile. “Ms. Yukizome.”

“Oh, don’t stop talking because of me!” Chisa’s heels clack on the tiled floor, and she waves one hand dismissively. “I’m just here for the food!” She glances over, glances up, and her eyes widen as she catches sight of Kyoko. Then she smiles pleasantly. “It’s good to see you out of your room, Kyoko!”

Kyoko takes the apple and walks past her, past Makoto. She hadn’t wanted to talk to Makoto anyway, and of course, Chisa would show up at the exact moment she might have gotten more information on—

Why does she even want to find Junko, anyway? Does she want to save her?

(Why would anyone, other than Makoto, want to save Junko Enoshima?)

As Kyoko walks down the hallway back to her room, Makoto cries out, “Wait!” When she turns back to him, he’s standing just down the hallway from her, one hand outstretched, and when she doesn’t say anything, his face grows as firm as he knows how to make it. “What happened?” he asks, brow furrowing. “When I was stuck in that room, what happened? The others won’t tell me anything.”

Kyoko opens her mouth to say something, catches Chisa just behind him, and stops. Her lips press together in a thin line. “I’m sure you would like to hear that, too, wouldn’t you, Ms. Yukizome?”

“Chisa,” she corrects. “We’re all friends here.”

“No,” Kyoko scoffs. “We’re not.” She turns away, clenches her gloved hand on the apple she still holds, and sighs. “Tomorrow,” she says, finally. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She glances back over her shoulder and meets Chisa’s eyes. “But only if you tell me more about Future Foundation. What the war has been like. Possible locations of Despair’s leaders.”

Chisa raises an eyebrow. “Why would you want to know those? Do you want to find—”

“No.” Kyoko cuts her off before she can even finish the sentence. “I want to bring them down.”

(She lies with her whole heart, or so she thinks, and hopes that Chisa believes her the same way Makoto does, his face falling and growing ashen with her words.)

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #kyoko kirigiri #junko enoshima #enogiri #makoto naegi #chisa yukizome #and then not appearing in this chapter but primary characters/ships within the series:#ryoko otonashi #otoshima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #matsushima

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aparticularbandit · 9 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Nagito (I)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

AO3

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Book One

Five Days Ago.

Nagito walks down one of the far too many tunnels, carrying the laptop under one arm.

“Hid something here for me to find….”

His voice trails off.

Someone else might find this infuriating, since Junko gave no hints in his message, just, “I’m sure, with your luck, you’ll find it eventually.” Then she’d given a little dismissive wave of her hand and a cheeky grin before signing off with a “Good luck!” Of course, she understands just as well as Nagito himself does: the higher the probability of impossibility for anyone else, the higher the probability of possibility for him. Sometimes that ends well, and sometimes that ends poorly.

Having a rare disease eating away at his already fragile mind? Poorly.

Having the plane he and his parents were meant to board get hijacked? Poorly.

Having a meteor strike and kill said hijackers? Well.

Having said meteor also strike and kill his parents? Poorly.

Inheriting said parents’ fortune while he was still very young? Neutral, really. He was a kid. What was he supposed to do with all of that money? (More than money, although he’s not sure any of that is still accessible.)

Right now, there’s no assurance that finding what Junko left for him will go well or poorly, but Nagito sincerely doubts it will be neutral. Junko doesn’t really do neutral. He certainly isn’t going to hope for it, either. No, in fact, he’s certain that whatever happens, it will end well. Whether she intends for it to increase despair or not, it will only lead to an overflowing of hope.

And from what he understands of her plans….

Well.

He can’t pretend that he does.

Now.

If he were Junko and he wanted to hide a present for him where no one else could ever possibly hope to find it – where even he couldn’t hope to find it, if not for his luck – where would he put it?

He steps.

Trips.

Lands on a tile in the floor that flips as soon as he puts his full weight on it.

Waves his hands wildly as he falls…and falls…and falls.

Nagito’s back cracks when he lands – a sharp, sharp sound that echoes around him. He groans as he slowly pushes himself up, rubbing the small of his back. It hurts, but luckily, he can still move. Then he raises a hand, touches the back of his head, and brings it away with thick red blood on his fingertips. A concussion, maybe. It doesn’t hurt the way his back does, but maybe that’s because he’s used to head wounds by now. They’ve never killed him before, even when they should have, so they probably won’t now either.

The laptop, held aloft in both hands as he landed and now tucked back against his side, is completely unharmed.

Good.

He needs that more than Makoto Naegi and Kyoko Kirigiri do.

(More importantly, if he left it with them, Kyoko would likely find some way to translate the message he’d been left, and that would do no good. No, no, best for him to take it with him.)

((Not to mention he was told to do so. He still has use for it, after all.))

Nagito glances around the room. It’s dark. He starts to feel along the wall. There’s got to be a light switch around here somewhere—

His fingers thwack against it – ouch – and then he flips it on.

A loud bang explodes overhead, so loud it would make a certain other of his associates flinch if she heard it. Multicolored confetti flies everywhere. Junko’s voice booms overhead: “Congratulations! You found it! Good job, Nagito-sama!”

Nagito’s teeth grit at the title. He’s a lord just as much as Junko’s a lady, which is to say, not at all, and he knows she just calls him that to spite him.

Still.

Nagito steps forward, scans the room, ignores the balloons and streamers and banners (Junko has decorated this room as though it’s someone’s birthday, with a plastic cake set on a table in the corner, complete with a Monokuma topper), and finds what looks like a singular glove resting on a table like some sort of power-up in a video game. He lifts the glove, and as he examines the metallic too much weaving in and through and about it, a note flutters out.

It’s covered in Junko’s bright pink gel pen.

He picks it up.

Reads it.

Grins.

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #nagito komaeda #junko enoshima #the rest do not appear in these chapters but are mains for the fic which is why the continuing tags #ryoko otonashi #otoshima #kyoko kirigiri #enogiri #mikan tsumiki #junkan #matsushima

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aparticularbandit · 6 months ago

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Of A Fatal Captivity: Day Seven (IV)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

TW for Vomit. A lot of vomit.

AO3

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Book One

Day Seven (of a Fatal Captivity).

Ryoko hunches over and retches again.

There’s nothing there – she’d gotten rid of everything when she’d smelled that rotting corpse – but this is….

This is worse.

“Ryoko?” Mikan is by her side in a moment with a trashcan in one hand. She sets it in front of her, then gently pulls Ryoko’s hair back out of her face and rubs her back soothingly just the same way as she had on the trip here, when Ryoko became afraid during the gunfire. “Wh-wh-what’s wrong?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

Of course, I’m not okay.

But Ryoko can’t really say that, can she? She can’t tell Mikan that she just remembered—

Ryoko shudders and retches again. Then she tries to take a deep breath through the burning in her throat and just ends up coughing again and again while her stomach stills. She groans.

“H-h-here!” Mikan hands her a bottle of something from out of nowhere.

At first, Ryoko doesn’t even drink anything. She just holds the bottle cool between her hands; then she presses it against her forehead and against the back of her neck. It helps. (It doesn’t help.) But as she stands there, forcing herself to breathe, Mikan – again, as though out of nowhere, brings her a cool, damp cloth. “Are you magic?” Ryoko asks as she takes the cloth and drapes it across the back of her neck. It’s only then that she glances at the contents of the bottle; it’s not water, but something clear and carbonated. “Do you just have these?”

Mikan flushes. “There’s a mini-fridge.” She points away from her. “Right there.”

That doesn’t explain the cloth, but as Ryoko takes it from her neck and refolds it to bring the cooler side back against her skin, she realizes that it’s not a rag. Instead, it’s a thin pink tank-top, folded and rolled into shape to mimic one. She runs her thumb along the fabric. It’s soft. Achingly soft.

It also smells a bit.

Well, when it’s against the back of her neck, that doesn’t matter!

(After getting sick so much, Ryoko’s pretty sure she smells a bit, too.)

Ryoko screws the cap off the bottle, takes a drink, pauses, and then chugs half of it in one go. It’s sweet in her mouth, washes away the horrible taste of everything, and fills her empty, quivering stomach without sitting heavy, without the cool in that void bringing the nausea back. She wipes beads of sweat from her brow and then turns completely away from the screens, from the entire set-up that even now her eyes want to keep sweeping over. There’s more there – there’s so much more there – but she doesn’t want to see it, she doesn’t want to know.

Still.

Sometimes, apparently, it doesn’t matter what she wants.

Ryoko runs her fingers along the wall just the same as she had in the tunnels. Her eyes light on a note taped to a wall on the opposite side, and she heads towards it. But it’s just an arrow. Her brow furrows, and she turns – there’s a longer area, but it’s empty, save for a note on the opposite side.

This time, though, when she reaches it, Ryoko finds that the note has writing on it.

Just your luck! Press here, Ryoko-chan!

The writing is unfamiliar to her, which means it isn’t hers. It has to belong to someone else. She should probably be concerned about that, but she isn’t.

“Ryoko, what did you—”

Ryoko presses on the tile, and another keypad appears. She doesn’t know what the passcode Mikan used was, but if she gets it wrong, she’ll ask. This one is supposed to be for her, though, and if someone who knows her set it up, then the passcode should be 927853.

Yasuke.

As soon as she presses the last digit, the keypad merges back into the wall, and then the whole wall slides open, just as the one from the tunnels did. Even before turning the light on, Ryoko sees multiple racks of…of something. She flicks the light on. Inside are three racks, full of clothes. They look nothing like what she’d imagined the Ultimate Fashionista would wear, given what little she’d seen of her clothes (one outfit does not a full person make), but then….

There’s another note taped to the front of the middle rack with her name written on it in huge gel pen pink bubble letters shaded with black. Ryoko starts for it immediately, but before she does, Mikan is there, fingers brushing along the paper. “Hey!” Ryoko snaps without thinking about it. “That’s mine!”

It has her name on it, after all.

“It’s from Junko-sama,” Mikan murmurs, not stepping away. Instead, she carefully pricks the paper from the rack. She runs her finger along the sharp edge, gasps, and then brings her finger away with a slice through it, deep red blood bubbling up from within. “Oh.” Her lips curve into a bright, bold grin. “A gift.”

Ryoko snatches the note from Mikan’s fingertips. “That’s not a gift!” she exclaims. “That’s just pain!” She tucks the note under her arm and then pulls Mikan’s hand into her own. “Are you okay?” It’s only as she examines Mikan’s fingers that she notes the second slice now there, left from how quickly she taken the note from her. Her eyes widen. “I-I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

It takes a second.

Mikan blinks at her fingertips, brow furrowing. “Huh?”

“Miki, you’re hurt.” Ryoko glances up, meeting her thistle-bruise eyes. “You’re the…. You said you were the Ultimate Nurse, so you’ve…you’ve got band-aids or something, right? And um….something to clean it with? You gave me this—” Instinctively, she pulls the cloth from the back of her neck, unwraps it, and presses it against Mikan’s fingertips to stop the bleeding. “Are you okay?”

But Mikan just blinks again. “You don’t…you don’t have to worry about m-m-me.” Her brow furrows again. “It’s a gift—”

“Getting hurt is not a gift!” Ryoko exclaims, gaze jumping up from Mikan’s hand to meet her eyes again. “Who told you that?”

Mikan squeaks. She quickly looks away. “N-n-no one! No one t-t-told me that!”

It’s a lie.

Which means—

Junko told her that.

Mikan must read that realization on Ryoko’s face because she takes her hand from Ryoko’s, wraps the dirty tank-top a little tighter about it, and says with some trepidation, “I-I-I’ll just go take care of…of this! Th-th-there has to be soap here somewhere!” And then she scurries off, back into the first room.

Something tells Ryoko that Mikan won’t find any soap at all. If Junko – the person who was here before – thought that pain was a gift, then why would she keep soap around? She’d get hurt and just leave it, get hurt and let it get infect, get hurt and—

Mikan calls Junko beloved. She would never have let Junko hurt herself that way. Not if her care of Ryoko says anything about it.

Ryoko takes another sip from her bottle and then pulls the note back out. It’s still emblazoned with her name – RYOKO OTONASHI!!!! – with more exclamation points than that and surrounded with multiple hearts, all in pink and black, all in varying sizes. Why would Junko leave a note for her? How had she even known that Ryoko would be here? And if this is Junko’s handwriting – one that doesn’t look as close to her own as Ryoko…doesn’t, strictly speaking, remember, but feels like she does – then…then whose was that on the other note? Because it certainly doesn’t match this one either.

Maybe Mikan will recognize that one, too, if she gives it a good look.

But it doesn’t matter.

Right now, Ryoko has this note, one with her name on it in as loud a way as someone can write it, and which, if she opens it, may explain a few things.

Does she really want to know what Junko wants with her?

Curiosity overcomes Ryoko’s hesitation, and she pulls herself to one corner of the room, hunkers down, and opens the note.

Ryoko! As I live and breathe (hah!), Ryoko Otonashi! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen you? I mean technically I’ve never really seen you, just a mirror image of you, which strictly speaking isn’t the same thing, so I guess you couldn’t say I’ve seen you. How unfortunate. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of that question, huh. Oops. Better question: Do you know how long it’s been since you’ve been out and about in the world? Couple of years, at least. You probably don’t remember any of that, though. Best question: What do you remember? Do you remember me yet? That’s the thing about recovering memories; it’s a little unpredictable. I mean, I know you’ll get all of them eventually – been there, done that! – but given all those modifications I made to Yasuke’s memory manipulation thingamajig and Izuru’s input— You’d think I would have given that a better name, actually, but I didn’t want to overwrite what he’d done with me, you know? It’d be a bit like erasing him. I never wanted that. But you probably haven’t remembered that bit yet.

Ryoko pauses. Remembered what bit? She’s suddenly struck with an even stronger bout of nausea. Whatever this is, she’s not sure she wants to remember. Is there a way to not remember? To pick and choose which memories she wants to keep? Can she do that?

No?

Back to the note.

Anyway. What I mean to say is that I don’t know what you’ll remember when! Honest. I don’t even know if you’ll remember everything in order. Maybe you won’t! Wouldn’t that be great? All of those pieces and no way of knowing how they all fit together until suddenly, all at once, they do! And hey! Maybe you won’t be the one who dies this time! That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway! ;) (Don’t tell Mikan. She’s the one with you, right? I don’t know why I’m asking; I know it’s her.) Oh! Fun fact! You’re not just the Ultimate Fashionista! I know, I know, that’s all my little Horrors are going to talk about, but that’s because I never told them this one! And you shouldn’t either. Point of fact, I’m pretty sure there’s only one person still alive who knows. …and Izuru, I guess, but he doesn’t count, because I didn’t fucking tell him, he probably just guessed it. Asshole. Huh. How tragic. How despair-inducing. For me, not for you, although you’ll remember that in the future, too, so – no spoilers! You’ll meet her in approximately— Oh, right. No spoilers! I literally just wrote that. How boring. Well, Miss Ultimate Analyst, your Ultimate Fashionista bestie made you a whole new line-up of—

Ryoko stops again. Wait, wait, wait. She just slipped that in like it was nothing. Ultimate Analyst? What does that even mean? Is that…is that how Junko knew Mikan would be with her? How she knew that Ryoko would be here in the first place? Hm. Well, if she’s the Ultimate Analyst, and if she’s Junko (which she still steadfastly refuses to believe, no matter how much evidence continues to grow in that direction), that means Junko is also the Ultimate Analyst, which means she should have been able to accurately predict the kind of clothes Ryoko would like.

Okay, fine. That’ll be her trial!

If Junko really is her, and they really are the Ultimate Analyst, then…then Junko should have been able to recreate the suit Ryoko stole from Sonia! She should have been able to make it, and it should fit perfectly! And – and! – Ryoko should be able to button up the lavender blouse without having to worry about…about fit!

With a giddy smile on her face – because the likelihood of all that is so small as to be impossible – Ryoko returns to the note.

Well, Miss Ultimate Analyst, your Ultimate Fashionista bestie made you a whole new line-up of— And you’ve stopped paying attention. Fine, that’s fine, I know what it’s like to get bored and distracted, trust me, I get bored all the time, but you can at least pay attention to the rest of the letter that I lovingly crafted for you, can’t you? Maybe? Just a little bit? No? Well. I need you to do something for me. Immediately. Without finishing reading this. Okay? Just a little…trial, we’ll call it.

(Ryoko doesn’t catch it, but you do, don’t you?)

In the back of the middle rack, the very last hanger should have a garment bag. Can you open that one for me?

Ryoko’s brow furrows. What an odd request. Still, she folds the note again, takes another swig from her bottle, and pushes herself up from where she’s been crouched in the corner. Mikan still hasn’t returned, which means she probably didn’t find soap in the other room. Not that Ryoko’s particularly surprised by that.

Middle rack, middle rack. All the way at the back—

There, separated from all the other clothes on the rack (clothes that Ryoko doesn’t hate, actually, although she’s not too terribly focused on them) is a garment bag. There’s a note pinned to it, too, although this one isn’t folded – a note that says, Yes, Ryoko! This one! inside a huge pink heart. Ryoko takes the note, crumples it in her hand, and shoves it into her pocket. Then, as directed, she unzips the bag.

Her eyes widen.

Her entire being tenses, a singular chill running up her spine, and she resists the urge to vomit again.

She doesn’t want to get it on the suit.

Shaking, Ryoko brings the other note back up.

You wanted a suit like Sonia’s, right? You were probably wearing that yesterday, too, huh. And today, you’re back in my war outfit. Of course, I never referred to it that way. Kyoko did. Not that she ever said as much to me, but— Oh, do you remember Kyoko yet? You’ll LOVE her! I certainly did, anyway. But it’s simple to read things like this, Miss Ultimate Analyst. Mikan was going to come save me. She was going to take me to that hideaway because it’s the closest one, and she was worried about carrying me too far away…and because she believed that I was going to meet the rest of them there after that final Killing Game. (Don’t worry if you haven’t remembered that one yet, it’ll come sooner or later. You’ll hate me for it, but then again, that’s the entire point, isn’t it?) Mikan took you there, and I didn’t leave any clothes there, which meant after you woke from your coma, you would want clothes. She would ask Hiyoko, who would be the closest fit, and you would bring up Yasuke because you always bring up Yasuke, you poor, broken thing, and Hiyoko would be a bitch about Yasuke because that’s a game she and I play together, and she’d think she finally found a way to get under my skin, and it would be a bit of a joke to her, and if you were me, it would be a great game, but the thing is— The thing is you’re right, you know. You’re NOT me. (Again, that’s the entire point.) But you would bring up Yasuke, and Hiyoko would be herself, and you would snap and hurt her in one form or another, and then you would run, and Kazuichi would be in the hallway from trying to talk to Sonia for the millionth time and not being able to get through to her, and he would notice that you needed better clothes (although he probably liked you in the towel, huh), and he would of course think of Sonia because she’s always the first thought in his mind when I’m not. Which means you would end up with Sonia, and you wouldn’t like all of her frilly princess dresses because I don’t like all of her frilly princess dresses, and most of them don’t fit you even if you did, which leaves one thing. The suit. Oh, yes, you would like the suit. And you, my darling girl, reading my letter and noticing that I called you the Ultimate Analyst, would conspire some sort of trial for me to prove myself, and it would of course be that suit. Because how could I ever know about Sonia’s suit? Well. Who do you think made that suit? :) Believe me, Ryoko Otonashi, when I tell you that despite everything we are the same person and you are the Ultimate Analyst and that if you don’t get your shit together then you will be the one who dies instead of me, and let’s be really honest here, neither of us wants that. So get your head on straight, Ryo-chan. Remember me. And then figure out how to kill me before I eat you alive. Kisses!! Junko Enoshima ♡ ♡ ♡

#bandit fic #of a fatal captivity with ryoko and junko #danganronpa #ryoko otonashi #junko enoshima #otoshima #mikan tsumiki #junkan #matsushima #and then not appearing in this chapter but primary character/ship for the series:#enogiri #kyoko kirigiri

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