"No way..."

"It happened." Kirito looked down at Ash's unmoving body laying on the ground of the media room by one of the couches.

"Who did it?!" Natsu yelled, trying to fight back the tears that had already begun to fall down his face, "damn it! Who was it?!"

"Whoever did this..." Eren gritted his teeth, "how could anyone be so heartless to go back on the promise we made."

"I guess we can't trust anyone here anymore, huh?" Korra's disappointed, sullen tone hushed the room as they all looked down at the young boy's dead body, red imprints on his neck, which was barely covered by the collar of his blue quarter-zip jacket.

"So, kiddos! Here's the victim report! Have fun, and let the investigation begin!! Yay! I'm so excited!"

With that, Monokuma left the tablet with them and disappeared as quickly as he appeared.

They all stared, horrified just as someone ran in.

"What happened?!" Tamaki ran into the room and broke past the crowd, "A-Ash! How did--"

"And where were you?!" Eren turned to look at Tamaki, pushing his hand against Tamaki's chest, "why are you just now getting here, huh? Wasn't it your job to stay with him?!"

"I-it was, but I thought you and Kirito were--"

"That's enough." Kirito pushed the two apart, "stop pinning blame. Especially not at a time like this. We have one person dead, here. If we don't get solid clues, then all but one of us will be dead. So let's just calm down, keep an open mind, and figure things out."

"Aren't you upset about this, Kirito?" Natsu muttered loud enough for them to hear, "why are you still trying to be--"

"I'm pissed!" Kirito turned to him, "but yelling and arguing aren't going to help! I want to get out of here as much as all of you! Hell, I'm not one to be rational! But we have to figure this out if we don't want to die!"

Everyone went silent as Kirito thrust the black and white tablet into Eren's hands, "here."

Eren looked cautiously at Kirito before clearing his voice and reading the description on the screen, "Ash Ketchum. Cause of death, suffocation. Estimated time of death, 12:30. Estimated time of body discovery, 20 minutes afterward. This is the same amount of information this damned thing gave us last time."

"So... 12:30..." Korra rubbed her chin.

That's when I woke up from that nap. Mitsuha thought to herself. I should probably take note of that. That gives me an alibi... Oh, and Kaori, too, since she's the one who got me.

"We should split up and search for clues like we did last time." Luffy suggested, "I can stay here and watch the body."

"I'll stay with him." Naruto spoke up, "I... Don't really wanna get too far into this, you know?"

I guess he's just a little scarred... Mitsuha smiled sadly, "alright. Let's split off."

"Wait, hang on." Kirito stopped everyone before they could break off into smaller groups, "we're still missing some people."

"You mean they haven't come down yet?" Korra looked at him.

"That's right!" Kaori looked at Mitsuha, "Haru and Taiga, right? We should go check on them."

And just like that, Mitsuha was dragged away from the scene and up the stairs to the main level to Taiga's dorm room. They knocked on the door a few times.

"How on Earth did she miss the announcement?" Kaori pursed her lips and knocked again. Finally, Taiga slowly opened the door, yawning heavily.

"Huh?" Taiga blinked, "are we dead yet?"

"Taiga!" Mitsuha exclaimed, "you didn't hear it?!"

"What do you mean? Hear what? I was sleeping until you guys came making a racket out here."

"Ash was killed..."

Taiga was frozen before she let out a heavy sigh, "I knew this would happen..."

"So..." Mitsuha looked at her, "you haven't left your room?"

"Hell no! I was sleeping this whole time! Besides, I'm sure someone would've seen me if I left my room and went to wherever everyone else was! Where were they?"

She doesn't even know... I'm sure she's fine... It couldn't have been her if she's been sleeping this whole time. Mitsuha noted mentally as the three girls made their way across the foyer to where Haru's ultimate lab was. They knocked on the door as hard as they could until the door swung open and Haru stood in his swimming jammers and a towel hanging over his shoulders. It was apparent by the way his hair was matted against his face that he'd just gotten out of the pool.

"Something wrong?"

No duh! Mitsuha pushed the anger further back into her mind and took a deep breath, "someone was killed and the killing game is back in action."

Haru stared at her, unable to speak. He pursed his lips, shut his eyes, and walked past the three girls, "let's go, then."

"Is he..." Kaori watched as he walked off towards the foyer, "is he totally unaffected by it?!"

"No." Mitsuha sighed, "let's go. We have a lot of investigating to do."

______________________

"There you two are." Naruto and Luffy watched as Mitsuha, Kaori, Haru, and Taiga entered the media room, "about time."

"Oh my..." Taiga's face turned even paler than it already was when she saw the corpse, "wh-what the hell happened...?!"

"It was suffocation." Luffy explained as he knelt by the body, "think by strangling?"

"Uh..." Naruto crossed his arms, "aren't those two the same thing?"

"Dumb..." Taiga shut her eyes, "suffocation can be caused by anything. Strangling is caused specifically by someone squeezing their neck."

"Huh, you knew an awful lot about that." Luffy rose a brow.

"What? That's just common sense." Taiga scoffed, "you're all idiots."

"We don't have time for this." Mitsuha sighed, "at this rate, we'd be better off splitting up and looking for our own evidence."

"Fine." Haru shut his eyes, turned, and left.

He's clearly trying to keep his composure... But he feels the same despair as the rest of us. Is this really what Monokuma wanted?

Whatever. I'd better get back to work. We don't have much time.

"I'll start with..." Mitsuha, glancing over the body, slowly approached Naruto and Luffy, "you both were out there playing foosball, right? Not really near Ash."

"We couldn't have killed him." Luffy defended, "we have our own alibis. We all do, those of us who were playing altogether. We were there the whole time."

"That's true." Naruto nodded in agreement, "it was Luffy, Natsu, Korra, Celty and myself. To be honest, I'd love to tell you who could've gone in and out of the room, but we were too invested in the game. Besides, it was way too loud to hear anything."

"In other words, you don't have anything else that could be helpful to us." Mitsuha sighed as she glanced down at Ash's body again before shutting her eyes and leaving, "I'll try and see if anyone else has anything."

She left the media room and glanced across the hallway to the open library door, opened a crack. She slowly pushed the door open and caught sight of Kirito and Celty.

"Oh, Mitsuha. Kaori." Kirito turned from the table he and Celty stood in front of, "look at this."

"Hm?" Mitsuha glanced over to where he was pointing and noticed an open book, "okay, so what makes this so special?"

"Okay, uh. I don't know how to explain this without sounding suspicious, but..." Kirito scratched the back of his neck, "I was in the room with Ash, but left. I came in here a few times today, and it couldn't just be a coincidence, but this book wasn't open the last time I was here."

"Okay..." Mitsuha picked up the book, "knots, huh?"

>> I think it's important that we hear what you were up to, Kirito. << Celty looked at the dark-haired boy.

"I know, I know..."

"We should get going." Kaori whispered to Mitsuha, "we don't have that much time."

"Right." Mitsuha turned as she and Kaori left the library and rejoined Taiga and Haru in the Game Room where Tamaki was.

"Man... I wish we knew where everyone went, it'd be easier to keep track of where to investigate." Taiga complained, "this sucks."

"Poof!" A voice rang from behind them. They all turned to see Monokuma standing below them, "guess what, children? Check your trusty system screens! I've added some handy little updates that might seem useful to you!"

"Uh..." They all swiped the air in front of them and their system screens popped up before them. Under 'School Rules' was the new option, 'Track', "what's this? A map?"

"Yep!" Monokuma beamed, "but it's not like your regular old map of the school grounds! It shows where all your classmates are! It turns off at night, though. Ya know, to conserve energy! It shouldn't matter anyway, all students should be in their rooms to begin with."

"Ah, this is inaccurate." Taiga spoke up, "I'm not in my room."

Haru looked at him, "yeah, it says I'm still in my Ultimate Lab."

"Oopsies! I guess there's a bit of a time lag, huh? I'll get that fixed! Maybe! We'll see! Puhuhuhu!" Monokuma cackled as he vanished once again.

"Hmmm..." Mitsuha studied the maps. Taiga wasn't wrong when they said Monokuma messed up the timing of the map's updates.

"Yeah, this has to have been last updated 10-20 minutes ago..." Haru muttered.

"So I hope everyone on here is still where the map says they are." Tamaki looked around.

"Hey, um." Mitsuha looked at him, "something's different about you."

Tamaki blinked a few times before Haru spoke up.

"It's the jacket."

"Oh!" Mitsuha nodded, "that's it. You're not wearing your usual purple jacket."

"Oh, I must've left it somewhere." Tamaki looked down at himself, "I didn't even notice."

"I... Still have some questions for Kirito." Kaori told the small group, "I'll catch up with you guys later."

"Okay." Mitsuha watched as she walked off before turning to Tamaki, "so where were you? You came in late after the announcement, right?"

"Well, you won't believe me when I say this, but..." Tamaki looked down at the ground, "I was in the bathroom."

"Huh? For 20 minutes?" Taiga rose a brow, "that seems a bit suspicious."

"I know. No one would believe me." Tamaki sighed, "it's alright. I'll find a way to manage on my own in the trial."

"Tamaki..." Mitsuha looked at him sadly before Haru tapped her shoulder.

"We need to keep looking."

"Yeah." Mitsuha sent him a small smile before leaving with Haru and Taiga to the Laundry Room, where Natsu was.

"Hey guys." Natsu smiled as he took a step back from the sink next this washer washer and dryer were standing, "I don't think I found any useful information, but I found this sick manual on how to work these washer and dryer."

"We don't have anything to wash." Taiga groaned, "that's useless to us."

"I mean." Mitsuha shrugged, "it doesn't hurt to look."

Wash darks in cold, wash whites in hot, SkinCare on all products, washer functions for at least 20 minutes to wash and 30 minutes to dry...

"Did, uh..." Haru pointed at the sink, "did something happen?"

Taiga ran over and looked into the sink before turning to Natsu, "what do you mean you didn't find any useful information?! This is pretty important, you know!"

"Y-yeah, but..."

Mitsuha ran over to see what the commotion was about. In the sink was Eren's folded jacket, the Scout symbol on the jacket's back facing upwards. Splattered across the symbol and on the sleeves was red.

"Natsu." Haru looked at him, "are you hiding something?"

"No!" Natsu scratched his neck, "I figured it was fine. I mean, Naruto did spill juice on Eren's jacket, didn't he? We all saw it. And since it's wet, seems like it went through the washer at least once."

That's right... Eren told me that... He was coming out of the Laundry Room when I came down, so...

"Hey, look at this! I didn't know we had this many jackets!"

Taiga had swung open a pair of doors on the opposite wall to reveal a closet full of spare clothes and jackets for everyone.

"Oh, yeah, that's been there." Haru nodded, "I took a jacket from there."

"It looks like each person has three spares of everything." Natsu sifted through the closet, "are there any missing?"

"Well..." Mitsuha counted through, "it looks like they're all here. Except for Haru, Kirito, and Eren."

"Hm..." Taiga rubbed her head, "this is making my brain hurt."

"We should keep all this in mind." Mitsuha turned to leave the Laundry Room just as they heard Natsu yell then the sound of items falling onto the ground.

"So clumsy." Taiga groaned as they returned back to him and helped him pick the stuff back up, "be careful next time."

"Yeah, sorry. Thanks, guys." Natsu thanked them as they left the room. Just as he started getting up, he used his hand to hold onto the shelves of the bookcase until the bookcase budged and something behind it caught his eye, "huh? What the..."

He grabbed the piece of furniture and pulled it away from the wall, "is this... A door?"

He grabbed the doorknob and opened it to reveal a passageway, "no way..."

________________

"Guys!" Korra smiled as Mitsuha, Haru, and Taiga walked into the boiler room, "we found something."

"We didn't touch it." Eren stepped aside and pointed at a hook on the wall. On it was multiple bundles of rope, "they're all the same, but this one caught our attention."

"It's frayed." Mitsuha inspected the frayed rope, "think it was like this before?"

"Not sure." Eren shrugged, "no one's been in here before, I don't think."

"Interesting." Haru looked down, "there's still something I've been wondering..."

Mitsuha looked at him, "what?"

"It's Kirito..." Haru turned to her, "he was with Ash the whole time, wasn't he? With Tamaki and Eren?"

"Y-yeah... I think so?"

"So..." Haru if Tamaki's and Eren's alibis are stable, then what about Kirito's?"

Mitsuha opened her mouth to speak before they all heard the tone over the PA system followed by Monokuma's voice.

"You children know what that means! Investigation hour is now over! Please step lively and make your way to the fountain in the courtyard outside and let's get this second Class Trial started!"

Crap... We ran out of time... Mitsuha pursed her lips as they left the boiler room. They turned to the other rooms and saw Kirito, Celty, and Kaori leave the Library and Naruto, Luffy, and Natsu leave the Media Room.

"Natsu." Mitsuha looked at him, "did you go to the Media Room or something?"

"Ah..." Natsu wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, "see, the thing is... I'll tell you later."

She studied Naruto and Luffy's faces and saw the same look of confusion and surprise.

I hope everything's alright.

"And here we go again." Taiga shut her eyes sadly as they all made their way to the courtyard, "I hate this so much..."