//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Dungeons and Death - Deadly life part 2 // Story: Danganronpa V.E: Creating Chaos // by Lusaminia //------------------------------// Three murders, all with some clear connection between them, and now somepony has tried to disrupt the very investigation by sealing off the murder scene. We were lucky some had stayed behind to investigate it, but it brought up a lot of questions. Doctor Hooves, Thorax, and I hadn’t seen who had done it, and it is completely possible someone inside was responsible. It didn’t help that Bon Bon had run off on her own, not willing to talk with anyone around her. That said, I had a promise to fulfill to my sister. The door in the dungeon, the one near the torture room that had been shut previous to this, was now open. It hadn’t been opened at any point, at least as far as I can tell, until these three murders. There was something inside of it that was possibly detrimental to this investigation. Yet looking at the door already gave me really uncomfortable question. Turning back to the changeling working on the broken door, I hoped he wasn’t too deeply concentrated yet on fixing it. “Thorax, can I ask you one last thing real quickly?” I asked. I didn’t get anything in response, Thorax seeming to be fixated on the task at hoof. “Guess I won’t be getting any theories from him.” I turned away from the changeling and back to the door. For all I had known, Monokuma had locked it up, meaning that whoever opened it got his permission. Either that, or they broke in, but one check at the lock told me that was not very likely. The door knob had no dent, wasn’t broken off, and as far as I know hadn’t been tampered with. Who knew if Monokuma would even allow that if he wasn’t letting ponies in in the first place. I hadn’t entered the room, and already something about it felt off to me. “Is it possible that someone messed with the inside of the lock?” I asked to no one in particular. “Considering the shape it is in, not likely,” Doctor Hooves replied to my left, inspecting the knob from every side. “You already noticed the lack of denting I’m sure, and I can’t see any damage or scratch marks. From what I can tell, it was either opened naturally,” he turned to me as he finished his own inspection of the door. “Or the room was broken into without using the lock.” “Perhaps we’ll find something on the inside,” I suggested, the sound of a tic-tok clock ringing in my head. It was something that happened when these investigations slowed to a crawl, and it made me uncomfortably anxious. “Besides, we can discuss the door at the trial if we have to.” Doctor Hooves nodded in response. “Right.” Door to Mystery Room has been added to the truth bullet section of your handbook. With that mystery pocketed for later, Doctor Hooves and I moved into the room. Considering what the rest of the floor had been like I had expected it was for freezer room up to this point. A place to store dead bodies, mostly likely ones from other killing games if Monokuma had done this before. I had suspected that of him, considering how experienced he sounded with this stuff, but it was possible he wasn’t. It made sense either way, but that was all just a theory up to this point, and none of it was true. My eyes went wide as I looked at what was in front of me, that feeling of discomfortable from earlier multiplying tenfold. It was a freezer room, so my theory wasn’t completely false, but it was also a very undefined truth. The room was covered in bright pink blood, save for the ceiling, and it was not dry. It made the entire room feel cold, something not aided by the lack of heating in the bottom floor of the castle. Despite my wish to just throw up at the sight of this, three words somehow managing to leave my lips. “What the hell?” “Ms. Yearling, please don’t tell me you actually fell for this?” Doctor Hooves replied, giving me a look that made him look extremely disappointed in me. “You… actually don’t realize what’s going on, do you?” “I don’t know? How the heck would I not know?!” I ask in surprise, noticing how calm he was in all of this. “The entire room is covered in blood, Hooves! It’s like something out of a horror novel! Why the heck are you so okay with all of this?” “Ms. Yearling, I’m a scientist,” He responded in a matter of fact war. “More specifically, I’m the Ultimate Scientist, and have study many different fields. This includes physics, chemistry, biology, and other fields of interest,” He gave me a smile, seeming to enjoy the gloating that I had allowed him to give. “You don’t become the Ultimate Scientist just for building a time machine, especially when doing so requires knowledge of all of those fields.” I expected more after that, but he didn’t continue. “The point is?” Doctor Hooves facepalmed, sighed, and then gave me a more straightforward answer. “This is paint, Ms. Yearling,” He explained. “The density isn’t the same, none of the victims had this much blood, and the pony body doesn’t have anywhere near enough blood for… this,” He pointed at the giant puddle of ‘blood’ we were currently standing in. “Also, even if it could be from a pony, the time of death for our three victims meant that the blood on them was already dry. If this was their blood, it would have dried by now.” “Oh… right,” I reluctantly admitted, feeling embarrassed about how I had acted. ”In that case, where did this blo... I mean paint, come from.” “I don’t know,” Doctor Hooves admitted with a shrug. “If this was meant to be a prank of some kind, than it was in poor taste.” Considering just how much paint their was, I doubted it was meant for a prank. This had some connection to the murder, at least that’s what I thought, but it made no sense. How the heck did murderer get this much paint, and what even was its purpose? It seemed completely unrelated, but the fact this room was only opened after the murder left me to think otherwise. Paint flooded room was added to the truth bullet section of your handbook. Now only feeling embarrassed instead of disgusted, I trudged forward into the room, deciding to get a better idea at what we were looking at. On the far side of the room was various small hatches, which were likely used for preserving dead bodies. To the left was a metal table, which was also covered in pink paint, which was probably use for autopsy. I had a feeling the walls were meant to be metal, but like everything else it was hidden behind a disgustingly bright pink. The only thing of real interest was the the hatches at the far end of the room. As I opened the first one, I quickly found that my hunch was right. Inside was the dead body of a pony, though it’s condition showed that preservation wasn’t really a goal. I stuck my hoof into the area behind the hatch, noticing a distinct lack of cold hair. Putting a hoof on the dead body, I noticed how fleshy and warm it was, for a decaying body at least. The mane, tail, and pony’s coat were gone, and the body itself was well rotted. Closing the first hatch, I moved onto the next, and got the same exact result. Another dead body, not well preserved, and well rotted. I continued to move down the row, noticing that Doctor Hoove’s had started doing the same exact thing. Each one we opened contained another body, and everytime it was the same exact condition as well. Then, suddenly, as we opened the last one, which was the hatch in the center of them all, we found the outlier. It was the only one with no body. “Doctor Hooves, how many hatches are there?” I asked my companion, wanting to check something real quick. I saw him quickly add up each column of hatches, mumbling the amount to himself as he did. “I’m counting ten,” He replied as he finished. “Not enough for him to use a killing game.” “Which would mean that these bodies are from something else,” I summarized. “I might be overthinking this, but I’m positive that another body should be here. Monokuma clearly had a reason for filling these, and a reason for keeping it sealed off from us.” “So you think the murderer used the missing body for something?” Doctor Hooves asked. “Yes, but what it is they used it for I’m unsure about,” I told him. “Either way, it’s something we can ask around about.” While the room hadn’t been as significant as we hoped it would be, it did leave us a few new mysteries. I couldn’t put my hoof on it, but the fact only one hatch that lacked a body behind it felt off to me. It couldn’t be a coincidence, I just knew it wasn’t, that wouldn’t feel right in this case. Somepony broke into his room for a reason, and whatever it was had to be connected to the missing body. Missing body has been added to the truth bullet section of your handbook With that we left the room, deciding to check back with some of the other ponies who were still down in the dungeon level of the castle. Thorax still wasn’t finished yet, saying that whoever messed with the door had done it carefully. That meant we couldn’t ask anyone who was inside about what we had found. That said, we still had another part of the dungeon that Ditzy wanted us to check. Other ponies were checking the dungeon cells, but if she thought something about it was important I wasn’t going to complain. The first pony we came into contact with was Rainbow Dash, who was watching Bon Bon until she had taken off upstairs. No one had exactly known why, but she seemed insistent on working alone, even after we explained again why we investigate together. Pinkie Pie seemed like the most reasonable option as to her condition, but it seemed like whatever was going on was worse than that. No one knew what was going on inside of her head, save herself. Either way, Rainbow had believed it would not do anything to go after her. “Hey A.K- what the buck!” Her voice exploded as she looked at me, or more specifically, my paint covered legs. “Yearling, why are you and Doctor Hooves…” “Would you believe me if I said that locked door at the end of the hallway was flooded with paint?” I asked, getting a look from my fellow pegasus that could only be described as skeptical. “Seriously, go check it if you want, but we were wondering if you’ve found anything interesting.” “Other than what I found in this open cell, not really,” Rainbow said, pointing at the cell. No doubt this was the cell that Bon Bon had been kept in, if Ditzy was correct about that fact. “There was a thing of rope in their as well as these keys, which seem to open every cell down here. I wonder why they were locked in the first place?” “Ditzy told me that Bon Bon was locked down here, though she didn’t exactly mention why,” I explained, stepping inside the cell just to make sure. “Usually all the cells are closed, so someone had to have opened this for a reason. With this evidence the idea of Bon Bon being held down here is far easier.” “Rainbow Dash, has Bon Bon stepped back down here at all since we’ve been gone?” Doctor Hooves asked behind me. I didn’t hear a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but the words I heard out of his mouth, as well as how they were said, told me everything. “I see. Any idea on what she could be checking on?” “Part of me thinks she just wanted to get away from all of us,” Rainbow theorized as I finished my investigation inside of the cell, not finding anything particularly useful. “If I had to guess anything, it would be the small shards of glass or plastic that was under Pinkie’s door.” That quickly got my attention, mainly because it was related to Pinkie, who had the most mysterious death. All we knew about her was about as much as we know about each of the other victims. We knew she had been impaled, though I didn’t know by what, and no injury she recieved was marked as fatal in the Monokuma file. For a second I thought she might have somehow escaped, but the quick flash of her dead body through my head told me otherwise. All of that made this detail, no matter how little it might help, all the more important. “How small exactly would you say?” I asked. “Small enough were you wouldn’t notice unless you just stood there and looked at the floor,” Rainbow explained. “After the entire debacle in the dining room this morning ended, I tried to go speak with Pinkie, but she… wasn’t in her room.” “That’s weird,” I tilted my head in confusion at that bit of information. “I figured that was were she would have headed off to.” “Pinkie was already in a rather bad mood, I doubt she wanted ponies talking to her, even if it was to cheer her up,” Doctor Hooves theorized. “Her room is likely the first place anypony would go to.” “Either way, I’m near positive on what I’m saying right now. That glass likely came from in her room,” Rainbow stated. “That was where most of it seemed to be located at least. When I saw it, I thought something bad had happened, especially when I found that her door was unlocked. Thankfully, there was no body, but I guess that didn’t last to long.” I still wasn’t completely sold on this. “And you say this earlier because?” “Like Hooves said, she probably needed some space,” Rainbow Dash said with what seemed like complete honesty. “Last thing she wants is everyone in the castle running around calling her name, especially with how she must have felt about all of us.” I wanted to call her out on that, say that Pinkie didn’t hate everyone, but thought didn’t even reach my lips before I realized how right she was. With everypony that died she seemed to get more and more quiet, and when Octavia died she didn’t want to be with us. I gritted my teeth as I thought about what might have been going through Pinkie’s mind. After we were so willing to kill Trixie and Octavia, even if that second one was more reluctant, she probably couldn’t help but think we had no problem killing those we come across. For somepony to then give that letter to her, saying her own sister had died, that last ounce of trust was destroyed. It was almost a miracle she was willing to talk to Bon Bon, if that was even possible after what happened. Opened Cell has been added to the truth bullet section of your notebook Rainbow’s Account has been added to the truth bullet section of your handbook “One more thing before we conclude here, Rainbow,” I asked. “Did you see whoever broke the torture room’s door?” “Is that what the loud sound at the other end of the hallway was?” Rainbow asked. I nodded my head in response, just realizing nopony had told her about it, since she was the only one who didn’t inspect it when it occurred. “Not really, Bon Bon was upstairs, and all of us were here together. The only thing I could think is that Fluttershy is responsible, since she is the only who I haven’t seen during this entire thing.” “Actually, where has that pegasus been during this entire thing?” Doctor Hooves asked. “She was with us when we start the investigation, but after that she just disappeared.” “Considering how Monokuma seems to be using her, I’m sure it has something related to getting around his own rules,” Rainbow suggested, a long pause between some of her words, almost as if she was reaching for something not really there. “Just because someone is a stickler for it doesn’t mean they won’t try and break it indirectly.” “That could be true, but I think that goes against Monokuma’s programming,” I reminded her. “Robots are built to follow instructions, and even a machine like him, as sentient as it is, has to follows those boundaries.” “Well I got nothing then, other then the fact it can’t be good,” Rainbow said, throwing her hooves into the air, shaking her head. “I hate to say it, but Fluttershy kinda did this to herself, trying to befriend that piece of trash.” Fluttershy’s whereabouts has been added to the truth bullet section of your handbook “Sis!” I turned around, recognizing the voice of a certain wall-eyed pegasus behind me. What I saw was Ditzy, Applejack, and Thorax walking towards us, the first of the three rushing forward to give me a hug. “Oh it’s so good to see you again.” “I can second that,” I replied with a smile. I could see Doctor Whooves looking back and forth between my sister and I in shock. This is probably the first time he has heard Ditzy call me that, now that I think about it. “How did things go for you guys? Hopefully you ended up getting more in there than we ended up with out here.” “If you think we really cracked one of these murders, than I’m gonna have to disappoint you,” Applejack answered. “We think we know what killed Pinkie, but it all is just guessing right now.” The next few minutes involved the sharing of information from one group to the other. Applejack wasn’t joking about not finding much, as apparently the only real confirmation we had was that Pinkie had been killed with a sword. Even than, Flam and Flash were still up in the air, and our finding didn’t help to fix that. The fact that Flash was also supposedly part of this group responsible for putting the messages back together was also something of interest. It was clearly something important, but seeing as the only we were certain of being a part of this was Flash, we couldn’t go on it without further investigation. Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen. Ding dong bing bong “Damn it,” I whispered, hearing that dreaded bell. Every investigation I felt like we got less and less time, and that feeling just kept on growing. “Attention everyone: the investigation period is now over!” Monokuma addressed from wherever he was observing us. “You know what that means? It’s trial time! Everyone make your way to the usual place, and get ready for another incredible battle of wits and words!” “How long do you think it took him to come up with that?” Rainbow asked from behind me. “Longer than most of us could probably guess,” I responded, sighing as our investigation came to an end. “Guess we’ll talk everything over during the trial. Hope you are all ready.” With that, we all made our way to the garden, though it seemed that none of us were truly ready for what was to come. As we entered I couldn’t help but notice how much emptier the garden now felt, so many of us now put in graves for some psycho’s entertainment. Even as we were joined by Redheart things felt empty, a notion that not even Bon Bon or Fluttershy could solve. With all of us hear, I decided to try and get on last detail before stepping on the platform. “Excuse me, Fluttershy?” I called, tapping the pegasus with my wing. She looked at me with almost robotic eyes, like she was no longer a pony but a tool. “Where were you this whole time? You know you are suppose to have a partner, right?” “Who said I didn’t,” She replied, her gaze turning to Bon Bon. “She didn’t want me to follow, but I did anyway. I’m sure my findings will be rather helpful during the coming trial,” She smiled as she passed by me, whispering in my ear as she did. “There is a lie in the murder room. Several, in fact. That’s all your getting for a hint.” With that she trotted past me and onto the platform, leaving me as the one everypony was waiting on. After thinking over what she had said, I stepped on as well, but what she had said seemed odd. A lie? What kinda of lie could Fluttershy be talking about? And why was she telling someone who hadn’t well investigating the murder location? I tried to get the thought out of my head, but it didn’t leave, as well as one other thing… ...Someone, dead or alive, is responsible for all of this. Pinkie Pie, the Ultimate Party Planner, a pony who had seemed to loss all will to live as the days went on, finally put to rest by somepony next to us. She was the last pony who deserved to die, as she was the one who needed a happy ending the most out of all of us here, including myself. Flash Sentry, the Ultimate Guard, killed and possibly associated with a group possible for reforming Pinkie Pie’s message. He wasn’t the kindest of ponies, but he certainly didn’t deserve this end, especially with how much Ditzy had told me about his relationship with Applejack. Lastly, Flam, the Ultimate Con Artists, who had been the most ironically honest one out of all of us here. Smart, cunning, and clearly as good with words as someone who spends their life lying should be. Perhaps he was also involved with Flash’s group, but either way he had been murdered while strapped down to a table. Three murders, each more mysterious than the last, and one of us had killed them, or maybe they had killed themselves. The dead wasn’t giving us any answers, and we had so little to go on already. A room filled with blood colored paint, Bon Bon for some reason chained up for unknown reasons, and if Fluttershy is to believed, a lie that we all seem to be falling for. As we reached the bottom of the pit and stepped into the trial room, I knew exactly what to do. I had to win this battle, if not for my life, but for the ones who died because of it.