By the time Serenade had reached the cafeteria, most of the others had regrouped as well. Hammer was the only one not there.
"Where's Hammer? Is he still investigating the fourth floor?" Serenade asked
"No, Mr Head told me that he had some matters to attend to...but he did not tell what those matters were..." Orion explains.
"We can discuss without him then...who wants to go first?" Beau asks
"Those metal plates still aren't coming off anytime soon, I checked each and every single of them to!" Punch says
"So the windows as per usual aren't a possible escape route" Beau folds her arms
"There's a photo gallery with a few nice displays covering the wall...but it doesn't seem like anything of interest was in there" Nimbus says.
"Zoom...she would have loved that gallery..." Olive says. Her mood was extremely uncomforting but there was nothing anyone could do to help her with it.
"Yes...she would have..." Nimbus looks away.
"There was a rec room with a pool table, a line of various magazines...and I mean a wide variety" Orion started
"Like ones Hammer would enjoy?" Samurai asks
"Er...y-yes...there was also a game of chess that was set up...unfortunately the magazines will not be switched with more up-to-date ones, for some unknown reason, Monokuma has informed me that it is not possible..."
"Strange...they're just magazines, why would they be a problem?" Grimdark asks
"I do not know...my apologies..." Orion smiles.
"T-there's a w-workshop...it's equipped w-with lo-lots of different tools and materials to build something..." B says
"Maybe that's why Hammer's up there?" Serenade suggests
"It's Hammer, he won't be building something in his spare time...you know what I mean?" Samurai says
"Um...right..." Celestia dammit, Samurai!
"There are your usual two classrooms as well, nothing suspicious about them though..." Punch says
"Actually...there was one thing" Serenade says, all attention was drawn over to him as he said that. "It was just like the third floor, I found a photo of three of the dead students, unlike last time though, it was: Lock, Digital and Tickery but Monokuma snatched it up before I could get a good look at the whole thing"
"Was it like before? With the windows?" Nimbus asks
"Yep, none of the iron plates were covering the windows and something that makes those photos all the more suspicious is...they were taken here in Hope's Peak..."
"But, the metal plates are clearly here and yet they aren't in the photo? They can't be the same place!" Punch yells out
"Well maybe...we aren't in Hope's Peak" Beau suggests "I mean, we all fell unconscious when we entered through the gates which means...we could have been transported to somewhere completely different"
"But what about the three of them in Hope's Peak? I mean, they had to have at least spent a day there for that photo to be taken" Serenade argues
"True, but what if that isn't really Hope's Peak and Monokuma was just lying? I mean...he did lie about the Despair Nightmares so why wouldn't he do that now?"
"So Digital, Tickery and Lock all knew each other before coming to Hope's Peak?" Samurai asks
"It's defiantly plausible" Beau folds her arms. There were a few moments of silence.
"Well then...I guess that concludes everything" Nimbus says
"Not yet...remember in the class trial I said I had one more thing we would need to discuss?" Beau interrupted him
"Hm? What would that be?" Nimbus looked at her intrigued.
"It's about him" She points at Grimdark "Why were you hidden up in the third floor all that time anyway? And is it just a coincidence that you're the only changeling here?"
"Hmph! You have no idea what you're talking about! I woke up on the third floor and was stuck up there for the whole time...of course...if you have something that would say otherwise, I'd love to hear..." Grimdark smirked confidently
"Well, if you want evidence, alright then. Do you all remember the message that was left just before we got our last motives?"
"Yes, I believe it said 'Who's next?'" Orion recalls
"Exactly...but I don't think Lock was the one that wrote that now...what if it was Grimdark? What if he had a motive in his head that would reduce the amount of others that could attempt to kill him and therefore try to turn us against each other and kill one another for his own personal gain?"
"I don't think so! I hid in the side room in the pool the entire time until I was found by the music boy!"
It's Serenade you douche...
"Oh please, if you were in there the entire time you would have seen Lock trying to kill himself but even if you were there, you wouldn't have stopped him, he was making things easy for you and also. Why didn't you have to do class trials up until now? I think...you're the mastermind" Beau pointed at him as everyone went silent.
"M...mastermind...?" Punch repeated
"Monokuma can't be doing this by himself, there has to be someone behind the scenes, the man behind the curtain! Why not Grimdark? As a 'Super High School Level Lieutenant' he has muscles that protect him from most of us, excluding Punch of course who could rip him into little changeling pieces, he has the ability to easily strategize before performing an action and he has the brains to know whether a plan will work or not...I'd say he's the perfect candidate..."
Grimdark let out a chuckle "That's real cute, but you should try to actually prove that little farfetched theory of yours..." He turned and walked out, hardly phased by the accusation.
A mastermind? Could someone really be controlling Monokuma...I guess Orion did think the same thing but that doesn't mean it's true, does it?
"I still think that it's him, he just shows up out of nowhere in the middle of an investigation and expects us to believe his insane story!" Beau says, annoyed. "I need to go cool off..." She storms off leaving the rest of them to ponder on what she had said.
"So a real pony trapped us in here...?" Olive asked
"We can't say that for sure...it's just a theory that Beau came up with" Nimbus says
"But...Beau has always been right about things, like Serenade...why would now be any different?" Samurai scratches the back of his head.
"W-well...that can't be true, it just can't!" Punch says
"Y-yes...one of us is t-the ho-horrible one behind t-this? It's u-unthinkable!" B agrees.
"But...it is not outside of the realm of possibility..." Orion argues "Do you honestly believe that a small doll could trap us like this? It must be a robot of some sort and if it is a robot then there must be a controller somewhere, no?"
"She...makes a valid point, but I'm not sure" Samurai says
"We can't question an argument like that at this point in time!" Nimbus says to him.
Oh just go and make out with her in the storage closet already. Serenade rolls his eyes.
"Let's not think about it to much you guys...we should just relax for the rest of the day as well as we can..." Punch suggests.
"She's right...we should just wait around for the day to end" Nimbus folds his arms. But before that happened, Serenade had recalled those Monokuma medals he found and headed to the shop on the first floor that was next to the gymnasium. He had three medals.
The first attempt he did acquired him a fashion magazine. Second got him a purple and red dream catcher and the last attempt got him a blue metal stack.
How do these all fit in here? He shook his head as he headed off to his room to relax for a bit.