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They’d been able to take the robots with them, when they’d left. It had been difficult; they didn’t hold power well, and they didn’t have anywhere to charge, but that second problem was remedied upon their swift contact with the Future Foundation.Munakata hadn’t exactly been thrilled, taking all the “machines built by that lady of despair” to a secure, Future Foundation holding, but hey. Junko hadn’t had a bot.Celeste’s first mechanical failure, a sudden collapse of a knee joint, had reminded them all that machines could still die. Their friends could die again.That had been when Makoto began his search for the remnants. There was a mechanic among them. He could keep Makoto’s classmates in repair. He might even have been the one who built their current forms.During an exploration of an abandoned city, Byakuya investigates a gym. The smell of protein powder nearly causes him to vomit.None of them is willing to touch a hammer. They’ll take screwdrivers, power tools, anything to help reconstruct their world. Unless it’s a hammer.They avoid communal locker rooms like the plague, too, those of them who might otherwise still have occasion to use one. Aoi can still see the blood, in the corner of her vision. The draped, crucified form of her classmate. Her friend.Yasuhiro begins to predict obsessively. After all, if he misses an upcoming future, something else might not miss one of his friends.They try to live “normally”. Separately. Taking care of their metal companions as best as they can. But it doesn’t. Work. They begin to share a house. Then a room. Then a bed.But the Future Foundation keeps them out and about, too, as does Makoto’s search for the remnants for his own reasons. The reasons that are Celeste’s busted leg, Chihiro’s clumsy typing on worn out fingers, the chunk that got blown out of Mondo’s side when he defended one of his squishier friends from a Monokuma that had slipped through the perimeter.Touko, eventually, ends up in Towa City. It was only supposed to be for a short while, to collect whatever of Junko’s hostages might remain there, but she stayed in order to help with the reconstruction. She lives with Makoto’s sister, and Yasuhiro’s mother. Someday, she’ll bring them home.Chihiro, on her laptop, has reconnected with Alter Ego. The program has taken a name, Aruta, and calls her creator “mother”.None of them say anything, when Makoto, Kyouko, and Byakuya take a sudden “business trip” to Jabberwock Island. Even as their patience wears thin to worry, as the time inches on and they hear nothing.The next thing they hear about that whole thing is that Makoto is going on trial for harboring the remnants of despair.Byakuya returns home, weary and pretending not to be as scared as he is. Makoto could get executed, after all.Aoi and Yasuhiro step up. Aoi will go to the conference. Yasuhiro will wait outside for news.Kyouko is already going to be there. The two have already been framed for the same murder once, after all.Those who remain at home receive a message; take the robots outside the Future Foundation walls. Repairs are offered.Byakuya and Mukuro exchange a glance.It is their only chance, they suppose.They sneak out, of course, and meet Souda, who’s all too delighted to perform repairs, and upgrades that nobody has time for.They have somewhere to be, Kamukura-- Hinata?-- reminds him. A debt to repay. None of them ask questions.Robots, newly repaired, offer to join them.“No,” Koizumi says. “I don’t think they’d ever forgive us if you got destroyed.”“I wouldn’t,” Byakuya agrees.They go home.They wait.Mitarai broadcasts and almost completes his influencing, controlling, collection of color, movement, and sound. But he does not.A new Hope’s Peak is built. The robots, who were once alive, are given new, more grown shapes, and synthetic skin. They can be teachers.Eventually, the former remnants join them, too.They can be people again.They can, perhaps, recover.
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When they emerged from the pods, awake and alive, they put their cold hands to their warm skin. They touched their own faces. Each others’, too, if they were the type.Nagito turns to Hajime-- Izuru?-- and freezes.Izuru-- Hajime?-- is holding a knife.Not towards anyone, mind you. But he’s holding one.“Where’d you get that?” Nagito asks, approaching cautiously, trusting his luck to keep him safe.Izuru doesn’t answer.He raises the knife.Everyone turns when they hear the quiet sound of hair being cut.It’s messy, but it’s short. He looks more like Hajime, than like Kamukura Izuru.His eyes, though. There’s no mistaking his eyes. They’re red, and dull, and bored.Naegi, Kirigiri, and Togami keep their distance. They have some idea what’s going on. Enough to keep them from interfering.“That’s better,” Izuru says. He stands, and places the knife on a nearby table.Then he falls sideways.Nagito catches him. He is lucky, after all. Both of them are.Except, it’s not both of them. The eyes that open, blinking from the light and from curiosity, are Hajime’s again.“He…” Hajime mutters, pushing himself upright. “I… We…”“Hey, take it easy,” Mikan says. “You must be exhausted.”“Wasn’t sure that would work,” Hajime continues vaguely, but he does as he’s instructed, and he seems to be feeling emotions again, so no one thinks about it too hard.The Future Foundation’s agents leave them there to live, at least until the matter of Naegi’s trial is settled, but even though it’s real it’s still Jabberwock Island. They can’t stay there.Not with all the reminders of everything they’d done.So, quite simply, they don’t.They leave. The first order of business is to stop by a certain place, so Kazuichi can repair (“And upgrade?” “We don’t have time.”) some robots. Then, they would collect their final classmate, who was spared this particular horror, if not any other. And finally, handle the matter of their errant, likely still irrevocably fucked up teacher.They’d initially figured that Naegi’s trial would sort itself out, but as it happened most everything else they were doing was there anyways. And it was most definitely not working itself out, on account of another, slightly different, killing game was happening.“How did this guy end up a lucky student again?” Nagito asks Hajime as they approach the building.One of Hajime’s eyes turns red, which has been happening more and more as of late. Nagito privately thinks it might stick some day, and then what would they call him? Hajizuru? That’s not a name.“His luck is similar to yours, in a microcosm,” The man beside him says, one eye blank, one eye determined. “So much so, that his good and bad luck tends to be the exact same thing.”“Interesting,” Nagito says. “Hey, do you think Kazuichi gave my robot hand any cool--”“No.”“Oh.”“It’s a hand, Nagito,” Hajime chuckles, picking up his pace. “It’s cool enough.”They find Ryota, they find Yukizome’s corpse, they bring Kirigiri back from the brink of death, although that last one is mostly (entirely) Mikan.And they leave.They plan never to see anyone else from Hope’s Peak again.Then they find the bunker.They fight their way inside, and find a furnished, almost luxurious entrance hall, with exits at every side.“Do you feel that?” Ibuki asks.No one answers. No one has to.It’s the atmosphere of a killing game.The kids in these, that they begin to find and rip apart, aren’t technically super highschool level students; they’re too young.Many of them, though, the 77th class agrees, would have been.It’s Ryota’s idea to go to the new Hope’s Peak and start helping out there, either by scouting out talent, or teaching, or whatever they can do.“Ah, yes,” Hajime says, tucking a confused 17-year-old under his arm. “The new Hope’s Peak, because the first one was such a good, effective, and useful institution.”No one’s really sure if he’s joking. Personality-wise, there’s starting to be a spill over between Hajime and Izuru. It’s starting not to matter which is which, when it comes to most aspects of conversation.So they go, and they settle in.They’re somewhat well known, Naegi explains. They can’t use their own names with the students.“That’s fine,” Hiyoko says.The imposter nods. “That’s not what matters.”
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They never say the word beautiful again.None of them realized it, at first. It wasn’t something they thought of, looking at each other, in those first few weeks. Trying to reintegrate back into (the new) Hope’s Peak, into a mostly rebuilt society, into their own lives, was tough enough.At first, they avoid each other, as much as they can. Some of them share classes, but it’s difficult to talk to someone when you look at them and see their corpse.Maybe it would have been better if I’d really been dead, if it had been real like last time, Rantarou thinks, and pushes the thought away.It’s Kaede, who first notices that she isn’t able to connect with her school friends like she had before. She goes to Angie, as the two are in the same class, and almost says something to her about it.“That’s a beautiful drawing,” A classmate remarks absentmindedly as Kaede approaches.Kaede spends the next few seconds remembering how to breathe without throwing up. Angie takes longer.So, no, they never say that word again.Some of Kaito’s classmates notice he’s been pulling away, too, so they ask him about video games. He has a good enough time talking to them, until one of them mentions something about a virtual reality console.Kaito doesn’t say anything more. A couple of seats away, Gonta leans farther over his diagrams and tries not to hear. In the other direction, a machine Miu is working on catches fire.In the corner of the room, Kokichi does nothing. He stares ahead, lost in the parts of his past he regrets.They begin to meet up, in places they can claim, can keep.It’s just a few of them, at first. Shuichi, Himiko, Maki, Kaito. Then, Himiko brings Tenko. They all start to bring their group together.Fourteen broken children. Could be fifteen, if they could trust. But they can’t. They never say the word beautiful again.The last to join them is Rantarou.“I was the sole survivor of my other game,” He says, by way of explanation. “You don’t want me here.”“Trust me,” Kokichi says. “You aren’t the worst person in this room.”The first school break after the game is when they realize that avoiding each other in an attempt to mitigate the damage had never really been an option.Shuichi sits in his room, in his uncle’s home, and agonizes. While they’re all out of sight, anything could happen to them. Corpses flash across his vision. Every corpse, and then some.Some of them have phones. Some of them traded phone numbers before going home for the time.Some of them don’t.No one’s heard from Maki, Kokichi, or Gonta since school let out.When they get back, they wait together until everyone shows up.Gonta picks everyone up and tells them how happy he is to see them. It’s mutual.Kaito pulls Maki and Kokichi into a big hug when they get back. It wasn’t unexpected that they’d arrive together; they lived in the same town, as it happened.No, the issue is that they arrive from a different town.They decline to detail. Things are still tense between them, but it’s different now. There’s no animosity. Not really friendship, either, but there is understanding, and it’s step forward.They begin to group together as much as they can. Eating together, doing schoolwork together, existing in the same vicinity, just to know they’re all okay.They begin to move into each others’ rooms. There’s a well defined distinction between boys and girls dormitories, but they do their best.There’s talk. Of course there is. But it doesn’t matter.All that matters is waking up the next day with everyone as alive as they left them.They learn things about each other.Most of Rantarou’s sisters aren’t missing, and most of them are older than him. Plenty of them are step sisters, or half sisters, but it doesn’t matter that much. They’re all his sisters. Still, at Miu’s insistence, he draws up a chart, once.Kaito’s grandparents run a battered persons shelter out of their lovely, private beach house. There’s so many rooms. So many people. Some of them have been there for decades.Himiko lives in a travelling carnival. She spent most of her life being effectively homeschooled, and ended up a year ahead in her studies around the right time to skip right into Hope’s Peak, almost on accident.Tenko’s not her master’s only pupil, but she’s certainly the star student. The other members of her dojo are more a family to her than her parents ever were, and that’s just fine, she thinks.Kokichi breathes shallowly when he sleeps, and his heart rate slows down to a rate that causes Ryoma to think he’s dead, the first time he realizes.They grow up. They get jobs.They get the biggest house they can afford, and they stay there. Together.Society is still rebuilding. It might never stop.The survivors are rebuilding, too.They don’t have to be what’s expected of them.They can just be.