Chapter Text
It was so quiet.
Usually, there were many noises around them: The Monocubs, school bells, daily announcements, someone screaming their lungs out seeing a dead body or lunging at another's throat. Noises. Daily. Recurring. Well-known.
Earlier as well; just a little earlier, there had been whirring. Hissing of steam. The click of a camera, their own voices talking. Just a little earlier, there had been arguing. A bomb going off. Despair and hurt, both psychologically and physically in nature. But now?
"Alright ... I'll do it now."
Now was a tense sort of quietness filling the hangar.
The sort of which no one dares to interrupt, the kind of silence that little children would fearfully endure in order to keep up their guardians expectations. Ouma always hated that exact kind of silence. He had been proud to never have conveyed this kind of atmosphere when he was with DICE.
Ha. What a joke.
"Yeah." Ouma closed his eyes. He exhaled slowly, unsteadily. His hands were shaking badly. Since it would be too noticeable, he pressed his palms flat against cold metal. Those fucking nerves were quite bothersome today.
"Do it."
"Yeah," Momota mumbled back. He sounded like he had given up, Ouma noticed. Which would be alright in itself, however, when people give up, they have a certain look in their eyes, a certain melody in their voice and a definite lack of attention for the current situation. He took another deep inhale before he called out.
"Momota."
"Yeah ... I know."
He knew. Obviously, he knew. The logical part of the brain wasn't exactly something affected, instead, Ouma worried about something else entirely.
Obviously, Momota knew what was about to happen. They had talked it through more than enough. Or just enough, maybe, considering time wasn't on their side. No matter which it was, it was enough - had to be enough.
"Good. Now say it again and make me believe you."
Ouma heard some shuffling, a deep breath and then: "I know. Leave it to me."
He nodded weakly. His entire body hurt. Everything was sore and he was running out of time. He couldn't afford Momota to break down. There was no time to build him up if he lost it now. There wouldn't be more time in general. This was it.
With every breath, his lungs rattled in his ears. His hearing grew dull, his eyesight blurred further and further ... this was truly it.
Then, a little click echoed through the hanger. It's funny how sometimes, a tiny little noise could be so loud in your ears, almost deafening. Breaking through the silence as easily as a sharp blade ripping through paper.
And right after that tiny little clicking of a button, the heavy mechanical whirring and unpleasant hissing continued as the press descended.
Ouma kept his eyes closed.
Don't look, he kept repeating in his head. Don't. Don't. Don't.
He felt something come closer. Or was it imagination since his brain knew ... ?
Don't look.
How cold metal was. Ouma's back was freezing pressed onto the solid plate.
Don't fucking look. You'll ruin everything. You'll ruin the plan. Don't look. Don't panic. You can't panic. You mustn't panic. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.
FUCK.
The tip of his nose was cold.
Holy SHIT.
Flattened. Like the way he pressed his nose against ice cold windows as a kid. Though the nauseating burn in his stomach was nothing like the childish excitement of seeing snowflakes raining from the sky.
The press continued to deform his nose and Ouma slowly tilted his head until it was pressing evenly against the highest point of his cheek bone and bridge of his nose.
Though it didn't stop. It kept going.
It hurt.
Ouma's eyes shot open wide.
FUCK.
It hurt, it hurt, it hurt it hurt it hurtithurtithurtithurtithurtithurtit-
Voices, voices that were screaming inside his head, outside his head, "Ouma! Ouma!" and it didn't stop, they didn't- didn't stop-
"Ouma! Hey, answer me!"
Banging, dull banging of something soft against a much harder surface. Screaming, this insistent screaming didn't stop. Ouma's head hurt, it hurt, his nose, his entire face, his chest, it was too much.
God, he felt his heart with every staggering beat pushing against the unyielding metal plate squeezing it down, it was maddening. Ouma wanted to hyperventilate but the pressure against his lungs was merely a grim reminder that he couldn't. His chest wouldn't heave. His ribs ached with each shallow breath.
Too much. Too much, why the fuck didn't the ringing in his ears stop?! Why didn't the voices stop?!
"Ouma for fuck's sake! C'mon, man, answer! Ouma!"
... was that Momota ... ? Ah. Yes, it was. And he was mocking him in this situation, really? After all of this shitfest they went through for those past few hours? Maybe he should've expected him to drop a comment. Prolonging this ... plan could satisfy his hero complex seeing it as some sort of payback for all the bad things he's done to them. He should've known something like this could happen. No, he did know, expected it even and took his chances. Because ... he didn't have any other choice. It was either do and die or die without even trying.
Certainly, Ouma wouldn't give Monokuma the satisfaction of an easy death. He would make this the most convoluted masterpiece of a plan he could possibly think of in this situation. And he would give it his goddamn best if it meant to cause a little more discourse for the mastermind. No amount of pain, no matter what Momota would try, no matter how many times their group's detective would try to break through his lies, nothing would stop him from ending this game on his own terms.
Nothing.
Ouma felt a little better thinking how the mastermind would probably lose his mind over his death. His resolve strengthened again, almost overpowering the pain he was in. Almost. A little bit relief while his head was being drilled in by screaming, loud banging and an overwhelming amount of cold pressure.
Why couldn't it stop faster ... ?
At least his senses were dulled so much by that lethal poison coursing through his veins that he couldn't move or jolt even if he wanted to. He couldn't fuck up his plan like this. The small amount of hope this provided might have been laughable to someone else but to Ouma it was almost like he had won. He had played his part perfectly. The only thing left was to die.
It wasn't like Ouma wanted to die, no. He had experienced his fair share of pain in his life but he was never sparing a thought about dying. Even if he wasn't hellbent on leaving this life on his own conditions just like he was leading his life on his own conditions, he still had DICE. He still had people that he held dearly and wanted to take care of. DICE ... well, depending on what was real and what wasn't, his friends - his found family, really - didn't exist. Maybe they died or were killed, maybe his motive video did hold a certain truth in it, but Ouma had to admit it to himself a while ago: His entire life and all of his memories previous to the killing game might have been fabricated. He couldn't confidently tell what was true and what was a lie. He couldn't confide in anyone of the people here considering there was the established fact of a mastermind. He had nothing here.
The mastermind truly stripped him of his Ultimate Leader title and threw him in his own personal nightmare of a world of strangers with one bad egg and almost no leads of figuring out who it is. One bad egg out of the sixteen of them. Minus himself, that meant fourteen innocent young people had been thrown together to die. What kind of leader would he be if he just let that happen?
Whatever. So what.
At this point, he had played all his cards. Nothing mattered anymore. He didn't matter anymore. Momota mattered now. Momota, then Saihara, probably.
He could leave it to them.
Ouma closed his eyes and waited for his death.
"Fucking answer me! Ouma!"
Momota kept banging against the giant slab of metal, ignoring the way his bile rose in his throat. His hands were clenching tight, teeth bared and gritted while small droplets of blood painted his lips red.
He didn't know what was going on.
The press had stopped by itself on its last stretch. Ouma was stuck below and didn't answer. This wasn't the plan, this was wrong! What the hell was he supposed to do now?!
"Shit," the astronaut cursed under his breath. He banged one last time against the press before accepting the uselessness of it. What now, what now?!
Momota looked around.
There wasn't much new to see in the hanger that he spent the past few days in. The lights were back on, the press was frozen - the exisals were lining up as motionless as they had been ever since he got here. Maybe they would be strong enough? Could he do it if he piloted one of them?
He had Ouma's remote control, obviously. He knew how it worked. "Fuck, no time to think," he decided, panic-stricken face morphing into a mixture of determination and doubt. His grip on the remote tightened until he heard a crack and he shakily ran over to the row of machines pressing the button repeatedly in his haste.
"Fuck!"
The hatch closed again as Momota reached it and he pressed the button yet again impatiently, waiting and trying to pry the hatch open along with their electric mechanism. It seemed like he could speed up the process ever so marginally - Momota had never felt this powerless in his life.
His head was empty and he ran on autopilot as he heaved his weak body inside the exisal. Shaky fingers grasped the edge of the hatch pulling it down. His heart was racing. This is it.
Powering up the exisal was easier than he thought, moving it was weirdly instinctual. Momota approached the press. Ouma was dead quiet and it was unnerving and so, so wrong and Momota wanted him out of there. He steered the exisal's claws in a way that could grasp onto the upper metal plate.
He made it lift.
It was very late at night when they rushed out of the school building.
Harukawa was, for lack of a better word, mortified. She sprinted as fast as she could which made it horribly difficult to keep up and he couldn't keep up - but oh, he tried. Saihara's chest heaved harder as it did after their nightly training sessions. His lungs were on fire, his legs aching, and he didn't care. Not when Harukawa's face was as emotional as that. He hadn't even known she was still capable of showing so much raw feeling in her face.
It was worrisome, he knew how angry she was ever since Momota had been kidnapped. In fact, he had been surprised that she had reacted as complacently as she had when Ouma took him from them. Maybe Harukawa's skills as an assassin had made her realize that she couldn't have won. No matter how much she would have wanted to fight or even kill ...
Saihara's feet hurt. He huffed and squared his shoulders, eyebrows furrowing as he made his way lagging behind Harukawa. She was targeting the exisal hangar ...
The only reason why he caught Harukawa in her mindnumbing state of panic in the middle of the night was the nightmare that had woken him up. Unable to fall back asleep, the dead tired Ultimate Detective had decided to take a stroll around the school building. He was about to enter and walk up to study some file cases in his lab when Harukawa stormed out of the main entrance. At the time he was unable to talk to her, stunned by her sudden appearence and the suspicious flask clasped tightly in her hands. It clicked in his mind right then that she must've taken either poison or antidote from his lab and with the panic shining in her eyes, he suspected that it - whatever it exactly was - had already happened.
Needless to say, the adrenaline coursing through his system woke him up thoroughly.
Saihara hurried after her as fast as he could, worry nearly ripping him apart at the seams. He could only pray that it wasn't too late. He could only pray that Momota was okay ... because no way Harukawa would run for Ouma, would she?
The boy swallowed heavily. He hated being left in the dark, his very soul itching to solve every puzzle and secret thrown his way.
He would find out. He had sworn to Akamatsu, his friends and himself that he would figure out everything.
And everything included Ouma.
When he finally arrived at the hangar, Harukawa was nowhere in sight. He gasped for air, head spinning, until his shaky knees brought him closer to the entrance.
It was open.
Saihara furrowed his brows but wasted no time to think. He sprinted again, this time right into the lion's den.
Saihara had started priding himself of his analytic mind, of the way he was able to predict and understand a lot of human behaviour. But this scene in front of him revoked itself from any logic presented by their already illogical killing game standards.
"Harumaki, please-"
"Are you even listening to what you're saying?!"
Right there in the middle of the hangar, next to the hydraulic press allegedly used for disposing of large metal pieces, stood a fully functional exisal talking in Momota's voice with a very irritated Harukawa. Shuichi swallowed staring at them in disbelief.
"Harukawa-san? Momota-kun?" He started carefully, announcing his presence to his thus oblivious friends.
"Saihara!" Momota exclaimed, somehow getting his relief across without even showing his face behind the exisal's metal hatch.
"Leave him out of this," Harukawa hissed. She glared at Saihara who didn't dare stepping closer to the peculiar scene. He took a deep breath, steeling his nerves.
"What's going on here? Why are you in an exisal?"
Oh. Oh. And also ...
"... Where's Ouma-kun?"
Harukawa, displeased, face full of worry and anger and so many things at once, opened her mouth but Momota beat her to it.
"Under there!" He pointed a large metal appendage to the giant press and Saihara froze.
"U-Under- oh god." His eyes couldn't stray away from it now. There was almost no space between those big intimidating metal plates and Ouma was under it?
Saihara shook his head a little to rid himself of his oncoming flash of derealization and hurried over to the press. Harukawa didn't comment or acknowledge him in any way as he passed her. She let it happen. Saihara heard a little thud as she sat down on the hangar's floor.
Momota was right next to him now, pressing the exisal's claws into the tiny gap and Saihara's nausea trippled. He grasped the plate as well to steady himself and took another deep breath. His fear of what he was about to see almost immobilized him. Almost. Saihara leaned down and peered at the trapped body below.
"Ouma-kun," he gasped, eyes wide and trembling. Ouma didn't move, didn't react in any way. His face was tilted the other way and Saihara pushed himself back on his feet. "Momota-kun, is he alive?!"
"I don't know!"
Momota's voice cracked. He sounded desperate, anxious, and Saihara swallowed the bile in his throat. He quickly made his way to the side of the press where Ouma's head would be. As he glanced in between the press, he saw those familiar unruly dark purple roots and messy strands of hair and he winced seeing how there was absolutely no space for the Ultimate Leader.
"O-Ouma-kun ... ?"
No reply.
"Fuck, Saihara! One exisal isn't enough!"
Saihara looked up staring at one Kaito Momota who currently jumped out of the exisal with blood oozing from his arm. His eyes were like a storm, grim, heavy and promising of an explosion that Saihara did not want to see.
Then, Momota flinched back. "You ... hey, look," he started more gently but he held his head high with an assertiveness that Saihara could only dream of emitting. He felt Momota's broad hands on his shoulder.
"Look," he repeated, brows drawn together tightly, "we have to get him out of there. I know you're probably overwhelmed but this is not the time to hide in your head!"
"W-What are ..."
"Saihara ... you're crying."
Oh ... ?
The detective cautiously touched his damp cheeks. Oh. He was crying, wasn't he? How had he not noticed his eyesight being this blurry?
Saihara quickly wiped his face with his sleeve. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"It's okay," Momota assured. "Now listen. One exisal isn't enough, but two might be."
He glanced at Harukawa, sitting on the floor, staring ahead at nothing. "Or three."
"Y-Yes, fuck, I ... yes. I'll help."
Momota inhaled. He swallowed thickly. "Thanks, sidekick."
They turned to the row of exisals. Momota put a hand on Harukawa's shoulder.
"Let's get him the fuck out of there."
And hope it's not too late, Saihara thought uneasily.