Interlude: Hard Landing

XxX

Naegi

My eyes drifted open, revealing Ikusaba kneeling beside me. I tried to roll up and felt a tearing pain in my left shoulder. Ikusaba held up a strange metal lump. My eyes widened.

"Is...is that..." I asked hoarsely. "Is that what I think it is?"

"If you think this is a bullet, then yes, it is," she responded dryly. "It only grazed you, but I would avoid any heavy lifting for the next while."

I rolled to my right and levered myself up.

"Battlefield medicine is part of Fenrir's training, then?"

She nodded.

"It is for the elites. I'm not an expert, but I know enough. Can you walk?"

I slowly pushed myself to my feet before taking a few cautious steps. My legs held, thankfully. I didn't even want to think about how difficult escaping was going to be if I were immobile.

When Ikusaba saw me walking, her shoulders slumped in relief. It seemed she had been thinking the same thing. She turned towards a box at the corner of the room we were in and opened it, revealing 6 or seven sidearms. After pulling two out, she turned to me.

"Take these. If my sister's memory erasure doesn't take out muscle memory, and I don't think it does, you'll be able to use them."

My eyes widened as she handed me the guns and their holsters before turning back to the box. As she predicted, my hands slid naturally onto the grips. However, there was something more urgent at hand.

"Ikusaba, you've mentioned your sister a few times. Who is she? Is she the mastermind?"

She whirled back to face me.

"You don't know? I thought you knew already-" she cut herself off. "Never mind. First off, call me Mukuro. You manacling me to a chair before turning me to your side and my saving your life puts us on a first name basis. Second, my sister is the real Junko Enoshima. She's the mastermind, if you care to call her that. She's the leader of our organization."

"A 17 year old was able to lead an organization that destroyed society as we know it? Where on earth did she get the resources?"

"It wasn't all her," Mukuro replied. "We had a lot of tactical help from a source she kept secret. She only referred to them as the bodiless voice. Whoever they were, they were an expert manipulator. With their help, she was able to launch a full scale class war within weeks off of something that happened to one person."

That story rang a bell in my mind. There was one person mentioned repeatedly in the documents relating to the rise of Despair...

"That was Izuru Kamukura, right? He committed some mass murder of the student council?"

"...Yes, that was him." Mukuro said slowly. "We really need to talk at some point about your sources of intelligence, because they are far too comprehensive to be anything my sister knowingly left behind."

Before she could say another word, a device in her pocket vibrated. She pulled it out and cursed beneath her breath.

"Do I want to know what that was?" I asked.

"I hope you are in fighting shape," she replied. "We've got about 15 seconds before...many, many Monokumas reach us."

"Tactical retreat? If so, which way?"

She nodded and pointed left to a nearby window.

"I'll hold them off for a bit. Through that window is a tunnel. Head to the room on the end and clear it out if you can."

I turned to the window and quickly opened it. Before leaving, I turned back to her.

"See you on the other side."

She nodded and I dove through the window, rolling to my feet with a grimace. I could hear faint growls from the room behind me as I started to run down the tunnel. Suddenly, I heard a faint voice coming from my earpiece.

"Naegi, are you awake?"

"Yeah," I responded. "I took a bullet on the way down, but I'm reasonably well off for it."

When Alter Ego finally responded, he almost sounded relieved. It was an emotion that made sense, but it was the first real emotion I thought I heard in his voice.

"That's good to hear. Judging by faint sounds and my IR readings, you're going to have some company in a few seconds."

I sighed and unholstered one of the pistols. My legs slid slightly apart as I kept walking, lowering my center of gravity. A moment later, a claw punctured a hole in the tunnel wall 5 feet in front of me. I sighted in on it and fired. The bullet sparked off of the claw, shattering it. I heard the monokuma bot whistling through the air before detonating on the ground below. A few seconds later, a massive clatter echoed through the tunnel. I tilted my head in confusion before sighing.

"That explosion alerted all the nearby bots to my position, didn't it."

"Either that or the gunshot. I would suggest you move," Alter Ego replied dryly.

I nodded and started running down the tunnel, holstering my weapon and replacing it with one of the acid vials. Once I reached the door at the end, I twisted the knob only to hear a faint click. Of course the door at the end was locked. As I was reaching for the Monokuma key, Ikusaba ran up besides me, panting.

"I forgot to tell you the robots would explode, didn't I." Her tone of voice indicated that that was not a question.

I nodded, and she scanned her communicator in front of the door, unlocking it. As she threw it open, I turned around and saw countless claws piercing the tunnel walls. I didn't have anywhere near enough acid to deal with this.

Ikusaba pulled me through the door into a room which looked like some sort of transport station. She ran to a control panel in the center and tapped a few buttons before turning to me.

"This is the central lift. If we can hold them off for long enough, I can get us back to the upper levels and the other students."

"About how long will that be?" I asked.

She glanced down at the panel.

"About 5 minutes, give or take a bit. You think we can hold them off till then?"

I grimaced.

"We'll have to."

She opened her mouth to respond but before she could, a claw smashed through the door. I grinned and readied my acid vials.

"I'll be fine. Get us that elevator."

She nodded and turned back to the control panel.

As the first monokuma bot poked its head through the hole in the door, I sprayed it in the eyes with acid. It fell backwards, face a smoking ruin, only to be replaced by 3 more. I pulled out my pistol and shot one. The explosion took out the other two. As I peered through the hole, a Monokuma smashed the hinges off the door, and it fell forward. The remaining Monokumas darted forward at me. Before I could react, another group of bots appeared from the shadows, striking this group in the flank. I grinned. Reinforcements were here. With the number advantage on my side, I could focus on eliminating single targets.

As I retreated to a corner of the room, I heard a crack and felt a bullet whistle past my shoulder. I looked up and saw a Monokuma bot with one arm replaced by a rifle. I quickly threw an acid vial at it, hitting it in the arm. It retreated, weapon corroded and useless.

Mukuro walked up beside me, eyes surveying the robot melee.

"I gather you've done as much as you can to call the elevator?"

She nodded, before pointing to the smoking sniper-Monokuma.

"You seem to have taken to this rather quickly."

"Yes," I replied as I aimed another acid vial. "I'm probably most useful in a support role here, though. My limited close combat abilities won't be too helpful."

She darted forward, cutting off the head of one Monokuma bot as her other hand came around to shoot another. As she pulled a bomb from its still smoking corpse, she turned to me.

"Cover me, ok? And be careful. I don't want you to die."

My eyes widened and my cheeks reddened slightly as she turned back to the robots before us.

"Sure, and...thanks."

XxX

Ikusaba

I tossed the bomb in my hands into a group of 4 explosive-bearing Monokumas in the hallway outside. The chain reaction caught 6 more in the blast radius. I whirled around, skewering another Monokuma with my combat knife before pushing its body into another. Before I could be surrounded, I jumped and scythed a heel kick into a bot directly in front of me, propelling me forward and driving it into the floor. I landed in a dead run, hands moving down to my holsters and exchanging my knife for a submachine gun. I turned towards the back of the hallway where the Monokumas were entering and aimed at one in the back which was holding a speaker. My commander was always so proud of her Siren bots, and no wonder. If that thing stayed alive too long we'd be overrun for sure.

As I approached the Siren Monokuma, three standard bots suddenly darted from my side, claws already extended. Before I could move, a glass vial of acid smashed into one, covering all three in the liquid inside and corroding them into uselessness.

"Don't worry, Mukuro," I heard Naegi call. "I've got the stragglers. You take out the one calling for reinforcements."

I smiled and sped up. I'd forgotten how nice it was to fight with allies. Well, human allies. Nonhuman ones weren't quite...intelligent enough.

The siren monokuma gestured and the two standard robots standing next to it ran at me, claws slicing the air. I jumped, firing one round into each of their heads as I passed over them. I landed as they crumpled to the ground. The siren backed up to the wall, trying to find some route of escape. I shot it in the head before it could. As it fell, I turned back to observe how the battle was progressing. The turned Monokumas seemed to have successfully repelled the unturned ones. As I slowly relaxed, Naegi walked up to me.

"You kept your memories, right? It wouldn't make sense for the mastermind to impair one of their operatives."

I nodded.

"Yes. That is one of the reasons I ended up helping you. You and I were...close, before the tragedy happened."

Naegi's eyes grew wide and his expression grew uncertain.

"Putting that issue on the backburner for now, I have another question for you. Do you know what happened to my family? Are they alive?" His voice shook on the last sentence.

I exhaled slowly. This wasn't going to be easy. Even after spending ears as one of Fenrir's higher ups, I still wasn't skilled at dealing with deaths of my comrades' important people.

"I have good news and bad news."

His shoulders slumped and he sat down.

"Not all of them are alive, then. Tell me, don't sugarcoat it."

I sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Your parents are both dead. Your sister is still alive."

His expression froze over. After a few seconds, he opened his mouth to respond, choking back a sob.

"I...I should have expected that. At least Komaru and I are still alive. What is she doing now?"

As the central lift rumbled into place behind us, I heard a girl's voice.

"You know, Makoto, I could ask you the very same question."

A/N: So, I've been mentioning a hiatus in the past few ANs, and I thought I'd explain. As anybody who's been on my profile knows, I have quite a few other stories that only got started before I left them behind to keep to a sensible update schedule for LiDD. Also, I might rewrite the first arc of this story because it isn't quite up to my standards of quality.

So here's the schedule for my next few months: Update PoSG(Jinchuuriki!OC Naruto fic), update SBatPD(3rd year HPMoR continuation), see if TFiS(Rational!Mastermind!Naegi) has enough behind it to be worth writing, and maybe rewrite the beginning of LiDD while I plot out arc 6. With this, I take my leave. See you all in a few months.

Please review!