Chapter 10 - Blowing Away The Dust

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The door to the Control Room was closed and the students packed the hallway. Their mouths were either hanging open or trembling, and their hands were kept busy behind their backs, in their pockets, or held on their heads.

"You all look so sad, it'd be depressed just by your faces if I wasn't so excited!"

Monokuma came from the corner and looked at everyone with his smile growing on his faces, a PAL in his hands. His paw pressed a button on the PAL and everyone's individual PAL's made a beeping noise. Some of the students took their PAL's out to see the Monokuma File for their friend Joseph's murder but Joy was on her knees, either in anger or sadness, no one could tell.

"Not again, this is not happening!" she said as she clenched her fists up.

Monokuma walked up to the girl as he looked into her eyes with fury, "I'm sorry little girl, but reality doesn't move to meet your wants, you either do what is needed or you fall behind. Now start!"

Joy glared her eyes into Monokuma's and went to drive her punch into the bears face but he jumped back in reflex and the punch hit nothing but air.

"Naughty, naughty!" Monokuma said, his voice getting angry it felt like to everyone, "Threatening your teacher isn't a good idea. To punish you, I'll giving you thirty minutes instead of an hour! Hurry!"

Monokuma left around the corner as the majority of students hit the walls or growled under their breath while Joy stood up, apologising to everyone.

"Don't stress yourself" Adam said, his hand on Joy's shoulder.

Jacob, having his body still held up by Marco, glared off to the Control Room in curiosity, "We don't have time to chit-chat, Marco, Carlos and Frankie, you guys check the Control Room with me."

Everyone stared at Jacob but Frankie spoke for them, "Why us?"

"Is there a reason not to?"

"There's a dead body in there! Our deceased friend, not everyone is capable of looking at that as easily as you."

"Well I'm sorry, I didn't know we should have tea breaks, ok?!" Jacob said in a roar, "We have thirty minutes, thirty Frankie! We have to check as much as we can, so unless you have a better plan then shut up! It's better we don't waste time."

Usually you'd see people who say things like what Jacob just did as complete dicks who are selfish, but even Frankie seemed to see reason behind the words and so he and Carlos decided to agree.

The funny thing about death is the body still looks alive sometimes. Sleep is a little like death, you are silent most of the time, not moving, and the two can be mistaken sometimes.

"He's so pale" Carlos said, he was looking right into Joseph's eyes.

"Stop that" Jacob said as he looked over the rope which held Joseph's body together.

"S-sorry" Carlos said and looked away at the boy's clothes, his fingers beginning to rub over them slowly.

"That's weird" he said, and Jacob looked over immediately.

"What is?"

"The dust on his clothes" Carlos said.

Jacob inspected over Joseph's clothes, his dark blue shirt was covered in dust, and his tight blue jeans was as well. His eyes then looked around the room, the walls and floor, the locker and the control panel.

"Dust on the body but not the room, so it was done somewhere else then?"

His eyes then went back to the rope while Frankie was rubbing his hands over the control panel, Carlos walking over towards him in curiosity.

"Hey, where's your coat?" Carlos said as he checked over Frankie's body.

Frankie looked down at his body, his white laboratory coat was indeed gone, he had worn it around since Day one.

"That's what I'm checking here, I took it off last night to sleep but it was hotter than usual when I awoke this morning so I felt it would be a bad idea to put it on.

"It was hotter?" Carlos said and he looked at the control panels.

"These control the heating and the lights correct? Were these touched?"

"I suspect so, I'm used to working in doors with pieces of machinery which is usually cold metal, the slightest bit of heat increase is usually enough to make me sweat" Frankie said as he wiped his forehead.

Carlos saw the sweat slightly growing on the man's forehead and so he rubbed his own forehead, no sweat was seen but then again he was used to fishing in the open sun.

"I don't remember the exact temperature it was on when we first checked this room but the heating is on 25 degrees presently" Frankie said.

"It was on 22" Jacob said from behind them, "I checked it myself yesterday, it was 22."

"So it was definitely changed last night then, right?" Carlos said.

"Most likely."

Marco was going through the locker, his hand rubbing around inside in case anything came out to him.

"Wait a minute" he said and he took one of the metal balls in his hands as he heard a bit of laughter, Monokuma walking from around the locker as if he had been there all along.

"That is my very own handmade smoke ball, I call them the Mono-Bear."

Marco held the ball in his hand to feel around it as Monokuma continued, "Normally a smoke ball lets out smoke and nothing else, but my special Mono Ball doesn't just let out smoke, it lets out dust as well."

Dust. Marco started remembering the night before, the figure at the top of the stairs. They had thrown some type of object down that had blown out gas and dirtied his and Jacob's clothes only a little. Was this the same thing that had been thrown down.

Monokuma was gone when Marco looked around but he didn't care, he brought the ball to Jacob and raised it to the boy but Jacob was instead rubbing up the rope.

"Is something wrong?" Marco said.

"It's perfect" Jacob said.

Marco went to ask what was perfect but he continued watching Jacob who began tugging on the ropes nice and hard.

"You mean it's perfectly tied together?" Marco said.

"Exactly," Jacob said and let the rope go as he turned to Marco, "It's usually very difficult to tie a perfect knot, the type that doesn't break with a simple tug or enough to hold something as heavy as 100 kilograms above ground. Yet here we have a very durable piece of rope."

"Is it helpful?" Frankie said as he and Carlos noticed the discussion.

"Definitely, it means they are careful enough to tie the knots with their hands trembling. It's a long reach but doing something as specific as tying a knot can cause someone's hands to tremble pretty easily. It takes a lot of practice to keep your hand from trembling."

"Is there anyone here that could be that skilled?" Carlos said.

"Well it's possible, what were you trying to show me Marco?" Jacob said he looked over to Marco holding the Mono Ball.

"Well I found something important, take a look at this. Monokuma calls them Mono Balls. They let out a bunch of smoke like most smoke balls, but these let out dust as well."

Jacob took the metal ball in his hand and looked over it, it was completely metal with a few grooves over it, but the main interest he noticed was the two red lights.

"Do you know what these lights are for?" Jacob said as he showed them towards Marco but he shook head.

"Well alright then," Jacob said and passed the Mono Ball back to Marco who placed it back on the shelf where it came from, his eyes looking over the Tasers on the top row now.

"Then there is this" Marco said and he brought two of the Tasers towards Jacob.

Jacob took a close look at each one, they were small and black with two metal prongs at the top but there was also a screen seen on the front side with a number in the top right followed by a percent sign. Below the numbers there was also a blue bar from the bottom to the top of the screen. The first Taser, Jacob noticed, had the numbers read '100%,' but the second Taser was on '97%.'

"It was used?" Jacob said.

"It would seem so, I'll keep a memory of it in case it becomes important."

Jacob nodded as Marco took the Tasers back, "Either way" Jacob said, "We'll discuss it at the trial, let's check on everyone else alright?"

The art room door opened by the hand of Stacey, and so Benedict, Adam and herself walked into the dusty room. The tables and the floor were covered, it was making the three of them cough right upon entering. The dust seemed to be focused more on the centre of the room since the far walls were not dusty in the slightest.

"This place is pretty messy" Benedict said, his shirt brought to cover his mouth.

Adam waved the dust away from his eyes and inspected around the room.

"Was someone drawing here?"Stacey said as she drew closer to the back table.

There was pencils and paper scattered on top, nothing was drawn on top of it but the pencils were scattered instead of having been put back properly in the container.

"Most likely Joseph, I believed Jacob mentioned he likes drawing" Adam said.

They began picking up the pencils and looking over them but there was nothing but dust over them,

"What are we hoping to find here, anyway?" Stacey said, "My only question is why is there dust everywhere."

"Most likely something happened here, let's try to search around alright?"

The three of them checked the room back and forth but nothing seemed important besides the large amount of dust and so they left the room.

Lexi, Marcus, Samuel, Joy, Simon, and Abby had checked the rest of the rooms on the second floor over time. Nothing was different except for, what Marcus saw as, dusty footprints in the gymnasium. Other than that they found that nothing important or at least different. Their search spread to the first floor as well which led to no reward, and so they grouped back in the dormitories with five minutes left until the Class Trial.

"Are we ready for this, and don't act smart, it's serious" Jacob said.

He was now standing on his own with the slightest wobble but Marco still stood nearby in case Jacob felt unsafe.

Other than that, no one was capable of answering Jacob's question.

"That's not easily answerable" Adam said, trying to help everyone overcome the thought, "You shouldn't ask anything in fact, it's times like these that motivated advice is usually best."

"Well I'm not saying 'Go Team Go'" Jacob said with his eyes glaring down Adam.

"I'd pay to hear you say that, but now's not the time."

"Right, we should head for the trial room, it'll open up in three minutes" Marcus said.

"Do we really have to, I am scared" Lexi said as she had her arm around Adam's right arm.

"It was scary enough last time, why is it happening again?" Abby said, her arm around Adam's left.

Adam gave off a sigh as he looked at both of them, "Let's just head off. If it makes you feel any better then I'll protect you both, understand, so trust me please, can you do that?"

Both of them responded with a slight nod as everyone slowly departed and Jacob limped over to Adam, a smile across his face as he whispered in the boy's ear.

"Look who's getting the ladies."

Adam almost elbowed his ribs but thought better to hurt a handicap so he instead followed everyone for the back of the building.

The doors to the escalators in the back of school building opened up and the students stepped onto the escalator and they were brought down into the darkness as the doors closed. It felt like forever, just like last time, but unlike last time, they now knew what awaited them down at the bottom and so they stopped and stood in front of the big red doors which they knew lead into the trial room.

Everyone stayed quiet, thoughts were filling their minds but they had calmed their bodies down as much as possible.

Finally the doors opened inwards and the room that welcomed them was slightly different than what had met them four days prior.

The centre of the room, which had been lower than the height of the rest of the room before, was now raised until it was one metre higher than the rest of the room. The flooring and the walls were coloured red instead of white. Besides those details, the 10 televisions was still placed around the walls and the podium with the sixteen positions along with Monokuma high podium were placed in their places too.

"A little redecorating was in order I felt" Monokuma said, his voice coming through the speakers loud and clear.

His body was soon seen jumping up from behind his seat and landing right in place with a clap of his paws.

"Now, how about we get things underway, shall we?"


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