Danganronpa: Despair's Fallen Children

Chapter 10 - Blowing Away The Dust

"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.