Danganronpa: Despair's Fallen Children

Chapter 13 - Transmission Received

The note was long, but efficient. Paul took the second note and read at the address before putting it in his pocket.

"Will you be fine cleaning this up, Sophie?"

Sophie raised her head only slightly but simply nodded and lowered her head again, her face covered by her hair.

"Good, thank you" Paul said, and he left the room.

The air was cold at night, and with no one around it felt lonesome but Paul was used to it as a captain. He spent nights and nights working on paper work, as he had for years, so standing here on the pier in the cold night, with only a couple of tall lights around him brightened around him, Paul actually felt relaxed.

"So you made it" said a soft, girlish tone.

Paul instantly felt his foot give way under him and he nearly fell, but his hand was caught by the soft touch of the girl who had walked up behind him, her purple fingernails rubbing on his skin.

Sophie's face, compared to before Paul thought, seemed to be a bit different, possibly a bit more make up or just less of it.

"Oh, yeah. Next time don't scare me please."

"And how would I do that, exactly?" Sophie said, remaining still as her hand kept holding onto Pauls.

"I-I don't know, message me in advance, or maybe don't be so close when you let me know."

"I will keep that in mind, but I hope you don't plan to get off topic much, this is important after all, it's for the future."

Paul gave off a sigh as he forcibly shook his hand from Sophie, "Yeah, so what was your plan exactly?"

"First of all there is something I haven't told you, or more I lied about it but only because it would be dangerous to write about it in that note."

"About what exactly? Were you worried someone might see it besides me?"

Sophie simply stared into Paul's eyes, "We have been able to track the signals, and they are making their way to their original bases like normal. There heartbeats are still the same as last time, the unnatural beat, and no matter how much we try and search there is no way a normal person can have such a relaxed heartbeat for such a long time that easily."

"So you are certain it's mind control, but why are they heading back?"

"It's just a guess, but I feel whoever is behind this is going to use them to wipe out the army protecting the city, if they do that then no one will have the power to fight what happens next."

Paul lowered his head slightly and thought back to what Jerry had told him about the underground facility, and how the same robotic devices from the times of the tragedy had appeared there.

"And the Tragedy could repeat, right?"

Sophie gave a soft nod, "We need to decide who will be a fake."

Pauls head tilted slightly, "A fake to what?"

"They will hide away and then come out and pretend to be one of the mind controlled."

"But the heartbeat will be clearly different, and the terrorist will most likely know they're pretending if they actually are as smart as we think they are!"

"Yet if we don't do this, we don't get a chance to find the terrorists themselves, we die and the city falls too."

Paul looked aside for a while and thought for a few seconds as Sophie stared towards him, then he turned his head back.

"How about Miles? He is trained enough to be able to take on a few trained people at once in a brawl, and he has expert knowledge on the basic weapons and some advanced weapons too, I'm sure he'd have a chance alone."