Danganronpa V3: Despair's Last Legs

Prologue: Despair Live

Darkness, no sound and no memory. Only hollow emptiness where ones reflection would stand.

Featureless, faceless, thoughtless; the woman stood in the locker...

And then, a small part of it came flooding back-

THUMP

"Ow!"

The woman groaned as she fell out of the locker. She quickly lifted herself up off the ground, the pain in her head still fresh considering her continued groaning.

"Where am..." Her question trailed off as she looked around the room she found herself in. "...A classroom?"

Tables, chairs, a screen at the front, windows that were covered in barbed wire. This place had all the trappings of a normal... classroom.

"What the...? The woman moved towards the barbed wire, pricking her finger as she touched it.

Great, now there's pain in two parts of your body! You use those fingers to play Piano why would you do that?

The woman shushed her inner thoughts with a sigh as she continued to look around: she only noticed a large monitor separate from the blackboard/screen, and a very obvious security camera turning from side to side.

"It's on... someone's watching me, but-"

THUMP

"Ah!" The woman made a quiet scream of shock as the locker next to hers opened, revealing a boy:

He wore a nice formal black shirt and pants, he had somewhat unkempt dark blue hair, a small bag on his back and a black hat utop his head.

"Ugh..." The man groaned. "Who-Where am I?"

"I-I've been trying to figure that out too," The woman chuckled as she helped the man up.

"I guess two of us," The man looked nervously around as he checked out the woman in front of him, taking note of any important details:

Blonde hair with little note charms in them, pink eyes, pink vest over white shirt with a purple skirt decorated with yet more notes.

"Hey uhh... you're staring," The woman pointed out.

The man raised his hands. "Ahh, sorry! I uh, I stare a lot,"

"Well duh," The girl giggled and shook her head making the hat wearing boy look down. "I'm Kaede by the way, Ultimate Pianist if you wanted to know that,"

"Ah, you're an Ultimate too... I'm Shuichi Saihara, I get called the Ultimate Detective, but..." Shuichi trailed off. "I'm nowhere near worthy of that title,"

"Oh, c'mon if the Ultimate Initiative scouted you out then you've gotta be some kind of... supergenius detective!" Kaede smiled.

Shuichi looked down further, his cap obscuring most of his face as he refused to look at Kaede. "Well, I'm sure it's not as impressive as you,"

"Oh... I just play Piano a lot, used to be called 'Piano Freak' back in middle school for it..." Kaede shivered a little as she reminisced; Aiko was probably still the biggest bitch she'd ever known, huh?

"Sometimes I'd forget to eat or sleep while playing, eventually I started doing concerts, and winning awards, and now I'm... here," Kaede looked around the barren classroom some more.

Shuichi's eyes widened like saucers. "That's way more impressive than me! All I did was solve one case for my Uncle's detective business..."

"Are you kidding me? That\s super impressive!" Kaede lightly jabbed the man on the shoulder, he looked up a little. "I mean an entire case all by yourself? Most cases take what like years to solve?"