THE FINAL EXECUTION: A ROBOT’S RETALIATION WITH RANCOR AND REVENGE - KEIICHI KOJIMA
Kojima’s vision blurred as he forced his eyes open. The strong yank had knocked the wind out of him, making it difficult for him to get up so quickly. As he stood himself up, the lights above him lit up to a familiar scene— he remembered working in a lab like this. Always busy with people running around him, with his coworkers talking and laughing amongst themselves. It was bizarre seeing that he was alone…
The door at the end of the lab opened. Two employees stepped in, wearing something odd over their faces. He recognized it as that Monokuma head that the first victim had died in— they remained silent as Kojima stared curiously at them. The atmosphere felt tense, but the man found enough strength in him to chuckle.
“Gentlemen?”
Their heads remained turned towards him, but they didn’t speak. Kojima squinted, pursing his mouth into a thin line.
The quiet air made it easier for Kojima to hear something curious. The gentle whrrrrrrrr- of machinery nearing, as well as heavy footsteps. Many of them. Soon, multiple other androids began to enter and the fill the room. Kojima found himself staring at all of the works he had busied himself with over the course of the district— his whole life. He surprised to see his more recent ones joining the fray, especially seeing them alive and moving.
To the others watching from the screen, those specific androids were not unfamiliar to them. Their classmates, everyone who had been murdered and executed during their time in the city, led the unfinished skinless robots behind them. Kojima raised his hands slowly with precaution, but it was useless for him to take any steps backwards. His creations were not only filling the room, but they were surrounding him. The sound of the door closing signaled that he was locked in, and he noticed that his androids were not empty handed.
Some of them carried knives, others carried bats and crowbars, with others raising their clenched fists towards their creator. They all moved bizarrely and grotesquely, with their limbs clicking and whirring at every second. He hadn’t intended on finishing them-- Ike had made it firm to him time and time again that they wouldn’t work, and Kojima had accepted that. Yet, they were all here before him now with emotions of their own.
Kojima closed his eyes tightly, grinding his teeth together. ‘That damned thing… did he plan this??’ He thought to himself. It was the only thing that made sense to him. Ike had a death wish against his creator since Jokiku’s game had started, but when would he have the time to plan all of this?
"Testing, one, two. Mmmm... nnnnn... All right! Nice!" Kojima opened his eyes to the voice coming from one of the students. Aina pumped a fist into the air, smiling. "Sorry for the technical difficulties, everyone. Aina Senki is back on-air!" Quickly, though, her face flattened into a more wry grin.
"Well, insofar as this isn't actually a rerun. So to speak. Seriously.... everyone tells you to drink water when it's hot, but nobody ever says that might kill you. It's the worst."
"Heh. But, hey, I'm back now! I'm back, and I think that's pretty good. I think my fans would agree too, right?" Aina did a small twirl in front of the other robots, flashing a V sign to the camera and holding the pose for a few seconds before covering her face with her hand.
Kojima stared at her, his expression growing pained by her words. What was she saying all of a sudden…? When she let it fall, she still had a smile, but her eyes were distant and resigned.
"Eheh. You… might not have had the worst motives, I guess, but, nnnnn… I, uh, think you should’ve maaaaybe thought a bit more. Doing this transference stuff against someone’s will, trying to play with life and death... You don’t get to make that choice. There’s, uh, someone who’s waiting for me outside. What am I gonna have to tell her now? Baka jiji."
Several of his robots walked up behind Aina, placing a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, Megumi included. Her expression was warm with an ever-present and pleasant smile. If this were a silent film, one might think she was simply chatting amicably with a friend from the way she smiled to Aina and nodded. But her voice rings out as she shrieks towards Kojima, and it's at odds with the entirety of her body language.
"Oh incredible, so first of all f-ck you, f-ck you! Thoroughly go f-ck yourself! The sh-thead that dragged us all into this is so much more of a worthless little b-tch than I thought!" Megumi says, with no more anger visible in her face than that of someone commenting on particularly sunny weather. All the same, her disconnected voice continues the tirade,while her smiling mouth moves out of sync. "You can choke on your reasons!! Mastermind retire b-tch!! You don't get to pull people out of their lives without consequences!!"
There was a cheer all around him as Megumi spoke, and sweat dripped down Kojima’s forehead. As Megumi held Aina out of the way of the faceless androids, Kojima spoke, “N- Now, now, there’s no need for… that sort of talk. Or for this sort of fight-- I’m not exactly in any condition for rough housing…” This didn’t stop the robots for readying themselves with their makeshift weapons, and Kojima bit his tongue. He dug through his coat pocket, pulling out a cloth handkerchief to wipe his face. He then wrapped it around the knuckles of his hand as he continued to speak, “I- I could work something out for all of you if you’d let me just walk out--”
He opened his eyes with sudden fiery, launching his fist towards one of the robots in front of him, knocking the head clean off its shoulders. The robots went into action as Kojima attempted to dodge them and punch anyone else in his way. His weakness however was attacked as one of the robots that had fallen swung their crowbar against his legs, knocking him down to his stomach as his chin bounced on the tile floor.
His vision blurred again for a moment, coughing as he felt three of the robots hold him down. Looking up, he could make out another student standing over him with a disgusted look over her face. Rachele scoffed as she said, "People here were killed because of you... I died because of you.” Her eyes met his, but it was as if she was looking past him. “I hope you rot in hell for this," she finished.
Haruna then came out behind, eyeing Kojima with more devilish intent. “Rotting in hell? I think I can get behind that, yeah! However…” She rocked back and forth on the heel of her shoes before being offered one of the bats that the other robots carried. Taking it in her hands, she continued, “I’m going to drag you to hell myself.” With a wind of her arms, she smacked the bat across the side of Kojima’s face as if playing a game of golf, then hitting it down over the top of his head with a disgusting crack.
That was enough of a signal for the others to join in. The robots that held him down before moved together to prop the old man up on his knees. Stella snuck up behind him, grabbing Kojima by the hair on his head in order to keep him looking forward. “You could’ve made this game so much more interesting if you had told us we were playing,” she drawled, the gears of her mouth clicking as it pulls her expression up into a smile as her eyes roll to gaze at one of the other robots, “but I don’t mind helping now. S'avère que vous êtes ennuyeux.” Kojima’s face and body was striked at repeatedly by everyone around him with their voices cheering along in a riot. The pain overwhelmed him into a near shock with his consciousness was just barely escaping him. He could feel his face swelling with blood as he was forced to gasp and cough with every kick to his gut. The second the scientist felt he was slipping out of it, cold water was thrown against his face.
He coughed and hacked, his senses coming back to him barely. A plastic cup fell to the ground from Alastor’s hand, and the young student sighed at the pitiful sight.
"Hmph,” he shook his head, “So it has come down to this, huh? You've trapped me in my worst, most hated fate. You- you technological people’s creations! I’m now what I once despised, huh…” As he would monologue, Alastor looked to his empty hand and attempted to stretch and curl his fingers just to watch it barely respond to his intentions. “I suppose this is my punishment for my actions? Bring me back home, only to rip it from me once again? For you forcing my hand to play along with your stupid game? Whatever. I don't care anymore.” He pointed his staff to Kojima’s face, just to hit him across the face and knock the loosened teeth from his mouth. "You've made a Grave Error, Necromancer Kojima! You may have turned us into enemies, but if there's one thing that brings enemies together, its to band together against those that made us so in the first place! I'll enjoy seeing you perish!"
“P- Please-- that isn’t what I--- this was supposed to be---”
The second Kojima tried to speak, he was met with everyone booing and heckling him, along with their voices distorting over themselves.
“This isn’t what you wanted?! Go f-ck yourself!” Matsukaze yelled over the noise with their hands cupped over their mouth. “I hope it hurts, old man!” Everyone in the room yelled along with agreement, and as they cheered, one of the androids that Kojima had attacked rose from the ground and walked over to him to stand in front of him with an expression of disappointment and disgust at the one who was supposed to be behind this grand scheme.
“Pathetic…. absolutely pat͠h̴ét̨ique…”
Héloïse’s voice dragged a bit as soon as she slips in her native tongue, though she didn’t seem to notice a change in her speech.“You capturing the best of the best in this country for your little experiment really did prove to be your biggest mistake. And bringing in my sister and I? Together? You i̢̧͏͘d̵́̕iớ̧̀t͝҉͘͝. Did you think even I would not figure you out? You left a cookie crumb trail for all of us to follow, it was like you wąnt҉e͞d͟ to be found out.” She touched the side of her face where Kojima had struck her with no sign of pain or bruising on her.
It was clear that the evenness of her tone was odd, considering the last time anyone saw the gymnast, she was anything but calm. Her face quickly morphs into the smile she’d wear when scheming. “Burn in the hottest flames of hell, and burn for eternity, Kojima. I’d be impressed at someone who can pull off such an amazing feat as a killing game… but at your p̴͟-͢͠p̵͟a̢th̷͡e̢͟͡tiç̧͏ age, your old, rotting mind couldn’t even think of — and execute — a successful plan for an idea as simple as that.”
Stella beamed at her sister, and the crowd erupted into more cheers as Héloïse swung her leg back and promptly kicked Kojima into his gut once more. He wheezed once more, his face wet with tears. He couldn’t admit it- he was too stubborn at his age now- but he knew that they were right. The one thing that he had been forced to do by superiors with constant threats looming over him, he wasn’t able to finish it properly. This final execution wasn’t grand or meaningful in the way that Otome Ito had debuted hers-- but did he really want that?
At this point, he preferred the silent death that his superiors promised him before.
The tense atmosphere and the accusations, as hot and searing as ever, were highlighted with the continued array of sounds.
A shout.
A kick.
A crunch.
A slam.
Another crunch, and another.
Crunch. Crunch.
Yeichi, relatively unperturbed, and to all extents absentminded to the dire situation quite literally boiling to the surface, squatted unnoticed as he fished out another cookie from the barely surviving elderly senior citizen that the surviving class had sent to his grave.
Stuffing another oatmeal raisin into his feeding hole, Yeichi freezes, quite shock at the revelation that Heloise presented, choking out an exclamation of horror.
“Whaft, coofie cwrumf twail?”
Oh no, he was consuming the evidence!
Hacking back out a mess of congealed brown matter and saliva promptly back onto the old man’s shoes, the self-proclaimed taxidermist huffed, looking quite cross with the duly accused.
“Yeah, what she said; you’re old and disgusting,” Yeichi barked, as if that was the pungent key point of whatever was being spoken about.
“The academy’ll hear about this and your dumb experiment or whatever will be through!”
Kojima closed his eyes, bracing for another attack. His chest heaved weakly, but he tensed when realizing that the crowd was lulling down into a silence. Everyone’s feet began to shuffle as they created space for another robot to walk towards him. Light footsteps came across the tile floor, and Kojima opened one eye before his eyes widened. She was supposed to be totally defunct. He had given up on her months ago. The androids stood still, as if just the presence of this specific creation was enough to pause their programming from continuing any further with their revenge and torture.
Otome Ito walked slowly towards the newfound mastermind, except her appearance was made done into the look of H!MECH@N. Her blonde hair bounced with each step, and in her embrace was a MonokumAI. Kojima sputtered, his eyes darting to her face and then to the ground, then back to her face. “H- How did-- who--”
Then he felt tears began to fall from his face. Stella’s grip went limp, and Kojima fell forward on his arms in front of Akedo’s mastermind as he sobbed. The one thing he had been trying to complete, he had given up at the last minute when urged by his superiors that it wasn’t enough. He didn’t have the information or skill to finish Otome’s progress, and somehow… she was right here in front of him.
Was this Ike’s way of mocking him? He had said so many times before that he would replace him and prove his talents, but he had taken it lightly as angst and jealousy.
“How could… this… O- Otome-san, what do you remember? What did he program?” He begged, but the android said nothing. Instead, she smiled, blinking with empty eyes.
Perhaps this was as far as she would go. He held himself up with his hands in his lap, trembling with blood on his face. Then her hand rose out to him.
She held a pistol forward to his face, and he froze. The android grinned, cocking it before resting her finger on the trigger. “Otome-sa---”
Her voice rang out in song with the star power of a newborn universe, “Bye~❤★! Bye~❤★!”
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
His body had fallen backwards the second shot, but the android continued shooting with an empty grin. Her arm then fell to her side, and her eyes perked over to the camera that was displaying the execution to the surviving class. The idol looked over and waved with the gun in her hand, then her expression hardened to a glare before shooting at the camera.
The display went to static before shutting down.
