Though it was the middle of the night, Mikhail hadn’t been sleeping. Who could sleep anymore, after all, when there was such a high chance that you wouldn’t wake up? Perhaps those more at ease, more desensitized to the goings on than Mikhail, but they certainly weren’t going to be able to. A frantic pounding at their door sent the architect sitting straight up from where they had been lying down on the couch, tumbling off of it and on to the floor in their haste to reach some kind of object to defend themself with. Their hand flew out and grabbed the first item it made contact with, which happened to unfortunately be the monokuma dakimura that had been laying on the floor nearby. Oh well, there was no time to look for something else, as they were already at the door and ready to hit their potential attacker in the face.As soon as they opened the door, they stumbled backwards rather than lashing out with the pillow, about ten seconds away from getting on the floor and begging for mercy when they realized who the person in the doorway was."Masaaki?" They hissed, squinting at the figure in the darkness with just a hint of annoyance in their tone. "The fuck’re ya doin’, dude?""Y-You have to help me," came his response, a panicked whisper as he stepped further into the room and closed the door quietly behind him. "Someone is t-trying to kill me!"Anger and panic both simultaneously surged through them as they gripped the pillow tighter. “And you led them to my fuckin’ room? Are you serious?”"They’re not- not following me or anything, but…" Masaaki’s hand fumbled for the light switch, flicking it on to cast a bright light through Mikhail’s room. The light illuminated the faces of the two occupants, Mikhail’s anger and disbelief, Masaaki’s fear and the tears that were still flowing freely down his face. As soon as the light was on he walked over to them with a piece of paper in hand, voice trembling as he held it up in front of them and announced: "This just got slipped under my door. There was nobody out there when I opened it."It took Mikhail a moment to be able to make out the words on the letter, due mostly to the fact that Masaaki’s hands were shaking so badly, but after a moment of looking it over they had gotten the gist- someone wanted to meet Masaaki backstage, right now. No signature. It was…concerning, to say the least, and they could feel that numbness beginning in the tips of their fingers, threatening to spread to the rest of their body if they didn’t hurry up and push it down. They shifted their gaze from the letter to Masaaki, his eyes wide with fear, and then back to the letter. After a looking at it for a brief moment longer, they took a deep breath and looked back at the cyclist, keeping their eyes focused on him. “Well, obviously ya gotta go.”Masaaki’s eyes grew even wider, the letter nearly falling out of his hands as he let them fall back to his sides. “What? I don’t want to die!”"You’re not gonna die!" Mikhail snapped. "You’re gonna go down there, you’re gonna find out what this is about, and ya have to, you’re gonna fight! Can’t wimp out now, bro. If ya wanna learn to be a hero, here’s a test. And if you’re too scared…" They gave the most confident grin they could muster, standing up a little straighter. "Well, I guess I’ll have to come with ya then! Make it our own little adventure! Don’t wanna bother Kenji, just in case he’s asleep, so it’ll be just the two of us! Whaddya say, Bunny Boy? Ya up for it?"A hesitant grin from the cyclist, small, but undoubtedly there. “Do I have much of a choice, Carrot Top?”"Of course not!" Mikhail cheered, throwing an arm over Masaaki’s shoulder and turning him towards the door. The two of them began walking, Mikhail pausing only briefly to snatch something else up off the floor and put it in Masaaki’s hand- a sword, received from the Monomachine earlier that week. They’d left it lying in their room with no real purpose until now, when they figured some kind of defensive weapon would be of use. They could sense his reluctance to take it and sighed. "Just in case."Biting his lip, Masaaki accepted the weapon carefully. “What about you? Don’t you need one?” His voice lowered to more of a whisper as they opened the door and stepped into the hallway."I’ve got this weird pillow," Mikhail whispered back. "Guaranteed to scare anyone off."And despite the fear that hung in the air between them, or perhaps it was even due to that in the heat of the moment, the two still had to fight to stifle their laughter.—-Once they actually arrived backstage, it was a completely different story. That fear had grown, changed itself into more of a haunting terror, a shadow tailing the two self-proclaimed adventurers with every step. Masaaki clutched the sword as tightly as he could, if only out of fear that it would make too loud of a noise if it fell from his hand, and Mikhail was just barely managing to walk with their legs as numb as they had gone. There were bad vibes in the air, that both of them could feel, and now it was all just a matter of waiting for the letter’s sender to reveal themself…The floor creaked somewhere in the darkness, sending both Mikhail and Masaaki into an immediate panic, abandoning each other right away to both run in opposite directions. Fortunately for Masaaki, he ended up closer to the exit- Mikhail seemed to draw the short straw of the situation, running farther away from there and tumbling to the ground after tripping over a prop sword laying abandoned on the floor.Heart pounding, body racing with adrenaline, they could barely feel whatever effects it may have had. Someone who definitely wasn’t Masaaki was approaching them as they lay on the floor, getting closer and closer and god, they didn’t want to die like this, they didn’t want to die at all-Instincts taking control, the lifted their right leg and kicked as hard as they possibly could at the legs of the person approaching. While Mikhail definitely wasn’t very strong, they seemed to do something by catching them off guard. They stumbled backwards, tripping over the same sword Mikhail had just moments before, and hitting the ground with a thump. Though every part of Mikhail’s mind was screaming at themself to run, their body seemed to have other ideas, fear quickly turning itself to rage, aggression, as they got up and forced the other person down. In the dark, they couldn’t make out much about who the person might be, but they didn’t really care- they were angry, so much angrier than they’d ever been, they could hardly see straight. There was a buzzing in the back of their mind that drowned out anything the person may have been saying, if they could say anything at all with the pillow up against their face…when did the pillow get there? Mikhail couldn’t remember moving it there, but then again, they couldn’t remember how their face started bleeding either. They figured that in their attacker’s struggle, they must have been scratched- of course it was blood, of course that’s all it was, it couldn’t have been tears. They pressed the pillow down harder as the person continued to struggle, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to hold them down much longer."Help!" They yelled in Masaaki’s direction, looking up to see if he was even still there. "Damn it, h-h-help me!" Where did that frightened tone of voice come from? That shakiness to their words? The desperation? That wasn’t supposed to be there at all. "Help!" They shrieked, nearly losing their hold on the attacker but managing to just barely stand their ground.Masaaki, meanwhile, was still present backstage- pressed up against the wall, sword held out protectively in front of him, shaking so bad that he was sure he would fall right over if he tried to so much as take a step. He wanted to help, he really did, he wanted to make sure that his friend was okay, but he was frozen in fear against the wall. He’d come too close to death to dive into this situation now, he couldn’t risk it, he just couldn’t.But…what kind of person would he be to just let Mikhail die? To allow them to be murdered right in front of him and not do a single thing to help? There was weakness, there was stupidity, and then there was whatever that was. He couldn’t even think of a word demeaning enough to describe it. Was that really the kind of person he wanted to be? Maybe…maybe he should just go for it…"Help…" Mikhail said again, practically begging him at this point even though the struggling had begun to get weaker. "P-P-Please, help me…" They blinked, trying to clear their vision, stop the tears from falling at all. And though they failed at the latter, they did managed to clear up their vision just enough for something lying on the floor nearby to catch their eye. A hat.Not just any hat, oh no, this was a fedora. An adventurer’s fedora, much like their own, in fact. Their first thought was that it must have fallen off sometime since they entered the room, be it when running, tripping, or trying to hold their own during the current struggle. They dismissed it for one brief, blissful moment, in which they found themself relaxing just a bit as the person underneath them seemed to be slipping away. And in the next moment, another thought came to them, one that sent their blood running cold.They hadn’t been wearing their fedora.It was still in their room.Their eyes widened and their body froze up completely, their grip on the pillow loosening as their fingers ever so slowly lost all feeling completely.They moved the pillow out of the way, allowing the person underneath them to breathe if they could still manage to. A small strangled whimper escaped them as they looked down at the face that they should have known from the start would be there.He was breathing, thank god he still seemed to be breathing, even if in reality it was more like wheezing. In shock, Mikhail stared down into the eyes of a betrayed and terrified Kenji Oshiro as he desperately tried to catch his breath. They knew they should get off of him, but they couldn’t move, still couldn’t feel any part of their body. It was like they weren’t in control of their body at all, although really it had been like that since the moment they attacked him.
