Seeing Zeben alive when he'd arrived had been the biggest whiplash Stolas had ever felt.  That's when he'd known something was very off.  Not that he couldn't tell already, judging from the fact that all of his classmates- The Remnants of Despair- were there with him.  But seeing the living, breathing form of the person he'd seen die right before his very eyes and had been unable to save... 

Stolas wondered if he was being punished.  Punished for not being able to be there for Zeben.  He'd tried getting out of that room, but he was stuck in there with that big screen and all of his classmates, watching as the hydroponics specialist was severed in two.  After that, he'd torn apart the school trying to find the kid, but it didn't matter once he was successful.  At least he'd been able to give Zeben a proper burial, on the bank of a lake far from civilization.  He'd then spent the next few hours carving a headstone from scratch.  He'd owed it to Zeben.  

But by the time he'd made it back to the city, everything was in shambles.  Because of his classmates.  He'd done what he could, choosing to go anonymous and pursue the role of a vigilante.  With his own bare hands, he shut down factories, rounded up followers of despair, and helped innocent people escape their destroyed homes.  Still, it was hardly a dent in all the damage done.  And then the Future Foundation had gotten him.  He should've known that stories of a masked vigilante who never got a scratch on him would get around to the society, and he should've known that they would suspect it to be him.  He hadn't objected when they'd cornered him and asked him to cooperate.  He'd just let them take him to wherever.  He didn't blame them for wanting to take him into custody just in case, even if they saw him trying to undo the damage done by the people he'd spent months alongside.  After that, he woke up in the virtual world.

Now here he was, sitting in a tree, thinking back on all the decisions he'd made that had gotten him here.  Hatchet in hand and Iris's flute bag dangling by his wrist, he took a deep breath, repeating the plan in his head one more time.  Then, he began to hack at the branch next to him.  It took a few swings because he was trying to stay as quiet as possible, but that was soon shattered by the sound of the branch as it crashed to the ground.  Stolas quickly tossed the hatchet into a nearby bush and retreated into the shadows, removing the flute bag from his wrist.

After a few seconds, he saw Furfur emerge from her cottage, puzzled and rather tired-looking.  Judging by the flashlight he could see in her open doorway before she shut the door behind her, she had never gone to bed.  He watched like a predator stalking prey as she got closer and closer...

Now.

He lunged forward, roped her in by the neck using the strap of the flute bag, and pulled from the sides.  Immediately, what had nearly been the start of a scream shifted to strangled gasps as the geologist tried to struggle and fight back.  Just seconds later, she went limp.  Stolas checked her for a pulse, relieved to find her still breathing.  Perfect, now to-

He looked up to see Marzy standing there, his mouth open in shock.  Stolas didn't hesitate, and immediately unsheathed his sword as the biologist tried to run, shifting his hands down and flipping it so he was holding it by the blade.  And with a well-placed strike to the back of the head, Marzy went down without a noise.  Stolas hadn't wanted to use his sword, but this had been a necessity.  So long as he followed through with his plan and established the murder weapon as the kitchen knife he had on him, it would all be fine.  He sheathed his sword once more, slipped the flute bag back onto his wrist, and grabbed Marzy under one arm and Furfur under the other.  With that, he swiftly made his way down the dusty path towards the central island.

He'd been rather worried that Iris would have come to investigate the branch as well.  He needed Iris not only alive, but also unaware of the fact that Stolas had orchestrated the crime in order for it to all flow seamlessly.  Stolas had certainly had his suspicions after the first chess board, but didn't know for sure until the second one found after Tristan's murder.  He'd thought that the use of the first letter of each setup to spell out a word was much too simple, but that second board had proven otherwise.  There had to have been intention behind each setup, and there it was, clear as day.  Still, Stolas had to keep it hidden until during the trial, otherwise it would make everything seem much more like a setup than he wanted it to.

He quickly carried Furfur and Marzy across the central island, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds to ensure he wasn't being followed.  He really didn't want to have another person to worry about; Marzy getting involved was already making things more difficult.  Not that Stolas couldn't handle carrying two young adults across three islands, rather that he now had to kill off a second classmate with his own hands.  He'd never wanted to harm any of them, but it was for the greater good.  If things didn't end well and the Remnants of Despair returned to the world, more tragedy would strike, and he couldn't have that.  Not when he could do something about it.  And as much as he wanted to protect the world, he equally wanted to protect his classmates from themselves.  There was a chance they could always go back to their despair-hungry selves, and he knew that deep inside of each of them, it would be painful.  Never in a million years would any of them want to be that way.  So Stolas wanted to ensure that they wouldn't have to.

Using his foot, Stolas carefully pushed the door handle to the music venue down and kicked the door open before carrying his load inside.  He didn't want to call them victims- it didn't sit right with him, as accurate as the term may have been.  They weren't just victims at all.  They were people with names and personalities and lives that they'd lived.  Sure, thinking about that made him a little more reluctant to carry out his mission, but it was true, wasn't it?  

He set down the bodies to turn the knob on the storage room door, removing Iris's flute bag from his wrist as he walked inside.  He carefully draped it over a chair placed in the center of the room.  Not too obvious, but just enough that it could be interpreted as accidentally left behind.  Once that was done, he carried the two bodies into the room, resting Marzy gently on a rack while he turned his attention to Furfur.  It was time.  With a deep sigh, Stolas removed the kitchen knife from his belt and rolled Furfur onto her back.  She had always been a fun one, carefree and witty.  Too bad all that had gone away when she lost herself to despair.  Stolas could still see the obsidian-headed arrow that whizzed by his head the one time he was trying to help a single mother and her two sons out of their burning townhouse.  The geologist responsible for the shot had kept firing, and would've killed the younger of the two sons if Stolas hadn't blocked it with his arm.  He wondered if his real-world body still had that injury.  He didn't know how long it had been since that.

Now, here she was.  The woman with murder and treason on her criminal record.  Not the worst Stolas had seen from his friends, especially when Caim of all people had mass murder on his.  But she didn't look like a killer, not right now.  She looked peaceful.  And she would stay that way.  Stolas bowed his head, then raised the kitchen knife and stabbed.  It went all the way through the geologist's chest, a killing blow for sure.  A quick and painless death, or as painless as he could make it.  Her blood seeped out from beneath her, coating the floor in the dark substance.  He then picked her up by her legs and dragged her out of the room, back out into the music venue.  He let the blood smear in a nice trail all the way to the front door.  Enough to get everyone thinking she was killed outside of the music venue, because Stolas was the only one strong enough to get her all the way here before she woke up and he knew it.  He began to drag her back over when his heartrate spiked, just slightly.

Marzy was stirring in the music venue.  Stolas hurriedly dragged Furfur back over, gently tossing her body aside as he reached for the knife again.  Marzy, still slightly disoriented, opened his dark crimson eyes and seemed to see Furfur's body first.

"Wh-wh?" he stammered before his eyes locked onto Stolas. "I- Stolas, you-!"

Before he could say anything else, Stolas had grabbed him by the neck, and in one swift move, slashed a huge slit in the biologist's throat.  Marzy's eyes widened as he tried to speak, only for his words to come out garbled and blood to drip out of his mouth and neck as he desperately gasped for air.  But much to his misfortune, it didn't work, and the life faded from his eyes in a matter of seconds.  One life for the many lives the biologist, under the influence of despair, had taking during his horrific malpractices.  Stolas hadn't seen the bodies for himself, but he'd seen images.  The sights were nothing he would ever wish on anyone.

He stared at Marzy's body for a moment before dropping the bloody kitchen knife behind the mirror and turning to leave.  After the door was shut behind him, he took the stool from the stage of the venue, went back to the door, and used it to hit the door handle until it was deemed unusable.  Everything was ready.  All he had to do now was act as if he didn't know anything.  The group followed basically whatever he said anyways, especially Sophie.  That was one of the reasons he'd taken her on as a junior detective- not just as a backup plan in case he was somehow caught or killed by other means, but also so she would trust him.  She depended on the hints he gave her, and he'd been making her throw the accusations the whole time.  So if anyone were to be attacked for a bold claim and suspected, it would be her, not him.

Stolas had always cared for Sophie- the bright-eyed artist had always been curious about his mysterious life, even back at Hope's Peak.  And she was soft, easy to manipulate if needed.  But also too soft to kill, which was why the only crimes she'd committed were treason and vandalism.  She'd paint despairing murals on walls everywhere, terrifying displays of gore and death.  On top of that, Azrael would write poems to go with them, scrawled on the bricks next to each one.  A little tag-team.  It was cute if the idea was isolated from all the despair and cruelty.

Oh, Sophie, he just wanted her to understand one day.  That he had to do this.  That he had to make sacrifices for the sake of the world.

And if things went badly and he died, not just here but in the real world as well, well...

He'd die with a friend right by his side, in the form of a sand dollar necklace that he, to this day, wore around his neck, over his heart.

***

(1998 words)

wow a longer chapter so cool, ace you're so awesome, we love you ace