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Hope's Peak Academy was nothing more than a distant sanctuary, hidden behind walls of barbed wire and gatling guns. Desperate innocents climbed those towering fortifications, fingers cut and bodies tired, only to be faced with bullets, bullets, bullets. Cold, unfeeling metal plates met the few who survived. But as heavy as their fists were, banging on every surface they could get their bloodied hands on, it was met by apathetic silence.
For Kamukura Izuru, however, silence was to be expected. He combed through sharp fences like a shadow in the night. Then came the quiet hiss of the metallic plates detaching and the dull clank as they fell back perfectly into place.
Hope's Peak Academy’s halls were empty, the air stagnant and cold where vibrant life had once brimmed. In the distance, tense voices could be heard—the 78th class, faces downcast, somber resolution on their faces. Among them, Kamukura Izuru spotted one of his curiosities: Naegi Makoto.
Lucky Student, they called him, but there had never been rhyme or reason to his luck. Smiling fortune never seemed to be on his side, either. For a spirit so ordinary, so utterly unremarkable, the practical embodiment of average, Kamukura Izuru could not make heads or tails of his luck. When would it appear? What conditions did it work within?
“I put all this effort into creating carnage, Kamukura, and you're more interested in staring at the dullest Ultimate student,” Enoshima Junko says behind him. “What does he have that I don't?”
Kamukura Izuru doesn't humor her. His eyes are still locked onto the lucky student, who manages to speak of such inane things even in the midst of an apocalypse. He can still hear the clang, clang, clang of the despairing people outside, but it melts into the tinkling sound of Naegi Makoto’s nervous laugh. Ha, ha, ha. A perfectly boring, average laugh.
The second ha is slightly higher than the rest, and there's a certain breathlessness to it, Kamukura Izuru notes.