Full summary: After escaping Hope's Peak Academy alive, the idea of getting into a similar situation for a second time hadn't even crossed Byakuya's mind. Yet, here he was, stranded on an island with a bunch of people he didn't know and Monokuma trying to convince them yet again to kill each other. Well, he wasn't having any of it. He learned some valuable lessons from the last killing game, so he would personally make sure that there wouldn't be a single murder this time.

At least, that was the plan. It turns out that trying to keep a whole class alive was much harder than just surviving on your own. Apart from handling his eccentric new classmates and looking for clues about why he was there and how to escape, he also had to figure out how to deal with Monokuma's continued attempts to disrupt the peace. It was a challenge, but surely nothing a Togami couldn't handle… right?

(Alternate title: How Byakuya Made It His Business to Save An Island Full of Idiots)

Chapter 1: The Dangling Carrot

In an apocalypse, money held no meaning whatsoever. Neither did luxury goods or even social standing, since there was no real society left. That was only natural. One could hardly expect the word to end without certain values changing. However, Byakuya Togami wouldn't be Byakuya Togami, if he hadn't adapted and set his sights on the thing that had become truly invaluable in the pile of rubble that was the new world.

Food. It had become a rare good that doubled as a means of survival. The despair-driven people one saw on the streets every day were mostly malnourished and unhealthy, barely able to find enough scraps to make it through another day. It was quite pathetic. Byakuya was not on the same level as those peasants. He knew where to look and what to take.

Fruit and vegetables? Barely even worth considering, if a few vitamin pills from a pharmacy raid did the trick just as well. The only good thing about them was that they contained additional water, but even that didn't make up for the hassle of combing the city for a single apple. Not to mention that fresh food like that spoiled extremely fast, so if they didn't happen to be pickled or preserved in some way, fruit and vegetables weren't worth the effort.

Meat posed a similar problem. You needed a cooler to keep it from going bad. At least fire wasn't too hard to come by, with all the burning cars out on the streets. So, cooking it was no trouble, at least. And it tasted delicious too, so he would never say no to some good meat if given the chance. Still, it wasn't too advantageous to hoard a bunch of uncooked meat within a group that was frequently forced to switch locations.

No, there was only one thing that truly mattered in the long run: junk food. Transportable, high in calories and it could be stored for later consumption without worrying about it going bad any time soon. It was the perfect source of nourishment.

As such, Byakuya made it his mission to search every nook and cranny of the destroyed city for anything edible, whatever it may be, eating things immediately if they couldn't be preserved, and bringing back the things that could be, to add them to his personal food reserves. Of course, he generously shared with his fellow surviving classmates if they couldn't find anything for themselves. He didn't want them to starve. But that didn't mean that he just gave away the greasy 'fruits' of his hard labor if it wasn't strictly necessary. He had to re-amass his wealth, after all.

It came as no surprise that he packed on a few pounds in only a couple of weeks after escaping Hope's Peak Academy. Okay, lots of pounds. In fact, he soon looked like one of those lazy people who never got up from their couch except for a raid of their overflowing fridge, although nothing could be farther from the truth.

Byakuya displayed his new physique with pride, as it showed just how much luxury he was still living in despite the end of the world. Plus, it also served to keep Toko away who was still struggling to accept that her 'white knight wasn't handsome anymore.' (Her words. It just went to show how unrefined her taste really was.)

In the end, it wasn't a literal carrot dangling in front of his face that would be his undoing, but a bag of chips lying openly on a table in the living room of one of the houses they were searching. Super-sized, +50% more, as the package promised. He should have noticed then that something was wrong. Something as obvious as this would have been scavenged a long time ago in this dog-eat-dog world.

However, in that moment, that didn't even cross his mind. He stomped over to the table, reaching out for the cheese and onion flavored treat, not heeding his surroundings at all. The snare trap tightened around his ankle and swept him off his feet in an instant. He could only let out a less than dignified scream before he was hanging from the ceiling face-down. Then, something was pressed against his face. A terrible stench of chemicals assaulted his nose. One confusing moment later, blackness engulfed him.

He woke up to someone daring to lay their filthy hands on his shoulder and shaking him. It could only be Makoto, that hopeful idiot who still hadn't learned that their difference in status meant that he didn't have the right to just touch him for no good reason. He sneered before he even fully regained consciousness and his eyes were just fluttering open.

The sudden brightness made him blink a few times, trying to gather his bearings and make sense of the ridiculous clown mask someone was holding in front of him. A second later, he realized that it wasn't a mask when the face moved its mouth to speak to him. But he couldn't make out the words.

"Huh…?"

The clown frowned down at him.

Slowly, Byakuya managed to make sense of the situation. He was lying on his back in the sand, the sun burned down on him relentlessly as the sound of rolling waves registered in the back of his mind… wait a second. Sand? Waves? He sat up abruptly, nearly colliding with whoever the weird guy with the clown face was. He stared at the vast sea in front of him.

What? How was that…?

He tried to recall the last thing that happened and remembered the obvious trap he had walked straight into. Oh joy. Kyoko would never let him live that one down, would she? He could already picture the smirk she would regard him with while she spouted some sarcastic-

"Hey, are you quite alright?"

He turned his head toward the guy in the white… was that a chef's coat? And come to think of it, that was definitely some sort of miniature chef's hat on his head. His eyes narrowed.

"Are you a cook?" were the first words out of his mouth.

The short guy seemed to be taken aback by the sudden question, until he puffed himself up with his hand on his chest, a superior grin on his face. "I am no mere cook, I assure you!" he proclaimed proudly, "I am the Ultimate Chef, Teruteru Hanamura, at your service! Even one bite of my renowned dishes will make you moan in pleasure and beg for more. You will never want to eat anything else."

So, he was indeed a chef. And an Ultimate at that. Interesting. He could only imagine how delicious the food prepared by someone like him would be. Already, Byakuya could feel his mouth watering at the mere thought of it. "Byakuya Togami," he introduced himself. He looked around, taking in the beach with its palm trees and the other people walking around, most of them looking confused. "Can you tell me where we are?"

Teruteru's face fell as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I'm afraid not. We all just woke up here on the beach, just like you. Nobody knows how exactly we got here from Hope's Peak either."

That caught his attention. "You are all students of Hope's Peak Academy?"

"Yes. Are you, too?"

"Indeed."

He pushed his glasses up, thinking about their current situation. A group of Ultimates woke up somewhere they were not supposed to be, with no recollection of how they had gotten there? That sounded extremely fishy.

His suspicion grew when an overly cheerful white rabbit wearing a pink, frilly skirt and wielding a staff showed up, and announced that they were on a class trip. Class trip? He wasn't even a part of this class, though nobody seemed to take note of that. They were given a bunch of petty rules and the rabbit told them that violence was strictly forbidden on this island.

Byakuya didn't trust it. Why would it go out of its way to say that, if there wasn't a good reason for it? He didn't like the implications it left behind. It reeked of another plot like Junko Enoshima's. Over the course of the next hour of exploring the island and trying to find out more about the rest of the students, he managed to calm his nerves a little. Nothing bad had happened yet, but at the same time he didn't get any answers either. Like, who had trapped them here and for what purpose? Why them? And how?

The where, at least, was easily answered. Jabberwock Island, an archipelago consisting of multiple small islands in the Pacific Ocean. He had heard of this place before. Though, why exactly their kidnapper had chosen this location remained a mystery to him.

The rabbit's weird announcement via the monitors about how she had a present for them all reminded him uncomfortably of the Monokuma announcements he still vividly remembered from the killing game he had been forced to participate in. So, with a sense of dread, he returned to the beach and sure enough, a short time later, when they were all about to relax, Monokuma himself spoke to them through the monitors this time, summoning them to the park. It may have only been his silhouette, but he would recognize that grating voice anywhere.

Of course, it would turn out this way. He cursed in his mind. Now he was trapped in yet another one of those idiotic killing games. And all that had just happened because of a single bag of chips. How utterly stupid.

He didn't know who was behind all this. Enoshima was dead, so this happening again didn't make much sense. But he would find out. And he would put whoever was behind this in their place for trying to mess with him. They thought they could get away with instigating another killing game and expected him to just play along? Well, if that was the case, they were dead wrong. He would make them rue the day they tried to make him just another puppet in their game. He would ruin their fun thoroughly by making sure that nobody would die. That would make the killing game pointless and it would be just another victory for him.

There was not a shred of doubt in his mind that he could do it. After all, he had a huge advantage over them. He already had experience with this situation, so nothing would catch him by surprise. They had a cook on the island too, which was a huge plus. If Teruteru could provide him with lots of delicious food, that was already a step in the right direction. Yes, it would all work out in the end. He, Byakuya Togami, would become the leader that would save every single one of those imbeciles on this island. Just to spite the mastermind behind his kidnapping.

And the cook would help him with that.