Audition For Your Life!

**Audition For Your Life!** is the name of Kaede Kanno's execution, as featured in Dangan Ronpa: Forever Despair.

## Sequence

*Excerpt taken from Chapter 12 of Dangan Ronpa: Forever Despair*

From atop his throne, Monobear pulled a mallet out of nowhere and used it to smack a red button that conveniently rose just in time out of the floor in front of him. There was a small game console-like screen on the front of the platform that had the red button on it, and an animation began to play on the screen. It showed a sprite, obviously meant to represent Kanno-kun, standing in the middle of a nondescript area. A Monobear sprite walked in from the left side of the screen and grabbed the Kanno-kun sprite before dragging him off the right side of the screen. While that was happening, words came on the screen reading, "GAME OVER. Kanno-kun has been found guilty. Now commencing execution."

A door opened on one wall of the courtroom, and a chain shot out from it, moving more quickly than any of our eyes could follow it. At the end of the chain was a shackle, and when the chain reached Kanno-kun, the shackle wrapped around his neck and closed tightly on it. The chain then retracted just as quickly as it had shot out in the first place, dragging Kanno-kun out the door.

As soon as Kanno-kun was out of our sight, Monobear opened the curtain from before again to display the same projection screen from before. But this time, what was on the screen was Kanno-kun, who had been dragged into a room that looked like a stage theater. The stage was complete with curtains and a very expensive-looking set of stage lights on the top.

The chain dragged Kanno-kun through the air until it brought him to a wooden post and forced him vertically against it. Instantly, more shackles appeared out of nowhere and locked around Kanno-kun's torso and ankles to keep him in place. We got a view of the large array of audience seats in front of the stage, which were all empty--but which were suddenly populated by hundreds of Monobears.

The projection screen changed angles, leaving us again with the view of Kanno-kun shackled to the post, struggling intensely but unable to move very much. Suddenly, something even more disturbing happened: a tomato, out of nowhere, flew past Kanno-kun a few inches to the left of his face. Kanno-kun noticed it too and gaped at it as it flew by. Another tomato then flew past him, this time a little closer and to his right.

Then suddenly everything was happening too fast. The wooden post started moving from side to side, moving more quickly as time went on and jerking Kanno-kun back and forth. In addition, more and more tomatoes started flying in Kanno-kun's direction and just barely missing him. Eventually we couldn't even count the fruits--probably hundreds of them came at him every second--but they all just barely failed to strike Kanno-kun.

And then they started not missing him. One tomato came so close to him it actually broke and left a bit of juice in his hair. A couple seconds later, one of them hit his cheek, leaving red all over that side of his face; and then one of them struck his shoulder, staining his clothes and making it look almost like he was bleeding. But it's not like he was suffering any lethal damage...

This went on for about ten more seconds, with Kanno-kun clearly becoming more and more pained as a select few of the tomatoes hit him at high speed, and the wooden post yanked his body from side to side, probably jostling his body and bruising his skin where the shackles were. But he didn't seem to be dying in any way, and for the briefest moment I wondered if this was all there was to it. If maybe, just maybe, all this "execution" was was a little bit of pain, and then he would get to come back to us.

Of course, things never work out that way.

One of the tomatoes was thrown from a very high altitude, and, almost as if it were in slow motion, we all watched as it struck one of the tough metal cords holding up the stage lights, causing the lights to rock back and forth for about two seconds. The entire stage light set creaked for a moment and then came crashing down on the stage.

The tomatoes stopped flying immediately. Everything and everyone was silent. Then, Monobear rushed up onto the stage and pulled the curtain closed, blocking the stage light set from our vision. After another moment, the entire audience of Monobears applauded for several seconds.

Then the projector screen turned off.

...Well, there it was.

Kaede Kanno, the Super High-school Level Actor...

Was dead.