Controlee: Outtakes and AUs

Runaway AU I: The Weird List

This is the first chapter of an AU of Controlee, a long fic I have written. If you have not read it, there will be much of this that does not make sense, and very possibly spoilers. Read at your own risk.

I only have a few chapters of this AU. They're somewhat out of order and there are some bits (big bits, more like huge chunks, really) missing so some of these chapters will have explanations at the start to give context, but the AU itself is quite fun. This is something of a mysterious starter to the AU. You'll get some more context in other chapters.

Maijima Higari had a favourite student. He freely admitted that. In a way, he had two favourite students, but one of them was more of a problem child.

Her name was Otsuka Emiko and she was brilliant. She wasn't the only brilliant student though, his problem child was brilliant too, Hatsume Mei, but Hatsume's brilliance often ended in explosions. It took ten minutes for Maijima to see how brilliant these two were, and only thirty more seconds for him to make absolutely certain the two would never be anywhere near each other in the lab.

Hatsume's explosions came and went every day and, to Maijima's horror, the two students were fast friends. They also seemed to be each other's only friends. Hatsume was loud, audacious, and it put others off. Otsuka was quiet, calm, and didn't go out of her way to talk to anyone. Hatsume came to her and nothing could drag them apart.

When he had lunch duty, he saw the two of them sat on a table alone. They ate and talked in a language he could only barely keep up with, ideas bouncing back and forth. There were moments when Otsuka stumbled over her words— her mind moving too fast for language to keep up— but Hatsume was quick to help her back to her feet and they continued with barely a second lost.

It was a cover teacher— a fool; a genius— who put them together. One of the other students kicked up a fuss about being next to Hatsume so Otsuka offered to switch and the cover teacher was so happy to oblige. Maijima aged ten years in fewer seconds when the cover told him what they'd done.

"How much of the lab is left?" he remembered asking, almost tempted to fall asleep on the floor. This could be the problem of tomorrow's Maijima.

The cover teacher had frowned at him— the audacity. "What?"

"How many explosions?" he tried instead. "How much damage did they cause?"

"None. Your students were incredible."

He tested it the next day. He never expected it. Otsuka glanced over at the desk of the girl next to her every so often— enough to catch the little mistakes that led to each explosion. Suddenly, explosions went from a daily pain in his side, to a small irritation once a week or so. He made a note never to separate them again.

His favourite thing currently was watching the two work on a partner project. They were perfect together, attempting to design the kinds of creations that would be used for centuries to come. Alone, Otsuka tended to focus on warning systems, tools that would be useful but not directly for fighting, while everything Hatsume created was either sword or shield. Together, they always went for shield.

As much as Hatsume was definitely the problem child of the two, that wasn't to say Otsuka didn't come with her own set of problematic behaviours— hers just came with fewer literal explosions. The first sign of something off appeared entirely innocent at first. Kids in support essentially did what they liked uniform-wise. Hatsume spent her entire life in her tank top and the UA coveralls, for example. Otsuka was much the same, though her tank tops varied in colour more and she had these little sweatbands. Innocent little sweatbands around her wrists. The studio got hot, really hot, he'd had plenty of students wear sweatbands before. But Otsuka didn't wear the sweatbands because they were sweatbands.