Assassins, Detectives, and the Mafia

Stress and Fixing

The 53rd season of Danganronpa ended with a battered Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko awaking to a cackling Tsumugi, insanity evident in her eyes.

"This season..." she gasped, drool trickling out of the corner of her mouth. "So much revenue... ah, can we keep this going?"

After that, a pair of people pushed her out of the way - Angie Yomada and Tenko Chabashira. They didn't look quite the same as they did in the game, hair shorter and clothes plainer. Still, the light in Himiko's eyes was unmistakable, and she wrapped them both in a hug.

Slowly trickling in was the rest of their class, all the people they had seen killed, all the people who had died in grotesque fashion earlier in the game, here and alive.

It seemed too good to be true.

That was soon proven correct the day they walked in on Korekiyo surrounded by a pool of his own blood, tears mingling with hot red liquid.

"I'm disgusting," Korekiyo sobbed, hands clutching at his skull as if to tear it apart. "I don't even have a sister..."

It wasn't just him. Kaede lost weight at a dangerous rate, Kurumi barely slept, Gonta appeared melancholy and withdrawn, and Kaito's normally cheerful demeanor was replaced with a dangerous fury.

The victims didn't seem much better. Rantaro appeared increasingly paranoid (perhaps due to the memory recovery treatments), Ryoma seemed less and less sociable, Angie and Tenko would wake up nightly with nightmares, and Miu was terrified of everything involving electronics. Not to mention Kokichi, who refused to be in the same room as Maki, and shared Miu's fear of electronics.

"There's so much blood on my hands," Rantaro confided, tears leaking out of his eyes. "I stabbed two of my friends to death in the 52nd season... real death..."

The survivors seemed to be the only ones unscathed, though Maki still refused to let Kaito out of her sight. Relations between her and Kaede continued to dissolve in the meantime, eventually coming to a head when Kaede made some offhand comment about being glad the season ended so quickly.

"It wasn't quick," Maki hissed, voice filled with bile and malice. "You can say that because you died first, and you didn't have to watch all your friends die."

"I'm a friend?" Kokichi whispered, voice filled with none of its prior malice. "...really?"

"I never said you, Ouma."

Real hurt flickered on Kokichi's face, quickly dissolving into a mask of nonchalance.

"Oh, okay then."

Things grew progressively worse over a matter of weeks, until the head technicians at Danganronpa approached them with a suggestion.

"How about we put you into the Neo World Program?"

It was meant to fix them.

It was meant to solve their problems, meant to save them from the overwhelming despair of a killing game.

That was decidedly not what happened.

Rantaro is the system's first failure. He wakes with a scream, the memories of both killing games ricocheting in his head, the murders, the killing, why won't it stop stop stop it.

They wheel him into therapy, trying to fix the brain they broke.

(He never speaks after that day, convinced the right to a voice is no longer his)

On one of those days, Tsumugi approaches him, offering to put him back into the program.

(He shakes his head once, a refusal. Leave the demon to his demons, he almost seems to say. What else is there for me?)

No progress is made until Kokichi awakes with a shout, thrashing wildly as he tries to escape.

"T-The press," he manages to stutter out between sobs. "I-I died... I-I died again..."

Kaede wakes the next day, hand reaching instinctively for a wedding band no longer there.

"Was Maki... was that all a lie?"

The conflicting memories inside her head confuse her, and she presses her fingers to her temples as if to banish the thoughts from her mind.

"If it was... it was a nice lie."

The tears streaming down her cheeks plainly conflict with her words.

Rantaro comes to visit them. He's allowed to walk around, but the large amount of bandages wrapped around his head lets everyone know just how far from okay he really is.

"I'd like to go outside," Kokichi hums contemplatively, staring out his window at the sunset. "And pizza. Pizza and ice cream. Ah, the things you miss when you're in a hospital... there's nothing fun to do here..."

Rantaro pulls a deck of cards out of his pocket, and like the child he is, Kokichi's eyes light up.

"Hearts?" the Ultimate smirks, dealing half the deck to Rantaro and half to himself.

(They tie, something neither of them expected)

Rantaro comes back every day after that, and they experiment with games. One of the days, Kokichi suggests that they invite Kaede, and while the blonde Ultimate is originally apprehensive, she ends up shooting the moon and beating both of them.

"No!" Kokichi wails, throwing his hand into the air. Beside him, Rantaro beats a fist on the ground, frame shaking in silent laughter.

"Never underestimate a pianist, Kokichi," Kaede smirks, dealing out the next hand.

It's impossible to put a date on the day they all become friends, but sometime between the first hand of Hearts and the day Kaede tells them they mean the world to her, something changes. They help each other shut out the darkness and let in the light.

Kaede is there for Rantaro when the bad memories come back, threatening to swallow him whole. Rantaro is there for Kokichi, when the pain of being hated by everyone makes itself known. Kokichi is there for Kaede, when the overwhelming sense of loss promises never to let go.

And they're happy. Kokichi and Kaede and Rantaro. The Leader, Pianist, and Explorer.

(Rantaro won't go by Survivor anymore. Too many memories dredged up by the word.)

They're allowed to meet other Danganronpa veterans. Ibuki, Sayaka, and Kaede all perform a trio (it's undeniably weird), Rantaro has a nice talk with Nagito and Makoto (even if the former is obsessively drooling over seeing a Gen-1 Hope) and Kokichi enjoys talking to Sakura and Peko (after the latter apologizes profusely for the events of the Neo World Program, despite not being involved).

It's happy. Life is good, calm, and perfect.

That is, until the one person with the power to shatter this fragile peace awakes with a war cry and a shout, destroying all semblance of calm.

Kaito Momota.