This is far from a bad BSD AU this would change so much—
Viewing the swap like how Beast does it, one thing stands out to me about Ranpo:
You know how in Beast, Dazai fed into Atsushi’s fear of death and made it consume him? And how if I remember correctly, Dazai learned most of what he knows from Mori?
Well, you know what young Ranpo was scared of? What he would’ve never figured out and gotten over without someone else showing him another way of thinking?
Ranpo thought the world was filled with monsters.
Monsters he couldn’t ever hope to understand on his own. He felt utterly alone in the world.
And Mori would fed into that fear.
Just like how Dazai did with Atsushi in Beast. Ranpo would grow up fearing the world, perhaps never realizing how much he sees that others just can’t, because Mori wouldn’t tell him the truth. Ranpo would know that he isn’t Gifted, perhaps he’d come to fear Gifts as things above him, or maybe he wouldn’t think too much about them beyond planning. But the main consequence of this is that he wouldn’t have his glasses to “hide behind,” in a sense.
He wouldn’t have the confidence in who he is. His plans and dedications would be as brilliant as ever (actually the stress of this way of life would probably dull his edge a bit, but that’s not very noticeable unless he somehow meets his canon counterpart and Mori would force him to learn more tactics to make up for that), but he wouldn’t see it like that. Mori would make sure that he stays feeling alone, feeling isolated, feeling like people are monsters.
And that Mori is the only person he could trust.
PM!Ranpo isn’t just scary, he’s scared. He might put on a mask of silliness, or rather, lean into how silly he can be, just to feel a bit of joy. Perhaps Mori would still give him snacks and spoil him in all the ways that don’t matter. But he would continue living without ever having security in himself, or the majority of people around him. Only ever trusting Mori, and tying his whole sense of self-worth to the Port Mafia.
Alternatively, he’d grow quiet. His silly demeanor that people know him for replaced by a silent observer. Maybe Mori teaches him that he can’t do what he wants, like how Mori forced Yosano to continue healing those poor soldiers to send them back to their deaths.
Mori would let him have snacks when alone, would let him enjoy his collection of Ramene marbles and whatnot after a day of work, reassure him just enough so that Ranpo won’t mentally check out— so he doesn’t end up with another Yosano (who would likely still get saved by Fukuzawa, especially if Mori hasn’t started/finished training Ranpo or hasn’t run into him yet).
But a PM!Ranpo wouldn’t be silly, really, now that I think about it. The only reason Dazai was silly was because he wanted to find meaning in life (well also he was a kid), and also he was allowed to be silly by Mori. This Ranpo isn’t like Dazai. He’d have a stare similar to Beast!Atsushi, one of fear, or have knowing stare with no smile, no flaunting of having figured out the mystery, just him seeing the Truth and planning on what to do. Only when alone with Mori would he smile, because Mori would be this Ranpo’s Fukuzawa, this Ranpo’s dad.
Ranpo would be running around handing out orders and putting himself in danger (that he knows wouldn’t end in danger, because Mori never taught him that he cares about his well-being and never told him that he would worry about him like Fukuzawa did). Though I don’t think he would directly kill anyone himself when he can avoid it. And he probably wouldn’t torture people. At least not physically. He wouldn’t need to do much to get the information he wants actually, though he might play with people’s emotions for the heck of it, like a twisted version of the dramatic reveals canon Ranpo likes doing. Though actually, him just laying out the facts like they were obvious just like how canon Ranpo did with that one secretary when Fukuzawa first met him, but this time with a blank but knowing expression like he was reading off of a list and was board— honestly that sounds like it would really make people fear him, perhaps more than they feared Dazai. Because Dazai made people fear him through his cunningness and his direct actions.
Ranpo, meanwhile, feels truly omnipotent to everyone (except himself).
He’d plan for exactly what people (pawns, monsters) he’d have to sacrifice, which ones he wants to sacrifice for a more fun experience, all while acting like he’s just playing a game, one that he’s starting to get board of. He only smiles when something particularly entertaining or exciting happens, but quickly goes back to a black-but-knowing stare that everyone knows him for.
One PM member claims that he saw The Omnipotent fidgeting with a blue Ramene marble, looking at it as if it was the most interesting thing in the room as he held it up to the light with a small smile on his face as he walked over the corpses of his fellow fallen mafia, before turning to him and casually saying that the Gifted who did this lives in the building across the street and that they should send “the angry hat boy” to ambush him in an alleyway at 3:42 AM sharp the night of the 5th, then pointed to the exact ally on a map before making his way back to the mafia towers via train. And the mafia grunt would have to do his part to remember it exactly because everyone knows that The Omnipotent doesn’t like repeating himself. (Mori would force him to learn how to take the subway; Ranpo would always mentally check out while navigating the crowds and hates it, going alone, being alone and surrounded by monsters, but it’s all he knows at this rate, and no one will hold his hand through it except sometimes Mori).
…Actually, back on Mori being Ranpo’s father figure in this— this goes into theory territory more than and use the rest did— if Mori really did plan it so that Dazai would leave the Mafia for the sake of the city (and for the sake of hisself, in a way), and so Mori wouldn’t have someone he was attached to, wouldn’t have a son that he’d start to care about more than the city, what would happen with Ranpo in this AU?
How would Mori push Ranpo away? Because this Ranpo wouldn’t befriend others on his own, wouldn’t place any amount of baseline trust in anyone other than Mori (he wouldn’t be paranoid exactly because he knows who would want to betray him and how to get them to not or to take them out, but he’d have no friends, just monsters and pawns). So he can’t have someone pull an Oda.
(…wait shoot I forgot about Oda. Well, Oda would still die and Ranpo wouldn’t try to save him, because he’d be used to death and would trust that Mori knew what he was doing. Honestly I don’t think he would be friends with Oda in the first place.)
Anyway, Mori would have to do something drastic in order to get Ranpo to unattach from him. Like, say, plan his death. And go through with it. Because any amount of planning for Ranpo to live would make Ranpo realize just what Mori was trying to do. Honestly this Ranpo might genuinely notice the plan and go along with it fully knowing that he would die, because he cares that much about Mori and the PM and maybe the city as well, and might not really care for himself. So if a plan that Mori made involves his death, who is he to stop it? (I mean he IS effectively taking Dazai’s role here, gotta make him at least passively suicidal)
No, Mori would have to get him to care about something other than things related to the PM.
And that’s where that ADA comes in. Mori asks Ranpo to help the ADA, and pretend to be a Normal Guy that was totally not in charge of running half of the PM a few months to a year ago, nope, he didn’t send his own people to their deaths because he didn’t care about them, he didn’t orchestrate so many killings all while avoiding getting blood on his suit simply because it’s annoying to wash, he’s just a Guy who wants to become a detective (he really did, deep down, that’s what he wanted to do, wanted to be, and what Mori didn’t let him become)! And who’s here to ask to be an intern for the city’s greatest living detective, Dazai (living because Ranpo’s real dad is long dead)! He’d definitely put on some fake smiles (honestly I’d compare this version of Ranpo to Kabru in some ways but not exactly but that’s yet another rant—), pretend and act for as long as he could, but. He’s not that good at keeping up a mask 24/7, not without being able to mentally check out, not when that mask is of a normal person, not when he thinks he’s expected to act in a way so greatly different from who he is.
Anyway, yada yada yada, at some point Ranpo actually bonds with the ADA and Mori then tries to “kill him off,” and Ranpo is just like “ok guess I die now if that’s Mori’s plan,” but the agency ends up saving him because no, they aren’t monsters, Ranpo isn’t something other to them, Ranpo actually belongs with them. Bonus points if he tries to stop them at first, calling people monsters, predictable monsters that make no sense, calling himself a monster and saying he doesn’t understand why, because he thinks he’s been seen as one to others ever since his parents died, perhaps his parents are the only people that have ever seen him as a person, so why should he try to be something else? This is what he was always supposed to be. And now even Mori clearly wants him dead so it’s his time to die, don’t you understand? This is how it works. I’m not valuable, I’m just someone that a powerful man took pity on, I’m just someone who doesn’t belong anywhere, why do you think I can belong?
Someone slaps him to stop his rant.
And then, for the first time since his parents’ funeral, he cries.
Soon after, any remaining ties he had to the PM are cut.
…Not like anyone other than Mori actually knew him beyond his reputation as The Omnipotent. Really, he just stops doing any and all work that he still did for them (his PM workload was already like at LEAST 70% less, having been half since Mori tasked him to help out/infiltrate the ADA and slowly decreasing over time, but he was still doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes remotely until this moment).
Because he’s Ranpo, he’s probably be able to figure out the actual reason behind Mori’s decision to make him infiltrate the ADA, but also because he’s Ranpo and this version’s ego is in the gutter since his view of everyone else being a monster at their core is shattered so that just leaves him being a monster (a logical deduction considering what he’s done), he probably would like to not think about Mori anymore, and would leave it as Mori never really caring for him, finding him too annoying, Mori hating how much he’d complain and continue to complain about the same things even after all those years, and perhaps most of all, him just not belonging in the Port Mafia.
They all hated him, didn’t they?
…strangely enough, that’s an easier pill to swallow for this Ranpo than the truth.
(The truth being that nothing was actually wrong with him at his core, that Mori was the one terrible to him, lied to him for reasons that aren’t really justified, not completely, that the whole PM was terrible for him, and that he was far too good for the PM and Mori made him into something terrible so he could help the PM, but he doesn’t have to live like that anymore—
no like he was LITERALLY too good for them, like honestly half the reason Mori would do this is because the PM would’ve taken over the entire freaking city and a lot of Japan and not just the underground at the rate Ranpo was going at like the whole Trifecta plan was going to be unbalanced because of Ranpo and the ADA wasn’t powerful enough without him to fulfill its role, like Mori was like “oh shoot oh no this is going TOO WELL for the mafia, I may have made a mistake, this boy needs to be in the ADA, they’re struggling on the detective front, right? …he mentioned quite a bit that he wanted to be a detective when he was younger. Feels like he would’ve thrived there… maybe it’s not to late to get him to switch sides…”)
When this happens in the timeline I’m not exactly sure, but it’s definitely sometime between a few years after Mori becomes the PM boss (which probably happens a few years earlier in this, especially if Mori picks him up when he was 14), and when Dazai joined the agency in canon. Actually, it would be interesting if he joins the ADA when OG Dazai left the PM, and him cutting ties to the PM happing when OG Dazai joined the agency. Either that, or he joins the agency earlier so that he actually has that one encounter with Poe so that doesn’t change, and then it takes a couple months to up to two years for Mori to strategically backstab him, by first making the ADA learn the truth and pulling Ranpo out, and then having someone kill him.
Because this is a swap between Dazai and Ranpo, it only makes sense that both of them will end up with the ADA in the end (or the equivalent thereof— I feel like it probably focuses on being body guards over starting as a detective agency, though Dazai would probably be an amazing detective anyway and work as a private investigator, just… not a master detective; also Dazai’s skillset would be completely different from canon Dazai because Mori didn’t train him, Fukuzawa and maybe some great detective did).
Anyway, point is, Ranpo would be terrifying in this AU, especially after joining the ADA ironically enough, because he gets more sleep and is therefore no longer nerfed by stress and sleep deprivation. And also has all the strategic training that Dazai had. Albeit, a lot less fighting experience, not that he needs it.
Anyway, I just cannot see everything from Atsushi joining the ADA and beyond playing out the same way, holy heck that swap would change so much and can be taken in so many different directions, I didn’t even talk about Dazai for more than a paragraph holy heck that’s another half to explore—
Yeah, this is a wonderful AU.
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