CELESTAKA TEA TIME AAAAAA. Celeste offering an invite to her regular solo tea parties since she always has them alone. Ooh, imagine him bringing a traditional Japanese teaset thinking they're going to make matcha but she's got out the assam lmaoooo. Cuuute.
A trigger happy havoc au where everything is mostly the same, but just a little bit worse for everyone, and this results in things somehow seeming to go better before getting even worse than they would have been. Cut for length
Sayaka goes further in lulling Leon into complacency before trying to stab him. She succeeds in her original plan, and it goes poorly for her. Makoto has to see with his own eyes how willing she is to lie to everyone about him, and the trial is just that bit harder on him.
Chihiro already felt horrible about how they were "complicit" in killing Sayaka, but something else that sticks with him is Makoto's much more pronounced betrayal. The students still leave the gym without confiding in each other, after the secret motive is revealed, but Chihiro goes about overcoming his "weakness" is a different way. Chihiro tells Taka that he wants to be more honest with his classmates, and would he maybe help Chihiro choose who to train with. Taka, without consideration, suggests Mondo, and would Chihiro like Taka to accompany him when asking Mondo for help? Mondo still has his insecurity breakdown, but Taka is there to step in. Except that Taka misjudges something; in the struggle, he kills Mondo on accident. In the trial, much like Taka had the breakdown in place of the killer, Chihiro has the breakdown here. Taka barely says anything during the trial. He's in shock, until Makoto asks him to confess, and he does.
Chihiro disappears into their room for chapter three, doubling down on improving Alter Ego so it can end this awful game. They know the mastermind can see them doing this, but just can't care about being reckless at the moment. Life settles into a tense but surprisingly easy equilibrium. The money motive gets put on the table and Kyoko, with no Alter Ego to confer with right now, takes more notice of how unstable Celeste is getting. She either points Makoto at her, or tries to fumble her way through talking her out of murder. Yuri is always correct, so let's say that's what happens. Her first attempt is just saying to Celeste's face "I know you're planning a murder. Stop. Money won't buy you out of execution." She is a little perplexed when Celeste is a little too willing to agree with her. She at least holds Celeste's interest long enough to stop her from killing anyone. The thing about equilibrium is that Junko gets bored of it very quickly, a whole week goes by without any murder; on top of that Alter Ego has been assailing her systems, getting a little more troublesome every time since Chihiro makes a backup before every deploy, so killing the ai isn't even fun. Unfortunately, Junko planned for such an occasion. Sakura murders Chihiro.
I think that Sakura still leaves Kyoko a skeleton key, but she leaves it in a duffel bag with the Alter Ego laptop in it too, and before she's executed tells the group tomorrow might be a nice day for a bath. In this alternate chapter 4, Celestia kills herself instead. With all of the trouble Kyoko can get into with the key, and everyone else asking Alter Ego for answers (it doesn't have many, but they have learned some new things early), Celeste really thinks about if she believes that they can get out of here. She does not win against her stalled grief, she can't bring herself to believe in her classmates, and she plans a murder. She's also...tired. She acts out of character for this chapter as well, but in the vein of being too nice to people. She invites people to have tea with her, Kyoko, Makoto, Byakuya, even Aoi and Toko. She invites Hifumi to a cup of tea, and he doesn't suspect anything at all, since no one else has come to harm from these little parties, and she's counting on that to poison his cup. He dies more slowly than she anticipated; she is a teenage girl, she doesn't know anything about poison except that it was the weapon of nobility. He flees her room and makes an absolute scene in the hallway. Someone hears, when they get there Hifumi is in a bad way, but Celeste lies that someone poisoned her tea leaves ;o; please go get help ;o; Hifumi somehow gets his miraculous memory moment, but Celeste is the only one there to hear. He calls her by her name, and she feels...something. She goes back to her room. She writes a letter, this time, and makes one last gamble. She tells her classmates that she's usually excellent at games, even ones she's never played, but this time she'd lost just by playing. She was focused on the rules explained to her instead of seeing the larger strategy. Playing against each other is useless, only defeating the mastermind themself will win this game--please, play to win. I'm placing my final bet on you.
Resolve, hope, Mukuro Ikusaba. You know the story. Makoto still covers for Kyoko, who does not reciprocate, but Junko has executions on standby for every classmate, so instead of sticking him in Kyoko’s she can just immediately pivot to Makoto’s personal execution.
7,777 Years of Bad Luck
The thing is, if he had killed someone, it would play out differently. Here, when he’s going to die for something he didn’t even do, but fully believes Kyoko didn’t do either, he fights. He knows he’ll lose, he's not an exceptional person, but maybe he can at least draw it out long enough for the mastermind to get annoyed. Monokuma always says more than he means to when he’s bothered. The abbreviated description of what I'm picturing is a room of mirrors, and I mean floor to ceiling including the floor and ceiling themselves are mirrors. Makoto is lowered from a line on a winch to the middle of it, and the second his feet are lowered to the floor, the glass cracks. Thousands of mirrors shatter around him over the course of this scene, but the shards wear through the rope tying him up, and Makoto refuses to die. He flips his hood over his head and dodges the larger glass pieces the best he can. It's inelegant...it almost looks like he'll live. There are only so many mirrors left to throw at him or fall on him and he's still standing. Then, Monokuma stabs him through the middle with a long, sword like shard from behind. Makoto looks down at the glass sticking out of him, and only wryly calls Monokuma "Cheater" before collapsing. Monokuma is very over-the-top offended by this, and HERE is where Kyoko makes her bargain in this au, right in the trial room, because she's at just the right angle to see that Makoto is still breathing. It's a lot less triumphant than the beginning of chapter six, but Kyoko's points stand--there's an audience watching, and if you let Makoto die here you lose your own game. She proposes that she be given as long as it takes Makoto to recover to investigate--the more vindictive the mastermind is with Makoto's care, the longer Kyoko will have to gather evidence against them for Mukuro's murder. Monokuma concedes to get Makoto only as physically well as he has to be to stand at his podium for the duration of the climactic trial. Kyoko believes him, since Makoto fainting in the middle of the debate would kind of ruin the tension of this epic battle the mastermind wants to give the world.
Possibly, for fun, Monokuma kick Makoto in frustration, and Makoto wakes up yelling. Monokuma despairs, "why are you s t i l l alive ugggh" and Makoto just says "fuck you that's why". If this happens, Monokuma teases him for being mean, he can't believe Kyoko is dumb enough to go out on a limb for such a loser, and he's like ??? she--he manages to sit up enough to find her, and mouths something to her, to which her eyes widen, and Monokuma scoffs in disgust. Monokuma twists the glass shard inside of Makoto, and he immediately passes out again. The kids are chased off to the elevator, they need to leave, since apparently he's got a call to make.
(Here is the part where my daydreams of Makoto getting to talk to despair Mikan could go if we wanted to get twistier, but that's a whole other thing)
There is a moment, where they are all rather hastily shoved to the elevator, that everyone is processing, and Hiro of all people is like, look Kirigiri, I didn't understand half of that, but you need to chill out. I don't have time for that. Toko is the one who says she has three minutes. You have to ride the elevator., that's three minutes of non-negotiable downtime. Even idiots know you can't bottle up everything or it will explode later, so explode now before you lose your cool later and you're useless. The door dings. I have a vision for this but it's kind of saccharine so imagine a camaraderie moment here.
I think alter ego is able to tell them that they were normal classmates before. Everyone has had time to be shocked and acclimate to knowing, but they have no idea why they’ve forgotten or what exactly. This makes the original pictures ineffective at turning them against each other--it’s not that big of a deal, because having the time and bandwidth to process that Makoto knew Kyoko was lying and, if he’d been wrong about her, sentenced them all to death by covering for her, upsets them just fine for a lot of the investigation. In this confusion, Monokuma gives them a different kind of bait. Everyone save Kirigiri is given class pictures where only Makoto is noticeably absent, rather than they themselves. This along with the elevator confession incline them to cooperation with Kyoko during investigation, but pile on Makoto for the first leg of the trial. He’ll have to prove he’s not the mastermind before they get to who is.
I’m going back and forth between Aoi being the one to help Kyoko with her father’s password. They’re not close like that, but she’s emotionally intelligent enough to make the same guess as Makoto, I think. Maybe this pre-trial time Kyoko actually integrates into the class more closely than she had any desire to before. Instead of disappearing around every corner, Aoi does get to accompany her to the principal’s office. Byakuya offers something he found without bitching for ten thousand years about it or just waiting until trial. Possibly a joke scene where Kyoko needs something on a shelf that’s too high for her to reach and she’s already planned her route to the nearest classroom to get a chair to stand on, and Hiro walks by and just. Gets the thing down for her.
An announcement. Times up. Makoto is waiting for them at the elevator, leaning against the wall. Kyoko asks if he’s really alright, did Monokuma keep his end of the deal or—no, he did. I’m gonna have some wicked scars, but I’ll be alright. His other friends are less glad to see him bc of the pictures thing but they’ll get over it lol. Makoto is like what now, and Kyoko says she has no idea because she didn’t take the bait. She asks if Monokuma gave him any information, but no, he induced a coma, so Makoto is walking into this entirely blind.
"Sorry."
"Don’t apologize. I’m…glad you’re here at all." Then, she smirks at him and says, "I've got this, Makoto, I am the ultimate detective, after all." Ultimate detective! Then the door opens and she has to help him walk to his podium. Later, when they get into things, adrenaline will let him hit his Pose, but at the start of the trial he is so sore get that boy a chair.
Once Junko is confirmed the mastermind, and she gets into the Tragedy, she doesn’t describe the Tragedy in any more detail than in canon, but she really twists the knife on their school life together. She shares anecdotes, she laments the friends she sacrificed, she tells them multiple times that she loves them. When it ramps up to the final vote, she promises that the outside world is dead and hates them, but she loves them so, so much. So much she'll give them their memories back if they let her kill Makoto for real. Kyoko points out that she has no reason to stay true to her word. Makoto points out that they can't get that time back either way. Trading the future for the past is not worth it, not when they can make new memories. Once the whole thing is settled and they make it to the entrance hall door, they stumble out into a wasteland. It's a long few weeks of living rough and running for their lives, but they still end up where they always would have, just a little to the left. Makoto maybe needs a smoothie diet for a while.
