I did some math and discovered if I fudge it a little I can have an AU of the Bullshit Defense AU where Apollo goes to Themis instead of doing a regular high school experience and he, Klavier, Sebastian, and Franziska are all at Themis together for a year.
Fran is two years older than Klav and Seb and Apollo is two years younger than Klav, so Apollo shouldn’t be at Themis until Fran graduates, but if I fudge it and say that Apollo skipped a grade and they just put him in whatever grade Nahyuta would be in - because I figure Nahyuta and Apollo received the same education while living on the run so when they go to actual school they’re just dumped in the same grade and so when Apollo is going as an exchange student to LA, they just figure it like “what grade would Nahyuta be in okay you’re probably there too”
So Apollo could be in his first year when Klavier and Sebastian are in their second, and Franziska in her fourth. Shenanigans ensue.
Apollo becomes friends with Franziska somehow, and Klavier befriends Apollo because Klavier is very “notice me senpai” about Franziska and he figures he can worm his way into her good graces by befriending her small and shouty friend. Sebastian is in a very one-sided rivalry with Franziska - he’s heard from his father all about how her father shamed the good name of prosecutors with all his witness tampering and faking evidence - but she barely cares he exists; and Sebastian is competing (“competing”) with Klavier to be the top of their class.
It’s a very weird “friend” group where Franziska and Apollo are friends, and Apollo is reluctantly friends with Klavier, and Klavier kind of trails after Franziska like a lost puppy, and Sebastian is rivals with Klavier and considers Franziska his rival and is actually sort of friends with Apollo because Apollo’s gonna be a defense attorney and so Sebastian doesn’t have to compete with that.
And they form a stupid sort of Scooby Doo gang without the dog - they have Pess but she’s kind of useless - where if there’s any ever mysteries or crimes on campus they’re the people to go to who can solve it.
Franziska’s trying to figure out why Debeste is such a familiar name and she asks her father and Gregory is just like “he was the Chief Prosecutor and now is the head of the Prosecutorial Investigative Committee” and conspicuously says nothing more than that, so she goes to visit Manfred in prison and asks him about it and he just goes “BLAISE DEBESTE THAT BASTARD I SHOULD HAVE SHOT HIM” and spills everything.
They kickstart half of the plots of AAI2 and Sebastian’s character arc when the gang find out that Sebastian’s father is buying his grades and also Franziska learned from Manfred that the autopsy report in the IS-7 incident was faked.
Anyway I just think the concept of them being stupid teenagers careening around Themis together is really funny. Their glory days only last so long though; it doesn’t stop after Franziska graduates, but when Klavier gets Phoenix disbarred there’s an explosive friend-break-up between him and Franziska and Sebastian and Apollo are awkwardly friends with them both still.
