"As the fallen city burned behind him, The beastly mastermind, Gundham Tanaka, began his reign of his new beastly empire as a new age dawned for mankind. In this new age, all shall fall to a primal, chaotic state of despair."
How would a Soudam AU with both of them being the Mastermind/Ultimate Despair work?
Would one of them just brainwash the other into despair?
or would both of them love the concept of despair so much, they eventually would want to spread it to their classmates? 🤔
Sweet wrench….I have thought of this idea on and off for a while.
long post below!
Let’s see, CrazyNekoChan made a Mastermind!soudam on AO3 that I love, but it was MM!Gundham that brainwashed everyone including Kazuichi who was also the MM in the planning stages.
I love either one being the Mastermind because whoo! The power dynamics! My first watch of a silent play through (I didn’t have game consoles at the time rip) I was DREADING being Kazuichi being the MM but it would’ve been a genius move - the supposedly simp mechanic being so absorbed by a pretty girl; who would think he was a calculating murder mastermind behind this killing game?
But back to the question: my answer would be a little mixture of both HOWEVER it would depend on who is Ultimate Despair:
If it’s Gundham, he would want to make Kazuichi see the true depravity of humanity. He feels like his Ultimate talent has opened himself to the real state of the world and humanity and it is as horrible and unrepentant as he always knew it was. Making Kazuichi and his best friend/student Sonia see this truth is a mercy - for they will not be lead astray by these tainted humans any longer.
He of course experimented on a few first years - you can’t bake a cake without cracking a few eggs and he made a mess of several…dozen. But he was able to create the perfect program that was as humane as possible (note: that didn’t involve invasive surgery or injury). He found the Kamakura Program and used the lab and Izuru was freed in exchange for helping him.
Sonia was his first official start and well…something went slightly wrong. However, she came out of it 99.9% intact and has had her third eye opened s he counted it a success. With Kazuichi, he took his time. His vibrant hell flower was surprisingly resilient in the first stages.
But he learned after Sonia and it was most unfortunate that it took so long. He needed to take his time with his beloved and the end result was truly worth it.
He thinks of making his fellow classmates see the light as well, but the method is so difficult to do in a larger scale and Izuru was calculating months for it to be at that large of a scale. That was too long and he had the two important people in his life. He can destroy the world with three people. The others can be spared…for now.
Now! If it was Kazuichi, he would’ve had production done for large scale projects much faster.
He would see the bigger picture, like Junko, and wanted his friends to be apart of this. He finds Izuru and promises him freedom and an obedient slave (Nagito) in return for his help which make Izuru help only because it’s Nagito. He experimented on Fuyuhiko’s little sister and that other reserve course student first, but sadly the other student killed Nazumi before she could be completely turned to Despair.
He made sure the test subject suffer before Fuyuhiko killed her. He was also furthering his experimentation by introducing it to certain individuals via drink, food or airborne. Granted, he’s not the Ultimate Chemist, but Izuru has been a real help!
But his most important task, was getting Gundham, Akane and Chiaki. Sonia would follow Gundham and Chiaki like a duckling - she’d only be perfect as a money and material distributor. Akane and Chiaki were his sisters basically and he needed their loyalty.
And for Gundham…well. Love makes people want that special someone close at hand. And Gundham was closer - even if that was because he had him chained downed for his special version of the formula.
It was a shame about Chiaki, but losing her made the Despair so much sweeter as he lamented her loss. Oh well. Some things are truly not to be it seemed. But he had the rest of his class to get together and administer the final step. And poor Gundham needed extra attention. Chiaki’s body can be handled later.
