It’s Shadow Maki’s berserk form, in the same vein as the Shadow Kaito design I once did!
In short, this is a concept from Persona 4 in which a person’s suppressed thoughts and feelings manifest into an abstract, symbolic representation of their issues. I’ve made a couple of posts mentioning vague, general ideas about Maki’s Shadow before, but now that I’ve finally managed to piece together enough ideas for her berserk form in my head, I couldn’t not draw it.
Since I’m not going to be writing a fic about this like I did with Shadow Kaito (there’s no need; Maki effectively already faces her shadow in canon thanks to Kaito’s encouragement and support), I’m instead going to just talk about all of the symbolism involved right here.
The Shadow initially manifests as just a giant box without any holes, upright and closed, thudding and rattling like something inside is trying to get out. As it tips over and falls open, the Maki doll clambers out from under a huge pile of weapons. The hands appear before she can leave the box itself, their strings piercing through it to take hold of the weapons and stab them into Shadow Maki, keeping her trapped in there under their control.
A significant part of this design was based around the fact that I’d already decided that Maki’s Persona would be Pandora. Pandora got associated with all the bad things that escaped when she opened her box, but that shouldn’t be considered her fault – it’s the fault of the asshole gods who filled the box with those things and gave it to her in the first place, knowing she’d open it.
So that’s why there’s a box filled with weapons, and why one pair of shadowy hands is holding it. The hands represent the members of Maki’s cult who trained her, or perhaps also the rich assholes who hire her to kill people, so the box with all those horrible things inside really originated from them.
The imagery of the box also fits very well with Maki’s tendency to cope through compartmentalisation – she’s become very good at just shutting away the things she doesn’t want to think about so that she can do what she needs to do. In fact, Pandora’s myth also works really well here, because after letting out all the bad things, Pandora shut the box in such a hurry that she left Hope, the one good thing, trapped inside. That’s basically exactly what Maki did with her own hope – her wishes that one day she could escape this hell and have a normal life – in order to cope. Shadow Maki starts out trapped inside a box because she’s been firmly sealed away inside a metaphorical box by the surface part of Maki for a long, long time.
(This compartmentalisation idea also works for the weapons being sealed inside the box to start with, since Maki also tries to shut away and avoid thinking about all the horrible things she’s been through and done whenever it’s possible for her to do so.)
I am aware that actually in the original myths, Pandora had a jar, and it’s a modern(ish) mistranslation that made it a box. However, while the original correct version of Atlas worked way better for Kaito (he carried all of space, not just the Earth!), this time the misinterpreted version happens to fit a lot better for Maki – because toy boxes are a thing. Except oh god those aren’t toys those should not be anywhere near children.
That was the other main idea I had in mind for this, before I’d even figured out Pandora and knew a box ought to be involved: this sort of imagery that’d disturbingly juxtapose Maki’s child caregiver and assassin talents, because it is horrifying and heartbreaking that she was put through all this and turned into a killing machine as a child.
So it was a pretty neat bonus that Pandora’s box could also be presented as Pandora’s toy box. There’s some more symbolism in the idea of the Maki doll having been alone and forgotten at the bottom of the toy box, because Maki on the surface hasn’t allowed herself to think about her normal, happy life as a child in a long time. Meanwhile, the weapons piled on top of her get taken out of that box and “played with” by surface-Maki a lot more often.
Even if anyone did pick up the doll and try to play with it again, it’s broken and mutilated and can never be the same any more. Maki’s traumatic experiences have messed her up enough that she can never have that normal life back now in quite the same way.
And even if she did try to be free anyway and live her own life despite being broken, she still can’t actually escape that box that she’s shut herself in, because she’s being controlled like a puppet by evil outside forces beyond her reach. That puppet imagery was another thing I knew I had to do with this – fitting neatly with the child-caregiving image of the doll – because a lot of the tragedy of Maki’s story is the fact that she never had a choice. Everything she’s been through has all been her being controlled and manipulated by people who don’t give a damn about her.
The box also helps here in that she can’t even see the hands puppeteering her, because Maki doesn’t actually see her situation as herself being controlled and feels like she deserves to bear every single bit of the blame and responsibility for her actions herself. (And the owners of the hands can’t see her in there suffering either, because like hell any of those assholes care about that.)
I had the strings be attached to the Maki doll via weapons impaling her partly just as an efficient way to combine the toy mutilation and puppeteering motifs into one, but also because that control and manipulation is precisely one of the main things that’s been hurting her and messing her up so much. She’s technically holding those knives in her hands and could use them to kill someone like this, but doing so is hurting her just as much. And trying to break free of it would only hurt her more – so it’s easier for her to just stop struggling and give up.
Imagine if the students successfully “defeated” Monokuma in trial 5, and also that Kaito incidentally had about one more day to live as of that point in time. (This is the end result of my trial 5 AU, not that any of the story in that post is particularly relevant to the AU story I’m about to present here.) An anon suggested to me that, from here, the students could demand that Monokuma owes them a life – in other words, he has to nurse Kaito back to health for them.
I had my doubts over whether it’d be the right call to actually trust Monokuma with Kaito’s health in that situation… but then again, that’s the fun part. What if they did make the mistake of entrusting Kaito’s life to Monokuma? What cruel things could he do while still technically complying with their demands?
Here’s what I thought of: Monokuma “saves Kaito’s life” by making a huge Flashback Light full of Kaito’s backstory plus all his experiences throughout the killing game itself, and all those memories get shoved into a fresh body. This would create a new person who is essentially still Kaito and is also perfectly healthy. Ta-da, Kaito gets to live!
Meanwhile, Kaito – our Kaito, the one who actually went through the killing game with his friends – well, he’s not needed any more. So, completely unbeknownst to anyone else, Monokuma just leaves him somewhere to die.
Aaaaand my thoughts on this idea escalated rather a lot, to the point that there’s kind of a whole story here.
Kaito’s death
Kaito is taken to some empty room somewhere – I dunno, maybe there’s a bed in it to at least give a vague impression that it could be some kind of hospital room, but maybe not even that – and told to just wait for the nurses to come and see to him. So he waits, his suspicion growing, and it doesn’t take long for him to get the sinking realisation that nobody’s coming, are they. He goes to open the door to try and look for Monokuma and yell at him to stop screwing around and keep his goddamn end of the bargain, only to find it locked.
With a chilling dread, it hits him that this was all a trap – a really obvious one at that, one he literally walked right into like an absolute moron. Monokuma never had any plans to cure him at all.
He’s going to die here, in this room, completely and utterly alone.
Kaito wouldn’t just give up, of course. He’d furiously try to bust down the locked door keeping him trapped there, but… his body would be so weak by now that he wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d only end up hurting himself even more, and after a while he just wouldn’t have the strength to keep trying.
And he might have more or less resigned himself and been mentally prepared for the fact that he’s not surviving this illness – though losing that glimmer of a way out he’d almost thought he had really, really kind of sucks – but, this is worse than he thought it’d be. Up until now, he'd finally begun to feel some relief in that, even if he does still end up dying, at least he'll die something of a hero, surrounded by his friends. Not like this. He never wanted to die like this – pointlessly, uselessly, alone and forgotten like he never even mattered. He doesn’t even have anything to distract himself with or to do to feel like he’s making a difference in his final hours. There’s just nothing but waiting to die, the pain getting harder and harder to bear as he feels his body slowly tear itself apart.
This is probably the absolute cruellest possible way Kaito could die from his illness, so much worse than how it happens in canon. (And, damn it, he hasn't even been to space…!)
Kaito would have no idea what's happening outside of the room he dies in, so he might be able to console himself to some extent by thinking that, once he’s gone, when Shuichi and Maki never see him again and realise they were tricked, they’ll be furious and will fight to avenge him. (Or, perhaps there’s still a chance, if they realise that something’s up soon enough, that they might be able to come for him in time and somehow save him after all…? It’s such a long shot – his death feels so close, dammit – but they’re his heroes, they’re amazing, so maybe—!)
But in reality... they wouldn't even know. They’d just obliviously leave him there to die, because Kaito would be right there with them, cured like Monokuma promised.
Kaito’s survival
That’d be the second horrible part of this – but not because this new Kaito who meets up with Shuichi and Maki all “cured” would be like some hollow imitation who isn’t truly Kaito at all. No; that’s not how it works. Flashback Lights create real people.
While I said at the beginning of this post that the one who died alone was “our” Kaito, that wasn't really quite fair of me. The other Kaito who's here now deserves to be thought of in exactly the same way. He would be our Kaito too, one hundred percent. Much like how Alter Ego Gonta was another Gonta, this is another instance of Kaito, separate from the one who died, but still him.
On the one hand, the new Kaito could have been made from a clone of the original Kaito’s body, so that he looks completely identical and nothing seems amiss at first. But on the other hand, he could be in an entirely different body – which is the version I’d rather lean towards, because that’d make things get awkward and painful a lot more quickly.
(If you want something to picture him as looking like: because it makes sense that Team Danganronpa would have picked a body that looked kind of similar and still fit his character, I’m imagining one of Kaito’s beta designs. I went for the one with poofy hair and eyebrows to rival Taka’s, specifically because he doesn’t look too similar to our Kaito, yet he nonetheless still has a very dorky Kaito energy to him. Meanwhile, his clothes would presumably be exactly the same. That and, despite the poofy hair, Kaito would totally grab some hairspray at the earliest opportunity and attempt to style his new hair into his trademark spiky upwardsness, just to try and look and feel a bit more like his usual self. The result would be, uh… something. It’d be something, all right.)
Some time after taking Kaito away to be cured, then, Monokuma presents Kaito’s miraculous recovery, brazenly handwaving the new body by claiming that extensive plastic surgery was totally necessary to save him. Maki and Shuichi would initially be all “?????? don’t mess with us, how the FUCK do you expect us to believe that this is Kaito”. Except... it is. His face and voice are completely different, but everything about how his eyes light up when he sees them, and the way he talks, and how quietly hurt he seems when they question if it's really him - it's still absolutely Kaito. And he appears to be just as genuinely confused as they are by the different body once they point it out to him and show him to a mirror.
Maybe they'd also confirm it by asking him things that only the real Kaito would know – and he knows all of it. Not just knows it, he obviously feels it, too. After asking him his favourite spaceship and seeing him visibly restrain himself from launching into a huge excited ramble about why that spaceship is so cool (exactly like he didn’t restrain himself from doing last time)… they can't deny it's really him.
The last thing Kaito remembers is being led away by Monokuma, and then he woke up like this; he must have been unconscious for whatever the hell was done to him in between. He and his friends end up concluding that Monokuma must have saved his life by… transferring his consciousness into a new body? Which seems more possible than they might have imagined considering how the Virtual World worked, now that they think about it, so maybe they'd be able to accept that.
(Is transferring a consciousness like that actually possible in this universe, though? Or does the Virtual World computer just create a virtual copy of them from their memories while the original one sleeps, and then Flashback Light their virtual self’s new memories back into their real body when they log out? That’d mean the virtual person would have to be deleted afterwards. It’d be painless and they’d never remember it, but in a sense, it’d be killing them.)
Kaito himself is pretty chill with it once he’s got over the initial shock. Sure, it’ll take some getting used to looking like this – he’s gonna have to grow himself a new goatee, to say nothing of the hair – but still, he’ll take this over dying any day. (He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to not be in pain.)
It'd still be super awkward for Shuichi and Maki, though, trying to adjust to Kaito looking and sounding completely different on the surface, constantly reminding themselves that this face and this voice is still Kaito. The two of them – especially Maki, who has a harder time trusting people instinctively – wouldn't quite be able to shake off the nagging possibility this could be some kind of impostor aligned with Monokuma who's just really really good at acting like Kaito. Of course they'd want to believe in him, because a different body is still infinitely better than losing him, but it wouldn’t quite come naturally.
Kaito, being Kaito, would very much pick up on the signs that his sidekicks are still a little subconsciously suspicious of him. It’d sting, but he wouldn't bring it up. Kaito's always fine! Now that he's healthy again, he’s got absolutely nothing to worry about! …which is to say, he doesn't want to go admitting to his new worries, not when doing so would be giving them even more reasons to feel like he's not quite Kaito and secretly not really want him around.
Kaito’s existence
But just when Shuichi and Maki have started to really get used to Kaito’s new body and things are beginning to feel somewhat normal between them again, everything would come out during the equivalent of trial 6.
As Shuichi figures out what Flashback Lights really do and Tsumugi starts trying to make everyone despair over how “fictional” they all are, Kaito, because he’s Kaito, would be having none of her bullshit. (However, I’ll keep this part brief here since I’m hopefully going to do a regular trial-6-with-Kaito AU at some point that should really be the place I expand on this properly.)
Sure, learning that they’re “characters” created from fake memories when the killing game began is kind of a lot to take in, but it doesn’t change the reality of who they are right now. The only thing that matters is what they want to believe, and they obviously want to believe that they’re real, just like they always have! Hell, their pasts being fiction is great news in Maki Roll’s case – she never really killed anyone, and she’ll never have to!
And Tsumugi’s claims that nothing matters because it was all “fiction” for entertainment are even more bullshit. Their pasts may be made up, but the entire killing game really happened. All those people really died. Every bit of the pain and suffering they and their friends went through in it was absolutely real.
But as he’s saying this part, Tsumugi turns to Kaito with a scathing grin. “How would you know? You weren’t even there.”
Before anyone can question what she means by this, she turns on another video – and this one’s not an audition tape. There were Nanokumas in the room where the original Kaito died. His final hours were recorded, as proof that Kaito is dead.
They wouldn’t watch the entire thing – he was in there for something like twenty-four hours – but she could have put together a “highlights reel”, some of the moments where Kaito couldn’t help but express exactly how lost and scared and desperate he felt. And of course it’d culminate in the moment of his death, just to hammer it home and make sure they know that it’s far too late to save him.
As Shuichi and Maki are reeling in horror from the suffering Kaito went through and the fact that they let that happen to him, Tsumugi goes for the decisive blow. She explains how the new Kaito came to be here, calling him a “fake”, an “imitation” who “tricked” them while they left the real Kaito to die.
And… Kaito kind of starts to believe it.
…See, one of the reasons this scenario really grabbed my interest (other than the prospect of Kaito dying scared and helpless and alone while also not being gone from the story afterwards) was that until now I didn’t think it was possible to give Kaito existential issues. He just has too much conviction in who he is. Under regular trial 6 circumstances, the reveals about Flashback Lights and his backstory being fake memories would barely faze him at all.
His memories are fake and all those things in his past never really happened? Okay, so he’s kind of shaken to realise his grandparents and fellow astronaut trainees don’t exist – but in that case, if none of the people in his memories are real, then the only person those memories matter to is himself. And if he feels like they were real, they might as well have been, at least in terms of the person he is now because of them. Oh, but the person he is now isn’t real, because the “real” Kaito is that murder-happy asshole in the audition video? Well, no, that dumbass was just somebody else, duh. Maybe he had the same body and possibly even the same name, but that doesn’t matter. The real Kaito, the one and only Luminary of the Stars, is right here! That's who he wants to believe he is, so it's who he is, dammit. End of discussion.
But in this situation… the real Kaito was undeniably the one who died alone in that room. Not him. His memories might feel real, but he doesn’t have the right to feel like those events happened to him, not when the memories belong to somebody else – someone who actually experienced all those things, whose friends that he experienced it all with are right here. It’s like he’s just stealing those memories, stealing that identity, stealing Kaito’s entire life. That’s not fair.
He still wants to be Kaito; he’s never gonna want to be anyone else, but… there’s no way he deserves to decide that, does he? Not when the real Kaito died, and Kaito’s sidekicks are still here and grieving for him. Knowing that, and with Maki Roll and Shuichi giving him these hurt, horrified looks that say You're not Kaito… maybe he really isn't.
(But Kaito is the only person he wants to or even knows how to be. So if he's not Kaito, then… who the hell even is he?)
Kaito’s friends
With Kaito stunned into speechlessness, and Shuichi and Maki shaken from the undeniable demonstration of how easy it is to just fake an entire person, leaving them also questioning how real they really are despite Kaito’s earlier efforts, it seems like Tsumugi’s succeeded in making everyone despair.
(at this point Keebo is supposed to barge in with his hope nonsense, but hey, how about we don’t have that clogging this up when I’m trying to tell an interesting story here)
But after a little while of none of the others having it in themselves to protest Tsumugi’s claims, Kaito (or, well, someone who once mistakenly went by that name; it doesn’t matter now) speaks up – hesitantly, because he still isn’t sure he really deserves to. “Hey, c’mon, Shuichi… This isn’t like you. You can’t just give up like this.”
(He resists the instinct to add, “You’re my sidekick,” because no, he’s not.)
It doesn’t matter about him, but Shuichi’s still absolutely real. He’s Shuichi Saihara, the Ultimate Detective who’s gonna save everyone, right? Never mind what Tsumugi says – that’s who he wants to be, who he’s always been trying so hard to be, so that’s who he is. And if that’s the case, then he can’t let something like this get him down!
“I guess this doesn’t mean much coming from me, but… I believe in you. For real.”
Shuichi stares at him in dawning realisation. This is… exactly the kind of thing Kaito would say to encourage him at a time like this. Especially the way he’s selflessly helping someone else even though he’s the one who’s got to be suffering the most right now. He… really is Kaito, isn’t he?
Kaito doesn’t meet his eye, muttering that that’s not really for him to decide. But… if Shuichi and Maki Roll want him to be Kaito, then – he glances at Shuichi hopefully – then maybe…?
Shuichi firmly tells him that no, that’s wrong. Kaito was just asserting that Shuichi and Maki and everyone else here get to decide who they want to be, so why should it be any different for him? If he wants to be Kaito, then Shuichi’s with him all the way. And Maki feels the same, right?
Maki puts in, slowly, like she’s still figuring this out as she speaks, that she’s been thinking hard about things since he pointed out that this means she never really killed anyone. It’s true that it’s a relief to know that nobody ever died because of her, but… she still feels like she killed all those people. It still hurts, because all of those memories feel real to her. So in that sense, it’s like she might as well have actually gone through all that hell.
Then… it must be the same for him, right? Even if it wasn’t really him who trained with them and supported them, he feels like it was, doesn’t he? So… he might as well be the same Kaito. If her feelings matter even if they came from fake memories, then so do his.
Hearing both their words to him, Kaito’s face gradually lights up into a huge, somewhat desperate grin. Of course he wants to be Kaito; there’s nobody else he’d rather be! And, Shuichi and Maki Roll, they… they still wanna be his sidekicks, right?
Of course they do. Shuichi and Maki were pretty shaken by the initial shock of seeing Kaito’s death and realising where the Kaito standing in front of them came from, to the point that their kneejerk reactions in that moment might have made him feel like they didn’t see him as Kaito or want him around. But having a little bit of time to process it and reflect on it, and seeing how badly Kaito was hurting from thinking this is how they feel about him… there’s no way that’d be what they settle on. They’re his friends – and they can’t bear to lose him twice.
Maybe they messed up in the sense that they let Kaito die on his end, but they also simultaneously didn't lose Kaito on their end. This person who's here for them right now is still him, and none of what happened to the other Kaito is his fault. How could they just throw away this second chance? They’re still going to need Kaito’s support – and this Kaito needs them, too, more than ever. It’s awful that they failed Kaito once, but they can at least make sure to never fail him again.
(Kaito tells them firmly that no, they didn’t fail him. There’s no way Kaito would have ever thought that, no matter how afraid he was at the end.)
Epilogue
After escaping and settling into the outside world, as the survivors put together a gravesite for the friends from their game who didn't make it, they make sure there's a grave there for Kaito as well. Kaito, Shuichi and Maki visit it from time to time. It only seems right to do so.
The other Kaito, the one who died scared and alone, would have been happy to know that this’d be how it ended, Kaito reflects: to know that he still gets to live on, in a way, and keep being there for his sidekicks. That he didn't just die useless and forgotten. He's certain of it - because he's Kaito, too.
[part 2 to this post - because I had another fun idea that branches off partway through this one - here!]
“Whaddaya mean by that!? We just wanted—”
“—to see how our favourite sidekicks are doing!”
“I still can’t believe there’s two of you. And do you really have to finish each other’s sentences like that?”
““Of course!””
“...And talk in unison, too...”
---
@trainingtrioweek Day 6: AU
I couldn’t resist using this opportunity to draw (the happiest ending of) my recent Duplicate Kaito AU. A lot of people seemed to like those posts of mine, and, heck, I wanted to see Kaito and Kaito double-teaming their sidekicks, too.
For those unfamiliar: despite the different body, that is still every bit the same Kaito there. He has exactly the same personality and memories (just with some bonus existential issues that he’s mostly worked out at this point). It’s Kaito, but TWICE.
(some additional very important lore about this AU beneath the cut)
I based New Kaito’s design off a couple of Kaito’s beta designs. He has this body, and then he styled his hair to look like in this one (and also grew a goatee).
See, with his different and more bushy and wavy hair, New Kaito could never quite match Kaito Prime’s up-and-down-spiking “quasar” hairstyle and get it to look as good. So naturally, rather than let him feel inferior, Kaito Prime suggested he could do something totally different with it, something that would work better with his type of hair. What if he gelled just the ends and swirled them around to make his whole head look like a galaxy? That’d be awesome, right? That’s something that Kaito Prime couldn’t ever hope to pull off nearly as well with his hair - plus, it's the perfect complement to his quasar!
This’d also then form the basis of the individual nicknames they get to distinguish them, since their hairstyles are one of the only meaningfully different things about them. After showing off New Kaito’s new hairstyle to their sidekicks, they declare that from now on, while they still each want to be called just “Kaito” whenever possible, if anyone needs to make it clear which Kaito they're talking about or to, they can call them - pause for dramatic effect - Galaxy Kaito and Quasar Kaito!
Shuichi and Maki stare at them blankly. “What’s a quasar?”
"And how does this have anything to do with your hair?"
The Kaitos are aghast. Their sidekicks didn’t already know this? Well, time to educate them!
And so they launch into a doubly-enthusiastic explanation of galaxies and quasars, getting way more in-depth and technical than they need to in a positive feedback loop of space geekery, interrupting each other and finishing each other’s sentences even more than usual because they’re both so excited to talk about this!
...At no point do they properly explain how Galaxy Kaito’s hair looks like a galaxy, much less how Quasar Kaito’s hair is meant to look like a quasar. In fact, they probably begin to suggest different versions of the nicknames that better encapsulate the specific technical parts of a galaxy or a quasar that their hairstyles are supposed to represent, because in their excitement they’ve kind of forgotten that they’re meant to just be coming up with an easy-to-remember way to distinguish them.
All the while, Maki and Shuichi just sort of keep staring, amused at seeing their friends (friend?) being so ridiculous and passionate, but also vaguely wondering, are they going to give this unnecessarily detailed explanation to everyone they meet who needs to know what names to use for them?
Eventually, Maki puts her foot down.
“Shut up for a second and listen. You’re Swirly Kaito, you’re Pointy Kaito. There. Sorted.”
The Kaitos are very indignant - that’s far too ordinary and not nearly as grandiose and space-themed as their ideas! - but despite their protests, those names stick.
---
(bonus: I couldn't help but wonder exactly what Swirly Kaito's hair looked like when he was trying to make it pointy, so I went and drew it...
(and it... actually looks more reasonable than I was expecting, as Wild Anime Hairstyles go? Like, it's a perfectly fine hairstyle on its own. But despite his best efforts, it's very much not the hairstyle Pointy Kaito has, so it's probably still better for Swirly Kaito to take his hair in a whole new direction rather than keeping this style and constantly feeling like he's not quite what he's trying to be.)
Hypothetically speaking of course due to one of Monokuma’s logic defying motives. If everyones favorite space man was ever turned into an actual tooth and fang monster, taking his issues on NEEDING to be a hero into acount how do you think something like that happening to him, being twisted into a beast like that would affect him? My apologies if this is a odd question I’ve just been thinking up story stuff lately and thought it would be interesting for the hero to become a literal monster in a sense.
Hey, no worries! I'm always up for running my mental simulation of Kaito through interesting scenarios and rambling about the fun ways he responds, and this one's a juicy one. Thanks for the prompt!
(Heck, I hope you don't mind me having gone into so much detail here, because if this is a story idea of yours then I don't want to step on your toes and make you feel like you can't use any of these ideas if you'd been thinking something similar.)
Basically, this would depend a lot on exactly how Kaito “being a monster” worked. Since you left it vague, I decided to just take multiple possible variants of this situation and talk about all of them, because they're all fun in their own way.
Scenario 1: he's still mentally entirely himself, and he can still speak.
If this were the case, Kaito would be basically fine! No problem! Sure, it's kinda freaky to suddenly be in a body like this, but he knows that doesn't change the fact that he's still himself. Kaito has a very strong sense of identity and conviction in who he is, and even this wouldn't shake that. (See also: that one AU of mine in which he found himself in a different human body.) Being physically a "monster" doesn't magically make him a worse person if his mind's still the same.
The only potential issue would be whether or not everyone else would understand that, since Kaito also cares a lot about how other people see him. But if he can still speak, then it should, in theory, be fine, because he can just reassure everybody that it's still him. Communication is important! He might be just a little strained and desperate at first upon seeing everybody freak out at him, but it'd be okay once they got it.
Shuichi and Maki would believe him straight away, because they know Kaito well enough to be able to recognise the way he talks and acts even from a different body, and because they want to trust him. Shuichi would maybe be a bit instinctively freaked out by Kaito's appearance, but he'd also know how much it would hurt Kaito for his sidekick to be afraid of him, so he'd be determined to push that aside and show Kaito that he trusts him.
Maki... Maki gets it. She knows exactly how it feels to be seen as a monster by everybody, to be afraid that the whole group is going to ostracise you and dehumanise you because of something about yourself that you can't help. Kaito has been teaching her to understand that she's not actually a monster despite all appearances and despite how long she believed it herself. She knows Kaito isn't a monster either, no matter what. Maki would never not extend that same compassion and trust back to him.
(Kaito reflects that this is helping him understand Maki Roll's struggles even more, so he can help her even better! So in some ways, this is a good thing, really!)
The rest of the group... some of them might just try to write Kaito off as a monster at first, even after he explains to them that it's still him. Not naming any names, but I think we all know who'd be the worst offender with this. Still, over time, and seeing Shuichi and Maki stand up for Kaito and treat him like they always do, most of the group would get used to it and accept him. They all got used to and accepted Maki within the space of pretty much one chapter; it might even happen quicker for Kaito since he'd still be acting just as trustworthy as ever. Keebo in particular should be good with this, since he can relate to feeling othered just because his body happens to be different from everyone else's.
That said, this is all on the assumption that Kaito gets turned into a monster at some point in the middle of the killing game, which actually kind of makes things easier. He's surrounded entirely by people who already know him and can easily recognise that it's still him once he communicates that to them. It might be harder in the outside world where there'll always be new people, people who'll just see the monster on the outside and might not be willing to listen to him for long enough to realise he's still a good person beneath that. That'd kinda sting a bit, since other people's image of him is so important to Kaito – even if not in quite such a literal way.
Still, given there's nothing Kaito can do about the monster body, he'd be determined not to let it get him down and see this as a challenge to overcome. He'd do everything he could to show the world he's a hero anyway. Hey, maybe this body has cool powers and he could be an actual literal superhero! That'd be awesome, right!?
(oh boy, what if he could fly, he'd be so excited at being able to fly you know he would, he'd give his sidekicks rides, it'd be great)
So in the end, this scenario wouldn't actually set off Kaito's hero issues that badly at all. He knows he hasn't failed anyone in terms of being a hero and still isn't going to, and Shuichi and Maki at least know it's still him and so he can still inspire them just as well like this.
The only thing really relating to his hero issues here would be the fact that finding himself in this body is kinda freaking him out a bit – not in the sense that being a "monster" matters to who he is in any way, but just in the sense that anyone would be freaked out at being trapped in an unfamiliar body that isn't even humanoid, let alone human. But no, of course Kaito isn't freaking out about anything! He's fine, everything's good, he is totally 100% chill with this situation. It'd be a similar flavour of his hero issues as in the canon story: just insistently hiding that something's bothering him and being afraid that he couldn't be a hero any more if everyone knew about it.
In fact, what I think this would set off the most isn't Kaito's hero issues, but Kaito's friendship issues. He's not less of a hero because of this, but this is making people see him differently and be more likely to just not want to trust him or spend time with him in the first place. Kaito already had some subtle insecurity and awkwardness about whether anyone would want to be regular friends with him because of how larger-than-life he always is; this'd set off a similar kind of feeling to that, but much worse.
Like, surely Shuichi doesn't actually want to hang out and be friends with a weird creepy monster? Surely he's even more definitely only sticking around out of still needing Kaito's heroic support and wants to be done with him the moment he's grown independent enough to be able to stand on his own? So, if anything, this'd make Kaito amp up his hero deal more than usual, not because he's worried he's not a hero, but because he's even more afraid that this is all he's got to offer.
Scenario 1b: he's still entirely himself, but he can't speak.
Only a slight variant on the previous scenario. Kaito would still feel the same about himself, but it would be a lot harder for him to communicate this to everybody if his monster form wasn't capable of human speech.
Let's assume everyone would be able to tell it's Kaito anyway. Maybe he's all purple and spiky and recognisably him, or maybe they just use process of elimination in that he's the only one missing. People would be bound to assume at first that he's just been turned into a mindless beast, but Maki and Shuichi, the ones most primarily viewing this situation as something awful for Kaito rather than a potential danger to the rest of the group, are less convinced. They'd be able to spot that he looks more confused and desperate than hostile.
Kaito, of course, wouldn't let the lack of a voice stop him and would do everything he could to communicate that he's still himself and still cares about supporting everyone. He could at least nod and shake his head to answer yes/no questions, and he'd figure out other ways to communicate, too. Maybe he'd lead Maki and Shuichi to the training spot and do push-up motions to get across the fact that he remembers their training sessions and still sees them as his sidekicks. That'd be adorable.
I bet he'd also figure out motions or noises to communicate the most important sentiments such as “I'm here for you”, “I believe in you”, “the impossible is possible!” etcetera, all so he can keep supporting his sidekicks the best he can. In some ways, his hero role doesn't even really need him to communicate anything that complex; he just needs to be there for his sidekicks and give them the nudge they need.
Kaito is so good at communication, after all. It'd be a challenge to learn to adjust and find new ways to communicate without a voice, but Kaito never backs down from challenges!
(All of the issues from the previous version of this scenario with Kaito freaking out about this body and worrying about how others see him would still be here, of course, and probably a good bit worse – but at the same time, it'd also be easier for him to hide those problems from everyone else. It's not as if anyone's going to be expecting him to talk about how he's feeling here.)
Scenario 2: having the body of a monster comes with disturbing violent urges.
The first scenario was a fun exercise in Kaito's self-conviction and determination to overcome any challenge, but what if we did try and make him really question whether or not he can even be a hero any more like this? So let's imagine that, while he is still mostly mentally himself – because if it wasn't really Kaito any more there'd be no point in this – monster-Kaito also has to deal with the intrinsic urge to do monstrous things.
Like, imagine Kaito's there fervently explaining to the group that it's still him, he's still himself, he's not actually a monster in any real way – except then his words die on his tongue as he's suddenly hit with the thought of tearing out Shuichi's throat. Uhhhhhh.
How this goes would really depend on exactly how strong these urges are and whether or not Kaito can control them. (And let’s also assume that he can speak in these scenarios, just for simplicity’s sake.)
Scenario 2a: they're entirely controllable.
In this one, Kaito is sure that he's perfectly capable of ignoring the urges and not acting on them, making them just really annoying and disturbing intrusive thoughts.
Naturally, Kaito would act like nothing's wrong and not tell anybody about this at all and continue to be Fine like he usually is. It'd jab at his hero issues, but not in terms of him actively failing at being a hero for having these thoughts – just in terms of the fear that he might end up failing them if anybody learns about this (or if he did somehow end up acting on them even though he's pretty sure he won't). So, you know, basically like Kaito's hero issues are in canon with him hiding everything he's going through and being terrified of it coming out anyway. But it's all okay so long as he doesn't let anybody see that he's not a perfect invincible hero, right?
Kaito might reflect during this – entirely to himself, of course – that this must be a little bit like what it's like to be Maki. She probably has similar thoughts all the time about all the many ways she could kill the person she's having a friendly conversation with, because her training has ingrained that mindset into her. But that doesn't meaningfully change who she is as a person just because she's been given these disturbing thoughts against her will.
(Maybe, even though Kaito is trying to hide his intrusive thoughts from everyone, Maki would be able to pick up on it a little bit, because she knows the feeling.)
Scenario 2b: the urges are very clearly uncontrollable and Kaito knows it.
If he was able to recognise from the beginning that the violent urges are so strong that they're going to overwhelm him and take control of him sooner or later, Kaito wouldn't take any risks. He'd just shut himself away the moment he realised this, to avoid hurting anyone. It'd basically end up looking a lot like this, except with a very different-looking Kaito.
(This wouldn't even necessarily be that specific to Kaito's hero issues, because any decent person would be terrified of losing control of themselves and hurting someone else like this. I guess it'd just be more amplified for Kaito than it would be for most, because his hero thing is such a big deal to him and he's so scared of failing everyone.)
This scenario might end with Kaito accepting there's no way he can keep safely supporting anyone any more and shifting tactics to do the next most heroic thing he can do – seeing if this new body will help him fight and take down Monokuma while he's still somewhat in control of himself. Even if he'll only end up being killed for breaking the rules, he doesn't exactly have much left to lose.
Scenario 2c, the most fun one: if Kaito thinks he can ignore the urges well enough to be safe around others but turns out to have misjudged his self-control.
(This seems like quite a plausible scenario, really. Even as a human, Kaito is not very self-aware about his difficulty controlling his impulses or his tendency to get riled up easily and potentially lash out at people when he's frustrated or upset. He presents himself as a person who always has himself together and always acts exactly the way he wants to, but that really isn't actually all that true about him.)
Imagine, with Kaito already more on-edge and stressed than normal because of the whole monster thing and the disturbing violent thoughts he keeps having to push down, somebody says something to him that happens to really hit a nerve and set him off. (Not that there's aaanybody in the group who'd be stupid enough do this kind of thing on purpose, not at all.) One moment Kaito's vaguely irritated but in control, the next moment a haze of anger grips him and he's pinned them down with his teeth at their throat and Maki Roll's screaming at him to stop—
—and Kaito does manage to stop himself just in time, but oh god—
—and as he's frozen in horror, still fighting the urge to finish the job, the rest of the group acts. A profusely apologetic Gonta wrestles Kaito down and clamps his jaws shut, rendering him unable to speak to defend himself or apologise – not that he'd even know how to if he could. Others pile on, restraining him, finding something to tie him up with, talking with frantic certainty about how he's a threat and a monster and can't be allowed around anyone.
Through it all, Kaito is using every ounce of his self-control to let it happen, forcibly suppressing the instinct to fight back and maul them. Being manhandled and restrained and talked about like he's not even a person would make him viscerally feel like nothing but a dangerous beast – but after what he almost did, and how much he felt a part of him wanting to do it... aren't they right?
Shuichi and Maki are too shocked to try and defend him in the moment, but they're the only ones standing back and not helping to restrain Kaito. They're the only ones that can see the fear and guilt and pain in his eyes.
(This would absolutely stab right at Kaito's hero issues, with him very openly failing everyone right in front of them all, doing something so undeniably monstrous and proving that he can't possibly be a hero at all. I came up with this specific variant of the scenario basically out of an attempt to find one that'd jab at his hero issues as much as possible.)
Later, as Kaito's tied up alone in a room hating himself and thinking over and over about how he's a failure and the exact opposite of a hero, someone enters the room for the first time since he's been locked away in here. It's Maki. He flinches away as she approaches, terrified of hurting her.
She's here to talk to him, but Kaito can't even speak with a rope roughly tying his jaws shut. So Maki begins to untie it, despite him cowering away and shaking his head and eventually growling at her in desperation to try and get her to stop (what if he hurts her?). She is undeterred, freeing his jaws and then moving to sit a safe distance away, calmly telling him that she knows he won't hurt her, that she's not afraid of him. (She... she really isn't, is she. Why not? She should be.)
Again: Maki gets it. If anyone can help Kaito become less afraid of himself in a situation like this and learn to control these urges that he now knows are capable of overcoming him – but only if he lowers his guard! – it's her, using everything she's learned from him. She's been there herself, more or less. She knows what it's like to be terrified that you're going to end up killing someone. Despite Kaito fervently insisting that she shouldn't have come here at all, Maki eventually convinces him to trust himself and his own desire not to hurt her for long enough to just... talk to her.
The biggest obstacle to Kaito opening up here is just reassuring him that he's not going to hurt Maki while they talk, because that's the only thing he's really got left to lose at this point. He'd actually be surprisingly willing to talk about his failure otherwise, not even bothering to try and insist that he's fine, because everyone's already seen him fail and so there's no point trying to hide it any more. There'd definitely still be a lot of Kaito talking like how he feels about all this shouldn't matter, not when he's a monster who nearly killed someone and still could – but Maki would know what that feels like, too.
Helping talk Kaito through this would also help Maki a lot with her own issues. The biggest argument to make that Kaito isn't a monster here is that he doesn't want to hurt anyone, despite the urges he can't help having. Neither did Maki, ever, despite her orders and her training forcibly instilling a killer's instincts into her. Talking Kaito into accepting this and giving himself a second chance might also end up being the first time Maki properly accepts any of this about herself.
Shuichi is outside the room for the whole conversation, listening in. He's just as worried about Kaito, but Maki knew that Kaito would feel less afraid of hurting someone if there were fewer people there, so she told Shuichi to let her go in alone, at least at first. Eventually Maki manages to help Kaito trust himself enough that he feels safe having Shuichi there as well, and Shuichi makes it equally clear that he still believes in Kaito no matter what. They are friends.
This ending would have been so, so easy to reach if only Kaito wasn’t such a selfless idiot. Any slight change to the canon events that’d cause his friends to realise the truth about him before it was too late would have led to this. If they’d known, they would have done anything to save him.
His illness was always curable. And escaping was always possible – they just needed a reason to be desperate enough to risk it.
AU: Kaito gets a genie or a wish granter. They offer him a wish of any kind. He wishes for his illness to go away, but he did hear the warning of the consequences of said wish. He was actually feeling better now and things were looking up until Shuichi starts vomiting blood. He tells Kaito that he always had this illness. Now Kaito has to reverse the wish before Shuichi dies.
I appreciate what you're going for here - delicious angst! Shuichi suffering a pain that Kaito knows all too well, and it's Kaito's fault! - but the thing is, I just can't quite see this particular scenario happening in the first place. Or, at least, if it does happen, I can't see it happening in a way which is meaningfully Kaito's fault at all.
(...Buuut then I also ended up thinking of a fun way this could play out anyway even though it isn't, so hold on for that at the end.)
The first thing is that, if this were happening in the killing game, and Kaito only had one wish, he'd never spend it on himself like that. He'd wish for everyone else to make it out of the killing game alive and safe. That's a far bigger priority than his own life.
So, okay, instead we can imagine this is happening in a non-despair AU in which Kaito has an equally bad (and presumably incurable) illness, and nobody else he knows needs that wish more than him. In that situation, sure, of course Kaito would probably wish for his illness to go away - but only if he had no reason to assume there would be bad consequences for anybody else.
If the genie made some vague warning about consequences before Kaito made his wish, there's no way he'd brush that off and ignore it. He'd demand they explain exactly what that means, and he wouldn't stand for any beating around the bush, especially not when this is his life on the line. It makes perfectly good sense that a life-or-death wish might have life-or-death consequences, and Kaito wouldn't just overlook this, no matter how badly he doesn't want to be dying any more.
See, Kaito's reckless - but he's not careless. Almost always, when he takes a risk, he's fully aware of what both the good and bad outcomes will be and has decided that the potential good is worth that risk. And whenever he does manage to straight-up ignore potential bad consequences that should outweigh the good, it's only when they affect himself. No matter how reckless he’s feeling, the thought of someone else maybe getting hurt would always give him pause, because his selfnessness is just that instinctive. Kaito only ever tends to make really serious mistakes that end up hurting other people in moments of heated emotion where he can't quite fully control himself. This wouldn't be that, because he'd have had plenty of time to reflect on the whole dying thing in a (relatively) measured way.
So, I feel like the only situation in which Kaito would make a wish that ended up having these consequences would be if he was genuinely never given any reason to believe there'd be bad consequences to it at all. (Also, the genie would have to be very good at hiding this even outside of just their words, because Kaito's intuition can pick up on people's intentions pretty well.)
In short, the problem wouldn't be Kaito being careless; it'd be the genie deliberately choosing to obfuscate the truth. And if that's the case, then Shuichi's resulting illness is simply not Kaito's fault. It's the genie's fault for being a deceptive asshole who apparently felt like toying with people's lives for the lulz. No matter how desperate he was, Kaito would never wish his illness onto anybody else - not anyone, even if he didn't know it would be Shuichi.
Ultimately, this'd just be Kaito confronting the genie and furiously demanding that they reverse their bullshit that was never what he asked for and leave his sidekick the hell alone, perhaps with some pointedly explaining why this is not his fault if the genie tries to deflect their responsibility and insist Kaito totally deserves the blame. Which would still be fun, but it'd be a fairly straightforward Kaito Versus Bad Guy, rather than a more issuey Kaito Versus His Own Mistakes. There would be barely any guilt involved on his part. Kaito understands very well how responsibility works, and this would not be his.
(Or, well, it would be, but only on the level that Kaito feels like everything bad that happens to his sidekick is his responsibility as the hero to help with and fix, not in the sense that Kaito himself actually caused it.)
Still, Kaito's guilt or lack thereof aside, there is a way I can imagine this being extra-fun anyway. What if, due to some arbitrary rule of this asshole genie's magic, the only way to reverse it was for Shuichi to wish his illness away, this time knowing perfectly well that it'll go back to Kaito?
Shuichi wouldn't want to, would he?
In fact, Kaito would probably expect that. And depending on how he found out how to reverse this - maybe Shuichi wasn't there - it could end up being possible for Kaito to lie to Shuichi about the consequences of the wish this time, since he knows that Shuichi might refuse if he knew the truth. Oh, man, Kaito would do that, if he could. He would absolutely do that, for exactly the same reasons he hid his illness from his sidekicks in the first place.
But also, it's fun to imagine what'd happen if Shuichi did find out the consequences and refuse to make the wish, either because he didn't buy Kaito's lie one way or another and prodded the truth out of him, or just because he was in fact there when Kaito learned this in the first place.
Imagine, as Shuichi keeps insisting he'd rather go through this illness himself than wish it on Kaito, Kaito's demeanour slowly slipping from a casual "All you gotta do is wish it away, easy!" to a more strained but still-grinning "C'mon, bro, you're my sidekick! I'll take all the burden for you, no problem, just leave it to me!", until it fully sinks in that Shuichi really is willing to suffer a slow and painful death in his place (no, no, that's backwards, that's not how this works...!). Kaito would get desperate, covering it up with something like anger at first - this should never have been Shuichi's choice to make! it's not fair! - but then somewhere along the way becoming straight-up pleading - this was meant to be Kaito's burden, it belongs to him, please give it back to him, Shuichi, please, he can't stand this, he can't bear to watch Shuichi die like this knowing that it should have been him.
(and of course Kaito still hates the fact that he’s showing weakness like this but oh god if he doesn’t Shuichi’s going to die and that’d be so much worse)
Seeing that this is hurting Kaito even more than the alternative, maybe Shuichi would eventually cave in and agree. But if he did, I imagine it would only be on the very strict condition that Kaito actually lets his friends help and support him once he’s sick again. Shuichi would not have been at all happy to learn that Kaito was once going through something this awful and he never even told them. If Kaito is going to insist that he dies for Shuichi and not the other way around, the least he can do in return is not let himself die alone.
Speaking of bonus content for Still a Hero, how about some mini summarised scenes of things that happen in the aftermath of the fic? I sometimes think about the interactions Kaito, Shuichi and Maki might have with other characters as their lives begin to go back to something like normal, and some of these ideas have solidified enough to be Definitely How It Happens in my head at this point, so you might as well consider these canon in the fic’s universe.
(Some of this would just work as an epilogue to the general UTDP cult takedown AU even outside of the fic, but most of the scenes are centred around Kaito and what he went through in the fic specifically.)
Telling loved ones
One of the first things for them to do, once the chaos has died down and they’re able to, is let their loved ones know that they’re safe. They had to cut all communication with everyone else and basically disappear for the week-or-so they were on the run.
The first person Shuichi tells is Kaede, of course, whom he’s equally as close to as Kaito. He felt really guilty having just left her out of this whole cult investigation thing, even before he went on the run, but she didn’t know the truth about Maki, so he had to. And then he had to just disappear without telling her despite knowing how much she’d worry, in order to keep her safe and out of things. (If she’d come with them, she’d have been in exactly the same position as Kaito – they might have tortured her, too.)
Then he tells his uncle, who knew he was working on some kind of big, somewhat dangerous case but didn’t know the details and also would have been worried sick and fearing the worst when he suddenly vanished.
Shuichi’s parents, meanwhile… weren’t worrying about him at all. They didn’t even realise he’d been missing. He’s basically used to that kind of thing from them by now, but it still stings.
Maki doesn’t have anyone to tell. She doesn’t have any family, and her only close friends from Hope’s Peak are Shuichi and Kaito themselves. Meanwhile, of course the orphanage staff (the decent ones who weren’t secretly cult members that have since been arrested) already know what happened, not that they would have been precisely worried about Maki’s whereabouts anyway.
She’s fine with that, though, just so long as it’s over and the kids are safe. It’s not a big deal. She’s used to not having anyone worry about her.
But… a few days after it’s over, she finds herself getting messages from other Hope’s Peak schoolmates, people she’d only really thought of as acquaintances and not friends, saying things to the effect of, “I don’t really know what happened, but I’m glad to hear you’re safe, I was worried when I heard you and your friends were missing!”
That… that means a lot.
Kaito tells his grandparents he’s safe, of course, but at first he doesn’t really want them to know about the part where their precious only grandson was tortured. Since they’re getting more frail in their old age, and since he’s Kaito, he kind of feels more like it’s meant to be his job to protect them at this point, and so aren’t they better off not knowing?
Shuichi and Maki talk him into telling them, though. Even if they’re older, they’re still effectively Kaito’s parents in a way that most grandparents usually aren’t, so it’s still their job to look after him when things are hard and he needs support. (And Shuichi kind of doesn’t quite have that, and Maki of course never did, so Kaito shouldn’t waste what he’s got.)
Kaito concedes the point and lets his grandparents know after all. When he sees them again, he ends up crying into their shoulders and feeling kind of like he did when he was a kid and his parents had just died – but that’s okay, right? That’s what his grandparents are there for.
His grandparents also make sure to let him know (just like they always do) how proud of him they are. Their grandson is the bravest hero in the whole wide world.
Shuichi and Maki are here for this, but they’re just standing back and watching, since they don’t really feel like this moment is about them. Except then Kaito’s grandparents invite them into the hug anyway – because they’re Kaito’s family too, aren’t they?
Kaito is taken aback for a moment as he hears this, only to continue sobbing with emotion as this becomes a big group hug with him in the middle. Yeah. They are.
(Maki and Shuichi – especially Maki – are more moved by this than they can put into words.)
Kaede
Shuichi first just reassures Kaede he’s safe over the phone in a hurry while everything’s still kind of chaotic, but he promises to tell her the full story later in person. Before he visits her to do so, he has to ask his friends for permission to tell certain parts of it.
Maki needs to be okay with Kaede knowing about the assassin thing, of course. That’s her secret to keep, and it’s not Shuichi’s place to tell anyone if she’s not comfortable with it.
Now that the cult no longer exists, and knowing that Shuichi trusts Kaede, Maki can finally just about feel safe with others knowing. Shuichi reassures her that he’s sure Kaede won’t think less of her, not once she understands why Maki became an assassin and what she went through.
While he’s explaining everything to Kaede, Shuichi begins this part with “Maki’s an assassin—” but then he stops himself. “No, that’s wrong. She was an assassin. But not any more.”
He also asks Kaito beforehand to make sure he’s okay with Kaede knowing about the whole torture thing. That’s not precisely a secret, but it’s still something Shuichi feels he shouldn’t go telling just anyone unless Kaito’s comfortable with it, since it’s something he needs to deal with at his own pace.
Kaito’s fine with it, though. He trusts Kaede, and he knows that what he went through is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s still pretty early days for him in terms of properly processing it all, but he doesn’t want to run away from it. If Kaede’s getting told the story, she should know the whole story.
Despite Kaede’s initial “oh my god, is he okay?” upon hearing this part, she’s not really at all surprised to hear that Kaito is okay – or, well, as relatively okay as anyone can be expected to be under the circumstances. That sounds just like the Kaito she’s seen and has heard so much about from Shuichi. She goes on to comment that he really is amazing and must care about his friends so much.
Shuichi passes this onto Kaito, because he deserves to hear it. The more people who react to what Kaito went through by being impressed and proud alongside their concern, rather than just seeing him as a pitiable victim, the more it helps everything he learned really sink in for him.
The birthday hero (plus more Kaede)
Remember how Kaito internally protested at one point during the fic that he’s “almost nineteen”? There was a small element there of him trying to puff himself up and feel bigger than he is – but it’s also not so unreasonable for him to have thought of it that way rather than just calling himself eighteen, because his birthday was only like a week or two away. Shuichi’s investigation of the cult began soon after they graduated, and Japanese graduations happen in March, while Kaito’s birthday is in April.
So Kaito’s birthday comes around while he’s still quite early on in his recovery from everything that happened. Not that that makes him any less determined to celebrate it, of course – and Shuichi and Maki make a point of making it not just a celebration of Kaito’s birthday, but also a celebration of the fact that they all got through that hell alive and safe, and of what an amazing hero Kaito is. (Naturally, Kaito then amends that to be what amazing heroes they all are.)
It’s a pretty small party, mind you. Kaito’s still pretty badly injured, and he doesn’t feel super comfortable having large amounts of people he doesn’t know that well ask probing questions and fuss over him. But one of the few people he does invite is Kaede, because Shuichi’s close to her and she’s been told about everything that happened.
Naturally, Kaede offers to play a few pieces for the occasion and asks Shuichi what Kaito would like to hear – a piano arrangement of one of his favourites from the Planets suite, maybe?
Shuichi suggests something else instead. Kaito hasn’t talked in too much detail yet about what he went through psychologically, but Shuichi’s pieced together some stuff from comments Kaito’s made here and there. So he asks Kaede to play something that evokes the image of heroes – not heroes just easily succeeding without any effort, but heroes fighting through hardships and struggling and feeling like they might not make it, yet still never giving up and managing to do what matters in the end.
Kaede, being Kaede, is able to find just the right piece. She plays it at Kaito’s party while focusing on evoking that particular mood from it like she’s so good at doing… and by the end of her performance, Kaito is in tears.
Kaede’s used to literally moving people to tears with her playing, but that wasn’t quite what she aiming for this time. Given she knows about what happened to Kaito, she’s worried she might have upset him and apologises, as does Shuichi, because this was his idea—
But, no, that’s not it at all. Kaito really, really loved her performance – and it really helped. He’s so overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude that he kind of wants to hug her right now, so he hesitantly asks her if he can do so.
She’s happy to oblige (albeit carefully, because Kaito’s ribs are still a mess). There’s no reason she wouldn’t be – nothing suggests Kaede is hug-averse in general, and here, Kaito is someone she trusts and admires and who really looks like he needs a hug in this moment. Of course she’d be okay with it.
Shuichi watches them hugging while telling each other how amazing they are (because of course they would) and is suddenly overcome with bewildered frustration. “How are you two not already friends? How have you both been two of my best friends for three years and somehow not become friends with each other?”
Kaito and Kaede both pull out of the hug and look at him and are equally bewildered about this. It is quickly concluded that, yeah, they should be friends.
Kaede, being Kaede, declares that this means she should be closer friends with Maki now too. They were somewhat friendly acquaintances already thanks to Kaede just wanting to be friends with all of her classmates, but with Maki having to hide the assassin thing from her, they could never be especially close. But now there’s no reason not to, right?
Maki pretends to be indifferent, but really she’s kind of touched. She’s still not used to the idea that people could ever want to be her friend even after learning the truth about her (Kaito and Shuichi always felt like exceptions, due to Kaito’s ridiculous stubbornness and Shuichi being a fellow sidekick)… but it’s a good feeling.
So Kaede is there for not just Shuichi but for all of them, as a helpful outside perspective on the trauma the three of them went through together. And also as a friend to just relax with when they want to forget about everything that happened and feel like things are normal again.
Ryoma
Sooner or later, Kaito happens to think about Ryoma again for the first time since his hero epiphany – and he promptly and immediately feels like a giant idiot for how undeservedly harsh he was on the guy for the three years they were classmates. Of course it’s not Ryoma’s fault that he’s suffering and struggling with stuff, and Kaito should never have expected him to just deal with it all on his own like it’s nothing!
So as soon as he can after he realises this, Kaito goes to visit Ryoma in prison and apologises for having been that way. He adds that, while he knows he’s not exactly the best option since his track record with Ryoma isn’t something he’s proud of – and it looks like Ryoma’s already got something of a support network going now with former classmates visiting him, which is great! – he’s here to listen if Ryoma ever wants to talk. And he really will listen this time, he promises.
Ryoma is honestly kind of bewildered. He never even particularly noticed Kaito’s harshness, or cared that much about it when he did (since his self-loathing would have made him feel like it was deserved anyway). While Ryoma was always a Really Big Deal to Kaito, Kaito was kind of just another classmate to Ryoma – one who happened to have once been a fan of his, but not really a source of mental strife at all.
(Kaito really wasn’t quite as harsh on Ryoma as he feels like he was, either. Most of the negativity was just in his head, and he only occasionally lashed out and actually voiced it for Ryoma to hear.)
Because Ryoma is so perceptive, he picks up on the fact that Kaito coming to apologise like this seems to be more for his own sake than for Ryoma’s. And now that Kaito’s getting better at actually talking about his issues, he willingly admits that, yeah, that kind of might be true, huh.
Ryoma is also perceptive enough that he noticed that Kaito’s injured, so, despite prefacing it with the comment that this is probably unsolicited of him (his new friends’ nosiness is rubbing off on him, huh), he asks if that has anything to do with this.
Kaito admits that it kinda does and explains the gist of what happened to him – which it turns out Ryoma can kind of relate to, since he has some of his own experience with shitty evil organisations that ruin people’s lives. Maybe this spurs him to actually tell Kaito a bit of what he went through as well, and they find themselves beginning to properly understand each other for the first time.
Ryoma ends the visit by offering that he’s always here if Kaito needs to talk. And… yeah. Kaito might take him up on that sometime.
(Ryoma is Good.)
Harumi
At some point, Maki, Shuichi and Kaito get invited to come and visit Maki’s orphanage by some of the remaining non-cultist staff members working there. This is mostly because Harumi, the girl who was about to be scouted as Maki’s replacement, really wants to see them.
Harumi was aware to some extent of what she was being scouted for. It had to have been so terrifying for her to know what was going to happen to her with no way of getting herself out of it, not even sure who she could safely ask for help, if anyone. But then suddenly she hears that that’s not going to happen after all, that Maki and two of her friends took down the cult and saved her from that horrible fate. They’re her heroes – so of course she wants to meet them and thank them in person!
The three of them already knew they were heroes in taking down the cult – Kaito makes sure to remind them (and himself) of that regularly – but being thanked by an actual person that they tangibly saved, seeing the huge smile on Harumi’s face, really helps it feel real. Everything they went through, no matter how awful, was worth it for this.
During her big adorable emotional thanks, Harumi gives each of them a hug. Not knowing she shouldn’t, she happens to hug Kaito a little too tightly considering his ribs still aren’t healed, and he can’t help but let out a small gasp of pain despite his best efforts.
Harumi notices that she accidentally hurt him and apologises; he tries to brush it off, but…
“Did… did those people hurt you? The bad ones, who were gonna hurt me?”
Kaito insists even harder that it’s nothing, she doesn’t gotta worry about any of that stuff, everything’s fine now—
“You don’t have to lie to make me feel better, you know. I’m not a kid. I know what they were gonna do to me. …S-Some of it, anyway.”
It strikes Kaito just how much Harumi reminds him of Maki Roll. Kids in this orphanage really must have to grow up so fast, huh.
“You’re right. My bad for treating you like a kid.” He pauses and glances away. “…Yeah, they hurt me. Real bad.”
(Shuichi and Maki Roll are letting him do the talking here, but around this point, Maki Roll quietly takes his hand and squeezes it. He’s kind of glad for that; remembering it still isn’t easy.)
“Were you scared?”
Kaito fights the instinct to tell her no, that fear that he might not be her hero any more if she learns the truth still present (but much quieter than before). But no, he knows how it works now; he can help her understand, too. “Y-Yeah. I was scared as hell. But—”
“But you never gave up, right?”
Kaito stares at her in bewilderment. “Huh? How do you know that?”
She looks at him like it’s the most obvious thing. “Because you’re a hero! Even when they’re hurting or scared, heroes don’t give up no matter what!”
Dumbfounded, Kaito reflects on the fact that this ten-year-old has a far better grasp on this concept than he ever did until he was almost nineteen.
Man, she really is one hell of a kid. She’s gonna go far.
i was wondering, how different do you think it would it be if Kaede had remained the protagonist, and Shuichi had been the one to die in chapter 1? do you think she and Kaito would have become as close friends as Shuichi and him did, or would their dynamic be too different for it to happen? i mean, i can't see her becoming his sidekick lol anyways love your blog and your analysis <3
[Got this ask over on my commentary blog but answering it here, partly because nothing about the ask or my answer to it is commentary-specific and it reads more like one of my AU posts, and partly because this ended up being Rather Long, even for my ask-reply standards, and readmores don't work on asks on my commentary blog's theme.]
In general, I love to imagine Kaede and Kaito hypothetically being friends! They are both so good and so similar and so selflessly focused on supporting and encouraging everyone around them with little heed to their own wellbeing that it just feels right that they should be friends with each other if given the chance.
And because of how similar they are, I like to think that the friendship they’d have would be very healthy and beneficial for both of them. They’d be equals – and more than that, they’d able to keep each other’s selflessness in check. Each of them would worry more about the other than themselves and therefore notice how self-destructively selfless the other can be and advise them to look after themselves more. Through this, they’d both have no choice but to realise just how similarly too-selfless they themselves can be and that maybe this isn’t always a good thing. They’d come to a mutually-supportive agreement of “I’ll try to look after myself more, so long as you promise to look after yourself more, too.” It would be so good!
But, well, that’s the most ideal scenario. The problem is, even without the stress of the killing game, Kaito is really not great at making friends outside of his sidekick thing – and Kaede is not a potential sidekick. In UTDP, Kaede and Kaito somehow aren’t properly friends with each other despite having a mutual friend in Shuichi, which makes me sad. (I don’t know why Shuichi never tried to do anything about this and get his two best friends to befriend each other as well; come on, Shuichi.)
In canon, Kaito clearly really wanted to befriend Kaede during chapter 1, but asking her for a hug out of nowhere was extremely not the best way to go about it. And on Kaede’s end, she appreciated Kaito being on her side but otherwise seemed to wholly underestimate him and not realise how amazing a person he is. All she saw from him in chapter 1 were his unfulfilled promises of being the kind of hero who can Get Shit Done – because Kaede herself was already filling the role of luminary-hero and preventing Kaito from really shining as much as he could.
So, would they actually have been able to reach that ideal mutually-supportive friendship if Kaede had continued to live, despite the stress of the killing game and their respective issues? Let’s break this down!
Chapter 2-ish
Kaede would be pretty torn up by Shuichi’s death in this AU (and his crime, for that matter – if Shuichi died instead of her then presumably it’s because he was the one who tried to kill the mastermind and missed). But she’s more emotionally resilient than Shuichi, so she’d be better at dealing with it than he was in the reverse scenario.
Naturally, realising that she’s bound to be having a hard time with the events of the first trial, Kaito would reach out to Kaede, much like he did for Shuichi at the beginning of chapter 2. He’d check in on her, making sure she’s all right, passing on his own experience in dealing with grief that she presumably doesn’t have. But as resilient as Kaede is, that’d be all she’d need. She’d have been able to bounce back and continue to do her best to lead and encourage everyone, without needing any more targeted action from Kaito. He wouldn’t have needed to invite her to training and make her into his sidekick.
Still, Kaito would keep letting Kaede know that he believes in her, that he’s on her side, that all the encouraging and rallying she's been doing is great and she shouldn't let what happened with Shuichi, nor any of Kokichi's anti-cooperation bullshit, discourage her from continuing. With how she’d have needed to hear something like this after Shuichi’s trial, Kaede would probably come to realise more than before how good Kaito is. Kaito would definitely have stood up for Shuichi in his trial, too, just like he did in canon for Kaede, and Kaede would likely have noticed and appreciated that from him.
But even so, they’d be more like just friendly allies at this point, rather than anything approaching close personal friends. Again, Kaito is really bad at making friends with people unless he can make them his sidekick first.
Chapter 3-ish
Maki might end up being a big turning point in all this. Her talent would still have been revealed one way or another, Kaito would still have believed in her and sidekicked her, and she’d still have agreed to it. None of that needed Shuichi around to happen.
Kaede, as lovely as she is, would have also got the sense that Maki is a fundamentally good person and not wanted to just write her off as a dangerous monster like everyone else was trying to. So she’d have really admired what Kaito was doing for Maki and come to see from that, if she still hadn’t already, exactly what an amazing person Kaito is. After all, Kaede would have wanted to help Maki herself but been somewhat less able to do so than Kaito. She’s not quite as stubbornly persistent as him (because literally no-one is), and she doesn’t make quite such an overt point of being there to support people through their issues, both of which are things Maki needed for Kaito to get through to her.
Perhaps, seeing how Kaede also cared about helping Maki, Kaito would have invited her to Maki’s second training session, too, not precisely for Kaede’s sake but so that she could also help Maki? …Though that would be when Kaito’s phobia was beginning to be a thing, damn it, thanks a bunch, Tsumugi. Maybe instead, Kaede sees that Kaito isn't well and worries about - well, about Kaito, but also about how Maki will do without him. So Kaede starts talking to and helping Maki in Kaito’s absence, she and Maki become friends that way, and then maybe when Kaito is back to normal they become something of a trio and Kaede does get roped into training with them? I want to imagine that happening, and this is a way it could feasibly happen, so shush, we’re going with this.
Reminder: Kaito has issues
At this point I need to point out the fact that Kaito would absolutely be jealous of Kaede. I’m pretty damn sure he already canonically was chapter 1. Kaede was all the things that Kaito values in a person and strives to be himself, but apparently better at it than him.
…Though, really, it’s less that she was better at it and more just that Kaito’s inability to control his emotions meant that Kaede got the chance to start encouraging and rallying everyone together first. Kaito might have been able to realise initially that that’s the only reason for Kaede overshadowing him. But because that’s not what it looks like on the surface, it would be very easy for him to forget that as time went on, especially as he started feeling weaker and more useless himself thanks to his illness.
And, consider: in this AU, Kaede didn’t kill anyone. In canon, seeing that she’d grown desperate enough and weak enough to resort to murder probably shattered Kaito’s idealised image of her a little bit and made her realise she was still human. But here, there’d be none of that. She’d have had some vague, nebulous insecurities here and there after the tunnel thing and Shuichi’s death, but those mostly didn’t affect anything and would be very easy for Kaito to forget had ever happened at all. Just like he did with Shuichi’s much more noticeable weaknesses.
What I’m saying here is that not only would Kaito be jealous of Kaede, but he’d come to see her as an invincible hero, rather like he did for Shuichi but without her paradoxically also being his sidekick at the same time.
(He maybe wouldn’t idolise her quite as much, since she wouldn’t be as obviously super-competent in the trials like Shuichi was – the impact of a luminary rather than an action hero is a lot harder to notice. But Kaito would notice her impact, all the same. He notices the impact of everyone except himself.)
Chapter 4-ish
Despite the fact that he’d be idolising her like this, would Kaito try to sidekick Kaede anyway in an attempt to feel important and needed and more associated with her success as his illness gets worse? I think he might, sort of. Making her his sidekick is actually something he brought up in his FTEs with Kaede in chapter 1! He let it slide when she brushed him off, but still, the fact that he suggested it at all says a lot. He has to have known she didn’t really need his support, but all the same, in chapter 1 he was desperately floundering around without a sidekick or any way to feel important in this deadly situation, which came through just a little bit there.
Here in chapter 4-ish, Kaito would have Maki as a sidekick to let him feel like he’s making a difference to at least someone, but otherwise his illness would still be breaking him down and making him feel weak and useless. He’d be just as desperate to compensate for that as he was in canon chapter 4. And maybe, if Kaede really had joined the trio – and if she’d been helping Maki in Kaito’s place during his phobia-driven absence – it would be all too easy for Kaito to feel like Maki didn’t need him and would have been just as well off with Kaede alone.
It would probably be quite easy for Kaito to subtly shift his behaviour towards Kaede from “you’re here to help me help Maki” into “you’re here because you’re totally my sidekick and also need me too, right,” as his co-dependency gets worse. Which on the one hand probably would be helpful for Kaede, because she’d probably be pushing herself quite hard to keep supporting everyone at this point and shouldn’t be carrying that burden alone. But on the other hand, this wouldn’t exactly be the healthiest reason for Kaito to be doing this.
Of course, Kaito’s reasons for doing this would all be pretty subtle, partly because Kaito doesn’t want anyone to know he has issues, and partly because even he isn’t really that consciously aware of how he needs to be needed. But it would probably be more noticeable with Kaede than it was with Shuichi, in which Shuichi was already officially Kaito’s sidekick and was supposed to need his support (since the part where Kaito increasingly felt like he didn’t was mostly happening in Kaito’s head). And even in canon with Shuichi, Kaito’s attempts to insist that Shuichi totally needed his advice, right did get rather noticeably aggressive in his final FTE.
So, maybe Kaede would notice what’s going on with Kaito. See, on the one hand, she’s not nearly as perceptive as Kaito is, so I don’t think she’d have been able to pick up on his illness on her own like other people might have if they’d been close to him. But if Kaito was being this needily co-dependent towards her, I feel like Kaede might just be able to spot it and realise that the root of this behaviour is some kind of insecurity on his end.
She wouldn’t be able to automatically equate this to “he’s literally dying”, but it’d be something – something she could call him out on and nag him about and ask him what’s wrong and offer to help. Kaede’s not as perceptive as Kaito, but she is pretty persistent in wanting to help with others’ personal problems once she’s noticed them, because she has that same kind of supportiveness as Kaito himself. So maybe she wouldn’t drop it even as Kaito inevitably told her that, what, no, he’s totally fine.
Kaito actually admitting it???
Still, I don’t think Kaede’s persistence and supportiveness would quite be enough on its own, because she’s still not perceptive enough to figure out the problem without being told what it is. I think Kaito would have to meet her halfway and willingly open up to her about what he’s going through.
But… if it’s to Kaede, maybe that actually would be possible, more than it ever was with Shuichi and Maki in canon. With less of an image to live up to as only Maki’s “hero”, and having never really thought of Kaede as his sidekick for whom he has those same expectations to fulfil, admitting to his vulnerability should be at least a little bit easier for Kaito. And Kaede would be right there as someone he knows he can trust and turn to for support, because she’s been doing such a great job of supporting everybody else. She’s already a hero to him.
This wouldn’t even be about Kaede saving his life, either. It never even crossed Kaito’s mind that telling someone about his illness would potentially save him, because the obvious resulting path of everyone rallying to escape in order to not lose him is something he’d never have imagined. Other people risking their lives for his sake? Nope, that’s backwards, that doesn’t exist in Kaito’s head. Shuichi was a hero to him, but even so, he had no idea that Shuichi could have literally saved his life.
Kaede’s not an action-oriented kind of hero like Shuichi was, though; she’s a luminary. What she does for other people is support them emotionally, helping them believe in themselves and feel stronger. Kaito may be convinced that he’s not surviving this, but that’s not what he’d expect Kaede to do for him anyway. Talking to Kaede about what he’s going through should help him feel at least a little bit less scared and helpless about his impending death. During some of those lonely nights in which he can barely sleep due to his illness and doesn’t have anything to distract himself from how awful he’s feeling, maybe he’d realise that Kaede’s support could help ease this at least a little.
Perhaps most of all, Kaito would have less to lose if he confides in Kaede and admits that he needs her support right now. With Shuichi, Kaito had built up this image of himself as the invincible hero whom Shuichi definitely relies on, and he was clinging to that as the source of most of his self-worth even as he increasingly felt it was all just an illusion. Admitting that really he’s the one who needs Shuichi would have shattered that supposed illusion and left him with nothing to cling to, and there’s no way he’d have willingly done that. But with Kaede, there isn’t nearly as much of an illusion of that in the first place, especially if she’d already been nagging Kaito to open up and offering her support.
Kaito would also have less to lose in the sense that he only has one sidekick to potentially let down, instead of two. In fact, this’d be less than half as bad. For one, there’s always the option of confiding in Kaede privately and making her promise not to tell Maki so he can avoid “failing” her at all. And even with that, he’d know there’d still be a risk of Maki finding out anyway – but, if it’s Maki, and not Shuichi, that’s perhaps not so bad. What Kaito has going with Maki as his sidekick is much less of an illusion to him. It’s clearer that Maki really does need him, so maybe, even if Maki ends up finding out about all of his weaknesses, he can still at least do something for her and not be a complete and total failure, maybe?
(Also, I should point out that if Kaito did confide in Kaede while making her promise not to tell Maki, Kaede would immediately tell him that that’s stupid. Obviously Maki will still be inspired by him and care about him even if she knows what he’s going through! Kaede would settle on, “since you trusted me with this, I won’t tell Maki – but you should,” and keep giving Kaito pointed nagging glances every time the three of them were together until he caved.)
A better chance than normal, at least!
I maaaay have kind of nudged this AU into the direction of Kaito learning to accept support and surviving, because this is a Me Post and I always want things to end up there if it’s even remotely feasible. And realistically, I probably shouldn’t be saying that this would definitely happen. At the end of the day, it’s still Kaito, and he is still so instinctively averse to talking about his issues of his own volition.
But I really do think that it’s at least significantly more possible that Kaito might have bitten the bullet and talked about things willingly than it ever was in canon when Shuichi was there instead of Kaede, which is pretty fascinating. It’s not even specifically because of how good and supportive Kaede is, though that obviously helped quite a bit.
Rather, this thought experiment essentially just led me to the conclusion that Shuichi being alive – him in particular, not anybody else – is one of the factors that killed Kaito. And that’s heartbreaking. But it’s also probably kind of true?
Shuichi happened to show Kaito a paradoxical combination of traits. He was somebody who really obviously needed Kaito’s support (at first) and whom Kaito therefore officially and firmly took on as his sidekick, thus setting up all those expectations as a hero who Must Not Fail Him. Yet at the same time, Shuichi was someone Kaito very quickly began to see as heroically invincible, to the point that he felt like the only way for him to match up to that and still be worthy of calling Shuichi his sidekick and keep being needed and not fail him was to somehow be even more invincible than Kaito already usually feels like he needs to be. There was no way he was ever going to willingly admit to anything approaching weakness in that state, to an even worse extent than his already-messed-up standards.
Meanwhile, with Kaede, Kaito would still see her as something of an invincible hero – but she was never also an obvious sidekick whom Kaito cannot afford to let down by admitting that he’s the one who needs her. And then there’s Maki, who very obviously does need him and is an official sidekick of his – but he doesn’t also see her as invincible in any way like for Kaede and Shuichi, so maybe it wouldn’t matter quite as much to her sidekickhood if Kaito admits he isn’t invincible either.
With Kaede and Maki, one would be a hero to him and one a sidekick, but neither of them would be both at once like Shuichi was. That was the thing that really broke Kaito and made it so completely inconceivable for him to admit what he was going through.
(And, geez, please don’t ever tell Shuichi this. It is not remotely his fault, just a result of the way Kaito’s issues responded to him, but you know Shuichi would blame himself and aaaaa. God I love Kaito’s delightful self-destructive issues and his messed-up relationship with his best friend.)
