Okay so. I have a new big AU concept. The Danganronpa V3 brainworms are eternal lol.
It's a lab/unethical experimentation au which honestly I am shocked I haven't seen more of. Like V3's setting lends itself to the idea so well especially with the final plot twists. (Honestly you could argue V3 canon fits under the genre if you really stretch your interpretation of Team DR but I digress)
In this AU, though, the experimentation is turned up to 11 :).
The gist is that Team DR (as they're known to their subjects) have a lab set up to tinker with human experimentation, with the V3 cast as their lab rats. Team DR could be anyone really, from Junko & her crew to the SDR2 remnants to the steering committee to some nameless mooks, their identities don't matter as much as they do as a conglomerate.
They mostly got their subjects through covert kidnappings (abducting them from orphanages/off the street, shady deals/contracts, etc.). Their main goal as far as their subjects know is to gain power and influence in the world, but something more sinister must be going on to justify all of this...
The V3 cast has various levels of experiments done to them, ranging from theoretically humanly possible to supernatural. The only sure thing is that none of them are having a good time.
Rantaro was the first. According to whispers and rumors, he was supposed to be an everyman that could handle any task they gave him. Something must have gone wrong, however, since he seems to be perfectly normal save for a missing set of memories. Occasionally, he'll get a dark look in his eyes and start to quickly talk about flashes of things that don't make sense, only for the Team to quickly scoop him up and run a quick test that seems to reset him and his memories all over again. Since he never remembers them for long, the experiments/prisoners (what I call for the V3 cast in this AU) have long since given up on making friends with him.
Kaede must have made it out. At least, that's the common sentiment among the experiments. Everyone only knows about her from Rantaro's occasional ramblings and the fact that Kaito swears that he vaguely remembers someone by that name being in the lab once. She's spoken about with hushed reverence amongst the prisoners, and everyone agrees that they need to find a way to contact her if they ever do make it out. That promise of hope through escape is all that keeps some of them going on bad nights.
Ryoma has perfect accuracy. Team DR meant to use this to boost his burgeoning tennis career and keep up some appearances/get funds, but when he used a training ball to severely injure several Team researchers in early experimentation, plans changed. Now, he's contracted out for assassinations with the Holy Salvation Society. As time has gone on, he's lost a lot of his fire and drive to escape, mostly resigning to being stuck in this hell until he eventually botches a mission and gets killed for it.
Kirumi runs in low power mode, basically. She barely needs to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep in order to function at peak efficiency. This makes her one of the more dangerous experiments, as she's one of the most capable of fighting back from the horrible conditions most of them are forced into. To deal with this, the Team keeps her busy with every chore and routine test they can think of. She says she's happy to help, since attention on her is attention not placed on anyone else, but it's an open secret that her mental state is slipping at an alarming rate.
Angie can perform transmutation. She's the main source of materials and funding for the Team, since she can do the classic alchemic trope and create gold from something cheap like lead. However, this requires her to cooperate, which she very rarely does. She's horrified at this entire situation, shaken in her faith from seeing her and her peers perform miracles, so she spends most of her time in a general state of denial and praying to her God to save them all. She's stopped hearing His voice recently, but she keeps saying that she still does in hopes that it'll come back to her soon and she'll be rewarded for her devotion.
Tenko is resilient. She doesn't register pain to her body, and she heals extremely fast when something does injure her. She boasts this quality with pride in front of the group, constantly fighting with the Team to stop them from taking anyone else (especially the girls) for experimentation. Her strong sense of morals stops them from doing anything useful with her for the time being, but the endurance tests she's regularly put through are also testing her mental fortitude.
Korekiyo can see the past happenings of wherever he currently is. This makes him vital for gathering intelligence and surprisingly good at covert operations since he can gather people's schedules super easily. Naturally, this means he also gets contracted out to the HSS for various illicit jobs. He definitely hasn't given up hope of escape, but the Team pacifies him for the time being by occasionally bringing him back to his old house so that he can re-experience memories with his now-dead sister.
Miu has superhuman intelligence. Which she thought was honestly boring, given that she was already wicked smart. However, the boost has made it so that she can effectively run simulations in her mind while inventing, leading to everything she makes working on the first prototype. The Team leverages this, along with her many anxieties, by making sure she has comfortable accommodations and special care in exchange for her help in facilitating experiments on the rest of the prisoners. This fact somehow got leaked, leaving Miu in total social isolation save for the praise she gets from the Team, making her into even more of a willing collaborator.
Gonta has super strength. Which he hates. It's hard for him to control and he routinely hurts his fellow prisoners in downtime, a direct counter to the gentlemanly ideals he's still vainly trying to uphold. He also struggles with fighting back and accidentally hurting Team DR when they come to fetch someone for experimentation, but is coming around to the idea that he may be able to use that strength for good. Team DR is aware of this and ready to neutralize him if he starts to seriously rebel.
Kokichi has charmspeak. If he says something forcefully or confidently enough, whoever he's talking to is likely to think he makes a lot of sense, even if it's a blatant lie. This was meant to make him a strong political figurehead, but it was quickly determined he was far too uncooperative for that. The Team is extremely wary of him and his potential, since he's tried to charm them into letting him go plenty of times. Having accepted that there's too many safety measures in place for such a direct approach, he's currently biding his time and planning a way to escape and bring Team DR crashing down around him in revenge.
Kaito was another early victim, so the Team used him as a testing ground for a lot of different ideas. This has, naturally, led to his body breaking down more and more as multiple unsafe experiments claim their dues inside of him. He spends most of his days lying sick on a cot somewhere, being tended to by one of his fellow prisoners. Team DR uses this fact, and how much some of their prisoners care for him, as leverage to keep everyone in line.
Keebo wasn't always a robot. One of Team DR'S scientists took his consciousness and uploaded it into a robotic body, meaning for him to be another contract killer who could go into dangerous situations without needing to worry about dying. Unfortunately for them, he's still fighting against the body's programming (meant to force him to obey them) too much to be useful in any regard. They also monitor the group at large through him, but the smarter ones caught onto this pretty quickly and watch their words around him for that reason, which isolates him and makes him feel even less human than he already is.
Shuichi can sense people's true emotions and feelings. Unfortunately, the burden of sensing that got to him, and he started working fervently to tear down the Team. He spoke out against them openly and tried to start a rebellion one too many times, and so they decided to lock him up in solitary confinement for their own safety. He hasn't been seen in quite a long time, and the prisoners are split on whether or not he's still even alive. And whether or not it would be a mercy if he wasn't.
Himiko rounds out the trio of early experiments. Team DR actually got her to sign up voluntarily with promises of actual magic, and were quick to try to give her some form of telekinesis. They succeeded, but because they were still figuring out their methodology, using her powers takes an enormous amount of energy. To compensate, she spends most of the time she isn't being experimented too tired to do anything but sleep.
Maki is basically an improved iteration on Himiko's experiments, since she has telekinesis specifically for metals (Metallikinesis? Mechakinesis?) in exchange for not being deathly tired all the time. She actually spends most of her time in the HSS and only comes to the lab for experiments, while everyone else is kept prisoner there unless the Team has a reason to take them out (like rare field tests). Her powers are deadly by design, but the Team know to keep metal far away from her, and she's loyal enough to her own cult to not step too far out of line, at least for the time being.
Tsumugi is normal. She's a perfectly normal girl, why are you even paying attention to her? She doesn't matter to this AU.
Okay so ignoring my obvious bias for Tsumugi, she's always the most fun character for me to play around with in AUs. Here, she presents herself as a challenge for the Team, being far too plain for any experimentation to do anything meaningful to her. In actuality, she's a spy feeding information on the various prisoners to the Team in place of Keebo, which is how they know about cases like Gonta thinking about rebelling. She also leaks information like Miu's help to the prisoners when asked. The only experiments she's had done are so that she could act as a counter to some of the weirder experiments (for example, she's immune to Kokichi's charmspeak, and can deceive Shuichi's senses if she wanted to, which is how she avoided detection from him before he got locked in solitary). She was probably taken in by one of the Team at an early age and has always seen this kind of work as normal, being desensitized to its effects of people and her place in it all. However, spending so much time around them all, combined with her feeling inferior and neglected in favor of the actual experiments (because my girl will form a complex out of anything) has left her alliances unsure.
I don't have much planned for this AU aside from what's listed here, but I might write something for it if inspiration strikes. Since I am me, this whole AU is actually a thinly-veiled excuse for me to think about Shirouma dynamics, so the most likely thing I'd write would be Kokichi confronting Tsumugi about her true allegiance and trying to win her over to his side in order to execute an escape plan, and then going with however things would progress from there.
