The first thing Hajime thought was when he woke up was how badly he wanted to get the hell out of the pod he was in, but when he tried, he was greeting with lots to sharp tugging in lots of different places, several of which he didn't want there to be. He was still hooked up with brain wave monitoring, IVs, the works. He heard yelling about someone already waking up, that must be about him. The second thing he thought about was how full his head felt. Then he heard it.

I didn't expect this.

Izuru. Then he remembered what happened.

The chances of you ever getting strong enough to return was so slim, it was almost impossible.

How is this going to work? Are we me or you?

Both. Right now you have control.

Can you take control at all?

He was curious. There was a pause. Then he felt dizzy, got a headache, and the arm that didn't have IVs moved against his will and punched a hole in the pod, what the fuck.

Yes, I can, though it seems rather limited right now. You don't have to worry about me interfering much, doing so would be pointless.

Great.

"Hajime Hinata?" He heard someone ask in a moderately worried tone, Makoto, he realized soon after. It was Makoto. He was probably freaked out because the hole he just punched in the pod. How boring.

Did… he just think that?

"Yes. Mostly." He answered, voice hoarse from disuse.

"Here, let me get you out of here." Naegi opened the pod and started removing his various tubes. "You are the first one up out of your friends."

"And the others, have you found out anything about them?"

"The others, the ones that died, are in comas, just like we thought, we are looking to see if their data was saved. Well, Togami is looking."

Hajime nodded, then having his third major line of thought. He felt his hair fall in his face when he nodded, his hair was still long. He needed a haircut, Hajime had short hair, and he was Hajime so he needed to have short hair. If he was going to live as him, he needed to have haircut. Naegi seemed to notice his distress.

"Do you need something?"

"Haircut, I need a haircut." Hajime nodded again. "This isn't my hair, it's his, I need it gone."

"Oh-"

"We can cut it ourselves." Hajime heard his body say without his consent. Izuru.

"What, no-"

"I have the ultimate hairdressing talent, we can do it, what's mine is yours."

"I don't think I want to test how well your talents work with us sharing a body on my hair." Hajime then looked over at Naegi, who was looking pretty frightened seeing the older man argue with himself.

"He's really in there, huh?" He asked, examining Hajime closer now. "So, haircut?"

"Yes." He knew that he could probably handle it himself, but if he had trouble accessing Izuru's talents, he could end up messing up his hair in a way not easily fixed.

"Kirigiri, do think you could help Hajime out?"

"Of course." Kirigiri walked over and started leading Hajime away.

You are sure about this?

Why would I be unsure about a haircut?

You still have no memory of becoming me?

Yeah, that's the only huge gap in my memory, what does that have to do with this?

You'll see.

Soon enough Hajime was plopped down in the bathroom while Kirigiri wen to go get scissors. He finally looked in a mirror, at which point he saw his eyes. One of them was bright red, what the hell!?

What a strange way to present that we are one, it's almost interesting.

Almost!?

No wonder they tried so hard to erase you, you're really annoying. And loud.

You son of a-

"Can you sit down?" He heard Kirigiri ask. When did she get back? He obeyed her anyway. His brain felt weird for a second, before realizing what it was. Izuru was feeling smug, but why? Whole chunks of hair started getting cut off, longer pieces first, before smaller pieces started to away until his hair length got closer to his head and Kirigiri started being more careful, starting to actually style it. Things where going fine, but suddenly Kirigiri's hands stilled, and Hajime felt Izuru's smugness rise. Then she started feeling his actual scalp. What the hell?

"What did they do to you?" She whispered, and Hajime just got more confused.

"Huh?" The young man asked, she started pushing his hair around, examining his scalp.

"So many scars, how many operations did they do?" She murmured, and then it hit him. He must have scars from the various brain operations he must have had becoming Izuru. "Small, needles maybe?" Just hearing her mentioning the operation was giving him a migraine.

"Kirigiri, can you not do that?" He had never felt so violated. He valued is privacy, and her examining his scars made him feel exposed.

I told you so.

Hajime had noticed that Izuru's personality had sort of have blended with his, he could just feel it, and that sassy response from Izuru let him know that the same thing happened to the talented half.

"I'm sorry." She apologized and went back to cutting his hair. Things were silent, awkward, but silent.

"I'm sorry they did this to you." Why was she-

Then he realized, Hope's Peak's headmaster's name was Jin Kirigiri, maybe it was a coincidence, but he had a feeling.

"I don't think your father knew the specifics of what the project entailed."

"I see Izuru's analytical talents are kicking in." Was that what just happened? He could hear the smile in her voice.

"Maybe."

She finished the haircut, he went out to see he friends awaking up.

##############################################################################

The events of the final killing game at the future foundation were several months behind them, and things were going well on the island. As a preventive measure, they give regular updates to Naegi and Kirigiri to make sure nobody was relapsing into despair. They were sent supplies every once and awhile, as a thank you for saving their asses (they were pretty sure what supplies they got had more to do with Togami than the rest of them). First thing was first, they got most things on the islands up and running, and now they were making plans for supply runs for things they needed to fix what they had all destroyed, with plans to make several new buildings down the line, and if they were going to do all that, they needed materials. Of course, everything wasn't perfect, problems did pop up.

It turned out saying they accepted the weight of what they had done was a lot easier than actually accepting it. Everybody was in a pretty rough state psychologically once all the dust finally cleared, but they were getting there, day by day. Some people were more damaged than others, depending on what sort of person they are and just how much they remembered. While the reset had gave back a good chunk of their memories, not all of it was quite there, and every once in a while, someone would remember something and, well, there would be an incident. And that was just about their time as Ultimate Despair, the events of their own killing game was still being avoided heavily. Lucky enough, they had Hajime, who was taking becoming the sudden leader of the class rather well and utilizing his talents to the fullest to help his classmates. His and Izuru's personalities had blended together a lot more since exiting the pod, and they weren't sure if that was a good thing or not but they figured they would just roll with it. They were mostly just glad he and Izuru weren't talking to each other as much, because it freaked them all out. They also didn't like it when Hajime says he was responsible for things Izuru did, but they weren't ready to have that fight with him yet. Though they would occasionally see Hajime actively fight off Izuru, and he still didn't use his more dangerous talents, just incase Izuru got any ideas to 'make things interesting'. Which brings them to now.

"Hinata, why haven't you been getting your hair cut?" Mahiru asked, raising a brow at the young man as they ate breakfast. Hajime looked over and immediately looked like he had been caught doing something bad.

"Is it a problem? I just thought that I might be more comfortable with it longer, now that Izuru and I are more at peace with each other. He- I like it longer." That was almost the truth, his hair was now down to just past his chin, and he wasn't a fan. Izuru himself didn't care much about his hair. But, Hajime didn't trust himself, the part of himself that was Izuru, to not try out some funny business once he had some scissors in hand. The part of him that was Izuru was annoyed at the distrust.

"No, it just seems a little weird I guess."

"Well, don't worry, it's fine, it's just a style choice."

And the subject was dropped… for about two weeks. This is where the group's trauma and mildly spotty memories came in. It turns out they had a few encounters with Izuru during their years of them being Remnants, several of them not being super pleasant. So one day, he had been reading over a book, rather bored, when Mikan went a tapped him on the shoulder, somebody probably got hurt doing something stupid and she needed his help. He turned to face her, still looking rather bored, and when Mikan saw an unamused red eye glint at her through dark hair, it triggered a rather nasty memory, causing her to break down weeping in the restaurant. It attracted the attention of everybody who was there for lunch. Shoot. Hajime had sprung up to try and help her, when she said it.

"K-Kamakura… No, p-p-please." She whimpered, and that had his eyebrows go up. He didn't mind being called by that, but everybody on the island made a point of calling him Hajime Hinata. That's when he realized what happened and he immediately tapped into his Psychology related talents to try and sooth her. Peko had noticed what happened and figured it out really quickly. And surely, as soon as Mikan was calmed down, Peko walked right up to him.

"Come over to my cabin for a haircut tonight." It wasn't a suggestion. Peko was sort of the resident hair stylist, as Hajime still wasn't up to trying that talent (not wanting Izuru to try something), because she was good with sharp things and had the most experience cutting hair, since she always cut her and Fuyuhiko's hair. And since Hajime didn't feel like fighting Peko, he did come there that night.

"So, where do I go?" He asked, looking around her cabin.

"The bathroom, dumbass." He heard Kuzuryu say. It wasn't really surprising that he was here, Peko and Kuzuryu spent most of their time together out of habit.

"Right." He nodded, feeling kind of stupid, his hair flopping around with a nod. He's glad he's going to be rid of it. He went and sat on the toilet, waiting for Peko to start, and she did so without a word. Snip snip snip, hair fell away. And then when she got to the styling part, the detail work, he noticed her still her work briefly. She had seen.

"Do you remember how many surgeries they did?" She asked in a way that he could see was her trying to be gentle.

"No. I still can't remember most of the project, but I don't think I had too many, most of the project involved minimally invasive stuff, I think. At least, that's what I assume." He was speaking in a low voice, and he looked down at his arms. His arms where covered in little need scars, from having large needles jabbed into him over and over for six months. While he was fairly certain that most of the work was through drugs and machines, but the more he looked, the more he found proof of smaller surgeries, so it didn't really surprise him that they had dug around his brain, probably trying to 'fix' it. Prepare it.

"It really is awful what they did to you." Peko resumed cutting his hair, and he was surprised she was talking about this. She thought she would just move on.

"I volunteered, I knew it would be rough." Hajime shrugged a shoulder, being careful to not move his head.

"Did you know that they would torture you, erase your personality, and try and eradicate your memories?"

"Well, no."

"Then you really didn't sign up for what happened, did you?"

"I guess not." He didn't sound like he meant it, but she hadn't expected that he would.

"Why did you sign up for that dumb project anyway?" Fuyuhiko asked, Hajime had sense that he was there, but was hoping he wouldn't say anything.

"Does it really matter?" Hajime tries not to bring up how obsessed he was with Hope's Peak and being talented, because it was embarrassing and would only prompt comparisons to Komeda, which he'd rather avoid. Thinking back on it, it really was pathetic. He been willing to do anything at all to be talented, even have himself mutilated and experimented on.

"Yeah, it kind of does, aren't you the one who is always on us about how we need to talk shit out if we ever want to properly move on and forgive ourselves? Or maybe that just doesn't apply to you?" Hajime fell quiet, hoping that would signal he wasn't going to be answering. He heard a sigh. "Look, I- we, just want to help you, like you have been helping us. We're trying to be better."

"There's nothing to help, I don't even remember the project past the first two or three weeks." Everything went silent. Peko soon finished the haircut and Hajime got up and left. Hajime decided he would learn to trust his Izuru half a bit more if it meant he didn't have to do that again.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Welp… So this is a thing I'm going to do now, I guess. Nobody wanted it, nobody asked for it, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm sorry if the characters seem a bit off, it might be that way for a bit, until I get used to writing them. Most chapters will be more humorous then this, I just wanted to start off simple to get a hang of things. I hope you enjoy this collection, I got lots of ideas (and am pretty open to suggestions), and plans. Goodbye, duckies.