Here is the first part of the second OS cause I wanted to update but I'm too lazy and busy with exams to finish it now so here.
This is an AU where Komaeda is immortal, which means he dies but he gets to live again after.
It's completely fucked up. Perfect.
Enjoy!
The smell is putrid. The feeling is worse. But I live.
The first time it happens is on a plane. A vacation, Komaeda's parents call it, though he's perceptive enough to detect the sharp gazes they send him and his mother's trembling figure as soon as the plane gets on air. He knows it isn't a fear of the white device in itself.
It stings when he notice the look of distrust they give him when they think he isn't looking. But he says nothing. He knows this terrible luck is his and if something happens it will be his fault alone. His sires are right to be wary.
But it isn't enough for them to escape their deadly fate when the meteor pierces through their already dead, discombobulated bodies, twisted in physically impossible poses with an alien material forcing their flesh open. The terrorists already shot down most people in fright when a tremor shook the plane just before the meteor literally fell right on the passengers.
Komaeda remembers a white hot pain he is sure he is perfectly unable to stand. Shreds of the meteor pierce his skin and he screams, screams screams and the last thing he can place before falling in a blinding numbness is the smell.
It smells absolutely nothing.
Then he wakes up on a hospital bed and doctors go rambling on just how lucky he is! The only one survivor is a child who got injured far enough to die!
The scars remain in his chest, some right above his heart where they extracted sharp shreds while calling him a "miraculé".
Nobody can explain how he survived, and even Komaeda doesn't wonder. He is far too shocked by the event, and the loss of his relatives. He's far too young to understand.
Why am I the only one left?
Alone
The second time he is in a closed down warehouse and the serial killer is staring at him with scorn.
(Komaeda considers it very lucky he isn't dead yet.)
A week of sequestration, he says, but no ransom. As if nobody even heard about him. Why isn't anybody worrying oh his disappearance?
Komaeda can't answer, but if he could he would have laughed. The criminal asks again. Is there really nobody for him? Nobody who would pay for his life?
The killer is obviously far more desperate than him. How useful can be an orphan? It's painfully clear the man is running after money more than murder.
And it was already the third time he used chloroform on the kid, to injure him – and push the blackmail further on whoever could care for his life with pictures sent to the newspapers – without having to hear his screams.
But this time the man is really pissed. Komaeda can tell by his spiteful tongue yelling on the orphan – why the hell did the child he kidnapped had to possess no siblings nor parents?
Komaeda starts tearing up though he isn't sure why. He is not scared, really, but then there is this ominous feeling crushing his chest again – like right before the meteor fell! - and he's going – he wants to- right now now NOW-
A knife is grabbed before ripping through his skin, close to the lung – the protection the shirt brought being quickly derisory – and there the killer freezes (in the middle of killing him). The horrible swellings of chair come to view and clearly, it unsettles the criminal.
"What are these?" he hushes the child to answer.
"Meteor shreds."
Komaeda barely has time to croak out the answer before the man slaps him, screeching that he's a liar, as if afraid of his ability to survive.
And then slits the kid's throat.
Komaeda gurgles, cries in pain and... his eyes become glassy.
He wakes up a while later inside of a trash bag, dried blood all over his throat and chest.
He died, he is sure of it. There is no miracle.
Yet, the police officers cheers when they rescue (find) him. The money is handed to him with whistles of envy when he shows the winning ticket.
He died, but somehow he's still alive. Breathing.
It hurts.
He doesn't understand.
He worries much later about the serial killer knowing his strange ability not to die when someone cuts his throat open. But then, he reasons, the man wouldn't have put him in a trash bag thrown haphazardly in some street if he realized Komaeda wasn't dead.
Besides, he learns not even a week after that the famous serial killer who made everyone tremble in the city was found. Hanged. No culprit is researched.
His luck intervened one again.
The scars are the worst. I wish they would just disappear. If only I wasn't -
The third time he is more prepared. It isn't even supposed to happen, the oppressing feeling doesn't cling to his chest.
(Because it's not supposed to be him.)
His luck messes around once again, and he finds himself at the edge of a road, waiting for his reckless friend – the only person who wants to associate herself with him; even in the orphanage people avoid him and they are right to do so – to cross the pedestrian path and...
A lorry comes, too fast, too big, too late to lessen its speed, impossible to avoid. It is disgustingly imposing compared to the girl, as if it wants to crush her with his height. In a flash, Komaeda understands that his friend is going to die. So he throws himself in front of the lorry, pushing her harshly to get her away.
He feels himself slip away from reality once again, after being hit by the front of the lorry – it was great enough the driver stopped there and he didn't find himself under the tires – while the girl was crying over him. He would have liked to say that she shouldn't be sad, not for someone like him but strangely he can't find the words.
They are floating around his mind but he can't voice them.
It feels so cold...
There is a hospital again when he wakes up, his friend still next to him. Right, she probably felt guilty for him taking the hit and dying instead of her.
"You're alive! It's a miracle, your pulse was non existent for a few minutes." the man in a white blouse explains but Komaeda doesn't care.
Miracle can't happen in this world.
The luck he was blessed with, and the ability to resurrect every time he died isn't a gift.
It was a curse.
He leaves the hospital with his friend, smiling at her never ending thanks, pretending it was made out of kindness – and not of morbid curiosity – all to save her, and acting as if he isn't appalled.
I want to die, I want to die, I want to die why can't I?
For a while, nothing happens. A few years go without anything relevant in it, without any disaster. Then, when he is 16, he's called to the medic – he can't avoid them all the time after all. The woman checks him with a bored look, it's just a routine inspection after all. Except that she apparently finds something slightly worrying. She doesn't say, but she sends him to the hospital.
And there, for some reason, Komaeda is anxious. What if they discover the reason why he can't die? He's oddly excited to learn about it – and especially of a way to counter it – but somehow he's afraid What will they do of him if they learn?
Yet, nobody mentions anything. They make him do several scans and IRMs around most body parts, then make different tests. It goes without saying it takes a whole day. They see his scars, of course, and when they ask the luckster replies it's a biking accident and conveniently, they believe him. Then, they send him back to the orphanage, saying he would be called later for the results.
A few days later he's in front of another doctor who looks at him with unhidden pity and sorrow. Komaeda hates that.
"I'm sorry. You were diagnosed with third stage fronto-temporal dementia and malignant lymphoma."
The news don't unsettle him. It has been a while since his luck manifested itself through an event of great importance.
It's even interesting. Could such illnesses kill him?
"What's my life expectancy?"
He forces himself to sound more devastated than eager.
"Six months, one year at maximum. If it were only for the dementia it wouldn't reduce it so much, but lymphoma is more problematic. We fail to have proper treatments for it unfortunately. However, we can still give you one, though I can't promise it'll increase much your life expectancy. It'll still help."
Komaeda takes in the words. One year maximum. Impossible to cure. He might finally die.
And he laughs, he laughs he can't stop himself, so much that he quickly becomes breathless and the doctor's look of pity worsen but Komaeda keeps cackling.
He couldn't die before, because of some stupid immortality, and now his body is deteriorating from the inside.
How ironic.
He doesn't laugh when he finds in his mailbox a letter with a particular symbol. Hope's Peak Academy.
It goes without saying he admires the school with all his being and receiving a letter from such a prestigious place fills him with happiness.
He's apprehensive though. He can't find a reason why they would contact him. Suddenly he's afraid they mistook him for a beacon of hope like the other students. He likes the school and the students, but he doesn't particularly want to attend it.
So he calls them as soon as he read the contents of the letter.
The secretary is curt, and professional. She encourages him to change his mind, insisting that he at least visits the school. Komaeda is honored, too much, but he can't bring himself to refuse.
Indeed, the school is at his expectation's greatness, even further. It was truly created for the elite of the country. He isn't a part of it.
But Jin Kirigiri is very persuasive, maybe too much. Komaeda figures it doesn't matter so much, if it's for one year. He'll make sure not to approach too closely any of the students. It can't harm anyone if he's careful.
So, Komaeda accepts to become the Ultimate Good Luck.
Except that my luck isn't that great. If it was, I wouldn't have died three times already. This luck isn't something to be glad of having.
A year pass, and he's still alive. He didn't count on the medical facilities of Hope's Peak Academy, nor on their ability to provide a better treatment for lymphoma than regular hospitals. Komaeda is reluctant to take it but he can't explain why so he takes it anyway from the doctor's hands, though he rarely swallows the pills.
He didn't count on an Ultimate Neurologist neither. But it doesn't matter.
The 78th class comes, and with it all the problems the school never dealt with. A yakuza dies, a culprit is murdered. The fashonista called Enoshima makes a great fuss out of it, provoking a wave of panic and fury against the headmaster who's unable to protect them.
Komaeda takes part in none of the actions the students take. He doesn't care. It is mildly concerning that the students who are supposed to be the future's hope are making riots and showing despair, but the world might burn to the ground he wouldn't care. Who can worry about the future when you are immortal?
The whole student council is murdered by one reserve student who was experimented on, and the fashonista spread the news like wildfire, inside of the school and around, making people doubt about it being really made to create the future's hope. Anxiety looms around everyone's head like a sword of Damocles.
Enoshima once visits her upperclassmen. She doesn't explain why, but they know. She doesn't make a big speech surprisingly, but releases a bag in their class, winking, before leaving.
Their confusion isn't long. The bag is full of weapons and sure they wonder why she gave those to them, how she got them, what she was expecting but especially, most of them are scared. Each one of them picks once – "we need it for protection!" Souda justifies poorly – and Komaeda does the same, though he doesn't know why.
Then Kirigiri calls for him in his office and the luckster doesn't wonder for long. The headmaster doesn't dance around the subject. He asks for consent to experiment on him and discover what makes him resurrect each time he is killed, to ultimately find a way to replicate and spread it around the world.
Komaeda panics.
There is no reason for Jin Kirigiri to know about this. It didn't occur since the lorry accident a few years ago. Kirigiri can't be aware of what in his childhood was made of. Desperation and depravity. Accidents.
It's not possible that Kirigiri knows, unless he spied on him and asked every single person who had once heard of him.
After all, he already forced the doctors who examined the luckster to break the Hippocrates vow, it's very probable he also researched on all the students. How he concluded that Komaeda was somehow immortal, the white haired boy has no idea, but it's true it was a bit too convenient for him to survive to all of these accidents.
But in this case, Komaeda has no choice. If Kirigiri has this compromising intelligence, he can't refuse the experiments. It would be so easy to blackmail him! Kirigiri is a man of honor but his moral virtues are rather doubtful (the project Izuru wasn't very moral in itself). Could he go as far as blackmailing one of his students for science? For hope?
But then Komaeda never really belonged in Hope's Peak. For some reason, he finds it very probable that the headmaster would be ready to do everything to know how such a secret works. Especially with the atmosphere that wanders through the school lately. Everything knows something terrible is going to happen soon, but none of them are prepared nonetheless.
Which means Komaeda has to be experimented on. He has no choice. Except to give in Enoshima's despair, like so many students already. It doesn't matter. Hope is the luxury of those who have a future. For him? None of this will ever have an influence.
He stabs Kirigiri. The knife that was hidden in his jacket's seam, barely peeking out, is suddenly in his fist, blade turned against the headmaster and then it's in the man's chest. The hit missed vital points. The man seems in pain and there are screams feeling the room and it takes a while for Komaeda to realize- Right. These are mine.
He's screaming because he just noticed that he put a knife in Kirigiri's chest, he attacked the headmaster, and he just tried to take a life! He's almost killed Kirigiri!
Komaeda can't stand it. He runs away from his crime.
He learns a few days later that the fashonista somehow caught him. She saw him stab Kirigiri, and decided to finish the job. The blame is pinned on him, unsurprisingly, but he doesn't get arrested or even punished by the school's staff (whose number has been drastically reduced). Probably because they no longer have any power on the destructive students, that seem to be uncontrollable ions aspiring only for chaos.
In fact, instead of being labeled as a criminal, he becomes the living symbol of the student's riots. He hates it at first, but then he muses it doesn't matter. He doesn't care enough to be opposed to the students. Besides it's in his best interest not to make himself look too remarkable.
Enoshima keeps hanging around him, and she is bothering but somehow her presence isn't completely annoying. Exactly like Kamukura, whose slaughter of the students council started the current madness, despite his coldness he is very interesting to talk to.
While Enoshima is spewing her despair everywhere, some students are resisting. Naegi is the most perfect example to it, and he tries to convince Komaeda that despair won't bring anything but unfortunately the luckster doesn't care enough to listen.
He is a zero value, this fact won't change, despite the positive value Naegi tries to adds to him and the negative one Enoshima convinces everyone he possesses. He doesn't particularly wish to act against Naegi, but the boy has yet to realize his ideals won't work in this place, at that time.
He is one of the first to send the world tumbling to the ground, watching it burn from a not much safer place. He is one of the biggest contributor to the Malefaction.
Yet then Junko throws all her partners away, saying she's not interested in them anymore. Surprisingly, Komaeda finds himself quite lost. He's lived eighteen years without her commanding around, spreading her despair, but it's far too unsettling when she walks away and a few weeks later, when he sees her getting executed on a screen because she made him think of the future.
Komaeda decides it's his time to leave.
The trick the hateful woman pulled was too misleading for me to escape it. Or maybe I just desired to believe there could be a future for all of us, a chance to make in our existence. But how could I be free if I can't even choose if I live or not?
He ends up in Towa City for some reason – he isn't searching for a place to stay. In fact, he doesn't know what he's searching for. Whatever it is, it makes Komaeda like Towa City, a place torn between a group of five despairing kids and a bunch of adults that are being slaughtered by Monokuma figures. The city smells of murder and despair, it's absolutely fucked up. It feels right.
Komaeda intends to be caught by the children of course, but he doesn't want to be recognized. Right, that is his main issue. By making everyone idolize him as a true symbol of despair, Enoshima made him rather famous and it's quite problematic. If the kids recognize him as the murderer of Hope's Peak Academy headmaster, they'll probably ask him to lead them.
Or maybe he's misguided but it doesn't matter. The children mustn't find he is Nagito Komaeda, especially since he carries around one of Junko's hands he cut from her corpse – he still hasn't figured what he intends to do with it.
Thankfully, it's not on his body or anything, since he rejected the first idea of using it like his own hand. It would be disgusting and especially very unpractical. If he has to live so long, he'd rather not lack a hand.
He takes different clothes, and find a chain to click on his throat. He makes himself called Servant. It probably should be humiliating when the children bring him back to their living place, using him as a slave – though it's actually more as if he's their nanny they take advantage of – but really, Komaeda doesn't care.
Messing around Towa City is rather interesting, but repetitive so when he meets Komaru Naegi along with Genocider Syo – he's rather impressed she survived the school life of mutual killing –, Komaeda decides time of change has come.
And in fact, he isn't wrong. He still keeps a low facade, discrete and devoid of interest, while pulling some threads when nobody looks. He even decides he prefers this way of action compared to putting himself on the front line, like he did with Junko. It's more convenient.
One might reproach him to play with human lives, he realizes as he sees the Children of Despair fall one after another, but really he did it since the beginning with his own life. He's just not the one in danger this time.
Except he miscalculated. He realizes he can't plan everything after finding himself under the shreds of a building.
He doesn't think it kills him. Maybe he just falls unconscious. But after all, it doesn't matter. He'll wake up anyway.
It hurts it hurts ithurtsstopit!
Being crushed isn't the most pleasant death, Komaeda figures when he wakes up still under the shreds. His whole body seems to be paralyzed in pain. There is no way he could get out of here.
At some time, he hears shuffling. And then the sounds of things being rolled, and suddenly a small light appears. Komaeda finally understands, someone is moving the shreds to get whoever could be under out. He wonders who would even bother.
It takes a while for him to notice. The light is far too blinding and everything hurts. Someone lifts him and he finds him completely dumbfounded, carried on someone's back.
Finally his vision focuses.
"Kamukura-kun? What are you doing here?"
After all, Komaeda hasn't seen the other since Junko's fall. How did he even know where the luckster was?
"The Future Foundation sent me. They want to help us get rid of despair, and they caught me so I'm helping them finding all of us to make it quicker."
So Izuru was found so easily by the Future Foundation? Somehow Komaeda doubts it, despite not knowing the organization. Izuru mustn't be so opposed with joining them.
"What are they going to do?"
"They didn't tell. But it's boring to wait."
Izuru then tells him to save his questions for later, so Komaeda shuts his mouth.
They find themselves on a boat. Komaeda doesn't even bother to fight Izuru to escape, he knows perfectly he wouldn't win. Besides, if the Future Foundation wants so much to get him rid of despair they can do as they please.
Komaeda has never really been in despair – though it's true he's quite more chaotic since Enoshima flung herself in his life – but he sees no reason not to follow the organization, even if he'll probably never harbor their ideals.
In fact, it isn't even so bad. It gives him something to do, a direction in his life, for now.
They talk a lot. After all, they have time and they are far from being enemies. On the contrary, they quite appreciate each other's presence, even if Izuru can be cold, impersonal, and Komaeda can be annoying.
It doesn't prevent the luckster from wondering why the raven haired boy saved him. After all, if he died under there it would be less of a concern for everyone. Does Izuru likes him that much? Or, more simply he could just be aware of Komaeda's immortality. It makes more sense.
Komaeda doesn't talk about it. Instead he shows the cut-off hand he keeps hidden mostly in one of his pockets. Izuru glares with a blank stare so the luckster precises it belonged to Enoshima.
"And what are you doing with it?"
"Well from now, nothing. I came to wonder why I even took it. Maybe only because the others did so."
Izuru nods, completely understanding what he means.
"Did you hear that Sonia almost died with it? Getting a corpse's blood isn't the best way to avoid illnesses." he giggles and Izuru throws him a strange piercing look.
Komaeda understands almost instantly.
"No. These don't matter. Stop focusing on it."
He has absolutely no intention of speaking of what made his body rot.
"You should tell me more about the experiment."
And surely, Izuru tells him all the plan made by Makoto. Komaeda is glad to find that he grew this ambitious. And he laughs, he cackles while Izuru watches him with a surprising glare again. It's so incredibly naive and yet he wants to believe it. It's so sweetly hopeful, so distinctive of Makoto that Komaeda finds he wants nothing more than to trust the other.
But Makoto is fallible, Makoto can die and Komaeda can't. Makoto can't understand the reason why he cannot hope nor despair. Izuru suffers from the same dilemma, though he doesn't have immortality weighting him and Izuru doesn't have to care because he won't be participating to the experiment.
"They are going to try to get the reserve student back."
"Don't you mind Izuru-kun?" Izuru doesn't like his last name, Komaeda finds after five minutes of discussion. "They'll overwrite your memories."
"They can't erase my existence now, it would be hell even for the neurologist and he's dead anyway. Besides, it might be interesting to share my mind with Hinata."
Komaeda would like to be so alright with having his history changed. But he cannot, because he is defined by his actions. If they erase one part of him, he won't be the same.
The thought is scaring, because who knows how he can turn?
When you have all the time you could wish for, you can do everything.
But that might not be the best for him.
Komaeda never fights but he never agrees neither for the experiment. It doesn't matter though, because Makoto, Kirigiri (did she know he killed her father?) and Togami aren't seeking for consent. They just make the simulation.
There is... a blinding light. What is it? It looks like... a school? Could it be Hope's Peak? Why did I come back, whydidI
Wait
How can I know how the Academy looks?
I've never been here before, it's the first time thefirsttimeIcome nonononononomemories no
Overwrite y/n?
You choose yes.
Yes I'm clueless about what happens in Another Episode.
ALSO FORMATTING IN THIS SITE IS HELL