Team Dangan Ronpa's offices were surprisingly normal, considering what happened within. There was of course a more glamorous office area for the big shots and VIP guests to interact, but most of their main building was just standard offices. Some floors even had cubical farms. Due's office, on the twenty seventh floor, looked out onto one. On a normal season, the Company's programmers didn't have much to do. There might be a virtual reality segment they had to plan for, and they worked closely with the robotics department to make sure Monokuma and any other robots ran smoothly. But their role was generally mostly support. This season, however, every single programmer was suddenly crucial. They'd never done an entire season within the virtual reality program, and it was going to be a lot of work to not only create the entire game within it, but rewrite the relevant parameters to keep everyone inside safe.
Due wasn't entirely sure how to feel about any of this. On the one hand, he was glad they were making the transition to safer, less traumatic seasons. He liked the kids, and hated having to watch them all die every year. Knowing that his department was in charge of making that happen was a point of pride for him, despite what some of the other department heads thought of the change.
On the other hand, it was a lot to ask of his relatively small programming crew. They'd lost a lot of people during the hiatus, between the layoffs and those who quit because they assumed they'd be next. His department had never been large, and he was now working with a skeleton crew even compared to that relatively small number. He'd been given the okay to hire more people, but that meant taking the time to train them and there was a balance to be found of how many people he could hire before it slowed them down more than it helped.
There was also the problem of being the obvious scapegoat if things went wrong. He had a reputation for being kind of lackadaisical in regard to his department, but it hadn't ever mattered before. This year though, if anything went wrong, his reputation would work against him in a big way. Due knew very well they would not have chosen to put him in charge of anything this important if they thought they'd had another choice. Naomi had sounded desperate when she'd suggested it in that fateful meeting. For now, all he could do was keep his head down and try to run things as smoothly as possible.
His people had been working full tilt on the new season for almost a month when the 'consultants' finally showed up. He'd been informed that they were being put through orientation and negotiating a consultant contract for most of that time, but he had no idea how much they would actually know when they walked through his office door. He just had to prepare for whatever it would be and go from there.
As he sat in his office on the day they were finally supposed to show up, he toyed with his ponytail nervously, eyeing the folders he'd set out for each of them and trying to play it cool. He'd never actually met with any of the survivors (other than Nakamura, who he'd met at the meeting where she delivered their demands but hadn't actually spoken to). His crew had worked on the technology that implanted their memories, he'd seen them on TV, but he had no idea what they would be like to work with. Would they be normal people, as they claimed? Would they have grown and changed in their time after the games? Would they be stuck in the archetypes they'd been programmed to be? He wanted to do right by them, but the thought of working with one note characters and knowing that it was partially his fault they were like that was enough to turn his stomach.
He tried to set that worry aside as he saw the three of them approach. He had to be professional, set the tone for their interactions. He had to not let the prospect of facing someone who was better at his job than he would ever be and a literal assassin who had every reason in the world to hate him get to him.
Due smiled at the three of them as they stepped into his office. "Welcome, all three of you. Would you like water or coffee?" He gestured at his coffee maker perched on top of his minifridge.
"I'll take a coffee." Hikari told him, looking him squarely in the eye before stepping over and getting it herself.
"Will you pass me a water?" Shuichi asked in a slightly uncertain tone. Due felt guilty about it, but it was nice to know that one of them, at least, was nervous too.
Maki shook her head silently.
"Alright, great." Due's smile felt fake, but he kept it up anyway. "If you'll all sit down, I have files set up for you with the details of what we have so far."
Maki and Shuichi sat down next to each other. Hikari, coffee in one hand, passed Shuichi his water before sitting down on his other side. All three of them opened their folders to flip through.
"A ski lodge?" Shuichi asked, frowning at the files. "Won't you have to make the whole mountain?"
Due's smile smoothed out into a more natural one. "They're going to be stranded in a blizzard. It minimizes sight lines and makes leaving impossible without impassible fences or the like. We're trying for a bit more of a… Agatha Christie murder mystery vibe than a Hunger Games free for all. It should be less stressful for the participants."
Shuichi nodded. Hikari frowned. "What about the staff, though? No ski resort is going to be completely without staff."
"Oh, that should be in there. The last couple pages?" He frowned. "The Monocubs didn't play very well last season, but we have replacements that will double as the staff."
All three of them turned to that section of the file and stared at it for a minute. "Wow, you're really desperate for characters you can merchandise that you won't have to share the profits from, huh?" Maki asked flatly.
"Well…" Due cleared his throat. "That's part of it. But we did need a few people on hand as 'staff'. Monokuma does really well with other characters to riff off of. And it helps immersion."
Hikari rolled her eyes. "Sure. So, what exactly can the three of us help with here? I was assuming that Shuichi and Maki, at least, would be sent over to the writing crew."
He sighed. "Well… the writing crew isn't doing much this season. Naomi Laurent made the executive decision to do as little scripting as possible. The writing team is pretty much just responsible for making characters and writing up files and clues and such to be hidden around. That leaves the three of you with me to help… create opportunities for story beats. Maki and Shuichi have the practical knowledge of what environmental factors make it easier or harder to kill, what might motivate different types of people to commit a murder, what sort of weapons should be made available and where… all that sort of thing."
Maki frowned. "You know I've never actually killed anyone, right?"
"Sure, but you have the memories of it. We didn't invent that training, we borrowed the information from actual assassins." Due smiled nervously. "All that information is still solid."
Shuichi put a hand on her shoulder. "Alright, we can do that. But would you tell us more about what you're doing to protect this cast?"
A/N: Back for another chapter! I hope you enjoy these teasers for the killing game to come.
I've got 9/16 Ultimates, so please keep them coming. I've got a few more chapters I can post before I need the cast filled up, but the sooner I have my cast the more time I have to plan out the game so if you're considering submitting go for it!