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1moreff-creator · 3 months ago

Note

I remember someone asked about if P:EG’s Chapter 1 victim and killer were to be reversed, so how about the same thing for Despair Time chapters 1 and 2?

Ooh this is an interesting one! The DRDT situations are a bit harder to reverse, but I think it would be interesting to try. Let’s see how it works!

Spoilers for DRDT CH2. CW: Murder, stabbing, gaslighting (implied), breaking bones, accidental murder.

Chapter 1 - Min!Victim & Xander!Killer

The big question here is how to set up the entire Situation in a way that ends with Min dead instead of Xander, and with Teruko still alive somehow. Here’s how we’re gonna do this:

Everything plays out exactly the same until Min enters the computer room after seeing Charles run off, including Xander ripping apart a pair of Charles’ gloves and dropping the pieces on the floor.

At that point, instead of doing the whole lightswitch thing, Min drops the bucket (which falls on its side and spills) and chooses to confront Xander with her pen. Xander rushes at her with his own knife, but is taken off guard when Min reveals the hidden knife in her pen, and he gets stabbed pretty badly. However, he remains standing, and easily overpowers Min with his super strength, throwing her onto a table (which causes some blunt force wounds) and stabbing her a few times with his own knife. Min’s injuries prove immediately fatal, while Xander manages to remain conscious.

At this point and panicking a fair amount, Xander switches plans. He now wants to frame this all as a fight between Teruko and Min. He moves their bodies a bit, then pockets the pen-knife and the disk with Charles’ name on it, before hastily carrying the bucket out of the room and into the laundry room. In the same room, he washes the blood off his hands (taking off his bloody gloves and replacing them with clean ones that… let’s just say he had on hand lmao), so that it looks like all the blood on his body came from his own stab wounds and no one else’s. This is important for the narrative he’s gonna try to create.

With some important evidence hidden, Xander quickly checks the Movie Screening Room (the closest room to the laundry room aside from the Computer Lab), finding the Halloween trio there. He immediately calls out for Arturo’s help, and explains that Min and Teruko are also injured in the Computer Lab. Arturo and Veronika are obviously taken aback by the blood (Ace is unconscious from the movie they were watching), but Arturo quickly helps Xander to the Infirmary while Veronika checks the Comp Lab and calls for help from the others.

In the Infirmary, Xander explains to Arturo what happened. Or rather, what he wants the others to believe happened. Here’s his story:

Xander and Teruko had planned to meet in the Computer Lab. Xander arrived first, and while waiting for Teruko, Min entered the room as well. Xander didn’t think much of it at first, but then Min ambushed him with a kitchen knife. Xander pushed her away onto a table (trying to explain the blunt force wounds), but due to the shock and the pain, he couldn’t think to do anything else other than back up onto the wall and yell at Min. That was when Teruko entered the room. In a panic, Min turned around and stabbed Teruko in the chest. However, Teruko, who is used to pain due to her luck, managed to push through her pain and fight back. She disarmed Min and, before Xander could stop her, she furiously stabbed the Student until she stopped moving, with the very same knife Min had used to stab Xander. Teruko passed out just moments after, and finally Xander recovered enough to get out of the room. At some point in the stabbing, Charles peeked into the room before immediately running away (to explain Charles’ state).

Xander here is hoping to get away with a quick trial, where the only question the cast would have for MonoTV is which culprit they would need to vote for; Min who killed Teruko, or Teruko who killed Min. Except, you know there’s a problem with that.

In the panic, he hadn’t realized Teruko was still alive. Once she’s brought to the Infirmary, though, Xander realizes he’s lost his chance to finish the job. Arturo’s attention is now constantly on Teruko, and she will wake up, meaning Xander now has to prepare to fight her testimony in the class trial.

After a few hours, when the cast has investigated the scene and more or less has come to the conclusion Xander’s story makes sense, Teruko wakes up. She immediately goes to the computer lab, finds Min there, sees Xander, and so begins the angriest Teruko crash out you can imagine. The crash out grows even angrier as Xander denies having done anything wrong, telling her his version of events. Teruko is baffled, and retorts with her own version: Xander called her to the Comp Lab, stabbed her when she got there, then she passed out and doesn’t remember anything else. The obvious conclusion here is that Min must have gone in afterwards, and Xander must have killed her.

The issue is apparent here: Xander’s story is, in the surface, much more believable than Teruko’s. Remember, the cast doesn’t know of Min’s knife, since Xander’s hidden it. It doesn’t help that the list of custom weapons Whit shows has Min’s weapon listed as only a pen, and Rose can attest through her memory that only one knife is missing from the kitchen.

This all means the cast thinks that, for Teruko’s story to work, Min must have somehow disarmed Xander to stab him, only for Xander to overpower her back. This is obviously quite insane.

Another aspect is motive. Min and Xander’s beef is well documented, while Teruko and Xander appear to have had a pretty stable relationship up to this point. In most of the cast’s eyes, it’s easier to believe that Min would attack Xander and Teruko would defend him, than believing Xander would attack Teruko and Min defend Teruko. It doesn’t help that Xander is doing his best to remain calm, as he’s had hours to prepare for the trial and wants to get it right, while Teruko is acting completely deranged, even more than in canon Trial 1.

That’s not to say Xander is fully calm. The guy has a temper, so his frustration with Teruko’s resistance bleeds through even when he doesn’t want it to. However, it helps that he doesn’t have to be the one talking all the time. After all, David wholeheartedly believes Xander’s story, and this confidence allows him to use his talent to dominate the conversation whenever Teruko isn’t speaking. Xander has one of the best allies one could ask for in this class trial.

However, Teruko isn’t completely alone. I said that “most of the cast” could believe Min attacked Xander, but not all. Eden and Rose would like to defend the memory of their fellow baking squad member, and of course, they’re more willing to be on Teruko’s side than Xander’s, especially seeing how alone Teruko otherwise is in this trial. Eden is the one who can convince the cast to at least consider Teruko’s story even when Xander’s seems much more believable, and while Rose doesn’t speak much, her input is always a slam dunk in terms of pushing the trial forwards and interpreting evidence correctly.

Bit by bit, the holes in Xander’s story start being revealed. Min was carrying water to the kitchen from the laundry room before the murder, so it would make very little sense for her to take a detour and kill Xander. After all, if she took too long to return to the kitchen, Eden and Rose would notice something was up, and that would cause problems for her. This is especially notable because of the water on the floor (remember that Min spilt the bucket when she dropped it?), suggesting that she went into the room with the bucket full and dropped it without thinking. That obviously lines up more with Teruko’s story, where Min accidentally stumbled on a crime scene and panicked, as opposed to the premeditated nature of her attack in Xander’s story.

But what really starts fucking shit up for Xander is the presence of Charles’ ripped up gloves. Remember those? The cast deduces that the initial attacker (Min in Xander’s story, Xander in Teruko’s) must have put those on the floor to frame Charles for the crime. And in Xander’s story, Min wouldn’t have had the time to drop those on the floor before getting murdered by Teruko, casting suspicion on Xander’s claim. Additionally, Teruko suggests that the initial attacker might have lured Charles into the Comp Lab to incapacitate him. With Eden as her witness, she speaks of the reaction Charles had to Xander’s missing eye, something which only the three present in that scene would know about. Notably, this does not include Min.

This is where it gets intense. Xander starts losing his temper even more, saying that Teruko’s speculation has no evidence. He claims the ripped pieces of the gloves were there ever since he entered the room, he just hadn’t thought anything about them until then. And he argues that Min didn’t need to lure Charles into the room to frame him with that, since the framing could have worked even if Charles hadn’t been incapacitated. After all, Charles was not the most well liked individual in the first chapter, it would make sense to frame him even if you didn’t know about his hemophobia.

Teruko shoots back, saying that it doesn’t make sense for Min to drop those ripped gloves before attempting the murder, as anyone could have cleaned them up otherwise.

Eden: “Yeah! Min was smarter than that!” Arturo: “Are you saying she would have been too good at murder to make such foolish decisions?” Eden: “Exactly! Ehr- wait. That’s not-“

David cuts in. He poses that arguing based on Min’s abilities is contradictory to Teruko’s reasoning, because if they were to argue based on Xander’s capabilities, then her story is impossible.

David: “If Xander was really already on high alert when Min entered the room, it would have been impossible for her to disarm him. It would have been impossible for anyone. Only had she brought her own weapon can I imagine her hurting Xander at all. However, that doesn’t seem to have happened.”

Teruko leans in on that idea, saying that there might have been a second weapon that Xander hid somewhere. Xander gets defensive and annoyed that people are speculating without evidence, while Arei gets an idea.

A discussion breaks out about what weapons could possibly be involved, some even suspecting that there may have been more to the pen Min received as a custom weapon that meets the eye. Xander again rebuts that not every custom weapon actually functions as a weapon, given you’d be hard-pressed to do any real damage with something like Veronika’s horror movie set.

With all the distractions, Xander doesn’t notice Arei sneaking behind him. She pulls out her pickpocket trick, and suddenly everything falls apart for Xander. Arei finds Min’s pen-knife stained with blood, and not just that, but also the disk with Charles’ name and a pair of bloody gloves. That’s pretty much three smoking guns for the price of one, so Xander’s case falls apart extremely quickly. A bit of freaking out and a David mental breakdown later, Teruko does the Closing Argument thing, and the trial ends, with Teruko receiving two votes and Xander the rest.

In post trial, Xander explains very little because his whole Thing relies on lore we don’t have. However, he more or less makes it clear that he has reason to believe Teruko is an issue, and implies that there’s something he was trying to accomplish that he considers more important than the lives of everyone there. Right before his execution, he has a little chat with David, apologizing for worrying him and hoping he doesn’t hate Xander too much, before handing David a slip of paper which no one else is allowed to see. This is the undamaged “kill Teruko Tawaki” note, so now David is more or less fully in on Xander’s plans going into CH2. It wouldn’t influence his actions too much, but it’s worth noting. David’s sanity is hanging by a thread after all of this, of course. In short; doomed yaoi becomes even more obviously plot relevant than before!

Oh, and Teruko now has to deal with the fact that her luck 100% got Min killed. Like, there’s no conflicting feelings because of Min being a murderer and attempting to win the trial this time. She entered the room because it was needed for Teruko to survive, so her luck willed it so. This makes the doomed yuri have a slightly different flavor, as Teruko probably wishes she could say something to Min about it, thank her with an apology maybe, but has to deal with the fact that she can’t.

Chapter 2 - Ace!Victim & Arei!Killer

So this one’s gonna be a little harder, especially if I want to keep the Arei redemption arc intact, but there’s still a way around it.

In this version of events, Ace never switched targets. In other words, even after the Nico murder attempt, Ace still decides to go for Eden instead of Arei, though he still uses the same method. That includes leaving a note to Eden to meet with “Arei” at the playground at 7:30 AM.

However, Eden is a bit more sensible than Arei in this timeline. She decides that it’s weird that Arei sent her a note instead of talking in person, so she goes to Arei’s room and talks to her about it. Obviously, Arei says she didn’t write the note, and they realize someone might be trying to kill Eden. Eden wants to talk to the others about it in the morning (ehr, I’m assuming it’s basically nighttime at this point), but Arei points out that the attempted killer will probably hide that they wrote the note. This is bad because then there would be someone wanting to kill Eden just running around freely.

Instead, Arei suggests they confront the note writer to find out who they are. If Eden and Arei go to the playground together and are ready for an attack, they should be able to see who sent the note and still escape safely, so that they can warn the others and make some kind of decision. Eden’s worried and wonders if maybe they can bring someone else, like Levi, to really make sure no one dies. However, Arei’s actually worried that Levi might have sent the note. She shows the secret she received to Eden, that Levi is a remorseless killer, and uses that to argue that he might be the one they’re going to find in the playground. Eden chooses not to jump to conclusions, but ultimately agrees that telling anyone else could complicate things.

They then make a plan. They’re going to go to the playground, but they’ll arrive 30 minutes early to catch the note sender off guard, and just in case, they’ll bring weapons. Eden, who is too weak to properly use blunt force weapons, takes a knife. Arei prefers something less lethal, and takes Eden’s wrench.

As planned, they both go down to the playground at 7:00 the next day. Eden wants them to just peek inside and not confront the note sender, though Arei makes no promises. Unfortunately, they don’t get to make that choice, as Ace was already hiding near the door when the duo gets there.

Eden and Arei notice the weird rope contraption in the playground, and enter cautiously. Ace, obviously a bit surprised by the development, panics and does the only thing he can think of: he goes in and tries to tackle Eden. Arei steps in and hits him in the head with the wrench, full force. He falls to the ground, unconscious. Eden and Arei quickly check that he’s not dead, and indeed, he isn’t! Eden says they should still get Arturo to check in on him just in case, and Arei reluctantly (she does still hate Arturo after all) agrees.

And so they get Arturo, explain the situation more or less, and go into the playground. Slight issue: Ace is gone. They decide he must have gotten up and walked away, and try searching for him as a group. They don’t expect him to be hiding or anything, so they just superficially check over all the rooms in the building, but they don’t find him. They’re not too worried, since Ace has to show up for the motive announcement at 8:00…

Except, he doesn’t. Now they’re really worried. Everyone starts searching more thoroughly…

And eventually, Teruko, Whit and Levi find Ace’s corpse, hidden in a changing room in the dress-up space. A bloody kitchen knife beside him, his neck is sliced open right where Nico had cut them in their murder attempt, and his ribcage is shattered. The BDA rings out.

In the subsequent investigation, Arei and Eden agree to keep the whole “Ace attacked us” situation secret, and Arei threatens Arturo (be it with his secret or his kneecaps’ safety) to keep it secret as well. Their reasoning is that clearly, whoever slashed Ace’s throat was his killer, and so the whole “Arei hit him in the head before that” doesn’t have anything to do with it. If the others learnt about it, it would just confuse the cast into thinking Arei might be the killer, when she clearly isn’t. Surely.

There is something strange about the corpse, though. Despite Ace’s neck being cut, there wasn’t as much blood as one would expect. As if his neck had been cut post mortem. The wounds on his ribs are also strange, but Arturo doesn’t do forensics, so he’s not entirely sure if those wounds were also done post mortem or if they’re odd for some other reason (sure let’s say that makes sense). Arei and Eden do not hear of this until the trial.

You might be guessing what’s going on by now, but basically: David caught wind of the situation when Arei and Eden went to get Arturo, and decided to pull a Byakuya. Ace was wounded in a way that he could have survived with quick treatment, but would die if he didn’t get it. By hiding Ace’s body, David manages to get him to die due to internal blood loss.

(I am not sure how medically plausible this is but we’re gonna suspend our disbelief a little okay? I am already reaching enough as it is please just give me this)

By getting Ace killed before the motive announcement, he can try to avoid having his secret revealed (which doesn’t work, the secrets are still shown as in canon), and fulfill Xander’s will by making the class fail a class trial. He even sets up a couple of red herrings around. In the playground, where Ace’s murder mechanisms are still set up, he leaves some of his hair accessories. In the dress-up room, he leaves some fish from one of the water jugs Ace gathered for his plan, to implicate Nico. And of course, he’s the one who broke Ace’s ribcage by repeatedly stomping on it, and the one who slashed Ace’s throat. However, that’s only after his heart stopped.

Now, for the trial. Let’s be clear; Arei doesn’t want to win this, it’s just that she doesn’t know she’s the blackened at the start. This means that this timeline’s second trial can be just as much of a clusterfuck as the canon one!

Just as in canon, it starts with people revealing the secrets they received. This time, though, Arei’s isn’t a mystery, as she just reveals it outright. Obviously, suspicion immediately lands on Levi, who had already threatened Ace’s life once before, and is now revealed as a remorseless murderer. Levi explains his whole thing, and while some people are saying to just vote for him, others (including Eden and, following her, Arei) argue that it’s reckless to vote for him without evidence. Discussion continues, and some of the other secrets are revealed, such as Arturo’s, Ace’s, Eden’s, basically all the ones that got revealed in canon at this stage.

Suspicion goes from Levi to Nico as people discuss the slash in Ace’s throat, and how it may be related to their murder attempt. This is where we get the explanation for that, and the cast makes the connection to the mechanism in the playground. They discuss that for a bit, and notice that it didn’t get used, since the water jugs which would have been used as weights are intact beyond one of them having been emptied on the dress-up room. More importantly, Teruko and Levi identify the gym band thing Ace took from Levi in 2-2, and they realize that this is actually Ace’s failed murder plan.

Here is when Teruko remembers that Eden felt followed the night of Nico’s attempt, and asks her if she thinks that maybe Ace was aiming for her. Eden and Arei discuss a bit in short sentences only they and Arturo understand, and that’s how they decide to tell everyone what happened that morning. They make it clear that Arei didn’t kill Ace, they even checked his pulse after he fell unconscious. This is when Arturo brings up that the slit on Ace’s throat doesn’t have enough blood to have been made before his death, and even the wounds on his chest are strange. This causes Arei and Eden to momentarily panic.

However, the cast can’t immediately assume Ace succumbed to the wounds inflicted by Arei. After all, someone still went out of their way to hide Ace, which on the surface doesn’t make sense if they aren’t the killer. If Arei’s really the killer, why would anyone else try to obfuscate that?

This is how the cast lands on David, since the hair clips in the playground are revealed. Arei doubles down, revealing his secret. This is when David crashes out and tries to convince everyone to vote for him. In this crashout, Arei brings up the conversation she and David had the night of Nico’s murder attempt, as she feels betrayed over that, and David does some of his shit to make her feel bad about it.

However, the question arises about what exactly David did to kill Ace, because the slit in the throat was done post mortem. Obviously, he points to the wounds on the chest, but Teruko questions why he would do that. If he had a knife and could slice his neck at any point, why would he opt for the louder and more time consuming “ribcage crushing” method? Also, why would he slice Ace’s throat after his death, anyways? It’s not like changing the murder method would have done much to help his case.

David tries to pull some bullshit and ad hominem attacks at Teruko, but eventually, the flaws in the possibility of David actually being the killer start revealing themselves. The final nail in the coffin is Teruko realizing why he would do this: because it’s what Xander would have wanted. Remember: in this timeline, Xander already revealed that there was something he valued over the lives of everyone in the killing game, and that he could achieve it by winning the class trial. And the note Xander gave David at the end of trial 1, which no one else saw, could have potentially explained what that was all about, convincing David to go along with it.

The ultimatum Charles gives David is to either say what was on that note, or accept Teruko’s proposition. After a moment of thought, David decides that he’s gonna get other chances to get everyone killed, and so chooses to keep the note secret and tell the truth about the murder. Indeed, Arei was the one who dealt the killing blow to Ace, David just made sure he couldn’t recover by hiding the body. After consulting with MonoTV, it rules that if the cast’s theory is true, then Arei would be judged as the blackened.

There’s a lot of yelling and crying after this point, where Arei starts breaking down over the fact that she didn’t mean to kill the guy, same as Eden begging MonoTV to reconsider the ruling, or the cast to reconsider the theory. But ultimately, after the Closing Argument, Arei accepts what’s happened. She has some heartfelt words with Eden, and in the end, Arei ends up with all the votes (well Teruko gets one vote but y’know how it is with her). Eden’s survivors guilt gets even worse as she feels even more directly responsible for Arei’s death than Min’s, and she already felt pretty bad about that and Ace’s death too. Arei is horribly pissed at David, and David mostly ignores her insults, but they bother him more than he’d like to admit as a result of the whole “let’s be less shitty together” scene.

All the drama is cut slightly short when Teruko asks Arei to attack MonoTV. Arei actually takes the suggestion with glee, and doesn’t even hesitate in punching that thing as hard as possible. Shit happens, though, including Levi getting shot in place of Teruko. Arei asks MonoTV to execute her quickly, tells Arturo that she’ll personally drag him to hell when he dies if he doesn’t save Levi, shares one last hug with Eden, and Eden assures her that she died a good person. Angsty as hell ending.

And that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for the ask, I loved thinking about this!

#drdt #danganronpa despair time #ask #this took longer than it should have sorry :p #btw i’m behind on asks but i swear i’ll answer the ones i have!#min jeung #xander matthews #arei nageishi #ace markey #eden tobisa #teruko tawaki #david chiem

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