#also yes i am still a dr fanfic writer apparently lmao

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Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me I give myself self-indulgent requests according to this marvelous card!

47-Survivor AU DR stuff in 2019?? More likely than I’ve ever thought. For those who never heard from it before, it’s an AU of mine (originally co-created with someone, though) where everyone but Junko survived out of the DR casts for DR1, 2 and V3, whom after escape Hope’s Peak began working for the Future Foundation as the 14th Branch (directed by Hajime). This fic takes place during their FF days and is, like my first prompt fill for this bingo Corrupted Flower, Maki-centric. (I dunno why, I really wanted to write about Maki. I still want to lmao).

Also, phew, can you believe we’re more than halfway done through this card? It’s weird to mostly have filled spots lmao.

Crimson Eyes

Summary: Trapped in an ambush by Despair supporters, what is a former hirewoman going to do to protect her life and the integrity of her companion?

Fandom: Danganronpa (Almost Everyone Lives AU - V3 cast-centric) Characters: Maki, Shuichi (background), Kaede (background)

Wordcount: 1.1K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

“Squad Alpha, HQ here! Do you copy?!”

Maki could have recognized this voice among a thousand others: Kaede, panicked and screaming into her microphone. Usually, she’d have minded: she hated irritated, agitated voices when she was supposed to be investigating on the field. There was nothing more aggravating than trying to be stealthy and have someone scream at you with no concern for how discredited they made you to sneak on people.

As it stood, she was closer to being reassured than pissed about Kaede contacting them with that high-pitched, urgency-filled, yelling voice of hers.

 “Squad Alpha here,” she said into her ear microphone, hidden behind her hair and her helmet over it.

“Ah, Maki, I’m relieved to hear you! (Kaede lacked professionalism, when she was concerned). How many are you, down here? Who’s with you?”

“We’re two. We split with Mukuro before that happened. Shuichi’s with me.”

Maki glanced over her shoulder, making sure the bear-masked psychos didn’t start attacking them while she was seemingly looking away. Sure enough, Shuichi was still there, hands trembling from fear but trying to maintain his composure in the face of danger.

“Yeah, Mukuro contacted us back, she told us about the situation. Be careful, we’re sending backup asap!”

 Yeah, that was good and all, but they were still trapped among the crazies. Shuichi had no training, as he had tagged along for an investigation in what they thought was a Despair-controlled research facility having long been abandoned. They had been wrong or, more exactly, she had seen it coming: Despairs weren’t the kind to simply flee away from any place they had partially destroyed and inhabited, relishing in the desperation to have destroyed one’s last home and staying there with a bunch of other junkies of the sort.

There was only disgust and contempt in her to seeing it all, the glass shards on the floor, the dried puddles of blood, the browned splashes on the walls, the Monokuma masks torn apart and hung from the ceiling, the beheaded Monokub plushies and those who had had their heads swapped out. It was like looking right into the eyes of a mass-disaster that had claimed the lives of thousands; which was the case, because they were right inside a physical representation of humanity’s worst.

To that, Maki only wanted to spit her hatred and want to destroy them all back, but she had to keep quiet and stay sharp.

 She lifter her eyes to make them understand she knew they were all gathered around here, in the shadows, as she forced Shuichi to hold onto her arm. It wasn’t a sign of affection, at least not more than platonically for them: it was just her way to tell he was there, by her side, unharmed and alive. Only living people with uninjured limbs could do that, that was a thing she had been taught about in case she ever had to escort threatened figures to some places while avoiding as much as possible to see everything go up in flames and finish in a flow of blood.

There was nothing weird to make sure a friend was alive, after all.

 While most of them had generic masks, one of them had this golden Monokuma head in lieu of their face, a sure sign she was directly facing their leader. It was a battle of stares, to see whom would attack the other first and who’d survive the fight. Maki and Shuichi were a measly force compared to the dozen of Enoshima followers circled around them from the broken parts remaining of other floors above. In any other situation, she’d have sneaked her way out of it and found another way out of the delicate situation to get her bounty from shitty people.

However, she had to do with what she had. She had military-level training in killing and spying, but Shuichi didn’t, having mostly detective experience and very little physical skills in. She couldn’t just give up on him despite the desperate situation, now when she was still convincing herself she was deserving redemption like Kaito was always insisting on (what an idiot…). A new plan, quick, quick…

 Perhaps because of all the rotten surprises she had had in her previous years of life, Maki always had some urgency weapons on her. As she watched the followers glare at them with appetized, swirly eyes filled with a will to kill and pulverize anything going their way, yet strangely relishing in the idea that they could be busted and die on the spot from a well-targeted pull of a trigger, she put her fingers on some leftover kunai from an old, old mission. Truth be told, she had never given them back and the blood of the guilty must have still been on some of them, drier than the puddles serving as this wretched place’s décor.

Keen-eyed, trained to murder on sight and on orders, Maki gave herself her own orders now. Kaede had stopped talking, Shuichi’s breath kept hitching behind her shoulder. She was going to go to end up in Hell anyway, so better keep herself and an innocent soul out of a bloodbath and throw her weapons to escape the predicament they had gotten themselves trapped inside of. Calculating a way for six of them to eat the entire pack wasn’t difficult, more like a task she had already had to complete in more stressful conditions.

 Reflexes were engrained inside her brain. First, check for their weapons: metal bats. Lethal if used violently against the skull to cast death by blunt force trauma. Second, check for their stances: all crouched and looking upon them. Unpractical to move and run away fast, exposes the back of the neck for some of them and throat for all the pack. Third, check for expressions: the masks hid everything away apart from their thirst to kill, visible in their uncovered eyes.

In all, it was a safe situation to be throwing kunai around, as long as she steadied her aim and knew exactly what to do. All that was left, once she had planned her course of action, was to make sure she wouldn’t hurt Shuichi in the process. Murder the rotten, spare the good: her humanity had survived by repeating herself that motto. She maybe believed sometimes you could save the Despairs, bring them back to normalcy, but there was no way around the issue without killing someone and getting killed if you didn’t act first. A shame, really.

 “Shuichi, crouch down.”

“H-huh?”

“I said, crouch down!”

 She threw the first kunai.

#bad things happen bingo #danganronpa #maki harukawa #shuichi saihara #kaede akamatsu #ambush #ndrv3 #it's neither whump nor a sickfic #shocking i know #also yes i am still a dr fanfic writer apparently lmao #bthb 1 #au: 47 survivors