#not quite regular prose writing but this *is* basically a condensed version of an entire fanfic

[elyvorg]

The Ultimate Talent Development Plan AU is the one canon AU in which everything is thoroughly good and despair-free and everyone lives happily ever after. …Except for Maki, potentially, because this is also the one AU in which her assassin cult is actually real and she might have to just go back to killing people once she graduates. This is Unacceptable and needs to have something done about it, because Maki deserves a happy life even more than anyone else after what she’s been through.

One of the possible ways of dealing with this is that Shuichi would fix things for her using his detective skills, like he offers to do in her last FTE in canon. He wouldn’t directly take down the assassin cult himself, but he could amass enough evidence of its awful deeds to pass on to some kind of government authority which could then move in and arrest all of its members and take the kids somewhere safe.

One time while I was thinking about this, though, a thought occurred to me: what if the assassin cult got wind of the fact that Shuichi was investigating them? What would they do then?

Imagine Maki going back to her work after graduation while clinging to the thought that it won’t be long now, that this new name on her hit list might just be the last person she’ll ever have to kill before it’s over and she’s free… only to see the name Shuichi Saihara.

And, well, that thought sure wouldn’t get out of my head and blossomed into an entire story. It would take me too long to write this as an actual fic, so instead, here’s just all of the ideas I had for how things would go, essentially telling the story right here in bullet-point form.

Part 1: how we got there

Let’s assume Hope’s Peak privileges meant that Maki didn’t have to work as an assassin while she was attending. So she’d begun to get used to having a relatively normal, non-murdery life for the three years she was there, especially with everything Kaito did to help her start facing her issues and feel more like a normal girl than a murderer.

Perhaps Maki had begun to hope, after Kaito had helped her admit that she never wanted to kill anyone, that Hope’s Peak’s supposed privilege of making its graduates “set for life” could mean that she wouldn’t have to be an assassin any more. Like, the Academy would pull some strings with the assassin cult to just completely cut her ties with it and let her live freely without the fear of those kids starving if she didn’t do what she was ordered to.

Towards the end of the three years, Kaito and Shuichi start to worry about what’ll happen to Maki once she graduates and ask her if they can do anything, but Maki tells them that she expects Hope’s Peak will do something like that for her and she’ll be fine. (She’s not completely sure they will, but she doesn’t want her friends to worry.)

…Except, that doesn’t happen. Turns out what Hope’s Peak meant by “set for life” in Maki’s case is that she’ll get to be an assassin for life. In one of her FTEs, Maki vaguely alludes to the fact that assassins in her cult are killed off once they’ve outlived their usefulness – like, perhaps, when they reach adulthood and are old enough to possibly start thinking for themselves. All Hope’s Peak did by pulling strings was make it so that that won’t happen to Maki, so that she’s trapped in her life of killing people forever! How nice of them!!!

When she learns this, Maki probably doesn’t even want to tell Kaito and Shuichi, because she doesn’t want to worry them and anyway there’s nothing they can do about it (right?). Kaito, of course, notices her acting off and distant and prods the truth out of her. Even then, Maki insists that it’s not a big deal, she’ll be able to handle it now that Kaito’s helped her feel like she’s more than just a killer; she can just live a double-life between horrible murderer and normal person and be fine, right?

Kaito and Shuichi both try to tell her that would not be remotely okay, but she insists that she doesn’t want them doing anything reckless for her sake. Besides, at least this means that she’ll never have to be replaced, meaning that as long as she’s alive and killing people, none of the other kids from her orphanage (those kids that Kaede played piano for, and that Himiko’s arranged to do a magic show for soon!) will ever have to go through what she did. That’s worth it to her.

(Kaito and Shuichi are still not okay with this, but they don’t push the topic for now.)

 At Himiko’s orphanage magic show, everything is generally adorable and lovely, and Maki uses this to firmly remind herself that these kids’ smiles are what she’s being a murderer for, that it’s fine and she can handle this and nothing needs to change.

But while she’s there for the show, Maki happens to get talking with one of the kids, a girl of around ten or so, and gets the most horrifying pit in her stomach as she realises that the men who recruit assassins have been visiting, and they have their eye on this girl.

They’re replacing Maki anyway. She’s not saving anyone by continuing to be a murderer. Nothing she does as an assassin, not even as the Hope’s Peak-approved Ultimate Assassin, is ever going to make a difference to this cycle of misery.

And, that’s it. That’s the last straw. Maki manages to keep herself together long enough for the magic show to end and Himiko to remain unaware of anything weird, but as soon as they’re alone, she turns to Kaito and Shuichi and begs them to help her end this. She doesn’t want this any more, not for herself or for any of those other kids. Hope’s Peak has shown itself to not give a fuck, so Kaito and Shuichi are the only people she can turn to. She has no idea how they can do something about this – it barely seems possible at all – but that… that’s never stopped Kaito, right!?

As it turns out, Kaito and Shuichi have already been having discussions about how they can help Maki while she wasn’t around (because they knew if they brought it up in front of her she’d just shut them down), so Shuichi has already been thinking about investigating the assassin cult and taking it down that way.

Kaito was still planning on bringing this up to Maki soon and persuading her to let Shuichi help. But he’s so incredibly proud that Maki realised on her own that she didn’t want this anymore and has made the decision to try and change her fate and claw her way towards something that seems impossible! (Of course, she’d never have been able to reach that mindset without everything Kaito’s done for her, but because he didn’t have to push her to take that final step, Kaito probably doesn’t quite realise just how completely thanks to him this is.)

Part 2: the ickiest job

So now we’re basically at the point I described in the beginning of this post. As soon as they graduate from Hope’s Peak, Shuichi gets underway with investigating the assassin cult to prove what it really does and who its members are. Maki has to go back to reporting to them and acting like she works for them for the time being, but she knows it won’t be long until Shuichi ends this.

Kaito put his astronaut training on hold for now just so that he can keep an eye on them both. He has Shuichi keep him updated about the progress of his investigation, and he keeps talking to Maki as often as he can to make sure she’s feeling okay about being suddenly thrust back into that world that she’d almost escaped from. She’s mostly doing fine, but that’s only because she hasn’t received any new hit requests yet.

Until she does. Maki tells herself that this new order is going to be the last one ever, that she’ll only have to kill one more person before Shuichi can save her… and then she sees Shuichi’s name, and everything falls apart.

She can’t refuse the order. She just can’t. The cult is still fully functional and in control of her orphanage – who knows what they would do to those kids (and to that one girl they’ve already got their eye on!) if she refuses. The kids have always been why she’s doing this. She would do anything to keep them safe; she made that promise to herself long ago.

She also knows perfectly well why the cult gave this job to her rather than any of their other assassins with no connection to Shuichi. They wanted to see if she was still capable of doing it, because if she wasn’t, then she’d be compromised and of no use to them any more. If she refused, they’d probably kill her off anyway, despite their agreement with Hope’s Peak.

It’s not like that would even save Shuichi, either – they’d just pass the job onto another of their assassins. And not all of them specialise in painless deaths. Shuichi was already doomed from the moment the cult realised what he was doing and decided he had to die. Surely Maki being the one to do it, as quickly and kindly as she can, is the best way for it to happen?

Who was she kidding thinking she could ever get out of this, anyway? Assassins are always necessary. Her being an assassin has always been necessary. It doesn’t matter what she wants or how she feels. It never mattered. The impossible is just impossible; she should never have allowed herself the luxury of believing any of Kaito’s idealistic nonsense.

Kaito, who reached out to her and still believed in her even after learning the truth about her, and now she’s going to repay that kindness by murdering his best friend. He never should have got close to her and made the mistake of caring about her in the first place, and then Shuichi wouldn’t have put himself in the cult’s way and the two of them could have been just fine without her. She’s just a murderer who only ever hurts people. She never deserved them.

So, as she’s sinking into a pit of utter despair (and I am not using that word lightly here), Maki prepares herself to break into Shuichi’s house at night and kill him in his sleep. That way, at least he’ll never know that his “friend” betrayed him.

Meanwhile, Kaito heard from one of Shuichi’s recent check-ins that at one point he worried his cover might have been blown, but things seem to have been okay for the past few days, so, eh, probably not?

Except… that night, Maki suddenly doesn’t show up to Kaito’s regular mini training sessions to check on how she’s doing. She doesn’t answer his texts or calls when he tries to ask her where she is, either. He might have brushed it off as simply something having come up and her having forgotten to tell him, and also forgotten to charge her phone… but Maki doesn’t forget things like that. Then Kaito remembers what Shuichi told him the other day, and he pieces it together.

and, no, no no no no no, this can’t happen. He won’t let this happen. He’s meant to be their hero, he has to be able to do something about this, he has to.

So Kaito drops everything and just fucking sprints to Shuichi’s house in the middle of the night, his heart in his mouth, begging the stars and the universe and every force of good in the world to let him not be too late.

Maki stands over a sleeping, oblivious Shuichi, trying to convince herself that her hand holding the knife isn’t shaking, that she never had a choice, that she’s just a heartless killer who doesn’t care – only to be snapped out of it by Kaito’s voice yelling her name at the top of his lungs. Not just her name, her nickname: Maki Roll! He knows why she’s here, but she doesn’t want to do this!

And Maki, knowing that she should just finish the job right now and escape out the window before Kaito has to see her do it, finds herself frozen. Shuichi’s awake now, staring at her in bewilderment and fear, no longer blissfully oblivious… and Kaito’s right. She doesn’t want to do this. It shouldn’t matter, but he’s right.

Moments later, Kaito makes it into Shuichi’s bedroom and immediately puts himself between Maki and Shuichi. (Shuichi, having only just woken up, is not only frightened but also extremely confused and is quite happy to just stay behind Kaito where it feels safer for the moment until he can get his brain to process what the hell is going on.)

Kaito makes it very clear that if Maki’s going to kill Shuichi, she’s going to have to kill him, too. He’s not letting either of his sidekicks get hurt.

Maki’s assassin mask is not on so tightly that she can’t realise what Kaito means by those words. He’s not only protecting Shuichi from being killed; he’s trying to protect her from carrying out the act by making it as difficult for her as possible. He still cares about her, even though she was moments away from murdering his best friend. He still believes that she won’t kill him despite what she was about to do to Shuichi. How can he be such an idiot?

But of course Kaito still believes in her; Maki Roll’s his sidekick! – and Maki snaps at him to stop calling her that! She’s not a normal girl; she’s never going to get to be one. He’s doing that thing he does, where he makes her believe that she deserves to be happy, that the impossible can be possible, and maybe it is for him, but it’s not for her; it never was.

This whole time, she’s still brandishing her knife, but it’s like in those sprites of hers – she’s not pointing it at Kaito or Shuichi; she’s just holding it out like some kind of barrier, like she can stop Kaito’s words getting through to her. She can’t falter here, because those kids, that girl – who knows what’d happen to them? And it’d be all her fault, because she was selfish, because she let herself care too much, because Kaito brought that out of her like he never should have done.

But Kaito just smiles and tells her that hey, sure the impossible’s possible for her as well, they’ve just gotta work together to make it so! There’s gotta be a way out of this, too, right, Shuichi?

(because Kaito doesn’t have a goddamn clue how to actually fix this situation beyond putting himself between Maki and Shuichi in this moment so she won’t be able to go through with it, but Shuichi should know a proper way out of this, right? Shuichi always knows what to do.)

Shuichi, having more or less managed to calm his panic enough to understand what’s going on by now, tells her that he’s almost finished with his investigation. He’s pretty sure he only needs a few more days’ work to have everything he needs to take it to the authorities and take down the cult. Then those kids will be safe and Maki won’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do any more. She just needs to trust him and believe that it’s possible.

While he’s telling her this, Shuichi moves out from behind Kaito, a silent show of the fact that he still trusts her despite what he knows she almost did. He believes just like Kaito does that Maki doesn’t want to do this, that so long as she knows that there is a way out of this, then she’ll be brave enough to take that risk and let him help her.

It works. Maki had already admitted that she didn’t want this life any more before getting the hit request on Shuichi; her mask was hanging on by a thread the whole time she was here and it can’t withstand this. She kind of just breaks and begins to cry – the first time that Kaito and Shuichi have ever seen her do so. Kaito goes to hug her, partly as an excuse to gently take the knife from her, but mostly just because she really, really needs it. She doesn’t resist.

Kaito spends the hug telling her that everything’s going to be okay, not like it’s a reassurance but just like it’s fact, and in that Kaito way he has, he manages to get her to just about believe it herself.

 Part 3: on the run

After Maki’s done sobbing into Kaito’s shoulder, she pulls herself together and gets down to business. The cult will be expecting her to report in that she’s completed the job soon, possibly as early as tomorrow. As soon as they realise she hasn’t and has gone rogue, they’ll send in other assassins to kill both her and Shuichi, so they can’t stay there.

(She’s still worried about what’ll happen to the kids, but Shuichi reassures her that they won’t be able to risk doing anything drastic to them for now, not when they know Shuichi’s onto them and looking for evidence of shady activity. Now of all times is when they’d want to keep pretending to be a perfectly normal orphanage that takes care of its kids. If they’re going to hurt the kids, it’ll happen later, and Shuichi’s going to make sure there won’t be a later for those assholes.)

For the time being, though, Shuichi and Maki are going to have to go into hiding. Shuichi will continue to investigate as best he can from there and Maki can use her knowledge of assassin methods to predict the ways in which the other assassins will be looking for them and keep them both safe.

And Kaito? …Technically he has nothing to do with this; the cult has no reason to want him dead and possibly doesn’t even know he has any connection to Maki or Shuichi beyond Hope’s Peak. He could just walk away from this right here and be safe.

When Maki tries to point this out to him, Kaito just stares at her and says, “Are you stupid or something?” and that’s the end of that.

(Of course she knew he’d be too stubborn to even consider leaving them like this, but she still couldn’t help but try and get him to do so, just because then at least he’d definitely get out of this alive and unhurt.)

So the three of them get the hell out of there, cut all communication with everyone else they know for the time being for their safety, and go into hiding.

(Maki makes Kaito ditch the hairstyle before they leave because it’s way too eye-catching when they need to lay low. He pretends to be indignant at first – surely there’s gotta be some kinda downside to doing that! – but then dutifully sticks his head under Shuichi’s shower for a couple of minutes without complaint.)

Kaito may not have much skill in terms of investigating or physically protecting them, but he’s here for moral support. Which isn’t just a trite excuse to make himself feel important – his friends genuinely need that more than ever.

After all, Shuichi and Maki are both kind of terrified and barely holding it together. Shuichi’s never been in a situation this dangerous before, and he’s anxious enough at the best of times. And Maki’s afraid not just for the three of them but also for the kids – if they don’t succeed, those kids will suffer the consequences too and it’ll be all her fault. So having Kaito there, somehow still managing to be his usual optimistic self, means the world to them right now.

(Kaito is equally terrified, of course. He’s just better than either of them at hiding it, and determined to do so because he knows that they need him to be strong for them, and that this is the only thing he can really do for them in this situation at all.)

Maki is quietly impressed by how strong Kaito’s managing to be for them. She’s always seen him as – well, sure, the friend who changed her life and inspired her to believe things could be better, but also as just a carefree ridiculous idiot who’d never had to go through the kind of horrors from her world. She was never entirely sure whether he’d really be able to stay that optimistic if he experienced anything close to as serious as what she’d been through – not that she ever wanted to have to find that out, of course.

Yet here Kaito is, in this life-or-death situation, still managing to make this seem like it’s just a big adventure where the good guys are obviously going to win, because that’s just how things work!

(And Maki knows full well that there’s no way Kaito’s really that oblivious to how serious the situation is, that he’s doing this on purpose to help them, and that’s… kind of incredible, actually?)

Shuichi’s much less surprised to see Kaito like this, because he’d always been under the impression that Kaito really is this strong. He’d never exactly imagined they’d ever be in this kind of situation, obviously, but even so, it just feels natural somehow that Kaito would be able to do this for them.

Kaito, on his end, is so proud to see how well his sidekicks are holding up. It’s such an incredible sign of Maki’s growth that she’s able to bring herself to fight against the cult and try and escape the reality she’d resigned herself to for so long.

And meanwhile, Kaito never realised Shuichi would be so good in a crisis. Sure, he still seems to be scared, but despite that, he’s able to focus on his task and Get Shit Done in a way that Kaito himself feels utterly lost with right now. This is the first time in this universe that Kaito has really found himself not only being proud of Shuichi, but almost… looking up to him?

(Oh you poor innocent UTDP Kaito, you have no idea.)

Being Kaito, he is also significantly underestimating the extent to which Maki and Shuichi are only able to be this strong because he’s there supporting them, despite the fact he’s very deliberately trying to do that for them and knows that it’s the only thing he’s really contributing here.

I’m not sure precisely how things go while they’re on the run, because the exact plot logistics of how Shuichi can investigate the assassin cult are not a thing I’m great at figuring out. (This is part of the reason why I won’t actually write this as a fic, aside from just not having the time.)

I’m here for the character stuff, so I’ve mostly been thinking about the quiet moments in between the detective espionage where the three of them are relatively safe together in whatever hideout they’re using. Kaito would, of course, still insist on training sessions each night – at least as much as is possible while they’re trying to stay inconspicuous and keep an eye out for enemies – and they’d be able to use those as moments to collect their thoughts and reflect on the situation.

Maki would feel awful for the fact that Kaito and Shuichi are putting themselves in this much danger just to help her. When Kaito notices she seems bothered about something that isn’t just the situation itself and prods this out of her, she’d try to insist that it’d have been better if they’d never met her and befriended her in the first place, and then they wouldn’t even know or care that child assassins like her are suffering because nobody was ever supposed to know or care.

Kaito scoffs at that idea completely. He’s a hero! Obviously he’s here to save people who are weak and suffering, so of course he should have befriended Maki in order to be able to help her and those kids like they’re doing now. What kind of idiot is she being to think he wouldn’t have wanted to do this from the start!?

Shuichi, being rather more realistic about things, admits that of course he’s really scared right now and a part of him wishes he hadn’t got wrapped up in this. But still, Kaito (and Kaede, and others) helped him realise during their time at Hope’s Peak how much he cares about helping people, and that he can use his detective skills to do that – so he’s really proud that he’s able to use his detective skills right now to literally save lives, both for Maki and those other kids. So yes, he’s scared… but he doesn’t have any regrets either.

Maki is also still hung up on and feeling awful about the part where she nearly murdered Shuichi. She can’t stop thinking that she might have actually gone through with it if Kaito hadn’t got there in time.

Shuichi hesitantly tells her that he doesn’t think she would have done – at least, he doesn’t want to think so. He saw the look in her eyes as she was standing over him when Kaito’s voice woke him up, and thinking on it now, he’s pretty sure that wasn’t the look of someone who could have done it.

(Shuichi doesn’t consider, however, that that was after Kaito’s voice woke him up, and Kaito’s voice was what started to take Maki’s mask down, too.)

Kaito insists it just doesn’t matter. He did get there in time, and she didn’t kill Shuichi because she didn’t truly want to, and so there’s no point getting worked up about possibilities when they’re not what actually happened and are never going to happen now.

(He wants to tell himself that he believes Maki still wouldn’t have done it anyway, that her better nature would have broken through and stopped her without his help. But, then again, would he really have run so desperately to Shuichi’s place like he had if he’d truly believed that? Kaito doesn’t voice that thought.)

Maki then brings up the fact that there’s always the possibility she could still kill Shuichi right now and potentially get herself and the kids out of this situation safely. How on earth can either of them truly trust that she won’t after she almost did so before?

Kaito’s answer is simple – because he wants to! He wants to believe that she’s stronger than that, that she can believe Shuichi will save them and isn’t going to give up and take the coward’s way out. After all, she’s his sidekick, and of course a sidekick of his is capable of facing something like this with courage! She already showed that when she stopped herself before!

Shuichi agrees that he wants to believe in Maki – because she’s his friend. He knows that he wouldn’t want to kill his friends if he were in Maki’s shoes, and would try as hard as he could to find some other way out, so he wants to believe that Maki feels the same way.

Maki relents and accepts that they really mean that and really aren’t scared of her in this situation at all. After all, she wants to believe that she’s stronger than that, too – and if they believe in her that much, despite everything, then maybe she really is that strong after all.

They are friends. That’s the core of this whole story – these three friends who are so scared of losing each other and of losing themselves, just desperately holding onto each other and protecting each other through this terrifying situation. Shuichi’s detective skills are necessary to take down the cult and end this; Maki’s assassin skills are necessary to protect them while he’s doing this; Kaito’s luminary skills are necessary because without his support Shuichi and Maki would both fall apart. (And without Kaito’s friendship over their time at Hope’s Peak, neither of them would have even dreamed of trying to do this, that it was even possible to take down the cult and give Maki a happy ending in the first place.) They need each other and they are FRIENDS and I love them so much.

Part 4: the end

I’m not quite sure precisely how things would end, because aaaa plot logistics again. But one way or another, they succeed in taking down the cult and get out alive. One universe in which even one of these friends dies is more than enough and I’m not about to make another.

Maybe during some kind of final showdown, Kaito makes an unthinking reckless leap to protect Maki, which succeeds, but he ends up getting shot in his left arm because of it. I dunno, I just think the parallel to what happens to him in canon would be neat.

While everyone is otherwise fine, Maki feels guilty that they didn’t all get out unhurt. Now Kaito’s going to have to postpone starting his astronaut training for several months while his injury heals and it’s all because of her. Kaito literally could not care less, though; this is the most insignificant price to pay for Maki and Shuichi and those kids being safe.

Maki keeps insisting that it’s not okay, that he shouldn’t have got hurt on her account, and in Kaito’s increasingly fervent attempts to get her to drop it, he kind of accidentally blurts out that this is nothing because he was ready to die for them if he needed to.

When Shuichi and Maki press him on that, he clams up and doesn’t elaborate. He meant what he said, but that’s all there is to it, stop talking about it, guys.

(Kaito spent enough time while on the run thinking about how he couldn’t bear to lose Shuichi and Maki, such that he realised he would rather die trying to protect them than live knowing that he’d failed to do so. He has no regrets about having decided that, but… he’s kind of shaken up by the thought of it. It’s the first time in his life he’s really properly thought about his own mortality, not just in the sense that life is short and you never know what might happen (guess who lost his parents to a car crash), but in terms of being genuinely prepared to die if it should ever become necessary. He’s always been so fiercely determined to live his life to the fullest; it’s… weird to know that he would have willingly cut it short. That he’d have been the one to prevent himself from ever making it into space.)

(Oh you poor innocent UTDP Kaito, you have no idea, again.)

Long story short, they’re all safe and free to live out the rest of their lives now, but they’re also just a liiiiittle bit traumatised by this.

Kaito would of course try to hide the fact that any of this got to him, just like he hid how scared he was while it was actually happening, because they need him to help with their trauma and how could he do that if they knew he was struggling too?

Kaito’s outburst about being ready to die for them and the way he was uncomfortable and cagey about it afterwards would give Shuichi and Maki an inroad to realise that something’s up with him, though. So one way or another, with enough prodding and reassurance, they’d eventually be able to get through to him and make him realise that it’s okay to show weakness to them and it doesn’t make him any less inspiring of a hero. 

(Yes, it’s me; I couldn’t resist finding a way to put that outcome in this AU too. Kaito deserves to get over his issues and learn not to be an idiot about this no matter what universe he’s in.)

So they’ll all be okay in the end. Even Kaito.

Regardless of their newfound issues that they’re having to work through, both Kaito and Shuichi firmly agree that it was worth it. They’d have taken twice this amount of pain if that was the only way they could save Maki and all those kids like her from ever having to go through even worse trauma ever again.

Kaito’s a hero, after all! – and this whole thing has made Shuichi realise more than ever, after Kaito points it out to him, that maybe he can be a hero too.

(Alternatively, instead of this ending described here, maybe Kaito has a considerably worse time than just getting shot in the arm.)