Intro:

Howdy everyone, long time lurker first time poster. I've been a longtime fan of this series and even though my love for this series has waned in recent years V3 has always been my favorite game, I'm even one of those crazy people who think V3-6 is one of the best trials, and the ending the best in the series. But I've always felt like certain things where missed potential, not bad, I actually like the Protag Switch or open ending. But because they did certain things a certain way, they couldn't do other things. And I've always loved the idea of a AU that does things differently to give us a different perspective, and well we're getting that with 2x2 so the question is now, why not V3 too?

As a disclaimer I'm not changing up the plot/ truth of the outside world, nor changing Tsumugi's role as the mastermind, nor character personalities because at that point I'm just writing a Fangan. I'm actually allowing myself the ability to change only two things here, motives and more importantly, who Kaede wakes up with in the prologue. Which I believe these two alterations would result in a completely different death order.

Prologue:

As mentioned above the main point of divergence here is Kaede waking up at the start of the killing game with Rantaro over Shuichi. Why? Well besides the fact that I think they have good chemistry together, I honestly think Kaede and Rantaro waking up together is enough for them to form a bond, they're the first people they meet in an unusual situation, similar to how most school friendships are determined by who the teacher sits you with.

Beyond that, they have like really good chemistry together. Their free time events in V3 Chapter 1 are really sweet and I'm sad we never got to see that relationship develop further. Outside of that, there's no changes to the prologue.

Chapter 1:

Victim: K1-B0
Killer: Shuichi Saihara
Motive: Time Limit/ First Blood Perk (Unchanged from Ch.1)

This is very cruel I'll admit that because it means in neither timeline does Shuichi and Kaede's relationship last a week at most. But I feel like this victim killer pairing makes the most sense that isn't just "Shuichi had the shotput ball" so please hear me out.

Chapter 1 plays out as normal, with Rantaro discovering the hidden door due to his Survivor Perk and Shuichi being the Ultimate Detective finding it out on his own. However I am allowing myself one extra "change" here, on the 2nd to last day before the time limit expires.

What if K1-B0 got hurt, hurt in a way that Miu couldn't fix?

I feel like in the eyes of Team Danganronpa, Miu Iruma was a creation of necessity more then anything as soon as the concept of K1-B0 being the audiences surrogate was approved. But it's likely they needed a fallback incase Miu couldn't (or wouldn't) fix K1-B0, or he was injured in scenario where Miu died (which actually happened). And that fallback would simply be K1-B0 being put on autopilot and entering the backrooms through the hidden door in the library for service.

So what if that happened, say K1-B0 had a memory error, and Miu wouldn't fix him because she feared if she fried him, that'd be considered murder and she would be executed for it. So Team Danganronpa during the night would use this fallback, and recall K1-B0 to the hidden room for service, before remotely blanking his memory of the whole thing. Expect during this Shuichi saw K1-B0 enter the library and believing K1-B0 to be the mastermind, plotted to kill him?

K1-B0 is found dead, and Kaede outs Shuichi as the culprit, with him explaining that he SAW K1-B0 enter the hidden room, and didn't take the first blood perk because he assumed the game to be over, and thought Monokuma/ The Monokubs would shut down any moment now. Shuichi is executed and the cast stands there wondering if he was actually telling the truth.

This is where another major change comes into play, and is how I'm escaping my rule on changing character personalities. With K1-B0 dead, a certain person is forced to "cosplay" as the audience surrogate and forcefully insert herself into the story as a major player, and that of course is Tsumugi Shirogane. With a hidden ear/mic piece and a hidden camera in her glasses. She becomes the eyes of the audience. And as the audience surrogate, she needs to play an active role in the killing game and become less "plain" to make the other participants actually want to interact with her.

Chapter 2:

Victim: Kokichi Oma
Killer: Miu Iruma
Motive: Secret Hidden in the Virtual World

Disclaimer: I have alot less to say on Chapters 2-5. Chapter 1 set up alot of different things and needed alot more words.

I do feel like if this where to happen, it'd be admittedly, very predictable. Well I did appreciate V3-4, the concept of Miu being the culprit and killing in a world where reality bends to her will was so cool and I would love to see Miu as a V3x3 culprit. I feel like also killing her off early game would make things interesting for the surviving characters as they don't have access to Eletro-Bombs, Hammers or Miu's intellect period.

I also feel like this hypothetical Chapter 2 would be alot harder to solve then V3-4. Monotaro gave the cast like half of the info used to solve the case, that's not happening here. Post Kokichi body discovery, Miu would absolutely omit or delete details from the games code in order to cover her tracks. I also think Tsumugi could be the MVP of the trial here as she's very much a nerd and would apply game logic to a game, well everyone else is applying reality logic to the case. (She's also the mastermind and likely saw the cast would've voted incorrectly but I am very much trying to make her a character here not just "the mastermind")

Essentially Miu would be playing chess well everyone else is playing checkers and even if everyone would be screaming at their screens the second the BDA music plays "MIU DID IT" there is so much you could do to make this case interesting and fun to solve. Maybe the virtual world used a different map and so game mechanics like saving/reloading, warp points, collision error's and more are used instead.

Chapter 3:

Victim: Gonta Gokuhara
Killer: Maki Harukawa
Motive: Motive Videos (Unchanged from Ch.2)

No I didn't forget Kaito here, bare with me. Also when making this death order this was the LAST chapter I did, and is absolutely, my weakest idea out of everything here. But. I did try.

Maki was always a sweet character to me, and I appreciated how she came out of her shell over the course of the game through Kaito. I actually think she's my favorite out of the 12 survivors across 1,2 and V3. But what if Kaito was never there and instead of opening up, she hardened her defenses?

Why, well Kaito is still here and his personality would have changed, but what DID change is who did and didn't die. Kaede never died, and Shuichi on account of being dead never became his "sidekick", and Kaito never really got a chance to take in Maki to begin with because Kokichi died too early to out her as an assassin, and suspicion never fell on her in trial 2, so Kaito didn't even get a chance to defend her. So alone her defenses harden. And Tsumugi seeing her (as well as other characters) teetering, Monokuma issues the motive videos we see in V3-2. Maki gets her own video this time and seeing it threatening the kids at her Orphanage she decides to plan a murder.

Gonta I feel is a fitting character to die here. I'm not 100% as him as a survivor because he's sweet but narratively simple and he was already a killer in the base V3. Maki could easily take him on in a fight and knows he can be easily manipulated. She is an assassin afterall.

But how does Kaito die in all this? Well...

Chapter 3.1:

Victim: Kaito Momota
Culprit: Kirumi Togo

I'm gonna skip over the fact that two killers was missed potential in Chapter 3, since you've heard this a billion times before and go to the how. Kaito would be his typical self, but with no Shuichi, I think the people he latches onto is Kirumi and Rantaro (maybe Kaede too). Kirumi remains strictly professional basically the entire time from the prologue to when she loses all sense of dignity in Chapter 2. And I really see Katio breaking though that and trying to pull out Kirumi the person, not Kirumi the Maid, and I see it working with Kirumi being more personable around Chapter 2 and 3. But why does she kill him? Well like Ryoma I think he allows it. When she receives her motive video it eats her alive knowing the country of Japan is suffering without her, and so she talked to Kaito. And Kaito being Kaito probably tells her to do it if Chapter 5 of V3 is anything to go off of.

"It's all of us, versus a whole country.... huh? Do it then, they're all waiting for you, don't hold back, right now or at the class trial. I believe in you"

Cheesy yes, but still heartbreaking and even more heartbreaking when Kaede breaks though everything and the cast realizes that Kaito's death didn't count and that he sacrificed himself for utterly nothing. We then get to see Kirumi slowly dig herself back out of that hole during Ch. 4-6

Chapter 4:

Victim: Himiko Yumeno
Killer: Tenko Chabashira
Motive: ---

I don't have a motive for this because unlike the 3 prior chapters, this murder isn't a response or uses a certain motive. So I'm leaving it blank here.

Anyways on the topic of reverse/anti-character arcs! Himiko! Tenko and Angie being alive I actually think would make her worse off, she has nothing really to live for and looking into her dialogue in Chapters 1-3 she could easily be written as having depression... so what if by Chapter 4, seeing 7 people die or be executed, and living among a killer. Himiko loses all will to live, and ends her life... but instead of just going out peacefully she decides that if she's going to die, then at-least someone deserves to benefit off of it and that person being the only person she made a genuine connection with, Tenko. Even if Tenko couldn't save her or reach her, she did atleast make her time at this hellish academy a touch more bearable.

Himiko sets off a "trap" so to speak that means technically Tenko killed her, not herself. Like 2-5 but instead of trying to kill everyone she's trying to save Tenko by making a case so complex that Tenko doesn't even realize she's the killer. Tenko's dialogue would be utterly heartbreaking as she slowly realizes she's the killer, and all We/Kaede can do is put the final nail in her coffin by explaining what she did in the closing argument.

Also you might be wondering is "Where's Angie in all this?" Well...

Chapter 5:

Victim: Angie Yonaga
Killer: Rantaro Amami
Motive: N/A

This is where Angie takes center stage here. Angie was always so interesting to me especially in Chapter 3. She manipulated people and formed almost a cult, and well you can say she did it to help people, you can easily read her as using this opportunity at a chance at power, and it's kinda sad that she just died because she walked in on Kiyo in Chapter 3. So what if she didn't? What if she spent the entire game trying to manipulate people for power within the academy.

Kokichi is a character built off of lies, and is the natural foil to Shuichi, but Angie is a character built off of control, and could be read as Kaede's foil who tries to empower people.

Unlike Togami, Nagito or Kokichi who spend the whole game being assholes, Angie I feel would be alot more subtler then that, she'd likely creep some people out, enough that Himiko wouldn't be friends with her and only have Tenko. But she'd be way more subtle then the three "main" foils/ antagonists.

As for Chapter 5 now. My idea goes all the way back to Chapter 2, Angie finds the truth hidden in the virtual world. We don't know which "truth" it was in the official games so giving myself some liberty here, Angie Yonaga learns the truth of the 53rd killing game and Team Danganronpa, as well as her true nature. But instead of going mental, she uses this. She realizes that if the only world she and her class can exist in is this academy. Then she'll make this world HER world, she'll take control of this world and make it so boring that the 53rd killing game ends because the characters stopped playing it and the audience stopped watching.

Throughout the game she's been making people doubt their memories that Team Danganronpa gave them in the flashback light and by Chapter 5 has taken an utter stranglehold among the students, except one, Rantaro. Seeing even Kaede fall for Angie, and a chance to end the game for good by making a murder Monokuma can't solve, he takes it.

I like the idea that Angie also tells him the truth and so the Rantaro we see after the vote is very very diffrenent from the Rantaro we've met. Maybe even asking if Angie was the right one afterall, which leads us into

Chapter 6:

Mastermind: Tsumugi Shirogane
Survivors: Kaede Akamatsu, Kirumi Togo, Korekiyo Shinguji & Ryoma Hoshi

This is where I might get alot of hate, this entire post has been a bunch of character hot takes but oh boy spiciness alert.

What leads to the Chapter 6 trial isn't exactly ONE thing, but a bunch of other things. Even if Kaede didn't know Shuichi that well, she knew he wasn't lying, especially not after the first vote when he had nothing to lose. What was the second motive? Miu didn't even know what it was, nor did she even use it, just the VR World. What was Rantaro talking about before his execution? A bunch of different questions, all leading up to one final class trial.

I'd say the flashback lights given are more or less the same, same with the survivors discovering the hidden room and Kaede finding out the flashback light machine. However instead of a copy and paste of V3-6 I want to go somewhere different.

What if Tsumugi got attached? Well their stories weren't real, their struggles where, and she... got attacked to that, to them, due to her being involved more and more as the surrogate for the audience. She saw these people as well, people.

When she's revealed as the Mastermind she doesn't cosplay as Junko, nor claims to be her. She tries to play the big bad evil girl, especially after Kaede's finds the truth of Danganronpa, and sends the cast into despair.

Expect for Ryoma. Ryoma had NOTHING waiting for him out there, but was able to find meaning in the killing game, so him being fictional is kinda preferable because maybe there is someone out there for him afterall? Ryoma plays the role of K1-B0 in this trial and is able to pull Kirumi, Kaede and Kiyo out of despair, enough that Kaede is able to break through Tsumugi's lies and gets her to admit that... she did care for them, not as characters but as real living people

With the now mastermind totally off script, Monokuma takes the role as the Mastermind, being their talking piece.

Avoiding turning this into fanfiction or applying my headcannons as cannon, I think I like the idea of Tsumugi's role also being fictional and her not working for Team Danganronpa but believing she was. Either helping the survivors escape and surviving as well, another victim of the killing game

Because what Tsumugi believes she isn't exactly the most reliable narrator still, even if she's trying to tell the truth so I don't think that if this happened this would be perceived as the "cannon" ending but just an ending that adds another puzzle piece into the truth of V3's ending period.

Conclusion:

Holy hell this took like way too long to write???? Anyways uh, yeah that's my likely very controversial idea for a V3x3, if you have any feedback feel free to post it here because this took like 2 irl hours to write up. Thank you so much if you read all of this yap fest!

Seriously the parking lot is so bad, why did they not put the stop signs on the curb 😭