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When she was a kid, Ibuki almost died.
It’s not that cool of a story, actually, but it’s funny. Or, most of the time it’s funny. She gets a laugh from the other person probably two out of three times, and the other time it’s something like:
“You had to go to the hospital because you were hit in the head by a… coconut?” Amami asks incredulously, nearly spilling over his milkshake. Ibuki sniffs, taking a long and pointed drag from her own drink as she looks him in the eye.
“Not a coconut, three of them. Ibuki thought you of all people would understand,” she laments when she’s finished, picking at her ear. “She did it while traveling on an illegal fishing boat, you know! And doesn’t Amami-chan love doing illegal stuff all the time?”
“No, I don’t,” says Amami.
“W-well, Amami-chan loves to travel!”
“Which isn’t necessarily illegal,” he says, sighing longer. “Mioda-san, I get a little concerned about the company you keep, sometimes.”
“Ibuki’s keeping company with you right now, so aren’t you just roasting yourself?”
“Hm.” His lips quirk into a smile. “Ah, fair enough. Consider me ‘roasted’, then.”
Ibuki’s about to go into a spiel about how he owes her a soda or a popsicle or something, now, when his face takes a serious turn. “W-what’s that look for?”
“Is that your real backstory?”
“You don’t have to call someone’s history their ‘backstory’,” Ibuki rolls her eyes. “Give Ibuki some credit, alright?”
“But it’s not what physically happened to you,” he says a little more firmly, a little more sadly.
“No,” she admits, “it’s not.”
-
Ibuki’s like Amami, in the sense that neither of them actually exist.
She’s from the 50th season, the All Stars season where they decided to bring back a bunch of fan favorites. Of course, those fan favorites either never existed in the first place or were dead as a doornail, so they took a lookalike on the street and messed them up until they actually fit the mold of what they wanted.
When she looks in the mirror, she can see the differences. Her face is longer, her nose smaller, and her eyes aren’t even the right color. She’s double jointed and can twist her hand backwards, and she chopped her hair short with a pair of safety scissors once she got out of her season. Pissed off production, but it’d been her tiny ‘fuck you’, the only one she’d had the courage to muster up.
Her family? Didn’t know ‘em. Amami’s? Didn’t know ‘em either. It wasn’t because she hadn’t tried, but because she didn’t care, and it was much cooler to think she had spent her days spelunking across the world than it was to acknowledge she’d been a boring girl who’s most interesting trait was the doodles she did in her notebook margins and she’d only signed up for Danganronpa because it was popular.
Amami was an anomaly, because he’d done it twice already and was going in a third time.
He had piercings, like her, so she considered that enough reason to knock on his front door once he had gotten out of the fifty-second season in the most punk rock look she could manage. He had opened the door with all the tiredness of a person who had either pulled a whole week of all-nighters or survived a killing game and had asked, “Who gave you this address?”
-
Here’s her secret: Ibuki Mioda likes pop music.
Not like the Ibuki Mioda from Super Danganronpa 2. She hated it, said it was an oppression of her individuality, and strived to prove that she was anything but generic. In that sense, it makes this Ibuki feel as if she’s betraying her.
She likes pop music, because it’s what’s popular and it also just kind of sounds nice. She said that in her season, and fans got so pissed off that they had to send everyone into a smoke-induced coma and fix her memories a bit so that she’d say the right thing, whatever they considered that was.
“Do you like this?” Amami had asked when she had snuck into sequester with him. The fifty-third season would begin in a week, and that meant he had to live under Team Danganronpa’s thumb in the most literal of senses, on the fifty-third (ha) floor of their main building. Ibuki only got in because they hadn’t had the presence of mind to change the password in the past three years, when she’d stayed there. “Mioda-san?”
Ibuki closes her eyes and listens, really listens, asks herself what she thinks. It’s bubblegum flavored music that pops and sparkles pink when she closes her eyes, all summer and everything that needed to be on the radio. “Uhm,” she says slowly, like she’s picking her way through a minefield, “yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s nice.”
Amami laughs, and she shoots a glare at him. “You’ve got a problem with Ibuki’s music taste?”
“No, not at all,” he hums. “I just don’t think I’ve ever heard you so hesitant over what you like or don’t like.”
“Well, okay. Ibuki said she likes this, so she likes this music.”
“Even though it’s pop music?”
She sits up violently, the earbud ripping out of her ear and playing muffled music into the covers. “So it was on purpose!”
“It was, sorry.” He at least has the sense to look guilty as he dips his head. “Will you ever forgive me?”
She huffs. “Ibuki’ll think about it.”
She doesn’t put the earbud back in, and the room is eerily silent without it. Though some of Amami’s personal belongings are in here with him, most of the space is covered by dozens and dozens of exclusive posters that he needs to sign before he kicks it so that they can sell for quadruple the price they normally would. She swallows thickly and turns. Amami’s sprawled out on the bed now, and if it weren’t for the fact that paranoia has taught her to tell the rhythm of someone’s sleeping breaths, she’d think he was asleep.
“Are you going to be okay in there?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Amami says, eyes still closed. “I’ve survived this twice before. Third time shouldn’t be any different.”
“Third time’s the charm.”
“Yeah. Third time’s the charm, and I’ll make sure to pass someone else the baton to redo a season and actually get out of this hellhole. I’m tired of spending my summers on television.” He opens his eyes. “I want to go on a cruise.”
“Then we can go on a cruise!” Ibuki promises fervently. “But only if you get out of there. If you die, Ibuki’ll kill you.”
“Ha.” Amami’s gaze shifts towards her. “Promise?”
She nods firmly. “Promise.”
-
She survives in a cowardly way.
Togami’s blood drips from the rafters when she finds him, limbs twisted unnaturally as she fights back a scream and the frothing from her mouth. Monokuma pops up and tells them all with great cheer that whoever did this is the one pulling the strings, so better get cracking, as if there wasn’t a great corporation pulling the strings all along.
So Junko Enoshima is the Mastermind, and though it comes as a shock to her, it doesn’t to anyone watching the season, nor does it come to a shock to the Historian with bright pink hair (10th season) or the Bird Trainer that looked like he walked straight out of hot topic (43rd season).
“I-I, I--” she says it as herself when everyone’s looking at Ibuki Mioda, at each other, trying to find a scapegoat to sacrifice as the upteenth Junko cackles maniacally, “I don’t want to do this again. I can’t do this again.
So the Bird Trainer does it. She feels bad for calling him edgy, especially when he’s the third victim in season 51.
-
She could do it, probably.
Super Danganronpa Ibuki Mioda would do it. And the fans might be pissed, but it’d also be great PR, right? Some generic BS of the two of them being lovers (even though she liked girls, and he liked boys) and wow, two fan favorites together? Fighting against society to get out of a killing game?
Probably.
It’s the ‘probably’ that keeps her back. Probably, it’ll be okay. Probably, they won’t be chased after by Team Danganronpa staff. Probably, they’ll be safe, and they probably won’t be sued or killed.
She digs her wrists into her eyes and breathes, frustration rapidly mounting. If she was that Ibuki, this would all be part of the thrill, wouldn’t it? She’d probably rent a party bus to do the deed, spraying paint everywhere and rescuing the rest of the survivors on the way, just for shits and giggles.
But she’s too cowardly to even save one.
She watches as Amami climbs out of the locker in the great premier, head heavy and as empty as ever. If nothing else, she finds herself taking comfort in the fact that his personality wasn’t rewritten this time around, that this Amami isn’t dissimilar to the one who listened to music with her in the still silence of his apartment.
“I’m not a suspicious guy, I swear!” he laughs on screen, and Ibuki covers up a smirk. Typical dumbass. Typical stupid, endearing, her friend Amami.
She thinks to herself, If he survives past Chapter One, I’ll drive a truck through the walls.
-
Amami’s the first victim.