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Leon Kuwata is born nineteen ninety-one, January the third.
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Teruteru Hanamura is born nineteen ninety-two, September the second.
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The world shifts.
. . . . . .
Leon grows up under pressure, a pushy father, a neglectful mother, and an obsessive cousin two years his junior.
It's no wonder when, at the age of eight, he runs away in the dead of night, bags packed and filled with necessities.
Aside from one single ball signed by a famous Japanese baseballer he couldn’t bring himself to leave behind.
He can't even remember who signed it.
Of course, the next day, an early morning jogger spots him curled up underneath a park bench and calls the local police station. Leon’s brought home within an hour.
And for a single second, Leon’s father does not seem concerned with baseball, with his son beating the next team in little leagues, isn’t worried about his son not throwing the balls as fast as he wants him to. For the first time in years, Leon Kuwata watches on in awe as his father seemingly worries about him- Leon- and him alone.
If he tries a little harder during baseball to get his father’s approval, ignoring aching muscles and agonising cramps as the years drag on... well, that’s for him to know, and everyone else to never find out.
. . . . . .
At the tender age of ten years old, Leon is hailed as a baseball prodigy.
Baseball magazines wax poetics about his superhuman abilities when it comes to the ball, write about how he’s the next Hideo Nomo to greet the land of the rising sun, and Leon?
Leon feels giddy.
And when he turns eleven in two thousand and two, he begs his father to bring him to an American stadium to watch Ichiro Suzuki in the Mariners.
His father challenges him, and when Leon pitches a ball at ninety-seven point fourty four miles per hour, his fastest yet, his father claps him on the back and buys the tickets.
. . . . . .
At thirteen, sweating and heaving for breath, his middle school baseball coach walks over, and with an awed look, drops his clipboard down in front of Leon’s red face.
“One hundred and seven point forty-two!” He blurts out, a giddy look plastered all over his face, and he looks down at Leon with obvious pride. “I’m prouda you, Leon.”
He can’t stop the wide grin that stretches across his lips, and he leaps up, dragging his coach down to his height to clutch him into a bone breaking hug, tears welling up in his eyes as he breathlessly gasps:
“Thank you.”
. . . . . .
It’s when he’s fifteen and been to three summer Koshien, and he knows he was too young to attend all three of them, but that didn’t stop the high schools from recruiting him into their teams for the summer, when he realises just how talented in baseball he truly is.
He’s coming back from practice, forehead damp with sweat, running his hand through his short buzz cut and texting his father on the brand-new Sony Ericsson K800i about the summer Koshien coming up soon when he spots it.
A letter sprawled out on the floor.
He swipes it up from the floor as he slides off his outdoor shoes and changes into his slippers, hanging up his bookbag on a nearby hanger before strolling through to the living room, opening the letter idly before he glances down.
He freezes.
To Leon Kuwata,
Congratulations. We are pleased to announce that you have been invited to attend the main course at Hope’s Peak Academy, a prestigious government funded school where only those at the top of their respective fields are invited to attend. All necessary items will be provided to you including, housing, food, uniforms, and school materials. You may bring personal items if you wish. We await your arrival.
Yours sincerely,
The principle of Hope’s Peak Academy,
Jin Kirigiri.
. . . . . .
When he first meets class seventy-seven, he thinks:
What a bunch of lunatics!
Of course, this is after they’ve all been dragged into the classroom by their forceful new teacher, Yukizome-sensei, and they're all a little bit pissed and Leon’s not much better, barely keeping his annoyance under control as he grumbles under his breath about rude awakenings, having been caught napping on a tree branch on the school campus.
Leon hits it off with Mioda, Tsumiki, Koizumi, Owari and Souda. Don’t ask him why, they just seem to click, and within ten minutes of meeting each other he’s got Koizumi brightly acknowledging him as a ‘dependable person’.
That, weirdly enough, is probably the highlight of his entire day.
. . . . . .
It's when Leon can’t find class seventy-seven’s class president in the cafeteria, that he truly begins to bond with her.
He spots her on a bench, Nantendo Game Girl Advanced in hand, and he can hear a stranger's voice as they mutter under their breath.
He peers over and immediately notices the Reserve Course student sat next to her as the brown-haired boy freezes in place. Leon lifts his hands up in what he hopes is a none threatening gesture and smiles.
Chiaki pauses the game when she notices her companion's distraction before she gives Leon a tired wave and a smile.
“Sorry to bother you, Chiaki. I can come back another time if you want...? I was just wondering if you’d fallen asleep somewhere again.”
She tells him not to worry about it and introduces him to Hajime Hinata.
They're fast friends, too.
. . . . . .
The holidays soon around and class seventy-seven split as close classmates.
Leon meets Fuyuhiko’s twin sister over the break whilst walking through the streets, she bumps into him and almost instantly recognises Leon as her brother’s classmate.
They exchange numbers and Leon suddenly finds himself visiting the Kuzuryu estate every week or so to hang out with the girl.
Besides that, there’s not much else interesting that happens, besides him going on an interview with Sayaka Maizono and getting to chat to her for a bit, he even offers to turn the host’s attention onto him during the show’s break after he notices how uncomfortable she seems under his invasive stare, and she stares at him like he’s the creep eyeing up a girl twenty years younger than him like a piece of meat.
Leon does it anyways even though she doesn’t end up answering him. He just doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the younger girl to fend for herself under the host’s leering gaze.
. . . . . .
And then, suddenly, the dynamic shifts, because now Leon's got a girlfriend to keep happy and content whilst hoping the Kuzuryu don't decide to gut him like a fish in the middle of the night and sell his kidneys for displeasing her in any way.
Natsumi laughs when he tells her this, and he shots back the fact that she let a drug addict scam her into a palm reading.
Her counter to this is: I was thirteen, dammit!
. . . . . .
When they get back to school, Chiaki’s waiting with a monitor and a happy smile, holding up a control and asking if anyone wants to play.
Class seventy-seven seamlessly slips back into their relaxed routine.
. . . . . .
He shares his best pitch with them, giddy with joy as he lifts up the photo on his phone that shows his greatest achievement.
One hundred and eleven point ninety three miles per hour.
Leon Kuwata now holds the record for the fastest ever pitch in the entire world.
Seventy-seven holds a party, and the new world record holder thinks:
Two thousand and seven is my year.
. . . . . .
He’s talking with Koizumi, Ibuki, Hiyoko, and Mikan when he hears it, the loud noise of shattering glass.
He and the other four dart to the music room, and when it doesn’t open with a twist of the handle, he steps back before ramming his shoulder into the door and smashing it open.
Leon immediately freezes at the sight of Natsumi Kuzuryu’s dead body slumped against the wall in front of him.
. . . . . .
It doesn’t take him long to figure it out when he spots the green vase in the next classroom, smashed to pieces on the floor.
He watches as Koizumi enters, snaps a few pictures, and silently retreats.
A few days later, he quietly approaches a grieving Fuyuhiko and mumbles the culprit's name.
“Sato, Koizumi’s friend in the Reserve Course, killed Natsumi”
And Leon doesn’t feel any remorse when he trails behind Fuyuhiko and Peko and watches as they corner her, but when Peko goes to raise the bat over her head, he grabs it form her instead.
He swings down and doesn’t feel sickened at the crunch her skull gives underneath the bat’s force. Because Natsumi was his girlfriend, and this nobody killed her without a thought of mercy.
When he’s done beating the last of her into the ground, he pulls back, panting and heaving desperately for air, before he flicks blood off the end of a bat he’s held countless times before and turns to the silent duo behind him.
He drops the bat to the hard concrete ground, makes sure to telegraph his movements, and pulls Fuyuhiko into a tight hug.
“Anyone finds a trace,” he starts, “you push the blame onto the pervert she made up.”
And, still out of it, Fuyuhiko numbly nods, before suddenly he’s clutching at Leon’s back with all the force he can muster, sobbing hysterically into the baseballer’s shoulder as he mourns for his sister.
. . . . . .
Leon is stressed and panicky as the exams loom over them, he takes to frantically playing baseball until he physically can't anymore, often resulting in Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama, who he became much closer to after the... incident, to come help bring him back to his dorm to rest.
Of course, it's not solely the exams that linger on his mind, Natsumi’s death and how he killed Sato without a second thought echoes through his head every minute of every day.
Honestly, if he hadn't had Fuyuhiko and Peko to rely on, Leon’s positive he would've been found out a long time ago.
. . . . . .
Nagito blows up the gym.
Nagito blows up the gym.
And now Chisa-sensei is gone too, thrown to the Reserve Course when she takes the blame without second thought.
He doesn’t like Kizakura-sensei all that much.
. . . . . .
Class seventy-seven break away from each other quietly, their first year done and over with in what seems like a flash to Leon.
And then he pauses, flash.
He can't help the way he glares accusingly at Koizumi’s back as she walks away until she’s out of sight, but never out of mind.
. . . . . .
Class seventy-eight pours into one of the empty classrooms easily, almost immediately mixing in with the masses despite the tension spread throughout the school with the start-up of the parades.
Leon gets assigned senpai duty by his classmates, though, since he’s apparently ‘the best with younger people’, but they mostly just say that since he’s the oldest in the class, though it doesn’t quite seem like it with Nekomaru and his giant stature and beard, though Leon’s also grown a little stubble on his chin that he can't be bothered to shave.
He meets all of them officially after catching a rogue ball just inches away from seventy-eight's lucky student’s face after he pops in to see how they’re doing during gym.
They were playing baseball, how could he not stop by to watch?
Leon just ends up smiling awkwardly at the younger boy before spinning rapidly on his heel and pitching the ball full force towards the asshole who streaked the ball towards the unknowing brown-haired boy.
He hears a thump and a curse but doesn’t pay attention, bowing towards the boy before turning to the rest of his class and doing the same.
“Nice to meet ya,” he waves, “I’m Leon Kuwata, your senpai from seventy-seven”
. . . . . .
Hajime Hinata disappears.
Chiaki and Leon search, but they never find their friend.
. . . . . .
Yukizome-sensei comes back from her suspension at the Reserve Course, and Leon almost collapses from the relief.
Finally, a tiny splash of normality in this big new world.
. . . . . .
Leon goes back to his dorm one night to find Junko Enoshima and her bodyguard in his room, the blonde perched on his desk, idly tossing a ball in the air before catching it and repeating the process.
The baseballer just shuts his door once again and walks over to Fuyuhiko’s room near him to ask to stay the night.
The only thing that stops him is the Glock currently held against the back of his head.
So, he returns to his room, and Junko Enoshima begins her spread of Despair.
. . . . . .
It does not go unnoticed by seventy-seven, when Leon’s personality seems to completely shift overnight.
After the deaths of the Reserve students, Leon turned down his volume due to the atmosphere in Hope's Peak, as most did, but this seems almost...
Seventy-seven doesn’t quite know how to describe it, all they know is that their once bright and cheery baseballer, has turned stone cold silent and eternally miserable.
And as soon as they see the shift, seventy-seven knows nothing is ever going to be the same again.
. . . . . .
The student council is slaughtered.
Leon Kuwata whispers warnings to the people who hold his darkest secret close to their chests.
. . . . . .
Somehow, Ryoma- the real one- finds out Leon’s plan, and, with a shaking hand, gives him the completed project he was working on until Junko burst into his life, uninvited and unwanted.
. . . . . .
Mikan Tsumiki goes missing.
Class seventy-seven runs for her.
When they find nothing after hours, most split and begin to head back to class.
Nagito, Chiaki, and Leon remain, but not before the baseballer drops a disk into the Ultimate Yakuza’s hand and follows the unbelievably lucky student and unstoppable gamer.
. . . . . .
Yukizome-sensei rescues them, and whilst Chiaki and Nagito flee, Leon can't bring himself to move.
Yukizome-sensei yells for him to go, but Leon is so, so tired; tired of the lies, the helplessness, how empty he feels without Natsumi, the way he can't wipe the sight of blood, brain matter, and gore from his mind, how the sound of his bat smashing against flesh echoes in his ears...
He’s tired of the lies, so he tells the truth.
“I can't be bothered.”
. . . . . .
He sees through the many cameras in the room he and Junko are settled in as his classmates make their way down the soon to be Ultimate Despair's lair, and when Mikan shoves Chiaki into a secret hatch, he watches as most of them eat up the excuse of a twisted ankle Mikan carefully feeds them.
He feels disappointed, but that compares nothing to the way Chiaki’s eyes widen in betrayal as Yukizome-sensei forces her down the lift.
. . . . . .
The Ultimate Baseballer, Leon Kuwata watches with despair in his eyes as Chiaki limps down a hallway she's never going to get out of, and when those spears pierce her flesh and she lets out a choked gasp, blood streaming from her gaping mouth, he watches as her chest slows to a stop.
Leon feels the tears streaming down his face, hear the gasping sobs that make their way past his lips, tastes the salt, smells the copper of blood as he draws his nails ruthlessly down his face, deep gouges bleeding uncontrollably as he collapses to the floor, chest heaving as wails desperately into his arm.
. . . . . .
Leon Kuwata is captured by despair, but Peko Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu remain unaffected.
They thank him for the chance and go along with the insanity that overtakes their once unbreakable class.
. . . . . .
Yasuke Matsuda dies at the hands of the woman he loved.
. . . . . .
The last day, class seventy-seven blows up their classroom and leaves Hope’s Peak as dead students walking.
. . . . . .
He remembers, before they all split ways, how Fuyuhiko reached out with a strong hand and grabbed onto his own.
He remembers turning around, and how the Ultimate Yakuza took one small, hesitant step towards him, before seemingly steeling his resolve...
And kissing Leon.
"See you around," is the last thing he hears from the tiny Yakuza, and the baseballer watches on in silence as his back grows smaller in the distance, Peko still guarding him as they walk on into the waste land Japan has become in just a few short hours.
"See ya."
He seems to have a type, Leon thinks.
That type is the Kuzuryu twins.
. . . . . .
The next year goes by in a blur to Leon, before, one day, he steps outside and for the first time in months, hears a television speak something other than empty static.
And the former Ultimate Baseballer, now Remnant of Despair, watches on in awe as his leader’s plan reveals itself.
. . . . . .
Teruteru Hanamura is unexpectedly brutal, Leon notes in surprise as he watches the chef break under the first motive easily, carefully giving the Ultimate Pop Sensation a heavy dosing of food poisoning before he strikes in the dead of night with a stolen dorm key.
Teruteru, Leon thinks, could have been an amazing Remnant of Despair. What with the way he keeps cutting and cutting the idol’s flesh into perfectly thin slices, turning green multiple times throughout the process but holding it in, until finally...
Dinner is served.
. . . . . .
The body discovery goes off seconds after someone has already shovelled the Pop Sensation’s delicately cooked flesh into their mouth and down into their stomach.
Halfway through the trial, Hifumi Yamada spews blood before collapsing to the trial grounds floor, dead.
Turns out, Teruteru made do with limited supplies in the kitchen and ordered a full scale clean out of everyone's stomachs, Leon admits he’s surprised nobody smelled the heavy amount of bleach he doused the girl's flesh in, though he supposes he could've offset the smell with well placed spices.
. . . . . .
The second pair to go is Celestia Ludenburg, or Taeko Yasuhiro, and Kiyotaka Ishimaru.
Leon almost feels bad for the Moral Compass, how utterly horrified he was at committing murder, however accidental.
But that’s just another thing for the poor boy to learn, never run about with sharp objects.
Leon supposes he wasn’t taught that particular lesson, yet.
. . . . . .
Then, next, it’s Junko Enoshima, later revealed as Mukuro Ikusaba, and Sakura Ogami.
There's no better way to hand in your letter of resignation then to try and kill your employer, unfortunately for Sakura, though, Mukuro hides a lot more than a bra underneath her shirt.
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
Yasuhiro Hagakure bludgeons Chihiro Fujisaki to death with his crystal ball.
Admittedly, he did a commendable job of covering his tracks despite seeming like the dumbest student out of them all, actually managing to redirect the trial for a few precious minutes of breathing time, but then when the accusations come again, he crumbles.
Leon shakes his head from where he’s watching, taking a break from smashing some woman’s kneecaps with his favourite metal bat, specially made by Kazuichi.
He’ll have to pay him a visit soon, he thinks idly, twirling the bat expertly in his hand as his captive whimpers and cries.
“Hush,” he whispers, carefully inspecting a baseball before eyeing up the woman tied up to a chair, “I wonder if you can take more than that other dude.”
He gestures to a bloodied and bruised body slumped in a batting cage, shattered bones poking out from ooze like skin.
He frowns to himself, he's running out of captives to torture.
And then he smiles, who said he couldn't torture himself?
. . . . . .
He almost misses it, when Makoto Naegi defeats Junko.
Leon spends ten minutes in incredulous silence.
And then he goes nuts.
. . . . . .
He meets the remainders of his class when they enter their old school, immediately going to the blonde-haired corpse pressed under the giant concrete block, and, with some struggle, they manage to lift it off the body.
Everyone takes some part of her, and Leon, when it comes to his turn, takes one look at the remainder of her body before promptly reaching out for the one thing that caught his eye the most.
He takes her smashed Monokuma hairclips.
Leon himself doesn’t quite know why he took them out of everything, they just... appealed to him in the moment.
. . . . . .
He hears of Towa city, the Warriors of Hope, and Komaru Naegi through hushed whispers.
But all those things do not interest him, what does is the fact that Leon’s old classmate Nagito Komaeda was spotted acting as some snot nosed brat's servant.
Leon breaks into Towa and grabs the only Warrior of Hope left, Monaca Towa, and drags the brat to a safe house in his own turf kicking and screaming.
Nagito never does anything without reason, so Leon'll do his part and keep the one Nagito's been protecting this whole time safe from harm.
(No matter how much he wishes he could just bash her skull in and be done with it when she starts to go on another one of her damn toddler tantrums.)
(Leon ends up respecting Nagito a lot more than he previously did after spending months with the little shit, before learning that it was just best to thump a computer down in front of her and let her go nuts controlling the Miaya bot she developed at some point during them living together.)
. . . . . .
He’s caught in the middle of smashing someone's skull into the pavement.
Leon hears them creep up behind him, before he twists around on his heel and slams his bat mercilessly into their stomach, it makes them gasp for a second, and then they're right back on him without giving the baseballer a second to breath.
He just remembers fishing a baseball bomb he had Kazuichi put together out of his tattered trousers' pocket, and then, he's throwing it with all his might towards his enemy.
Leon notices the second one when it's too late, something heavy coming down on the back of his head, his body making a loud 'thump' noise as he collapses to the ground and it all goes dark.
. . . . . .
Leon Kuwata mutters the lyrics to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ mindlessly under his breath as he walks towards his new classroom. He hopes he doesn’t get stuck with any assholes, this year. Leon slides open the door, and the newly formed class seventy-seven greets him with quickly building debates on how to open the door Leon just came from.
What a bunch lunatics, is the first thing he thinks.