Class-A 900
The current top of the food chain. The class that all other classes wanted to be.
What did it mean to be in this top class? While other classes were still reeling back from the reveal of their CP and re-organizing themselves on how to catch up to Class A, the top students were more concerned on who would lead the class from within.
Currently, there were two frontrunners.
On one side, Katsuragi Kohei. A bald young man who exuded the composed, calm aura one would expect from a Class A student. While initially intimidating, he held a serious and honorable personality that had gained the respect of many of his peers. He was the perfect example of an upright moral compass that people wished were the ones in power.
On the other side, Sakayanagi Arisu. If Kohei was large and imposing, Arisu was cute and petite, a girl with shoulder length lilac hair topped by a black beret. The cane by her side she used to help her walk added a sense of fragility to the young girl. However, what laid behind a playful personality and weak body was a depth of cold intelligence that stood above the rest of her excellent classmates.
If Kohei drew followers from the results of his hard work and cautious stability, Arisu reeled in supporters drawn in by her overwhelming natural abilities and charisma.
If Kohei showed respect to even those outside of the class, Arisu treated even her own inner circle as the disposable pieces they were.
If Kohei wanted to play referee, to make sure all was played fairly, then Arisu was the Chess master, the only one truly playing the game.
In a sense, it was a single boy who relied on friendship and honesty against a girl who utilized her genius and ruthlessness to control all before her.
Hope vs Despair.
...or it should have been.
Sadly, for a student with long dark hair that reached up to his knees the truth was just far more...boring.
"Tsumaranai." muttered the red-eyed Kamukura Izuru as he watched the scene of the two sides go at it. Not a single other person in the class gave him notice even with his wild unruly hair but that was expected.
Right now, it was just the lackeys of the two who were arguing on who should lead the class. The two leaders, for their part, were just sitting silently with Katsuragi Kohei sitting silently with crossed arms compared to the unbothered playful smile on Arisu's lips.
The whole exchange was none of his concern.
Within this school were only talentless nobodies. Even those who could be called genius, without any talent, were still useless in contributing to society for what limits did they push?
At least at Hope's Peak, each student had a talent they were strong at to the point they were given a title of Ultimate. For example, the Ultimate Baseball Player who would always hit home runs. Or an Ultimate Lucky student, picked out of every middle school in Japan.
And, Kamukura Izuru? He stood above all other Ultimates.
He already knew how things would go: The Sakayanagi faction would allow the Katsuragi faction to take center stage while both sabotaging them behind the scenes or allowing the other classes to take them out. Then they could simply swoop in to establish dominance.
It was boring how simple it was.
Katsuragi Kohei was closer to a Moral Compass than Hope. While he certainly led through example, that did not make him a true leader. Naegi Makoto would be able to stand on his own feet when isolated and backed into a corner. Katsuragi Kohei would simply crumble once his followers left him.
No infectious hope would grow from this inevitable dead end.
Did that make it a victory for Despair than? No, because Sakayanagi Arisu was no Enoshima Junko.
Sakayanagi may have qualified for an Ultimate Chess player but was no Ultimate Analyst. Unlike Izuru and Enoshima, Sakayanagi still found enjoyment in her role as a "player", and, as such, still needed an opponent. She had a possibly perverse desire to find a genius better than her.
Chess was also a zero-sum game of limited decisions. The number of possible moves at any given point, combined with the number of possible states of the board, were numerous but, in the end, finite. The Chess player in the girl would never be able to show Izuru the unpredictability he wanted to see as long as she clung to her limited board.
Izuru couldn't gain any excitement at this level of Hope vs Despair.
The most damning point was that she had yet to acknowledge his presence throughout the whole month they had been in the same classroom. Then again, he was using the talents of an Ultimate Imposter, Ultimate Spy, and Ultimate Assassin. He was sure some of his own classmates had also yet to notice he was also of their class from the ghost rumors that had started to circulate around the classroom.
To help blend in, Izuru simply scored the expected class average of Class A by analyzing the capabilities of every student in the class. He also made sure the mistakes he made were the most common errors. Being an average nobody in Class A allowed him the most freedom. If he performed anything out of the ordinary, people would simply attribute that to him being from Class A than himself.
A low profile was most optimum in order for these two factions to have been born. He had already known they would be failures of Hope and Despair but, since he was looking for unpredictability and variance outside his analysis anyways, it was still worth pushing through on the off-chance something interesting would happen.
Only disappointment had arrived but at least his lowered, almost invisible, presence within Class A contributed to his true reason for being in ANHS.
His only mission in this school was to graduate from Class A to prove the superiority of Hope's Peak over the other factions even if he already knew there would be future guidelines or even handicaps coming in the future. If needed, he simply had to save up twenty million private points to directly transfer right before he graduated for a mission success, but such a thing was too boring.
The Maijima Education Cooperative, the Steering Committee, and even the mysterious MJ12 of America all had their representatives in ANHS even if said students may not have realized it yet.
Izuru had also been briefed there was one student from the White Room, but such was not a concern for Hope's Peak. For the Steering Committee, twenty years of research and raising children to be geniuses had been crushed the moment Kamakura Izuru was born.
Although to the White Room's credit, they did not go so far as human experimentation.
After agreeing to go under a certain surgery, a boy with no talent had died and was reborn as Kamakura Izuru, a being that housed every talent that had been researched at over the centuries old Hope's Peak. Named after the school's founder, Izuru was titled the school's Ultimate Hope or the hope for humanity to evolve even further.
Yet as much as Hope's Peak had looked down on the continued failures of the White Room, their masterpiece held the same failure's the children from the White Room had: Kamukura Izuru had no heart and would only be able to last in the real world due to his various talents. A monster with no humanity, even one blessed with so much talent, would not be able to further evolve the common people of Japan to his own level.
The one born as Kamukura Izuru was an emotionless mass of talents that held no motivation or purpose. It was only after certain events that he was able to have some semblance of motivation.
So, now, what was Izuru to do to alleviate this boredom? Before he left Hope's Peak, he made a promise to try to find some entertainment and not stew in the predictability.
Would it be possible to raise these two failures into the parameters he needed? Some sort of Hope Cultivation Project? Then again, the question was not 'if it was possible' for that was a question on his abilities but if it was worth the effort.
Izuru could allow the Katsuragi faction to flourish while sabotaging the Sakayanagi faction. What face would Sakayanagi Arisu if every plan she thought up was crushed over and over? Would she then give up her seat on the board and show him something interesting? Flip it over the table when she was isolated and defeated?
Sadly, he intuited this would only lead to some sort of predictable hope, not the kind he wanted. There was another Katsuragi in Class B Izuru had felt would move once Sakayanagi's heart grew vulnerable.
Or would it be better to turn the Hope that was Class A for every student into Despair? Instead of a place to aim for, the once Ultimate Hope would become Ultimate Despair and create a scenario where to be in Class A was the worst possible outcome for every student which would only lead to a graduation of one: himself.
Once again, not to be. There were already those from Class C who did not choose Class A as their Hope. Other students may start to flock.
Then, should he play the eminence in the shadows that pulled the strings behind the scenes? If he so wanted, he could even create animation that lead to subconscious hypnosis. Or just straight out lobotomization.
No. There was no need to be redundant. The one in Class D would have that covered. The mastermind part, at least.
Now that he thought about it, among the pool of talents that ranged from Ultimate Housekeeper to Ultimate Physicist, he had a ridiculous sounding talent that may provide him some entertainment at the moment.
Ultimate Student Council President.
AN: So, I've been reading a lot of these COTE crossovers where multiple characters are brought in and wanted to try one myself that don't use the usual "Genius" characters people always use like Light, Shiro/Sora, etc. Sadly, I'm not that smart so I had to stick with ones I know.
Class D is fine as the control of this experiment. They're the MCs after all. I'll be honest where I'll probably breeze over a lot of what the Class D did. So, apologies to those who don't read COTE but hope y'all don't mind. I'll still write summaries and mention if it's important later on. I would really really love this to be fanon blind but just not possible in a crossover.
Class C was given probably the one no reader knew, Kiyomaro Takamine from Gash Bell. A kingmaker who could both oppose and raise a violent king. I'll say it now, he's legitimately the strongest piece added but can't be used by Kakeru Ryūen which balances it out. Gash Bell is peak shonen, like, I'd say it's the greatest shonen manga written personally. Up till the end, the battles are mostly reliant on tactics.
Class B was given Katsuragi Keima from KamiNomi to compensate for their weaknesses. Basically, what if Honami didn't have any weakness from the start and was allowed to keep her ideals? The details on Honami's Capture will be revealed later on.
Class A got Him, That Man, Kamukura Izuru of Danganronpa in the flesh. While it may seem unfair to give him Class A, he's more of a debuff than anything. So, it should be fine...probably. He has his own backstory which explains how he knows Naegi and Enoshima as their respective titles but that's for later.