Fanfic / String Theory (NeoStarReset)

aka: String Theory

The remastered version of String Theory's first cover.

“This rule will remain active throughout the Killing Game! For whoever manages to kill Prairie Marble...gets to graduate scot-free! No need to wait for a perfect moment, kill her whenever you'd like! Kill her in front of her friends and lovers! Bring your kids! Either way, there's NO class trial and NO punishment! Puhuhu~!” - Monokuma, Chapter 3.5

Prairie Marble wakes up in the Ultimate Academy like how any other normal student would: chased by Exisals to the gym, briefly meeting some of the other confused students who don’t know how they got there, just to wake up in a locker again after being exposed to a flashback light. The one problem for Monokuma was that she still kept her memories and information even after multiple attempts of using the flashback light, singling her out from the rest of the students who didn’t keep theirs.

With that advantage on her hands, Monokuma tries to restrict Prairie from helping the other students too much whether it be by additional rules specially made for her or a motive that gives her a target on her back compared to other students. It still won’t stop Prairie from doing anything, even if it meant putting her life in danger, to get herself and her peers out of the Killing Game.

String Theory is a Danganronpa OC-insert fanfiction written by NeoStarReset. Quite a Door Stopper for any reader interested in further development for Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony's canon characters and the setting, as well as a mystery beyond what the original plot of the game has given. There are four parts/arcs where most are in Prairie's perspective, save for interludes that switches to another character’s perspective, released so far:

• Part 1: Entrance Ceremony Arc (12 Chapters)
• Part 2: Killing Resistance Arc (16 Chapters + 1 Interlude)
• Part 3: Poisonous Truths Arc (21 Chapters + 3 Interludes)
• Part 4: Lovely Desolation Arc (Ongoing)

All chapters are simultaneously posted on Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad (as well as on Amino before being discontinued due to technical issues) that have started since 2018. Wattpad (as well as Amino and Fanfiction to a certain extent) have the added bonus of showing the dozens of art that Reset has made for the story be it the covers or additional art, but it can also be viewed on their Tumblr. The author also created a self-made wiki for those who wants to read about the characters, worldbuilding, or some meta behind this fic's creation in World Anvil.

Not related to the webcomic with the same name that are both inspired by the scientific concept, as well as the trope that has the same name.

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This fanfiction series contains examples of:

• All Periods Are PMS: Lampshaded during Prairie’s breakdown after Kaede’s attempted murder on her, where the former thinks that she was feeling some form of PMS because of what she experienced.
• Amnesia Loop: Happens to all the students except for Prairie during the first few “resets” in Part 1.
• Amnesiac Resonance: The probable explanation as to why Prairie is able to perform rock climbing feats such as climbing the Wall of the End despite losing her memories as Perfect Blitz.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The first interlude chapter between Part 2 and 3 shifts perspective from Prairie towards Shuichi, Part 2’s interlude gives the readers some perspective regarding what happened prior to Kaede’s death and his deductions on what may lead to it. The Rantaro interlude and Tsumugi’s execution chapter also applies here.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Can be applied to either Rantaro/Prairie or Kokichi/Prairie, especially since Prairie usually gets angry and insults them to hide how she actually feels.
• Blinded by Rage: Prairie’s reaction when she looks at her demotivation video, which was Rantaro’s motive video, though Shuichi notes that it was spliced to make Prairie misunderstand. Even when he points it out, Prairie is still distraught about it. See My God, What Have I Done? for further elaboration.
• By the Hair: Maki pulls Prairie’s hair so hard that several strands come off while she tries to prevent her from escaping to the Death Road of Despair.
• Chromatic Arrangement: Although it’s not the usual primary additive colors, Prairie, Rantaro, and Kokichi can be put in here. Their secondary colors (if you’re using the traditional red, yellow, blue primary colors) are orange, green, and purple respectively.
• Claustrophobia: The end of Chapter 3.10 and 3.11 has Prairie escaping through one of the open vents inside the Death Road of Despair. She’s usually not claustrophobic, but half of the latter chapter being spent stuck inside a small space, her head recently pulled by Maki, being poisoned with drain cleaner by Kirumi, and not to mention what she had to go through before… it’s no wonder she starts getting delusions of some of the characters talking her down.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Kokichi pulls this one in the first trial where he almost describes in excruciating detail on how Prairie’s underwear looks like before being physically shut up by her. Even Rantaro already had enough of the charades.
  Prairie: Don’t you dare finish that sentence, or the next body discovery announcement is going to be for YOU!
  Tsumugi: Hey, that shouldn’t even be even joked about! Rantaro, d-do something…!
  Rantaro: No, I don’t think two against one would be fair for him.
  Tsumugi: I meant help stopping her!
• Corner of Woe: Prairie has this moment in Chapter 1.4 in the third loop once she sees Rantaro eyeing her with suspicion after she was restricted from telling others the truth about their kidnapping.
• Curse Cut Short: Chapter 3.7 provides this with the resident big-brother figure for Prairie saying: “Business days’ my—” that gets cut off due to Prairie falling to one of Death Road Despair’s traps out of spite to Rantaro. He finally gets to say it (in the narrative) during his interlude chapter.
• Declaration of Personal Independence: After chapters of lectures and overprotectiveness from Rantaro, Prairie snaps when he decides that the best way to deal with one of her “temper tantrums” is to lock her in one of the classes until she calms down. After she declares this in the most spiteful way, the two remain in conflict for almost the entirety of Part 3.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Prairie has a problem with her brain to mouth filter at times, but Chapter 3.16 takes the crown when she accidentally says her thoughts about Kokichi’s lies after discovering Ryoma’s dead body out loud while waiting for the rest of the students to arrive.
  Prairie: *narration* My god, the smell of his lies are so potent, you’d think he’d just let rip a massive fart.
  [Kokichi sputters out laughing.]
  [The rest of the students are staring at Prairie, disturbed.]
  Prairie: I said that out loud, didn’t I?
• Dream Intro: String Theory deals in various dream sequences ranging from hilarious to tragic, it’s all there in the menu.
  • Chapter 2.11 and 4.2 starts like this, where her dreams are suspiciously about an event in her past.
  • Prairie also has several nightmares regarding Kaede’s death during the start of Part 3 due to the mental tax seeing her die in front of her has on her mental health.
  • Played for Laughs with the start of Chapter 3.15, where Prairie dreams about relaxing on the beach with Rantaro who was pampering her with the whole package.
• Face Doodling: After Prairie and Rantaro get into another quarrel about her immediately forgiving Kaede for almost taking Prairie’s life, Prairie and Miu came up with a prank involving a permanent marker and Miu’s lipstick. Come the next day and Rantaro’s face is littered with a bunch of kiss marks all over his face and neck, not to mention the word “LAME” written on his forehead with a permanent marker.
• Fake Memories: Just like in canon, Prairie comes to the conclusion that the students’ memories were overwritten by Monokuma. She comes to this conclusion much earlier than what the mastermind intended, though.
• Fish out of Water: Prairie is the only amnesiac as well as the only foreigner among the rest of the students. It doesnt’ help that her previous status as a celebrity further increases the gap between her and the other students.
• Forgotten First Meeting: The first few chapters heavily feature the characters as their pre-Ultimate Awakening-selves. Prairie still retains the memories of the resets before they became Ultimate students, but unfortunately nobody else does.
• Friendship Favoritism: It’s not hard to see that Prairie prefers several people within the group of students she’s stuck with. The obvious ones being Rantaro, Kokichi, and Tenko, though she vehemently denies that she likes hanging out with the first two when it counts. There’s also some hints scattered throughout the fic that Prairie wants to be considered a priority to them as well.
• I Am Who?: Prairie doesn’t know her Ultimate Talent at first, but it’s soon revealed that she's the Ultimate Rock Climber. Not just any Ultimate either, since she apparently has a celebrity persona called “Perfect Blitz” who acts nothing like how Prairie was at the start.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Prairie uses her intuition to throw a rock at Shuichi when she heard him call her Moe while she is hiding. Rantaro finds out about her mischief pretty quickly.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite the numerous amount of changes that Prairie’s existence brings, Kaede is still one of the deaths that marks the start of the killing game… Only this time, she’s the victim and her murderer uses the First Blood Perk to get out scot-free. Ryoma is also the second person to die too.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Brought up by Kokichi after Prairie tricks him so that he wouldn’t see the sorry state her dorm room was in, followed by her getting sick and falling unconscious while guarding her door from Kokichi’s lock-picking.
  Kokichi: Hey, Prairie Dog! Welcome back from the dead again! Remember earlier last night when I said karma is a bitch?
• Le Parkour: Her attempt to get through the Death Road of Despair even has Kokichi cheering for her, though she does have the cheat sheet that is her intuition.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Chapter 2.15 has Rantaro walk in on Prairie while Miu was copping a feel on Prairie’s chest.
  • Before that, chapter 2.11 has Prairie not only caught by Maki, but also Kaito, Gonta, and Kokichi entering the guy’s toilet in order to have the secret meeting with Monotaro and Monokid.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Since Prairie was out of commission after Part 1, she didn’t know about the existence of the Death Road of Despair at first. Kaede tells Prairie about it, saying that Rantaro and Kirumi asked the rest of the students not to tell Prairie about it because she might do something reckless. To Prairie’s annoyance, nobody bothers telling her about it even when she leads the conversation to its existence.
  • Double Subverted in the case of the motive Monokuma gave the students that targets Prairie in Chapter 3.5. Prairie was actually listening in from outside the gym, but left to go to Maki’s lab in the middle of the announcement due to her suspicions regarding her talent.
• Love Hotels: Not only is Hotel Kumasutra just a place to unlock Love Suite events like in canon, Prairie actually stays over at the hotel after Kirumi’s attempted murder. The rules for this place end up getting expanded much more when its presence is heavily connected to Ryoma’s death.]
• Major Injury Underreaction: Defied. The cut Prairie gets from the assault in the Love Hotel is underplayed though it was affecting her emotionally during the trial without her knowing, Shuichi was the one who ended up having to beg Prairie to take care of herself after realizing the amount of damage she has taken on her body.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Chapter 3.7 has Prairie accidentally hit Angie with a can of drink due to her being distraught over the demotivation video she just watched with Shuichi, mistaking her aim that was meant for Monokuma. The other students who were crowding Prairie in the middle of the breakdown end up calling her out on her aggressive actions that have been escalating throughout the day.
• Mythology Gag: The second murder involves the ownership of hotel keys, where one of the additional rules states that it can’t be borrowed, but it can be stolen.
• Odd Couple: Korekiyo remarks that Prairie and Kokichi seem like this in Chapter 3.20 when they revealed the withheld information about the assailant in the Love Hotel in the trial.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Prairie unfortunately has been on the naked side twice since she came across circumstances where she instinctively runs out of her dorm room without changing out of her pajamas, and doesn’t realize it until other people are around. Luckily, Rantaro doesn’t seem to realize the embarrassment he’s causing Prairie as he offers his shirt for her and Kokichi lending her his shirt means he gets to embarrass Prairie a lot.
• Precision F-Strike: Prairie, the one who’ll use any form of creative insult other than swearing, gets one in the middle of Chapter 3.7.
  Prairie: I know I don't have all the answers and maybe the video is cut and I know Monokuma wants to just get to me- that doesn't change what he said and how I fucking feel!!
  Tsumugi: Oh my god, she used the 'F' word…
• Rejected Apology: Played straight on several occasions in Part 3, where Prairie learns from Kokichi that she shouldn’t accept and forgive people if they don’t mean their apology, to the shock of others. Subverted after Kaede’s attempted murder in Part 2, where Prairie immediately forgives Kaede in the same day.
• Reset Button: Momentarily abused by the Monokubs during the first few chapters of Part 1, where they keep failing to erase Prairie’s memories of the botched attempts to do the Ultimate Revival by using a flashback light.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: One of the main gimmick of the fic focuses on this. Part of Prairie’s intuition powers allows her to keep her knowledge after being exposed to flashback lights at first, or being immune to the memories it’s supposed to rewrite after Pregame. The backlash for the latter is pretty bloody, though.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Subverted. When the second flashback light was discovered by the group, Prairie was asked by Shuichi, Rantaro, and later dragged kicking and screaming by Maki to the gym in order to explain what it does. She tries to pull one once she realizes the group of students still intend to use it (while Prairie doesn’t trust it) with Kokichi happily tagging along, only for Maki to activate it right in front of her face.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Rantaro, due to him being more tethered to the group by Prairie’s presence. Miu, debatably so because of the First Blood Perk. Kirumi, despite receiving the same motive video, the difference being that her target has changed. Though whether these characters survive until the end of the fic is up in the air.
• The Stations of the Canon: Although Part 1 showed some high divergence in regards to Pregame, at least until the final loop, the motives and flashback lights provided from Monokuma doesn’t change much. Yet it’s the way the characters react, due to Prairie’s presence or surviving past the chapter they were supposed to be dead, that changes the things that happen in that part drastically.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: After tons of pestering from Prairie regarding how Kokichi got a Love Hotel key (as well as Kiibo asking once), he says that he “hypothetically” stole the key since it’s not the same as lending it.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Prairie and Kokichi in the first trial, though the latter is enjoying it a lot more than the former. They hide the fact that there was an assailant during the morning before Ryoma’s body was discovered in the Love Hotel.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Kokichi pulls a nasty one to Prairie while they were both printing the photos that’s going to be used for the second trial, earning him a beat down from Prairie.
• Verbal Backspace: "Well, Miss Marble...I guess you win this one. However, we still have three Exisals, so-" Monokuma cuts himself off when Monokid's Exisal bursts into flames in the back, making some of the other students back away quickly in case it explodes. "...We still have two Exisals, so don't get cocky or anything!"
• Volleying Insults: Prairie and Rantaro roped into this when the two are still spiteful around each other in chapter 3.8. It turns out even the cool-headed big brother figure can throw a few childish insults.
• We Need to Get Proof: Prairie’s reaction after being assaulted in the Love Hotel with Kokichi isn’t to alert the others about the event, but rather to get out of the building to find some cameras and take pictures in the scene of the assault in order to collect evidence. The photos end up being useful for the murder trial that comes afterwards, but not before she and Kokichi hide the presence of it to lure out the culprit.
• Wham Episode: A bit of a double entry, but both Chapter 3.10 and 3.11 bring some revelations that were revealed late in canon right in Prairie’s lap. Not only that, she also learns the intended order of the deaths in Canon as well as who the mastermind is.
• Wham Line:
  • While Prairie made a deal with Rantaro to take a break for the rest of the day, Kaede invites her to practice piano like they agreed before to bond with each other. It’s too bad it had to be cut short when Prairie discovered a shot put ball while rummaging through Kaede’s bag... The following accusation she makes towards Prairie before trying to kill her makes it hurt even more.
  • Chapter 4.3 brings in the fantastic line from Kokichi right before he trick Prairie into thinking he was about to kiss her.
    Kokichi: Hey…have you ever heard of something called 'misattribution of arousal'...?
• Working Out Their Emotions: Tenko provides some reprieve for Prairie after her big fight with Rantaro by inviting her to spar in the gym to let out some of her stress.
• You Have Failed Me: Instead of dying in an execution like in canon, the end of Part 2 has Monotaro’s bomb detonated ala Trial 6 when he and Monokid were revealed to be traitors to Monokuma after Kaede’s death. This proves to be an intimidation tactic from Monokuma to make sure no other Monokubs betray him especially after Monotaro publicly disavowed his allegiance with Monokuma.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Monokuma unexpectedly pulls one to Tsumugi once she was revealed to be the culprit of the second case and the mastermind. It’s a Double Subversion where Tsumugi thinks his AI is just defunct and that she’s still running the show, only to find out that’s not the case.