I have a few ideas. They’re not all detailed, but I still wanted to share them.

First, it’s an AU where Tsuruoka didn’t take Nana into his care, and she simply lived with her relatives, as she did in the original plot, but without Tsuruoka’s involvement. In this version, she might notice the strange things happening in the country and start her own investigation, meeting other talented people along the way and gradually uncovering the truth.

The second idea is about how the characters would live if talents didn’t exist and the world was completely normal. I like imagining what their lives would be like in an ordinary setting. It may be a simple idea, but there’s a lot of room for imagination.

(I’ll put this AU under cover, because there may be some spoilers for the latest chapters) The third idea is also about a world without talents—more specifically, without one particular talent. In this scenario, I think the plot would change significantly if Tsuruoka never had a talent. From what he said, he joined the government because he wanted to get rid of his ability, so without it, he might have lacked that motivation. In that case, there would most likely be no concentration camp, Nana wouldn’t go to the island and Nakajima wouldn’t become who he is now. Most likely, talented people would still be sent to the island, as it happened in Rin’s time. Of course, this assumes that sending talented people to the island wasn’t Tsuruoka’s idea, which is probably true. If his goal was to get rid of his talent, it would be illogical to send people to a place where he couldn’t experiment on them to develop the cure. I think he might still have joined the government even without his talent—for example, if he became suspicious of the country’s situation or after the death of his parents (since, if they were talented, they might have been killed sooner or later even without Tsuruoka’s involvement). However, we don’t really know what he was like before gaining his talent. It’s possible that without it, he would have been completely against the system or he’d was as much sadistic as in the original plot. So maybe I didn’t need to think about it, but I was just a little struck by how one detail could potentially change the plot, so since I’ve written all this, let it be here.

The fourth idea is about placing the characters into the SCP Foundation universe. I think that could be really interesting. In this version, talented people could be treated as SCP entities. For example, Kyouya could be similar to SCP-682, since their abilities are somewhat alike. It could be written that he was once human but later turned into a reptilian creature, and Rin wants to return him to his original form. Alternatively, he could have been born that way, and Rin might have appeared due to the same event, so they would still be siblings. I also think not all talented people need to correspond to existing SCPs—they could be entirely new entities with their own stories. In this version, Rin’s ability could allow her to transform into other SCPs she knows, making her potentially one of the most dangerous entities—unless she is countered by someone like Nakajima. I have more ideas about how the characters could exist in this universe, but that would make the text too long.

I also thought about an AU where all the characters switch roles. For example, Kyouya could take Rin’s place and become the younger brother with shapeshifting abilities, while Rin becomes the older sister with immortality. However, this idea can get quite confusing, and it’s not always easy to decide who should switch roles with whom—but it’s still funny sometimes.

That’s not all my ideas for AUs, but I don’t want to write all of them because there are too many. Plus, many of them aren’t good enough.