"change one thing" AU notes

[youngnobelman]

Touma has the weird disease instead of Relena

Relena's the heir, which takes a lot of pressure off Touma so he doesn't hate his father and grandmother as much. (Unfortunately, his mother still died. However, Relena's did not! So Touma has a stepmother.)

He's not as determined to cure himself as he was Relena, and his health holds him back from his studies a bit, so he becomes a doctor at a more reasonable age. Say, twenty. (kid's still a genius)

Franz wouldn't have let his wheelchair kid go back to Japan on his own, so Touma works with DATS Austria rather than DATS Japan. He still teleconferences DATS Japan for tactics, and to facepalm at Masaru from afar.

Touma also does not go to America and work out that digimon are affected by human emotions.

The adults of DATS Japan end up having to step up into the field a lot earlier.

Touma really held down the fort and/or turned things around through a lot of the Kurata plot so things fall apart, and it forces a lot more cooperation between the international branches of DATS since Japan clearly can't keep it together.

I don't even know how Masaru and Yoshino get out of their Metal Phantomon nightmares.

Kurata has to find someone else to bribe/blackmail into working with him! Or he can't and that wee Belphemon arc just happens slower.

Touma's mom lives

Touma Henjyoji

He never goes back to Austria

Relena probably isn't born, or if he does it's not like he knows about her, so he doesn't have the motivation to become a doctor at such a young age

He's still a genius, but he doesn't have something to focus on and Touma's mother doesn't have the money to send him to university earlier or anything, so he goes to a regular school and actually knows a bit better how to get on with kids his own age

In general he's not as much of an uptight douchecanoe and less concerned with image and ~perfection~

He's in DATS Japan from the start and never gets involved with DATS Austria