Summary (what's going down, more or less): It's been almost a full year since Nyx was sealed away, and six months since the Desert of Doors incident. The remaining members of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad have finished their Journey and found their Answer, and are now getting on with their normal lives at last, free from the Shadows and their burden. But when the Dark Hour vanished, it took two final victims with it, locking them in a Shadow-infested twilight world with no means of escape. By now robbed of their memories of life in the real world, and desperate for an end to the constant fighting, the couple reaches out for help from the all-but-forgotten Dark Hour to the only chance of redemption they have left—six ordinary kids and their dog, who are pulled back into their own memories for one last rescue mission.
Disclaimer (don't say I never told you so): Just to be on the safe side of things, this story is rated M, which means there's a high risk that something violent, obscene, and/or sexual may happen at some point down the road. The game was rated M, and I don't want to have to sacrifice the tone to meet censorship regulations later on, if it should come to that. If this bothers you, save us all the trouble and don't read, please—although if this is the case, you really shouldn't have played P3 FES in the first place...
Also, I obviously don't own the rights to Persona 3, the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole, or any of the songs or lyrics thereof that I use in the course of this story. Those are all owned by whoever else owns them. Just throwing that out there.
A/N (read me, I'm important): This story was inspired, obviously, from the events of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES. The actual plot was inspired by no single source very prominently, so it's probably a mess of all kinds of thoughts I had floating around my head. The idea for posting relevant song lyrics before each chapter comes from the fanfic author xxxfire-feariexxx, most notably her story Victimized (look it up and read it; it's damn good). In fact, the only reason I started writing fanfiction at all is because I was impressed with her work, so I'll probably blatantly promote her further down the road some more as well.
Though this first song should be familiar for anyone who's ever even seen the game for any length of time, I referenced the actual lyrics from Data Drain's Soundtrack/Lyrics FAQ on GameFAQs, as I could never be completely sure myself what Ms. Kawamura was trying to say.
One last note: This story takes the story events of The Answer into its background. If you've played Persona 3, but not Persona 3 FES, you'll probably miss some references, but you can probably still enjoy the story. This is an extension of events, not a parallel version of the original story. And now I'll be quiet and let you read.
Dreamless dorm, ticking clock
I walk away from the soundless room
Windless night, moonlight melts
My ghostly shadow to the lukewarm gloom
Nightly dance of bleeding swords
Reminds me that I still live
I will burn my dread
I once ran away from the god of fear
And he chained me to despair
Burn my dread
I'll break the chains and run
Till I see the sunlight again
I lift my face and run to the sunlight
—Burn My Dread, by Yumi Kawamura
The clock strikes midnight, chimes once, then explodes.
The night sky turns green, eerie. Ominous. This is not a natural color. In a healthy world, this sky should not exist.
The moon glows yellow—actually glows with a light of its own. There is no sun in this world. That fluorescent light comes from within, a product of something that should not be there.
A moment ago, as the day drew to a close, people were bustling about in the streets: heading home from work, heading to work from home, heading from one club to the next, walking pets, talking with friends, holding cell phones, holding beer, holding each other. Living, as only people know how, at the end of the twenty-fourth hour, before the dawn of the next moment, the next new reality.
They're not there anymore. Their reality has been postponed. In their place stand monoliths of black up to seven feet tall. Where once people stood, coffins now stand upright in stark contrast to the vibrancy of life before this moment. Some leak blood, which pools in massive puddles at the base of these new monuments, running but never congealing, never drying up. Beneath this sky, beneath this moon, the blood is a vibrant but lifeless crimson, richer in color than blood should ever be.
These people, captured mid-sentence, mid-step, mid-life—they are the lucky ones. Trapped within their coffins as they are, shut in from the new world around them, they remain oblivious to it. Their lives will resume when all this ends; they will finish their sentences, their steps, and move on to their new moments, never once knowing of the green sky or the yellow moon, or what they become beneath them. They are the victims of circumstance, but they do not see their plight, do not even know that it exists.
But not all of them are so fortuitous. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the veil of ignorance is lifted. Sometimes, as reality breaks and the shattered clock pieces fall to the floor, people are left standing. People, not coffins, thrust into a strange new world, suddenly and at once shut away from the lives they knew. They see the perversion of their sky, their friends transformed before their eyes into bleeding statues honoring death. These poor souls, slaves enlightened to their bondage upon seeing the nightly rape of life for the first time—they panic. Their perception of reality shatters like the clock's face, and as they struggle to understand, to put meaning to this sudden desecration of their world, they are often devoured. Their minds fall prey to sinister forces that stalk the world beneath the green sky. If they make it back to their own reality, to the safe-haven that left them for dead on the shores of this twisted plane, it is not as the same person they came in as. The survivors are little more than empty shells, a waste byproduct of the world that consumed them. They return stoic, without thought or energy. Comatose. Zombified. Lost.
Rare are those who stumble into this plane. Rarer still are those who emerge again unscathed, their minds and bodies intact. However rare, though, such occurrences are not impossible. Those with the potential to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, alone but unafraid, in danger but suffering no grievances, must eventually do so; and from the first night they awaken to such talent, they are destined to step into this strange frontier each time it appears, night after night, every night 'til eternity so long as the yellow moon exists. When the clock blows, they alone are left standing against the darkness, to do as they will in a world where human beings have no place and are not welcome.
Some exploit such power, while others hide it away and pretend that it doesn't exist, that the warped view outside is only a recurring nightmare. But some see this moment for what it is, what it truly signifies, and they embrace their potential. They fight back against the injustice of a distorted world. They hunt the darkness down, confront it, and kill it. Every night, while the blissfully ignorant sleep inside their coffins, they head into battle with the firm belief that, somehow, they must set the world right.
This is the Dark Hour, where what evil lurks in the hearts of men is made corporeal. This is the kingdom of absolute death, who sits in her golden throne atop her jade palace and watches the world below slowly surrender to her presence. Her spawn are the shadows that feed on human apathy, and her citadel rises up to meet her every night, growing larger as the will to live diminishes. She reigns unopposed but for those rare few who dare to desecrate her home and slay her children, all in the hope of one day dragging her down from her throne in the sky and reclaiming the sanctity of life.
About one year ago, they succeeded. By conquering their own souls and wielding their inner personas as weapons against their fate, they conquered the Tower of Demise and wrenched the incarnation of oblivion from her seat of power. The bravest among them sealed her away from the world with his own indomitable will, forfeiting his physical existence to stand guard at the doors of her prison, that none may set her free and place her back in the sky. Their objective realized, the remainder of the rebels returned to their lives, as the world they knew was freed from the clutches of utter darkness, and all connection with the Dark Hour was severed.
This is what we're told, anyway. The two of us, we've never known anything else outside this haunted wasteland.
We're standing in the parallel version of Iwatodai, staring up at a vacant dormitory that, six months ago, housed a group of six students and their dog. From what we've heard, they used to be like us; for exactly one hour every night, they entered our world. It was they who ascended the Shadow Labyrinth to stage a coup on the goddess hidden in the moon.
The difference between us and them, though, is that after an hour, they left—they went back to their normal lives again, returning once more after twenty-four hours of stable reality, away from this emotional dumping ground of blood and coffins and shadows. The Dark Hour came for them as promised; an hour of darkness, once every night.
Not so for us. For us, it is eternal. All that changes is the position of the coffins.
Staring up at this empty building, we wonder where they've gone. We wonder why this world still exists if Death no longer watches over it. We wonder why the Dark Hour surrendered them each night when it refuses to let us out.
We have ceased wondering how we came to be here in the first place.
We wonder these things, and suddenly the moonlight is blocked out. Not by clouds—never by clouds, not this doomed moon. One of them has come up behind us. There are no peaceful moments in this world; each one is a struggle for survival. There is always something trying to destroy our minds.
We don't turn to face it, though we share a glance. There is sadness there, and pity, and exhaustion. We tire of this unending battle, but we still will not surrender to death. That is not the escape we want.
We don't turn. We close our eyes instead, ignoring the otherworldly growling behind us. I hold my gun to her head, as she holds hers to mine.
We pull the triggers.
There is a sound like that of glass shattering into a thousand pieces, a burst of light, a sudden surge of power. A strange sensation washes through us. It feels like some great pressure has been released. It feels like liberation. Like freedom.
While we remain trapped here, it is the only freedom we will ever know.