As this takes inspiration from Persona and by extension the SMT metaverse, keep in mind to expect a few questionable depictions of religious figures. But even better would be to disassociate religious figures from this entirely, outside of perhaps the Demiurge, and treat their representation as abstractions, not literals.

As well as to differentiate between the Demiurge, YHWH, God, god(s?), etc. Things will get messy, crazy, and I was running on four hours of sleep when I started this

Opening Act: Again, Again, Again

Darkness. As far as the eye could see, but for one little pinprick in the distance. But the darkness did not bother the eldritch entity whose presence permeated all. As creator of this realm, the one who created and destroyed, gave and took, began and ended, this was simply an extension of itself.

The darkness, the underlying matter and its laws, any wonder It felt from the moment of its first conception had long since dissipated as it became the vessel for more creations, more laws, and more experiments. But His many creations, the cosmos and all that encompassed it, had become, for a lack of a better term insignificant. Insignificant relative to His most recent experiment as a creator, an artist, as God.

For God He may be, but time, time was its own tricky experiment that He had only recently (for Him) grasped. It took many trials and errors. Oh, how His derivative creations had suffered as He created and destroyed new existences. He knew the number of times He had done it, of course. The number did not matter though. As a creator, what mattered was the results, and oh was His sense of satisfaction higher than it had been in eternities.

In His quest to master time itself, to defy and control the one law that had not been placed by Him, He had invested ever so much time. So much time that everything He had done before He began, all of His previous creations combined, were but a blip relative to it in time expended.
But if He mastered time, then did that truly matter anymore? No, no it would not. He was already eternal, but He also knew that while all-powerful, He would not be true to that until everything was His domain, and time was that last frontier, the lone holdout. It was only a matter of time.

If He had a sense of humor, perhaps now He would have laughed. But He digressed. His first experiment was finally stable. It was truly ingenious. The cosmos, over the time that He had ignored it in favor of experimentation, had delivered upon Him its own creations. Picking at random, He had selected one of its creations, and chosen some of its denizens for His experiment. He had been meticulous at this point.

Flawed. They were all flawed. They were flawed, predictably so, and oh so easy to program at His whim because of it. But even with the assured predictability of His test subjects, He had moved to cut down the number of variables in His scenario.

Their parental figures? Shadows at best, removed so utterly from the world that their only presence was an echo drawn from memory. Truthfully, it wasn't only parental figures. Every individual in the existence of His test subjects was but a data structure, abstracted. To the point of non-existence, so that there would be no unpredictability in His experiment. The world itself? There was none. The world consisted of the 'cul-de-sac'...and that was it. Oh, but if one of His test subjects were to step far enough away from their flimsy (for even He would admit that their world was flimsy relative to His other creations) little world, they would see nothing, hear nothing, be nothing. It would shatter his model, but that was already accounted for. There were checks in place, for should that ever occur. It was all but impossible for it to happen, in other words, and He was confident in his means.

Ending its internal summation of recent events, Its primary focus returned to the sliver of light in the darkness, where an image could be seen. He was eager to see what would happen, for he had been careful, patient, and meticulous in this creation. It was time to see if time would kiss the ring.
And so He executed the model, and watched. And watched. And watched. Watched as three young boys met, grew together, laughed together, fought together, fell together, suffered together. He watched as they were antagonized by others, but slowly (and painfully) built a better reputation for themselves. How they slowly grew, while not out of their character flaws, at least overcame them to the extent where they could grow. One would gain courage. The other would gain patience. The last one would stop sticking his head in the sand. He watched as they aged, married, had children, grew old, and died.

And then he reset.

Again he watched, but more attention was put on the other subjects this time. He watched the primary antagonists of the trio, and their broken background. If He had compassion, then perhaps He would have been sympathetic to them and the way they turned out, but that simply not who He was, and so He observed some more. They each had their own personal demons, but were all insecure in their own ways. And how their response to their own insecurities was to take it out on others.
They improved, eventually. It took time, and it was long after the first trio he looked at had moved on from being cowed by them. And it took many painful lessons. But they were capable of changing, growing as people, and reforming themselves. He watched until they too died.

And again he reset.

Continuing His previous trend, he watched another set of three. Anger, Denial, and Isolation, was how He decided to categorize them. They too, unsurprisingly, had their flaws. For that was exactly why He had chosen them, although their flaws differed greatly from the previous test subjects in that they did not wear them on their sleeves. Unlike the other subjects, they never truly outgrew their flaws. Society, for that was what their little realm of existence could be defined as, did not pressure them to change their ways for there simply was no need; they were well-adjusted enough that their demons remained strictly in the back of their subconscious minds, never to be addressed. Of course, their flaws were expressed indirectly, like the other subjects. 'Normal' test subjects would just not do; they would have the unpredictability inherent in man in spite of their flaws, for flaws do not define a person. But not these subjects. They were ruled and controlled by their flaws, defined by them, characterized by them, and lived and died by them.

Once more a reset.

Finally, his last three subjects. Insecurity, Narcissism, and Loneliness. These were more like the other test subjects; their flaws were blatant, their minds open books. For the most part; To Him, of course, but He imagined that some details, some rather important details that defined them, were not quite so apparent to other test subjects. But no matter. He continued to watch in contemplation as they too lived, loved, and died. Humanity. How curious a creation his creation had delivered upon him. So weak. So fragile. So flawed. And yet they prospered, developed civilization, and reached untold highs, relative to everything else save few other points in existence. How curious that beings so weak could be so strong. Not that they understood their own strength; humanity lived ignorant of the power of their will, their faith, their beliefs, their determination. Did not understand that what moved the earth to humanity's whims was humanity's desires. But He digressed; these test subjects would do just fine.

He ran several thousand more trials. Not all too long, but after doing so He felt like his understanding of every little action and thought that occurred in his experiment. It was now time to introduce variables. He played with ages, genders, sexual preferences, backgrounds, adding new subjects, or removing subjects. He ran tests where the cul-de-sac was empty save for one of the test subjects. He ran trials where the cul-de-sac had triple the number of test subjects. Ultimately, He decided that His original test cases would be more than enough, and stopped playing with numbers. And without fail, his loop repeated. Over, and over, and over again. He had managed to manipulate time, to an extent. True, He was not its master. Not yet, at least. But He had all the time in existence, and He could afford to play with his newest experiment a while longer before returning His attention to His true interest.

Truly, He could not state how long He tinkered with His experiment. Well, He could. It was just too long to bother, and if time is meaningless, well, why bother? He exhausted every possibility, His fascination with the limited unpredictability of man growing stronger. He found, contrary to his initial analysis of humanity, that there was a slight degree of unpredictability. Very slight, however. The same variables always produced the same results, but tinkering finite details could provide very slight changes. Most of these were ignorable, but some had rather drastic effects in the short and long term. But, this was why He was fascinated. He wanted omniscience over humanity; His curiosity would not tolerate anything that did not kiss the ring. And so he watched, and watched, and watched. Watched until everything that occurred could be predicted by Him. Watched until everything that was and would be was known to Him. Watched, until His interest left him. Yet again, He reached omniscience. There was nothing in his experiment that was unknown to him, nothing at all. And He was bored once more.

He contemplated destroying his latest model. After all, He understood it its entirety. He could recreate it at will from any point in the scenario. But destruction was not quite something that suited him in this case. He had destroyed countless other failed attempts, but this was his first success in his conquest of time. While not one to be sentimental, it would serve as a reminder of His first step. And truthfully, there would be no harm in letting it exist to the side; it was not as though He was pressed for space. Resetting the experiment once more, it was set to the side and ignored as He began to brainstorm His next experiment, one that would hopefully let Him cut into the timestream rather than bend it around. The experiment played out again in its default state with no variable modifications. A year passed. Two years. Three. It would have almost certainly reached its completion without any deviation, were it not for the fact that He had placed it next to the cosmos, His first creation. So close, that they were in fact touching. Inside the cosmos, an elevator attendant smiled.

"Master, I believe it's time. I do believe we can act before Kuzunoha or the Hito-Shura do! It's time to punch them to the beat!"

Igor's face remained unchanged from his uncanny grin as he sighed internally.

End of Opening Act

Spoilers: At the moment, the Hito-Shura and Raidou are just easter eggs and nothing more

Terminology:

Kuzunoha - Raidou Kuzunoha XIV, can travel the Amala Network/SMT Multiverse, protagonist of 3rd and 4th Devil Summoner games

Hito-Shura - The Demi-fiend, protagonist of SMT3: Nocturne, can also travel the Amala Network/SMT Multiverse

This experiment came to me in the oddest way, at the oddest time. It's also the oddest idea I've ever had, but let's roll with it.
Keep in mind that I let a few years pass so that the cast of Ed, Edd, & Eddy would be in the 15-16 age range. This lets me do a few things:

a) Make them more tolerable to write. I love the show, but it has its extremes and adoloscence lets me work with (only slightly) more mature characters For example, Ed is rather stupid. Apparently. But we've also seen him destroy everybody's expectations of him and be crazy insightful at random Is he truly stupid? No, but I think there's a reason for how he acts and how he will grow up. And that's why we have a story folks

b) These characters are Persona 3 and 4-aged, making my life a bit easier. They're not really going to grow as people when they're young and selfish

As for who's the protagonist? Are they a Wild Card? Well, that's decided, yes they will be a Wild Card. As for who they are, who do you think is closest to passing for Narukami or Makoto Yuki/Minato Arisato? I hope it's obvious via the story's character options.

Note that I'm not planning on rehashing either Persona 3 or Persona 4. No Tartarus, no TV hopping. We're going into uncharted territory, because I like to think that I'm more original than doing a rehash while pasting square characters into the circle holes.

If you're a bit lost on what the purgatory theory is, Google it. It screams SMT to me, and while I like SMT, I'm still a bit of an SMT noob and the cast seems more suited to Persona than mainline or spinoff SMT, if you get what I mean. And yes, there will be Social Links.

Feel free to ask any questions that you have via review?