Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera.

"...I'm just one of the many students here."
-Harold Westbrook

September 8, 2014

Vicki Long had never thought of herself as a bad girl, not in the sense the term was typically used. Perhaps a bit too willing to put down those lower than her on the social hierarchy that, despite the best efforts of its staff, had nevertheless formed among the students of Westbrook Academy. It was a fault she would admit to, if reluctantly; and always holding to the defense that if she did not go along with the crowd, she would become its next victim.

Clearly, though, whatever was chasing after her had no interest in listening to that defense.

It seemed as though she had only just emerged from the coffee shop when the bizarre entity had made itself known; a blob of black, it seemed at first, with a faint red blotch at around waist height. It was not until it hurtled towards her faster than she thought possible, and the red blotch revealed itself to be a mask, that she realized the danger she was in.

There was nobody else nearby; it was past closing time for the coffee shop, it door locking behind Vicki as she existed. And the lone streetlight that should have illuminated the environs had been extinguished, its illumination disappearing with a loud pop the moment she first noticed her hunter.

And so Vicki ran, fleeing from the small town's streets into the surrounding woods. Whatever chased her was no animal; with luck, she thought, her pursuer would meet their match in the twisted trees and shadows. Once she had escaped, she could return to the dorms, protected by high walls and what she found herself desperately hoping would prove to be working lights.

It wasn't until a black hand grabbed her ankle, an unnatural chill causing her to stumble and trip over an exposed root, that she realized her error.

The black creature loomed over her as she turned. Vicki still could not identify her attacker; there was precious little light to reveal her surroundings. All that was certain was that although it was no beast of the forest, neither was it human; nearly a dozen arms reached out from its form, some with hands whose fingers ended in claws that gleamed in the pale moonlight, sharper than any of the swords that the school's fencing instructor used. For an instant, she counted herself lucky that such a hand was not the one that grabbed her, although she realized in the next instant that it was not likely to remain so for long.

The creature lifted an arm, and Vicki struggled to keep from closing her eyes in fear. For some reason she could not put into words, she was suddenly determined not to give whatever entity had chased her the satisfaction. If she was to die, she suddenly felt, let it be without flinching.

And so, when the arm failed to cleave her head from her neck, she knew why: it had instead gone flying from the body of the creature in a flash of steel.

Vicki did not know when the newcomer had arrived, but she was grateful regardless. It was a man; or at least, he appeared to be a man, if young and wearing a long coat of what appeared to be gray leather. From where he stood his face was not visible, although there was likely not enough light for it to matter anyway. In his right hand he held a thin-bladed sword with an ornate hilt of wirework, and in his left a phone. The screen shone just brightly enough that she could tell that her savior wore leather gloves, the same gray as his coat.

"You shall not claim her, shadow," the newcomer said. His voice was masked, the electronic distortion like something out of a TV show. "Flee, or perish by my hand."

Undaunted by his bravado, the creature lashed out with three of its arms, but the newcomer was too fast. The first he dodged around, and the others he sliced through, the severed limbs bubbling away into nothingness as they fell to the earth. A guttural hiss rose from whatever the creature had for a throat as new arms grew outward to replace them.

"They never flee," the newcomer said with a hint of resignation before raising his phone, the screen facing towards the black blob. Its light gave Vicki the first chance she had to truly see her attacker; it was a mass of inky shadows, a red theater mask in the shape of a laughing face sliding across its form. "Marduk!" the newcomer screamed, and the phone began to glow brighter than she thought possible from any such device.

The light became a burst that forced Vicki to cover her eyes, and when it faded, the newcomer had been joined by what she could only describe as a giant of a medieval knight, standing some nine feet. Its armor glowed a faint purple, and it held a sword longer than she was tall in one hand and a shield just as large in the other.

The knight lifted its sword with impossible ease and pointed the tip of its blade at the shadow-thing. It shrank back ever so slightly, as though preparing to flee, but before it could, a burst of flame rose from the ground, engulfing it. An inhuman scream pierced the air, and then there was silence, the flames consuming every trace of the shadow-thing before dying away.

The new arrival turned to face Vicki as the knight lowered its sword. She still could not identify her savior; the bulk of the man's dark-skinned face was concealed beneath a white mask that reminded her of a butterfly. "Who...who are you?"

"Someone who can fight those things," the man said. "If you need a name, call me Monarch."

"What the hell are they?" Vicki asked.

"It's a long story," Monarch said as Marduk circled around behind Vicki, facing outward from the pair. "Stay low. I don't think it was out here alone."

An echoing, inhuman roar served to confirm those words as three new shadow-creatures leaped forward from the darkness of the woods. Rather than red masks, theirs were blue and shaped into a crying face rather than laughing; but otherwise, they looked and moved the same as the first. One of them held back, while the other two charged towards Vicki from either side.

Monarch was the first to act, the thin sword stabbing forward and piercing the mask's left eye. The creature let out a bubbling hiss before exploding into a small cloud black dust that soon became nothing. Marduk had already moved to stop the other, his sword cleaving the creature in two. Both halves soon met the same fate. The last of the three seemed to think better of joining its compatriots, instead electing to turn and fleeing into the woods.

"Th..." Vicki started to say, but found herself unable to finish the word, let alone the sentence, as a wave of exhaustion struck like a blow from a champion boxer. Her knees wobbled, her vision blurred, and she was unconscious before she hit the ground.

Adam Burton was not someone who often remembered his dreams. To be sure, he would know that he had dreamt upon awakening. Sometimes he might even retain a few shreds of whatever tapestry his unconscious mind had woven, although they rarely lasted for more than a few minutes before fading into nothingness. But to recall the bulk of a dream...this had never been a common occurrence during the sixteen years that he had thus far lived.

And yet, as he gazed upon the blue walls of the chamber he now stood within, the high school student knew that this was a dream he would remember in its entirety.

This struck Adam as peculiar at first, for even he was aware of the difficulty of remaining within a dream after recognizing it as such. Nevertheless, the dream did not waver, and after a moment he allowed himself to take in the chamber.

It was not a large chamber, perhaps the size of a school classroom. Blue velvet curtains hung from each wall, and the floor was blue marble of the same shade. Two dozen long wooden benches, each polished and stained a dark brown that was very nearly black, lay arranged in a chevron pattern that opened up in front of a lectern that rose seamlessly from the floor.

A man stood behind the lectern, although his back was turned to Adam. He was a short man, and very nearly bald. White hair framed the sides of his head, some of the longer strands falling against a well-tailored black suit. He was silent and unmoving, as though his attention was elsewhere.

Adam started to walk towards the man at the lectern, but before he could make it past even one of the benches, the man turned around to face the dreamer. His nose was long; impossibly so, Adam thought; and his eyes were all but inhuman: bulging, bloodshot, and lacking any visible iris.

The man at the lectern made a sweeping gesture with his right arm as he bowed to greet Adam. "Welcome to the Velvet Room, young man," he said, pressing a white-gloved hand to his chest. "My name is Igor, and you...well, you are not what I would call an entirely expected guest. No matter. Please, have a seat."

Adam settled in at a bench to his left as Igor continued to speak from the lectern. "It is odd that you have been sent to this place. His interests in...well, it is not my place to question the one I serve. He did wish that you be brought here..." The elderly man suddenly stopped and narrowed one of his eyes, peering closely at Adam. "And you do seem to have the potential."

"Where am I?" Adam asked. Sleeping, he thought to himself, a reflexive answer that he nevertheless knew was not the one he sought.

"As I told you earlier," Igor said, "you are currently within the Velvet Room. It is a place of my master's creation, existing outside both dream and reality, beyond the conscious and the unconscious." He gave Adam a brief, toothy smile, before continuing. "Not all people can perceive this place, even in their dreams. Only those with a certain rare gift..." He trailed off. "But perhaps I overstep my bounds. He only just informed me of your coming, after all, and from what I was told I can only assume that you know nothing of this gift."

Adam frowned. "What gift?"

"You will learn soon enough, young man," Igor said before reaching into his breast pocket and retrieving a small item. "Of this, I am quite certain. But for now, let me ask you: do you believe in destiny?" He opened his hand, revealing the item to be a box of Tarot cards.

The frown on Adam's face deepened at the question. "Of course not."

"But there is so much it can teach us," Igor said as he opened the box and began to draw cards from it. As he spoke, he showed Adam each card before releasing it. Rather than fall to the ground, though, they floated in front of Igor, defying whatever the dream apparently had instead of gravity. "After all, even if one controls their own fate..." The Fool, although its close-cropped black hair made the figure resemble Adam himself. "It is still necessary to decide what that fate should be." The Emperor, but with a young, clean-shaven man of African descent wearing a gray suit and tie rather than an elderly white man in a red robe. "For if we do not strive to shape the world into what we wish for it to become..." Death, although the red-haired woman sitting atop the horse was nevertheless anything but dead. "We will instead find ourselves shaped by it." Justice; a brunette seated on a brownstone throne, holding a book and a noose instead of a sword and scales.

"I don't understand," Adam said. Igor simply smiled and returned the cards to their box, and the box to his breast pocket.

"As I said before, you will, soon enough. Perhaps I will even be the one to aid you in this understanding...so long as you agree to this." Igor lifted a sheet of paper from the lectern and handed it to Adam.

The youth read over the paper. I, the undersigned, hereby swear and affirm that I choose of my own free will the fate that lies before me, and that lies before all those who follow me. I swear and affirm that I shall abide by the consequences of my choice, and all choices to come as a result... "What the hell is this?"

"A contract," Igor said. "It should be straightforward enough; you simply acknowledge that what you do, you do without coercion. And that what happens because of what you do, you will accept."

Adam looked over the contract again, then back to Igor. "But what about what you said before that? About deciding one's own fate?"

"That is precisely the point, young man," Igor said. "To choose your fate is to choose the consequences of that fate. But if you are confused, you need not sign just yet. After all, we will meet again."

"When?" Adam asked.

"When it is time for you to be shown the mask which you have so long worn," Igor said in reply. "Now, if you are not going to sign the contract until then, I'm afraid I must ask you to leave. There is much work that needs to be done. My master can be quite insistent about certain matters, you see. He is not someone I wish to disappoint. Farewell, Adam Burton."

The world dropped out from beneath Adam as he awoke.

In a dark room that both did and did not exist, the young man who had called himself "Monarch" earlier that evening removed his mask and let out a breath.

"It's getting worse. The Shadows aren't just coming through one or two at a time now. I found a pack of four chasing one of the other students. Almost didn't save her."

The other man in the dark room stood, expressionless, from across a black marble table that served as the only visible furnishing. His skin was as pale as Monarch's was dark, with long brown hair tied into a ponytail and a mask that could have been a twin to the one that had just been removed. Instead of a gray leather coat, he wore a black shirt and pants that almost seemed to be a single article of clothing. "What would you have me do?" he asked in a tone that lacked any trace of emotion.

"Since you won't fight them directly for God knows what reason," Monarch said with a frustrated tone, "I would have you point me to the source, or at least tell me what I can do to keep the Shadows from entering my world."

"I cannot," the other man said. "I am bound by my role, just as you..."

"Don't give me that crap!" Monarch said, slamming his right hand, open-palmed, against the table. "A girl could have died tonight! If you want me to keep that from happening, you'd better..."

"I had 'better' do what?"

The room stood silent for a moment. "You really don't care, do you?" Monarch finally asked in a quiet tone.

"Do you care?" the other man said.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Monarch said, anger returning to his voice. "Of course I care! I wouldn't be this pissed off if..."

"Then I must care as well," the other man said. "It is as Marduk told you when first you called him forth."

Monarch rolled his eyes. "So what, you care, but you're not going to do anything that makes it look like you care?"

"I have already acted in ways that 'make it look like I care'," the other man said. "I cannot act openly against the Shadows, because to do so would invite a far greater threat into this reality. Instead, I granted you my mask, and bade you act in my stead. The true enemy sees this, and knows that I am prepared to act should my hand be forced."

"And that's why you can't tell me anything other than 'monsters called Shadows want to kill everyone, I'll give you a magic smartphone app that can stop them'?"

The other man shook his head. "You know that the power of Persona is not..."

"Of course I know that," Monarch said. "The sea of my soul, etcetera etcetera. The point is, why is that information something you can't share?"

"Were I to explain why it is forbidden for me to reveal the knowledge you seek," the other man said, his voice still emotionless, "that would itself require me to reveal forbidden knowledge. But you need not fear the Shadows, young general. You have already found your army, and soon, your army will have its champion. His journey is only just beginning, but..." For the first time, the other man's expression changed, becoming a smile. "There are powers in this universe that smile on those such as he."

"My 'champion' had better get here quick, then," Monarch said. "The full moon is tomorrow, and now that I've figured out that the Shadows are tied to the lunar cycle - something else you said was forbidden knowledge, by the way - I think I can safely assume that we'll want his help sooner rather than later."

"I can promise you this," the other man said. "You will indeed meet him before the sun next sets."

September 9, 2014

"The Westbrook Academy is a school with a fascinating history behind it."

The man speaking to Adam Burton was not as ancient-looking as the man from his strange dream, but he was nevertheless old. Easily in his seventies, Adam felt, with thinning gray-white hair and silver-rimmed round glasses that framed a face as narrow as the rest of him. He looked, simply put, exactly how you would expect a man with the position of "boarding school headmaster" to look.

"Abraham Westbrook was born in the deep South, a black child in an area where Jim Crow laws were the order of the day. Orphaned at a very young age, he was placed in a home run by a group of Catholic nuns who impressed on him at a very young age the importance of a good education. As an adult, he used this education..."

The elderly figure escorting Adam on a tour of the Westbrook Academy campus continued his lecture, but the youth had ceased to pay much attention. He already knew the rest, after all. Westbrook founded what would eventually become a regionally prominent electronics chain before being acquired by Best Buy, and used the money to fund a school that 'would ensure that he would not be the only child of humble beginnings to benefit from a quality education'.

"...to benefit from a quality education," the headmaster continued. Yes, Adam thought to himself, he's just quoting the pamphlet. Figured as much. "Half of the students here are much like yourself: children at the peak of their school's academic rankings, but whose parents lack the finances necessary to..."

And again, Adam returned to ignoring the headmaster. For a moment he thought the man might deviate from his plainly memorized speech, but that was apparently not going to be the case: like the school's founder, it seemed, Adam Burton was himself an orphan. It had only been a few months since his parents died in that car accident: the very same day he had been notified that he had been accepted to Westbrook Academy, as fate would have it.

It made things easier, Adam had to admit; his aunt had been named his legal guardian, and as much fun as he had always had whenever she visited, even Adam could tell that the woman was ill-suited to act as a mother. To his parents, Westbrook Academy was an opportunity that he might never again see the equal of; to his aunt, the Academy was a lucky break.

Adam turned the corner of the hallway, and barely stopped himself from running into the headmaster; the man was speaking to another student, a black teenager in a... "...gray suit and tie," Adam found himself whispering, just loud enough for the headmaster to hear.

"Ah, good, there you are. I'd like you to meet someone." The headmaster stepped to one side. "This is Harold Westbrook, Abraham's great-grandson. He's a junior here, like you. Harold, this is one of our new students, Adam Burton." Harold offered a hand in greeting, and acting entirely on social instinct, Adam shook it. He was on the Emperor card in that dream, Adam thought to himself. How is that...?

"It's good to meet you," Harold said. "Anyway, Headmaster..."

"Please," the headmaster replied. "Call me Peter. Or Mr. Kells, if you must."

Harold shook his head. "No, Headmaster. I don't want any special treatment. While I'm at the Academy, I'm just one of the many students here."

"But I can't just..."

"You can, and you will, Headmaster," Harold insisted. "My great-grandfather wanted this school to be free of all class hierarchy. If you won't respect my wishes, then respect his."

"I...I'll try," Headmaster Kells replied. "But it's just...well, your family has done so much for this school."

"My family," Harold said. "Not me. I haven't done anything yet besides spend my sophomore year within these walls."

The headmaster opened his mouth, for a moment, then closed it again. "If you insist. If you wouldn't mind doing one favor, though, could you finish showing Adam around the school for me? I should get back to my office."

"If you insist," Harold said, to which the headmaster nodded. "Very well, then. I leave Adam in your capable hands." As he turned and walked away, Harold rolled his eyes. "I swear, he always does that."

"What?" Adam asked. "Round up other students to do stuff he doesn't have time for?"

"No...well, that too," Harold admitted. "He always makes me talk like that. If I don't sound like some stuffed shirt, he acts like I'm disrespecting my family." He sighed, then grinned faintly. "Normally, I'd make a crack about old white guys right about now, but I'm not sure how you'd take it."

Adam chuckled. "For the next fifty years or so, I'd say it doesn't apply to me, so go ahead."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harold said, allowing his grin to widen. "Come on, I've got some friends I want you to meet."

Harold's path to his friends led Adam through several hallways and sets of doors, giving the new arrival time to observe the other students. The mixture was far more wide-ranging than at Adam's old school, something that Harold soon seemed to realize Adam had noticed.

"It's a quirk of how the scholarship system is set up," he said. "If you're in the top ten percent of your school and below the median income for your area, you're allowed to apply. And given that you don't get many schools with a real mix of black kids and white kids anymore, let alone..." He stopped suddenly, both in speech and footsteps. "I'm starting to talk like that again, aren't I? Going to lose my street cred if I keep it up."

"You have street cred?" Adam asked.

"I'm a black kid in what would be a small town were it not for the Academy," Harold said. "It's one of those 'until proven otherwise, and probably even then' deals."

"Odd how they're all dressed, though," Adam said. "It's like eight different uniforms at once." For although Harold was hardly the only one wearing a suit and tie, they were in a wide range of colors, as well as a number who simply wore a long-sleeved buttoned shirt above their waist instead of the full suit.

"The administration say it's about allowing individual expression without it turning into a way to divide people up based on how much money their parents make," Harold explained. "Or something like that. Anyway, we're here."

The door that Harold had stopped at was of an orange-painted metal, with a black-and-tan plaque to the left of the door reading "STUDY HALL C" in block text. Along the wall on the right was a mural depicting a forest at night. Snow-covered pine trees rose up towards the cloudless sky, the stars dots of pale yellow against the deep blue. On the right side of the mural, presumably somewhere far in the distance, some unnamed city rose above the trees like light-spattered hands reaching to grasp the heavens.

"That was actually done by one of the students," Harold said as he opened the door. "Kid's a bit out there, but he knows his way around a paintbrush."

The first thing that caught Adam's attention was the large stone door at the far end of the study hall. It was a dark gray, framed in an arch made from the same stone that made it look like something that belonged in a castle instead of a school. The rest of the room, though, looked far more normal for a study hall. Dark wooden computer desks ran the length of one of the walls, the cables spilling out from the back onto the orange carpet. The rest of the room was filled with long tables made from similar wood, tan plastic chairs scattered between the desks.

At one of the tables in the center, two teenage girls sat across from each other. One of them was tall, with brown hair and a white buttoned shirt hanging over a black tee. Despite the textbook that the girl was holding, Adam could make out the words "SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543" across the black shirt. "Ah, good, you're back," she said without looking up. "It occurred to me that you never got that sample we needed last night. I know those..."

"Not now, Dana," Harold said, just hastily enough for Adam to notice. "There's a new student here."

"Really?" the other girl said, shoulder-length red hair rotating along with the head that bore it as she looked at the new arrivals. Her outfit was somewhat more formal than Dana's, consisting of brown slacks and a tan polo shirt over which she wore an unbuttoned brown suit jacket. A notebook computer sat in front of her, although the angle kept Adam from seeing much if any of the screen. "He scholarship or one of the rich jerks?"

"You're not supposed to draw those distinctions here, Judy," Dana replied, still not looking up from the textbook. "The teachers have been riding you on that since you started here, and you know how Harold feels about using his name to bail you out."

"I'm not the one who drew the class lines," Judy said as she turned back towards her computer. "So stop acting like it's my job to erase them. Besides, I'm sure there's rich kids out there who aren't jerks. Who knows, maybe one of them will even attend the Academy someday."

"Can we put it on pause for a moment?" Harold said forcefully before turning back towards Adam. "Meet Dana Schuler and Judy Keene. Dana, Judy, this is Adam Burton. He just arrived today."

"You think it's him, then?" Dana asked.

"Not. Now." Harold said.

"Then I'm getting back to work on this project," Judy said. "I still need to see if my side-channel attack on a known personal data repository will provide the necessary cryptographically insecure information that I can use to breach the administrative access restrictions on the school network."

"Meaning...what, exactly?" Adam asked.

"She's looking up teachers on Facebook and seeing if any of them used really stupid passwords," Harold said. "Don't worry, I got the network people to sign off on it. It's an internal politics thing."

"And yes, I know it's not technically a side-channel attack," Judy added. "But it really doesn't count as social engineering if they gave away the necessary information without you even needing to contact them to request it."

"I don't know about that," Dana said. "You're attacking the implementation of the system rather than the system itself. It may not be a cryptographic attack, but side-channel would still be an otherwise accurate term, I'd think."

"When did you start paying attention to stuff like that?"

"When I decided that knowledge was important, maybe?"

Harold sighed as the not-quite-squabble between the two girls continued. "They're going to be like this for a while. Feel free to tune them out for now."

"Does..." Adam pauses, trying to remember the name. "Does Judy always talk like that?"

"Only to mess with people she's just met," Harold says. "It's actually a good sign. If she didn't care enough to talk like that, it'd mean she'd just want you to go away and never bug her again."

"If you say so," Adam said. "Anyway, question for you."

"Shoot."

Adam gestured to the stone door at the rear of the study hall. "Where does that door go?"

The conversation stopped as three pairs of eyes fixed themselves on Adam Burton. Dana was the first to speak.

"The stone door at the back of the hall? You can see it?"