Hello! This is going to be my first Shin Megami Tensei fiction. Now just a warning to those of you that are into the game because of its bleak nature: I'm not Stephen King. What I'm trying to say is that this will have the concept of the games, but will be nowhere near as dark. Don't get me wrong; this is going to be intense, and there are going to be moments that show the worst in people. Enjoy.

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing pertaining to Shin Megami Tensei. Please support the official release.

An Ugly yet Beautiful World

Chapter One

The Beginning

XxxEnd01xx: I'm telling you! It's freaky!

Some people have weird pennames…

Shader54: You're giving me the creeps.

She decided to join in.

Autumo: What are you guys talking about?

Shader54: End here thinks that there's some dude on the net sending people free apps.

Autumo: LOL! That might not be normal, but it doesn't really qualify as 'strange.' Maybe he's just trying to build up the hype for the new and improved version of the app?

XxxEnd01xx: It's not that he's giving away free apps! It's what the apps DO!

Autumo: Which is…?

XxxEnd01xx: I...

It took a moment for him to continue his reply.

XxxEnd01xx: Don't really know.

Autumo: And how do you know there's something weird about these apps then?

XxxEnd01xx: There's this weird stuff on the message boards about it; a lot of people have claimed to have gotten this app. Then they flat out stop posting. Like they vanished.

Shader54: Shut up.

Autumo: Shut up as in 'Oh my God!' or as in 'be quiet'?

Shader54: As in be quiet.

XxxEnd01xx: Hey!

Autumo: I'd appreciate it if we avoided starting fights in my chat room.

Shader54: You're a loser, End!

Autumo: Shader!

XxxEnd01xx: Shader54, What's your problem?

Shader54: XxxEnd01xx, You're my problem!

She didn't hesitate to click under Shader54's avatar and then click "BLOCK USER."

SHADER54 HAS BEEN BLOCKED

XxxEnd01xx: Thanks Autumo.

Autumo: No prob. I hate it when people go around doing stupid stuff like starting fights. GTG. See you later.

Audrey still had some time before she had to go to school. She wasn't sure what to do, so she checked her phone. One new text message.

Taking care of some last minute details with the move. Won't be home until late.

Love, Mom.

They wouldn't have to move if she hadn't been so naïve.

She slipped on the red plaid skirt, tightened the red tie, buttoned the blue blazer, and pulled up her navy blue knee socks. The only thing she was wearing that wasn't dress code was her footwear. The stupid dress shoes the school required the girls to wear nearly caused her feet to bleed at one point. She was wearing solid white Converse.

Audrey put her laptop, along with her school books, into her backpack and left the house. Her street looked like every other residential city street; it was nothing but a bunch of fancy old townhouses. Once she turned the corner the landscape went from a simple residential area, to a true bustling New York City street. There was honking, numerous pedestrians, and countless commercial buildings that reached up to the heavens.

This day seems so much like any other, she thought. So many people, so many different paths, so many different dreams, all crammed into the same city, all trying to make their ideals and needs come first.

She didn't know whether to find it awe-inspiring, bewildering, or sickening.

(…)

In her opinion, Audrey's school was awkwardly placed. It was wedged between two large office buildings; the football field was small and had less surrounding open area than in any school Audrey had ever seen. The track team had to take a bus over to a community center for their track. Aside from these characteristics and the fact that it had several more floors than the average school, Eastern Private High School was built like any smaller high school.

Audrey walked into the building, blending in with most of the other students. In most schools, children would put their MP3 players and phones away the moment they walked through the doors; Eastern High was different because, so long as you weren't in the middle of class, phones and MP3 players were completely regulation.

They day droned on like any other normal day. One class was all discussion; one was all note taking, and the one truly hands-on class of design engineering. It was the one class Audrey always looked forward to. Audrey was really creative and she was always the first student to come up with a good final design. The guidelines for the projects were never very strict and she could build such amazing devices. Sure half the time they were made out of wood, foam, glue, and tape, but she was always proud of herself when her machine wound up working in the end. There were only two factors she didn't like about the class: she was the only girl in the room, and there were a lot of dangerous potential weapons that were very easy to access.

After her design engineering class came lunch. Audrey didn't really have anyone to sit with, so she always grabbed her lunch as fast as she could, made her way to the roof, and bounced between eating pizza and cookies while surfing the web on her phone. There, the sounds and smells of the city were more distant and ghostly.

Today was one of the few days where she didn't know what to do on the internet. Audrey almost wound up simply eating her lunch and wasting the rest of the lunch away by zoning out. Then she remembered something…

End here thinks that there's some dude on the net sending people free apps.

Some dude on the net sending people free apps…

That didn't seem like a half bad way to pass by an extra fifteen minutes. Audrey decided to do several searches.

Free app giveaway gave her a bunch of contests to win large sums of money for iTunes apps—all of them clearly fake.

Mysterious app brought up a bunch of internet articles warning people about apps that you could get off of third party sites that could make everything on your phone accessible to hackers.

She tried several different searches, and Audrey was about to give up, when she tried one last search in the last few minutes of lunch.

App phantom

The page was all red with some black text and had two choices:

BYSTANDER

OR

CHOOSE YOUR FATE

The site seemed like something that any random person who spent ten minutes on a website that taught people how to make their own websites. All it took was a computer program that most computers already came installed with and codes that any one person could copy and paste. Audrey thought that it was clearly a viral site some amateur hacker was using to learn how good he or she was at getting to other people's information.

The bell rang.

Audrey jumped and scrambled to get her things together. The woman that taught her next class automatically gave students afterschool detentions for tardiness. In the mad dash to hide her phone, she accidently pressed something on the site.

CHOOSE YOUR FATE

(…)

"Hey Audrey!" Someone called.

It was Alex. He had brown hair in a mop cut and glasses.

"I'm going to the library afterschool and it's in the same direction as your house, so I figured we could walk together?"

Audrey smiled. Alex was one of the few real friends she's had since she moved to New York. They were the two kids left out of most groups for one Design Engineering project, so they decided to work together. From that point on they were good friends.

"Sorry Alex; I'm behind on that solo project so I'm staying after."

"Alright." Alex shrugged and waved her goodbye.

As Audrey fought the flow of students heading home for the day, she walked up the stairs and went up to the Design Engineering room. She dropped her bag by her normal seat as if she were walking into a normal class.

The teacher smiled at her and continued reading his issue of Architectural Digest.

Alex took a piece of wood and smoothed it out

(…)

He sat down on a large sofa of the sort that most shrinks would have in their offices. Lying back, he covered his eyes with his right arm and sighed.

"Tell me a story." He said.

Across the room, a woman with flowing silver hair wearing a featureless white dress bowed and took a seat on the floor.

"Where should the story take place?" She asked.

"I think you know." He said with a small chuckle.

She took a breath. "It takes place on the Blue World. The People of this world lived either distant, isolated existences in the countryside, or in towering cities."

"Tell me more." He said.

"The city buildings reached up to the heavens and shined with light. People even had Windows of light that they could use to reach out to people from all over the world, no matter how far away they were. Many even carried these Windows around with them. But something strange was happening with a few of these windows."

"Oh," He sighed.

"These windows could become doors. The person with the Window couldn't go through the Door, but strange things could come out. Everything from fantastic beasts, to fearsome monsters, to powerful weapons like none on the Blue World had ever imagined."

"Who is the main character?" He asked.

The woman thought for a moment. "Our story is about a girl who grew up in the lonely countryside, but recently moved to one of the greatest of the towering cities."

"Why did She move?" He asked.

"You see, She was once a happy girl. While almost everyone looked to the future and saw sorrow, She saw hope and endless possibilities. Not only that, She was very intelligent and had much promise. Her family took pride in all of this. But sadly, one day She bore witness to a terrible tragedy. Her family, not wanting to force her to endlessly mourn, left the countryside for the city in the hopes that this would help her recover."

"So sad." He said.

"She preoccupied herself with the small Window She carried around and her craft work, no longer the same girl and questioning everything She knew. She heard from people that called out to her from their Windows about how the Windows could become Doors. Little did She know, She had turned her Window into a Door."

"Now what happens?" He asked.

"She silently works on her craft, her mind blank, and unaware of the gravity of her situation."

He smiled. "Can we help her become aware?" He asked.

Only it was neither question nor a request. It was an order.

She nodded. "And so our story continues."

(…)