1. Package? Welcome to Iwatodai
Chris POV
"And that's it for this LP guys and...yeah, Frosty is crying in the corner again. You know how emotional she is. Alright that's it for our Persona 3 LP. See ya guys around."
I stopped the recording and drank some water. I looked over to Luce who was sitting on my bed. Of course she didn't cry, but a tear really was running down her cheek. Well, I was a bit shaken myself, but I had more control over my feelings.
I leaned back in my chair. Frosty707 was Luce's username on youtube, while mine was Jackie707. We made LPs every so often, when school allowed us. Originally we didn't want to LP Persona 3, because none of us could stand the ending. Great, we still had to LP the answer for our viewers. I was so not looking forward to it, mainly because it was so fucking hard on the PS2 version.
I hate grinding. Personally I often fight bosses totally under leveled. Hey, it was a challenge and I won. Luce had way more stamina for grinding.
"Should we call it a day?" she asked. "We can upload tomorrow and I'm hungry."
"Again? You just ate a whole pizza during the boss fight." I pointed out. Whenever I was together with her, I was reminded of the fanfictions where the protagonists had bottomless stomachs. Luce was totally like them.
"Well, I'm up for some ice-cream." I said throwing the empty water bottle in the corner of my room. "Alrighty!" she cheered. It was a warm summer day and I opened up my vest. You can't trust the weather reporter anymore.
I used my vest as a belt and stretched my arms, while the two of us were heading towards the nearest ice café. We met a few people, but didn't stop for a conversation. Most people we knew were out of country and we were burning to crisps anyway in the sun.
There were a lot of people outside the café, so we decided to stay inside, where no one was sitting. We had our privacy and the air conditioning for once was working. The waiters and waitresses were busy outside, so it took a while until we could make our orders.
"So, the answer comes next?" Luce asked.
"Looks that way. Wouldn't make sense if we start another project now." I groaned at the thought. I had nothing against the game, but recording, rendering and not to forget the high upload times (although we used a converter) it all took a lot of time.
"I'll do the grinding then. But I think we should start a little side project." she suggested.
"Any ideas?"
"Yeah, how about Professor Layton against Ace Attorney?"
"You know I totally suck at those games. And I never played any Layton game. Well as long as you take the Layton game play, I'm fine."
"Hah, fine." Little not wanted insider. It wasn't funny or anything.
After the two of us got our ice, we shoved it down until our brains froze. We walked outside and went inside again. The same thing happened three times in a row, for each time we ordered something, so nine times in total.
We chatted alongside each other for some time, small talk, how it was supposed to rain today, how much school sucked, how we had no idea what to do after we finished school and all that crap.
We decided to walk back to my place, when the sun was finally settling down. Luce slept at my place over the weekend and my parents weren't there.
In front of my house was a package. It was addressed to me AND Luce, but it was brought to my place. Whatever, if it was a prank, no harm done as long as they don't overdo it.
Curiously we took it inside.
"What do you think is inside?" Luce asked.
"I go for the prank."
"I go for fan-post."
It was neither of those. "Uniforms?" Luce asked curiously.
"Not ANY uniform." I replied, because my stuff was already laid on my bed. "Gekkoukan uniforms."
"WHAT?! Cool~~!" Luce beamed at her own uniform. The two of us were stunned until we fell over in laughter.
"Ok, but seriously, how did they get my size? And who are they?"
"Who cares? Let's put them on!" She was already heading for the bathroom. I shook my head amused and changed into it. It totally fit and was very comfortable.
About a minute after I changed Luce came into my room, holding a card in her hand. She looked at it curiously. I took a peak. It was empty.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"It was in my uniform." she answered. I grabbed into my pocket and found a card, empty like Luce's. When I flipped it, another surprise waited for me: it was the back like in the persona games.
"Cool. Hey there's more in the package, let's have a look."
The next things were rather disturbing: guns. Like REAL guns. We knew how to handle them, since my uncle trained us regularly with those things. He's in the army.
"Okay...this is scary." I commented. A part of me was scared, while the other part was eager to try that thing out. I looked at Luce, who was totally excited about this. I could see it in her eyes. I tried to be the voice of reasoning.
"So, why does someone send us Gekkoukan Uniforms, empty persona cards and real guns-"
"And mp3!" Luce cheered. "Mp3?" I echoed.
Well, there were two mp3s inside, each a pair of headphones connected. Luce's were pink, while mine were black. There was a button on the ride side, which shouldn't be there.
We put them on and she tested the button.
"Nothing's happening."
"Whoa!" I exclaimed.
"Huh?"
"Those things are like Walkie-talkies. Here check it out!"
We played a bit with them.
"Uh...Chris? Is your favorite music also on your mp3?"
"W-h-a-t?"
This was getting more and more ridiculous. Along with my favorite bands, there was the original soundtrack of all persona games.
"Is this the time I should freak out?" I asked. "No, there's still this piece of paper inside. Don't worry, it's the last thing."
"Why do I have the feeling I already know what it is?"
"It is a contract. 'I chooseth this path of my own free will. Signed: Luce van Doom and Chris Hammer.' Urrgh, van Doom, I really need to change my last name."
"Your last name isn't the issue here. This is either a pretty good prank or we're fucked up."
"I think...I'll go for fucked up. These are our handwritings."
"What!?" I snatched the paper out of her hand. No shit, I'd recognize my handwriting everywhere. Luce's handwriting I've seen often enough to recognize it. We were best buds after all.
"I'm ready to shoot myself. Where's the camera?" I asked aloud. Of course there was no camera. We checked everything, but found nothing and we didn't leave for long enough, so the cameras could be hidden that well.
"Maybe their watching from outside?" Luce suggested, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. There was this feeling nagging at our chest and it kept increasing. It was already dark outside, almost a full moon.
We both sat in my room, looking down at the contract as if we would expect something to happen. I took a peak at my watch.
"It's almost midnight."
"Yeah, hehe, it's like we're waiting for the dark hour or something." she chuckled. "So, why are we sitting here?" she asked.
"I don't-"
The clock struck twelve. I knew it, since I was looking at it. I passed out along with Luce. This was our last day on the 'real world'.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
When I woke up, I was sitting on a train seat. Okay, keep calm, keep calm, and don't scream anything.
Luce was sitting in front of me and franticly looking around, like me. Our gazes met each other and the two of us wanted to speak at the same time, but we stopped, pointing the finger at each other.
"You first." I said.
"Uhhh, your hair is black and your eyes are yellow."
What?! I had brown hair and blue eyes. Oh well, Luce would be surprised as well.
"Your hair is pink and your eyes are red."
She looked at me dumbfounded, before checking her ponytail. "Cool~!"
Oh Luce, it's always the same with you. She inspected her hair, while I inspected my pockets. The card was still in there. I couldn't find the gun. Just when I thought about it, it appeared in a flash of light in my hands.
Luce jumped a little but didn't scream. Oh well, we were alone in the waggon. I thought three things in the following: cool, ammo, disappear.
First nothing happened, second a new magazine appeared in my hand and third everything was gone.
"Holy-"
"-fucking-"
"-madness."
We sat there a few seconds, before we laughed our asses off. The whole situation was just so hilarious, we thought we were high.
"Wow, check this out!" She pointed outside the window. We could see the lights of a city outside, while we rode the train.
"Luce, we're heading-"
"-to Iwatodai."
We looked at each other and just stared. Our brains tried to comprehend the whole situation, but it was simply crazy this all could be true. Yet the two of us couldn't be dreaming the same thing, right?
By all the fuss ongoing, we totally missed the announcement. I just heard the word Iwatodai and became alarmed.
"We don't have any stuff here, right?" I asked. Luce checked, but found nothing. So we headed outside empty handed. We walked out of the train station. It was surprisingly empty. We looked at a clock and saw it was 11:00.
We sat down on a bench and discussed the situation.
"'I chooseth this path of my own free will.' We're not taking their roles, are we?" Luce asked me. Urgh, that one got me worried too. "I'm not sure, but honestly I hope not. It's still an hour until midnight. Let's wait and see if they will arrive. If so, we'll look for a way to help them. If not, let's kill the chairman and then ourselves."
"Why ourselves?"
"I wanna see if we can summon our personas not only through the cards, but the guns."
She snipped her fingers. "Let's try our personas now and get the hang of summoning them."
"Now? What if someone sees us?" I asked. She shrugged. "So what?"
I laughed. She was always a bit risky. "Okay, ladies first."
The two of us stood up and took some distance from one and another. Luce took out a card and stared at it. Right, none of us knew how to channel sp.
"..."
"...*yawn*."
I decided to think for myself, so we at least would both be able to do something. And so we stared and stared and stared until a flash of light hit my eyes. Looking up, I saw the card floating in her hand, blue mist surrounding it.
"VARNANI!" she shouted, crushing the card in the process. Varnani was a demon from Digital Devil Saga 2.
As she looked down at me, I felt something inside me. "VARNA!" I shouted and crushed the card, not noticing it had been circling in my hand. I felt my personas presence behind me.
Information flooded into my brain and I got a light headache. I could see the same happened to Luce, judging from her expression.
"No weakness?" I asked.
"No strength?" Luce asked.
In case you don't know in the Digital Devil Saga Games Varna or Varuna (use the latter name if you want to look in Wikipedia) and Varnani had ice resistances and fire weaknesses, yet our personas had none of it. We had ice spells though. There was another information in my mind or probably our minds.
We needed some time to figure things out. Luce summarized everything:
"Our personas level up pretty normal. We have the mantra grid from DDS 2 in order to learn new skills. We know in those games you need to devour enemies to learn new skills. You chose a category from the grid and devour enemies until the bar is full, so you learn those skills. So far we have ice spirit full, which gives us bufu and void ice, a spell that blocks one ice attack, but the shield is temporarily. We need to find out how temporarily. Our current mantra we're leveling is devourer, which gives us devour, a physical attack with which we can eat enemies, so one of us gets more mantra points and ingest mana, which allows us to recover mana by devouring enemies. In order to change our mantra, we need to summon our cards, but it will cost us yen to download a new one. And so far we have nothing in our pockets. (Note: in the game, you trade dollars)."
I took a look at the grid. Instead of changing the 1000 dollars into 10000 yen, it is only 1000 yen. With the random money from Tartarus, we would be able to buy at least the stuff we would need. Completing the whole grid was out of question, especially when later categories needed more time to get completed.
For example Ice Spirit and Devourer were difficulty level 1. Dark Lord, which gives you a null element shield, was difficulty level 8. The highest were 9.
It took us quite some time until we gathered our thoughts. The next train arrived by then and only two passengers went out.
"Let's go ahead a little." I whispered. Luce nodded and we went outside the train station, where we realized, we didn't know where the dorm was.
"Seems like we have to follow them." Luce said. It was then that the dark hour struck in. We were totally taken off guard and looked around in shock, until our gaze met the big yellow moon.
"Wow."
"Wish I could make a photo." Luce pouted a little.
"You can always ask-"
"You two, look out!" we heard a girl scream. We looked behind us and saw the female protagonist and the other one. The girl pointed in front of us!
We turned around again and found the first of the maya shadows approaching. "This is it. If we don't beat those guys, we're officially lame." I smirked.
"Let's kick some ass!" Luce shouted, summoning her gun. I did the same. Everything of that gun felt the same, like the one my uncle gave us to practice. We never practiced on moving targets, but those guys were pretty slow, even at top speed.
Each of us gave a few shots and the shadows were done.
We looked at each other and grinned. "Hell yeah!" We high fived each other.
Turning around we found the male protagonist standing protectively in front of the girl.
"Calm down, we're not gonna shoot you guys." Luce said, grinning. "Yeah, we're just sadistic shadow killers." I told them. Sadistic was good. I really enjoyed it. I knew it had been shadows, but even they were living beings. I felt a mixture of satisfaction and sickness of feeling good killing things.
"W-what did you do!?" shouted the girl! "Where did you get the guns?!" she asked.
"Package." we both answered. Hey it was the truth. I waved off. "Anyways, this place doesn't look save. We'll escort you to your destination, just in case." I said.
"Shadows shouldn't be underestimated. Those a second ago were their weakest form." Luce continued. "I'm Luce, by the way. And this is Chris."
"'Sup."
"Now, we know you have a lot of questions probably, but we should get you to your destination. We can talk tomorrow."
"Okay..." the red eyed girl replied. "I'm Minako by the way. This is my brother Minato. He doesn't talk much...hehe..."
"Can see that. By the way, we just arrived here an hour ago ourselves. Do you guys have a map?" I asked. Minako nodded and took out a map, pointing where the SEES dorm was.
"Okay, let's get going."
We walked for a few minutes, only to encounter a bunch of Mayas. We shoot until our guns were empty. We simply summoned new ammo.
"H-how...?!" Minako asked. "Tomorrow. We need to keep going." Luce said.
We came across some little shops and restaurants. Well as to be expected there was a lot more, than in the actual game. By the way, the shadows always dropped a few yen notes, so our pockets got stuffed.
"At this rate, we're gonna be rich in no time." Luce commented.
"You forget we still need to buy a lot of stuff." I pointed out. "What's with the coffins?" Minako asked.
"First time experiencing this?" I asked. She nodded.
"This is the dark hour, a 25th hidden hour. Those coffins are people, sleeping inside. No electricity works, the reason I don't fly with planes anymore."
Luce took over. "Those things we fought earlier are called shadows. Everyone outside of their coffin becomes one of the lost, when they prey on you. Have you heard of the apathy syndrome?" she asked. The twins nodded.
I took over. "Basically you get mind-fucked. The reason the two of us are normal is because we're persona users."
"Persona...?" she asked.
"Oh, oh. Chris, here they come!"
Another group of shadows was approaching. Only two.
"Let's try our personas. Varnani!" She killed the first one with a simple bufu spell.
"Varna!" I finished the second one.
Minako looked amazed, while her brother kept his expression. He didn't seem to trust us, I couldn't really blame him. "We're not too far away anymore, are we?" Luce asked. I took a look at the map and nodded.
"Just around the corner."
We walked the road down and to the left. Yup, there it was, unmistakingly the SEES dorm.
"Wow, looks like a horror mansion in this light." Luce said, checking everything on the dorm. I had to agree in the light of the dark hour it really looked that way.
"Maybe they stole it from Silent Hill. Hey Luce, since we're here, do you think..."
"I'm not planning on going there. Although, I'd die to meet her." she said smiling. "What are you talking about?" Minako asked.
"Nothing." we replied simultaneously, "Okay, we're here. So-"
"That's SO typical!" Luce shouted. I turned around and saw one of those wrestler shadows, but didn't recognize the type.
"Oh crap. You two get inside! We'll deal with him!" I shouted.
"Varnani!" Luce used a bufu, which did not much. The shadow laughed. I shoot a few times, but it was even less effective. The shadow charged pretty obviously, so we jumped out of the way.
"We'll need a thousand bullets for that thing!" she complained.
Suddenly time was frozen. Pharos appeared in front of us.
"Uhh, hi?"
"KYAAAAAAAA!"
"Keep your fangirl down!"
"But he's so cuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!"
It was going through with her again. As if it wasn't annoying enough during our LPs. Pharos giggled at our antics. "Hold them at each other's temples and shoot."
He disappeared and time was flowing again. We almost got smashed by the shadow, but luckily it hit the wall. "Let's do it."
"You owe me if we die." I said. It was totally crazy, but we already landed in another world, so why shouldn't it work. We held each other a gun at the head and shot.
"CHAOS WAVE!" we shouted. A large, circling cloud appeared in the sky and a black, white, grey energy beam hit the ground unleashing a wave with the same color in every direction. The shadow was dead and the last thing I heard was the sound of a door being opened.