DISCLAIMER/AUTHOR'S NOTE: I do not own Shin Megami Tensei, SMT, Persona 3, the Persona brand, or any characters within this fanfiction. They all belong to Atlus Co, Ltd., Atlus USA, and all subsidiary companies thereof. The legal stuff aside, that will be the only disclaimer for this part of the RES Saga. Before reading this, you should know that this fanfiction takes place in 1999, ten years before the events of Persona 3, and follows the events surrounding the "Gekkoukan Incident". Considering the main characters from P3 would have been in elementary school at the time, this fanfic will not feature them in any significant light. Rather, this fic will explore the incident as it happened. This fic will be told in the first person, however, the narrator will have been a character you should be familiar with from P3, so I hope you don't mind. Note that this fic is also within the RES Saga and will sometimes jump into the future for story's sake. Also, to forgo any future questions, I will still be working on ParaPol while simultaneously writing TGI. Now then, onward with...

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI

T H E

G E K K O U K A N

I N C I D E N T

MARCH 31, 2037

"Alert, Alert was all I kept hearing. As I ran down through the halls of what used to be lab 14-A, chasing that crazy son of a bitch who started all of this, I began to wonder...What if this wasn't a mistake, an accident, even an attempt at foolish theft or murder. What if he really thought he was helping the world by doing this? What a foolish thought that was! Back then, I didn't know...how I wish I'd known...

"He was an employee of mine for three years prior to the incident. A hard worker, he had a wife and a child, both of them absolutely beautiful. You were the one he always talked about, you see, so I never factored that into my equations when I made my hiring decisions. In hindsight, I'd say he did what he did for your sake. Whether or not he understood he was releasing hell upon the world is another question whatsoever, but when I was chasing him through those halls that eerily cold November night, I swear to God I could hear him laughing...laughing, crying, and downright muttering all at the same time. It was pathetic."

"Why did you let him get away?" she asked me, looking me straight in the eye, tears forming in her hazel eyes, wondering what I'd done all those years ago...

"I didn't let him get away," I told her. "Your son of a bitch father went into the record room, locked himself in, and set the place on fire."

"If that were true, he wouldn't have revived...he didn't die in this world, I know that."

"That's true, to a degree...I guess," I said, bringing a cigar to my face and lighting it with my matchbook. I offered the girl some, but, she wouldn't take any of it.

"I don't smoke," she said.

"Your loss. Either way. I chased your father down to the bottom floor, where our archives were held. You have to remember, we didn't have a network or any of the fancy crap you kids have today, this was 1999 mind you. Anyway, I chased you father down to the basement level before he locked himself in the record room, and then, he torched the place. How do I know? I could see the flames through the door, the handle was hot to the touch, too. If I went inside, all I would have found was his charred corpse."

"And what time was this?"

"Nowhere close to midnight. So you see the challenge this poses, yeah? Your father killed himself hours before midnight, and yet he was still able to set the events of the past few weeks in motion..."

"How do you think that was possible?"

"Oh, how the hell should I know? All I know is that the things you kids have been up to for the past thirty-eight years have been very disturbing, and almost completely to the contrary of what everything else in this Universe has tried to accomplish. Your damn well lucky you had me on your side."

"And what if we didn't..."

"You'd be dead...this world would have merged with all the rest, and your father's death would have meant nothing..."

"Do you think he was a martyr?"

"Martyr, Saint, whatever you want to call him, you can call him that. I'll always remember him as the bastard who let loose that hell upon Iwatodai all those years ago."

"So why are you telling me this, after all these years? In fact, why even tell me? Why not your own grand-daughter, or your son, or..."

"Because you are the one that happened to survive, my dear...you see all these gravestones around us...souls of the damned. And out of all this death there is but one ray of light that my old eyes can see...and that is your past...or rather, your future...this world was never meant to carry on, only absolve us of our sins temporarily until a better solution came along. Even then, humans were an accidental creation created by Gods and demons unknown to our universe...hell, if you want me to depress you even further, our own universe is a split dimension built off of the Otherworld...a shared destiny of destruction and cruelty that only through your actions you have managed to cease..."

"So what was the purpose of all this...this experiment? To liberate us? To control us? Or rather...to release the bonds of fate..."

"None of the above," I replied. I saw the surprised expression on her face and offered her another cigarette. She declined and I scanned my eyes across the graveyard we were standing in. Names I recognized and names I didn't, but all the same linked through one thing and one thing only: the power of the Persona. The girl – or rather, woman I was talking to, had been kneeling next to two particular headstones by the time I had arrived. She had been weeping alone. Six kids, barely out of high school, had been standing near her, looking down sympathetically at the time, and all the while I couldn't help but feel glad that I didn't have to face my own grand-daughter in the flesh...

"So what was the purpose of the project, then? Time travel? Prevention of the creation of our universe?"

"Time travel per se cannot describe the exact hopes and dreams for this experiment. All I can say is that regardless of the turmoils you have been through in the past four decades, the overall project was a success...By pursuing your true selves back through the Gates of Hell, you have done the impossible...you can start anew..."

"What do you mean?"

"In about a week, this world will crumble, and it will all fall back into place as it should have been if the experiment had succeeded, thirty-eight years ago..."

"Seven days from now...April Seventh?"

"That's right...the anniversary of when your story began, and when the final steps of this grand scheme were set in motion..."

"Final steps...what exactly was the purpose of the experiment, then...you have seven days to tell me, and I expect them in full detail..."

"The purpose of the experiment? Well, I suppose I'd better start at the beginning then, back when this all first started...before the experiment even began and before your father unleashed the Shadows upon the world..."

"I want to know everything," she said to me, her eyes watery and barely able to hold my gaze. "The truth to this whole damn fiasco."

"A chaser of the truth? Well, then, I shall divulge all that I have within my knowledge of the incident and what our intentions were...It all began on New Year's Day, 1999..."