NOTES: This is my attempt to make sense out of a number of elements of the Persona 3 backstory, most particularly as they relate to Strega, but with other events likely to be referenced as well. The specifics are based entirely and exactingly on Persona 3 itself, period. There will be places where I borrow or mention plot elements or details from other games in the series or rereleases of P3 itself, but the original game is the only canon I've strictly beholden myself to. General warnings include mad science, child neglect and abuse, Jin and Shinji's foul mouths, a smattering of original characters, and, amidst wild and unrepentant speculation about game events, a much more intense scrutiny on minutia than the script was probably intended to be subjected to.

Further notes, more specific to the chapter, after the fic.

Later, he would remember the silence as being the most fearful—the Shadows drawing themselves up in a jittering black wave, the comprehension and fear filling the boy's wide golden eyes in the stretching slowness of the moment before they fell upon him. Clawing and screaming, they illuminated the containment field with lightning and fire. Instantly, the boy's pale form was swallowed up.

Takeba was across the room before he could remember moving, slamming control buttons in sequence. The field plunged into darkness as a high siren note shot through the air.

"What are you doing?" one of the others demanded, seizing his arm, fingers rigid with shock. He shook her off, pulling a flashlight from the wall.

"It's just a kid! They'll tear him apart! There's no time!" A light blinked from red to green and the door to the containment field slid back, spilling cold mist across the observation deck's floor. Ignoring the team's protest, he hurried forward.

Inside, the noise of the alarm was nearly unbearable; he clapped one hand to his ear as he scanned the floor. Everywhere, Shadows twitched and twisted, heads craning for the source of the noise or cowering low into the fog, the great masses of them heavy and horrifying just outside the sweep of his flashlight beam. He didn't have long; maybe forty seconds before the fog began to thin, or Shadows that could do so began to adapt forms.

Counting in his head, he headed for the center of the field, panic edging higher. He smelled the site before he saw it; the scent of blood hit him like a slap. He whirled, casting the light left and right until it caught on the ashen blond hair of the boy who'd appeared in the Shadows' pen so suddenly.

Takeba didn't stop to assess the injuries (So much blood, but Shadows don't bleed, not red like this), just scooped him up in one arm (One arm; he doesn't weigh anymore than Yukari!) and darted back towards the door.

Just as he reached it, a set of the Dice shadows reared up in front of him, weaving to keep themselves between him and the door. To his right, a Mother righted herself on her divan and rose back up into the air, beckoning imperiously towards the child he held. Terror climbed up his throat with breath-rending claws and he stumbled back, fumbling to find anything in his pockets or coat that would serve for a weapon without dropping the boy or the light.

The two Shadows drew nearer, the Mother lifting one hand. He flinched back, and was halfway through a turn to shield the boy when the flash of gunshots burst in the doorway. As the monsters turned, another light went up—a flare-gun round, fired up towards the high ceiling. Takeba clutched the boy closer and, as the heads of the Shadows snapped up to follow the trailing magnesium brightness, bolted for the observation room.

The security guard punched the door button so quickly it nearly caught Takeba's trailing lab coat, and the din of voices began immediately. Ears still ringing, the scientist searched the room. From the hall, a hand gripped the door-frame and the facility's doctor skidded around it into the room, a first aid kit in his other hand. Pushing through the excited crowd, Takeba thrust the boy into the man's arms.

Understanding swept the man's expression and Takeba managed a moment of relief before, finally, the strength left his legs. The last of the adrenaline drained away like cold water, and he sagged to the floor as the rashness of what he'd just done replayed itself across the monitor of conscious thought. He swallowed a delirious laugh, feeling the shaking begin. Around him, the other researchers were crowding to the observation window as the siren shut off or being sharply ordered to back away from the patient, but all he could see was the outline of the Mother-Shadow's hand, back-lit against the lab's window, rising to call down who-knew-what kind of spell.

He shuddered hard, and his hands closed convulsively as something was pushed into them. He looked down to find a bottle of water there, and Shouko, who'd tried to stop him from entering the room, watching him with a level stare.

"For the shock," she prompted as he stared at her. "Go on; drink it."

He nodded shakily and obeyed. She watched silently as the other scientist slowly drained the bottle.

"What do you think?" she asked quietly when he'd finished.

He looked over at the boy again, studying the paleness of his skin and hair, the tattered remnants of clothing, the streaks of blood, red and bright in the lab's white light. Utterly human, at least to the naked eye. But there was only one door to the containment field, and it was the one Takeba himself had gone through. The only other entrance was a service duct in the ceiling, built in case of problems with the siren, but it was barred shut—welded shut, even, after the first flying Shadow had pried it open. Surely there was no mundane way the kid had gotten in. And the way the Shadows had all turned on him—they didn't seem to fight their own kind as a rule, and even humans they only attacked sporadically. What on earth could have caused such a unanimous response?

"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. He sat back helplessly, arms on his knees. "We'll have to run tests. But I've never seen them turn on anything like that. Maybe he's some kind of higher order. The accounts from the Nanjo Group talk about demons and Persona, things more humanoid than the Shadows, but we haven't found out anything that suggests they can appear independently in this world.

"And those readings just before he appeared—not just sentience, but almost sapience. It's—it's unprecedented. Maybe it's a breakthrough. Maybe he's from some kind of—of layer of time we just accessed for the first time. I just don't know."

"...Mr. Kirijo will want to know," Shouko responded. "I'll start a report."

Takeba nodded, taking a deep breath and closing his hands around the bottle to mask another shiver. "Get someone to start taking down everyone's thoughts. We know our intuition is important when we're dealing with these things." He scanned the room again. Researchers were standing in pairs and small groups, talking animatedly or keenly watching the patient or the Shadows. His eyes landed on the guard who'd helped him get out and the man gave him a significant look, jerking a thumb towards the hall. He sighed and carefully stood, knees still worryingly wobbly.

"Have Atsushi follow Dr. Fujimoto back to the clinic, or wherever he's going to take the kid. Tell him we'll need to run tests as soon as he's stable. And get someone putting together our readings for all this. I'll go and give Security the incident report."

Shouko nodded, patted his arm briskly, and headed off. Takeba sighed again as he made his way over to the security guard.

"You know you're in trouble, right?" the man asked him dryly, flipping the visor on his helmet up to show mildly exasperated brown eyes Takeba remembered sharing coffee with a few times on particularly late night shifts.

"I know," the scientist answered wearily. "It was stupid of me. It's just—he was so young. I've got a daughter about his age, you know?"

"Yeah, you talk about her a lot," the guard—Toshirou, wasn't it?-replied, not unindulgently. "Think about her for a second before you pull a stunt like that again." He waved off Takeba's response. "Good job, though. It's not like there'd be much left to study if you hadn't done it. Just a smear, probably."

He grinned at the other man's queasy look. "Just sayin'. Not the kinda remains you want your wife havin' to ID if it were you, y'know?"

"...No. I don't. Want her to have to—do that, I mean."

Toshirou patted him on the shoulder.

"Right. Nobody does. So remember it for next time."

"Mm..."

.

He woke to pain and heard the whimper in his own throat; turned and curled in on himself. Why had they turned on him like that? Yes, he'd always kept to himself (They didn't count), but still, nothing he could remember had ever attacked him like that, and now he hurt, everywhere, and he felt strange...

He opened his eyes and pulled back a hand to stare at the pale, tapering digits. It—was a human hand, he realized, and stared some more, then jerked as something touched his shoulder. A man looked down at him, eyes narrowed, lips turned down, and a noise that had just been sounding in the background since he'd woken resolved into the man's voice. He returned the stare cautiously. The other sounded questioning, but he couldn't make out any real meaning to the movements of his mouth and gestures. The man paused, spoke again, then breathed out hard and turned away.

He sat up, looking around—so bright, the room he was in—and down at the form he'd taken. He blinked at the sight that met him—papery cloth, in a pale blue shade, covered his torso and upper arms and legs. Something—some things—tugged at his skin when he moved. He tried to pat at the white blocks of cloth covering—his injuries, probably, but why?—but the standing man had turned back around and quickly caught his arm. The other arm was—was tied somehow, cloth knotted around the back of his neck, and trying to move it sent pain shooting afresh through the limb, hidden behind—

What was that? Some kind of white shell? Humans didn't have shells, did they?

Panic, abrupt and unwelcome, seized him, and he struggled to pull his other hand free. What was he now; what was he becoming? He hadn't known when he left the darkness that he would change, hadn't wanted to leave or to change, but just so tired of waiting, and now there was carapace on his arm, and more on one leg, and his hands were human and he's breathing too fast and it hurts ithurtsithurts—!

Numbness pricked beneath one writhing shoulder and spread lazily, blossoming through his limbs and rolling up and over his thoughts. With implacable strength, it pulled him down—gently, sweetly—into the old familiar darkness.

.

The head security officer was a hard-edged, meticulous man. It was nearly two hours before Takeba escaped the grilling, and not even that without ceding to having the boy assigned a guard detail, and a subsequent stern lecture about resources, man-hours, and how few the security department had to spare.

When he finally won free, he headed straight for the med lab. Even if the boy wasn't there, he needed aspirin for the headache racketing between his temples. It was the contact with the Shadows, he knew, and it would fade with a good night's sleep, but the dressing-down hadn't helped.

The waiting room was brightly lit, a small room that, aside from the lack of windows and the higher than usual reading grade of the magazines on the tables, didn't look much different than any small clinic's lobby. He found it empty, and the nurses' desk deserted. Concerned, he leaned past the frame, peering around the station to try and see into the rooms in the hall beyond. Seeing no one, he hesitantly opened the door into the hall and ducked partway through.

"Hello?" he called. After a few seconds, just as he was venturing further in, a nurse walked hurriedly out of a room some doors down holding what looked to Takeba like X-ray films.

"Send him on back, Mika," he heard in the doctor's voice as the woman opened her mouth. She paused, gave Takeba a rebuking look, and came over.

"Come on," she said, settling for eying him rather than saying more as she guided him back to a door with the doctor's name printed on a thin brass plate. Inside, the doctor gave him a flat look and nodded to a chair tucked into a corner of the office. He took the X-rays from the silent nurse.

"Go and get Takeba a dose of Acetaminophen and some water, please," he told her, turning his stare to the scientist as she nodded and left. "Quite a specimen you've dropped in our laps," he stated without preamble, continuing before the younger man could find a reply. "I've taken x-rays and some material for samples. He looks human enough; I'll let you know if the tests say differently."

Takeba watched the doctor sit back, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Where is he now?" he asked.

"Sleeping off a dose of Propofol," the other man answered shortly. "He panicked when he woke up and I had to sedate him. If he does it again I'm going to have to strap him down." He paused. "I don't think he speaks Japanese. If what your researcher told me is true, I don't know that he speaks anything. What on earth were you thinking?"

Takeba sighed wearily, trying not to think about how many times he was going to be asked this question—as if no one else in history had ever acted recklessly to save a life! All right, the boy's circumstances were strange, but... Was it really so insane to want to help?

The nurses' return spared him from having to find an answer; he took the cup of water she offered, downing the pills with it, and gathered his thoughts.

"I'd like a timetable for his recovery—once you're done with the tests. We'll have our own to run, but they'll be more..." He looked for a word to describe the Elemental Affinity Assessment, and settled for, "intensive," before finishing, "I'll see what I can come up with for the language barrier. I'm sure he'll have so much to tell us..."

Fujimoto looked unconvinced. "...I wasn't hired to deal with children," he said finally. "Can I convince you to stay until he wakes up again to try and calm him down? He's going to mean more work, and I don't want to have to be watching him at all hours to be sure he isn't trying to sneak out."

Would you rather he was running around underfoot? Takeba thought, remembering Yukari when she'd gotten old enough to walk; he shook off the thought. The boy was here and would have to be taken care of, inconvenient or not. He couldn't just be tied down.

He sighed. "Let me go and get my laptop."

.

A faint, steady hum buzzed in the air, an irregular taking clicking through it. He drifted in and out of the darkness and the sounds, slipping through fleeting awareness of sensation. Cloth rising and falling as he breathes...a numb, dull burn hovering over his chest...a scrabbling, convulsing twitch through one leg, like an insect trapped beneath the skin...the weight of his body, stretched out on something firm but not hard, and soft beneath his cheek.

He remembers the two Others. He remembers breathing.

He remembers time.

He remembers...

...self.

The light above him was cool and pale, coruscating faintly. The air seemed suffused with it, a gentle halo blurring at the edges of things. Though his body still felt weighted and distant, his thoughts were airy and unafraid. It was a wonderful change from earlier, when his heart had hammered in his chest like it was trying to break free and his breath had burned and ached in his throat. Absently, he raised a hand to press his fingers along the curve he could feel tugging at his lips. So strange, to have such distinct features, to be so aware. But not unpleasant.

A voice turned his head to the side; a man looked down at him, speaking in meaningless lengths of breath and sound. The tone seemed unthreatening, though, and something in the brown eyes seemed softer than the stare from the man before. As he watched, the man stood, setting down some black device on the thing he'd been sitting on, then turned back to him, speaking gently. He blinked, enjoying the feel of it, and closed his eyes to better concentrate on the sensation as the man's fingers brushed his face—a light touch; invasive, a little, but only harsh in its unfamiliarity.

And if he was to be human now, perhaps he would need to become used to such things. The thought made him remember—an unpleasant invasion that cut a vision across the insides of his closed eyes, lingering even after he opened them—the thing on his arm, the white shell. He looked down the length of his body, then tried to sit up to get a better look at it. A few heartbeats later, the man's arm slid around his back as the human sat down next to him, still speaking in his curious way.

The shell was still there and he studied it intensely before looking up to the man next to him. Cloth covered the other's arms, white like the shell, but it didn't seem as inflexible. Was it normal after all? He reached over with his other arm, fingers closing in the cloth and tugging at it, looking for a glimpse of what lay beneath it.

The man made a surprised noise, his next words questioning, but after only a moment, he stretched his arm out, letting the other fidget and toy with the cloth, running his fingers beneath it—another layer of cloth was there, studded with hard discs at his wrist, and finally, beneath that, warm flesh; the heartbeat of another being.

He ran his fingers over the skin for several long moments, fascinated, before it sunk in that the man had comprehended what he wanted, somehow. So understanding was possible. Well, if that was so, then perhaps things wouldn't be so frightening here, wherever it was. He'd felt something calling him before, after all—something that felt steadier than the First's capriciousness, and colder than the Second's reserve, but still, an attractive feeling, misty tendrils along his hands that had pulled him onward. He'd been so tired of the dark and of waiting. And now he was here, in the light, and things were happening, and he could remember them clearly, and everything seemed so vivid and alive.

The smile returned, wider, and he looked up at the man, feeling the strange joy bear him up like leaves on a fresh breeze.

He wasn't alone anymore. How wonderful.

.

The kid healed fast, Takeba had to admit—though didn't all kids, really? The doctor had declared him fit to be up and around, and now, even hobbling around on crutches, the boy was well ahead of him as they walked into the examination room. The researchers inside looked up with interest and split up from their group, some of them going to talk to the boy, a few heading on back to other tasks, and Shouko lingering long enough to hand off a fresh manila folder of test results.

He'd just flipped it open to skim the first page when a comment from amidst the usual chatter gave him pause.

"All right, D-Boy, up you go."

He stopped reading, blinked twice, then looked up. One of the younger scientists had carefully grasped the boy's waist and set him up on the exam table; another had produced a handful of crayons and he had set to scrawling arcs of color on the paper stretched out over the yielding surface, eyes wide and interested. But...

"...D-Boy?" Takeba asked, confused. "Who said we were calling him that?"

The others fell silent and looked over at him; one or two looked embarrassed, the others blank. Eventually, a young woman, one of the day nurses, ventured, "Atsushi-san was calling him that day before yesterday. It's—it's sort of caught on."

Atsushi straighted up under the head scientist's attention. "It's from an anime that came out a few years ago, sir. The Space Knights find the main character under mysterious conditions, and he doesn't remember anything, so they have to call him something. The 'D' is for 'dangerous', and..." Briefly perked up with enthusiasm, he'd glanced around and noticed the stares from his colleagues. He deflated, cheeks reddening. "It just seemed like the right name," he muttered, giving the nurse a dark look.

Takeba sighed. "I see. Please don't give him strange names like that, Atsushi-san." He looked over at the subject of the discussion, who had paused in his coloring and was looking around at the group with sharp, curious eyes. Takeba met the stare and wished again that they could really talk with the kid. He seemed so perceptive; it was torture to be so unable to communicate with him.

He looked back at Atsushi, who was staring at the ground, a man in his mid-thirties who'd just been stuck in the position of having to explain his hobbies to a superior several years younger than him. Takeba sighed again, but strictly internally. They'd have to name the kid eventually, after all.

"Does D-Boy have a real name?" he prompted, and ignored the titter of nervous amusement that whispered through the group.

"Takaya Aiba, sir," the researcher answered, muffled, and flushed even more deeply.

"All right. Takaya, then."

Atsushi relaxed, looking relieved, and the discomfort drained out of the air. The newly-named Takaya looked over to Takeba and smiled admiringly. Just how much was he picking up, Takeba wondered, and closed the folder, walking over to try and communicate to the kid his new name. He'd have to get back to the test results later.

.

It was a week later, and to everyone's frustration, Takaya's eyes remained the strangest thing about him. Blood tests, DNA samples, the EAA (and Takeba had had to be quite firm about finding less strenuous ways to run the assessment tests; no lab group under his supervision was going to turn open flame on some kid, no matter how weird he was)—they all said the same thing.

Human. Just human. He didn't speak a single language the team could uncover, his eyes were yellow as a barn owl's, he'd appeared in the middle of the Shadow containment field, and every test applied to him said that he was human.

It was down to the electrocorticography. Takeba had his reservations, but he was out of ideas. It was early still to expect clear results—it was still hard to explain anything beyond simple concepts to Takaya—but everyone needed to know whether they'd spend more time on him or not. Especially after last night.

Now he stood behind an observation window watching as one of the other researchers, with glances for guidance at Dr. Fujimoto, ran Takaya through the prompts for movement or reaction, a stack of photos of Shadows at his side. The kid looked slightly glassy-eyed but alert enough, and Takeba tried to concentrate on that instead of the wet glistening of blood and exposed brain matter.

Across a floor snaked with cables, Shouko and another scientist oversaw the feed of a long print-out, spiked with lines showing the activity measured by the electrodes carefully positioned against Takaya's cerebral cortex. The man looked towards the surgery and said something Takeba couldn't make out through the glass. The group exchanged glances. Shouko, frowning at the print-out, held up a finger then spoke, adjusting her glasses. Takeba had just begun considering washing up and putting on scrubs to join them when a knock on the observation room door jostled him from his thoughts.

"How's it goin'?" Toshirou asked as he ducked in, closing the door behind him. "Thought you'd be in there yourself."

"I'd been planning to," the scientist answered, wishing briefly that the other had brought coffee with him. "There was a change in the Shadows' activity last night. I didn't get back to sleep until just a few hours ago, and then I overslept."

"Man. Workin' hard, huh? Ugh—gross," the guard said as he stepped up to the window. The tone reminded Takeba more of the college roommate he'd had who liked cheap horror movies than of someone who was really feeling queasy over exposed bone. He sighed.

"They're talking about something. I don't know what yet, but it doesn't look like anything groundbreaking. Did you need something?"

"Well, somebody had a breakthrough. Out at Yakushima last night. They just called to tell us we should be expecting the President to visit sometime soon. The Captain said I should tell you."

"The President? Kouetsu Kirijo?" Takeba's mouth went dry. There was still so much they didn't know, so many questions they still barely even knew how to ask. They had no explanation yet for what had happened last night—all the Magician Shadows turning on one another, feasting and shrieking but never attacking with any measurable malice—and now the President was coming?

"Yakushima... That's their robotics branch, isn't it? What happened out there?"

Toshirou shrugged. "Dunno, but they said they'd send some guy ahead of time. Guess he's supposed to tell us about the 'new direction' the President wants us to take."

"...New direction? Who are they sending?"

"Name's Shuuji Ikutsuki. They said he'd be here next week."

01:13 END

-The title:
Erga Mortes Ambulamus translates to, as best I could determine with the help of a college Latin student, "We walk towards death." It's most specifically about Strega, of course, who are all walking open-armed towards the ends of their lives, but most of the characters in this fic are heading towards their deaths in one way or another whether they're aware of it or happy about it or not.

-Shouko:
My name for the Antiques Shop Lady, also heavily implied to be the author of the Old Documents the player collects for Elizabeth. Shown here younger and more temperamental.

-Electrocorticography:
This is a type of surgery involving slicing open the scalp, removing a piece of the skull, and using electrodes positioned against various parts of the brain (rather, specifically, of the outermost layer of fleshy protection the brain is housed inside) to measure the electrical impulses going on in the brain in response to various stimuli. Often it's used to help with epilepsy and various other health problems. Here, the scientists are trying to figure out if the strange kid's brain shows activity in any ways a normal brain doesn't (or, in Shouko's case, ways a Persona user's brain does).

-D-Boy:
The anime referenced is Tekkaman Blade, a sci-fi armored suits series that came out in Japan in 1992 and got a U.S. Release (that gave everyone more Western-sounding names) in 1995. It did well enough here, but was quite popular in Japan in its day; the main character (D-Boy/Takaya Aiba) appears in several crossover video games, including Tatsunoko vs. Capcom as recently as three years ago. I used it because I needed to get Takaya named; I didn't want to have to come up with something stopgap, then be facing the same problem a few chapters down the line of figuring out why he was going by Takaya in-game. As-written in the Persona 3 material, the name Takaya doesn't leap out to suggest interpretations that a group of scientists might select for someone of his circumstances, but I wanted something a little more substantial than a throw-away line about him reminding someone of a Takaya they once knew or what have you (which would require someone knowing a pretty strange Takaya anyway).

Not having seen Tekkaman myself, I'm informed by someone who has that the name works pretty well on a number of levels (both for young Takaya's situation and several aspects of Takaya in-game), so I decided to run with it, despite the potent contact embarrassment of 'naming' my lead character after someone in a show called Tekkaman.