2 months until the Fall

It's December again. In the past week, there's been a lot of strife among the Persona users. Mitsuru announced that, to deal with the threat of the end of the world, the Investigation Team would be transferred to Gekkoukan. Their school had been linked to it to begin with, so it didn't take much effort to get them here. They're living in the old S.E.E.S dorm' now… So are the remaining S.E.E.S members. Most of them have nowhere else to go for their stay in Iwatodai. Neither do I… So, I've taken Minato's old room, and I'm living in the dorm' too.

Mitsuru said she'd re-enrol me as a third-year transfer student at Gekkoukan, so I could bond with Yosuke, Souji, Yukiko and Chie… But I declined. I didn't tell her my reasons, but I think she understood anyway. Over the next two months, I have to prepare myself for the Fall… I have to become Nyx Avatar. I have to become some twisted anthropomorphism of my mother and commit genocide on a grander scale than has ever been seen before. Is there a word for killing a planet? Is there?

Whatever Aegis was trying to prevent by becoming the seal, she's failed. I feel the pull of mother's influence on the world, now. The Dark Hour has returned. The cult's going wild, pulling in new members left and right. It's just like the last Fall… but will it be averted like last time? We're missing our savior—our Messiah. Where's Minato when the world needs him most?

I think, this past couple of days, I've been starting to get a little paranoid. Last time I summoned the Fall, the beginning of December marked the point where I started to lose it a little, I guess. As a general rule, I have two 'forms'—Ryoji, and Thanatos. When I become the Appriser, Ryoji is slowly usurped by my mother's appearance. Everything about me sort of… changes. For a while, I can force the illusion of still being me—manipulate people's minds so they think I'm still blue-eyed, brown-haired, male… But eventually, I've changed enough that there's no way of forcing someone to think they're seeing a human being, let alone Ryoji Mochizuki.

Naturally, when Ryoji first starts to disappear, everything sort of collapses in my life: it's a sort of 'uncanny valley' effect: I look in the mirror, and see myself, but my eyes and hair are pitch black. It's sort of depressing, I guess. I can almost convince myself I'm human, but then I notice their color and a light switches on inside my mind, saying I can't go back to what I used to be. For a while after that, it's a downward slope, but around the time I can't pretend to be me any more I accept my fate and roll with the punches. There's very little in this world that's more difficult than looking in the mirror and seeing yourself as a hermaphrodite with wings sprouting from your hips. It defeats you—you've become this creature that isn't human any more. There isn't anything left but to wait while the rest of your transformation swallows you up.

Gazing into the mirror today, I feel the same fear I feel every morning now when I wake up: the fear of change. Glancing in, I over-analyze everything I see. Is my hair a shade darker? Are my eyes turning black yet? Are my hips more pronounced? Mother, what kind of life have you doomed me to? Ultimately, I find no changes, but I feel different nonetheless… It's a sense of impending doom on the air this morning… a sense of impending doom that all but dissipates as I hear a knock on my door. Walking to it slowly, I twist the handle and open the door partway, peering out through the crack.

"It's just me," Teddie. He sounds more serious than usual, though… I let him in without a moment's hesitation. I like Teddie—he's like I used to be: flirtatious, cheerful… a Shadow in denial of itself. He has feelings and a personality, and he tries to be kind and gentle to humans. I wish I could be like him again, but that's a wish that—barring amnesia—will never come true.

"What's up?" Shutting the door behind him, Teddie walks past me and takes a seat on my bed.

"We need to talk," He says, folding his legs, his mouth slightly downturned.

"About Nyx, right?" It doesn't take much time to figure out what he's here to chat about. Why it would be anything else is beyond me.

"Sort of," Then it's about me. "Souji's been crying in school lately." Whoa. I was way off.

"He misses Minato, I guess,"

"Something like that. I think it's just the pressure of everything hitting him at once. He's lost his powers, there're his father's injuries, the prospect of the world ending… Minato's just the tip of the ice-burg," Teddie stares at me surprisingly icily. "You and I are the only ones who don't have to worry about the Fall. We're not human."

"We can't help that, Teddie," I have a feeling that he dislikes that thought, but it's true. "We were born as Shadows, the same way they were born as humans."

"Ryoji… I don't get how you can accept what we are as being some sort of inevitable fate for us," Getting to his feet, he looks away from me. "Long ago, I decided I wanted to interact with the humans, and I managed to will myself into a body that wouldn't scare them away. I managed to force myself to abandon my own species and become something almost entirely different."

"That's different to my situa—"

"You keep saying things like that, and it's not true. You're not special, Ryoji. You're just another Shadow… Why don't you at least try to be something more?"

"Because I can't, it's—"

"Impossible?" Teddie smirks at my shocked expression. How did he know what I was going to say? "It's not impossible." Beginning to walk towards the door, he shakes his head.

"You know the big difference between you and Minato?" Minato is selfless and confident and human. Or at least, he used to be. "He never gave up." Gesturing around him, Teddie raises an eyebrow.

"From what I've heard, we wouldn't have any of this without him," Finally exiting my room, Teddie closes the door with one final word of advice to me. "… You know, I would've thought that death is inevitable for everything. Isn't Nyx just another part of that 'everything'?" A click as he pulls the door completely closed behind him, leaving me along.

Teddie… Is right. I shouldn't be letting Nyx get the better of me. I should be trying to defeat her, reclaim the world from her and Erebus… But really, even if I should be doing that, can I? Can I face up to my mother, and win in a god-on-goddess battle? Can I? Can I?

Any idealist can take that statement and say 'yes I can', and the problem is, I'm trapped in a group of idealists who don't understand the way I've been grounded in the reality of my situation. Kind of weird, thinking about it that way, actually: here I am, a god in a group of mortals, and yet I'm the one refusing to believe in a chance that we could win this. I'm the one holding the rest of them back. I'm…

… You know what? I'm going to ignore the odds stacked against me. It's time that I accepted what everyone's always been trying to tell me—I have to be willing to take the million-to-one chance that the world can be saved. If they can all believe they're going to win, then I can too. Look out mother, we're coming for you.

Minato, I'm sorry that I'm usurping another of your roles, but S.E.E.S needs a new leader, and they've got one—me.