+++++ ? (Saturday + 0)

Shinji, hours later, walked through a corridor that matched his memories of the past few hours. He remembered dancing with a woman of unearthly beauty. He remembered her ability to move with him in ways that felt both wonderful and terrifying. He remembered that they spoke of things, but he could not remember what they had spoken of. He could also not remember the start of the kiss she gifted him as he was sent on his way, but he could remember her honesty as she begged him to remember her later on.

The chaotic mishmash of corridors that seemed to both start and stop mid-thought echoed similar dilemmas. Walls made solely of stacked school chairs, legs and arms tangled together in knots that neither started nor ended visibly. A floor that seemed entirely constructed of textbooks, save for the fact that none of the covers could be lifted and read. Promises made, bargains sealed, but never in a manner that allowed for deeper analysis. The metaphors flirted with the personifications, when at the end of the most recent corridor he'd been walking down he spied what appeared to be a chibi high school mascot chasing after a fleeing, and fetchingly familiar, former Miss Japan.

"You will meet a number of young women, and amongst them there will be several who will need your protection from things that alone they would not be able to overcome," the memory of Qodeshah's voice echoed in Shinji's mind as he took his next step forward, bunching his leg and preparing himself to sprint towards, instead of away from, something that looked as dangerous as it did comical.

What Shinji did not do, unfortunately for him, was plan what exactly he was going to do when he got there. Most experienced fighters agree that everyone has a plan until they're punched in the mouth, but most experienced fighters agree that going into a fight blindly swinging is also a terrible idea. Trusting in their trained reflexes, their focused athleticism, and their workout regimen is what allows such fighters to succeed. Forgetting that they have a weapon, and simply throwing themselves bodily at what they could only describe as two snowballs in a scarf, hat, and boots would not occur to them as a method of success.

The transfer of momentum sent the bulbous creature off course as Shinji connected in an inexpertly attempted open field tackle. The creature caught one limb in a gap between two of the millions of chairs that formed the walls of the hallway, which snapped with a frozen crunch, and then rebounded backwards tearing off said limb as it bounced a meter or more down the hall.

The young lady, whose name Shinji couldn't quite recall despite him knowing her on sight as the woman that had graced several magazines and newspaper articles he'd spied in the forbidden living room of the house he'd grown up in, had heard the impact and slid to a halt as she saw Shinji land on his ass after losing his balance from the collision. "Whoa! Hey, thanks." Moving with ease, she slipped over and helped him stand up. "Rise Kujikawa."

Once again Shinji had a beautiful woman helping him stand. Stepping away and remembering he had the long dagger by virtue of the hilt jabbing him in the side, he drew it and placed himself between Rise and the enemy. With his mind occupied attempting to decide whether to fight or flee, his tongue once more ran away from him. "Shinji Ikari. That's right, they called you 'Risette'. I always thought that was a stupid name for such an honest woman."

Rise was grateful that the new, and surprising, young man wasn't looking at her. She felt her cheeks redden, an inner joy that someone who recognized her agreed with her contention that the commercially manufactured personality she had been given was 'stupid' radiating from within. "We need to kill this thing. I'm not a fighter, I haven't figured out how to use my Persona to do anything but support. Do you have access to fire magic? This thing's weak to it."

He had a few tricks involving flash paper and a lighter that he'd learned from the same library book that had helped him first learn other sleights of hand, but without a lighter, or flash paper, he decided that things tended to die when stabbed repeatedly and charged forward to do that instead. Securing a reverse hold on the grip with his right hand, he looked briefly down to his left as he went to set the palm on the pommel to add force to what he hoped would be a good first strike. He noted, with alarm, that the kanji for 'flame' had suddenly appeared in bright neon blue upon said palm just before he pressed it against the pommel. His dagger responded violently, blazing to life with crimson fire that ignored both gravity and air pressure. It also, consequently, buried itself directly between the eyes of the creature he would later learn was called a 'Jack Frost', ending its existence and causing it to evaporate completely, cloth, snow, and all. Standing tall, he noticed Rise cheer.

"Great job, Shinji-kun!" Holding her hand up, closing her eyes, and smiling brightly, she waited for him to slap her hand. When the expected contact didn't occur, Rise Kujikawa opened one eye, "What's wrong?"

"I…uhm," he looked around, repositioning his long dagger to avoid hitting anything with it, "I just killed something." Not finding the corpse, or any signs of a struggle, he scratched his hair, "I know I did, because you told me I did a 'great job'. It was…white, bulbous, blue hat and scarf…I'm not dreaming it. I know I'm not."

"First time here, huh?" She reached forward with her raised hand and patted his chest, "Yeah. This can be pretty rough. Luckily, you have the Number One Guide in all of the TV World to help you find your way." Waving him on, she turned to move, "We'll talk more on the way, but we have to keep up to support the Investigation Team. You can be my bodyguard," she looked crossways at him, grinning. "You're about my age, seventeen right?"

"Y-yeah," the yellows and blacks surrounding them seemed garish and confusing. "I just uh…I just came back into town after being called by my parent. Train crash, strange man stabbing me in the neck…wake up here."

"Welcome to Tokyo-Three," she spun through the doorway to the next room. "Lucky you! First day here, and you already get a girlfriend."

Pausing before the door, he blinked in confusion, "I get a what now?"

"Girlfriend," she tapped her chest. "You saved my life, Shinji-kun." Taking his hands, she bounced happily, "By international law of damsels in distress, that means you're now my boyfriend."

"I…ok?" Letting himself be pulled towards the door, he shrugged, "I don't know why someone like you would want someone like me, though. You're a megastar, I'm…nobody."

"Trust me," she winked, figuring that he'd be the one person to actually know her secret since he was also a transplanted returnee to the local area, "you only think you know me."

The Standard Ikari Protocol of going along with whatever the more assertive person wanted activated itself and he instead made motions to clarify what he believed to be a misunderstanding. "N-not really. I saw you on the covers of magazines. Sometimes on ads for products. I don't know you any more than I would know Kurosawa or Beethoven. I know what was put out for the world, and that's…a lie, I guess."

Correctly surmising that the 'I guess' was due to him not wishing to call her a liar, she inwardly thrilled and outwardly displayed a confidence that she'd recently begun to discover was genuine. "It is, and you're right. Directors and photographers use those lies to sell products. Magazines, candy, supposed lifestyles, nothing people need and anything that will get them to spend all of their money." She also read him well enough to know that he wasn't immediately comfortable with contact. Letting go of his hands, she instead walked close enough to occasionally brush up against him. "So, train crashes aren't normally what send people here."

"Where…uhm, where is here?"

"The TV World. Or, at least, that's what we thought it was." Her gaze moved slightly from point to point, her choices of corridors informed by an otherworldly sense. "Tonight we ran into several other groups. Two of them seemed much more comfortable here, the other two were confused but still knew how to summon Personae. We all agreed to move together, but then there was a huge quake in here and I got separated. I haven't been able to speak with them, and then that Jack Frost found me, and then you found him. It's weird, though, I didn't see a Persona come out when you used magic."

Shinji had been nodding along, politely, attempting to indicate that while he could recognize the words she was using, he had absolutely zero idea what they meant when used in the specific order she'd used them in. He could tell that her final statement was more of a subtle question, and that she expected there to be an explanation that fit into whatever world it was that she'd come from. Instead of opening his mouth and sounding like the idiot he felt he was, he gestured to his own ear. "I…don't see a two-way radio on you."

"Don't need one, in here." She thumped her forehead twice with her forefinger. "One of the other ladies has something like me, with a Persona that lets them communicate with telepathy. I can only really speak to the others I came here with, but maybe…." Can you hear me?

He stumbled slightly, unprepared to hear her in his mind. "Y-yeah. That's…wow."

A sudden whimsy took her, and to avoid cheering out loud she began to sing a gentle ballad mentally while feeling with the unnatural sixth sense that she used to locate threats and allies in the field. She had teased him with the girlfriend comment as a means of testing his character and hadn't expected him to not only pass but pass in a way that was both adorably awkward and earnestly honest. If he was the type of man who simply went along with the flow of life and did what was right because it was what was right, then the worst outcome of her comment would be having staked a claim before anyone else could tempt him. She wasn't ready for him to accompany her song with a confident baritone hum, however, and began to wonder what other talents might hide beneath the exterior of the man beside her that…had a tube sticking out of the back of his neck. "Oh my gosh, Shinji-kun, are you ok?"

Shinji only kind of cooperated with being bent in double, having his hair used as a handle to manipulate his head and his face suddenly slapped against Rise's pronounced chest while she poked and prodded at the metallic cylinder that was becoming the least strange of the many oddities he had been bombarded with. "I-I y-yeah?"

"There's…no scarring?" Testing the 'seal' she believed the skin had made around the foreign object, she scowled as her nail could neither find nor create separation between skin and metal. "What is this?"

"I, uhm…I don't know." Slowly lifting his head as she relaxed her grip, he reached back with one hand and felt the spot with his own fingers. With a rounded top, and smooth surfaces, it felt to be around one centimeter in diameter and stuck out nearly three centimeters from his flesh. "Before the train crash, a…strange man shoved this into my neck." Weakly grinning, hoping that he hadn't somehow lost what little trust might have been gained by saving her, he shrugged one shoulder. "I've had a very odd day."

"Understatement of the decade." Instead of reacting with hostility, as he feared she might, Rise instead reacted with sympathy and concern, "Don't worry, we'll get out of here once we find the others and then we'll get you to a hospital. I'm sure they can fix it."

Confidence levels were lower in Shinji's mind. "Are we close to where you were?"

"Oh, hey!" A woman, about ten centimeters taller than Rise though thinner of frame, with red hair dyed white at the tips, waved from a nearby intersection. "Kujikawa-san…and someone new?" Hurrying over, she grinned with a touch of hunger as she sized Shinji's frame up. "Nice to meet you, I'm Ulala Serizawa. You are?"

A flare of jealousy hit Rise as she realized that Ulala was sizing Shinji up for a wedding tuxedo before he'd even spoken a word. "His name is Shinji Ikari, and this is his first time here. We were looking for everyone, what happened after the quake?"

Now faced with yet another woman that could easily be a model if she chose to, Shinji tried not to break down into hysterics at being the focus of attention. "I-it's a pleasure to meet you Serizawa-san." The act of greeting someone was important enough to overcome his social anxieties, but not enough to tamp down on his anxiety as Ulala sidled over to him and put an arm around his waist.

"Everyone got split up. I heard the Kirijo girl organizing a retreat, and more than a few women responding." Rolling her fingers along what she found to be surprisingly muscular flesh, she moved the conversation back to something she was more interested in. "I thought this was more of a 'girls only' club. Where'd you come from, my fine, fabulous, friend?"

"Train crash."

"There you are!" Another voice called out from down the hallway in a similar direction that Ulala had appeared from. A half dozen women approached, led by a poised and polished young woman that was clearly in charge of the group by both temperament and general acclaim. "I was worried that we had lost you both." Unlike either Rise or Ulala, when she reached a socially appropriate distance, she inclined her head politely towards Shinji. "Pleased to meet you, sir. Mitsuru Kirijo, student body president at Tokyo-3 High School."

"Shinji Ikari," he used the chance to bow in greeting to separate himself from Ulala by backing up to make room for the group to assemble properly in the small space. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I believe I might be starting at your school soon, if I'm not dead or dreaming."

"That's a pretty common response to winding up in Tartarus, Ikari-san." Mitsuru, already fairly tall for a woman, wore knee-high boots that had spiked heels adding another five centimeters. With long, flowing burgundy hair and classically refined features, she would have been a rare beauty in any group of women…save for the women she walked with. There was a hint of hesitation in her gaze, a sense of anticipation that she believed she might actually see unfulfilled. "Are you…it's unimportant. We need to find the exit and return to the real world. I'm sensing one off to the east. Kujikawa-san," her eyes shifted to Rise and she subtly flicked a finger towards the east in case the idol's sense of direction wasn't up to the task, "if you could verify?"

Rise nodded twice. "I had us heading in that direction after Shinji-kun saved me from a Jack Frost. I hoped to at least find the exit before we started searching for everyone else. His Persona is…odd, and I didn't want to expose us to danger."

A tomboyish young woman went to speak up, and Mitsuru lifted one hand to cut off conversation. "We all have a thousand questions, but for right now we need to get out. If we stay longer, we risk another quake. Please, as your President, your safety must be our first priority."

Shinji couldn't agree more. If these were the women he was supposed to protect, the last place he wanted them was in a bizarre dungeon designed by a maniac suffering from fever dreams. "I'll…uhm, I'll walk ahead of everyone." Carefully moving around the group, he started towards the east. "Since I'm a stranger."

"I will take the vanguard with you," another student gave Shinji a confident smile and moved to walk on his right to keep the fencing rapier she carried free to act without striking him accidentally. "Eriko Kirishima. Let us guard our fellows as one, Ikari-san."

"Take the path two rights down the hall," Mitsuru ordered, herding the others into motion so that she was the rearguard alongside the young woman she'd silenced earlier. "And be cautious, Ikari-san. Stranger or not, you do not seem like someone I would see hurt."

A smattering of conversations, quiet enough to be heard by those near them but not enough to overcome the approach of enemies, cropped up behind Shinji as he set a reasonable pace towards the intersection indicated. Moving the dagger 'Tony' had given him around his grip, he worked to gain a feel for the balance and weight of his new weapon. He'd used knives for most of his life, but only for slicing, chopping, fileting, or coring foods for preparation. Now he'd…well, he believed he had killed something dangerous. It wasn't a human, but it also wasn't a spider or wasp. The only living beings he'd ever killed had exoskeletons and more than the appropriate number of legs for something inside of a human structure. "Kirishima-san?"

The woman to his side seemed wholly unfazed at the situation, and glanced over with a friendly smile. "Mmm?"

"Am I really the first male you've seen here?"

"Yes." Her eyes drifted around the corner as they approached it, keeping a watchful presence while not ignoring his question. "Yuka-chan and I wound up here a few weeks ago after playing a game. We bumped into Ulala-san a few days after that. Then Mitsuru-senpai a day later, and Yukiko, Rise, and Chie-san a week after that. Sumire-san was the last, and we found her wandering in here three days ago." She glanced back at him, clearly uncaring about the oddity. "Now you. You're the first person who isn't in our class, and the first male, and the first person with something sticking out of their neck."

"Take the third left," Mitsuru called with slightly greater volume, covering over Shinji's surge of self-consciousness.

"That's…new to me…." Shinji slowed to a halt, a flush of dread crawling along his spine in both directions, centered on the tube between his shoulders. "Something's coming."

Eriko lifted her rapier to 'en garde'. "From where?"

His heart clenched tight in his chest, and he shakily turned his head towards the corridor on the right that they were about to cross in front of. "There." Fixing his grip on the dagger, he moved to where he could look down the hallway in question.

Standing in the middle of the hallway, occupying most of the space within it, was a four-armed semi-human creature made of dull grey metal. Insectoid spikes and spines extending from much of the surfaces gave it a level of menace that bypassed the rational mind and summoned instinctual fears from those who beheld it. With a mostly humanoid face that betrayed no real emotions, set with two burning eyes of bioelectric red, its jaw slowly drooping to emanate a predatorial growl, it began to advance on the ladies that had gathered behind Shinji to see what had caused him to call a halt.

He had to protect them. He couldn't remember much of what Qodeshah had told him, but he remembered clearly that he had been told to protect the ladies he'd been sent to find. That meant running was out of the question…for him. "Get everyone to the exit."

Eriko scoffed at the thought, "We're not-"

"Go!" To force the issue, he began to stalk towards the bio-mechanical menace ahead. He heard Mitsuru begin to organize yet another retreat, and heard in her voice the unmistakable tone of someone who would not be disobeyed. The clatter of footsteps moving rapidly away gave him a level of freedom to act and react. The monster looked after the fleeing ladies, then back towards Shinji without once displaying anything approximating intentions or motivations. "I get the feeling you're not interested in talking."

Changing location nearly instantaneously without visibly moving, it made to bypass Shinji without coming into conflict with him. Its progress halted when Shinji moved to obstruct it, a minor note of confused surprise appearing in its bearing as it retreated two steps.

Shinji couldn't let something this fast get past him. He also had no earthly idea why it seemed confused by something that was physically half its size. "I don't want to fight…back off, and we'll get out of your territory."

Another two steps back, and the mechanical beast turned and moved back down the corridor it'd come from. Never once speaking, or indicating understanding, instead seeming to do what it would for reasons only tangentially related to what was happening around it.

He felt a shameful level of relief for the most fleeting of seconds before he remembered that just because he was standing in what appeared to be a maze that there wasn't necessarily only one way to get to the same place. Terror seized his mind and he began to sprint in the direction he'd heard the others move towards. Each branching corridor after the first was taken because he had to trust that it was the right direction, to place hope in the chance that he'd be lucky just this once to reach the ladies before whatever he'd just stared down did.

Rounding one last corner, he saw the group of ladies standing near an enormous doorway that looked like it belonged in a public building intended for giants to occupy. Between them and him was the remaining corridor and a square pit lined with awkwardly angled guardrails which he would have to round to reach them. Relief once more surged forward, his pace not flagging as he opened his mouth to shout for them to run only to instead issue a roar of frustrated rage as he saw the monster appear once more, also now between him and the ladies. Qodeshah had told him to protect a group of ladies. She had told him that they would, in turn, teach him how. The last thing he needed to do at the moment was fail the first time he ever saw them.

Shinji's roar drew not only the attention of the women he wished to protect from harm, but also the bio-mechanical monster that threatened them. It was caught off guard entirely this time, not expecting Shinji to launch himself from the ground in a desperate flying attack against it. Its left upper arm reared back to strike down at Shinji's skull, only to have the blow knocked off course by an arrow shot by one of the women by the door, and then knocked forward a step by a blast of fire after another of them cried out, "Persona!" Those two attacks bought Shinji the time needed for him to stab his dagger through the machine's shoulder, knocking it backwards towards and over the guard rails.

Taking him along for the ride.

+++++ Temp Author's Note Part Deux.

Broke the first chapter up into two chapters of reasonably equal size. Is this chapter size better for everyone, or should I go back to my traditional eight thousand to twelve thousand words per chapter? I know I have a lot of readers on mobile, and no clue as to how my traditional chapter length plays on a platform I never touch.

Ahzek dot Ahriman: The Velvet Room is indeed from Persona. As per my usual wanton thievery, I am drawing from more than a few other sources to make a new Neon Gen story.

cortana5: The Wanderer and Chaos are gainfully employed at the moment, and will appear as necessary to advance the 10,000 foot plots.

BloodStasis: Not so much DMC, yes Persona among others. Too much Dante makes the story about Dante. You can't write Dante as a secondary character and still have it be Dante, mainly because he's intentionally over the top in everything he does by design.

SK: I imagine a cellist/pianist to have greater aptitude at sleight of hand, and as you see in this bit of the story Shinji's hands have more to offer than simply picking up things.

Ghost Man: Persona *and* SMT. While Persona is a sub-series to SMT, this work will have distinct flavors of both, among the other works that I've already referenced.

Guest: I needed someone to make the delivery, and who better to make a delivery in something referencing SMT: Nocturne Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series than Dante himself?