Persona: Spirits In Pixels – Chapter Ten
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'Ello 'ello 'ello guys! One major announcement to make...we are nearly at the end of the story! But don't worry, there will be a NEW story! This NEW story start where this story leaves off, and it will be left at the end of the NEXT AND FINAL CHAPTER! I hope you're excited! LET'S GT-R-DONE!
08/01 - Morning - The TV World
After long and winding minutes of finding Mitsuru's entrance, they all finally saw a pile of TV's stacked on top of each other, shining its static flickering through the dirty fog. They approached it and sighed in relief and restlessness.
"Ooh! My feet are killing me!" Teddie moaned as he fell down onto his backside, "I must...lay down." he gave a huge sigh as he levitated his feet into the air. "Don't tell me about it," Kanji spoke as he leaned forward to ease the pain in his feet, placing his hands on his knees for support, "man, that was some trek..."
Everyone ignored the moaners and paid their attention to their exit. "This is where I fell in," Mitsuru pointed out, turning to Yu and company, "I trust you have questions to ask me...I have some for you as well, so it would be best if you came through with me." She then turned back to the TV's and started climbing in, only to be stopped by Yu.
"Wait," he spoke as he caught her, turning her head with a look of confusion on her face, "I'll go through first and help you out." he offered, getting a grateful nod in return. Yu turned to Yosuke and made a hand gesture to call him over. "Yosuke, help me out here."
"You got it." Yosuke answered, walking over to Yu's side with an active will. Yosuke was the first to enter the group of TV's and Yu jumped in after him, gliding with him through the rectangular outlines that flew past their weightless bodies into the white unknown.
As their flight picked up speed, a bright light was seen at the end of the blank tunnel. Eventually, after diving into the deepness of the brightness, they flew out of the other end of the TV letting out a brief yelp as they felt gravity pull them back down. But they both landed on a surprisingly soft carpet.
08/01 - Morning - The Real World
They stayed laid down on the floor for a few comfortable minutes before slowly picking themselves up with an urge to lay down again, but the view around them caught their amazed eye. The furniture around them seemed fit for a person of great wealth, depicting floral images of red roses and violet tulips. The room around them looked like a lounge. Even the TV was bigger than the one they used at Junes.
"Wow...Mitsuru must have a rich family..." Yosuke spoke his thoughts aloud, distracted by the wonders that were organised around the room in front of him. "Yosuke, concentrate!" Yu called for him, already prepared to feed everyone through, knelt down on one knee and facing his body towards the TV.
Yosuke nodded to Yu's order and poked his head through the screen, careful to not fall back in. "Okay, we're ready!" Yosuke shouted in a singing voice, pulling his head back out and taking the same position as Yu did.
After a short while of last minute preparation, a vague whooshing sound was heard from the inside of the TV. The noise grew louder and louder, before Mitsuru eventually came out of the flat screen. She grabbed a hold of their hands and landed comfortably on their knees, standing up afterwards to straighten out her hair.
This process continued until the last person climbed out, though both Yu and Yosuke's knees started to weaken with each person exiting the screen. They got up to their feet and joined everyone else on the couches and sofas that were provided.
"First of all," Mitsuru began, "I would like to thank you all for your efforts. It is much appreciated..." her gratitude was genuine and not one sign of a lie was seen. Everyone smiled at her and some gave embarrassed scratches of their heads.
"...though I can't thank you properly if I don't know your names..." she chuckled, beginning the groups introductions. Yu cleared his throat and gladly introduced the team, one by one with warm greetings from each of them. "Ah, magnifique." she commented in a french dialect.
"So, Yu," Mitsuru spoke with a smile, already learning his name, "I suppose you would like to ask me some questions?" Yu had many questions scrambled throughout his mind, but after take a breath in preparation in asking one of them, Yosuke interrupts him.
"Sorry! I have to ask...do you live with your family? I mean, your lounge looks amazing! It's filled with stuff that not even my dad can afford, and he owns a major superstore!" Yosuke asked with a high-pitched tone and sparkles in his eyes.
Mitsuru gave a giggle to Yosuke's unawareness and folded her arms. "Lounge? You mean my room?" she asked, getting an immediate gobsmacked look from the ginger-haired boy. Some others were startled as well, giving another glance around her room.
"It does look like a lounge doesn't it?" Mitsuru said with another chuckle, "No, I don't live with my family. They sent me this furniture, but I share this dormitory with my friends." Everyone nodded respectively to Mitsuru, giving an interested look to her.
"I hope this isn't intruding but..." Yu spoke, slightly cut off by his hesitation, "how do you know about Shadows?" the question caught Mitsuru off guard, giving a shocked expression at the knowledge that Yu and the others had on the subject.
Mitsuru searched through her mind in deep thought, looking up to the others as she collected her thoughts. "The question returns..." she spoke reluctantly, giving everyone the impression that she had been asked the same question many times before, "...it was during my childhood..." everyone leaned forward in their seats.
"My grandfather was obsessed with the Shadows, and he pushed his staff to conduct investigations and experiments on various Shadows." They all looked at each other, indicating their correction of the situation. Mitsuru continued. "But it wasn't enough for him. He hungered for their power...and with the amount of Shadows he contained, the power he could have harnessed would have been unimaginable..."
The knowledge that Mitsuru shared with the gang was overwhelmingly staggering to sink in, realising something about their greatest enemy that made them seem more fearful than they originally thought. But that wasn't all.
With butterflies flying in everyone's stomachs, Mitsuru carried on. "Though...it resulted in failure..." Jaws gawped and sudden gasps filled everyone's chests with a painful air, "...at the final stages of the experiment, they lost control of the Shadows and at that moment...it only took an explosion to alter the world for good..."
"Wow..." Yukiko spoke in awe, along with a few others. More questions were whizzing through Yu's cranium making it hard for him to pick out the next one. A reflective pause silenced the air, but Yu found a question.
"So...the experiment was the cause of the Shadows in the TV world?" he asked. But surprisingly, Mitsuru gave a shake of her head. Yu put on a look of confusion, sitting on the edge of his seat.
"Do you remember the school where you fought my Shadow?" Mitsuru asked, only getting more confused looks. Everyone wondered with great difficulty about how the school was important. Mitsuru continued explaining. "It was exactly the same school you would find in Iwatodai."
Everyone nodded to her with confidence that they knew the school well. She took a pause. "That was where the experiment was conducted..." And upon hearing the unexpected, their spines stiffened and their eyes grew wider. But the news only exacerbated further. "But they didn't spawn in what you call the 'TV world'..."
"Then...if not in the TV...where?" Yosuke asked hesitantly. Mitsuru lowered her head to call the horrible memory from the forgotten side of her subconscious. She lifted her head up. "Gekkoukan High School." Even though it was a surprise to everyone, they couldn't be anymore shocked than they were then. "That would make sense since the experiment was sited there," Naoto spoke, but with some doubt left in the statement, "but if the Shadows overran the school, it would have been shut down...I trust you have an explanation..."
"Of course," Mitsuru said with a nodded, calling another memory to mind, "...the failed experiment not only released the Shadows...but it also altered time and space...this is the part when you might stop believing me..." Everyone found it hard to imagine such causes, but they were confident that Mitsuru would know. She explained further, "...but every night at midnight, the school transformed into a tower of countless floors to climb...we called it Tartarus."
They all seemed to calm down after their shock, and their expressions showed more of deep interest and wonder. "Was that...?" Rise began to ask, "When we fought your Shadow...that was the tower?"
"Yes. That's correct..." Mitsuru said, praising Rise's understanding, "...but it doesn't end there..." Some put their fingers to their chins, listening with careful hearing, "...the experiment also gave birth to what we call the 'Dark Hour', a 'hidden' hour that presents itself every midnight to anyone who owned the potential."
"This 'potential'..." Chie began her say, "...it is something that anyone could have, or was it only certain people?" The raised question made Mitsuru grin a bit. She unfolded her arms and laid them on her leg that was crossed over the other one. "Very few people have it," she began giving a pause, ready to say the other half of her sentence, "but I am one of them."
Everyone's interest suddenly rose to a new height, leaning closer towards her. They were all so grasped by Mitsuru's answers, that they were slipping out of their seats.
"Why are you all so surprised?" she asked with a sweet giggle, "You all have the potential too." They all recoiled with a greater surprise, exchanging looks to each other to see if anyone knew what she meant.
"Wow! We have the potential?" Teddie shouted with a dramatic voice, "Please, Miss Mitsuru, would you kindly tell us what this 'potential' is?" Mitsuru gave a chuckle to Teddie's outgoingness and everyone's unawareness. "You really don't have a clue?" she asked with a friendly smile.
Everyone shook their heads, anxious to know what Mitsuru is teasing them with. "A Persona." she finally said, causing a thud to be heard from where Yosuke was. Everyone looked towards him and found that he fell off the edge of his seat, back onto the soft carpet.
"You have a Persona?" Yosuke asked in a shout, taking the question from everyone's mouths. "Not just me, all of my friends who live here have their own as well..." Everyone smiled, knowing that they weren't the only ones to have a Persona. But Mitsuru didn't return the smile back to them, only lowering her head, hiding her face behind her hair.
"Well...when I say 'all' of my friends..." Mitsuru said quietly, not being able to end her sentence. Yu could tell how she felt by the sound of her voice, knowing right away that there was one person she was trying to force out of her mouth. "Minato Arisato..." he spoke his name, causing Mitsuru's head to shoot up to look at him.
"How do you know him?" Mitsuru asked, slightly confused for someone who she didn't know to have some knowledge of her longtime friend. "I heard about him on the news...I'm terribly sorry..." Yu apologised to Mitsuru with a genuine look of sympathy for her.
"No need to apologise," Mitsuru said, forcing a smile for him, "it was just a shock for us to hear that his body went missing just a couple of days ago. We didn't know what to do..."
Mitsuru cleared her throat before saying anything else. She remembered Minato and his capabilities, reminiscing the final times before he met his death. "He didn't talk very much when we first met him, but when he awakened to his Persona, we knew right from the start that he was someone special. He became our leader for our expeditions in Tartarus. He cared about everyone..." A sense of surprise grew inside everyone except for Yu, but they all hid it away in respect.
"In fact...you're just like him." she said, looking towards Yu. He slightly flinched to Mitsuru's opinion, even though he has been told that before. "Really? What do you mean?" he asked politely.
"You care about the people around you...you have an aura around you which comforts anyone you approach..." Mitsuru then picked out the main point she wanted to make, "...but incredibly...you have his power." Again, everyone but Yu reacted to this, but he feigned clueless to Mitsuru's point.
"You mean, he had the power to hold multiple Personas?" Naoto asked with surprise still in her eyes. Mitsuru nodded. "Yes, but he used his potential for something that none of us would dare to do, let alone could do."
She took another moment to collect her thoughts before coming out of her deep thought. "Just at the start of the year, the day came when Nyx, a primordial goddess of the Shadows came down to earth to summon 'The Fall', the end of the world." Upon hearing this, everyone looked at each other, exchanging looks of fear. Yet again, Yu didn't react.
Mitsuru spoke further, "It wrecked havoc across Iwatodai, and we could only watch from the top of Tartarus..." She took a deep breath before carrying on, "...as the end drew nearer and nearer, the force of Nyx's power pushed us all down to the ground and the force made it almost impossible for us to breath." Shocked expressions were seen all across the room, even from Yu despite hearing it for a second time.
"But Minato was able to get back up...and confronted Nyx alone," She spoke slowly as if telling a story, pausing afterwards, "He held a power of unimaginable strength, but Nyx was an immortal, she could not die...so he used every bit of that power to seal her away from the world. To prevent 'The Fall' from ever happening again. He became The Great Seal himself."
Everyone expressions didn't show shock, but deep sympathy and sadness towards the true story. "Risking his own life for us and the world..." Rise said, quiet and shaken, wiping away a tear that formed in the corner of her eye. Yu responded to this and sat closer to her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She forced a smile for him and sank her head under his chin. "Man...I wouldn't have the guts to do that..." Kanji spoke as he lowered his head, as did Yosuke who had the same thought going through this mind.
"Up until Graduation Day at the school, he stayed with us for a little longer before returning to where he sealed Nyx away." They all opened their mouths with the sad thought of someone hanging on to life before slipping away on the final day. "Later on, we learned about Minato's reason for his sacrifice after fighting another god, Erebus."
"Erebus? What was he the god of?" Yu asked, afraid of the answer that was to come. Mitsuru sighed before giving her answer. "He was created from human malice...from people's wishes for 'The Fall' to come. And everyday, and even now...Erebus attacks The Great Seal, trying to break through Minato's chains and bonds to reach Nyx...and finally bring about The Fall."
Some of them closed their eyes at the horrible thought, and some were just speechless, scratching their heads with the awful emotions running through their minds.
"Which brings me to the question I wanted to ask you." Mitsuru spoke after a long silence, shooting their heads up to her with ears widely open. She proceeded to her question. "The disappearance of Minato's body seems too suspicious for it to have been stolen or any other mere excuse..." Everyone thought about what she said and instantly agreed with her.
"...If you ask me, it might have something to do with all of this." Yu along with a few others nodded as she discussed her main question, "So now I ask...will you aid us in finding the answers? To his disappearance, to the cause of it and why?" she asked with a small sign of desperation to shout out a bigger one.
Everyone looked towards Yu, and he looked around at the faces that looked for his answer. Yu had no thoughts of backing out and he immediately had an answer in mind. "Yes, definitely." he answered confidently, "We won't let you down." They all smiled to him with agreement.
"Then it's settled," Mitsuru began with more confidence in her speech, "when shall we meet again? I suggest you take a day to convince your parents and guardians before departing." she asked with a plan already in mind. Everyone turned back to Yu. "Well, we've got a whole summer vacation to do it, so whenever will be fine." Yosuke said to Yu, getting the same response from the others.
Yu's mind wasn't changed at all. "Will tomorrow be fine?" he asked with a warm smile, forming a wider one on Mitsuru's face. "That is more than fine. I have confidence in your commitment." The room went from a space full of glum faces to faces of beaming smiles and forming friendships.
"I will give you the details of your destination in the morning," Mitsuru began, speaking like a leader, "and once again, thank you so much." After a number of friendly farewells to their new friend, everyone entered the TV one more time to return to the TV world, but Yu was stopped by a question that he wanted to ask.
"Wait, Mitsuru. I have just one more question." Yu called for Mitsuru as he was just about to step into the screen."Very well, what is it that you ask?" she asked him politely, willing to answer his incoming question.
"Before we left to find you, I asked someone about you who said he worked with you, and you told him about Shadows. Who is he?" The question baffled Mitsuru, making her search through her mind for such a figure. "He looked about your age." Yu added, giving him a confusing result.
"I have no one in mind who would fit those criteria. I'm very sorry." she answered him, only making the situation more tricky for Yu to solve. "I'm sure he was someone who worked for your father, there's no need to apologise." he reassured her hiding his confusion from her.
"Actually..." Mitsuru began, getting wide eyes from Yu who hoped that she knew something about the boy... "...I have a question for you too." ...only to be crushed by a false hope. "Sure, go ahead." he accepted his incoming question.
"The person in the bear costume. Why does he wear it?" she asked, imagining the image of Teddie with a brief chuckle. Yu chuckled with her before calming down. "I think we'll save that for tomorrow."
They both made their final goodbye before Yu jumped back into Mitsuru's TV. After going through the tunnel of flying shapes and outlines, he safely hopped out, back into the TV world, seeing that the others were huddled together. He joined the group.
"So, how are we going to convince our parents?" Chie asked, looking around the group for anyone with an answer. Everyone rubbed their index fingers on their chins in deep thought, until Yosuke had an idea. "How about we say that we're going to have a sleepover marathon? That way, they'll know that we'll be away for about a week or more and they wouldn't know where we are? Who's with me?" Most of the group gave face-palms.
"Dude, that's a bad idea...besides my family know that I don't do sleepovers..." Kanji opposed with a look of disinterest. But Teddie thought otherwise. "A sleepover marathon?" Yu then jumped into the conversation before he got too excited. "We could say that we're going on a school trip for a summer holiday in Iwatodai." he suggested with his quick reaction.
Everyone struggled to find an excuse better than Yu's, so they saved their painful thinking and nodded confidently to his suggestion. "That's not a bad idea." Yukiko commented, still unable to search for a better reason. "Well, it's better than a sleepover...good thinking Senpai." Kanji praised Yu, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder.
They all gave a brief smile to each other, knowing that the perfect excuse was set to take another step forward in their aid for the people of Iwatodai. But then there was the worry of getting back to Inaba.
"So...does anyone know the way back?" Chie asked with her heading turning in all directions to anyone with a clue, "Yu?" she darted towards Yu. Everyone looked at him as the leader he was, only to laugh and giggle at his blank expression.
There's another chapter for you, and in the same week! Anyway, there is ONE LAST CHAPTER to write, and I can't wait to write it! So look forward to it, keep reading and reviewing and I will write you the ending soon! CYA!