Well, this hasn't been done by me in quite some time now. Two uploads in the space of a little bit of time of each-other. I will admit that I did mean to get this fully written yesterday, but my head and ear began to bother me and I had to lay down for a little while. That basically ate up whatever was left of Sunday. Ah well.

So, for the first time in… quite a while… I'm doing a theme week. This time, for the FeMC of Persona 3 Portable. Minako, as I'll be calling her, is a really great character and it's such a shame she couldn't be part of Reload. So, I'll be doing this to celebrate her as best I can. I am going to try to do every day in some capacity. We'll see how it goes.

Side note, for her name, I'm gonna be going with 'Minako Hamuko'. Just because I like that name. It's what I used in Q2 and what I'll use if I do ever get to the Portable ports.

Before we begin, I do wanna give a quick shout out to both Femcweek on Twitter (I refuse to call it by its new name), and the Femc Reloaded Project on Discord. The former gave out the prompts for this week, and the latter is a really passionate group of people who are working to port Minako into Reload. There's been a lot of really great stuff going on there, and the person they got to voice Minako in the mod is really amazing.

With all that out of the way, let's get this going with prompt one, "Other Self".

Disclaimers: Persona belongs to Atlus, SEGA, and all of its other owners. Some original concepts are my own ideas.

Every so often, Minako saw her own reflection seem to change. Not by much, not by a very long shot, but just… every so often, when she looked in the mirror, she saw herself with yellow eyes. This ended up happening more and more often as the full moon began to approach, and seemed to wane with the disappearance of the full moon.

Doctors were simply baffled and eventually chal it up to hallucinations, which most of the relatives that Minako was sent to live with over the many years ended up accepting as well.

'Then… why does it feel like… there's someone watching me…?' a much younger Minako thought, looking to her reflection one day…

April 6th, 2009, Evening

Many years had gone by since the fateful day. Minako had eventually transferred over to a new high school and was on her way over. It was rather late at evening, but Minako was capable of keeping herself mentally occupied.

"There is no more darkness, no more tears in the rain, no one hurt…" Minako softly sang to herself, listening to a music player while on the train.

After a little bit of travel, the train came to a stop. Minako could feel it and lowered the music on her player to hear the announcer.

-Iwatodai. This is the final train bound for Tatsumi Port Island.-

The teen just gave a small nod of her head, then reached up to get her bags. She briefly saw her own reflection, with a glint of those yellow eyes, but it quickly vanished before long. After the train's doors opened, Minako started to walk out and along her way to the dorm she had been assigned to.

The walk had been mostly uneventful for her, but the mysterious green hue that the town had become as she was walking made her exhale a bit. Minako just kept on her pace and, after some time, arrived at the dorm and went inside.

"You're late. I've been waiting a long time for you…" a voice proceeded to speak, making Minako turn to see a young child. The child looked to be about six or seven at best, had one blue eye, one sort of red eye, hair that was a mix of both boyish and girlish, and what almost looked to be a prisoner's outfit. Their voice was the most peculiar part about this child, being a mix of a young boy's and a young girl's.

"Uh… hello…" Minako proceeded to speak, trying her best to be polite. The child then snapped his fingers and something almost seemed to materialize in front of them, "...eh?"

"Now, if you want to proceed… please sign your name there," the child spoke, motioning to the thing that had just appeared, "It's a contract. Don't worry… all it says is that you'll accept full responsibility for your actions."

Minako nervously exhaled and took a moment to read the contract. Sure enough, there wasn't anything majorly off about it, and it was simply saying that she would take responsibility for her choices and actions. With that in mind, she proceeded to write down her name onto the contract.

'Minako Hamuko'

A couple of days went by, mostly without incident. While, once or twice, Minako did see the mysterious reflection again, it hadn't been for very long. The brunette was capable of going through her first few days at her new high school relatively smoothly. But then…

April 9th, 2009, Evening

Minako laid in bed in a half-asleep and half-awake stupor. She was facing the clock on a stand nearby her bed before the world went back to the weird green state that it did in the time between one day and the next.

She soon felt some sort of rumbling outside and was guided out to the roof by Yukari. The two ended up unwittingly getting cornered by a monster of some description. The monster managed to disarm Yukari of some sort of a silver gun, which landed nearby Minako. She glanced down to it and saw 'Evoker' written on the side.

Minako stared at it for a moment, almost entranced by it…

"Go on…"

She reached over to it and then, with her heart racing almost a mile a minute, she slowly turned the Evoker towards herself and closed her eyes as her breathing became more erratic…

Minako slowly opened her eyes up again… only to see a pitch-black void around her. There was nothing around her that was visible for miles and miles.

"Am I…?"

"No. You're very much alive still… but you're at an important crossroad…" a voice spoke. This voice was eerily like Minako's own, yet had a heavy distortion to it.

The voice then went quiet before the sounds of chains rattling and what seemed to be feet walking against the ground began to approach. Minako kept herself calm and braced herself for whatever it was that was going to appear before her. Minako gasped a little upon seeing the figure in question.

The figure was barefoot, but had some chains that were tied to both her ankles and her wrists that seemed to not go anywhere, a white chiton that covered the top half of her body, what looked almost to be a black cloak that covered up most of her legs, carrying what looked to be a scythe that had strings that trailed off to nowhere, long, flowing, red hair that reached to about her waist, what looked to be a silver necklace of some sort… the same face as Minako herself… and those bright yellow eyes her reflection showed her.

"It's been a very long time coming, but, now… we can finally meet," the other Minako said with a large smile on her face, "After so long… we can finally see each-other."

"Who… or… what… are you…?" Minako proceeded to ask.

"I am the Shadow… your Shadow…" the figure spoke, a bit of an evil smile on her face, "I'm sure you remember reading about what I am in the past…"

"So… you're…" Minako slowly spoke, realization dawning on her.

"Every little thing you want to keep buried about yourself from the rest of the world. Your fears, your sadness, your pain… all of it that you don't want anyone else to see about you…" Shadow Minako spoke, a grin on her face. She then seemed to strum the strings on the scythe and then giggled, "Anything you don't want revealed… I am."

Minako stared at the Shadow for a moment in a bit of shock and a tiny bit of fear. However, she managed to calm herself and then a thought occurred to her, "Let me ask you this. …if you're everything I'm repressing, then why are you perky like I am?"

"Because I am you. We are two halves of one coin…"

"...why are you showing up now?"

"That little trigger you got with you. It'll call upon my power in a new form. I just wanted to make sure that you knew what you were getting yourself into. There's no going back once you fire and summon me. So… what say you?"

Minako took a moment to breathe and gather her thoughts. Time hadn't seemed to move as she allowed herself a moment of calm.

"There's no way that we're getting out of this unless we fight together…" Minako proceeded to say, making her Shadow stare at her a little, "So… we're in this together. I accept you and all the risks and dangers that this brings."

"Perfect," Shadow Minako said with a grin. She then went behind Minako and got closer to her, "You just need to accept one thing. Don't look back."

"...huh? What does that mean? Like… I can't think about the past anymore?"

"Oh, no. That's not it. I just mean don't look back on this deal we made and regret it. Keep looking forward and never look back upon this choice."

"Alright. …you ready?"

The Shadow simply nodded her head in response. Then, as one, they both simply smiled…

"Per… so… na…"

A sound of cracking glass and a gunshot followed Minako pulling the trigger on the Evoker. Energy seemed to pour out of her and then reform into a being nearby her.

"I am thou… thou art I. From the sea of thy soul, I cometh…" a voice that was similar to Minako's, yet heavily distorted, began to proclaim, "I… am Orpheus… mistress of strings…"

Orpheus let out a roar of sorts as Minako just kept smiling, almost giddy, as her Persona floated above her. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Minako felt a strange pain flow through her body. She grabbed onto her head and began to scream. Orpheus began to almost convulse from what was happening and then seemed to rupture into another, more powerful and dangerous, Persona.

This new Persona effortlessly tore through the monster that had attacked the two and soon left only a few stragglers behind before it reverted back into Orpheus. Minako, while shakily breathing, managed to guide herself and Orpheus through cleaning up the remaining few monsters.

"...a… amazing…" Yukari managed to speak. She slowly got up and walked towards Minako, who turned towards her, "Hey…?"

"I'm glad… you're… okay…" Minako managed to utter before her body felt limp and everything started spinning to her. She managed to keep the smile on her face before she collapsed and passed out. She remained alive, but was totally out of it…

And there is the first chapter. I think I did pretty well with this theme, but let me know what you all think.

One thing I'll admit that I did want to try to portray with Shadow Minako was, sorta like the Shadows in P4, a resemblance to the Persona it would become. One part I really loved was how the scythe that the Shadow had is meant to be both Orpheus' harp, but also Thanatos' sword. I am pretty proud of that idea. Oh, and as for the chains, they're meant to symbolize how Minako is chained to many things. Her past, her guilt, her fears, and her connection to Death.

A thought I'll admit I did have when thinking about this… given how the rest of S.E.E.S., as shown in The Answer, didn't seem to know about Shadows and Personas being two sides of the same coin, it makes me wonder if any of them have actually faced their Shadows or not. I'm sort of leaning towards 'no', but that the Evoker is capable of forcing the Shadow to emerge as a Persona. Something I also think might be the case is that, while they never faced their Shadows, they can at least see them. Like… Yukari. I can just imagine, aside from the Evoker's imagery, she can also catch shaky glimpses of her Shadow self when she aims the Evoker. It's also why the whole rampaging thing is another factor, aside from the supplement stuff. But that's just how I view it.

One thing I will mention that got tossed to the cutting room floor was an extended battle scene for Minako and Orpheus. Given some… *nervous exhale* things… that happened in the world recently, as of this writing, having fire get thrown around seemed a little insensitive.

Another bit that I scrapped was an exchange about 'memento mori' between Minako and her Shadow. I couldn't figure out how to get it to flow right, so it had to get tossed as well.

I think my favorite part has to be the 'don't look back' exchange. It was honestly kinda cute and I'm happy with how it flowed. Plus, it's a nod to both the original myth of Orpheus and the new All-Out Attack finishing touch in Reload.

Hope that you enjoyed this.

Just Live More.