An: I am in the market for a Beta-Reader. If you would like to help me out drop a PM.
Yukari was no stranger to things that went bump in the night. At least she thought she was, but it turns out that hiding in her room where everything was safe when something flew by her window did not equate to knowing what monsters crawled about in the very real witching hour.
If she had to sum it up in a word, she would choose terrifying. Learning that it also didn't use to be this bad was a hollow comfort when she knew that it still happened even without literal Demons making the hour a hell on earth.
10 years and an apocalypse later and this was the world Yukari Takeba was inhabiting. How did her dad manage to get involved in any of this?
How did a tech company get involved with this? Why can they pull ghosts out of their head? When did the UN get involved? How did Kirijo Senpai know about her? Was she set up? Would she survive? Would Sanada-Senpai survive tonight?
As Yukari went down the stairs following the choco colored foreigner with stunning hazel green eyes she couldn't help but think all of this was a terrible nightmare.
But a glance of her hand with Sanada-Senpai's dried blood she couldn't help the involuntary reaction of her blood draining from her face.
"Um…."
Her voice came out barely above a squeak. She wasn't sure why but no matter how she tried she couldn't even raise her voice to a conversational scream.
It was like being in a nightmare while being awake.
She wanted to vomit but her stomach was still, she wanted to scream but she couldn't even speak.
Who would she even talk to? Both Senpai were busy taking care of Arisato and Sanada-Senpai.
Squeezing her hands she realized that in her left hand was the Evoker, it was heavy. But she supposed that all guns were heavy, seeing as though they were made from metal.
Now after everything… she couldn't help but stare at it. This tool had been in her hand the whole time and was supposed to be something she used to make a difference…
Abruptly she holsters the pistol.
Unwilling or unable to do anymore with it. How could she? Everything just felt heavy, far away, too close…
Even the groun-
…
When she awakes it's morning. She is safe in her bed tucked in and a fresh uniform is already laid out for her.
She must've passed out from everything that happened last night. Judging how she was only partly undressed, just enough to get comfortable, she was sure that whoever put her there was probably in a rush.
That makes sense… Everything was just so hectic last night. She honestly didn't think that going to school would be possible for Sanada-Senpai with his arm being hurt.
Wait… School…
"Oh. I should get ready for school…"
Her morning was on autopilot from placing her supplies for Kyudo into her gym bag to grabbing her homework from the night before.
Her mind was still on the night prior even as she waded through bodies at the train station. Even as she was met with the white gates of the school.
"Takeba-san looks tired this morning, do you think she slept well? Hey, you should go ask her!"
"Nu-uh! She looks like she'll rip my head off for sure."
"That's rude, you know Yukari-San isn't like that. I'm gonna, oh she's already gone… maybe she is in a bad mood."
She just had to go drop off her archery stuff before class started. Hopefully her Captain wouldn't be too upset about her taking her stuff, hopefully she brought the excuse about wanting to restring her bow…
Which now that she thought about it sounds really suspicious since it wasn't something she normally did.
Oh well, she would definitely need to plan for this better…
Yukari paused.
Planning? Would there even be a next time?
Right as she was about to finish placing her supplies into her locker, the brunette heard someone approach her.
"Yukari-San. Are you alright, you look like you stayed up all night."
Turning to address the speaker, the second year had been met with the face of someone familiar, Nishiwaki Yuko.
A girl that might've been half foreign but it'd be rude to ask and Yukari had always found the girl to be nice enough.
That's odd, isn't she involved with the Kendo team?
"O-oh… Yeah, it was just a rough night last night at the dormitory."
"Oh, I almost forgot that you lived there. I was just worried about you, since normally you don't look erm… as tired as you do right now."
"Right, you don't have to worry about Yuko-san, I appreciate your concern though. I'll be alright."
She wasn't alright. Not really.
But Yukari, if nothing else, was good at getting through tough times.
Class was a bit of a distraction but considering everything that just happened she thought she took pretty good notes.
…
In fact she was pretty sure that if nothing else Minato-San would appreciate the notes that she took. Especially since he himself wouldn't have much idea of what was going on.
Looking over to his empty desk the brunette couldn't help but notice Junpei was off in his own world… typical.
He definitely wouldn't be a reliable person to get notes from.
Junpei was… a good friend, but definitely not someone to get notes from.
"Watcha looking at Yuka-tan, do I have something on my face?"
Ah, there he goes with that clueless look on his face.
"Che."
"H-hey do I actually have something on it?"
Rubbing at his face in an attempt to get off what could only be the stupid that he had on his face.
Silly Junpei. No matter what you try nothing would ever wipe that off.
"Seriously Yuka-tan do I have something on my face, help me get it off."
Unable to hold back her troubles, the junior couldn't hold back her laughs.
"You're messing with me, aren't you? Yeah, yeah laugh it up Yuka-tan, real funny…" Junpei trails off with a pout that definitely didn't look cute with his sanpakugan.
"You just thought something extremely rude about me, didn't you!?"
Whatever made him think that?
Well, no matter how anything happened she was lucky that she had friends, and even with how much he could annoy her that included Iori Junpei.
His arm hurt. His arm really fucking hurt.
Holding the Evoker in his hands as Polydeuces casted Dia, Sanada Akihiko couldn't help but resent his situation. He was continuously casting the healing magic and drinking coffee and other energy drinks to refill his magic.
A little trick that constantly had him needing to piss.
It was worth it since by some measure his arm wasn't going to just fall off.
It more like it was a mass of hanging meat with nerves firing off constantly as they were revived promptly told him his arm was fucked up.
It was like being branded with a hot iron from the inside.
…
He had been doing this since sunrise.
It was sunset now.
Sweat dripped down his form from the fatigue, though it wouldn't last long as he was still hot enough to see that same sweat evaporate from the heat his body was giving off.
Sighing heavily, the senior looked across the room to where his impromptu roommate was still resting.
Still out cold then. Truthfully Akihiko didn't think he would wake up anytime soon. He wasn't as tired when he first summoned his Persona but he also hadn't summoned something that was probably strong enough to fight one of those things in the tower and win.
A flash of blinding pain hit the silver-haired boy as his concentration lapsed.
He would need to be more careful, while the boxer had managed to avoid necrosis, through an impossible margin. Something that would have been impossible with traditional or modern medicine.
In a way it was a result of his training.
Enough to keep him moving but not enough to seal the deal. For now, that was fine. He knew that he had only tripped, and that he would find his way back to his feet, soon.
He knew that he had yet to reach his peak for all the power that he commanded.
His face felt like it was carved from cement.
His arm still burned.
The doctors and nurses had been told to leave him alone while he was resting by the Kirijo Group, but to him it made no difference. Everything on this island was for the advantage of the Kirijo Group. Not needing to explain his circumstance made things easier but it left a weird aftertaste in his mouth once he realized that In a way everything was set up for Mitsuru's advantage.
He had nothing against her.
He really didn't, especially after he and Shinjiro had basically been trained to be bodyguards for Mitsuru since they were in grade school.
…
Those were good times. Learning how to fight, fighting Shinjiro, defendin-...
Good times.
As the silver haired boxer healed his arm he couldn't help but get lost in his past fights. From the one he barely survived to ones in his distant past. It was always three reps, one mimicking the exact fight, another envisioning what he could do better and another where everything goes wrong.
It helped distract him from the pain even with the phantom motion.
The door opened, it was Takeba, she looked haunted, that was something he was familiar with.
"Oh Sanada-Senpai you're awake? How are you?"
"Hn."
How was he? A hard question to answer considering he was trying to reattach his arm through magic and having been at it all day he would say beyond exhausted. But it was better to be exhausted than dead.
"Right, stupid question. I'm sorry. I bought some food, I thought that Arisato-San and you might enjoy some food from outside," the girl admits with a sheepish look.
That was considerate of her, he didn't expect that.
"...Thank you. Arisato hasn't woken up yet but I'm sure he'll appreciate the effort," having not said a word to anyone Akihiko took his time to carefully state his appreciation.
His junior's face brightened up as she handed him the food looking at him expectantly, before flushing red.
"I didn't think of how you would eat this with only one hand," the girl muttered out in embarrassment.
"Don't worry about it. I've trained enough with my left arm to use it for things like this, and I can use Polydeuces to hold the foo-"
"I can't accept that! Please let me help you out, Senpai -to at least hold the food, you're still recovering. Please focus on that while I help you."
It was the most he had spoken to her, it was earnest. She might've been a liability on the battlefield but she at least had decent bedside manners.
Everyone starts out as a liability. Everyone has the capacity to grow.
As the girl roped herself into helping him eat the almost amputee turned over an idea in his head. If she came back tomorrow he would ask.
With the meal finished the duo looked over to the comatose junior.
"He really fought that shadow on his own?"
"Er, yeah, it looked like he was trying to copy your movement to stay ahead. I don-"
"No, don't knock his achievement like that. What he did was a tribute to his skill, visual or otherwise," looking over to the clock the senior saw that it was getting late, almost 11pm.
"Head home now, Takeba. It's getting late. Thanks for bringing food."
"Right. Goodnight Senpai, rest well."
Placing down his cup Snipe refilled his glass of rum and coke as sunlight pierces through the office building UNDIT was held up in.
The NCO was surrounded by white boards, binders, pens and paper work sitting at a desk that was a bit too bare for his tastes.
It didn't feel like he was supposed to be here.
But that's what happens when someone decides that they want to take over and no one wants the job.
Hell, who would? Now Snipe has to make sure that everyone who just died receives their final rites, send home their personal effects and all that trash.
Everyone knew what they were signing up for.
….
Tatsumi Port Island was shaping up to be one hell of a deployment. Granted for UNDIT every deployment was guaranteed to see combat but this island was described as having some of the worst opposition possible.
From what the last unit let slip before they left it slowly ramped up with higher stakes until they saw levels of violence that could be ascribed to be straight out of myth. Same with the unit before, ever since this 25th hour nonsense had been discovered.
He still had to go through the after battle reports and casualty rates.
If it had been like that the whole time then either the Kirijo Group was sitting on a secret army or the island would've been sunk by now.
Be that as it may Sgt Snipe was willing to bet it was the latter over the former since building a Demonica tier army wasn't something that could be done with conventional science. It took a melding of man and machine and coordination to create this and if the Kirijo Group did have something like this would've solved their issues by now.
Seeing as though he was here instead of somewhere in the middle of Europe or India dealing with the nonsense over there it was clear that they didn't, wouldn't, and couldn't deal with the problem.
After all, what the hell can a group of high schoolers accomplish that trained super elite soldiers couldn't. None of them could dodge automatic gunfire.
He could.
Nuff said.
He wasn't mad that he watched decades of training flushed down the toilet while some random high schooler helped deal with the threat.
If anything Snipe was smug, they had their own secret super soldier on the case that survived without power armor.
He wasn't being petty… and he wasn't that drunk either.
"Miller, could you get me the new squad rosters."
"Sure thing Snipe."
Miller was a good dude, a brit that had a bit of obsession with knives but he hadn't met one who hadn't yet. Since they didn't have much in terms of freedom for firearms.
A real shame, the average joe but they got to have their hands on some of coolest toys as a perk of the job.
Belt fed full automatic dragon's breath shotguns were a personal favorite of his. Rail guns too.
Guns… ammunition count, optic count, serial numbers… right he was still trying to get all of that logged. He couldn't afford to get too distracted by this when he still had so much to account for.
Still had to set up a new patrol cycle and a tower exploration team rotation.
"Going from 60 PAX to 36 really fucked us…"
Normally this wouldn't be considered a platoon by typical standards but this was a specialized job with a small community.
Snipe might have to see if he could pull some Pogs to cover down for some of the admin shit so he could have his platoon have days off. Though with the way everything was looking, days off might be an impossibility. The last couple days was some fucking stiff fighting.
"Snipe you still brooding over there you bloke?"
"Yeah. A lot to get done."
"You're drinking."
"If I don't my head will explode from trying to figure out how we're going to make this work."
Miller looking over the old chain of command and distribution couldn't help but wince. Most of the leadership had been slaughtered over the last week.
They weren't supposed to see a night parade like that for another month or two. But like all operations, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And most enemies couldn't hurl lightning at you either.
"Here's the roster of what the squad leaders put in place. With the way things are looking there's not going to be much if any downtime."
"Of course not, we fight Angels and Demons, at some point we might have to fight The Devil too."
"Think he'll have a pitchfork?"
"Who fucking knows at this point."
"If he does show up, think we'll have the chance to shove it up his ass?"
"Sodomizing Satan? Fucking hilarious, we'll have to try that."
The conflict store was based around some simple uses.
With things like【System Experience Module】being straightforward as far as could be.
Whereas【Limiter Destruction】didn't have much of a description at all let alone one that matched it.
Or at least in context to Faer, he was already stronger than the average human by a few magnitudes, by that logic one could say he already broke his limiter.
Then again what did Faer know?
Not much and he should know more.
The fact remained that both were too expensive for him and the higher up on the list it was the shittier the description became and more expensive it was.
【Limiter Destruction】was definitely closer to the higher end of the spectrum costing 3 million Conflict points.
The highest powers in the store hadn't even left a description or a cost.
Which could probably be ascribed to what the store called "Alternative Sources" which were even more inscrutable for the young man considering he didn't understand what he was looking at. Qi, Ki, Chi, Chakra, Reitsu, all these words registered in his lexicon, but he had no idea what the context or definition of what he was looking at was.
These were only some of the intermediate powers and with no frame of reference the Contractor turned high schooler honestly had better luck trying to figure out what the lottery numbers were going to be.
Not that it mattered much when even the most basic thing he could find on there, the module cost five hundred points.
He wasn't even at 50.
He wasn't sure if it was because it was a scam or it was because nothing he had gone against up to this point required that kind of power that would warrant him needing that much.
Also he had only been here for half a week. He couldn't expect full mastery or even proficiency in that time.
Ah well, practice made perfect.
Speaking of perfect, there was also this dog.
Faer didn't know the name of the breed or the dog's name.
Bark.
"Koromaru. Yeah, you definitely look like a Koromaru."
Although the foreign teen said the dog was perfect, he wasn't. At least he wasn't well taken care of. Twigs, leaves and dirt tangled in his white under coat with signs of chronic dehydration.
It was a shame.
"Bark."
"The owner of this place passes away and now it's up to you to keep Demons out? Shit, say no more. I'll help you out."
Koromaru was pretty cool.
"Bark."
Oh he had something he needed to do tonight so he wouldn't be at the shrine until after the Dark Hour?
"Alright, you take care of that and I'll make sure that no one is breaking into your home in the meantime. We'll call it a favor between friends."