Friday, April 10, 2009, 6:42AM
Iwatodai Dormitory, Makoto's Room
For the first time in years, Makoto smacked his alarm clock quiet.
His body felt like lead, he barely got any sleep after the battle last night, and his eyes were practically welded shut.
As Makoto forced himself out of bed, stretched, and yawned, he felt like he could take on the world itself.
"Good morning." Kotone waved at him, sitting alone at the dinner table. Her eyes were narrowed and she leaned hunched over on the table. Her hair was loose and tangled. Makoto would never say this out loud, but she looked more like a gremlin than a girl.
"Yo." He said, throwing his backpack on the floor and sitting down across the table from her.
"Sleep well?" She asked with an audacious grin, as she made a tent with her fingers for her chin to rest on.
He raised a tired eyebrow. "If only. I'm still holding you to what you said last night."
She giggled. "Well don't worry. We'll answer any questions you got." She said with a thumbs up before she yawned heavily.
He gave his own thumbs up. "Right. Now can you remind me how to get to school? I don't think that part of my brain has activated yet."
"Yep!" She pointed to the door. "Forward, march!"
"Dude." Junpei said with wide eyes as Makoto passed him at the gate of Gekkoukan as Kotone skipped ahead of him. "You look like crap."
"I feel like crap." Makoto walked right past him.
"Did you get into a fight or something?" He said as he started walking with Makoto.
"Junpei, I can barely remember my own name right now." He looked at him, one eye shut and the other eye fluttering. "Not now."
Up until today, Makoto had never ventured to the third floor, where the girls rooms were, let alone the fourth floor. All he knew was that Kotone said that Kirijo wanted him to go there as soon as school ended.
Unlike the previous two floors, this one had only a single door, which led to a meeting room. It was fairly spacious, at least compared to the individual rooms, with a table, some couches, and computer monitors along the wall.
On the couch, flanked by Kotone, Kirijo, and Takeba, sat a middle-aged man. He wore a brown coat and had a trilby on his lap and a cane next to him. Unlike the girls, who all looked as tired as Makoto felt, the man looked full of life, even if he looked about as old as them combined.
"Hello." The man said with a soft smile. "Sorry it's taken me so long to show up. My name is Shuji Ikutsuki. I'm the Chairman of the Board for Gekkoukan High School. It's a pleasure to meet you, young Makoto-kun."
Makoto sat down. "Hello sir."
"Let me get straight to the point." He leaned in, placing his elbows on the table and his chin on his knuckles. "Would you believe me if i said a day consists more than twenty-four hours?"
"It's the reason why I've been able to squeeze in an extra hour of sleep for years." He said with a yawn.
He let out a hearty laugh. "Well, that's certainly a positive way of looking at it." His smile faltered. "This is a phenomenon we call the Dark Hour. Sometimes we call it Shadow Time, but I've always preferred the Dark Hour. It's a much more snappy name."
"True to the name, this is when the Shadows emerge." Kirijo said. "They're what we fought last night. We understand that they are what is responsible for the outbreak in Apathy Syndrome."
Makoto thought back to the odd people he had seen around the Port. Vacant-eyed, listless people standing or laying down in the streets, along the walls, or huddled in the corners. At first he thought they were just drug addicts, but soon people had informed him of what they really were.
Or rather...what they thought these people really were.
"Shadows attack people during the Dark Hour, prying open their coffins and consuming their psyche. When they wake, their very will to live is stolen. Physically they're alive, but mentally..." he shook his head. "Kill the Shadow, free the psyche, and cure the person's Apathy Syndrome. One man, or woman, at a time."
Ikutsuki leaned in. Looking into his eyes, Makoto could feel the the emotions emanating from his man.
"This is where our dorm comes into play. Everyone here can use what is known as a 'Persona'. That's the spirit you summoned last night."
Makoto nodded. "I think I can see where this is going."
Ikutsuki smiled. "Our group, the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad – or SEES for short – fights Shadows in defense of humanity. Will you join us?"
Makoto took a deep breath and leaned back. He scoured his eyes across the room. The three girls all were looking at him with exhausted eyes and bated breath. Ikutsuki stared at him, eyes soft but clearly expecting a certain answer from Makoto.
"Do I have to decide immediately?" Ikutsuki shook his head. "I still have a lot of questions before I want to commit to anything."
"But of course." The chairman said, leaning back into his seat. "Please, feel free to ask anything. Knowledge is meant to be shared, after all."
"Personas, Shadows, the Dark Hour, what is all of this?"
Ikutsuki put his hand on his chin. "The best way I can explain it is that Shadows are kind of like viruses, and Personas are humanity's antibodies created to fight them."
"But, why do they exist?" Makoto asked. "Shadows, I mean. And the Dark Hour too."
"Those are questions I have been pondering myself for years, my boy." He shook his head. "Sadly we're no closer to discovering the answer than when they discovered both a decade ago."
"So all of this has been around for a decade?"
"At the very least." He said. "The Kirijo Group discovered them at that point, it's possibly the Shadows and the Dark Hour existed beforehand, but their presence can only be confirmed for that long."
Makoto nodded. Kirijo Group, Kirijo-sempai... He stole a glance at his red-headed senpai, who had a pained look on her face. "Since you know about the existence of the Dark Hour," Makoto leaned in, eyes matching Ikutsuki's, "does that mean you have a Persona?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes." Ikutsuki said. "But mine was so severely damaged that I might as well not have one." He averted his gaze. "The sad truth is, I'm dead weight in a fight."
Makoto's eye briefly flickered over to the cane next to the chairman.
"It's alright." He said with a comforting smile. "You can ask if you wish."
"Your leg, was it...?"
"My actual leg is fine, but..." He paused. "A Persona can tolerate a lot of abuse, far more so than a human in fact. Given enough time they will heal from many things. But even they have a limit."
Ikutsuki shifted in his seat, sighing quietly before continuing.
"My Persona's body was mangled by the Shadows. Utterly destroyed. I can still remember how the Shadows snapped his arms, crushed his skull, and...devoured his leg. The pain your Persona feels ricochets back to you, even if the physical damage doesn't always."
Ikutsuki wiped some sweat off his brow, the uncomfortable looks on the girl's faces making Makoto wonder if it was right of him to ask in the first place.
"The wounds I sustained from that battle eventually healed, but since then...my leg has been completely numb. Every doctor I speak to says there is nothing wrong with it, physically speaking, and that it's a psychosomatic issue. But...it's like the opposite of a phantom limb. I know it's there but I can't feel it or move it right anymore."
Makoto exhaled, releasing a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
Intellectually, Makoto knew that combat would be risky. He saw the damage that Aragaki and Sanada took last night. He remembered the exhaustion from summoning Orpheus just twice. Fighting those things would invite the opportunity for him to get hurt, severely wounded, or even die.
But they recovered, or at least were recovering in the hospital according to Kotone, and he recovered. Sure he was exhausted right now, but he felt better than he had in months. Like he was finally clear of a long cold, or had crawled out of a dungeon into the light. Awaking Orpheus made him feel truly alive again.
Hearing it from Ikutsuki's mouth directly, about not just what could happen, but what did happen, made it much more...palpable.
Makoto sighed. I guess sometimes you can't come out of a fight unscathed. "What will you do if I say no?" He could all three girls tense up, clearly not expecting that as an option, or at least hoping he wouldn't.
Ikutsuki, meanwhile, remained nonplussed. "Well, given the risk involved, there is always the likelihood that a student will choose not to join. That is of course completely understandable, and we would accept your rejection and try to accommodate you as best as possible. In practice that would mean transferring you to a regular dorm when a vacancy shows up."
"You're not going to, like, wipe my memory are you?" Makoto asked quietly. "Like the Men in Gray?"
To the surprise of the students, Ikutsuki let out a big, hearty laugh. "No, no we don't have that kind of technology. Although," he put his hand under his chin, "with a pair of sunglasses I guess I could hypothetically be an Agent I. I'd have to change my wardrobe though." He mused. "I like brown better."
"Um, Mr. Chairman?" Kirijo interjected meekly. "Aren't we getting off track?"
"Hm? Oh yes." He said with a nervous laugh. "Ahem, anyways, if you reject we won't force you to stay and we won't wipe your memory or anything like that." His smile faltered. "It's very difficult to try and discuss this subject with people out of the know. I can imagine you've come to that realization a long time ago."
Makoto winced.
"I think we've all been there at least once." Ikutsuki said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Makoto could barely make out Kotone turning her head and biting her lip.
"I won't ask for you to immediately make a decision, but is it possibly you can make one by the end of the month?" Ikutsuki asked.
"I think I can do that sir."
He smiled. "Very well." Ikutsuki picked up his cane and stood. "Until then, feel free to live your life as a regular student, or tag along with the others in patrolling the streets and exploring Tartarus if you so feel like it."
Makoto cocked his head to the side.
"Oh dear! I forgot to tell you about that." He shook his head. "Well, seeing is believing as they say, Mitsuru-chan, will show him Tartarus in the next few day?" He turned to her. "Perhaps while Shinjiro-kun and Akihiko-kun are in the hospital you could take the second-years for a bit of fieldwork if they're up to it?"
She nodded. "Yes sir, Mr. Chairman."
"Very well." He put on his hat and picked up his cane and began to leave. "If you have any more questions, feel free to ask Mitsuru. Although given how you and everyone else look, I imagine you'd like the comfort of your bed." He said with a chuckle.
Makoto politely nodded and yawned once more.
"You know what they say," Ikutsuki grinned, "'the early bird catches the bookworm!'"
A long silence fell over the room.
"Ahem." He straightened his tie. "Tough crowd."
"Personas, Shadows." Makoto mumbled to himself. "Man..." He buried his face in his pillow. "This is too much." He flipped over and stared at the ceiling. "My parents died ten years ago. It's the earliest that the Shadows appeared. Personas are the antibodies to Shadows" He sighed. "This can't be a coincidence. But...what does it mean? How is it connected? There's so much I don't know..."
Makoto slowly drifted off the sleep, his mind racing with the various ways all of these tragic events and unearthly happenings could be related.