Opening Shots (Persona 2129 Writefaggotry)

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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The first attack came when I was only fourteen years old. Back then, I was just a wide-eyed girl who would stare out a bedroom window on long nights, wondering about the latest in fashion, whether or not Patrick Stone would ask me out to homecoming, and praying for Dad to come home safely from Korea.

I was still living with my family at the time, the eldest of four army brats born and raised in the suburban Fairfax County. The house was always crowded, even when Dad was away on tour. I remember storming out that day after an argument with my mother, calling one of my friends to drive us out to the mall.

Fuck, I don’t even remember what we were arguing about.

I remember catching the latest summer blockbuster, something mindless and inane to take my mind off of things. The latest teen-dystopian-escapist fiction adapted to movie form. I don’t remember much of it. But what I do remember was sound of the sirens, their shrill screams audible even through the noise of the movie and the walls of the theatre.

All we got on our phones was the order to evacuate. Nothing else. No clue as to what disaster warranted a response of this level, only the command to find safety. So that’s what we did, evacuating from the mall under the watchful eyes of nervous police officers. We were all afraid, tension wound so tight you could cut it with a knife. It reached peak fever when someone tried to make a joke about Korean nukes making it to the Eastern Seaboard.

Stupid and half-hearted, but it was enough to get people freaking out. For six months, we’d been at war ever since North Korea attacked. Conventional warfare by itself was unnerving enough given their megalomania, the sheer insanity of the fact that World War Three was happening in our lifetimes. But what really disturbed everybody was the power of Persona, and its formal debut on the battlefield.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Personas and Persona-users didn’t even exist. Those were better days, simpler times, when we didn’t have to worry about magic, or the gods and demons within the souls of humans. But I digress. This isn’t a history lesson, and I’m the furthest thing from a psychologist. I’ll keep it brief, though.

So where was I? That’s right. Some asshole made a joke about Korean nukes. It was the wrong thing to say. With the escalation between the Allied Forces and the GDC, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to use nuclear weapons. The only question was who was going to push that red button. None of the Allies were desperate enough to use nukes. But we couldn’t say the same for the GDC.

There was almost a riot. The tension just cracked. People started shouting, panicking. The orderly evacuation ground to a halt within three seconds. Arguments with the police broke out, people demanding to know what was going on, and more than one person fainted from the pressing mass of bodies. It only reached fever pitch when someone punched the joker who made the nukes comment in the first place.

That was the signal for them to attack.

They came from nowhere, peeling off of walls and rising out of nothing. Formless puddles of black goo that just…attacked without any provocation, any sort of warning. Within a second, they’d already dragged someone to the ground. Within the next, he began to scream as they devoured him.

Everything happened at once. There were just as much people that died from the stampede to escape as there were that got savaged by the monsters. Not that it helped. The Shadows moved just as quickly, rushing along the ground and grabbing at anyone within reach. Those out of their arms’ reach were blasted with magic. Civilians burned, police officers slicers sliced to ribbons, and the main exit was frozen shut. Blasts of lightning turned screaming people into charred husks, and even the weakest of blows was enough to break bones and shatter necks.

You know, I can still see and hear my best friend, screaming as she was pulled into the writhing mass by dozens of oily, black limbs. Sometimes when I’m fatigued, I can still feel her hand gripping mine for life, and the violent sensation of it being torn away from me.

…somehow, I didn’t get trampled or pulled in, but I wasn’t able to break out of the mad scramble. It was awful, trapped in that writhing mass of bodies, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to see anything. I’ve never been claustrophobic, but that’s the closest I’ve ever been to having a panic attack.

As a matter of fact, I almost came close to pissing myself when the monsters came for our group: at least a seven of those flying orbs with grotesque tongues, and a dozen of those masked oozes. Instead of panicking like the others, something just…snapped within me and I summoned my Persona.

Even now, I can’t explain why I did it. It just felt like the right thing to do, kind of like those gut feelings you get when you have to make a quick decision. Basic fight or flight instincts from six million years of human evolution. And I guess that my brain, or rather, my soul chose to fight.

To tell you the truth, I’ve never actually used her outside of competitions. Aside from her magic, she had very little else to offer in terms of actual close-quarters combat. All of those videos or urban legends of me being some kind of prodigy? All kinds of horseshit. I was running on adrenaline and desperation when I had Undine do the first thing that came to mind.

Mabufu is only better than its single-target variant in its ability to hit multiple things at once. Other than that, it’s still the lowest among the tier of Ice-based magic. Even in Gauntlet matches, all it did was tickle the opposing team.
Not with the monsters. The flying tongues -Halberries - reeled back as the spell hit them. But it had the most visible effect on the ooze, the things we'd later call Mayas. They literally froze in their tracks, trapped in the ice that my Persona created. The attacking force suddenly got cut in half.

Somehow, it worked. Eventually, there were other teenagers who saw what I was doing and followed suit, summoning their own Personas. Eventually, the tide turned somewhat. Most of the kids had never even been in simulated combat. That much was obvious from their shoddy aim and weak magic. But it was enough to give everyone a breath, a temporary respite from the massacre.

Within a few moments, some semblance of order had been restored. The surviving police officers continued to evacuate the civilians, some lending their support to the Persona-users. I did my fair share of following up on my act, but I didn’t care about fighting them. All I wanted to do was get back home to my family.

I desummoned Undine, turned and ran with the crowd. I kept running, past police officers, past people crying for help. I kept running even when my lungs burned, when my legs were on fire, when my body was pleading for me to rest. I thought I was going to die, listening to those creatures butcher their way through the city.

I kept running until I got home, many miles away from the mall. My family was indoors, still watching the whole thing unfurl on the TV. I saw footage of the Shadows attacking everything and anything. Police officers were cut down by winds as sharp as swords, and the tanks of the National Guard swept aside like toys by the larger monsters. Skyscrapers collapsed, dragged down to the earth by the crawling masses, the skylines of our cities set ablaze with hellfire.

My mother ran over and hugged me when she noticed I’d come home. She held me tight and kissed my dirty cheeks over and over again as if the morning’s argument never happened. I didn’t hug her back. There wasn’t any time, not until we were far, far away and safe. But I didn’t even know where that was.

All I could do was yell, my raw throat somehow finding the strength to do so after that running. Something along the lines of “we have to get the fuck out of here”, give or take a few panicked words. On any normal day, she’d wash my mouth out with soap for cursing in front of my siblings. But they listened, grabbing what they could fit into the family car. We were out of the driveway within twenty minutes, the fastest we’ve ever been.

Somehow, we managed to make it to a refugee shelter in spite of all the chaos, the local university’s sports arena. At least five thousand distraught men, women and children, all of them were just…sitting there on the turf. Shellshock, emotional trauma, you name it. Some even had early signs of Apathy Syndrome, although it didn’t have a name at the time.

Cell phones were out, and the internet was gone. But the landlines for TV? Those were still working. All of us wanted answers, demanding to know what was going on. The staff capitulated, turning onto a random news channel and broadcasting it on the jumbotron.

In hindsight, it might’ve been better for us not to see what was happening. We thought we’d reached the pits, you know? ‘What’s the worst that could happen’, right? It’s already World War Three. But the answer to that question was something that no one wanted to learn.

It wasn’t us only us. Footage came pouring in from all over the world: London, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, even the Vatican. What we thought was happening only in America was occurring on a global scale.
Everything was burning. People were dying. Monsters were attacking.

The message was clear. This was an enemy that could not be reasoned with, that would stop at nothing until it had achieved its goal. No one was safe, no one would be spared.

It was only a few hours later when the call came out, for the mandatory conscription of all registered Persona users that were old enough to fight, any one between the ages of twelve to seventeen. We were the only ones that had the power to stop them. At least that’s what the government man said when he came to our camp to collect anyone with the power of Persona. Including all four of my siblings and I.

Mom was in hysterics. I had enough training with Undine to compete in Gauntlet Matches. But Joey? He could barely control Odysseus. Tristan hated violence, and there was no way in hell that eight-year old Rebecca would survive, even with her Persona. We didn’t even know if Dad was alive or not.

He promised her that none of us wouldn’t go to the front lines. Not until we were ready. I was the first one to complete basic. At the time of this recording, I’m almost sure that Joey’s finished his first mission with resounding success. The army has Tristan running as support on the rear lines, far away from combat. And the last time I heard, Rebecca was one of the strongest healers in the area.

But I don’t know how long they can hold onto that promise, to keep them away from the fight. Because if I’ve seen anything from this goddamn war, things are only going to get worse before they get better. Remember what I said about gut feelings? Yeah. This is one of them.

-Interview with Private First Class Serenity Dollman, United States Ant-Shadow Operations