[ooc] App//Extended info
OOC INFORMATION
Name; Seek
Journal; verrucktkind
Timezone; EST
AIM; anathematisation
Email; Ask!
Other Characters; Rokujo Miharu
IC INFORMATION
Character Name; Arisato Minato
Series/Fandom; Persona 3
Appearance; Minato, standing at around 5'4", has grey eyes and blue hair, which is styled in what might be described as an emo hair-style, with the fringe in front falling either over his right eye, or between them both. It's... actually not styled in that way specifically. He just has really. Perfect. Hair. Despite the fact that he's pretty much a bottomless pit when it comes to food, he never gains any weight and is actually quite skinny, weighing around 110 - 120 lbs. On most days, because the school he attends is private school, he is often seen wearing his school uniform, and when he’s not wearing that, he usually sticks to simply things; long sleeve, black or blue shirts (occasionally with a v-neck to them) in the winter and short-sleeves in the summer, and more often than not, jeans or pants to go with them.
Personality; Generally speaking, Minato is somewhat of a quiet person, never one for many words. This isn't because he's antisocial, or because he doesn't like people, but merely because he doesn't see words as necessary or important things. He rarely feels much of a need to break any silences, unless he feels it might be awkward or he has something to say or discuss. (However, even if a silence is awkward, he won't always catch on to that fact, and will remain silent.) He doesn't show his emotions very often, only occasionally offering up full smiles, and he never talks about his past; it isn't that it's so painful to remember that he shuns conversing over the topic or anything like that, he simply doesn't feel a need to talk about such things. Why bring someone down over something like that?
He's always very calm and collected, looking at things through a somewhat logical standpoint, no matter how dire the situation might be. NOTHING FAZES THIS BOY. (No, seriously. Water turns into what appears to be puddles of blood, the sky changes color, and everyone around him turns into coffins? THE KID DOESN’T EVEN BLINK.) His emotions are far from ruling factors, but none of his decisions are made without thinking of how it will affect the people he's close to. He’s one of those self-sacrificing Jesus-y types.
Despite how he might appear to others and how quite he might be, Minato is actually a very friendly individual who loves meeting new people and making new friends whenever he can, and he'll try to befriend almost anyone, regardless of whether that person is a sleazy TV salesman or a little girl at the local shrine. The type of person that you are, how you might look on the outside or how you live your life-none of that really matters to him. Much like his disregard for physical appearance, hobbies or social standings (such as popularity, family positions, etc.) mean nothing to him. He's a member of almost any and every club in his school, including the sewing and music clubs, and he enjoys every single activity as much as the one before it, never picking favorites or being judgmental towards someone for the things that they like.
He is a fairly neutral-minded person with no angst, that simply loves the life he is given, and everything about it, despite the hardships that go along with living.
...He’s also somewhat easily used; if someone tells him to do something, as long as it isn’t an act that he’d be absolutely be against, he’ll most likely do it. Make lunch for me? Sure. Help me clean? Alright. (likewise in this aspect, while he likes people very much, he won’t start to develop feelings for someone unless they’re reciprocated; or, more simply put, unless the person likes him first and tells him so.)
Abilities/Strengths; HE CAN DO ANYTHING. ....No seriously. If he can’t do it, he will learn, very quickly. He can use almost any weapon with no problem, no matter what it is, even if he’s had no previous experience with it. He can cook without much difficulty, either, and he can sew, and--
Oh, right, did I mention that he can summon various different Persona from the depths of his soul whenever he feels like it? Well, he can; at most, he can have up to twelve different Personas inhabiting his soul at once, though they aren't terribly talkative. There are over a hundred different Persona, actually, all with unique appearances and abilities, all rather easily controlled by one teenage boy. The way he summons these creatures?
Well, if you want the simplified version, he shoots himself in the head. Not so simplified version? He uses a device that looks suspiciously like a gun, called an ‘evoker,’ to draw whichever persona he wishes to use at the time from the depths of his soul, by placing the barrel against his skull and pulling the trigger; this breaks the mental wall keeping the Persona inside so that is can be used freely. All he has to do then is call the Persona’s name, and it will do exactly what Minato wants it to, without him saying a word. He can heal, cause huge bursts of flame or gusts of wind, and if the situation calls for it, even bring people back from the verge of death, and these are just a few of the things he can do.
Weaknesses; He has his drawbacks, though; Minato’s body is human and has the obvious human weaknesses and frailties, but when it comes to his Persona, they’re dictated by elemental weaknesses. If one is of the fire element, it will probably be weak against water/ice, water/ice would probably be weak against electricity, and so on. Whatever Persona he is using at the time will also either raise or lower his defenses in certain elements; for instance, if he were to use a fire-type Persona and get doused in water, then… he’d probably get sick from it. His healing ability also has its drawbacks; if it’s a serious injury, he’ll take on the pain of the individual for three days, though no wound will appear on his body and no painkiller will rid him of it. And if it should come to him healing someone that is near death? ..then he’ll pass out, and likely not wake up for a week or so. It may take more time or less, depending on the nature of the injury.
History; Minato’s childhood, to put it rather simply, was average; he was an only child who grew up in the city of Gekkoukan, raised by his mother and father until the day, when he was around six years old, that they died “in an accident.” However, this simple accident was something that would change his life. It just so happened that the accident was caused by an epic battle between the personification of Death and a robot, Aigis, sent to destroy Death. Because Aigis could not defeat Death, she instead sealed him within the sole survivor of a family that was torn apart by the battle-the young child, Arisato Minato. Years later, he’d be told of these events; of the reason why his parents died, and why his life went the way it had, but Minato would never remember the events that stole his family.
With no relatives in the city to care for him, Minato was whisked away from his home to live in foster care. None of the new families stuck; he’s too quiet, he’s too polite, he isn’t right for a child his age, that’s what they all said. In his attempts to win these people over, Minato taught himself as many new things as he could, and has had a knack for picking up on things quickly ever since. They were all kind people, the boy never once doubted that, but it wasn’t Minato’s destiny to stay with any of them, and so, he didn’t. He himself never realized this until much, much later, but he never had any ill feelings towards the families that did not want him.
Minato stayed in the system, skipping around from place to place, until the day he returned to Gekkoukan to attend school at Gekkoukan High, ten years later.
Barely a minute after he stepped off the train that had taken him to the city, everything went black; the lights went out, the machines stopped running, and his MP3 player stopped playing music. Without giving it much more thought than ‘did the battery go dead?’, Minato progressed through the city, whose streets were brightly lit from the unearthly green sky and the glow of the full moon. The puddles had turned to blood, the people-had they really been people? He hadn’t seen the transformation, couldn’t know for sure himself-had become coffins, standing upright, and everything was quiet. The city was alive but dead, and he didn’t seem to notice it at all.
When he arrived at the dorm, someone was waiting there for him; a young boy, with too-knowing-too-strange blue eyes and striped clothing. He smiled at him, said he’d been waiting for him, and offered a contract, saying that if he wished to progress, he had to sign his name. “Don’t worry,” he’d said, “all it says is that you’ll accept full responsibility for your actions. You know… the usual stuff.” The contract read, I chooseth this fate of mine own free will, and Minato signed his life away.
The boy disappeared into the darkness then, and one of the people living in the dorm-a girl, no less, something Minato hadn’t expected-came down to greet him with an expression caught between panic and fear. She reached for the gun strapped to her side, only to be stopped by another one of the residents of the dorm (yet another girl). And then, everything went back to normal; the lights went back on, the few cars on the street outside began to run again, and Minato’s MP3 player started running again.
From that point on, Minato was put under surveillance by the residents of the dorm-Takeba Yukari, the first girl he’d met, Kirijo Mitsuru, the second girl he’d met, and Sanada Akihiko, the only boy actually living at the dorm at that time-while he slept, being watched by secret video cameras in his bedroom.
And then, something happened, something that even Minato couldn’t ignore; the dorm shook as though a powerful earthquake had overtaken the city, the eerie light from the green sky and bright moon shone through his windows, and for the first time since Minato had arrived in the city, he wondered, ‘what’s going on?’. Only moments after he’d changed from his night clothes into some actual clothing, Yukari was pounding on his door, not even giving him time to open it before she burst in. “Come with me!” That’s what she’d told him, and Minato followed her, through the still shaking building and to the roof.
Yukari had thought that the farther away from the ground they were, the safer they’d be. She’d thought that they would be okay there on the roof, and that she’d be able to cover the whole thing up later, say it was some freak earthquake and that she’d panicked. He hadn’t said anything before. He hadn’t asked questions before. Why should he now?
...Life had never granted Yukari or Minato such graces, though. They were far from safe, and before Yukari could realize her grave mistake, it was too late. Arms, long and discolored, came into view over the side of the roof; just a mass of arms and thin, spindly fingers with knives in them, no body to speak of holding the monstrosity together, and no nails on the fingertips. (There wasn’t exactly substance to it, either; no bones beneath the arms, just flailing flesh.) One arm held a mask that served as the creature’s face, and that was all there was to the being. Yukari knew what it was, and the expression that Minato had seen on her face the first time they had met-fear, plain and simple-returned, and once again, she reached for her gun; it made it to her skull this time, but she froze, and in a second both Yukari and the gun were on the ground.
It was more instinctual than anything, when Minato picked up the gun. It wasn’t something he thought about. He just did it; in a second, the gun was at his temple, and the word that left his lips were not his own, slow and carefully enunciated. “Per-...so-...na.” And he pulled the trigger.
For a second, the world was quiet as something pulled free of his psyche, a piece of his soul that no longer needed to be held in flesh, and Minato smiled unknowingly, because it had finally started.
But then the splitting pain came, and Minato was clutching his head. He didn’t see his Persona, who had said its name was Orpheus, be ripped apart from the inside out, replaced and obliterated by something dark and huge and powerful, another piece of his soul that was far too great to simply be the same thing as Orpheus was.
Yukari watched in horror as the creature ripped the mass of tangled limbs to shreds, and finally, it was over. The being turned back into Orpheus, and for Minato, the world went black.
Minato learned, after he woke up a week later in a hospital, that the monsters were called Shadows, the enemies of humanity, and the beings that came from his soul were, you guessed it; Persona. The Shadows attacked people during a time called the Dark Hour, and were the cause of Apathy Syndrome, a disease that caused those affected to turn into beings that just sat there and moaned all day, unaware of anything going on around them or even of themselves. The only ones that could stop the Shadows were Persona users, like Yukari, Akihiko, and Mitsuru. And now, Minato was part of this group called the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S. for short).
From that day on, life took on a comfortable (if not strange) pattern; go to school by day, attend club activities, study in the library, and then go to Tartarus by night. (Tartarus was Gekkoukan High during the Dark Hour; it became a massive tower every night, well over one-hundred floors, and it housed all of the Shadows.) Once a month, a very powerful Shadow would appear on the day of the full moon, and though the battles were hard, they were always won. Before he knew it, six months had passed, and they had gained many new allies: a classmate of Minato and Yukari’s, Iori Junpei, an old friend of Mitsuru and Akihiko’s, as well as their upperclassmen, Aragaki Shinjiro, a shy girl from a different class, Yamagishi Fuuka, a robot built ten years ago for the purpose of destroying Shadows, Aigis (yes, the same Aigis as mentioned before), a young boy by the name of Amada Ken, and, believe it or not, a dog by the name of Koromaru, lovingly nicknamed Koro-chan. And of course, the chairman of the group who had started everything, Ikutsuki Shuji.
Everything was going brilliantly, until the day that Shinjiro was killed by one of the members of STREGA, a group of Persona users who were trying to stop S.E.E.S. from defeating all the Shadows that showed up at the full moon. (There were twelve of them; if the group could defeat them all, then Tartarus would disappear, and the Shadows would go with it.) “This is the way... it’s supposed to be.” He had been expecting death for a long time, by then, and he was probably the one that cared the least about it.
I would love to say that that’s as far as the hardships went; that, despite the fact that it would have happened no matter what, that was the worst they had to go through.
They didn’t.
Two months later, they almost lost Junpei; if Junpei hadn’t fallen in love with a member of STREGA, a girl by the name Chidori, he would have died. ...Actually, Junpei did die. Chidori used her Persona’s power to bring Junpei back to life. She died that night, despite the side she was on, despite her place in the fight, in order to save Junpei.
Not long after, they defeated the final shadow, and that should have been the end of it; the dark hour, the shadows, and their reasons for fighting should have vanished, and they should have been able to lead the lives of normal teenagers, whose only major concerns were passing their finals or picking a date for the weekend. Life would never be so kind to these children.
The next day, courtesy of Mitsuru and her family’s wealth, they bought all kinds of expensive sushi (Junpei’s suggestion) and met in the dorm lobby to celebrate, but the man that had pulled them all together to help save people-Ikutsuki Shuji-was nowhere to be found, apparently off fixing Aegis. Eventually, the party began without them, and just as the teens were reminiscing about how the world wouldn’t stop at midnight, the worst case scenario occurred; It did. Immediately, Mitsuru’s father, who had been celebrating with them, asked where Ikutsuki was and what exactly he was doing to Aegis, and Fuuka used her Persona’s abilities to locate the both of them; they were at Tartarus. Immediately, the group of Persona users accompanied by Mitsuru’s father, make their way to Tartarus, and standing outside are Aegis and Ikutsuki. Ikutsuki tells them that it was all a trick, and that he had only been using them to get the twelve shadows out of the way in order to free pieces of Nyx. He orders Aegis to knock them out, having reprogrammed her, and when everyone wakes up, they’re tied to crosses on the observatory rooftop.
Ikutsuki tells Takeharu-Mitsuru’s father-that he is going to sacrifice all of them so that they will become harbingers of the fall; death as deliverance to the world. He then orders Aegis to kill Takeharu who, despite having been reprogrammed, hesitates at Mitsuru’s pleads not to kill her father. Impatient, Ikutsuki pulls out a gun he had previously kept hidden, and Takeharu pulls out a gun that he had on himself as well; both men shoot each other, and Kirijo Takeharu falls. Ordered to kill all the Persona users, Aegis turns her guns on Minato, but somehow manages to go completely against her new programming and shoots everyone down from the crosses, unharmed. And then Koromaru shows up, because they made him stay home, to grab a remote control from Ikutsuki at the last minute, which seems to be another thing he had hidden on him. Backed into a corner, Ikutsuki tells them that the world will slowly fester, and lets himself fall from the rooftop.
…all anyone could do was rest.
Shortly after this, another transfer student arrived at Gekkoukan Highschool, a boy by the name of Mochizuki Ryoji, and Junpei found a new best friend in him; the boy helped to cheer him up after Chidori’s death, since they were both… fairly girl-crazy and he finally had a companion to go skirt-chasing with. His place among the rest of the S.E.E.S. group, however, wasn’t as close-Aigis considered him a threat, for no other reason that ‘he is dangerous’; the rest of the girls were put off by his incessant flirting; Akihiko didn’t think much of him; and though Minato and Junpei were often together, he and Ryoji didn’t became terribly close with one another. With no clue of what they should do from then on out, the teens continued to fight Shadow’s in Tartarus on a somewhat regular basis, hoping to diminish the numbers of ‘The Lost’ that continued to pop up. (eventually, during their class trip, Yukari managed to pull Mitsuru out of her depression as well.)
One night, during the Dark Hour, Aegis went missing.
The members of S.E.E.S. had Fuuka locate her using her persona, and they all rushed to her location, only to find her in a broken state; she’d been defeated in battle not by any normal enemy, but by Ryoji. At this point, Ryoji remembered who he truly was-a part of Minato, a shadow, and the Appriser: the one who would bring about the fall of humanity. Arisato Minato was the human personification of death, and Ryoji was his messenger, formerly the young boy called Pharos that had appeared in Minato’s dreams; both of them were keys in bringing about the end of the world. This is when he gave the members of S.E.E.S. a choice: they could kill him, and forget everything about the Dark Hour and live peacefully until the time that Nyx came to end everything; or they could wait, living in despair until the end of the world but retaining their memories until the very end. He attempts to convince him that it would be better to forget, that he will not really ‘die’ and that it is better to live happily in their final moments and not recall what they’ve all been through together; that Nyx cannot be defeated. After that, he disappears, promising to come back in a month, which is when S.E.E.S. would have to decide their fate.
One month later, Minato and his friends made their decision; Ryoji would live, and they would fight Nyx, even if they could not win.
Eventually, the time comes that Ryoji becomes the avatar of Nyx, and they are forced to fight him; they defeat him, but he is still able to fulfill his role and bring usher in Nyx. However, using the Links that he had created with people during his time in the city, Minato seals Nyx away in order to save the world. And, just as the world should have been, everyone except for Aegis and Minato forgot. (even if they hadn’t wanted to.)
As they finished school, the remaining S.E.E.S. members recall that they had promised to meet on the roof of the school if they made it to graduation day. That is where they find Minato again, lying in Aegis’s lap. He smiles at the short reunion with his fellow S.E.E.S. members, happy to see them all together again, before he falls into a deep sleep from which he never again wakes.
-Except, that’s not quite the case. Minato did wake up again, in a place that he had never even thought to dream of; Minato, thinking at first that it was ‘the beyond’, woke up in Paradisim. He made new friends and lived in an apartment with a boy named Belphegor, and lived the extra bit of life that he had been given rather happily, knowing that he was not meant to return home. Minato could remember that he was dead, and though most of his friends were alive, he was content.
One day, though, Minato found a note left by his roommate, Belphegor, saying that he’d be back.
Days-weeks?-went by, and Belphegor never returned. And one day, Minato went to sleep again.
Name; Seek
Journal; verrucktkind
Timezone; EST
AIM; anathematisation
Email; Ask!
Other Characters; Rokujo Miharu
IC INFORMATION
Character Name; Arisato Minato
Series/Fandom; Persona 3
Appearance; Minato, standing at around 5'4", has grey eyes and blue hair, which is styled in what might be described as an emo hair-style, with the fringe in front falling either over his right eye, or between them both. It's... actually not styled in that way specifically. He just has really. Perfect. Hair. Despite the fact that he's pretty much a bottomless pit when it comes to food, he never gains any weight and is actually quite skinny, weighing around 110 - 120 lbs. On most days, because the school he attends is private school, he is often seen wearing his school uniform, and when he’s not wearing that, he usually sticks to simply things; long sleeve, black or blue shirts (occasionally with a v-neck to them) in the winter and short-sleeves in the summer, and more often than not, jeans or pants to go with them.
Personality; Generally speaking, Minato is somewhat of a quiet person, never one for many words. This isn't because he's antisocial, or because he doesn't like people, but merely because he doesn't see words as necessary or important things. He rarely feels much of a need to break any silences, unless he feels it might be awkward or he has something to say or discuss. (However, even if a silence is awkward, he won't always catch on to that fact, and will remain silent.) He doesn't show his emotions very often, only occasionally offering up full smiles, and he never talks about his past; it isn't that it's so painful to remember that he shuns conversing over the topic or anything like that, he simply doesn't feel a need to talk about such things. Why bring someone down over something like that?
He's always very calm and collected, looking at things through a somewhat logical standpoint, no matter how dire the situation might be. NOTHING FAZES THIS BOY. (No, seriously. Water turns into what appears to be puddles of blood, the sky changes color, and everyone around him turns into coffins? THE KID DOESN’T EVEN BLINK.) His emotions are far from ruling factors, but none of his decisions are made without thinking of how it will affect the people he's close to. He’s one of those self-sacrificing Jesus-y types.
Despite how he might appear to others and how quite he might be, Minato is actually a very friendly individual who loves meeting new people and making new friends whenever he can, and he'll try to befriend almost anyone, regardless of whether that person is a sleazy TV salesman or a little girl at the local shrine. The type of person that you are, how you might look on the outside or how you live your life-none of that really matters to him. Much like his disregard for physical appearance, hobbies or social standings (such as popularity, family positions, etc.) mean nothing to him. He's a member of almost any and every club in his school, including the sewing and music clubs, and he enjoys every single activity as much as the one before it, never picking favorites or being judgmental towards someone for the things that they like.
He is a fairly neutral-minded person with no angst, that simply loves the life he is given, and everything about it, despite the hardships that go along with living.
...He’s also somewhat easily used; if someone tells him to do something, as long as it isn’t an act that he’d be absolutely be against, he’ll most likely do it. Make lunch for me? Sure. Help me clean? Alright. (likewise in this aspect, while he likes people very much, he won’t start to develop feelings for someone unless they’re reciprocated; or, more simply put, unless the person likes him first and tells him so.)
Abilities/Strengths; HE CAN DO ANYTHING. ....No seriously. If he can’t do it, he will learn, very quickly. He can use almost any weapon with no problem, no matter what it is, even if he’s had no previous experience with it. He can cook without much difficulty, either, and he can sew, and--
Oh, right, did I mention that he can summon various different Persona from the depths of his soul whenever he feels like it? Well, he can; at most, he can have up to twelve different Personas inhabiting his soul at once, though they aren't terribly talkative. There are over a hundred different Persona, actually, all with unique appearances and abilities, all rather easily controlled by one teenage boy. The way he summons these creatures?
Well, if you want the simplified version, he shoots himself in the head. Not so simplified version? He uses a device that looks suspiciously like a gun, called an ‘evoker,’ to draw whichever persona he wishes to use at the time from the depths of his soul, by placing the barrel against his skull and pulling the trigger; this breaks the mental wall keeping the Persona inside so that is can be used freely. All he has to do then is call the Persona’s name, and it will do exactly what Minato wants it to, without him saying a word. He can heal, cause huge bursts of flame or gusts of wind, and if the situation calls for it, even bring people back from the verge of death, and these are just a few of the things he can do.
Weaknesses; He has his drawbacks, though; Minato’s body is human and has the obvious human weaknesses and frailties, but when it comes to his Persona, they’re dictated by elemental weaknesses. If one is of the fire element, it will probably be weak against water/ice, water/ice would probably be weak against electricity, and so on. Whatever Persona he is using at the time will also either raise or lower his defenses in certain elements; for instance, if he were to use a fire-type Persona and get doused in water, then… he’d probably get sick from it. His healing ability also has its drawbacks; if it’s a serious injury, he’ll take on the pain of the individual for three days, though no wound will appear on his body and no painkiller will rid him of it. And if it should come to him healing someone that is near death? ..then he’ll pass out, and likely not wake up for a week or so. It may take more time or less, depending on the nature of the injury.
History; Minato’s childhood, to put it rather simply, was average; he was an only child who grew up in the city of Gekkoukan, raised by his mother and father until the day, when he was around six years old, that they died “in an accident.” However, this simple accident was something that would change his life. It just so happened that the accident was caused by an epic battle between the personification of Death and a robot, Aigis, sent to destroy Death. Because Aigis could not defeat Death, she instead sealed him within the sole survivor of a family that was torn apart by the battle-the young child, Arisato Minato. Years later, he’d be told of these events; of the reason why his parents died, and why his life went the way it had, but Minato would never remember the events that stole his family.
With no relatives in the city to care for him, Minato was whisked away from his home to live in foster care. None of the new families stuck; he’s too quiet, he’s too polite, he isn’t right for a child his age, that’s what they all said. In his attempts to win these people over, Minato taught himself as many new things as he could, and has had a knack for picking up on things quickly ever since. They were all kind people, the boy never once doubted that, but it wasn’t Minato’s destiny to stay with any of them, and so, he didn’t. He himself never realized this until much, much later, but he never had any ill feelings towards the families that did not want him.
Minato stayed in the system, skipping around from place to place, until the day he returned to Gekkoukan to attend school at Gekkoukan High, ten years later.
Barely a minute after he stepped off the train that had taken him to the city, everything went black; the lights went out, the machines stopped running, and his MP3 player stopped playing music. Without giving it much more thought than ‘did the battery go dead?’, Minato progressed through the city, whose streets were brightly lit from the unearthly green sky and the glow of the full moon. The puddles had turned to blood, the people-had they really been people? He hadn’t seen the transformation, couldn’t know for sure himself-had become coffins, standing upright, and everything was quiet. The city was alive but dead, and he didn’t seem to notice it at all.
When he arrived at the dorm, someone was waiting there for him; a young boy, with too-knowing-too-strange blue eyes and striped clothing. He smiled at him, said he’d been waiting for him, and offered a contract, saying that if he wished to progress, he had to sign his name. “Don’t worry,” he’d said, “all it says is that you’ll accept full responsibility for your actions. You know… the usual stuff.” The contract read, I chooseth this fate of mine own free will, and Minato signed his life away.
The boy disappeared into the darkness then, and one of the people living in the dorm-a girl, no less, something Minato hadn’t expected-came down to greet him with an expression caught between panic and fear. She reached for the gun strapped to her side, only to be stopped by another one of the residents of the dorm (yet another girl). And then, everything went back to normal; the lights went back on, the few cars on the street outside began to run again, and Minato’s MP3 player started running again.
From that point on, Minato was put under surveillance by the residents of the dorm-Takeba Yukari, the first girl he’d met, Kirijo Mitsuru, the second girl he’d met, and Sanada Akihiko, the only boy actually living at the dorm at that time-while he slept, being watched by secret video cameras in his bedroom.
And then, something happened, something that even Minato couldn’t ignore; the dorm shook as though a powerful earthquake had overtaken the city, the eerie light from the green sky and bright moon shone through his windows, and for the first time since Minato had arrived in the city, he wondered, ‘what’s going on?’. Only moments after he’d changed from his night clothes into some actual clothing, Yukari was pounding on his door, not even giving him time to open it before she burst in. “Come with me!” That’s what she’d told him, and Minato followed her, through the still shaking building and to the roof.
Yukari had thought that the farther away from the ground they were, the safer they’d be. She’d thought that they would be okay there on the roof, and that she’d be able to cover the whole thing up later, say it was some freak earthquake and that she’d panicked. He hadn’t said anything before. He hadn’t asked questions before. Why should he now?
...Life had never granted Yukari or Minato such graces, though. They were far from safe, and before Yukari could realize her grave mistake, it was too late. Arms, long and discolored, came into view over the side of the roof; just a mass of arms and thin, spindly fingers with knives in them, no body to speak of holding the monstrosity together, and no nails on the fingertips. (There wasn’t exactly substance to it, either; no bones beneath the arms, just flailing flesh.) One arm held a mask that served as the creature’s face, and that was all there was to the being. Yukari knew what it was, and the expression that Minato had seen on her face the first time they had met-fear, plain and simple-returned, and once again, she reached for her gun; it made it to her skull this time, but she froze, and in a second both Yukari and the gun were on the ground.
It was more instinctual than anything, when Minato picked up the gun. It wasn’t something he thought about. He just did it; in a second, the gun was at his temple, and the word that left his lips were not his own, slow and carefully enunciated. “Per-...so-...na.” And he pulled the trigger.
For a second, the world was quiet as something pulled free of his psyche, a piece of his soul that no longer needed to be held in flesh, and Minato smiled unknowingly, because it had finally started.
But then the splitting pain came, and Minato was clutching his head. He didn’t see his Persona, who had said its name was Orpheus, be ripped apart from the inside out, replaced and obliterated by something dark and huge and powerful, another piece of his soul that was far too great to simply be the same thing as Orpheus was.
Yukari watched in horror as the creature ripped the mass of tangled limbs to shreds, and finally, it was over. The being turned back into Orpheus, and for Minato, the world went black.
Minato learned, after he woke up a week later in a hospital, that the monsters were called Shadows, the enemies of humanity, and the beings that came from his soul were, you guessed it; Persona. The Shadows attacked people during a time called the Dark Hour, and were the cause of Apathy Syndrome, a disease that caused those affected to turn into beings that just sat there and moaned all day, unaware of anything going on around them or even of themselves. The only ones that could stop the Shadows were Persona users, like Yukari, Akihiko, and Mitsuru. And now, Minato was part of this group called the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S. for short).
From that day on, life took on a comfortable (if not strange) pattern; go to school by day, attend club activities, study in the library, and then go to Tartarus by night. (Tartarus was Gekkoukan High during the Dark Hour; it became a massive tower every night, well over one-hundred floors, and it housed all of the Shadows.) Once a month, a very powerful Shadow would appear on the day of the full moon, and though the battles were hard, they were always won. Before he knew it, six months had passed, and they had gained many new allies: a classmate of Minato and Yukari’s, Iori Junpei, an old friend of Mitsuru and Akihiko’s, as well as their upperclassmen, Aragaki Shinjiro, a shy girl from a different class, Yamagishi Fuuka, a robot built ten years ago for the purpose of destroying Shadows, Aigis (yes, the same Aigis as mentioned before), a young boy by the name of Amada Ken, and, believe it or not, a dog by the name of Koromaru, lovingly nicknamed Koro-chan. And of course, the chairman of the group who had started everything, Ikutsuki Shuji.
Everything was going brilliantly, until the day that Shinjiro was killed by one of the members of STREGA, a group of Persona users who were trying to stop S.E.E.S. from defeating all the Shadows that showed up at the full moon. (There were twelve of them; if the group could defeat them all, then Tartarus would disappear, and the Shadows would go with it.) “This is the way... it’s supposed to be.” He had been expecting death for a long time, by then, and he was probably the one that cared the least about it.
I would love to say that that’s as far as the hardships went; that, despite the fact that it would have happened no matter what, that was the worst they had to go through.
They didn’t.
Two months later, they almost lost Junpei; if Junpei hadn’t fallen in love with a member of STREGA, a girl by the name Chidori, he would have died. ...Actually, Junpei did die. Chidori used her Persona’s power to bring Junpei back to life. She died that night, despite the side she was on, despite her place in the fight, in order to save Junpei.
Not long after, they defeated the final shadow, and that should have been the end of it; the dark hour, the shadows, and their reasons for fighting should have vanished, and they should have been able to lead the lives of normal teenagers, whose only major concerns were passing their finals or picking a date for the weekend. Life would never be so kind to these children.
The next day, courtesy of Mitsuru and her family’s wealth, they bought all kinds of expensive sushi (Junpei’s suggestion) and met in the dorm lobby to celebrate, but the man that had pulled them all together to help save people-Ikutsuki Shuji-was nowhere to be found, apparently off fixing Aegis. Eventually, the party began without them, and just as the teens were reminiscing about how the world wouldn’t stop at midnight, the worst case scenario occurred; It did. Immediately, Mitsuru’s father, who had been celebrating with them, asked where Ikutsuki was and what exactly he was doing to Aegis, and Fuuka used her Persona’s abilities to locate the both of them; they were at Tartarus. Immediately, the group of Persona users accompanied by Mitsuru’s father, make their way to Tartarus, and standing outside are Aegis and Ikutsuki. Ikutsuki tells them that it was all a trick, and that he had only been using them to get the twelve shadows out of the way in order to free pieces of Nyx. He orders Aegis to knock them out, having reprogrammed her, and when everyone wakes up, they’re tied to crosses on the observatory rooftop.
Ikutsuki tells Takeharu-Mitsuru’s father-that he is going to sacrifice all of them so that they will become harbingers of the fall; death as deliverance to the world. He then orders Aegis to kill Takeharu who, despite having been reprogrammed, hesitates at Mitsuru’s pleads not to kill her father. Impatient, Ikutsuki pulls out a gun he had previously kept hidden, and Takeharu pulls out a gun that he had on himself as well; both men shoot each other, and Kirijo Takeharu falls. Ordered to kill all the Persona users, Aegis turns her guns on Minato, but somehow manages to go completely against her new programming and shoots everyone down from the crosses, unharmed. And then Koromaru shows up, because they made him stay home, to grab a remote control from Ikutsuki at the last minute, which seems to be another thing he had hidden on him. Backed into a corner, Ikutsuki tells them that the world will slowly fester, and lets himself fall from the rooftop.
…all anyone could do was rest.
Shortly after this, another transfer student arrived at Gekkoukan Highschool, a boy by the name of Mochizuki Ryoji, and Junpei found a new best friend in him; the boy helped to cheer him up after Chidori’s death, since they were both… fairly girl-crazy and he finally had a companion to go skirt-chasing with. His place among the rest of the S.E.E.S. group, however, wasn’t as close-Aigis considered him a threat, for no other reason that ‘he is dangerous’; the rest of the girls were put off by his incessant flirting; Akihiko didn’t think much of him; and though Minato and Junpei were often together, he and Ryoji didn’t became terribly close with one another. With no clue of what they should do from then on out, the teens continued to fight Shadow’s in Tartarus on a somewhat regular basis, hoping to diminish the numbers of ‘The Lost’ that continued to pop up. (eventually, during their class trip, Yukari managed to pull Mitsuru out of her depression as well.)
One night, during the Dark Hour, Aegis went missing.
The members of S.E.E.S. had Fuuka locate her using her persona, and they all rushed to her location, only to find her in a broken state; she’d been defeated in battle not by any normal enemy, but by Ryoji. At this point, Ryoji remembered who he truly was-a part of Minato, a shadow, and the Appriser: the one who would bring about the fall of humanity. Arisato Minato was the human personification of death, and Ryoji was his messenger, formerly the young boy called Pharos that had appeared in Minato’s dreams; both of them were keys in bringing about the end of the world. This is when he gave the members of S.E.E.S. a choice: they could kill him, and forget everything about the Dark Hour and live peacefully until the time that Nyx came to end everything; or they could wait, living in despair until the end of the world but retaining their memories until the very end. He attempts to convince him that it would be better to forget, that he will not really ‘die’ and that it is better to live happily in their final moments and not recall what they’ve all been through together; that Nyx cannot be defeated. After that, he disappears, promising to come back in a month, which is when S.E.E.S. would have to decide their fate.
One month later, Minato and his friends made their decision; Ryoji would live, and they would fight Nyx, even if they could not win.
Eventually, the time comes that Ryoji becomes the avatar of Nyx, and they are forced to fight him; they defeat him, but he is still able to fulfill his role and bring usher in Nyx. However, using the Links that he had created with people during his time in the city, Minato seals Nyx away in order to save the world. And, just as the world should have been, everyone except for Aegis and Minato forgot. (even if they hadn’t wanted to.)
As they finished school, the remaining S.E.E.S. members recall that they had promised to meet on the roof of the school if they made it to graduation day. That is where they find Minato again, lying in Aegis’s lap. He smiles at the short reunion with his fellow S.E.E.S. members, happy to see them all together again, before he falls into a deep sleep from which he never again wakes.
-Except, that’s not quite the case. Minato did wake up again, in a place that he had never even thought to dream of; Minato, thinking at first that it was ‘the beyond’, woke up in Paradisim. He made new friends and lived in an apartment with a boy named Belphegor, and lived the extra bit of life that he had been given rather happily, knowing that he was not meant to return home. Minato could remember that he was dead, and though most of his friends were alive, he was content.
One day, though, Minato found a note left by his roommate, Belphegor, saying that he’d be back.
Days-weeks?-went by, and Belphegor never returned. And one day, Minato went to sleep again.