WARNING! This chapter mentions suicide, rape, abuse, and death. If you haven't played Persona 5, 4, or 3, then I highly advise you play it, watch a let's play, or read a summary before reading this. It has spoilers. Your choice.

The personas launched themselves at the incoming shadows. Occasionally, the personas would stop fighting and wait for their wielder to shout out a command. Minato's persona, Messiah, would occasionally fade, in which Minato would have to bring out the gun and shoot himself in head again.

Naoya's persona seemed to copy all of his movements, so Naoya was running and slashing with ease as his persona hit the targets.

Akira stared in wonder at the 2 new people, Naoya and Maya. They moved with such ease, as if this was second nature. Minato had the same grace.

But I lacked something that Maya, Naoya, and Minato had. They all had a melancholy feel to them, as if personas had caused them tremendous amounts of grief.

Within 10 minutes, all of the shadows were gone. The personas faded as some of the wielders collapsed on the floor. Teddie, Yu's strange bear friend, seemed exicted. So did Mona. That was bad.

Teddie ran off into the fog. He came back with a stack of old box T.Vs. Yu smiled at him. I wondered why he was so happy. Yu told us to all hold hands. We all hesitated before grabbing them.

Why not? Yu ran towards the T.V.s, and pulled us along with him. As he was about to make contact, he disappeared into the screen.

Minato, Naoya, Maya, and myself followed him. On the other side of the T.V was our apartment. I looked around in amazement as Minato, who was beside me, checked his watch.

"2 mins until the Dark Hour is over." he said.

The creepy green sky was still there. Why was that? I was going to ask Minato more, but he got up and went to go tend to our unexpected guests. He got the tea pot ready, but he didn't turn on the stove. Once 2 mins had passed from when he'd made that ominous announcement, the sky went back to being blue.

Minato turned on the electric stove, and boiled the water. The clock on the wall went back to ticking. The cable box turned on. Why were they all off? Power outage?

Yu got out our finest glasses for our guests. Red plastic cups. He poured Minato's tea into the cups and gave one to each of us. I smelt the strong scent of green tea as I sipped from the cup.

I realized Mona wasn't with us halfway through a sip, which caused me to spit out my drink. The half-ingested tea got all over Yu. I didn't care.

"Where's Mona? Is he ok?" I asked frantically.

Yu got a towel and wiped off his face. Then he said to me,

"Thank you, Akira, for the brief shower."

He sounded sincere. What was up with this guy? It seemed like he took everything seriously.

"Mona stayed with Teddie to talk. Teddie can bring him whenever he wants."

I let out a sigh of relief as Maya continued the train of thought.

"Ok, I already knew Naoya from a while ago, and we've benn fighting shadows for a long time. I think there are other persona users thanks to a guy I met a while ago named Igor. All my friends are Persona users too, even Tats-"

"IGOR!!!????"

Minato, Yu and I simultaneously yelled as Maya said that awful man's name.

"That little smoking Pinocchio rip-off nearly got me and my freaking friends killed!"

I yelled through the rest of the chaos.

"Was he with 2 girls named Caroline and Justine or with a girl named Lavenza?"

Naoya looked confused.

"He was on a boat, below the deck. There were blue velvet couches in a rectangular shape, and both the floors and walls had blue velvet wallpaper. He sat directly in front of us, and there were 4 people with him. Belladonna and Nameless were there as always, and a new guy named the Demon Painter was there too. The ones next to Igor though were 2 ladies and 2 guys. They said that their names were-"

Naoya was cutoff by Maya.

"They said that their names were Theodore, Lavenza, Margaret, and Felix."

Naoya interjected.

"He also said that a girl named Marie was steering the ship."

My head hurt. Did Yaldaboath split Igor and Lavenza into 5 different people? Why did he keep her name as Lavenza instead of Caroline and Justine? I could see that Minato and Yu also had similar questions swimming around in their heads.

Eventually Naoya, who'd been silently playing with his silver earring, spoke up.

"I think we need to discuss how we got our personas, why we got them, and if anyone else we know has them."

Maya immediately went first. Her peppy attitude made the room feel warmer.

"Ok. I'm Maya Amano. I went to Seven Sisters High as a reporter and met Katsuya Suou, and Ulala Serizawa. I went to cover a story about a curse at the local high school, and ended up joining forces with Tatsuya here, as well as Baofu, Eriko Kirishima, and Kei Nanjo.

We all had Personas , and we used them to defeat Nyarlathotep, a god who believes that all humans are inherently evil. I-"

She looked at Naoya with a pained expression.

"My friend Tatsuya, as well as his friends Eikichi, Lisa, and Jun, all were victims of Nyarlathotep. They have collective amnesia and can't remember a thing. I wish I could tell him what happened, but I can't."

The grave tone was then immediately discarded.

"That's all! Kinda boring, huh?"

I felt a deep sadness radiating off of Naoya, like he also had something he wanted to say but couldn't. 

"I'll go next." Yu volunteered. "So, in 2013, I was sent to the town of Inaba by my parents to live with my uncle for a year.

When I arrived, I found out that a series of kidnappings and murders had occurred. My uncle, who's a detective, was part of the investigation team. I was enrolled in Yasogami High.

I met my friends Chie, Yosuke, and Yukiko. Later, I was watching T.V. when I realized I could stick my hand through the T.V. My friends and I then solved the kidnappings and prevented the murders. I made friends with all of the surviving victims, and all except one, got personas.

My little "sister" was the one who didn't get one. As of now, my friends Chie, Yukiko, Yosuke, Naoto, Kanji, Teddie, Rise/Risette, and myself all have personas. We were given our personas by Igor and the rest of my friends also had to get theirs by facing a part of them they didn't want to acknowledge."

Yu seemed to not want to tell us anymore. Oh well. I'll get it out of him eventually.

Naoya went after Yu.

"I'm Naoya Toudou. Back in 2006, I went to St. Hermelin's. My friends Masao Inaba, Kei Nanjo, Hidehiko Uesugi, Eriko Kirishima, Yuka Ayase, Reiji Kido, Yukino Mayuzumi, as well as myself all got Personas after playing a game called the "Persona Game".

We were given them to help us fight against SEBEC and what was called the DEVA System. We helped our hospitalized friend Maki accept her true self and saved the world from ruin.

I also met my dead twin brother named Kazuya who was a manifestation of my self hatred. He disappeared when I accepted him."

He seemed to be hesitant about giving out the names and details about the event, as if some mentioned were not his comrades anymore and the event had scarred him. I decided to tell them my story.

"I'm Akira Kurusu. Back in 2013, I was walking down the street when I saw this drunk a-hole trying to shove a woman into his car. It looked like he was trying to take advantage of her, so I shoved him away from her. He threatened me and her, in which the court ruled me as guilty instead of her. I was sentenced to 1-year probation in Tokyo.

I stayed with a man named Sojiro Sakura, who was at first cold and awful towards me. He put me in an old, trashy attic, and treated me terribly. I was enrolled at Shujin Academy, where I met my first 2 accomplises, Ryuji Sakamato and Ann Takamaki. Ryuji and I got our personas from a man who we addressed as 'Igor' to use as tools to invade a person's conscious and steal their most prized possession."

I saw weary glances passed between everyone. They were all obviously still caught on the "Accomplices" bit. They'll understand later.

"Anyways, we stole the treasure of our abusive, pedophilic teacher who even caused a student to try committing suicide after he'd raped her. He was one of the less scummy people we fought.

Overall, we got a group of 9 people, which consisted of Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke, Makoto, Futaba, Haru, Mona, and Myself. We called ourselves, 'The Phantom Thieves of Hearts' and when we thought we were done, we found out that 'Igor' was actually the demon Yaldaboath, who thought all humans had evil desires that would eventually overtake their conscious."

It was a minute before Minato quietly said,

"I'll go. I'm Minato Arisato. I'm supposed to be dead. I already have died. Back in 2009, I was sent to Iwatodai dormitory, at Gekkoukan High. I met a guy named Pharos, and also met Shuji Ikutsuki, Mitsuru Kijiro, Akihiko Sanada, Yukari Takeba, Junpei Iori, Fuuka Yamagishi, Ken Amada, Koromaru the Shrine dog, Shinjiro Aragaki, and Aigis the female android.

They all got personas from Igor and facing their weaknesses to fight the goddess Nyx. Another group, named STREGA, consisted of Takeya Sakaki, Jin Shirato, and Chidori Yoshino. They could summon personas without using Evokers, which are these."

He pulled out the gun.

"The Evokers brought out natural personas. However, STREGA didn't need them. We fought shadows in a place called Tartarus every full moon, thinking if we destroyed the major shadows on those nights, we'd end the Dark Hour, a time period where shadows can come to our world and attack humans, giving them Apathy Syndrome.

But, we found out that everything were doing helped Nyx awaken. Nyx planned on destroying the world. We fought her with everything we had, but it still wasn't enough. I had an ace in the hole, though. My friends Shinjiro and Chidori had both already died, and I wasn't going to allow their deaths to be in vain.

I gave up my soul as a chain of restraint that would keep Nyx dormant forever. I defeated her easily, and said my last goodbye's through Aigis. I fell asleep in her lap, and in my sleep, the last bit of my soul left my body to seal up Nyx, resulting in my death.

I was dead for 3 years.

I only came back to life because one of Igor's assistants gave up her soul in place of mine. The only catch to my revival is Tartarus and the Dark Hour still exist.

They're less dangerous, but they still follow me everywhere. I can also never be asleep during the Dark Hour. It's my curse. Not only that, but I'm immortal in the sense I can never die, because Igor's assistant put some of her immortal soul in me. I can die if I'm wounded or sick, but age can't kill me. That's why I'm naturally sleepy."

Wow. He had gone through a lot. I cleared my throat and looked at our guests.

"I have a place for you guys to stay. Don't worry about Yu, Minato, and myself. you have full access to our beds and couch. The least we can do is offer you a place to stay. Minato and Yu looked at me in confusion as our guests nodded sleepily and went to their rooms.

"Akira," Yu started, "Where are we going to sleep?"

I smiled and led them out into the hallway by the door. I pulled out my phone and clicked on the Meta-Nav. We entered Mementos.

Yu and Minato seemed to not notice. I decided to let them figure it out. Why? Because it would be hilarious. I walked over to my Mementos bedroom and laid on my bed.

I could hear Yu and Minato's surprised reactions through the walls. I was right. It was hilarious. Eventually, their shouts faded, replaced by light snoring.

I walked out of my room and out to the Yongen-Jaya station. There Panther, Skull, Fox, Queen, Navi, Noir, were waiting. Even though we "officially" disbanded 3 years ago, we still did nightly runs almost every night.

I grinned my trademark smile at the group, and they all nodded, ready for tonight. I laughed before face towards Mementos.

"Phantom Thieves, It's time to steal the hearts of the wicked and unjust!"