14th February, 2011
The battle roared back to life with the sound of twin gunshots, a bullet from Emma's revolver striking the snowman between the eyes before a fireball from Belle's rifle sent it flying, slush and black goop trailing its limp form.
In response to the sudden attack, the other enemies flinched, allowing the ferret to make his own move. With a call of "
BUFU!" Honest Jack conjured a burst of ice and frost, striking one of the two flower creatures with it, causing it to explode into a shower of black ooze.
Unfortunately, that was when the enemies recovered from their surprise. The floating ladies tried to reposition while the last flower standing launched itself at Emma, its body glowing with a faint red glow. Almost on instinct, Emma twisted on her heels, barely dodging the flower creature's assault, its passage making her duster flap in the wind.
Her revolver slipped back into its holster and she went for her knives. Before the walking plant could recover from its failed charge, she buried the blades into its back, causing it to dissolve into that same black goop.
Unfortunately, it seemed like she got too distracted with her own fight. Just as Emma started turning back towards the fight at large, something painful slammed into her back, causing a gasp of shock to tear from her throat. An indescribable cold seeped into her bones, and the force of the impact was strong enough to send her sprawling to the shocked cries of Dennis and the ferret both.
She managed to pick herself up and turned around to the sight of the ferret's rapier blade stained with black and only two of the women remaining. As one, the two floating ladies unclasped their hands, forming flurries of snow and ice between them before sending their attacks flying. This time, Emma managed to dodge, though she still barely suppressed a shiver from the cold the attack gave off. The ferret, meanwhile, bulled through the one thrown at him, swiping at his attacker with his rapier. The woman dodged backwards though… which put her right in front of Honest Jack.
"
LUCKY PUNCH!" the ferret called out, and Honest Jack
moved. Suddenly he was in front of that floating woman, his hand lashing out with a swift backhand, sending her spinning. Emma focused on the other woman, and a fireball from Belle's rifle sent her to the ground as well. With a menacing chuckle, the ferret pulled another bomb out from
somewhere and gave it a languid toss at the two ladies. They both dissolved back into the muck that birthed them.
As if sensing that they weren't needed any further, Belle and Honest Jack vanished in twin flares of blue fire, and Emma became aware of a slight weight settling around her neck. A short length of iron chain looped tight around her neck like a choker, a small padlock hanging at her throat in a parody of a charm on a necklace. A similar chain manifested on the ferret's wrist as well.
Another flash of flame replaced Emma's new attire with her old clothes, and suddenly she could feel a flood of exhaustion hit her, making her stumble.
"W-What happened? Why do I feel so exhausted…?" she half-groaned, nearly falling over if it wasn't for Dennis stepping up and catching her, allowing her to lean on him.
"Yeah, what
did just happen?" Dennis added his voice to hers, staring at their furry savior. "And more importantly… Who are you?"
"
What are you?" Emma finished. Normally she wouldn't have been so direct, but she was too tired to have a filter right then.
"You can call me Rex." the ferret bowed gallantly. "And I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have… but we should walk and talk. You can bet more guards are already on the way. Shall we go?"
"'Go' where, exactly?" Dennis' eyes narrowed at Rex suspiciously.
"Well, out of here, of course. You're human, right? Don't know how exactly you ended up in the Metaverse, but I'm guessing you don't know how to get out, do you? Well, I know where the exit back to your world is, so I can guide you out."
And without another word, he started to walk away, leaving Emma and Dennis to stare at his back, flabbergasted. Once he noticed they weren't following him, he huffed and looked at them over his shoulder.
"Come on, would I really step in and save you two from those hunters if I was just gonna lead you into a trap right after? I
genuinely just want to help you two."
Finally, tempted by the promise of answers
and a way out of this 'Metaverse', the two teens decided to follow the ferret through the winding back-alleys of this medieval town.
"So, you asked what I am." Rex nodded at Emma after a bit of silence. "I'll be honest… I don't really know myself. I'd like to say I'm human like you two, the human form certainly feels familiar enough, but… I also know far too much about this place, with no memory of actually
learning these things. That makes me think I'm a Shadow, like those things we fought before, just… different. That doesn't exactly feel right either though… All I know for certain is my name. The rest of me is lost. That's why I'm here, honestly."
Neither of the teens knew exactly how to react to that. What do you say to someone who has lost everything that made them, them? Dennis patted Rex on the shoulder. "Hey, I'm sure it'll come back to you."
After a bit of awkward silence, Dennis spoke up again. "So, you called this place the Metaverse before. What exactly is it?"
"Well…" Rex scratched at his chin awkwardly. "This may sound a little crazy or hard to believe…"
"Buddy." Dennis interrupted him. "You're a 2 foot tall weasel wearing clothes, with a sword and a seemingly limitless supply of bombs, and I saw you summon some weird ghost barely a few minutes ago. Whatever you're about to say, I have definitely heard weirder."
Rex stared at that, before chuckling, his eyes shining with mirth. "Well, when you put it that way… Like I said, this is the Metaverse, a world composed of humanity's collective cognition. A world of the subconscious, you could say. More specifically, we're in what's called a 'Palace', a part of the Metaverse that has been affected by a single person's distorted desires and warped worldview. See, when someone grows especially twisted, they develop a Shadow Self, and once that Shadow grows powerful enough, it creates a Palace around itself, based on how its Real World counterpart sees the world."
"...Okay, that
is pretty weird." Dennis admitted after a second of silence. "But considering everything I've seen today, I'm willing to go along with it. So, whose Palace is this then? And how did we get here?"
"I… don't actually know." Rex admitted. "I don't know the answer to either of those questions. The Palace Ruler is only ever referred to as the Hunt Mistress, I've never heard her name. And I have no idea how you two ended up here. I mean, I can slip between worlds, but that's a conscious decision I have to make, I've never
fallen through before."
"Okay, my turn." Emma interrupted, having recovered enough that she could walk alongside Dennis and Rex without having to lean on her fellow teen. "What did I
do back there? What exactly is Belle, how did I make her show up like that? And what's with the spontaneously changing outfit?"
"Belle is what we call a Persona." Rex answered, before going quiet for a second, mulling over his thoughts. "To be a little poetic about it, a Persona is… the chains binding your heart, wielded as a weapon. They're your Shadow, tamed, accepted and projected outwards as a shield. Everything that used to hold you back, now used to fight back against the unfair world crushing you into the dirt. Anyone can technically have a Persona, deep down within themselves. As for the outfit, it's your inner rebel, essentially. Palaces can be pretty dangerous, they're literally a distorted mindscape after all. And they get especially dangerous if the Palace Ruler sees you as an enemy. You rebelled before, stood up to the guards, so you were an enemy. Now you aren't. Plus, a Persona Awakening takes a lot out of you. That's why you're so exhausted."
"Okay, uh, here's a question that I really should have asked sooner… Where exactly are we going? I mean, I know you said we're going back to our world, but… where
exactly is the door?" Dennis spoke up again. To Emma's ears, his words sounded almost worried a little.
"Why, the door, of course." Rex grinned at him. "And by that I mean the main gate on the big wall surrounding the town. The entryway is just off the main street, in a different alley. Now hush, we're almost there."
And indeed, they were. The labyrinthine maze of narrow alleys suddenly ended, their path widening out once more. The main gate stood to their right, barred shut and imposing, while the main road snaked further into the town to their left.
"The doorway home's just up ahead." Rex spoke quietly. "We just have to be careful so we don't get spotted by any of the guards, and we should be home free."
Of course, as soon as the three got halfway across the main street, the main gate suddenly rushed open, revealing the world beyond the wall to the two teens.
It looked like something out of a horror movie, a spooky forest that the main character would have to travel through. Pale trees grasped for the sky with their barren, skeletal branches, adorned only by clumps of parasitic mistletoe and bark the color of cold steel. Grass the dreary color of asphalt littered the ground, though patches of the bone white soil beneath could still be seen. Fog drifted amid the trees like a persistent cloud of exhaust fumes.
And through this dreary picture, rode a hunting party of four, all on horseback, flanked by two great hunting hounds. Two of the hunters were carbon copies of the guards that chased Emma and Dennis before, right down to their frowning masks. They rode on a pair of brown horses, and even their steeds wore masks; cold iron, covering the snout and neck. The third wore a much more elaborate outfit, with a dark green cloak pinned to his shoulders with a pair of silver pins and a mask whose expression was one of pure wrath. His horse was a creature of midnight black fur with its own elaborate helm decorating its equine head.
But it was the fourth hunter, the one in the lead, that was the problem.
Because Emma
recognized this figure.
Sophia Hess rode a horse the pale color of ash. She was the only one of the four that wore proper armor, with sturdy sabatons and greaves gracing her legs from toe to knee, gauntlets covering her arms from fingertip to elbow, and a cuirass securely covering her torso. In place of a cloak, the heavy pelt of an enormous wolf laid across her shoulders, its fur so dark it seemed to draw in light. Her eyes, narrowed in disgusted contempt, gleamed a sickly gold beneath the circlet of carved bone resting on her brow.
"Well…" Emma muttered numbly, feeling the velvet flames lick up her figure once more, transforming her back into that cowboy attire, feeling the chain settle around her throat once more, "I guess we know who the Palace Ruler is now…"
With that sudden realization, Emma's gaze was drawn back to the two hounds flanking the hunting party. Something seemed… familiar about them. One was smaller, with russet fur. The other, larger one, had a fiery ginger coat with a larger ruff around its head, almost like a small mane.
"I see that some rats have snuck into my town." The Shadow's voice cut through Emma's thoughts. The Hunt Mistress regarded them with cold eyes, before speaking up once more.
"Captain, deal with the pests. And should you fail, pray that they kill you. Return to me in failure and your end shall be pure agony. Are we understood?"
Without waiting for an answer, she nudged her horse's flanks with her heels, causing the beast to speed up into a trot and then a full gallop, causing Emma, Dennis and Rex to have to leap aside before they were trampled. One of the two hunters stayed behind to aid the Captain, while the other followed his Mistress, giving the two teens a glimpse of the hunters' prey laying across the back of his saddle: a tiger, its fur bright red and striped with green.
In Sophia's wake, shadows rose like waves, blocking off the side alleys. The message was clear: no escape.
The Captain and the other hunter entered the town, and the gates slammed shut behind them. With a pair of wordless growls and the sound of snapping bone, they convulsed and dissolved, the black muck swallowing up the horses as well, forming a massive puddle on the cobblestone.
Three figures rose from the muck. A knight in blood red armor, his helmet decorated by a pair of twisted horns, his lance leveled at Emma and Rex, flanked on either side by a floating, green horse, its hindquarters unraveling into a large mass of vines.
Velvet blue flames reached for the heavens in response, Belle and Honest Jack manifesting behind their respective masters, the female desperado leveling her rifle at the opposition, the flamboyant master thief spreading his arms in a flourish, ice already beginning to build on the ground around him.
And Dennis, meanwhile, could only stand back, cower and watch, as battle was joined. Helpless.
Powerless. He had tried to freeze Rex before, after he admitted to not knowing what he was, after he said he could be just like these hunters, and it
did not work. He had nothing. He could do nothing. How ironic, that a hero was the one being saved by someone who was, effectively, a civilian…
"And are you truly okay with that?"
A whisper on the wind, so faint that he wasn't sure he even heard it, accompanied by a stabbing twinge of pain shooting through his head.
"Will the hero truly sit back and watch?"
A second twinge of pain. A second hiss on the wind.
"AGI!" A fireball from Belle's rifle splashed harmlessly off of the knight's armor as he stampeded toward Emma. The girl barely twisted out of the way, but the knight somehow turned his horse on a dime, his spear already striking downward, intent on skewering the girl.
Dennis didn't remember moving, but at that very moment, a loose stone bounced off the horseman's helmet, distracting him long enough that Emma could scramble clear.
With a mocking growl, the crimson knight turned his horse toward Dennis. Even with the helmet obscuring his face, the teen could feel the armored rider sizing him up.
"Psh. So the weakling tries to interfere, does he?" The creature's voice was strange. Hollow, almost. But the contempt in it was unmistakable.
"I was going to leave you for last, but if you truly wish to die so badly, I'll grant you that wish, you powerless wretch."
Emma tried to attack, but one of the floating vine horses lunged at her from behind while she was distracted, knocking her to the ground. Rex tried to fire off an ice burst, but a careless swing of the rider's lance summoned a fireball that knocked the ferret to the ground where the other plant horse planted a hoof on his back.
There was going to be no help from either of them. And the shadows behind Dennis had risen into a wall when he wasn't looking. No escape, not that he could outrun a horse anyway. This truly was a hopeless situation.
"Any last words, wretch?" the rider tilted his head curiously.
"Going to beg for your life, now that your allies cannot help you anymore? Truthfully, I do not care about the words of a weakling such as you, but the strong should be honorable in their victory."
"You keep calling me weak. You keep calling me powerless."
Dennis' words were quiet. His head hung low. He stared at the ground.
"I may not have any power, but that doesn't define me!"
His head snapped up, and he glared at the horseman with eyes gleaming like molten gold.
"So stop looking down on me! I'd rather be powerless than an asshole defined by his powers like you!"
With a wordless screech of rage, the lance struck… and bounced off of a chrysalis of chains that had erupted from Dennis' flesh.
"Finally, the joker speaks sense."
Embers of blue fire sputtered and spat between iron links. Heat shimmered in the air. Smoke curled from cold, black iron.
"Too long have you allowed your power to define you. Too long have you languished between the stolen seconds."
The lance hammered into the chains a second time, the knight growling in frustration.
"Now, let us stop the clock. Let us live our life apart from the ticking seconds."
The crimson horseman turned away, his gleaming eyes sweeping across Emma and Rex, caught under his underlings.
"Let us make our vow, and enshrine it in eternity."
The armored demon threw out his free hand, a command ringing from his lips.
"Kill them both, n-"
I am Thou, Thou art I. Let us do away with the false, flashing smiles of lightning, and show them the truth of our storm!"
The knight's command was interrupted as the cocoon of chains behind him erupted with flames. A burst of pure force exploded from within, rupturing the links and sending them flying. And from the fire walked a new Dennis Nobel.
Simple brown boots clicked against the cobblestones, leading up into a set of tough, practical jeans. He wore a poncho over a pastel yellow long-sleeved shirt, the fabric draping over his left side and leaving his right mostly exposed. A pocket watch was pinned to his poncho over his heart, its glass cover marred by a trio of bullet holes, its hands perpetually stuck at noon.
The Persona behind him stood on a pair of cloven hooves, his unguligrade legs covered in cream colored fur. He wore a simple brown belt around his waist, with a golden buckle shaped like a goat's skull. His torso was covered by a dark brown shirt under a black leather duster. A long scarf the color of storm clouds was pulled up over his mouth and nose, the long strip of fabric fluttering behind him in an unfelt breeze, its length accentuated with random, jagged lines of white, like lightning jumping between clouds. He wore a simple, brown, pinched front cowboy hat, with a pair of goat horns sticking through holes in the leather, anchoring the hat to his head. His left hand was bare, a simple silver coin dancing between his fingers, while his right was covered by a brown, fingerless leather glove. An absolutely massive revolver rested lazily in its grip, the gun's blocky barrel the length of its wielder's forearm.
The Persona caught the coin and, with a practiced motion, flipped it high into the air. His now free left hand formed a finger gun, and a bolt of lightning shot from it, striking into the horse standing on Emma's stomach, sending it flying off of her. A second bolt of lightning struck the other one, repeating the feat, before the coin came falling back into the Persona's fingers.
"You called me weak." Dennis spoke. "Because I had no power, you dismissed me as worthless, as useless. It's time I change your mind. Emma, Rex, would you care to help me out?"
"You know it!" Emma called, getting back on her feet. Rex gave an eager nod as well.
"Do you really think you suddenly have enough power to stop me?" the knight growled.
"I am one of her Majesty's Guard Captains. I shall not fall to scum like you!"
His lance flashed toward Dennis, but in a burst of blue, the boy was suddenly holding the handles of a pair of hatchets. With a flourish, the rider's weapon slipped to the side, and he was suddenly caught between the three Persona users.
"Do I think I can stop you?" Dennis mused out loud. "How about we find out? Shoot to kill,
Billy the Kid!"
Lightning lanced out once more, and then again. The rider's horse stumbled, and the knight barely kept himself in the saddle. He was stunned from the twin strikes.
"Now's our chance! Follow my lead!" Rex called out and the three leapt into actions, surrounding the dazed knight. Rex pulled out one of his bombs, chuckling menacingly. Emma pointed one of her revolvers at the knight's head. In a flash of blue light, Dennis found himself aiming an infantry rifle at their opponent.
"Sorry, asshole. But this is the end of the line!" Dennis called out, and a surge of energy rushed through the three. They launched themselves forward, melee weapons suddenly drawn.
What followed was a frenzy of slashes and stabs, a frenetic dance of three that their target simply could not fight back against. And when the energy rush died down, the rider exploded in a gush of black blood behind them.
The three Personas disappeared, and Dennis barely had a second to admire the short length of chain that manifested on the pocket watch he was sporting, tying it to his breast pocket, before his entire attire reverted in a flash of blue, and the exhaustion hit him.
This time, Emma was there to catch him when he stumbled.
"Hey, thanks for the save, hero." she smiled at him.
"I'd like to say no problem, but… yeah, I'm ready to go home. Rex?" Dennis sighed in return.
"Right. This way." Rex motioned, and the three walked into one of the alleys nearby.
And in a ripple of purple and black, they were gone without a trace.
A.N.: A'HM NOT DEAD! A'HM JUST STUPID! Also, here he is, my favorite Persona design I made for this fic.
