Badass
Later he decides it was kind of awesome, but right when it happens Junpei isn’t thinking much of anything except how bad he doesn’t want to die. One minute he’s standing there at the drink case in the a.m. p.m., trying to decide if he wants to try the new blue flavor of Mad Bull, and the next minute everything goes so wrong it’s not funny.
The lights go out all at once — not too creepy by itself, right? Junpei grew up in a little town where a bad thunderstorm could knock the power out for a few hours — and everything, this is the scary part, goes silent. Nobody screaming, nobody cursing, nobody grabbing a handful of candy bars and running for the door. Junpei looks up, and — and it just gets worse.
Between him and the door? Where the other people in the store used to be? Are a bunch of coffins, big ones, standing on end and kind of glowing red at the bottom. This is so, so not okay. Junpei’s heart is pounding. He feels like he’s going to be sick. Maybe if he can get out –
He edges past the coffins, toward the door. Only. Only the door is, is electronic, right? And the power’s out. Crap.
Somebody more awesome than Junpei could probably force the door, could get out of here. Junpei tries, but he can’t get a grip on the glass, and doesn’t have anything he could shove between the doors to try to pry them open — man, if only he had his sword right now — and his mom said he was wasting his money on it — crap. Okay, so. So if he’s really badass he can break the glass. Maybe. Right?
He’s so screwed.
If this was a video game, he’d get powers now, or find a weapon, or — or something. Only he hasn’t. He’s just…stuck here, in the dark, the only person left in the store, maybe the city, maybe the world, and he doesn’t know how to get out, and — crap, what’s that? There’s something moving out there.
It’s not human. There’s something black and squelchy oozing across the ground out there, pulling itself along like something out of a horror movie. Its eyes are glowing. It turns toward the door of the a.m. p.m., and Junpei cringes back as fast as he can. Crap.
The thing crawls up almost to the door, while Junpei hides in the back and shivers and tries to watch from behind a stand full of seaweed crackers. Oh, man. There’s nothing good about this at all.
It goes away eventually, but not before Junpei’s broken out in a cold sweat, sick to his stomach watching its long spindly fingers slide down the glass.
So bad. This is so, so bad. What is he going to do?
He feels like a tool, but what he’s going to do? Is cry. He can’t help it. His eyes are stinging and he feels totally hopeless and he just kind of collapses in a little ball right there.
And then something squelches in the back of the store, behind him.
Junpei flattens himself against the glass, his heart pounding and he’s going to be sick. He needs to get out of here, one of them has gotten in with him somehow, he –
Something pounds on the door, right behind him. Junpei jumps, startled, and turns around and –
“Are you okay?” asks the guy outside, another person, a real person, thank god — holy crap, the captain of the boxing team at Junpei’s school.
“There’s something in here with me,” Junpei says, and his voice cracks and that’s almost worse than the thought that he’s probably just gotten the squelching thing’s attention.
The guy — Sanada, is it? Junpei thinks so — nods. He looks real serious. “You’re going to be okay,” he calls through the glass. “Hang in there.”
Then he’s trying to get a grip on the door from outside, trying to pull it open. Junpei wipes his face on his sleeve and tries to help, his fingers skidding on the glass, and behind him the thing makes noise again and oh, man, he doesn’t want to die like this. There are tears in his eyes and he’s still embarrassed about that, even with how scared he is — but they’re getting the door open, just a little, just a crack, enough for Sanada-senpai to get his fingers into the gap and pull further, and Junpei hauls back on the other side until Sanada-senpai can get his shoulder in there and shove and –
“Move,” Sanada-senpai orders, and Junpei cringes back because holy crap he has a gun and –
And he holds it up, not pointing at the creepy thing but at his own head and it goes off and there’s this huge flash of light like — oh, man, like a summon, or something, this giant in armor that calls lightning and — life is so not fair. It figures, that when crazy stuff goes down and people do start getting powers, it’s the jock who gets to be badass.
When the lightning fades, the squelching thing dissolves into wisps of smoke. Junpei’s breath is hitching in his chest. He wipes his eyes again.
“Hey,” says Sanada-senpai, coming over. He’s put the gun away. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Junpei says. His voice is all shaky. Great. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.” And he sounds like a total noob, but he’s gotta ask. “What was that thing?”
“A Shadow,” Sanada-senpai says, serious enough that Junpei can hear the capital letter.
“A — a Shadow?” Junpei says. He swallows a couple of times.
Sanada-senpai nods, looking Junpei up and down. “There aren’t many people who can keep their human form to fight them,” he says. “Most people just Transmogrify.” He points at the coffins.
Junpei blinks a couple of times. “Wait, those — those are people?”
“Yeah,” Sanada-senpai says. “That happens to almost everyone, during the Dark Hour. But it looks like you have the potential to fight them, like me.”
“I — seriously?” Junpei says. “Like — like that?” Because that, okay, that was really, really cool.
Sanada-senpai shrugs, with this little smile like he’s almost kind of embarrassed. Who’d have thought? “Your Persona will be different than mine, but sort of like that, yeah.”
“Sweetness,” Junpei says. He’s still a little shaky, but he’s not freaked out anymore. “That would be awesome.”
“Don’t say anything to anyone about this, okay?” Sanada-senpai says. Like Junpei would be that stupid. People would think he was crazy. “But I’ll talk to the leader of our group, and see about getting you brought in officially.”
“Really?” Man, if he can have power like that, too? If he can fight the creepy things instead of just hiding from them? Junpei beams. That would be totally “Badass.”
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