How am I gonna write these updates?
Welcome to Persona 3 Portable! People over at r/jrpg rave about Persona 4 and 5, but I have no way of enjoying those titles. I want to explore this franchise, then I'm gonna have to start at an even older game. While playing through the tutorial bits tonight, I found myself wondering how I was going to go about writing all of these updates. The MC is a silent protagonist, and there is a vital day/night cycle. So should I do a diary? I haven't done one in a while. The problem is, I don't remember dates... To worsen things, a lot of the dialog almost seems tertiary. The important part of P3 is the gameplay, and the plot just adds to it. But....what if I did a memoir?
"This whole journey started a year ago. I had fallen asleep on the train to my new high school. The train was delayed, so I had nothing else to do. I had a dream then, and a voice told me something that I didn't understand at the time. Ii wondered if I could change the future. I'm warned that time marches forward, but I might be able to alter it, but I only had a year...
I woke up when the train got to the station, just past midnight. Despite being a bustling town with a number of malls and a corporate sponsored high school, it looked long abandoned and in ruins. The buildings were crumbling, and coffins lined the streets. But the worst part was the eerily giant, yellow moon. But it didn't bother me enough to turn around and run away. I went to where my dorm was, and it all looked fine enough. I stepped inside, and a creepy boy asked me to sign a contract. The document was just to make sure I took responsibility for my own actions. After I signed my name, the boy disappeared as though we were eaten by shadows. From where he stood, though, came a girl. This was Yukari Takeba. She was surprised to see me, but our upper clansmen quickly settled the scene down. Mitsuru Kirijo didn't expect me to show up late, but I was glad someone knew I was coming. And then I noticed Yukari had a gun... I asked her about it, and she said it's for self defense. Apparently, Takoda City has a crime problem. But it was late, so Misturu asked Yukari to show me to my room. It was the last door on the second floor. I was only expected to be here for a short time because my paperwork got eaten or something, but I would end up living here for the foreseeable future. I jumped right into bed once she left.
And then she woke me up in the morning. Yukari made sure I wouldn't miss my first day of school, even if it was because Mitsuru asked her to. The two of us rode the train to the school, and I was glad to see the city looked ...uh..."normal." Once we got to school, we went our separate ways. Yukari suggested I speak to my homeroom teacher, so I went to the bulletin board to see who that was. I couldn't find myself at first, but my second look over revealed that I was in 2-F. Yukari was also in that class. I walked to the faculty room and got a glimpse of my teachers for the year. Mr. Ekoda was throwing himself a pity party because no one respected him, not even the bread seller. Another, Mr. Ono, wore a samurai hat and congratulated a boy with a French accent that he had the "heart of a samurai" in him. But my homeroom teacher was Mrs. Toriumi, the composition instructor. She hadn't read anything about my past, so she read it aloud there. It brought up how I lost my parents ten years ago, so it was a little embarrassing...
Before class started, we had to go to the auditorium. The principal gave a boring speech, as they're want to do, but I had my first interaction with someone wondering if I was dating Yukari. After that, the rest of the day just went by. After class, another student, Junpei Lori, also asked me if I was dating Yukari. Well, he eventually got to that. He mostly wanted to introduce himself to make sure I didn't feel lonely. He was a transfer student a few years ago, so he knows how it feels. It was nice of him. It also seems that Jumpei and Yukari have been classmates together before. They have a ...decent... report with each other, which I gathered when she reminded me not to say anything about what happened last night. What did happen last night? The way she worded that did not quell any rumors... After this, I spoke with Junpei on the way back to the dorms and hit the hey again. The next day was much of the same... As was the next day, but that night...
Yukari woke me up just past midnight. She was in a panic because something was attacking the dorms. Mitsuru and the other student in the building, Akihiko, were fighting it, and the dorm mother wanted us to flee. I didn't know what was going on, but Yukari gave me a sword. It didn't help that I just had the strangest dream. I met Igor, a skinny Penguin from Batman, and his attendant, Elizabeth. Igor welcomed me to the Velvet Room, a strange elevator like place, but he didn't give me many details. Yukari and I tried to run, but the backdoor was under siege. We fled to the roof, but even that wasn't safe! Something climbed up the side of the building and attacked us! Yukari called it a "Shadow." but it had about ten hands and held a mask over its head. Not on his face but over it. And then Yukari pulled out her gun... She held it to her head and psyched herself up, but the Shadow attacked her. I don't know what came over me, but the gun was knocked towards me. I picked it up and put it to my head. Maybe I decided I was to die here and figured I might as well take it into my own hands? I pulled the trigger, but I felt no pain. Nothing went through me, but something came out of me.
Orpheus! He attacked the Shadow and wiped it out. Some of it remained, so I decided to get involved a bit. Together, we took out the remnants. This was the beginning of the rest of my life. Although, I wouldn't learn any of it until I woke up in the hospital a week later. Yukari was sitting beside me and thanked me for saving her. She then gave me her life story about how her dad died in an explosion in 1999, and she doesn't have a relationship with her mother. She thinks the two of us have some similarities here. She knew of my backstory before I even got to the dorm, so she felt guilty. I wouldn't have minded, but she wanted to make it even, so she shared hers with me. She's a good cookie... By the way, it was during the time I was in the hospital that Mitsuru was elected to the student council.
Soon after, I met the man in charge of SEES, Shuji Ikutsuki. Jumpei joined us for this meeting, which we all found strange. But Akihiko found him crying outside the mall one night, a sure sign that he has "The Potential." But it was from Ikutsuki that I'd learn what my life would be like going forward. Between the hours of midnight and 1 AM, something called the Dark Hour happens. The Dark Hour is a period of time that isn't mentioned on any clock and time almost stands still... for normal people. For others, like myself and everyone in this building, we're aware of what's going on. We're not turned into coffins, but we're actually sought out by the Shadows. If we get caught, we become afflicted with something that the media has been calling Apathy Sickness, which takes the victim's soul and turns them into a vegetable. A girl in my school was struck by this shortly after I got here. However, members of SEES, the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, are to hunt down the Shadows and stop them from ruining the city. We do so by summoning things called "Persona" into battle, which we call using that evoker gun. Even now, I barely understand it myself. Yukari had never fought a shadow before and was too afraid. Akihiko was injured in the fight, so he was out of commission for a while. He's fine, but it's hard to fight with injured ribs. Rather than waste time, we all went to high school during the Dark Hour... The normal and modest building my teammates have known for years suddenly transformed into something terrifying and grotesque. And Mitsuru wanted us to climb it!
The maze of Tartarus is filled with weak shadows, a perfect place for three initiates to learn how to fight. There was also a door to the Velvet Room, but I was the only person able to see it? Igor gave me instructions on how to combine Persona, but I, shockingly, didn't understand it at the time. I didn't understand that the strength of my Persona would be reliant on the strength of my friends. I trust Orpheus. Anyway, since this was a training exercise, Mitsuru only let us explore the first floor. It was a quick and successful mission. But it sure was exhausting...
We all went to bed and carried on with our lives for the next few days. Remember, we are high school students. It was during that time I made a friend outside of SEES. Kenji and I enjoyed a lot of good ramen from one of the shops at the strip mall. And that's the first two weeks of my junior year of high school."
Holy day one plot dumps, Batman!
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