Chapter 3

Akihiko swallowed hard and his saliva went down like a solid lump. "So, you don't have to, ahh, make preparations or anything?"

"No," Mitsuru said calmly. She pulled out the thing that looked exactly like a handgun but she called an invoker. She said it wasn't for using on the monsters like he'd expected, but to use on themselves, which immediately worried him. It sounded too much like the many tales of lovers' double-suicides in his Japanese lit class. Akihiko licked his lips and suddenly wondered if she was lying to him about this whole thing.

But how could she have known about the monsters and the midnight horror she called the Dark Hour?

"I recommend you brace yourself the first time," she cautioned. "If you expect the worst, the sensation's not so bad, but it would probably be a rude shock if you weren't ready for it."

Sounds like she's describing death. "You're going first, right?"

"Of course."

Shortly before midnight, they met in the shopping district near Akihiko's apartment. There was a movie theater there and it wouldn't look suspicious to find a couple of teenagers out late. Akihiko worried that they wouldn't have a place to hide once the Dark Hour started, but Mitsuru just smiled when he voiced his concern.

"You'll see," she said. "Once you know how to use an invoker, the shadows will be the ones with reason to fear you."

Akihiko shivered with anxiety while the clock ticked down to midnight. He pretended to be cold and practiced his boxing footwork, bouncing in place to expel his nervous energy.

At midnight exactly, the Dark Hour smothered the world. Shadows cast by streetlights slithered up the walls, cracks appeared in the movie theater's stucco, and the friendly mall topiaries sprawled with new tendrils of thorns. Standing outside and watching the darkness infect miles around him was vastly worse than watching the change in the confines of his room. It was like the whole world had turned to hell. He was instantly grateful for Mitsuru's presence. Her eyes followed the same changes and he knew she was seeing the same things, but her poise never wavered. She stood confident and cool, the invoker in her hand.

A monster the size of a dog scuttled into view from an alley. It looked like a severed hand skittering nimbly along on the tips of its fingers, but it had two eyes near where the wrist should have been. The eyes were perfectly circular and solid black, dead and hollow as a shark's. The creature fidgeted in place for a moment, its finger-feet pattering restlessly. Then it rushed towards them.

Akihiko never felt so naked and vulnerable in front of the monsters before. Suddenly he wished there were bullets in that gun-thing of Mitsuru's after all. "Hey…" He turned to face Mitsuru.

She stood with feet shoulder-width apart, serene confidence on her young face, and planted the invoker against her temple. She pulled the trigger.

"No!" Akihiko's cry was drowned out by the crack of gunfire.

A spray of brains and bone shrapnel flew from the far side of her head and Mitsuru's body began to fall. Akihiko stood dumbly in place in disbelief, the monster momentarily forgotten.

I just watched a girl commit suicide. I was standing right here and she—

But Mitsuru calmly regained her footing after she'd staggered in place for a moment. The spray he saw blasting out the other side of her head dissipated into a blue-gray haze of ectoplasm. Behind her stood a female knight, hovering a foot off the ground like a ghost, but with a body as solid-looking as Mitsuru herself. At nearly six feet tall, the knight dwarfed Mitsuru in size. It wore a heavy jouster's helmet that covered its entire head, with a matching steel breastplate forged to fit a woman's curves. Besides the breastplate and helmet, the specter wore no armor. It was clothed in a cuffed and collared coat that looked like a man's suit, but with a distinctive feminine cut. In one hand it clutched an épée with a parrying dagger in the other.

Akihiko watched slack-jawed. He felt he should have some comment to make, but only a weak croak emerged from his throat.

Mitsuru's guardian swooped forward and slashed the scuttling hand monster neatly in two. The monster's two halves slid apart for a moment, then dissipated into shadow like a puff of vapor. As soon as the monster was destroyed, the knight drifted back towards Mitsuru, turning translucent, then transparent, until it disappeared entirely.

"There." Mitsuru tossed one of her ringlets over her shoulder primly. "That's how it's done."

"What was that thing?"

"It's called a persona." Mitsuru glanced away when she said it. She looked as though she were keeping watch for another monster, but Akihiko thought he saw something like embarrassment on her face.

"You're saying I can make a knight like that?"

"Not exactly. Each person's persona looks different. Like the name implies, a persona is a fragment of your own personality. It's partly your true self, but it's also the face you want other people to see." For a moment, her embarrassed expression flickered to something that might have been guilt, but then it was gone. "The self-image you present to protect yourself from being hurt."

He wondered if there was some deeper metaphor in the fact that her persona appeared heavily armored and masked her face. He didn't relish the thought of finding out what his own looked like. He thought he was going to learn how to fight, not bare his soul in front of a stranger. "So everybody's got one of these personas?"

She lowered her eyelashes and shook her head. "Only those of us who can see the Dark Hour."

"How many of us are there?" Hopeful thoughts of a well-equipped underground resistance rose in his mind.

She met his gaze soberly. "As far as we know? Just the two of us."

He blinked.

"Are you ready to try?" She pulled out a second invoker and held it out to him.

He held his palms up as if in self-defense and didn't reach for the gun. "Whoah. Not exactly. I wouldn't know the first thing to do. You didn't give me any instructions or anything."

She smirked at him. "Finger goes here." She pointed at the trigger guard. "Then squeeze." She pointed away from them and pulled the trigger. This time the invoker discharged with an empty click like an unloaded gun. "It's not that complicated." She held it out to him.

He took the invoker from her timidly. It weighed a lot more in his hands than he thought it would. Probably because the only guns he'd held before were plastic toys. "Can I use yours? What if this one doesn't work?"

"No ammo but your own ego," she explained. "It won't fire until you have it against your head."

"That's comforting," he muttered. Again he wondered if this was all a ridiculous hoax. What if the gun was loaded and he ended up splattering his brains all over the pavement? What if it did nothing and the next monster kept charging while he clicked the trigger over and over like an idiot? But nothing about the situation felt like one of those locker room pranks that ended up with one of his guy friends pointing and laughing, "Got you!" There wasn't anything funny about it at all.

Another monster swung into view. This one looked like a crow with tattered feathers and a three-foot wing span. In its talons it clutched an iron lantern that oozed blue-black smoke. Akihiko flattened himself against the movie theater wall, the invoker held down at his side.

"Go for it," Mitsuru urged.

He turned to her, eyes wide and frantic. "Don't I get to practice or something first?"

"Your persona exists to protect you. It won't emerge unless a need arises."

"But how do I-?"

"Just go. I'm right here as backup." She held up her invoker in both hands, looking a little like a hero out of an American action movie.

Akihiko's hands trembled as he put the gun up to his head. It felt like it weighed twenty pounds.

The ragged-looking crow monster spotted them and swooped down.

Whether or not this works, my problems will be over soon.

He pulled the trigger.

He was braced for pain, but not this. An invisible hand squeezed his heart in its fist and suddenly he couldn't breathe like he was having a panic attack. He fell to his knees. Fire lanced through his brain, slicing it in two, and Pandora's box of horrors came screaming out from the cracks of his torn psyche. He felt his inner strength surge forward, but not just the noble side of him. Sneering cynicism. Teeth-gnashing envy. Arrogance disguised as self-confidence. All the nasty things inside of him flooded to the surface of his mind, forcing him to stare directly into the ugliness he preferred to stay blind to.

Then a pale figure materialized in front of him, a hulking man wearing padded armor that looked like riot gear. Unlike Mitsuru's persona, this one was not only unarmed, but its feet and hands were disproportionately tiny, save for the right arm which ended in a lance that eerily resembled a hypodermic needle.

The persona lunged forward just as the ragged crow monster swooped down for the kill. The two collided and the monster screamed in pain. The persona slashed with its needle arm and the bird exploded into a cloud of black feathers that dissolved into shadowy mist.

Akihiko had been so surprised to see his persona appear, then engrossed in the combat, he barely noticed that the mental pain had stopped. In hindsight, it only lasted an instant. The realities of the physical world swam back to him. Akihiko retched in his mouth a little, then spat on the pavement. The pale guardian of his persona didn't disappear right away, but turned around to look back at him.

For the first time, Akihiko saw the persona's face. It was almost entirely hidden in the thick padding of its riot gear armor and only two white eyes peered out over the top, like a turtle with its head half tucked down into its shell. The eyes were blank white with no pupils and with dark curving eyelashes. Its long blond hair flowed all the way down its back. After a moment of staring back at Akihiko mutely, the persona vanished into nothingness.

"Interesting," Mitsuru said. A bemused smile twisted her lips.

Akihiko felt suddenly exposed. Between the striking eyes and long hair, his persona looked distinctly feminine in spite of its hulking frame. He wondered if this reflected something about himself or if this was a fragment of his sister Miki locked away inside him.

"Well done," Mitsuru said. "I wasn't sure you were going to pull the trigger."

His voice came out more sullen and petulant than he meant it to. "It would have killed me if I hadn't."

"I was right beside you the whole time," Mitsuru said. "You did well."

An awkward silence followed. Akihiko rose to his feet, his knees aching and bruised from when he'd fallen to the ground.

"Care to try it again?" Mitsuru twirled her invoker around her finger like a sharpshooter. Showing off for the newbie.

"Does it always feel like that?" He pressed the heel of his hand to his head. His nervous stomach finally began to settle.

She shook her head. "You get used to it. The first one's the worst. So congratulations on surviving your initiation."

She held out her hand to congratulate him but Akihiko turned away without acknowledging her, pretending not to see her extended hand. He knew it was petty to snub her like that, but he was getting tired of her know-it-all confidence. He needed to tip the social scales in his own favor, if only for a moment. For the first time he wondered if this selfish impulse was the sort of thing that contributed to his persona.

Mitsuru planted her knuckles on her hips and tossed her hair primly. "Well? Are you up for a little training?"

Not exactly. After weeks of sleep deprivation, his post-adrenaline crash made him feel ready to sleep for a week. But professional athletes train whether they feel like it or not. He would never get stronger unless he challenged himself.

"I'm ready," he said. He and Mitsuru both held their invokers at the ready, listening to the scratching sounds of more monsters skittering towards them. "Bring it on."