This sucks. What a load of bullshit this is. What do I mean by “this?” Why, life of course.

Everyone always says to follow your dreams and make something of yourself… But what do you make of yourself if you don’t have any dreams? What if your whole life is just numbing yourself enough to bear waking up the next day?

Well… I’m probably being overly dramatic. But it’s hard not to be when you’ve not accomplished much of anything. Everyone always says I could be good in school if I just tried … but when I do try, I still can’t seem to figure anything out. Not much point in trying, then. So whenever I’m forced to sit and reflect for a while, it seems to me like the only way to win the game is to not play.

I hear footsteps… Or is it just my imagination?

“Nova. Why are on the ground?”

Oh. No, they’re real footsteps. I look up to see Anja, stumbling towards me like she just woke up in a hangover or something.

“Where did Ashley go?” She asks me as I get to my feet.

“She ran off.”

“...She ran off? Why?”

“We were being useless.”

Anja chuckles. “Oh Ashley… always so pushy.”

“She said that you had gone loony.”

“...She said that?”

“Yeah.”

She rubs her eyes. “Well… Maybe I did. I remember walking down this really long chamber… then I was just sort of on the ground and everyone was gone! I don’t remember what happened.”

That’s weird. I remember everything that happened… but I don’t really want to tell her about that, so I’ll play along.

I look around… we’re still in the same room, but in front of me I can see a door… are we back at the entrance? I turn around and there’s another door… Wait, what?

“I remember this place being a lot bigger,” Anja comments, looking around herself. “Well… let’s take advantage of this opportunity and get to the exit. It’s that one, that’s the direction I came from.”

“Isn’t magic a bunch of fucking bullshit?” I say, because it is.

“Yep,” she agrees.

So we make our way across the rest of the way to the exit, and ended up in a different corridor. Ashley is already there, leaning against a wall like she’s about to fall asleep. Surprisingly, Ted is there too.

“And where have you two been?” Anja questions.

“Oh, you know…” Ashley explains. “You guys took a while, so I took a nap… got up… fought some monsters… went to Starbucks… took the PSAT…”

“Well, I hope that you’ll bedazzle everyone with your scores.”

“...What?”

“Oh right. You guys are freshmen, you don’t get that joke.”

“And what about the armadillo dude?” I ask Ashley.

“That’s the weird part… he apparently was here the whole time.”

“Nova says that you said that I went cuckoo,” Anja explains.

“Yeah, you did. You started rambling about ‘the evil,’ and how it was too powerful and it would swallow us whole, or something like that.”

Anja giggles at this. “Haha, I did go cuckoo… what the hell was I talking about?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“So did you free us from… whatever magic bullshit that was, then?” I ask. “How did you manage that?”

“Angel powers,” Ashley says simply. She puts her right hand in front of her, showing us her palm, which starts glowing a bright white.

“Whoa! Where did you learn how to do that?”

“A monster I fought try to use a beam of light as an attack on me, but it didn’t work… and then I discovered that I can do the same thing.”

“Well, aren’t you special,” Anja remarks.

“Anyways... I know the the left path leads to a dead end, so we can go right or forward,” Ashley explains.

“Let’s go right,” I suggest. “Forward is probably progress.”

“Wait… first of all, how do you know that? Second of all, if forward is progress, we should go that way.”

“No, we should explore all other paths first. We might learn something useful.”

“Like what???”

“Like… I don’t know, something that can help us during battle.”

“He has a point,” Anja interjects, and I feel very grateful for her. “You wandering off on your own led to you figuring out how to use those… ‘bless’ powers or whatever.”

“Well, nice theory, but wandering around looking for fights to get into sounds like a waste of time to me, given that we came here to fight one specific person…” And with that, she starts walking forward, evidently not giving a shit what we think.

“Hey, who died and made you queen?” I shout at her as she walks away. She ignores me. Anja shrugs and follows after her. Looks like we don’t have a choice.

After about a minute or so, we come across another door. Ashley tries to open it with a push, but it’s a no sell.

“Don’t worry, I got this,” she says. She puts her hand on the door, and closes her eyes. Her hand palm starts emitting a pure white glow… And the door opens.

We walk into the next room and… oh boy. This is not going to be fun.

It’s a courtroom, which is already not bringing back great memories. But there’s a twist… everything is made out of white marble (of course,) and everything is also way larger than normal, making us feel like insects in comparison.

“Very subtle,” Ashley comments. “I’ve noticed a theme here… this place seems to like making you small and powerless.”

“Well, it won’t work on me!” Anja asserts. “I’m used to being smaller than everyone else! And it does nothing to quell my rage…”

“I second that,” Ted interjects. “I was a powerful human, but I am even more powerful now, as an armadillo.”

“Wait, you used to be human?” I ask.

“Alright… let’s cut it out with the chit chat,” Ashley nags. “There could be enemies nearby. Let’s get a move on.”

But as the four of us walk through the center aisle, we don’t see a soul, enemy or otherwise. An ominous quiet hangs over the court. As we reach the front where the judge would normally sit, Ashley turns around to face us.

“There isn’t a single thing in this room,” she observes. “So what’s the point of it?”

“There’s probably a boss fight coming up,” I tell her.

“A boss fight… Oh, I see. You’re thinking about this as if it were a video game.”

“I mean, it could be one.”

Ashley shakes her head. “No, Nova. We are not inside of a video game. I can assure you of that much.”

“Sometimes I like to think that I’m the star of my own TV show,” Anja comments, grinning. “I find myself internally narrating my life…”

“You think that you’re the main character?” Ashley says in reply. “That’s really cute.”

“What? Why can’t I be?”

Right at that moment, we are interrupted by smack that is so loud that it feels like the air is split in two. I quickly cover my ears, feeling dazed by the noise. Ashley winces, and then starts frantically looking around to find the source. Anja is so surprised that she falls over onto the ground.

“What the hell was that?” I shout at nobody in particular.

Ted points off to the side of the witness stand and says, "I do believe that the 'boss' is here."

I look in the direction he's pointing and lay eyes on one of the grossest things I've ever seen: Pavia, except like fifty feet tall.

"Oh, shit! " Ashley curses, looking annoyed at this turn of events.

“Court is in session,” he says, his voice magnified so that it booms across the room. “The defendants will now take the stand…”

And before we can do anything about it, we’re all involuntarily hovering upwards into the air, so quickly that my vision is temporarily blurred. However, after a few seconds we are plopped straight down onto the desk in front of where the witness would normally sit. Somehow, in the intervening time, Pavia has made his way over to the center.

“Now... the defendants will state their charges,” he explains. Being right next to him, his voice is loud loud that it’s making my ears ring.

“Um, no, you’re the judge here,” Ashley snaps at him. “That’s your job. Why don’t you tell us what we are being charged with?”

“Do not be impudent… you were able to exit the chamber. That means that you must be ready to confess.”

“Confess to what exactly? I haven’t done jack diddly shit. I’m just trying to survive this bitch of an Earth, all the while being supportive to my girlfriend, who is being fucked in the ass by collectivist society, as well as being in marching band, and maintaining all A’s in school, and practicing multiple musical instruments to maintain my excellent musical standards in upcoming auditions and performances, and kicking your ass.”

Anja, who for some reason is still laying on the ground, giggles at her.

“You should not have exited the chamber!” Pavia shouts at her. “You are clearly still unaware of your crimes…”

“Dude, will you shut the fuck up?” I yell at him, unable to stand his overly loud voice any longer.

He looks down at me. “How dare you speak to me that way, you… rapscallion!”

“You’re being really fucking loud! Would you mind keeping your voice down!” I shout back.

“You are nothing but a bunch of ungrateful children… This is what happens when you let incapable parents reproduce. Screaming children who don’t know what’s good for them…”

“I know what’s good for me: Never being forced to look at your nose hairs again!”

“I demand… Order!” He grabs his gavel and slams it down, which not only makes yet another loud clacking sound, but a bright flash of light that temporarily blinds me.

“Umm… Nova?” Ashley says in a lower voice, as my vision starts to come back into focus. “I don’t know if you realize this, but… you don’t have your Persona yet.”

“So?”

“So… you really shouldn’t be the one picking fights right now.”

“I don’t care. I do what I want.”

“Damn it, Nova. You don’t have the ability to fight yet . You’re kind of useless to us right now. Don’t make this situation worse.”

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

“Yes.”

“He was probably just going to do that anyway,” Anja jumps in, finally getting to her feet. “Look over there!”

I look to the part of the desk in front of Pavia himself, where some enemies have finally spawned. I see three extremely tall knights in golden armor, as well as a couple of strange winged creatures that I can’t get a good look at on either side.

“Escort these back to the chamber. They need more time to mull over their crimes…” Pavia order the enemies, as he gets up from the desk and stomps back to the door.

“We’re outnumbered… this isn’t good,” Ashley says. “Those golden men are like the ones I fought. They’re weak to fire and bless, but resist physical attacks.”

“Um, Ashley… that means nothing to me,” Anja says, nervously getting into a battle stance.

And before I know it, the other three have charged off into battle. Ashley immediately uses that white hand shit she has to weaken one of the armored guys. Ted starts using his pistol to try to shoot down the winged ones, who on closer inspected are vaguely cat like humans with wings coming out of their heads… freaky. This leaves the other two armored guys to gang up on Anja. She’s shooting them with all she’s got, but while the bullets are punching holes all over their armor, it’s not doing much to slow them down… This is painful to watch.

The two are moving faster than it looks like they should. Anja’s trying her best to duck and dodge around them, but it’s hard when there’s two of them. Before long she’s been kicked off to the side…

I can’t stand it anymore, so I run out towards her. However, when I’m halfway there, I feel something pick me up by the collar of my shirt. I am lifted up by one of the ones who was just attacking Anja, who brings me face to face with himself.

“You don’t even have an awakened Persona yet,” he tells me. “Do you have any sense at all?”

“Let me down… you fucking… bastard… bitch-ass…” But my shirt collar is pressing against my neck, and it’s suffocating me…

“Or what, exactly? Are you going to keep swearing at me? That’s typical of children like you...”

From behind him, I see a huge blast of fire knock one of the others down and into the back of the one holding me, who shouts and tosses me in front of him as he loses his balance. I land flat on my ass right next to where Anja is laying.

I take this opportunity to immediately roll over and look over her. She’s conscious, but her face is scrunched up in pain…

“Are you okay? I ask.

“Uh… Owie… Got me right in the stomach… Nova, I… Didn’t study for the test…”

“What? What do you mean?”

She doesn’t say anything else, and just grimaces at me.

I get to my feet and whirl around to make sure I’m not being snuck up on. I see Ashley nearby, the two winged creatures flying around her head like two extremely large angry bees. The knights are currently preoccupied with Ted, who is making use of his small size to run into between each of their legs, causing the three to stumble around in confusion.

“You just gonna stand there?” Ashley gripes at me, trying to swat them out of the air with her sword.

“This is your fault, you know that?” I yell at her, suddenly understand what Anja was trying to tell me. “None of us were prepared for this at all! We should’ve done more exploring like I said!”

“All you’ve done this whole time is bitch at me about this and that,” she retorts, finally landing a hit on one of them and knocking it backwards. “What are you going to do about it?”

I’m so mad… I ought to show her...

[I see a figure standing across from me. It’s… no way… it can’t be...]

[“Chris Hemworth?” I ask. “Is that you?”]

[“Um… uh… I do not know of this ‘Chris Hemsworth’ fellow… I am your Persona.”]

[“Oh.”]

[“It seems that you are tired of having no say over your own life, and are finally ready to take matters into your own hands… a wise decision. You have proven yourself worthy to wield my power!”]

[“Cool.”]

[“Um… Alrighty then. Carry on.”]

[“Okay.”]

I know instantly, when I begin trembling, that it must be happening… the awakening of my Persona. I feel a mask on my face, and I tear it off. It sucks, but I know I had to do that to get my fighting abilities. Then, my clothes change around me… I’m wearing a long, golden robe, and some weird thing on my head that I can’t see. But what excites me most is the huge steel hammer I’m now holding in my right hand…

In front of me, Ashley is making an unusual face at me… She’s smirking?

“I thought that all you needed was a push…” she says.