. . . Fight!

There’s three of them coming towards you now. You shrug Hinako off your shoulder and have her back off. You focus your will and find the strength of your bond with Hinako. It gives you strength and the confidence to charge the creatures. You swing at the first ones mask with all your strength and connect with the mask on it. It shatters into dust and the thing melts into a puddle before you. The next one lunges at you with a set of sharp looking claws. You hold the bat out to parry, but the claws easily cut through it. Now you’ve only got half a bat against two “shadows” that would like nothing more than to rip you and Hinako apart. Hinako!

She screams and you swivel around.  One of the creatures is heading straight for her!  Forgetting the two behind you, you make a bee line for Hinako and chuck the now useless bat at the creature.  By some stroke of luck, it smashes against the mask and it melts like the first one.  Grabbing Hinako’s hand you high tail it out of there.  You run down the street with Hinako in tow, only to see more materialize in front of you.  In a split decision you turn and run into the store next to you.  You slam the door shut, lock it, and shove over a nearby book case to barricade the door.  Fortunately, this shop doesn’t have a windowed front so you should be okay for now.  The both of you catch your breath, “are you all right Hinako?”  She nods at you in response.  “What were those things?”  She asks.  “I don’t know, but I think I think I would’ve turned into one of those things if you hadn’t stepped in.”  You take a moment to take in your surroundings.

It looks like a pawn shop of some kind.  The walls and shelves are lined with everything from microwaves to novelty pens.  Good, maybe you can find some sort of weapon.  You climb over the shelf and check for anything pointy and imposing and tell Hinako to check for something she could use.  You check under the register and almost scream in satisfaction as you find a pump action shotgun.  You’ve never used one but you have the general idea, after a few tries you figure out where the safety is and open the slide to see that it’s loaded.  You find some spare shells and put them in your pocket.  Hinako comes over and shows you a katana she found.  You’re in Japan, of course there would be a katana lying around.  That should come in handy in case you run out of rounds.  Hopefully it you’ll find a way out of here before it comes to that.  You ask her “is there anything you can use?”  She nods and shows you the nanbu type 14 that was in a display case.  It an old world war 2 weapon but it looks like it’s been taken care of.  She found two clips for it so as long as she aims carefully, she should be alright.  She’s got a roofing hammer for when she runs out.  Now that you’re armed you hunker down and take stock of what happened outside.  You give Hinako the details about the dream you had (making sure to skip the risqué parts) and about the ringing and voices you heard.  She winces when you mention Persona as if she was familiar with it too.  When you explain what it felt like to be infected by that darkness and how she brought you back from the brink she throws her arms around you, as if she thought that talking about it would make it happen again.  You hold her tight as she starts crying again.  “Relax,” you say, “you can’t get rid of me that easily.”

That’s when the creatures decided to start pounding on the door.  You barely have enough time to fumble the safety off and cock it when they break through and start crawling in.  You aim carefully and take out the first one but the kickback was more than you expected.  It almost knocks you down.  You’re not going to last long like this and there are too many coming through the door.  Any second now you’ll be overrun.  You and Hinako head for the back exit, taking a few shots over your back as you go.  You barrel through the door into an empty back alley.  The things cut off your access to the main road so you have **** but to head further down the alley.  You run through the maze of back roads and alleyways with the monsters nipping at your heels.  You manage to take out the ones that get too close, but you’re wasting too much ammo in the process.  It’s not long before you’re down to your last four rounds.

You keep running until you see another wall coming up ahead of you.  It looks like you’ve run out of options.  You spin around and drop to one knee, readying yourself for a last stand.

The first one that rears it’s ugly head is dispatched with a well aimed shot.