Butterflies are migratory animals.  When winter comes, they travel to warmer climates, and return to their starting places when the weather changes.  But it’s a bit different from birds.  Not one butterfly manages to make the whole trip.  In the cold of winter, the butterfly moves slowly, and does not stop to mate or reproduce.  When it gets to its more temperate destination, only then will the children be born.  And it is the children who then go back to a home they’ve never seen when winter ends.  Every year the same.  It’s not a winter vacation, like it is for the birds.  Butterflies spend their whole lives fleeing the ice.

 Winter had come late to Touji City – possibly that was why Daijiro Ishikawa saw the butterfly in the snow.  The moon was full overhead, casting soft silver light down on the snow-covered sidewalks.  It gleamed off the icy streets.  The streets had been closed for the time being, and the silence was really broken only by the soft crunch of Daijiro’s shoes in the snow.  It was a magical moment, one in which a sensitive person could be overwhelmed by the feeling of mystery and power in the endless dark velvet of the night sky.

 Daijiro was evidently not such a person.  His dark eyes, glittering beneath a thatch of messy black hair, were fixed firmly on the ground in front of him as he trudged through the snow.  His expression was a sour one, an anger matched by the knowledge of how futile anger was in this situation.  He had thrown on a coat earlier to beat the cold, a rust-red overcoat with what must have been some kind of band or maybe gang logo on the back, a curious sword-and-stylized-L design with the words “Knights Errant” under it.  It was  buttoned up closely against the wind, and must surely have helped, but any heat it kept in was probably drained out by the fact that the snow he was walking through was unfortunately higher than his plain sneakers, and kept creeping in.

 Even in the cold and snow, though, he might have paused even for a moment at the moon that lit the city up almost like day.  But Daijiro couldn’t have cared less.  He mushed relentlessly onward.  Unfortunately, with the snow piled up, and his own preoccupation, he didn’t see where the sidewalk had cracked upward.  He caught his foot on the edge of the cement and stumbled.  Daijiro’s reflexes were good, though, and he saved himself from falling flat on his face.  But it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.  He snarled as he straightened up, muttering curses about snow, and winter, and the city.  And he looked up at the night sky, and the full moon.  And his anger died as he saw the butterfly, the golden butterfly, shimmering in the dark.

 It’s beautiful, he thought, before he could catch himself.  The moon was a huge disk, the butterfly tiny before it.  But through some trick of the light or imagination, it was as though Daijiro could see every detail of it, as though it were right in front of him.  It struggled against the wind.  It fluttered up and down, buffeted by the currents of the air, but its progress up and away was only impeded, never halted.  And in a moment it was among the trees, and lost to Daijiro’s sight.

 I’ve seen that before, Daijiro thought.  Somewhere before.  It’s déjà vu.  And then the wind rose screaming around him, and the cold sliced through the thin protection of his coat, and he returned to the here and now.  No, that’s stupid.  I’ve seen hundreds of butterflies.  Thousands of them.  They’re all over the place in spring.  What does it matter, anyway?

 Daijiro shook himself, and resumed his progress.  Almost immediately he collided with a man and this time did fall down.  Seething, Daijiro jumped to his feet.  “Watch where you’re going!” he snarled.  “You could have hurt me.”

 The man rose unsteadily.  He was dressed more warmly than Daijiro, but Daijiro looked a lot more comfortable.  The stranger was wrapped in layer after layer of old ragged coats and scarves.  Cold as it was, Daijiro figured he had to be 
roasting in there.  A hat was crammed down over his head, scraggly hair sticking out from the sides crazily.  Daijiro had him figured for an elderly vagrant who had been lucky enough to scrounge a winter wardrobe from some trash pile.

 But when the man raised his head, Daijiro realized he’d been wrong.  The face below the hat was a younger man, a bit older than Daijiro himself, and the eyes were sharp and cunning.  “I’m so sorry,” the man said solicitously.  “It’s this freezing cold.  You can’t think straight when it’s this cold.  I didn’t mean to knock you over.”

 “Yeah,” Daijiro said.  “Well, I’m surprised you can even feel cold under all those coats.”

 The man grinned.  “I’m always cold.  But I’ll be warm soon enough.  You better get in out of the cold yourself.”

 The man walked past Daijiro, who turned his head, confused and unsettled.  Then he turned back.  “Don’t I know you?”

 “I don’t think so,” Daijiro said.

 “Yeah?  Maybe not.  Well, I hope you warm up soon.”

 And with that, the man walked down the street.

 Daijiro shook his head.  He’s crazy.  But no crazier than me.  Or anybody else.  The whole world’s crazy.

 It wasn’t too much longer before Daijiro saw the building he’d been looking for.  Finally, my room.  I didn’t think it was this far away.  Daijiro let himself in and headed upstairs to his room.  Normally he took the stairs, but he took the elevator to the ninth this time.  The hour was late, but Daijiro didn’t bother trying to walk softly.  A neighbor poked his head out of his own room.  “Hey, would you mind keeping it down?” he said quietly. 

 “I’m tired,” Daijiro said shortly, and loudly.  “Keep it down yourself.”

 Another door opened, next to Daijiro.  “Excuse me,” a man said, coming out into the hallway.  “I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation.  It’s late, and Mr. Ishikawa’s tired.  I’m sure he didn’t mean to wake you up.”  His voice was soft and friendly.

 “Oh, all right,” the irritated man said, somewhat mollified.  “I’m up, guess I’ll go for a walk.”  The man closed the door firmly behind him, looking suspiciously at Daijiro, and left.

 “Sorry again for intruding,” the friendly man said.  “I thought…”

 “I don’t care why you did it,” Daijiro said.  “Just forget about it.”  He paused.  “How did you know my name?”  He studied the friendly man.  He did look familiar, but Daijiro’s list of acquaintances was small, and he didn’t fit any of them.  “Do I know you from somewhere?”

 The man smiled a bit.  He was rather plain looking, with mud-brown hair a bit longer than Daijiro expected on such a straight arrow, cut simply and combed neatly.  His clothes were a good match for the rest of them, plain slacks and a dress shirt.  Probably medium size, Daijiro thought.  This guy’s what they had in mind when they thought of the word average.  Couple years older than me, though.

 “I wasn’t sure, actually.  I just moved in, you see.  I looked to see who my neighbor was, and your name sounded familiar.  Maybe we’ve met before.  I wanted to meet you, but I’m sorry to do it like this.”

 “You sure apologize a lot,” Daijiro said.  “You really feel that bad about the things you say and do?”

 The man looked a bit downcast.  “Sometimes…”  He perked up.  “I’m Meiji Hamada.  Your new neighbor!  I’m sure we’ll be good friends.”  He offered his hand.  Daijiro looked at it.  They stood there for a few moments.  Finally, Meiji’s smile wavered, faded, and he dropped his hand.  But he didn’t move.  Daijiro fidgeted.

 “Yeah.  Just moved in, huh?”

 “That’s right.  My old place…well, it burned down.”

 “Burned down?  Was it that arsonist?”

 “That’s right.  The one they talk about on TV all the time.”  Daijiro shook his head.  “It doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Meiji continued.  “I mean, running around, burning down buildings in the middle of winter.  That’s the time to stay indoors.”

 Looking for a reason why?  You just don’t get it.  There’s no real reason to what people do.  They just do things.  It doesn’t make any sense because it’s not supposed to.

 “You don’t talk much, do you?” Meiji said.  “I’m sorry if I talk too much.  I guess I’ll see you around, sometime.”

 The stairs creaked.  Both men looked around.  Someone was coming up.  “I guess someone else had a late night, too,” Meiji said softly. 

 Daijiro peered into the gloom.  A bulky shadow was slowly making its way toward them.  A feeling of dread stole into Daijiro.  He tensed himself, clenching his fists.  “What is it?” Meiji asked.  “You know who it is?”

 The shadow crossed into a shaft of moonlight.  I knew it.  That guy from before.  Still wrapped up in an excess of winter gear, the man Daijiro had bumped into was the one heading toward them.  He recognized Daijiro only a beat later.  “Oh, it’s you!” the man said.  “If I’d known you lived around here I would have asked you for help.  I had a hard time finding this place in the snow.”

 “Can we help you?” Meiji asked politely.

 “Help me?”  The man seemed to find the idea amusing.  “I’m here for you, fool!”

 Meiji stepped back in alarm.  “W-what?”

 “You got away last time,” the man said.   “But this time there’s no escape!  It ends here!”  He lifted his hand.  Sleeves too big for his arms flopped down.   “Now die!”

 When his arm came up, Daijiro moved, his fist raised to send the man flying.  He was fast, but before he reached his target, the vibrations shook the hall, telling him he was far too late to do anything.  From the outside, a person would have seen every second floor of the apartment complex explode outward in shattered glass, tangled steel, and roaring flame. 

On the inside, Daijiro simply felt himself being lifted into the air by the force of the detonation, and a brief moment of heat and light before the darkness and the cold came back.
 
 

The first thing he felt was something brushing against his face, soft and feathery.  Feels good, he thought.  Like an angel’s wings.  Memory rushed in.  He opened his eyes and sat up with a shout.  A blaze of gold danced before his eyes and vanished.

He was sitting up on a smooth, cold stone floor.  Stone pillars, set in a large circle around him, rose into a perfect darkness.  There was a pool of light in the center of the room, coming from nowhere, for when Daijiro looked around, the stone floor terminated abruptly in the darkness, and it stretched overhead, unbroken by natural or artificial lights.  In the center, illuminated by the pool, was a massive design etched into the stone.  A butterfly.  Daijiro sat in the outline of a wing.  There were no shadows, he noticed.

But there was a man, standing in the middle of the design.  A man in a neat, gray suit.  His face was strangely ambiguous.  Daijiro got to his feet.  “Who are you?” he called out.

“Who am I?” the man echoed.  “Who do you think I am?”  He moved closer, and Daijiro saw the reason for the strangeness of the face was that it was a mask, half of it a perfectly sculpted human face – the other half a butterfly’s wing.

“I don’t know you,” Daijiro said.  Suspicion and anger penetrated the sleepy warmth in his head, washing coldly over his brain. 

“My name is Philemon,” the man said.  “For now.”

“I’m dead?” Daijiro said.  “Great.  A pointless death after a pointless life.  I always knew there wasn’t any reason in this world.”

 “No reason?  No logic?  No order?” Philemon inquired, putting his hands behind his back.  “Is that what you believe?”

 “Things just happen,” Daijiro said angrily.  “People are always asking why.  Does it matter why?  The result is still the same.  Does it matter why that guy blew up my home?  Does it matter why the other guy stopped me so I wasn’t asleep when he got there?  I’d still be dead, wouldn’t I?”

 “Are you dead?”
 That stopped Daijiro for a moment.  “Yeah…I guess so.  I mean, I couldn’t have survived that explosion.”

 Philemon spread his hands.  “Yet here you are.  So you give me a reason, Daijiro Ishikawa, why you are still alive.”

 “I don’t know.  Maybe someone saved me?  Maybe my neighbor, because he wanted to be my friend.  Or maybe the arsonist, because he didn’t want me to get hurt.”

 “Maybe so.  But you see, the reason for your survival is an important one.  It means one of those two men is your friend, and one of them is your enemy.  Doesn’t that make a difference?”

 “Yeah…it does…”

 Philemon gestured to either side.  The forms of the two men Daijiro had met took shape in the air beside him.  “You must decide, then, which is to be your friend, and which your enemy.”

 Daijiro thought.  The neighbor, well, he seems sincere.  But then again he also seemed pretty guilty about something.  And the arsonist seemed to want to kill him for some reason.  Maybe he’s not what he seems.  Then again, can I consider somebody who goes around blowing up buildings to kill one man my friend?

 “Meiji,” Daijiro said aloud.  “He’s not what I had in mind for a friend, but I think he’d try to save me if he could.  Why, I don’t know.”

 “Very well,” Philemon said, gesturing again.  “Then Meiji Hamada is your friend, and the other man is your enemy.  You have changed the pattern of causality.  Without altering the events of the present, you have made a significant change to your reality.”

 “You mean I can just choose?”

 “You said there was no order in the world.  In a world of chaos, do you not think that a man might determine a cause after an effect has already occurred?  In your world, cause and effect have begun to separate and drift apart.”

 “No order in the world…”

 “That is why I have brought you here, to this place suspended between consciousness and unconsciousness.  You are a believer of chaos.  But you have within you the power to bring order.  You do not believe that people have reasons for the things they do?  You must learn why it is that humans behave as they do.  Because reality is being undone, from the end, to the beginning.  Without your help, the world will become the chaos you think it is.   If cause and effect separate fully, if they cease to be intertwined at all, then all events will truly be random, without reason.  The power to change the cause of an effect is within you – or rather, it is within another you.”

 Philemon, and the room, began to waver, and look transparent.  “My time with you is limited,” Philemon said.  “You begin to return to the world you know.”
 
“If you give me this power, I’ll use it,” Daijiro said.  “For myself.  Maybe you have a reason for doing what you’re doing, but it might not be my reason.”

 “I have given you nothing,” Philemon replied.  “This power has been with you since the beginning.  I am simply showing you another you – a you that you have forgotten.”

 Daijiro began to feel hot.  Philemon was a haze now, the room almost gone.  “Why can’t you stop this separation?” he demanded.

 Philemon spread his hands.  “Because I am just a figment of your imagination.”
 
 
 

 Daijiro felt a wave of heat slam into him, then a gust of cold air.  He shuddered and opened his eyes.  He was lying on the ruins of a shattered door.  Meiji was picking himself up.  “You’re okay!” He seemed relieved, seeing Daijiro getting to his feet.  “I knocked you away from him – I guess I hit you a little too hard.  I’m sorry.”

 “Don’t apologize,” Daijiro said.  He looked around.  The room was empty, and the window was shattered, letting the cold night air flow in to do battle with the fires.  The floor creaked alarmingly as Daijiro took a step.

 “This building can’t last long,” Meiji said.  “We’ve got to get out of here!”

 The doorway filled with the shape of the arsonist, his clothes even more soot-stained than before.  “You’re alive?” the man raged, seeing the two of them more or less intact.  Flames flickered around him and on him.  Though his clothes were in bad shape, the man seemed unconcerned about the fire burning all around him.  “He said to make sure you were dead!”

 “Wait!” Meiji said.  “I don’t know what you have against me, or Mr. Ishikawa, but we’re all in danger here.  Let’s get out first, then we can talk about this!”

 “Danger?”  The arsonist laughed.  “You’re the ones who are in danger here, not me.  The flames are my friends!”

 He raised his hand again.  The fires around him bent forward, twisted themselves.  They were slowly taking on the shapes of sleek creatures, dogs or wolves.  Their mouths opened, revealing vicious flame-fangs.  Little shapes darted around the man on blazing wings, scattering cinders as they flew.

 “Demons!” Meiji yelled.

 The fire-wolves leaped for their throats.  For the second time this night, Daijiro was looking at his death.

 It was too much.

 He could feel it within him.  A stirring, a pressure, a feeling of energy welling up from some hidden place inside him, a voice in the back of his head, a voice that sounded exactly like his own.

 I am you, and you are me.

 He straightened, his eyes blazing with an intensity that overwhelmed the fires around him.  The arsonist drew back in alarm.  Blue fire, cool fire, erupted around Daijiro, tracing two circles at his feet, and blowing the real fire back.  A wind arose, whipping the end of Daijiro’s coat about, and ruffling his hair strongly, as though he stood at the edge of a tornado.  A pillar of blue light sprang up around him.  The power raged in him like another person, but it moved at Daijiro’s will.  And he called for it.  He clenched his fists.  He threw his head back and screamed it.

 “PERSONA!!!”

 It surged from his body and his soul, reached upward.  It was the image of a man, his body surreally thin and twisted, face in pain, but with arms and head raised in defiance.  Its voice rang out, deep and hollow-sounding, silencing the snapping and popping of the fire and the groaning of the overstressed building.

 “I am Tantalus.  More cunning than the gods themselves, I paid the price for their failures.”

 Daijiro’s head snapped forward.  He pointed toward the fire-wolves.  “Because you’re dead,” he said flatly.  Above his head, Tantalus gestured, and light speared out from its hands.  Obscure symbols traced themselves across the flanks of the fire-wolves.  They writhed and howled, caught in a ring of runes, and faded away. 

 Tantalus sank back down into Daijiro.  The light faded from his eyes.  He felt light-headed and dizzy.  He brought his hands to his face, staring numbly at them.  What…what was that?  Persona?  The power of another me?  He shook his head to clear it.

 “Kill him, too!” the arsonist screamed.  Flame-fairies darted forward. 

Daijiro looked up, eyes widening.  “What?”  They burned through the air, leaving streaks across his vision.  Too fast!  I can’t summon it again!

Meiji stepped in front of him, arms crossed in front of his face.  “You idiot!” 

Daijiro yelled, reaching for him. 
“PERSONA!!!”

Another image rose.  From within Meiji.  A powerful but faceless giant, its bearing strangely gentle. “I am the one who beats the plowshares into swords.  I am Ninurta, fighting for the humble ones.”

Ninurta reached out, and a wave of water slammed into the fairies.  Daijiro could smell the odor of freshly broken earth as the fairies’ light guttered and was swept away by the tide.

“Are you okay?” Meiji asked as Ninurta retreated within him.

“You have the power too?”

“I guess so,” Meiji said, smiling brightly.  “Lucky, huh?”

“You didn’t know?”  Daijiro covered his face.  “You are an idiot.”

“Persona?”  The two looked up.  The arsonist was staring at the floor, panting with the exertion of his summonings.  “You have Persona?  Did he give them to you, too?!”  He raised his hand.  “Just die!”

“PERSONA!!!”

A woman rose from the wild man, with a bloody face and a dress that shifted and moved constantly.  Daijiro’s stomach twisted.  The dress was made partly of living scorpions.  The woman screamed piercingly and pillars of solid flame erupted around Daijiro and Meiji.  The two clapped their hands to their ears, trying to block the ear-shattering noise.  The floor beneath them burst open, and they dropped through.

They landed heavily on the floor below.  Daijiro shook himself and sprang to his feet, scanning the hole in the ceiling.  The arsonist and his Persona were nowhere to be seen.  “We have to go after him,” he said.

“No, don’t!” Meiji said shakily, picking himself up.  “Can’t you hear it?  Can’t you feel it?  This place is going to come down around our ears.  We have to get out of here!”

 Daijiro looked around.  Modern buildings were strong, but they couldn’t compete with the power the arsonist had set loose within this one.  The sprinklers had long since given up the struggle, and though the building’s supports had not taken much damage from the force of the blasts, the fire had dealt the complex a fatal blow.  

“Right,” Daijiro agreed reluctantly.  “I’m not even sure how we’ve survived being in this inferno this long.  Our Personas must be shielding us from the worst of the heat.  But they probably won’t protect us forever.  Let’s get mov-“

 A door down the hall blew out.  A demon flapped its way out into the hallway, moving jerkily on wings too small to support its fat blue body.  Daijiro cracked his knuckles.  “Come on,” he muttered.  The demon hooted and zoomed towards him, flailing razor talons.  Daijiro twisted his body and the paw shot past him.  He slammed his fist squarely in the imp’s midsection.  The demon staggered and Daijiro followed it up, jabbing left and right. 

The blows seemed to melt the demon’s substance away.  But the ruined door spewed two more demons out to continue the fight.  “Hey!” Daijiro yelled.  The demon he was attacking had faded away, but the other two were flapping in his face.  Off-balance and unable to see, he was hard-pressed to fend off their attack, much less retaliate.  Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, a chunk of masonry as big as Daijiro’s head hurtled into one of the demons, throwing it up against the wall and knocking it senseless.  Daijiro followed the path of the rock back to see Meiji standing, his arm cocked and ready to hurl another stone. 

Daijiro smashed his elbow into the demon’s face and ran back to Meiji.  “Good shot.  Didn’t think you had it in you,” he said.

“Me neither,” Meiji replied, with an embarrassed grin.  “I wish there was another way, but sometimes you have to fight.”

The stunned demons were regrouping.  “Then let’s do it!” Daijiro yelled.
The two men flung their hands out at the demons.

“PERSONA!!!”

Ninurta and Tantalus leaped up, water and darkness swirling together into a vortex of liquid shadow that engulfed the demons.  Their bodies frayed and fell apart under the force of the Personas’ combined attack.

Daijiro surveyed the devastation as the Personas shrank.  “It was because you’re weak,” he told the departed demons with satisfaction.

“Sorry we had to do that,” Meiji added, rubbing the back of his head.  He shrugged weakly when Daijiro threw him a dirty look.

“We should probably go.”

The way out was complicated.  The elevators were a deathtrap, of course, and the stairs were frequently blocked by rubble, forcing the two to detour periodically across floors to get to the other staircase, hoping each time that the way down would be clear.  One more than one occasion fires and collapsed structure blocked the way down the hall, and they had to enter one room, cross through holes in shattered walls, and exit a different room, to get by.  They were harassed all the way by demons, but Daijiro was a natural fighter, the falling walls provided plenty of ammunition for Meiji, and of course, they had their Personas.  The opposition wasn’t nearly good enough.

In the lobby Meiji had to pause, worn out from the heat and the fighting.  “Just a little farther,” Daijiro said.  “We can make it.  Don’t stop now.”

“I need to rest,” Meiji protested.  “I’m sorry, but it’s just too hot.  I can’t fight my own body.”

Daijiro groaned.  Then he looked around.  The flames in the lobby were flickering, bowing away from them.  “The breeze feels good,” Meiji said.  “I’ll be okay in a minute.”

“Breeze?  Where’s it coming from?”  Daijiro turned around.  Behind him, blocking the main doors out of the building, was yet another demon.  A real monster, human and bird merged into a disgusting whole.  Powerful wings were kicking up winds in the lobby.  Behind Daijiro, the stairway they’d just come down collapsed in a shower of sparks.  Meiji sprang up and away in panic.

Daijiro assumed a fighting stance, ready to absorb the shock of the bird’s attack.  But it didn’t move.  It just hovered there, keeping its position with great sweeps of its wings.  Daijiro relaxed slightly.  “Why isn’t it attacking?”

The harpy let out a squawk.  “I’ve never seen a human before!”

Daijiro and Meiji gasped.  “They can talk?”  The voice was scratchy and squawky, but understandable.

“I’d like to talk to you,” the harpy continued.  “I’d like to learn about humans.”
“If you can distract it with your rock,” Daijiro said softly, “I can take it.”

“Wait,” Meiji said. “It wants to talk.”  Daijiro looked at him incredulously, but Meiji’s expression was serious.  “Try talking to it first.”

“All right,” Daijiro said reluctantly.  He turned to the curious monster.  “Hey, demon!  Get out of our way or you’re going back to the void!”

The demon screeched in alarm.  “I don’t like threats,” it said in a panicky voice.  “Are all humans so frightening?”

“You scared it!” Meiji said.  “Let me try.  You’re not exactly a people person.”
“It’s not exactly a people,” Daijiro muttered darkly. 

Meiji stepped forward.  “We have too much in common,” he said to the bird.  
“Let’s put our differences aside and talk out our problems.”

The harpy hooted softly.  “Go on…”

Emboldened by the interest, Meiji warmed to his theme.  “We can all work together.  We’ll teach you if you’ll teach us.”

The harpy flapped its wings excitedly.  “I like humans after all!  Here, take some of my power!”  Its wings exuded a glittering dust that fell over Meiji before he could think twice.  The harpy backwinged away out the doors and into the night.

“You okay?” Daijiro asked.  The dust that settled on Meiji evaporated away, but it seemed to have given him energy.  He looked rejuvenated. 

“I’m fine.  Feeling a lot better, actually.  I think the demon healed some of my wounds.  See what happens with a little friendliness?”

“Later,” Daijiro said.  “The building?”

Huge sections of the ceiling caved in as they dashed madly for the main doors and threw themselves bodily out of the ruined complex.  They landed heavily in a snow bank.  For a moment they lay there, relishing the cold and watching the steam that came off their singed clothes.  Then they looked back at the building.  The lobby was buried in debris.

Meiji sighed and flopped down.  Daijiro pulled himself into a sitting position, rested his chin on his knees, and stared moodily at the fire.

“I can hear the fire trucks,” Meiji said, his voice muffled by the arm draped across his face.  “It’ll be okay now.”

“Not even close,” Daijiro replied.  “Have you forgotten that guy still wants to kill you?”

“It’ll be okay,” Meiji insisted.  “We made it out of the building.  The police station isn’t that far.  We’ll just tell them what happened and they’ll arrest the guy.”
Daijiro laughed.
 
 
 

 After the furnace they’d been through, the cold felt good.  But only for a little while.  Meiji hadn’t been inside the police station long before Daijiro got off the bench and started walking around to warm up a little.  There was a drink machine not too far away.  Daijiro fed it its due and grabbed a warm can.  He sipped the hot tea, his hand in his pocket, jangling a few more coins.  After a moment, and a few more sips, he fed the machine again and took another can.

 Meiji was just coming down the shallow steps to the sidewalk when Daijiro reached the bench.  Daijiro tossed him the other can.  “Here.”

 Meiji caught it in surprise.  “Thanks.”  They both sat down, and Meiji opened his drink.  “That’s good.”

 “They didn’t believe me.”

 Daijiro didn’t say anything.

 “I guess I should have known.  You knew the police wouldn’t believe a story like ours.”  Meiji looked at him.  “You know, I’m quite a bit older than you are, but you’re the cynical one.”

 Silence.

 “You’ve had some run-ins with the police yourself, haven’t you?  Are you a gangster?”

 Nothing. 

 Meiji looked at his drink.  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.  It doesn’t matter.  I don’t think there’s any problem people can’t solve if they just work together.  If they just cooperate and are willing to give and take a little.”
 He took another sip.  “Thanks for the tea.  You didn’t have to do that.”

 “I’ll trade you for it.”

 “Huh?”

 Daijiro leaned back.  “I want to know about this power we have.  The power to call up other beings inside ourselves.  You have it, too.  Do you know anything about it?”

 “Well, it’s Persona, isn’t it?” Meiji shrugged.  “You know, that game.”

 “Game?”  Daijiro frowned.  “Oh yeah, that devil summoning game the kids play.”

 “Sure.  You walk around the room and ask the Persona to help you.  You must have played it when you were in school.  I know I did.  It always made me feel spooky.  But I never thought Persona would help me.”

 “No,” Daijiro said, shaking his head slowly.  “I never played that game.”

 “No?” Meiji frowned.  “You sure?”

 “Yeah,” Daijiro said.  “I always thought those games were stupid.”

 Meiji shrugged again.  “Well, what do we do now?  Find a new place to stay?”

 “It’ll just get burned down again.  And next time we might not be so lucky.”

 “It’s me the arsonist seems to want,” Meiji said.  “Maybe you should just leave me.”

 “I should,” Daijiro replied.  “But it seems to be my problem now, too.  I met this man…or maybe it was just a dream…”

 He explained his encounter with the enigmatic Philemon to Meiji.

 “Wow!” Meiji said.  “I’ve never met a psychic before.  I’m impressed!  So we weren’t even friends until you decided we were.  You can change causes just by deciding!  That’s remarkable!  So you’re supposed to search for the reasons why to help put cause and effect back together again.  Hmmm.”

 “I don’t get it,” Daijiro said.  “Who cares why this guy’s trying to kill you?  The only important thing is that he is, and we have to stop him.”

 Meiji just sat there, quietly.

 “What’s the matter?” Daijiro said.

 “Nothing.”

 “You thought of something?  You know why this guy’s trying to kill you?”

 “No…no, I don’t.”

 Daijiro scowled.  “I’m supposed to find the reasons why, right?  Okay, fine.  This guy’s your enemy.  But a straight arrow like you can’t have that many enemies.  Who have you ticked off lately?”

 “No-nobody,” Meiji said, drawing away.  “I always try to make people happy.”

 “Yeah?” Daijiro’s mind was working furiously.  “Earlier I asked you if you really had so much to apologize for.  You acted really funny after I said that.  What’s your secret, Meiji?  What do you have to be ashamed of?  Who are you really apologizing to?”

 “It’s my brother!” Meiji said abruptly.

 “Your brother?”

 “My brother, Reiji.  That’s who I should be apologizing to.  I’ve always tried to do what I could to keep people on an even path.  Always.  Ever since I was a little boy.  But I failed with my brother.”  Meiji swallowed.  Daijiro could see tears in the corners of his eyes.  He looked away, uncomfortable.  “He was living with me.  Last winter…I kicked him out.”

 “You kicked him out?”

 “He was always a troublemaker.  I thought I could change him.  Show him a different way of life.  But he wouldn’t change.  I decided the only way he was going to learn was if he had to be on his own.”

 “Huh.  Well, that’s how I learned about life.  I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

 “It’s different when you’ve lived comfortably for most of your life, and then you get sent out into the cold.”  Meiji said.  “That was the worst part.  You remember how cold it was last year.  Not as cold as this year, maybe, but it was cold.  I could have waited.  I could have given him another chance, or at least just waited until the weather was better.  But I told myself for once I wasn’t going to let anything change my mind.  I kicked him out.  That same night the blizzard came through.”

 Meiji sighed.  “I couldn’t sleep.  I felt so guilty about it.  I looked for him, but he wasn’t anywhere nearby.  I couldn’t go very far, with the storm.  All I could do was hope that he’d be okay.”
 “I’m sure he found shelter.”

 “My brother had never had to fend for himself.  For that matter, I wouldn’t know how to take care of myself out there.  But people get pretty resourceful.  How cold would you have to be before you started doing things you’d never considered, just to get warm?  How cold would you have to be before you thought that setting a building on fire might finally make the cold go away?”

 “You think the arsonist is your brother?”

 “I’m afraid it might be,” Meiji said softly.  “Your questions made me realize it.  We’re looking for someone who said he’s trying to get warm.  And the only person who might want to kill me is the one I sent out into the cold.”

 Daijiro sat back.  “Don’t feel guilty.  The decisions you made in the past are what made you the person you are now.  If you regret your decisions, then that means you regret the person you are now.  And that’s a waste of time.”

 “It’s hard to tell,” Meiji said, smiling faintly.  “But I think you’re trying to cheer me up.”

 “I’m just trying to keep you from wasting your time,” Daijiro returned.  “Nothing more. It’s useless to regret or try to change your life.  Does it matter what you do with your life?  Does it matter who likes you?  I don’t need your help, but if you’re going to tag along, then do something useful.”

 “A-all right,” Meiji said, amusement faded.  “So what’s the plan?”

 “Don’t you have any ideas?  He’s your brother, right?”

 Meiji bowed his head.  “I-I’d rather you make the decisions.”

 Daijiro sat forward, resting his chin on his hands.  “Persona powers or not, you can’t just blow up a building without any help at all.”

 “You think he really is a bomber, too?”

 “Could be.”

 “How would he find a bomb?”

 “You’re really naïve, aren’t you?  It’s simple to get hold of that kind of stuff.”  

Daijiro stood up.  “There’s a place.  Let’s go.”

 Meiji jumped up.  “Where?”

 “You know Peace Diner?”
 
 
 

 Peace Diner was a bar, and not the best, either.  Under ordinary circumstances Meiji wouldn’t have even considered going into such a place, especially not in the dead of night.  Rumor said that it was a favorite watering hole for gangsters.  He could believe it.  Business wasn’t exactly brisk tonight – Meiji figured it was probably too late/early even for criminals – but the people who were here were definitely not solid citizens.  They ranged from intimidating toughs in ill-fitting suits to brash youths in garish clothes.  Guns and knives were displayed openly on tabletops.  Laughing, talking, smoking, drinking, bright colors here and pools of shadow there.  A woman, her hair streaked with green and purple, threw a drink in the face of a distinguished looking gentleman with a long white moustache and a machine gun.  The counter at the back was polished wood, fencing off wine racks and barrels - a high-class bar serving the lowest class of clientele.  It exuded a quiet, surreal madness – a refuge of insanity in an otherwise calm and rational city.
 Meiji shook himself, swallowing hard, and looked away.  As fascinating as the customers were, they probably had firm views on privacy, and there were a lot of weapons out.  He followed Daijiro closely and tried to look tough.  Daijiro was heading for a table back towards a dim corner, occupied at present by only one man, a pale, scrawny fellow dressed in a peculiar black and white jumpsuit and adorned with a fair amount of jewelry.  Daijiro dropped into a chair opposite the man.  Meiji hesitated, then followed suit in another chair.

 “Get lost, kid,” the man said, in a thin high-pitched whine.  “This is my table.”
 “Word is you’re the man to see about explosives,” Daijiro said.  “Fitch, right?  We’re here for information.”

 “Explosives?  Never heard of ‘em,” Fitch sniffed.  “And I don’t know nuthin’.  Find some other sucker.”

 Daijiro rose from his chair instantly, quick-stepped over to Fitch, and lifted him up bodily by his shirt front.  “Don’t lie to me, little man,” he hissed.  Blue flames flickered around him.

 Fitch flapped his arms uselessly.  “H-hey!” he squawked, his face turning red.  “This guy’s nuts!  You got to help me, mister!”

 Meiji folded his arms.  “I can calm him down,” he said.  “But you’ll have to do me a favor in return.”

 “Sure!  Sure!  I’ll tell you what you want to know!  Just get this maniac away from me!”

 “He’ll cooperate,” Meiji said coolly.  “Put him down.”

 Daijiro released Fitch, who collapsed to the floor.  Daijiro reached down and hauled him into his chair, then resumed his own seat.

 Fitch tugged at his collar and wiped the sweat from his brow.  “You two are crazy!”

 “It’s just a little negotiation,” Meiji said.

 “Now pay up your end of the bargain,” Daijiro growled.  “You’ve been getting a lot of business lately, haven’t you?  From a man who really likes winter fashions?”

 “Yeah,” Fitch said nervously.  “He’s the arsonist that’s got everybody riled up, right?  If you’re looking to find him, you came to the right guy.”

 “He comes to you for materials?” Meiji demanded, incredulous.

 “Nah.  Way I hear it, that arsonist is straight up insane.  I wouldn’t go near him at all.  But I’ve seen him.  His friend buys stuff from me and a couple other guys in my line of work.  That one’s a real weirdo, too.”

 Meiji and Daijiro exchanged glances.  “Who’s the friend?”

 Fitch shrugged.  “Don’t know.  Strange thing is, the guy looks real familiar.  I’d swear I’ve seen him before.  But I can’t remember his name.”

 Daijiro half rose and Fitch shrank back.  “I’m not lyin’!” he protested.  “I really don’t know the guy.  There’s just something familiar about him.  He had me deliver the stuff to an old factory or something.  First time, I went with the delivery to make sure the guy didn’t double-cross me.  When I got there, it was your snappy dresser that was waiting for it.  He was real happy to see the stuff, too.  You could tell he was a firebug.  I figured he was crazy enough to be the one everybody’s talking about.  All I know is, I didn’t go back the second time.  Blowing stuff up ain’t how I get my kicks.”

 “You just get your kicks by helping people blow stuff up,” Daijiro said angrily.
 Fitch shrugged.  “Hey, what they do is their problem.  I’m just a businessman, see?”

 “Why would somebody else supply him?” Meiji asked quietly.  “Even if it’s not Reiji, he acts like his grudge against the world is strictly personal.”

 “It doesn’t matter,” Daijiro said.  “This familiar guy’s probably just some nut Reiji was using to avoid getting caught.  We don’t have to find out ‘why’ everything.”  He looked at Fitch, who squirmed a little under his glare.  “Tell us where this factory place is.”

 With a little more incentive from Daijiro, Fitch eventually explained the location of the abandoned building where he’d delivered the materials.  As Daijiro and Meiji left, the weedy fixer called out to them.  “Hope I helped.  If I never see you again, don’t come back!”  Daijiro turned to glower but the man had already scurried away into the shadows of Peace Diner.

 Daijiro turned to Meiji instead, who looked back at him, obviously hoping for approval.  “Not bad, back, there.” Daijiro said, grudgingly.  “I thought you wanted everybody to get along.”

  Meiji shrugged.  “Just following your lead.  A little intimidation, a little mediation.  But maybe next time you can follow my lead.”  Daijiro raised his eyebrows as Meiji sauntered toward the exit, attempting to look dangerous.  He might have pulled it off, if he hadn’t proceeded to step directly on a puddle of spilled drink.  His foot went skidding out from under him and he flailed his arms wildly, trying to regain his balance.  He failed spectacularly, crashing to the floor amid the amused, drunken cheers of Peace Diner’s patrons. 

 “Maybe not,” Meiji muttered, from the floor.
 
 
 

 Fitch’s factory was actually an old steel foundry, which had once been a major employment source for Touji City, but had been closed for years as the city turned away from heavy industry to encourage commercial growth.  The move had paid off for the city – it had prospered.  The company that owned the foundry had not.  It left its equipment in place when the foundry was forced to close its doors, gambling on being able to reopen it again soon with profits from other businesses.  When the company went bankrupt, legal entanglements involving multiple creditors prevented anyone from taking clear possession of many of its assets, including the foundry.  As a result, the building simply sat there, moldering, untouched.   The city went as far as to put up warning signs – though the power had long since been cut off to the building, the equipment was still dangerous to be around – but other than that, left it to rot.

 Naturally, this only made it more attractive to local kids – and the criminal element.

 Daijiro and Meiji pushed their way in through the ruins of the loading dock door.  Inside, lurid graffiti was scrawled over the entryway, and trash blew around the hard concrete floor, a mute testimony to the past presence of children with energy to burn.  Undoubtedly the winter had driven them from their hideout.  Snow had blown in through the wrecked door, and ice coated much of the room.  The metal guardrails on the stairs were slick and more dangerous than the steps themselves.  As they walked into the room, they saw the graffiti fading out into the shadows, leaving the huge room starkly bare.

 Meiji shivered as the wind picked up and howled around the empty room, swirling old newspapers around his legs.  It was colder in here than it was outside.  The dark, bleak room seemed to drain what little warmth he had right out of him. 

“This is the place?”

 “Maybe it’s warmer farther in.”

 Daijiro put his weight tentatively on the plain platform of the cargo elevator.  It seemed stable enough, but when he hit the button to send it to the next floor, it remained motionless.

 “No power,” Meiji said.  “I guess we’ll have to walk.”

 Daijiro looked up.  The cables of the cargo elevator reached blindly toward the unrelieved blackness of the higher stories.  “Yeah.”

 They pushed open a small door leading out onto the main floor.  It was a study in black and silver, of shadows and moonlight filtering in through jagged holes in the walls, and cracks in the roof, high above them.  Pale radiance glinted off of rusty catwalks and huddled machines, cold and silent, their labors long since ended.  Cobwebs and dust lined the massive molds that had shaped steel into the tools of men.  Meiji and Daijiro wandered in and out of the conveyor belts in silence.

 “Maybe…maybe he’s not here,” Meiji said.

 The silence was starting to unnerve him.  Their footsteps pounded and echoed in the emptiness.  He could hear the silence like it was a sound itself.  He listened to the silence, and began to hear a rhythm, a subtle, insistent pulse on the threshold of his awareness.  Beat-beat.  Beat-beat.  He stopped in the middle of the floor, straining to hear it.

 “What is it?” Daijiro asked.

 “There’s something…”

 Beat-beat.  It was louder now, stronger.

 “Can’t you hear it?” Meiji demanded. 

“I don’t hear anything.”

 “What is it?  Is it only in my head?  It’s so loud!”  He covered his ears.  BEAT-BEAT.  “It’s like…like.... like a heartbeat.”  And at his words the pulsing stopped.
 
“You!”

 The voice boomed through the cavernous room.  Daijiro and Meiji looked up.  High above them, on a catwalk running the length of the room, a shrouded figure stood staring back down.

 “You let the cold in!  Why did you do that!”

 Meiji yelled up to him, his voice cracking.  “Reiji?  Is that you?”

 “You…you know me?”

 “I’m your brother, Reiji!  Don’t you remember me?”

 “My…brother…”

 “I’m sorry, Reiji!  I’m so sorry about sending you out into the cold!”

 “The cold…  Ah…  Ahhhhhh!”  Reiji threw his head back, screaming.  “Why is it so cold?  Why can’t I get warm?”

 “He’s out of his mind,” Daijiro growled.  “We’re going to have to take him down.”

 “You can’t do that,” Meiji said.  “He’s my brother!”

 “I don’t care,” Daijiro said.  “And neither should you.”

 “Are you even human?” Meiji demanded.

 “You shouldn’t care,” Daijiro said, “because he doesn’t.  Can’t you see that?  He’s only thinking about one thing.  The cold.  And he’ll burn the world up to get out of the cold.”

 “Burn!” Reiji yelled.  “He said if I burn, I’ll be warm again!  He showed me…the fire of another me!”  He raised his fist. 

“PERSONA!!!”

The figure of the woman, covered in scorpions and streams of blood, rose from within him.  It spread its arms wide.

“No more cold!”

The world burst into scarlet and orange brilliance, and fire ignited all around the two hunters.  Meiji shielded his eyes and flinched wildly, expecting to be burned up in an instant.  When he felt only the intense heat of an oven instead of the obliterating heat of a bone-crisping inferno, he looked up, and saw Daijiro, blue fire flickering around him in an intermittent aura, looking at him.  “Oh…our Personas…  I guess I forgot.”

Groaning noises filled the air to override the roar of the magical fire.  As Meiji watched the old, crusted conveyor belts shuddered to life.  Great claws swung back and forth, haltingly, a mockery of the long-gone life of the foundry.  Vats tipped and poured, runnels of liquid flame spilling from them to consume the molds below.  Meiji’s mind spun at the thought of the terrible power that could have done such a thing.

“You’re not burning!” Reiji called.  “But you’ll burn soon enough!”  He laughed insanely and ran across the catwalk to a door.

“After him!” Daijiro said.

The blazes were congealing into demon-shapes, as they had at the apartment complex.  Twisted shapes made of flame, or shadowed forms wielding it as a weapon, they stalked the two as they ran through the maze of machinery.  Daijiro’s fists lashed out as they ran, knocking beasts aside.  Meiji stooped to scoop up hunks of scrap metal to hurl.  When talon, fang, or fire came too near, their Personas rose up and sent cascades of water or planes of darkest night to tear through the attackers.

They reached a door whose fading, ragged sign proclaimed it to be a stairwell.  Meiji tugged on the handle.  “Locked!”

“Figures,” Daijiro said, smashing his fist into a squat demon’s too-wide head.  
“There has to be a key here somewhere.”

Meiji looked around desperately.  “Where would a key be in this place?”

“There should be a small room for security guards.”  Daijiro ducked under a heavy-handed swipe.  “Keys would be kept in there.”

“A small room…small room…”  There was an unobtrusive, unmarked door across the room.  But it was blocked on all sides by fire. A conveyor belt ran over some of the flames, but it was running the wrong way. 

 “I see it – I think,” Meiji said hesitantly. 

 Daijiro flung his hand out and Tantalus surged forth.  A black pit opened beneath the demon confronting him and swallowed it up, vanishing soon after.  “Let’s go for it.”

 The two dashed through the conflagration and leaped up on the conveyor belt.  Fighting its relentless motion, they raced to the security room door.  The belt ended before the door, of course.  “W-what now?” Meiji yelled, breathlessly.

 “Follow me,” Daijiro said, and accelerated past Meiji.  As he reached the end of the conveyor, he jumped over the fire, and crashed into and through the door.

 Meiji gasped.  “I…I’m not sure about this!”  But if he stopped to think, the belt would carry him back.  He didn’t have much choice but to follow suit.  He pushed off from the end of the belt, and to his great surprise found himself arcing over the flames, and into the relative coolness of the security room.

 Picking himself up, he joined Daijiro in searching for the key.  It didn’t take them too long to run through the possibilities in the cramped little room. 

 “The cabinet,” Meiji said, gesturing at the shallow cabinet built into the wall.  Daijiro tugged experimentally at the handles, but Meiji shook his head.  “Electronic lock,” he said.  “We’ll need the code.”

 He rummaged through drawers.  “Well, where’s the code,” Daijiro snapped.

 “Ummm.”  Meiji held up a scrap of paper.  “I think this is it…but it’s falling apart.  I can read the numbers, but there’s several listed.  Some of them are probably codes for different areas.”

 “Try them all.”

 “No, we can’t!” Meiji said.  “I’ve seen these types of locks before.  If you enter in the wrong code, they lock down completely and can’t be opened.  It prevents people from just entering random codes.  We can’t just guess!”

 “We’ve got no choice!”  The harsh light from the doorway was suddenly blocked by the bulk of more fire-demons.  “I’ll hold them off.  You pick a code.”  He took a fighting stance in front of the door as a flapping beast swooped on him.

 “No!” Meiji said.  “I can’t do it.  I just can’t!”

 “What?”  Daijiro turned his head in surprise.  The winged demon sank its fangs into Daijiro’s arm.  “Ah!”

 “Daijiro!”

 “Make a decision!”

 “I can’t…”

 “Fine.”  Ignoring his wound, Daijiro sent a wave of night into the demon, knocking it back.  He jerked the paper away from Meiji and jabbed in the first code listed.  With an electronic click, the cabinet doors swung open.  Daijiro grabbed the key marked ‘Stairwell.’  “Let’s get out of here.”

   The doorway to the second floor catwalks opened easily.  The steel was hot, but the walkways seemed stable, so Daijiro and Meiji ran across them swiftly, heading for the doorway Reiji had disappeared through.  They burst through into what must have once been an office area, but was now emptied of all furnishings - a plain steel cube, with a huddled shape in the corner.

 “Reiji!” Daijiro said.  “It’s over now.”

 “Come with us,” Meiji pleaded.

 Reiji looked up.  “It’s cold out there…so cold…” he said softly.  “I don’t want to be cold…”

 “It’s not cold anymore,” Meiji said.  “It’s warm now.  Come with us and be warm,”

 “It’s a lie,” a voice said, shocking Daijiro and Meiji.  The voice was colder than Reiji’s fears, a voice that reeked of malice.  “They’re lying to you.”

 “A lie?” Reiji’s head whipped around, side to side.  “It’s…it’s you, isn’t it?”

 “It’s cold out there, Reiji,” the voice continued.  “And it just keeps getting colder.  You know the only way to get warm, don’t you?”

 Meiji and Daijiro looked vainly for the source of the voice, but they were all alone in the room.  “Who is it?” Daijiro said angrily. 

 “I…I don’t want to be cold…” Reiji said, clawing his way up the wall to stand, unsteadily, before them.

 “You’ll always be cold, Reiji,” the voice told him.  “Unless you kill.  Unless you destroy.  Unless you burn!”

 “I’ll burn it all!” Reiji screamed.  “I’ll burn it all down!”

 “Reiji!” Meiji yelled hopelessly.

 “Forget it,” Daijiro said.

 Reiji swung his gaze over to the two of them, his eyes glazed, seeing past them into a private world of ice.  “If I kill you…the cold ends!”

 “PERSONA!!!”

 Three voices rose as one, three shadow selves sprang from their hidden places.  But Meiji froze, caught in indecision, and a river of flame was pouring from Reiji’s Persona toward his head.  Daijiro crashed into him, knocking him down.  “You have to fight,” Daijiro growled.  “There’s no choice!”

 “A-all right,” Meiji gasped.  “If there’s no other choice, I’ll fight.”

 He picked himself up, just in time to see a flash of fire from Reiji.  He threw his arms protectively in front of his face, and felt the reassuring presence of Ninurta move to block the attack.  Heat raged around him like a living thing, lessened by the presence of the bulky Persona.  He lowered his arms as the heat subsided, and gestured in return.  Ninurta slammed its fists into the floor, shaking the room.  No matter how insubstantial the Persona looked, it commanded unbelievable force.  Water burst from under the floor – broken pipes, or raw Persona power, Meiji couldn’t tell.

 Water reared up, poised to crash down on Reiji. “Too cold!” he shrieked.  The wild-eyed man twisted away from the deluge, and drew his fires around him like a cocoon. He stood in the middle of a holocaust, unscathed, and Meiji’s water attack burst into hissing steam. 

 “Because you’re in my way!” Daijiro shouted.  Tantalus rose, and a swirl of black power opened above Reiji, like a hole leading into nothingness.  The flame flickered and stretched toward the hole.  Snarling, Reiji raised his arms above his head as if in celebration, and the fires leaped to respond to his will.  The vortex ignited and was consumed.

 “Burn, burn!”  Reiji cast bolt after bolt of fire at them, sending them scrambling out of the way.  The floor, torn up by Ninurta's attack, offered Meiji plenty of ammunition.  He snatched up a jagged piece of metal and hurled it with all of his strength at his brother.  It struck him square, and Reiji flinched.  In that moment, Daijiro charged forward. 

 His blow caught Reiji on the jaw, and the arsonist staggered back, legs buckling.  He collapsed into a heap of winter clothing.  The fires subsided.  Daijiro advanced cautiously, ready for another fire blast.  But Reiji blurred upward, moving with abnormal speed, and flung his own chunk of debris straight for Daijiro.  It took him full in the face and sent him spinning across the room.

 “Daijiro!” Meiji yelled in panic.

 Daijiro was only down for a moment before he struggled back to his feet.  His arm, wounded by the winged demon, hung loose, and blood was running down his face, from the long cut on his forehead, and from his mouth.  But his eyes were shining bright, and he grinned like a demon himself through the blood.  “That was pretty good,” he said, wiping his mouth.  “Now it’s my turn.  See how you like the temperature in the dark world.”

 And he, too, blurred with superhuman speed, streaking across the room to pummel Reiji.  Reiji dodged with surprising grace, and the fires re-ignited around him.  His arms stretched out to grapple with Daijiro, coat sleeves flapping in their struggles.  Daijiro hit him solidly in the stomach, then slammed an uppercut into his chin as Reiji doubled over.  Reiji fell to the ground, but his hands closed on another chunk of metal.  Daijiro loomed over him to deliver a finishing blow, and Reiji threw again.  Daijiro jumped back to avoid it, and Reiji got to his feet.
“Burn, burn!” Reiji screeched again.  He clenched his fists.  His Persona rose and the flames leaped higher, Meiji and Daijiro felt the heat increase, even through the protection of their Personas. 

“He’ll bring this whole place down!” Meiji said.  “He’ll kill us and himself, too!”

“Our Personas aren’t strong enough to stop his,” Daijiro said.  “We need to combine our powers.”

“Combine?”

“Fuse our spells into one,” Daijiro said.  “We make a pretty lousy team, but it’s the only way I can see to get out of this.”

“All right,” Meiji said.  “I’m with you.”

“PERSONA!!!”

Tantalus and Ninurta shimmered into existence, and power roiled around the two.  Words formed themselves, in their heads and on their lips, words spoken by them, and by other selves.

“HELL TIDE!!!”

It began to rain in the room, a cold, dark drizzle.  It wasn’t nearly enough to flood the room, but water welled up from every crack, seeped through the walls.  It rose around the combatants like a living thing, gray and black like a stagnant stream suddenly overflowing its banks to drown everything around it.  It moved as a wall toward Reiji, passing through Meiji and Daijiro like a heavy mist.  Reiji cowered before it, shrieking in instinctive terror.  “No, no, no, NO!!!”

It rolled inexorably over the man, smothering his screams and struggles, rendering both abjectly futile.  Serrated shards of black ice glinted through the awesome supernatural wave.  It washed over Reiji, and ran red as it streamed away into whatever limbo it had come from.  The drizzle slackened, died.
As the water drained away, Meiji and Daijiro seemed to wake up, as if they were emerging from a trance. 

  “Reiji!” Meiji shouted.  As the water receded, it revealed Reiji, flat on his back, eyes staring blankly, water running from his slack mouth.
 Meiji knelt down beside him, shaking him.  Daijiro stood nearby, poised in a fighting stance for any other tricks the master of fire might have planned.  Reiji coughed, spat out water. 

 “Meiji…  It’s you…”

 “Yes…”

 Reiji smiled.  Some of the clothes had been shredded or washed away, the rest hung limply on his body, more sodden rags than clothes.  Daijiro could see he was younger than he had thought, and his face and hair, cleaner now, looked like anyone else’s.  He looked like a younger version of Meiji, with lighter hair and build.  His eyes were clear.

 “I thought so.  I…don’t feel cold anymore.  I actually…feel warm.”

 “You do?”

 “Yes…” Reiji sighed.  “It’s strange.  I wasn’t thinking…before.  I didn’t even…really recognize you.  I couldn’t think about…family.  Not when it was so cold.”

 “But you’re not cold anymore,” Meiji said.

 “Not cold.  And now I recognize you.  You’re my big brother.  I’ve…caused you more trouble…haven’t I?”

 “It’s…all my fault.  I’m the one who sent you out.  It was my decision to send you into the cold.  I was wrong…and this is what happened.”

 “No!” Reiji tried to sit up and choked.  He coughed and subsided.  “You were right.  I was trouble.  I don’t blame you at all.”

 “But…but you tried to kill me.”

 Reiji closed his eyes.  “I didn’t know…it was you.   I was trying to get warm.  He told me…he showed me another me…a me who was warm.  I just wanted to be like that other me.  I couldn’t think about anything but getting out of the cold.  Nothing else.  Not family, not friends, not even taking care of myself.  Nothing mattered except my need to escape from the cold.  What you did…was what I needed.  After that…it was all my fault…  I believed him when he said…if I burned things…if I burned everything…I’d never be cold again.”

 He spasmed again in another cough, and collapsed.

 “Is he all right?” Daijiro asked.

 Meiji checked him over.  “We need to get him to a hospital.”

 “Hospital.  To save his life?”

 “Of course!”

 “Huh.”  Daijiro dropped his arms.  His face twisted.  “A guy like that?  He wasn’t even looking for revenge.  He was just acting out of instinct.  All he wanted to do was get warm.  Pathetic.  Do you really think a life like that is worth saving?”

 “I do,” Meiji said.  “Maybe he was just acting out of base instincts, just following his base nature.  We’re all like that.  There’s always something driving us.”

 “Being at the mercy of something so basic…no way am I like that,” Daijiro said.  “Nobody who submits to that is worth saving.  Take him to the hospital if you want, but don’t look at me for help.  I’m finished here.”

 “Excellent…excellent!”

 It was the voice again.  In the intensity of the fight, Daijiro and Meiji had forgotten all about it.  If anything, it was more hate-ridden than before.

 “You are so right,” the voice said.  “Humans at the mercy of basic forces, of the elements themselves, aren’t worth saving.  But you’re right, too, humans can’t help it.  There are forces that control everyone’s destiny, forces that no one can escape.  But it’s not worth living a life at the mercy of drives like those.”

 “You’re the one Reiji was talking about,” Daijiro said.  “And Fitch, too.  You’re the one who helped Reiji, who told him what to do.  You’re the force that drove him.”

 “I told him the truth,” the voice said, laughing.  The laughter cut the air like a razor.  “I told him that he would never truly be safe from the cold unless he stood in the middle of a funeral pyre.  Everything else was him.”

 “You brought a Persona to life within him, just like ours.  But not a protector – a destroyer.”

 “You want to blame me for that, too?  But it wasn’t me.  Personas are a part of all humans.  I showed him another self, but I never showed him what to do with it.  What you see here, what happened before, is the work of a single human, with the power to make his desires come true.  He had everything he needed to be happy.  All the warmth he needed, was right inside him.  And what did he do with that power?  He destroyed.  He brought chaos and devastation where order once stood.”

 “That’s humanity,” the voice spat.  “A creature of chaos, driven mad by impulses beyond his control.  But when given the power to overcome those impulses, he denies it, and returns to chaos.”

 “Why?” Meiji demanded.  “Why did you do all this?”

 “Call it…an experiment.  A test to confirm my theory.”

 “You’re mad!”

 “I know the truth.  I embrace the chaos that is mankind.  Enough clinging to the thin shield of order.  If we are creatures of chaos, then let us live by chaos, and die by chaos.”

 “Show yourself,” Daijiro demanded.  “I’ll answer your theory right here.”

 The voice laughed again.  “But what if I am not even here,” it said.  “In a world of chaos, where effect need have no cause, why does a voice have to have a speaker?”

 “Cause and effect…you can manipulate cause and effect?” Daijiro asked.  
“Sorry.  So can I.  And I say you’re right here.  Because I can hear you.”
 And at his words, the shadows in the room, the false night that had been growing as the distant sun began to drive away the moon, began to run together, and congeal, flowing smoothly into a darkness that might have concealed a man.  And the man stepped out of the darkness.

 Meiji jumped to his feet, and Daijiro tensed.  But both were stunned by his appearance.  He was older than Daijiro – about Meiji’s age.  His clothes were garish but ragged.  Dark hair hung limply and greasy, masking a dirty face, but his eyes gleamed like stars through them, a burning gaze the two could feel.  He wore an overcoat like Daijiro’s, but black, and carelessly unbuttoned, stained.  Daijiro could feel the dead weight of madness, the feeling he had expected to find in Reiji but hadn’t.  Here, then, was the madness that had shaped Reiji into a killer, despite his fancy words.  His hands were in his pockets, but he lifted one out in a casual gesture, and Daijiro saw he wore black gloves. 

 Meiji felt that same surreal, otherworldly quality that he had felt at Peace Diner.  It was the feeling that he had made contact with a reality almost indescribably alien that was at the same time so close to the reality he had known all his life that the two were interwoven beyond separation.  The man’s power, his madness, his dress, everything about him ran counter to the humdrum routine Meiji had lived all his life.  And at the same time he felt a feeling of déjà vu, of familiarity, as though any second he would remember the man’s name and greet him as a friend.  It was an impossible, paradoxical feeling.

 The Familiar Man laughed again.  “Well, so you have some power.  But we know what people do with power, don’t we?  How long will it be before you destroy yourself and everything else with it?”

 “I won’t destroy everything,” Daijiro said.  “I’m not like the people you talk about.  Nothing drives me.  I only do what I want to do.  And what I want to do is destroy one thing.  You!”  Daijiro lashed out, but the Familiar Man was suddenly behind him, and his fist flailed air.

 “You missed me, Daijiro,” the Familiar Man said, “because I wasn’t there.”

 He put his hand back in his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.  “I know who you are,” the Familiar Man continued.  “And I’m happy you came to meet me.  This will make things even better.”  He cupped a cigarette in his hand, and it was lit, without any apparent light.  “So you live free, do you?  You, of all people?  We’ll see how long it takes you to recognize your own futility.  Then you’ll understand.  Just like I do.”

 “I’ll never see things the way you do,” Daijiro said.

 “But you already do, Daijiro.  You know there’s no meaning in life, that nothing matters.  You’re so close.  Why not join me?  I’m going to show the world the chaos inside everyone.  Those who can embrace the chaos will survive and prosper.  Those who don’t will die.  You should join me, Daijiro.”

 “I don’t believe there’s any meaning in life.  And I know, maybe better than you, how easily people turn to destruction and chaos.  But…”  He looked down at Reiji.  “But I just don’t like you.”

 The Familiar Man blew out a cloud of smoke and laughed.  “Then come find me, Daijiro. Reiji was just a simple matter.  Brute force.  It doesn’t matter that you beat him.  You’ll never make it.  But I’d like to see how far you go.”
 
He was thinning out.  Moonlight shone through his form as it faded away to insubstantiality.  “Find me if you can.  Follow the Path of Demons.”
 
And he was gone.
 
 
 

 Daijiro punched the wall in anger. Meiji bent to tend to Reiji.  “What are you going to do?” he asked quietly.

 “Find him,” Daijiro said.  “Reiji was just the first.  There’ll be others…”

 “But maybe others to help,” Meiji said.  “Others like me.”

 “I don’t need your help,” Daijiro said.  He looked at Meiji.  “But your brother does.  Stay with him.  Stay out of this.  You’re not a fighter.”

 “You’re right, I’m not,” Meiji said.  “I don’t know how much help I can be.  You said it yourself – we make a lousy team.  But we’re in this together.  I’m not going to back down.”

 “Then maybe there’s hope for you,” Daijiro said, with a smile so slight Meiji wondered if he had just imagined it.  "But we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
 “Where do we go?”

 “First…” Daijiro looked down.  “First we go to a hospital.  Then…then we follow the Path of Demons.”

 With everything they had seen and done this night whirling in their minds, they left the foundry.  The first light of dawn touched them as they departed.  The disk of the moon was almost invisible now. But a shape fluttered across it, clear even in the wan light.  Neither Daijiro nor Meiji saw it.

It had hooked talons and a cruel beak like the blade of a sword.

No more butterflies.
 
 

A path of demons.  A city stained with blood.  The fear in her heart, and the inevitable consequence.

Next:
Stage 2
what you are in the dark