Chapter One

What Will Happen:

"Joker," she stops, not wanting to continue.

"Cheater," he greets, still not looking at her. When the silence is broken by her angry sigh, he turns. If he didn't know her – if he didn't care – he wouldn't have picked up on her anxiety. "What's wrong?"

She holds up a hand, stopping him from coming closer. "…We need to talk."

"Alright," he nods, leaning back and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

It takes her a moment to relax. She splays a hand over an eye. "I need to run something by you."

"Okay."

"I need you to trust me."

He really looks at the smaller teenager. "…What's this about?"

Yume removes her hand from her eye to clench her arm. "I have a bad feeling."

What Has Begun:

Yume is her parent's favourite toy.

And honestly, Ishii Yume would have done anything for her parents… if they were her first set of parents. But they're her second set. This doesn't mean little child Yume doesn't love them. Quite contrary, she loves these people – the Ishii family – lots; especially since they spent the first three years of her life cooing and entertaining her.

But she is not a toy to break, to be remoulded. Little Yume stands firm on her decisions, showing a force of will that causes her parents to see a matureness in their daughter. A quiet three year old with a firm will is not a broken child. But, to the thrill-seeking lives of her parents, little Yume turns out to be boring.

Privately, Yume would disagree. There is nothing boring about having a second chance at life.

After three years, her parents turn the reigns of raising their daughter to babysitters. This continues for a few months, until one day neither her parents nor a babysitter show up for a week.

If she hadn't lived for a handful of decades before this, she would not have survived.

And being forgotten… left behind…

That hurts.

But she holds her head high and buys her own groceries with the babysitter money.

Cooks her own food while standing on a stool.

Washes her clothing in the laundry room three floors below her parent's apartment.

And finally, gets a computer.

Because you might die, but old habits don't.

After 'paying' rent and utilities, little Yume's first search is for her parents.

She hopes they are enjoying their 'business' trip in the Bahamas.

Then she looks for the babysitter.

Hit by a car; currently in the hospital with amnesia.

With all this independence, she's not going to alert anyone to her problems.

Especially since it looks like Tokyo's police force isn't at its best at the moment.

It's not until months later that something interesting happens.

Yume is doing her past-life job of scanning through online articles, pulling up files on the most 'remarkable' people. There are a lot of shady ties between everyone, a few names even trigger recognition from her old memories, but nothing is slapping her in the face. So she goes back to scanning online newspapers.

And, a few hours in, comes across a picture.

It's not men celebrating on the front that catches her attention. It's a person off to the side, on an old flip phone, that triggers her focus. She peers closer, blinks, and can faintly make out an eye on the phone's red screen.

An app on a flip phone. Nothing too innocuous about it, but her mind latches onto that like a-dog-with-a-bone. She starts searching for that app. The girl looks up the phone-make, and then the apps allowed for it. Not finding what she wants, she goes to the phone's source code.

It's there. An inactive app that can only be brought forth under certain conditions. From what she finds, it's the app's creator who's supposed to activate it. Or deactivate it.

So, she flips them an unseen, metaphorical middle finger by downloading and activating it herself.

That is the slap in the face she was waiting for.

"Persona," the girl whispers, gazing around the other world with horrified awe. She recognizes it for what it is, and it's terrifying.

She closes the app, breathing hard.

There had been hope she could pick up a job like her last one. Somewhere she could work for bettering the world, a background character who gathers information for the heroes. But in the world of Persona, there is no good and evil. Everything is shades of grey. So much grey, it's a storm the world drowns in.

The things she's dug up about the police make sense now. The world has to curl for the protagonist to straighten. That means she can't get a job in law or security, because in a few years the corruption will run too deep.

If she tries to go the other way, her heart will twist beyond repair.

The small girl smirks.

When in Persona, do as the others do.

Git Gud.

And then, little Yume cackles.

Disclaimer: I don't own Persona. All rights belong to their respective owners.

A/N: I've been going through my old, unposted stories and found this. I don't know… I thought it might be nice to put this up now that I've finally finished the game… Thanks for reading