Lori spoke quietly in response. "Wait...are we really cut out for this? Maybe we got lucky..."

Rijk shook his head. "No," he replied. "You reached within yourselves and drew out what you needed. If you had not been chosen, you would not have been able to draw the power of Persona. I have utmost confidence in you, and your abilities. Each Persona is different, and some are more powerful than others."

Walski spoke up. "So why not just give us all the same Persona - like a really powerful one, instead of differnet ones?"

"Because a Persona by definition, becomes and is a part of you," Rijk said. "A Persona is a side of yourself that you may or may not choose to show. Personas are indeed somewhat separate entities, but they bond to a certain individual only if the individual has been given the power, and if they find a part of themselves in the individual. You have been endowed with a Persona who not only gives you certain abilities, but also is well-suited to working with you. The longer you are onded to a Persona, the better you work together and the more you will learn from each other..."

"It makes sense," Bradster said, crossing his arms. "In a weird kind of way..."

"So where do we go from here, then?" asked Laura.

"Seek out the source of the disturbance in the skies. Fight your way to Guido's office - then you will know what to do." Rijk said. The masked man turned to disappear, but then stopped short. "One more thing," he said ominously as he began to fade. "Beware of those who are more equal, and more close to you, than you think....beware the DarkSiders. Their defeat....depends on your courage.....and your willingness...." Rijk's voice faded on the wind that blew through the room, his form becoming more and more insubstantial, until he himself disappred into nothingness.

"That was....interesting. Can't say much more than that, really..." said Bradster, blinking.

"What I want to know is what he meant by 'beware the DarkSiders'. Talk about your prophetic warnings and harbingers of doom," said Rex. He looked at his hands. " I can't believe I was doing what I was doing...I mean, I've taken martial arts, but that was a lonnng time ago. And I don't remember umbrella throwing as part of the training..."

Walski nodded. "I think we're all changed pretty significantly....as for these 'DarkSiders, we can take 'em. This Rijk guy doesn't need to accuse _me_ of not having enough courage and/or willingness..!"

Laura looked at them all. "Well, we can't worry about any warnings at the moment. We have to get to the Sebec building...it's not only the tallest building in the town, but also the spot where that lightning hit..that's gotta be it."

Emily, who had been kneeling next to the now-uncovered woman under the rubble, called them over. "She's coming to again...I think...it's...."

"Holee....." exclaimed Bradster. "It's..Caroline...!"

The group kneeled next to Caroline, half buried in the rubble of the collapsed wall. She groaned in pain as she attempted to turn her face to look at everyone. Opening her eyes, she looked at the group around her weakly. With effort, she drew her arms out and put them to her face, whcih was covered with ugly cuts and bruises. When her hands came away with her own blood, she laughed faintly and said "Not one of my better days....." Her once lilting Australian voice was accented with pain.

Emily put her hand on Caroline's forehead. "Be careful...you're lucky you're alive..."

"What the hell happened here?" said Laura, the shock of looking at Caroline's injuries having passed. "Are you...strong enough...to tell us..?"

"I...think so," said Caroline. She grimaced as she struggled to remember. "It was...so sudden..like a blur....

*****

"So Ted," Caroline said as she called him over in the midst of all the usual commotion and bustle. "I thought you were the kind of guy who never gives up a good debate. What gives - are you losing your touch? Getting on in years, maybe?" she grinned crookedly, almost Nabiki-like in her tone - or so her fellow members said of her. She grinned even wider at Ted's slight reaction and frown. Most would have mistook her manner and demeanor as derisive and biting half the time, when in fact she was merely a no-nonsense person with no need for little things like tact and circular talk. Ted was just beginning to learn that. He just forgot sometimes, is all.

"Are you kidding?" Ted said, his face changing into a grin not unlike her own. He remembers how I am after all, thought Caroline, as she crossed her arms. "I was just regrouping, you know. The jury's still out on this one, and trust me, I'll get the final verdict in my favor." Ted seems to have done a lot of mock trial for school lately, thought Caroline again, as she listened. He's even talking like a lawyer already.

A flash of lightning registered against the windows near the ceiling of the basement level room, and several people jumped. Caroline was unfazed, however. Amnesiack wandered over to them, Coke in hand.

"What's with this storm, anyway?" said Amnesiack, taking a long drink, balancing the can and his manga in both arms. "It was clear just a few minutes ago or so." Ted grumbled something under his breath in answer about unreliable weathermen.

"Well, not to worry," replied Caroline. "This place gets sudden storms like this all the time. It'll pass." Having been here a little longer in this small college town, Caroline knew the strange behavior of the weather better than almost anyone in the room.

"What I'm worried about is Walski, Laura, and the others," Amnesiack said, his eyes focused on his manga as usual once more. "I've been here long enough to know the weather is nasty enough normally, but this isn't right. Something tells me it isn't. There has to be an explanation..."

"Sometimes logical explanations don't really explain some things anyway," said Ted, shrugging. "Besides, getting the food here is all and good, but the important reason for them getting back, anyway, is so I can continue our little debate with our newest member. I've got something that'll back her into a corner. Just move her into range, and then, BOO-"

Ted's final word was left forever unfinished as a definite real boom sounded, this one sounding much closer than before. The people in the room looked around in confusion, and even Caroline blinked. Even as she tried to think about what was going on, another boom rocked the room, this time inside the room itself. Then the room somehow began to shake, as if some unseen pair of hands was jiggling a box, trying to discover its contents. Several people were thrown to the floor. Caroline grabbed a hold of a table to steady herself.

Caroline felt the first tinges of fear touching her when the first flash of lightning entered the room, its white hot shape streaking into a place at the room's center, from which several people fled. Then another bolt, and another. Another. All focused at the center, concentrated on it. Screams began to register from some of the people at the entrance to the room, and Caroline flicked a look across the room.

The double doors had somehow locked them in. People banged on them futilely, yelling to get the attention of people outside, but the basement hall seemed to be deserted, for their cries went unheeded - or unheard.

Horrified at this, Caroline turned back to watch as the bolts all began to focus together on the one spot, and expand out slowly in a wide circle before her, like a large mirror. The bolts expanded, molded, and then fused together on the edges of the disturbance, forming a kind of border around the mirror shaped gate-like thing. Inside the gate, Caroline looked, and saw....nothing. Like a soap bubble's surface, the substance beyond the gate swirled and transformed, a rainbow of colors moving too swiftly for the eye to perceive one at a time. Then, she began to hear a chittering sound, a sound that got steadily closer to the entrance of the gate, like the sound of clicking teeth, grinding together.

That was when the first of the horde of creatures swarmed forth from the gate, creatures with large, sharp teeth and slits for eyes. Their claws dripped a substance which Caroline could only guess, in all the confusion, was acid, by the way the floor hissed as it fell on it.

The people in the room yelled out even more in horror, gathered in one side of the room. Several tried to charge the creatures with sticks and table legs, to no avail. Some fell back, screaming at the burning on their skin and bleeding wounds on their legs. Others, as they fell back, were overwhelmed under the demons' charge and dragged back toward the portal. Caroline ducked down behind a desk/table and saw from behind it a couple of people she recognized being dragged by demon teeth, into the portal. Laura Hendricks, and Arnold Kim, she saw. Glancing at another part of the room, she saw that people were either being viciously killed or wounded to the point of not being able to stand. Ted seemed to be flailing away at the creatures threatening to bring him down, having been pulled from her side during the confusion and now, she thought fearfully, all but lost.

Over all of the carnage, Caroline glimpsed someone - a human someone - standing in front of the portal. If she weren't panicking and looking around for a way out, she would never have spotted him. Wearing a black pinstripe suit, the man seemed to be giving orders tot he demons, pointing silently. However, he too seemed to be taking orders - he cocked his head to one side occasionally as if listening to something. Most incredible about the man to Caroline, however, was the fact that some kind of light wurrounded him, a blue column of light which encased him head to toe. A figure loomed above the column that Caroline could not make out in the portal's swirling eddies, and the man's eyes glowed with unnatural light.

By now, several people in the room had also seen the man in the portal and were redoubling their eforts to get out of the room as the creatues got closer, slowly overwhelming the gaggle of people gathered in the corner. The man frowned, then, looking at the panicking men and women struggling to escape. Growling an unheard command (the roar of the portal and the screams in the room seemed to mute all other normal sound anyway) , he reared back and threw something in the midst of the people at the door, not far from Caroline's hiding place. The thing exploded in a spark of pyrotechnics, sending several flying in its wake. The people affected seemed to land at various parts of the room, either unconscious or worse. Chaos ruled, as more people replaced the ones that had been blasted away, trying desperately to get open the doors which would not budge.

The firework-type explosion shocked Caroline out of her horror and fear. Shaking her head, she ground her teeth, ripping her gaze from the man. Think....got to think of a way out, she thought as she scanned the room with her eyes quickly.

It was then that she spotted the little used side door tot he prop room next door, hidden behind yet another table or so. If I can get to that, she thought to herself, I can get out of here. However, the door was a short sprint away, at the other side of the room, and Kami knew what would happen if she didn't make it. But there was no turning back now. Gritting her teeth even harder, Caroline moved quickly from her hiding place, bounding for the door. She heard the man bark another command, but moved anyway, her hands shoving the table and chairs away with adrenaline-pumped strength, her hand ont he doorknob, turning...

The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was a loud ringing boom in her ears, and then the pieces of wall, falling toward her - and finally, she herself falling, into the void.....

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