Shin Megami Tensei: Sonata of the Collective

Calm Car Ride

    We sat in the back of the armored truck, all panting. The uncomfortable metal seats might have been the softest couch to us. Across from us sat a man in blue and white robes. He had blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, and appeared to be in his mid-thirties. This man was the one who saved us, and he looked tired as well. We nearly died there, and none of us had really calmed down.
    "Thank you. We would all be goners if it weren't for you guys." I said. The man smiled at us three.
    "If there's anything we can do to make up for this favor please tell us, I'm forever in debt to you," Keiji said.
   "Oh no! We don't want anything in return, but thank you. How about you introduce yourselves, I haven't seen anyone like you three in a long while." He said. We all felt so relieved, we finally had a moment to breathe.
    "I'm Ollie, this is Keiji and this is Umeko. We don't know much about anything that's going on, to be honest. Last night everything was normal, and today we were in this wasteland." I said. His eyes widened.
    "So, I see that thing has fallen into disarray. How long ago did this all start?" I asked. He was silent for a moment. He seemed to be shocked at my words.
    "It's been seven years since the bombs fell. You say that you weren't aware of any of the time in between?" He eagerly asked. I nodded. Seven years, the world was destroyed seven years ago, and all of that time went by in an instant. Keiji, Umeko, and I all looked at each other. It hurt to know. The man stood up and walked to the front of the vehicle. He whispered something to another person in a similar outfit.
    "We'll question them further when we get back. They seem to fit the description, but we'll see." The man responded, and then the other man walked back and sat down.
   "I apologize, I haven't told you my name. I'm Norio, and we are the Messians." He said with a smile, gesturing to the others in the vehicle.
    "Messians?" I asked.
    "We're a large group that's come about in these times. We're heading towards Ikebukuro, it fell after the bombs dropped, but in the past couple of years we've established a fairly big place away from the chaos of this wasteland. Our civilization there is little, but for the most part self-sustaining." Norio said. It was the city that Keiji saw before. I smiled back at him. Ikebukuro was a city I'd been in, it was something familiar. The idea of that was supremely comforting, even though I knew it would be almost unrecognizable. The blue and white robes seemed to be a mark of the Messians. Norio wore body armor underneath his clean robes, and he had a submachine gun strapped to his hip. On his chest was a blue shield with a cross in the center. The same symbol was painted on the outside of the truck, as well as on the clothing of the other people in the car.
   "Why did you save us?" Umeko asked. She didn't mean to sound rude at all, and that was clear in her tone, but Keiji looked at her as if her question was appalling.
   "Well, we can use as many helping hands as we can get. Times have gotten a lot tougher since you three were about last. And we go on routine patrols of the land around Ikebukuro to kill off any monsters that could sneak into the city and cause trouble." He said with a smile. I looked down at my comp, they didn't seem to know about it.
    "Are you aware of the demon summoning program?" I asked. He glanced down at my comp.      
   "Yes I know of it... but I don't believe it's right to ally myself with demonic creatures, so I don't use it. There are a few who do use it here, but it's generally looked down upon." He said, hesitating to speak. Umeko looked up from the floor. She opened her mouth to speak before the vehicle came to a sudden stop. Norio looked to the front of the truck. We had reached Ikebukuro, and the truck was being checked at the gate.
    "We've picked up two humans we found in the wasteland. Old worlders." The driver said out of the window in a gruff tone. The woman checking the vehicle's eyebrows raised, and she let us in.
   "You must meet the head of the Messians, he'll explain more to you three than I can." Norio said. Keiji looked at me with a smile.
   "Maybe we'll have somewhere that can finally be safe-" He said to me with a laugh. I smiled at him in response. We all entered the city, and Norio pulled down the metal sheets covering the windows. Around us was a bustling city, clearly tattered and beaten by the harshness of the new world that we all now inhabited, yet still surviving. We drove for a while before I could see a large structure in construction at the center of the city, bigger than any building I'd ever seen.
   "That's the cathedral, it's far from completion, but it's beautiful isn't it?" Norio said with a smile.