Chapter 1: Metal Heart, Metal Body

"Help! Somebody please help!"

It was the first, darkest hour and the scent of death filled the air, changing the fate of the world, and amongst it all a young boy covered in cuts and bruises crawled from the wreckage of a car crashed into the side of a bridge. He called for help, his voice hardly more than a hiss from all the smoke he inhaled, but nobody came.

"Mommy… Daddy... please… come out. Don't leave me alone out here," he cried weakly, but nobody answered. He tried to stand, but his legs weren't listening to him. Nobody heard him. In this dark and scary world, he was alone. He'd thought he'd been a big boy, making it through that scary movie without elbowing Mommy and asking her to leave, when he didn't cry even though he hurt his ankle, when his parents left him on his first day of school and he was the only kid that didn't cry.

"You're... you're all messed up, but... you'll be fine," he croaked as he turned over onto his stomach, staring at the wreckage. "Just like when Daddy would play dead so Mommy wouldn't yell at him. You'll get back up. It's okay. It's okay."

There was no response but the crackling of the flames that ate his parents up.

"You'll be alright! You're always alright!" The boy screamed, feeling something warm in his throat as he tore it apart. He turned himself, tried to move closer to the car, but his body was ignoring him. His father's arm hanging out the window, covered in that red substance. Blood, just like when he cut his finger. But there was so much more of it. Too much. It was supposed to stay inside you.

"Don't... don't..." Die, he meant to say, but the word wouldn't leave his mouth. He couldn't say that word, refused to accept it with all his being. He was just a kid, he'd never seen death before. That's what Grampa said. They couldn't be dead. He didn't know what death looked like, but still...

Something in him knew that they were beyond saving.

Hot tears welled up in the corners of his eyes, aching to be released, as he took in the salty air, polluted with the scent of blood, and realized that this... was loss, that he would never be the same again. Shining down from above, the moon dispassionately bathed the world in its sickening, green light. He cursed it. The boy would rather be lost in the dark, where at least he could perhaps be found, than bear to see the car turned metal coffin. It was a supernatural phenomena that caused the crash.

'It's not my fault. It's not my fault! I didn't do anything bad! I'm good! We just wanted to go see the movie! Go away! Bad feelings, go away! I said it's not my fault!' The boy mentally screamed.

Why was he so angry at himself? Why did this happen to him? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?! Why?! Why! Why! Why! Why...him?

He'd… he'd do anything if he could just hear their voices one more time. They were all he had left that he cared about in this world. Everything else faded away, disappeared when he got too close to it. He had no friends, no siblings, nobody else he could rely on. It was too cruel, as if the world itself hated him. What did he ever do to the world? He held his tears back.

'Good boys don't cry. If I'm good, they'll come back, right? That's how it works, right? Right? Right? Right? Right!...

Wrong.'

He was young, no older than seven and no younger than six, and didn't have the mental maturity to deal with sorrow, grief, anger, self-loathing all at once. It was too much trauma for his soul to process, an emotional overload. His sense of self began to crack under the pressure of this mental pain, so he sealed it all away into his heart and sealed his heart inside that metal coffin that his parents' corpses were buried in. For him, the world lost its color. He could no longer taste the salty air or smell that foul blood. He just sat and listened to the fires of crashed cars, the crackling filling up the entirety of his being.

On that day, with eyes as dull as unpolished bronze and a heart heavier than steel, Minato Arisato stopped being human.

"Thou art I… and I art thou…"

'I am nobody and you're nobody too.'

An explosion rocked the lab as black matter was flung wildly over the scientist and equipment, the fragments consuming that as the remnants of the Harbinger they tried to create fled. One such scientist, his breathing ragged, watched a cracked screen as all limbs save for his left arm were being consumed by the Shadows. At the bottom of the screen, the words 'ASW:AIGIS' were watermarked. Screams resounded in the lab, some got guns and tried to shoot the Shadows, but as the lab twisted and turned around them, transforming into something else entirely, only the monsters kept their balance.

"You can't stop it," he whispered with a twisted grin, "Let's all Fall together."

Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon: Aigis

Live Reporting System: Active

Target has been engaged. Identified Shadow as Harbinger Fragment: Death. In pursuit. Enemy has launched high energy output attack, Codenamed: Megidolaon. Taking evasive maneuvers, preparing Persona. I… did no damage. Target is strong. Accompanying units have all been destroyed.

I am the last one left.

The last of my kind.

I shall not fail this mission.

My Persona has slammed hard into the enemy, tackling it into a building as it continuously fires blasts in my direction. I have avoided all of them successfully. Firing all weapons. I have not ascertained a limit to Targ—...Enemy's stamina. Ammo has been depleted. Preparing Orgia Mode. Estimated amount of damage to the area has increased exponentially. Will calculate costs after battle. Enemy appears to be weakening. Estimated time till end of bat—

DAMAGE CRITICAL DAMAGE CRITICAL DAMAGE CRITICAL DAMAGE CRITICA—

The girl who chased Death was sent flying off into the building after a blast of Megidolaon. Satisfied, the monster continued on its path, consuming every living being it encountered. It wanted to be whole, to fulfill its purpose and bring about the end of all things. It would make its Mother proud. The skull-faced beast of shadow flew through the city, tracking the nearest life it could find.

Alone on a bridge, was a young boy filled with unimaginable possibilities. Death was a being of instinct, thoughtless, and only did as it was meant to do. It was a force of nature, not a person, and it had come to claim this young boy. Just like his parents had been claimed by death. The child looked up at the monster soullessly, apathetic to the entire world. Unlike so many others, he had sealed away his own ego deep within himself. His Persona would not be dragged out and consumed so easily. Because of this, it took Death a moment longer than normal to give the boy true apathy before taking his life.

In that moment, a metallic leg collided with its face, sending it flying into a car parked along the bridge. The man-made, blonde girl landed in front of the boy, making eye contact with him. One arm was missing, a mass of wires extending from her shoulder in one place, and she had a hole gouged out in her side, but Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon:Aigis was alive.

"You are safe," was all she said, but those words caused a glimmer of life to shine in the boy's dead eyes.

'A superhero?' He thought in awe and, for a moment, he believed the world didn't hate him like he thought it did.

The beast roared as it charged at her, angry that its meal was interrupted. She raised her arm and activated the protocol specifically placed in her for eliminating the threat should it get out of hand. It should have been a specialized weapon meant for destroying it, but instead it was an entirely different thing. She'd been hesitant to use this, and she'd been right. It wasn't a weapon. It was a device meant for sealing the Shadow into a person. She'd been tricked.

The white beam shot at Death before moving to connect to the boy. He looked at her the entire time, that glimmer of life still barely there. He trusted her. Believed she would keep him safe. She betrayed all of that.

Death, however, reacted strangely. The life in the boy was drawing it closer to him, but this bait laid out before it didn't entice it. Something's will entered, crawled and wriggled around inside it, repeating the same words over and over again.

'Don't take the boy.'

The voice was much like its Mother's and Death, being an entity that only fulfilled its Mother's purpose, did the only thing it could think to do. It would leave the boy, but instead, using the tether that tied the three of them together, it transferred the life it so desired into the girl. It was a curse only Death could accomplish. Its hunger must be sated.

Minato felt he was dying. His body shriveled up, flaking and wrinkling as he became an old man in seconds. His hair, once blue, turned grey. Across from him, the robot that saved him was healing herself, her metal replacing itself with flesh. He would die and she would live.

'Ah, I really am hated. Mommy, Daddy, it hates all three of us. I don't want to... die,' he thought as he turned his hand into a fist.

"From the sea of thy soul I cometh…"

'If only I could be a superhero like that girl.'

His parents were waiting for him. They'd be disappointed if he went without so much as a whimper. He needed to make them proud, prove there was a purpose for them to bring him into the world, that their lives had meaning.

"I am…"

'I will be...'

He locked eyes with the monster, wishing he had a gun in his hands, a weapon even a child could use. Something in him, something primal, wanted to fight against this fate. To break the rules of the world just to show that he had a right to live in it. If the world wanted him to die, if the world wanted him to always be alone, he'd change that world! Fight against the villains that destroyed something so beautiful. Only evil could be responsible for this.

"Orpheus… Master of Strings…"

The moment he heard those words, that singular wish was realized. Where his body was growing weaker, metal appeared, covering him, becoming part of him. His grayed hair went a step further, becoming unnaturally white and his bloodshot eyes turned red. Sparing a glance for the robot once more, he only saw a now young girl around his age. Her eyes closed slowly as worry ran across her face. Maybe she didn't intend for this to happen. Maybe she did. It didn't matter to him. If she was to live the life he was meant to, then he'd live as the machine hero she was and defeat this monster.

He stood, his body now obeying his every command. A red scarf was wrapped around his neck, hiding part of the lower half of his face. His skin was the same color it had ever been, but now he only had the skin on his face left. Everything below that red scarf was metal, his arms and legs covered in a white clothes. No longer could the boy claim to be a kid, for his body now resembled that of a young man. He'd become the superhero he'd imagined as a kid, an idea that mixed with the one hero he'd ever met in his life. That girl.

Empty of everything but his will to defy his fate, the boy, now suddenly a metal man, charged at Death fearlessly, but, before his fist connected, the monster suddenly entered the girl.

Once more, he was alone.

"It's your fault, isn't it. Not mine… I'll kill you..."

With those words that shouldn't have come out of the mouth of one so young, he collapsed.

The lone scientist laughed. In the broken lab that had mostly assimilated with the great labyrinth, his joy froze the air as he crawled forwards with his one arm. All the others were dead, their wills weak. No matter. They were pawns, all of them. So long as the king survived, he could always find more pawns, create more knights. Shadows looked to him, but none spared the time to leave their meal and try to claim one already being consumed by Shadow fragments.

"So that was it! I see, I see! A way to change fate itself! If that's so…" he trailed off as grabbed a small bottle of pills and a device that looked like a gun. Madness shined in his eyes. "Then I hope you don't mind if I steal your method."

On that day in the lab, one will to change the world had given new life to another.

An eyepatched man in a suit and a butler arrived on the bridge, flanked by several specialized soldiers who moved to secure the scene. Needless to say, quite a few had died today. The couple crushed in the car only intensified the bitter taste in the man's mouth.

"W-What happened here? That girl… she can't possibly be…" The butler asked as he began to pale.

"Close your mouth. Don't say a word more. Keep everyone quiet about this and take her in. Observe her. If she seems human, we'll grant her freedom, or at least the illusion of it," the man stated calmly, taking completely control of the situation.

"Yes, sir. What about the new machine?"

"Bring it to Yakushima, run some tests. Find out where it came from and how it operates. We lost the last active ASW, so see if we can use this undamaged one instead. I'm not letting my daughter enter Tartarus alone."

"...Yes, sir."

Takeharu Kirijo clenched his hand into a fist tightly, his nails digging into his flesh. He failed the people of this world, his father, and his own daughter. If he could protect her, he'd use any means necessary, even if it meant taking this thing he couldn't even identify. In English, the word MINATO was engraved on the boy's chest, but, perhaps because the scientist who did the initial inspection was not well-versed enough to properly read the font, the metal man was codenamed: M1N470.

A/N: The original has been around for about four years now, so I thought I'd try my hand at taking all I learned and attempting to write a better chapter. Back when I first started, I had no idea what I was really doing and tried to pass off a lot of my failures as intentional rather than taking proper responsibility for them and sometimes responded poorly to criticism. I was often too eager to please and that clouded my judgement, turning my story into something that at times wasn't even the story I wanted to tell. And now, currently, I've reach a brick wall with the original, so I decided to write this to help motivate me to get back into it (although now I'm just even more tempted to do a full re-write, as it would be a different story).

You'll notice there are things in this chapter that aren't in the original and vice versa. Rather than foolishly treating word count like a god, I introduced foreshadowing for events I only thought of later and stopped the chapter where it should have ended. I'd also rather have all my words be meaningful, unlike how they were in the original. And I cut out that whole sister thing because, to be honest, that was just me thinking I was being clever at the time.

If you liked this chapter, feel free to leave a review if you feel so inclined. Also, check out the Fandom Flux podcast on youtube where we talk about writing, tell funny stories and do all sorts of stuff. Honestly, being with those guys helped me learn a lot (as did becoming an English Major and taking actual classes), so I hope you guys could learn some stuff from us too.

Edit: Made it a full rewrite. Currently editing this rough draft.