[center][h2]Caelum Harrington[/h2][/center]
The Shadow reacted to his question by shouting at them to leave it alone. Which Caelum wouldn’t mind doing, but these things were dangerous. Who knew what consequences leaving them on their own would have? Besides, the more people in their group got their Persona, the better off they’d all be.

Nick immediately tried to placate his shadows, taking a moment to glare at him. Caelum merely shrugged a shoulder, smiling wryly. It wasn’t his fault that this dream-world worked by killing everything in your path – or risking being killed otherwise. Spindle was the one who actually knew something about the place, and she’d been the one to suggest Shadows needed killing, though Nick hadn’t been there for it.

Instead, the other student continued arguing with his Shadow, getting more and more heated as the child-thing criticized and baited him. Caelum stepped back slightly, determinedly not paying attention to what they were saying, though he got the gist of it. Shitty parents, shitty friends, it looked like, though what exactly had had happened to Nick was spoken about vaguely enough that Caelum could only guess at it. Which he had no reason nor desire to, frankly. As it was, he simply waited, letting the conversation progress as it would without any input from him.

Inevitably, the verbal spat culminated in the monster-transformation of the Shadow. It was the most humanoid of any Caelum had seen so far, a giant human-esque creature with multiple limbs and faces for it. The familiarity of its form being so warped made it all the more horrifying, however. Caelum uttered a brief startled shout as it thrashed the room purely due to its size, then threatened to collapse the room as it swung its bludgeon upwards.

Then Nick came barreling out of the room straight towards him. Caelum was grabbed by the hand, and his body twisted awkwardly. Stumbling, he turned the rest of the way around, running as he’d been physically urged to do so. “Al-right, going,” he gasped, shaking Nick’s hand off. He didn’t appreciate being dragged alongside, nor did he want to fall over because of a person who was panicking just as much as he was, if not more.

As they ran outside, Caelum was momentarily relieved to see that backup had already arrived. The feeling of being rescued was short lived, though, because just then the house exploded behind them. Caelum glanced back wildly, seeing a chaotic blast of materials being sent all around, and crouched as quick as he could behind the remains of a nearby wall. Yet that was not all – the monster issued a booming roar, and in that same moment, pools of bloody tar appeared around them. There would be no escape.

As if that was not enough, the Shadow sent something flying, and it clearly exploded with magical force upon impact. Caelum desperately looked around for a weapon. There were plenty of items that could serve as projectiles, but he’d learned the lesson on that from Barney’s Shadow. If he wanted to contribute to bringing the monster down asap, he’d have to find a melee weapon. 

There was a lot of debris, glass, pieces of broken furniture…and there! A short piece of rebar. Running to it, Caelum grabbed it in both hands, then crouched behind a knocked over couch. While the others hopefully distracted or engaged the Shadow upfront, he’d sneak to its flank, and stab it with the rebar when the opportunity to do so was there.