Chapter Text
In a perfect world, neither human nor demon would stray from their side of the border.
Greedy humans wouldn’t use esoteric magic to summon and bind demonic slaves, rapacious demons wouldn’t stray over the fence to steal life-essence from unwitting human victims. We would all live in perfect harmony, braiding each others’ hair, and singing songs of peace and love while unwashed hippies strummed out of tune acoustic guitars.
In a perfect world, there would be no need for Devil Summoners. There would be no need for a great, sprawling government conspiracy designed to keep humanity safe from the denizens of hell and maintain order between our worlds.
Thankfully, the world is far from perfect; if it was, Akechi Goro would be out of a job.
4.9.202X
10:32 a.m.
Shibuya - Tokyo
“Everyone, please stay back! Rescue crews are on their way! Do not get in the way of medical personnel!”
Akechi Goro elbowed his way through the crowd, offering apologies without sincerity as he pushed up to the front of Shibuya station. The smell of steel and smoke filled the air as paramedics rushed past him with people on stretchers, bloody gauze attached to more heads than Goro cared to count.
“This looks bad; stay focused.” A voice came from Goro’s backpack as he shifted the black leather guitar case to his other hand, diving into his peacoat’s pocket for his credentials.
“Stand back, son,” one of the police officers said, holding a hand up to block Goro’s advance. “Station’s closed due to a train crash; keep the stairwell clear for medical-”
With a wordless smile, Goro flicked open his leather badge case. He took a depraved kind of pleasure watching the police officer's face flash between confusion, recognition, and realization as he took in the black iron badge embossed with the symbol of a three legged crow.
“...s-sorry, sir,” the officer mumbled, stepping aside and lifting the police tape. “Your colleagues are downstairs; we’ll keep the press at bay.”
“Appreciate it!” Goro said, a practiced expression of humble appreciation accompanying a bow as he turned and headed down towards the stairs. The police didn’t appreciate his presence on the best of days; to them, the black Yatagarasu badge was a warning that the routine case they were managing had just taken a turn for the bizzare.
“That good-for-nothing pig better keep the press out of my hair this time,” Goro grumbled, unzipping his backpack with his free hand. “Last thing we need is Ohya getting another picture of me leaving the crime scene.”
A black cat leapt out of Goro’s backpack, landing with a stretch before looking up at him with strangely human blue eyes. “The police have their uses,” Morgana said, falling into step beside his partner as they walked down the deserted subway steps. “Don’t discount them out of hand.”
“The number of useful cops in the world can comfortably fit on the tip of a Pixie’s prick,” Goro sighed, eyes sweeping the hallway in front of him for any sign of unusual movement. “Smell anything?”
“Nothing so far; I think our backup is up ahead,” Morgana said, sniffing the air as Goro walked quickly down the abandoned hallway. He had to duck under a web of police tape every few dozen feet until they came to the platform and the scene of the crime they were supposedly investigating. An empty train car sat in the middle of the tracks, tilted on one side and surrounded by tape. Inside he could make out a young woman in a black vest and slacks setting up computer equipment while a beleaguered looking young man in a full suit took notice of him with a start.
“Akechi,” Mishima Yuuki said with a small nod and wave as he set up a gigantic dish embellished with strange glowing sigils. “You got here quickly.”
“Mishima,” Goro said, dropping his case on a bench as the young woman stuck her head out of the parked subway car.
“Is Mona-chan here?” Suzui Shiho asked, glee dancing in her eyes as she caught sight of Morgana darting between Goro’s legs. “Hiiii Mona-chan!”
“Lady Shiho~” Morgana purred, sparing Goro a disdainful glance. “It’s so nice to be around people who appreciate my presence for once.”
“Go get your chin-scratches, you shameless whore,” Goro groused, cracking his case open and laying out the contents on the bench. “Any peep from the target?”
“Couple of sparks on our end before our new Control showed up,” Shiho said, rubbing Morgana’s head with the back of her hand. “You’ll want to introduce yourself.”
Goro glanced down the track, spying a young woman with astonishingly red hair carefully consulting a computer terminal while pretending that she wasn’t looking at him out of the corner of her eye.
She looks exactly like Kasumi, Goro mused, shucking his tan peacoat and donning a black vest made of heavy fibers infused with glowing threads that crackled with magical power. The pros of being the Quartermaster’s guinea pig was that he got to test drive new equipment before the other field agents had a chance. The downside was that any bugs that existed in the product would be painfully, perhaps fatally, obvious to him.
“Tell me I don’t need to offer condolences,” Goro mumbled as he tugged his uniform on.
Mishima and Shiho sent him the same exasperated glare every adult in his life had leveled at him at one point or another. “Oh Goro...” Morgana sighed, shaking his head.
“You could try and be polite,” Mishima muttered.
“Hi Sumire-san,” Shiho said flatly. “Your sister was a great person and we are very sorry for your loss. See that? It’s that easy.”
“Can I pay you to offer condolences on my behalf?” Goro asked, loading his handgun and stowing it in a holster on his hip next to a silver rapier. “You seem to be the expert here.”
“No; you have to act like an actual person for once,” Shiho sighed, rubbing her eyes. “Honestly, Akechi, you’d get a lot farther if you just pretended to be personable.”
“You have to be a person to be personable, and I thought we just agreed I can only act like one,” Goro said as he affixed a series of thin metal tubes to the holsters on his chest. After a moment’s hesitation, he pocketed a blank kuda, stowing the tube next to his spare ammunition as he slammed his case shut with a clack.
“Don’t know what Kuzunoha is thinking, sending her out here so soon…” Mishima mumbled, watching Yoshizawa’s back as she worked.
“She's probably thinking that we’re short staffed and need all hands on deck,” Goro said, grabbing Morgana under the belly and hauling him away from Shiho’s scratching fingers. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Until we meet again, Lady Shiho,” Morgana mewled, waving with his paw as Shiho cooed after him. “Your memory will always be a-”
“Wrap it up, Lothario,” Goro said, awkwardly loitering a few paces away from the young woman at the end of the railway before summoning up the courage to break the ice. “...Yoshizawa-san?”
The woman glanced up from her terminal, adjusting her glasses as she fished around in her pocket. “O-Oh, forgive me.”
With a crisp and entirely too formal bow, she offered him her business card with both hands. “Yoshizawa Sumire; I’ll be running logistics for you on today’s mission. I-I hope we get along.”
Goro stared at the card for a moment before Morgana nipped his hand. “Yes, well...sorry about your sister,” Goro blurted out, internally wincing as he accepted the card.
“...thank you,” Sumire said quietly.
“Goro-chan doesn’t get along with anyone,” Morgana purred, leaping from Goro’s arms and brushing against Sumire’s legs. “I think you’ll find I’m the more personable member of the team.”
For all his eccentricities, Morgana was an expert at diffusing the tense and awkward situations that Goro inevitably caused with his lack of tact.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a business card for you as well, Morgana-senpai,” Sumire said, crouching down and offering a hand which Morgana shook with his paw.
“Do not call him senpai; it will go to his head,” Goro sighed, glancing at the screen. “What am I looking at here?”
Snapping up, Sumire adjusted her glasses, punching in a few keys and bringing up a map of the underground subway system. “The Anomaly appeared precisely forty-five minutes ago during the mid-morning rush,” Sumire rattled off, swiping across the screen as a large, glowing red force-field appeared in the middle of the map. “An unknown Category 5 demon is the most likely culprit-”
“Based on what?” Goro said, glancing at Sumire out of the corner of his eye.
“...based on the size of the Metaverse bubble and the rate at which it expanded,” Sumire said after a brief moment’s hesitation. “A-Also based on the rate that it stopped expanding, it cannot be more powerful than a Category 5 -”
“Unless for whatever reason the demons decided not to press further,” Goro mused, studying the screen. “We need to set up a containment field as soon as we can-”
“Already taken care of, Akechi-senpai,” Sumire said, wincing as Goro glanced at her. “Sorry, that was-”
“Good,” Goro said briefly, turning to glance down the corridor at the shimmering wall of red and purple light that stretched across the train tunnel’s entrance. “That will make it less likely that things will spill out. Cameras?”
“All shut down as soon as the bubble expanded,” Sumire said. “Technology inside the Metaverse won't work unless properly shielded so privacy shouldn’t be an issue.”
“Alright, begin transcription,” Goro said, glancing at Morgana whose cheerful demeanor turned stony. They could bicker back and forth all they liked in the real world; crossing planes meant that they needed to keep their heads on a swivel or lose them in short order.
“R-Right,” Sumire said, quickly pressing a button on the side of her machine that caused a small red light to start flashing on her glasses. “Time is...ten forty-five on the ninth of April. Devil Summoner Akechi Goro backed by System Control Yoshizawa Sumire and Support Staff-”
“You don’t need to add that to the audio,” Goro said, adjusting the mic fixated to his collar. “That’s part of the written report; just count us in and make your observations.”
“Please,” Morgana added, tongue sticking out as Goro extended a one-finger reply.
“Right,” Sumire chuckled, adjusting her glasses. “Sorry…”
“You up for this, Yoshizawa?” Goro asked, watching Sumire’s eyes flash behind her glasses. He had struck a nerve, but instead of shrinking she seemed to straighten up, looking down at her monitor with a hard glare.
“Commencing a capture or extermination operation of an unidentified Category 5 demon,” Sumire rattled off. “Akechi-senpai, please begin when ready.”
The pile of doubts that he had about Kasumi’s sister shrunk as Goro nodded, turning to head down the tracks towards the Metaverse bubble. Most people didn't have the training to know what they were looking at when they saw a Bubble; to the average person, the shimmering waves in the air could be mistaken for heat or gas rising out of the ground. But to Akechi, the unmistakable stench of the demon world couldn't be mistaken for anything else.
“Akechi Goro and the flea bitten Cassanova-”
“Bite me.”
“-Morgana beginning our assault,” Goro said, taking a deep breath before passing through the thin curtain that divided his world from the Metaverse. The tracks before him snarled and reached up in strange, alien angles as a thick, oppressive air pressed in on all sides. No matter how many incursions he made, stepping through the barrier was always the same. It was as though stepping off a boat into a deep blue ocean, surrounded by nothing but water for miles while strange fish lapped at his heels beneath the waves.
“Yoshizawa, do you read?” Goro asked into his mic.
“Loud and clear,” Yoshizawa chirped on the other end of the line. “Tech shield is holding fast at eighty-two percent. Scanning area for hostiles...okay, target seems to be five hundred meters ahead around the bend...no sign of movement or activity. Proceed with caution.”
“Really? I was actually going to proceed without caut-ow!” Goro yelped as Morgana’s teeth grazed the back of his heel.
“Stay focused, Akechi,” Morgana chided, nostrils flaring. “I smell something seriously bad up ahead...I can’t be sure but it might be a Fiend.”
Goro tensed, drawing his rapier as he made his way down the twisted hallways that stretched out ahead of him. He was already at a serious disadvantage fighting demons on their own turf; if he was up against a Fiend-
“Pixie,” Goro said, uncorking a kuda and watching a flash of green light illuminate the hallway, a small demon appearing in the shape of a scantily dressed woman with wings jutting out of her back. Turning around with a stretch, she scowled deeply as she caught sight of who had summoned her.
“Ugh,” Pixie sniffed. “Why do they keep sticking me with you?”
“Because you’re working off your sentence and nobody gives a shit what you want,” Goro said cheerfully, flicking the little demon in the back of the head and watching her tumble in the air.
“You always take me to the grungiest places,” Pixie sniffed, wiping her back where Goro’s finger had touched. “Can you like, walk a little ways away from me? I don’t want to run into anyone I know when I’m with you.”
The longer a demon lingered outside the Metaverse, the more personality they seemed to unfortunately develop. Though physically identical to other Pixie-class demons, the Pixie in Goro’s command seemed to grow more spoiled, demanding, and stand-offish the more time he spent with her.
(“That just means you’re rubbing off on her, Go-chan,” Hifumi sniggered, batting the wadded up roll of paper Goro hurled at her face away with a ruler.)
“If you die, I’m not picking your smelly butt up off the ground this time!” Pixie continued, following Goro as he wound his way down the track, eyes sweeping the shadowy corridors ahead.
“Uh-huh,” Goro mumbled.
“I’m serious!” Pixie huffed, floating around Goro’s head, trailing Pixie dust as she went. “If you expect me to bend over backwards to help a guy who is nothing but rude to me-”
Morgana paused in the middle of the track, hair on the back of his spine raising as his eyes suddenly widened. “Goro, move!”
Before he had the chance to answer, an almost overwhelming force of malice pressed in on Goro from all sides. Dread pooled in the pit of his stomach as the dim light caught on a flicker of steel. Instinct told him to dodge left, bringing his own weapon up in time to deflect the edge of a long, sharp blade as it thrust out of the shadows directly at his face. The blade glided along the edge of his weapon, rattling the steel in his hand as the edge nicked the corner of his vest.
“Senpai!” Sumire’s voice was distant in his ear as he almost tripped over himself getting out of the way of the strike. His shoulder banged against the wall of the tunnel as the creature sailed past him, landing in a crouch a few meters away.
“Fiend,” Goro hissed into his microphone, the word drawing a small gasp from Sumire as the demon stood up. Dressed in a teal blue bull-fighter’s regalia, the demon turned its head to reveal a stark, skeletal face complete with hollow black eyes and a perpetual, fleshless grin.
“A Spanish grim-reaper born from the pursuit of the aesthetics of killing,” Morgana hissed. “No doubt about it...this is the Matador.”
A billowing red cape dangled from the Matador’s hand as it regarded Akechi with a cock of its head. “ Curious,” it said in a dry, reedy voice.
“Stay alive, Senpai,” Sumire’s shaky voice came in his ear. “I’ll radio for backup-”
“No,” Goro snapped.
“Goro-” Goro waved Morgana’s protest off, saber held in a defensive stance as he faced down the Matador.
“Senpai,” Sumire’s voice came again, a little firmer. “ Protocol dictates that Fiend-class demons should be handled by a team of-”
Goro ripped his earpiece out, stuffing it in his pocket as the Matador leveled its rapier in his direction. Kuzunoha Raidou had brought in Fiends solo in the past; if he ever hoped to succeed his mentor, he was going to have to prove he was equal to the mantle.
“Akechi-senpai?” Sumire squeaked, her pale expression staring back at her as she frantically mashed the microphone button. “ Akechi-senpai?!”
“What did he do ?” Shiho sighed, leaning out the edge of the train-car as Sumire stared at Akechi’s blinking red dot on the map.
“H-He’s lost his mind,” Sumire stammered. “He’s trying to fight a Fiend-class demon without backup! We need to-”
“Ha!” Mishima crowed, a muffled fuck coming from Shiho’s train car. “Told you he would go AWOL in under ten minutes; you’re buying the new girl her first round tonight!”
Sumire blinked, glasses sliding down her nose. “What?”
“I forget you’re new to Team Akechi,” Shiho sighed, leaning out the window of the train car. “Akechi-kun is...how do I put it gently...a complete asshole .”
“It seems the dogs of S.E.E.S. are more capable than I initially gave them credit for,” Matador chuckled, soulless black eyes staring deep into Goro’s. “ Still...a human can only achieve so much on its own.”
“...look,” Pixie said, holding her hands up as she floated away from Goro. “Th-This guy is forcing me to work with him! I-I don’t want to fight other demons! P-Please, Mr. Señor Matador-san, sir; hurt him, not me!”
“Tell me how you really feel, why don’t you?” Goro growled. His demons’ lack of respect didn’t keep him up at night; he didn’t care about the opinions of the pigeons that shit on his balcony either. Still, the fact that he was expected to put his life in the hands of such inherently evil creatures was almost more than he could bear; all the more reason for him to work alone whenever possible.
“Oh, don’t worry dulce princesa,” Matador said, eye sockets landing on Pixie’s. “You’ll have time to properly thank me after I liberate you from this beast; I promise, it won’t take long.”
The lecherous edge in Matador’s voice made Pixie’s nose wrinkle as she fluttered behind Goro. “Ugh, I changed my mind! Akechi, you better kill this creep before it gets his gross bony hands on me!”
“A tall order,” Matador sneered, wrist-bones cracking as it swung its sword in an arc. “Though I have to wonder if your would-be knight in shining armor can even land a strike on me.”
The trouble with being so terribly powerful is that you eventually become convinced of your own superiority. His mentor’s words rang in his ears as he raised his own weapon to meet the challenging gesture. If you think you can't be beat, you stop fighting seriously.
“Well, if you’re so certain you can best me, why don’t we settle this one-on-one?” Goro said, fidgeting with his kuda and recalling Pixie. “I challenge you to a duel.”
“Que gracioso, ” Matador chuckled. “That is my line.”
“ What are you doing ?!” Morgana hissed. “This is not the time to work out your crippling inferiority complex!”
“My...what?” Goro huffed, raising an eyebrow. “Who said I had a fucking inferiority complex?”
“Everyone who’s spoken more than two words to you!” Morgana growled, keeping one eye on Matador as he watched Akechi’s free hand dip beneath his cloak. “Goro, this demon is beyond anything you’ve handled before.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Goro said, unclasping the pistol from its holster as quietly as he could. “Stay out of this; my honor as a Devil Summoner is on the line, after all.”
Morgana’s eyes narrowed into suspicious slits as he quietly stepped backwards against the tunnel wall. “Sumire’s not going to like this...though I suppose it’s better that she learns what kind of idiot she’s paired with sooner rather than later.”
“I am nothing if not transparent with my partners,” Goro said, turning back to Matador with a toothy smile. “What do you say? Do we have a deal?”
“On your honor...and mine,” Matador said with a flourish of his cape. “Come and beat me if you can; I swear by my sword and capote that I will be-”
Matador’s head jerked backwards as Goro put a pistol round square in the center of its skull, squeezing the trigger again and again as the bony demon jerked and twitched with each round that struck it. A disappointing click filled the air as the last round left the chamber, Matador’s head snapping forward with burning yellow eyes.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that line before,” Goro drawled, leaning backwards as the edge of Matador’s blade flashed in the flickering Metaverse light. Goro brought his weapon up to parry the inhumanly strong creature, ejecting the pistol’s cartridge with his free hand and loading it back up with another clip on his belt. The red cape flourished in front of his face; Goro saw the distraction for what it was and managed to get away from the demon’s impossibly fast lunge just in time.
Fuck, this thing is fast, Goro thought, watching it lean out of the way of a bullet that rocketed towards its head. Before the stray round could even ping against the far wall, a flurry of sword strikes stabbed at him, the final blow piercing the protective vest near his shoulder.
Thanks R&D, Goro thought, ignoring Morgana’s cry of distress as he fired another series of rounds into Matador’s bony body. Gunfire wasn’t working and he doubted that his sword skills were up to the task of defeating such an advanced fencer in a fair fight.
Then again, when had Akechi Goro ever given a shit about fighting fair?
“Morgana!” Goro cried, falling back and jamming his hands over his ears as Morgana seemed to instantly know what was expected of him. Opening his mouth, a harsh, otherworldly screech echoed throughout the corridor, the sound immediately making the Matador freeze for a hair of a second as Akechi fumbled with two kuda on his chest.
“Calling for backup ?” Matador snarled, watching two streams of green light snake from the thin metal tubes between his fingers. “What happened to your honor as a Devil Summoner?”
“Yeah, about that,” Goro grinned, watching a floating pumpkin in a cape appear next to a small white demon in a floppy blue hat. "See, I can't really swear on my honor-"
“-because he doesn't have any,” Morgana sighed. Matador saw the fireball rocket at its head and dodged backwards, eating a frigid ball of energy from the cackling Jack Frost who clapped his hands in fiendish delight.
“Put it away, Akechi!” Morgana cried, watching the Matador flourish its cape as Goro lunged, his own weapon poised and ready to thrust.
Come on, Goro thought. Do it again.
Like clockwork, he saw the Matador go for the same lunge that had wounded him earlier. This time, Goro rolled his injured shoulder to one side, letting the blade sail past him as he drove his crackling blue rapier straight into the Matador’s skull.
The blade and capote clattered to the ground as the Matador stared blankly back at Goro, its material form already dissipating as the Metaverse bubble began to shift and destabilize.
“Pedazo de mierda …” Matador chuckled. “You’re as good as they said you’d be.”
“Or you just aren’t as good as you thought you were,” Goro said, uncapping the blank kuda. A lasso of green light shot out, encasing the Matador in glowing green chains that pulled pieces of it, bit by bit, into the metal tube.
“For your sake, I hope it's the former,” Matador said, its voice garbled as the kuda pulled it into its depths. “You won’t last long against them if you’re as sloppy as you were today.”
“Who do you mean?” Morgana asked, narrowing his eyes at the Matador. “Who told you about Akechi?”
Impossible as it was, Goro swore he saw the Matador’s bony smile widen. “You have quite the reputation, Detective . You have many fans on the other side...some who would love to make your acquaintance.”
“I don’t do meet-and-greets,” Goro said dryly, yanking the Matador forward and into the metal tube with a flick of his wrist. The Metaverse around them flickered for a moment, the winding corridors and floating tracks rearranging themselves until Goro found himself standing in the middle of a relatively normal subway station.
Goro pocketed Matador’s kuda, reaching down and picking the microphone back up. “Target neutralized; returning to base.”
“That was…you’re so...sometimes I just want to...” Morgana trailed off with a deep sigh.
“What, not going to scold me this time?” Goro said dryly, whipping Pixie out of his pocket as he examined the shallow gash in his shoulder. The Matador’s sword had cut through the reinforced vest, opening a fresh slash next to the white, ropy scars from previous battles.
“You’re...alive?” Pixie said almost hopefully as she appeared. “How did you-”
“Make with the fairy dust, Tinkerbell; I’d like to get this thing back to Headquarters before lunch,” Goro said, oblivious to the stream of worried squeaking coming from Sumire’s end.
“...you really know how to make a girl hate you, don’t you?” Pixie sighed, green light trickling from her fingertips and into the wound as Morgana stared thoughtfully into space.
“Who do you think he was talking about?” Morgana asked quietly.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Goro said, rubbing the freshly knit scar tissue as he pocketed Pixie without so much as a thank you. “Probably just a load of mierda he thought would ruffle my feathers. You know how these things love theatricality.”
“Maybe...but you’re not exactly popular on the other side,” Morgana said.
“I’m not popular on this side either,” Goro said with a shrug. “You think I’ve made some enemies?”
“You haven’t made friends,” Morgana said, glancing up at Goro. “Maybe if you would-”
Morgana’s eyes narrowed at a camera above them, a red blinking light indicating that it was, against all reasoning, still functional despite being ported directly into the Metaverse when the bubble expanded.
“Goro,” Morgana nodded at the camera. Goro’s eyes drifted up, staring into the blank, glassy eye that regarded him. “I thought Metaverse bubbles knocked out all electronics that hadn’t been properly modified.”
“They do,” Goro said thoughtfully, watching the mechanical arm of the camera pivot to follow his movement.
“You think it’s a fluke?” Morgana asked. “Or do you think-”
“- someone’s watching us?”
In a dark, secretive corner of the Metaverse, a grainy closed circuit camera image loomed large on a screen that took up an entire wall. Seven demons watched Goro’s expression with rapt curiosity as he scowled back at them, slowly raising his pistol to aim at the camera lens.
Devil Summoner Akechi Goro
vs
The Phantom Thieves