#devil summoner au

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6.16.202X 8:29 pm S.E.E.S. Tokyo Headquarters - Interrogation Suite A

"How long has she been in there?" 

"Half an hour; Ken-kun's been minding the door so no worries about anyone getting too handsy with her," Akihiko said, keeping pace with Mitsuru's long strides as she made her way past rows of armed guards the Chairman had insisted be installed in S.E.E.S. HQ for support. At the time, Mitsuru had agreed with his assessment of the situation; now, all she could see was a line of guns held by unfamiliar faces. 

"She's unharmed?" Mitsuru asked. 

"Had a split lip when she came in," Akihiko said, quickly adding. "She says nobody from S.E.E.S. hit her though." 

"Who brought her in?" Mitsuru asked, flashing a badge at one of the guards who opened the way to the inner chambers where mortals were kept pending interrogation. 

"Suzui…said she just walked up to her and surrendered," Akihiko said, nodding to Ken as he stood next to Koromaru outside the interrogation room. Hayase and a few other agents were leaning on the opposite wall, arms folded and glaring at Ken until they saw Mitsuru approach. 

"Director Kirijo," Hayase said with a salute. "Amada-san refuses to move and let us conduct wellness exams on the prisoner." 

"He has refused to move on my orders," Mitsuru said, not sparing the upstarts another glance. "Give me a few minutes, Akihiko." 

Akihiko nodded, sliding next to Ken and meeting Hayase's annoyed look with a placid smile. "She okay?" Akihiko muttered to Ken. 

"For now," Ken swallowed, hands clasped tightly behind his back, his fingers inches from the pistol tucked in his waistband. 

Mitsuru stepped into a small, grey interrogation suite, furnished with a table and two hard metal chairs. One was occupied already by a slightly disheveled looking Yoshizawa Sumire, who still found the grace to smile up at her, despite blood drying on her upper lip. 

"Yoshizawa…" Mitsuru said, the door thunking loudly in the bare room. 

"Sensei," Sumire said, handcuffs clattering against her restraints as she shifted in her seat. "Sorry to call you in like this, but this was the only way I could be sure to talk to you." 

"Did you lose my phone number?" Mitsuru asked, rubbing her eyes wearily. "Who did that to you? Akihiko said no one at S.E.E.S. did that." 

"No…I told him that no one on our side did this to me," Sumire said. "That's an important distinction to make. Shiho wanted me to go to the medical bay but our colleagues outside insisted I be questioned first." 

"I'll have someone from the medical bay attend to you in a moment," Mitsuru sighed. "Do you understand how much trouble you've caused, Yoshizawa?" 

"Quite a bit, I'm sure," Sumire shrugged, looking as sheepish as a child caught stealing candy. "I imagine you have quite a few questions for me." 

Mitsuru snorted mirthlessly through her nose. "Sumire…tell me you didn't have anything to do with Niijima-san's disappearance." 

"Not…directly," Sumire said. "She's alive; I promise…though she, and everyone in this city, are in serious danger unless we act." 

"Is that right?" Mitsuru echoed. "You disappeared into thin air-" 

"Thank you," Sumire said. "That must mean you had no clue as to what I've been up to…guess I'm stealthier than I thought." 

"You are more trouble than I thought you'd be," Mitsuru said, sounding almost proud for a moment until a photo of eight blurry figures moving between buildings in the Metaverse landed in front of her. "The Phantom Thieves have resurfaced…though there seems to be eight of them now." 

Sumire didn't glance down at the image. She already knew what it showed, after all. "Seems that way…I imagine they'll be more formidable in the future." 

"Did you have something to do with that as well?" Mitsuru asked, watching Sumire roll her tongue around in her mouth as though she were trying to dislodge a kernel from her teeth. 

"...yes," Sumire said after a moment. 

Mitsuru glanced up at the camera in the corner, scooting closer and dropping her voice. "You have twenty minutes to explain yourself before word of your capture spreads…where's Shirogane? Where's Narukami? Where's Akechi , for that matter? Several of the most powerful Summoners we have have either betrayed us or gone missing and I want to know why." 

Sumire leaned back in her chair, the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. In spite of being cold, hungry, and bleeding from the nose, this evening was going exactly how she wanted it to. 

"It's…a long story," Sumire sighed. "But please believe me when I say that I'm being perfectly honest with you." 

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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

The Apartment of Yoshizawa Sumire

4.17.202X

7:34 am

Shinjuku, Tokyo

"-like this all night!" 

Goro sucked in a pained gasp of air, fighting some kind of sleep paralysis as he struggled to sit upright. 

"Easy…don't rush." That was Naoto speaking, and for some reason Goro recoiled from her hand as she placed it on his upper back. The memory of being quite literally surrounded by love was still fresh on his skin and Naoto's sudden intrusion brought him back to the real world, back to Sumire's apartment, back to the hunger that only seemed to get worse after sleep. 

"What…what's going on?" Goro spluttered, wiping the drool off his cheek. "Where were you last night?" 

Naoto's expression of concern relaxed with a soft sigh. "Good to see you're alive and unharmed as well, Akechi." 

"Do you remember what happened?" Sumire asked, hovering near Goro's elbow as he stood up in case he lost his balance again. "You were in the kitchen and you-" 

"-slipped," Goro said, wincing as he rubbed his stomach. 

"Yoshizawa said you were hungry," Naoto said, holding out a pack of protein bars. "Are you feeling weak or unsteady?" 

Goro shook his head, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. It was hard to describe the feeling; every inch of his skin seemed to buzz as though something wriggled just beneath the surface. He felt like a held breath; a painful pause in anticipation of something important. More than anything, he felt hungry in so many ways. 

"I'm fine," Goro lied, ripping open a protein bar with his teeth. "Did you get held up?" 

"Took the long way here; needed to make sure I wasn't being followed," Naoto lied. "I'm going to have to make an appearance at the office so I'm afraid this can't be a long visit; I just wanted to make sure you were still breathing." 

Goro nearly choked on a large unchewed hunk of chocolate protein bar, gagging until Sumire whacked him on his back. 

"Though perhaps I spoke too soon," Naoto sighed, rubbing her eyes. 

"Blow me," Goro coughed, stuffing the sticky pieces of protein bar back in his mouth to chew them better a second time. "Where's Narukami?" 

"No idea," Naoto lied again. "He must think associating with us will put us in danger, so he's probably blundering off on his own like some heroic fool."

"You have no idea where your senpai and oldest comrade is?" Goro sniffed, taking a swig from a bottle of water Sumire nervously passed him. 

"Yosuke is recovering from surgery, but even he might not have any clues," Naoto said. "And we can't afford to go looking for him now…we'll just have to trust that he knows what he's doing. Apparently he helped himself to a few kuda before he left, so at least he'll stand a chance against Kaneshiro if he runs into him again." 

The yakuza's name seemed to drain the life out of the room, each of them shuddering at the monster they had barely survived. 

"You fought him…how strong is he?" Goro asked. 

"Too strong," Naoto muttered, chewing on the corner of her thumbnail. "The only other demons that I've fought like that were the Phantom Thieves…and they seemed to have more trouble fighting us than Kaneshiro did." 

"How long has he been like this?" Sumire asked. "He's been right under our noses for years; how have our sweeps for cults missed this?" 

"Not even Rise is omniscient," Naoto clucked. "And she would have picked up on a demon like that in Tokyo before tonight. She only felt his presence when he started attacking the guards; I was there when she did." 

"So is he a human possessed by a demon or a demon pretending to be human?" Goro asked, scarcely caring which it was. The only thing he had to consider is how he was going to kill Kaneshiro if he ever ran into him. 

"He seems possessed to me, but not quite like the abominations that attacked our forward station," Naoto said. "He's more…complete. Like he's taken to the demonic presence and kept more control of himself than the others did." 

"But how did they get so many possessed yakuza in the first place?" Sumire asked. "They would need to be able to summon and bind demons like we do with-" 

All three agents seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. 

"Those glyphs those kids were making in Madarame's basement…" Goro said, sitting back down on the couch as he felt suddenly lightheaded. "Kaneshiro's men protected that old bag while he ran his little sweatshop." 

"How does an aging artist and a crime boss get mixed up in demon summoning?" Sumire muttered. 

"Perhaps they signed contracts with the same demon and were asked to work together," Naoto said, her eyes scanning the horizon just outside Sumire's window as they often did when she was looking for answers. "But this whole operation has been too tightly polished for a low-level cult. Kaneshiro was able to call Hell Bikers into the fight without a summoning ritual…I could have sworn I saw him release them from kudas as well." 

"Kudas?" Sumire echoed. "How did they-" 

She trailed off, the answer to her question too terrible to voice aloud. 

"I've had my private concerns there about this for a bit," Naoto said, turning her cap over in her hands. "But…I'm starting to suspect that Kaneshiro and Madarame might have help from some more well-connected friends." 

Goro swallowed heavily, the dry crumble of a protein bar scraping his throat on the way down. "...you think S.E.E.S. has a rat?" 

[siderealscribblings]

Devil Summoner Akechi Goro vs the Phantom Thieves

Interlude: Seasons in the Abyss 1

Some Time Ago… The Labyrinth of Amala

One look at the tattered pink tutu in Haru's hands and Ann knew they were all in hell. 

"Is that all there is?" Ann whined, holding her torn skirt together with one hand. She needed a replacement and the twisting plains of the world they found themselves in were short on clothing shops. Occasionally they would stumble upon a pile of garbage that appeared to be from the world they had been cast out of; stacks of broken computers, discarded clothing, and other junk that nobody wanted just like them. The worn pajamas they had fled with had long torn to pieces and their little group was forced to replace their clothing piecemeal with whatever they could find. 

"If Ryuji makes fun of you, you can always hit him," Haru said cheerfully, dressed in a hideous orange and purple dress and two different sneakers. 

"I know…I just don't want to be a ballerina for the next few weeks," Ann muttered. She almost wished Ryuji would make fun of her like he did when they were still kids. Time was only marked in the strange world by how their bodies changed in both expected and unexpected ways.

The ears on her head were far from the oddest thing about her new appearance as the little bump at the base of her spine had extended into a full cat tail one night while she was sleeping. It wasn't a comfortable sensation and the feeling of suddenly gaining a new appendage woke her with a howl of pain that sounded more feline than she was comfortable admitting. Her new ears were making her hypersensitive as well, each sound amplified once through her human ears and again through the feline nubs that stuck out of her hair. Why she of all people was doomed to spend her days as a cat was beyond her but Ann hoped she would stop changing before she grew whiskers. 

"Well, maybe there's a department store around the corner," Haru said brightly, turning around to give Ann some privacy. It was rare for any of them to have a moment alone and on the occasion they found a pool of water, they often hastily washed in the same bath, doing their best to preserve each other's modesty by turning the other way. It seemed like such a silly thing to care about when hideous monstrosities threatened to eat them on a daily basis, but like Makoto said, they at least had to try and be normal. 

Thankfully, her tutu was on tight when someone knocked on the sheet metal hiding their little cave. Ryuji stuck his head and Ann saw a glimmer of amusement in his golden eyes that fled as soon as she glared at him. 

"Yo, Futaba found a phone in one of the junk piles," Ryuji said, a worn baseball bat hanging off one shoulder suspended by a thin leather strap. The boys donated any tops they could find to the girls, so Ryuji was bare-chested, his golden tattoos pulsing as he crawled back out of the cave. 

"Does it work?" Ann asked, trailing behind him as he led them back out into the area they had discovered a few days earlier. The desert they had first landed in had given way suddenly to a craggy forest with jagged trees. Crooked shadows stretched out from each trunk, never shifting as a pale red sun hung motionless in the sky. Ann preferred it to the desert but so did so many of the other monstrosities that chased them from hiding spot to hiding spot. Something about seven starving, ragged teenagers was catnip for aliens but at least they were getting better at protecting themselves. Yusuke had found a rusty old katana that was more otaku prop than weapon, but it was sharp enough to cut through a monster's neck and reduce it to a pool of warm, red…stuff. She wasn't sure what that stuff was yet; all she knew is that her body craved it worse than any dessert. They had long overcome any shame they might have felt in gorging themselves sick on the viscera of their fallen enemies; if this was an eat or be eaten sort of world, Ann knew which side she would rather be on. 

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Devil Summoner: Akechi Goro vs the Phantom Thieves (Chapter 4)

Rating: M 

Pairings: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Polythieves 

Tags: Devil Summoner AU, SMT/Persona Mashup, Adventure, Mystery, Romance

The door beneath them swung open on creaky hinges and Goro fell silent as he heard boots on the dingy tiles below. Raising a finger to his lips, he pressed Sumire back into the corner, leaning around the railing to get a look at who had arrived. For a moment, he thought he was looking at another human…and then he turned his head and Goro's fleeting hope was dashed. Bright yellow eyes swept the empty bar as the man (or what appeared to be a man), surveyed his surroundings. A black coat trailed like a shadow behind him, his own shadow flickering as the light from Kagutsuchi streamed through the door. A white and black mask, much like a superhero's disguise, hid half his face; his mouth was just about the only part of him Goro could see, crooked into a smirk as he looked around.  

And then there were the tattoos. Glowing, black and red lines streaked across his pale skin. They disappeared under his mask and down beneath the collar of his jacket, pulsing with every breath he took. A brand like that marked him as otherworldly; there was no chance he was one of Hanamura's agents.

"Goro...I-I sense something bad down there," Morgana whispered. "We need to get out of here!"

"I know you're here…" a low, male voice called out into the open bar. "Detective Akechi Goro and Yoshizawa Kasumi of the Japanese government's Spectral Examination and Eradication Squad…we've had our eye on you since you arrived in Kaitul."

"Told you," Loki hissed, until Goro jammed the muzzle of his weapon under Loki's chin.

"Quiet," Goro said, glaring at Loki and Morgana.

"If we wanted to harm either of you, we would have done so already," the demon called, scanning the bottom floor for any sign of them. "And no harm is going to come to you so long as you do exactly as I say."  

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