Aria of the Devil Soul

One Odd Morning

The next morning, Vergil barely took a breakfast, just a cup of green tea, before looking to the folder which appeared on his brother's desk during the night. One big proof it was all real and that they were ten people from another dimension in theirs.

He wasn't paid enough for all this shit.

It was an odd case just by itself, made with black luxurious and rigid paper, the logo on it was probably the Team's totem: a black and red top hat with the matching mask under and, from the right eye of the mask, a bright white flame was burning. With an original font, the name of the team was written in white just under the totem: The Phantom Thieves of Hearts.

Opening the folder, Vergil started reading the first file, the one which belong to the team's leader: Joker or Amamiya Ren, an eighteen-year-old young Japanese man. His main Persona was Arsène Lupin, the infamous gentlemen burglar incarnated as a demon while his ultimate one was Sathanaël the devil prince, also said as a gentleman with a sweet taste for luxurious things. The young man also had a lot of sub-Personae with due to his 'Wild Card' statue. Looking at the kid's photo, Vergil couldn't help but wonder what secrets were hidden behind the thick lenses of those glasses.

One by one, he read each file:

Morgana's one, or Mona if using his codename. By his side, his main Persona, Zorro, AKA the spirit of the unfamous Don Diego de la Vega. His ultimate one was the Latin thief's god, Mercurius. He was the Velvet Room's envoy, a being created with a human soul and a cat-looking body. He also hated being called a cat. The file also said that only people who entered a cognitive space like the Velvet Room or Mementos could hear his real voice in the human world. No age was given, his photo showing his feline body, a black and white cat of average size, making it hard to not think the word 'cat' next to Mona's name.

Sakamoto Ryuji's one, or Skull for keeping the use of codenames, with the ghost pirate captain William Kidd as main Persona and Seiten Taisei as his ultimate one. He was a young man, the same age as Joker, with a bad reputation of delinquent, abusively given, while his only goal was to help people in his own way. He had little to no faith in adults, having been betrayed to much by people of authority. Like his own PE teacher... who simply broke Ryuji's leg... because the kid threatened to tell everyone about the way this man used to sexually abuse of teen girls... before spreading terrible things about Sakamoto. This one would have been a tough one but, somehow, he reminded Vergil a bit of his own son, Nero.

Takamaki Ann's one, her codename was Panther, with her main Persona, the spirit of the sulphurous gipsy Carmen, and the witch goddess Hecate, the ultimate one. Gracious et agile young lady, the same age as the two young men Vergil's already read the files, she has no pity for men who dare to hurt girls and women, especially while abusing of their authority. Seductive but dangerous, she has remained a humble one and a hard worker. A lady's help would have been good with her, Ann having a traumatic past with adult males, her past PE teacher being her main problem at the time. By seeing her photo, Vergil could guess one of her parents wasn't Japanese, making her a potential bullying victim.

Kitagawa Yusuke, the codenames being Fox or Inari, with Ishikawa Goemon, the ghost of the revolutionary samurai as his main Persona. And Kamu Susano-O, the Japanese divinity of storm, as his ultimate one. He was an enthusiastic young artist, being also eighteen, an eccentric one but with sharp eyes, no details being able to fail him in missions. His main problem was when he painted, he could forget about everything, even to eat. And when it was not because he was painting, it was because his eyes were lost in the contemplation of his late mother's last masterpiece, Sayuri, like he was trying to communicate with this woman he didn't even remember. He wasn't apparently able to speak English, but Vergil didn't mind at all. After all, he learned how to speak Japanese while learning how to wield a katana properly. In fact, he really needed to catch some news from his old master, a hermit Inugami living in a small house, deep in one of the Japan's forests.