[] Light/Neutral
[] The Idol
[] Guardian Beast
...yes, that's right. The Phantom Society has to be stopped. With the Tokyo Modernization Project they've managed to place soul-sucking computers in almost every household in the city, and while they claim it's just to 'skim' magnetite off the top of the entire population, not enough that they'd even notice...somehow, you don't buy that. They infiltrate the highest levels of government and spend billions on just giving away expensive tech to the entire population just to 'skim'? No, there's got to be more to this. At the very least, they've got to be amassing all that magnetite for a reason. Merely selling it doesn't seem plausible after spending so much putting it into place. So, they must be aiming to summon something? You have absolutely no idea what could possibly need all that magnetite, but the mere thought of it terrifies you.
But, even without their soul-sucking, the Phantom Society is monstrous. Sure, they're the largest organization of demon hunters in the country, but that's only because they have a sense of self-preservation. Even with the Barrier in place, Tokyo sees the supernatural rise up from the abyss to devour the works of man every day, and if left unchecked things would rapidly spiral out of control. Thus the demon summoners under the Society's control spend most of their time taking jobs to curb the ever-rising tide of demons, working to return areas sucked into demonic Domains back to reality, exterminate or negotiate with rogue demons, and generally keeping demons from interfering with humanity too much.
You're fine with that part. In fact, the idea of becoming a demon hunter and stopping tragedies like your own from happening again is a big part of why you had thoughtlessly agreed to join the Society in the first place, thinking they were a group of like minded individuals.
But then you discovered that's not all the Society does.
Mercenary work for the various supernatural factions warring for dominance over Tokyo. Criminal activities like smuggling, drug dealing, prostitution and human trafficking, all supplemented by demonic powers that meant mundane law enforcement couldn't even touch them. And a slow, insidious take over of the entire world, with anyone getting in their way being brutally silenced.
While you're fine with doing Gaean or Messian dirty work on a case by case basis - keeping those lunatics focused on each other meant they didn't bother anyone else - you wanted no part of the rest of it. Over the course of the last few years it's become clear to you that any good the Society does is completely incidental, merely seen as necessary steps in order to advance their dark cause.
...well, for now, all you can do for now is keep your head down and wait for your opportunity. Trying to pull anything as you are now would just end with you buried in a ditch on the side of a road somewhere. You need to prepare yourself. Gain power for yourself, gather allies, learn the secrets of the Society to turn against them, and most importantly ensure they can't use Mayone against you.
You've spent the last five years of your life with the woman and owe her everything, and you don't think you have it in yourself to hurt her. Something you'd almost certainly be forced to do if you betrayed the Society while she still followed their orders. You don't have any illusions about her - you know she isn't a good person, that she kills the targets the Society send her after without hesitation. But, still...
...you should put all this to the side, for now. Taking out the Society will have to wait. For now, you'll need to get yourself ready, which first and foremost involves you doing your job. You sit down at your new desk, and turn on your new computer. The OS installed is an older version, which is pretty good because most of the newer ones are riddled with malware. You quickly open up the web browser and connect to Summoner Net, the Society's private website used by the devil summoners in it's employ to coordinate their actions, share information and, most importantly, find work.
You browse the job boards for a few minutes, looking for something to spend your first day on the job on. There's a planned raid on a building being used as a hideout for a rogue summoner, a request to kidnap a pair of children that you pretend very hard that you didn't see, and then you find something that looks simple enough. Cleaning out an underground emergency shelter of a recent demon infestation. Reports of the demons inside are unclear since workers sent in never returned (pretty common when it comes to this business, unfortunately) and they haven't sent in a proper summoner yet, but it seems to be mostly lower level demons and undead.
Seems simple enough. You and Pascal could handle the whole thing yourselves if that's the case, in addition to whatever demons you manage to make contracts with on the way. Zombies tended to burn pretty well, after all. You take the job, get the details (pretty barebones, just a history of how the Tokyo Modernization Project included the construction of several shelters across the city, probably in case some bigshot demon showed up and trashed the place) but doesn't even tell you how far down the shelter goes. Typical. You shut down the computer and stand up. Now, Mayone said she left your things in the fortified basement, but she didn't tell you how to get down there...
---
It takes a few minutes of searching, but you eventually find a false wall in one of the empty rooms that opens up into a rather narrow stairwell leading down. You climb down, and come out...into the bar, behind the counter and out of sight from where any customers would be seated. Huh, how about that. And, looking around, the bar's still filled with tables and chairs, albeit ones encrusted with dust. Mayone must have overlooked them, either accidentally or on purpose. You'll probably spend the evening cleaning some of them up and moving them up to the office so you've at least got somewhere to talk with customers. But only after you get a bed to sleep in, of course.
You find the way down into the basement quickly enough. It's a dingy thing of concrete and darkness, with only bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling for light. The good news, though, is that the basement turns out to be a rather expansive underground complex, going three floors deep and ultimately at least twice as large as the building above. The walls are pretty sturdy too, most demons would have a fair amount of trouble breaking through them, and if you apply the proper magical wards to them you could have something pretty impressive going on down here.
But God knows what you're going to actually do with all this space. Was Mayone expecting you to start a small paramilitary organization in the heart of Tokyo or something?
It's not like you need to give your demons room and board - pretty much every demon is digitally storable, and while you've only got space for about ten demons and change on the ancient smartphone you own (if you're not using any expansion apps for the Demon Summoning Program), if you ever wanted more without upgrading to a better phone you could just buy a server and stick it in the corner of your office. Hell, the computer you've got up there will probably hold all the demons you'll ever need - you don't exactly need one of the armies of Hell to do your job, after all.
Putting the size of the underground complex to the side for the moment, there are three rooms you find interesting down here. The first is what appears to be a pantry. Completely barren, of course, but it implies some things about this place. Was this basement supposed to serve as an emergency shelter of some sort? You kinda wanna meet the people who owned this place before you, ask them a few things, but you strongly suspect that you're not going to get the chance to. The second location of interest takes up pretty much the majority of the third basement level. It's just a very, very big room. If this really was a bomb shelter of some sort, maybe it was supposed to be an exercise room or gym? You can't really see yourself doing laps around this room, though...
The third room, on the second floor, contains your very own private Terminal.
This is...frankly a lot more impressive than that empty pantry and the large room on the third floor. Now you really wonder who the hell owned this place before you did. It's a fairly small room, about the size of a small bedroom, with intricate designs covering the walls broken up by bulbous protrusions that remind you vaguely of eyes. But most importantly there's a computer console embedded into the far wall, next to which sits your beloved guitar, your gun holster, and a couple bags of luggage. All of which are yours, your 'stuff' which Mayone had said she put down here. You guess that means that this here is why she bought this building for you in the first place. You grab your bags and unceremoniously throw them through the door outside before walking up to the Terminal's console, regarding it as you pick up your guitar and gun and start getting ready.
Terminals are pretty fantastic things. One of the original mergings of magic and modern technology, the Terminals spread throughout Japan (and the world, for that matter) provide an invaluable service for the Phantom Society, and anyone aware of the supernatural - instant and almost free transportation to any Terminal you know the address for. There is a cost for such a convenient service, but it's a cost paid by simply plugging the thing into the electricity grid so it's barely anything at all.
They utilize something called the Amala Network, some poorly understood concept that, theoretically, links the entire multiverse together. You haven't really studied it so you don't know that much about it, but you know the gist of things. If you had the right address, you could even travel to parallel universes - you know for a fact that you can at least reach the Expanse with one of these things. You've used one yourself to visit the demon city of Tiphereth with Mayone once. Beautiful place.
Still, the presence of this thing complicates matters somewhat. On one hand, it's quite the boon to have your own private Terminal. You can think of at least a dozen ways this could make your life easier. On the other...it presents quite the security risk. These things have absolutely no security features - as far as you know it's actually impossible to implement them at all due to the nature of the Amala Network. The best you could do is point a bunch of automated turrets at the door from outside the room, since putting them inside when the Terminal is operational would end...poorly. And even then...You really don't like the thought of people getting in here without your knowledge.
The only way to make it absolutely secure is to not use it at all. You can't use the Terminal network to travel to an offline Terminal, even if you have it's address, meaning that if you just keep the thing powered off you won't have to worry about anything. On the other hand, if you use it to get around the city, that'd shave hours off the commute between jobs, meaning you'd be able to get a lot more done each day. But, it's not like you could just power it on and off remotely. Just setting a mechanism to cut the power would end up damaging the Terminal pretty badly, since they've got a pretty involved shutdown process. You'd have to leave it on the whole time you were out unless you had someone who knew what they were doing that you trusted back here to turn it off for you. And the closest 'public' Terminal you know of is about an hours walk away.
So, that leaves the question of what do you do with this thing?
[] Leave it off. Better to be safe than sorry. You can just make do with public transport until you can afford a car or something. (day will end when you return from today's job)
[] Use it, but only for today's job. You're not high profile enough for anyone to give a shit about you just yet, and you're not planning on being out long enough for anything serious to happen...Besides, you can use this thing to move the furniture you're planning on buying this evening into the building. You'll still have to carry it up to the second floor (the rooms up there are a hell of a lot nicer than the ones down here), but it's better than carting it across the city without a car. (frees up one action in the evening, after you return from today's job)
[] Fuck it, it's here, just use it. Who cares about security when time is money? (going on a job or request takes up one action out of the daily four instead of two actions)
