Part 1

Of Angles and Devils

Disclaimers: I don't own DMC or Angel, I'm just a fan who though of a good fiction.

The phone began its usual light ring as it had done countless times before. Dante, leaning back in his chair and with his feet up on his desk, kicked down on the desk, sending the phone spinning into his left hand. He let the phone hang there as he smiled and got ready to give his normal greeting. He had to have answered the phone about a hundred times before, but he never got tired of saying it.

"Devil May Cry?"

The person on the other end of the line was silent at first. After a few moments of Dante considering hanging up, she finally answered. "Hello?"

Dante instantly recognized the voice. "Lay-de, well, it's been a long time since I've heard that voice now hasn't it? Now, when was the last time we-"

Dante was cut short. "Not much time to talk now, Dante. We'll leave the greetings for when you get down here."

Dante was suddenly interested. It could only mean another job…or a date. "So, where exactly is 'here'?"

"L.A."

"L.A.? That's close enough. So, what is it this time, someone from the underworld get too big for his skin? Monsters start eating tourists? Demon hoards?"

"It's a hoard alright. Listen I need you over here as soon as you can get here, and bring as much firepower as you can."

"Can do, babe. I'll be over quicker than you can say 'Devil Trigger', but where exactly are you?"

Lady gave him and address and finished up the conversation with, "Just hurry!" before hanging up.

"Hmph, same old Lady." he mumbled to himself before hanging up his phone.

Dante grabbed up Force Edge, his twin pistols Ebony and Ivory, and a sawed-off shotgun before heading out of the door.

Eddy had been reading his magazine when someone kicked the doors of his shop open. Reaching behind the counter for his gun, he called out to the mysterious man who had just kicked in his door. "You sure picked the wrong night ta mess with me, homie, cuz I-"

He looked up to see Dante standing in front of him in his familiar red jacket and vest. Dante smiled at the African American.

"Hey, Eddy, how's life been treatin' ya?"

"Dante, good ta see ya man, good ta see ya! So, what has my best customer slash provider got for me today?"

Dante glanced around at the shelves of glowing vials of liquid and spell books as he spoke. "Well, didn't exactly come around to drop off something, I actually came by to pick up."

"Alright them, m' man, I got everything you need; vital star, blue orb, magic books, anything so long as you got the duk-" He was cut short as Dante placed a pile of hundreds on the desk. "-ets."

"Ya know that stuff I dropped off awhile ago to get the money to fix up my office? Ya know, after Temen-ni-gru?"

"Remmember? How could I forget? Half a dat stuff was glowing for gosh sakes. Some costly things, though, man, you sure ya got enough cash?"

Dante smiled again. "It's all there, Eddy, count it out if you want to. So where did you put the stuff?"

Eddy, who was already immersed in counting his payment, pointed to a door in the back of the shop from which hung a rusty "out of order" sign. "Same place I keep all the good stuff; in the back."

"Thanks, man." said Dante as he walked back to the door. The back room was filled with at number of abnormal objects; a few glowing katanas, a whispering broad sword, some books that appeared to be vibrating, an abnormally large snake head. Once Dante had gotten to the back of the back room, he had found what he had been looking for. He was almost a bit flattered that Eddy had kept all of the weapons he had given him in their own little area. Hanging from a nail on the wall was what could only be described as triple nun chucks. The weapon had three short bar like handles, much like nun chucks, all connected by chains to a central ring of metal. Each of the ends of bars was tipped by a circle of spikes extending out in a radius. The metal chains and central ring were black but the bars were a color that made them look as if they were made out of ice. Twirling them about a little bit, Dante reminisced. He hadn't used Cerberus in awhile.

The next item was what looked like a florescent purple electric guitar. Once Dante removed it from the wall, however, the guitar seemed less tame. Remembering the touch of its old master, the guitar began to glow and purple bolts of electricity surged through it.

The last thing on the wall was a pair of silver gauntlets and boots. At first they almost seemed to resist being worn by Dante, but they eventually gave in and allowed him to slip them on easily. Surprisingly enough, the gauntlets disappeared once they were put on. Dante somehow knew that they would reappear when he called them.

Dante looked about the area for a bit and though to himself while stroking his chin. Hm, I've got Cerberus, Nevan, and Beowulf, so where's…

Dante's chain of thought was broken when he heard loud snoring on his immediate right. Looking down, he spied two curved swords, one red, and the other blue, both with serrated edges. They looked like semi-normal weapons except that at the very end of the handles were heads. One head on each weapon, making for two heads. Two heads that seemed to be snoring at the moment.

Bending down, Dante lightly tapped the heads to wake them up. The red sword was the first to awaken. Slowly it opened its eyes and then gave a start. Speaking in a low, deep voice, it called to the blue sword, "Wake up, brother, the master is back!"

The blue sword woke up a bit more quickly and also seemed to jump when it saw Dante. Its voice was deeper than the other one's, if that was at all possible. "It is true; the master has come back for us!"

"Alright, alright, calm down and shut up. I'll get you guys outta here, just stay quiet and let me do the talkin'. Remember our little deal?"

Suddenly remembering the deal that they had made with Dante back during the Temen-ni-gru incident to stay quiet, Agni and Rudra went silent. The both of them almost seemed to frown a bit as they did so.

Putting the two swords on his back along with his other weapons, Dante walked out of the room to find Eddy still counting his money. Just as Dante's hand was at the push bar to the door of the shop, Eddy shouted after him.

"Oh, Dante, wait! About Artemis…" Eddie trailed off when he noticed that Dante hadn't taken Artemis with him. "Oh, you didn't take it."

Dante was suddenly interested and turned around. "What about Artemis?"

"Well, I was gonna tell you not to take it because I've been doing some work on it, ya know, research and stuff, and I've been tryin' to modify it. It was…sort of going to be a-"

"Birthday present?" Dante interrupted. He knew that his birthday was coming up, so he suspected Eddy was going to do something like this.

Eddie looked a bit embarrassed. Finally, he nodded. Dante smirked at this and headed out the door, only to reappear a few minutes later with another weapon. It looked like an arm piece to a strange suit of armor. In reality, it was the Nightmare B, a sort of demon laser gun that he had used when he went after Mundus some time ago. He set the weapon on the counter.

"Here, you can use this for your project." Dante noticed Eddy getting money out to pay him, but waved for him to stop. "No, no, it's on the house. Consider it my thank you card in advance."

With that, Dante walked out of the store and into the street. Straddling his motorcycle, he couldn't help but wonder what a demon hoard would be doing in L.A. He shrugged it off. What did it matter anyway? Just some more demons to kill, right? Dante drove off into the night, headed for L.A. and prepared for whatever he would find there.