Reapers
Psychopomp, or Guide of Souls; serves to sever the last ties between the soul and the body and to guide the deceased to the next world without having any control over the fact of the victim's death.
Usually when he took jobs that didn't pay much, he tried to get done with the task as soon as possible with the least amount of ammo used. However, today, he was having more fun than he should have been with this one mission.
Dante laughed as he flipped over a large black cloaked reaper, using his trusty Ebony and Ivory to shoot two hot-as-hell silver bullets straight into the personification of the demon soul that had (unfortunately) escaped through a Hell Gate. Said Hell Gate had been destroyed for almost three months now but he was still having to clean up the mess that idiotic cult had caused. Usually the kid was on garbage duty, but he hadn't heard from the punk in about a week and God forbid Dante just let the demons trample everything in their path.
It screamed momentarily before bursting into a cloud of dust. Like a corpse so dried out that the smallest touch could disrupt what connection was still holding it together before falling to an non-descriptive neutral gray pile.
Two more seemed to take its place as a soft glowing orange portal opened up, and more reapers spilled in. Some of the reapers still had lost souls connected to them with thick, rusted chains. Their screams of terror could barely be heard over the blasts from Dante's weapons.
When one was shot down, two, sometimes even three, more showed up, waving their scythes high above their heads and bringing them down onto where Dante was standing. A few dug into his skin, and while it stung like a bitch, Dante continued to jump around and slice through them as well as he could. However, as soon as some of the dust cleared from the small enclosure, he found himself trapped alone in a room filled with reapers. He almost couldn't tell the difference between the lost souls and their weapons, they were moving so fast.
Claustrophobia was beginning to become a reality for the half devil.
"Now this is what I call a party!" he says, but there isn't as much enthusiasm as he had thought there would be. Three lunge at him and he quickly holsters his guns to free his hands for Rebellion.
However, just as he goes to swipe, three light green arrows are embedded in their gray skulls, and the demons burst into dust. He looks in the direction they came from to find a bulky figure kneeling over a hole in the ceiling of the abandoned building. Dante nods to them in thanks before swinging at the other group that comes forward to take the fallens' place. He hears a thud from behind him and then a slight pressure on his back, but it is gone in seconds.
Turning to swing at a reaper to his left, Dante uses this as his excuse to get a better look at the spinning figure. Their silver bow glows with a few violet and blue runes engraved in it as the light green and blue arrows of (what he can only describe as light) make one fluid motion to go from the quiver on the figure's back to being shot from the golden string of the silver bow. The target (the reapers' skulls) is hit with a scrape of metal on bone before they burst away into a cloud. Dante goes back to battling his half of the demons.
When he's down to his last two, he's panting for breathe. It takes a lot to get him roused up like he is, but the hunting high is one that no money or souls could buy. He moves to the left, but obviously it was not planned for by his helping hand and a blue arrow goes straight through his arm. The arrow head still hits the reaper it was aimed at, blood sliding down the glowing blue rod as it meets the demon before dripping to the ground.
Dante groans as he swings Rebellion, before grabbing at the wound. It felt as if his arm was about to explode. The throb he felt from the wound disappeared as soon as the reaper dropped into a pile of dust. The torn muscle stitched itself back together within a minute.
"That fucking hurt," he grumbles, looking at the red, irritated skin through the hole in his sleeve that the arrow had created.
The figure just shrugs, before pulling another arrow and killing a demon going for the distracted Dante.
He tries to get a good look at them, never seeing them before or noticing their scent, before the largest reaper Dante has ever seen raises from the ground. It's at least three times the size of a usual one, and the amount of souls it has connected to it makes up the usual black cloak they are seen wearing.
"Well damn," he says, resting Rebellion on his shoulder as he whistles from the size of it. He turns to his impromptu partner, who had been too far away to get a good look at, but finds they have covered their face with a pair of goggles and a faded bandana. Behind them a growing blaze rises as it catches on the old, dusty furniture of the room. "Didn't think it could get any worse."
The half-demon could swear he heard his partner say something, but between the screams of the souls and the bandana muffling their words, Dante could only shrug and lunge at the demon looming over them both. As he sliced at the arm holding the scythe, he saw them aim a large cut off shotgun at the chains of the souls to free them. It only took a few blasts of rock salt and iron shavings to free them, weakening the demon who fed off the terror of the lost souls.
Kill two birds with one sword.
At least that's how he thought the phrase went.
"Hey, Trick Shot!" he yells, landing on the shoulder of the demon and pointing his twin guns to the head of the demon. "Shoot a couple this way, and try not to hit me this time."
The figure raises their gloved hand, showing off the glorious image of their slim semi-gloved middle finger before they holster their shotgun to a strap on their right leg and knot three arrows at once; blue, green, blue. They shoot off, and hit in a perfect line on the demon's skull-face; mouth, nostril, forehead. The ends explode, taking away bits of dust and bone with them, but the demon still stands. Dante takes the moment of weakness and sends ten quick shots of Ivory and Ebony into the gaping jaw of what had been a demon skull.
The demon disappears before him, dragging what few souls with left down to the depths of Hell, clouding the room with black dust before the growing fire uses it to spread further into the building.
Was it hot in here or just him?
"And this is my queue to leave," Dante says, flipping through the air and landing closer to the door to run out. He's surprised to find his partner has disappeared into the flames, going in the opposite direction. However, when a wall falls between them, shielding his view with bright flames, he decides not to follow.
The front door of the building bursts open from the heat of the fire and one lucky shot with Ebony.
Dante brushed a semi-gloved hand through his hair, coughing when some of the black demon dust was inhaled with his quickly working lungs. It was a quick mission, especially with the help of that random that showed up right as another cluster of the reapers showed up to find their brethren dead. He momentarily wondered why they had gone in a separate direction.
Lady and Trish were awaiting him outside, guns ready in case any of the demons managed to escape the blade of Rebellion or shot of Ebony and Ivory. Of course, they were not surprised to find that they simply wasted an hour of their time waiting on him. However, they did care to glance at each other when another figure stepped out of the burning building also not seconds after Dante did; dark blue coat fluttering at the ends, but the metal clasps keeping it together across their chest.
"Looks like you made a new friend, Dante."
The man smirks and glances over his shoulder, pleased to find his partner had come back. He tried to catch some definitive physical attribute of the random, but the makeshift mask obscured any possibility of that.
"Seems that way," he huffs, before holstering his twin guns and stitching Rebellion back on its holder sewed into his red coat. "Thanks for the help. I thought I was a goner."
"We both know that's a lie," the figure says, voice deep but still more feminine than their bulking physique suggested. The dark gray goggles and bandana used to hide the face of the woman are slid down around her neck before she takes the moment to secure her slightly tarnished silver bow across her body. The quiver holding her arrows fizzles from sight in a small burst of yellow light, but her shotgun continues to slap against the denim around her leg with each step.
"What gives you that idea?"
"Come now, Son of Sparda, I can smell your demon aura from ten miles away."
Dante smirks, but can't help the rolling of his light colored eyes.
"What is with it and people connecting me to the old man?"
"Because they know of his strength, and anyone with blood relations must be just as strong, if not stronger."
Dante pauses, watching the woman as she unbuttons her coat. She shakes off the dark leather of the soot and demon dust that caught in the material. Underneath he can make out a dark brown vest covering an off-white shirt. Her dark blue pants match her coat, but the few rips and holes (sparingly covered by a few brown leather holsters) show they were haphazardly pushed into the tops of brown boots. The building collapses behind her in the lasts of the fire the reapers had created when the sparks from Rebellion and their scythes caught on an old, dry mattress.
"Haven't heard that one before."
"Then you should take it as a compliment."
Her as-a-matter-of-fact tone and smirk almost defeats Dante's signature one. She flips her hair from underneath her collar of her jacket as she begins to walk away. It reaches just below her collar bone, knotted at the ends from sweat and being moved against the inside of her jacket, but otherwise it falls messily in tight curls. Her skin has a healthy glow, a human glow, even though it seems to be unnaturally pale. She needed some sun. Her eyes were wrinkled with the lack of sleep and there were countless cuts across her right cheek. A bruise began to grow under her left eye and had momentarily spread across her nose to her right eyebrow.
Those eyes… sunken into her skull like death was upon her, hanging like a loose thread that only continued to unravel after every cut.
"Neat bow!" he calls after her, having experienced firsthand the power it could do. Luce and Ombra never missed, and it seemed that bow had the same ferocity when it came to vanquishing enemies. The cuts and bruises almost seem to disappear the more and more he looked at them, following her with his eyes as she begins to walk away from the trio.
She tosses her hand into the air, her two fingers closest to her thumb knocking to the side in an informal salute. Kicking off of a nearby dumpster, she jumps onto the roof of a decaying brick building and the clicking of the heels of her boots disappears not long after she leaves their sight. As a half-demon, he could smell the rotting flesh of the reapers before he walked on the block. Almost like he had cracked open a few dozen rotten eggs and left them to bake in the hot summer sun.
Her scent was not the usual human scent of soap and coffee that he usually got from customers or his girls. Oh no, she smelled of fresh linen and wildflowers. She had called his scent a 'demon aura' and the only thing he could describe hers as was the scent of something equally divine.
"Well then, shall I go get paid?"
Trish and Dante look to Lady, both wearing aspirated expressions.
"What?" She looked clueless. "Do you know how much damage you've done? Plus you still owe me!"
Dante just walks off, clasping his hands together behind his head. Trish smirks and shakes her head as she follows the half devil, holstering Luce and Ombra into the back of her black pants. Lady huffs and slings her large gun across her back to tie up the tail end of their trio.
"Did she smell funny to you?" Trish says quietly to Dante, keeping an ear open as Lady chatters loudly over her cellphone to another client that the Devil May Cry trio may be in business with, shortly.
Dante nods.
Even after knowing Trish for years, it still catches him by surprise that she's a full demon and not another oblivious human, like what Lady can be during her few moments of ignorance.
"Not demon, not human."
Dante nods again. There's only so many beings out there. Of course, demons and humans made up the majority of that.
"At least, not the demonic we're used to."
Dante looks to Trish, pausing mid step before falling back into the swagger he had beaten out for himself. The weight of Rebellion was comfortable on his back, but he still felt another, stranger, pressure.
"But really, we've only handled demons. You don't think..."
"You're doing that thing again, Trish," Dante says, but he finds some nostalgia in the subconscious mutterings of inner thoughts. His mother had done that, rest her soul. Vergil had picked it up from her too before they were split apart. Oh how things had been so simple before the world of demons grew a thirst for his blood...
"Whatever she is, she definitely knows how to control it."
"That's what I'm afraid of." He glances to Trish from the corner of his eye.
(And he was just as thirsty for their blood as they were for his.)
"Should we worry about her?"
"I don't see why we should."
Of course, Dante's opinion didn't hold much weight in their conversation and he could already see Trish's brain cranking out any and all ideas of sabotage that she saw as acceptable.
"You'll regret those words."
Dante smugly mused, "Only because you'll make me."
The banter between the old friends caused a small smile to tug at the corner of Trish's mouth before Lady crashed down the amusement she held for just that moment.
"Got a job on the other side of town. C'mon, you two. I'm not paying you to just sit around."
"You don't pay us at all," Dante taunts smoothly at the dark haired woman. Yet, all she does in retaliation is peek over the colored glass of her sunglasses and sends a look that has Dante briskly walking away, hands up in surrender. He can't argue with these women. It's not worth the uphill battle. He'd rather file his taxes. (The same taxes he's been evading for the last five years because all of his work is under the table and it must have been Mundus himself who created the lengthy process it is to record and process all the money Dante doesn't have.)
Above them, the temporary partner that had accompanied Dante for his quick little reaper mission looks at them from the broken window of an old office building. She can smell the musty rot of the demon girl, the blonde, and the other leaves a bland taste in her mouth, like most humans. There's a sparkle in her brown eyes, one that hasn't been there in years. The archer glances down at the ticking wrist watch hooked around her left arm before she turns away from the window, counting the minutes in her head.
Dante glances over his shoulder at one of the broken windows of the abandoned street. He watches her shadow disappear. Turning forward, he's surprised to find her jumping rooftops. While she stays hidden in the shadows, the rustling of her coat doesn't blend into the night breeze as well as she thought it would.
He counts the light tap of her boots, and he can tell by Trish's posture that she's heard the hunter too. However, from Dante's nonchalant posture, she does not worry. It's only when Dante is bristled that one should run. After all, it can only mean Hell has come back when Dante becomes serious.