AUTHOR'S NOTES: NEVER FEAR! I'm not abandoning Highway To Hell, but this plot bunny's been chewing at me for a good long while. Actually...It has ever since I playing Silent Hill: Origins a couple of years ago (the mirror thing spawned ideas), so I'm finally trying to get it down. Dante, Vergil, and their personal trip through Silent Hill.

Prologue. Chapter one coming soon.


There were places that built up rumors, in the demon hunting business. Places that built up a bad reputation through disappearances, deaths, and the level of creepiness a place projected. Typically it had a lot to do with just a solitary building, or maybe a small group of them, but rarely did an entire town achieve that kind of status. After all, how common was it to find an entire town consummed by evil?

Dante would have been the first to snort at most of those rumors. Most of the time when he and Vergil were called to one on a job, it turned out to be a case of nerves on the parts of previous hunters, or something that was hunting the hunter personally, not something lurking around a particular building or area or town. And for the most part what they found was easily dispatched.

The road passed under the car effortlessly, and Dante had a good feeling about the job before them. He'd been surprised when Vergil had agreed to driving to the location - a podunk resort town in the middle of nowhere - and Dante figured, as he glanced over at his twin in the passenger seat, it was because he could catch up on much needed sleep. Vergil, much unlike his conscious self, was stretched out, the seat let back as far as it would go, and snoring loud enough to be heard over the radio, a bit of drool leaking down his chin.

Of course, Vergil would never admit to any of that later, but that was fine. Dante would have proof.

He reached into the console and pulled out his phone, dividing his attention between it and the road as he fumbled for the camera button, finally finding it and getting it set the way he wanted it - at this point driving with a knee - before snapping the picture and safely storing it away in his phone's memory.

He needed a new myspace profile picture.

The phone was shoved away once more, and Dante leaned back in his seat, one hand moving to rest on the gearshift knob, the other lazily hanging over the steering wheel, as the scenery passed them by in a green blur, the road a seemingly endless blue ribbon before them. This was going to be a good job: The payout was unbelievable, and Vergil - though he'd never admit it and Dante knew he wouldn't - had been surprised that Dante had been able to hook it all on his lonesome. Without the elder twin there to mediate.

He snorted to himself at the memory. As if Dante was so helpless he couldn't find work on his own. Really. What did Vergil take him for, a dribbling, drooling retard? Well, he did, but really? He shook his head, returning his attention to the road. Who cared what Vergil thought on the matter: Dante had landed the job, and they were off to make some serious money.

The road carried them onward, and Vergil woke at sundown, blinking and wiping at his face covertly, as though Dante hadn't noticed he'd drooled on himself like a retarded three year old, before letting his seat up and peering out the windshield in a half squint. "How much further?" His voice was rough and low, cracked with sleep, and Dante quirked an eyebrow, a corner of his mouth twitching in a surpressed grin.

That would only get him in trouble and he knew it.

"Another fifteen minutes, according to that stupid ass GPS thing you just had to bring." Dante rolled his eyes, giving Vergil a sidelong glance. "Just because you have no fucking sense of direction doesn't mean I'm fucking clueless."

Vergil shot him a look, but for a moment said nothing, his mouth pulling into a flat line. When he did speak, his voice had regained some normalacy, and a dry edge had entered it, as his eyes slanted in dark humor. "Yes, Dante, which is exactly why, not a month ago, we ended up in North Carolina instead of North Dakota. Because your sense of direction is simply without equal."

"Hey." Dante didn't glance his way as he jabbed a finger in Vergil's direction. "That wasn't my fault and you know it. Who's the one who pissed off that shaman in Times Square that put that curse on me? Wasn't me, asshole. Was you. And if you could learn to keep your crazy to your fucking self we wouldn't-"

Vergil cut him off with a dramatic yawn, before leaning over to fiddle with the radio. "Stop wibbling. And what is this noise. I thought we discussed not having that heathen music when we were trapped in the car together." It was said as, with unerring accuracy, Vergil's fiddling fingers found a classical station and he leaned back in his seat once more, resting his head against the window.

There was a pause, over which the grinding of Dante's teeth could be heard. "...No, Vergil. You bitched and I tuned you out."

Vergil's eyes narrowed, and he retorted, but his words were lost as a squeal and then static issued from the radio, and for a moment they both glanced at it, and then at each other, before Vergil reached over and shut the radio off. "Well. If you're going to be such a baby about it."

But Dante knew that look on Vergil's face when he saw it. It was that cold, disconnected expression that meant Vergil was analyzing what had just happened, and was filing it away with everything he knew about the town they were nearing, and all of the rumors they'd both heard about it. And he knew they'd both come to the same conclusion: That was one rumor, at least, that had proven itself true. But Dante wisely kept those thoughts to himself, and instead pressed the gas pedal a little harder, taking them deeper into the gloom looming before them.