June 15th. Three months since the incident. "The incident" being when Sanctus, the supposed vicar of Sparda, nearly destroyed the town of Fortuna after erecting a massive, living statue that was to resemble Sparda. The people of Fortuna were so shocked and ashamed that somebody they used to place as being saint-like turned on them all that they now call the tragedy of that day as being "the incident." That is, during the rare times they do discuss that day in hushed tones to one another. The name Sanctus was practically forbidden now. Soon after the incident, parents rushed to change the names of their children named in his honor. However, despite the tragedy, the townspeople's faith never wavered. If anything, they became even more loyal to Sparda. They believed he sent his son Dante to protect them since he was unable to.
Aside from the public's reaction to the Savior incident, the Fortunians immediately started recovering after the crisis was over. What was left of the dead was carefully collected and buried within the same day and the process of clearing out debris was started the next. Emergency orphanages and refugee areas were established in large buildings that were still standing. After the last three months, most of the debris has been cleared, including the remains of the hell gate, and a good portion of the buildings have been rebuilt or repaired. A new vicar has been appointed after careful review as well. However, the vicar will never have the same influence as he did before the incident. As for the Order of the Sword, they still remain intact as well, though their numbers have been greatly reduced to a handful of those the vicar feels are trustworthy and have the capabilities to protect the town.
Despite its previous corruption, Nero is still a member of the Order. The new vicar was wary about keeping the half-demon as a part of the Order initally, but figured that if Dante, a son of Sparda, can trust him, then why shouldn't they? His line of thinking is more lenient than some of the others in town, the fear of demons heavily instilled within them now. Speaking of Dante, he occasionally visits the small, old town from time-to-time. The life of a bad ass demon hunter is full of new demons to slay and women to hit on, but sometimes Dante will get a break for the day. On those days, he takes a trip down to Fortuna to help out or just waste some time with Nero. After all, it's refreshing for the older hunter to get away from the two hormonal women he has to deal with at home and spend some time with another guy every now and then, even if Nero is a bit of a girl at times. At first, Dante was reluctant to spend his free time with a 19 year old. Doing something like that screamed "mid-life crisis" to the older man. But, the kid had tracked him down via phone book and had been constantly calling him lately, asking if he had the time to come see what all they had done with Fortuna. Dante knew he wasn't bugging him for that reason though. He knew that Nero was probably bored out of his mind being stuck in a small town with little to do and wanted somebody he had some things in common with to hang around. Besides, as Dante found out, spending the day around Nero and the other Order members wasn't that bad. It wasn't just kiddos in the Order, most of them were around Dante's age. In fact, Nero was the youngest of the bunch. With that being said, Dante found himself regularly visiting Fortuna. It may be once a week that he visits though, sometimes only once every two weeks, depending on how active things are at home.
Currently, the older man was on a ferry to Fortuna. Since his first visit to the island, he had learned the quickest routes to the town. As it turns out, shockingly, taking the ferry was faster than finding some old fisherman willing to take him to Fortuna, the method of travel he had used at first. Dante was leaned up against the railing of the ship with his arms folded, looking out at the ocean. There were fishing boats out on the water, since the ferry was only a couple minutes away from Fortuna now. You wouldn't know it by looking at the old, isolated culture of the small town, but the island was actually only about 30 minutes away from the mainland.
The ferry made a sound comparable to two old, rusty pieces of metal colliding into each other as it docked. The people and objects on the ferry were jerked around as a result from the collision. During his first ferry trip, Dante nearly fell over because of this. Now, though, he had become a pro at grabbing onto the rail as if his life depended on it. As Dante got off of the ferry, he noticed that there was absolutely nobody around, except for the ferry employees. Fortuna is a small town, but on a bright, sunny day like today, usually there were at least a few families enjoying the cool ocean waters on a summer day such as today. Curious, Dante looked around for a nearby employee, quickly finding one nearby.
"Hey, buddy, where is everyone?" The ferry employee was in the middle of unhooking the ferry from the dock, but briefly stopped to look over at and to answer Dante.
"Don'tcha know? A couple of people cleaning up debris in the middle of town came across some kind of cave. Ground below them collapsed and they fell right in. They were pulled back out and weren't hurt, but supposedly the hole has a tunnel that leads to something. Must be something demonic too, the Order now has the place surrounded and they aren't letting anybody near the place."
A cave? Demons don't live in caves anymore. Too many comfy, abandoned human homes that're much better shelter than cold, clammy holes in the earth. And certainly not in a cave with its entrance covered and underneath a building. Dante thanked the man quickly before heading off the ferry and towards the center of town. Finding the site wasn't that hard - it looked like the entire town was there, all gawking and whispering rumors among one another. Once the townspeople noticed Dante was there, they immediately started asking him questions about what had happened. Word had gotten out long ago that Dante was a son of Sparda, and apparently his lineage meant that he knew everything about anything at any given time. He just shrugged at them with an occasional "I'm not sure" and "I don't know" rather than explaining that he had no earthly idea what's going on and is not capable of the psychic powers the believe he possesses, he was just as clueless as them. Heading towards the center of the crowd, the citizens moved out of his way without hesitation. Nobody was about to get in the way of the son of the being they worshiped.
There were several Order members surrounding what looked like a plain ole hole in the ground. The freshly torn up dirt around the entrance indicated the Order members had carved out an entrance that would allow them easy access, but the cave hole itself looked only five, maybe five and a half feet tall by 3 feet wide. Certainly nothing incredibly impressive in size. Beside the hole, at the entrance, was a group of Order members talking to each other, with one of the members being the familiar face of Nero, easily identified in his blue trench coat that very starkly contrasted the sea of white trench coats all around him. He walked through the circle of members, greeting a couple of them very briefly and being allowed through upon them recognizing him. Though the Order had strict rules to not allow any outsiders in on anything the Order does, for whatever reason, they didn't care if Dante knew. No clue why, of course. Nero was very focused on the conversation he was having with the other Order members, but Dante's flashy clearly-not-from-here attire could attract anybody's attention.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" Nero asked as he walked to the man in red, having broken off his conversation upon noticing him.
"Had some free time. Looks like you've been kept busy." Dante peered down into the sinkhole as he spoke.
"Just a little bit. Only been working on figuring this out for a few hours." He replied with a sarcastic smirk. "They're deciding who's going down there now." 'They' being the members Nero was previously speaking with. "They already said I'm going though. Something about me being able to claw a way out if the roof caved in, or some bullshit excuse like that."
"Looks like a simple sinkhole to me. What's the need to send people down there?" Dante turned his attention back to Nero after deciding the sinkhole wasn't anything special. It certainly didn't look remarkable.
"Just to see how long the tunnel is. We figure some kids long ago got bored and decided it'd be cool to make their own 'secret tunnel'. Nothing big, but we'll have to plug the hole and tunnel up with dirt to make sure the ground doesn't cave in anywhere else." Nero crossed his arms as he spoke. He no longer bothered to put his demonic arm into a sling since it hindered his abilities too much. He did, however, still cover it up with his coat sleeve. The townspeople had accepted Nero and his arm, but he knew his arm still probably made them uneasy, which made him uncomfortable.
"It took you hours to figure that out?"
"Well, we had to rule out several other possibilities first."
Dante chuckled at his response. "Looks like you're a detective now, huh?"
"Whatever pays." Since the destruction of the false hell gate, demons became scarce in Fortuna. This meant the Order more or less became the "policemen" of the town, instead of being a demon hunting task force. Nero didn't much like this, but the lack of work meant less people were in danger, which was a good thing in his book. Keeping the town in shape was still a busy chore, but it didn't have the same challenge that it had before. "You wanna come along? There isn't much else to do around here right now."
"Sure. Beats going home after driving this far already."
Nero glanced towards the conversing Order members, then scoffed and rolled his eyes. "They'll take forever to decide... I'm just going to go ahead and go in. Get this done with as quickly as possible, there's no reason to spend the entire day on a stupid sinkhole."
"What's your rush? Got a hot date later?"
"Yeah, if you consider paperwork hot. Tonight's the monthly 'figure out who screwed up and spent way too much of the Order's money last month' night."
"Sounds like fun."
"I'm glad you think so. You'll be helping us out." Nero smirked at him before entering into the hole in the ground. Due to the roof of the cave being a good 6 inches shorter than both Nero and Dante, he had to hunch his back just to fit. Taking his long sword inside was not an option, instead he left her safely at the entrance. It would be too much of a hassle fighting to fit her in here for a simple scouting mission when he already has Blue Rose and Yamato within his Devil Bringer.
"Hey-! I wasn't being serious!" He followed in after him. He too had to leave his precious weapon behind, though this did not concern him since he's pretty damn good with Ebony and Ivory.
"Oh? You mean you wouldn't want to help me out?" Nero paused to turn his head around and pout at Dante for just a moment before he started his journey down the tunnel, leaving Dante behind before he could respond.
"Well... no... not with paperwork..." Dante muttered his complaint to himself before following his companion.
The tunnel was much longer than either of the demon hunters expected. The light from the hole had quickly left them and they were forced to rely on the glow from Nero's arm to see where they were going. After 30 minutes of walking down a one-way tunnel that was slowly taking them further down into the Earth's crust, the tunnel suddenly opened up to what appeared to be another tunnel. This tunnel had a much higher ceiling, much to the relief of the hunters, and was much wider. So much so that the glow from his Devil Bringer could not show where the new walls and ceiling were at, the light dissipating into the darkness long before it reached any solid structures.
"I think we might want to turn back now. This clearly wasn't made by some kids and I don't know where this might lead to." Nero wasn't exactly 'scared', but being in a huge underground tunnel that's completely dark with no real concept of how big it is made him a bit anxious.
"Are you kidding me? Where's your sense of adventure!" Dante, of course, wasn't intimidated by what they might find. He took a step forward, but froze when a clicking sound echoed through the tunnel. Following the click, the entire area lit up. They could now see that there were ancient-looking, burnt torches mounted onto the walls, all of which had simultaneously caught fire all at once. It was now apparent that they were no longer in a tunnel at all. Instead, the tunnel they were in to begin with had opened up to a large area that they could only assume was what the tunnel was meant to lead people to.
At the back wall of the area, there is a 7 to 8 foot tall statue. The statue was clearly meant to represent a demon. The wings of the statue were folded up; the tail was curled around the base of the statue and had spiked protrusions starting at the very tip of the tail and followed along the statue's spine up to the base of the neck. The tail covered up the feet. The hands, however, were visible. The elbows were down while the hands were raised up to the statue's heart. The hands were clawed, much like Nero's own demonic hand, but were interlocked with one another. With the curled tail, the folded wings, and the position the hands were in, the statue looked as if it was meant to portray fear. The face of the statue appeared to be humanoid, but lacked the intricate details that the rest of the statue had. Though the features were plain and indistinctive, likely from the erosive effects of time itself, the eyes of the statue were clearly closed.
The area around the bottom of the statue was littered with objects. Burnt sage and frankincense was abundant. Two bowls of water were at either side of the statue's base. Aside from these objects and the statue, the room was barren.
"Well, if this doesn't scream 'demonic worshiping ritual,' I don't know what does..." Nero commented after observing the room's contents.
