3 minutes had passed since Lady entered the bathroom. One of the receptionists turned to look at the man at the door.
"She didn't look so good. Check on her, would you?"
This was said only for the benefit of the human still in the room. Everyone else already knew she was by now sleeping like a baby, and would remain so for the next several hours. The usual lie was already ready. He would enter, grab her, everyone would shake their heads sadly about her status as a "Junkie", a lie helped by the fact that half the people they grabbed were junkies. Then she would be dragged into the back to wait her turn to be drained. In a way, she was luckier then her boyfriend. She would be dead long before she realized anything was amiss.
The man knocked on the bathroom door. "Miss? Everything ok?"
He waited 5 seconds, then opened the door, closing it behind him. Inside the small bathroom was two restroom stalls, one ajar an inch, and the other closed. Under the closed one, a bundle of clothing which he knew to be the leather biker suit she had on was on the floor, blocking the view he would usually have to see if someone was inside the stall. The other one appeared to be empty.
He walked up to the closed stall, and attempted to open it. It held shut, locked from the inside. He gave it a much harder tug, shattering the door. He threw it to the side and stormed inside, only to be confused when he found it empty. He looked around. On the floor sat an empty duffle bag, and next to it, an odd green pineapple shaped thing. Next to his foot sat a pin with a white cord tied around it that appeared to be attached to the door.
Lady, in the next stall over, jumped off of the toilet she had been standing on and bolted, rushing out of the bathroom, now in her normal outfit with her guns in their usual places. The man turned and started to chase her as she exited the door, only for the grenade to go off not 3 feet behind him. She didn't wait to see it happen, she had to act fast while she had the element of surprise.
Hearing the sound of the grenade, the civilian quickly did as instructed and dove to floor as the other staff members turned to look at the bathroom in shock. This timing conveniently allowed Lady to shoot the first demon directly in the head with her pistol as the civilian left her firing line, the demon unable to react to the unexpected sight behind the civilian in time. It fell, shifting from a human form to an elongated, yet still humanoid form, with blackened skin and arms as long as its body that ended in sharpened claws. The bloody bullet hole remained in its now mutated head, leaking blackened demon blood on the tacky carpet.
The other two demons were quicker to react, exploding out of their human skin like it was a suit as Lady turned her gun on them. The other male looked identical to the dead demon, while the female had blue skin rather then black, but otherwise appeared largely the same in physical appearance. The two demons jumped out of the way as she aimed, the blue one ducking under the counter while the other dove over it. The demon reached for a chair, throwing it at Lady, who rolled out of the way.
The demon leaped in the air as she rolled, aiming to come down on her with both claws and rip her in half. It never got a chance, as she came out of her roll in a crouch, drawing one of her SMGs. She pointed it up, and started unloading into the demon's chest, holding down the trigger and unloading the entire magazine into him, the force enough to keep him elevated in the air.
The second demon, thinking her distracted and open, tried to leap the counter and rush her while she was shooting the other demon. Lady responded to this by lifting the pistol and unloading two shots directly into the demon's skull while the SMG was still firing. The end result was that the blue demon fell to the ground, sliding to a stop at Lady's feet as her SMG clicked on an empty mag, causing the other demon to fall to the ground next to her.
This all happened in the span of about 10 seconds, and the civilian, now in shock, watched, his mouth flapping open and closed uselessly as Lady lifted her pistol, coldly unloading an additional two pistol rounds into each of the demon's heads, just to be sure. Then she slowly walked over to the counter, looked over it, and unloaded another two rounds in the head of the one behind it.
"I…..I…." The civilian started to try to speak, only for words to fail him. Lady looked over at him with a surprised expression as she let her empty and mostly empty magazines drop out of her weapons.
"You're still here? I told you to run." He stammered for another second as she pulled out new mags and rammed them into her guns. "Well? What are you waiting for, the cops?" She waved her SMG at him, motioning toward the door with it as she worked the slide on her pistol to ready the next bullet. "Run!"
The civilian finally scrambled to his feet and bolted through the exit. She sighed, shaking her head. Then she heard a noise behind her, and spun around, raising her weapons.
"You should be the one running, puny human!"
She beheld some giant freak of nature, not that such a thing was unusual when dealing with demons. It had the head and arms of a lion, which had eyes that were glowing red with fire, the body and legs of a goat, which had its own head sticking out of its chest that had glowing blue eyes, and the back end had a snake for a tail.
The snake, unlike the rest, seemed to be already dead. A glance revealed that it had taken the brunt of the grenade blast to the face, and being both the closest of the three parts to the blast and the weakest of the three parts, the unexpected grenade had proven enough to do the job. The other two heads, naturally, looked furious about this.
The thing itself was big enough that it had created a hole twice as large as the bathroom door just by walking through it, and the lion head was scraping against the top of the room, even though the goat body was physically hunched over.
"You killed our sister, human!" A different voice, coming from the goat head, yelled.
"Turnabout is fair play" Lady said casually as she shrugged. "How many humans did you kill?"
"Not enough, clearly!" The lion roared out.
She was silently thanking her poker face, one that was allowing her to hide her natural fear. She had full confidence in her abilities, but she recognized this was a bad situation, stuck in a small room with a large, angry brute of a demon. Her first thought was to run to get to Dante for backup, but she had no idea where the office he was at was or how far away it was, and at this point, if she couldn't hear the gunshots from his guns, he was too far, she'd never find him before this thing caught her and shattered every bone in her body.
Still, looking at the demon, he wasn't that big, and a single grenade had proven sufficient to kill a third of it. Admittedly the weakest part, but the thought gave her some confidence. That confidence invigorated her as she reached into one of her pouches, and before she even thought about it, she was talking.
"Well, maybe I understand why you waste your time being a door guard for a clinic that feeds on the weakest of humans, you're clearly the runt of whatever litter you came out of." She said with a smirk.
"What did you say!?" The goat yelled, frost starting to come out of its mouth.
"I'll rip you apart, eat your flesh, and use your bones to clean my teeth!" The lion yelled, fire coming out of his. Then Lady dropped what she had pulled out, and smoke covered the room in less then a second as her smoke grenade went off.
What the hell am I doing? She thought to herself in that instant as she bolted in the direction she knew the door to be in. Why did I just piss it off more, I never felt the need to be a smartass to the demons before!
The worst part was, she had actually gotten some level of enjoyment out of pissing it off, however much she wanted to deny it.
Don't tell me I've been around Dante's smartass mouth for so long that it's rubbing off on me!?
She didn't waste any more time on self reflection. She had to get outside, that was the only way she was going to have a chance against this thing.
Inside the doctor's office, the three demons tore out of their skins. The two nurses floated up into the air, the only solid part of them being white masks, the rest of their bodies consisting of little more then black mist and a pair of hands. In their hands, a pair of giant scissors appeared. They each snipped it in the air, laughing somehow.
The doctor, meanwhile, turned into a giant mosquito demon. He lifted off on large wings, pulling back behind the other demons.
"Damn." Dante said, looking disappointed. "Here I was, building myself up for something cool, and you're just an oversized bug. But hey, it could be worse, at least you don't sparkle."
"You, what are you!?" The demon yelled as his back slammed against the door.
"Name's Dante. Maybe you've heard of me?"
"Dante? THAT Dante? The-"
"Son of Sparda, you're going to eat my blood, get revenge for something, yadda yadda yadda, can we move this along?" Dante asked, spinning his hand in a circle. "I wanna get back to the office in time to order the lunch special from the pizza joint."
"KILL HIM!"
The scissor demons floated forward. One of them started spinning like a drill and flew at Dante. He just shook his head, and lifted his hand. Out of his guitar case shot his sword, which landed in his hand. He swung his sword, parrying the blow and causing the demon to fly backward. Then he jumped and delivered a clean vertical slash to the center of the mask, slashing it in half. The demon screamed, and faded away.
The second one hesitated, floating backward as Dante casually walked over to his case and pulled out his guns.
"What's wrong? Got the jitters? Need a second to steady your hand before the operation?" He asked, holding his hands wide.
"What are you waiting for? Do it!" The doctor yelled. The scissor demon approached carefully, slowly snipping at Dante. This only helped make it easier for him, and the only difference this time was that the demon was shot in the mask rather then cut. Dante held his sword over his shoulder and approached the bug.
"Wait, wait, don't kill me!"
"That line never works in the movies. What makes you think it'll work here?"
"Me, I'm a nobody! A, a, what do you call it-"
"Flunky?" Dante supplied.
"Yes, yes! Just a mere cog."
"Didn't have to tell me, bloodsucker. Any demon actually worth his salt would have fought to the death."
"I don't even drink the blood I collect! I just suck it up, then spit it into a container!"
"Dude. That's gross." Dante said as he waved his hand in front of his face. "Who the hell wants to drink secondhand blood?"
"I don't know what they do with it! Maybe they drink it, maybe not! All I know is, I put it in a container, and then, at the end of the day, my master comes and does…something with the papers, I don't know what, and then someone picks it up the next day!"
The demon pointed over at a stack of files and several rusted barrels in the back corner of the operating room. "There, over there, that's where it all goes!"
Dante put his hand to his chin, nodding. "Alright. Last question. Who's this master of yours?"
"You saw him already, he likes to stand at the front door during the day, watch the operations. Kill anyone stupid enough to cause trouble personally." He laughed, a creepy sounding noise that reverberated through the room. "He's probably out there right now, twisting that girl like a wet rag to squeeze out all the blood!"
Dante shrugged. "Na. I don't think so. Anything that tough, I'd have noticed coming in. My guess is he's a little tougher then you, but still pretty low on the pecking order. Otherwise, he wouldn't be stuck in such a shitty operation. Or he'd at least have enough self respect to hang up a painting or something."
"Whatever you say! I, I've told you everything I know. Can I go now?"
"Sure." Then he pulled out his gun and shoved it into the demon's face. "Right back to hell!"
He fired, and the demon flew backward, hitting the floor dead. Dante shrugged. "Well, that's that. Guess I should head out, enjoy the show, make sure Vergil's girl doesn't bite it. But first…"
He turned toward the files.
"Time to make a checkout from the library. Hope they don't charge late fees, I already have one bloodsucker sucking me dry of cash, I can't afford another."