DMC: End of the Line SE

PART X

"Drop them!" Nelo demanded. Dante spat.

"Hell no."

"I will kill her!" he threatened. Dante merely shrugged, a look of complete indifference showing on his face.

"Go ahead."

Nelo started to say something but then paused, confused. Even Lady looked surprised. "What?" she gasped.

Dante laughed. "Well lets not screw around here, we both know I drop these guns and you'll pop her anyway, and I'll be next. On the other hand I keep hold of these, then when you're busy putting a cap in her I'll be riddling your face with bullets," he explained matter of factly.

"That wont kill me, and she will still be dead." Nelo argued. Still, Dante looked supremely unconcerned, much to Lady's mounting surprise and annoyance.

"And? So? Your point?"

"Dante!" Lady snapped, glaring dangerously at him, "I'm your partner! Hell, I'm your friend! You're just going to let him shoot me?"

"We all gotta go some time Lady. Besides, you did shoot me in the head, remember? Now's your chance to find out what it feels like."

"But I'll die!"

"Well then, lesson learned," he smirked.

"You bastard!" she snarled, narrowing her eyes at him.

"You're bluffing," said Nelo. Dante released a short laugh.

"Oh I'm really not," he assured him, "But by all means go ahead and try me - I think I'll start by hollowing out those Disco eyes of yours - see how well you can fight when you're blind."

Several seconds passed in tense silence. Finally Nelo lowered Luce from Lady's temple and shoved her towards Dante. He ignored her, keeping his twin handguns trained on Nelo as she stumbled to a halt beside him, then, shooting him a severely nasty look, drew her own weapons and turned to her former captor.

Nelo had drawn Ombra now as well, and twirled the two pistols experimentally in his gloved hands. He was less like the dark knight Dante had confronted on Mallet, but he was also older and more twisted than the human brother he had confronted years before. He dressed in a rich mixture of black and dark green, and the Yamato sword hung from a sash around the waist of his long green overcoat.

"Its been a while," Nelo said in a level tone, pacing in front of the pair of Devil hunters who kept their weapons trained on his every movement.

"And you've been busy," Dante spat. "First Trish, now Lucia and Matier."

"I wont allow anyone to stand in the way of my masters plan," Nelo warned.

"So you found it really necessary to put a bullet in Matier's face? At point blank range? You've changed. I remember when you were a man of honour."

Now it was Nelo's turn to shrug. "I let my pride hold me back. Honour is a weakness that cost me every battle I had with you. The strong learn from the means employed to defeat them," he indicated the guns Luce & Ombra, "And they become stronger for it. And who would have thought that the old witch would not only be guarding the Tombs location, but the very key to unlock it?"

"So you need Sparda's weapons to unlock his Tomb?" Lady asked, not really expecting an answer and not needing one. She had read as much when she was just a girl ... stories that she had believed were just that - stories.

Nelo fixed her with his strange glowing eyes. Suddenly he was standing right in front of her, the barrel of Luce aimed right between her eyes. It was knocked upwards as the barrel of Ivory shot across and struck it from below, the gunshot ringing harmlessly over her head. Nelo responded by jabbing Ombra at Dante's chest and firing, just as the devil hunter twirled to one side to avoid it, anticipating the attack.

Both Dante and Lady simultaneously raised their pistols and fired at Nelo, who ducked and lashed out with a sweeping kick. Lady was sent sprawling, whilst Dante bounced up the instant he hit the ground. Nelo was on him in a heartbeat, thrusting his pistols at him in a furious blur of movement as Dante countered, twisting the weapons aside and narrowly dodging the point blank shots.

Still on the ground, Lady raised her pistol and fired it at the back of Nelo's head. Through some instinct he pulled his head to the left, causing her shot to whistle past his ear. It struck Dante in the cheek, knocking him off balance. Nelo smacked Dante across the head with the barrel of Ombra, then spun and fired a snap shot at Lady, the bullet ricocheting off her pistol and knocking it from her grasp.

Gritting her teeth, Lady somersaulted backwards from the ground, landing on her feet and drawing her Scorpion and a fresh pistol in the same instant. She charged at Nelo, firing wildly. He twisted and jerked, somehow avoiding her shots. When she was close enough his arms and left foot shot out, pivoting her body and throwing her in a hip toss into Dante, sending the pair sprawling into the dirt.

Lying in a tangled heap on the ground, groaning in pain, the pair stared up, wincing at the silhouette of Nelo Angelo as the sun shone in the distance behind him. His two fiery blue eyes burned like cold stars, regarding the pair with contempt as he slowly holstered his pistols. Dante and Lady both raised their guns and fired, just as their foe exploded into a ball of fire, which shot up into the sky and disappeared over the horizon.

Grumbling profusely, they untangled and picked themselves up, Dante holstering Ebony & Ivory whilst Lady reloaded, anger lining her face.

"What now? He'll be at Sparda's Tomb in no time and we don't even know where that is," Lady said.

"Not true," said Dante, spitting her bullet out of his mouth and rubbing his wounded but healing cheek, "Its here, on this island. Lucia told me a while back that her clan buried my father here, and they've been guarding his tomb ever since." He stopped, a sad look passing over his features as he thought of Lucia. Dead ... he blinked and shook his head. No time.

Dante sighed and strode off, picking up speed as he went. Frowning, Lady holstered her guns and hurried after him. He led them to a worn out shed a short distance away from the burning rubble of the cottage. Lady watched as he went in, clattering sounds coming from within as he rummaged around.

"What are you looking for?" she called out.

"This!" he exclaimed, wheeling out the familiar sight of a gleaming motorcycle. "I gave this to Lucia after our last job together. She's kept it in good condition." He tossed the keys into the air and caught them deftly, grinning at her.

Scowling, Lady strolled down to the shed and walked up to him. She stopped and slammed her bunched up fist into his face, sending him reeling back.

"Ow! What the hell was that for?"

Lady snatched the keys out of the air as he let go of them. "For standing by and offering to let Nelo shoot me in the head. If you ever do something like that again, I'll put a grenade between your legs and pull the pin."

Dante winced more from this threat than from her punch, as she straddled the motorcycle and jammed the keys into the ignition. "Oh, and I'm driving," she added, gunning the engine.

A/N: Nice little three way gun-kata fight scene here. As I said before, I doubt I'd be able to write a very good DMC fight scene these days because my personality and interests have changed so much. I sort of changed Vergil's signature colour here to dark green as well, as a call back to the green armour he wore as Nelo Angelo in the first DMC game. It occurs to me now that the events and backstory for DMC4 kinda shoot this fic out of the water, as the Order of the Sword based a lot of their research off of Nelo Angelo's corpse. Capcom really wanted to make it clear that Vergil was dead and was never going to come back. To this day I'll never understand their reasoning for that - Vergil is perhaps the second most popular character next to Dante himself, yet because (I think) one of the developers personally didn't like Vergil they decided to kill him off in favour of ... Nero? Like I said, I have no idea what they were thinking with that. Or what they're thinking now with the current game in development. I honestly believe that I or any of a hundred DMC fans could write a better script for a DMC game than the things Capcom are actually using.