I HOLD NO CLAIM TO ANY OF THE ORIGINAL Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening CHARACTERS! NOTHING! :(

Chapter Nine

Gatecrasher's Win or Lose

"You seem very pleased." Ryona commented as they walked towards the door.

"Of course I am." Dante grinned. "I just killed a bunch of monsters and got a girlfriend. I'm the happiest dude on the planet, right now!"

She flushed and turned away until they reached the door. "That damn red hand!" Ryona growled in anger. Her attention was then grabbed by white feathers that appeared out of nowhere, closely followed by a Fallen. These were the hardest of the enemies to beat throughout the entire tower; perhaps only Vergil was stronger than them.

Once inside they traveled again through the entire tower. The Provisions Storeroom, Gears of Madness, The Altar of Evil Pathway, until they finally reached a doorway in the of the DevilSprout Lift that they had to place the three Orihalcon fragments they had found to open the door.

The elevator took them up to the top of the Chamber of the Sun and Moon. There, waiting on them, was more monsters. Dante seemed very pleased with that so Ryona let him have his fun as she checked out the two statues behind them. She took in the Sun and Moon crests etched above the door they needed to get through and smiled. ~This is just getting too easy~ She told herself.

They found the Onyx Moonshard in the Chamber of Sins ("Damn that red hand!" Ryona cursed) and the Golden Sun was in the door that the Moonshard opened after placing it in its place on the statue. The Damned Chessmen weren't a problem to fight off afterwards and they hurried back to the Sun and Moon Chamber. The doorway opened and the door led them to the Ice Guardian's chamber. The monsters here were those Blood-Boyles again and Enigmas.

"You know what?" Ryona sighed as they continued on through the next few rooms. "After this, I demanded that you take me on vacation."

"On vacation?" Dante then shook his head. "Wait, you 'Demand'?"

"You damn straight I do. This is your brother's fault and so I demanded a reward. Some place where we don't have to fight with lots of pizza, chips, and alcohol."

Dante let a large smile ripple across his face. "I like how you're thinking. That actually don't sound like too bad of an idea. Where would you like to go to participate in that?"

Ryona thought for a moment, smiling herself. "Surprise me."

"Surprise you?"

"Yeah, surprise me." She told him as the entered the Divine Library. She took one look around the room before her smile grew wider. "Well, well, look who's here."

Micheal lifted her head at Ryona's voice and gave a grin. "Finally decided to show up, huh?"

"We had a little problem with some of the monsters but other than that I have to say that we made good time. And by the looks of you two it seems that you had a hell of a time yourselves." The woman replied.

"You got that right." Micheal told her, leaning his head back against the shelf and closing his eyes. He looked to be extremely tired now.

"What's wrong, you tired?" Dante toyed with Lady as she continued to breathe hard. "Then stand back. We'll take care of this."

Lady lifted her gun and pointed at Dante. "No, YOU stand back."

Dante grabbed the gun and brought it down to where the bullet hit his stomach. He didn't even flinch. "I told you, you can't do it. Don't you get it? This is not a human's job."

"You're the one who doesn't get it." Lady growled. "It's not something you can reason with. It has nothing to do with me being a human and you being a demon." She lifted her gun again and shoved it against his chest. "I'm driven by the inability to forgive him. My soul is screaming, demanding me to kill him." He ripped the gun from her hand and she backed up. "That's enough motivation to keep me going." She placed that large gun of her's on her back again. "Besides, this is my family matter. You should stay out of it." She walked past Dante but Micheal and gotten up to stand in her way, not letting her move any further. "What are you doing? Move."

"Okay Lady, I get the picture now." She turned back to the half-breed. "But I can't just sit back and watch either. I'm pretty pissed at him too, ya know." He tossed her gun back at her feet before whipping out Ebony and Ivory. "Now, get out of my way or there'll be some consequences."

"Fair enough." She whipped her large gun out again. "I wasn't planning to let any demons live anyway. Not even one!" She fired a rocket at Dante but he dodged.

"Do we really have to do this?" Ryona asked, a hand on her hip.

"That includes you too!" Lady growled at her with a glare.

Ryona went to open her mouth but Micheal cut her off.

"You and Dante can go ahead and go." He told them, placing a firm grip on that large gun of Lady's.

Dante pulled a face. "You sure, man?

"Yeah, she won't be able to do anything, so you two go ahead and finish this. We'll meet up later for some drinks, yeah?"

Ryona nodded and grabbed Dante's hand. "You got it." She pulled the man out of the room behind her.

"Are you sure about leaving him there?" Dante asked her.

"Micheal can handle himself, Dante. Don't worry."

Micheal closed his eyes as the door shut before looking down at the woman beneath him again. She was trying to rip her gun from his grasp but he wouldn't let go. "You can just stop now, you know. I won't have to hurt you if you do."

"Let go, dammit! This is my job. MY JOB!"

"He will kill you if you go up there. He's not human anymore. Just let the two of them take care of it, Lady." He told her.

"Let go." Her voice was cold.

"No."

Lady made a quick decision and pulled the trigger, firing off a rocket. It caught Micheal in the chest, firing him backwards into the wall. Lady's eyes grew wide as the rocket slipped through him and bashed out of the wall. Micheal fell to the ground, blood seeping out of his body before he pushed himself up, shaking the rubble from his clothes. There was a large hole in his shirt where the rocket had hit but the wound in his skin…the rocket had shot right through him, leaving a large hole.

Lady lifted a hand to her mouth as the skin seemed to stretch back out, sewing itself together. Micheal's face was like stone as he began to moved towards her again. Whipping out her handgun she began to rain more bullets on him but it didn't work as he continued to move towards her. They healed just like the others did. She continued to fire even after her bullets ran out.

Micheal placed a hand above her on the wall and leaned in. "Dante and Ryona will take care of him. Everything will be fine soon, just wait."

"You…" She stared up into his face. "You're not human either, are you?"

Micheal pulled away from her and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before giving a fake laugh. "Yes and no. It was like your father said. I drank something known as the Elixir of Life. I suppose I should start at the beginning." He sighed and glanced at the floor after he sat down against the bookshelf again. "It was nearly twenty years ago. My brother and I were treasure hunters but we had gotten our hands on a blade called Alastor. It's a legendary blade of thunder. I don't know how my brother had gotten it but it seemed that its previous owner wanted it back. The demon, as I later found out, killed him and took it back before disappearing. It was in Limbo City that I found Ryona for the first time. I had gone there to find the demon that had killed my brother and found her instead. At first she was just another demon to me and I wanted to kill her before soon finding out that she was something much, much different. I don't know what those orphanages and other places had done to her when she was a child but from the scars that she has you can tell that it wasn't nice. Ryona hated demons at first and therefore hated what she was, locking away the power she had. Imagine my surprise when I learned that she was Mundus' granddaughter trying to run from what she was."

"Mundus?" Lady asked.

Micheal glanced at her. "Mundus is the Dark Emperor of the Underworld. The Devil, as some say. She hated what she was. At first I just used her to get what I want but after time I found that Ryona wasn't the enemy; she was actually a friend and a friend that I needed."

"What did you want?"

"The Elixir of Life. It was like your father said, only the hand of the royals of the underworld can touch it and so I sued Ryona to get it. I still owe her for it, too. It was locked away in a secret place by Sparda with Ryona's mother, Aowin, centuries ago; before Sparda locked the underworld away. Only Aowin's blood could open it again because of the power it possessed. The Elixir turned me immortal, though some that find out my abilities call me more of a monster than anything else." He closed his eyes again. "After I drank the Elixir and left Ryona in Limbo City, I found the bastard that killed my brother. I planned on getting Alastor back to keep for a reminder of my brother but the bastard didn't have it anymore and he wouldn't tell me what he had done with it before I killed him. It's been twenty years now and I'm still looking for that damn sword. When I caught scent of the power being used to raise this tower from the ground I thought for sure that the blade would be here but it's not…"

"Then why did you stay?" She asked him.

"Eh, I'm not really too sure on that. I do know that it had something to do with Ryona but other than that, I just did. Besides, how could I just walk away when there was some idiot that was trying to take over the world? This place may be a piece of shit, but I live here, you know? And if anyone is trying to destroy I'm gonna have to stop them." Micheal looked back at her. "Sorry about before, but now you know that you can't get past me to go fight your father so you're stuck here with me, Lady."

"Mary."

"Huh?"

"My name is Mary."

"So…Mary," Micheal grinned at her. "You wanna go watch the ending of the show?"

She looked at his in surprise. "What?"

"I said you couldn't interfere. I didn't say we couldn't go watch. So, what do you say?"

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