Teenage Girls With Cameras
Chapter 14
Hell Has Made Me Born To Bleed
Alia's right eye was pried open; it felt like it was stuck shut with glue. Every inch of her back felt like coals scalded her skin. Something was wrong. Her body should not feel as it did in this very moment. Her eyes should not feel glued shut, her skin cracking like a pepper left to burst in embers. She was covered with a filthy sensation that she was dying and that everything in her life had amounted to a mortal death like this one.
Someone was burning her alive.
She finally managed to open both of her eyes, though it caused her great pain. Fear was trickling through her in slow waves, like a leaky faucet shut on and off. She focused on the images bubbling in and out of her vision, until finally she found a familiar countenance looking down at her. A long arm swept past her left field of vision and disappeared, but then it withdrew to the man's side.
"It's too late to kill you now," he commented quietly. "It's already too late. Your body would crumble and from the dust the Destroyer would rise again."
"What... what are yout talking about? Who are you?"
Then she understood. His face was different, the nose was too feminine, the eyes too narrow. He was someone else entirely, but most assuredly his hair was as white as Dante's and his lips were drawn into a tight frown. He wore a dark red cloak instead of a jacket and beneath that his entire body was bound in a suit composed of sewn patchwork leather and metal brass rings that jingled whenever he moved. He couldn't be older than sixteen years old. At least she could tell that much from her vision which blurred and sharpened off and on.
"Maybe I should ask you the same thing." The boy withdrew from her. He folded his arms over his chest. "In this dwelling, I felt a disturbance last night. Then I came up and saw you and your fancy accessories." He reached down toward her. She felt another prickling burning sensation that spread down to her toes. He had touched her wings.
"Stop that. It hurts."
Suddenly the white-haired stranger smiled in a sad kind of way. He brushed his hands through his shoulder-length locks. "You really don't know what's going on? Then I guess it's better that you sit back and watch the show, girl. The main event is you."
Nina pulled with all her strength on the handle of Rebellion, sweat and tears dripping down her neck and soaking into her thin shirt. Getting Dante down from the wall is proving to be a real challenge to the whole 'rescuing Alia' thing. I can't figure out how to get up there. I've looked and prodded, but it seems like the only way to get up there is in the glass elevator, but it's broken now.
She had managed to pry the other weapons out of his body. Agni and Rudra were laying quietly on the floor, covered in Dante's blood. In the background, they quietly chatted to each other.
"What a terrible predicament!" "Indeed! I wonder if he's really dead this time?" "No, of course not, idiot! He never dies. He's taken mortal wounds like that before without a problem."
Nina strained again, planting her boot on the wall. Dante was still so pale, so still, that she was not about to trust to hope that he would ever rise again. Finally the sword made a terrible 'screek' as she moved it a fraction. Then she hauled again, putting all of her strength into her pulling shoulders, her white-knuckled hands.
Then she fell end of end, falling on her ass with Rebellion clattering across the hard stone floor with an earsplitting clarity. She winced at the stabbing pain in her tailbone that twinged as she got to her feet. Now Dante was just hanging by his feet. She wiped her face and choked down a little sob.
"Okay... I guess... I can climb up there." She walked back over and started using the demonic/angelic carvings to climb up the wall. She reached over, trying to untangle the cold chains that burned with cold at her touch. With a final snap, the nunchaku fell and so did Dante and Nina (again).
"Dammit! I'm sorry I'm sorry," she reiterated with a sob. She quickly rolled Dante's body over and straightened him out as much as possible, fixing his coat and everything. A black, slow creeping puddle of blood was pooling at the base of the statue to which he had been nailed. His skin was burning hot. His wounds swelled down and appeared to be nothing more than superficial then, but she knew that moments ago three swords had been slamming through his body and into the stone statue.
"Shit," she whispered for the fourteenth time. Her eyes stayed glued to Dante's face, her cheeks hot with tears. "Damn it! I can't wait any longer. Dante... I'm so sorry. If ... If this's the end of you, I'm sorry. I... I like you, okay? Don't be dead, or I'll be pissed."
She wiped her face one last time and shook herself so hard her head ached afterward. She stood up and retrieved Rebellion, since it was probably better that she didn't just leave it lying around. It was bizarrely heavy, as if she was in no way capable enough to wield it. She remembered so long ago, tripping over this damn thing and having begun a bizarre relationship with the dead guy on the floor. So maybe it was partly for sentimental reasons she took up the weapon and mostly for vengeance. How would Dante's murderer like it if she slammed this baby through their heart instead?
She secured it to her back with Dante's straps. It was so embarassing to be touching on his body, when he wasn't there to say or do anything to defend himself. But if she wanted to get the straps off, she had to. When she made them fit her, she sheathed the big sword and started to climb again, aiming for that elevator hole that seemed to glow with other light near the top.
She gritted her teeth when she heard voices again.
"Wait! Are you just going to leave us down here?!" cried Agni.
Rudra added plaintively, "Please take us with you!"
"I can only carry one sword, and I'm sorry, it's got to be this one. This was Dante's sword and I'm taking it! Now shut up before someone hears you both! Cry-asses," she muttered. The twin broadswords fell silent. She could almost feel them straining to watch her go up. They coached her on where to put footholds and find handholds. It was really rather quite annoying. If she stopped now and looked back to Dante, she was afraid she would jump down and stay near him until he woke up or... until something terrible happened.
At last, she was as close as she was going to get to the hole. The light falling through it was a dull yellow, making the stone near it seem to gleam golden. It was damp and every surface was slick with moisture. Her fingertips were almost scraped completely raw. She cursed that her demon blood did not give her tougher skin. She tried once to reach, clinging with her legs and free hand. Her hand slipped once. The whole room beneath her suddenly looked desolately far away and threatening to get a lot closer. Her legs burned with straining, and she cursed colorfully as her hands flailed to grab onto something to steady her again while her butt slipped from the spear of a demon encountering an angel's sword.
"Please be careful, friend of Dante!" cried one of the broadswords from far away.
She nearly shrieked, "I AM!" but swallowed her words, concentrating on her handholds. She repositioned her feet and tried to squeeze the spear between her feet and get up higher. Then she used both hands, straining to arch her back and at the same time keep herself straight. Her fingertips grabbed the edge of the hole, but she barely had any purchase at all.
She cursed again. She kept reaching anyway, wondering if her weight was just enough to snap the delicately carved demon spear and send her falling to what would be an unpleasant experience if it did not kill her immediately.
Suddenly a leathery gloved arm shot out from the hole above her and grabbed her by the wrist. It pulled her and she squeaked as she was hauled effortlessly up - whoosh! - and dropped onto the ground so quickly she was very easily disoriented.
The figure standing above her looked at her with disapproval. "Where did you think you were going? Never mind that. Why didn't you just call the other elevator?"
Nina blinked. Then she watched him press a small recessed button in the wall. Another glass elevator came whooshing from above them on the fourth floor. It stopped inches away from breaking her fingers. She stared at him in disbelief, then she started swearing at him.
"What the HELL, I didn't know there was another elevator or I would have done that, goddammit, I wasted all that time and effort!" She leapt to her feet and grabbed the red-cloaked man in her grasp and proceeded then to shake him back and forth. "Listen, weirdo, I don't care who you are, but you better tell me pronto where my friend Alia went! You're the one who took her, aren't you?! And murdered my Dante!" ('My' Dante?)
The man stared at her with a plainly shocked look on his face. Maybe he had expected a thank-you for the help up. But no such thing came at all. Nina was on a rampage for who had taken Alia and murdered her best friend.
"I...I am NOT!" he exclaimed, too surprised to even stop her. "I'm Nathaniel and I work here!" He stared at her with plain shock on effeminate his face. "Please stop shaking me. I don't know what you're talking about, but if you're talking about that other man, he disappeared and left that other girl here. Is SHE the one you're talking about?"
Nina blinked, then turned to follow his gaze. Alia was sitting on the floor beside a burning torch, her black wings all huddled up to her. The freckly girl looked like a tiny bird soaked after a rainstorm. She was sitting down with her dress bunched up around her legs, so her pale scrawny limbs were showing. Two Alia's left and right were two metal arches that seemed innocuous enough, and runes inscribed their surfaces. She had no idea how to read them.
"Nina, please leave him be. He was here when I woke up. He's not the same as the other man. I am quite sure that other one is Vergil Sparda. I was unconscious when he disappeared, though."
"Then who the hell is HE?" Nina demanded furiously.
"Nathaniel," the boy said again. "And I work here. I'm ... a janitor, of sorts. Although I'm not like any janitor you've ever met before."
"He's a homunculus," Alia said softly. "Homunculi aren't really alive, but I... I can definitely feel that he is."
"Where did you see the other man go, Nate?" Nina was practically wringing her hands, imagining Vergil's neck between them.
Nathaniel looked at her blankly, then lowered his eyes and swallowed. "He made me promise not to tell. But... but because I like Alia and I don't wish any harm to happen to her, I... I will tell you. Please don't let Mister Vergil hurt Alia!"
The teenager looked at Nathaniel for a long time, wondering how a homunculus could have such feelings. He LIKED Alia? Did that mean he had a soul, or he was just a lonely creation cursed to bide his time caring for this lonely miserable tower? He found a friend. That made him kind of a liability. Great. I'm starting to think like Dante.
"You don't let anything happen to her, you understand me? Don't let her out of your sight!" Nina planted her hands on her hips, realizing just how sore her hands were. "Now... tell me, where is Vergil. I'll kick his ass for hurting my friends."
The homunculus looked around himself again, looking as though he was terribly sorry for something. It was almost unusual. He swept his hands nervously through his hair again and again, until it almost seemed to stick up, but of course it was too long. When he looked at her again, Nina was struck by the abrubt change in his personality as shown by the way he carried himself. His voice was even different now.
"What a fool. So you are Dante's..." He did not smile. Nina flinched away from him when he moved but the movement was still a blur of motion that barely registered. He had drawn his sword halfway from his cloak, slamming the pommel into her solar plexus and knocking the wind and the strength right out of her. Nina sank to the floor, her stomach heaving.
"Did you think you could save anyone? With that pathetic strain in your DNA? The only thing you inherited were your mother's eyes and your father's weakness. Neither will help you here."
Let him keep talking, Nina thought, trying to feel for her strength, the power in her blood rising to the surface of her skin. Strengthening her, making her faint with it. She called it closer to the surface. If she couldn't draw Rebellion to defend herself, maybe she could pull her own weapon faster. The familiar tickle started in her fingertips, spreading over her knuckles and palm. She dared not supplicate him for mercy, in case he decided to silence her by cutting her to ribbons. She lowered her head instead and focused on trying to breathe. She lay at his feet, wheezing.
He turned away from her, advancing on Alia. "The Destroyer... a Guardian of the Shadow Realm. Once awakened, it will open a tear in the world large enough for me to return through. I don't have the energy to expend on a wastrel like you."
Alia shivered like a wet hatchling and she shrank away from Vergil as he walked toward her in the homunculus's body. It was all clear to Nina now. What Alia had seen wasn't Dante or Vergil - it was Nathaniel the guardian homunculus of this tower. Through some weird means Nina could not begin to guess, Vergil had possessed the homunculus and was using him to initiate some stupid ritual that would awaken something called the Destroyer - whose very presence would rip open a hole to the realm of devils.
Apparently that's where Vergil was and that was why Dante never talked about his brother anymore. It was as good as a death sentence. Nina pulled herself upright as quietly as she could, her entire center feeling like it was going to burst apart. But when she tried to call out the sword in her skin, it would not come. She began to feel the panic rising. So she reached back to feel Rebellion's unfamiliar, heavy, worn handle and readied herself to pull it as quickly as she could.
It's too tall, something whispered. It won't come out smoothly, it will make too much noise, he'll have a fraction of a second more speed on every move you make.
But it's for Dante, she insisted silently. The Vergil-homunculus took three more steps with his red cloak whooshing behind him. The blood in her veins sang, her skin erupted like armor beneath her clothes. She pulled Rebellion free and rushed at Vergil. This could be one of the stupidest things I have ever done, second only to breaking into Devil May Cry.
Metal banged against metal like a crack of a lightning bolt. The sword in Vergil's hand turned white hot from the pressure. Nina pushed against it, her entire body bent toward breaking through him and waves of tension shook her legs and arms and back. The face staring back at her was cool and collected.
Finally, Vergil saw the state of his own weapon and made the slightest crease in his forehead showing his concern. His was clearly not a weapon designed for such passionate encounters; with mere seconds between now and the moment his sword shattered, he sidestepped, but she matched it immediately, trying to keep him occupied until... until what?
She fell backward a step and sent her foot out toward his groin. The blow sent him knocked back a step and their swords parted, but the blow apparently had little effect otherwise. He stared at her as if wondering if she really did have a brain after all for only a hairsbreadth of time before he slashed diagonally from where his swordpoint had been relaxed near the floor. She swayed out of its reach while feinting the blow, then darted toward him, using her own demon's strength to fuel her attacks. The heavy Rebellion was awkward; she was much shorter than Dante and though the homunculus Vergil was a little taller, he was just as quick and most of his attacks came closer to hitting her than hers did hitting him. Each swing of Rebellion was enough to disrupt her center of balance, so she was limited to very few movements and soon Vergil would become impatient enough to stop playing with her and finish her for good.
Maybe the instinct was right; she wasn't skilled enough to fight. She had spent her time at Devil May Cry trying to be what she wasn't, and now that she had a chance to prove her worth she was once again too little, too late.
Don't think about that now, moron! Fight him! Whatever's going on, he's got to be stopped either way!
"Alia, run away!" she screamed. "Get into the elevator and go down, get Dante out of here back to the shop! AH!" The next sword slash cut deep; blood spurted through the sections of thin, bug-like demon plating covering her bicep. Now lifting Rebellion was even harder.
When Alia was not crying out or even bothering to help - a little well-aimed fiery death beam wouldn't have hurt - Nina chanced to look at her. Her black wings were spreading out around her, illuminated by an umbra of dark, garish energy. It gave everything around her a deep faded green glow. She was going to use her power, but something about it was wrong this time. The light shining from her didn't hurt Nina's eyes.
The metal arches pulsated and thrummed to life, then cracked with energy; two beams suddenly raced toward Alia, slamming into her and latching onto the aura radiating from her body. They seemed to hook onto her and flicker and pulsate, thickening as Alia began to scream.
The only way to stop Vergil was to find out how this ritual was going to take place.
Nina stopped and stared. And then Vergil rushed in and impaled her in the belly, the hot sword breaking off at the hilt from the motion and she screamed too. He pulled Rebellion from her limp fingers and tossed it aside.
"Please stop Mister Vergil from hurting Alia," Vergil mimed in a perfect Nathaniel voice, his eyes glistening with victory and something almost kind of like joy. Nina hated the way he looked at her, then looked to Alia, watching the spectacular clash of purple energy with the brilliance beaming from the metal arches.
Nina fell to the floor, blood pouring from between her hands where she tried to grip the snapped-off blade buried in her stomach.
The pain was indescribable. Every breath she took made her diaphragm flare up as if it were on fire, and no breath could even get into her lungs, the whole process interrupted by the thin metal sheath thrust through the muscles used to do the job. She looked at Vergil, then at Alia, who was struggling, half-raised off the floor. Something was pulling her wings from her. Or maybe trying to pull something out - because she saw something attached to the wings coming out of her back, no longer coming out of her shoulders. It was a second set of shoulders now. They seemed half-formed, transparent, and composed almost entirely of the kind of darkness that made a night-time in the middle of nowhere seem like midday. A muscled shoulder broke free. A spinal column delineated with jagged spikes split Alia's dress apart. It was birthing right out of Alia's body like it was just a cocoon.
The fabric of space seemed to tremble and shudder, making everything Nina saw ripple like the surface of a puddle. Or maybe it was blood loss. Either way, she was losing consciousness with every attempt to draw in air. The homunculus suddenly went rigid and fell to the ground, clattering like a plastic doll, its sightless eyes turned toward the heavens as if waiting for another miracle.
Lady saw the black lightning cut across the dawn sky and felt it was somehow Dante's fault. When she got to the office, seeing nobody home, she immediately got changed, armed herself to the teeth, and headed back out, following the pattern of the stormclouds. They got darker, nastier, and angrier the closer she got to the memorial tower. Her motorcycle revved to an earsplitting pitch as she dove through traffic to reach it. Where did all these damn cars come from? she thought angrily.
"Get out of the fucking way, asshole!" she screamed to everyone at once and no one in particular.
When she reached the tower itself, she approached the door. It was enscribed with the words:
"Woe to man and devil;
The Destroyer comes."
Lady pulled two pistols from their holsters and shoved her shoulder against the double doors. They gave unexpectedly on the third try, and she stumbled inside; the very walls here were bleeding, and the illusion was so complete she was fairly sure she could smell the coppery stink of it. She ignored it all and sped headlong toward the stairs, reaching the elevator. The floor was thick with broken glass which crunched under her knee-high boots. When she smacked the button and waited, ten, fifteen seconds, the cable-operated elevator car did not come. She holstered her pistols and elected to use Kalina Ann - she had stolen it from Dante's cupboard - and used the gatling hook to lift her up through the hole.
She had been prepared to see some destruction, but not the amount of blood on the floor. There was no sign of anyone; there was a strange circular dias on the floor and something in the middle seemed missing. The statues and carvings all along the walls were trembling, sending dust to the floor.
"What... is going on? Dante?"
She turned back to the elevator and looked up, grimacing as she realized her situation. Everything, all along the walls, was starting to move. The effigies of angels and devils twitched and started to flex muscles carved from stone, gaining color to their grayish-white figures. Wings bristling with feathers began to arch and fan the air.
Half a dozen of the figures detached from the walls and circled three times before they began to dive, all of them making a direct shot for Lady. The woman smiled, her heart beginning to race even harder. This was what she was born for - ever since that dreadful day.
The first figure swung a scythe on its first pass, landed, then took an explosive grenade round right to the face. Diving and rolling, flipping out of reach of those lethal edges, Lady fired from her pistols next, but the bullets pinged off harmlessly as armored angels swept past with swords swinging.
She used the pillars to her advantage, opting for her clip-loaded shotgun. It was risky; waiting until they were almost on top of her for maximum effectiveness brought them almost too close for comfort. However, compared to her other options left her a bit breathless from moving around so much.
The worst part was counting the number of figures breaking free of the walls. It did not take too much quick math to estimate how many bullets she would need (and didn't have) to send them all back to wherever they originated from.
After a minute and a half of dodging, rolling, spinning out of the way of lethal swords and sharpened edges, she noticed the rhythem of battle had changed - she was watching demons and angels falling from the sky that weren't her targets. She was so busy fighting her own battles she failed to notice someone else had joined.
She stepped back against a pillar and heard a familiar voice chide her, "I've been next to you this whole time and you didn't even say hello. Tsk, tsk."
"Dante!" She circled around the pillar, leaping onto the back of an angel before planting her foot firmly on its head and firing a bullet into its neck. She tumbled off and felt her shoulder crackle a little as she rolled too carelessly.
The smirking bastard walked up to her. Figures collapsed to the floor together, their bodies tangled together and breaking from the fall, stone again.
"You didn't bother to look for the one with the red eye in its forehead; the one that controls them all." He pulled her to her feet by the hand. He looked a little unlike himself - his skin was too pale! - but there was a livid glow in his eyes, a look that Lady knew all too well. His hold was slipping on that something which lurked there behind those beautiful baby blues. Something was on his mind, weighing in heavier than usual. But in my line of business, you learned not to ask about stuff in the middle of a job; you wait till its over before you have heart-to-heart chats.
"Someone's throwing a party upstairs and I haven't been invited. You know me; I better go ahead an' invite myself. You'd better sit this one out, Lady." He looked at her for a moment, then turned away. So casually, he pressed the call button for the elevator and a second one came down from above. He climbed in and waited 'til he shot upward to the third floor.
The devil hunter disappeared upstairs, while Lady was considering following. It was going to be a messy day; she was already covered in dust; the smell of blood was nowhere to be found in the room. She stared at the man-shaped blood spot on the floor, choking on a realization. The devil's own son could survive anything, could live through any greivious injury. He was immortal in a way that Lady could not even begin to measure. How much can he really take? In other words, what would it take to actually kill a son of Sparda?
Dante emerged into chaos. He felt something 'snap' into place around him as soon as he entered the third floor. The air stank of the Devil World like there was an enormous draft blowing through an open gate from that world itself.
It was opening between two arches; they were burning flaming with searing heat. The flames themselves licked at the looming deep darkness, creating more menacing leaping shadows on the walls. Between the demonic arches, there was the gateway to Hell itself; the landscape was as varied as earth's own, but the scene on which this one opened was bone-white and spread for miles and miles... and a hundred thousand demons were prowling there. Their heads were raised and they saw the gateway tearing open slowly from their side. It was as tall as a doorway and growing larger. The sight itself was nothing as compared to the infernal noise of Hell - endless screaming, roaring, groaning, tearing, ripping, crunching, howling, all happening at once. For now, the noise was far away as though from a great distance and growing louder.
Hell was coming closer.
On the floor lay a life-sized doll or mannekin or something. He gave it a kick to push it aside, then stared at the other body laying next to it which belonged to none other than Nina. She was laying on her side in a puddle of new blood, her hands bunched up against her belly. Poking out the back of her leather coat was the point of a sword.
Dante swallowed hard. His entire throat felt like it was stuck with a huge stone, and somehow his heart was hammering in his chest, his arms tingling all over He knelt down and reached for the gore-covered point of metal. He pulled it out and wiped the blood on his jeans. It was tucked away up his sleeve. Then he scooped Nina right up in both arms and smooched her on the forehead.
"Hey, kid," he said to her softly. "I'm going to take care of this. Just sit tight." He set her back down by the elevator and straightened his back, his eyes softly glinting red for just a moment in the light. "This will just take a minute."
The gateway to hell was blocked by an enormous winged thing; it looked cut from a large black piece of cloth but was enormous. Its screams were like a thousand engines trying to turn over, screaming into impossible pitches, and its entire body reeked of the Demon world. Beneath it, Alia was laying on the floor, shuddering and crying and forgotten. The Destroyer was still attached to her by less than half of what Dante was going to assume was its body.
Its freakish body lacked any definable characteristics other than a humanoid shape and enormous feathered black wings. Twin horns curved from its nondescript head. The wings passed harmlessly through the arches as they moved back and forth with every strain the Destroyer made to be free. It twisted its body this way and that, and beneath it was still Alia, shuddering and mindlessly aware of every agony the movements caused her.
"The Destroyer, huh? Not much to look at, are you?" He nosed the toe of his boot under the hilt of Rebellion where it was on the floor and flipped it - it arced skyward, spinning like a blurring propeller blade. He caught it effortlessly.
"Real sorry to interrupt," he added as he walked up quickly to the dias, through the storm of demonic energies whipping his hair and his coat into a frenzy. "I just need to borrow her for a minute." He reached down, grabbing Alia's arm close to her shoulder and pulling her out from between the arches.
The Destroyer screamed louder than the combined howls and screams of Hell, shaking the very foundations of the tower itself; it twisted its body toward the disturbance, following the movements of Dante with two points of deep crimson energy where ordinary eyes would be. It had no voice but the one it was born with, and communicated its outrage with a second noise. It sounded an awful lot like "Ssssppardaaa!"
Half of its body stopped at its waist; the other half was missing. Alia was limp, but with surprising recovery she latched onto Dante and held onto him, her hair whipping about just as wildly as Dante's.
"Don't let it come out any more... don't let it... be free. It will destroy everything! The ancient devils of Hell, even before Sparda, created the Destroyer... and fearing its power of corruption and death, they sealed it away because if it was let loose, it would destroy even the Demon World before it escaped to earth! I didn't know, Dante! I had no idea it was ME! I'm sorry!"
The poor girl was pretty distraught; maybe she found all this out when she felt the Destroyer start to emerge - pouring her full of information to let her know exactly why she was about to be obliterated to give birth to the one creature that could potentially put an end to everyone's problems for good. The Destroyer was a manifestation of all hate, all hopelessness, all hunger. It would crush everything to dust until there was nothing left to crush, then it would consume the world. Another name for it was the Devourer.
"So you're a real party crasher. But I think you've really overstayed your welcome." He directed this comment to the Destroyer and not, in fact, to Alia. To her, he said, "You should let go of me now." He smiled and winked at her. Absolutely confused by his nonchalant attitude in the face of absolute destruction, the freckled girl let go of his jacket sleeve and merely sat down next to Nina.
Then she had no other words, watching the son of Sparda approach the still-opening gate of Hell framing the monumentous winged shadow that had caused even demons to tremble, before they trembled at the name of Sparda. The half-Destroyer clawed at the stone floor to reach Dante, as if the youthful hedonistic fool had been the first target by default. There was a small (by comparison) explosion of crimson light, leaving a smear of Dante on her retina. Where Dante was walking was another demon. It was Dante. Now armored in his Devil form, he rushed headlong with the point of Rebellion aimed to spear the Destroyer through its deadly wicked middle.
Even at half of its full size, the Destroyer was formidable. It had enormous range with its taloned long arms and its wings showered poison and steel feather needles wherever Dante's Devil form darted. He was too fast for normal eyes to follow. The only witness was Alia, and even her sight was challenged enough without her glasses, which had long since been crushed to pieces in all the chaos.
It seemed at first that every movement Dante made was as chaotic as the noise and motions of the Destroyer. The Destroyer would strike out, screaming, sending pieces of the ceiling crashing down. Dante would move out of the way, rolling for his life to avoid being crushed by them. Then he would move in, always a second ahead, and take a deadly chance moving so close to the fiend. A brilliance shower of black and red sparks would ensue from wherever Dante's sword struck, then he would dive away, toward the glowing arches. The Destroyer would be stunned for a hairsbreadth, then scream in pain.
What was Dante doing by the arches to cause such a reaction?
Then, squinting, Alia noticed it: when he rolled to the arches, he stuck his blade out and cut into the archway. Her eyes watered every time Rebellion made contact with it; it sent up a blinding light... and the Destroyer was screaming every time, as if it caused it pain.
With these random passes being made, the arches were being cut down - because they tied the Destroyer to this world while it was being born. And as if to prove it, one of the arches tipped to one side and shattered on a seventh pass. At the same time, Dante shimmered into view - dropping the Devil Trigger just as soon as it ran out.
The Destroyer shrank into itself, raising such a noise that Alia's hands shot up to cover her ears. The sound struck her to her very core - it was filled with unequal sadness and rage.
Dante stood passively by, watching as the Destroyer reached out, seizing hold of the last arch as if it was its only hope to remain. It looked at Dante with strange and oppressive silence. Then the vacuum of Hell pulled the Destroyer backwards through the open gateway, into the windswept, bone-strewn landscape of Hell.
It was then that Dante noticed a figure walking through the desert itself. It was a blurry and quivering with the likeness of a mirage; the man-shaped figure stopped when the Destroyer came barreling through the vortex. It must have looked as though the ruined beast had appeared out of nowhere, flying through the air at a monumentous velocity. With a quick, expert motion the man drew a sword and severed the Destroyer in half again on its way past. The shadowy being fell to the ground, vanishing into the bones.
Then the figure moved forward again purposefully, seeing the window with a view into the tower.
When it started shrinking, the figure in the desert burst forward into an all-out sprint - the sky on the other side was a turmoil of colors, like a blender of flesh and tissue.
Dante stared, gripping his sword in his hand tightly; the amulet he typically wore around his neck was glinting a brilliant crimson in the supernatural daylight.
The man in Hell continued running, but the opening was growing smaller and smaller. Not a demon had dared approach the gate this way, since the Destroyer was most assuredly waiting on the other side to devour them.
"How did you do it?" Dante wondered out loud. "Did you find something over there to give you a hand, brother?"
Across countless miles and yet right in front of him, an identical Dante was charging across the sand, and seeing the human world of light closing on him, screamed, "NO!" He was so close, Dante could see the fury and pain written all over Vergil's face. It was the last thing Dante ever wanted to see.
Without really thinking, Dante reached forward as he stood in front of the doorway. It was now only about as tall and wide as a normal door. The edges rippled and coalesced with reality. Vergil jumped... then the sand and the fleshy sky and the floating sun that glowed with no warmth vanished altogether.
Dante dropped his hand and stood very, very still.
"Maybe next time," he said softly. Something bright and shiny and probably without consequence dripped to the floor. He turned just in time to see Lady coming up after him. There was debris and stone and dust collected all over the floor. The air thrummed with the deep, deep quiet.
"Are we okay?" Lady wanted to know as she crouched beside the two girls, seeing the strangest look on Dante's face. He looked at her blankly like he hadn't heard her. "Dante?"
He shook himself very slightly. "Yeah. We're okay for now." He walked back over, slipping Rebellion back into its sheath. It was still glowing from hitting the arches, warm all over. If anyone touched it, it would've burned them.
He scooped up Nina. She wasn't bleeding so much anymore. Alia was hiding her face in her hands. Then she wriggled herself over to the doll laying not so far away, half-buried beneath a piece of ceiling. "Nathaniel... he was the one designed to look after this place. He was the caretaker. Vergil found a way to get inside him and control him superficially. He was still stronger than you somehow."
"That's what living in the demon world does to you," Dante grumbled, ignoring the unmoving doll for now. He checked Nina over. Her belly was almost healed over. He kept talking as he pushed some of Nina's hair out of her face. "No matter how hard you try, a person can end up just as fucked up as the real demons living in there." His eyes had hardened a lot, guarding some emotion he would doubtless vent some other time - out of their sight and in the company of his own kind.
Lady expected the look to stay on his face the whole way home. He had driven in his car here, while Lady had taken her motorcycle. They went down two at a time in the elevator; the wooden double doors gently closed behind them on their way out to the car. Alia shivered in her seat next to Dante; Lady would ride behind them. Nina crumpled into the front passenger seat without moving, eyes closed tightly with pain.
"Are you all right?" Alia whispered to her friend. "You... you did so good coming to rescue me, Nina. So please don't die, or... or I'll be very angry. O-Okay?"
After navigating the light, early morning traffic, Dante double-parked the car in front of Devil May Cry and walked a half-conscious Nina up the steps and over to the large brown sofa, sitting her into it. It was a familiar sight, seeing her all banged up and on his sofa, but there weren't any ropes and duct tape this time. He didn't have the time to think about what the hell Lady and Alia were doing, but if he had to guess, Lady was taking Alia up to her own little apartment and spending the night up there. That seemed to be the unspoken plan.
The Destroyer was gone forever now; as soon as it had been sucked into Hell, Alia's body suddenly felt... lighter. In fact, if she could say she felt anything, it was a hollowness that was a relief, an infection of her soul that had disappeared. Cleansed of the Destroyer, Alia would not realize until later that the Destroyer was the entire reason she had any power to begin with. Maybe Vergil sensed it inside of her but had no idea what it was. But... it was gone now.
Not that it mattered. Dante left his weapons by the kitchen door before he went in and popped open a case of beer to suck down while he sat by restless Nina in the armchair. His eyes were heavy but all in all, he wasn't about to shut his eyes to sleep. With so much on his mind - Vergil, Nina's near-death date with the business end of a sword, the Destroyer...
He sucked down one beer after another, hoping that there was enough in the entire twenty-four pack to get him remarkably trashed, but of course, as always, he needed just one more beer - a beer he didn't have - to reach that climax.
The day was breaking through his ruddy curtains, daylight eroding away the darkness in the city he called his home. How fucked up was it that he had an entire waking day to deal with everything else?