Do My Calculations
I just thought a little look into Nevan's point of view could clear up some mess.
A warning to readers: there is real swearing in this chapter.
Disclaimers are disclaimers and furthermore shall remain so.
Entry Twenty-One: Eyes of a Demon
Those humanoid bats have watched almost every move she made to keep an eye on the twins. She tried to spy on those boys for all the trouble they gave her, but she ended up getting captured.
The person who built the stone structure set a complex charm on the confinement device. For every attempt to break her prison from the inside, the force is converted into a power source that fortifies the stone even more. She could make no communication with the outside world. Sometimes it gets hot in there, and at times it was freezing.
But she would not die so easily. Demons like her could survive on their own powers; it was only the annoyance of hunger and thirst she had to bear.
One day there was a sudden shock felt about the stone cell. She waited a while in case somebody intended to set her free, but she thought of the following possibilities:
Someone stole the key from the group and wanted to release her.
One of the bat-boys turned against his team-mates in some way and has a reason to let her go.
The boys misplaced the key and now a person who found it has unintentionally liberated her.
She kept in mind that the stone can only be opened from the outside. Despite the shock, she could not push the door open yet. When she could, she found herself facing a security guard of the private grounds. She knew she would have to drain the life out of him to replenish her strength.
To her fortune, nobody else – no security guards, no grounds staff – put even one foot on the soil of the little forest where many trees still stand. She has to regain orientation of the time and place surrounding her. She had to leave some people for dead after she consumes their life-force, but an unexpected chance led the bat-boy to the place where he and his friends subdued her.
Revenge is just so very sweet.
He was the one who built the edifice from remnants of building materials in the area. He was the one who disarmed her attempts of escaping.
Now he gets a taste of his own medicine.
Brian noticed the shocked expressions of the two irregular visitors and can prudently presume that they were staring at a key lodged in its hole on the structure's door.
"Damn the pencil case," he muttered some other curses incoherently. Jimmy's balcony accident and the previous guard they raised against the outsiders made him postpone his concern for the key, which was supposed to still be in the case.
There it is now, ready to be turned and opened.
It was how she escaped, which meant someone else would have been trapped inside. They can only be left to wonder why she did not take the key with her.
Immediately Brian turned the key to unlock the structure. There were signs of strain on the hand he used to do it. He spread his arms and stepped backwards to warn the others to stay behind, and a door swung open to his expectation.
"Fresh air! Soda! Milkshake and fries!"
It really is Jimmy, wearing yesterday's clothes, but now they hung loosely on his frame. He seemed to spill forth onto the ground.
"She got out. She's escaped and put me in here. She smelled like death!" the tall man screamed, writhing on his back. He paused to say to them: "By the way, I was about to undo the spell I put on this crap. You could've waited a bit."
His head slumped back due to gravity. His eyes closed and his breathing slowed.
"So… whatever you kept in there… it's a she?" Nay asked, frowning.
"I should be either really glad or really upset that Dante isn't around to hear it from us, but the threat that we've kept here for all those weeks is really the July Intake girl he's been dating."
Brian waited for the shock of the information to register.
"Nevan is the purplish menace?" Nay burst out.
"And I set her free?"
The boys and Nay but not Jimmy turned to peer at Vergil.
"I mean, after we found the pencil case in this place, we raided the contents and I took out an envelope with a key. I didn't know why at the time, but I put the key in there and suddenly I got pushed back."
A distance away, Matt talked side-handedly to John: "That's untapped demon power for you."
"After that, we saw a security guard. We didn't think of pulling the key back out 'cause we didn't want to be seen," the half-demon continued.
"Let's say this: you put the key in, but the guard turned it and opened the door," Brian deduced.
John nodded to add: "Only human hands can operate this kind of mechanism." There was still a puzzled look to him when he moved his gaze over to his fallen comrade.
"Jimmy built this structure and set its spells, but he can still be careless," Zack stated.
"Hey!" they can hear Jimmy wheeze.
Nay knelt down near his six-feet-plus figure. Brian followed suit, his expression sober. "We're going to send him home and take care of him. It's not as if we need more of your involvement in this than Dante becoming a sitting duck for the succubus."
"Lay off! Neither of us thought it was a good match in the first place!" Nay told him, glancing at Vergil to see if he agrees with her.
He turned to look elsewhere, though. "Is it me, or does anyone here smell decay and decomposition?" he asked.
Matt and John volunteered to survey the area outside the gate farther east. Brian was about to pick Jimmy off the ground until he held up a hand to the longer-haired man. "Save yourself the energy. If they found something, you won't like it, but it's necessary that you do."
His words rang true when there are exclamations like "Oh my god!" and "What the fuck!?" from the tree-covered areas. The scouts came back pale and shaken.
"There are dead bodies piled somewhere there," John informed them.
"Security guards, gardeners, even a guy in some striped clothes – they've all got marks on their lips or necks. They looked like dried blood," Matt described what he witnessed.
It seemed that only Nay and Vergil did not seem affected by morbid words. Maybe long years of Sparda upbringing and violent video games have cultured them to be immune against things that commoners would normally feel disgusted with.
"Alright, now we can go."
A sudden movement from Jimmy made Brian jump.
"We're sorry about the other day, big guy. Let's get you the soda you wanted."
"I changed my mind and said milkshake and fries, remember?"
The five each had smiles on their faces. "This will be all for now," Brian notified them, putting his cap back on.
"What do we do about Dante?" Vergil questioned.
"Break it to him in the gentlest way possible, like, make sure he's in his comfort zone when you start talking to him. If he doesn't believe you," he said with a sigh, "he'll be in for a rude awakening."
That night in the Sparda residence…
Dante had just finished his dinner of pizza – this time with cheese, and no other toppings.
Vergil tried not to shudder at how his twin could eat that much cheese at a time or sigh at what a waste it is not to have at least pineapples to add some zing.
The twin in a relationship has heard from his girlfriend about how other female classmates wanted her help to set them up with the single twin. Vergil was unwilling to date anyone at the moment, but if Nay saw him wearing a 'Single but Not Available' T-shirt, she would definitely give him the cold shoulder. He has seen this happen to a Globalization classmate of hers at lunch. There was something about that phrase that seems to drive her up the wall.
"Hey, Verge, did you hear about the girl who asked Nevan if she can set you with her?"
He tried not to sigh in exasperation; after all, he did want to lower his twin's guard.
"Which girl is it this time?"
He did not bother paying attention. Most of the time, Dante would describe the asking girl as physically attractive to human eyes; to him, Nevan is out of this world. If only he realized how literal his statement is…
"Well, she's either an international student or someone who had grown up here, whose parents obviously don't look local. She's got dark hair that's kind of short for a girl, but her eyes are differently colored, not that she wore contacts or anything."
"Doesn't sound like my type," Vergil replied.
Maybe tonight Dante realized his brother had been saying the same thing about the girls described to him. "If you don't want to start seeing girls this way, you could've just said it."
Vergil finished packing his single-strapped bag for another day of college, which is tomorrow. "Do you remember the purplish menace that we thought would terrorize the campus? Well, she's closer to taking us down than you think."
The younger twin snapped to attention. "You mean the purplish menace is a she?" What horror it is to hear the same thing from two different people.
It seems that he has to play Brian's role now. If he had time, he would have wondered who Dante would more strongly believe in, his brother or one of his peers, but the final exams are around the corner…
"She was in our Economics class today, but she left when Brian and his gang came around."
"Wait a minute. Didn't I hear from you about Jimmy spilling secrets from the group? He did mention being part of some superhero squad."
How he wished Dante did not just get sidetracked, but the shirtless of the two of them continued: "Maybe she was afraid that the guys would own her."
He was about to give up until Dante proceeded to ask: "Wait again – how did you know she was in our classroom?"
"Well, I saw her."
"What did she look like?"
Vergil waited for the right moment to say it, no matter how painful it is for his twin to accept.
"She has long reddish hair, not too petite and shows a lot of skin for even a college student."
Dante looked blankly at him for a moment. "If this is a joke, it sounds horrible," he stated.
He can go easy with his breath and start sighing now. "Believe what you like, Dante. I could do nothing about that."
"Alright." With hardly more than a peek into his backpack, Dante pulled the sheets over himself.
Earlier that afternoon in the Program Director's office…
From outside the office, it would have looked like the blinds completely removed visibility past the window. In truth, there were bats covering every inch of the office walls.
The Program Director – a middle-aged woman who made herself look younger – hid under the table where she gets most of her work done. She dared not touch the bats as they would obey their mistress's commands whether to deliver a shock of lightning, bite or scratch the older woman.
"Listen here," the so-called international student began pacing. "I don't want any trouble from the authorities, and you're a suitable example of them. Ergo, I don't want any fuss from you."
"What did I ever do to you?" the Director instinctively screamed back.
"Dare you ask? Just a few minutes ago you were talking about a warning to remove me from this program. I could've toasted you up pretty nicely for that alone."
"W-what do you want from me? High Distinction grades for all your papers? The answers to all the papers? I'll do what I can, but please don't hurt me!"
"I intend to stay in this program until the end and be left alone. At the same time, I don't want anyone knowing about this. If I found out that you blabbed…"
Grown-ups aren't exempted from feeling fear.