Showtime
Dante looked up from the game of pool he was getting beaten at when Regan opened the door and came down the steps quickly. Lifting a brow at how fast she was moving, he listened to what she said as she grabbed her coat from the hanger.
"Arias spotted The Vicar coming, but I have no clue where he went."
In hearing this explanation while watching Regan as she tugged her coat on before flipping her red hair out of the collar, Dante settled the end of his pool stick onto the floor casually and asked, "Arias followed you upstairs, huh?"
"Yeah, and told me something very interesting too. I'll have to tell ya later though."
"Slow down, babe," Dante informed her, leaning back against the wall, apparently in no rush despite the fact that he'd just heard that death was on his doorstep, in a literal sense. "Even if he's coming this way, you should probably stay here instead of sticking your pretty face out where he can see it."
"Dante," Regan sighed, "he already knows where I am more than likely, and I don't want him getting any closer, because I've been putting too much work into your shop to see it get ruined."
Dante smirked, lifting his arm and settling his pool stick on the rack, somehow finding a good bit of enjoyment in the idea that Regan gave a shit what happened to his place. "Alright, fine, but I doubt that–"
Suddenly, he was cut off when he heard a sound as if some type of power was swirling about, and he glanced up. Portals were opening. With a roll of his eyes, Dante grumbled, "Goddamn it, not this shit again."
Imp groaned as well, moving toward the edge of the pool table without question, leaving the stick he'd been playing their game with behind. Turning, he climbed down while Dante moved past him, and once he was on the floor, he called out to the demon hunter, "Don't worry, Dante, I'll letcha stay in my shop again if it comes down to it."
The last time Dante's shop had been wrecked - when the tower of Temen-Ni-Gru had been raised - Dante couldn't get through the front door, let alone get to his room to sleep in it. Imp had let him stay over for a few nights until enough debris could be moved out of the way that he could do anything in his shop at all.
Dante wasn't going to let that shit happen again though.
"Be careful, Tiny," Dante told Imp, grabbing Rebellion as he heard the groan of demons dropping out of the portals and into his shop, the same long tongued Quietuses that he'd fought before at Blackwing Creek.
Regan let out a sigh when she saw them, the lumbering demons turning toward them while she gripped the hilt of her own blade. "Yep, he's definitely close."
"We'll just take out the trash and then go up on the roof," Dante told her in response as he'd hoisted Rebellion against his back, "then have it out with the big baddie up there."
He'd said that just in time to dodge an attack by one of the creature's tongues, turning his sword to sever the appendage before he rushed in to flay the bastard in two. As blood erupted from the demon's torso against Rebellion's blade, Dante used his free hand to grab Ivory from inside of his jacket and flipped her around deftly, letting off a spray of bullets at another demon to his left, effectively knocking his enemy backwards and into the wall.
Regan's guns were a little less effective against these creatures - just a normal pair of six shooters that weren't extremely effective which she'd learned in her encounter with The Vicar, and besides, they weren't in one piece currently anyway. Dante had taken them apart in order to soup them up, an effort Regan was helping him with, but they hadn't completed the task at that time. So for now, Demoncaller was Regan's main focus, and she'd just used the weapon to cleave a head from a body, which went flying toward Dante.
Dante had spotted the head before it reached him, and he turned with a deft swing of his blade, hitting the flying cranium like a bat while calling, "Batter up!" The head went flying toward another demon, knocking it backwards just as Regan moved to impale it from behind.
When she tugged her blade from the body, she noticed that she wasn't having as much trouble this time as she had when she'd previously fought The Vicar, but it wasn't because of any skills she'd gained. They seemed to be more interested in attacking Dante, a good six of them heading toward him now that she could count right off the bat, and she remembered what Arias had said about Democrities' desire to take the demon hunter out.
It was plain to see that Democrities hadn't changed his mind with everything going on, which gave Regan a huge upper hand in this case. She could use their distraction with Dante to help him much more easily.
Or so she'd thought as she tried to start moving, seeing a tongue darting out in front of her suddenly in order to wrap around her waist swiftly, lifting her from the ground with a fast jerk of motion. Regan was jerked up so hard and so fast in fact that she found herself slammed into the wall above Dante's office desk before she was pulled back again, just barely managing to hold onto her blade in the process of taking the hit.
She tried to twist her arm to turn it and use against the appendage that was binding around her torso and left arm now, hearing Dante taunting the demons from across the room while she was about to slice herself free. But as soon as she was about to move, another tongue had shot out to wrap around her wrist and hold her arm in place, effectively keeping her from getting out of this predicament.
Grunting, Regan twisted in its hold fruitlessly, cussing before she glanced over to see that Dante was fine despite the numbers against him. She didn't think he was in peril, but this was just fucking annoying, and she called her warning to him, "Kinda stuck over here, give me a minute."
"No troubles, sweetheart," Dante grunted out as he sliced his weapon into another torso, then, in the same blow, severed another tongue flying toward his side.
Dante turned toward the demon whose tongue had just been cleaved off and kicked him backwards, sending him flying onto his back. Swinging Rebellion in one hand - a feat Regan knew wasn't easy because that sword was damned heavy - he stepped over the monster and stabbed the blade down into his body with a gush of blood flying upwards and then splattering onto the floor.
"Too bad they can't fight as good as they are ugly. Might actually be a challenge then," Dante said, turning to see what kind of situation Regan was in when a tongue wrapped around his ankle and tugged him upwards, pulling him into the air upside down. Like Regan, Dante held onto his blade, but these guys seemed to be faster than he remembered, a long tongue slithering around his wrist to keep him from using his weapon, and even though he jerked on his arm and actually managed to tug the demon around a bit, he cringed in pain when he was stabbed, one after another, by the sharp appendages holding him in midair now.
All he could feel were various parts of his anatomy being punctured again and again, and he lost count after the fourth time. Regan could see it all clearly, at least six of the demons impaling him again and again, his blood going splattering everywhere, dripping down onto the floor below in red dots.
"Dante!," Regan yelled and jerked on her arm. She knew he could take abuse, but fuck if she wanted to just let it happen.
Dante went limp, every movement he made painful - but not anything he'd never done before. With as many times as he remembered getting impaled, he was starting to think there was an invisible sign floating around him somewhere that said 'Stab me, I won't mind'.
He did have one arm free though, and he used it to go for one of his guns while hanging and impaled so many times. "That all you got?," he grunted out, managing to grab the handle of Ebony, but the Quietuses moved again, preventing him from tugging the gun out of it's holster. They jerked him and then turned him to be slammed down into the floor between where they stood around him, knocking up a bit of debris as they created a crater with his body. To top it off, he could feel the slack taking up in order to do it once again.
Now Dante was getting really irritated.
"You shouldn't do that you know," came Arias's voice from the stairs. The sudden sound got the Quietuses attention it seemed because they hesitated in lifting Dante in order to body slam him again.
The hesitation made Arias smirk and add the words, "But you're too late."
Dante triggered. His body shifted to his demonic form, and with the extra strength lent to him in that state, he pushed himself up quickly and grabbed one of the tongues still impaling him before jerking it inward. The demon he'd grabbed went flying toward him, and right onto his blade as he ripped his arm free of the way it'd been bound, just before he turned the weapon and, with the demon still impaled on it, took off the head of the next closest to him.
The appendages that had impaled him were torn free one by one as he moved, too pissed to care about the pain they'd caused him. As he beheaded the second demon, the body impaled on his blade dislodged itself with the force of his swing, and Dante didn't stop. Amidst the slaughter he was bringing down onto his enemies now, tongues, arms, and legs fell to the floor.
He was moving far too swiftly for Regan to keep track of, but she did see Arias disappearing from where he'd been standing on the stairs only to reform behind the demon that was holding her arm into place, followed by severing the tongue with his sword Venom, which allowed her to cut herself free. As she sliced her way from the bondage she'd been held in, she turned Demoncaller in her hands as she fell, bringing the blade right down onto the Quietus that had grabbed her, slicing him in two down the middle.
Arias had finished off the other with a swift stab to his gut and not a lot of fuss, when Regan looked over at him. He stood up straight again and then glanced at her in return, holding up his hand, "Don't thank me, I hate those awkward moments of sentiment."
"Good, because I didn't want to," Regan replied, looking over to see that Dante had finished off every Quietus that had impaled him in a demonic rage, and was now fading back to the visage of his normal self once more.
She moved toward him when he turned and put Rebellion onto his back again, shaking his head, "These things are really starting to piss me the fuck off!"
"I can tell," Regan replied just as she stopped next to him, then looked around. "On the bright side, they didn't ruin anything that can't be fixed easily, except maybe the floor there."
Strolling by them at that time, Arias pointed out, "You can assess the damages later. The Vicar is almost here."
Dante rolled his eyes, "Yeah, where the hell were you? Eating popcorn?"
"No, it gets stuck between my teeth. Cake's tastier."
"Whatever," Dante grumbled, heading up the stairs so he could get onto the rooftop and maybe snipe the bastard who'd caused all of this before he arrived. Regan followed him, and they ended up on the roof just a moment later where Arias had simply teleported himself to, standing on the edge looking out over the roadways.
"See him?," Dante asked.
Arias's eyes had turned black once more, and when Dante saw it, his expression wrinkled a bit, but he listened when Arias informed him, "No, but he's close."
"So what, he's just waiting in the background while he sends his bitches out to kill us off?"
"He is a coward," Arias agreed, only to be responded to by a voice that sounded somewhat faint, softly feeble, coming from directly behind the three of them.
"You've always underestimated me, Arias. That is why any plans you have against me now will fail."
They all turned and looked back, the cloaked individual one that both Regan and Arias had met before, but one that Dante was only just now getting to know. Dante lifted a brow at the skinny looking freak, his pale skin and nearly stark white eyes watching them from under the hood he wore.
Dante wasn't impressed.
"You're The Vicar?" Dante scoffed and then shook his head, "I don't know whether to fight you or find you a priest to give out the last rites."
"Dante Sparda," came the return, "your father wasn't quite as loud mouthed as you are."
That just made Dante grin. With a shrug, he spoke, "Well pops needed to get with the times. I'm the improved version." The line was spoken while pointing at himself without any lack of ego. Then he lowered his hand and took a few steps toward him, though not completely close, asking, "So, you want a piece of me, too? Well, line up pal, I got demons from all over who've been trying to kick my ass for years now, but still haven't managed to do it. You're just another face in the crowd. Uglier than most, but still just another face."
The Vicar didn't seem to be impressed, just as Dante didn't, looking from the Son of Sparda and to Arias, then to Regan, both standing behind Dante and to his sides, Arias on his left, and Regan on his right. As he did this, while a soft breeze blew and the sun was drawing down enough to turn the sky a deep tone of purplish blue, he reached up and removed his hood from his completely hairless head.
With the action, a few bugs began to fall out of his robes, some of them crawling inside of it around the collar, and Dante cringed when he saw this. "Damn, you should get something for that shit before you give my shop a bug infestation."
"The curse of the Succubi Queen," Arias spoke informatively. "Even in this form, in this realm, he can't escape it. Forced to eternally rot until he'd met her standards."
Dante lifted a brow, though he kept his gaze settled on The Vicar, asking, "The Succubi Queen? What'd he do to piss her off?"
"She's my mother," Arias replied. "She cursed Democrities to rot until he freed me from torment. It's a long story," Arias replied.
Apparently, the story held more interest to Dante than The Vicar did however, because he looked back and asked, "Seriously? Your mom's the Succubi Queen?"
Arias didn't look as if it were something to gloat over, simply informing Dante, "It only means she's more of a slut than most. He's her son too, after all."
Dante cringed and looked ahead again at the shell of Democrities standing before them. "Damn it, why the hell do I ever ask when it concerns demons! That's fucking disgusting! You did your own mommy!" Dante looked like he was about to be ill, and Regan wasn't too far from the same fate.
"Guess that means we can legitimately call him a motherfucker," Regan groaned out.
The Vicar didn't speak, only began to step toward them, and when Dante noticed the movement, he reached for his weapon, becoming a good bit more serious than he had been. The demon reached for the clasps at the top of his cloak, and tugged them free, the material billowing away in the breeze as he stepped in closer, leaving his body exposed, and Dante couldn't help but think to himself this shit just keeps getting more and more disgusting.
But it wasn't the sight of some nude male anatomy that made him think that - apparently this shell didn't have any male anatomy. It was, instead, the ill-formed body that made Dante think what he had, one that had chunks of skin missing in several places with blue and purple welts here and there. One that was even hollowed out in places from the looks of it, empty caverns in the torso where maggots and centipedes were crawling in and out of, festering. As for the male anatomy, there was nothing there but a missing patch of flesh, something neither of the three standing together now looked at.
"It's time," The Vicar spoke solely, just as his body began to contort unnaturally. He came to a stop in his path, his arms folding in as he grunted, the joints breaking with gruesome crunches of bone and flesh, the skin along his spine splitting open with spikes that tore through his back.
When his mouth opened, several long, sharp fangs, dripping with drool and blood, could be seen protruding from his mouth, and one of his eyes fell out of its socket, hanging grotesquely against his cheek, a red glow emanating from behind it.
It was sickening to watch, extremely so, but the human mask the creature wore was soon torn away completely as the beast unleashed itself onto all fours, eight feet in height of foul smelling, blood covered skin that glistened in the dying light, a solid black color. The head was elongated almost like a horse, red glowing eye sockets leering down at them while it raised itself to full height, sharp talons lining each digit on his front and hind legs, and a spiny tail whipped about behind him dangerously.
The creatures ribs were sunken in, as if it were mostly a skeletal frame bound together by flesh, tendons, and some muscle - the most notable being the heart that was pumping with a low gurgle in its chest, a black organ that look just as decayed as the rest of him, pulsing disgustingly.
"That smell!," Regan couldn't help but exclaim, honestly about to throw up because of it. It was strong enough to knock someone over literally.
Dante couldn't have agreed more, saying, "Gonna need a shower after this one. But you're right, ugly," he swung his blade up to point at the creature ready to attack them now. "It's time. Time for you to go back to hell, or as I like to call it," he crooked his fingers to tell the beast to bring it, "Showtime."