Just before dawn on Tuesday morning, Nero once again found himself staring at the entrance to the mine, which was still cloaked in deep shadows at this hour. "You ready for this?"
"Probably not." Lady adjusted Kalina Ann's strap on her shoulder. "But we've done as much preparation as we can, and it's not like we have any control over the schedule."
"I'm ready." Trish twirled Luce and Ombra before tucking them away at the small of her back. "I do wish I had a sword, though."
"Couldn't you have brought one of Dante's spares?" Lady asked. "You just came from the shop."
Trish shook her head. "His other Devil Arms won't permit me to wield them. They bow to Dante's will because he's the one who defeated them in combat, but the only one that ever responded to me was the Sparda."
"Strange. I wonder why that sword accepted you, when the others wouldn't."
"The same reason Dante did, I suspect." Trish gave a humorless smile. "I've gotten a lot of mileage out of my resemblance to Eva."
Nero checked over his own equipment once more. He'd topped off Red Queen's fuel reservoir that morning. Blue Rose was loaded, and he had plenty of spare ammunition. He had several Devil Breakers on his hip, and the newly-refitted Quicksilver glittered on his arm. Normally Nero wouldn't take an untested weapon into combat, but he knew he might need the extra speed to evade the Nilepoch, and Nico swore she'd recalibrated the Quicksilver and capped its ability so it wouldn't set him on fire again. Besides, it gave him an edge with that extra boost of energy, and between yesterday's unarmed fight and rising at an ungodly hour this morning, he was more than a little tired.
"Okay, I'm all locked and loaded." Lady slapped her last pistol into its holster. "Nico, are you coming down with us?"
Nico, slumped on the van's running board with her lips dangling in a cup of coffee, shook her head. "Non-combatants are stayin' out o' baby-fication range. I'll monitor the… uh, monitors from up here an' give you a heads-up if I see anythin' comin'."
Nero frowned. "The radio won't work underground, will it?"
"Who d'ya think you're workin' with? I piggybacked a relay on the… thingies." She waved a limp hand toward the posts with the infrared receivers they'd installed weeks before and yawned. "Did we have t'be out here this early? Sun ain't even up yet."
"We don't know what time the Nilepoch will show. We're only guessing that it will be some time today based on its last appearance." Lady stretched her arms overhead, then behind her back, loosening up. "Though personally, I hope it's sooner rather than later. I don't want to sit around waiting the entire day, or have to fight it late at night when we're getting tired again."
"Or hungry," Trish added.
"No worries on that front," Nero said. "Kyrie said she put some sandwiches in the fridge for us."
"We'd better take those with us, then. We aren't likely to come back up for a lunch break." Lady climbed into the van, tilting Kalina Ann to avoid banging the weapon into the door, and returned a moment later with three small bundles neatly wrapped in brown paper. Each packet had the sandwich ingredients penciled on top and a small bottle of lemonade tied across it with a ribbon. "Kyrie is a marvel. You do whatever you have to do to keep that girl, Nero. You'll never find another one like her."
"That's always been my number-one priority," he grinned. "Okay. Everybody got everything? We good to go now?"
At the affirmative answers, Nero led the way into the mines. It was even colder in the damp underground passage, and Nero made the trek to Agnus's lab as quickly as he dared. Like Lady, he was hoping the Nilepoch appeared soon—not only so they would all be fresh for the fight, but also because he couldn't imagine what he would do with himself if forced to wait around in a single room for an entire day.
Lady and Nico had done extensive work on the lab over the past week. With one of the generators restored, a couple of light bulbs burned high on the far wall, casting a dim yellow glow over the area. Apart from the cage where the captive Riot paced, most of the lab's fixtures had been dismantled, and a series of L-shaped barricades now ranged along each wall. The dense structures had been cobbled together from scavenged equipment banks and scrap material, and were positioned to provide cover regardless of which angle of approach the Nilepoch took. Metal grating from the floor of the second level had been pulled up to construct a chute inside the door, across which a series of tripwires stretched. The danger zones were marked clearly in paint with words like BIG ZAP and SICK BURN.
Nero pointed at the warning signs. "Nico's work?"
Lady raised her hands in a gesture of innocence. "She was worried the Nilepoch would be able to read the warnings if we made them any more literal. I told her there was no evidence that the Nilepoch could understand English words, much less read them, but…"
"But Nico." Nero shook his head. "I guess we should just be glad they're labeled at all."
Once they'd checked that the Riot was still secure in its cage, they arranged themselves in various nooks of the barricades and settled in to wait. Within a few minutes, Nero was pacing; within an hour, he was nibbling at his sandwich, more out of boredom than hunger. By two hours in, he had found a screwdriver and was amusing himself by dismantling the console that formed one section of his cover. "Man, this is some weird hardware. I wonder if Nico can do anything with these circuit boards."
"She's a gunsmith, not a computer technician," Lady laughed from her own corner. "She does have an impressive array of skills, but they're mostly analogue."
"Wouldn't most of that material be obsolete, anyway?" Trish was perched atop her own barricade, paging through a magazine she'd brought from the van. "I don't really keep track of technological advances, but judging by all these ads for mobile devices, there seems to be a fairly fast turnover."
"Not for us. When it comes to technology, Fortuna's always a couple of decades behind the rest of the world. There's not enough of a market for anyone to bother shipping state-of-the-art stuff out here, and it's not like we have the infrastructure to support it anyway. I mean, we don't even have a working mobile network. Closest thing we got to wireless is that radio phone in the van." Nero ripped a handful of cables out of the console. "Huh. This copper wire is decent stuff. Might be worth salvaging—"
He was interrupted by the squelch of the radio handset he'd left sitting on the edge of the barricade. "…ell just hap…" The words died in a burst of static.
Nero dropped the cables and reached across to press the talk button. "Come again, Nico?"
Her voice burst through the static again. "…said, what the hell just happened down th…ensors blew ou…"
"Dammit!" Nero fiddled with the antenna. "I told her this wouldn't work underground. Nico? You copy?" The only answer was incomprehensible squelch. He climbed out of his makeshift bunker. "I'll go partway up the tunnel and see if I can get better reception."
"Nero! Get back!" It was all the warning he had before one of Lady's missiles sailed past his head and blew an impressive hole in the grate that made up the near side of the chute. As he reeled back from the explosion, he heard the sizzle of electricity and smelled ozone.
Recovering, Nero whirled and came almost face-to-face with the Nilepoch as it reared up on its spindly legs. The BIG ZAP tripwire lay smoking at its feet, weak sparks flashing from the severed end of the cable. As he watched, it crossed the SICK BURN line and bellowed as viscous yellow fluid dribbled onto it from above. Nero used the demon's momentary distraction to dive back behind cover—and not an instant too soon, as a blinding beam of light swept across the room, destroying the outer layer of Lady's barricade.
"Where the hell did it come from?" Trish called over the noise it was making. "None of the alarms in the tunnel tripped!"
"It probably didn't come from the tunnel." Lady slammed another missile into Kalina Ann. "It may have just appeared. Time jumps, remember?" She ducked around the corner of her cover and fired. The shot went wide of the thrashing creature, blowing a hole in a wall-mounted console behind it.
"Doesn't matter where it came from, it's here now!" Nero stretched up over his wall to put a few explosive rounds in the Nilepoch's hide. It gave an irritated twitch, but the rounds didn't seem to do much damage. "Damn, Gigi was right. Bullets don't even put a dent in this thing."
Trish performed an impressive flip over the front of her barricade, blasting away with Luce and Ombra. "Not even these scratch it!" She landed beside Lady and took cover again.
"Rhinoceros!" Lady shouted.
If they survived this, Nero promised himself, he would have a chat with Lady about her in-battle communication. "What?"
"A bullet will flatten on rhinoceros hide because it spreads the force out," she called back. "But you can cut it!"
"What do rhinos have to do with—"
"She means use your sword!" Trish translated. She ducked instinctively as another deadly beam flashed overhead.
The moment the light faded, Nero dodged around the side of his barricade, drawing Red Queen. Opposite, Trish launched over the front of Lady's bunker and veered around the far side of the Nilepoch. For an instant the creature's attention was divided between them, which gave Nero a chance to activate the Quicksilver. Energy surged through him, and as the world seemed to stream to a halt around him, he twisted Red Queen's throttle and aimed a blow at what should have been the soft spot behind the demon's shoulder joint. His strike landed hard enough to rock the creature back a step, but the blade caught in the folds of its skin, dragging against it like a knife caught in taffy.
"The hell?" Feeling his sword's grip warm from the friction, Nero returned to normal speed and wrenched Red Queen free. The edge of his blade was tarred with a velvet-black ooze. "It's sticky!"
All light in the room seemed to gather in the Nilepoch's mouth, and Nero scarcely managed to dive out of the way as the demon shot another blast through the space he'd been occupying. The beam struck the barricade behind him, and another layer of protective structure crumbled away.
From the other side of the Nilepoch, Trish launched into the air and—to Nero's astonishment—hovered there. "Let's see if you'll cook, sugar," she said, and shifted.
The back of Nero's neck prickled as the wave of demonic energy struck him. He'd never seen Trish in her full devil form—hadn't known she had one—but found himself riveted by the sight of her wrapped in scarlet lightning, golden power streaming upward like flame, her eyes illuminated from within. From her hands she unleashed bolt after bolt of dazzling energy, which scattered over the Nilepoch's skin and danced through the iridescent clouds pooling beneath it. The Nilepoch roared in rage and pain and spun to lash out at Trish directly, its bifurcated jaw snapping at her hovering feet.
Trish dodged easily, performed an aerial backflip, and landed atop the cage that held the Riot they'd used as bait. The halo of power surrounding her vanished, and she paused for a second to assess her enemy.
That second was all the opportunity the Nilepoch needed. Without the usual warning charge-up, the demon spat a slender beam of light at her. Trish lunged to one side, narrowly escaping the attack, but the beam struck the cage and shattered it. The Riot, agitated by the fight it had not been able to join, screeched and launched itself toward the barricades.
"I've got it!" shouted Lady, leaning sideways around the barrier to blast the Riot with a handgun before it could reach Nero's position. "You deal with the big one!"
Nero turned his attention back to the Nilepoch, though he had no clue how to attack it without getting his sword stuck in the demon's adhesive skin again. "Trish?" he called over the din. "Any ideas?"
"Not unless we can take it out from the inside," she shouted back. "But with that thing in its mouth—duck!"
The Nilepoch spat another blast, swinging its head to strafe the room, and Nero had scarcely landed behind his barricade before the attack evaporated the top half of his cover. He flattened himself on the floor, eyes squeezed shut to avoid the near-blinding reflections that scattered from the surface of the Quicksilver as the light beam lanced directly overhead. "Shit! Trish, you still alive?"
"Somehow," she called back. He heard her hiss in pain, though, and was not surprised when he leaned out and spotted her limping behind a pile of rubble across the room. The Nilepoch crept after her, head swiveling to seek out her hiding place. "Dammit, I just grew this leg back!"
Lady had paused for a few seconds to reload her pistols, and the weakened Riot hobbled toward Nero's place of concealment, making a desperate swipe at him with its claws. "Oh, come on," Nero growled as he danced into the aisle, easily dodging the attack. "Just get out of the way already!" He seized the Riot with his spectral arm and put a pair of shots from Blue Rose through its neck. With a final squeal, the demon collapsed into ash in his hand.
The action had taken his attention off their main enemy, and it wasn't until Trish shouted, "Nero! Cover!" that he realized the Nilepoch had abandoned its search for Trish in favor of the more visible target. Nero activated the Quicksilver and dove toward the crumbling remains of his shelter, but he could see the ray of light already flowing toward him; even at advanced speed, he wouldn't be fast enough to escape it. Instinctively, he threw up his arms to protect his face—
The beam struck the Devil Breaker's mirrored surface and split into countless fragments, each blasting a tiny hole in whatever surface it struck. Lady yelped and curled into a corner of her shelter as lethal rays pierced the weakened barricade in front of her. The largest beam ricocheted off the main plate of the Quicksilver and struck the Nilepoch squarely in the face. Dazzled, it rocked back, head swaying faintly.
"Holy shit," Nero breathed, eyes traveling from the still-incandescent Devil Breaker to the reeling demon. "Is it… did that freeze it?"
"Stop staring and hit the damn thing!" shouted Trish.
Nero snapped out of his shock and charged forward, Red Queen in hand. The demon's mouth hung slightly ajar from being stunned mid-attack, and he threw all of his power into a blow at the sphere of energy at the back of its tongue. As the sword connected, a sound like a thunderclap shook the room, and fragments of light scattered beneath his blade like shards of glass.
The injury dragged Nilepoch from its stupor. It reared up with a bellow and slammed its body into Nero's, knocking him flying; then, with surprising agility for a creature of its size, the demon pivoted and bolted back through the chute and up the tunnel. By the time Nero scrambled to his feet, it had vanished completely.
Belatedly, Nero became aware of the burning sensation in his arm and realized the Quicksilver was smoking. He phased his arm to its incorporeal state and let the Devil Breaker slide off. It dropped to the floor, still glowing with heat, then cracked in two. Molten metal seeped from the edges of the break.
Lady joined Nero and gave a low whistle as she watched the weapon destroy itself. "Good thing your arm wasn't in that."
"Broadly speaking, I think it's a good thing his arm was in that." Trish limped over to them. The leather over her left thigh was burned away, and the leg beneath seemed oddly shriveled. "If not, he'd either be toast or an infant right now. Or possibly a toasted infant."
"All, that, and we didn't even kill it," Nero groaned. With the sudden loss of the Quicksilver's energy, his body felt heavy and drained.
"We did inflict some damage, though." Still favoring her wounded leg, Trish knelt for a closer look at the shards that had splintered from the sphere in the Nilepoch's mouth. "What do you make of these?"
Nero squatted beside her. The pieces had faded from solid light to an iridescent transparency, like fragments of crystal. "No idea."
"I wonder…" Trish used Luce's muzzle to flick the tiniest shard toward herself, then extended a finger.
"Are you sure you want to touch that?" Lady warned. "We still don't know the extent of that thing's abilities."
"Just testing a theory." Trish brushed the glass-like sliver, which curled into vapor at the contact. A few seconds passed; then she hissed in pain and clutched at her injured leg.
"What is it?" Lady crouched beside her, hands extended to catch her if she collapsed. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Trish said through clenched teeth. She took a couple of breaths, then relaxed. "Nothing. It worked."
"What worked?"
Trish removed her hands to reveal her injured thigh—only now the limb appeared whole and unmarked. "I caught a glancing blow from that beam attack. Not enough to drain my power, but I think it absorbed some of the energy I'd poured into restoring my leg."
"And you got it back just from touching that piece?"
"It would seem so."
Lady's eyes shifted to the shards. "That book we translated did say something about the sphere holding the energy it absorbed."
Nero glanced between them. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Lady met his eyes, but shook her head. "There's a definite risk. We don't know that it will restore them to their proper age. And even if it does…"
"It might not restore the rest of their memories. I know." Nero scrubbed a hand over his face, which felt rough and grimy after the fight. "But the question is… is it worth the risk for a chance to get them back to normal?"
"We could always test it on Vergil first," Trish said. Lady and Nero turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. "I'm just being practical. If we have to risk one of them—"
"Trish!" Lady snapped. "He may not be our favorite person, but he is Nero's father."
"No, it's cool, I already spent twenty-five years thinking I was an orphan. Why not make it official?" Nero rolled his eyes.
"Besides, we don't know how much power these fragments contain," Lady went on. "If we only have enough to restore one of them, I think Dante's the logical choice. He's defeated Vergil more than once, which means has the best chance of helping us kill the Nilepoch when it returns."
"If it returns," Nero pointed out. "We chased it off, but we've lost our bait, and we have no way of knowing when or if it'll put in another appearance. Plus, it's injured, now. All we can hope is that it doesn't go into the city and start attacking more people."
"We'll just have to try to be prepared for any eventuality," Lady sighed. "In any case, we ought to find some way to transport these fragments. I don't think we ought to touch them directly."
Nero automatically reached for his gun at the sound of approaching footsteps, but a second later Nico came tearing into view, radio clutched in her hand. "What the hell," she panted, "is goin' on down here?"
"Nothing much." Nero pushed to his feet. His legs ached, and his arm twinged with the burns the Quicksilver had left. "Kicking demon ass. The usual."
"Looks like you're the ones got your asses kicked," she snapped. "Huge ugly-ass demon thing ran right past the van, scared me half to death. Nobody answered on the radio, so I figured you all for dead."
Nero glanced around for the handset, but the barricade where he'd left it had been destroyed. "Yeah, I think the radio got vaporized, along with most of our cover. Bad news is, the Nilepoch ran off and we can't track it. But the good news is, we survived, and put the hurt on the bastard. Even got some souvenirs."
Nico crept closer, her attention arrested by the glittering shards on the ground. "Ooh, are these from that demon? I bet I can make somethin' really—"
Nero grabbed her hand as she reached for one. "Not this time. These are our one shot at getting Dante and Vergil back to normal. Maybe. If it doesn't kill them first."
Nico jerked her hand back. "Uh, right. How's that gonna work, exactly?"
"That is a really good question," Nero sighed. "For now, we're gonna need that dustpan you keep in the back of the van."
