Mission 02: Three Of A Kind
"Hey kid," said the voice. "Kid! Speak to me."
"Mmm," Nero grumbled as he came to. He saw two people, a woman and a man. The woman was beautiful, a well-toned blonde with an outfit to end all clothing, and beside her was a man in red, almost identical to his father in every conceivable way, save for his preference in color. He awoke softly and slowly rose as the man in red poured a drink down his throat. He sat up on a leather couch and coughed, observing his surroundings as a burnt out wreck of an office.
"Where am I?"
"You're in the remains of my shop," the man quipped.
The boy croaked, and his head pounded in response.
"Alright, take it easy, kid," his elder assured, gently pushing him back to lie flat. "Big Red's got ya. What's your name?"
The boy stayed silent.
"Hello?" the man asked, sarcastic. "Earth to kid, what's your name?"
"I'm . . ." Nero hesitated. "I'm Nero."
"Nero." Dante considered the name and shrugged. "Not a bad name. Would ya mind explainin' where exactly you came from, Nero?"
"I . . ." the boy seemed to be at a loss for words. "I'm not sure. One minute I was with my mom and dad, the next—"
"—you just crashed through here and made a mess o' my shop seein' stars. You don't know how and you don't know why. That about right?"
"Y-Yeah," the boy replied. "Sorry. That's all I know."
"Eh, don't sweat it, he isn't too mad," the woman said.
He got a feeling from her that was good. Positivity and electric charge.
"I'm Trish," she told him. "This old fella here is Dante."
"Dante . . ." the boy repeated.
He sat up, and Dante helped him. "Nice and easy."
"Thank you, Dante."
"Pleasure to meet you, I guess," the man chuckled, and he ruffled the kid's hair. Just like father. "You did a real number on my place. Fixing that won't be cheap."
"Oy, give the kid a break hotshot!" Trish joked with a smack of his brazen head. "Looks like he's got enough going on as it is."
"Hey, bad enough you trashed it already, babe. It's not like it was cheap to fix. You're lucky I make enough money."
"What do you guys do?" the boy asked.
"Kill demons and kick ass." Trish beamed. "If you've got a demon-shaped problem, you call us, got it?"
"Got it," the boy replied, smiling himself.
"You alright now?" he asked the boy. "You back to normal yet?"
"Yeah, I'm feeling better. What did you give me?"
"Ah, it's a little thing I whipped up myself," the man said. "Gives you a boost when you're down n' out. You're gonna be alright, thankfully."
The kid stared at the man in wonder, noting his similar appearance to his own father. But it was such a bizarre turn of events. He couldn't quite comprehend what had happened. Who was the man? Why had the boy found himself there at his house in this odd place? He didn't feel right, although he felt normal. There was something wrong about this world, very wrong, almost as though he was a stranger in a strange land, and the land was rejecting his very presence in as active a manner as possible. The air felt wrong; the light looked different; the floor felt uncannily flat.
Where was he? This was more than a simple different place. This was something else, more extreme.
And that was when he noticed a peculiar feeling in his right arm. He stared down and saw a black-scaled thing, a devil's hand in place of his own, and yet obeying his commands, glowing from within a pallid, faint blue. He flinched and scattered himself into a corner, trying to divest himself of the limb, but it was futile, it was his own arm.
"Aah! Wha—What the hell—What happened to me! What happened to my arm?"
"Kid, calm down," Dante said, approaching slowly. "You sayin' your arm wasn't like that before you came here?"
Huffing and puffing, the boy shook his head up and down. "What's wrong with me?"
"I—" for the first time, Dante wasn't able to answer a question. "I don't know what's it is. Just take a moment to relax. Are you in pain?"
"N-no . . . I don't think so."
"Well, if you're not in pain, I don't think it's necessarily bad. But I can help you. I have books, we'll comb through 'em and figure out what's up, see if there's a way to reverse it, you dig?"
The boy looked worriedly between his arm and the man.
"Kid," the man said, waking him from his indecision. "You good?"
"Yeah—yes. I'm . . . I think I'm okay."
"Dante!" Trish whispered suddenly.
He looked back at her. "What's up?"
"There's a man outside, he—" she abruptly paused. She couldn't finish that sentence.
"He's what?"
"He's you. Or he looks damn just like you."
"What?" Dante replied, bewildered, and he strode towards his front office window.
Sure enough, peeking through the blinds by Trish, he saw a man in red, dressed not all too dissimilarly from himself, his face nearly identical, and yet discernably separate from his own, as through one or two features had become slightly altered or different from his normal face. He was also older, the lines in his face harder, and his hair longer and less well-kept. He had several days' worth of growth on his face, although not yet a true beard. He was walking toward the front doors strangely, leading overtly with his hips and a tired smirk that seemed well-worn and ingenuous.
Dante quickly went to his door and opened it. He stepped outside and caught his near-doppelganger off-guard.
They stared at one another for a moment as they admired one another's differences and the older man took an exaggerated pose, hand to chin, pondering his younger self with a strange over-exuberance.
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm Dante."
"So am I."
"You sure about that?"
"As sure as the day I was born."
"What day was that?"
"March 7th."
"I'm March 9th."
"You were late."
"You were early."
"What'd you do to my shop?"
"Who says it's your shop?"
"My eyes. It's my old building, but the name's different."
"I changed it."
"When?"
"After I came back from Mallet."
"That piddly island? Creepy place. I left mine alone."
"I like the new name better."
"And I'd like to know why you're in my shop. Trish," the older man said, looking at the blonde as she came to stand by Dante. "You realize this isn't me, right?"
"I don't think you've got the right Trish," she said. "What I wanna know is how the hell there are two of you now."
The older man sighed, "Beats me." He turned away and paced to the edge of the steps, admiring the sky. "All I know is one moment I was slaying demons in the Qliphoth, and now, I'm here next to some trippy renamed version of my shop."
"Did—" Dante started. "Did you happen to . . . fall out of the sky at some point?"
"Yeah, why? D'ya see it or somethin'?"
"Lucky guess. Where did you say you were?"
"The Qliphoth."
Both Dante and Trish looked at one another in confusion.
"Guys," the older man said with conviction. "The Qliphoth. My stupid brother's evil fruit-fly tree nonsense. He's been tearing apart the whole world with roots."
"Yeah, I got none o' that," Dante replied. "My brother's dead."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Uh, it makes plenty o' sense, pally. I saw him explode into nothingness."
"My brother lived and split himself in half with Yamato," the older man sighed.
"Huh? So he killed himself?"
"What? No. He stabbed himself with it and split himself into two people, V and Urizen. Do I gotta explain every little thing to you?"
"You aren't talkin' sense," the hunter replied. "Vergil's dead, and Yamato doesn't split people. I don't even know what you're talking about with this 'Klai-foth' thing. It's a tree?"
"Look, it doesn't matter," the older man sighed and ribbed his eyes. And he sighed, "I need to get back to that tree ay-sap, and I came back to my place as a baseline. I need some cold brew and a slice to clear my head. I hope you're both not lame enough to turn me away."
"Suppose I don't like your attitude?" Dante said.
"Suppose I don't feel like being nice?" the older man replied.
"It's impolite to presume," the red hunter growled and stood over his counterpart.
Oddly enough, they weren't the same height. Dante was a cool 6'3 but this other man, he was only 6'0. Their voices didn't even sound similar. Where the one was a tired, mid-range sigh, the other was a lower smooth-baritone that dominated fully. The two similar-but-different men stared at one another for a long while as tension flared.
"Alright, alright, back off," the other Dante sighed. "If you're gonna be that way I'll just go somewhere else."
The hunter's face drooped into confusion.
"Wait, what?"
"What? I'm goin'."
"What—that's it? There's no fight?"
"What did you expect? I ain't got time for this. I'll be on my way. Just hope Nero and the others won't be too worse for wear when I get back to 'em."
"Nero?" Dante spoke loudly, head tilted and eyes widened.
"What?" said the boy from behind him. "Who's there?"
The older man froze in place and turned round to see a small child walk up behind his counterpart. He stared in utter horror as the child revealed himself to be the identical replica of the young man he knew, only far younger. It was bizarre to see him so young, though to tell the truth the man thought of Nero often as being such a young boy at heart. But this was wrong, all wrong. The air itself seemed to be a densely drab weight on his skin, though he didn't feel any slower. The energy that passed through all living things skipped over him, and yet he was alive. Seemed to be he just wasn't made for this world. And seeing that boy there confirmed his worst suspicion.
"What the hell?"
"There—there's two of you," Nero said. "How are there two of you?"
"Welcome to the club," Trish replied.
"What did you get put through a cheese grater? How the hell are you twelve?" the older man hemmed with a sigh.
". . . I . . . I've always been a kid? I don't understand his question," the boy said to Dante.
"I don't really understand the cheese-grater thing either," Dante said with a raised eyebrow.
"Whatever," sighed the older man, and he walked down the steps. "I'm outta this freak show."
And that was when another sight caught them all by surprise. Out on the edge of the car park staggered a hooded man, his body smoking, small, dying fires on his black-red coat. He coughed and sputtered to his knees, crawling onward around the corner towards their shop. Dante darted past the older man and grasped the figure's outstretched hand for aid. The older man looked on indifferently as Trish jogged after the other Dante and Nero stood by in the doorway.
Together, the pair held the man up and carried him with his arms around their shoulders to the doors of Devil Never Cry. Dante put him down on the couch, smoldering coat being the least of his concern, and Trish grasped another vial of green vitality, handing it to her partner, who swiftly treated the mysterious stranger's wounds. He was thin and pale, bruises and cuts on his face, looking to be a former addict of some substance; short black hair shaved in a crude fade haircut that made him look like a prisoner; he looked abused and ill-fed.
The older man snuck by and went to the mini-fridge of his counterpart's side-bar. He found the ingredients for a Strawberry Sunday but felt too lazy to make it, so he grabbed an old crusty slice of pizza welded to the paper plate it sat upon by oil, peeled the cold remains off the slab and chomped away as he observed them treating the broke-down foreigner. His coat had a Union Jack simble stitched onto its left sleeve, and the faded grey cloth had seen better days.
"Well, today's just full of surprises, huh?" Trish said.
"I didn't realize I'd opened a homeless shelter," Dante replied with a grumble. "You alright, guy?"
"Where the fuck am I?" the man slurred.
"Hey, whoa, watch the language," Dante said. "There's a child present."
"Fuck 'em. Where the fuck am I?"
"Oh, please don't make me regret saving you."
"Yeah-yeah-yeah, real appreciative," the man garbled back. He groaned, "Agh, I feel like shit."
"You look it too," Trish replied.
"Thanks."
"You got a name?" Dante asked.
"Dante."
"You gotta be kiddin' me."
"What?"
The older man chuckled aloud behind them and clapped his hands, sighing, "This day just gets better and better, don't it?"
"What's so fuckin' funny, dickhead?"
"We're all Dante, sport! A Dante from every corner of the world, it seems. Good grief."
"The fuck are you on about, prick?"
Dante grumbled. "D'you have any other words in your vocabulary?"
"Fuck you."
"Didn't think so."
"Hey, cut the kid a break," came the sigh. "We all have edgy phases."
"I don't know about you, but I was never like this."
"Me either, but you gotta give him props for the punk-look."
"Alright this is getting weird. I'm out. You white-haired faggots take care."
A slap hit the young man's face and knocked him back to the couch senseless.
"You're in my office. Don't talk that way." Dante said.
The older man pumped his fist and grinned. And both Nero and Trish shared the sentiment. The young man's eyes rolled from the back of his head and he came to, grasping his face with shock as he glared up at his older incarnation. He stood there, towering over him, daring him to move again. And the man most definitely would.
"What the fuck!? You can't just—"
Another smack rocked him against the couch, effortless in its efficacy.
"Actually, I can. And I'll gladly keep doing it if you keep talkin' that way. You sound like a Bullet For My Valentine fan."
The man spit blood and glared, growling, "Bullet For My Valentine rocks!"
A failed punch came, and a roundhouse kick counter across the cheek replied, knocking the man off his feet over the couch and against the wall.
"No," Dante replied. "They don't."
The man crashed into the floor with a hard thud and shook out the damage, his head spinning, dizziness setting in. That was a hard blow.
"That's showin' 'em," the older man smiled. And he strode over to the young man and grasped him by the coat, lifting him off the ground. "So you're us. How come your hair's not white?"
"I dunno. Maybe different genes from my mom," came the slur.
"Mom was a blonde, kiddo."
"Fuck you."
"Nah, don't think I'll take that offer."
And the older man hurled the foul-mouthed hunter out of the hole in the building's western wing. And he was gone with a shout.
He came to stand by his other self. "So how'd that happen? The kid?"
"Yeah," Dante replied. "Came the same way you did. Probably the same way he did, too. Fell outta the sky and crawled home."
"Ah, well, at least that prick's gone."
A heavy boot crushed open Dante's front wood doors, and they swung wide as the black-haired punk stood in the doorway, enraged.
"Or not," the older man sighed.
Dante felt his counterpart push on his shoulder towards the younger man.
"He's all yours."
"Gee, thanks."
"Aaaah!" the black-haired Dante let forth with a stinger and sped forward wildly, unfocused.
His blade never reached flesh. A flaming gauntlet pushed the blade aside and fire-coated fist broke his momentum the other way. The young man went flying, sailing out the doors and bouncing across tar, blade barely held to. He stood, using the weapon as a crutch as his stronger self approached, demonic gauntlets blazing wildly, his body aching from the attacks. The pair glared at one another, hostility well-deserved and white-hot like an iron.
"I officially regret savin' your ungrateful ass."
"Fuck you!"
"Ya said that already, kid."
"Fuck you again!"
"Adding one word doesn't make it different."
"Grah!" The black-haired man charged and struck downward. His elder stepped back, easily evading the blow as he put forward Ebony at his skull and fired. He cocked his head to the side, seizing Dante's trigger wrist. His grip was unexpectedly strong, just as much as the man's used to be; he could remember. This version of himself could've been no older than twenty-five, judging by his face and his poor attitude. The alternate incarnation tugged him and threw some few yards, though he landed with grace flashed blue as he banished Ifrit and drew upon Alastor. In an instant, the blade clashed against the younger version's strange broadsword, and metal on metal crunched out sparks. Blinded briefly, he stepped back as Dante stabbed at him a million miles an hour many strikes from his electric blade and then gored the blade forward with one ultimate plunge.
The black-haired Dante went sailing, rivulets of blood hurtling out and staining the car part as he pounded across cement unkindly.
As soon as slid to his feet, a fiery boot collided overhead with his chest, diving from the sky in demonic menace to his ribcage, breaking his weak defense and rendering him breathless as a collage of thirteen terrible blows hammered his flesh and left him haggard; Dante moving in swift and efficient wrath; pathways of darkness taken to the breaking of will and mind; the evil of Ifrit's powerful flames. Brute force worked well on the young boy, and his body bled as he hit the side of a parked car and left a sizable dent in the metal, and he felt done.
Dante approached him with a ruthless stride, chest first coming at him, and the young man croaked, "Okay! . . . I think I've had enough."
"Good," Dante replied. "Now apologize."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"Christ, you're a fuckin—" the young ceased speaking when a brimming boot crashed down on the side of his leg and made him scream. "Okay-okay-okay! Alright! I—I'm sorry man, alright? I'm fuckin' sorry! I didn't mean to call you guys' names, it just came out, I swear to God it won't happen again; now will ya take your damn foot off me!"
Dante relented, and Dante shrieked with relief, rubbing his leg where pain afflicted him most severely. Blood thankfully restored flow, and the bone pitched itself right quick into shape.
"Can't say I thought I'd go down so quick," Dante said to his younger self.
A sigh came from behind him, "well ya know, sport-o's gotta learn somehow."
Dante turned to his older self and grumbled, "okay, do you have a lung problem or somethin'? Why the hell are you sighing every time you talk?"
His counterpart sighed, "why's the sky blue?"
"Because the sun reflects light on our atmosphere."
"What are you, a bookworm?"
"It pays to be well read," the man replied. "Smarts make a good detective."
"Huh? We're not detectives, friend. We're mercenaries."
"In what world, old man?"
"Mine!" he replied insistently.
"You dicks can't even decide what you are, and you're calling me out for having bad taste?" the young man said from the ground. "Man, you guys are fuckin' lame."
Fire blasted the boy from Dante's metal-cestus hand.
"Be quiet, champ," the detective said.
The mercenary gloated, "the adults are talkin'."
"You be quiet too," Dante said back to him. "Now there's three versions of us all together in one place. Why?"
The mercenary shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? Life's a rollercoaster."
The detective almost scowled and banished his gauntlets. "Do you take anything seriously?"
"What's this pretty face tell ya?"
"Guess not. Look, first the kid, then you, and then him. What brought us all together?"
"I fail to see why that's relevant," the mercenary replied.
"Maybe it's that kid's arm," the younger one said.
They both glanced at him, almost impressed he had a thought that didn't involve profanity.
"Not a bad guess. It does look rather weird. You think whatever did that to him brought you two here as well?"
"Nero? Nah, the devil bringer couldn't do shit like that. Still don't know why or how," the mercenary sighed.
"Maybe it has somethin' to do with why the sky looks so . . ." the detective searched for words to describe it. Since the boy had landed, the sky had opened to a cosmic spectrum of unholy light, an aurora borealis irrespective of geographical possibility, and a touch of evil in its powered wings. There was a bad, bad vibe to the sky. And not one of the three Dantes could understand why or how they'd become saddled together, only that they had been. The detective grimaced. "Bad."
"Eh," the mercenary replied. "I've seen worse pollution."
The detective scoffed, and the deadbeat chuckled.
"Well, whatever the reason, we gotta figure it out."
"Why's that our problem?" the deadbeat replied.
"I'm with the kid. What does the sky have to do with us?"
"Are you guys serious? You both fell outta the sky, to great pain I imagine, and we all bumped into each other. There's no such thing as a coincidence."
"Well, what you do you suggest we do about it then?" the sigh came. "Coincidence or not, it ain't like there's anything anyone of us knows."
"I think the kid's the answer," the detective replied. "You wanna bail, that's fine. But I'm figuring this out. I'd suggest you stick around if you wanna get back to where ya came from."
Good point. Neither of the alternates had considered that. They had thought going their separate ways was an excellent choice, and for how much they all hated each other, it didn't seem like anyone was ready to cry about it. But common sense prevailed, and the mercenary nodded as it came to him: he hadn't seen hide nor tail of the Qliphoth root since he'd gotten here. The sky was rather ominously glowing, as though an invading force had taken residence with tendrils of power across the sky. The deadbeat pondered how he'd gone from his trailer after a late-night threesome to a car park fully clothed and smoldering beneath a bizarre sky. He felt wrong in this realm, as though the frequency of its vibration was simply different from the reality he felt accustomed to, and on that hunch, he made his own distinction that his counterpart, though brutally efficient as he was, spoke entirely correctly. He was a stranger in a strange land, and there wasn't any other way of finding out how he might come home if he left them now.
And the two took him up on that suggestion.
(*.*.*)
Chris Redfield sat at a large desk in a conference room that was an air-conditioned icebox. He hadn't been given a reason to come here, only that it was of great importance. He knew that if the matter was so urgent as to wake him from the dead of his sleep in the early morning hours of his west coast time, that the problem was severe. He sat in the room with fellow anti-bioweapon veterans, their trade a dangerous one, but an occupation that made lifelong friends under the right circumstances.
Chris himself was a hardy man of good intelligence for as much iron as he pumped to maintain the stress of his past endeavors. He ran a tanned hand through his black hair and glared at his reflection in the office's stained glass windows. He was graying at the temples and dark circles undercut those strong eyes on his brutish face. He'd seen a few wars in his time. Fought many a battle. Blue Umbrella's atonement made the strain bearable, he supposed. No coffee for the briefed soldiers. Four in the morning. Nothing face-to-face either. Their superior was scheduling a telecom call through a screen; and still no damn coffee. No snacks, nothing. Only that damn screen of a federal marquee, a dry throat, and burning eyes. The day was getting off to a splendid start.
When the time finally struck, the screen switched and on popped an old man that spoke to them.
"Gentleman, thank you for being here on short notice. As you know, with past outbreaks, we've often relied upon your skills for our operations, but today's briefing brings a broadly 'unique' problem."
"What's the difference?" Chris replied.
"It's not an outbreak, but is a fringe-oriented crisis. Over the shores of the East Coast, a giant, rather mysterious red light has appeared."
"That's it?" Chris said, tired eyebrow raised. "Just a light show."
"Afraid not," the director replied as the monitor's screen shifted to high-resolution captures of the mysterious scarlet flare. It was a massive thing, hovering just over the atlantic see, but imperceptibly both far and near. It seemed out of space, much as the sun would have been, glistening a deep red that painted the horizon a bleak dark orange. Another part of the screen became a video, showcasing what it was exactly the red light was doing.
"While America's top defense organizations would normally handle the anomaly, the light seems to have taken to spitting out odd individuals; individuals who've previously died. They're often unharmed and seem to be friends and relatives, deceased loved ones, and," the director paused, clearing his throat as he continued, "old enemies."
The screen changed again, away from the red lights and to a grainy photo of an unmistakable face. Someone Chris knew very well. His pale face shone a trademark smirk, dark glasses hiding glistering red eyes, and blonde hair slicked back over top of his skull; Albert Wesker. Even his dark clothes were the same as they had been on that fateful mission to Africa. That damned bastard had returned to this world somehow, restored to life as though he'd never died that day.
Chris leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. "Oh god. Why is he still alive? I blew him up inside a fucking volcano."
"That's why we've called you and your squad in. You know this threat, you're considered . . . uniquely capable. As part of a broader investigative effort, you will lead a task force starting immediately discern the nature of the anomaly and contain its affect. Find Albert Wesker and neutralize him A.S.A.P. We can't afford more outbreaks on his account. You men are valuable assets to the United States and we value your contributions."
"Yes, sir," the group resolutely said, although mired by lack of sleep and caffeine.
"You're damn right we'll take this op. I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch once and for all."
To Be Continued