Disclaimer: DMC and its characters aren't mine, but Alastor's a**hole personality is.
Dark Side Luke: I have several reasons for not novelizing the entire game, too many to mention here. But two of the major reasons are these: 1) My original plan was to write chapters 1-9 and stop. 2) DMC is largely repetitive (fight, explore, fight, explore, find an item, talk to someone, fight, etc.) Because of this, more depth would have to be added by me, and I haven't made plans in advance for that. Trying now would take months at best, kill my urge to write at worst, since I'm too absorbed with ideas for this fic, and any future fics.
Jamal: Glad that you like my "outtakes"! But don't expect my original fantasy to be posted in the near future. I am way WAY behind schedule with that one.
Long, long minutes slipped by unnoticed.
Alastor could have been declared a monument of all that was wrong with the world right then and there, and the spirit wouldn't have noticed. The devil arms stood dumbfounded were it protruded from a crumbling bulwark, completely, and utterly speechless.
Below, and no more than scant inches away, yawned a two thousand-foot fall into the choppy sea. In the opposite direction, peeking over a destroyed section of the battlement, teased safer ground in the form of a courtyard of sorts.
Alastor dully looked about, hardly seeing the patches of crab grass that sprouted between weathered tiles, or even the ancient decorative piece that dominated the yard...or had it been a garden? Alastor gazed with a numb sense of detachment at the sheer drop, again. The thought that only air separated it from a briny fate made it suddenly and decidedly nauseous, or as close as a sword could feel ill.
The battlement also served as a walkway that skirted around the courtyard - boxing it - but eventually guiding a walker above a particular terrace. One of the doors leading onto the terrace bore a splintered hole...Alastor's impromptu exit.
Forgotten.
Third-person visions of itself began flitting unconsciously before its mind's eye, like slides in a projector. Alastor saw itself become a forlorn artifact in a human museum, left with the dust of ages. In another vision, it lay beneath the sediment of the ocean, its natural tomb. Yet another scenario played out with it witnessing the end of the world, stoically enduring the fire and ice of a planet's death throes. Human cities would crumble, species would die out, all life would cease to be, but Alastor would linger.
Nothing but a desolate existence, forever alone, with not a single mind to think back, and say, "Ah yes, Alastor, the devil that lived a rewarding life, then fought many a glorious battles as an instrument of destruction and death."
Outside the devil spirit's inner wanderings, the sky was orange tinged with gold in the west, as the dusky hues of the dark side of the world encroached the horizon to the east. There was a healthy, young breeze, whispering urgently along the cloth of banners from a long ago era. Alastor returned to its senses so suddenly it would've suffered whiplash if it had had a neck. The fear of the future unknown abruptly turned black.
Then, there was anger.
Cast aside like so much -
- How could this have happened!?
Centuries in the Underworld, and not a single suitable master to call worthy. And now, half the time spent on the surface - a wretched experience in itself - with nothing to show for it but simmering resentment, and the knowledge it had likely squandered the best pairing humanity had had to offer.
No master was permanent, in the end, but never had the inconceivable crossed Alastor's mind that it might one day be discarded. Sword Alastor had always, always been handed down, bought or sold, won or lost, stolen, buried, then found. Any spawn with a fraction of intelligence could easily discern the power it had to offer.
A dragonish growl boiled like a thunderhead inside the living blade, a reverberating sound that sent visible shivers up and down its metal length. The air around it became thick, charged, reeking of ozone. Electricity crackled, lines of it searing the air, biting it. A behemoth snarl drove spidery fractures into the blocks securing the sword, inching it a little closer to the abyss.
Alastor didn't care at this point. Let it wallow in the inevitable, it just did...not...care. When the integrity of its perch was truly compromised, and gravity took hold, Alastor bellowed a single curse, as damning as it was defiant.
"MON-GREL!"
"WHAT!?"
"DAMN Y-...wha-!? Huh?"
A gloved hand firmly grasped the dragon hilt before its inching slide became a headlong plunge. Metal scraped free from loose stonework, and now it was Dante's turn to spit curses. He was vainly shaking the phantom ringing from his head caused by Alastor's earnest shout.
"Thank you, I've always wanted an excuse to hook you up to my toaster."
Alastor was too astonished to absorb the threat's implications. "You live...?"
Dante drove the devil arms into the ground at his feet, and stood back with a frosty look. "Yeah, I live. Surprised? Well, don't be. Being afraid is more up your alley. And just so we're clear: Any excuses, begging, weeping, threats, and/or curses will be summarily laughed at, shot down, then forgotten as I pitch you into the cold, uncaring ocean. Any questions?"
Again, Alastor failed to react accordingly. "How did you survive? It makes no sense? A-and you returned to reclaim me...?"
A two-second pause.
Dante folded his arms, unsure how to respond to that. He felt the heat of his anger fizzle out, and was almost sad to feel it go. He had been raring to go and make his thrice-be-damned partner pay for what it had tried to pull. The hunter found himself shaking his head as he began to pace.
Sure, he had cheated death countless times before, but with each instant, it had come no closer than he had allowed it to. What happened with the Guiding Light...it shouldn't have happened. It was because he relied on another. For reasons of his own, the hunter had sworn never to do that.
Dante gave Alastor a weighty side-glare, then realized: What's the point? If anyone was going to change, it would be him, and not some spook set in its ways. Stopping in his tracks, Dante pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, eyes closed, and willed any-and-all bitter emotion away. It took more than one try.
The alchemist sun had turned the ocean into molten gold, as distant, rippling waves glittering platinum diamonds of light. The wind was lukewarm with the nearness of the day's end, and tugged like an eager child at the half-devil's sodden clothes. The crash of the sea against unseen rocks was so faint, it seemed to rise from his own imagination, rather than thousands of feet below him. Dante slowly opened his eyes, and let his arms drop limply to his sides.
"You know what? I'm bushed, and not in the mood to play twenty accusations. So be a good backrest, and shut up."
He promptly sat against Alastor's flat, and let tense muscles unwind for the first time since arriving on Mallet Island. His energy reserves were on the wear, what with having a sword rammed through his chest, enduring various life or death struggles - most of them a snap, but opposition had been numerous as well as frequent - and, oh, the part with his soul almost being ripped from him had been particularly draining.
And the magical experience wasn't over yet , kiddies.
Somewhere, the Gates of Hell beckoned a swift, solid kick-and-closure. Phantom seemed determined on another thorough butt-whooping, and the mysterious devil knight....bastard had to be alive. Trish was as elusive as ever, but that was alright. She was a devil, she had to be strong if she had gone rogue against the Underworld.
And she walloped you good back at HQ cause your mind was in the gutter, Dante silently admonished himself. 'Sides, trusting her fully is not what you want to do just yet. That girl...she's on a mission of her own.
Alastor's intruding hiss derailed Dante's train of thought. "You...weren't lying were you? Sparda truly is your sire."
"Don't you listen?" the hunter groused. "I told you that soon after we met. And as I recall, I also told you to keep quiet not two seconds ago. God, deaf and a short attention span...?"
"You should be dead," Alastor responded sharply, stubborn with denial. "You practically had one foot in the grave, but here you are, impossibly alive. You should be a body drained of life, your soul destroyed. "
"Sorry to disappoint."
"Idiot! You make it sound so easy. Even while it was in your possession, you obviously couldn't sense the potent dweomer on the key, but I did. Most of my kind would've surrendered, but you..."
The lightning spirit sounded frazzled. Dante thought it was making a big deal out of nothing.
Hands down, the experience was far worse than getting run through. But so what? Given his exceptional parentage, he had come to expect miraculous recoveries whenever work proved more challenging than it had first appeared.
"....Do really think surviving a sword through the heart is an accomplishment?" Alastor ranted on. "Fool mongrel! It's as a pinprick to spawn of the higher echelon. Sparda was the same...yet different. He defied the natural order, boggled minds with charisma and calculated shows of power alone...walked away unscathed for ages, despite his conduct."
His interest piqued, Dante sat a little straighter. "You act as if you knew him," he said quietly.
The hunter didn't want to imply much, but he knew precious little of his father's personal history, and he found it difficult to swallow back a number of questions. Questions that Alastor might answer, and warp.
"I...never met him." Alastor was solemn with truth. "But I saw him once, and that was enough."
Dante found himself smiling at that.
Way to go, dad, he thought.
He leaned back, the glow of affection alighting in his often steely eyes. Now their blue color was softened, the icy chips melted slightly with thoughts of his honorable sire, then his departed family. Evil had struck them down, but Dante saved those images of tragedy for a battle when he might need them. Right now, pleasant reverie was more important.
It was a rare moment of peace.
Ah, but there were chores to be done later. He'd have to drudge up the shotgun - he remembered losing it. Alastor was full to bursting with wonderment at his survival, and it didn't take much to sense the spirit's curiosity. Frankly, Dante wasn't sure how it happened, either.
How amazed he had been when the Light hadn't punctured into the bronze motif, but melted into it, instead. As unexpected as that had been, the key vanished just as suddenly in a snapshot flash of light. Left with an empty fist, the knowledge that death had been way too narrowly avoided had come charging down the halls of his mind soon after.
A sense of animation, of feeling - of life - instantly poured back into him, then. He had watched in a semi-giddy high as the emblem and its plaque rose up to reveal the hidden door that had been there all along. The next leg of the hunt lay beyond...
But until then, some time to recoup, and woe to any spawn that disturbed him.
Chasm: Good news, I'm motivated to write more! I already have a mission in mind, too. Thank you, reviewers! Couldn't have done it without you!