Disclaimer: Joss, WB, UPN, et al. own Buffy. May they keep her post Season 7. Devil May Cry and DMC2 are owned by Capcom. I own neither of these things.

Title: Elysium

Author: Paradigm Shifter

Feedback: You have to ask? Of course! Please?

Crossover: Devil May Cry

Rating: R. Something different, I feel?

Continuity: Better the Devil You Know. If you haven't read that, do so, or this will make no sense whatsoever.

Notes: OK… Unlimited SaGa is bloody hard work. Fun, but hard. And Shadow Hearts… lets not even go there. It's a Gothic Final Fantasy. Set in 1913.

Album Recommendation: "Lindy's Party" by the Bolshoi. An old UK band. Listen, and think 'what the…?' £6.

*

"Who am I?" The words echoed in the darkness, bouncing off unseen walls to be mirrored back at the four speakers.

"Who are you?" Xander asked the second.

"Who are you?" the second Xander asked in return.

"I am Xander."

The other three smiled. "So are we."

*

Angelo stepped into Xepto's realm.

"What do you want?" Xepto snarled at the Knight of Mundus. She was in no mood to deal with lackeys of the Dark Lord.

"I come to ask a truce. My brother has shown me…" Angelo paused in thought, "the error of my ways. I wish to correct what I have done."

"Why come to me?" Xepto asked out of interest.

"Because you betrayed, and yet were not cast down. How?"

Xepto smiled, and lacking a nose, it was a discomforting sight. "I have my ways."

Angelo spoke simply. "I know what Mundus is doing to your son. I wish to stop it. I will need help, and secrecy."

"How will you help?" Xepto asked, "you will but make it worse."

"I can get him out. If he survives what Mundus has trapped him in, he will emerge more powerful than ever, but fatally flawed: who gets to him first will mould his mind for the rest of his life."

Xepto leaned forward. She had no power over what Mundus was doing to Alexander. She did not even know what was happening. "What is Mundus doing?"

Angelo seemed pained for a minute. "He has trapped him in his own mind. Obviously, despite his power, he has not fully come to terms with what he is. Until he does, he will remain trapped, forever sealed off from his body. It is something we cannot help him with, but while he is as such, detached from his corporeal form, we have an advantage:"

"And that would be?"

"We can move him."

"Move him? Where? Certainly, nowhere in Hell is safe."

"We must return him to Dante."

"Dante!" Xepto spat. "That emotionless reject? Why should we expect him to help?"

"Xander is his partner. And he is far from emotionless. His partner has saved him numerous times, they have a bond… but as Xander comes into his power… Dante gets… darker."

"Darker?"

"Yes…" Angelo said, "Darker. It is strange, but it as if with his partners form, comes some form of contamination. Dante is becoming that which he fights against."

"Stare into the Abyss…"

"And the Abyss stares back into you. I understand that. But it is different. Dante had fought for so long… why is it only beginning to affect him now?"

The two Devil Knights looked at one another across the distance of Xepto's realm. Eyes, hidden within their helms, nevertheless met. Silence gathered, until one spoke.

"Much rests on this."

The other nodded. "I know."

*

Giles needed to talk to Dawn in private. Telling Buffy of Dawn's little adventure in the basement would not make for good family interactions. She had stumbled out an hour ago, and was far from coherent for that time.

Giles also realised that forcing information out of her would not work, and make her resent the group more than she already appeared to. This could be said: her crush on Xander had not lessened, and indeed appeared to be getting stronger. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? "Dawn… what were you doing in the basement?"

Dawn looked nervous all of a sudden. "What? Basement? What basement?"

"Did you go looking at those guns?" Giles was not stupid. He could usually determine what was going on, even if it was American teens that were those doing what he was trying to figure out.

Dawn sighed. "I guess, while you'll chew me out, it'll hurt less than one from Buffy. Yeah. I looked at those guns. Something weird happened."

"Something weird?" If those guns were dangerous… obviously more than a gun usually is, at least, they had to go, whether they were Xander's, Dante's or whoever's.

"Yeah. They… talked to me." Dawn sounded confused about it. "In my head."

"That is most strange. You mean, like a sort of telepathy?"

Dawn nodded, almost to herself, lost in the memory again. "Yeah."

"What did they say?"

Dawn shrugged. "Not much. I touched one, the bluish one. I made some comment about names… 'Guns this impressive should have names', that's it… and they… talked to me. Said that they did."

"Did what?"

Dawn looked at Giles, a strange look on her face. "Have names, Giles."

"Oh." Giles frowned. "When Buffy picked… tried to pick up, those weapons, they reacted most violently. How were you able to touch them?"

Dawn shrugged. "I don't know. You're the occult master."

Giles rolled his eyes, but was secretly quite flattered by the complement.

Dawn continued, her voice taking an almost haunted tone. "Then they wanted Xander. Asked for 'Master'. Then they screamed. It was… disconcerting. It hurt. But… not my ears. This was… alien." She looked up, and Giles saw in her eyes that she was terrified by something she didn't understand. "They were something more than, than… anything. I've ever felt…" Dawn hiccupped a laugh. "I'm being crazy."

Giles looked at the distraught teen. "No." he said, "no. I don't think you are. But we need Xander or Dante here to explain exactly what's going on." He sighed. "Until then, Dawn, I don't want you coming here any more. Proximity to those might be affecting you."

Dawn nodded silently. She stood up. "OK. I'm gonna go home then. Think of something to tell Buffy why I'm not gonna be here for a while…"

"Be safe, Dawn. Those weapons were not meant for people to wield. I know that much. Not even Slayers."

Dawn nodded again.

*

Dante smiled at the bound and angry Ethan. "Y'know, I've found a new trick I want to try out. It's called, 'heads I win, tails you loose'. You want to know how to play?"

Ethan growled at him.

"No? Oh, too bad. You would have loved it, too. I know you would. Come on, say you will! Be a devil! Oh, I forgot, I am, you're not. Buy a hare."

Ethan hung against his bonds. "What they hell do you want now, Dante?"

Dante paused; his joking, crazy act vanished, and in its place stood a man who had taken his rage a step too far. "I want to give you… a gift. Yes. I'm going to wrap you up for your killer. Frozen in a moment. Trapped within time." His joking side forced it's way out again. "You'll love it."

Five candles burst into flame with one gesture, and Dante smiled from outside of the area enclosed by them.

Ethan shook half in fear, half from fatigue and exposure to the elements as Dante smirked at him. In Dante's hand was a coin.

"Tell me, Ethan. Head? Or tails?" Dante's leering grin filled Ethan's whole world.

Shaking off his terror, Ethan managed to croak a reply. "Heads."

Dante flicked the coin and both watched in fascination as it spun lazily through the air, loosing momentum before falling back to Dante's outstretched hand. He examined the coin, and Ethan strained forward against his shackles to see what side it had landed on.

Dante smiled like a snake. "Congratulations, Ethan."

Ebony was out and pointed at Ethan's head before he could even blink. Ethan swallowed, and spoke. "What was it?"

"It was you're lucky day, Ethan. Heads."

Dante fired four times, the gun barking as the enchanted bullets sped their way to their target.

Ethan flinched at each report, and fell to the floor as Dante holstered his weapon.

Dante turned away, and stalked off. Five words floated back to the slowly breathing Ethan. "Get out of my sight."

Ethan, terrified, slowly got to his feet. He rubbed his wrists where the manacles had cut into the flesh, and looked suspiciously after the retreating form of the half-Devil.

"My lucky day?" Ethan took off in the opposite direction to Dante. "He shot the damned shackles off."

*

As Ethan stole an old motorboat to get away from the island Dante had taken him too, Dante watched, and smiled evilly after the form of the Chaos mage.

"There was no point in killing you, was there? After all, Angelo gets you so much better than I could…"

*

Xander looked at the other three. Where is the Devil?"

The others nodded. "He's here."

"Where?"

They seemed amused. "Everywhere."

All the Xander's suddenly shifted, and in their places stood Xander's Devil form. The Devils leered down at him, until all of a sudden; he was of equal height.

"That's good." Xander said, and heard it echoed among his other aspects.

Suddenly, they were all human again:

Xander, as a boy; nervous energy and jokes all wrapped up in the same package, hiding his real feelings within his shell.

Xander, as a man; matured, prepared, knowledgeable, but still critically dependent on what others thought of him.

Xander, as he was that Halloween; a cold, calculating killer, fully armed and aware, ready to do whatever it took to win. And win, he would.

Xander, as he had been during the hours of his possession; the Alpha, the leader of the pack. The animal with lightning reflexes and the sheer ferocity to back them up.

As Xander watched, four scenes played out behind them, and he knew that it was the future, if that aspect gained full control. All ended in pain. The boy died in a vampire attack. The man, in an accident at work. The soldier, in a war that had never been acknowledged: the one against the darkness. The Hyena, cut down like an animal for daring to be 'different'.

As the Devil forms took control again, the futures shifted once more. All showed the same scene, in excruciating Technicolor. A life spent, exhausted on the fight against the darkness, the thing that spawned the Devil, the Devil fought. Dante and Trish at his sides, saving, directing, then disappearing into the background until the next time they were needed.

Xander watched, awestruck, as he saw the future unfold.

*

Mundus smiled. This was going better than he could have hoped. Now… all he needed was some time.

No matter. In Hell, there was plenty of that.

*

Xander jumped as a silken voice spoke to him.

"It's painful to watch, isn't it?"

Xander shrugged. "I guess. It could be worse."

Body took form from the voice. A long, flowing diaphanous gown, barely concealing the body underneath, and long hair that floated about as if in a wind.

She spoke again. "It doesn't have to be that way."

The two stood in darkness, the other aspects of Xander having disappeared to give him time.

Silence can be the most deafening sound in the world.

Finally, Xander spoke. "How can it be, then? All the other routes lead to death."

The woman shook her head. "Not all. There is one more."

Xander turned and looked at her. "Show me, then."

A smile, and a nod. "Very well."

Darkness swallowed them, not for the first time.

*