Weak chapter ahead; you have been warned. I will make it up in the next one. Don't look at me like that; I will! Now please read on!
Date Uploaded: 12 June 2005
Chapter 04: Thou Shalt Not Screweth With My Fandom
Upon once again reaching the main level Alexis caught sight of two running figures. One was Sue00377554, already dashing through the exit. A few paces behind her was a terrified Joshua, white as a sheet and looking ready to blow chunks.
Have to get out… Screw the mission…
"Oh no you don't!" Alexis called out, narrowly managing to grab onto the back of his jacket. She then whipped him around, clutched him by the lapels and shook him hard. "Snap out of it, St. Louis! And stop screaming in my head!"
That seemed to work fairly well. Joshua blinked, focused on her and the telepathic shrieks died out. "Alexis…"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she growled, letting him go.
"Me?" Now that Joshua had regained his senses he grew angry. "You set me up! You didn't mention some creepy-looking figures would be holding a kind of butchering ceremony behind that door!"
"That was the reason you're freaked out?" Alexis said in disbelief. "You're supposed to be an agent; will you compose yourself? Jesus, if a little thing like that gets to you…"
"It wasn't so little," Joshua snapped back. Now he was beginning to go pink as he realized exactly the stupidity of his actions. "I guess the creepiness got to me and I lost a bit of control. Technically I'm still new, remember?"
"That excuse was only valid two chapters ago," Alexis shot back, now hurrying towards the exit. "Come on, you distracted me so much down there that our Sue got away. We're screwed if she meets up with Dante; it'll take a hell of a lot more fixing up to do."
"Right, coming, coming," Joshua grumbled, jogging behind her. He stopped as she shoved him into a darkened area and motioned for him to keep still.
A second later the hesitant figure of a teenaged girl in a blue school uniform appeared. Tachibana Chiaki looked around at the near empty square for a moment before taking the same flight of stairs down, presumably towards the club.
When the coast was clear Alexis poked her head out again. "If I have my timelines correct, Chiaki arriving here would mean Dante has just met up with the main character," she muttered, almost to herself. "That means our demon boy is headed here."
"Despite having no idea what you said, I garner this is all bad so let's get the hell out of here," Joshua said, straightening his coat.
"Most intelligent thing I've heard from you all day," Alexis commented as the two of them hurried out.
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If they had known Sue000377554 herself had gotten lost in the wasteland they probably wouldn't have hurried so much, or been so panicky. Now their half-demon prey (because being a helpless human sucks and being a full demon blows) groaned and peered into the wreckage of a great building that lay in front of her. "Damnit, Dante should be somewhere around here; if that stupid spirit hadn't given me faulty directions I would be with him now!"
She also cursed the woman she had seen in Shibuya. Somehow, the moment the door opened she knew this person was dangerous to her, more so than the Nekomata standing behind her. Surprisingly the woman hadn't struck first, and seemed to be having a conversation with her head once Sue000377554 had hit her. Now she was even more desperate to find Dante. Once he was with her they could get rid of that annoying woman together.
And in the distance she saw it. A flash of red that was quickly made out to be a trench coat. The figure in the distance had white hair that hung over his high collar. Sue000377554 stopped herself short of screaming in delight. Time to put her plan in motion.
Crouching low she made her way for him at top speed. Her strategy for snagging the hottie was basic; attack him as an enemy but somehow make him see that there was more to this outer shell. And then she would slowly reveal her tragic, marvelous past that had gaping holes here and there where canon and logic should have been. But, first thing's first.
With a cry she pounced, hands outstretched, fingernails out like claws. Slowly he turned…
And she stopped dead, forgetting she was in mid-leap and effectively losing her footing. She flailed, still looking into the cheekily grinning face of a Jack Frost.
"Hee-ho," the creature with Dante's hair and clothing said.
"What the…?"
A hand suddenly tapped Sue000377554 on the shoulder. She turned and was the recipient of a closed fist that made violent contact with her nose. "Thou. Shalt. Not. Screweth. With. My. Fandom," Alexis said fiercely, punctuating each word with a shot to the face. Soon her knuckles were smeared black from goth-Sue's excessive makeup.
She would probably have kept going if Dante Frost hadn't grabbed her wrist. "Cool it, Alexis!" Joshua's voice said from behind the grinning mask. "Remember what Erin said about NOT going overboard."
"Oh, right," Alexis said, now gripping the near-unconscious Sue in one hand. Then she caught sight of something and froze. "Shit!" she snatched Joshua's pistol and fired a solitary shot into the Sue's gut, making her evaporate like so many others before her.
"Hey, I thought I was supposed to finish off the Sue!" Joshua complained.
"It was your gun, now stop whining, we've got company!"
"What, where?" Joshua asked, panicked and looking around.
"Dante!"
"What, me?"
"No, the REAL Dante!" Alexis snapped, shoving the pistol back to him. "Now take off that ridiculous top disguise before he sees you! No, no, keep on the one underneath!"
Some twenty meters away the said badass demon slayer disinterestedly poked through rubble with his trademarked gigantic sword. He had a couple of hours to kill before he met that half-demon again at the doors of the Mantra Headquarters and he was bored stiff. Maybe he shouldn't have accepted this gig. Oh well, too late for that now.
A movement caught his eye and he looked up. A few ways off he spotted two figures. 'I could've sworn that other one looked like me…' he thought. Upon closer inspection told him that it was just a Jack Frost and its fiery counterpart, a Pyro Jack. 'This place must be fucking with my head.'
But then it didn't hurt to have a little target practice. Dante lifted his firearm and took aim, but stopped short of squeezing the trigger when the two low-level demons hightailed it out of there, almost as if they had known he was around.
Shrugging, Dante went back to nonchalantly kicking at rubble, wondering where he could get himself some grub in this twisted wasteland.
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