Mere minutes after Dante made his way onto the scene, things at once began to stabilize as well as turn sour against their new and unusual ally. He afforded none of their mistrust with much comment. Only through necessity could he acknowledge any of them as allies himself. With shifty eyes, the Figaro brothers regarded the demon man from a distance.

"Is it really such a good idea to trust that guy?" Sabin asked surreptitiously to his brother. "I mean, that guy did kill the chancellor after all."

"Yes," said Edgar, retuning his drill. "Well, he wasn't the chancellor then. I've been putting two and two together, and it has to be the bites. The chancellor was fine before one of those things tried to make a meal out of him. That's gotta be how it spreads so fast."

"A lot of good that does us now." Usually a bare-knuckled brawler, Sabin left nothing to chance and decided to slip on a set of iron gauntlets for good measure. "What about him, though? What's his story?"

"I hunt these things for a living, Mr. Figaro." Sabin gave a start as Dante spoke without turning to face him. "I know what it is that drives them and, more importantly, how to stop them."

The martial artist rolled his eyes , turning back around to Edgar. "But can we trust him?"

"So long as he doesn't start dancing around and singing "Thriller", I think we'll be okay."

The whole time which Dante spent checking and reloading Ebony and Ivory, Terra was looking the half-demon up and down from a distance. Something about him had begun to stir some very strange feelings in her, bringing life to urges she had never experienced before. Dante noticed her noticing him, though decided not to say anything until she did.

"So," she said, wrapping a lock of her emerald-blond hair around a finger. "Dante, was it? How come we've never seen you around these parts before?"

"It's complicated," he replied, laying Rebellion to one side as he tested the triggers of his pistols. "Sibling rivalry, and all that."

"Oh," she said, smiling coyly. "Well, what are you doing later on tonight?"

Dante looked up at her, keeping his gaze level as she awaited his answer. "It'll be one of two things, I suspect. I'll either be soaking up some rays at Costa del Sol or get turned into zombie fodder in the next hour or so."

She nodded, not entirely sure she had heard tell of any place called Costa del Sol but deciding that it sounded infinitely better than the alternative.

"I'm a halfing too, you know."

"How's that ?"

"I heard Edgar talking about you earlier. He said something about you being a half-demon. Is that true?" Before Dante could respond, Terra continued. "Because I'm a half-esper, you know. Such a small world, isn't it?"

"Minuscule," said Dante, gathering his coat close about him as the groans of the dead became more prolific. "Excuse me . . ."

A dark apprehension passed across the demon man's face as he stared out through the inch-thick holes lining the windows. He saw what no one else could see, that the bleach-white eyes of the fallen seeking entry suddenly assumed a hellish red glow about them. The visage was so foreboding that it made even his demon blood run cold.

"Hell Prides," he though aloud, and others nearby who had been brandishing their implements of destruction with confidence now faltered under the hunter's shellshocked gaze.

Damn it, brother, that's not fair. They're only mortal.

Though Dante could neither see nor hear Vergil, he had a pretty good idea that he was smiling triumphantly right now.

"Let's get ready to rock!"

Celes straightened when she heard that, securing a full chamber into the king's autocrossbow and eager for the opportunity to use it. Terra, Locke, and Setzer, practical weapons being as scarce as they were, had little to work with aside from the ornamental halberds and short blades which lined the walls. When figuring they were half-ready, the group gathered close to one another for comfort - eyes darting from one failing barricade to the next.

"All you have to do is aim for the head," he told them, both his barrels focused on the boarded up windows at corridor's end. "Your weapon will do the rest."

Locke started to speak when the din of chaos reigned in all around them. Spent shells skittered off the treasure hunter's face, one savage volley of firepower after another ripping and cutting away at whatever dead head was unfortunate enough to have its skull pressed in through the wooden planks. But then the creak and roar of a barrier giving way jarred every last nerve that was still alive to feel it. No one appeared ready for the onslaught as they found half of the worm-eaten husks brandishing weapons of their own!

Celes hesitated. "I thought none of those things could use weap--"

"Don't talk!" Dante reminded her. "Just fire! Hey!"

The demon hunter felt a set of nearby hands paw around at his coat, before realizing that it was Locke - seizing the sawed-off shotgun that was strapped to his back.

"Thief!"

Locke warded the demon off with an icy stare. "Don't go there," he warned.

Dante started to protest, then opted to keep scything through the dead with his dual pistols. There was no way for him to wield all three weapons at once anyway, and they would all need every advantage they could get.

Edgar and Sabin ran pell-mell down the hallway to the next window that was ready to give way. Black gore flecked at the king's face as his drill spun to life yet again, boring through the cranium of one frantic zombie after the next. Sabin ducked and dodged away from the scene, finding little in the way of leverage against an army that was suddenly wielding weapons of their own making. As one side of the wooden partition yawned open, the monarch's twin brother made his move at last, crippling and crushing skull after skull with his gauntleted fists.

But the tide soon shifted, with sheer numbers alone enough to swallow them whole. Celes called out to them, trying to distract long enough to squeeze off one well-timed volley of arrows at the restless legion. Scythes and bludgeons started to chip and tear away at the walls of their refuge, but the general tuned it all out. Ten more stiffened and died beneath a hail of crossbow bolts, and she tossed her hair back to one side with a self-satisfied flare.

Dante meanwhile cartwheeled in his place as one of the Hell Prides swung to behead the half demon from behind. He landed and screeched with exhilaration, Rebellion spearing down out of nowhere and skewering the wraith through the top of its head. Using his own momentum, Dante followed through with flinging the twice-dead projectile north and halting the enemy for several precious seconds - enough for Edgar and Sabin to find some routine for the carnage against them.

Two shots exploded through empty space, flinging Locke backwards from the recoil as the faces of several ex-Imperials vanished in a cloud of brain and bone fragments. He grinned, already enjoying his new toy as he took aim yet again. The weapon gave a useless clicking sound between his hands.

"Locke!" Dante called out, pantomiming with his sword. The treasure hunter mimicked the gesture, ejecting the spent shells from out of the shotgun's chamber. "And load! Yeah!"

"Don't look now," Celes uttered to Terra as a sinewy form in glittering white materialized from out of the rotting masses. "But here comes the bride!"

A passive observer up until now, Terra grit her teeth and shoved the Magitek Knight to one side. Forsaking style for substance, she at last rid herself of a jeweled pike in favor of one of the slain corpse's scimitars. Hurling the weapon end over end, it found home with a dull thud. When next anyone looked, the headless body kept its footing for a split second before vanishing beneath the tide from whence it came.

"And there 'goes' the bride," said Celes offhandedly. "Nicely done. I never thought you had it--"

"Look out!"

Celes yelped as a gangrenous blond zombie snuck up behind her, ripping a wide, gory chunk out of her neck. The sound, so achingly familiar to the treasure hunter's ears, had him running to her side in no time. The gambler, having been disposed with keeping the south wing guarded up until that point, leaped to her aid first. A single, razor-edged playing card slipped down from his sleeve, making the gambler grin before embedding the projectile into the creature's forehead.

"Cel!" Locke cried, scooping her whimpering form up into his arms. "Cel, speak to me!"

The gambler's own resolve withered as he came to recognize the clothing on the shade he had just lain waste. Tears strayed along the corners of his eyes. It couldn't have been.

"Daryl?"

Celes turned over in Locke's arms, coughing and spasming as she felt the whole right side of her body go numb. "Locke . . ."

"I'm here." he assured her. "And I won't let you go again, I promise."

"You . . . have to," she rasped, her life blood blanketing them both. "I'm going to become one of them, aren't I?"

"No Cel. Don't . . . just keep fighting the good fight."

No wonder Daryl was looking for a piece of her. He thought he recognized that shade of lipstick.

Terra straightened, picking up the discarded crossbow where it fell. Dante was paying little attention to the emotion of the moment. Almost nothing existed for him now except pistols which kept getting hotter and a sword which kept getting heavier. Slowly but carefully, the esper girl brought the weapon up and trained it upon the dying woman's head. Locke gave a start.

"What are you doing?"

The weapon gave a tremble between her tiny hands, but she held it firm. "You know what I'm doing."

"Terra, don't. She saved your life . . ."

Dante's arms windmilled, slashing apart and two-timing yet another swarm of undead adversaries. The bodies were beginning to mount.

"A little help here!" he roared, though no one appeared to hear him.

"She's not one of them!"

"But she will be."

Setzer gingerly laid the corpse of his best friend to one side, standing to face the esper woman himself. "Terra," he whispered, as softly as he could manage, "Put the crossbow down, okay? We don't need this right now."

"Fuckin' A!" Dante cried out in the background with several blades hanging out of his chest. "I'm getting pureed over here!"

"She's going to die!" Terra wailed. "And then she's going to come back like all the others! We've seen it happen, Edgar's seen it happen!"

"How do you know the same thing will happen to her?" Locke barked back at her. "How do you know that all those magical infusions didn't give her a natural resistance to this bug? Terra, put the bow down."

Edgar let his drill drop uselessly to the floor, much to Dante's chagrin! "Terra, she's still our friend until that happens. We have to give her a chance!"

"Locke . . ." Her head rolled over in his lap, nuzzling weakly into his tunic. "Are you there?"

Terra's hands began to falter, her tears falling unchecked. "I'm only trying to protect you . . . the same way you protected me."

Locke blinked, dumbfounded.

"I'm sorry."

His face started to soften. "Maybe I'm not the one you should be apologizing to."

The esper girl bit her lip. "Celes . . ."

The final barricade gave way at last, and the ever familiar hands of the already dead reached out and took in handfuls of her clothes and hair - not about to let her get away a second time. Locke's face contorted in horror as the others jumped in to retrieve her. Terra stretched out in an attempt to knock the hands away but there was simply too many of them. Sabin and Setzer snatched up her bare legs, heaving in desperately.

"Terra!"

"No! NO!"

As one, the dead came down in a hail upon her, ripping apart both cape and smock, their cold, patchwork limbs clawing and disappearing into her abdomen.

"TER-RA!"

Terra shrieked and then fell silent, her eyes and head lolling heedlessly as fists came away clutching handful after handful of her intestines.

Edgar screeched. "No–!"

Heads shook in repulsed disbelief as the sounds of organs unweaving and cartilage breaking filled all of their world with pink and red. Locke staggered back, still with Celes in her arms as what remained of Terra was ripped and gnawed into oblivion.

The king backpedaled as the very foundation of his castle seemed to give way beneath a sea of undeath. Dante, by this time, was brought down to a shaking, quivering mass of muscle, resisting almost drunkenly against the bodies which covered and chewed at his appendages from head to toe. Almost indistinguishable beneath their assault, the leather-clad demon could do little other than give a weak wave of his long sword as the ghouls delighted in their grim feast.

"They don't pay me enough for this shit," he uttered, finally collapsing beneath the weight of the dead.

Fighting at close quarters made things no more easier for either Sabin or Setzer, who were at the outermost limit of the fray before having to watch their friend get disemboweled. From Edgar's vantage point near the stairwell, he could have only assumed that the gambler and Blitz Master were either eaten alive or suffocated beneath the sheer mass of bodies. Only when the ruler of Figaro made out the scaly green faces of undead pugs did he decide without thinking. He couldn't let the same thing happen to the others.

He wouldn't let it happen.

"Just go," Edgar told them, pushing them up the well. "Take this key. It leads to the north wing of the castle. It's no bomb shelter, but seal it up and you might have a chance."

"Yeah, but . . ." Locke hoisted Celes aloft, eyeing his long-time friend with both respect and guilt. Were any words left unsaid between them? "But what about . . ."

"I'm staying." He pulled the final surprise from out his duffle - his patented chain saw. "I'll hold them back for as long as I can. You two make a go of it."

"But--"

"Go!" Edgar virtually shoved them both up into the landing, slapping on his safety mask in the process. "Things are about to get ugly around here."

Locke shook his head, disappearing with his beloved in tow. Only when he was sure they were out of sight did the monarch's dreaded weapon come to life with a savage tug on its rip cord. With both heart and home suffusing his thoughts, Edgar went on the warpath - one last time.