Notes: pray for me because I should be writing my term paper but I can't get this story out of my head.
Also: did you know that 10 out of 10 writers smile whenever you leave a review? (okay, maybe it doesn't happen if the review says they suck)
Chapter 6
Dante almost choked up as the wall closed behind him, that place managed to smell even worse than the qliphoth and the underworld combined. All lesser demons smelled of rot, multiply that by the number of creatures needed to make even just one floor of the fake Temen-ni-gru, and there was the reason behind the foul smell.
"I don't remember father smelling this bad." He coughed a few times until he finally managed to get at least a little used to it.
He was a little behind Vergil but wasn't too worried about it, the half demon could pick up his pace in no time. On the outside, the place looked exactly like the tower where he had faced his twin 22 years ago, although on the inside… not so much. The ground floor was just a big, empty room with three sets of stairs on the far end. He assumed each of them would lead to a different room.
The legendary devil hunter figured his brother would have chosen the left one, so he would take a different path and choose the set of stairs to the right.
As soon as he reached the first floor, some of the demons slowly detached from the wall and floor, charging at him. Dante punched the first one and stepped hard on his head as he summoned his sword with a grin on his face.
"Let's rock!"
He made a circular motion with his right arm, slashing all the demons that surrounded him. One of them fell on its head and he thrust his sword on it, ripping it in half. A diagonal slash hit another creature, a vertical one another, and he finished a third one with various thrusts.
Once most of the demons were dealt with and only one was last standing, the devil hunter grabbed Ebony and shot on its head. It dropped to the floor with a loud thump and he put his gun back. Satisfied enough, he grinned as he continued his way up.
Meanwhile, Phoebe and Nero were finally inside the tower, but the powerful smell of then place really affected her. One of her palms supported her weight against the wall as she used the other hand to hold her copper hair as she vomited every little thing she had in her stomach.
"See? This is what it feels like when you teleport us around." The boy snapped, unaware of the reason why the sorceress had such a bad reaction.
It was the same foul smell from the place they had found Billy's corpse. Or at least the scattered pieces of meat that once had been him. Phoebe leaned her forehead against the back of her hand as a single tear ran down her cheek.
"I can't do this…" She muttered.
"What?"
"This! This is too much for me right now!"
Nero realized what was going on and placed a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "You can do this. If you back out now, you'll be back to being locked in your apartment afraid of everything."
The redhead took a deep breath and wiped that stubborn tear with the back of her hand. She slowly nodded in agreement.
"You're right."
"Do you want me to go get Dante for you?" He watched as she raised an eyebrow.
"Why? Because I'm a woman so I need a man to help me?" She was deflecting, however, the boy didn't know her well enough to realize that.
"I don't mean that!"
"I'm messing with you. Go, someone needs to keep an eye on the super twins when they get up there."
Nero nodded and left, walking towards the stairs in the middle. She took a few more deep breaths before teleporting herself to keep an eye on Vergil.
Although the tower had three sets of stairs that led to different parts of each floor, every room looked the same. Perhaps it was just a way of keeping the three of them separated. They were all empty until demons started crawling out of the ground and walls to face each one of the descendants of Sparda.
Nero grabbed the Red Queen and charged, using the blasts from the Gerbera devil breaker to move around the room. He swung his sword in a way to throw one of the creatures in the air and defeated it with an aerial combo. He smashed the ground with his sword and tore another one in half.
They went on for about half an hour like that, another floor, another room with more lesser demons in it. Until Vergil saw a familiar face once he reached the eighth floor, or even better, a familiar horse-face. Geryon stood in front of him, black fur and a mane made of blue fire. The twin curiously stared at it.
"Interesting…"
Sparda's memories of Temen-ni-gru were so strong that some memory fragments were taking the form of the demons that resided in it and were slain by Dante more than twenty years ago.
He removed Yamato from its sheath and slashed the air in front of him multiple times. As soon as he sheathed the katana again, the demonic horse fell to the ground as it couldn't survive not even one Judgement Cut. Were the memory fragments just extremely weaker versions compared to the original ones, or did he get stronger than he thought since his teenage years? Maybe both.
Vergil walked past the disappearing corpse as he stared to the right side of the room, never releasing the hilt of his sword.
"How long do you intend to keep watching from the shadows?"
Phoebe's heart skipped a beat when he finally decided to let her know he had noticed her presence since the beginning. Of course the older brother could feel the little demonic energy she had, she should've thought of that. How stupid. She removed the camouflage spell and stared back at him with the best poker face she had.
"I'm a big fan of reality shows… I just got carried away."
"My quarrel isn't with you." He recognized her from the previous day. She teleported, standing right in front of him.
"You have a quarrel with Dante, you have a quarrel with me." Her green irises gleamed like there was a green flame dancing behind them.
She knew pretty well how dangerous the half demon in front of her was, but her anger was bringing up the worst in her. Depending on his answer, the sorceress could lose all control right there and get herself killed by attacking him. Thankfully, Vergil just scoffed and walked past her.
"You're not even a threat."
"Physically? No. Psychologically? It would be pretty easy to break your already fucked up mind."
Phoebe teleported away before he could unsheathe the Yamato once again.
"Annoying witch." He hissed.
She went to Dante's location, who wasn't too far behind from his twin, he had just reached the eighth floor on his side and was fighting another group of demons. He acknowledged her presence when she placed her hand behind one of the creatures head and used her telekinesis to smash it on the floor over and over again in blind rage.
"Hey, slow down, you're gonna make a hole through the floor!"
"I'm mad because Vergil figured me out!" The sorceress threw another one against the wall, and Dante kept slashing and shooting at the demons.
"I thought you said…"
"I know what I said! I slipped!" She continuously kicked the head of one of the creatures. "He went all 'my quarrel isn't with you'." The half demon burst out in laughter as she imitated his twin with a high-pitched tone. "But mine is, you fucking. Little. Shit." The redhead was timing each kick with her words by the time she felt the devil hunter hugging her from behind.
"Breathe in." He held her tighter as she tried to escape. "Pheebs…" She stopped, closed her eyes and did as he said. "Breathe out."
To be honest, under different circumstances, he would've just let her be angry. That woman looked way hotter than any living being should be allowed to when she had that murderous look in her eyes. But did he enjoy the thought of her getting into a fight with his older brother? Not in a hundred years.
They were both extremely protective of each other. However, for some reason Phoebe would always react badly whenever he exaggerated. Dante always assumed it was her trying to prove a point about being independent because she was raised in the middle of the Italian mafia and they were all sexist.
"I just don't want him to attack you when we reach the top."
"I know I told you what he did in the original Temen-ni-gru, but I think he's changed." He knew she was rolling her eyes at his carefree tone.
"You think." She mocked.
"I think, deep down, way deep down, he's more inclined to listening to his human side but refuses to admit it."
"You said it was fifty-fifty…"
He interrupted her. "It still is."
"Cazzo di merda. Figlio di una puttana."
"Hey, that's my mother too."
"Sorry… sorry." Phoebe took another deep breath and Dante finally let go as he realized she had calmed down.
"Now listen to me, don't engage in a fight with Vergil." He was using his extremely rare strict tone, he was dead serious.
"Because I can't win, I know. I'm well aware of which enemies I can or cannot defeat even though…"
He interrupted her again.
"Because, if I have to kill him in the end, I wanna do it because he's an asshole, not because he hurt you."
The sorceress looked down when she heard that, her hair covering her cheeks so he wouldn't see that she was blushing. She couldn't help it whenever he said something cute, she would never get used to it after growing up in two abusive homes.
"You're blushing." He whispered in her ear with a mischievous grin.
"I think you should go. You'll end up losing the race if you stay here."
The white haired man chuckled and gave her a peek on the cheek and Phoebe buried her face in her palms as she heard his footsteps getting further away.
God, she was such a simp.
Nero reached the sixth floor on his side and became surprised when he saw a more powerful demon than the lesser ones he had been slaying on his way up. Or, more specifically: a demoness. She was extremely skinny and tall, with long and straight raven hair. Her eyes were completely black, her skin was a dark blue shade and she wore white rags on her body.
"Weird… a human that smells like Sparda." Her fingers were long and at some point each one of them turned to claws.
"Can you smell anything other than the pile of garbage that is this place?!"
"Garbage!?" She laughed, a horrible shriek that caused the boy to take his hands to his ears. "This is the smell of us restoring Sparda to his former glory!"
"But didn't he, like, die?" Nero looked at his hands just to check if his ears weren't bleeding.
"Dying would be too merciful for a traitor like him. We spent all those years corrupting his essence, so he can go back to his original purpose: answering to Mundus."
"Well, I'm sorry, but that isn't happening."
She gave another laugh and summoned two enormous demonic hounds as the young devil hunter recovered from it. The demoness disappeared in a cloud of black smoke as the hounds charged against him. He blocked one bite by holding the Red Queen horizontally, the demon dog's fangs crunching down on it.
"Oh, come on! I like dogs, let's just play fetch instead!" The creature growled and he exploded his devil breaker against its eyes, blinding it. His demonic spectral arm grabbed the hound and threw it across the room.
He grabbed another devil breaker from inside his coat: Overture. An explosion in the form of a large hand hit the other canine charging in his direction, making it fall to the floor. He swung his sword multiple times against it until it disappeared into thin first hound rose back to its feet and stared at Nero.
"C'mon, pooch!" He waved at it and whistled. The demon ran to him but before it could get close enough to the young devil hunter, it got hit by a RV. "Timing as perfect as always, Nico!"
She gave him a thumbs up as she hit the brakes of the vehicle.
"I figured you needed some stuff!"
"Figured it right." Nero got inside. "How did you get here?"
"That crazy sorceress opened the wall for me, and Trish and Lady are fighting outside killing the incoming demons." Nico watched as he grabbed a few devil breakers. "Want a ride upstairs?"
He walked to the passenger's seat and sat on it, crossing his legs and hitting the exterior of the vehicle through the window. "Hit it."
And then they took off.
