A/N: Ugh… mistakes were made. It was 10:40 last night and I was like "I shouldn't do this mission of DMC5" and then I clicked start mission anyway. Some of my friends (who've never played any of the games) are watching me stream it via discord and their confusion over things is amazing. One of them has decided that when Dante is wielding King Cerberus he "sounds like a xiaolin monk on crack" which then had me giggling like crazy while fighting…
Disclaimer: I can't even claim that silly phrase
Every Deal Has a Price
Nero attempted and failed to wipe some of the gore from his person, the thing they'd just fought, the whole place that they'd worked their way through was a miserable, distorted hellscape covered in stitched together bodies and massive creatures that clung to the warped walls. Nero thought he'd be ready for strange places after the Nightmare but this was fresh, new wounds on the world, the Nightmare had been old, some of the visceral misery of it faded, this was different… Not to mention the horrible amalgamation that they fought at the end of the street. The partial devil was used to fighting big, gross monsters, it was part of the job description for demon hunter, but he wasn't exactly accustomed to being showered in body parts when the thing tried to take a swipe at him. While disgusting, the creature had posed little threat to the pair of them, they'd just needed to keep wailing on it in between its clumsy strikes and it went down easy enough. Now the pair of them stood at the lantern and Katherine looked at him, just as covered with muck as he was.
"Shall we return? I don't feel I require the rest." she said, taking her hat off and shaking some of the gunk from it. Nero couldn't help the chuckle that bubbled out of his throat, he'd felt the same way after many, many a mission clearing out demon nests.
"I'm covered in muck but I'm not injured, we could continue if you want." he shrugged, Katherine nodded solemnly and the pair of them wandered onward, in short order finding themselves in a room that housed many, many bodies. Nero spun in a slow circle, taking them all in, they were all just… sitting. It looked almost like they'd mummified in their seats, even stranger still were the bizarre cages that rested on their shoulders, raising up above their heads like a parody of a hat. Katherine reached forward toward the one sitting front and center as the devil hunter continued to take in the scene around him but whirled around at the sound he heard behind him. It wasn't something he heard with his ears but rather felt in his bones. There were the briefest images of purple stars in place of Katherine but nothing else beyond the bones surrounding him.
"Katherine?" he asked, almost hesitant to break the silence of the room. There was no answer and Nero took a deep breath, reached forward and touched a hand to the skeletal remains in the chair. Much like when warping via the lanterns his vision glazed over and he caught the briefest glance of mad blue eyes before finding himself in a large building. The building looked almost like that museum that he and Dante had had to defend that one time… He shook his head and started forward, hoping to find Katherine in the massive building.
Within several minutes of searching the devil hunter realized that this was going to take a while, there were large lecture halls that were full of these strange goopy creatures that were wearing those funny graduation hats. They turned out to be more of a nuisance than a challenge as they had a penchant for hiding on the ceiling and in small nooks and would lunge out at him. Thankfully they were neither quick nor stronge and a good fiery slash from Red Queen was enough to disembowel them and continue with his search. He found some weird experiments and a good number of notes and books with mad ramblings within them but so far he had no sign of the Hunter. There was a pair of large doors that Nero assumed led to the outside world but the dust and grime that sat undisturbed in front of them led the partial devil to believe that Katherine hadn't left the building. The notes that had been scattered in the path caught his attention however and he picked them up, curious what nonsense he'd see now. "The nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence and his associates. Paleblood." strange, but it was the first mention of Paleblood that he'd seen since Katherine had told him about it, perhaps it meant something. What was the moon presence? The moon over Yharnam was certainly big, red and ominous but beyond that it seemed harmless enough. "Three third cords." The other note stated in a scrawled, looping script, it was the same handwriting as the first though otherwise the devil hunter couldn't tell if they were meant to go together or not. He sighed, stuffing the notes into a pocket, and vaulted over the railing and down to the first floor, landing with a loud thump on the old wood. A singular book fell off a shelf and to the floor anticlimactically as the partial devil continued his search. There were a few more of those gooey scholarly types before hearing the sound of voices. It wasn't just the sound of rambling madness either, it was the sound of conversation and… Katherine's voice. He stepped up to the door and tried the knob first. It was locked but the voices on the other side halted, then Nero knocked, there was a pause and he saw Katherine's eyes peek through a break in the glass at him. She disappeared but the door swung inward to reveal the Hunter and a massive spider with the head of a man. Nero tensed but kept up a calm face. The spider-man laughed, a giggly sort of laugh that the devil hunter mistrusted immediately.
"Oh do tell, who is your friend?" the man-spider asked, frontmost legs twitching in front of him that had Nero suppressing a shiver of disgust.
"Nero." the partial devil said flatly, crossing his arms in front of him. The creature's eyes gleamed as he looked on the glinting metal of Nero's arm.
"Oh what a fascinating contraption. May we make a deal, a trade perhaps? A gift for a gift? For a friend?" he asked, spindly legs beginning to reach forward until Katherine shifted, the weapon in her hand clicking loudly as she did.
"Every deal has a price. Take your life and be satisfied with that." her eyes were cold ruby chips beneath the brim of her hat. The man-spider shifted uncomfortably before giggling again and bowing his head.
"Of course, of course, I wouldn't want to abuse our blossoming friendship now would I?" he shifted back on the table he was perched on and Katherine grabbed Nero's arm and started to drag him from the room. The partial devil kept an eye on the creature even as the door slammed, gleaming eyes watching them through the break in the glass.
"You took long enough." she said tiredly.
"I touched the creepy mummy right after you." Nero huffed "You didn't exactly make it easy to find you."
"Well you have succeeded. Have you found a route to leave this place?" she asked. Nero nodded and pointed in the direction of the big door
"Yeah, there's some doors over there, probably go outside, oh! Right. I found these, they mean anything to you?" he handed over the crumpled notes. Katherine smoothed them out, eyes scanning the scant words before looking at him strangely.
"I wish I knew what this one meant." she said, glancing at the longer one "But this one…" she dug around in her pockets for a long moment before pulling out something that Nero wrinkled his nose at but accepted anyway when she handed it to him.
"It's an umbilical cord from-" she started, Nero was about to drop the thing when it began to glow, as did his whole arm. A brief flash later and it was gone, that hadn't happened since… well since his Devil Bringer "an infant Great One…" Katherine finished slowly, still staring at where it had been. Nero swallowed thickly, his stomach roiling, and paused before asking
"It's… from a what?"
A/N: I still have people being very cranky about the chapter length, so I have a question for all of you, I can post once every three weeks with longer chapters, or continue as is. I don't have a lot of time to write fanfiction, as most of the time I spend writing goes to either preparatory work for the D&D campaigns I run or my own original works. So I s'pose let me know if you'd like longer chapters less frequently or to keep the current schedule.