Author's Notes: I guess a it's that time of year still with tests and stuff, or at least I hope it's more a case of that than reviewers not dropping by out of disgust :o. Hehe, well a rodent can hope, although it's a shame SinOan doesn't seem to be around at the moment, I seem to remember him mentioning using a Deus Ex Machina, and I've been saving this one for a while, hehe. I won't be pulling this kind of stunt regularly, it's a one off, part parody and part something that really does have a history with the character involved. Anyway, not one of the most humour-driven chapters, but regardless, to all who read, thanks and enjoy :D.
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Lady, Reiko, Arson and Zone made their way through the deserted streets, in that order, the demon hunter leading the way. She was constantly on guard and it rubbed off on the others, making them edgy, but fortunately no demons appeared to attack them.
After a few minutes they came to a dilapidated building that looked no different than those around it, and Lady lead them inside, where they quickly went to the back and descended into the basement. Down here was similar to the Bullseye bar, survivors huddled together, but the accommodation had taken a budget cut.
"People are gathering wherever there's food, shelter and numbers" Lady explained briefly as they walked through the scattered crowd of people sitting or lying about. They came to a backroom with a door still intact and Lady opened it an entered, the trio following into what looked like a makeshift briefing room.
"Take a seat if you like" Lady offered. Roughly in the middle of the room a large chunk of debris with a flat top had fallen through, and someone had put a few empty crates around it, turning it into something like a meeting table. Arson dropped down onto one box and Zone hopped up onto another, while Reiko leaned against the wall. Lady for her part just sat on the table itself, setting Kalina Ann down to get the weight off.
"So what's up?" Zone asked, the curious rodent beating Reiko to the punch in asking what they wondered.
Lady sighed, and it was obvious she was thinly stretched. The young demon hunter had enough to worry about dealing with her own problems, she wasn't used to working with others. Her quest for revenge drove her on originally, but she had no hope of killing Arkham with Mary sue holding the plot up like she was.
Instead, Lady had found herself trying to help out her fellow humans, driven by a sense of compassion that still survived inside her. "All Hell broke loose early, basically" she said, not one for formal briefings either.
Seeing the expressions this got, she thought it might do with a little elaboration, and added "Without Dante and Vergil around to keep their numbers down, the demons have been getting out of control and the area around the tower that isn't safe is growing by the hour. On top of that Mary Sue's continued presence is, destabilising the fandom or something, Nevan explained it before she left. The laws of canon are being weakened and stuff like demons from the other games are leaking through. Mary Sue hasn't done anything directly herself at least; she's still inside the tower for all I know, but things are bad enough without her".
The others took a moment to let this sink in, but in truth they hadn't expected much different. Reiko was the first to speak up, "So Mary Sue is the source of the problem, but she's surrounded by a horde of demons too large to overcome by any means available?".
"In a nutshell, yes" Lady replied. "I'm not sure how tough she is, but no one can even get near her. Dante and Vergil could probably cut through the demons, but she's already dealt with them, and if more powerful enemies from the later games come through the cracks, soon even together they won't be enough. She's got things nicely stacked in her favour" the young woman added bitterly, her contempt for Mary Sue obvious.
"It's one of those key in a safe things" Zone thought out loud, trying to figure how to gain the upper paw.
"Don't safes have combination locks?" Arson piped up.
"That's… Besides the point" Zone snapped back, at a loss for a direct rebuke since most safes indeed did not have keys. Arson crossed his arms, made an indignant humph noise, and turned his head away, chin held high. The rodent ignored him back, but without the theatrics, instead focusing on the challenge before them. They had a way of getting to Mary Sue, but they needed to get close to the tower first, and from the sounds of it that wouldn't be easy. Although Zone didn't like to admit it, perhaps they could use some help.
"We-" was all he got out before Reiko cut him off.
"Will go out and check for any more survivors. If we are attacked we should at least be able to make a fighting retreat to safety" the vampire said, ignoring the withering glare the hamster was subjecting him to.
Lady gave him a slightly surprised look, since last she'd seen them, settling down and digging in seemed to be the last thing on their minds. Still it was reasonable, so she agreed, "Alright, but don't stay out too long".
Reiko nodded and opened the door, "Come on guys, we've got important work to do" he said. Arson stood up to follow, and Zone wanted to say a lot of things, but decided to bite his tongue until they were outside.
Walking back through the underground huddle, Arson stole an unsupervised bottle of Coke and started drinking it as they headed back up to the ground floor and exited the building. Once outside, Zone rounded on the vampire. "What was that all about? I admit I'm rarely the voice of reason here, but the Temen-Ni-Gru is surrounded by swarms of demons. Swarms, plural. We won't be able to get near it alone, don't you think it might be smart to gather a little help, a small force maybe?" the rodent ranted on irritably at Reiko.
The vampire listened to him calmly, waiting for him to finish. When Zone was done, Reiko's response was calm, "If we tell Lady what we plan to do, she will either not help us, or try to help us too much. She would not stop at helping us reach Mary Sue; she'd want to fight her, and the same probably goes for anyone else who would join us. We cannot risk the lives of others, least of all one of the key characters of the series".
Zone heard him out, and found himself wanting to argue back, but he fought down the urge. "… Conceded, you have a point" the rodent said with some self-restraint. "You could have clued us both in earlier though" he added brazenly, a familiar smirk crossing his face, "I don't suppose you have a plan, though, do you?".
Reiko smiled slightly, "Sorry, it did not occur to me to mention it earlier, and no, I'm not sure how we'll get close enough to the tower to execute our plan, but I'm positive that wasn't the right way" he responded.
"How close do we need to get again?" Arson asked.
"Within a stone's throw of the tower if I recall right, the entrance is literally right by it" Zone replied.
"Yes, that's true, and if the demons are overflowing from the tower, there's no way around the problem, we need to get through, but there'll be hundreds of them" Reiko added, the vampire pensive at their problem.
They lapsed into a thoughtful silence, a very dangerous obstacle between them and their objective. Whether or not they could fight together well enough to defeat Mary Sue would be of little use against a press of demons so thick they were separated and unable to coordinate together. Several minutes passed, until Zone suddenly spoke up. "I think, I might have just the thing" he said with a spreading grin, the other two giving him doubtful but curious looks. The rodent seemed more convinced in his inspiration by the second though, and gestured animatedly to the other two, "Come on, you're gonna love this" he promised them excitedly…
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Sometime later, and the trio had managed to, at the hamster's insistence, track down an entry point. That's an area where people can enter and leave the fandom, for those curious, there's a few scattered thinly about.
"Alright, just give me a minute" Zone said as he dialled out on the public phone. Evidently someone had been watching The Matrix when designing this point. The others were still wearing doubtful expressions.
"Are you sure this will be enough? I mean, hamster-sized and all?" Reiko inquired politely but to the point.
Zone looked over his shoulder at him, or as much of one as he had, and winked. "Trust me" he said with incorrigible assuredness. "Oh and, you might want to stand back" he advised a moment before he vanished.
Reiko looked at Arson bemusedly, who muttered "Couldn't hurt". They gave the phone booth some space.
A minute passed, and another followed asking the first where it thought it was going on such short notice.
Reiko was about to try and think of a mature way to complain, when the phone began to ring, the warning for an incoming signal. A moment later and a white light emanated from the earpiece, and began to grow.
"I'm gonna, back off some more" Arson muttered as the light continued to expand over the ground in front of the booth. He did so, and Reiko followed, moving away as it kept growing. The special effects weren't anything amazing, that was just how the entry point worked, but the size of what was coming through was another matter altogether. Eventually the light faded, and what stood in its place got a nice stunned silence.
It was a tank. That wasn't surprising to Reiko and Arson, as Zone had promised them a tank, but they hadn't expected, so much of a tank. The war machine before them was from track bases to turret top three metres tall, five metres wide and a full eight meters long. It was in short, a fully-fledged tank. The heavily armoured chassis was mostly an almost pitch black, ever so faintly tinted blue, so that you'd only really notice by comparing it to true pitch black. This was complemented by touches of a dark metallic blue that weren't too eye-catching, but stylish in a very hard, edged way. It was armed with a sophisticated looking yet sturdily built main cannon on the turret, and rolled on all-terrain caterpillar treads like most tanks do.
The hatchway on top opened up, and dwarfed by the vehicle from which it came, out popped Zone's head. "Haha, hamster-sized this!" he laughed triumphantly at the dumbstruck expressions on his friends' faces.
"Where did you get this?" Reiko eventually found his tongue to ask, looking over the armoured hull in awe.
"Give me some credit" Zone replied. "I mean, in all the time I've had in my laboratory, you thought I never came up with anything besides a lightsabre? You don't see much of my stuff because it's very hard to make anything effective, yet small enough for me to carry. But this carries me" he said, patting the tank proudly.
"Not compensating for anything are you?" Arson asked suspiciously. In answer, the enormous, long, thick, hard barrel of the tank swivelled round smoothly and pointed at him. "OK, OK, I take it back" Arson said, waving his hands in rapid diplomacy, and with a smug grin Zone returned the gun to its original position.
"This baby is the epitome of my work thus far. It's not invincible…" Zone grudgingly admitted. "But it's my very own Deus Ex Machina. Took absolutely ages to make, and there's not many situations it's suited to. But I think current circumstances proves it pays to have an ace up your sleeve… Or in your garage" he said, modifying the phrase since even if he had sleeves, he'd never find one big enough to park his tank up.
"Impressive" Reiko said, giving credit where it was due. "Is there enough room for us inside?" he asked, since even though the vehicle was at least as big as a normal tank, Zone had probably built it for him to use.
"It's not a limo, but there's room" Zone replied, inviting the other two in with a gesture of his paw. They climbed up the hull of the tank and as the rodent dropped back inside, they followed him. Indeed there was only formal seating for the rodent, but there was plenty of free space for the other two to sit without being cramped. Zone closed the hatch with the controls, and turned back to grin at the other two in the blue-hued interior lighting. "Well if you're comfy, please enjoy the ride" he said with an excited edge to his voice…
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Around the Temen-Ni-Gru, the demons were overflowing. Hells, Enigmas, even the Damned Chessmen were thronging in the streets, slowly spreading out in an all-consuming spill of carnage. Here and there among the masses could be seen creatures out of place, Marionettes, Blades, Sins and other monsters from Devil May Cry 1 or 2 that had slipped through the weakening barrier between the different game worlds.
The demons seethed without reason or rhyme, all victims in the local vicinity long ago massacred. They did however pause and look up from there preying at the sound of a distant rumbling, eager for the promise of fresh meat to slaughter. However, what came crashing down the street was not flesh, but a beast of metal.
"Yeeehaah!!" Zone screamed as his beloved tank ploughed headfirst into the supernatural ranks at 40KPH. Various Hells crumbled to dust, Chessmen exploded to rubble and anything else was just crushed beneath the treads of his machine of doom. If he wasn't so excited the tyrant would have shed tears of pride and joy.
Behind him Reiko and Arson could only watch on the screens giving an external view. "Does it have to be so bumpy?" the hybrid complained as they ran over a Hall Wrath, the explosion rocking the vehicle around.
"You can get out and ask them to move if you want" Zone snapped back, focused on the enemies ahead. More dangerous beings were starting to show up. The rodent brought them into the main cannon's sights.
With a crackling discharge, the turret spat a raw beam of energy, the massive blast of power vapourising the air in its wake as it sailed towards its target. With thunderous impact the entire width of the street ahead was enveloped in an expanding sphere of crackling light, obliterating a huge swathe of demons as well as destroying the buildings to either side, not to mention punching a crater in the road itself. Zone didn't even slow down as the tank drove into it and up the other side, the versatile vehicle handling the obstacle easily.
"We're already halfway through" Reiko reported from inside, seeing the tower looming close on the screen.
"Yeah, I can tell" Zone replied, the resistance getting thicker, his tank losing a little speed from the sheer number of demons it had to run over to advance. Some of the more agile creatures were starting to clamber onto the hull, but they could barely scratch the armour. One Blade saw the turret and scrambled onto it, seeing the hole as a way past the thick hide of this strange beast. The poor thing, Zone thought, as he quite leisurely pulled the trigger. Its component molecules probably didn't survive that he thought as another laser blast cut down hordes of demons. A third blast toppled a building on one side of the road onto the enemies in it, and the tank bludgeoned its way through the rubble a moment later, almost at their target.
"Hey, what's that thing?" Arson asked, leaning forwards and pointing at something at the base of the tower.
Zone looked up, not quite able to make it out, but as they closed Reiko was. "It's a Phantom" he muttered.
Sure enough, standing right at the base of the tower was a gigantic cross between a spider, a scorpion, and a volcano. The Phantom, and Arson wondered how such a massive, loud and destructive thing got that name, opened its mouth and roared deafeningly. Fire and light began to swirl in its mouth and a moment later it spat a burning meteor of rock and lava, which smacked headfirst into the front of the tank, making it skid.
"Oh shit" Zone muttered as lights he really would have preferred to stay blue started turning red. They were only one block away from the beast and as Arson and Reiko asked him distracting, unimportant things like are they going to die or not, Zone took aim. The Phantom opened its mouth and began charging again, and was halfway done when Zone beat it to the punch, another burst of energy lancing from the tank's cannon.
The bolt of light leapt right into the demon's mouth, spearing through the fireball it was gathering, causing it to erupt in its face, before piercing into its insides. The Phantom let out an ear-shattering roar of agony, but its mouth was quickly plugged by none other than the front of the tank, as a moment later the vehicle ploughed full speed into it, ramming the monster against the side of the tower and finally coming to a halt.
"This thing can take a lot of punishment" Arson said, he and Reiko in a heap at the back after the collision.
As the hybrid and vampire detangled themselves from each other, Zone was watching as red spread across his controls like a rash. "Actually" he said with rising panic, "I think it's gonna explode in five seconds."
"What?!" Reiko spat in disbelief, having to raise his voice over the increasingly numerous alarms going off.
"Four seconds" Zone replied with suitable adjustment, having already pressed the button to open the hatch.
As it swung open, Reiko leapt forwards and grabbed the rodent, then turned and caught Arson's collar. Tensing his legs he leapt straight through the open hatch and clear of the vehicle, landing but not stopping.
When they were clear of the tank, he let go of Arson and Zone, who turned to look at his baby. The vehicle was at an angle against the side of the tower, the disintegrating remains of the Phantom beneath it. Those same remains were also eating the tank however, the machine well made but not enough to survive such extended exposure to molten lava. With a metallic bubbling the machine slowly disintegrated before them.
"We have to" Reiko began to say, but then he noticed Zone's expression. It was one of mourning. Putting off matters for a moment, he leaned down and rested a hand on the rodent, covering his entire back. "It was a noble sacrifice" the vampire said consolingly.
Zone turned his head to look at him, sniffing and blinking back a couple of tears. "I know" he said with a smile despite his sadness, "I memorised her inside out, I can make her again, better perhaps even, even if it will take a lot of time and effort. I was just paying my last respects and, giving my thanks for helping us".
Reiko nodded in understanding, and allowed the hamster a couple of moments to mourn. It was strange but, in a way he could understand it. If you put so much time and energy and heart into making something, then perhaps you could come to love it. Also, the vampire found a new respect for Zone for his ability to care for something enough to cry for its loss. Reiko had seen the hamster cry before, but this was a new side of him.
"Alright, lets go" Zone said at last, wiping his eyes and clearing his vision. His face set into a determined expression and he turned to Reiko, who nodded. They both rose and saw Arson standing by a garage door.
"You guys ready?" the hybrid asked, and the others nodded. All around them the demons were starting to close in like a vice. Reiko and Zone quickly joined Arson at the door, and the hybrid gave the rodent a lift up onto his shoulder. The vampire placed his hand on the door, and Arson put his besides it. Zone walked down their arms and placed his paw on it as well, and together, they pushed. For a long moment nothing happened, the demons closing in, and then they seemed to shimmer, and passed through the solid door…