The prisons, a national facility that covered multiple acres of land, had long-since been closed due to cuts in federal budgets and its numerous cell blocks and rehabilitation facilities now sat empty. But on this night, one figure could be seen lounging on top of the prison's outer walls. Dante hummed to himself as he twirled one of his personally customized handguns, gazing absent-mindedly at the moon hanging high in the sky. He sat alone for several long minutes until, as if out of nowhere, a figure in a cloak made of flowing black mist and a statuesque mask appeared behind him, the eye slits glowing with a bright green light. Without looking at the figure, Dante grinned and said "I knew if I waited long enough you'd decide to come out of hiding."

"You KNEW I was here?" Kalaratri said indignantly.

"Had a feeling, yeah. What took you so long? Hoping I'd come inside and walk into whatever trap you have set up?" Kalaratri didn't answer, but the glow from her eyes brightened to reflect her anger. "Can I take that as a yes?"

"You are an…IRRITATING little half-breed." The shadowy woman spat, causing Dante to laugh in response.

"Woo, boy, that was fast. Usually takes a lot longer for women to get pissed off at me. I must be on my game tonight."

As he talked, Kalaratri slowly drew a large scythe, the Pier Donia, from the darkness of her cloak. The large weapon had a relatively simple design with two handles sticking out its sides, but the moonlight reflected off and drew attention to its wickedly sharp blade. "Even if you were NOT the son of my sworn enemy, I would happily end your worthless life."

Dante laughed again, which only served to irritate her further. "Ouch, baby, that one hurt!"

In a flash, the scythe was suddenly above her head and aimed toward the red-coated devil hunter. "And so will this!"

Her strike was as fast as her windup, but Dante was already out of its path, and he fired at her with his handguns while in mid-air. The bullets passed harmlessly through her cloak, and Kalaratri leapt up after him. Returning his pistols to their holsters, the man in the red coat drew the claymore Rebellion from its sheath on his back and used it to block Kalaratri's scythe. The unexpectedly powerful impact, however, pushed him back down to the ground, while his opponent hovered in the air. The cloaked woman hurled the Pier Donia high above her and pulled two more slightly smaller scythes from under her shroud. She threw both weapons at Dante, then caught her own handled scythe as it came back down.

Noticing the spinning blades coming at him from above, Dante dashed forward to duck under them and glanced up just in time to see Kalaratri hurtling towards him with the Pier Donia held high. He put away his Rebellion and held both hands in front of him, waiting. With Kalaratri's weapon mere inches away from him, Dante suddenly thrust his hands forward and blocked the blade, energy crackling through the air from the impact.

"Hmph." Kalaratri scoffed "Where did a half-blood like you learn Royal Guard techniques?"

He flashed his same cocky smile at her again. "Oh, I pick things up here and there."

Dante thrust his hand forward to release the energy absorbed from the blocked attack, but Kalaratri was already out of his reach. She landed several feet away and pulled the Pier Donia back. It began to crackle with demonic energy until finally she threw it, spinning through the air, at her opponent. Dante took a flying leap to get out of the way of the large weapon, but the scythe followed him, forcing him to stay on the move. He leapt again, but when he landed, Kalaratri was suddenly behind him and one of her secondary scythes was raking across his back. The blow pushed him forward and into the path of the Pier Donia, which impaled him through the chest.

"Pathetic." She said with a euphoric smile that was hidden by her mask. "I was expecting more from Sparda's…" Her words trailed off as Dante stood up straight with the scythe's blade still stuck in his body.

"Now now" He reminded her "the fat lady hasn't sung just yet."

The red-coated devil hunter pulled the Pier Donia out of his chest with some effort and a few spurts of blood, then turned around and pulled the scythe back in the same way Kalaratri had done earlier. After the weapon began crackling with his own blood-red energy, he hurled it towards her. The scythe did nothing but pass through the mist of her cloak, and she caught it as it came out the other side. "You presume to try and use MY skills against me?" she growled "You just LIVE to insult my very existence, don't you?"

Dante shrugged nonchalantly. "Not exactly, but if the shoe fits…"

The green glow from Kalaratri's eyes became brighter than ever before, and she stuck the Pier Donia into the ground to reach both hands back into her misty cloak. Before she could withdraw whatever she was seeking, however, a blue-skinned wolf demon suddenly leapt into the fray and struck her from behind with an icy-blue zweihander. More startled than hurt, Kalaratri leapt away, pulling out a pair of scythes. "Who dares to interfere with my hunt?!"

Fenrir waved lightly. "Yo! How's it goin'?"

Dante eyed the new arrival with amusement. "And who would this be?"

"He is soon to be a dead man!" The cloaked woman shouted as she crouched down and dashed back towards the interloper. She held each scythe at her side and brought them together to chop Fenrir in half. The wolf demon blocked one blade with his own weapon while Hantu suddenly appeared beside him and blocked the other with both of his swords. "Another one! What is this?!"

Fenrir grinned. "Oh, just a couple of guys who'd really appreciate it if you didn't kill Mr. Dante here."

Kalaratri backed off and muttered. "You are Greater Demons, yet you…you are traitors to the Demon World, then?"

"Something like that." He held his zweihander in a ready stance. "Think you can handle getting ganged up three-on-one?"

"I'm the daughter of a Devil Knight, you idiots! OF COURSE I CAN!" Reaching back into her cloak, she suddenly threw a full dozen whirling scythes at the two Renegades. Hantu vanished into thin air while Fenrir crouched down and held his Ymir zweihander in front of his body to protect himself. Dante glanced between the two parties and calmly pulled a sawn-off shotgun out of his coat. "You two will regret having interfered in my affairs." Kalaratri said as Fenrir stood back up and brushed himself off.

"You're probably right." The wolf demon replied simply. "Doesn't mean we're going anywhere, though."

The cloaked woman glared at him and reached out her hand to making a beckoning gesture. The Pier Donia yanked itself out of the ground and spun towards its master, but as it neared her hand, Hantu suddenly reappeared and stabbed her outstretched arm, preventing her from grabbing ahold of the weapon. Reacting quickly, Kalaratri used her other hand to pull another secondary scythe from her cloak and raised it to strike him when Dante suddenly stepped in front of her. "Hey! Forgetting someone?"

Sticking the shotgun into her face, he let loose with a blast of energized buckshot, pushing her backwards and cracking her mask from the impact. She only had time to let out a scream of frustration before she was interrupted by a rocket flying towards her, signaling Lady's arrival on the scene. Kalaratri managed to recall her handled scythe, successfully this time, and deflected the explosive before it could strike her, then turned from her numerous opponents and leapt away, out of sight.

Fenrir looked over the edge of the roof to try and find the cloaked woman, but she was already gone. He commented to the man in the red coat. "That was a pretty nice shot."

"Why thank you." Dante answered, half-serious. "You can show your appreciation by telling me who the hell you two are and why you jumped in like that."

Fenrir glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "Wha?"

The devil hunter crossed his arms. "Well, let's face it, I ain't exactly Mr. Popular among your kind, yet here I have two Demons stepping in on one of the more interesting fights I've had lately."

"I'm curious about that myself." Lady added as she approached.

Dante glanced at her with a sly grin on his face. "Ho, looks like there's a lot going on tonight if you're hanging around too."

"Oh, shut up and let them answer." The human woman scoffed.

Fenrir grimaced and said to Dante "Dude, your girlfriend is scary."

Lady suddenly had a gun in her hand and pointed it at his face, her own face regaining its reddish tone. "AHEM."

"Alright, alright." The wolf demon cleared his throat before continuing. "The name's Fenrir. Bottom line is that my buddy Hantu here and I are mercenaries, hired to do a job. That job just so happens to entail keeping crazy-scythe-chick from taking your head off."

Dante laughed in disbelief. "Someone actually hired you as bodyguards for me? And you took the job?"

"Told you it doesn't exactly happen every day." Lady said to Fenrir with a shrug.

"Well, we've got our own personal stake in your survival too. See, we owe your old man Sparda big time for the help he gave us back in the day. Figured the least we could do is hop on over and make sure his only son didn't end up get shanked."

Dante began laughing even harder now, almost doubling over and he clutched his stomach. Fenrir glanced between the Son of Sparda, Lady and Hantu nervously, unsure of what to make of this. Finally, as Dante regained his composure, he answered the wolf demon's confused looks. "Now this…this is unreal! Gotta be the first time I've ever been tracked down by Demons who knew my father, but DIDN'T want to take their hatred of him out on me!"

"Yyyyeah, he's not exactly popular in the Underworld either…"

The red-coated devil hunter wiped tears from his eyes and said. "Well, sorry, but you made the trip for nothing."

Fenrir stopped and frowned. "Um……come again?"

"Appreciate the offer, really do, but I fight my own battles, thank you very much. I'll handle mask-babe on my own."

The wolf demon held up his hands and shook his head. "Woah, woah, wait a second. Kalaratri ain't exactly a pushover, as you might have noticed. Her father was on par with Sparda's power when they were Devil Knights together, and she's a full-blooded Demon to boot."

"How'd you know I was only half?"

Fenrir nodded towards Lady. "Your girlfriend explained it on the way here."

The human woman's face turned a bright red this time as she began to pull out a large magnum and shouted "NOT. HIS. GIRLFRIEND!" Before she could point it at Fenrir, however, Dante waved her down.

Confident that he wouldn't be getting shot in the face just yet, Fenrir continued. "Look, I'll admit that you've inherited more than enough of Sparda's power to handle the average Greater Demon with ease, that much has been obvious. But Kalaratri's not your average Greater Demon, she's way beyond that, way beyond either of us. You go after her without bringing some back-up, you're not gonna live to talk about it."

Dante simply shrugged. "Yeah, maybe."

Far from the response he expected, Fenrir tried to get an explanation out of him. "…ssso then…?"

"But that's not important. I don't let anyone else fight my battles, especially one as much fun as this. Never have, and I don't plan on starting now." He turned and waved the pair of interlopers away. "So go on back to your employer and tell him there's no job for you to do here." Before Fenrir could respond, Dante took a few steps forward and leapt off the roof.

Fenrir gripped the sides of his head in frustration. "That…rrgh! Is he suicidal or something?!"

"I've always had a feeling he might be." Lady replied nonchalantly.

"You're not just gonna let him run off on his own, are you?"

"Of course not." The human devil hunter said, shifting the rocket launcher on her back into a more comfortable position. "But are you?"

Fenrir shook his head grimly. "Hey, he may not like it, but we're not going anywhere till we've fulfilled our contract. We got paid in advance, after all."

"Then we'd better hurry and follow him. Dante can move pretty quickly when he wants to."

Hantu, thus far having remained a silent observer, spoke up. "I'll go on ahead and keep an eye on him."

Lady cast him a surprised glance as Fenrir said "Now there's an idea. Good thinkin', man."

The hooded assassin nodded and disappeared, and Lady commented to Fenrir "Doesn't talk much, does he? I'd almost forgotten he was even here."

"Yeah, pretty much keeps to himself most of the time."

She continued with a sly smirk "I could get used to being around a Demon that wasn't a complete chatterbox."

Fenrir glanced at her with a wounded look on his face. "Hey, now that was just mean, I don't talk THAT much."

Lady turned and started to walk off, heading for the nearest stairs. "Feel free to just stand there while you wait for an apology." The wolf demon ran to catch up to her, shouting "So was that!!"

***

The nearby administrative building had once housed the offices of the prison staff, and Dante had followed Kalaratri's trail into its dusty halls. His twin pistols Ebony and Ivory were out in hands, ready to fire at a moment's notice. The red-coated devil hunter's current path led him to an open atrium, where an overhead skylight cast a pale illumination over the tiled floors. The sound of metal whirling through the air caught his attention, and he rolled to the side to avoid a scythe blade that was aimed right at his head. Before he could stop to find the source, however, several more blades came flying out of the shadows, forcing him to stay on the move. He landed next to a wall, hoping to use the cover to eliminate one angle of attack, but he was stopped short by a previously-unseen blade catching his leg and pinning it against the floor. Before he could holster one of his handguns to pull it out, the rest of his limbs were struck and pinned against wall or floor themselves.

Once she was confident that Dante was trapped, Kalaratri revealed herself. "You're finished, Son of Sparda."

Despite being filled with more sharp metal than a pincushion, Dante remained unperturbed "Hey, what'd I say about that fat lady? I don't hear her singin' yet, do you?"

Rather than get mad, the cloaked woman decided to simply get even, lifting the Pier Donia into the air above her head. "She's just warming up…"

Before she could bring the large scythe down, however, Kalaratri felt a sharp pain in the back of her knees and let out a yelp as she lost her footing. Glancing around, she spotted Hantu crouching right behind her. "You again?!"

The hooded assassin leapt out of the way as she swept her scythe along the floor and stood up. Eyeing him through her mask, Kalaratri's anger quickly turned to annoyance. "I would very much like to know what a member of the Hantu family is doing interfering in my business." Hantu's dark-irised eyes widened visibly against his pale face, but he said nothing in response, prompting Kalaratri to continue. "Yes, I recognize you. My father owns the realm your family makes its home in, you think I wouldn't be familiar with my constituents? You wear dark colors, are easily overlooked at first glance and have a tendency to vanish from sight without warning…common traits for a Hantu demon."

She pulled the Pier Donia back and hurled it at her opponent, quickly pulling out two more scythes and throwing them as well. Hantu dove forward, twisting himself in mid-air in a cat-like maneuver to avoid the whirling blades, and Kalaratri was waiting for him with another scythe that she swung vertically along the floor. The assassin disappeared, avoiding the attack, and reappeared several feet away from her. With her back turned, Kalaratri failed to notice Dante's behavior; while he listened to their "conversation" with a mild interest, he winced as he slowly pulled one of his pinned arms along the bloody scythe blade that held it into the wall, red energy crackling around his body.

"Now, let's see…" Kalaratri recalled her handled scythe and turned to face Hantu, whirling the Pier Donia in her hand as she spoke. "large eyes, a humanoid build, gaunt face, weapons with bone-white blades…You must be a relative of Hantu Jarang, correct?" Her opponent didn't answer, but at this point she didn't really expect him to, if he was who she thought he was. "Yet I don't recall him ever speaking of a male relative that wielded twin swords and had the gall to support the traitorous Sparda. Nor one that was allied with a wolf demon from the Frozen Hell."

Hantu pulled out several illusionary blades and threw them at Kalaratri in a cluster, causing her to spin her scythe much faster to deflect them. "Unless…" the cloaked woman thought for a moment, her eyes focusing on her opponent as she slowly approached him "unless you would happen to be Hantu Kubor, who has been officially missing in action since Sparda's rebellion two millennia ago. Jarang doesn't like to talk about family members who have proven themselves to be an embarrassment to his renowned clan of assassins, but I over-heard him mention you to my father. He wouldn't be too pleased to learn that his only son has been running about the Human World like some renegade hooligan, obstructing the important work of Demon World rulers for pocket change."

"I…have long since stopped concerning myself with what my father thinks of me." Hantu finally answered, though his voice was strained, as if he had difficulty saying it aloud.

"Hmph. I feel sorry for you, then, if you don't have the dignity to- AUGH!" Kalaratri cried out as she was suddenly struck in the back by one of her own scythe blades. She turned around to see Dante pulling himself off the wall, some of her blades still stuck into his body. "What the-?!"

The red-coated half-blood shrugged. "Aw, you didn't expect me to just hang around there all day, did you?"

Kalaratri's green eyes had brightened again, and her arms trembled with frustrated anger. "You…you…!!"

"Oh" Dante added, turning his attention to Hantu "but I gotta thank you, shorty. Took me a minute to get the proper leverage there, so thanks for keeping her busy."

"Mm…you're welcome…" The hooded assassin replied, any further words being cut short as he had to duck out of the way of Kalaratri's scythe.

"I had him!" She screamed, outraged. "I HAD HIM, AND BECAUSE OF YOU-!!"

"And now you don't." Dante said with a shrug and a smile. "Better luck next time, baby."

Using a free hand, Kalaratri pulled a cluster of scythe blades from her cloak and tossed them at him just as the sound of glass shattering echoed through the atrium; a rocket struck her blades and knocked them off course, quickly followed by Fenrir and Lady dropping down from above. "Hey, give my buddy over there a break." The wolf demon said as he drew his own weapon. "He may be a bit of a pain in the ass, but that's no reason to try and kill him."

Hantu narrowed his eyes in exasperation. "Gee, thanks."

Glancing around at the crowd once again surrounding her, Kalaratri stopped her gaze on Dante. "Are you so much of a coward that you refuse to face me alone, Son of Sparda?"

The man in the red coat simply shrugged. "Hey, it doesn't look like I'm getting much of a choice here." Kalaratri scoffed at his words and then ducked into a nearby hallway and vanished. Dante turned to Fenrir and continued. "Speaking of which, didn't I just tell you two to clear out?"

"Sorry man, but as long as Kalaratri's here, so will we."

Nodding, Dante suddenly dropped his light-hearted demeanor and pulled the Rebellion off his back. "So what's stopping me from just kicking your asses and being on my way? I'm running outta patience here."

Fenrir initially shared Lady's surprised reaction, but he remembered that this wasn't the first time he was faced with this weapon or the techniques used by its wielder. "If that's what you, fine, give us your best shot. But I warn you, don't underestimate either of us. We know how to fight with the best of them because we learned from YOUR dad, both first-hand and watching from afar, and we probably know more about his techniques than you do. We may not be Devil Knights or the kids of one, but we've spent centuries honing our skills and our coordination; we're still a far cry from Sparda, but we could give YOU a run for your money, and together we could probably beat you. So if you want to settle this with violence, go ahead, show us what you can do."

Dante grinned and eyed the pair hungrily. "Thought you'd never ask…" Before any blows could be exchanged, however, Lady stepped between the two of them.

"OR you two could stop being idiots and think rationally for a bit." She said impatiently.

"What? Come on Lady, I've got a right to my privacy, and if these two can't get it through their heads, I'm just gonna have to get rough with them."

"Oh, so suddenly wanting to lend you a hand without your express permission counts as invading your privacy? And you 'kick their asses' as a result?" Lady replied, glaring at him.

Dante regarded her indignation with a bit of amused confidence. "About sums it up, yeah."

"So what about me? I'm not about to let you face that woman on your own, are you going to kick my ass too?" This gave the Son of Sparda pause and his smile faded. "Hadn't thought about that, have you? Figured I'd just run on home if you told me to?"

"Look, Lady…" Dante started, but the dark-haired woman cut him off. "I won't have you hold me to some double-standard either. You want to fight them to get them out of the way, you'll have to fight me to. And you KNOW I can hold my own against you." She said, reminding him of the time they'd squared off while both in pursuit of her father Arkham. He'd won that little engagement, but it was a hard-fought battle, and he didn't quite like his odds if faced against her while at the same time as the two newcomers.

"So what would you like me to do instead?" Dante asked, crossing his arms.

"How about swallowing your pride, FOR ONCE, and accepting some help? We won't tell anybody, I promise." Lady added with a hint of sarcasm.

The Son of Sparda stared at her for a moment as he thought it over, then sighed, threw his hands up in the air and glanced over at Fenrir. "Looks like I won't be winning this one." He said with a bit of a laugh "You want to help me take Kalaratri down? Fine; what did you have in mind?"

Fenrir turned his gaze to Hantu, who suggested "Certainly not the direct approach. Kalaratri will see that coming from a mile away and refuse to confront us."

"In that case, I might have an idea." Lady added. "If we can't track her down, we'll have to make her come to us."