Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. I just started college in about the last week or so of August and it took me a while to adjust to it. I'm still adjusting to it, actually.

Anyways, here is the next chapter. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 13

The Blitz homed in on the sound, its arms spread out wide for a powerful tackle. Takashi looked on at the approaching creature, his eyes widening in shock at how fast it was moving; he could just barely see it.

He knew right then and there that he wasn't going to be able to do anything to stop it since it was way too fast for him to handle. He began to bring up his arms as quickly as possible to guard against the coming attack, but as soon as he did, Dante, who was still standing next to him, whipped out the Coyote-A and fired right at the Blitz.

The shot struck the Blitz right in the face, making it roar in surprise and come to a stop, looking over in the direction it was fired from. Takashi noted that the shot hadn't damaged it at all, that it had seemed to strike the strange shroud that surrounded the Blitz.

Dante chuckled. "Hey there," Dante said to the Blitz, "didn't think I'd see one of Sparky's relatives here." The Blitz roared at him and in a flash, launched itself at the devil hunter. Dante waited until it was close by and fired again at it when its massive fist was about to hit him. Once again, the shot struck the Blitz's shroud and unlike before, the Blitz didn't stop its attack, forcing Dante to leap away before the attack made contact.

Dante quickly looked around and saw everyone scrambling for cover from the Blitz as its attack had hit a wall and knocked a good chunk of it all over the place, making them all back away as quickly as they can. "Why don't we take this outside, big boy?" Dante taunted and leapt as high as he could, going through the huge hole that the demon had made in the ceiling. He blasted the Blitz again with the Coyote-A to make sure that its attention was still on him.

He certainly didn't have to worry about that for as soon as he had leapt, the Blitz immediately followed, the bullet missing its mark as Dante had aimed for the spot the Blitz had been standing at, not at the blinding fast creature that had now zipped up into the air.

Dante had just barely landed on whatever was left of the roof just as the Blitz made its appearance right behind him and lashed out with a swipe of its arm. Dante had just barely sensed it in time and pulled out Rebellion to block it. He knew that blocking its attack with its shroud still up was stupid seeing how he'd just get shocked from touching it, but he'd rather get a good jolt than be knocked off the building.

Dante hissed in pain from the jolt of the attack, but thankfully for him, he was able to get into a blocking stance in time so that he wasn't knocked back too much from it. He had only skidded back several feet from the blocked hit rather than several meters if it had actually struck.

He took hold of the Coyote-A again and began to charge it up with demonic energy, getting ready to blast the Blitz in the face with a nice old charged shot. He moved towards the edge of the building and jumped off, the Blitz in pursuit.

Dante landed in the parking lot with a nice, quiet landing, but that was quickly replaced with a rough one by the Blitz as Dante rolled out of the way as the creature in question landed hard, its intent having been to crush Dante flat underneath.

Dante quickly got up and whistled, getting the Blitz's attention, not that he needed to. The Blitz reverted to bolt form and charged straight at him. Dante pulled up the shotgun to shoot it, but just as he did so, the Blitz suddenly changed direction and went to the right, moving under Dante's arm. It came to a sudden stop next to him, Dante's back more or less being directly exposed to the demon and the demon took this opportunity to lash out with a fierce punch.

Dante let out a small yell of pain as this time the fist connected. He went flying, but he was able to flip around in mid flight and blast the Blitz right in the face. The shroud crackled intensely as the shot hit it and for a brief second, it flickered. Dante had no doubt that another charged shot or two would bring the shroud down.

However, he knew that doing that would take a while. Although this Blitz was just as fast as any of the other Blitz he's encountered before, it possessed a ferocity far greater than theirs and appeared to be much more cunning than the other ones; normally, they'd just zip around the place and blindly strike, but this one seemed to be trying to keep him on his toes to prevent him from attacking and the dodge maneuver just now was definitely something new.

"Heh, I guess old dogs can learn new tricks," Dante commented as he landed. He stood to his full height, charging the Coyote-A up again. The Blitz growled, it being able to hear the crackling coming from the gun. It took several steps forward before moving in a zig-zag pattern.

Dante smirked; now this was something that he definitely recognized from before. However, the stunt it had pulled just now had made him a bit more cautious so he didn't try anything that he normally would've done. He watched as the Blitz kept moving back and forth between places, it getting closer almost every time before backing away. Dante had to give it credit; it was a hell of a lot smarter than its brethren.

Eventually, the Blitz seemed to grow tired of waiting for Dante to make a move so it lunged straight at him, going down low to try and take down Dante's legs. But the devil hunter had seen the attack coming and leapt over it and shot it right in the back as it past underneath him. He had charged this shot up more than the previous one and so with this shot, the Blitz's shroud fell.

As soon as it did, the Blitz skidded across the ground, the shroud disappearing having sapped it of some of its strength. Dante didn't waste this time given to him. At speeds rivaling the Blitz, he drew Rebellion from his back and charged straight at the fallen demon.

The Blitz had just barely got to its feet when it roared in pain as Dante slashed it right across its massive back. It tried to turn around, but Dante kicked it hard so that it tumbled forward. He jumped into the air and did his Helm Breaker. The sword connected hard with the upper back of the Blitz, eliciting another roar from it, but before Dante could pull back and attack again, the Blitz quickly rolled over, knocking Dante down in the process.

It leapt on top of him and tried to bite the devil hunter's face off with its sharp teeth, but Dante brought up Rebellion in time to stop it. The Blitz thrashed around, trying to get past the sword, but to no avail. Dante kicked it in the stomach to try and knock it back, but doing it from such a close distance prevented him from putting much power behind the attack.

Nevertheless, he tried again and once more after that before delivering a painful elbow to the Blitz's jaw. This time, it got up and staggered back slightly. It growled and Dante began to see sparks of red surrounding the demon. It had finally had enough and was about to go on its suicide run.

Dante wasn't about to let that happen. He launched himself at the creature and slashed it across the face horizontally before bringing Rebellion up to slice it across the chin. This last attack stunned it enough for Dante to summon Pandora while it took a few steps back from the two powerful slashes.

"Here's a trick you can play for me, Sparky junior. Play dead," Dante said as he switched the deadly briefcase into one of his favorite forms for it: PF398: Revenge. Once the briefcase had transformed into its laser cannon form, Dante wasted absolutely no time in firing it. A massive blast shot out and struck the Blitz in the face at point-blank range.

Once the blast dissipated after a few seconds, Dante saw that the demon's head had been completely vaporized, barely anything left of the neck, which demonstrated how powerful the beam was. The Blitz's body stood perfectly still for a moment until Dante tapped it in the chest and knocked the body over. He sighed. "Well, I gotta give it props. It put up a better fight than its dumb cousins," he commented aloud.

"True, but it makes a big mess of things too." Dante turned to see Lady walking out of the mall. "Then again, whenever you fight, things always get trashed," she said with a bit of a smirk.

Dante snickered. "Aw, you couldn't do anything in this situation so you try to insult me," he said playfully.

Lady sighed. "Well excuse me for not being able to react to a demon that literally strikes like lightning. Besides, someone had to stay behind to help keep everyone calm and that isn't something you're good at," she said, that last bit meant as a jab against Dante.

Dante raised an eyebrow. "And just how is everyone doing right now? Anyone shit themselves?"

"They're fine, but they're very shook up. Obviously. Takashi and the others are trying to help that policewoman keep the mall people calm for now. But it's not as if they'll know right away that the Blitz is dead now. And when I do tell them that, they're going to want an explanation," Lady explained.

Dante groaned; he hated having to explain things to people, especially ones like them, what with their state of mind to begin with and all. "I'll be the one to do the talking," Lady said, making Dante smile to himself, but Lady killed whatever relief that he had just felt. "Meanwhile, we can't just leave the Blitz's body here to rot. It'll just freak out the people and that's the last thing they need."

"And what about it? You want me to drag on out of here?" Dante asked. He had said that as a joke, but the look Lady gave him said to him that that was exactly what she wanted. He sighed. As much as he hated to admit it right now, Lady had a point.

Grumbling to himself, he walked over to the Blitz's corpse and picked it up, heaving right over his shoulders. "Sure wish the damn thing had exploded this time, save me the trouble of dragging its ugly ass anywhere," he thought aloud.

As he began to walk away, he noticed that many of Them had been slowly making their way across the huge mall parking lot towards them, undoubtedly because of the noise he and the Blitz created.

Repressing the urge to sigh, Dante jumped as high and as far as he could, the Blitz's dead weight not slowing him down at all. He slammed noisily into the top of a car near the crowd of Them, drawing their attention to him rather than head closer to the mall. "That's right, uglies, let's play follow the leader," Dante said, leaping off of the car and onto another one, this one farther away from the mall than the first one.

Lady watched as Dante did this until he and the most of the zombies were out of sight. She sighed. "Well at least we won't have to worry about the zombies for a while now," she commented to no one in particular, knowing that Dante will definitely keep them all occupied with the noise he was now making. She had to give him credit for one thing: he really knew how to get attention, be it for good or bad.

She headed back inside the mall, careful not to accidently bump into a part of the barricade that covered up the doors. The last thing she wanted was to test how good the zombies' hearing was and have them come back.

However, as soon as she walked in, she found herself surrounded by a few of the mall survivors. "Just what the hell is going on here?" One of them, a lady, practically roared.

"What was that thing?" Another of them said.

Takashi and Kohta, who had apparently been watching over them beforehand, came up to them, Takashi getting in front of Lady and gently pushing the people back. "Alright, alright, I know you want answers, but this isn't the way to get them," he said, trying to reason with them to get them to stand down a bit.

Lady looked a bit thankful for the assist as she didn't want to have to restrain them herself. That would've been time wasted and if the Blitz's appearance meant anything, time may very well be of the essence. She just had this bad feeling that more crazy shit would be going down very soon and she wanted everyone to be aware of this just in case. Better safe than sorry as they always say.

At first, the mall survivors were uncooperative with Takashi and Kohta, but after another moment or two, they finally seemed to give up and back away for now. "Thanks for the help," Lady said to them.

"No problem," Takashi replied with a small smile. Then his expression grew serious. "So is that demon….?"

"It's dead. Dante is hauling its body away somewhere," Lady answered.

Takashi let out a sigh of relief. "That's good," he said.

Kohta nodded in agreement. "But just what kind of demon was that? It looked much more vicious than any of the others we've come across so far," he pointed out.

Lady faced him. "That was a Blitz. A demon of a higher caliber than the ones you've seen so far. As I'm sure you saw, it can turn into lightning."

He shivered. "Yeah, I saw that." He paused for a moment. "It was blind wasn't it? It relied on sound to move, just like Them?"

Lady nodded. "Yeah. It'll immediately lock on to whatever makes a sound and by any sound, I mean any sound. If the sound came from a living thing, then it won't hesitate to attack with everything its got."

"Sounds pretty damn vicious," Takashi commented. It certainly looked vicious too when he saw it move; the thing was like a berserker.

"It is and its aggressiveness makes it a very dangerous one to fight and that's not even taking into account its speed and strength. However, it can't discern between humans and its fellow demons so sometimes it ends up attacking its comrades." Lady sighed, knowing that not long from now she'd have to explain this again along with everything else to the others.

Takashi and Kohta started walking back to where everyone else went as soon as the Blitz had left, Lady following right behind them. "Is that so? Well, that's a bit of an advantage then," Kohta said.

"Yeah. But I'd rather not have to see one of those again," Takashi muttered to himself, but Kohta and Lady heard him anyway. They both chuckled a bit.

They walked the rest of the way in silence until they got to a big, open restaurant in the food court. Everyone was gathered there. Saya, Rei, Saeko, Shizuka, Alice, and the mall survivors were all waiting around for them, some of them having looks of fear or concern upon their faces.

As soon as Kohta, Takashi, and Lady were within sight, they all looked up at Lady, expecting an explanation. Lady sighed. "Maybe I should've tried to drag the body away instead," she thought to herself. She sat down in the closest chair and almost immediately, the mall survivors moved closer. Trying not to sigh again, Lady waited until she was sure they weren't going to start yelling out questions. Then she began to speak.

Meanwhile, Dante was now several blocks away from the mall, still carrying the Blitz's corpse. He was busy knocking down and sometimes killing off the zombies that followed so he didn't know how far he was just yet.

He had just sliced a zombie straight down the center with Rebellion, keeping his distance somewhat so that its blood wouldn't stain his clothes, when he noticed that he was now finally alone. Looking down the street he had just came from, he saw that it was littered with the cleaved bodies of many of Them.

Dante snickered. "They sure ain't like their cousins in Twenty Eight Days Later," he remarked as he took in the sight of the now blood spattered street. He didn't know that blood could fly out of the human body so easily when it was basically dead already.

Looking down at his sword, he saw that some blood and pieces of fragile bone had gotten on it. Giving Rebellion a quick shake to get it all off, Dante looked around for a place to put down the Blitz's body. He was amazed at how hard it was to find a relatively big place to put it at.

Normally, instead of playing the role of undertaker, he'd just blow the body to bits and be done with it, but then if he did, the noise would just attract more of the undead and while he could cut his way through them all day, there were better things to do with his time. That was the only reason why he didn't just whip out Pandora again to finish the job.

He walked down the street further until he had finally come across a dumpster big enough to fit the massive demon in. "About damn time," he thought.

Walking up to it, he lightly kicked open the lid and as soon as it flew open, Dante dropped the demon's corpse right in, the dead weight of it being enough to make the entire dumpster shake violently. The lid slammed shut of its own accord as a result. However, it didn't close all the way due to an arm sticking right out. At first Dante thought about pushing the arm inside, but decided against it.

"Not like it matters. Hell, maybe it'll help keep the rats full so that people won't have to bitch about them ever again," he said to himself.

He was about to start making his way back to the mall, but he then stopped mid-step. He had heard something, like a blade being dragged. He sighed, figuring that it was just another Scarecrow. However, as he turned around to where the sound was coming from, he heard another one just like that and then another one. A few seconds later, he was hearing at least several blades beings dragged.

Normally, he'd be feeling like his cocky self, but he didn't right now. Something was off about the blades. Normally, he'd be able to hear the lumbering footsteps of the Scarecrows, but not this time and that was odd. He figured that the Scarecrows were either a hell of a lot lighter than before or that they finally stopped acting so damn klutzy. "Or it's something else entirely," Dante thought.

He decided to wait it out, let them come to him. The sounds grew louder as they got closer. Dante wasn't even remotely intimidated by the sounds, which couldn't be said about other people. If anything, he grew a bit impatient.

However, before he could say anything snarky to whatever was approaching, he finally saw something. The sight he saw made his eyes widen in surprise. Coming from around the street corner was one of the many rotting zombies that infested the city. However, it was unlike any of the other undead roaming around. This one had some slight characteristics that reminded Dante of Scarecrows. Its left arm seemed to have split open, a blade sticking out from the open spot, coated in its own blood. One of the zombie's legs looked a little twisted, looking more like that of a Scarecrow demon's as well. Parts of its chest and face also seemed to have taken on the looks of a Scarecrow's 'skin', pieces of rag-like material covering small bits of face.

Dante snorted in disgust; he could've sworn that just now the rag-like pieces of flesh moved as if something was underneath it. he stared at the strange thing before him before remembering that there were more scraping sounds. Looking over to the corner, he saw more zombies with Scarecrow-like qualities just like the one in front him approach. Some of them groaned, their voices sounding like a cross between their original voices and the guttural sounds of the Scarecrow demons.

"Well… this is new," Dante said to the approaching bunch, for once unable to come up with anything witty.

The strange new breed of zombies merely groaned in response. Dante took this time to count how many there were. "Seven total," he summarized.

No sooner than he counted did the one at the front of the group launched itself at Dante. Dante, while having not expected it to be capable of such speed now, was still far faster than it could ever possibly be. The demonified zombie swung down its blade arm at Dante, but the devil hunter easily parried the attack and responded with the draw of the Coyote-A. he took aim at its head and pulled the trigger, blowing its entire head right off.

Dante watched as its blood spattered across some of the other new zombies along with some of the same black liquid that Scarecrows had as well as parts of whatever was left of its human skull.

Dante snickered; while these new zombies seemed faster and - judging by the force of the swing just now – stronger than the normal ones, they still had the exact same weakness: the head.

Dante, not wanting to prolong this and also wanting to let the others know of this rather startling development, charged straight at the remaining six. As he came in close, two of them ran forward to meet him head on and tried to slash his head off. Whether or not this attempt of theirs was an intentional form of payback for their fallen brethren or not was something Dante would never know, but he didn't care. He ducked under their arms, the blades just barely missing the top of his head. Turning around suddenly, he pulled Rebellion from his back and swung with both hands, slicing their heads horizontally in two.

As the top part of their heads slid off to the ground with a sickening squish, Dante placed Rebellion behind him in time to stop another one from stabbing him. Without turning to face it, Dante pulled out Ivory in his left hand and fired several times into the demonified zombie's face. Some of the black liquid and blood flew onto Dante's coat, but he didn't pay it any mind right now.

The remaining three then surrounded Dante, one covering his right side while the other was about to attack from his left. Meanwhile the last one, which had its blade protruding from its knee, jumped into the air to try and lobe Dante's head off.

Dante reached out to the one above him and grabbed it by its blade. Pulling it hard, he swung it around in a big circle, smashing it hard into the other two. He let go as soon as he heard their bodies hit each other. The zombies flew and slammed into and through a nearby wall.

Dante waited several seconds to see if it had done the trick, but saw that it hadn't; they were still moving around. However, they had hit the wall very hard and seemed to have some trouble getting back up due to the blades that replaced one of their limbs as well as the new form of their feet.

Dante stood there, watching them struggle to get up before finally walking up to them and whipping out Ebony and Ivory. Without any hesitation, he opened fire, blasting away the upper parts of their head.

He watched their bodies slump to the ground right after that and slowly began to walk away, trying to fully process what he had just seen. Somehow, these zombies were able to gain demonic qualities, thereby boosting their overall power. While not enough to pose more of a threat to Dante or even Lady, Dante knew that if there were more of these things, then things could become hectic.

"Well…. Fuck," Dante said. Sighing, he began to make his way back to the mall, wondering just how Lady and the others would take this news.

And there we go! Hope that you guys liked the battle between Dante and the Blitz. I know that it did seem somewhat easy for Dante at some parts, but given how he casually reacted to the Blitz in the DMC4 cutscene in which it was introduced, I figured that a fight between them would turn out like that.

And I please let me know what you think of these new versions of zombies too. From the get-go I never planned to make demons the main baddies of the whole fic as some of you have pointed out that that is somewhat overdone in other fics, a point that I wholeheartedly agree on. Nevertheless, I do hope my solution to avoiding the problem of doing that particular cliché is one that you liked so really, please let me know what you thought of the demon-zombies.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter and please be sure to review.