A New Home
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry belongs to people who are not me. I am making £0.00 out of this fic; it is written purely because I had some Dante angst.
Rating: PG-13
For all my reviewers, who without I would have surely given up a long time ago.
Chapter Four
"Wait, did Vergil just call me a butthead?" Dante turned. The door might have vanished, but the windows hadn't. he hammered on the window, he could see the street outside, but no sound came through.
Lady walked up to the window he was pounding on and looked right at him, her face smooshed up to the glass. But she paid him no mind. Dante frowned. It didn't feel like she was being rude; it felt more like she couldn't see him.
Typical Vergil, this was a security thing. He'd want windows for light, but wouldn't want any random person on the street peering in. This had Vergil's paranoia plastered all over it.
"So, this is the house that Vergil's neurosis built, huh?" Dante turned to look at the mansion sprawling before him. "Spacious."
He walked forward, so far, so good. Vergil had plainly decorated the building, but he rushed the job in a fit of pique, so it was hardly his best work. At the end of the hallway, the space opened out into a wide room. An ornate stairway led to a mezzanine floor which circled the room, almost like an upstairs hallway but open to the ground floor.
"Don't know what all the fuss was about," Dante huffed, kicking the wall, testing its strength. It held against a gentle kick, so he tried harder. The plaster cracked, but nothing fell down and his foot didn't go through the stone. So, it had to be pretty solid. "This place seems safe enough." As if by saying the words aloud summoned disaster, the floor shook. But then stilled. "Ok, so we've got some structural issues."
The floor rumbled again. Part of the mezzanine floor crumbled and fell. Dante pretended not to see the black smoke emanating from the rubble.
Dante swore, Vergil deliberately built this house as shit as possible just so he wouldn't have to build it properly. Was a lazy asshole. If Dante could summon buildings from nowhere, he'd do it. Think of the money he'd save on shop repairs. Vergil was just a bum.
Dante kicked the rubble, but only in annoyance, not at all to murder the strange smoky tentacle.
"What the hell is that!" Nero said suddenly behind Dante and making him jump.
"Your dad being a deliberately bad craftsman so we won't ask him to build a house. What you doing here? You ask him to do something so he threw you in the here too?"
"No," Nero was looking around, eyes wide. "Um, Dad said that you attacked the house, so it went into 'intruder mode'" Nero made air quotes.
"I didn't attack it." Dante snapped. "I tested its structural integrity." Nero gave him a bullshit look. "I kicked it a bit." Dante paused, and a grin spread over his face. "Aww, you came in to save me."
"Hardly," Nero scoffed. "I came in because I think Vergil will let me out again. I have my doubts about you. He's pretty pissed."
"He's always a little pissed at me," Dante muttered. The smoke was getting worse. "Hey if intruder mode is filling the place with smoke, then it's doing a great job."
"We should go. That stuff smells pretty rank." Nero pulled on Dante's arm. Dante yanked it back.
"Hell no, I want to look around."
"It's just a-" Nero started, but Dante interrupted.
"Your dad built this in a momentary fit of grumpiness. If it's cool, imagine what he could do if he actually put some effort in. We need to go look around so we can build a good argument. Now come on." Dante started walking. As he did, he pulled his phone out and started taking pictures.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Evidence." Dante smirked. "Mr Smarty-pants can't stand up against all of us and I'll use pictures to get the girls on side."
"That's kind of smart." Nero admitted, following his uncle as he strode through the hall. He glanced back at the rubble, still spewing black smoke. It smelt like the clyphod, but different, not biological in the way the plant had, but demonic. "So, the way dad was talking, he made it sound like a house he raised would be a portal to the demon world?"
"Nah," Dante snapped a photo of a pleasingly shaped archway. "The Yamato does the portal thing. He didn't use the sword to build the house, ergo no portal."
"Oh, wow, this place is enormous."
Nero glanced down the hallway they were heading into. The walls were bare, but lined with doors. The windows were thin and tall and looked out into a barren courtyard big enough to be labelled a park. Nero opened a door. The room on the other side was empty, wood looking floors and bare walls, but it was big and there were at least ten of them in the hallway alone. There had been two hallways in the north direction, two in the south and the same upstairs. That was at least 40 rooms.
"Yeah, Vergil always liked the finer things in life. I'm surprised he put up with slumming it with me for so long." Dante continued kicking in doors and taking pictures.
"I'm thinking you might be right." Nero muttered. "If he can make something like this on a whim, then just imagine."
Just as Nero was coming around to Dante's way of thinking, the floor rumbled again. Fragments of plaster fell from the wall, revealing writhing black and blue energy beneath.
"Eww," Dante laughed. "It's a Cthulhu house."
"What is that?" Nero was half tempted to touch it.
"Demonic energy made flesh." Dante did poke it. Blue sparks zapped out at him and he put his injured fingers n his mouth. "Virgil's special brand of demonic energy." He held out his injured hand to Nero and red energy cracked across his palm. "We've all got it."
"So, I could…"
"One day yeah, ask you dad to teach you. He's better at that crap than I am, don't tell him I said that. He can make it do what he wants as and when. Mine responds to how I'm feeling."
"That's why he can build houses and you can't?" Nero still couldn't take his eyes off the writhing wall. He reached out and touched it. The wall didn't zap him.
"Daddy's boy," Dante muttered. Nero shivered as the wall fizzed against his hand. A small purple spark spat out of his arm, making him jump and pull away. "See, you've got some too. You're is just baby power at the moment."
"Neat." Nero turned his arm over in front of him, looking to see if he could pull any more of the purple looking sparks out.
While he was watching, he glanced down, noting the black smoke had followed them and was curling around his ankles. The smell was back too.
"This is gross Verg!" Dante yelled at the ceiling. "You made your house out of tentacles and farts when bits of it fall off." He snorted. "No wonder you didn't want to do this."
"This feels really-" Nero was cut off as one tentacle in the wall lashed out suddenly. It cracked across Dante's shoulders, sending the older hunter flying. More tentacles lashed out, erupting out of the wall all down the corridor. Everywhere black smoke had spread, it drew tentacles out. They spread like a mesh of wire and for a moment it put Nero in mind of the mission impossible style films where a thief had to get through a laser tripwire alarm system.
The tentacles stilled before as one spasmed hard.
"Oh, shit." Dante muttered just a moment before the blue sparks rained down from the tentacles into the smoke and erupted into flame.
"Oh." Nero managed before his body took over and he crouched, making himself as small as possible. His devil burst out of him the moment he felt the heat on his skin. Power enveloped him, protecting him from the worst of the fire. Thankfully, the smoke was a quick fuel source. It burned hot as hell but lasted only seconds.
But seconds were still enough to kill anything that wasn't a high-level demon.
Certainly enough to kill humans.
"Fuck's sake!" Dante, in his high devil form, yelled. "I only kicked a bloody skirting board."
"We need to go." Nero reached for his uncle, drawing the demon's attention to the smoke pouring in anew.
"Fine." Dante huffed, opening his wings and hurling himself forward through the tentacles. They gave instantly under his force, spewing blue sparks as they snapped. Nero followed on Dantes heals. The more damage Dante did, the worse the defences got. Chunks of floor and wall erupted, spewing more and more black smoke, which erupted into flames. By the time they reached where they had both entered the house, the whole place was a blue fireball.
There still wasn't a door, but Dante's high devil form didn't need doors.
Nero skidded to a stop in the street, feeling flames snuff out behind him.
"Asshole," Dante released his form, returning to a far more human appearance.
"I tried to warn you." Vergil said. "Anything I make will be demonic. Demonic reacts badly to threats and violence."
"You're saying if one of the kids, I don't know scuffed a carpet that would happen?" Nero tried not to picture it.
"Or bumped hard into a wall, maybe yell a little too loudly. Demonic energy isn't smart, it doesn't think it just reacts and my particular brand of demonic energy is… sensitive to perceived threats."
"It didn't hurt me when I touched it." Nero smirked.
"But it didn't care that it might have murdered you when Dante pissed it off."
"Point."
"So," Lady was peering inside the wreckage. "Contractors it is."
"I'm still ending them after it's finished." Vergil crossed his arms.
"How about a mind wipe?" Lady offered. "That sounds like something you could do."
"That many contractors, all with no memory, would raise suspicion."
"So would that many deaths!" Nero snapped.
"How about," Dant held up a hand. "We use so many that none of them know the complete picture? We get what we can get made off site and shipped in?"
"That's not a bad idea." Nero said.
"I got it from a movie." Dante grinned.
End Chapter
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