Heart's Burial

by Convulsion

Power. That's all that matters to him, and all that matters here, surrounded by the strongest of Earth and creatures from Hell. He should feel at home here, shouldn't he? Well, he doesn't.

8. Burn

The wind whistled in an eerie scenery, abandoned, and forgotten.

The hoot of an owl somewhere around here cut through the night breath, like the full moon cut through the shadows sustained by tall and not-so-tall trees.

The cicadas sang beside the asphalt road, the single line that pierced their forest, part of the proof that humans stepped foot in this place, at some point.

But humans were not stepping foot here, at least not as often as they used to; where a lively highway that would see countless cars drive through once existed, there was now a broken path, cracked like the skin of an alligator, with grass threads growing from the cracks. The only things that it would consistently see were insects, mostly the ants that traveled busily between breaking marks. There was also the occasional wildlife from the surrounding forest, animals that would grow curious enough to explore it, like deer, foxes, or even a lone bear.

Oh, and the road would also see fireflies.

The fireflies kept the place somewhat alight with their twinkling glow now that the highway lampposts couldn't. The muggy nights of summer would summon them to virtually every place with trees and grass.

It was unlikely anyone would want to come here and see their show.

(Yes, unlikely, but not impossible.)

A lax gait, footsteps without a trace of apprehension.

An indifferent gaze partially hidden by black bangs, no shits given for the current state of this area or the intense darkness, a sign of how late it was.

No, none of that.

The tunnel was there, not too far now. The circular void at the end of the road awaited her, pitch-black.

Her expectations were kept low, but her readiness to enter it was not. It would never be when it came to this.

The meters and the minutes went by, and soon, she found herself standing still, inches from the veil of total darkness under the tunnel's ceiling. Neither the moonlight nor the fireflies would follow her there.

Her eyes went momentarily to the fallen utility pole beside her, cradled by the grass and supposedly damaged by time and a lack of maintenance. Then, she gazed at the torn cordon tape that hung from brick walls, the evidence of human law, and the restriction of this remote area. It made her think…

(How many had already trespassed it before her?)

A tarantula crawled out of the tunnel.

The woman watched it move around until it disappeared into the grass behind her, then forgot about it as she set foot into the tunnel.

She didn't bring a flashlight with her, but it wasn't needed. The deepening darkness hardly hindered her view, somehow. It'd always been like that.

The sight of nature taking over a man-built road was replaced by an artificial curved passage, with broken light bulbs peeking at her from above, and useless wires longing to touch the concrete underfoot, but only managing to graze the graffiti-stained brick walls at best.

Some beer cans and broken wine bottles had been tossed carelessly, accompanied by metal screws and a car tire, scratched, and bitten everywhere.

As the sounds from the outside were gradually muffled by her advance between the brick walls, the woman began to take vague notice of the silken silver threads above, and strangely enough, beneath her feet.

The spiders above were still.

The asphalt floor was slowly disappearing as she walked forward, consumed by the natural flooring of earth, where many nickel-sized, silk-adorned holes would fill her view.

The woman halted her pace completely, staring at something that caught her attention for real.

There was a tarantula outside a hole, feasting on what looked like a thumb.

A human thumb.

Beside it, a camera lay, utterly crushed.

Her indifference lessened, and a fierce scowl settled on her face.

The strap around her — that kept her guitar case glued to her back — was gripped tightly in her hand. "Guess this might not be a waste of time after all."

The woman resumed her walk.

The path widened as she advanced, less of a tunnel and more of a broad cave now, with a lot of distance between the walls, the ground, and the ceiling. Moreover, the walls were not made of bricks anymore, and neither was the ceiling, with broken lights nowhere to be seen. There were many piles of rocks instead.

The path showed her more and more stuff that belonged to humans as she moved further. The woman saw pieces of vehicles, a driving wheel, the carcass of a pulsar, bike handles, mirrors, and broken glass. The woman saw torn clothes lying on the ground that was so swallowed by silk…

…and then she saw bones, with some flesh still attached to them, with spiders crawling through them.

A tarantula emerged from a skull using the hole meant to hold a right eye.

At that moment, the woman stopped walking completely.

A shiver ran down her spine. Her heart rate accelerated.

(Something was here. Something was coming.)

The earth shook and cracked.

The spiders and tarantulas abandoned their homes, be they white-colored webs or holes protected by silk. They came together inside the cave, an insectoid crowd that crawled through the earth, the cave walls, and the rocky ceiling... They were all headed in the same direction:

To the cave's exit.

But the woman knew that whatever scared them wouldn't wait for them to abandon the area, no.

The smoke arose from the cracks on the cave floor. The temperature increased. The spiders rushing past her were too many, didn't let her see the ground, but she didn't need to.

The earth under her feet became extremely hot for a split second, and it was all she needed.

The woman leaped forward just in time to avoid the lava geyser that erupted, powerful enough to greedily lick the top of the cave; needless to say, the insects crawling over the spot she once stood on were consumed by the molten hot attack.

Meanwhile, she landed on top of a rather tall pile of rocks, adorned with silk and bones.

The woman squatted, arms on her knees, curious eyes set on the geyser source of the bright light that provided the cave with momentary, fiery illumination colored red, like an extremely powerful bonfire.

The geyser died off in seconds, and as soon as it did, a huge ivory-colored, clawed paw emerged from the hole opened by the eruption. It gripped the edge of the hole; the noise of the earth breaking was followed by the supernatural echo of a hissing voice:

"I missed! How unexpected!"

An arachnid the size of a truck crawled out of the hole.

The woman looked at it, and it, in turn, looked at her with its six black eyes.

And they appeared so utterly empty, dead.

She frowned.

(No, not the one she was looking for…)

Oh, well, it's dead meat anyway.

"Your speed is commendable… Human!" the tarantula-resembling monster exclaimed with paws raised. "It matters little, still. Your powerless flesh is bound to perish the same way those who came before you did! You shall regret invading my home!"

"…Your home, eh?" The woman scoffed. "Don't make me laugh, spidey! This tunnel's always been ours. You stole it from us, and I'm here to take it back."

"A DOOMED INTENTION!"

The arachnid lunged at her, mouth open and hot fangs itching to sink into her flesh.

Her first response was to toss her guitar case whirling like a boomerang past the monster.

Her second response was to leap at the arachnid, fearless, and perhaps a little insane.

The distance between them was closed in an instant, and right when the fangs were about to tear into her when clawed paws were about to pierce her and never release her, she put a hand on the arachnid's head.

And she vaulted over it.

Her free hand caught the guitar case that returned to her mid-vault.

The rapid, downward spin she performed ended with her brutally slamming her guitar case against the arachnid's large, swollen abdomen.

The strike launched the monster straight into the soil, so fast that the barrier of sound was broken with a boom and so violently rocks were propelled away from the crash spot as dust arose from it, a broad cloud covering it.

It all happened in a second.

The woman landed not too far from the growing dust cloud, facing away from it with a somewhat indifferent expression.

"You…"

The arachnid emerged from the dust cloud, crawling to the woman at speeds no animal that size should have been able to achieve, not from this world, anyway. "YOU DARE STRIKE ME?!"

The woman spun around and raised her guitar case to shield herself from the massive forepaws that attempted to crush her. The earth shook from the impact, and the soil gave in, allowing her feet to sink a bit.

"Heh, what's the matter? Don't tell me a human just hurt your lava-shittin' ass!" Her taunt was accentuated by the smirk on her face, clearly visible to the six black eyes.

It had the effect she sought.

"INSOLENT TRASH! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO ACT SO COCKILY!"

The arachnid leaned closer to bite her with searing fangs.

Her strength was focused on the right arm, to keep the guitar case up while she retired her other arm.

Her expression shifted to one charged with cruel aggression, and with a whirl of her hips, she slammed her left elbow against the arachnid's mouth.

The beast was pushed back at least ten meters, skidding until it collided with the burned-out carcass of a van. The vehicle remains collapsed under the arachnid's weight.

The woman gazed at the monster.

The sight of crimson threads falling non-stop from its mouth did not particularly please her, but it allowed her to know she delivered a rather damaging strike, especially considering the broken, steaming fang welcomed by the soil between them.

"Ah… H-How…?"

The arachnid spat, spat blood, the same blood that flowed under the shell over its body, visible through the gaps in it.

Then, the blood under the shell boiled, to the point it bubbled.

The blood that was spat evaporated.

The temperature in the cave started to increase, and steam was expelled from the gaps in the arachnid's ivory shell as it glared at the one who hurt it.

"HOW COULD YOU, A MERE HUMAN, HARM ME NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE?!" The arachnid's shrill, disbelieving cry echoed in the site and rumbled in her ears. "I WILL NOT ACCEPT IT! I REFUSE TO ACCEPT IT!"

Her eyes darted to the piles of rocks around them, that slowly melted alongside the silk and the bones. The spiders and tarantulas that hadn't yet managed to escape the wide cave suffered the same fate.

"I BELONG TO A DISTINGUISHED CLAN THAT HAS EXISTED FOR EONS, A SPECIES MEANT TO THRIVE IN THE UNFORGIVING FLAMES AND VOLCANOES OF THE FIRE HELL!" the monster roared, and the temperature kept increasing. "I WILL NOT ALLOW A LOWLIFE, PREY SUCH AS YOU TO BEST ME! MY EXISTENCE IS FAR GREATER THAN YOURS, IN SIZE AND STRENGTH!"

The woman knew she was playing with fire — and didn't care in the slightest — when she stuck her finger into her ear and scratched it a bit. "Keep tellin' yourself that."

Then, she brought her finger out and stared at the tip, a bored look on her face. "You still ain't nothin' but an oversized bug to me."

And the arachnid responded, but it wasn't with words.

The blood under the shell boiled until it evaporated completely.

The woman's eyes widened.

The arachnid's insides sparked for an instant.

Her hand dashed to the lock of her guitar case.

The arachnid released an earth-shaking diabolical roar, and as flames burst from within it, a sphere of molten rock almost as large as the creature itself was ejected from the monster's mouth, straight at the woman.

But she opened her guitar case in time.

The lava sphere was sliced in two with a rapid, downward slash.

The red-hot halves brutally struck the walls behind her, staining them with lava that failed the task set upon it. It took a moment for the arachnid to process what happened, and its confused voice was almost a whisper, "…Huh?"

The woman's left hand held the open guitar case.

The woman's right hand held the scarlet sword she used to bisect the lava sphere.

"Hey."

The arachnid's eyes abandoned the sword held by the woman and found her staring.

A rare sensation struck the monster, then. It couldn't be pinpointed, yet.

"I'm about to fuck you up real bad, but I wanna ask you something before I do it. You don't mind, right?"

The woman tossed the guitar case aside and aimed the red sword at the beast. The indifference in her gaze had been replaced by immense animosity. "Have you seen a sword like this before, used by any of your fellow freaks?"

The creature tried to form words, but it was trapped in the crystal-clear danger burning within those dark-blue eyes, in the way she so easily had sliced through its lava ball and her words that lingered, the fully confident promise to destroy the arachnid.

(Was it— Was it AFRAID? No.)

"Well?"

No! No!

The demon thought about itself.

The demon thought about its birth, the time it endured in the Fire Hell, the battles it survived, the species it belonged to, the world it belonged to, and the fact that humans were prey to the demons, nothing else.

To feel threatened by one…

To feel threatened by that sword, from which no demonic power came…

Ludicrous!

The pride managed to overwhelm the growing fear. The demon snarled:

"Do you believe I will just answer any inquiry residing in your head, foolish human? YOU HAVE DISRESPECTED ME!" The fire began to charge inside the demon again. "I WILL NEVER ANSWER ANYTHING YOU ASK!" The fire ran even hotter than last time. If a single lava ball couldn't eliminate her, then more would be needed. "THE ONLY THING I SHALL DO… THE ONLY THING YOU DESERVE… IS TO PERISH IN THE FACE OF MY MIGHT— "

The woman dashed forward, closing the distance between them at a shocking speed, no time to charge another lava sphere.

The woman slashed down.

The demon retreated in a panicked backward leap.

When it landed away from the woman, the demon felt it… Or rather, didn't.

"Wait, what…?"

The demon was supposed to have eight legs.

It could only feel seven now.

At the woman's feet, a large ivory forepaw lay, severed.

The shell covering it had failed to protect it as much as the demon had failed to avoid the wild slash, and now…

…now it was bleeding profusely from the right side, the side the forepaw used to be attached to.

A shrill cry escaped the demon as the pain sunk in with the realization.

The fire burst from the creature's back instinctively, out of control. "I-IMPOSSIBLE! MY LEG! MY LEEEEG!"

"Oops, my bad. I should've said I've got a short fuse."

The demon's eyes snapped to the woman.

"And, fuck, I don't like it when someone doesn't answer my questions."

Her expression hadn't changed.

The sword was dripping with blood now. "I'll ask again, spidey: have you seen a sword like this before? It's half of some huge-ass scissors, and I know a demon has the other half."

The woman took a step forward.

The demon was scared, and it immediately crawled to the nearby wall, climbing it. The shame it felt was silenced by the internal screams of fright that it suppressed.

The woman took another step forward, almost lazily, and gazed at the demon for a moment, thinking a bit.

Then a feral grin settled on her face. "Well?"

"D-DISAPPEAR!"

A fire beam erupted from the demon's mouth, an all-consuming attack.

It approached the woman faster than a bullet.

And it didn't matter.

Because she never planned to avoid it.

"WHAT?"

The woman — no, whatever that thing was — leaped right into the beam, letting the flames engulf it as it soared higher and higher in the shape of a black blur, practically swimming through it.

It burst out the beam, right in the demon's face, murderous and with the sword held beside it.

Absolute terror swallowed the demon.

"NO! GET— "

The beam ceased.

The sentence ended with choked noises.

The monster had stabbed the demon's mouth.

The red blade came out of the abdomen, encased in flames and blood that burned away. The shell couldn't keep it inside; the blade pierced the wall behind the demon, firmly stuck.

The flames coming from the demon's abdomen were extinguished.

"I warned you this time, dipshit."

The monster kept a small, human-resembling hand closed around the crescent-shaped hilt of the sword, hanging from it. There were tiny embers all over the black mid-length hair and the human clothes worn by it, and these flames refused to grow, as if afraid to do so.

The dark blue eyes with which it impaled the arachnid's soul were devoid of mercy, charged with unveiled and unending hatred.

"If you're not gonna answer me, just die. I can find others like you no problem."

The embers died within seconds.

The monster retired the sword from the demon's innards.

Then, with a single spinning slash, she decapitated the demonic arachnid.

---

Burn.

---

It was morning.

The sunlight was entering through the window.

The birds chirped outside the manor. It was the sound he'd woken up to. The old record player was spinning the vinyl record, to hear Legacy pleased his ears. Mama was in the kitchen, no doubt; he could smell the tea.

He was in the living room, on the couch, reading the book the old librarian had given him the other day.

It was so tranquil…

…and then…

"You always put that one!"

…then Dante came and replaced the Legacy vinyl record with the Thriller one.

The older twin sighed, internally. He didn't acknowledge Dante's presence, didn't look at him, bent on immersing in the quotes William Blake had bestowed upon the world, collected in this book, the possible meanings behind them, and the interpretations that—

"Vergil! Vergil!"

—that could be contemplated—

"You wanna know what I dreamed? You wanna?" Dante sat beside him, legs over the couch, back in the opposite direction where the backrest was. The eye's corner showed him all.

"Not really, no."

"I dreamed that I was riding a shark!"

"Ah."

They watched Jaws yesterday, hadn't they? Mama wasn't very pleased when she opened their dorm's door and saw a Great White staining the ocean water red with a person's blood and innards. Vergil didn't understand why, the shark was merely animatronic, and the blood was likely corn syrup, nothing real.

"But it wasn't any shark!" Dante declared, leaning closer to his older brother until he bumped his shoulders into Vergil's.

At last, Vergil gazed at him with mild irritation that contrasted with the awed look in his brother's pale blue eyes, so silly. Dante spread his hands wide above his head, gazing at the space between them. "It was like, ten times this big… No, a hundred! Two hundred! O-Or a thusand!"

"Thousand."

"Yeah! Yeah! Thousand! It was huge!" Dante said. "I think it was a… What was it… Uh… Ah, I got it! A Megalondon!"

"Megalodon. Carcharodon Megalodon."

"Yes, that! I was riding it! But you wanna know what happened next?"

Vergil, who unintentionally visualized his little brother atop the extinct beast, laughing while riding it like a surf table — surely because he had nothing better to do than bother the colossal animal — realized the stupid topic his mind had been allowed to stray to, shook his head, and turned away, eyes on the book pages. "No."

"Ah? Why not? I'm getting to the best part! A black whale even BIGGER than the Megalondon came outta nowhere and— "

"Shut up. I'm reading."

Dante then departed his eager attitude. "Oh, come oooon, Verge! You know reading is boring! My dreams are way better! I bet they're better than your dreams, too… I bet you read in your dreams!"

Vergil sent his little brother a blank stare. "…Leave."

At that, Dante showed him a devilish grin. "Nu-uh!"

Vergil turned away.

"I'm not leaving! I'm not leaving!" Dante repeated, childish. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"I'll pretend you don't exist."

"Ha! Okay… Then I'll have to show you I still exist!"

Vergil saw the kick coming to him, not with his eyes, but with instinct and experience. He responded with an attack of his own.

Vergil ended up with his younger brother's heel on his cheek, and Dante ended up with his older brother's knuckles on his cheek.

"Shee?" Dante said, too content to speak with his cheek pushed in. "I shtill exshist!"

Vergil slapped his brother's leg away and pounced on him. "Allow me to change that!"

It all became a mess, then.

Vergil didn't know how many punches and kicks were thrown, how many landed and how many didn't. He just knew he ended up with his body over the carpet, with a busted lip and a bloody nose.

"Damn you, Dante! This isn't over!"

The floor sunk around him when he pushed it down with his two bare hands. The blood rushed to his head as he rose, angry eyes darting to the couch. He was sure he'd see Dante there, cheekily reading his book while he was knocked down.

"Dante, leave my book alone! Dan— "

...

"—te?"

…

The birds no longer chirped.

The music had died.

Dante was gone, and to where Vergil didn't know. He just knew he took the sunlight with him.

The book lay on the floor, the floor that was stained red. It wasn't the red used in Jaws, this was real, as real as the woman below, as real as her broken body, as real as her golden-colored hair spread below, so long it touched his shoes.

---

His abrupt awakening was marked by a sharp intake of air.

His eyes burst open right at the same time.

The sight built by his brain was replaced by the one built by reality, a turned-off light bulb hanging from the concrete ceiling that a lone spider had chosen to live in, comfortable on the web woven in a corner above.

And Vergil stared, frozen.

He stared until his heartbeat slowed down. He stared until his tense muscles relaxed. He stared until the injection of reality cured his eyes of the sight that he had witnessed. He stared until his body and mind were convinced that what he had seen was but imagined, nothing real.

(Lies for painkillers.)

When tranquility finally descended upon him, Vergil sat up.

The pain coming from his abdomen was dull but continued to serve as a reminder of all that he went through in the past twenty-four hours. It made his attention shift from what he dreamed to what he lived, but considering the core memories that arose were related to his catastrophic loss and humiliation, he did not fully welcome this.

He really, really did not want to think of what he dreamed, though. He was lucky he woke up before the nightmare began.

It was then that Vergil blinked twice and spared a look around.

The living room and kitchen were darker than he recalled. He could still see the daylight shining through the two windows down here, although quite dim, and the small size of the windows did not help matters.

The sun hadn't set yet. It wouldn't be long before it happened, however.

…And Aikuro hadn't returned.

Vergil's senses, revitalized by the rest and the total digestion of demon flesh, did not pick up the sound of his breaths, or his pulse nearby. He was not here.

A scowl settled on Vergil's face.

"That fool…"

What little light covered the city would die soon. What was Aikuro doing right now? He needed to come back. There was no time to waste.

"Hmm."

Vergil looked deeper into the situation. The child Aikuro went to see, what happened to him… Perhaps something very troubling occurred. It wouldn't surprise Vergil, humans — and of course, human children — were fragile.

Or maybe Aikuro didn't go there in the first place and escaped him, intent on leaving him here, alone with the demons that would arrive upon nightfall. Perhaps he went to report to Satsuki, to inform her of his rapidly improving health and his plans to consume the demon population to harness more power.

Which was more likely?

The former had plausibility. The latter too. The man could be tending to a helpless, dying child, or the man could be stabbing Vergil in the back. Vergil was uncertain, and this uncertainty was what kept him from ripping Aikuro apart after he discovered he worked for Satsuki.

The man worked for her, for Honnoji Academy. The man could have poisoned him, taken advantage of his faded memories of last night. The man could have been sent to monitor him, the man…

…the man had given him food, and clothes. The man had retrieved his amulet, twice. The man had taken the time to explain his occupation here and offered Vergil information regarding the Elite Four, and Vergil doubted it was all a carefully crafted lie.

He even seemed happy when he discovered Vergil had faced the Elites in combat and survived.

Vergil did not trust him, but the more he thought about it, the less he thought he could be betraying him, and perhaps this was part of his plan, to make him doubt while he worked against him. Maybe Aikuro was an expert at this.

He was hiding something for certain. Why else would he aid him?

His train of thought took a different course when he heard the footsteps outside. Aikuro?

Vergil got off the couch and headed to the living room window.

It wasn't Aikuro.

It was the neighbor — not the blind old man he'd seen earlier, he was probably his grandfather. He looked like a fully-grown adult, into his thirties perhaps. He appeared to be checking something outside his house.

Vergil's stomach growled a bit, and a minor burning sensation that lasted for about two seconds caught him off guard. Huh?

The human shook his head, cursed, and stepped back into his house.

Vergil's curiosity grew when, after a few moments, a bright crimson barrier formed around the neighbor's house. He saw the man walk out to check it, smiling upon seeing the force field.

The force field faded, but if Vergil concentrated, he would still be able to see it.

The neighbor headed into his home and closed the door.

Meanwhile, Vergil headed into reflections: were all the humans here capable of casting magical barriers around their houses? The memories he had of that one powerless human running through the streets last night indicated otherwise, though the human might have known how to cast a field, and the field just happened to malfunction.

Vergil had his own dire experiences with field malfunctions.

Was Aikuro capable of casting a barrier, too? He guessed so; the man was supposed to teach others about demons, after all. It would make sense for him to know that.

This led Vergil to realize Aikuro's house was unprotected.

And the sun would be exiled by the moon, soon. It'd be his cue to leave this house and enter the nightscape conquered by demons. When that happened…

…would he stay here?

The half-demon thought about his next course of action; his talk with Aikuro was not over yet, after all, but the man hadn't come back, and the heavens were going from vermilion to black with each minute spent waiting for his return.

Is it worth it?

Aikuro did say he had a reason for lending him a hand, but even if he had, would it make a difference in the grand scheme of things? The retrieval of his Yamato, working as hard as he could to have it back, the slaughter of Kiryuin and her Elites — all that.

What value would Aikuro's response have regarding these things?

What would Vergil gain from having the answer?

Why did he wish so badly to understand the actions of a human, an inferior creature?

Why did he listen to his advice about staying here for a while and reading some books?! He could have spent that time in the sewers, consuming more demon flesh to take his body back to tip-top condition!

His stomach growled again.

POWER.

The more Vergil questioned himself, the more ridiculous he found this situation. He glanced at Aikuro's bookshelf, at the books carefully ordered by none other than the half-demon.

His confusion morphed into anger.

The only reason why he held back from tearing the bookshelf apart was that it would undo all the work he went through during the early afternoon. His clenched hands were so ready for it, still.

He'd made a complete fool of himself! He wasted — was wasting his time here, wasn't he?!

The Yamato was in enemy hands! The Yamato needed to be retrieved, but oh, look at all those books on the floor! It's of utmost importance that they are placed on the bookshelf! He should read one or two too, for some leisure time, forget about his plight and escape through the letters like a hopeless coward!

Fool!

Fool!

WEAKLING.

Vergil's accumulated fury started to slowly pour outwards in the form of demonic power, an aura of it that encompassed his body and made his hair and clothes float as if he were underwater.

The last image of his dream chose that very moment of mental frailty to return, to haunt him and remind him of his weakness, of why power was essential and little else mattered; a miserable worm lent him aid when he was wounded! It was humiliating! It was proof that his power was not enough! He shouldn't care about the reasons that Lowlife could've had for tending to his wounds, he should care about gaining more power, so he never went through the same again!

The sun was setting…

The sun was setting, and he was still here!

HUNGRY.

If he wanted to speak with the human, he could always return later, couldn't he? But not right now, not when he was in such dire need of power.

Under the command of relentless single-mindedness, what little patience and consideration he had for Aikuro shattered, and Vergil teleported outside the house.

As the heavens were swallowed by a darkness so deep no star could hope to shine through, and the moon loomed above as the only light to guide those below, Vergil leaped across rooftops, in a desperate quest to take back what was his.

The first step was abandoning the slums. He was convinced no demons remained here, neither above the surface nor below it. The Behemoth — considering the cannibalistic tendencies of the species — wouldn't have needed to go up if there were demons to feed on below.

But Vergil knew he'd find more if he went to the upper districts.

…

…About ten minutes later, Aikuro arrived home, in a hurry. He needed to cast a shield over his house.

The first thing he noticed was that his bookshelf was filled with books, ordered rather than spread across the house as he recalled them.

The second thing he noticed was that Vergil was nowhere to be seen.

---

The third level of the sewers was easy to break through, as Uzu expected. A thrill-seeker, he was far from pleased with this.

The fourth level was not a very different story. He would admit that the insatiable corruption that stained every wall made for a cool obstacle, what with the mass that tried to consume him and the tentacles that would arise from under the blood channels now and then, eager to catch him. The demons were a tad bit stronger and trickier to kill than the ones in the third level, too.

But, really, nothing to write home about.

Not to him, at least. He'd visited that area a few times in the past.

The fifth level was the worst because there were no demons there to oppose him, Cerberus was responsible for this; they were all either dead or alive but too damaged to even stand up, and since their healing factor was not as advanced as that of sentient devils, he knew they'd spend a good amount of time unable to do anything except wait for their cells to reconstruct.

The blood channels were also frozen, so the obstacle from the fourth level was removed.

To summarize, what would have been an extremely dangerous mission for the students below his rank ended up being a sleeping pill for him.

He supposed he couldn't blame Cerberus and the lesser demons that roamed underground. He'd gotten very strong while working for Lady Satsuki. Maybe he should've given the demons a handicap, to make things a tad bit funnier.

Well, too late for that.

He was already at the entrance to the chamber at the bottom of the sewer system.

The entrance was a hole of moderate size. The Elite Armor's sensors were hindered by the density of demonic power down here — the technicians needed to improve the sensors — but it hardly mattered…

…he was confident he'd find what he was looking for down the hole.

With an armor stained red and the need to shake the boredom off himself — which probably wouldn't happen, anyway — Uzu hopped down the hole.

The warrior landed on the floor. The surface did not crack.

Finally, inside the vast chamber, Uzu took in the sight of the colossal Hell Gate at the center of the room, with a height of over a hundred meters and a width of around fifty.

The color of the gate was a pristine white with beautiful, dragon-resembling paintings. An ominous light was being emitted behind the gate, shining through the small openings at its sides, below it, and above it. It was the only source of illumination that the room had.

"Ah, haven't seen this in a long time," Uzu said, smiling as memories he was fond of came to his mind. "Gamagori got so angry when I opened it without Lady Satsuki's authorization. I had so much fun fightin' him!"

Uzu sighed.

"All right, let's get down to business."

Uzu looked to the side and up.

He found a cocoon of ice, the size of a small house, hanging from the ceiling.

The red veins all over it pulsed, with a sound akin to that of a heartbeat but so loud it echoed in the whole chamber.

"Heya there, pooch! Been a while since we've seen each other!" Uzu said as if he were talking with an old friend. "C'mon, come down!"

The cocoon cracked.

An insane pressure filled the chamber.

Uzu grinned under the armor as more cracks began to appear over the cocoon and little pieces of it fell onto the ice floor.

As soon as the first shard touched the floor, the cocoon broke completely.

Cerberus fell from it.

The demon landed on the floor.

A tail frozen at the end waved behind the hellhound and then whipped the floor, provoking hideous cracks to spread around it and to Uzu.

The demon opened its two eyes.

"Hello, simian."

Uzu offered the demon a wave of his hand. "You look well, buddy."

The demon sat down, tail lightly tapping the floor in poorly concealed eagerness. "I am afraid I cannot say the same about you, what with that blasphemous armor you sport."

Uzu chuckled. "Hey now, don't hate on the armor! It's ssstylish and you know it!"

Cerberus sent him a skeptical stare.

"Anyway, where's Takeda?" Uzu asked, arms folded. His tone of voice remained light-hearted, but there was a little hint of something less than friendly in it. "I accidentally stepped on a frozen shit while on my way here. Was that him, or is he still inside your belly?"

"I am certain that I already digested and defecated him. I smelled nicotine on my last excrement."

"Ah, makes sense. Takeda was a smoker, always carrying cigarettes and a lighter everywhere he went. Was kinda ironic considering he used you to fuel his armor."

"Indeed."

The lines running through Uzu's helmet horns brightened.

"But I believe you did not come all this way just to ask me about him and speak about his unhealthy habits," Cerberus stated, with a slight growl to its otherwise calm voice.

"True."

Uzu cracked his neck, unfolded his arms, and started to walk toward the demon.

Cerberus did not move. The tail ceased tapping the floor.

"So, you killed Takeda. I feel happy for you, really," Uzu said. "But it was pretty much pointless, you know, as pointless as coming down here was."

Cerberus tilted the head to the side.

"Did you think you'd escape us if you killed your master and headed to the Hell Gate?" Uzu scoffed. "Please, we've done everything in our power to ensure valuable assets such as you are unable to free themselves of our control. If it weren't for that half-human half-loser dude, you wouldn't have been able to free yourself from Takeda in the first place."

The man stopped in front of the demon, and with his thumb pointed at the gate behind. "You couldn't break the shield, could you? Well, hate to be the one to break it to you, but it's reinforced and beyond what you can destroy, even after regaining the power you lost when you were bound to Takeda. If you were mature and had two more heads, maybe you'd been able to do so, but we both know you'll never reach maturity, not here."

Cerberus was silent.

"So, what's gonna happen now, mutt?" Uzu asked, with hands on hips, leaning forward and staring down the demon. "You gonna follow me to the academy, or will I have to break every bone in your body and take you there? I wanna bet on the latter; come on, be stupid, think you stand a chance, and fight me. I need some fun."

Cerberus remained silent.

It looked down, ears lowered as if intimidated.

Uzu quirked a brow underneath the armor.

Is it actually…?

"Ape…" Cerberus began. "I admit that most of your statements are correct: I will never reach adulthood, I failed to break the shield, and I certainly would not have been able to escape that lowly human without the aid of the half-breed. The shame I feel due to this is beyond measure."

Uzu listened.

"However, you are sorely mistaken when you say that it was pointless for me to kill that human."

Cerberus looked at Uzu.

The demon's mouth was open wide in an elated, disturbing toothy grin for the Elite to witness. A manic glee was visible inside the green eyes of the beast, and the creature's tail waved behind it, happier than it'd ever been.

"I. LOVED. KILLING. HIM."

A line of drool hung from the demon's mouth. "His innards served as the most sublime dinner I have had in years… His blood, oh, his blood! I can still remember the taste! But that is not the best part!"

Cerberus began to shake.

"He screamed so, so much. He would not shut up." The floor beneath Cerberus started to freeze as the creature's hold over its power slipped. "I could smell his fear, his despair, his powerlessness...! It filled my lungs, completely exquisite! And when his head was crushed under my paw…"

The creature inhaled, with eyes closed.

It stopped shaking.

The ice ceased expanding.

The monster's voice became tranquil, unsettlingly so:

"The bliss I experienced was unparalleled."

Uzu stared at the demon and blinked.

Then, he shrugged his shoulders. "Eh, to each his own."

The Elite lifted his leg.

The demon moved the tail.

The collision echoed in the chamber, as the end of the tail intercepted Uzu's roundhouse kick, inches from Cerberus' snout.

Uzu pushed himself off the tail, spinning with a reverse roundhouse that Cerberus hopped past. The demon swung the tail downward at Uzu's head and the latter caught it in his hand.

He released it and leaped back as soon as frozen spikes burst from Cerberus' flesh, intent on piercing him. The little beast landed on the floor and rushed toward Uzu, who tried to stomp on it.

Cerberus avoided the foot and snuck between Uzu's legs, wrapping the tail around one of them. The Elite lost his footing as the demon sped up and he was dragged through the floor by the sprinting canine.

Cerberus launched Uzu forward and stomped on the floor with a paw, then released an ice beam from the mouth.

The Elite spun mid-air, right in time to kick and break the ice skewer emerging from the floor under him before it could stab his back. The warrior proceeded to deflect the beam with his palm, only for the beam to move toward him from the left, faster.

Cerberus released a pair of viridian rays from the eyes, combining them with the beam.

Uzu responded with a shockwave coming from his armor, that overwhelmed both the twin rays and the ice beam. He put his arms forward in an x and protected himself from Cerberus' brutal tackle.

The inertia sent the Elite in a straight line to one of the chamber's walls. As this happened, Cerberus spun the tail thrice, sending twenty-seven small shards from the tail, all aimed at Uzu. Then the demon stomped on the floor.

Uzu swung his feet backward, let his heels touch the wall, and leaped from it as ice crawled through the ground and up the wall, bent on freezing him in place. He folded his arms, and in a showcase of extremely developed speed unleashed a barrage of kicks that shattered every single shard except the last one, which he caught between his index and thumb fingers and flicked right back at Cerberus.

The demon hopped backward, five meters away from the shard as the little thing hit the spot where it once stood. Upon impact, massive spikes erupted from the shard and spread all around, in a radius of close to five meters, stopping inches from Cerberus' snout.

The ice spikes crumbled almost immediately after creation.

Uzu landed halfway from Cerberus, behind the demon. He didn't look at it.

"Ah, been a while since I saw you do that. Takeda never used it."

The demon scoffed. It didn't look at Uzu either. "The fool lacked the skill to replicate it. Humans are worthless."

"If you say so…"

Uzu's horns sparked, and a little, nearly unperceivable light-colored green floated to Cerberus at high speed.

Cerberus coated its body in ice armor.

An explosion engulfed the demon. The shockwave reached the shield that covered the Hell Gate.

Uzu turned around.

The smoke and the green fire were dispersed by a wave of cold wind, revealing Cerberus' crumbling armor, revealing its hateful, bloodthirsty eyes as it turned around to face Uzu. "The same way I killed him, I shall kill you."

"We'll see about that!"

The Elite rushed to the demon, so fast it looked like he warped in front of it.

A bamboo sword emerged from Uzu's right gauntlet and with it, he tried to strike the demon on the head. Cerberus did a backflip, swinging the tail upward and deflecting the downward strike. The demon breathed ice out, but Uzu had already dashed beside the little beast. His heel kick connected with Cerberus' side.

The little beast was sent away, rolling, and bouncing off the floor, while Uzu rushed toward it with his shinai ready. As soon as the Elite got close enough, Cerberus howled, and ice skewers burst from its skin. Uzu did not try to avoid them.

His second shinai emerged from his left hand, and he performed a fierce x downward strike with the twin bamboo swords. The attack obliterated the spikes and struck Cerberus' belly, the demon bit back a whine of pain.

Cerberus crashed into the floor with the force of a loose cannonball, breaking the hardened stone. The demon stood up immediately while Uzu dashed forward with a horizontal swipe of his right shinai.

Cerberus stopped the move with a bite, catching the shinai in the mouth. Before Uzu could follow up with his left shinai, Cerberus slammed him back-first against the floor, but Uzu rolled to the side and swung his arm, slamming Cerberus — whose teeth were still clenched over his shinai — to the floor too. The immense power behind the slam made Cerberus release his shinai and bounce, perfect for Uzu to leap at the demon headfirst and stab Cerberus' gut with his horns.

The leap carried both high. Cerberus growled as it happened. Ice spread through Uzu's horns in a second. The Elite retired them before the ice could reach his head and delivered an upward kick with two feet to Cerberus' face.

The demon rolled mid-air, curled into a ball of ice twice the size of a truck tire that bounced off the ceiling and headed to Uzu at high speed. Huh?

The falling Elite parried the sphere with a swing of his shinai, sending it to a wall. The sphere bounced off it, moving even faster toward him. He could still react to it; Uzu kicked it behind himself with a bicycle kick.

He landed on the floor, spun around, and—

—Uzu couldn't do anything in response to the approaching sphere, except step aside. The sphere moved past him, inches from his face. Whoa!

Less than a second after, Cerberus was bouncing off the walls at speeds that easily broke through the sound barrier. Uzu managed to dodge it with leaps, rolls, crouches, and sidesteps, but it came to a point where the ball became too quick for him to avoid; he had no option but to shield himself with his arms, shinai, and knees.

Not bad!

As the ball bounced once more from the wall, Uzu knew he would have to put a little more effort into this battle and see better. Gotta increase the output…

Uzu put his forearm in front of his face. The ball sent him skidding through the floor, bounced off a wall, and headed toward him once more.

"Heh!"

The Elite closed his eyes under the armor.

Ten percent more should be enough.

Then, he opened them.

He rotated his upper body at the last moment, approximately ninety degrees, effectively avoiding the ball.

The sphere of ice bounced off the wall, headed toward him…

…and met his palm, which stopped the ball in its cold tracks.

Until it no longer rolled, Uzu stood still, a smirk beneath his helmet's mask.

As soon as the ball ceased to move, Uzu used his shinai to bat it with all his might.

The ice encasing it was DESTROYED.

Cerberus was launched straight to the Hell Gate, colliding with the barrier that protected it. A small, nearly unnoticeable crack appeared on the shield, and Cerberus fell to the floor, landing on its paws.

"Okay, that's a neat trick. I don't remember you doing it before today," Uzu said and clapped his hands. "Inumuta will be so glad to know you've got stuff he hasn't seen."

"I wonder if he will be as glad when I show him your severed head," Cerberus growled, as blood fell from its mouth and the two holes in its belly.

"You wanna behead me, mutt?"

Uzu laughed, and then in a malicious gesture beckoned to the demon.

"C'mere and try, show me your resolve!"

Cerberus roared, released an ice beam, and became a ball of ice that rushed past the beam and around Uzu, covering the floor it rolled through with a frosty cape and generating a cold tornado. The ice beam fused with it upon impact, with Uzu still inside.

Cerberus rolled away from the tornado, but just when it was about to stomp on the floor with its paws…

"Over here."

The demon whirled with a tail slash meant to slice Uzu — who was behind it — in half.

The attack landed.

But Uzu faded.

"What?!"

The real Uzu released a burst of power from inside the tornado, causing it to vanish.

The real Uzu dashed to Cerberus at a monstrous speed, grabbed the demon by the tail, tossed it high, and leaped above it; Cerberus' back met his shinai, a downward strike that was followed up by a rising knee to its stomach, then a stab to Cerberus' side with his horns. Uzu shook Cerberus off his horns, throwing the demon back to the floor.

By the time the demon processed what happened, it was already on the floor, and Uzu was dashing toward it again. The only reaction Cerberus could muster in response to his approach was an instinctive one, to cover his whole body in ice armor.

Uzu's multi-hit thrust — performed with the right shinai — shattered the armor and made the demon stagger back, vulnerable to Uzu's leaping diagonal sweep. The demon's right eye was brutally struck by the shinai. It was quite painful, but the beast was more enraged than hurt.

"MISERABLE TRASH!"

Cerberus lunged at Uzu, mouth open for a bite, and at the last moment swung the tail downward in an overhead attack. The Elite effortlessly intercepted the move with his shinai and pushed it away before Cerberus could freeze the bamboo sword through physical contact.

The demon whirled in the air, sending three series of six shards at Uzu and breathing ice upward. Uzu shattered all the shards with three swings of his left shinai, but the remains sharpened immediately and homed in on him. At the same moment, lethal icicles fell from above.

As this happened, Cerberus smashed the floor with its two paws, howled, and opened its mouth; a sphere of cold power swirled between its teeth as the demon charged it with ice.

Uzu obliterated the tiny shards coming at him with a blast of his horns, kicked the icicles back up, and easily leaped and dashed around the countless colossal spikes that burst from the floor, trying and failing to reach him as he practically danced around them.

"C'mon, Cerberus. I thought we skipped the warm-ups!"

The demon's response to the lame pun was a fully charged Absolute Zero beam.

The sheer power behind the attack obliterated the spikes. It closed in on Uzu at such speed anyone else would have been undoubtedly hit.

The Elite merely vaulted over it.

As soon as the Absolute Zero beam hit a wall, Uzu felt the room's sharp drop in temperature, all the way to his bones. The armor protected him from it, the same way it protected him from the intense hailstorm that ensued.

"Is that it?" Uzu asked, arms folded, and swords retracted. His eyes were on the demon in front of him, unimpressed. "You vomit ice cream at me and then turn the ac on?"

The Elite whirled around, fast enough to catch the real Cerberus by the mouth and force it closed, preventing the second Absolute Zero from abandoning the demon's maw.

"You can't pull that off, not with me."

Uzu tossed the real Cerberus at the Cerberus that stood halfway from him; it was revealed to be an illusion, a statue of ice that shattered when the demon crashed into it.

Cerberus landed on the floor back-first, at the same time the ice statue pieces hit the floor. The demon was forced to stand up and leap backward when Uzu dashed toward it and tried to stomp on its stomach.

The demon growled:

"I had my suspicions when we first fought, but this settles it: you possess an ability meant to enhance your vision."

The Elite smiled with delight and clapped his hands.

"Bravo, boy! How'd you figure it out?"

"Your scent changes mildly whenever you avoid my moves." Cerberus eyed the pieces of the ice statue; if it weren't for the frozen insides and the lack of blood, the sight could have easily been mistaken for a mutilated Cerberus. The details were far too exact. "It also changed when you looked at my illusion, and you managed to see right through it when no human should have."

"You mean no normal human, right?" Uzu asked but didn't wait for a confirmation. He didn't need it. "I thought you'd know by now that we of the Elite Four are a bit above normal people."

Cerberus scoffed with sheer disdain. "Please! Do not delude yourself, you humans are all the same, so unsightly, so fragile, and so powerless it makes me want to puke! Even among the countless other creatures that inhabit this realm, you are weak."

Uzu was silent. Cerberus was on a roll:

"It was not your power that allowed you to rise above all other beings on this planet and conquer it, it was your intelligence, your sentience, nothing more!" A profound disgust stained every word that was spit by the devil. "Your bodies never evolved to become stronger, and you all grow weaker with every millennium that passes! A bit above normal people?! How arrogant! How laughable!"

The air in the room became colder.

The pressure emanated by the demon became outright oppressive.

"The tools you created in ancient times were what allowed you to survive and thrive, and the same is happening right now: you cannot fight against us demons on your own, so you have to create sacrilegious weapons fueled by the power of darkness, designed in a way that lets your fragile bodies withstand and wield energy that would otherwise consume you."

Cerberus followed these words with a final snarl of hatred:

"You are not the one who is above normal humans! Your armor is! A sheep that dresses in the skin of a wolf shall remain a sheep underneath, fragile, breakable, and with the sole purpose of serving as prey to the real wolves. That is all you are!"

A silence of about four seconds ensued.

When these seconds elapsed…

"You done, puppy?"

Cerberus didn't respond.

"What can I say? Your rant was spot-on!" Uzu said, nodding and giving the demon a thumbs-up. "We humans are pretty weak on our own, ain't we?"

Cerberus' eyes widened.

Cerberus tried to step aside when it saw Uzu charging forward, straight at it.

(An afterimage.)

Cerberus…

The visceral, fleshy sound of something ripped right off was followed by a nerve signal, that traveled from the creature's back to the brain. As soon as it arrived, a harrowing explosion within it spread throughout the body, making every muscle tense in the face of the searing sensation, paradoxical enough to make the demon freeze.

Cerberus snapped out of it as soon as a merciless reverse kick was delivered to its side; a loud crack accompanied the stab of pain provoked by the rupture of bones, in this case, those that made up the demon's ribcage.

Cerberus was sent crashing to a wall. The collision shook the chamber, caused dust to arise from the crash zone, and rubble to leap everywhere.

The demon burst from the dust cloud that formed, furious and wounded.

It found Uzu many meters away. The Elite stood still, holding the demon's tail firmly.

"Guess I'm lucky this ain't as simple as a sheep wearin' a wolf's skin or whatever other lame metaphor you'd pull out your ass, Cerberus," Uzu said, right as his horns sparked; the demon's tail disintegrated immediately after. "Honnoji Academy's found an effective way to deal with pests like you; no matter how much you trash-talk us, no matter how much you cry about us being weaker, the truth is that ugly, frail, weak humans surpassed you, and you're mad about it."

To solidify this, Uzu snapped his fingers.

The wave of raw power produced by the action put an end to the hailstorm inside the chamber, destroyed the countless pieces of ice everywhere, wiped away the bloodstains left by Cerberus, and even made the Hell Gate shield crack further. The massive room was essentially cleaned up.

"I can end this fight whenever I want. I can make you my bitch in seconds. I can take you to the prison under the academy like last time, and let you rot in there until a Cavaliere student picks you as their source of power. The only reason I haven't done so is that the trip here was boring and I needed to squeeze some fun out of it," Uzu said, eyes closed. "But I'm starting to think it ain't worth it. This is gettin' dull, and I've been holding back too much."

He opened his eyes.

Cerberus was nowhere to be seen.

"I should do just do what I did back then and be done with this…"

With a lazy movement of the neck, Uzu avoided the ice beam coming at him from behind. He avoided the next one with another movement of his neck and whirled around to face the third beam, catching it in his palm. He proceeded to crush it.

The Elite glanced forward and lifted a leg.

Before the ice ball could hit his stomach, Uzu stomped on it, keeping it on the floor. Then, he kicked it away and dashed after it, performing an intense series of punches as he chased after the ball. The strikes shattered the ice, and Cerberus uncurled, learning what it was like to be struck by a hundred punches per second.

"ENOUGH!"

Yearning for the assault to end, the demon let ice spikes burst from its skin. Uzu hopped back, horns sparking once. The blast that erupted obliterated the spikes and launched Cerberus away, covered in smoke and viridian embers.

The demon landed on its feet, but the paws had begun to tremble. The damage taken was becoming too much, and Uzu's attacks — growing faster — weren't as forgiving as they had been at the start. At this rate…

Uzu appeared beside Cerberus. The demon wouldn't be able to avoid the next attack the Elite chose to use, so it covered its body in ice armor.

The Elite kicked the demon on the snout and off the floor; the armor shattered, and Cerberus spun mid-air and beyond its control, only stopping when Uzu delivered a right hook to its gut.

The punch stabbed into the Cerberus' stomach. The sharp, acute sensation was one the creature knew all too well.

Uzu wasn't satisfied. He retired his punch, but before Cerberus could fall to the floor performed another powerful, gut-stabbing punch, and then another, and another, until his gauntlet came out Cerberus' back, coated in blood and pulverized innards.

The Elite yawned.

The demon coughed out blood.

"Give up. I hit your freezing organ."

"Never…!"

"Ok."

Uzu retired his hand.

Cerberus attempted to bite him, taking advantage of the proximity.

The Elite intercepted the demon with a neck-breaking kick.

---

"The monkey hasn't come back, eh?"

"No, Jakuzure. I am confident he is done with his task, though. He may be heading to the sewers' elevator as we speak."

"Or maybe he's still toying with your relative. You know how he is."

"It could be."

---

Cerberus lay on the floor.

The creature's body twitched from time to time.

A lot of blood flowed from the demon's mouth, forming a crimson puddle where the man who defeated it was reflected.

Uzu's helmet retracted into the armor, and the Elite scratched the back of his head, disappointed with himself. "Ah, dammit. Inumuta's not gonna be happy."

It was all an excuse.

Uzu did not think the combat had gotten dull, and although he was holding back a lot, he still managed to find some enjoyment with each attack evaded and each strike landed. Cerberus was funnier to battle against than most other demons, particularly because of the set-ups and tricks it could do with its ice powers, more developed than those of other pups. It was one of the reasons why Satsuki wanted to capture it.

What happened was that Cerberus wouldn't shut up about humans being hopelessly weak, nothing but prey, and some of this managed to get to the Elite. This, paired with the knowledge that the demon had slaughtered one of his strongest underlings…

Well, he didn't take it very well.

"Eh, screw him. The mutt deserved this," Uzu told himself, shrugging his shoulders. He crouched, grabbed Cerberus' paw, and lifted it so that the beast rested on him, draped over his right shoulder. "I'll throw it into a cell and go home."

The Elite looked up.

His attention was set upon the hole in the ceiling of the chamber, the hole he used to enter not long ago. Uzu headed to it, at ease.

But then…

"K-KILL HIM!"

Cerberus' ear-splitting howl was followed by the emergence of massive, twin tentacles from the floor. Uzu whirled around, right in time to dodge the first tentacle's whip attack and stop the second tentacle with his free hand.

He would have retaliated, struck the tentacle perhaps, if not for the slash that came at him from behind, and then from the side, and then from below. The attacks went on non-stop, and as Uzu avoided them, a dense silver silken thread came at him from above.

He leaped backward.

The chamber shook, and from the floor four more tentacles burst, giving chase to the mid-air Elite. He could see the devils running through them, so fast they faded in and out of view. He could also see, from the corner of his eye, the creatures that crawled up the wall his leap was taking him to, all too eager to welcome him there.

A combined attack.

On instinct, Uzu released a burst of power.

It pushed the tentacles and the demons away.

This included Cerberus, of course.

The Elite didn't take notice of his small mistake until he landed back on the floor and looked around, watching as the falling Cerberus was caught in the arms of an azure Fury.

"What the hell?"

The Fury landed and set Cerberus down.

With very shaky paws, Cerberus somehow managed to stand up, with a broken neck and a twisted head and all.

"Damn you…" Cerberus growled. "DAMN YOU, APE!"

The demon moved the head sharply. The bones inside the neck snapped as the head was forced back to normal position. A cold, weak aura was emitted from the demon's neck.

While this happened, a second blue-colored Fury warped beside Cerberus.

Then, two huge spider-like demons leaped from the walls, both colored green and blue. Uzu immediately recognized them as members of the Arachne species due to their upper bodies bearing resemblance to human women.

The tentacles coming from the floor disappeared back under it.

There was an earthquake in the chamber.

The floor behind the pack of demons shattered as a monster twice the size of a goddamn Blue Whale burst out of it. Uzu recognized it as soon as he saw it; the dense bio-armor covering the beast's limbs and abdomen, the metallic sharp protuberances all over the back, the six colossal tentacles coming from the mouth, the twenty golden eyes on the creature's head…

…and the roar, the distorted roar that forced him to cover his ears, that sounded as if a thousand different voices were howling in agony at the same time...

(The Level-Five demons.)

(The Level-Five Behemoth.)

The demons shared one single trait: the small, ice pieces all over their bodies.

"Well, would ya look at that!" Uzu exclaimed, honestly surprised. "You made some friends on your way here, Cerberus? I thought you ate everyone you met!"

"Friends? What a ridiculous notion! I killed these devils and revived them with my ice powers, binding them to my will so that they would serve me when I needed them to! They are nothing but slaves—"

A wave of nausea and pain interrupted Cerberus.

"I didn't know you could do that! You've got a lot of hidden tricks, don't you?"

But the demon wasn't listening.

Cerberus vomited crimson.

A black-colored, misshapen shard fell from the demon's mouth, and panic fell upon Cerberus as soon as it noticed. "This is bad."

The creature glared at Uzu, then at the devils that surrounded it. "Destroy him."

The demons obeyed.

The Level Five Furies teleported around Uzu, effortlessly dancing through space and time to confuse the Elite with the patterns. Uzu brought his forearms beside his head and intercepted the arm blades simultaneously coming at him from both sides. He proceeded to push the two Furies away.

He couldn't chase after any of the Furies; a series of webbings the size of small houses came at him from above, forcing him to move around at high speed. He'd have to deal with the Arachne, but as the Furies teleported around him again and the mutated Level Five Behemoth leaped at him with the full intent to crush him, Uzu knew this wouldn't be so simple.

(Even the lower outputs of his ability worked fine against one enemy, but considering there were five now…)

Meanwhile, Cerberus put what little ice power remained inside it to use. The devil was shrouded in a white aura for a few seconds and then howled in an explosion of power that created a dense fog, spreading it through the entire chamber.

Uzu groaned when he found his visibility limited. "Hey, Cerberus! What the hell are you—"

The Elite was silenced by a Fury's rising knee strike, right to his chin and lifting him off the floor.

A slash was delivered to his neck. If it weren't for the armor's metal, he would have been decapitated.

The Elite whirled around mid-air, and shinai released.

He slammed it against the Fury behind him, striking the head with monstrous power.

It was all a distraction, though.

The two Furies that attacked him teleported away.

Uzu then remembered the Behemoth.

He put his two arms up.

His palms collided with dense bio-armor. The Behemoth's immense weight pushed him down to the floor, and the floor sank when they landed.

And Uzu was buried.

---

"I hate to use that."

Cerberus — who'd entered the hole in the ceiling of the chamber and escaped the area — found himself running through the Level Five sewers, ashamed and badly injured.

He stopped for a moment and vomited. The little puddle of red that formed below him was filled with more black shards. He growled.

Most organs in his abdomen were pulverized; it wouldn't kill him, but the part of his body in charge of producing ice happened to be there, and that human destroyed it with his fists. He knew it would heal.

He also knew it would take time, and time was a luxury he didn't have. He wasn't certain of how long his minions would be able to hold Uzu off. He didn't know how much the Elite held back against him.

So, Cerberus resumed his escape.

He ran as fast as he could through the nearly empty zone. He reached Level Four soon enough, and there, he cannibalized the weakest demons he could find. He made sure to do so outside of the view of the cameras, because although sensors were useless down here, some of the cameras still managed to record the place.

As he chewed on a Hell Antenora's head…

---

"Not funny, Cerberus."

The Elite wasn't amused.

He wasn't amused at all.

If there was something he hated more than demons, it was a cowardly demon.

(He could excuse humans, if not for his bias, then for their inherent weakness. But demons?)

Uzu kicked the mutated Behemoth off himself, sending the creature crashing to a wall.

Uzu stood in the crater that formed with the beast's collapse, then sent waves of wind all around with a sharp motion of his hands.

The fog that clouded his view was dispersed in an instant, and just as he expected, Cerberus was nowhere to be seen.

He saw it, right before the fog covered the chamber completely. He saw Cerberus leap to the ceiling and crawl into the hole above. He could see the bloody footprints of the devil there right now.

An Arachne pounced at him.

He wasn't in the mood to avoid it.

Uzu grabbed it by the head, and before the insectoid beast could use pincers to attack him, he smashed it to the floor, turning the head into a mess of brains and blood.

The Furies attacked him in synch while the Behemoth's tentacles approached.

A green shield of condensed demonic power surrounded the Elite, knocking the combined attackers away momentarily.

He couldn't let Cerberus escape. The mutt would no doubt eat the demons in Level Three or Four to regain some power and regrow what it lost. Those zones would be comfortable for the little beast to feed since Inumuta's sensors and cameras did not work very well there; Uzu was aware the demon knew this.

Then, one of two things would happen: Cerberus would hide somewhere in the three lowest levels of the sewers — forcing Uzu to look around and take more time than needed with the mission since his armor, much like Honnoji Academy's devices, couldn't track anything below Level Two — or…

…disregard Inumuta's sensors, head to the surface, and feed on humans. He knew Cerberus had the necessary power to break through the shields that covered most homes in Honno City if need be. Uzu was sure the only reason it hadn't done so earlier was that it was far too focused on escaping the city through the Hell Gate, and now that it knew it couldn't penetrate it…

Well, the thought of gaining more power to be able to do so would probably cross the devil's mind, and human blood was far more nourishing to demons than the blood of their kin.

Uzu caught the blade coming to his face, with his fingers. He crushed it in his hold, and before the blue Fury could teleport away, expelled a powerful wind wave with his hand, powerful enough to blow the Fury's head and upper body up.

The demon fell to the floor, a convulsing and bloodied mess. Uzu saw the upper body regenerate at an alarming speed, but he couldn't be less interested, even as he kicked away the Fury that tried to bite his head off.

What would happen if Cerberus went to the surface?

There was no doubt in his mind that another Elite would step in and capture Cerberus. An awesome thought, right? Yep, at least until it got to the part where he was punished by the council for failing to complete his mission.

And that wouldn't do.

Uzu gazed at the colossal Behemoth that sprinted toward him, tentacle-like tongues ready and eyes murderous.

If he held back against this thing, he wouldn't be able to reach Cerberus in time.

"Sorry, fellas."

A viridian aura shrouded Uzu.

The Furies dashed to him. The Behemoth sent the tongues after him. The remaining Arachne shot a wide webbing toward him.

"I'm in a hurry."

There was a surge of light around Uzu.

His armor, then, shattered.

---

Cerberus' nose scrunched up.

He swallowed the Hell Antenora's head and glanced behind himself. "What was that?"

The answer to his question came when a sudden, otherwordly pressure filled the area, overwhelming the dense energy emitted by the inactive Hell Gate and startling every demon there.

A daunting realization hit Cerberus. Splendid. Just what was needed.

The Cavaliere-Rank armors all had a particular characteristic in common: the ability to transform into more demonic, stronger forms. Cerberus could tell when a Cavaliere-Rank student transformed due to a radical change in their scent, less foul, more in line with how a true demon smelled.

A demon was needed as the source of the armor's power to trigger this transformation, and he'd been told by his former master that Elite-Rank armors lacked this mechanism because it wasn't needed; the Elites didn't need to transform because they were already stronger than everyone else, and he had no reason to believe otherwise, after all, no demons accompanied them.

Of course that Cavaliere bastard had lied.

He could feel him. It was easy to figure out that his ice minions were slaughtered.

Because he could feel his approach. He could feel his power.

Cerberus could feel Uzu moving through Level Five.

A shiver ran down the demon's spine.

An instinctive whine escaped him.

He wasn't the only one who was frightened; the other demons around him became so nervous they began to shake or run away to hide, and some of them were outright paralyzed.

Cerberus couldn't afford to be paralyzed.

He brought his gaze forth, forgot all about cannibalism, and ran as fast as he could. He needed to head to the upper levels and do so fast. He couldn't stay because that thing was bound to find him one way or another if he did.

He couldn't let that thing catch him.

He wouldn't let that thing catch him.

The elevator to the surface was at the top of Level Three.

He could make it there in time.

---

—Two Hours Earlier. —

"What is Vergil's status?"

"He is on the Proto-District, my Lady."

The student council president didn't need to ask why.

"How many demons has he engaged?"

"Forty-six."

---

The starless night had fully taken over Honno City.

The streets were desolate, not a human walked through them, and if they did, they surely weren't alive anymore. The people needed to secure a safe zone one way or the other because of what would happen to them if they didn't.

The demons did not need to worry much. The night belonged to them and only them and they could do as they damn pleased. The activities they would engage in were varied:

The main activity was searching for humans to eat. Most humans were hidden in the safety of their homes, but not all humans managed to secure a safe zone, and they went to hide in unprotected places; abandoned buildings, small markets, under or inside vehicles, in a cave under the bridge that connected Honno City and the highway leading to the mainland, the lighthouse at the edge of the slums...

A similar activity was seeking houses with faulty barriers and destroying them. Most humans in Honno City weren't very adept at performing incantations due to their lack of experience with them before coming to the island, and it wasn't uncommon for them to die before they could master this ability. Those who succeeded in mastering it were sometimes overconfident in their capabilities and failed to notice the flaws in their barriers; a spot lacking power, an uneven distribution of energy, subtle flickering, small cracks…

Not all demons could see and exploit these flaws, still. It was an activity reserved for those with the sharpest instincts.

An easier activity was fighting and killing each other. The demons would often fail to find prey, and this would frustrate them, and frustration paired with hunger could lead them to turn on their kin and battle to death so that the winner could consume the loser. The act could provide a small boost in power and satisfaction of hunger, but it could never be compared with real prey, so demons – with a few exceptions – didn't particularly favor this.

Less violent activities existed; competitions to see which one could roar louder, traveling the city without a purpose other than exploring it, chasing after stray animals out of curiosity and not bloodthirst, or leading their young through the city while teaching them how to hunt.

Yes, demons could do as they pleased during the night. It belonged to them.

…

…A lone Riot crawled through one of the streets of the Proto-District.

This Riot was little, an infant that snuck out of the hideout in the sewers where the mother and over thirty siblings rested. He was curious when he noticed his father leave the hideout, so he chased after him.

But the father was far faster, he soon lost sight of him.

By the time this happened, he was in the middle of an unknown area with the black sky watching over him. He also lost his sense of direction, woefully underdeveloped; he was barely two days old.

The infant Riot cried for his father and cried for his mother to come for him. He was scared. He went ignored by the demons that roamed the Proto-District, too focused on their activities to pay attention to a youngling nobody cared about.

The Riot crawled around. His chubby limbs – a far cry from the muscular extremities of his powerful father – hurt. It wanted to return home but didn't know the way back.

So, he cried.

And eventually, his cry was answered.

It was weak. It was a debilitated hiss. There was no way anyone could have heard such a weak noise.

But the infant Riot somehow did and recognized it.

His father was somewhere!

With renewed vigor, the infant Riot crawled through a street, and then another. The demons around did not pay attention to him, as expected, but he didn't care; his father was somewhere!

The Riot entered different neighborhoods, crying for his father. His father kept answering. The son kept moving closer to the sound.

The infant Riot was so ecstatic he failed to realize the population of demons decreased with every neighborhood it moved through until there were none to be seen. The infant Riot stopped for a moment, gazing around.

The buildings were smaller here. The asphalt was cracked in many spots, and there were red stains everywhere, accompanied by a lot of dust. His little nose picked up an unfamiliar scent, one he hadn't smelled down in the sewers, where the demons gathered upon dawn.

Who was this?

What was this?

Whatever it was, it smelled bad.

The infant Riot cried.

He heard the call of his father not too far away. His eyes went to where it came from. The infant Riot headed there.

He found himself standing in front of an alleyway shrouded in shadows.

His eyes couldn't see past the deep darkness. They were yet to develop.

But the little Riot could hear. He could hear the sounds coming from the darkness well.

It sounded like his brothers and he, whenever their father brought food for them to eat. The Riot heard chews, frenzied chews going through flesh, rapid breathing, and a few growls.

The little Riot cried.

The chews stopped.

The breathing stopped too.

Silence.

Then, his father answered.

The little Riot wagged his tail. He found his father!

The little Riot heard a thud, something hitting the ground beyond the darkness. There was a tame splash sound, too.

His tail stopped moving.

The Riot saw his father emerge from the shadows.

What remained of him, anyway.

The adult Riot dragged himself forward with his only remaining arm, like a worm. The son didn't understand.

Where was his other arm?

Where were his legs?

What happened to his right eye?

Why was he so stained in red?

His father released an agonized groan.

The little Riot approached him and rubbed against the unusually red scales of his father's head. He smelled weird, why?

The poor little thing would never realize why.

A red-stained arm came out of the darkness.

A hand with five fingers gripped the back of his father until the fingers pierced the scales and drew more crimson out. His father groaned again right as he was pulled back into the darkness.

The infant Riot cried.

He cried as he heard his father cry inside the darkness. He cried as he heard the fleshy sound of something ripped apart. He cried as he heard something getting stomped on, crushed.

He cried when his father stopped crying.

He cried one last time before something unknown and dangerous rumbled:

"Shut up."

The murderous, red-stained hand burst out of the darkness, gripped his head, and crushed it.

The infant Riot stopped crying right then and there.

His back hit the asphalt, and he couldn't stand or move anymore.

He was too dead to care and cry about it.

The hand returned to the darkness.

The infant Riot crumbled into dust and was then caressed by the whispering wind, taken away from that monster.

---

"His power has increased somewhat since he started his hunt. It's nothing to worry about, though."

"As expected… It will cease rising soon, no matter how much he eats."

---

He could've eaten it.

He could've eaten the same it the same way he ate the father — or was it the mother? It was hard to tell with this species, especially with his sanguine vision, the intoxicating scent of blood, and this hellish craving that burned in his stomach.

Why didn't he eat it? Shut up. He wanted it to shut up. It wouldn't shut up. All creatures shut up when they died. He wanted it to die, so he killed it and didn't even think about taking a single bite.

IDIOT.

What a waste.

His eyes dilated with ravenous delight as his attention returned to the thirty-seven dismembered demons that writhed helplessly on the crimson concrete, alive but too broken to escape him; he had hunted them, one by one, then brought them here for the feeding that would take place. He managed to capture forty-six before their scent grew too tantalizing and his appetite got the best of him, bringing him to his knees in sweet and grotesque surrender, where instinct could override sanity.

The first demon he ate — a Chaos — satisfied him, if for a fleeting moment.

But his hunger returned with a vengeance in less than thirty seconds, and soon he found himself devouring more and more. He needed more. His stomach burned. It wouldn't stop.

He ate nine demons before the little Riot came here looking for the father, and the father was his most recent meal. It would have been nice for the son to follow in the footsteps of the father, all the way into his digestive system.

Well, what was done was done. There was no point in dwelling on it now.

He approached his next meal, a screaming Hellbat whose wings he had ripped apart.

He didn't know how much time he spent feeding in the alleyway.

He did know it did not satisfy him, not even when he ate the last demon he'd hunted. He needed more, but it was not enough, somehow his stomach didn't feel less empty than before he ate.

He'd felt the power boost after feeding. It was nowhere near enough to bring him back to top condition, still; his body was still wounded from yesterday, and he was yet to reach the levels of speed and strength he had when he faced Kiryuin.

He supposed the complete digestion would increase his power a bit more later, but he wanted more power now, not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, no. He needed to recover as soon as possible.

MORE.

He was aware he was missing something important in his meals, something that could quench this hunger for good, something that could unshackle his power beyond imagination and make him feel whole at last. If forty-six devils had failed to fill him…

(Perhaps it was time to switch prey.)

No.

No.

He refused to listen to the human heartbeats all around him, everywhere in the district.

He shook his head and tried to wipe out the intrusive thoughts that entered it. When he failed, frustration overwhelmed him, and he dashed out alleyway, infuriated and bloodthirsty.

He spent some more time on the streets of the Proto-District, devouring the demons that he came across; an oblivious, dumb pack of Empusas, a lone Fury sitting atop the roof of an abandoned house, two Chaos in the middle of sexual intercourse, worthless Hell Prides, an Empusa queen…

He tore them apart, enough to immobilize them but not kill them, then let his teeth and throat do the rest.

But as the Proto-District was bathed in more and more blood and covered in more and more dust, he felt his power increase less and less…

…until he inevitably hit the cap imposed by Bakuzan's inhibitor, and his power didn't increase at all.

His motivation to hunt did not decrease much. He kept doing this, hoping that if he ate more, his power would break through the limiter.

…

…He started to think this could be a futile effort around his hunt number one hundred-six.

Sanity thinned.

Temptation fattened.

FOOL.

…

…And upon his one hundred thirty-sixth demon meal, the hopeless reality of his situation became crystal-clear.

He stood under the canopy of a gas station, right beside the remains of a fuel dispenser – destroyed by a careless swipe of claws done by his latest prey – and in front of the crumbling remains of the young Fury he effortlessly hunted and devoured.

NOT ENOUGH.

His fingers twitched.

The heartbeats…

SOMETHING ELSE.

His breathing quickened, even though he wasn't exhausted.

HUNGRY. STILL HUNGRY. STILL WEAK.

He held onto the amulet that hung from his neck and tried to hold onto the memories of the last human who meant something to his calloused heart and his messed-up mind, deteriorated by the immense number of things he ate, by the colossal power that swirled inside him, desperate but unable to escape the prison set by Bakuzan.

He wouldn't do that.

He couldn't do that!

WEAK.

WEAK.

His head ached. He brought his hands to it.

There was an inferno in his gut. It burned. It burned.

WEAK.

WEAK.

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKUSELESSWEAKWEAKTRASHWEAKWEAKWEAKSCUMWEAKWEAKWEAK–

An unexpected, extremely low whisper provided a momentary reprieve from the assault of his instinct:
"T-This is nuts … He ate the demon…"

His gaze snapped to the right, to the small convenience store close to the gas station.

The glass doors allowed him to see inside the building.

He wished he hadn't.

He was delighted he had!

The human heartbeats he had banished from his mind and deliberately ignored during his night hunt became too loud, too clear then. He could hear them all around, but more importantly, he could hear them coming from the convenience store.

Two.

Two humans that were sneaking a peek at him from behind the checkout counter of the store. He couldn't see below their noses. Why were they there, inside an unprotected place? This question was rapidly swallowed by the darkness within him.

As soon as they noticed he was staring back at them, they panicked and hid under the checkout counter.

"He saw us!"

"Shh! Shh! Quiet!"

Too late to be quiet.

Their fearful whispers were far too heavenly for his ears, the final nail in the coffin for his restraint.

He would feed.

…

You remember them, don't you? The ones who were attacked by the Behemoth.

You were there?

…

Do you want to know what I think? I think that for all your talk of not caring about us, there is a part of you that does care.

…

I'm not speaking of this with you.

...

It's an irrelevant matter, all of it!

…

…

…

…When Vergil came back to himself, his eyes were met with the lifeless, bloodshot stare of a young woman. He was holding her severed head in his lap, and her long, beautiful golden hair was spread all over his legs.

(Ironic.)

Vergil blinked twice.

He looked around. His stare was empty.

He was inside the convenience store, sitting behind the checkout counter.

The area behind the checkout counter was filled with blood, a very warm puddle of blood on the floor, stains on the counter and the cash register, stains on the walls, and even some stains on the ceiling.

He could feel the droplets falling on his head from time to time.

He could see some of the stains on the walls and the counter had the shape of hands.

Fragments of bones surrounded him. He noticed some intestines here and there.

He also found torn clothes on the floor; the remains of jeans, white and brown shoes, a leather jacket, a sleeveless white shirt, a scarlet blouse…

His eyes stopped on the half-eaten leg beside the blouse.

Then, they traveled to the head, or, well, what was roughly a quarter of a head, with a single bloodshot brown eye looking at him, and some hair on the top; no mouth, no second eye, and no nose to speak of. The brain had been pulled out from the side, and it was easy to figure out where it ended up.

Was it a man?

Was it a woman, too?

Vergil did not know, or perhaps he did know and did not want to remember. It was his victim, and that was all he knew.

(He left so little of them…)

His gaze returned to the head he held, to the eyes of the woman he annihilated.

And for a moment, he lost himself in those hazel blue eyes of hers, that reminded him so much of the eyes he would see whenever his mother held him close.

His mouth trembled, then opened, but not to eat. The hunger from before had vanished. He was in control.

He wanted to speak.

His voice did not come to him.

What could he say?

That he was sorry…? That he did not mean to do this…?

He feared it would be pointless. He feared it would be a lie.

The woman was dead, and so was her companion. His apology would be worth nothing because they were dead anyway.

His instincts had overwhelmed him and led him to do this, but his instincts were part of who he was, what he was, and it would be a lie to say no part of him wanted this.

He could muster all the excuses he wanted, say that the loss of the Yamato and his humiliation brought him to a new low point of despair, blame the Behemoth from earlier for triggering his hunger, and blame Satsuki for sealing his powers in the first place and forcing him to find ways to increase his power and get back to top condition quick.

It would not matter.

Because he did this.

This was his responsibility.

A frail bridge he never dared to cross, now burned behind him as he made his way toward the path of true inhumanity, monstrosity, a point of no return. His amulet hung heavy on his neck, witness to the ultimate insult to the memory of the person who brought him to this world.

This was his deed, and it would always be, until his last breath.

He stood up, holding the head in front of him, between both hands.

He steeled himself for what he was about to do.

Finally, Vergil found his voice, the words to say:

"Goodbye."

He exerted force, as much as he could.

It was as if time slowed down when he felt the skull inside the head break, felt the blood that burst from it, the pieces of brain, the eyes that leaped off the sockets…

…

…Vergil stepped out of the convenience store a few moments later.

When he did, he clenched and unclenched his bloodstained right hand in front of himself, at shoulder height. He stared at it, thoughtful.

Was it worth it?

There was only one way to find out.

He brought his arms together and closed his eyes.

The night wind began to swirl and gather around him. The gas station floor shattered, and he sank into the crater that formed around him, slowly increasing in size. The fuel dispensers were crushed under his pressure, and the canopy wouldn't take long to follow.

He could feel it.

He could see the blue flame overpowering the darker blue flame and the far smaller purple flame, the inhibitor of Bakuzan and the venom of the Chaos respectively. He could see the blue flame consume them with each second, he could feel his power rising and rising and rising non-stop.

He was taken aback.

Incredible!

A blue light enveloped him.

The stitches on his stomach were burned away, and his wounds all healed.

The darker blue flame was consumed.

His eyes burst open.

"This is…" he breathed. "POWER!"

He stretched his arms to the sides in a sharp motion.

An explosion of pure energy obliterated the entire gas station and the buildings that surrounded it in the blink of an eye. The barriers that protected many of them did nothing to oppose Vergil's power, and the people inside the apartments were consumed by the hellish release.

---

"L-Lady Satsuki!"

"What is it?"

"It's Vergil! His power… My sensors detected a substantial increase in his power! He's reaching the levels he had when he came here— No, perhaps even higher!"

"Nonsense! The Bakuzan effects are meant to last for a whole month! Unless…"

"He is rampaging! Vergil has destroyed four apartment complexes in the Proto-District with many students in them! The casualties— thirty-seven…sixty-two…ninety-eight…one hundred twenty-two!"

---

Vergil stood at the center of a crater the size of a whole city block, the aftermath of his fierce, destructive recovery all around him for him to take in. "Marvelous…"

For the first time since he came here, Vergil felt genuine happiness.

The smile on his face gave it all away.

"How splendid!" he exclaimed, triumphant and encased in a glorious, azure aura. "And to think all I needed to do was consume human flesh! This was always within my reach!"

He spent some time there, just enjoying the feeling of all that power coursing through his body; he performed countless shockwave-inducing punches faster than the speed of sound, practiced kicks that ranged from normal to roundhouse and rising ones, following moves one after another as if it were some sort of wild dance. He did all that over and over until he grew weary of it.

He returned to the center of the crater and folded his arms.

"Now then, what am I to do?"

He turned around and set his eyes on the tower far above this district, the tower of Honnoji Academy.

"Hmm, shall I pay that contemptible woman a visit?" Vergil asked himself, fond of the idea.

He was about to do this before a sudden burst of power that was not his startled him, overwhelmed his senses in an instant, and made every single muscle in his body tense. "Huh?! What is this?!"

He focused.

The power was coming from below.

He…

He…

He recognized it!

---

"Your speed's hellish. No wonder Lady Satsuki lost against you."

---

He snarled, "That scum…"

What was one of Kiryuin's Elites doing below, in the sewers?

A more important question arose from that one: why did his energy feel so different from the power he felt in the academy? Back then, the Elite's power was immense but still with clear traces of humanity that distinguished it from that of demons such as Cerberus.

But now, he could have easily been mistaken for a true devil.

---

"Another immense power was registered! It's coming from the sewers! The machines recognized it as… SANAGEYAMA?!"

"He activated the armor's true power…"

---

Vergil was very curious about this development, curious and pleased with it.

"Uzu Sanageyama… I wonder how your power compares to mine now," he said, voice eager, power-drunk eyes burning with lust for revenge. "The first step toward the recovery of the Yamato shall be marked with your demise! I can easily locate your presence!"

The half-demon did not waste time.

He jumped high to the sky, performing a somersault.

Then, he faced the ground from above and kicked the air to propel himself down.

As he descended headfirst at breakneck speed, he whirled and encased himself in demonic power, becoming a drill that stabbed into the ground and permitted him to break through it. He entered the sewers effortlessly.

Yes.

He would slay that so-called Elite.

There was nothing Vergil thought about except for that, as he pierced through the concrete bottom of Level One and entered the second level of the sewers.

Uzu was lower, far lower.

---

Author's Note:

Holy shit was this long.

I don't think I'll ever write a chapter as extensive as this one. I'm getting too crazy with the length.

As always, I'll answer your reviews! I've been thinking about responding to registered users in PM, you know, to stop my responses from taking up unnecessary space in the chapter, but I'll keep answering everyone in the chapter notes until the prologue is over:

-Lightblade1121: First, THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME OF NICO'S FILES! Damn, I can't believe I forgot these… Now I'll have to choose a way to introduce the orbs that makes sense within the story, you know, since Vergil ate a Behemoth, and no Red Orbs came out… It's good to have so many drafts written for emergency cases such as this!

Is Vergil too OOC? I've tried to keep him close to his behavior in DMC 3 while taking into account the situation he threw himself into here and how he tends to react whenever things don't go his way.

We'll see about the Greatsword! He might find something like that soon.

-not a guest: Who knows… Vergil and Uzu are bound to fight in the next chapter… Let's see what happens!

-spookyfool: The plastic chair?! There's a scene in Kill la Kill with Ryuko abusing a poor plastic chair. Perhaps the chairs will steal the show here someday!

-Null: Well, there IS a Hell Gate down in the sewers. The veteran Devil May Cry players must know that these welcome disasters, especially when power-hungry maniacs get too close to them.

I hate to see blocky texts whenever I'm reading something. I'm glad you think the pacing and the spacing are good! The updates are supposed to happen every month or — at worst — every three months, with possible updates in less than a month if I have the free time required to write. Considering this, every chapter must advance the story in a meaningful way, at least that's how I see it.

The good news is that I'm on vacation period now, so expect more updates soon. I can dedicate more time to my hobbies.

The earliest version of this story had Nero in it. It was very f-bomb-heavy too, as you can imagine.

Hey, Dante isn't too bad! Uh, beyond the debts and the bills and Subhuman — kidding kidding! — and all that. Vergil on the other hand… How can I put it… Hmm, he's motivated, I give him that, and Bury the Light's a pretty damn good song!

We didn't get to see Mako in this chapter, but we did get to see someone else. I believe it's a nice price to pay.

-Gridman Telos: A new reviewer? Welcome! You requested another dose of this, didn't you? Well, here it is!

And, dunno, I'm not sure anyone can merely worm their way into Vergil's cold heart. Nero — his flesh and blood — had to kick his ass for Vergil to somewhat let him in and entrust his book to him. We'll see what happens!

Onto the chapter commentary, a lot happened here! I teased a new character, Uzu and Cerberus had a brutal encounter, and Vergil freed himself from the shackles imposed by Bakuzan at a cost… You are free to tell me what you think of all this!

See you all later!

Oh, and happy Father's Day!