The Devils Cry Ch 1-8

[eiahmon]

Title: The Devils Cry Chapter 8
Category: Devil May Cry
Rating: PG-13
Devil May Cry and it’s characters and situations are the sole property of Capcom. I am making no money or profit off of this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended. On the other hand all original characters and situations are mine so please don’t run off with them without my knowledge or consent.
Summary: A daughter’s dreams of a place that Dante doesn’t want to remember make him recall things that he had once tried so hard to forget as the skeletons in the Sparda family closet come out to play. Lost family history is revealed, and people once thought long gone return.
SPOILER WARNING!!!: Spoilers for all three Devil May Cry games.

8.

Alastair paid for take out Chinese without any complaints. They cleaned up, put their weapons away and sat down to eat. Dante sat, chewing on an egg roll, and seemed to be gathering his courage. After a bit, he swallowed and started to speak.

“I suppose that I should start with the Temen-ni-gru, and get the easier part done and over with first.”

Alastair and Vergil nodded, saying nothing. Dante took a deep breath, and looked away from them.

“Vergil and I were separated when we were fifteen. When your grandmother was murdered, Vergil was kidnapped and taken away. I have no idea what they did to him, or if they did anything to him at all. His actions certainly seemed to be of his own free will, so I can’t say. But anyway, I wouldn’t see him again for two years. Imagine the nasty shock I received when I ran up to him, overjoyed to see him alive, and he drew his sword and attacked me. We met and fought a couple more times over the next few years, so we were well into being enemies by the time the Temen-ni-gru appeared.” He took a swig of pop and took another breath before continuing.

“I was 21 when I opened Devil May Cry. I had just opened the doors, so to speak, when this bald dude with one red eye and one blue eye comes in, asks me if I am ‘Dante, Son of Sparda’ and flips my desk up into the air. Then he sics the Prides on me, which completely wrecked the place - and I hadn’t even named it yet. Right after that this big damn tower comes out of the ground, and demons start swarming over the city. I entered the tower, of course, fought a overgrown three headed puppy, twin demons who had their heads on their sword hilts -”

“Agni and Rudra?” Alastair wondered.

Dante nodded. “The very same. Not long after fighting them, I encountered Vergil. We fought, and it ended with him stabbing me in the gut and stealing my amulet when I fell backward. When I tried to get up, he rammed the Rebellion through my chest -”

“Ouch.” Vergil said with a wince.

“- and walked away. With the blade in contact with my blood, the sword woke up, waking up my inner demon with it.” Dante smiled. “Right after than, I jumped off the tower and got swallowed by this really big lizard. So I trashed his heart, brought him crashing back down to earth, headed down into the tower, fought Vergil AGAIN, and I still haven’t figured out what the hell that clown was ON.”

Alastair and Vergil blinked. “Clown?” they said simultaneously.

“Yeah, Jester. It was Vergil’s lackey, Arkham, dressed up for some reason that still makes no sense to me, and he had to have been on something. I mean, he was gone. Had a habit of calling me “Devil Boy” that just irritated the hell out of me.”

“Wouldn’t that make you human?” Alastair asked in all sincerity. Vergil chuckled, and Dante smiled.

“I suppose that it would.” he said with a shrug “When Vergil figured out that Arkham had been manipulating him instead of the other way around, he was quite ticky about it. The three of us: myself, Vergil, and Arkham’s daughter, Lady, challenged him, but he knocked us all aside. The seal that Dad had put on the tower had already been broken by Vergil, so the center of the tower rose up to form the gate. The floor of the room that we were in split, and Vergil, who’d been knocked out when Arkham kicked him in the head, fell into a crevice. I grabbed Lady before she could fall down one too, but my eyes never left where Vergil had fallen, and I had to fight the urge to go see if he was alright.”

“Why didn’t you?” Vergil asked.

“Because, he would have refused my help if he had been hurt, and would have tried to kill me if he hadn’t been. Anyway, he dropped the Beowulf gauntlets, which he had been using in the recent fight, and I picked them up. I climbed up to the top of the tower, fought Lady in the library -”

“Why?” Alastair wanted to know.

“Because Arkham was her father, and had murdered her mother, and because of that she thought that she alone had the right to be there. A ‘demon like you wouldn’t understand” is what she kept telling me.”

“How did she know that you were a half demon?” Vergil asked.

“She didn’t. She thought that I was all demon.”

“How did she come to that conclusion?”

“Because she shot me in the head, and I stayed conscious and asked what the hell that was for.”

Alastair exploded into laughter. “She shot you? In the head? Oh that is too much! I wish I could have seen that!”

“Arkham had knocked her off the tower, I stop her fall by grabbing her ankle, and she expresses her gratitude by shooting me in the head.”

“Mighty nice of her.” Vergil commented dryly.

“Yes, well that was typical of her throughout the whole thing. Shoot first, ask questions later, and if it’s got demon blood, kill it.”

“Nice lady.” Alastair remarked.

“Very nice.” Dante said, sounding wishful for just a second “Anyway I entered the demon world and met up with Arkham. He had broken the seal that had kept Dad’s power locked away, and he had gotten it, as well as the Force Edge. The power morphed him into Dad’s image, and he tried to attack me from behind. He went off on something about looking at my father’s image and some shit, then he turned into this mass of Jell-o gone bad.”

“Gross!” Alastair looked revolted.

“That is was. Well about halfway through, I was feeling kinda tired, and Arkham mocked me for being a half-breed and tried to kill me with one of his slimy tentacles. Vergil suddenly showed up and lopped the thing off. He jumped down to me, and I accused him of stealing my spotlight.”

Vergil chuckled. “Sounds like something that you would say.”

“Yeah, well....” Dante leaned back in his chair. It had been thirty-nine years ago, but he could still remember the conversation between he and his brother, word for word.

Vergil pointed the Yamato at Dante’s neck. Dante pushed the blade down and said: “Look at you, coming in the middle of the show and stealing my spotlight.” Vergil flicked the Yamato back at Arkham, knocking the severed tentacle back to it’s owner, who reattached it.

“What? You don’t really believe that he deserves to be our main attraction, do you?”

Dante looked thoughtfully at Arkham. “Now that I think about it, you’re
right.” He shouldered the Rebellion, and he and Vergil began walking, side by side, to Arkham.

“Do you think that you can defeat me? Defeat the power of your father, the great Sparda?” Arkham challenged.

Vergil pointed at Arkham. “You will come to realize that you can’t handle the power of Sparda.”

“You don’t have a chance, buddy.” Dante added, pointing the Rebellion at the writhing blob. He stopped, causing his brother to stop too, and said: “You know, I think he needs to learn the hard way.” Vergil looked sharply at him, then the blade of the Yamato clanged against the Rebellion, knocking it out of the way, and charged. Dante followed.

Dante shook his head. “Anyway, we joined up and beat Arkham to a pulp, and Vergil actually used a gun, which is funny since he didn’t consider them they weapons of a true warrior. Arkham was defeated, and he left the Force Edge and our amulets behind. We dove in the hole that Arkham had left after them, and I grabbed my amulet, and Vergil grabbed his. The sword fell faster than we did and embedded itself in the rocks of a shallow river in the Underworld. Vergil got to it first.”

Vergil reached out to Dante, to his amulet. “Give me that.”

Dante looked down at the glowing red stone in his hand. He held it close to his chest. “No, you got your own.” He looked at his brother. “What are you gonna do with all that power, huh? No matter how strong you get, you’re never gonna be like Father.”

“You’re wasting time!” Vergil growled, charging his brother and razing the Force Edge to cut him in half. Dante reached out and caught the blade, simultaneously bring the Rebellion out and down. They stood there for a second, each grasping the blade of the other’s sword, blood running freely down the blades.

“We are the sons of Sparda.” Dante said, grunting against his brother’s strength “Within each of us, flows his blood. But more importantly, his soul!” With that they broke apart. “And now, my soul is saying it wants to stop you!” He pointed at Vergil. “And we’re supposed to be twins.

Vergil laughed lightly, bring the Force Edge up and pointing it at Dante. “Twins.” he said “Right.”

Dante shuddered, not noticing the looks of concern that Alastair and Vergil were sending him. “We fought, and in the end Vergil lost. He collapsed and I told him to get up, that I had to stop him, even if it meant killing him. He managed to gain his feet, and I said ‘Let’s finish this.” We charged each other, and I swung the Rebellion, nearly cutting him in half. He dropped his amulet, but managed to pick it up. The area began to shake, and he told me that the gate to the human world was closing because the amulets had been separated.”

Vergil clutched his amulet protectively to his chest, as he staggered at bit, trying to keep his balance. “No one can have this Dante. It’s mine. It belongs to a son of Sparda.” The area began to shake like an earthquake had come. “The door to the human world is closing Dante, because the amulets have been separated.” He started to back away from his brother, ending on a small ledge overlooking an endless black abyss.

Dante ran forward to stop what he knew was going to happen. Vergil touched his chin with the end of the Yamato. “Leave me! if you don’t want to be trapped in the demon world. I’m staying. This place was once our father’s home.”

Vergil leaned backward, letting himself fall off the ledge. Dante reached out to grab him, but Vergil slashed his palm with the Yamato, stopping him from grabbing hold. Vergil fell, arms opened wide, coat fluttering, into the blackness below.

“Vergil fell.” Dante said quietly “I’m not sure to this day why he didn’t follow me out, why he chose to stay in the demon world. Once I lost sight of him, I walked back to where he had dropped the Force Edge. I picked it up and left the demon world. I didn’t look back.” He sighed. “Lady and I met out on the ruined streets. I was crying just a little, and she noticed it. She asked me about it, and I denied it, saying that devils don’t cry. She nodded knowingly and said that “even a devil may cry if he loses a loved one.’ That is how I named Devil May Cry, because of what she said.”

“Poetic.” Alastair said.

“And that is all?” Vergil asked.

“For the Temen-ni-gru anyway.” Dante replied.

“Now it’s on to Mallet Island?” Alastair wondered, sounding eager.

“Yess.” Dante paused to chew and swallow some fried rice. “Oddly enough, I find Mallet harder to talk about the Temen-ni-gru, maybe because it stirs things up.”

“What kind of things?” Vergil asked.

“Forgotten memories, mostly. The entire time I was in and around that castle, I could feel things that I had forgotten trying to come forward, trying to be remembered. I didn’t recall anything, but I had a bad feeling of deja vu the whole time. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.”

“Maybe you had been there before?” Alastair suggested.

“No,” Dante insisted with a shake of his head “I had never been there before. Of that I’m certain. It was more of a feeling that the place reminded me of some other place that I had been too. I never remembered, but that feeling returns whenever I think about it.”

“And that is why it bothers you?” Vergil asked gently.

“Partially. A large part of my reluctance to talk about that place is because of something that happened while I was there and because of a couple people that I met. The first person was a demon named Trish -”

“Your ex-girlfriend Trish?” Vergil said incredulously.

Dante used the interruption to take a drink of his pop. “Yes her. She had been created by Mundus in my mother’s image to lure me to Mallet Island. I guess he figured that I wouldn’t hold my guard up around her. He was right, and I fell right into the trap. Mighty stupid of me.”

Alastair and Vergil nodded in agreement. Dante chuckled.

“Anyway, she disappeared right after we got through the back gate, and I would only get a glimpse of her every now and then. So I went through the castle on my own, fought a bunch of possessed puppets that had a thing for blades and shotguns, got pinned through the chest to the floor by the Alastor, danced around with a few Shadows, had to put up with the giant lava spider that had an ego the size of Texas, and then I met the Dark Knight.”

“Dark Knight?” Alastair and Vergil spoke at the same time.

“Yeah, demon swordsman. He had a sword bigger that was than I was. The first time we fought, I won the sword duel, but he stomped me in hand to hand combat. He grabbed me by the hair, and pushed me up against the wall, strangling me while he was at. My amulet fell into sight out of my vest, and for some reason he couldn’t bear to look at it. He threw me aside and disappeared.”

Vergil gulped. He had an idea where this was going. Alastair looked at him.

“I had to fight the damned spider once more before the idiot challenged me on the castle roof. He had a habit of jumping around, and the moron jumped up and came down on the glass skylight. He fell right through it and impaled himself on the lance of a statue of a mounted knight in the front hall.”

“Dumbass.” Alastair said with a giggle. Dante smiled at her, agreeing with her completely.

“I had to fight this giant bird in the courtyard, and I used my new Devil’s Arm on him - Mallet is where I got Ifrit too - which knocked him down pretty quick. I fought the Dark Knight again a few hours later. I won hands down this time, and he zoomed off into the sunset. The funny thing about him was that while Mundus’ other lackeys used dirty tactics whenever possible, he didn’t. He preferred a fair, honest fight. He had me fairly confused, I have to admit. At any rate, I busted up the Griffin again, had to put up with a ghost ship, which sank right out from under me, I might add, had to tangle with more damn Shadows, and I finally defeated the Griffin in the coliseum. The skywalk collapsed on top of him, and he complemented me on my strength and power, then promptly asked Mundus for more power. But he had failed, and Mundus destroyed him completely for his failure.”

“Such a nice guy.” Vergil remarked.

“Well, needless to say, I was mighty pissed at Mundus over that, ranted to Trish for a bit, and continued back to the castle. By now, the entire area was in darkness, it being the middle of the night and all, and the only light I had was a rock that I had found in the coliseum that came from the Underworld and glowed in the human world. I had to fight a living puddle of goo named Nightmare, got swallowed up by it, getting dragged into a representation of my nightmares and fears or something like that, and had to fight a weaker version of the Phantom. Anyway, it ran away from me, only to appear again a few hours later. I beat it stupid again, and then I faced the Dark Knight for the third time.”

“Tenacious.” Alastair said with one raised eyebrow.

“Considering what the punishment for failure is, I can see why.” Dante said easily “I complimented him on having guts and honor, and he changed a bit. His head and face took on a human appearance, and I thought that he looked vaguely familiar.”

Both Dante and Vergil had to swallow lumps in their throats. Dante coughed a bit, then continued.

“We fought of course, and he lost, which took a lot for me to do. I have a feeling that he was on his last chance, as he put everything he had into the fight. He rose off the floor and just erupted into blue flame and vanished up out through the ceiling and out of sight. A second later, something fell from where he had gone. I walked over to it and picked it up.” He swallowed heavily again. “It was his amulet. He never would have let go of it as long as he was alive. It was then that I realized that -”

“It was him.” Vergil said weakly “You brother. My father.”

Dante nodded. “Yes. I imagine that only reason I was able to get up from where I was kneeling on the floor was that I sensed the Force Edge and my own amulet reacting to the presence of the other. The two amulets joined and the Force Edge morphed into the Sparda.” Dante closed his eyes, trying to shove the memories back and collect himself. Vergil said nothing, looking glum. After a bit, Dante had gathered himself together, and he continued.

“To make a long story short, with both halves of the amulet, and the Sparda, I was able to find the key to the Underworld and go in, destroy the Nightmare finally, nearly getting killed by Trish in the process, and face ol’ three eyes himself. He used Trish for a distraction, which nearly worked, but she sacrificed herself to save me. I got all pissed off at Mundus again, deflected his eye beam with my glowing eyes -”

“Eye beam?” Vergil said, his voice having finally returned.

“Mundus has three eyes, the third eye on his forehead, shoots out this powerful beam that he used to destroy the Griffin and attack Trish. I was so furious with him, that I deflected it with my eyes.”

“Cool!” Alastair was in awe “How did you do that?”

“I’m not sure.” Dante replied, scratching his head “Maybe it was because I was so angry that my power did what I normally could not. At any rate, I used the Sparda and morphed into my father’s form and beat Mundus into the ground. Right after than, Mallet Island began to collapse -”

“The obliqitory Escape-Before-It-Explodes Level.” Alastair quipped, causing Vergil to chuckle lightly.

“- and I had to haul ass to keep from getting smashed when the whole thing came down. But the floor in the hangar collapsed under me, dumping me into the sewers below. As soon as I got my feet, archaic symbols started forming in the air in front of me and Mundus came tearing through, going off on a spiel about how I wasn’t going to get away, and this is where I was going to die. I went at him again, but I was wearing down, and that was the first time that I was really fearing for my life.” He fell silent again, squeezing his eyes shut in pain. “But I heard her voice, Mom’s voice, telling me that it would be okay, that I could do it. Right after that, Trish appeared and gave her power. I fed her power and my power into Ebony and Ivory and knocked Mundus back through the gate, and it closed behind him. The plane that was in the hangar above us crashed through the floor, and I used it to blow a hole in the wall and fly out from under the island before it exploded. And that is the story of Mallet Island.”

Dante leaned forward and dug back into the food, while Alastair and Vergil looked at each other, both of them reaching up to touch the amulets that they wore around their necks. They had been given the amulets when they were almost too young to remember, and neither one of them had known what the purpose of the bright red stones was.

“Joined, they allow passage in and out of the Underworld.” They both snapped back to Dante. He was looking at them gravely. “They also broke the seal on the Sparda once they were together. Since the seal on it is broken, they can be separated without the sword reverting back to the Force Edge.”

Alastair blinked. “Force Edge?” she said stupidly.

“The form the Sparda took once Dad had sealed it’s power away is that of a two handed broadsword. He called it the Force Edge in that form.”

“Why did he give it that kind of form?” Vergil asked.

“All demonic blades have a different form that they can take when the soul of their creator is sealed away inside, sleeping. Once the soul is awakened, the weapon takes on it’s natural form. The soul within can be put back to sleep, but it takes a bit of power to do so. Since doing so is so difficult and it lowers the weapon’s power, most don’t bother unless they want to seal the entire thing away, like my father did.”

“Odd.” Vergil commented “Then how does that explain the Yamato then? I know that he put a part of himself in there.”

Dante shrugged. “The Yamato was made in medieval Japan for my father as a gift. The sword was not demonic originally, though it was magical. I am assuming that sometime during his time in the Underworld, Vergil was able to figure out how to ensoul a weapon and he did so.”

“So is he walking around somewhere without a soul then?” Alastair looked horrified.

Dante shook his head. “No, no, no. See, a demon only ensouls a tiny portion of their soul in the blade, not the whole thing. Just enough to make the weapon sentient and give it some of their power.” He looked thoughtful for a second. “What is odd is that Ensouled weapons seem to be rare. Other than the Alastor, Ifrit, and the Sparda I’ve only seen a few of them, and most of those didn’t feel right, like the process hadn’t been completed or hadn’t been done right.”

“Is it possible to set the soul free?” Vergil wondered.

“I don’t think so. I think that when demons die their soul ceases to exist, so releasing the soul may destroy them.”

“I wonder if they can’t like temporarily project themselves, you know like take the form that they once had outside the weapon for a brief minute if they are needed or called upon.” Alastair said, looked thoughtful. Dante shrugged.

“I don’t know if they can.” he admitted “To be honest, I’ve never thought about it. I don’t see why they couldn’t, but I couldn’t see why they would either. Remember that the Alastor and the Ifrit tried to kill me before deeming me worthy.”

“Nice of them.” Alastair commented.

Dante smirked. “Don’t forget, Alastair, you are NAMED after the Alastor.”

“What!!”

“Oh yes, the Alastor may have tried to kill me, but it did save my hide out there at Mallet. The Force Edge is good, but it wasn’t powerful enough for my needs, plus it didn’t let me take on a demon form, and since this was back before I could manifest my own at will, that was problem. So when you were born I thought ‘What a better name then a variation of the name of the sword that allowed me to live long enough to conceive you.” He grinned. Alastair groaned, leaning back into the couch cushions.

“Shut up.’ she growled when she heard Vergil chuckling quietly. He chuckled louder, joined this time by Dante. She growled again.

“The hell with this.” she said in exasperation “Since I cooked, you two can clean. I’m going to bed.” She jumped up from the couch and flounced upstairs to her room. Dante and Vergil erupted into full blown laughter as she left.

Once they had gotten themselves under some semblance of control several minutes later, they tossed the empty cartons and washed the plates, still grinning. Then they went to bed, glad at least that the day had ended on a good note.

******

Alastair groaned when the castle materialized in front of her. It had been nearly five weeks since she had dreamed of it last, and she was not happy to see it again. Growling in anger, she huffed and waited to see things unfold like usual. The dream started out like usual, but abruptly changed only a short way through. The woman appeared again, once again making Alastair think that she looked familiar. Instead of sitting on the fountain and crying she walked calmly into the castle. It was clear from the way she walked that she knew the place very well. She quite possibly lived there. Remembering what she had done last time, Alastair willed herself to follow her.

The woman walked out of the courtyard and into the shade of the shade of open air patios. She passed through a set of double doors on the other side and out into a large indoor hall under a stairway. She rounded around the stairs and climbed them up to the second floor and into a room that was filled with comfortable furniture and stacks of books and children’s toys and had enormous floor to ceiling windows looking over the courtyard. A few of them were open, and they had gates stretched across the bottom that were anchored to hooks in the walls, presumably to keep children from falling out. The woman took a left turn and continued down a corridor that also had the large gated windows before stopping at a door that had the sounds of giggling coming from behind it. She put her hand on the knob and was about to turn it when someone called out from behind her.

“Eva!” The lady stopped and turned to face the owner of the voice, giving Alastair a glimpse of sapphire colored eyes, that were just like Vergil’s. Alastair also turned and saw a man standing at the end of the corridor, smiling at “Eva”. She couldn’t really see his face, and when she tried to get a closer look, the castle began to fade and dissolve. Furious at being interrupted when she was probably about to learn something useful, Alastair tried to hang onto it, but it slipped between her fingers.

She snapped her eyes open. Growling in anger at not getting a good look at the man, she reached out and punched her headboard, not caring about the sharp crack that the wood produced when her knuckles split it clean down the middle. Nursing her bruising knuckles, feeling them already beginning to heal, she laid back down. She would have to tell her dad about it in the morning.