Fan Fiction ❯ Image ❯ Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own neither DMC (if I did, I wouldn't be borrowing 3), or Dunbar's poetry.

 

Set in my fic-verse, `during' Where You Are (Trish is Eva's reincarnation).

 

At a masquerade ball, everyone takes off their masks, traditionally of monstrous beasts, at midnight.

 

PSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPS

 

As the latest client slammed the door on her way into her now demon-free home, Trish whacked Dante on the head.

 

“Ow! What was that for?” He said as they walked back to their bikes.

 

“Why do you have to piss off everyone we run into? She was a nice person; you didn't have to come across like a macho sexist pig! I know you aren't like that, Dante, yet you try to make every guy we run into feel like an inadequate weakling and every woman like a sex object! Do you like making them hate you?!” Trish hissed quietly, making sure they couldn't be heard, if anyone was poking a head out a window now that the all-clear had sounded.

 

“I like keeping them alive, Trish. Think about it.” He said, walking quickly ahead, outpacing her, yet when she was about to hurry to catch up he arrived at… a red motorcycle.

 

“Oh.” She whispered.

 

“Exactly.” Dante said firmly. “Now, let's get back to the shop. It's Monday, that's usually when the nine-to-fivers decide to snap and try to destroy the world. I hate Amateur Night. You never know what in Hell you're gonna run into.”

 

Trish tried to laugh. “The world's best black-power user doesn't fear the second-best…” She paraphrased.

 

“He fears the worst, because he doesn't know what the idiot'll do.” Dante laughed. It didn't sound fake, at least not any more so than usual.

 

She thought about it on the ride home. They seemed to be taking the long way, which didn't mean an indirect route; it just meant driving the whole way instead of portalling when out of sight. What he'd said, about being in a hurry… or he could just be trying to conserve magic for later…

 

Humans considered fear, hate anger, to be weaknesses. To Hellspawn, who were creatures more of mind then body, that was utter foolishness. They fed on emotion, their own and their prey. They crafted physical forms from humanity's worst nightmares to reap a greater harvest of that strength, killed their family in front of them, taunted and enraged them and sought to create a `Hell on Earth' to tap the power of that misery.

 

Too allow another to make you feel gave them control over a source of your power.

 

To cry, to release emotion, for another, was spilling your lifeblood. That was why devils never cried.

 

They kept that strength, the power of that misery, and horded it. Used it, tamed it to harness to gain the power to destroy what had dared make them feel that black despair, and by doing so sought to control them.

 

Humans, however, who barely ruled their bodies, let alone their minds, could rarely tame that power, had to let it out lest it crush them.

 

Dante had forged the knife of his agony at being forced to fight his brother perhaps to the death, though she doubted it, into the chain that re-bound the amulets, which re-claimed the Sword of Sparda. She'd felt such joy then, here was one who could truly defeat Mundus, and yet… something more…

 

He had cried for her, to give her those tears, that power, to aid in her revival and to let her break free from Mundus' control, she thought, but… why had she caused such power? What in her could invoke an emotion as strong as that for his brother?

 

He'd changed the shop name to Devil Never Cry and told her it was for a vision, but why had he looked at the calendar until a day circled in red arrived, and changed it back? When he had made this year's calendar, that day wasn't circled again, but a blue day was again and a black day was only half-circled…

 

Devil May Cry.

 

A reference to devil-may-care, reckless pursuit of a desire, for vengeance here obviously, or was it more?

 

That he could cry. That he was capable of such a human act… was the sign claiming his humanity?

 

That he could spare such power. That he was such a powerful devil… was it a boast?

 

Was it a warning, that the devil who had destroyed his family would suffer despair and loss at his hands so deep that the power would crush them unless released in such a weak, such a human way?

 

Was it a remembrance, of what he had lost?

 

Of the tears held inside, that for some reason he didn't have to hold back anymore?

 

She rode the rest of the way one-handed, her left hand resting on the hilt of the Sparda.

 

PSPS

 

Dante's metabolism is so fast, like a lot of hunters, that he digests alcohol (which is itself