Devil May Cry: Dante x Alastor [Gamma]
Title: Eye of the Storm
Fandom: Devil May Cry
Pairing: Dante x Alastor
Theme set: Gamma
Rating: R
#01 - Ring
"I am not some ornament, the sword snarls in his head, as irate as ever, "a piece of cheap jewelry for you to fling on at your traitorous whim!"
#02 - Hero
In his days of autonomy, Alastor was a warrior, an avenger, even a deity, so Dante's motivations - to serve and protect and to save - bewilder him, making him wonder at the alien nature of this heart that conquered him so completely.
#03 - Memory
When they erupt as two spirits in one body, the line between them blurs; Alastor will find himself enraged (in mourning) at his brother's betrayal, Dante will rue the day (in pain) that he was ever torn from his place of honor, and by the time seperation comes again, they've each gained a new wariness for each other and all the things that are more similar than they knew.
#04 - Box
Of the many threats Dante hurls at him on a daily basis, the one that involves being locked away in a spelled casket in the basement of the shop for a few years while the Ifrit and that useless slab of metal Rebellion have all the fun is the only one that Alastor really worries about.
#05 - Run
Okay, he can admit it: when the going gets tough, the tough get fleeing, so now he's panting, slumped against the wall, sweat sticking his shirt to his skin from both exertion and fireballs grazing his ass not five seconds ago, and while Dante waits for the sounds of Phantom's rampage outside of the door to fade away, he scowls when Alastor sparks on his back, not in warning, this time, but silent laughter.
#06 - Hurricane
When he becomes Alastor, he becomes the very essence of the storm; with lightning threading across his skin, breathing ozone, wrapped in winds and raw power, Dante understands why Alastor chooses hearts so ruthlessly, since a weaker man would break under the might of it.
#07 - Wings
It isn't often Alastor gets to stretch his wings, and even less often that he's allowed to fight at his wielder's side as an equal, an armsmate, rather than a willing tool, and that brief freedom tastes all the more bitter for the confinement that always follows it.
#08 - Cold
"I hate this freakin' weather!" Dante snaps, freezing his balls off in the middle of the snowy nowhere, reduced to lining his clothes with fur that makes him look like a cyberpunk Santa Claus reject, and that bastard Alastor is enjoying this way too much.
#09 - Red
It's a color for warriors, for luck, for passion, for power (for mother), so eventually, he has to ask Alastor what the fuck is so special about blue and purple that demons (father and brother) are so attracted to it - Alastor gives him one of his condescending looks and he points one claw at the clear sky overhead that most demons never got to see.
#10 - Drink
Lightning spirits, Dante is delighted to discover, are ridiculous lightweights when it comes to alcohol, and he feeds Alastor one shot after another in the hopes of future blackmail material.
#11 - Midnight
Dante doesn't see why he shouldn't take advantage of the giant four-poster, so he puts a ward on every possible surface of the room to buy himself at least a couple of hours, hits the bed and clocks out instantly; he doesn't notice in his coma the electric spirit materialize from the sword and study him with disdainful interest.
#12 - Temptation
The hunter that is to be his new "master" sleeps in a careless sprawl on his back on the canopied bed, as if the castle around them isn't brimming with horrors, and Alastor doesn't know what to make of him; what he does know is that he wants to test that halfbreed heart again, to see if it is as stalwart as it seems.
#13 - View
"Y'know, Al, this'd actually be kinda pretty if I wasn't trapped in the middle of a godforsaken gothic freakshow in the Atlantic," Dante remarks as he looks out over the turrets of the castle on Mallet towards the sun setting into the ocean, and Alastor just snorts.
#14 - Music
Dante cranks up the volume on his stereo until the walls are shaking with bass, drums, and, screeching guitars, half-headbanging around the office, but when the song hits the climax, every electrical appliance in the office sparks and goes completely dead; Alastor looks innocuous as ever on the wall, but Dante glares at him darkly anyway.
#15 - Silk
In some instances, the hunter is mindful, maintaining the blade with precision only a warrior can show his tools - when Dante isn't flinging him around or stabbing him into walls or losing him in lakes - and he'll clean the sword until it glitters, wrap it in fine cloth and set it, almost reverently, in an honored place; Alastor knows this will only last as long as it takes Dante to forget again, but he still finds himself appreciating it anyway.
#16 - Cover
"This is my cousin Sparkalicious - twice removed," Dante says by way of introduction, jabbing a thumb at Alastor, who is in human form and trying to kill him with the sheer disgust in his glower.
#17 - Promise
"You give me your word, Alastor, I want to hear it right now, you're either with me or against me and I leave you right the fuck on this rock, swear on whatever it is that means anything to you that we're in this for the long haul."
#18 - Dream
Dante never planned on being a hunter, but then, what he wanted when he was twelve (rock star, gunsmith, normal), before Mundus fucked it all up, doesn't matter much anymore, and for what it's worth, at least he knows that the way things are now aren't what anyone else particularly wanted, either - Alastor especially.
#19 - Candle
"This isn't funny, halfbreed," Alastor growls, sounding as if he's on the edge of murder, but Dante thinks it's freakin' hilarious as he waves the bright blade around in front of him in the pitch-black darkness - who knew a demon sword would make such a convenient glowstick?
#20 - Talent
The boy - and he is just a child, his meager decades are nothing alongside Alastor's centuries - has an undeniable gift, it's true, but no concept of graceful execution, no dignity and no restraint, and Alastor almost despises him for it, except he's rather enjoying the unbridled destruction, the gleeful rage; pain has forged this boy's abilities, and vengeance will refine the edge.
#21 - Silence
It's a rare thing, the two of them not speaking, not even a snide comment or casual insult for the sake of it; Alastor realizes he hates this, he hates quiet even more than he hates pointless prattling, it reminds him of waiting, always waiting, for a new hand, a new warrior, a new chance at the battlefield, and what will become of him, when Dante is no longer worthy and he has to wait yet again, with only the stillness for company?
#22 - Journey
Dante crashlands the rickety old plane in a beautiful display of aerial deficiency, nearly killing them all, but when he hits the ground flat on his back, he has just enough wind left in him to laugh, long and hard, the relief evident in his voice, while Trish smiles and Alastor wonders at the next step they're all destined to take at the fool hunter's behest.
#23 - Fire
Ifrit is content to keep to itself and only really stirs in the heat of battle, and when it does it notes how the hunter and his pig-sticker quarrel, snapping back and forth with the sort of venom that the gauntlets, older - and considerably more mature - than them both, can recognize as more than just rivals combating, as it's more like siblings sniping because one sees something in the other that reminds him too much of himself.
#24 - Strength
"Where you cannot stand, I will," the sword will say whenever the battle seems darkest, without hesitation and with more than a little of his typical look-how-big-my-blade-is cockiness, enough to piss Dante off, if he wasn't so busy feeling grateful.
#25 - Mask
In full armor, the lightning spirit is an implacable nightmare, making Dante's teeth itch uncomfortably just from standing too close, and he doesn't acknowledge Alastor then, because what almost, almost makes him seem human any other time is hidden under a helmet, and all that can be seen are those eyes, glowing, soulless.
#26 - Ice
The surface of the lake freezes over the second he's thrown into it, Dante doesn't have a drop of energy left to trigger, but before he can either succumb to hypothermia or drown, the weight on his back vanishes, a clawed hand presses against the wall of ice between him and freedom, and Alastor warns simply, "This will hurt"; it does, but that's the price you pay to live.
#27 - Fall
No god is a god forever and he was only one for an instant, but even that moment is too much to forget, though that brat of a hunter has no problem reminding him, time and time again, that he's just a spirit, now, just something to be used, descended from grace onto the blood-soaked battlefield and into gloved hands, and Alastor isn't sure which is worse.
#28 - Forgotten
"You used to be the sword of the son of Sparda himself, the King of Hell, Dante, right?" Alastor's newest wielder asks eagerly, and Alastor can only sigh, to think that such a warrior is little more than a name now, yet it will always remember he was more.
#29 - Dance
Dante knows better than to swing Alastor too hard in any civilian area, unless he wants to level a city block or two, so when he practices his techniques, he does it with the weaker swords, Vendetta or Merciless, step by step, turn for turn, but all the while he's envisioning the damage each move would make with a thunder god in his hands.
#30 - Body
Alastor is talented in strange ways: he can calculate time down to the last nanosecond, catch stray thoughts when someone's standing close enough, always knows where and when a storm is happening, and, with just a long, pointed tongue along the side of Dante's neck and a well-timed jolt of electricity, he can make Dante come in an instant; Dante thinks to himself, who's controlling who, here?
#31 - Sacred
The moment he is handled by the hunter's sibling, Alastor comes to a disquieting realization: That for all his equal power, refined skill in swordwielding, and warrior's soul, Alastor prefers the hunter, prefers his haste and stupidity and fearlessness, even values it, and it disturbs him, he who once held nothing important in this world but his own ambition, whose only god was himself.
#32 - Farewells
The day will come when the sword will be passed to a new wielder, and Alastor is resigned to this, knows it's inevitable, but something in the hunter's grip, fierce and unrelenting, makes him wonder if this particular parting will be more difficult than the rest.
#33 - World
No one has wielded the Alastor in over a century, devil or human; not even the great Mundus could remove it from its place, as one requires a heart to wield a weapon that judges hearts.
#34 - Formal
There is no ceremony, no great to-do or elaborate rite, there are simply words, pain, blood and lightning, as the sword passes into a new hand and a hunter gains a new weapon, a new ally; when that alliance passes into almost-friendship, there aren't even words, just silent unacknowledgement.
#35 - Fever
Hungry for sensation, starving for it after so long, he's oversensitive, writhing, desperate, it's humiliating and he tries to get revenge through vicious shocks with each touch, but that just spurs the hunter on, and though Alastor knows he will hate himself for this later, he sinks into the heat anyway, uncaring of what will happen when it breaks.
#36 - Laugh
There's few things as disturbing as Alastor's laugh, rippling and unnatural, echoing strangely in Dante's head, but when the spirit corporealizes for the first time, Dante decides there's only one thing worse, and that's Alastor's smile.
#37 - Lies
"Don't worry about it," Dante mutters, reaching over and pulling Rebellion off the wall so he doesn't have to look Trish in the eye, "you can use Alastor whenever you want - I don't really give a shit."
#38 - Forever
Weapons shatter, heroes fall, memory is as thin and passing as mist, but that heroes would always need weapons and weapons would always need heroes is a symbiosis older than time, that cements legends, and honors such alliances to the bitter end and beyond.
#39 - Overwhelmed
The hunter is dying and Alastor cannot let that happen, but all he can do is shock his body, over and over again, and swear that he will not be wielded by anyone who cannot match this one's might, that he will not settle for second best when he has known the finest.
#40 - Whisper
Sometimes, during lulls in the fight when they're both too tense and alert to do more than watch for the next attack, Alastor will mutter to itself in a dialect of Greek Dante knows hasn't been used in the world for centuries, and he doesn't know what the sword is saying or why, only that he finds it almost comforting, the reminder that he isn't completely alone out here.
#41 - Wait
"I've known him since his birth, I served his sire and shall most likely serve his heir, and I will not be swept aside for the likes of some spark-headed devil who still thinks himself a god," Rebellion says, sharp as her blade, and Alastor has little to tell her, except, "You are his weapon, and fair enough; I am his avenger, and I wait turns for no one."
#42 - Talk
Dante's taunting a couple of Frosts intent on "putting him on ice" when Alastor speaks to him for the first time since that melodramatic speech when the sword first pinned him to the floor, and it's to yell at him, sounding for all the world like Vergil in a bad mood and surprising him half to death - For the love of all the gods in the deepest pits of the earth, will you just shut up and kill them already?!
#43 - Search
The hunter seeks a variety of things - brother, knowledge, destiny - and the sword is patient, beside him through the best and the worst, the thing it desires already within its grasp: a wielder that is worthy of its blade.
#44 - Hope
All Dante has at the end is Alastor, with Force Edge (not Force Edge anymore) serving as a gravemarker for a woman he'll never truly know now, as the destroyer of his family looms before him, mocking him, claiming to be his doom, and all he can do is pray that it is enough.
#45 - Eclipse
The sun reduced to an opaque hole in the sky is almost always a herald of interesting things to come, and Dante suspects Alastor looks forward to destruction and devastation in the dark of the day, and is feeding its eagerness into him; or maybe that's his own bloodlust.
#46 - Gravity
He's dropping like a stone, faster and faster, hundreds of feet and the ground rushing up to greet him, then Dante draws Rebellion and slashes through the Puia, easy as a knife through silk, but it's just not as flashy as it could be, and damn it, he thinks he misses the stupid crackling voice in his head, laughing right along with him.
#47 - Highway
Dante, it turns out, has no sense of direction whatsoever - Alastor suspected this when he was wandering around Mallet like a lost dog, but now knows for sure, called from the sword in the middle of a desert road somewhere in Iran, to stare at nothing in both directions while Dante pores over a map, turns it upside down, curses and then tells the spirit to take wing and see if he can find a fucking sign somewhere.
#48 - Unknown
The resemblance is startling - too-pale skin, hot bright eyes, and the electricity - but Nevan only laughs when Dante asks if there's any relation, Trish shrugs and Alastor, charming social butterfly that he is, goes on brooding.
#49 - Lock
"Oh, please, Al, like I could ever chain you up anywhere for long," Dante laughs, and though there are spans of time in which Alastor rests and other weapons have their moments, there's very few that Dante always returns to, and one is at the top of the list.
#50 - Breathe
The thunder blade pulses in time to the hunter's heartbeat, to the rhythm of war, deeper now, breathe in - there is blood to be spilled, vengeance to be made, today as any other day - exhale, and take glory by the throat.
Fandom: Devil May Cry
Pairing: Dante x Alastor
Theme set: Gamma
Rating: R
#01 - Ring
"I am not some ornament, the sword snarls in his head, as irate as ever, "a piece of cheap jewelry for you to fling on at your traitorous whim!"
#02 - Hero
In his days of autonomy, Alastor was a warrior, an avenger, even a deity, so Dante's motivations - to serve and protect and to save - bewilder him, making him wonder at the alien nature of this heart that conquered him so completely.
#03 - Memory
When they erupt as two spirits in one body, the line between them blurs; Alastor will find himself enraged (in mourning) at his brother's betrayal, Dante will rue the day (in pain) that he was ever torn from his place of honor, and by the time seperation comes again, they've each gained a new wariness for each other and all the things that are more similar than they knew.
#04 - Box
Of the many threats Dante hurls at him on a daily basis, the one that involves being locked away in a spelled casket in the basement of the shop for a few years while the Ifrit and that useless slab of metal Rebellion have all the fun is the only one that Alastor really worries about.
#05 - Run
Okay, he can admit it: when the going gets tough, the tough get fleeing, so now he's panting, slumped against the wall, sweat sticking his shirt to his skin from both exertion and fireballs grazing his ass not five seconds ago, and while Dante waits for the sounds of Phantom's rampage outside of the door to fade away, he scowls when Alastor sparks on his back, not in warning, this time, but silent laughter.
#06 - Hurricane
When he becomes Alastor, he becomes the very essence of the storm; with lightning threading across his skin, breathing ozone, wrapped in winds and raw power, Dante understands why Alastor chooses hearts so ruthlessly, since a weaker man would break under the might of it.
#07 - Wings
It isn't often Alastor gets to stretch his wings, and even less often that he's allowed to fight at his wielder's side as an equal, an armsmate, rather than a willing tool, and that brief freedom tastes all the more bitter for the confinement that always follows it.
#08 - Cold
"I hate this freakin' weather!" Dante snaps, freezing his balls off in the middle of the snowy nowhere, reduced to lining his clothes with fur that makes him look like a cyberpunk Santa Claus reject, and that bastard Alastor is enjoying this way too much.
#09 - Red
It's a color for warriors, for luck, for passion, for power (for mother), so eventually, he has to ask Alastor what the fuck is so special about blue and purple that demons (father and brother) are so attracted to it - Alastor gives him one of his condescending looks and he points one claw at the clear sky overhead that most demons never got to see.
#10 - Drink
Lightning spirits, Dante is delighted to discover, are ridiculous lightweights when it comes to alcohol, and he feeds Alastor one shot after another in the hopes of future blackmail material.
#11 - Midnight
Dante doesn't see why he shouldn't take advantage of the giant four-poster, so he puts a ward on every possible surface of the room to buy himself at least a couple of hours, hits the bed and clocks out instantly; he doesn't notice in his coma the electric spirit materialize from the sword and study him with disdainful interest.
#12 - Temptation
The hunter that is to be his new "master" sleeps in a careless sprawl on his back on the canopied bed, as if the castle around them isn't brimming with horrors, and Alastor doesn't know what to make of him; what he does know is that he wants to test that halfbreed heart again, to see if it is as stalwart as it seems.
#13 - View
"Y'know, Al, this'd actually be kinda pretty if I wasn't trapped in the middle of a godforsaken gothic freakshow in the Atlantic," Dante remarks as he looks out over the turrets of the castle on Mallet towards the sun setting into the ocean, and Alastor just snorts.
#14 - Music
Dante cranks up the volume on his stereo until the walls are shaking with bass, drums, and, screeching guitars, half-headbanging around the office, but when the song hits the climax, every electrical appliance in the office sparks and goes completely dead; Alastor looks innocuous as ever on the wall, but Dante glares at him darkly anyway.
#15 - Silk
In some instances, the hunter is mindful, maintaining the blade with precision only a warrior can show his tools - when Dante isn't flinging him around or stabbing him into walls or losing him in lakes - and he'll clean the sword until it glitters, wrap it in fine cloth and set it, almost reverently, in an honored place; Alastor knows this will only last as long as it takes Dante to forget again, but he still finds himself appreciating it anyway.
#16 - Cover
"This is my cousin Sparkalicious - twice removed," Dante says by way of introduction, jabbing a thumb at Alastor, who is in human form and trying to kill him with the sheer disgust in his glower.
#17 - Promise
"You give me your word, Alastor, I want to hear it right now, you're either with me or against me and I leave you right the fuck on this rock, swear on whatever it is that means anything to you that we're in this for the long haul."
#18 - Dream
Dante never planned on being a hunter, but then, what he wanted when he was twelve (rock star, gunsmith, normal), before Mundus fucked it all up, doesn't matter much anymore, and for what it's worth, at least he knows that the way things are now aren't what anyone else particularly wanted, either - Alastor especially.
#19 - Candle
"This isn't funny, halfbreed," Alastor growls, sounding as if he's on the edge of murder, but Dante thinks it's freakin' hilarious as he waves the bright blade around in front of him in the pitch-black darkness - who knew a demon sword would make such a convenient glowstick?
#20 - Talent
The boy - and he is just a child, his meager decades are nothing alongside Alastor's centuries - has an undeniable gift, it's true, but no concept of graceful execution, no dignity and no restraint, and Alastor almost despises him for it, except he's rather enjoying the unbridled destruction, the gleeful rage; pain has forged this boy's abilities, and vengeance will refine the edge.
#21 - Silence
It's a rare thing, the two of them not speaking, not even a snide comment or casual insult for the sake of it; Alastor realizes he hates this, he hates quiet even more than he hates pointless prattling, it reminds him of waiting, always waiting, for a new hand, a new warrior, a new chance at the battlefield, and what will become of him, when Dante is no longer worthy and he has to wait yet again, with only the stillness for company?
#22 - Journey
Dante crashlands the rickety old plane in a beautiful display of aerial deficiency, nearly killing them all, but when he hits the ground flat on his back, he has just enough wind left in him to laugh, long and hard, the relief evident in his voice, while Trish smiles and Alastor wonders at the next step they're all destined to take at the fool hunter's behest.
#23 - Fire
Ifrit is content to keep to itself and only really stirs in the heat of battle, and when it does it notes how the hunter and his pig-sticker quarrel, snapping back and forth with the sort of venom that the gauntlets, older - and considerably more mature - than them both, can recognize as more than just rivals combating, as it's more like siblings sniping because one sees something in the other that reminds him too much of himself.
#24 - Strength
"Where you cannot stand, I will," the sword will say whenever the battle seems darkest, without hesitation and with more than a little of his typical look-how-big-my-blade-is cockiness, enough to piss Dante off, if he wasn't so busy feeling grateful.
#25 - Mask
In full armor, the lightning spirit is an implacable nightmare, making Dante's teeth itch uncomfortably just from standing too close, and he doesn't acknowledge Alastor then, because what almost, almost makes him seem human any other time is hidden under a helmet, and all that can be seen are those eyes, glowing, soulless.
#26 - Ice
The surface of the lake freezes over the second he's thrown into it, Dante doesn't have a drop of energy left to trigger, but before he can either succumb to hypothermia or drown, the weight on his back vanishes, a clawed hand presses against the wall of ice between him and freedom, and Alastor warns simply, "This will hurt"; it does, but that's the price you pay to live.
#27 - Fall
No god is a god forever and he was only one for an instant, but even that moment is too much to forget, though that brat of a hunter has no problem reminding him, time and time again, that he's just a spirit, now, just something to be used, descended from grace onto the blood-soaked battlefield and into gloved hands, and Alastor isn't sure which is worse.
#28 - Forgotten
"You used to be the sword of the son of Sparda himself, the King of Hell, Dante, right?" Alastor's newest wielder asks eagerly, and Alastor can only sigh, to think that such a warrior is little more than a name now, yet it will always remember he was more.
#29 - Dance
Dante knows better than to swing Alastor too hard in any civilian area, unless he wants to level a city block or two, so when he practices his techniques, he does it with the weaker swords, Vendetta or Merciless, step by step, turn for turn, but all the while he's envisioning the damage each move would make with a thunder god in his hands.
#30 - Body
Alastor is talented in strange ways: he can calculate time down to the last nanosecond, catch stray thoughts when someone's standing close enough, always knows where and when a storm is happening, and, with just a long, pointed tongue along the side of Dante's neck and a well-timed jolt of electricity, he can make Dante come in an instant; Dante thinks to himself, who's controlling who, here?
#31 - Sacred
The moment he is handled by the hunter's sibling, Alastor comes to a disquieting realization: That for all his equal power, refined skill in swordwielding, and warrior's soul, Alastor prefers the hunter, prefers his haste and stupidity and fearlessness, even values it, and it disturbs him, he who once held nothing important in this world but his own ambition, whose only god was himself.
#32 - Farewells
The day will come when the sword will be passed to a new wielder, and Alastor is resigned to this, knows it's inevitable, but something in the hunter's grip, fierce and unrelenting, makes him wonder if this particular parting will be more difficult than the rest.
#33 - World
No one has wielded the Alastor in over a century, devil or human; not even the great Mundus could remove it from its place, as one requires a heart to wield a weapon that judges hearts.
#34 - Formal
There is no ceremony, no great to-do or elaborate rite, there are simply words, pain, blood and lightning, as the sword passes into a new hand and a hunter gains a new weapon, a new ally; when that alliance passes into almost-friendship, there aren't even words, just silent unacknowledgement.
#35 - Fever
Hungry for sensation, starving for it after so long, he's oversensitive, writhing, desperate, it's humiliating and he tries to get revenge through vicious shocks with each touch, but that just spurs the hunter on, and though Alastor knows he will hate himself for this later, he sinks into the heat anyway, uncaring of what will happen when it breaks.
#36 - Laugh
There's few things as disturbing as Alastor's laugh, rippling and unnatural, echoing strangely in Dante's head, but when the spirit corporealizes for the first time, Dante decides there's only one thing worse, and that's Alastor's smile.
#37 - Lies
"Don't worry about it," Dante mutters, reaching over and pulling Rebellion off the wall so he doesn't have to look Trish in the eye, "you can use Alastor whenever you want - I don't really give a shit."
#38 - Forever
Weapons shatter, heroes fall, memory is as thin and passing as mist, but that heroes would always need weapons and weapons would always need heroes is a symbiosis older than time, that cements legends, and honors such alliances to the bitter end and beyond.
#39 - Overwhelmed
The hunter is dying and Alastor cannot let that happen, but all he can do is shock his body, over and over again, and swear that he will not be wielded by anyone who cannot match this one's might, that he will not settle for second best when he has known the finest.
#40 - Whisper
Sometimes, during lulls in the fight when they're both too tense and alert to do more than watch for the next attack, Alastor will mutter to itself in a dialect of Greek Dante knows hasn't been used in the world for centuries, and he doesn't know what the sword is saying or why, only that he finds it almost comforting, the reminder that he isn't completely alone out here.
#41 - Wait
"I've known him since his birth, I served his sire and shall most likely serve his heir, and I will not be swept aside for the likes of some spark-headed devil who still thinks himself a god," Rebellion says, sharp as her blade, and Alastor has little to tell her, except, "You are his weapon, and fair enough; I am his avenger, and I wait turns for no one."
#42 - Talk
Dante's taunting a couple of Frosts intent on "putting him on ice" when Alastor speaks to him for the first time since that melodramatic speech when the sword first pinned him to the floor, and it's to yell at him, sounding for all the world like Vergil in a bad mood and surprising him half to death - For the love of all the gods in the deepest pits of the earth, will you just shut up and kill them already?!
#43 - Search
The hunter seeks a variety of things - brother, knowledge, destiny - and the sword is patient, beside him through the best and the worst, the thing it desires already within its grasp: a wielder that is worthy of its blade.
#44 - Hope
All Dante has at the end is Alastor, with Force Edge (not Force Edge anymore) serving as a gravemarker for a woman he'll never truly know now, as the destroyer of his family looms before him, mocking him, claiming to be his doom, and all he can do is pray that it is enough.
#45 - Eclipse
The sun reduced to an opaque hole in the sky is almost always a herald of interesting things to come, and Dante suspects Alastor looks forward to destruction and devastation in the dark of the day, and is feeding its eagerness into him; or maybe that's his own bloodlust.
#46 - Gravity
He's dropping like a stone, faster and faster, hundreds of feet and the ground rushing up to greet him, then Dante draws Rebellion and slashes through the Puia, easy as a knife through silk, but it's just not as flashy as it could be, and damn it, he thinks he misses the stupid crackling voice in his head, laughing right along with him.
#47 - Highway
Dante, it turns out, has no sense of direction whatsoever - Alastor suspected this when he was wandering around Mallet like a lost dog, but now knows for sure, called from the sword in the middle of a desert road somewhere in Iran, to stare at nothing in both directions while Dante pores over a map, turns it upside down, curses and then tells the spirit to take wing and see if he can find a fucking sign somewhere.
#48 - Unknown
The resemblance is startling - too-pale skin, hot bright eyes, and the electricity - but Nevan only laughs when Dante asks if there's any relation, Trish shrugs and Alastor, charming social butterfly that he is, goes on brooding.
#49 - Lock
"Oh, please, Al, like I could ever chain you up anywhere for long," Dante laughs, and though there are spans of time in which Alastor rests and other weapons have their moments, there's very few that Dante always returns to, and one is at the top of the list.
#50 - Breathe
The thunder blade pulses in time to the hunter's heartbeat, to the rhythm of war, deeper now, breathe in - there is blood to be spilled, vengeance to be made, today as any other day - exhale, and take glory by the throat.