fanfic100 - 043. Square - Devil May Cry 3 - Dante
Title: The Encounter
Fandom: Devil May Cry 3
Characters: Dante (plus the SOL)
Prompt: 043. Square
Word Count: 1647
Rating: PG-13 for Dante-mouth.
Summary: One of my only Dantes in play, virgintitres, decides to come home to check on his shop. This is what spawned this entry and this entry. Back-dated a little from the game's timeline.
A/N: Um...None? :)? Well, other than the fact that Dante's been hiding a lot more than he's letting on about and didn't tell Vergil the WHOLE story?
It was obvious when he reached the door of his shop that something was wrong. Dante wasn't stupid; he knew the signs of forced entry when he saw them, what with living in the roughests places possible in every city he happened to drift to. What he couldn't understand, really, was why someone would pick a ramshackle, falling apart building like his shop to try it on. Seriously, it was pretty fucking obvious, in his opinion, there wasn't a damn thing inside worth breaking in for. It was just an old warehouse with dusty windows that didn't even look occupied at all, because he'd never gotten around to actually doing anything with it. Not that he would have, even if he'd had the inclination; he didn't want to attract attention.
The door was swung open, and, really, he shouldn't have been surprised to find the inside ripped apart and turned upside down. He shouldn't have, yet he was, as he stumbled in, wordless at the destruction of his few worldly possessions. "Who the fuck-" He tromped farther inside, eyeing everything with a growing scowl, and a growl in the back of his throat. The more he looked, the more he realized all wasn't what it seemed. There was a hint of something, though whether it was his imagination or not, he couldn't guess, but he could feel it in the air, and though the scents within were human, something was very, very off about the whole thing.
"I can't believe this shit." It was answered with a few mewls from the kittens that had paraded behind him the whole way there from the university, as they moved past him and deeper into the room, sniffing at things with that curiosity cats seemed to have, along with that fearlessness the stupid possessed. "This is bullshit. Who the fuck-" He broke off once more, as he made his way through the destruction, over to what remained of his pool table. The felt cover had been torn to shreds, and parts had been broken off, near the pockets, like someone had been searching for something. "Who the fuck wrecks a goddamn pool table?"
He gave a sigh and knelt down, glancing back out into the main part of the room once more. Skulls, his trophies from his hardest kills, had been knocked from the walls, along with the swords holding them, though as far as he could tell, nothing was missing. Good thing for the would-be thieves, really, because the only weaponry worth sneezing at he owned he carried with him. Everything else was just for show and decoration, and wouldn't fetch much period, or even begin to hold up in real use.
Standing once more, he clopped over to his overturned desk, absolutely flabbergasted. Papers had gone everywhere, the drawers were tossed around as if they'd been yanked out in a rush, and everything from cryptic notes on funds to porn had been spread all around on the floor nearby. Seriously, if someone had been expected to get something worth something out of that mess? Dante would give them credit for being tenacious. He might have come off as a complete and total retard when it came to anything like that, but Dante had a meticulous secret system going, that so far he doubted anyone could have made heads or tails of.
And so on it went, with the kitties trailing behind, as he made his way through the shop. His speakers had even been ripped open, as if he was stupid enough to keep anything in them. Really, all of the important stuff was carefully hidden away, including emergency funds, if he just flatout had to leave or couldn't get by any other way, and there was no way in hell that would ever be found.
Just to prove that to himself, he started that way, which was a spot in the stairwell where he'd found a secret little trap door, which had originally given him the idea to tuck the important shit away there. The building he currently owned had quite the history, especially with the occult, and when he'd first opened the door hidden carefully in the floor, not only had he come across some...Very interesting notes and trinkets, there'd been a body locked away inside, as well. It hadn't been anything but skeletal remains at that point, but Dante was pretty well versed in that kind of thing, considering he got paid to investigate and kill, and there hadn't been a doubt in his mind that it hadn't been human. Well, not entirely so. The bone structure was slightly different, and the way it was put together was just a tad off from a normal human's.
Well, that and the intense scent of something demonic all over the tiny hiding spot under the stairs. That had been his biggest tip off.
Regardless, he shuffled into the stairwell, where every noise was amplified in the hollow space, devoid of anything at all except a few boxes and the stairs themselves, and over to the spot where the trap door waited. However, once he reached it and lifted the door, his heart sank to his stomach in shock, because it, too, had been rifled through. The kicker was that his stash of money had been left there, though tossed as if unimportant from the small metal box he'd kept it in, along with the various other seemingly useless items he'd kept with it. No, the worst part of it was that his books were missing.
Dante had been funny about those books. Of course he had; they dated back to the 14th Century, falling apart at the binding and the pages fragile from age. But they'd been important, because they weren't just normal books. Not at all. Grimoires, true grimoires, were hard to come by, and even more so for him, because he was a poor son of a bitch and couldn't afford them the normal way. He'd found those three books in Germany, during the Third Reich, in an old castle in the middle of nowhere that he'd ducked into for a night, because it was unoccupied and he'd been miles and miles away from any civiliation on foot. They'd been down in the castle's 'dungeon', and while he realized walking off with them hadn't been the smartest of ideas, he'd taken them anyway. It was because of those books he had the enchantment for Ebony and Ivory, so he never had to waste time reloading when something was coming for his head.
In fact, when he'd finally read through them and realized what, exactly, they contained, he was glad he'd taken them. They weren't something he'd have wanted just anyone with delusions of grandeure to get their hands on. It was bad news. So yes, he was quite upset that they were gone. More than upset, really, because as far as he could tell, that was the only thing missing. None of the other assorted occult goodies he had stashed here and there, now strewn across the floor of his shop. No. Just the books.
Which, of course, meant whoever had stolen them had known what they were looking for, which was about as far from comforting as it could get.
He froze where he was, when a loud thumping sounded overhead, and he glanced up, swearing he'd seen something move, before jumping to his feet and swinging around the stairs' railing and starting up the steps, his boots clanging heavily on the metal. One hand reached around and ripped Ivory from its holster against his back as he clamored upward after the fleeting flutter of white and grey, until he reached the top, finding the door to the roof hanging open. Fucking lovely. He tore out onto it, gravel crunching underneath his feet in the dark and dim lights of the city, before he saw it again, near the ledge.
And followed, naturally. It seemed to perch there, on the ledge a moment, as if taunting him (and he couldn't get a smell or a feeling from it, which was bad, he knew), before plunging over the edge. And when he reached that spot, climbing up himself and peering down into the alley, there was nothing. Of course there wasn't. "Fuck me sideways," he huffed, more to himself than anything, before taking another hard look into the darkness below. Nothing, and with him not being able to feel the damn thing...
He slapped at the ledge in aggravation with his free hand, before reholstering Ivory and hopped down, stepping away from the concrete barrier. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? His fucking books were gone, the ones he'd been guarding like a miser for the last sixty or so years, and he had no fucking clue what had taken them. It hadn't been demonic, that was for sure. The shop had all kinds of wards around the fucking thing.
Another huff, and he turned on his heel, heading back to the stairwell. He was going to have to call in a few favors, ones he hadn't wanted to waste for something like that, but so be it. Those books were too...Well, dangerous, for that to happen. The door was slammed and locked behind him, before he started down the stairs once more, to make a few phonecalls.
Really, that was just what he'd been hoping for, when he'd come to check on his shop.