Fanfiction: Metempsychosis, Prologue [DMC]
Title: Metempsychosis
Chapter: Prologue
Genres: Drama/Suspense
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings (by chapter): ??, Nero/Kyrie (not the main focus for the whole story)
Spoilers: Devil May Cry anime, 1, 3 and 4
Warnings: Language, violence and torture to come
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry belongs to CAPCOM.
A/N: It's quite easy to guess who the "??" character is once you read the prologue, but I just don't want to reveal it up front. Haha.
Summary: [Post DMC4] Half a year of peace has passed since the near destruction of Fortuna. But trouble loves company, as Nero discovers in the form of recurring dreams. Yet they become the least of his worries as something, someone awakens inside of him...
Darkness. All around him was never-ending darkness, disorientating darkness... nothing else but the deepest, darkest black he had ever encountered. Silence. All encompassing, heavy, defeated silence. He realized he had never actually liked noise, but this quietness suffocated him. Then there was pain. Not from fresh bleeding wounds (did he even have a body now?), but from somewhere inside his consciousness. It burned from the inside out and felt like it was tearing his soul apart... and he didn't know why.
Why he was in this soundless blackness, why there was so much pain around him, in him... Why could he barely remember anything about his circumstances? Why couldn't he remember anything at all? All he knew now was that he was free, but from what, he did not know.
Vulnerability. It was a mark of being powerless... He hated that feeling. There was a sense of loss too, like he was missing something that had been with him for a very long time. He had an impression it was a sword. Not having it now was discomfiting, and he would have to find it as soon as it was possible. It wasn't that he felt that he had no way to defend himself; he could feel a certain strength in him that had seemed to deter the vague impressions of danger he had got periodically at bay.
But as disoriented as he currently was and the feeling of vulnerability that was plaguing him... It felt safer to have that sword with him. He wanted, no, he needed to know what had happened to him, to know why he had this amnesia. To do that, he needed to heal from something... He hated not knowing what it was, but instinct told him he had to rest in a safe place... and instinct told him that this was not it.
He wandered in the darkness, not knowing if he was going around in circles or making actual progress. Everything looked the same, was just the same nothingness. He persevered on. There was a way out of it. He would make his way out of it.
It was then when he heardfeltsensed a silent call, a tug on his consciousness. He followed it without hesitation because it felt right, and with nothing to guide him but his instincts it was his only hope. The call guided him along, and there was a sudden sense of danger passed. There was still no familiarity in his surroundings. Was it due to his lost memories? It was now just grey, grey that was gradually lightening into white. Then he heard sounds of life breaking through the barrier of silence just as the white bled into color and he saw objects, people and demons...
He wasn't going to make it. Oh god no. He had to make it there, make it to her in time. It was imperative that he did so. But the distance between them, and the rapidly increasing mass of demons that were in the way was making his already difficult task on the verge of impossibility, if it weren't already downright impossible. Damn it, and he had conveniently not brought out any of his weapons today in his haste to meet her. It was downright foolish considering that Fortuna was known to be an area of frequent demon manifestations, and now it was very possible it was going to cost him her life.
"Kyrie!" he yelled as he raced towards her, fighting away the demons that were blocking his way with his bare hands.
But even as one demon fell, five more appeared to replace their fallen comrade. At this rate, he really wasn't going to make it to her in time. She was going to... He was going to fail her, a thought that he did not even want to entertain even in less trying circumstances. He needed to do something. Anything. He had to. If only he had more power to defeat all of the demons in one blow, then she'd be safe. He needed more power. Right now.
"KYRIE!"
A silver-haired boy was shouting a name frantically in the street swarming with demons. There was only one other person there, a pretty brunette who was rapidly backing away from a horde of demons attempting to corner her. The tug on his consciousness guided him closer to the boy and then it was as if he could hear the boy's thoughts, even though he didn't think he had ever been telepathic.
He knew that the boy wanted to save the girl and that he desired more power - a sentiment he could connect with immediately. He knew what it was like to hold absolute power, even if the specific memories eluded him now. He would undoubtedly find a way to reclaim what was rightfully his again - his power and his memories. This boy... seemed a suitable choice for his quest. He was young enough to be manipulated when the time came, although admittedly, there would be enough people around for him to choose from.
It was that desire in the boy to become stronger and more powerful, whatever the reason, that settled it for him. That and there was an extraordinary familiarity to the boy which he could not place, but it was of no immediate consequence and he doubted there ever would be. Perhaps he had seen the boy before, when he still had his memories but it would not matter.
Decision made, he approached the boy, noting that his call and desire for power was increasing. He would grant him the ability to save the girl, and in time to come, the boy would have to repay him for his "services". Then he felt something from the boy, that marked him as not completely human... A half-demon then? It pleased him more to know that the boy had demon blood in him; he would be more resilient than if he were a normal human being. There was also a well of untapped power within the boy, and instinct (all that he had to go by now) told him that it was what he needed to regain himself again.
He saw the boy's outstretched right arm and he reached out for it, holding on to it firmly.
"Power," he whispered, though he thought it echoed loudly. "Give me more power."
Bright blue light suddenly engulfed his outstretched right arm, and something that felt like electricity surged through him. It stunned him momentarily, as he stared at his hand. When the light faded away, his arm had changed. What in nine hells had just happened to him? The shock had barely settled in before he heard a disembodied voice that resonated in his head and seemed to originate from his now demonic-looking arm.
"Power. Give me more power."
Power. That was what he had wanted since the beginning of this. It was as if that voice was the key to triggering his awareness of his current situation again and he instinctively reached out with his changed arm to grab at the nearest demon. But it wasn’t his arm that reached it, instead, a huge spectral demonic arm, which looked exactly like his own right arm except for its size, that gripped the nearest few demons instead and sent them crashing into the street in a gory splatter of blood.
The swathes of demons surrounding him, and even the ones advancing towards Kyrie, paused in their attack momentarily, as if shocked that their companions had met with such a bloody fate, as if they could sense that there was something vastly different from the boy before them.
He, however, grinned at the sight. The shock of seeing his arm transform into a demonic-looking one was long forgotten, and even if he remembered it later, it would not be of much concern. He could save Kyrie now, and that was all that mattered.
"You're going to pay, bastards!"
Entering the boy's body let him know just how much untapped power the boy had, and how much of his own strength had to be drained to grant the boy his new ability. His own powers were acting as the boy's own, as well as slowly guiding the latent energy in the boy to be put to better use in his new appendage. He had not expected that at all, and it was a little displeasing to be weakened so. However, the boy had given no indication that he knew that there was another being in his head. He was sure the boy had heard him, but the boy did not seem to suspect that anything was amiss, that he was actually playing host to another soul.
All the better for him.
His host had much more mental strength than he had initially assumed due to his young age, and so it was for the best that his presence remained unknown at the moment. He had not bothered the boy shortly after acquiring his host, but now that the danger had largely passed, he had begun... scouting the boy's subconscious as unobtrusively as possible. It made him realize that it would not be as easy as he had expected to gain control of his host in the state he was now. He could tell that the boy would not meekly relinquish control to him, but would likely fight tooth and nail like he had been doing when he wanted to protect that girl.
A challenge, the boy would be. But that was all right. He enjoyed challenges. A stronger host who could take care of himself in sticky situations was also much more preferable to a weak one who could get killed easily, especially if he wasn’t able to gain control of the body in time to prevent certain death.
At the same time, he could tell that he would be safe here, dwelling in the far recesses of the boy's subconscious. Well, it would be very much safer than where he had been in that darkness before at least, that much was fairly obvious. All he had to do was to wait for the powers that the boy had siphoned from him to return. In the mean time, he could, and would, rest and try to recall his memories again. Then when the time was right, he would be claiming this body as his own to use.
Rest. Now that he was out of that debilitating darkness, the pain had vanished and was swiftly replaced by fatigue. Bone-deep fatigue. He was not too far gone yet to realize the irony of it. He had no real body yet, after all. But he needed sleep now, and in a few moments, through no real conscious of his own, he had lost awareness of the space around him...
It would be a few months later before he would begin to really awake again.
"Metempsychosis" means "the transmigration of the soul, especially the passage of a soul after death from a human or animal body to some other human or animal body". I suppose you could say it's a fancier word for "rebirth" or "reincarnation". It's my new favorite word now! XD
Because the canon DMC timeline is quite... screwy (especially more so if you take the DMC4 novels as canon), I created my own timeline and slotted in the games and other significant events into it. To get it out of the way, there won't be any yaoi here, although I usually write yaoi. However. If unrelated oneshots arise from the context of this universe... then maybe there'll be yaoi. XD
This was posted on Fanfiction.Net way earlier, before I decided to try my luck on LJ too. ^^" Anyway, hope your interest has been pricked! Feel free to comment!
posted to:
dmc_fics
Chapter: Prologue
Genres: Drama/Suspense
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings (by chapter): ??, Nero/Kyrie (not the main focus for the whole story)
Spoilers: Devil May Cry anime, 1, 3 and 4
Warnings: Language, violence and torture to come
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry belongs to CAPCOM.
A/N: It's quite easy to guess who the "??" character is once you read the prologue, but I just don't want to reveal it up front. Haha.
Summary: [Post DMC4] Half a year of peace has passed since the near destruction of Fortuna. But trouble loves company, as Nero discovers in the form of recurring dreams. Yet they become the least of his worries as something, someone awakens inside of him...
Darkness. All around him was never-ending darkness, disorientating darkness... nothing else but the deepest, darkest black he had ever encountered. Silence. All encompassing, heavy, defeated silence. He realized he had never actually liked noise, but this quietness suffocated him. Then there was pain. Not from fresh bleeding wounds (did he even have a body now?), but from somewhere inside his consciousness. It burned from the inside out and felt like it was tearing his soul apart... and he didn't know why.
Why he was in this soundless blackness, why there was so much pain around him, in him... Why could he barely remember anything about his circumstances? Why couldn't he remember anything at all? All he knew now was that he was free, but from what, he did not know.
Vulnerability. It was a mark of being powerless... He hated that feeling. There was a sense of loss too, like he was missing something that had been with him for a very long time. He had an impression it was a sword. Not having it now was discomfiting, and he would have to find it as soon as it was possible. It wasn't that he felt that he had no way to defend himself; he could feel a certain strength in him that had seemed to deter the vague impressions of danger he had got periodically at bay.
But as disoriented as he currently was and the feeling of vulnerability that was plaguing him... It felt safer to have that sword with him. He wanted, no, he needed to know what had happened to him, to know why he had this amnesia. To do that, he needed to heal from something... He hated not knowing what it was, but instinct told him he had to rest in a safe place... and instinct told him that this was not it.
He wandered in the darkness, not knowing if he was going around in circles or making actual progress. Everything looked the same, was just the same nothingness. He persevered on. There was a way out of it. He would make his way out of it.
It was then when he heardfeltsensed a silent call, a tug on his consciousness. He followed it without hesitation because it felt right, and with nothing to guide him but his instincts it was his only hope. The call guided him along, and there was a sudden sense of danger passed. There was still no familiarity in his surroundings. Was it due to his lost memories? It was now just grey, grey that was gradually lightening into white. Then he heard sounds of life breaking through the barrier of silence just as the white bled into color and he saw objects, people and demons...
He wasn't going to make it. Oh god no. He had to make it there, make it to her in time. It was imperative that he did so. But the distance between them, and the rapidly increasing mass of demons that were in the way was making his already difficult task on the verge of impossibility, if it weren't already downright impossible. Damn it, and he had conveniently not brought out any of his weapons today in his haste to meet her. It was downright foolish considering that Fortuna was known to be an area of frequent demon manifestations, and now it was very possible it was going to cost him her life.
"Kyrie!" he yelled as he raced towards her, fighting away the demons that were blocking his way with his bare hands.
But even as one demon fell, five more appeared to replace their fallen comrade. At this rate, he really wasn't going to make it to her in time. She was going to... He was going to fail her, a thought that he did not even want to entertain even in less trying circumstances. He needed to do something. Anything. He had to. If only he had more power to defeat all of the demons in one blow, then she'd be safe. He needed more power. Right now.
"KYRIE!"
A silver-haired boy was shouting a name frantically in the street swarming with demons. There was only one other person there, a pretty brunette who was rapidly backing away from a horde of demons attempting to corner her. The tug on his consciousness guided him closer to the boy and then it was as if he could hear the boy's thoughts, even though he didn't think he had ever been telepathic.
He knew that the boy wanted to save the girl and that he desired more power - a sentiment he could connect with immediately. He knew what it was like to hold absolute power, even if the specific memories eluded him now. He would undoubtedly find a way to reclaim what was rightfully his again - his power and his memories. This boy... seemed a suitable choice for his quest. He was young enough to be manipulated when the time came, although admittedly, there would be enough people around for him to choose from.
It was that desire in the boy to become stronger and more powerful, whatever the reason, that settled it for him. That and there was an extraordinary familiarity to the boy which he could not place, but it was of no immediate consequence and he doubted there ever would be. Perhaps he had seen the boy before, when he still had his memories but it would not matter.
Decision made, he approached the boy, noting that his call and desire for power was increasing. He would grant him the ability to save the girl, and in time to come, the boy would have to repay him for his "services". Then he felt something from the boy, that marked him as not completely human... A half-demon then? It pleased him more to know that the boy had demon blood in him; he would be more resilient than if he were a normal human being. There was also a well of untapped power within the boy, and instinct (all that he had to go by now) told him that it was what he needed to regain himself again.
He saw the boy's outstretched right arm and he reached out for it, holding on to it firmly.
"Power," he whispered, though he thought it echoed loudly. "Give me more power."
Bright blue light suddenly engulfed his outstretched right arm, and something that felt like electricity surged through him. It stunned him momentarily, as he stared at his hand. When the light faded away, his arm had changed. What in nine hells had just happened to him? The shock had barely settled in before he heard a disembodied voice that resonated in his head and seemed to originate from his now demonic-looking arm.
"Power. Give me more power."
Power. That was what he had wanted since the beginning of this. It was as if that voice was the key to triggering his awareness of his current situation again and he instinctively reached out with his changed arm to grab at the nearest demon. But it wasn’t his arm that reached it, instead, a huge spectral demonic arm, which looked exactly like his own right arm except for its size, that gripped the nearest few demons instead and sent them crashing into the street in a gory splatter of blood.
The swathes of demons surrounding him, and even the ones advancing towards Kyrie, paused in their attack momentarily, as if shocked that their companions had met with such a bloody fate, as if they could sense that there was something vastly different from the boy before them.
He, however, grinned at the sight. The shock of seeing his arm transform into a demonic-looking one was long forgotten, and even if he remembered it later, it would not be of much concern. He could save Kyrie now, and that was all that mattered.
"You're going to pay, bastards!"
Entering the boy's body let him know just how much untapped power the boy had, and how much of his own strength had to be drained to grant the boy his new ability. His own powers were acting as the boy's own, as well as slowly guiding the latent energy in the boy to be put to better use in his new appendage. He had not expected that at all, and it was a little displeasing to be weakened so. However, the boy had given no indication that he knew that there was another being in his head. He was sure the boy had heard him, but the boy did not seem to suspect that anything was amiss, that he was actually playing host to another soul.
All the better for him.
His host had much more mental strength than he had initially assumed due to his young age, and so it was for the best that his presence remained unknown at the moment. He had not bothered the boy shortly after acquiring his host, but now that the danger had largely passed, he had begun... scouting the boy's subconscious as unobtrusively as possible. It made him realize that it would not be as easy as he had expected to gain control of his host in the state he was now. He could tell that the boy would not meekly relinquish control to him, but would likely fight tooth and nail like he had been doing when he wanted to protect that girl.
A challenge, the boy would be. But that was all right. He enjoyed challenges. A stronger host who could take care of himself in sticky situations was also much more preferable to a weak one who could get killed easily, especially if he wasn’t able to gain control of the body in time to prevent certain death.
At the same time, he could tell that he would be safe here, dwelling in the far recesses of the boy's subconscious. Well, it would be very much safer than where he had been in that darkness before at least, that much was fairly obvious. All he had to do was to wait for the powers that the boy had siphoned from him to return. In the mean time, he could, and would, rest and try to recall his memories again. Then when the time was right, he would be claiming this body as his own to use.
Rest. Now that he was out of that debilitating darkness, the pain had vanished and was swiftly replaced by fatigue. Bone-deep fatigue. He was not too far gone yet to realize the irony of it. He had no real body yet, after all. But he needed sleep now, and in a few moments, through no real conscious of his own, he had lost awareness of the space around him...
It would be a few months later before he would begin to really awake again.
"Metempsychosis" means "the transmigration of the soul, especially the passage of a soul after death from a human or animal body to some other human or animal body". I suppose you could say it's a fancier word for "rebirth" or "reincarnation". It's my new favorite word now! XD
Because the canon DMC timeline is quite... screwy (especially more so if you take the DMC4 novels as canon), I created my own timeline and slotted in the games and other significant events into it. To get it out of the way, there won't be any yaoi here, although I usually write yaoi. However. If unrelated oneshots arise from the context of this universe... then maybe there'll be yaoi. XD
This was posted on Fanfiction.Net way earlier, before I decided to try my luck on LJ too. ^^" Anyway, hope your interest has been pricked! Feel free to comment!
posted to:
dmc_fics