HILARITY WILL ENSUE.
Okay, so a little explanation here. A friend of mine writes a lot of DMC stuff, and one day I brought up the novel idea of what would happen if Dante ever met his guardian angel. Since we both had very different ideas, we decided to write our own and then compare.
This is what I produced.
My brother loved it so much he nagged me half to death to post it on the forums because, "It's a piece that deserves to be enjoyed."
Cheers.
Divine Intervention
The gray drizzle just started to swing into a full-fledged downpour as Dante set foot in his office. He sighed and stretched a bit as he stood on the doormat -- a new addition Trish had insisted upon after he'd tracked in mud every day this past week -- and shook some rainwater out of his stark white hair.
After a noncommital tap on the mat that was the epitome of his efforts at wiping his feet, he strode into the room over to his desk. Old, battered and heavy it had served him well and he quite liked the ugly thing. It was the perfect height on which to rest his feet.
After tossing his guns on the desk, Dante paused at his trophy wall. About a half dozen demon heads screamed at him through silently gaping maws, all pierced with a number of outlandish swords and spikes. One head, about the size of a terrier -- a white-eyed Abyssal -- had the day's mail daintily wedged between its serrated fangs.
Removing the head of the Blitz he'd acquired from his last job from his belt, Dante grabbed one of the jagged spikes, and thrust it through the slack mouth, pinning the new trophy to the wall. The demon hunter stepped back and scrutinized his handy work, head cocked to the side. He made a small adjustment, then nodded, satisfied.
"Miss me, babe?" he muttered as he lay Rebellion on two pegs in the wall behind his desk. The broad blade was all that kept a racy pin-up poster decent, blocking the woman's impressive endowments from view.
Loud clanging came from the small kitchen off to the right. "Trish, whatever you cooked, I'm not eating it," he called, dropping heavily into his battered chair that oozed foam through large holes.
He swung his feet up on the desk, wiggled comfortably into the chair which shrieked a protest, and picked up his Sports Illustrated where he'd left off. "I didn't think it was possible for me to get food poisoning but damn, you managed it. Oh, nice!" He turned the magazine so the binding was parallel to the desktop and gave a low whistle, one eyebrow cocked appreciatively.
More clanging from the kitchen. Well, she must be damn determined to cook something, he figured, sighing. At least I've still got some pizza left over....
His hand had drifted over to the desk top where there was always a pizza box to be found. Like the phone, blood-stained glove, lamp and his shoe prints, it was a permanent landmark of the desktop terrain. It may be a few days old and stale, but there was always a pizza box there.
Except today. His fingers touched nothing but cold, bare wood.
At first, this mysterious absence didn't even register. He frowned slightly, his eyes fixed on the magazine while his hand patted around, exploring for that familiar, greasy cardboard feeling.
The realization that something was wrong finally penetrated his brain. He frowned and reluctantly lowered the magazine. The desktop was devoid of any pizza boxes. There was the phone, the glove, and --
"What the f--"
He removed his feet and took a closer look at the desk. Disbelieving, he swiped a finger across the top and examined it.
Nothing. No dust, no dirt, no crumbs -- nothing. The desk had been scrubbed scrupulously clean.
Swinging around in his chair, Dante realized that so had everything else. The floor, usually littered with bits of paper, bloodstained towels, crushed beer cans and other things best not analyzed had been swept clean. The trashcan in the corner that was always fluctuating between a state of overflowing and drowned was empty, and even the can itself appeared to have been scrubbed. The yellowed windows actually allowed some meager daylight through their old panes, the accumulated years of grime fastidiously scraped away. The comfortable, familiar chaos of the room that had molded to fit Dante like an old coat was gone. It almost looked respectable.
Dante immediately grabbed Ebony and Ivory from the desk and sprang to his feet, reaching behind him for Rebellion. Something diabolical was afoot. Something incredibly, heinously evil had come from the demon world, and it had parked itself in his office. Dante could let a lot of things slide, but an insult on this level was not to be tolerated.
He was going to find the demon responsible for this and kill the fucker.
A loud clang from the kitchen made him spin around, Ivory's deadly muzzle aimed at the kitchen. "Trish, I know you got a weird sense of humor but this is a bit much." No response.
In a flash, Dante dashed through the kitchen doorway and stopped dead in his tracks. Shock blazed across his face.
There, of all things, stood a dark-haired, short woman -- maybe five feet at most -- wearing tattered jeans and T-shirt, scrubbing industriously at the sink.
Now, some note should be taken at the incredible courage of such an endeavor. Dante's diet consisted of pizza and various late night take-out meals. He did not cook. He tried it once. It was rice. He'd even bought a little rice cooker and everything to ensure success. Long story short, rice had exploded everywhere, a fuse had blown, and the rice cooker ended up on the neighbor's porch in several pieces with the words "This is how much I give a shit," scrawled on it. He'd abandoned any optimistic thoughts of cooking after that.
This meant the kitchen became superfluous to his life in the greatest sense of the word, and as a result it became the convenient pit of the building. Old pizza boxes and Chinese cartons awaited their long decaying death in that rank cemetery. Half-forgotten things were tossed into the kitchen to lay moldering under layers of stale boxes, grimy rags, and the occasional demon head brought home to be identified.
Crumbling cassette tapes had long taken over the table, and an engine had taken up residence on the counter, which Dante had always meant to fix. Unwashed, torn clothes pinned the refrigerator shut now and then, but he just tossed them deeper into the foul abyss of his kitchen -- the only cleaning he ever did, and that was because it stood between him and a cold beer.
As a result of this neglect, the kitchen sink had become a festering pit of mold, ooze and slime that even Dante was prepared to admit might be showing signs of sentience. Forgotten Chinese and Italian food had been dumped in there years ago, and only made it halfway down the drain, the rest clinging to the sink sides like leeches. The constantly dripping faucet combined with the dim light made a paradise for aspiring fungus, and the sink had long ago been taken over by the vicious mold that was eerily resilient to the most caustic of chemicals.
So, to take a scrubber into this pit of bubbling slime was an extraordinary feat indeed, one that not even Dante could contemplate without turning green. Which is saying something, considering he'd been down the gullets of various demons throughout his lifetime and worse.
Thus, when Dante burst into the kitchen to find not only a stranger cleaning the sink (he was certain that the mold would've eaten away the metal by now) but that the entire kitchen was actually clean... not only did he stop in amazement, but his jaw came perilously close to hitting the floor. He just stood there on the clean floor -- holy shit, he could actually see the floor! -- and stared.
The woman turned to face him. She was skinny and pinch-faced, as though she suffered from bad indigestion all her life and drank outlandish teas as a cure. "About time you got here." Despite her frame, she had a mellow, commanding voice. "You and I have a lot of things to discuss about some simple hygiene."
Dante had been fighting demons since he could swing Rebellion without falling over. It had taken him a long time to figure out how they behaved and what tricks they used. Not all demons were full-out fighting, door-smashing grunts. Some were subtle, wearing familiar faces with soothing voices and sharp-toothed smiles. Some demons looked very human and some humans were worse than demons. Twenty-some years in the business had ingrained a certain set of instincts which would jump in even if he was caught off guard. Which, in fact, was the particular case right now.
Dante shot her three times.
At least, he almost shot her.
The bullets -- raw pellets of his own power -- zipped toward her with unerring precision. But just before they struck, she swung her hands in front of her three times. She held up her hand, wearing a yellow rubber glove. On her palm sat the three bullets, which shortly crumbled into nothing. "Don't be an ass," she said. "Sit down and have a drink." She nodded toward the table -- the miraculously clean table -- and the beer that was waiting for him, sitting on a coaster.
"Who the fuck are you," Dante said baldly. His mind still was still reeling with shock -- wit would have to wait until he was somewhat composed.
Sighing, the woman stripped the rubber gloves off and washed her hands. She dried them carelessly on the seat of her jeans as she turned to him. "My name is Lexi," she said. "And I am your guardian angel."
***
"Angel, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Where're your wings then?"
"I'm not in my angel form at the moment. You can't see them. And in case you're wondering, yes, angels are asexual, but it's tradition to take form of the opposite sex of your charge, when occasion calls for it."
"Hunh." Dante leaned back in the kitchen chair and took a swig of his beer. He scrutinized her with one eye. "How does it work?"
"What work?"
"You 'guarding' me and all that. How is it supposed to work?"
She glowered at him. Now that he was closer, he noticed she had rainbow-colored eyes, scintillating every time she moved her head. "Damn difficult is how it works!" she snapped. "You haven't made my job any easier, that's for sure. You know, before I got assigned to you, I had an excellent record. No savagings, no murders, nothing ever happened to my charges. But you! Oh, you just have to go out and find the biggest, most foul, spike-encrusted demon out there and practically hump it to death!"
"Hey--"
"Do you have any idea what you've done to my blood pressure? Three millenia. That's how old I am, and you've aged me five times that in just a few decades!"
"Well--"
"And honestly, do you think you could just ONCE keep your damn hand on that sword of yours? You have no idea the heart-stopping terror every time I see that thing get snug up to its hilt in your dainty little chest. I know you help people and save lives by the score every day, but can't you consider the impact of what you're doing to me?"
"Hey, wait a second, slow down!" Dante straightened up in his chair. "I didn't even know I had a guardian angel until ten minutes ago, so don't go shoving firecrackers up my ass."
Lexi's lips twitched and one eyebrow arched slightly, but she remained silent.
Encouraged, he went on. "Besides, I can take it. I haven't had a cold since I was five, for crying out loud. A few stabs and slashes don't bother me." He leaned back in the chair again, fingers laced behind his head. "'Sides, you haven't explained what you're doing here. How is it I get a guardian angel? Shouldn't there be some kind of lobbyist thing against angels protecting half-demons?"
She smirked. "Nah, everyone with a soul gets a guardian angel assigned to them. You need about a whole squad assigned to you," she added, dispprovingly.
"So, what, no halo?" he said, hastily trying to change the subject.
"Don't change the subject. You're damn reckless and my health is bad enough as is. Not to mention the filth--! It's a miracle you didn't catch a disease just living in this junkheap! I've made a list of things for you to do, by the way, that are simple enough to do. If demons and swords can't kill you than neither will a little house cleaning. As for how the 'guarding' works, all angels can see into the future."
Dante brightened. "Really? I just bought this lottery ticket--"
"We can only see into the future about forty seconds ahead, so don't bother."
"Oh." He wilted somewhat at this disappointing news. "Well, what's the point, then."
"It's WAY too limited in your case," Lexi grumbled as she lifted her glass of water to her lips. "Had I known what you'd be like I would've demanded some compensation at the very least."
"So that's how you caught the bullets, right? You saw them forty seconds ahead of time?"
Lexi smiled at him, a wry little thing. "Oh, I must hand it to you, you do catch on quicker than any of my past assignments."
"Oh, so you show up and shoot the shit with every assignment, eh?"
She sighed. "No. In fact, this is the first time ever, and there's plenty of paperwork involved in such cases, mind you. Eternity is never so long as when you have to do paperwork." She spat the hateful word and shuddered, sipping some water to cleanse the foul taste it left on her tongue.
To this, Dante could only nod in commiseration -- he was terrible at paperwork as well, and made himself scarce whenever it was tax time, dumping that burden on Trish. He leaned back and began to settle into his usual position of comfort, hands laced behind his head, feet on the table.
Lexi hissed at him suddenly and swatted his feet off the table. "Don't you even dare! It took me an hour to clean this table and by god it'll stay clean for at least as long!"
"Hey, hey, whatever lady." He hastily moved his boots away from the quick, harmless swats she was delivering to them. "So, why did you show up anyway, other than to clean house? Unless you're looking for a job, 'cause I think I can pay ya for work like this."
Lexi snorted. "I'm not that desperate. I'm here because you're in danger."
Dante snorted. "When is that ever different?"
She shot him a look, rainbow eyes flashing. "Indeed. But this is a special case. Someone wants to siphon your soul, and since you are my charge, I can't allow that to happen."
He raised an eyebrow. "I guess they woudn't accept an autograph as a substitute, huh?"
But Lexi wasn't listening. She had gained a vague, distant look, her eyes glittering unnaturally. "Phone," she said.
Out in the lobby, the phone on his desk rang.
"Road shut down, Trish can't come," Lexi intoned in that eerily flat voice. Then she abprubtly sang, "Heeeat of the moment..." She blinked at him and smiled. "I love that song, you know."
She's lost it he thought. Well and truly gone batshit insane. Well, at least I got some cleaning out of it. He walked out to the desk and answered the phone, affecting a slow Texan drawl. "Roadkill Cafe, you kill it, we grill it. This is Bert."
He listened, his brow furrowing each passing second. Trish had gone out to town to check out an area a client had set up to ambush a major demon. Apparently, the entire freeway was shut down and she was miles from the next turn off. He hung up, disquieted.
Outside, a car drove by, the music and bass turned up so high he could feel the vibrations through the soles of his shoes, and the windows rattled in their panes. "HEEEEAT OF THE MOMENT!" boomed the speakers, before the car leisurely turned the corner and the music faded away.
Dante stood there for a moment, hand on the phone, rock still in the silence of the office. Then, "Okay, creepy."
He walked back into the kitchen and, for the second time that day, stopped dead in his tracks.
Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Lexi was holding a silver broadsword, swung over her shoulder much as Dante often did. He eyed the small woman. "The hell were you hiding that?"
She glanced at him and turned back to the kitchen windows. It appeared as if she were waiting for something. "Ten, nine, eight..." she murmured to herself. She held the broadsword like a bat, knees bent, sword over her shoulder. "One," she said, as she swung the sword.
A small hex ball had just been thrown through one of the windows, bounced off the counter and slammed into the flat of the silver sword swinging to meet it. It bounced back through the hole it had made, and exploded beyond in a glittering cloud of black dust.
"Come and get it, you fuckers!" she shouted through the hole in the window. "Dante, duck."
He ducked. There was no time to question why, and he had seen her powers in action and respected it. No wonder angels were such fierce opponents that no demon wanted to tangle with; at least that explains why the demon world never tried to lay siege to heaven and just settled for invading the human world.
With a sound like tearing silk, an odd blade shaped like a metal crescent scythed through the air where Dante's neck had been. Lexi plucked it out of the air and threw it back. Looking over his shoulder, he saw it bury itself in the chest of man standing in the middle of the office. A cultist from the look of all the demonic symbols carved into his skin and the third, pure white eye in his forehead. The man looked down in surprise at his own weapon protruding from his chest. Then suddenly, his skin shriveled, drying out within seconds. His withering lips peeled back from his teeth and a terrified death cry rattled in his dessicated throat before he fell to the floor, smashing into ash when he fell, the odd blade pulsing atop the heap of dust that had been its owner.
Dante gaped. He'd never seen anything like it before.
"Don't let the blades touch you," Lexi said, walking past him. More cultists were pouring through the door, and stopped in confusion when they saw the small woman advancing toward them, silver broadsword in hand and murder in her eyes.
Dante watched as some of the cultists slashed at her. A small shift, a twitch of the shoulder, was all it took for her to avoid their amateur swings. Swinging that enormous blade over her head, she decapitated two of them. Turning, she caught the descending blade aimed for her back and shoved -- the other end smoothly entered the wielder's stomach and he too turned into a dessicated husk as his soul was siphoned away.
Dante, watching her battle -- incredibly good, he had to admit -- shrugged and drew Ebony and Ivory, twirling them around the index finger before firing into the mob. The barrage of bullets tore into the cultists, shredding through their ranks.
Suddenly, Lexi was next to him, as though she had just materialized out of nowhere. Then a cultist actually did materialize out of nowhere, a few steps away from Dante's side. The man found himself staring into Lexi's malevolent rainbow eyes.
She stabbed him with her sword, the blade going clean through him. But she didn't stop with just him -- she pushed the blade further, multi-colored flashes of power funneling down the weapon's length from the tip, and pierced two more cultists on the blade. Dante knew a Stinger when he saw one and actually smiled. He wondered if she had gotten that move from guarding him for so long. "Not bad!" he shouted.
With the three luckless cultists stuck on her blade like an absurd shishkabob, she kicked the first one she had impaled, the force of her blow knocking all of them off. "DOWN!" she shouted.
Dante blinked and dropped to the floor -- five crescents sang as they spun through the air and embedded themselves into the wall, thrown by invisible hands. He rolled over on his back and riddled a cultist with holes who tried to take advantage of his position.
"Jump, dash to the right, then high time!" Lexi shouted. She was busy with five opponents.
"Yeah yeah, I hear ya, bossy," he muttered under his breath, but followed her direction. He jumped into the air, neatly avoiding another cloaked cultist, and came down on top of the man, breaking his neck. Then he quickly dashed to the right, avoiding three more blades that came from nowhere and stopped behind another assailant. The man never even knew the danger until Dante had knocked him into the air with a powerful upward slash with Rebellion. Quick-drawing his guns, the demon slayer shot him full of lead then knocked the body into a cluster of cultists with another swing of his sword.
Dante grinned, and swung Rebellion eagerly. Ignoring Lexi's shout, he dashed forward, bringing Rebellion around to bear. Five cultists made the mistake of charging to meet the demon hunter and all of them were caught in the deadly jig Dante liked to call Dance Macabre.
The slayer swung slashed at them several times, the broadsword slicing across all of them; then he stabbed at them so fast no human could possibly hope to dodge it, and the five men were stabbed at least a dozen times each. Then Dante swung his sword twice, knocking all of them into the air. Crouching much as Lexi did earlier in the kitchen, like a batter on the diamond, he focused his power around Rebellion, making the blade glow dark red. "Get outta here!" he shouted as he swung the glowing blade, the weapon biting deep into flesh just as the cultists were descending from their unwanted flight. Ten pieces of demons worshippers flew across the room, each sliced cleanly in half. Their bodies smoked and sputtered, fizzling away into nothing.
Smirking, Dante turned for his next victim--
And looked into the edge of a crescent blade about to bury itself in his skull. It would hit him -- while he'd been busy knocking the cultists five layers deep into hell, another had come up behind him. There was neither the time nor room to dodge the fatal blow. Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly was the last bit of post-facto advice that passed through his mind.
The blade descended... then rapidly pulled back just a hairs' breadth from Dante. Across the room, Lexi had thrown her sword like a spear, then summoned it back to her hand, much as Dante had done in the past. The only difference being, she had a screaming cultist on her blade.
She grabbed the man by the top of his head and snapped his neck with a small jerk of her hand. He slipped off her blade and sizzled away to nothing, leaving behind a foul-smelling stain.
"Assholes," Lexi muttered. "Always have to leave a mess behind." She flicked her blade at the stain, disgruntled, before sheathing it over her shoulder. Dante craned his neck and raised an eyebrow -- she had no sheath to speak of on her back; the sword just hung there. He jerked his chin at the sword. "You do that with magnets?"
She shrugged. "Something like that."
"Hey, thanks for that. I would've been a goner for sure."
Lexi gave him a gloomy look. "Yeah, I know, it's a feeling I'm very familiar with."
He laughed. "Say, if you angels are so good at calling shots ahead of time, how come I've gotten so many scythes buried in me? Isn't it your job to make sure I don't come to harm?"
She rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, you mortals must learn for yourselves. Besides, direct intervention is rarely allowed. We're allowed to move small things. Thoughts are easiest to manipulate. Make a demon think it'd be better to jump too early or to hesitate, to make mistakes -- you handle the rest fairly well by yourself."
"Ah, I see."
"Of course, I can hardly keep up with all your idiot disregard for safety even the lowest of apes would consider," she added viciously. "LETTING Echidna snap you up like that? You just LET her do it, not even considering what might happen, simply trying to look suave."
"Well it worked, didn't it?" he shot back, crossing his arms.
Her mouth snapped shut on the start of another lashing and she gave him a mollified look. "Yes, yes it did." She smiled ruefully and patted him on the shoulder. "You're a good sort, Dante, if a little stupid."
"Charmed," he said dryly. "Want a beer?"
She sighed and shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I have to go back to incognito once the task is done. Protocol is very strict, I'm afraid."
"What? You're leaving just like that?"
"I'll still be here, you just won't see me."
He considered this for a moment. "Okay, not stalkerish at all."
Lexi gave him a look so old-fashioned it was fairly esoteric. "Please. Those occultists by the way were servents of that major demon your client wants to ambush. Bastard thought he could get the jump on you once and for all and steal your soul -- would've worked too. But that shit won't happen on my watch!" Her look of smug satisfaction was so funny Dante couldn't help but snort.
"Well, thanks for the tip. I guess see you later then?"
"Not so fast, cupcake!" Grinning maliciously, she pulled a paper from her back pocket and handed it to him. "Here's a list of chores-- oh, shut up!"
Dante groaned the minute the c-word left her mouth. "What kind of angel tortures the person she's supposed to protect?"
"A LIST OF CHORES," Lexi shouted over him, "that you can do. They're simple, and doing them once a week will keep this place resembling something habitable instead of what a demon ralphed up after a bad hangover."
Dante sighed and took the sheet of paper from her.
"And don't even think about destroying it, I've blessed it six ways from Sunday," she added, smug.
"Hey, before ya go...." he paused, then cocked an eyebrow curiously. "Can I see what you really look like?"
Lexi seemed to consider this. "My true form would burn your eyes out and is approximately the size of the Chrysler building."
A pause.
"But I suppose I could scale it down for you." Suddenly, Lexi vanished. In her place stood an angel that was easily seven feet tall, with skin so white it glowed, looking more like contained light than flesh. Two enormous wings were folded against her back, rainbow colors rippling across the white feathers. The angel balanced on the broad balls of her feet -- the feet more resembling that of a cat's or demons than any human leg, powerful and fast. Large clawed hands hung at her sides, ending in sharp points -- not surprising, considering angels and demons shared a common ancestry. Shining silver armor, slightly irridescent, protected her torso, arms and legs, and a silver helmet with a dark red fringe running from brow to nape finished the set. Around her forehead, a thin, golden strand of pure light glistened and flowed, almost vanishing among the brilliant cast of her skin and wings.
Her face was what drew his attention, though. Smooth and featureless but for a pair of large, almond shaped eyes, there wasn't much to look at. But her eyes. They shimmered and shone with every color of the rainbow, impossible to fully describe. They weren't irredescent, but glimmered with constantly shifting colors. It was breathtaking.
Angels had always been described by poets as beings of pure light. They never mentioned that every color within that light shone at all times as well.
"Very impressive," said Dante. "What's that made of?" He pointed to the armor.
Adamantium. The voice resonated in his mind, not unpleasant.
"Neat. Where can I get some?"
Goodbye, Dante.
Dante smirked. There was no mistaking the dry and long-suffering tone as Lexi's. The angelic figure stood for a second longer until he blinked -- then it was gone. Dante looked down at the list of chores in his hand and sighed. Then a sudden thought came to mind; What if I flushed it down the toilet?
The front door blew open from a violent gust of wind, mussing his hair and setting his coat to flapping.
"Okay, okay, geez! It was just a thought!" he said, and hastily shut the door.
Okay, so a little explanation here. A friend of mine writes a lot of DMC stuff, and one day I brought up the novel idea of what would happen if Dante ever met his guardian angel. Since we both had very different ideas, we decided to write our own and then compare.
This is what I produced.
My brother loved it so much he nagged me half to death to post it on the forums because, "It's a piece that deserves to be enjoyed."Cheers.
Divine Intervention
The gray drizzle just started to swing into a full-fledged downpour as Dante set foot in his office. He sighed and stretched a bit as he stood on the doormat -- a new addition Trish had insisted upon after he'd tracked in mud every day this past week -- and shook some rainwater out of his stark white hair.
After a noncommital tap on the mat that was the epitome of his efforts at wiping his feet, he strode into the room over to his desk. Old, battered and heavy it had served him well and he quite liked the ugly thing. It was the perfect height on which to rest his feet.
After tossing his guns on the desk, Dante paused at his trophy wall. About a half dozen demon heads screamed at him through silently gaping maws, all pierced with a number of outlandish swords and spikes. One head, about the size of a terrier -- a white-eyed Abyssal -- had the day's mail daintily wedged between its serrated fangs.
Removing the head of the Blitz he'd acquired from his last job from his belt, Dante grabbed one of the jagged spikes, and thrust it through the slack mouth, pinning the new trophy to the wall. The demon hunter stepped back and scrutinized his handy work, head cocked to the side. He made a small adjustment, then nodded, satisfied.
"Miss me, babe?" he muttered as he lay Rebellion on two pegs in the wall behind his desk. The broad blade was all that kept a racy pin-up poster decent, blocking the woman's impressive endowments from view.
Loud clanging came from the small kitchen off to the right. "Trish, whatever you cooked, I'm not eating it," he called, dropping heavily into his battered chair that oozed foam through large holes.
He swung his feet up on the desk, wiggled comfortably into the chair which shrieked a protest, and picked up his Sports Illustrated where he'd left off. "I didn't think it was possible for me to get food poisoning but damn, you managed it. Oh, nice!" He turned the magazine so the binding was parallel to the desktop and gave a low whistle, one eyebrow cocked appreciatively.
More clanging from the kitchen. Well, she must be damn determined to cook something, he figured, sighing. At least I've still got some pizza left over....
His hand had drifted over to the desk top where there was always a pizza box to be found. Like the phone, blood-stained glove, lamp and his shoe prints, it was a permanent landmark of the desktop terrain. It may be a few days old and stale, but there was always a pizza box there.
Except today. His fingers touched nothing but cold, bare wood.
At first, this mysterious absence didn't even register. He frowned slightly, his eyes fixed on the magazine while his hand patted around, exploring for that familiar, greasy cardboard feeling.
The realization that something was wrong finally penetrated his brain. He frowned and reluctantly lowered the magazine. The desktop was devoid of any pizza boxes. There was the phone, the glove, and --
"What the f--"
He removed his feet and took a closer look at the desk. Disbelieving, he swiped a finger across the top and examined it.
Nothing. No dust, no dirt, no crumbs -- nothing. The desk had been scrubbed scrupulously clean.
Swinging around in his chair, Dante realized that so had everything else. The floor, usually littered with bits of paper, bloodstained towels, crushed beer cans and other things best not analyzed had been swept clean. The trashcan in the corner that was always fluctuating between a state of overflowing and drowned was empty, and even the can itself appeared to have been scrubbed. The yellowed windows actually allowed some meager daylight through their old panes, the accumulated years of grime fastidiously scraped away. The comfortable, familiar chaos of the room that had molded to fit Dante like an old coat was gone. It almost looked respectable.
Dante immediately grabbed Ebony and Ivory from the desk and sprang to his feet, reaching behind him for Rebellion. Something diabolical was afoot. Something incredibly, heinously evil had come from the demon world, and it had parked itself in his office. Dante could let a lot of things slide, but an insult on this level was not to be tolerated.
He was going to find the demon responsible for this and kill the fucker.
A loud clang from the kitchen made him spin around, Ivory's deadly muzzle aimed at the kitchen. "Trish, I know you got a weird sense of humor but this is a bit much." No response.
In a flash, Dante dashed through the kitchen doorway and stopped dead in his tracks. Shock blazed across his face.
There, of all things, stood a dark-haired, short woman -- maybe five feet at most -- wearing tattered jeans and T-shirt, scrubbing industriously at the sink.
Now, some note should be taken at the incredible courage of such an endeavor. Dante's diet consisted of pizza and various late night take-out meals. He did not cook. He tried it once. It was rice. He'd even bought a little rice cooker and everything to ensure success. Long story short, rice had exploded everywhere, a fuse had blown, and the rice cooker ended up on the neighbor's porch in several pieces with the words "This is how much I give a shit," scrawled on it. He'd abandoned any optimistic thoughts of cooking after that.
This meant the kitchen became superfluous to his life in the greatest sense of the word, and as a result it became the convenient pit of the building. Old pizza boxes and Chinese cartons awaited their long decaying death in that rank cemetery. Half-forgotten things were tossed into the kitchen to lay moldering under layers of stale boxes, grimy rags, and the occasional demon head brought home to be identified.
Crumbling cassette tapes had long taken over the table, and an engine had taken up residence on the counter, which Dante had always meant to fix. Unwashed, torn clothes pinned the refrigerator shut now and then, but he just tossed them deeper into the foul abyss of his kitchen -- the only cleaning he ever did, and that was because it stood between him and a cold beer.
As a result of this neglect, the kitchen sink had become a festering pit of mold, ooze and slime that even Dante was prepared to admit might be showing signs of sentience. Forgotten Chinese and Italian food had been dumped in there years ago, and only made it halfway down the drain, the rest clinging to the sink sides like leeches. The constantly dripping faucet combined with the dim light made a paradise for aspiring fungus, and the sink had long ago been taken over by the vicious mold that was eerily resilient to the most caustic of chemicals.
So, to take a scrubber into this pit of bubbling slime was an extraordinary feat indeed, one that not even Dante could contemplate without turning green. Which is saying something, considering he'd been down the gullets of various demons throughout his lifetime and worse.
Thus, when Dante burst into the kitchen to find not only a stranger cleaning the sink (he was certain that the mold would've eaten away the metal by now) but that the entire kitchen was actually clean... not only did he stop in amazement, but his jaw came perilously close to hitting the floor. He just stood there on the clean floor -- holy shit, he could actually see the floor! -- and stared.
The woman turned to face him. She was skinny and pinch-faced, as though she suffered from bad indigestion all her life and drank outlandish teas as a cure. "About time you got here." Despite her frame, she had a mellow, commanding voice. "You and I have a lot of things to discuss about some simple hygiene."
Dante had been fighting demons since he could swing Rebellion without falling over. It had taken him a long time to figure out how they behaved and what tricks they used. Not all demons were full-out fighting, door-smashing grunts. Some were subtle, wearing familiar faces with soothing voices and sharp-toothed smiles. Some demons looked very human and some humans were worse than demons. Twenty-some years in the business had ingrained a certain set of instincts which would jump in even if he was caught off guard. Which, in fact, was the particular case right now.
Dante shot her three times.
At least, he almost shot her.
The bullets -- raw pellets of his own power -- zipped toward her with unerring precision. But just before they struck, she swung her hands in front of her three times. She held up her hand, wearing a yellow rubber glove. On her palm sat the three bullets, which shortly crumbled into nothing. "Don't be an ass," she said. "Sit down and have a drink." She nodded toward the table -- the miraculously clean table -- and the beer that was waiting for him, sitting on a coaster.
"Who the fuck are you," Dante said baldly. His mind still was still reeling with shock -- wit would have to wait until he was somewhat composed.
Sighing, the woman stripped the rubber gloves off and washed her hands. She dried them carelessly on the seat of her jeans as she turned to him. "My name is Lexi," she said. "And I am your guardian angel."
***
"Angel, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Where're your wings then?"
"I'm not in my angel form at the moment. You can't see them. And in case you're wondering, yes, angels are asexual, but it's tradition to take form of the opposite sex of your charge, when occasion calls for it."
"Hunh." Dante leaned back in the kitchen chair and took a swig of his beer. He scrutinized her with one eye. "How does it work?"
"What work?"
"You 'guarding' me and all that. How is it supposed to work?"
She glowered at him. Now that he was closer, he noticed she had rainbow-colored eyes, scintillating every time she moved her head. "Damn difficult is how it works!" she snapped. "You haven't made my job any easier, that's for sure. You know, before I got assigned to you, I had an excellent record. No savagings, no murders, nothing ever happened to my charges. But you! Oh, you just have to go out and find the biggest, most foul, spike-encrusted demon out there and practically hump it to death!"
"Hey--"
"Do you have any idea what you've done to my blood pressure? Three millenia. That's how old I am, and you've aged me five times that in just a few decades!"
"Well--"
"And honestly, do you think you could just ONCE keep your damn hand on that sword of yours? You have no idea the heart-stopping terror every time I see that thing get snug up to its hilt in your dainty little chest. I know you help people and save lives by the score every day, but can't you consider the impact of what you're doing to me?"
"Hey, wait a second, slow down!" Dante straightened up in his chair. "I didn't even know I had a guardian angel until ten minutes ago, so don't go shoving firecrackers up my ass."
Lexi's lips twitched and one eyebrow arched slightly, but she remained silent.
Encouraged, he went on. "Besides, I can take it. I haven't had a cold since I was five, for crying out loud. A few stabs and slashes don't bother me." He leaned back in the chair again, fingers laced behind his head. "'Sides, you haven't explained what you're doing here. How is it I get a guardian angel? Shouldn't there be some kind of lobbyist thing against angels protecting half-demons?"
She smirked. "Nah, everyone with a soul gets a guardian angel assigned to them. You need about a whole squad assigned to you," she added, dispprovingly.
"So, what, no halo?" he said, hastily trying to change the subject.
"Don't change the subject. You're damn reckless and my health is bad enough as is. Not to mention the filth--! It's a miracle you didn't catch a disease just living in this junkheap! I've made a list of things for you to do, by the way, that are simple enough to do. If demons and swords can't kill you than neither will a little house cleaning. As for how the 'guarding' works, all angels can see into the future."
Dante brightened. "Really? I just bought this lottery ticket--"
"We can only see into the future about forty seconds ahead, so don't bother."
"Oh." He wilted somewhat at this disappointing news. "Well, what's the point, then."
"It's WAY too limited in your case," Lexi grumbled as she lifted her glass of water to her lips. "Had I known what you'd be like I would've demanded some compensation at the very least."
"So that's how you caught the bullets, right? You saw them forty seconds ahead of time?"
Lexi smiled at him, a wry little thing. "Oh, I must hand it to you, you do catch on quicker than any of my past assignments."
"Oh, so you show up and shoot the shit with every assignment, eh?"
She sighed. "No. In fact, this is the first time ever, and there's plenty of paperwork involved in such cases, mind you. Eternity is never so long as when you have to do paperwork." She spat the hateful word and shuddered, sipping some water to cleanse the foul taste it left on her tongue.
To this, Dante could only nod in commiseration -- he was terrible at paperwork as well, and made himself scarce whenever it was tax time, dumping that burden on Trish. He leaned back and began to settle into his usual position of comfort, hands laced behind his head, feet on the table.
Lexi hissed at him suddenly and swatted his feet off the table. "Don't you even dare! It took me an hour to clean this table and by god it'll stay clean for at least as long!"
"Hey, hey, whatever lady." He hastily moved his boots away from the quick, harmless swats she was delivering to them. "So, why did you show up anyway, other than to clean house? Unless you're looking for a job, 'cause I think I can pay ya for work like this."
Lexi snorted. "I'm not that desperate. I'm here because you're in danger."
Dante snorted. "When is that ever different?"
She shot him a look, rainbow eyes flashing. "Indeed. But this is a special case. Someone wants to siphon your soul, and since you are my charge, I can't allow that to happen."
He raised an eyebrow. "I guess they woudn't accept an autograph as a substitute, huh?"
But Lexi wasn't listening. She had gained a vague, distant look, her eyes glittering unnaturally. "Phone," she said.
Out in the lobby, the phone on his desk rang.
"Road shut down, Trish can't come," Lexi intoned in that eerily flat voice. Then she abprubtly sang, "Heeeat of the moment..." She blinked at him and smiled. "I love that song, you know."
She's lost it he thought. Well and truly gone batshit insane. Well, at least I got some cleaning out of it. He walked out to the desk and answered the phone, affecting a slow Texan drawl. "Roadkill Cafe, you kill it, we grill it. This is Bert."
He listened, his brow furrowing each passing second. Trish had gone out to town to check out an area a client had set up to ambush a major demon. Apparently, the entire freeway was shut down and she was miles from the next turn off. He hung up, disquieted.
Outside, a car drove by, the music and bass turned up so high he could feel the vibrations through the soles of his shoes, and the windows rattled in their panes. "HEEEEAT OF THE MOMENT!" boomed the speakers, before the car leisurely turned the corner and the music faded away.
Dante stood there for a moment, hand on the phone, rock still in the silence of the office. Then, "Okay, creepy."
He walked back into the kitchen and, for the second time that day, stopped dead in his tracks.
Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Lexi was holding a silver broadsword, swung over her shoulder much as Dante often did. He eyed the small woman. "The hell were you hiding that?"
She glanced at him and turned back to the kitchen windows. It appeared as if she were waiting for something. "Ten, nine, eight..." she murmured to herself. She held the broadsword like a bat, knees bent, sword over her shoulder. "One," she said, as she swung the sword.
A small hex ball had just been thrown through one of the windows, bounced off the counter and slammed into the flat of the silver sword swinging to meet it. It bounced back through the hole it had made, and exploded beyond in a glittering cloud of black dust.
"Come and get it, you fuckers!" she shouted through the hole in the window. "Dante, duck."
He ducked. There was no time to question why, and he had seen her powers in action and respected it. No wonder angels were such fierce opponents that no demon wanted to tangle with; at least that explains why the demon world never tried to lay siege to heaven and just settled for invading the human world.
With a sound like tearing silk, an odd blade shaped like a metal crescent scythed through the air where Dante's neck had been. Lexi plucked it out of the air and threw it back. Looking over his shoulder, he saw it bury itself in the chest of man standing in the middle of the office. A cultist from the look of all the demonic symbols carved into his skin and the third, pure white eye in his forehead. The man looked down in surprise at his own weapon protruding from his chest. Then suddenly, his skin shriveled, drying out within seconds. His withering lips peeled back from his teeth and a terrified death cry rattled in his dessicated throat before he fell to the floor, smashing into ash when he fell, the odd blade pulsing atop the heap of dust that had been its owner.
Dante gaped. He'd never seen anything like it before.
"Don't let the blades touch you," Lexi said, walking past him. More cultists were pouring through the door, and stopped in confusion when they saw the small woman advancing toward them, silver broadsword in hand and murder in her eyes.
Dante watched as some of the cultists slashed at her. A small shift, a twitch of the shoulder, was all it took for her to avoid their amateur swings. Swinging that enormous blade over her head, she decapitated two of them. Turning, she caught the descending blade aimed for her back and shoved -- the other end smoothly entered the wielder's stomach and he too turned into a dessicated husk as his soul was siphoned away.
Dante, watching her battle -- incredibly good, he had to admit -- shrugged and drew Ebony and Ivory, twirling them around the index finger before firing into the mob. The barrage of bullets tore into the cultists, shredding through their ranks.
Suddenly, Lexi was next to him, as though she had just materialized out of nowhere. Then a cultist actually did materialize out of nowhere, a few steps away from Dante's side. The man found himself staring into Lexi's malevolent rainbow eyes.
She stabbed him with her sword, the blade going clean through him. But she didn't stop with just him -- she pushed the blade further, multi-colored flashes of power funneling down the weapon's length from the tip, and pierced two more cultists on the blade. Dante knew a Stinger when he saw one and actually smiled. He wondered if she had gotten that move from guarding him for so long. "Not bad!" he shouted.
With the three luckless cultists stuck on her blade like an absurd shishkabob, she kicked the first one she had impaled, the force of her blow knocking all of them off. "DOWN!" she shouted.
Dante blinked and dropped to the floor -- five crescents sang as they spun through the air and embedded themselves into the wall, thrown by invisible hands. He rolled over on his back and riddled a cultist with holes who tried to take advantage of his position.
"Jump, dash to the right, then high time!" Lexi shouted. She was busy with five opponents.
"Yeah yeah, I hear ya, bossy," he muttered under his breath, but followed her direction. He jumped into the air, neatly avoiding another cloaked cultist, and came down on top of the man, breaking his neck. Then he quickly dashed to the right, avoiding three more blades that came from nowhere and stopped behind another assailant. The man never even knew the danger until Dante had knocked him into the air with a powerful upward slash with Rebellion. Quick-drawing his guns, the demon slayer shot him full of lead then knocked the body into a cluster of cultists with another swing of his sword.
Dante grinned, and swung Rebellion eagerly. Ignoring Lexi's shout, he dashed forward, bringing Rebellion around to bear. Five cultists made the mistake of charging to meet the demon hunter and all of them were caught in the deadly jig Dante liked to call Dance Macabre.
The slayer swung slashed at them several times, the broadsword slicing across all of them; then he stabbed at them so fast no human could possibly hope to dodge it, and the five men were stabbed at least a dozen times each. Then Dante swung his sword twice, knocking all of them into the air. Crouching much as Lexi did earlier in the kitchen, like a batter on the diamond, he focused his power around Rebellion, making the blade glow dark red. "Get outta here!" he shouted as he swung the glowing blade, the weapon biting deep into flesh just as the cultists were descending from their unwanted flight. Ten pieces of demons worshippers flew across the room, each sliced cleanly in half. Their bodies smoked and sputtered, fizzling away into nothing.
Smirking, Dante turned for his next victim--
And looked into the edge of a crescent blade about to bury itself in his skull. It would hit him -- while he'd been busy knocking the cultists five layers deep into hell, another had come up behind him. There was neither the time nor room to dodge the fatal blow. Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly was the last bit of post-facto advice that passed through his mind.
The blade descended... then rapidly pulled back just a hairs' breadth from Dante. Across the room, Lexi had thrown her sword like a spear, then summoned it back to her hand, much as Dante had done in the past. The only difference being, she had a screaming cultist on her blade.
She grabbed the man by the top of his head and snapped his neck with a small jerk of her hand. He slipped off her blade and sizzled away to nothing, leaving behind a foul-smelling stain.
"Assholes," Lexi muttered. "Always have to leave a mess behind." She flicked her blade at the stain, disgruntled, before sheathing it over her shoulder. Dante craned his neck and raised an eyebrow -- she had no sheath to speak of on her back; the sword just hung there. He jerked his chin at the sword. "You do that with magnets?"
She shrugged. "Something like that."
"Hey, thanks for that. I would've been a goner for sure."
Lexi gave him a gloomy look. "Yeah, I know, it's a feeling I'm very familiar with."
He laughed. "Say, if you angels are so good at calling shots ahead of time, how come I've gotten so many scythes buried in me? Isn't it your job to make sure I don't come to harm?"
She rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, you mortals must learn for yourselves. Besides, direct intervention is rarely allowed. We're allowed to move small things. Thoughts are easiest to manipulate. Make a demon think it'd be better to jump too early or to hesitate, to make mistakes -- you handle the rest fairly well by yourself."
"Ah, I see."
"Of course, I can hardly keep up with all your idiot disregard for safety even the lowest of apes would consider," she added viciously. "LETTING Echidna snap you up like that? You just LET her do it, not even considering what might happen, simply trying to look suave."
"Well it worked, didn't it?" he shot back, crossing his arms.
Her mouth snapped shut on the start of another lashing and she gave him a mollified look. "Yes, yes it did." She smiled ruefully and patted him on the shoulder. "You're a good sort, Dante, if a little stupid."
"Charmed," he said dryly. "Want a beer?"
She sighed and shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I have to go back to incognito once the task is done. Protocol is very strict, I'm afraid."
"What? You're leaving just like that?"
"I'll still be here, you just won't see me."
He considered this for a moment. "Okay, not stalkerish at all."
Lexi gave him a look so old-fashioned it was fairly esoteric. "Please. Those occultists by the way were servents of that major demon your client wants to ambush. Bastard thought he could get the jump on you once and for all and steal your soul -- would've worked too. But that shit won't happen on my watch!" Her look of smug satisfaction was so funny Dante couldn't help but snort.
"Well, thanks for the tip. I guess see you later then?"
"Not so fast, cupcake!" Grinning maliciously, she pulled a paper from her back pocket and handed it to him. "Here's a list of chores-- oh, shut up!"
Dante groaned the minute the c-word left her mouth. "What kind of angel tortures the person she's supposed to protect?"
"A LIST OF CHORES," Lexi shouted over him, "that you can do. They're simple, and doing them once a week will keep this place resembling something habitable instead of what a demon ralphed up after a bad hangover."
Dante sighed and took the sheet of paper from her.
"And don't even think about destroying it, I've blessed it six ways from Sunday," she added, smug.
"Hey, before ya go...." he paused, then cocked an eyebrow curiously. "Can I see what you really look like?"
Lexi seemed to consider this. "My true form would burn your eyes out and is approximately the size of the Chrysler building."
A pause.
"But I suppose I could scale it down for you." Suddenly, Lexi vanished. In her place stood an angel that was easily seven feet tall, with skin so white it glowed, looking more like contained light than flesh. Two enormous wings were folded against her back, rainbow colors rippling across the white feathers. The angel balanced on the broad balls of her feet -- the feet more resembling that of a cat's or demons than any human leg, powerful and fast. Large clawed hands hung at her sides, ending in sharp points -- not surprising, considering angels and demons shared a common ancestry. Shining silver armor, slightly irridescent, protected her torso, arms and legs, and a silver helmet with a dark red fringe running from brow to nape finished the set. Around her forehead, a thin, golden strand of pure light glistened and flowed, almost vanishing among the brilliant cast of her skin and wings.
Her face was what drew his attention, though. Smooth and featureless but for a pair of large, almond shaped eyes, there wasn't much to look at. But her eyes. They shimmered and shone with every color of the rainbow, impossible to fully describe. They weren't irredescent, but glimmered with constantly shifting colors. It was breathtaking.
Angels had always been described by poets as beings of pure light. They never mentioned that every color within that light shone at all times as well.
"Very impressive," said Dante. "What's that made of?" He pointed to the armor.
Adamantium. The voice resonated in his mind, not unpleasant.
"Neat. Where can I get some?"
Goodbye, Dante.
Dante smirked. There was no mistaking the dry and long-suffering tone as Lexi's. The angelic figure stood for a second longer until he blinked -- then it was gone. Dante looked down at the list of chores in his hand and sighed. Then a sudden thought came to mind; What if I flushed it down the toilet?
The front door blew open from a violent gust of wind, mussing his hair and setting his coat to flapping.
"Okay, okay, geez! It was just a thought!" he said, and hastily shut the door.