(Part 2)

"Wake up." Someone part-groaned, part growled. It wasn't a nice tone of voice to wake up to, but I drifted back to reality just in time to hear the command being repeated again. I felt my world shaking, then realized it was just something shaking me.

Groaning at the headache that had built between my eyes, I tried to shift my uncomfortable position, and felt things shifting beside me when I moved. The smell entered my nose just a moment after, and I gagged almost instantly. It was by a pure miracle that I managed to keep my bile down, as I took careful shallow breaths to tide over the worst of the smell.

"Wake up." Someone growled again, and I opened my eyes.

It was dark, but there were faint lights from the streetlamps outside. We had to be beside a window, because the streetlights shined exactly on his face as he looked down at me in an expression that was a cross between a scowl and a frown.

"Who are you?" I groaned, pinching my nose a little in hopes to clear the smell of rot and decay. "Where am I?"

"That's a question I want to ask you." The voice grumbled in reply as lazy blue eyes looked outside the window. "What the hell were you thinking, waking me up like that?"

"I thought you were dying. Your breathing was shallow." I answered, fishing for the correct answers to his questions from the corners of my mind. I distantly remembered poking, then slapping and almost punching him. Then something had happened –I had felt something demonic –and I flew through the air, hit something and blacked out. But what was it? What had hit me? I had definitely never experienced anything like that during my demon hunting days.

"What year is it? From when I last woke up, people didn't hit others who thought were dying." He answered with a tone of such heavy disinterest that I wasn't sure if he was asking just for the sake of asking, or if he was seriously curious.

"What do you mean?" I asked warily, daring myself to sit upright, cringing on the inside with disgust when I realized I had been lying on a pile of decaying pizza boxes. "How long have you been out?"

"What day, month and year is it?"

I scratched the top of my head. "If I haven't been passed out for days, then it should be May 19th 2015."

"Which means I have been out since a year and three months ago." The man answered with a shortly surprised tone. "Huh, I figured I'll be able to stay asleep longer than that."

"What?" I repeated the question in my head, resisting the urge to dig the dirt out of my ears. I had to be hearing things. Did he just say he was 'out since a year and three months ago'? Was he actually sleeping for fifteen whole months?

"Shouldn't have woken up..." He grumbled, looking around as if finally taking a look at the mess all around him. "I forgot how messed up things was."

"Forget it..." He turned around from the window. "They aren't back yet."

"Who aren't back?" I asked on pure instincts, picking myself to my feet warily. I still wasn't sure how I had been knocked unconscious, but it was becoming obvious that the threat wasn't around anymore.

"Vergil and Leah. My brother and sister-slash-sister-in-law-to-be. I don't exactly know if they're married now or not."

"Where did they go?" I asked the most obvious question, but the guy simply shrugged, pulling his hand through his long hair, seemed to meet resistance of tangles, then gave up combing through it.

"Leah died and went back home to her world. Vergil fell sick searching for a way to get to her. Then he suddenly said something about our mother visiting him in a dream, telling him to prepare to see her. Viola, one day he just up and disappeared and never returned."

I decided that he was most probably crazy, and that I might be in a situation that was rather delicate. It was obvious that this guy thought that he had slept through fifteen months without needing to attend to his human needs of eating, drinking or even peeing. He had assumed he had slept through a year and three months, and that his sister-slash-sister-in-law (I wasn't even going to start asking what kind of strange incestuous relationship he assumed his 'brother' and 'sister' to have) had died and gone into another world.

"And... Um... how long have they... 'Disappeared'?" It was a good thing that we were in the dark, because he wouldn't have seen the disbelief written all over my face.

"A little more than five years ago. I've been waiting since."

"Has it ever occurred to you that they might have... you know..." I trailed off a bit, but decided to heck it. I was a demon huntress. I figured I could deal with a crazy man if he exploded or something. "You know, they might have really just died."

He turned around to look at me with wide eyes, and I struggled to not look like I was guilty of anything. It was hard keeping my emotions off my face, but his blue eyes –for some reason –seemed to glitter against the streetlight outside.

"Die?" He repeated softly. "Vergil, and Leah... Die?"

I expected some sort of crushing revelation. Perhaps he would explode or something, or break down with the sudden realization that he might have been waiting for the impossible. I waited for something to happen, for him to get angry at me in denial or something related to that situation.

What I didn't expect was him bursting out in hysterical laughter.

Of course, I was more or less convinced that he was loony as I watched him laugh, him hugging his stomach as if he were afraid he would laugh it to pieces if he didn't hold on. I would admit that he had a nice laugh and in the streetlight –ignoring that excessive facial hair –he had eyes that were attractive. I could not get a straight guess of his age, but I would assume him to be of my age if he removed all that hair. What a pity it was, though. He was quite an attractive soul, and he had figure of a god. It was just too bad that his mind was too burnt to fit the body.

"The two of them dying is almost impossible." He finally wheezed in enough air to say. "They are my siblings for a reason. We're like cockroaches. At least Mundus thinks we are."

Mundus? My ears perked up quickly at the name that was dropped casually. Demon hunting instincts immediately set into work.

"Mundus, as in Demon King Mundus?" I asked politely, not really sure why I was questioning a loony about Mundus. Exactly how had my venture to look for Sparda –or at least a son of Sparda –ended up with me asking about a demon king from a loony?

"Yeah, that Mundus. Why, you know him? You don't feel very demonic from where I'm standing. And you got knocked out just by one blast. You have to be a human." He answered, as if he were commenting about the weather.

"I am a human." I replied automatically, my brain struggling to keep up. This guy, loony as he was, knew that Mundus was a demon king. Still, he was suicidal enough to mention Mundus casually? "Wait, you can 'feel' demonic beings?"

"Yeah." He finally moved away from the light, and I forced my legs to step behind him, making sure I followed his dark figure piercing through the dark shadows. I wasn't sure why I was following him instead of staying by the light, but instincts simply had me doing so. "Why not? I'm half of one myself."

"What do you mean by that?" I pursued, putting my hands out in hopes of catching something. I usually wasn't scared of the dark, but suddenly I wasn't so sure now that I couldn't really see the outline of the loony in front of me. I didn't dare to stop, and ventured walking straight, hoping seriously that I wouldn't bump into anything. The smell was slowly becoming bearable, but the evidence of decay was still lying all around us.

"I mean that I'm a half-demon. Don't you know?"

"You're a half-demon?" I repeated in confusion. Half-demons were rare anywhere. The most famous half-demons in the world had been the sons of Sparda, and now that they were out of commission, there were little others who could rise to beat that rep. Besides, Sparda was one of the strongest demon who had ever sired children.

"What else were you looking for? A human to kill demons for you?"

"I'm a human." I answered, not sure whether to be insulted or not by the scoff. "And I hunt demons for a living."

"A fellow demon hunter, huh?" The voice sounded far away from me, and I wondered how someone who had sleep 'for a year and three months' could find his way easily through the darkness. How the hell does someone see in this utter darkness? I had already come to a helpless stop, not daring to take another step for fear of hitting a wall or something. "What's a demon hunter doing here? Is there a demon you can't kill or something?"

"No." I answered on instincts, frowning. The loony wasn't sounding so loony after all. Save all that bullshit about his family, he was sounding surprisingly sane for someone asking about demon hunting. In fact, he sounded so understanding that demons needed hunting, and he actually sounded... experienced. Was he truly a half-demon? "I'm looking for someone."

"Motivation must be great." I heard soft mutter, and something warm closed over my wrist. I refrained from squeaking, and moved my feet along with the force pulling on my arm, assuming it to be the loony man. "At least great enough to come into this hellhole looking for 'someone'."

"Well, I found someone." I muttered lowly in reply as well. "Not sure if this is expected or not."

No more words could be exchanged before I heard the opening of a door, and light blasted through the slit of the door. Wincing at the suddenly visual onslaught, I was pulled fully outside while my eyes were squeezed shut, and the sound of doors closing behind me came.

"Expected or not, you need to answer a few things first." The hand around my wrist tightened a little and I opened my eyes on instincts.

He didn't look much different, but he now had a red trench coat donned on, hiding his old shirt and pants. If he buckled up, he might actually look like a man who had missed his appointment with his barber. But he didn't, and I still thought he was a complete loony who was strangely sane at some points.

"Answer what?" I wasn't really sure why I was talking to him normally at all. Perhaps it was the fact that he was acting totally normal, as if he hadn't been spewing nonsense all this while.

"Do you have money?"

Wary, but curious to know where things were heading towards, I nodded slowly. The way his charming grin grew wasn't very settling at all.

"Is Freddi's down the corner of this street still open?"

"Umm..." I struggled a little to remember which shop connected with the name. "Yes, I think."

"Great." He turned, but still refused to let me go, dragging me down the stairs and onto the street away from the decay. I was still ninety percent sure that he smelled, and was utterly amazed that he dared to walk out into the open like that.

"Where are we going?" I asked, though I already had the sinking suspicion.

"Freddi's. I haven't gotten one since a year and three month ago. It was the last thing I ate before I slept, so it's going to be the first I take after waking up." He continued, and didn't let go.

I sighed heavily, resigned to the fact that I was now chained to a loony that was surprisingly strong. I had already tried shaking my hand away, but he showed no strain at all holding me back.

I bit my bottom lip. A simple mission of looking for Sparda or his son had turned out into something like this.

I was ninety-nine percent sure that Dad was shaking his head at me in the heavens now.

____________________________________________________________________________________

"Dante." The man pierced through the silence that had settled between us as I watched him taking another bite from his third sundae.

"What?"

"My name." He said shortly, taking his time spooning another mountain of ice cream. "My name is Dante."

I kept quiet because of the urge to tell him that I had decided to call him a loony in my head.

"What are you planning to do after this then, Dante?" I asked in reply, not sure what I was doing feeding a guy who was almost homeless. The guy had lost his home to the government, except that the government probably had deemed his building too dirty and smelly to be dealt with. He had probably lost all electricity and water supply, and probably had planned to die sleeping there. Now that I had woken him up, I wasn't sure what this half-demon wanted from me.

"Get a shaver and some scissors. I shocked myself in the bathroom a little." Dante answered. "I look like a girl with long hair."

I simply refused to tell him that 'a girl' wasn't exactly what he looked like at the moment.

"What about after that?"

"Look around if there's any jobs. If not, I'll sleep in DMC again until my siblings come back."

It didn't take long for me to guess intelligently that DMC meant 'Devil May Cry'.

"Face it, Dante. They were gone for five years. They're never coming back."

"Vergil would. I bet he misses his favourite twin brother. He must be dying without me."

"He might already be dead." I wasn't sure why I was sounding so negative, but I was surprised at how normally I could be talking to him at the moment.

"Nah, Leah wouldn't let that happen. Besides, she has an angel for a backing. That's something."

I guess it was time to be honest, and I crossed my arms resting on the table, leaning forwards a little to show that I meant no harm.

"I have no idea what you're ranting on about, but I don't think they're coming back."

"Fine," He seemed to decide something quickly. "Can you hold a secret?"

As a demon hunter, keeping secrets was one of the easiest thing to do. I nodded honestly, and wondered how Dante could easily just trust someone who had had just met.

"Then, let me tell you the story of my brother and sister. Or sister-in-law. Or friend. Or- Look, I don't really know what to categorise her under, okay? Just call her Leah."

"You're already losing me." I reminded, but he shook his head, still scooping ice cream.

"Never mind. I'll start from the start."

"That's what I expected you to do." I answered honestly, and he gave me a dirty look for sounding so sarcastic. Still, he continued.

And he began to tell a story.