[Part 1]

[Daniel’s P.O.V]

There’s a reason why I hate Mondays. There’s a reason why I hate my job –much less a job that isn’t cut out for me. Give me a break; my calling is to be downstairs, on the fifth floor playing around with my technologies. I was born to create and innovate and make virus into software so that I could find more time to make my own brand of anti-virus. I wasn’t born to deal with paperwork and unhappy businessmen.

You’d think eleven years in this post, and I’ll be used to it.

But no.

I hate Mondays. I hate my job. But damnit, other than my job, there is honestly nothing I have left to entertain me. Sure, I have Damien and Wynter, but Trish is convinced that I’m a bad influence to them, so I’m pretty much on my own if I want any sort of entertainment at the moment.

Unless…

I pick up the phone and press speed dial. The phone rings as I tap fingers on the desk impatiently, a file spread out in front of me. A rival company to Kries Tech is folding down, and the boss of that company is finally humbly asking me to help him out. If I had any say, I would reject him immediately for making my business life hell. But right now, what Damon says wins –since he still has the business mind even after ten years in Hell.

Did I mention that my twin brother was trapped in Hell for 10 years?

No, no, trapped isn’t the word. Voluntary staycation, I’ll call it. That damned brother of mine pretended to be heroic eleven years ago, staying back in Hell with Lucifer ‘for our own good’ and making all of us cry. And then, just a week ago, he came back from Hell, saying that he’d killed all the Princes of Hell.

And he’s a half-demon now. Even in my non-demonic world, somehow, he is a half-demon.

Go figure. Shit happens to Damon.

“Kries Residence, Wynter speaking.” Wynter picked up happily, and I chuckled.

“Who’s my favorite niece?” I asked, grinning already at the sound of her voice. For ten years, I’d already considered her my daughter and now Damon’s return forces me to think her as my niece. It was kind of hard to change –considering I’d watched her and her brother grow up like how I’d grown up. I don’t know how Damon grew up –we grew up apart –but I was pretty sure he grew up the same way the two little devils of the Kries family did –fighting and arguing.

“You only have one niece, Uncle Daniel.” Wynter, where once she would have squealed in excitement at my call, now replied sarcastically. She was pretty much grown up now, and I was kind of having a hard time trying not to treat them like little babies. I mean, wasn’t it yesterday that Wynter and Damien first learnt to talk? “What are you calling home for?”

“I was bored.” I replied with a sigh, spinning the pen between my fingers absently.

“You have got to be kidding me. You probably just reached the office five minutes ago.” She said in disbelief as I closed the file in front of me, tired of having the frozen picture of the businessman staring back at me from the paper.

“I hate Mondays.” I complained. Why couldn’t businessmen’s lifestyles be like the children’s? We could have work holidays too. One month each, two times per year. Yeah, that’ll be awesome.

“You’re incorrigible, Uncle Daniel.” Wynter replied, and I heard the grin in her voice. See why I loved my niece? She was exasperated at me, but she still entertained me. Kind of like how Damon always did that for me –except that I would never know when he would explode.

“Uh oh.” Wynter said suddenly, as my curiosity perked. “Daddy’s coming.”

“Oh shit.” I exclaimed, and my niece could say no more words before I heard the phone passing hands.

“Daniel,” Damon started in an irritated tone of voice. See what I mean when I said he was totally cut out to be a businessman? “What are you calling back for so early in the morning?”

“I’m bored! It’s a Monday; give me a break!” I whined, but it definitely didn’t work with him. It has never really worked with him –I don’t know why I try at all. It sometimes works with our sister Marcy, but right now, she’s in another world –literally –gallivanting with her husband.

By gallivanting, I mean that she’s killing demons. And by husband, I mean Vergil Sparda. Yes, that Vergil Sparda. That emo guy, that sardonic Vergil, son of Sparda. Wow, my family is totally screwed up.

“Didn’t I tell you to contact Mr. Somerby and tell him that we’re helping him out in exchange for his cooperation with Kries Tech?” Damon replied in his usual business-like tone, and while it kind of was a downer to actually have work to do, I found that I actually missed his voice like this. I hadn’t heard this voice for 10 years, and one week after his arrival back home, I still couldn’t get used to hearing him again.

“But I don’t want to. You weren’t around when he was a great big ass to Kries Tech! Honest; I went through a hell lot of troubles trying to scrape him off my back! Now you want me to bite my ass and tell him I’ll help him?” I whined, feeling like Damien when he was 5. Now Damien was 10, and I don’t think I’ve grown in the same time period.

For that fact, I don’t think I have grown for the past 30 years, forever at 5 years old.

At least, that’s what Damon and Trish think of me.

Did I mention I have a great brother and sister-in-law?

“It’s the way to go, Daniel, if you want a reliable backup in times of crisis. Just swallow your pride and make the damned call.” Damon says in a tone that is final and I sigh. Honestly, I don’t know why I thought a Damon after 10 years in Hell would be less strict and stern. But I guess some things just don’t change, does it?

“Fine. You don’t have to be such an ass about it.” I surrendered, ready to hang up the call.

Mondays suck.

“Wait.” Damon rushed to say before I hung up, and so I kept by the phone, waiting for his elaboration. If he was going to say anything more about how I should be keeping Kries Tech alive, I was so going to slam the phone back on the cradle.

Apparently, I didn’t have to stay by the phone at all, for before the desk suddenly grew a tear in dimensions. The redness of the portal took me back to the day that the two main characters of the Devil May Cry characters dropped into my world, but I waited patiently for someone else instead.

True enough, Damon stepped through –all neatly dressed. 10 years hadn’t changed his physical outlook, but he now held an unnatural demonic air that I would never be able to replicate. If we once were hard to differentiate as twins, his unnatural and slightly inhumane side definitely made things easier to strangers -not that we should be seen by any strangers together.

“You’ve come to visit!” I jumped to my feet, ready to run barreling into him in a teddy bear hug, but he only keeps me at arms’ length.

“You are incorrigible. Wynter wins the statement of the year.” Damon commented softly, pushing me a safe distance away from him as he hangs up the phone, then picks it up again, dialing a number. I open my mouth to ask him what he was planning to do, but he gives me a look that firmly tells me to shut my mouth if I value my life. Obediently, I do, since it looks like he’s doing my work for me.

“Mr. Somerby, good morning.” He greets in the iconic businessman voice. “This is Daniel Kries, from Kries Tech. We heard about your financial status, and are sorry to hear about your situation. Regarding your letter to me…”

Damon continued speaking, as if he had never left the company at all. Damon continued speaking –under the persona of me –as if he, in this world, hadn’t passed away at all.

I wasn’t sure why he still didn’t want to declare himself alive to take his job back, to save me from the pains of the corporate world. At first, I thought he only needed a rest from 10 years in Hell, but it was slowly coming to light that he wasn’t planning to come back soon -or at all. I would have guessed that he was out to make me suffer, but afterwards, I realized he wanted to take the time to spend it with his children –that he had never seen since their birth.

For Wynter’s, Damien’s and Damon’s sake, I had to zip my mouth and let him be. Trish definitely thanked me for it, but it didn’t stop me from extorting a strawberry sundae treat from her.

“… Yes, Mr. Somerby. I will be transferring the funds over once I find the time… Yes, you are welcome. You can send me your proposed contract, and I will have it vetted.” Damon quickly concluded in his condescending, businessman tone. “I hope we will have a good working relationship in future.”

With that, he hangs up the call, and turned back to me with an expectant look, crossing his arm across his chest.

“I love you!” I declared, trying for the second time to rush to him, hugging. For the second time, he holds me at arm’s length, as he clicks his finger and the portal closes.

“You’re not going back?” I asked, a little surprised. Anytime Damon comes here to the office anymore, he always leaves quickly for fear of my secretary –his ex-secretary –barging in and finding two of us when he was already supposed to be dead. It was impossible for more than any one of us to be around, so we had to be extra careful in public.

“No.” He replied, walking over to the couch that I hadn’t removed from the office. The office hadn’t changed much since 11 years, and once I left it in the hopes of Damon coming back. Right now, I left it as such because I was simply too lazy to take anymore actions. “Wynter and Damien are training with Dante.”

“And Wynter can pick up the phone halfway through training?” I asked curiously. Both the young ones were training to be like their mother when Trish was still young and a demonness. Young demon hunters; they had their own set of amazing intellect that Damon passed to them, but what surprised not only me, but also Dante and Vergil was the amazing level of teamwork between the two of them. Fraternal twins Damien and Wynter were, but it was as if they shared the same mind when it came to hunting demons.

“Dante gave them a break to scrape his pride back after being trashed.” Damon replies, and I hear a hint of a proud father in his voice. Everyone had been extremely disorientated when Damon returned suddenly without a warning, and of course Damon had tried his best to adapt into his life with his children. We could all still see the awkwardness of Damon around them –the children that were supposed to be his flesh and blood, but slowly it was fading away.

Still, it worried Trish and Marcy overly that Wynter and Damien seemed a little distant from Damon. No one could blame them –their father who had never been there for the 10 years of their lives had suddenly popped back. No one would be able to accept that fact instantly. It kind of brought me back to so many years ago, when I first met Damon in my life, after finding out that I had a twin, and that my father was actually a rich bastard enjoying life somewhere in America while I was shipped to Paris to live with my mom.

But Damon didn’t get to grow up with the woman we knew as Erica Kries, and I guess that was both the good and the bad thing about our whacky family relationship.

“Dante’s getting old.” I grinned, joining my brother on the couch, but it seemed like he wasn’t in the mood for making fun of my doppelganger for he put his face into his bowled hands with a long sigh that was heavy enough to break whatever lively mood we were having.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, a little –just a little –more sensitive than before at the sufferings of my brother. Save his wife and children, he hasn’t been willing to tell us exactly what happened to him, but we got the gist that it was a lot of suffering and pain. We didn’t really dare to ask him to confront his nightmares, but I was still staying in the same house as them, and some nights I hear Damon waking up in screams in the dead of the night.

“Is 10 years really enough to destroy a man’s humanity?” He asked, voice muffled behind his hands, but audible enough for me to make out the proper words.

“You look human enough to me.” I stated plainly, wondering what the hell he could be thinking about. At my reply, he takes his face out of his hands, and look at me with a confused, perplexed expression as if he didn’t understand how I could make such a simple statement.

“10 years in Hell, and I’ve become a half-demon. I don’t want to remember half of what I did down there, and coming back home; I feel like I’ve changed so much. I don’t feel like Damon Kries at all; don’t remember feeling like a human. All I feel now is power, and it’s all I can do to stop it from running rampant, killing everyone in my path and in my sight.” He confessed, the struggle obvious in his blue eyes.

He wasn’t wrong in saying that he didn’t feel much like a human anymore. Behind those blue eyes, I now saw a half-demon raging and always ready for a fight. Almost like Vergil, the power and intelligence he held could almost be seen through his eyes, waiting to be released.

“Surely it isn’t so crazy? Shouldn’t you feel powerful and all heroic? You were there for so long; coming back should be a relief, isn’t it?”

“You don’t understand.” He says, looking at his hands that are trembling. He looked almost… scared. Damon Kries doesn’t look scared. When my brother looks scared… I am scared.

“I can look at you, and if one day you piss me off enough, I can kill you. You know how my temper goes; when it flares, I lose myself. I don’t want to do anything stupid, but I can’t control it when I’m angry. And then there’s Wynter and Damien… I’m afraid that anytime I’ll make a mistake, and kill them myself.”

“Whoa, whoa.” I reared up, raising both palms to get him to stop with his sick confession. “Back up, bro. You’re beginning to sound like Vergil. Well, the Vergil on DMC3.”

Slightly amusement flickers past his face, but it fades away quickly as he looks back up at me again. “You don’t think I’m strong enough?”

I opened my mouth to say no, but it wasn’t needed, because he clicked his finger and another portal opened before us. He walked through it with an expectant expression, and there was nothing left for me except follow him through the same red portal.

I came out on an empty field, with a soft breeze on my face. Damon stood in front of me, waiting expectantly. In a dress shirt and long pants, Damon didn’t look like he belonged in such a place of nature at all. Then again, neither did I.

“We are back in Devil May Cry.” Damon explained, and that was all he said before he raised his hand high above his head.

Demons crawled out from the ground –all sorts of them. The sudden appearance of them after so long -10 years –brought me momentary shock as I stood stoned. What the hell man, how was I supposed to know that we were here to fight demons? I didn’t have my weapons with me, and we were sorely outnumbered 1 to 50 even if we wanted to take them on. For that fact, how had they known where and when to attack? This was just a random field –there were no relatively human people around for them to terrorize, no city to destroy. And we had just appeared into Devil May Cry just seconds ago!

“You want me to call Vergil?” I asked, shifting closer to Damon while taking a look at the scene. The demons were still trying to pinpoint the source of the half-demonic power emanating from both my brother and I. Since we were in Devil May Cry now, we wielded Sparda’s power –Damon way more than me. Still, I was considered half-demon here, so it made me definitely stronger and more resilient against these low-level bastards. Still, there were at least a hundred of them.

“There is no need.” Damon stated simply, eyes taking in the scene too. He stood straight and tall, as if unafraid at all. It unnerved me slightly; at how undisturbed he was by the scene playing out before him. Was he really so used to demons? They were still after us, weren’t they?

“When I killed Mammon first, I learnt to control Greed.” Damon started, and raised his hands before him in a strange almost hypnotic-like state. A faction of the demons stopped their moaning and turned their heads –or what was supposed to be their heads –to face us. Their immobility shocked me, as they stared and stared.

And I realized none of them were walking towards us, not even seemingly to plan to harm us at all.

“And then I killed Beelzebub, and I learnt Gluttony.” Damon continued, and another section of the demons stopped moving.

“Aamon followed, and Wrath was my power.”

“I went after Leviathan, and Envy lent me its strength.”

“Belphegor was next and I held Sloth.”

“Next came Asmodeus, and I controlled Lust.”

With each sentence that Damon spoke, each section of the demon army before us stopped moving. I was suddenly horrible aware of the fact that the demons were staring not at me, but at Damon. And they were obeyed him, as his blue eyes raked over them.

“Last, I killed Lucifer and Pride was my weapon.”

My brother closed his palm into a fist, and it was like someone had pressed the red button.

Demons exploded into sand, and I jumped in shock. There had been no sound, no signal, no warning at all. Just his hands closing into a fist, and all demons had dusted. Just like that. Not even a weapon in sight, not even a gun or a sword.

“Can you see my power now, Daniel?” He asked, turning around to look at me. There was lethargy and pain written on his face –very much like the expression he first had when he arrived back on our world. It was as if he’d gone through too much, and had too much that he wouldn’t let us see.

“Wow.” I said, looking at the demon ashes covering the field around me. If he worked in the demon hunting sector right now, he would be the monopoly. He could totally throw Vergil, Marcy, Lady and Dante all out of their jobs; dominate the entire industry. “Just… Wow.”

“That’s not all.” Damon continued, a small smirk at my speechless reaction at his display of power.

“The death of each Demon Prince gave me something new. Four of them gave me elemental power. Asmodeus gave me the ability to transmuting abilities. Aamon gave me the ability to cut through anything. Lucifer gave me his soul –in a sword.” Damon explained, showing a little of each of his abilities as he did so.

I could only watch with my mouth hanging open.

Suffice say; I was green with envy. Of course I was. How could I not be? Here he was; with such great powers –almost infallible a half-demon. Of course, he had to be. He had single-handedly destroyed 7 Princes of Hell. Of course he had to be amazing.

But I hadn’t imagined that he would be this powerful…

“Now you understand, Daniel, exactly what I gave my humanity up to have. I have powers, but I lost one side of me forever. I’m still the Damon that is your brother, still the man who love Trish more than his own life. I’m still the father of my children, but down in Hell, I lost the human part of myself to survive. I’ve been trying to reclaim it back; I don’t know if I ever will.” Damon started again, the smirk losing its power as he looked like the lost little lamb all over again.

I really don’t know what happened to him in Hell, but I know it has obviously changed him. He’s trying hard to become the Damon that we used to know, but we all can see that something has changed. It goes further than the fact that he had become a half-demon, but it had never struck –until today –that it was because he lost part of his humanity to become what he was.

But did it really all matter? I asked myself all over again as I stepped closer to my brother –a killing machine by his own right – and flicked him on his nose. The slightly sad frown disappeared into a familiar expression of shock, then settling to my favorite expression from him –exasperation at my movement.

“You seem pretty human to me.” I commented, exaggerating the movement of scanning him up and down, left and right.

“Daniel, you don’t-” He began to explain again, as if trying to make a kindergarten kid understand how and why the Earth was round, or why it rotated on its axis.

“I don’t what? Understand? Sure, I don’t.” I cut him off quickly, grinning stupidly. I was the kindergarten kid of the analogy, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay around being told that I didn’t understand anything.

“But it doesn’t really matter to me.” I continued, shrugging and turning my back to him. “You’re still Damon Kries, right? Still my twin, my brother-in-law’s doppelganger, still my sister-in-law’s husband. It doesn’t matter what you can or can’t do, because what the heck man; I’ve got a bat-shit DMC crazy woman for a sister. A half-demon twin brother isn’t going to make a difference in this whacked-out family that I’m stuck with.”

“Honestly, I think it was seriously a bad thing when Mum brought me back here, man… I would have been way better in Paris…” I muttered to myself, but Damon didn’t seem to be following, and so I had to stop and turn around.

“What the hell are you waiting for? I’m not going to send up a red carpet of demons for you.” I asked, watching my twin brother stand alone in the field, looking lost.

“Daniel…” He began weakly, and I sensed that some weak, softie moment was going to turn on.

“Oh please.” I sighed. “Must I really be the only normal person in the family? I just want to go back to DMC and trash Dante’s place up right now, so wipe off that disgusting look on your face and let’s go.”

This time, he did wipe off the softening look in his eyes, as he bent over, erupting in body-wrecking laughter at the top of his lungs. He laughed as if he had never laughed before, and I could only stand there, helpless and wondering what the heck he was laughing at. Had making him a half-demon made his common sense way less common now?

“You… ‘the only normal person in the family’…” He wheezed between breaths, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes. “This is classic Daniel…”

“Hey!” I protested, affronted at the implication of his words. “What!”

Barely straightening up from his laughter, he grinned, and it’s like he had never gone.

Beneath the half-demon, I still saw the man who I cared for, and who cared for me in return.

I still saw Damon Kries, my twin brother.