Chapter Text
Dante laughs gleefully, heart thudding eagerly away in his chest, a staccato to the adrenaline and joy of fighting. He switches out his weapon, seamlessly slides into gunsmith and pulling out Ivory to rain a hail of infernal bullets on the snarling centipede he is fighting. A second later Ebony materialises in his left hand to target the screeching woman torso on top of its wriggling butt.
He asked the thing why the human body part is attached to the butt instead of the head of the insect—one would think its got the brain in it, with all the noise it keeps making after all—but sadly got cursed out instead of an actual answer. Rude as hell and still leaves Dante faintly confused how exactly this particular constellation happened. Or how it even works. He has seen many weird things in his time as a hunter, but that is for sure a new one. It just seems so wrong to him. And also kind of cumbersome, too.
Either way, the many legs dance hilariously as he shoots at the thing, making it wriggle and writhe around. Awesome, Dante loves it when the demons dance for him, it's always a right riot.
A faint beeping from his left wrist distracts him before he can switch back to swordmaster and hack a few of the legs off. He moves into trickster for a dash backwards as the pseudo insect's maybe head maybe tail lashes out at him, making a spirited try for his gut with the poison barbs.
"Whoopsie daisy, calm your horses, will you."
A quick glance confirms his suspicion. He taps at the clock thing that has been forced on him by Nico, with many a rambling about reinforcement to demonic energy and advanced biological readings and algorithmic tracking and predicting anomalies that Dante tuned out two minutes into the impromptu rant. He doesn't have half a bad head on his shoulders, but that is so far beyond his understanding it may as well be rocket science. It could very well actually be rocket science, now that he thinks about. Some of those devil breakers of Nero's definitely stray into the 'could shoot you to the moon' territory.
A frowny face blinks up at him from the little display, expression quite displeased for such a simple thing. A tap makes a very red number appear in its place. It's a little bit too high for the comfort of his obsessive minders. Dante wouldn't yet bother himself about it, of course, but everyone gets really snippy when he overdoes it, so sadly he will have to heed this warning, or suffer the consequences of house arrest or something equally boring. Well, time to take a break.
"Well damn, got too excited there. Sorry bud," he tells the thing, dashing back three more times and neatly parking his butt on a nearby bench that has by some miracle survived the carnage up until now. It's the only thing still standing in this here former street. "Gotta take a mandatory break until that sorts itself back out. Get back to it in about fifteen, yeah?"
"Traitorous filth. You would dare mock me so?" demon the centipede lady shrieks again, very shrill indeed.
Dante grimaces and rubs at his left ear. The sensitivity is really a curse sometimes. Now they ring enough he can feel his sliiiiightly elevated heartbeat in them.
"Told you. Mandatory break." He shrugs, peering around to see if there is some convenient box or whatever to put his legs up on. Better circulation that way and also more comfortable. "Can't have too high a pulse or everyone looses their shit about it. Be glad we're only going to have to wait until it goes back down into the green. It was a mandatory four hours break just last week, you know. But the doc was very happy with what a good boy I've been, so I have graduated to the next level, yay."
The centipede does not seem very appreciative of the leaps and bounds his health has taken the last few months under Vergil's strict micromanagement. So rude. It absolutely deserves to be cut to smithereens when it tries to attack despite him calling out. Vergil always takes such offence to demons daring to interrupt Dante's mandatory breaks, it's hilarious.
Said brother strides through the rain of guts and blood the Yamato leaves of the demon, sneering in disgust at presumably the world at large. When he sees Dante's very well-behaved ass sitting all nice and pretty and very much resting, he nods firmly and even gives an teeny tiny approving smile. Dante laughs at the ridiculous idiot and then conjures Faust to pull down over his eyes, leaning back to try to find a comfortable position. Might as well get some shut-eye while he waits it out.
His brother was on the other side of the building just a second before, Dante is pretty sure. Not at all surprising that the beeping has miraculously summoned the obsessive idiot, though. He isn't quite sure if Vergil has his own synced device of bodily function tracking, which would make him a stalker, or has tuned his senses into the noises Dante's makes to such a ridiculous degree that he can hear them no matter how far apart they are, which is not really much better when one thinks about it. Either is about equally possible. It won't surprise Dante even a little bit if it's both.
He grins widely behind the brim of his hat, especially so when Vergil gives it a tug before his brother settles down next to him. The shuffling probably means the poetry book has made an appearance. Lo and behold, Vergil's voice begins reciting verses a few seconds later, continuing where they left off last time. Nice.
Also a bit pavlovian. Dante is pretty sure Vergil is trying to train him into a reflexive calm mood when he hears poetry now, the way his twin is always reciting it in situations like this. It's kind of working, he can already feel his pulse slowing down even after just a few words.
He would be more concerned about that, but well, what works works.
While they wait there are a few more enterprising demons coming close to sniff around, but those fall easily to Vergil's summoned swords without either of them having to even get up. Dante is tempted to lift his legs up over his twin's lap—with the excuse of elevating them for better blood circulation of course—but he won't while enemies are around and his brother may still have to react fast if a lord or something equally dangerous turns up that won't be stopped by the spectral sharpsies.
Pity. Dante has found out he can get away with a lot more nowadays, what with everyone being so stupidly cautious about his heart. Obviously, he ruthlessly uses this to be an utter pest as revenge for the babysitting. It's going splendidly, if he may say so himself. Just last week he has managed to weasel a whole afternoon of hunting down the old Devil Arms he sold out of Trish and Lady with just a hangdog expression and a sniffle. If they used the opportunity to not so covertly check up on his health is neither here nor there.
After about twenty minutes his watch beeps again, signifying that his heart rate has calmed enough to be considered save for a satisfactory long time. Vergil finishes the verse of the current poem, then shuts his book with a dull thud. Dante huffs in answer to a questioning hum and disappears Faust, replacing it with the newly recovered Artemis. Time to get back to work.