Jasmine's POV
As we walked towards the tower we were attacked by a few Hell prides and Hell Wraths as well as a singular Hell Lust, until we reached the Bullseye Bar. In an instant we were surrounded by Hell Prides with three Enigmas in the background preparing to fire arrows of energy at us.
“Well this is one hell of a welcoming party.” Me and Dante said at the same time, causing us to look at eachother while Dante took Rebellion off of his back and I formed a purple and white sword in my hand using my demonic and angelic energy. Ryan though had taken out two bottles of some kind of liquid. Pulling his arm back, he threw one of them at the ground, causing a burst of blue flames to erupt and set the Hell Prides on fire.
I smirked upon seeing this before realizing that that could be problematic if it was what I thought. “If that's holy water I suggest keeping it away from me and Dante. I don't feel too keen on having my skin burn off.” I said while dodging a blue arrow and slashing through a couple of Prides, before a Wrath appeared in front of me. I froze for a second as it began to swell, before Dante quickly kicked it towards one of the Enigmas. The Enigma only had time to look at the Wrath before it blew up, killing them both.
“What's wrong? Can't keep up?” Dante asked with a cocky grin that made me grin as well.
“Don't get ahead of yourself devil boy.” I said as I threw my sword into the eye of the second Enigma, causing it to shriek in pain before it crumpled up and died. The last Enigma started firing repeatedly at the group, though it wasn't very accurate.
Ryan reached his hand out as something blue and round materialized, then reformed to appear as a blue bomb. Instantly, the bomb’s fuse was lit. “Take a step back.” Ryan warned as he chucked it at the Enigma. It looked down curiously, however it didn’t have much time for anything else as the bomb exploded in a burst of pixelated fire.
I smiled as I saw the Enigma disintegrate in the fire, causing a glowing red barrier on the strip club's door to shatter. “Well that was rather disappointing.” I said before looking at the strip club. “Maybe that place’ll be more exciting.” I said as my sword of angelic and demonic energy disappeared and Dante put Rebellion on his back. We turned to each other and shared a grin before walking up to the door of the strip club and walking inside.
Ryan softly chuckled. “You’re having way too much fun with this.” He said as he walked alongside me.
“Can you really blame me? It’s not often that I fight something that wants me dead. I generally have to hold back and even now I’m not using any of my more insane weapons because I could hurt you with them.” I said before noticing a sawed-off double barrel shotgun hanging on a nearby wall next to the door that lead out of the bar section and to the main area of the strip club. I smiled before walking towards the shotgun, only to have a white transparent wall that looked like it was made of souls appear in front of me as well as a bunch of Prides, two Lusts and a Hell Sloth.
“Ok, this is just becoming bothersome...” Ryan said with a frown as he brings up his powerglove’s hologram screen, showing a wide variety of icons. He reaches up to select what appears to be an eight-bit cannon, soon causing half of his arm to morph into a more detailed version of it.
“I don't know what you're talking about. This party's going great so far.” I said as I heard a scream and quickly jumped out of the way of the scythe slash from the Sloth, which had teleported behind me. When I stood back up I quickly fired a couple of bullets into the Sloth, only for it to teleport away from my bullets.
“The only thing missing is some food and drinks, though a few more babes wouldn't be terrible.” Dante said as he cut several Prides in half before throwing one into one of the Lusts, causing it to stumble before running at him. Just as it reached him, Dante stomped it’s ass into the ground before jumping on its back and surfing around the room on the Lust's body while shooting a bunch of Prides as more appeared.
"But how many are there? Kind of reminds me of those old beat 'em' up games where they spawn in every new area." Ryan said as he took aim at the nearest Hell Sloth and let loose a pixelated ball of energy. When it hit, ice started to spread throughout its body, freezing it completely. The end of the canon opened up wide, allowing a missile to shoot out. Upon making contact with the frozen Sloth, the missile exploded, causing the Sloth to shatter into a million pieces.
After the Sloth died the others stopped coming, leaving only one of the Lusts left and six Prides. I smiled as I saw Dante kickflip the Lust that he was surfing on, into the group of Prides killing them. The last Lust rushed me before I quickly shoved Lumos into its open mouth. “Eat this.” I said before pulling the trigger, causing the Lust’s head to explode into sand. The barrier shattered, revealing the way into the strip club section of the building as well as the shotgun.
I smirked before walking over to it and grabbing it. It was just a regular sawed-off double barrel shotgun so I didn't think much of it. “Hey Dante!” I shouted causing Dante to look up from the bar’s fridge, which he had apparently been raiding in the hopes of finding some strawberry ice cream. “I think ya might like this.” I said before tossing it to him.
Dante caught it before smirking and putting it in his coat. “I’ll hang on to it. Could be useful for bringing some excitement to the party.” He said before walking over to me with a sigh. “What kinda place doesn't have the ingredients for a strawberry sundae?” He said out loud causing me to chuckle.
“How long have you been doing this, Dante?” Ryan asked curiously as he glanced at the holographic screen to see their current position on the mini map.
“Does it matter?” Dante asked as he flashed Ryan a cocky smile before kicking down the door leading to the main area of the strip club. The doors revealed a lot of stairs around a dancer’s pole that was in the middle of the room with multicolored lights under it in a circular shape.
We walked into the room as three Sloths appeared and started teleporting around the room before barriers appeared at all of the exits, preventing us from leaving. After the barriers were up, Lusts and Prides started appearing all throughout the room.
Me and Dante simply turned to each other with grins on our faces as we both took out our dual pistols, before quickly running down the stairs and up to the dancer's pole and wrapping our legs around it. We then started spinning around the pole while firing our pistols in all directions, killing a large majority of the Prides and Lusts and dealing major damage to the Sloth that hadn't been quick enough to teleport out of the way of the bullet storm.
“Well now, that’s one way to clear it out!” Ryan said with a laugh as he stayed behind watching it all go down. Me and Dante kept doing our little dance of death, putting holes in every demon in the room until there was nothing but sand left. We both stopped our dance and got off of the pole as the barriers shattered. We smiled at each other before nodding.
“I have always wanted to do something like that. It’s so difficult to find a fight in a strip club.” I said before walking to the door as I put Umbra and Lumos away while Dante did the same with Ebony and Ivory.
“Hey Ryan, get your ass over here! I’d rather not have you getting left behind with all these demons around!” I shouted before turning back to Dante. “We should be getting close to the tower. Once we get there, we get to see the bouncer and give him our VIP tickets.” I said while reaching into my pocket universe and pulling out two slices of pizza before handing one to Dante and taking a bite out of my slice. Dante did the same, though it was a bit funny to see a pony eating pizza.
“Assuming they can even catch me.” Ryan said as he came up to my side.
“Lets just go. We don't have forever.“ I said before walking out of the strip club and towards the tower entrance. There were floating orbs that Dante kept collecting. I knew from playing the game that the red ones were currency, green was healing, and the shards of blue ones were like heart pieces in The Legend of Zelda. I just smirked before grabbing a bunch of red orbs for myself, only to notice that I already had a large amount of them.
That's when I realized that I had been gaining red orbs from killing demons, which meant that I could learn some of the skills that Dante could learn. This caused me to smile as we approached a golden statue of a figure carrying a giant hourglass on their back.
“Looks like it's time for some upgrades!” I said while smirking as me and Dante walked up to the statue. I didn't pay much attention to what Dante got as I unlocked Stinger, before upgrading it. I grinned before making a sword out of demonic and angelic energy and testing the skill out on a nearby car.
I pulled back with the sword and, as I had expected, felt a large amount of energy build up in my sword arm before I threw my arm forward, releasing the energy and sending me flying towards the car sword first, stabbing through the driver side door, before I started stabbing at it multiple times in quick succession with the sword. After fifteen quick stabs, I ended the combo with a kick that sent the car flying back a fair bit.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that.” Ryan commented as I saw the holographic screen from his powerglove showing the current abilities I was gaining and the amount of orbs I gained.
“Well sorry if I’m not used to game logic just yet! Besides, I'm having more fun just being here, though the bouncer is gonna be one hell of a fight.” I said as Dante finished upgrading his weapons and learning new skills for his swordmaster and gunslinger styles.
“Let’s get going. After all it would be rude to make our host wait after he gave us our invitations.” Dante said before running into the tower, with me not far behind.
Upon entering the ice covered room, me and Dante saw a building-sized dog-like creature with three heads, frozen in place and chained to the main entrance of the tower. I simply smirked as I held Dante back so we could wait for Ryan to join us, since we had ran ahead.
“Wait, us?” Ryan asked with raised eyebrows. “You may have gotten one, but not me and Jasmine, is that a metamorph or s-HOLY!” Ryan stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the towering three headed mutt.
“Well there's no time like the present.” I said before smirking as me and Dante walked forward, causing the frozen three headed dog to move before the ice slowly fell off of its body. The three headed dog lumbered forward, despite the fact that its body was still mostly covered in ice. It then let out a loud roar, shattering the ice that had fallen off of its body.
“Leave now mortals! The likes of you are forbidden in this land! You who are powerless are not worthy to set foot here!” The dog said as it kept trying to get free from its chains.
“Wow, I’ve never seen a talking mutt before. You know in a dog show, you’d definitely take first place.” Dante said while walking back and forth.
“You, a mere pony, make a mockery of me?!” The dog said before rearing back and firing a beam of ice at Dante, who simply jumped over it while I grabbed Ryan and got him out of the way. The ice beam hit the entrance, freezing it shut and making it impossible to go back.
“Easy fido. How about I take you out for a walk?” I said as I put Ryan down before walking over to Dante.
“Come on puppy! Let's go!” Me and Dante said in sync as I clapped my hands together in a come here motion.
“You will regret this, you worms!” The dog said as it kept trying to bite me and Dante. We just smirked at eachother before Dante stood up on his hind legs and limbered himself up a bit.
“It’s showtime!” We said at the same time as we both took out our pistols with cocky smiles on our faces.
“Dante, your mouth would be perfect for a gun since you keep shooting it off…” Ryan said as he started to scroll through his inventory.
[Cerberus The Ice Guardian.]
His powerglove spoke, soon revealing the dog’s health in the holographic screen. “A boss battle then,” Ryan said as his clothes shifted to white and purple. “Hey Jasmine, catch,” Ryan said as some kind of silver stopwatch materialized in his hand, he tosses it over to me, causing me to catch it. I look down at it in curiosity, noticing it had a pixelated heart icon along side a number twenty. “Usually it can stop time, but considering this is a boss, it can only slow down time around you for three seconds per five hearts, just push down the trigger and release,” Ryan explained to me, I looked at him in confusion. “Don’t ask, it's what the games used as ammo,” Ryan said as he ran off to the side, keeping his distance as he threw bouncing pixelated fireballs at Cerberus’ feet.
“Cool!” I said before putting it in my pocket and grinning as I started firing at the green eyed head in order to destroy its ice shell while Dante did the same to the red eyed head.
As the fireballs hit Cerberus’ feet the ice on them slowly came off before the blue eyed head blew a large chunk of ice out of its mouth at Ryan. I went to get him out of the way only to have a clawed paw come down on me, trapping me while I pushed against it to keep it from crushing me.
All of a sudden, he zipped out of the way as a barrage of fireballs bounced toward Cerberus. “I haven’t used that pause button in a long time.” Ryan said as he ran to the other side of the room. “Jasmine, does this thing have any weaknesses or do we need to keep attacking it ‘til it falls?” Ryan asked as he glanced at his powerglove’s screen to check on its health bar.
“Just...destroy...the...ice...covering...its...heads…and…attack!” I shouted in between grunts as I slowly began lifting the paw that was on me before finally throwing it off of me, causing Cerberus to stumble back a bit.
Dante quickly used this moment to finish off the ice on the green eyed head and red eyed head leaving only the blue eyed head with ice armor on it. Dante smirked before putting Ebony and Ivory away and switching to the shotgun. He quickly ran up to the blue eyed head and fired two shots, destroying the ice armor and causing the ice on its legs to shatter as well.
Before Dante could get another shot in Cerberus lunged at Dante, forcing him to jump out of the way. The red eyed head switched positions and became the center head, before charging up and firing an ice beam at Dante that hit him and sent him flying back with bits of ice on his red coat.
Ryan took out two bombs with lit fuses, he waited for a second, then threw his bombs straight at Cerberus, soon they exploded in Cerberus’ face in pixelated fire.
Cerberus roared in anger as it’s skin shifted from its greyish black to a more fleshy red. It then roared again before stomping on the ground as all but one of its chains snapped and its body regained its ice armor. The stomp had caused giant human sized icicles to fall from the ceiling in a pattern that made it very difficult to stay out of its range without getting hit.
I got up from the ground, since I had yet to move from when I pushed its paw off of me, and put away Umbra before creating a sword out of angelic energy and using Stinger to get up close to Cerberus. I quickly stabbed it the blue eyed head ten times while shooting it with Lumos until it head butted me, sending me flying into a wall while breaking the ice covering the blue eyed head.
Dante got back up before quickly running at Cerberus with Rebellion out. Once Dante got close Cerberus tried to bite him, only for Dante to jump on top of the red eyed head and start slashing away at the ice until it shattered. Before Dante could go for the green eyed head Cerberus moved its heads in a way that sent Dante flying into me right as I got back up from being sent flying into the wall. Ryan’s powerglove shifted into an arm cannon as he took aim. Ryan reached with his other hand and held down one of the buttons.
[Rapid Fire Mode: Activated]
His powerglove spoke as the arm cannon started shooting pixelated fireballs more straight and more rapidly at Cerberus’ armor, trying to break it open like a walnut.
The final bit of Cerberus’ armor shattered and it quickly started launching chunks of ice at Ryan, not noticing that me and Dante had gotten back up. We turned to look at each other and nodded before wielding our respective swords.
“It’s about time we put this dog down!” Me and Dante shouted as we ran up to Cerberus and quickly severed the blue eyed head and the green eyed head, causing Cerberus to fall to its knees in pain.
“You are not normal, are you?” Cerberus asked as it stopped attacking and waited for a response.
“That depends on your definition of normal.” I said as I stretched, before noticing the chunk of stone that was embedded in my left arm from when I was sent flying into the wall. “Oh shit. That's new.” I said before grabbing it and pulling it out, along with some muscle and bone. Once the stone was removed the hole slowly started closing on its own thanks to my regeneration.
That was the unfortunate part about being in the Devil May Cry universe. Unlike most video games where you would be hurt but not really see a hole or anything like that, injuries in Devil May Cry were visible. If you got stabbed through the chest you would have a hole in your chest and if you got shot in the head you would have a hole in your head. But that was something that I should’ve expected since, like Resident Evil, it was a Capcom game.
“Huh, guess this world is more like Doom.” Ryan said as he noticed what happened to me.
“Regardless you have proven your strength. I acknowledge your ability. Take my soul and go forth! You have my blessing!” Cerberus said before roaring as it shattered, leaving behind a glowing orb of light that split into three before going to Dante, Ryan, and Me.
Me and Dante reached out and grabbed ours, causing them to become what looked like a modified version of nunchucks that had three handles connected to a ring in the center that was big enough for a hoof to fit through. We looked at each other before going back to back and testing out Cerberus, causing ice spikes to appear from the ground when we struck it.
“Oh this is awesome!” I said while Dante just put the new devil arm in his red coat.
“Not my style of fighting, but it could come in use incase someone else wants one.” Ryan said as he reached it, but instead of grabbing it, it got absorbed into his powerglove.
“Let’s not keep them waiting. We have a long way to go after all since we don't want to miss the party.” Dante said before walking towards the door that Cerberus had been guarding, only for a red motorcycle to bust through the top part of the ice that was blocking the way they came in. The motorcycle looked like it was about to hit Dante until he jumped up and did a flip, allowing his head to pass by the mare that was driving the motorcycle.
“Are you going to the party? What’s the hurry? Didn’t you get an invitation?” Dante asked as he landed while I took a bucket of movie theater popcorn out of my pocket universe and started eating it while watching their interactions.
The brown maned, tan coated mare said nothing as she just grabbed the large bayoneted rocket launcher off her back and fired it at Dante without even looking at him.
“This world just gets crazier and crazier, and that’s me saying something.” Ryan said as he rubbed his forehead.
Dante jumped onto the rocket and rode it before jumping off last minute as it hit the ceiling, creating a hole leading to the room above them. Dante was now in front of the mare as she prepared to drive before driving towards Dante, only to hop up through the hole in the ceiling with the motorcycle.
“Well that was something.” I said while still eating popcorn before putting it towards Ryan in a gesture of offering him some. Ryan gladly accepted it as he grabbed a handful of popcorn. He began eating it, smiling at the flavor.
“It’s good to taste actual food from another world.” Ryan said happily.
“Yeah, though I wish my brother was here. When it came to cooking he was a master with anything. You could give him a new recipe and somehow he would make it taste amazing no matter what it was.” I said while smiling, but the smile left my face as I remembered what happened to my brother. “Anyway we should probably get going. The sooner we end this, the sooner I can get back to the universe that I was in when you summoned me. That Celestia and Luna were about to visit me and my daughter and I definitely don't want to miss them.” I said before tossing the bucket of popcorn to Ryan and walking towards the entrance.
Ryan caught it with his left hand. “Yeeaaa, here’s the thing. Each world of Epixeria has a different timescale.” Ryan said as he followed me. Ryan brings up his powerglove’s hologram. “Let’s see… oh wow, time moves very slow here.” Ryan said as the calculations came up on his screen. “An hour here is like a minute in your world.” Ryan explained.
“That's cool, but what we're about to do is going to take a while and I would rather hurry. I think Dante would agree seeing as how there are demons everywhere.” I said before walking through the door. I could hear Dante laughing behind me, though I couldn't hear what he said very well.