01-13-2016, 03:08 AM
"So," the grass-haired pirate hunter began, trying to break up the monotony of steps and grunts that constituted their journey, "Who was that guy, anyway? How'd he know you like that?" Dante made a noise somewhere between a groan and a growl, his frustration newly apparent as he trudged along weakly. Zoro made an innocent shrug, as if he were being accused. "What? I'm just asking."
"Can it wait? This isn't exactly the best time for backstories," the half-blood gritted out with a hint of strained humor about him. As if to emphasize his point, a wicked cackle echoed in from somewhere off in the forest, followed by a modest flock of crows taking off.
Zoro looked at the sight with some grim anticipation, and merely nodded in acceptance. They had probably lost some time on the Akuma with the encounter against the corrupt Vergil, and with Dante wounded now, their effort was best spent reuniting with the Exorcists. Those two seemed to have handled these kinds of demons before, so whatever they could provide to help take them out would be invaluable. If they couldn't reach Kanda and Klaud first, however, then there was going to be trouble.
"I don't think I even caught your name," the pirate hunter redoubled his brief conversation, "How about that, at least?"
The Son of Sparda gave a sidelong glance at Zoro, maintaining eye contact for a couple of seconds. The swordsman was a difficult person to scrutinize, considering his neutral expressions and almost conflicting dispositions at times. He seemed straightforward and determined, yet disinterested and narrow-minded. But, perhaps most importantly, he at least knew when to absolutely stand up for something.
Finally, he said, "Just call me Dante."
"Right, then, Dante," Zoro quickly picked up, taking the wounded man's right arm and draping it over his shoulders, "Let's hurry. It'd be a shame for you to die so soon after we've met." They two of them began to limp forwards together, and collectively faster. The devil hunter gave Zoro another look, with a somewhat kind yet incredulous expression.
"Really? How about your name, then?" Dante asked in kind. The pirate hunter said nothing, giving no response whatsoever to his inquiry. "No? Guess you want that 'mysterious swordsman' guise, eh?"
This time, Zoro didn't get an opportunity to respond, as a grotesque ball of wrath tore free from the treeline and twisted about to meet the two interlopers. Both hunters immediately wrenched free from one another, Dante opening up with a quick-draw pistol shot as the ronin drew his swords. Ebony & Ivory quickly made swiss cheese of the first Akume, but several more followed it, spearheaded by a demonic armored humanoid and two lesser accomplices. "Perish!" the Level-3 cried out with the fury of banshee, and the inferior creatures behind him rushed forward to attack their enemy. The pair of men pushed their bodies hard as they dashed away from the charge.
Dante side-winded one of the Level-2 beings with a flurry of pistol shots, only for another to burst out from behind. Spider-like limbs creaked out to surround and entangle the hunter, dripping a disgusting black fluid, but the Son of Sparda was more agile and narrowly jumped out of the trap. A cry of mixed pain and exertion marked Dante's spinning hailstorm of bullets, turning the demon into a bloody hole-filled mess. The demon-killer's momentum carried him into the canopy of dark trees, where a line of Level-1 Akuma formed a firing squad at the general area. Zoro did his part to interject in their plan, leaping off of another sliced-up Level-1 and performing a violent twirling attack at one of the abominations in the firing squad. The creature let out a shrill scream as it was hacked apart, it and the pirate hunter landing on the ground with rough slams.
Before he could do anything more, however, the twisted dark-spawns aimed and opened fire with a cacophony of blood projectiles. "Dante!" The green-haired samurai looked up at the tree with a concerned, yet furious expression. As the leafy canopy was shredded into fragments of green and red, the devil hunter exploded out of the top of the giant plant. The drab grey sky provided a backdrop for the man as he sailed through the air, trailing wisps of crimson life.
A field of floating ball Akuma quickly surrounded the Son of Sparda, but he took no caution from it. A large scarlet glyph began to materialize behind him, and he somersaulted forward to kick off of it, diving to meet the closest enemy with pistols in hand. Filling the Akuma with bullets, Dante kicked off of the monster's corpse to elevate himself further. Letting loose a battle kiai, he unloaded more rounds into the demons surround him, confident that with so many foes at hand, he couldn't possibly miss. The cacophony of pained hell cries bellowed around him, and the Son of Sparda clenched his teeth as gravity began to claim him again.
Several evolved Akuma, looking like various mutated humanoids, roared up from below his feet to corner the man in hangtime. Rebellion came out one again, clashing with the fierce demons. In direct spite of his injuries, Dante fought and maneuvered with all his capacity, his quick and mighty swipes of the sword parrying and riposting each fang and claw sent for him. He bit through the pain as he had done countless times before- physical injuries meant nothing to his body.
Zoro, meanwhile, pulled one blade free from the remains of a weak Akuma and returned the weapon to its sheath. It was difficult to not pay some attention to the devil hunter's fantastic maneuvers, as he himself could only barely keep up with even a single Level-2 Akuma. Said demon roared again, in the shape of a skull-faced gorilla, and charged forward to crush the swordsman in his mighty arms. With as much precision as he could muster, the samurai focused his senses and listened to the intake of breath...
In a single movement, Zoro drew, swiped, and sheathed the blade, catching the beast off-guard. A fine diagonal line draw itself upon the monster, while it stammered out in wonder- and then the swordsman repeated the movement, roughly and violently bisecting the Akuma. Able to breathe freely again, the pirate hunter hissed in dissatisfaction. It had taken one of his strongest maneuvers just to stop what seemed to be only a glorified mook. Compared to Dante, who was wiping the floor with these fiends even with his terrible wounds, Zoro found himself falling far behind. To prove his point, a peach-colored Level-3 careened into the swordsman dead on, easily bowling the man over.
"You will die, human," the captain-grade Akuma seethed, "And your remains shall become us."
"Yeah? Well, you gotta kill me, first!" Zoro retorted, performing a drawing slash that attempted to push the demon away. He draw another sword to follow it, swiping rapidly at the Akuma, who deftly deflected or glanced away each blow. Determined and otherwise unfazed, Zoro clenched his teeth as he spun like a tornado, summoning another Tatsu Maki that whirled and blew the demonic enforcer away. Another Level-1 crunched into a messy heap under the force as the Level-3 was smashed into a sturdy hemlock, which bent under the combined impact.
Several more black-streaming Akuma corpses rained into the ground, and Dante finally followed them with a harsh landing on the earth. "Dante!" The pirate hunter bellowed out to his associate, his voice revealing a tinge of desperation, "We need to get out of here! We can't take them all!"
Almost seeming to not pay attention, the Son of Sparda burst forward again, thrusting out with his sword. The fierce stabbing attack sent flying a Level-1 trying to get the jump on Zoro, leaking a stream of putrid demon blood in consequence. "You sure?" Dante smartly replied, twirling Rebellion once to rest the weapon on his shoulder. "Seems like I'm doing just-" Cut off by a sinister demon blade piercing through his gut, the devil hunter still managed to spit out, "-fine."
Red claws belonging to a certain Level-3 fastened themselves around the devil hunter's neck, well and truly cutting off Dante's stolen breath. The Akuma shoved the blade further through the half-blood's body, its head craning over aside his victim's own. "A mighty nuisance," it seethed with a perverted malice, "-but only human, in the end."
Don't let them gloat over you. You're stronger than all of them! Prove it!
The Son of Sparda's eyes suddenly snapped wide open, pupils dilating into shining red circles, and his body began to tense and twitch heavily, veins popping out along Dante's squeezed neck. Staring intently and cautiously at the sight, Zoro risked a step back, having a strange overcoming of deja vu. Confirming his suspicion, the injured hunter growled out with a familiar devilish reverb, "I take offense to that-!" A crimson aura flared around the half-blood, and only the samurai had the good sense to dash away from the inevitable surge of wrath.
With a cry of released dark anger, a burst of raw energy erupted from the red-coat. The pirate hunter rolled away enough to look back into the bright surge of bloody magic, the area rendered in a pure red that left each figure as a vague silhouette. Within the epicenter, the evolved Akuma found itself knocked away by the burst of demonic power, and then very violently hacked apart by a reinforced Rebellion. His main opponent gone, the feral devil that stood in Dante's place quickly turned to the other foes in the vicinity. One by one, the lesser Akuma were obliterated by the Son of Sparda, every extreme burst of movement and swipe of the broadsword spelling annihilation for another one of them.
Finally, the surge of energy faded as quickly as it came, the shining blaze of demonic power dissipating into nothing and leaving only Dante remaining alive in the remains of the scorched carnage. He crumbled to his knees from the exertion, still feeling some of the pain of being impaled yet again. Damn, and he remembered why he started investing in body armor more in his later days.
Zoro, for his part, was thoroughly amazed. His own experiences with Armament Haki had mostly revolved around the act of strengthening one's own form to perform devastating physical feats. This seemed almost something else entirely- a brief, insane pulse of energy that held unreal amounts of power. He was even willing to overlook that he had most certainly witnessed the red-coat transform into a monster for a short time. It seemed to truly set in stone how far behind the swordsman found himself set back in this world.
"I'll ask later," he said, and a moment later realized he had said it out loud. Quickly salvaging the comment, Zoro moved to continue, "Let's go, before more of them show up-"
"I'm afraid it's a bit late for that, gentlemen." The two hunters, still barely recovering from their respective efforts, stood their guard and looked for the source of the voice. That shadowy man from before, the apparent master of this army of Akuma, lay idly before them on an exposed tree branch several meters off the ground. A single purple-lit butterfly perched on his outstretched index finger, and with each flutter of its winds a new Akuma seemed to emerge from the shadows abound the area. "You efforts are most commendable, though; such fine entertainment even in the face of certain doom."
"Big talk, for someone that hasn't killed us yet," Dante mouthed off rather casually, ever defiant to his enemies as he stepped forward with Rebellion in hand. Though he seemed awfully determined for someone who had turned tail and fled minutes ago, the Son of Sparda remained wary, watching closely for whatever this villain's ace in the hole was. "If you wanna make your big bad monologues, save it for when you've actually beaten us- and I mean personally, not with your dumb servants."
"Oh?" Tyki perked up, reading Dante's words carefully. "Is that a challenge? You truly want to die by my hand?" He seemed to mull over the idea for a second, then simply stopped to erupt into small fit of laughter. Zoro held his swords tight- what was Dante planning? Was this figure truly as strong as his creations- or god forbid, even more so?
A gunshot rang out over the otherwise thick atmosphere, and a butterfly in front of Tyki was popped in a burst of black and purple. The Noah's laughing ended instantly, his grim visage again pointed towards the devil hunter that held the smoking gun. A vain effort, but worth the attempt.
"Very well." The master of the Akuma let his legs slip off of the branch, and he hopped away from the tree, gently hovering down to the ground. "For being such amusing victims, you may have the reward of a grand death granted by my own powers," Tyki announced to the pair of men, boasting with the power of a judgmental nobleman. Side-by-side, flanked by the swarms of demon-kind, both hunters witnessed the stage being set for what could easily be their demise.
Unwilling to have it, Zoro leaned over to Dante. "You need to get out of here," he whispered hastily to the red-coat.
"Yeah?" The Son of Sparda replied, as quietly as he could manage with a sardonic tone, "And why's that?"
Zoro could quite hold back the tiny sigh that emitted through his teeth. "You're the stronger one of us. Like I said- It'd be a shame for you to die so soon."
A brief moment passed, as if Dante was making and effort to understand what the swordsman was saying. He chuckled lightly afterwards, quipping, "You won't last longer, you know."
"Does it matter?"
Tyki's feet pressed into the ground, his arms spread as if this demon mastermind was a herald of God himself. "Are you prepared, gentlemen, for the end?"
Zoro hissed, "Go. Now. With any luck, I'll keep him busy." The Son of Sparda furrowed his brow in mild displeasure of what he was about to do, but he prepared to go about it nonetheless. As the samurai and the Noah stepped forward to encounter the other, Dante suddenly entered his devil form again, and with a burst of speed broke through the perimeter of Akuma to sprint away, farther into the Moors.
With a glance and a gesture from Tyki, a fraction of the demon horde separated and began to pursue the devil. Meanwhile, Zoro remained standing his ground, placing his third katana between his teeth in anticipation of the battle. "It seems your friend has abandoned you," the Noah taunted his victim, a swarm of dark butterflies starting to materialize around him, "A pointless effort, ultimately; I can track his every movements. There is nowhere in this world he can hide."
"I wouldn't worry about him, right now," Zoro retorted through his third blade, brandishing the other two in challenge. Tyki simply let out a mere chuckle in response.
"You are right. After all, it is you who is about to die."
---
Panting, bleeding, and caught in a chilled sweat, Dante continued to run. He had cut off his reserve of demon energy a while back, determined to save those last drops of energy for a last resort. Of course, he had also been smart by darting back into the woods and weaving around a bit, hoping to get the Akuma confused and off his tail for a limited time.
At last, eventually, he caught sight of the pillar of smoke from a campfire- on a hunch, one that the Exorcists set up. The devil hunter pressed on, and finally emerged in the small clearing where, indeed, Kanda and Klaud were resting and ruminating on the situation.
"Dante?!" Kanda exclaimed, his twinge of relief turning into alarm at seeing his short-time accomplice in such bad shape. "What happened? Did he-!?"
"I'm fine," Dante insisted, still looking quite the opposite with his shredded, dirty and bloody clothes. Starting to regulate his breathing again, the devil hunter stepped over to the campfire and sat down heavily, visibly rather exhausted. "I think I lost 'em around the third bend- out of like, seven."
The situation still lay heavy, but there was some relief in that at least the three of them were still alive- even if two of them had just weathered a full encounter with the Noah. General Nine quickly piped up, however, "Where's the swordsman? Wasn't he with you?"
A moment of silence. Dante looked into the flames, sighed, and shook his head. "As long as he interests Omni, he'll be reborn... hopefully." The exorcists realized the impact, and became rather disheartened at that- even though the man had been a rough, crude warrior, he still didn't deserve a death at the hands of the Akuma. It was made worse by the fact that they hadn't even known his name, with which they could mourn him by.
Maybe that had been his intent all along.
"This sucks," Dante said bluntly, after a far longer moment of silence. Solemnly, wordlessly, the other two agreed.
"Can it wait? This isn't exactly the best time for backstories," the half-blood gritted out with a hint of strained humor about him. As if to emphasize his point, a wicked cackle echoed in from somewhere off in the forest, followed by a modest flock of crows taking off.
Zoro looked at the sight with some grim anticipation, and merely nodded in acceptance. They had probably lost some time on the Akuma with the encounter against the corrupt Vergil, and with Dante wounded now, their effort was best spent reuniting with the Exorcists. Those two seemed to have handled these kinds of demons before, so whatever they could provide to help take them out would be invaluable. If they couldn't reach Kanda and Klaud first, however, then there was going to be trouble.
"I don't think I even caught your name," the pirate hunter redoubled his brief conversation, "How about that, at least?"
The Son of Sparda gave a sidelong glance at Zoro, maintaining eye contact for a couple of seconds. The swordsman was a difficult person to scrutinize, considering his neutral expressions and almost conflicting dispositions at times. He seemed straightforward and determined, yet disinterested and narrow-minded. But, perhaps most importantly, he at least knew when to absolutely stand up for something.
Finally, he said, "Just call me Dante."
"Right, then, Dante," Zoro quickly picked up, taking the wounded man's right arm and draping it over his shoulders, "Let's hurry. It'd be a shame for you to die so soon after we've met." They two of them began to limp forwards together, and collectively faster. The devil hunter gave Zoro another look, with a somewhat kind yet incredulous expression.
"Really? How about your name, then?" Dante asked in kind. The pirate hunter said nothing, giving no response whatsoever to his inquiry. "No? Guess you want that 'mysterious swordsman' guise, eh?"
This time, Zoro didn't get an opportunity to respond, as a grotesque ball of wrath tore free from the treeline and twisted about to meet the two interlopers. Both hunters immediately wrenched free from one another, Dante opening up with a quick-draw pistol shot as the ronin drew his swords. Ebony & Ivory quickly made swiss cheese of the first Akume, but several more followed it, spearheaded by a demonic armored humanoid and two lesser accomplices. "Perish!" the Level-3 cried out with the fury of banshee, and the inferior creatures behind him rushed forward to attack their enemy. The pair of men pushed their bodies hard as they dashed away from the charge.
Dante side-winded one of the Level-2 beings with a flurry of pistol shots, only for another to burst out from behind. Spider-like limbs creaked out to surround and entangle the hunter, dripping a disgusting black fluid, but the Son of Sparda was more agile and narrowly jumped out of the trap. A cry of mixed pain and exertion marked Dante's spinning hailstorm of bullets, turning the demon into a bloody hole-filled mess. The demon-killer's momentum carried him into the canopy of dark trees, where a line of Level-1 Akuma formed a firing squad at the general area. Zoro did his part to interject in their plan, leaping off of another sliced-up Level-1 and performing a violent twirling attack at one of the abominations in the firing squad. The creature let out a shrill scream as it was hacked apart, it and the pirate hunter landing on the ground with rough slams.
Before he could do anything more, however, the twisted dark-spawns aimed and opened fire with a cacophony of blood projectiles. "Dante!" The green-haired samurai looked up at the tree with a concerned, yet furious expression. As the leafy canopy was shredded into fragments of green and red, the devil hunter exploded out of the top of the giant plant. The drab grey sky provided a backdrop for the man as he sailed through the air, trailing wisps of crimson life.
A field of floating ball Akuma quickly surrounded the Son of Sparda, but he took no caution from it. A large scarlet glyph began to materialize behind him, and he somersaulted forward to kick off of it, diving to meet the closest enemy with pistols in hand. Filling the Akuma with bullets, Dante kicked off of the monster's corpse to elevate himself further. Letting loose a battle kiai, he unloaded more rounds into the demons surround him, confident that with so many foes at hand, he couldn't possibly miss. The cacophony of pained hell cries bellowed around him, and the Son of Sparda clenched his teeth as gravity began to claim him again.
Several evolved Akuma, looking like various mutated humanoids, roared up from below his feet to corner the man in hangtime. Rebellion came out one again, clashing with the fierce demons. In direct spite of his injuries, Dante fought and maneuvered with all his capacity, his quick and mighty swipes of the sword parrying and riposting each fang and claw sent for him. He bit through the pain as he had done countless times before- physical injuries meant nothing to his body.
Zoro, meanwhile, pulled one blade free from the remains of a weak Akuma and returned the weapon to its sheath. It was difficult to not pay some attention to the devil hunter's fantastic maneuvers, as he himself could only barely keep up with even a single Level-2 Akuma. Said demon roared again, in the shape of a skull-faced gorilla, and charged forward to crush the swordsman in his mighty arms. With as much precision as he could muster, the samurai focused his senses and listened to the intake of breath...
In a single movement, Zoro drew, swiped, and sheathed the blade, catching the beast off-guard. A fine diagonal line draw itself upon the monster, while it stammered out in wonder- and then the swordsman repeated the movement, roughly and violently bisecting the Akuma. Able to breathe freely again, the pirate hunter hissed in dissatisfaction. It had taken one of his strongest maneuvers just to stop what seemed to be only a glorified mook. Compared to Dante, who was wiping the floor with these fiends even with his terrible wounds, Zoro found himself falling far behind. To prove his point, a peach-colored Level-3 careened into the swordsman dead on, easily bowling the man over.
"You will die, human," the captain-grade Akuma seethed, "And your remains shall become us."
"Yeah? Well, you gotta kill me, first!" Zoro retorted, performing a drawing slash that attempted to push the demon away. He draw another sword to follow it, swiping rapidly at the Akuma, who deftly deflected or glanced away each blow. Determined and otherwise unfazed, Zoro clenched his teeth as he spun like a tornado, summoning another Tatsu Maki that whirled and blew the demonic enforcer away. Another Level-1 crunched into a messy heap under the force as the Level-3 was smashed into a sturdy hemlock, which bent under the combined impact.
Several more black-streaming Akuma corpses rained into the ground, and Dante finally followed them with a harsh landing on the earth. "Dante!" The pirate hunter bellowed out to his associate, his voice revealing a tinge of desperation, "We need to get out of here! We can't take them all!"
Almost seeming to not pay attention, the Son of Sparda burst forward again, thrusting out with his sword. The fierce stabbing attack sent flying a Level-1 trying to get the jump on Zoro, leaking a stream of putrid demon blood in consequence. "You sure?" Dante smartly replied, twirling Rebellion once to rest the weapon on his shoulder. "Seems like I'm doing just-" Cut off by a sinister demon blade piercing through his gut, the devil hunter still managed to spit out, "-fine."
Red claws belonging to a certain Level-3 fastened themselves around the devil hunter's neck, well and truly cutting off Dante's stolen breath. The Akuma shoved the blade further through the half-blood's body, its head craning over aside his victim's own. "A mighty nuisance," it seethed with a perverted malice, "-but only human, in the end."
Don't let them gloat over you. You're stronger than all of them! Prove it!
The Son of Sparda's eyes suddenly snapped wide open, pupils dilating into shining red circles, and his body began to tense and twitch heavily, veins popping out along Dante's squeezed neck. Staring intently and cautiously at the sight, Zoro risked a step back, having a strange overcoming of deja vu. Confirming his suspicion, the injured hunter growled out with a familiar devilish reverb, "I take offense to that-!" A crimson aura flared around the half-blood, and only the samurai had the good sense to dash away from the inevitable surge of wrath.
With a cry of released dark anger, a burst of raw energy erupted from the red-coat. The pirate hunter rolled away enough to look back into the bright surge of bloody magic, the area rendered in a pure red that left each figure as a vague silhouette. Within the epicenter, the evolved Akuma found itself knocked away by the burst of demonic power, and then very violently hacked apart by a reinforced Rebellion. His main opponent gone, the feral devil that stood in Dante's place quickly turned to the other foes in the vicinity. One by one, the lesser Akuma were obliterated by the Son of Sparda, every extreme burst of movement and swipe of the broadsword spelling annihilation for another one of them.
Finally, the surge of energy faded as quickly as it came, the shining blaze of demonic power dissipating into nothing and leaving only Dante remaining alive in the remains of the scorched carnage. He crumbled to his knees from the exertion, still feeling some of the pain of being impaled yet again. Damn, and he remembered why he started investing in body armor more in his later days.
Zoro, for his part, was thoroughly amazed. His own experiences with Armament Haki had mostly revolved around the act of strengthening one's own form to perform devastating physical feats. This seemed almost something else entirely- a brief, insane pulse of energy that held unreal amounts of power. He was even willing to overlook that he had most certainly witnessed the red-coat transform into a monster for a short time. It seemed to truly set in stone how far behind the swordsman found himself set back in this world.
"I'll ask later," he said, and a moment later realized he had said it out loud. Quickly salvaging the comment, Zoro moved to continue, "Let's go, before more of them show up-"
"I'm afraid it's a bit late for that, gentlemen." The two hunters, still barely recovering from their respective efforts, stood their guard and looked for the source of the voice. That shadowy man from before, the apparent master of this army of Akuma, lay idly before them on an exposed tree branch several meters off the ground. A single purple-lit butterfly perched on his outstretched index finger, and with each flutter of its winds a new Akuma seemed to emerge from the shadows abound the area. "You efforts are most commendable, though; such fine entertainment even in the face of certain doom."
"Big talk, for someone that hasn't killed us yet," Dante mouthed off rather casually, ever defiant to his enemies as he stepped forward with Rebellion in hand. Though he seemed awfully determined for someone who had turned tail and fled minutes ago, the Son of Sparda remained wary, watching closely for whatever this villain's ace in the hole was. "If you wanna make your big bad monologues, save it for when you've actually beaten us- and I mean personally, not with your dumb servants."
"Oh?" Tyki perked up, reading Dante's words carefully. "Is that a challenge? You truly want to die by my hand?" He seemed to mull over the idea for a second, then simply stopped to erupt into small fit of laughter. Zoro held his swords tight- what was Dante planning? Was this figure truly as strong as his creations- or god forbid, even more so?
A gunshot rang out over the otherwise thick atmosphere, and a butterfly in front of Tyki was popped in a burst of black and purple. The Noah's laughing ended instantly, his grim visage again pointed towards the devil hunter that held the smoking gun. A vain effort, but worth the attempt.
"Very well." The master of the Akuma let his legs slip off of the branch, and he hopped away from the tree, gently hovering down to the ground. "For being such amusing victims, you may have the reward of a grand death granted by my own powers," Tyki announced to the pair of men, boasting with the power of a judgmental nobleman. Side-by-side, flanked by the swarms of demon-kind, both hunters witnessed the stage being set for what could easily be their demise.
Unwilling to have it, Zoro leaned over to Dante. "You need to get out of here," he whispered hastily to the red-coat.
"Yeah?" The Son of Sparda replied, as quietly as he could manage with a sardonic tone, "And why's that?"
Zoro could quite hold back the tiny sigh that emitted through his teeth. "You're the stronger one of us. Like I said- It'd be a shame for you to die so soon."
A brief moment passed, as if Dante was making and effort to understand what the swordsman was saying. He chuckled lightly afterwards, quipping, "You won't last longer, you know."
"Does it matter?"
Tyki's feet pressed into the ground, his arms spread as if this demon mastermind was a herald of God himself. "Are you prepared, gentlemen, for the end?"
Zoro hissed, "Go. Now. With any luck, I'll keep him busy." The Son of Sparda furrowed his brow in mild displeasure of what he was about to do, but he prepared to go about it nonetheless. As the samurai and the Noah stepped forward to encounter the other, Dante suddenly entered his devil form again, and with a burst of speed broke through the perimeter of Akuma to sprint away, farther into the Moors.
With a glance and a gesture from Tyki, a fraction of the demon horde separated and began to pursue the devil. Meanwhile, Zoro remained standing his ground, placing his third katana between his teeth in anticipation of the battle. "It seems your friend has abandoned you," the Noah taunted his victim, a swarm of dark butterflies starting to materialize around him, "A pointless effort, ultimately; I can track his every movements. There is nowhere in this world he can hide."
"I wouldn't worry about him, right now," Zoro retorted through his third blade, brandishing the other two in challenge. Tyki simply let out a mere chuckle in response.
"You are right. After all, it is you who is about to die."
---
Panting, bleeding, and caught in a chilled sweat, Dante continued to run. He had cut off his reserve of demon energy a while back, determined to save those last drops of energy for a last resort. Of course, he had also been smart by darting back into the woods and weaving around a bit, hoping to get the Akuma confused and off his tail for a limited time.
At last, eventually, he caught sight of the pillar of smoke from a campfire- on a hunch, one that the Exorcists set up. The devil hunter pressed on, and finally emerged in the small clearing where, indeed, Kanda and Klaud were resting and ruminating on the situation.
"Dante?!" Kanda exclaimed, his twinge of relief turning into alarm at seeing his short-time accomplice in such bad shape. "What happened? Did he-!?"
"I'm fine," Dante insisted, still looking quite the opposite with his shredded, dirty and bloody clothes. Starting to regulate his breathing again, the devil hunter stepped over to the campfire and sat down heavily, visibly rather exhausted. "I think I lost 'em around the third bend- out of like, seven."
The situation still lay heavy, but there was some relief in that at least the three of them were still alive- even if two of them had just weathered a full encounter with the Noah. General Nine quickly piped up, however, "Where's the swordsman? Wasn't he with you?"
A moment of silence. Dante looked into the flames, sighed, and shook his head. "As long as he interests Omni, he'll be reborn... hopefully." The exorcists realized the impact, and became rather disheartened at that- even though the man had been a rough, crude warrior, he still didn't deserve a death at the hands of the Akuma. It was made worse by the fact that they hadn't even known his name, with which they could mourn him by.
Maybe that had been his intent all along.
"This sucks," Dante said bluntly, after a far longer moment of silence. Solemnly, wordlessly, the other two agreed.