Devil May Cry - Volume 1 - Chapter 2.2

Phase 2.2

“Scoundrels! What do we do in this Cellar?” Bobby had clambered back on his bar and had his hands in the air, like a ringleader. 
“Drink!” everyone shouted. 
“So how do we settle something here?” Bobby asked. 
“Booze!” 
“Booze? I got an ocean of the stuff!” Bobby 
sneered. “What do you want?” 
“Bobby's vodka!” 
The roomful of mercenaries roared their approval. Gilver stood in front of the table, still none the wiser. His opponent was sitting opposite him with a glass in hand. People guided Gilver into a chair and a glass found its way in front of him. 
“Hey, newbie.” Tony grunted. “A word of advice. Drink as if you want to die. If you don't, you really will die.” Someone poured vodka into the two glasses. 
“Ready, you bastards?” Bobby hollered. “Go!” 
A chorus of gunshots rung out, and Tony slugged back his glass with a sour face. 
Gilver manipulated a slit in the bandages covering his mouth, and followed suit. He felt the fiery liquid tumble down his throat and wanted to vomit. 
Before he knew what was happening, a gaggle of mercenaries forced a funnel into his mouth and began to pour endless waves of vodka into it. Gilver's consciousness didn't hold out for long. He fell backward and passed out. 

The mercenaries kept going anyway. Eventually, vodka began pouring out of Gilver's mouth and spreading across the floor. The smell was enough to knock out an elephant. 

“How's that, newbie?” Tony said. 
Someone in the crowd tried to help Gilver up, but his unconscious body proved too unwieldy. He crashed back to the floor like a puppet with severed strings, face down and limbs akimbo. 
Tony stoically emptied his twentieth glass. The crowd began to cheer him on. 
“Tony! You're the strongest!” 
“Ha! Knocking back a few glasses doesn't mean you're strong!” 
Surrounded by reckless hooting, Tony flung his glass away. “Don't be asses. I'm doin' the whole keg!” he proclaimed. 
“Do it! Do it!” The jeers and cheers grew louder. 
Tony grasped the half-empty barrel with both hands, tilting it back so that a steady river of vodka flowed into his welcoming mouth. He drained the keg amid rousing cheers, letting it crash to the ground once it emptied. An enormous bout of applause erupted from the crowd. 
Tony raised his right arm like a victorious boxer. “Hey, Bobby! That's my win, right?” 
“Sure,” Bobby shot back. “I haven't seen you go all-out like that in a long time. Even so...” He indicated Gilver, who was now snoring, prostrate on the floor. 
Bobby couldn't close until he woke up. But there were benefits to having passed-out customers. He began rooting through Gilver's pockets. “Loser pays.” 
Eventually, Bobby produced an overstuffed walled and a jewel-encrusted watch. “Hey! This guy's loaded! There's more than enough here to pay for the booze and bar repairs.” 
The revelation sent the assembled throng into a hyena-like frenzy. A middleman grabbed the watch and made a beeline for the nearest pawnshop. Everyone else became energized by the notion of free drinks. 
“Drinks are on the newbie!” 
“All right! Tonight's a lucky night! Bobby, keep them drinks coming!” 
“If there's not enough money, sell off his clothes!” 
“We can pawn that sword, too!” 
Tony shrugged, remembering his own initiation into the mercenary world. “I knew it would turn out like this.” When it had been his turn, he was fleeced after a narrow defeat and left penniless for nearly a month. 
“I'm heading home now,” he announced to nobody in particular. “Do whatever you want.” Tony staggered into the night, but no one in the hollering crowd paid him any attention. 
 
The chill night air rushed around Tony as he tottered down an empty back alley near Bobby's Cellar. He drank, but his binges were few and far between, so Tony was fairly certain that he was drunk. At first he wondered why the alley wobbled like the sea, but then he realized that it was perfectly still and he was the one wobbling. He also kept tripping on the bottom of his own coat. 
Like a million other drunks before him, Tony decided to swear off alcohol – at least until the next time. He started humming a jaunty little number, putting a swagger in his wobble that made his movements look like a wind-up toy's. He had completely forgotten about his match with Gilver and was lost in the moment. 
A cool breeze lashed out like a tendril and whipped across his face, breaking his reverie. Tony's muscle memory sprang into action and he crouched into a combat stance without thinking about it. But the alley was empty. 
Too empty, Tony thought. He sensed danger, but was unable to identify a threat. The empty street offered no clues. Tony gripped a Beretta M92F in one hand and a Colt Government in the other. His sword was handy in close combat, but guns were always best against the unknown. 
The wind puffed the clouds across the moon, veiling the alley in darkness. It's like something out of a cheap horror novel. Tony flicked the safety on his pistols, scanning the area. 
A flicker of doubt raced across his mind. What if bullets don't work on these enemies? But he soon dismissed it; Tony rarely had time for fear. 
He crossed his arms and assumed an imposing stance. The last of his drunkenness ebbed away as adrenaline flooded his system. 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
Tony's ears pricked up. 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
So it wasn't his imagination. 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
Where's that voice coming from? 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
It wasn't just a voice. It was a malignant aural presence, cold and inhuman. A faint rustling fluttered up and down the alley. Tony tensed. 

Suddenly, something wiggled in the darkness. 
Tony began to make out humanoid figures in the gloom. 
“I've been waiting for you bastards.” Tony squeezed both triggers, loosening a volley of bullets. 
An inhuman scream rang out in response. The bullets had cut a swathe in the darkness, which in turn 
seemed to produce more and more figures. 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
The shapes moved closer, revealing glittering 
scythes. 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
Now Tony could make out skull-like faces. 
“DAAANNNTEEE!” 
Tony gripped his guns tighter and fired off a fresh barrage. He knew the clips would soon be empty, but at least he was making some progress in thinning out the advancing forms. Tony carefully controlled each weapon to prevent them from recoiling upward after each round. The alcohol might not have been entirely stamped out of his system, but he was far from truly impaired. 
But Tony had forgotten one thing. One tiny yet crucial detail. He was still using bootlegged guns. 
Kaching! 
One of his pistols jammed. The bullets in the Government locked up, rendering the weapon useless. The Beretta was still spitting out violence, but shoddy materials meant it was on the verge of crapping out. 
Tony hurled both guns in the direction of the advancing shadows and grabbed his massive sword. “Come on! Who wants to get cut in half?” 
The weapon felt heavier than usual. Tony wrote it off to the vodka, but he had the sinking suspicion it was something else. 
He hacked and slashed his way through the darkness, sparks flying where sword met scythe. The otherworldly forms were unable to withstand his frontal assault. 
“I don't know what you want, but if you've got a problem with me, stop sending your minions and deal with me directly!” 
Each swing of the sword began generation unsettling visions in the back of Tony's mind – a woman sprawled on the ground and covered in blood – a small child clinging to her body, crying. “Mommy.” 
“Mommy!” 
Tony renewed his attack, enraged. He was no longer a helpless child. He had the power to kill; he had somehow lost the ability to cry. 
He carved through the shadowy crowd. Eventually, the last of his foes fell. Tony felt his rage smolder deep inside. He held his sword out, scanning the alley. But it was as empty as when he had entered it, save for the scattered ashes of his mysteriously vanquished 
opponents. 
The air hung heavy around him. 
“Are you there?” Tony swept his gaze around the 
alley. “Come out!” 
Suddenly, a voice rang out. “TOOONNNYYY!” 
This cry was so different from the one that kicked 
off the melee. 
A smile broke across Tony's face. “This is the hundredth time, you know.” 
A single man stood in front of him, legs apart. He wore a familiar red coat, which was ragged with holes. The man's body was coated with blood. His head sat uneasily atop a severed neck, held in place by a narrow strip of skin and muscle. It was a strange shadow of a man... a man Tony knew well. 
“Does even the devil hate me so much that he sent you to rag on me, Denvers?” 
“TOOONNNYYY!” The thing that had once been Denvers groaned hoarsely. 
Sympathy flickered across Tony's eyes. He rarely showed emotion for the dead, but Denvers had been a colleague in an industry without many opportunities for relationships. The shameful sight in front of him was too horrible even for someone who had tried to kill Tony ninety-nine times. 
But Tony knew that whatever faced him now wasn't really Denvers. He resorted to sarcasm to dull his emotions. “Your face is an improvement, but still painful to look at. Come here; I'll fix it up for you!” 
He readied his sword. 
The thing that had been Denvers raised its arms and launched itself at Tony. The silver talismans dotting the red coat jangled. 
“My favorite coat doesn't suit you.” Tony swirled his sword twice, remaining stationary but for a flick of a wrist. Both of Denvers' arms plopped to the ground. 
They wriggled like snakes. 
“TOOONNNYYY!” Denvers bared the remains of his teeth and sprung forward. His coattails streamed 
behind him, jewelry clanking. 
Tony calmly decapitated him. 
“My hundredth victory,” he muttered. “Farewell.” 
The headless body stumbled forward through sheer momentum and finally collapsed on the ground. 
The atmosphere snapped back to normality as surely as if someone had flicked a switch. A gust of wind blew the last of the clouds away from the moon, driving the shadows further down the alley. Denvers' transformed corpse was all that remained of the uncanny episode. 
“You can keep the coat.” Tony wiped the blood from his sword and stalked down the alley. Before long, the adrenaline wore off. 
Tony headed home with unsteady steps.