Creepy & Crawly Fragment: Devil May Cry Me a River

“I think I need a memory wipe,” Mei said, her hand now over her eyes.Leo took to kicking Alestor. “I fucking hate you!”

“Guys,” Henri said, trying again to lift the sword. “We’ve got company.”

The door burst open, and just as a pack of screaming businessmen/women streamed in, Henri got enough leverage to lift and swing the sword, slicing them in half. Mei did what she was wont to do and screamed, Yoko quickly changed beats from laughing hysterically to freezing their attackers in place, and Alestor did what he was wont to do, and that was tell everyone else what to do.

Yoko kicked a backpack she’d found on their way to the two-man orgy to Leo. “Make yourself fucking useful, Leo!”

Inside where most of his confiscated weapons, Alestor’s gun and, somehow, Alestor’s cane. Leo passed what didn’t belong to him to the elder gentleman whom sighed inwardly.

“So much more no human casualties,” he said rolling his eyes.

Mei was at Henri’s side, trying to help him lift the massive weapon when an OL leapt at them with all the grace and ferocity of a tigress. Instinctively, Mei’s hands were on the Polaroid camera and her finger on the shutter. The flash the camera emitted dropped the OL like a sack of cement and downed a small pack that was tearing its way through their only exit and the sole entrance.

“Go!” commanded Yoko, hurdling the pile of unconscious or worse business people and sweeping what looked to be an electric current from the light switch to down the hall, taking out the hordes in the hall. Leo didn’t wait to be told twice; he was in the hall with Yoko, all automatics blazing. Mei followed, sprinting as cautiously as she could with spells and bullets all around her. Alestor was the last one out of the room with Henri and the sword.Clearing out a path was one thing. Keeping it clear and trying to find a way back to stairs or an elevator was entirely another. Yoko took lead with Leo backing her up, and somehow found enough bearings to get them back to the same elevator that had brought them down to hell. The halls were becoming less hellish and rusty as they found the right corridor, and when they reached the right one, the hall terminated with a white light lit elevator, its doors opened like the gates to paradise.

The final sprint is always the most difficult. Sensing their prey was escaping, the business people redoubled their efforts in trying to stop the five, going from shuffling American zombies to ass-kickingly fast European zombies in seconds.

Henri stopped, since he was starting to lose steam from carrying a sword nearly three times his height. With a short burst of willpower, he swung it as hard as he could and took out the foremost pursuers in the group.

One zombie-like attacker made a flying leap at the boy and was shot down, literally, by Alestor, whom had also stopped running when he realized he’d passed him and the sword. In a single ballistic movement, he scooped up Henri under one arm, and the sword with his other. Carrying the blade at his back and the boy, Henri realized that even Alestor could sometimes look cool.

Mei was almost at the elevator, holding it for Alestor and Henri, even as Leo was shooting past her and the pair and just barely missing.“Alestor,” Henri panted, as they were just yards from salvation. ‘Isn’t the sword heavy?”

Two things happened simultaneously. The adrenaline rush from saving Henri ran out, and the full weight of the demonic sword became startlingly obvious, and both of these singular truths nearly crushed Alestor. The pair went down, Henri tucking and rolling out of Alestor’s grip, and Alestor getting smashed by the sheer weight of the blade.

“Never mind,” Henri muttered to himself as Alestor crawled out from under the weighty weapon. “Badass rush.”

With the horde nearly upon them, Henri quickly made the executive decision to snatch up the sword, even as Alestor was scrambling into the elevator, thinking the boy was right behind them (sword be damned). When Mei squeezed out past him to assist, Alestor realized he’d made a small error in judgment and as the doors tried to close, he grabbed the sliding doors and yanked them back open, even as the buzz of the warning alarm sounded in the now bluish-lit car.

Mei and Henri’s combined strength sliced half a dozen business people in one swing in the narrow hall. Using the force from the blade bouncing off the wall, the pair swung again and successfully killed another half a dozen.

“Come on!” yelled Leo, who’d now finally run out of ammunition and was leaning on the “door open” button in the elevator. The kids, with one last burst of strength, dragged the blade with them into the car, at which point, Leo jabbed the button for “door close” and the doors obeyed with movie-close timing.

When the car started its laborious trek back up to the top/bottom floor, Leo blurted out, “Shit, not this goddamn elevator again.”

To which the elevator responded by dropping suddenly as it had before.

“LEO Goddammit!!” yelled Alestor annoyed.

“Henri!” cried Mei. “Do the saving thing again!”The boy was against the wall, clinging to the handrail. “I think I might make it worse!”

“Anything’s better than being dead!” Leo yelled.

Just as suddenly, the car braked, throwing its occupants to the floor. Then, after a creak and shake, it started its laborious journey back the way it came.

Wincing from the jolt, Mei said, “Nice job, Henri-kun.”

Henri blinked, sitting flat on his bottom. “It’s not me.”

“It’s me,” Yoko snapped. She was leaning against the wall of the car, her hands flat against the sides. Where her palms touched the wall, it glowed green and blue alternatively. The ordeal was obviously a strain on her, as she looked like she was suffering from an acute migraine.

Alestor was watching the number counter return from hellish symbols to actual numbers. “Just a little more, Yoko, love.”

When the elevator lurched to stop and the doors creaked open, Leo and Alestor grabbed the doors and yanked them open. The car shuddered.

“Out!” commanded Yoko, sweat streaming from her forehead.

Henri, Mei, and Leo did as they were told, dragging the heavy blade after them. When the sword left the car, it jolted, shuddered, but didn’t fall.

Alestor, at the door, paused to look at Yoko. “You going to be ok?” he asked.

Without warning, the car dropped down, neatly decapitating Alestor on its plummet back down to depths/heights unknown. The elder gentleman’s head bounced and rolled away from the shaft like a watermelon, coming to a stop at a screaming Mei.

“Bloody hell,” snapped Alestor with a sigh. “Not again.”

Mei screamed, and Leo proceeded to throw up in a nearby trashcan. Henri rolled his eyes.

“Fuck,” cursed Yoko, hand to her head.Despite incoming doom and death from a plummeting elevator car, Yoko still had enough time and strength to kick Alestor’s headless body, and then started her arduous journey back up.

Meanwhile, topside, Henri was refusing Alestor suggestions to make Shakespeare impressions.

“Dreadfully sorry about all this,” Alestor said, gesturing to his lack of a body with his eyes.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” he asked the head. He held it like a perspective buyer contemplating a pumpkin.

“I’m immortal; I’m used to things like this. Stings like a sumbitch though.” Alestor pointed his eyes to Leo. “Hey, Henri, tell Leo to go long.”

The boy obliged, raising the head to Leo, whom promptly got sick again in aforementioned trashcan.

To ease the tension, the elevator car resurfaced. Yoko unceremoniously kicked Alestor’s body out of the car, and then leaped out. Once the source of its power left, the car plunged back down the shaft.

Henri kneeled down, and tried to reattach the head. Despite her horror, Mei came for assistance. She held up the body by the shoulders while Henri fitted the head back on the neck. He held it in place, as one might do when gluing two solid pieces together and holding it in place to set the glue.

Unfortunately, Henri was off by a few inches, so that when Alestor’s flesh and blood reformed, it healed over his windpipe, suffocating him.

“What happened?!” cried Mei, watching Alestor turn colors before ultimately asphyxiating.