The air crystallized around Vergil like shattering glass. Batgirl's pupils contracted to pinpricks as his silhouette *fractured*—first at the edges, then inward, seams of cerulean light spiderwebbing across his form. His coat dissolved into motes of azure energy that swirled like hungry phosphorescent plankton.
Constantine's Zippo flame inverted, burning downward as reality itself seemed to tilt. "Oh, *fuck me sideways*," he rasped, blood from his scalp wound dripping into his left eye.
Huntress's next quarrel slipped from her fingers entirely, clattering against the dock's warped boards. The carbon-fiber shaft warped midair, twisting like a living thing before snapping in half.
Then—
—sound returned in a concussion wave that sent shipping containers skidding sideways, their metal screeching against concrete. Vergil's boots no longer touched ground. Instead, he hovered within a nimbus of crackling energy, Yamato now an extension of his forearm—the blade fused seamlessly with bone that gleamed like polished onyx. His hair had become a living corona of white flame, each strand moving with sentient purpose. Where his face should've been, there was only a smooth mask of demonic ivory, its surface etched with glyphs that hurt to look at.
Batgirl's escrima sticks sparked and died. The electronics fizzled, smoke curling from their handles. "What—" Her voice cracked. The word tasted like copper.
A root lashed toward them. Vergil moved without moving—his form flickered, and suddenly the root was *elsewhere*, bisected midair, its severed halves writhing like beheaded snakes. Black ichor hung suspended for three heartbeats before gravity reasserted itself.
The Qliphoth's trunk pulsed faster. The thing inside its hollow throbbed in sync with Vergil's energy field, their rhythms matching like lover's heartbeats.
Constantine was scribbling in his own blood on a crumpled cigarette pack, his lips moving around silent incantations. The symbols he drew *wriggled*, attempting to crawl off the paper. "Right," he muttered, teeth clenched. "So we're *properly* fucked."
Huntress grabbed Batgirl's arm, her nails biting through the Kevlar weave. "We need to *go*," she hissed, already backpedaling toward a half-collapsed scaffold.
Batgirl resisted, her gaze locked on Vergil's transformed silhouette. The air around him tasted of lightning and something older—like the scent of glaciers calving. "He's not—"
A sound like a universe tearing interrupted her. Vergil raised Yamato—except the blade was *longer* now, its edge singing with harmonic distortion. The first cut parted the harbor's surface horizontally, the water refusing to close around the wound. The second came vertically, intersecting the first at a perfect 90-degree angle.
Space itself screamed.
The Qliphoth's fruit-heart *quivered*, its surface developing a hairline fracture that spiderwebbed outward with glacial slowness. Vergil's masked face tilted slightly—the only warning before he *moved*.
Constantine's blood sigils burst into cobalt flames. "DOWN!" He tackled Huntress and Batgirl behind a toppled crane as the dockyard *folded*. Shipping containers inverted midair, their surfaces turning inside out like peeled fruit. The Qliphoth's roots recoiled—too late. Yamato's afterimage carved through them in a sequence too fast for human retinas to capture.
Batgirl's earpiece crackled. Oracle's voice was shredded with static: "*—reading seismic—oh God—*" The transmission dissolved into white noise punctuated by what might've been screaming.
Huntress wiped ichor from her cheek, her fingers coming away sticky with something that *writhed*. "We can't win this," she breathed, more to herself than the others.
Constantine's cigarette pack sigils dissolved into ash. He watched the motes swirl upward toward Vergil's hovering form. "No shit, Sherlock." His hands shook as he fumbled for another cigarette. "But maybe *he* can."
Above them, the Qliphoth's fruit split open with a wet *pop*. What emerged wasn't seed nor sap, but a *hand*—skeletal and clawed, its bones the color of tarnished silver. The fingers flexed, each knuckle cracking like a gunshot.
Vergil's mask tilted again. This time, the movement read unmistakably as *interest*.
Batgirl's comms fizzed back to life. Oracle's voice was barely audible beneath the distortion: "*It's summoning something. Get. Out. NOW.*"
Vergil says "Mundus i was wondering how you would get here"
The skeletal hand curled into a fist, knuckles popping like a string of firecrackers. The Qliphoth's trunk groaned as something *pushed* from within, the bark splitting with the sound of tearing flesh. A voice emerged first—deep, resonant, thick with the phlegm of centuries:
**"Vergil."**
The name rolled through the docks like thunder, shattering warehouse windows in concentric waves. Vergil's mask remained impassive, but Yamato's edge flickered—a blade's version of a predator's grin.
Constantine's latest cigarette fell unlit from his lips. "*Mundus?* As in *the* Mundus? Prince of the—"
**"Quiet, insect."**
The mage's jaw snapped shut with an audible *click*, teeth rattling from the force of the command. Blood trickled from his nose in twin rivulets.
Batgirl's escrima sticks sparked weakly in her grip. "We need to—"
**"You need nothing."**
The voice wasn't just sound—it was *pressure*, a physical weight that drove Huntress to her knees. Her crossbow clattered to the ground, the metal limbs warping like melted licorice.
The Qliphoth's trunk ruptured fully, birthing a silhouette that defied perspective—taller when glimpsed peripherally, its edges blurring like wet ink. Mundus stepped forward, his armored boots crushing concrete to powder. His face was a shifting mosaic of screaming faces, each one frozen mid-agony.
Vergil floated higher, Yamato humming. "You've gotten slower."
Mundus's laughter made the harbor water boil. **"And you've grown...*smaller*."** A clawed hand gestured dismissively. **"Where is your brother? Still hiding behind human weakness?"**
Constantine wheezed, scribbling in his own blood again. The symbols this time were jagged, frantic. "*Non serviam—*"
Mundus flicked a finger. The mage's ribs *cracked*, folding inward like crumpled paper. He collapsed with a wet gasp.
Batgirl moved—not toward the demon lord, but to Constantine's side. Her fingers found the vial at his belt, the glass already cracked. "Stay down," she hissed, pressing it into his palm.
Huntress was crawling toward her fallen quiver, fingers brushing a blackened bolt. Her lips moved silently—a prayer or a curse.
Mundus took another step. The ground liquefied beneath him, concrete becoming tar. **"This world will kneel,"** he rumbled, **"as all others have."**
Vergil's mask tilted a fraction. "You talk too much."
Yamato moved.
The first cut bisected Mundus horizontally at the waist. The second came vertically, splitting him into quadrants. The slices lingered in the air like afterimages, glowing white-hot.
For three heartbeats, silence.
Then Mundus's laughter erupted from *everywhere*—the shards of his form hovering midair, each piece vibrating. **"You always did favor theatrics."**
The fragments *twisted*, reforming not into one body, but *dozens*—smaller, leaner duplicates with the same shifting faces. They spread out across the docks in a grotesque chorus line, each moving in perfect sync.
Huntress's bolt found its mark—plunging into a duplicate's eye socket. The thing didn't flinch. The shaft disintegrated before it could detonate.
Batgirl's comms screeched. Oracle's voice was shredded: "*—dimensional bleed—get—*"
Constantine wheezed, clutching his ribs. "Oh, *brilliant*. He's fractal."
Vergil exhaled—a sound like a sword being unsheathed. His energy field pulsed once, twice, then *condensed*, the blue light darkening to violet.
Mundus's duplicates charged as one.
The resulting clash wasn't a battle—it was a storm. Vergil flickered between forms, Yamato leaving afterimages that hung like guillotine blades. Duplicates fell in halves, thirds, their pieces squirming like bisected worms.
One fragment lunged for Batgirl—
—only to freeze midair, impaled on a sudden spike of crystalline ice.
A new voice cut through the chaos, dry as a desert wind: "Well. This is embarrassing."
Standing atop a pile of shipping containers, a man in a red coat surveyed the carnage. His sword rested on his shoulder, its edge notched from what looked like *teeth* marks.
Constantine groaned. "*Dante*."
vergil appears next to dante back in his human form and says "your late"
Dante's boots scraped against the rusted container as he shifted his weight, the metal groaning under him. His gaze flicked from Mundus's reforming fragments to Vergil's human form, then down to the battered trio near the scaffold. One eyebrow arched above his sunglasses. "Damn, Verge. Didn't take you for the type to drag civilians into your messes."
Vergil's coat rippled as he landed beside his brother, the transition from demonic energy to solid form seamless. A gash on his cheek sealed itself mid-stride, the skin knitting together like time-lapse footage. "They insisted," he said dryly, watching a drop of his own blood evaporate before it could hit the ground.
Batgirl's escrima sticks sparked feebly in her grip. Her domino mask had slipped, revealing a thin cut across the bridge of her nose that wept crimson. "We're not—" she began, then coughed violently, over as something black and vi dribbled from her lips. The substance sizzled where it hit the dock boards.
Constantine groaned, pressing his blood-smeared hands to his fractured ribs. "Qliphoth spores," he rasped, squinting at the ichor. "Bloody *fantastic*." His cigarette pack sigils smoldered at the edges, the half-drawn runes losing coherence as his fingers trembled.
Dante's nose wrinkled. "Ugh. Demon flu." He tapped Rebellion's pommel against his shoulder. "Mundus always did have the worst party favors."
The remaining duplicates twitched in unison, their shifting faces coagulating into a single screaming visage. **"The Sparda whelps,"** they intoned, the words slithering from a dozen throats. **"How...predictable."**
Huntress wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her crossbow dangling from its strap. The weapon's limbs had warped into useless curves. "Okay," she muttered, "someone explain why the hell-god knows your family name."
Dante's smirk didn't reach his eyes. "Long story short—"
"—we killed him before," Vergil interrupted, Yamato humming at his hip. The blade's edge still steamed.
Constantine made a wet, choking sound. "*Before*? As in, this isn't the first—"
A duplicate lunged. Dante moved faster, Rebellion cleaving downward in a diagonal slash that split the creature from shoulder to hip. The halves *screamed*, dissolving into black mist that reeked of burned hair. "Yep," he said, shaking gore from the blade. "Third time's the charm, right Verge?"
Vergil's fingers flexed. "Second for me." His gaze tracked the remaining duplicates as they began circling, their movements synchronized like a school of piranhas.
Batgirl staggered upright, bracing against the scaffold. Her breathing was ragged, each inhale producing a worrying rattle. "Need...extraction," she managed, fingers fumbling at her comms. The device sparked and died, its circuitry fried by residual demonic energy.
Dante sighed, rolling his shoulders. "Alright, kids. Field trip's over." He tossed something small and metallic toward Constantine—a rosary bead that glowed faintly crimson. "Get 'em clear, Johnny."
The mage caught it with trembling fingers. His eyes widened as the bead's warmth seeped into his palm. "This is—"
"—not gonna last long," Dante finished, already turning toward the encroaching duplicates. Rebellion's edge gleamed hungrily. "Vergil. You take left."
Vergil's response was to draw Yamato in a single fluid motion, the blade's whisper slicing through the harbor's unnatural silence. "I take what I want."
The brothers moved as one—Dante barreling forward with earth-shaking stomps, Rebellion carving arcs of crimson energy; Vergil dissolving into a streak of cobalt light, his afterimages crisscrossing the docks in a lethal lattice. Duplicates fell like wheat before scythes, their shrieks harmonizing into a single, ear-splitting wail.
Constantine fumbled the rosary bead between his fingers, his lips moving around a guttural incantation. The air around the injured heroes shimmered, warping like a mirage. "Hold onto your knickers," he wheezed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.
Huntress grabbed Batgirl's wrist just as the world *twisted* around them. The dockyard lurched sideways, colors inverting momentarily before—
—they collapsed onto the Batcave's cold stone floor, Constantine's smoking boots leaving scorch marks on the bat-symbol etched into the ground.