CHAPTER EIGHT: UNDERSTANDING

"So, let me get this straight…" Tatsiana began, as she gave Dante an irritated look. "She," the wolf girl pointed at the bunny woman.

"Hey, cutie~" She smiled back flirtatiously.

"Is some kind of interdimensional traveler from a… light novel?"

"And a sequel game where you're yuri for each other."

"I'm straight!" she shouted indignantly.

Dante raised an eyebrow with a knowing and amused expression. "So, I'm supposed to ignore how you've half-listened to my explanation and just been checking her out the entire time?"

Her face turned bright red near instantly, she got up in his face. "T-That's-! I-I was making sure she wasn't carrying anything dangerous on her!"

He gave her a smug and patronizing smirk. "Yes, I'm sure she's carrying something very dangerous in that tight, form fitting sexy bunny suit of hers."

She grit her teeth. "You-"

She cut herself off as she felt a pair of hands wrap around her shoulders. Tatsiana stood as rigid as a statue as she slowly looked up to see the rabbit women's ruby eyes gazing down at her, with an almost hungry look.

"Oh, I don't mind at all~" The taller woman licked her lips. "She's such an adorable puppy~"

Tatsiana could practically feel the steam wafting off her face. "I-I-I, uh… I… uhh... umm."

Dante let out a snort. "I see The Beast of Caerbannog has risen again."

The bunny woman blinked. "Eh?"

Dante frowned. "Ah, yeah, you wouldn't get that reference. Different pop-culture and all that. I'll have to ask Odin if he can pull a few strings for a movie night." He then had a sly smirk directed towards the bunny woman. "And aren't you chummy with Tatsiana here? It's your first meeting and you're already all over her. And here I nearly had my head lopped off."

She pouted. "Awww, I thought we were past that. I spent all day making it up to you too~"

He smiled. "True. Anyway, are you going to introduce yourself?"

The bunny woman leaned down, practically draping herself over the shorter werewolf. "Well, my business name is Black Hare, but you, my adorable puppy, can call me Francesca~"

Tatsiana felt her heart beating out of her chest, this was way too much for her!

"The cute ones always get special treatment," Dante grumbled.

Tatsiana got the feeling this Francesca placed a little more stock in how people looked…

"Well, you can't really blame me." Francesca adjusted her position, and now Tatsiana could feel her breasts pressing into her back. "Some suspicious guy covered in blood knew how to summon someone from the Pocket Watch Society and even knew me by name. Certainly didn't help that you gave off 'weird cultist' vibes. Hate those guys."

Dante rolled his eyes. "Oh please, if I had my original body, you'd be swooning over me."

That caught Tatsiana's attention. "Your… old body?"

"Yeah, I might as well call this one a rental." Dante shrugged. "Antoine Tombe de Rouge, poor kid got dealt the shittiest hand in life. The Yellow Monarch gang scammed the hell out of his family and put them in an impossible debt, and when they couldn't pay, they were sent to the Guillotine Casino. Then they spent years treating him like a slave, surviving on scraps and being forced to delve into the Nightmare Dungeon. Hours before we met, he'd been chopped to pieces and had his organs removed to sell on the black market."

Tatsiana's face paled, the very forward bunny woman completely forgotten. "Good god… Is that what happened to the missing low ranked Adventurers?!"

To her horror, Dante nodded. "Pretty much. Either brought to the casino as 'entertainment' or chopped up and sold like meat." He knocked against his head with his hand. "Kid's still here too. If Odin can't find a way to give him his body back, then I'll work out a way. Maybe make a homunculus body or something."

"Making a homunculus?" Francesca made herself known once again. "That's some seriously illegal shit."

The creation of homunculi were banned world wide after the uprising in North Africa back in 1922. Mass amounts of homunculi were created as a cheap and replaceable labor force. They were seen as nothing but soulless creatures, and even used as expendable soldiers by local warlords…until they developed their own souls. Then they rebelled against their creators, and slaughtered anyone that stood in their way, creating the Homunculus Republic of Africa. Ever since then, the creation of homunculi had been illegal, punishable by death.

Dante scoffed, crossing his arms. "In all the worlds you've been in, has that ever stopped anyone?"

Francesca let out a nervous laugh. "Just be careful okay?"

"That's for Future Me, to worry about. We got shit to do today, clock's ticking."

Tatsiana narrowed her eyes. "What are you two up to anyway?"

"I've only been here for like two days, and know jack shit about my own abilities. We're heading over to the Nightmare Dungeons to get a better understanding of what I can do." He gave her a serious look. "I almost killed Verner in our first battle. Almost. I got him by surprise and pulled out shit neither of us had ever seen before. The crafty bastard's no doubt made countermeasures for me next time we meet. I just have to be an even craftier bastard than him."

He was genuinely being serious. He was after the life of the most infamous man to walk the world. A man so slippery that not even the Round Table and their inquisitors could pin him down. King Arthur himself had taken his head, and he still came back, though no one knew how.

And here was Dante talking about killing Verner Von Bluecher like he was a minor bump in the road.

She untangled herself from Francesca and walked up to Dante, she looked into his eyes. The beautiful and enchanting scarlet eyes she had ever seen. Near hypnotic pools of red, Tatsiana had a hard time looking away. She almost felt like Eve plucking an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Her head pulsed, like when she first found him in that alley, but instead of a full-on migraine, it was a dull ache.

Another vision entered her mind…

She saw her murderous older brother crawling away from her, bloodied and beaten, there were a few holes through his left leg, and even his knee. His expression was utterly pathetic, fear and disbelief written all over his face as he finally hit the wall behind him.

"H-How?! How could I lose to you! Of all people, you!"

Nowhere to run…

"S-Stay the hell away from me!"

Tatsiana could feel the sheer rage flowing through the other version of herself.

She raised her gun, Balmung, at Yegor ready to end the bastard that plagued her nightmares for over a decade.

Then a warm hand fell on hers.

She turned to see Ichiro. Once again, he had Dante's eyes. He didn't say a word, just had a gentle expression on his face. That soft smile that eased the pain in her heart. She remembered the comradery they had with their small, elite unit. The arguments, the friendly rivalry between them. How they always had each other's backs and rose through the ranks at a breakneck pace. The nights of love and passion she shared with him.

She had gained so much over this last year, and if she pulled that trigger she would lose it all…

Tatsiana stared at her defeated brother. Blood covered his face, fear and terror written on it clear as day. Tears began streaming down his face, in either fear or frustration, she didn't know nor care. It was completely and utterly pathetic.

He was beaten. No longer a threat. Never again would he haunt her nightmares…

She felt the anger in her wash away, and clarity returned to her mind. With a shaky breath, she lowered and holstered Balmung, and took out her cuffs.

"We're doing this by the books. You can rot behind bars for the rest of your life."

And like that the vision ended.

Dante was in front of her again, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "You good? You've been staring at me for like a solid minute."

"What about Yegor?" Tatsiana spoke up.

"Your brother? That should be obvious, right?"

"So, we're just locking him up?"

Silent Hill OST - Not Tomorrow

"Tatsiana, I want you to understand something." He began, his voice had a graveness to it that she had never heard before. "I know you. And I mean I know you. On a deep personal level that you are definitely not going to be comfortable with coming from a stranger like me." He paused before he gave a long sigh. "And I've seen you die… more than a handful of times."

That completely sobered her up from the emotions she felt from her vision. "You've… seen me die?"

He leaned against the alley wall, and turned to face the streets of Paris, wet with melted snow. "Sometimes it's just a plain old Bad End, a stupid choice gets you a stupid reward, plain and simple. Another time, the pain of people you trust turning their backs on you pushes you over the edge, and the results, while badass, weren't pretty. You remember how I explained the game, right? How the 'player' takes control of Ichiro and controls him in battle and gets to make choices for him in certain social situations, right?"

She felt a pit of dread in her stomach. "Yeah…"

"Well, once those credits roll, the 'player' is completely out of the picture, and Ichiro eventually goes back to his old ways. I'm no longer his cosmic babysitter and wingman. Years later, Yegor escapes prison and starts up a new criminal empire. You and Ichiro take him down again, and you're ready to end him once and for all, just absolutely sick of his nonsense. Ichiro convinces you to stop, and Yegor shoots you in the back, right through your heart. You die, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to stop it."

Silence reigned over the alleyway. Only the sound of a few passing cars which were deaf to her ears. She didn't know what to feel, her mind was swirling with emotions. A part of her wanted to say that he was lying, another another wanted to run away, and another wanted to punch him in the face and scream every obscenity she knew. But instead, she stood there, paralyzed.

"This isn't a game. I understood that the moment I was dropped into this world. So, I can't make your choices for you. As a matter of fact, I refuse, you're your own person. A grown woman who can make her own decisions, but if you're looking for my opinion on the matter, I can't do that either. We both have our circumstances, and I've never been through anything like you have."

He turned to face her once again.

"My grandfather once told me that blood is thicker than water, but so is mud. And the lines get blurred more often than you'd think. Blood and family are two different things, and I never really saw eye to eye with anyone other than my grandfather. My little brother, Aurelio, he was the golden child of my family, got everything he ever wanted. A lot of shit happened between us, but one day he put a gun up to my head, called me a monster. He didn't know it at the time, I doubt he ever figured it out, but the gun in his hands was empty."

There was a shift in the air, and for some reason the winter breeze of Paris felt so much colder than it did before. Then she noticed the change in Dante's face, the man always seemed to have a perpetual air of levity around him, even when Odin pulled himself out of his body, but now it had vanished completely. The look in his eyes as he stared at her was a coldness that the frigid snow that fell from the skies couldn't hope to match.

She couldn't help but think that this must be the true Dante under all of his wacky antics.

"If he had pulled that trigger… If I had heard that click… After everything I had sacrificed for him and the sake of our murdered parents… I'd have put a hole through that son of a bitch's head then and there."

image [https://i.imgur.com/2thESge.png]

Chapter End