Jump 15 Bayo-

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone there kid. Now you can’t just go and tell it to the people like that. Listen, you just sit back, relax and let your pal Dante tell the tale of our epic showdown. The audience has waited much, much too long for this.

            What are you doing here? I didn’t even ask for you to come with us. Go back to your failing business. I’m sure that you’ve got pizza and strawberry sundaes to eat or something?

King, you wound me. After these past ten years how could we not be anything but the best of friends? Besides, you’ve got pizza here. Why would I spend money when there’s some good ones to mooch off of at your place?

            I can’t stand you sometimes.

            Then take a seat and have a slice. I’m about to start telling the story.

            Oh give me a break.

            So the day starts like any other. I wake up, think about reading the morning paper and have to deal with a group of demons breaking down my door and looking to start some trouble. More than the usual since our resident demon magnet was sleeping on my couch after he passed out from partying way too hard the other night.

            I swear I’ll end you if making things up becomes a trend in this retelling.

            Now, now, take it easy buddy. You’ve got to add a little flare to the story to if you want to keep the people entertained. Anyway, where was I again? Right, right, the morning demon cleanup. So as per the usually Tuesday, I had to deal with that before I even got to make a cup of coffee. King was quick to wake and pull his own weight though. That was just enough to be a good stretch for the day once we took care of them, so I had King make us some eggs. The man knows how to make a mean omelet let me tell you.

            So after our little breakfast the two of us got to talking. We’d been around each other for about ten years now barring that three month stint where he got all broody and left to do mercenary work all by his lonesome. I’m surprised Karen even let him stay gone that long to be honest. Hey, what’s with that look? At least you have a girl that cares enough to bring you back. You expect Lady or Trish to do the same for me unless they need something? Anyway, back to the story. We were discussing our various exploits, the demons we killed, the pizzas we shared, all that good stuff. Then after a little argument about who took out the most demons between the two of us I figured there was only one way to settle it before we said our goodbyes. That’s right, you guessed it, I decided we should duke it out mano a mano. It honestly surprised me that we never had before looking back on things.

            Now, King’s a man I can respect. Knows when to throw ‘em and when to fold ‘em. But sometimes two men just have to swing swords at each other’s throats for no real reason. When he refused at first and called it a “pointless endeavor” you can expect me to have been a little upset. So I figured I’d egg him on a bit, act like he was afraid to take on little old me. But this guy has the nerve to say it’s pointless because he’d win without even trying! So naturally that gets my blood boiling like nothing else and seals the deal right there. I’d sooner die than let him leave with a statement like that just sitting in the air.

            It took a bit of coaxing and a rigged bet-

            I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to that stupid bet!

            Hey now, take it easy. I’m about to get to the meat of the story. So it took a little work, but I managed to get our fight happening. Thanks to that handy teleportation ability of his, King brought us to the middle of nowhere to have our duel without endangering the town. Meaning we could go all out without much consequence. I was pretty excited to get things started, but then the peanut gallery arrived and almost ruined the fun I had worked so hard to have.

            Hey! King’s not the only one around here who can kick your ass demon boy!

            Nobody asked you to butt in, but if you want to test that theory I’ll take you up on it later. Anyway, all of King’s little friends he brought along for the ride showed up within under five minutes. Man they’re fast. So they all appeared and while some of them wanted us to stop the majority were alright with it and just wanted to watch. Shoutouts to Leo and Shock on that note. Those two know how to be an audience. With the stage finally set it was time for our show to finally kick off. King looked ready to end me so I laid on the classic Dante charm before taking out Rebellion, my trusted sword that’s always been with me. I think King pulled out some sort of legendary Chinese sword or something. The Elven Scar something or other. The name’s not important. With the two of us ready to throw down there was only one thing left for me to do. I threw Rebellion into the air, shouted “Let’s Rock!” and took out Ebony and Ivory (my lovely little twin pistols) and let loose.

            Without missing a beat, he throws his sword directly at me and starts dashing to my left, flinging lightning at any bullets his sword didn’t deflect. When the sword got close enough I gave it a solid kick into the air before putting away my guns. Rebellion was finally coming down so I did the only logical thing I could think of. I jumped up, grabbed both swords out of the air, and lunged at King, spinning like some sort aerial death top. Stopping in his tracks, King pulls out his own twin pistols, Aeolus and Enlil, and shoots them right at the ground. The clever bastard made a gust of wind blow me back before I could cut him.

            As I was about to land stylishly after a backflip, King decided he wanted his sword back and teleported right in front of me. I would have said something cool, but that’s a bit hard to do when you get kicked away with the force of a speeding semi-truck. It kind of tickled though. Landing on my hands to push myself back up, King was already behind me attempting to run his sword through me. Sucked to be him though, because I was too fast for it to work. I got to pay him back for that kick with one of my own. Pushed him back pretty far, but I was annoyed to see his let his sword take the brunt of the damage.

            With a confident grin I asked him if that was all he had. Naturally, it got him riled up a bit, I’m sure. He teleported to my right and brought his blade down only for it to be met with my own. He tried again from the left, then behind, then above, then… you get the point. It was a weird flurry of attacks you can only accomplish by cheating and teleporting around. But it wasn’t a problem for me to deal with. Not to say that King was being predictable… yet. I’m just that good. Besides, he got me with this cheeky little trick where he teleported above me, swung his sword down and before it even made contact with my blade, he teleported again and hit me with a mean upper cut while I went to block. He was going to follow it up, but I caught his next punch before letting him feel the end of my boot. It was oddly satisfying, but for some reason it left my hair standing up.

            Feeling electrified I felt it was only right to bring out an old favorite of mine. You like rock? Because I had the urge to play a killer guitar solo, so I pulled out my guitar Nevan and treated the audience to a sick riff from one of my favorite tunes. Oh, it also summoned a bunch of bats I sent at King to distract him. But the solo is way more important. So the bats flew at him to be a minor annoyance, but I forgot that lightning doesn’t really do anything to King, so he shrugged them off. While I continued playing my solo, he decided to send about 100 magic ice arrows at me right when I got to the best part. Sickened by his lack of musical appreciation and swapped weapons once again. The ice arrows all swarmed me, and I can only assume it looked like my fun was over. But, from the mist that appeared I emerged, dashing towards King with Ifrit (a pair of gauntlets with the power of fire) on my hands.

            King didn’t look too surprised though, and ripped off the brace on his right arm and met me head on. As we traded punches sparks flew and embers danced around the two of us in perfect harmony. If it wasn’t for the sight of us trying to wail on each other, it probably would have made for a nice light show. After a decidedly strong clash between our fists pushed the two of us back, the ground started to shake and took away our attention from each other. At first I thought this was another of King’s magic tricks, but when I saw how confused he looked I knew it was something else. It hadn’t even been a minute before the hands started popping up from the ground and we knew what was happening. Demons. An actual army of demons were clawing their way to us from the ground as more approached from the sky. Off in the distance there were a ton running at us from pretty much all directions. It only took one look for us to decide what we were going to do.

            We stood back to back as the first wave came at us before charging off in opposite directions. Don’t get mistaken through, the fight was still on. We just had to clean up enough of them to land a good hit on the other. Now this was a party. The two of us were really giving our audience a show at that point. Some of them wanted to step in, but the sane ones of the group let us be and continued to watch. The sane ones are my favorite of the bunch by the way. There were sparks flying, flames dancing, ice bursting, wind howling and everything else you can think of under the kitchen sink happening. It was great. At one point the two of us were going back and forth just throwing demons at each other. I won that game of dodge demon, by the way.

            When the last demon fell we were left staring each other down, eyes locked on and looking for the slightest movement that would leave and opening. By this point our clothes were ripped, torn, burned and everything else under the sun thanks to those demons. Not to brag, but it looked like King was breathing a little more heavily than I was. But something in his eyes (or maybe my eyes, I can’t say I wasn’t thinking about it) told me it was time to ramp things up to the finale. The two of us activated out Devil Triggers without a second thought. We both were immediately going at each other’s throats and I’m sure at this point our audience could hardly follow what was going on. I wouldn’t blame them, we were going at it so fast I almost felt like I was reaching my limit.

As if you hadn’t.

            Can it peanut gallery. The fight got so intense we ended up in the air more times than I even remember. The sky was alight with all of our attacks. Gigantic streaks of lightning, huge pillars of fire, tornadoes and more were tossed around like kids playing with pebbles. It was so much fun. Suffice to say, we kept at it until we ran out of time for our transformations. We had a bit of banter when it happened, we were both trying to buy time to mount one final attack.

            There was something the two of us both had been saving since we knew the other had it as well. An ability we never really had to rely too much on. Quicksilver style. It was only made sense for a battle of this magnitude to end in paused time. We both snapped our fingers and watched the rest of the world come to a stop. Neither of us had much time to use it, so we decided to end it in the most cliché way possible. I pulled out Rebellion one last time as King brought out his own sword. We both took our stances and then…. we ran straight at each other. He yelled my name, so I yelled his right back at him and then…. it was over. We both turned around to look at each other as time resumed, our audience was visibly confused as how we switched places as we fell to the ground.

            Then after I woke up they told me that King was still conscious and barely got back on his feet, but I don’t know. Shock totally should have been recording the whole thing. I’d love to watch this in HD while I kick back and eat some pizza. But I’ll live. I’ll have plenty of awesome fights that a certain someone better get on camera as long as I stick around here right?

            Dante get out of my house, I don’t need you to come with us. That fight was just to shut you up.

            No need to try and act all tough my friend. I know you’d miss your pal Dante if he wasn’t around to take your extra pizza off your hands. So don’t worry, I’ll be hanging around for whenever you want to go at it again.

            *Sighing in text* I don’t even feel like arguing anymore. We’re going to the next jump.