The Devil and the Subject

David and Charlie Wilson laughed in their hotel room, each chuckle and guffaw was filled with popularity-based excitement.

"Oh man, I love your roleplaying abilities, did you hear what some of the people were saying?" Charlie said, finally calming her excited giggles.

"I heard someone say 'it's like you stepped right out of the screen', and that... that was just really fucking awesome." David reminisced the events that transpired only a few hours ago.

He'd chosen Dante in human form, the DmC version, and thanks to this amazing costume, he'd done it perfectly.

Athena had chosen Chell, the Portal 2 version, and wore a similarly amazingly perfect costume.

They thought back to the friendly old man who'd sold them the costumes.

~Flashback~

"Hello, welcome to my humble little store." the old man greeted, looking at David with one wide eye and one half-closed.

"Hi, I'm Charlie and this is my brother Daniel, we're looking for cosplay costumes, and the sign said that you sell 'literally everything', so I was wondering if you had some?" the young woman asked, brushing a lock of her brown hair behind her ear.

"Well well well, Charlie, a nice little name for a pretty young lady like you, I'm D'Scor, D'Scor D.-" it sounded arabic "-Back in my country-" yep, arabic, not being racist, but it was the most logical answer "-my store, Entropy-rises, was infamous for having so much available stock that it was hard to find everything, luckily I know everything here like the back of my old paw here." the grayish-skinned old man greeted warmly, gesturing to the lion-fur glove he wore, "What cosplays are you looking for?"

"Um, I want one of Chell, the Portal 2 look, if you know that one, and David's looking for the Devil May Cry 5 Dante, if you know that one, do you have those?" the young woman asked, blushing ever-so-slightly from anger and embarrassment at the seemingly lecherous look on the old man's face.

He struck the claws of the brass glove on his left hand together in a snap, "I'll look in the back."

David looked at the old man, noting a green, scaly boot on his left leg, 'weird', he thought, before returning to looking around on the shelves

Nothing had a legitimate price tag on it, just little stickers with symbols. Some had little purple diamond shapes, some had pink butterflies, some had orange apples, some had red lightning bolts, some had blue balloons, and some had these weird little explosion-looking stars or whatever.

What kind of price was that?

D'Scor came back out with two immaculate outfits, both looked incredibly real.

"Here you go, Dante and Chell, these were my only ones." D'Scor handed them over and took the small price stickers.

Apple and star.

"So, what do we owe you?" David knew that this old man must have had some sort of system of values memorized, maybe.

"I need you to give me..." the old man frowned as his train of thought left him. To get it back, he stamped his foot a little, making a *clack* sound similar to a deer's hoof hitting the stone floor,  "AH... trust and a promise."

"Trust and a promise? What's the promise?" Charlie asked in suspicion.

"Whatever you do, do not wear these costumes at the midnight minute, or else something will happen to both of you, and it won't necessarily be good." D'Scor's tone was grave.

"And I'm guessing we need to trust you enough to heed your warning? Well I trust you, come on sis, let's go try these on, and not at midnight." David grabbed both outfits and pushed his sister out of the door.

He wanted to get out of there anyway, he was starting to get nauseous from the overwhelming smell of chocolate and glass.

-Present Day-

"So it's... like... 11:59 PM, and I don't think anything's going to happen." the young man knew better than to trust the ramblings of an old man.

"Well, I mean... well... I mean... I guess it's like one of those stupid stories where you wake up at three in the morning and suddenly there's a clown at your bedside with a chainsaw that you somehow didn't wake up from the sound of it running, or something, I just kinda forgot how to english for a second there." the young woman looked at the clock, it was ten seconds till midnight.

"Yeah, well I guess our contemplation time is over, it's gonna be midnight in three..." he quickly gestured for her to follow after him.

"Two..." Charlie took aim with her portal gun.

"ONE!" they both aimed and launched.

*BLIP*

*BLIP*

*VZAOM VZAOM*

*BANG* "OW SHIT!" the bullet was real!

The brunette tried to voice her concerns, but came up coughing and unable to speak.

The red-clad man fell to the ground, the bullet had gone in through the top portal, out through the bottom portal, and had blown a big hole in his leg.

A warm, soothing sensation coursed throughout his back, traveling down to his leg and filling in the missing skin, muscle, and nerve ending with new ones, fully healing in only a few seconds.

"What the hell?" there was no pain, only the warmth of strong muscles flexing under the skin as he stood up, "Eh, I mean, I've experienced weirder." when one practically lives on the internet, most real-life things don't affect you.

Charlie still couldn't speak.

"Ugh, what happened?" he looked around, everything seemed a lot more vividly colored, the darkness gradiented from the light in a beautiful, if quite short, procession.

His eyes adjusted in seconds, seeing books lining the walls, "Oh great, it looks like we're in a library." his voice seemed different, the tiniest bit higher pitched and lot more rough.

A muffled voice came from behind the front door, the older brother motioned for Charlie to stay still and quiet.

His empowered ears heard the voices perfectly.

The door shook slightly, followed by a voice of complaint, followed by a sigh.

--

Twilight and Spike had finally returned home after a hectic shopping trip, but Spike was complaining that the door wasn't opening, and therefore must have been locked.

The lavender unicorn sighed, "Spike, I only ever lock the door at night, you just turned the knob the wrong way." to demonstrate, Twilight grabbed the knob in her magical grasp and turned it to the left.

*click* the door opened.

--

*click* the door opened.

"Shit, portal us out of here or something." David got into the shadows immediately.

Charlie, who'd been exploring the library, was not one to want to be found in someone's house, and it definitely was a house, if the presence of a bathroom, kitchen, and upstairs bedroom was anything to go by.

Jumping higher than he thought possible, David landed on the loft, pushing the window open and pointing out of it.

Charlie took aim and, not even sure if it would work, but hoping it would, launched a blue portal outside.

*VZAOM* the portal planted, and connecting with the orange portal she put on the floor.

David smiled and jumped into the portal, appearing out of the other one.

Except he was upside down, an unfortunate side effect of having to manually right his orientation due to not having Long Fall boots.

Charlie came through a second after, luckily the street was empty, so nobody saw us just use what could be considered witchcraft.

"We look to be in scotland or something, maybe it was time travel, and... I'm thinking out loud aren't I?"

"Yeah you are bro, come on, you're the guy with the accelerated high school graduation plan, what do we do?"

"Um... I~... I... we need someplace to hide, or stay, depends on how friendly the locals are, and where we are in the first place." he looked around, searching for any abandoned houses.

"Well I trust you to lead the way, so what direction should we go in?" Charlie's voice was hoarse, like her vocal cords were infected.

"I'd say... up the street." David tested out his weapons, Ivory and Ebony were practically weightless in his hands, and the triggers gave negligible resistance to his fingers as he quickly fired a volley of a dozen or so bullets into the air.

Charlie experimented a bit as they walked, creating a portal in front of her, then thirty feet up the road, and jumped through.

Success!

Hesitantly, the siblings tested out their newfound powers, making sure not to make anything too noticeable or loud.

Celestia paced in her bedchambers, thinking about the odd sense of dread she was feeling.

Taking a feverish slurp of her tea, the white alicorn was tripped by something appearing at her hooves.

"Oof! What was that?" she looked to where the offending object was, only to find a pair of gray boxes, each containing a green symbol not unlike the shape of the medal of honor and a couple of lines of words.

The viewers at home, if they saw these boxes, might identify them as Xbox 'acheivement unlocked' notification boxes.

Acheivement Unlocked:

Out of the Fire and into the Rainbow 5g

Acheivement Unlocked:

Cutie Mark Crusader, God Freers, YAY!!!!! 100g

Celestia knew that whatever these statements were, they were linked somehow.

She could only say one thing.

"Mother of me."