Demon's Tears: The Unseen War

Vanilla's night was oddly calm, despite the disturbing and traumatic events that had unfurled that evening. She sleptn perfectly soundly, ignoring the various noises that Dante made, simply turning over occasionally. The poor Earth mare only began to panic when she realised where she was - i.e. neither on the pavement nor tucked up in her own bed, but lying on a slightly motheaten couch in a completely unfamiliar living room. Then again, any sane pony would be worried if they woke up and weren't where they were before, particularly if they just narrowly escaped being assaulted in more than one way.
"Wh-where...??" Vanilla gasped as she looked around feverishly - though when she heard a certain voice from the next room, her worries were quelled - however, the relief that came with it also had a degree of (by now familiar) exasperation firmly attached to it.

"And there's the cheeping of the early bird~"
The smooth, sarcastic voice of Dante floated gently through the door and crawled into Vanilla's ears like an irritating little bug crawling on one's foreleg. Vanilla groaned as she heard that voice which she'd had quite enough of over the past few hours. Would she ever be able to avoid that smartass? At the moment it seemed as if fate was conspiring to keep them together, against their wills - or at the very least, against Vanilla's will. She didn't think Dante would care enough to have a will to go against when it came to being around other ponies. It was almost like one of those strange romantic undertones in adventure novels where the dashing protagonist and the attractive young mare just so happen to keep bumping into each other. Though the idea of Dante and her falling in love nearly made Vanilla laugh out loud and throw up at the same time. It certainly wasn't every day, she thought, that one had a thought that was both hilarious and personally sickening...

Dante swung the door open with his magic, strutting towards the relieved, yet miffed mare lying on his couch. "And a good morning to you, little miss not-a-morning-pony~"
He would be very right in that respect, though this was not the entire reason for why the white mare was glaring at him.
"You got that right. I'm also not a 'waking up in someone else's living room right after nearly being raped and/or killed' pony." Vanilla spat out, giving Dante a murderous look.
"Oww, easy with the thorns, flower, I saved that pretty little flank of yours! Have you ever slept in a good bed that was made of concrete~?"
"Still gives you no reason to be all high-n'-mighty about it."
Dante chuckled. "Do you know me, Nilly? I'm always high-n'-mighty, about pretty much everything~"

Vanilla looked as if she was about to hit back with another angry retort, but the pair were interrupted by a loud knock on the door, and one which seemed to excite Dante greatly. The eccentric Unicorn trotted out of the living room without another word, leaving the door open and Vanilla on her own once again. Probably the best for him, Vanilla thought, if he didn't want to be stabbed again. She could not be held accountable for anything she did before 10 AM, because it would most likely have been fuelled by morning grumpiness more than anything else. She turned away from the door and decided to take a bit more time to try and grab some extra shut-eye... Or she would have, had Dante then not slammed the front door loudly and exclaimed "Yeeeeeeah, baby!"

Vanilla grumbled, turning back over and looking at the door again, to see Dante what looked like a couple of metal items out of a cardbpard box that was presently floating in his magic.
"Oooh, aren't you two beautiful?" the stallion gave a strangely seductive smile as he spoke... apparently to whatever he had just lifted from the box, which on closer inspection proved to be a pair of elegantly-decorated pistols, one with a black finish and one plated in a shiny, silvery metal. " Now... What should I name you...?"
Vanilla sighed and covered her face with her hoof. It almost wasn't much of a surprise to her seeing Dante treating two guns like any other pony his (apparent) age would treat a pet. Someone as contently lonely as him must get quite a few kicks from this strange brand of materialism he seemed to possess. That is, assuming that he was indeed "contently lonely". He seemed the sort of pony who would be, considering the way he acted around others if the way he acted around her was anything to go by.

"You got any ideas~?"
Vanilla jumped slightly as she heard Dante's voice next to me. She had been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn't noticed the sly pony teleport next to her, once again grinning.
"I am in no mood to think up names for your stinkin' guns, Dante." Vanilla replied, sourly.
"Hey now, there's no need for that attitude~" Dante replied, mockingly feigning offence. "They haven't done anything to you, haven't they?"
"Yet."
"... Hm. I can't say I've ever met a pony who wanted to be shot..."
There he went again, twisting the meaning of everything Vanilla said...
"Shut up."
Dante ignored Vanilla completely, staring at his guns again. "Hmm.. I dunno. Yin and Yang? Nah, too overused. Luce and Ombra? Nah, sounds like what a dad in his midlife crisis would name his guns..."
"Just pick a name already and let me go!"
"I wasn't saying you had to stay, sister. Maybe you have a reason to stay here?"
Vanilla did not reply to this, simply standing up and stepping past the grinning Dante and out into the entrance hall.

However, before she could get to the front door, Vanilla stopped dead as she observed the room she was in. The ceiling was high and had some beautiful architecture and there was a pair of arched windows running from the ceiling to the floor. It looked almost like some sort of temple... But then she noticed the rest of the room and realised that the effect was spoiled somewhat by what Dante had managed to do to it. Assorted papers all over the floor, letters and old bills and the like covering up the wooden flooring which looked like it needed a good scrub, filing cabinets roughly lining the walls, some left open by their devil-may-care owner, their contents looking as if they'd been thrown in in any which order. Perhaps the oddest feature was the massive stack of pizza boxes beside the walnut desk near to the door she'd just exited through. Vanilla wondered if that passed for some sort of high art in Dante’s mind - she certainly wouldn’t be surprised, consiering that Dante and modern art were about as odd as each other, for different reasons.

"What do you think?"
Dante had strolled up behind her once again, that very same grin that he usually wore plastered across his face. "My beautiful shop... Still gotta think of a creative name for it. I'd ask if you have any ideas, if you weren't 'in no mood to do so'..."
Coming out of her half-stupor, Vanilla could have slapped Dante across the face as he mimiced her style of speech. She was now heavily doubting that she was ever going to get out of her morning mode, tired or not, all because of that weirdo and his constant wisecracks that he seemed to be a factory of. Though for once, something about that last sentence made her wonder...
"A shop?" she asked, tentatively. The kind of items or skills Dante sold here was a question that Vanilla didn't really want to know the answer to, but the question came nevertheless, and she almost hit herself for asking it. She braced herself for whatever weird answers might have come...
"Well, not so much a shop, more a storefront for a... unique type of business. " Dante replied, and was about to continue his sentence when all of a sudden, something happened that made Vanilla shriek and Dante's mout curl up at the side just that little bit more.

A tremendous crashing noise could be heard as the stone wall of the building was broken down by an unimaginable force, sending chunks of stone crashing onto the floor. Vanilla covered her head instinctively, looking down... But her shock and fear turned to tension as she heard a horrifying noise... A rattling, monstrous breath, unlike anything she'd ever heard before... Slowly, she looked up, and immediately wished she hadn't. In fact, she wished she'd never fainted in the street and been taken here at all. For what she saw then made her heart stop. She didn't even scream. She simply couldn't bring herself to out of the sheer, white hot terror she felt upon seeing the horrifying thing that she had just laid eyes on.

It was a bipedal creature, taller than the average pony. Its entire body was covered in blood-red, leathery skin which caught the light in places, giving the effect of being somewhat slimy at a distance. Its hands and feet bore long, sharp talons, and its head sported crazed, yellow-on-orange eyes which stared maniacally at the two ponies, and below them two flat nostrils and a mouth containing many long, thin and pointed teeth. It looked positively demonic, and it stank of... something. She couldn't quite place the foul odour that the hideous, frightening creature was giving off, but it was not one that she would expect to emanate from anything anywhere near close to being describable with the word "pleasant". In fact, it was almost the smell alone that gave her the sense that this was not a creature to be meddled with. This, however, didn't seem to be stopping Dante from going ahead and meddling with it.

Dante approached the creature, grinning wildly. Vanilla might've called him downright reckless to do such a thing, but then she remembered that this was the same pony who not only survived being stabbed several times and survived, but treated it like a mere scratch.
"Hey, what's the deal? You just tore down my wall!" Dante teasingly complained. "If you wanted to come in, you could have used the door, y'know."
The creature responded by letting out an ear-splitting, terrifying roar like nothing Vanilla had ever heard before. Slowly, she started creeping back towards the back room, hoping that it wouldn't see her. Dante, meanwhile, kept on going with his quips. "Whoo! Bad breath, you could use some breath mints... So, what've you come for today, if not to pay my repair bills?"
The creature suddenly slashed at Dante, to which the crazy Unicorn responded by dodging at the very last second. "Oh, so that's what you're here for, huh? You wouldn't be the first. But even so..." Dante closed his eyes as a massive, ornately-crafted sword suddenly appeared on his back. He picked up this sword in his magic, brandishing it confidently at the beast. "What do you say - shall we dance~?"

The monster charged at Dante, but the pony was ready for it. He dodged the attack, swinging his sword with blinding force and speed, disposing of the monster within a few seconds. "All too easy..." he remarked, as the monster's body crumblled into trace amounts of fine ash. Vanilla breathed a sigh of relief, but just as she was thinking of leaving the room, some more of the same monsters broke in through the section of wall which held the establishment's splintered door with equal amounts of stone shattering and masonry being dismantled. Ever the master of wit, Dante's response to this was "Well, I thank you for being more courteous than your friend, but, you see... now I have to replace my window AND my door. And you've just knocked over one of my filing cabinets." Indeed, one of the demons had clipped a filing cabinet as he entered, causing it to fall over with a loud thud. "Do you know what happens when somepony does that?" He sneered, readying his sword again. Vanilla, who had sucessfully entered the back room and was hiding there in terror, watched this with immense tension. She hoped that Dante knew what he was doing, but seeing how he'd dispatched one demon so fast, a few more didn't seem like they would pose a problem to him.

Dante crouched down, preparing for an attack... before picking up the fallen filing cabinet in its magic. "What happens is... I have to pick it back up again." No sooner than he'd finished this sentence, he'd sent the filing cabinet flying towards one of the monsters, knocking him over. Instantly, all of the monstrous creatures moved to attack him, but this was not something that Dante was unfamiliar to. He leapt over the crowd of monsters, landing near to the edge of the throng and slashing wildly at them, with immense skill and precision, the blade of his sword slicing quickly through the demons' bodies, leaving them broken on the floor before they crumbled into ashes.

His smile only grew wider as he hacked and slashhed at the demons, more of which seemed to be constantly arriving. But the Unicorn still did not falter or tire as he swung his blade, gleefully dismembering the creatures before him. At one point, he swung his sword in such a way that one demon was sent flying straight up into the air, but before he could come crashing down, Dante decided that it would be a good time to test out his new guns... Pulling out the firearms, he aimed at the creature in the air and began firing at a blinding speed, the bullets leaving the barrels with such speed and force that every shot pushed the creature right back up into the air. Dante looked like he was very much enjoying this, chuckling and singing a stereotypical circus riff as he juggled the creature in the air, before leaping up incredibly high and slamming his sword down into the ground, taking the flying monster with him and creating a massive shockwave which threw the others away from the impact zone, and knocking over a few more filing cabinets in the process. Vanilla winced as he did this, feeling the crash of Dante's blade as it slammed into the ground even from where she was standing.

Dante continued this, dancing between the monsters, slashing and shooting and stabbing his way thtough the seemingly undending horde, all the while smiling maniacally. Eventually, however, the creatures ended their relentless assault, and Dante returned his sword to his back with a chuckle. "Good thing I'm not losing my touch~" he quipped as he did so. Vanilla, on the othert hand, was absolutely speechless. He'd seen Dante fight off that guy in the street and thought him tough then, but that... Whatever that had been was beyond the realms of belief. There was no way an ordinary pony could fight off hordes of horrifying creatures and escape with almost nary a scratch. Tentatively, she opened the door, words once again failing her entirely.
Dante approached her, as ever bearing his trademark grin. "Well... I guess I have some explaining to do."