Chapter 7
Angel Trigger
An eclipse lays over. Everything goes pitch black.
”Riddle me this.”
“The hell? Jason?”
“I have a double set of wings and soar in the sky.
But I’m not a dragon or a dragonfly.
When you stab me in the heart, I won’t die.
Instead, you bring my power to life.
What am I?”
“Sin Devil Trigger?”
“Look at that, he got it right on the first try! Impressive for an imbecile.”
The light returns via a wash of sickly yellow and green. The buildings recede then protrude into pieces, asymmetrically jolting into amorphous clusters of brick, metal, graffiti…
The world around Dante is turning itself upside down to pick a fight.
"Where’s Jason?”
Worried for his new friend’s wellbeing, he contains his heightened emotions and stands tall, Rebellion ready to go. A massive screen floats behind him, alerting him with a condescending tone.
“Oh you really shouldn’t be here in Arkham Asylum, whoever you are!” The person on this demonic television wears a green suit covered in black question marks. His face behind a domino mask, he tips his derby hat, quite pleased with himself.
“Hey, I remember you from when I was a kid!” Dante exclaims. “I saw you on T.V.! You’re The Riddler.”
"Is that Dante, the Legendary Devil Hunter? Ha! No, it’s Dante, the wannabe emo-punk that everybody forgot about! HAHA! Too funny!”
“Nothing emo about me.“
“Ooooo and look he’s got his own wittle version of Rebellion! But where’s your red coat? Where’s the white hair? What’s that I hear? A clever quip? Wait a minute, you mean you don’t even have that? Well what do you have to offer then? A cigarette? No thanks, I don’t smoke.”
Gravity goes bye-bye, Dante’s gonna fall, but it feels great, like being engulfed in the clouds. He invites the drop, crossing his arms as he plummets through a wide crack in the quaking ground. Down down down, spiraling until WOOSH!
He’s flying, flying with massive wings. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but it’s never felt this euphoric.
“This emo enough for you, fuck-nugget?!”
Caught in a glide, he flaps forward into a grand sewer-like tunnel, then into a wide open sea of endless vertical wires. Screens with Riddler’s face are mounted against these infinite, electrical cords hanging from a cloudy sky, and disappearing into blackness below.
“My maze isn’t for the faint of heart, Devil Hunter!”
The path from one screen to the next is a zigzag, leading towards a narrow opening, towards a beckoning light. From this light in the distance, straight ahead, Dante hears Jason’s voice.
“Dante, look out! Don’t touch the wires!”
Dante whips out his grappling hook and sends it flying at the closest monitor, it hits the Riddler right in the face on the screen, cracking it.
“OOF!” He freaks as Dante swiftly pulls himself from screen to screen until he reaches the last one blocking his path.
He rams into it!
“Uh-oh!” Riddler yelps!
Dante lands on a dusty floor.
“Uh-oh is right, bitch!”
The maze lights up with projections of disturbing memories all over the walls. The brightness of his wings makes visible, the sight of bird cages everywhere… and they’re filled with tweeting robins in great distress!
Their desperate peeps incline a full-spread from Dante’s wings, eliciting a white light that knocks the locks off the cages, setting the flock free!
“Awe, that’s beautiful. I haven’t seen a flock of birds in forever.”
The flock goes wild, forming a line for him to follow, and fast, because his wings are starting to set the walls on white fire. Someone else’s memories of knife fights in the streets, motorcycle chases gone haywire, drug lords ambushing…
He’s gotta run run run, down the maze, follow the birds!
“This your baggage, Jason Todd?”
He reaches a fork in the road.
“Which way, robins?”
As he looks between the two paths the roar of a souped up engine draws his attention to the right. Idling, it’s the Batmobile! Just like he saw it on T.V. years ago.
CLANG. Each of the Batmobile's tires detach from the body and roll past him, down the path to the left. He follows them, all to be met with these scary memories coming to life and jumping off the walls.
“You weren’t supposed to get this far, Devil Hunter!” echoes Riddler’s voice. “Are those fancy wings of yours a key of some sort?”
“You tell me, fuckhead!”
“You are the fuckhead! I’m the intellectually-remarkable gatekeeper, Vergil said so. He’s the smarter one of the Nephilim twins, anyone can see that!”
Dante grabs Rebellion from behind his back, extending his contagious flame as he battles the memory-devils.
“You’re the gatekeeper of what?!”
The sight of the Red Hood graces him in the distance, at the end of the maze. The vigilante is strapped in an electric chair.
“Who the fuck is that?” Dante says, ferociously intrigued. “Where have you been all my life?!”
All the cords, all the wires, connecting to the chair, and Batman… about to pull the lever, his voice hissing…
“Fine, Red Hood, you win. I’ll break the rule… for you.”
“Oh no you don’t, demon!” Dante shouts.
He speeds up so uncontrollably, that he plows through them! They disappear like smoke as he takes a tumble into a prison, somehow in another city! The Riddler is pissed!
“I’m the gatekeeper of the rift! You were’t supposed to break through, you inferior ingrate!”
Dante is greeted by an army of Joker demons!
“I told you, Robin, the Batman isn’t coming for you. Oh no, you again?!”
In a helicopter…
“This is Vicki Vale reporting live, over Arkham Asylum.”
A massive explosion is caught on tape, on citizen’s phones from inland.
“What the hell is that?”
“Oh my God!”
“What is it?!
“A bomb?!”
“The prison was abandoned a month ago, after it’s occupants kept mysteriously disappearing in mass numbers. As of this morning, the island was reported to still be overrun by demons. Now, as you can see, the facility is experiencing an electrical malfunction.
There’s-we can see demons emerging from the windows and doors, they seem to be fleeing what appears to be, a series of explosions coming from inside. It’s very bright, I can’t, I can’t keep looking directly at it. We’re going to use the drones.”
Several drones release from the Gotham City News helicopter and into the asylum. Almost all of which get blown offline when the calamity makes it’s way out the doors.
This explosion moves and soars, chasing the demons and slicing through them like laser-light. One drone remains, the last one in the line. It captures the light pause about ten feet off the ground, to reveal a ghostly angel, with huge white wings, slaying the hell out of a Joker demon with a blazing sword, right on camera.
“Batman, save me!” the devil screams.
“Shut the FUCK UP!” Dante screams back.
WOOSH. The flap of his wings blasts a wind so violent, that the helicopter has to reposition to avoid the gale! Vicki accidentally yelps offscreen!
“Is that an angel?! Can we still see it? We have got to get a closer look!”
“Almost lost the drone, being that close,” she hears through her headset, from the drone’s operator back at the news station. “I’ll try again.”
“I’m getting word that we’re going to try and get a closer look.”
Gotham’s finest drone operators have their work cut out for them. This is a multiple-person effort in the station.
They try to fly the drone around this destructive, but undeniably fantastic slayer, slaughtering the demons infesting the island. The broadcast hits the largest of jumbo screens around the city, and the light can still be seen from miles away in real time.
“We’re back!” Vicki announces.
The drone survives long enough to film the insanity of this Angel Trigger, giving everyone the closest possible look they’ll ever get, to seeing what it’s like to experience death by light. Demons catching fire from mere proximity, a warrior who looks like a cathedral statue come to life, his kill-fest is met with gleeful excitement from distant onlookers.
“I didn’t do it, it wasn’t me!” squeals a Joker.
“I said SHUT IT!”
SLICE!
“Yeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh!” cheers the city.
The roar of Gotham’s elated inhabitants fills the air, everyone getting a real kick out of seeing demons of the Joker, such a horrible force of evil that terrorized so many, go down repeatedly, supernaturally, via the epic ensnare of a potty-mouthed angel. But it doesn’t last long. The drone is soon swept into the blow of his wings and eats the dirt, landing in white fire and dying with the devils.
“We’ve lost all the drones. Fly closer! CLOSER! An angel is killing demons at Arkham Asylum! This doesn’t happen every day, ya know! DO IT!”
One final wave of wind and the helicopter has to pull back even further, the cameraman manually zooming in as best he can, but it’s like trying to film a white bunny rabbit bursting repeatedly into a kamikaze of starry fireworks. Vicki commentates as the light subsides.
“Amazing! Hurry, he’s powering down! Get a shot of his face! HURRY!!! GO GO GO!!!”
The helicopter moves in, capturing him running back inside, his wings too big to fit through the doorway, they go through the outer walls like wind.
One final burst of brightness expels from the doors and windows, before the light is gone.
The power goes out completely, leaving Arkham Asylum grazed with patches of dancing fire incinerating the carcasses of all the Joker monsters, that had been prowling the island.
Meanwhile at…
Devil May Cry!
The door slides open, Vergil strides in to find Dante leaning back in his desk chair, his boots propped on his book-covered desk as he snoozes with a spell book over his face. Vergil shoves his feet and half the books off the desk, nearly knocking him out of his chair.
“Sleeping?! Do you even want to find your son again, Brother? Wake up, before I claim him for myself!”
“What the hell are you talking about? See all the books from Raven’s library? I’ve read all of them and can’t find anything about Limbo City.”
“The television, turn it on!”
“Hang on.”
Dante finds a remote in his desk and flips a switch. A hidden flatscreen mounted on the wall reveals itself via a sliding door.
“Find the Gotham City News. Quickly.”
Dante channel surfs.
“What is that here in Jump City? Channel 5?”
“Give it to me.”
Vergil snatches the remote and switches it to Vicki Vale. Dante immediately jumps to his feet as soon as he sees footage of the Nephilim as Vicki recaps.
“I’m standing here, just outside Arkham Asylum, where only moments ago, an angelic vigilante showed up and slaughtered a mass of Joker demons. Joker himself was killed last year by Harley Quinn. Quinn, whose real name is Harleen Frances Quinzel, pled guilty upon her arrest.”
The footage shifts to Harley Quinn being taken away by police officers.
“Yeah, I killed him! I bashed his brains in! I’d do it again right nooooow!”
She holds up her cuffed hands, giving the world two middle fingers, and receiving a cheer from onlookers in response. The people are grateful. Though, an obviously disapproving Batman can be seen in the background as the cops grab her arms and shove her in the back of a police car. She sticks her tongue out before they shut the door, almost right on her face.
“Vergil, that was Little Dante at Arkham Asylum!” Dante happily exclaims.
“Indeed,” Vergil nods, a subtle smile giving his brother a glimpse into the jovial excitement that he’s poorly hiding. They focus on the broadcast again.
“GCPD has yet to locate the Arkham Angel who decimated the horde of devils that infested Arkham Asylum over the last month. Commissioner Gordon has already released a statement saying the Arkham Angel did our city a great service, in spite of the destruction the battle caused to the facility. Authorities say it had already been completely looted by the demons prior to his arrival.”
Vergil gloats, “Holy Angel Triggers open gateways, he’s become profoundly powerful. Let us go to Gotham right now, we can use the Yamato.”
“Is that smart? To use demonic energy to teleport to the same place as an Angel Trigger? That might kill the two of us.”
“Are you suggesting we go on foot? That’s madness, Dante!”
“No, but we need to travel to Gotham some other way.”
“If we travel any other way, by the time we arrive, he’ll surely be gone!”
“It’s either that or we risk that Holy Angel Trigger setting you and me on fire in the worst way. You wanna take that chance, Vergil?”
Vergil folds his arms and pouts.
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“The situation continues here at Arkham Asylum. The Bat-Signal is illuminating the skyline. It looks as though Commissioner Gordon has enlisted the help of Batman to get to the bottom of this mystery. We’ll keep you posted, Gotham. I’ll be here to bring you the latest scoop as it develops! This is Vicki Vale, back to you in the studio."