as proof i'm not lying to your faces, here's a snippet from first chapter of the RWBY x DMC crossover that i can't get out of my brain fast enough
Nero rounded the corner of the last building before the hill and came to a swift stop. A cargo container, twenty feet and fuck knew how many pounds of rusty red corrugated metal, flew past him and crumpled in a horrific cacophony of rending screeches when it hit the ground. While it tumbled away , he faced the pitcher with a low whistle that barely carried over the din.
“Not bad. You planning to hit the big leagues with a cannon like that?”
To his disappointment, the demon didn’t even seem to hear him. Three stories tall on three legs, the thing had to be the boss of all the other cats around; its purple, scaly skin had darker streaks that mimicked a tiger’s stripes, and an incongruous tail with a wicked spike at the end lashed out around its legs. Only two arms, though, with claws even more wicked than those of its underlings. A jaw wider than it had any right to be revealed rows of gleaming teeth and a tongue layered with its own barbs. Various wounds decorated its body, and it was moving in bursts of speed punctuated by stretches of heaving for breath.
Tired or not, every time it moved, it sent out ripples in the earth like waves in a pond. Movements of its arms sent out spikes from that disturbed ground; as Nero watched, one such spike launched up another battered container. The demon plucked it from the air and hurled it at its assailant.
Who was, notably, not Nero. The guy was dressed in a black jacket, pants, and boots, with short and spiky red hair and what looked like a sheathed sword at his side. A white mask with red accents covered the upper half of his face, two black horizontal slits over each eye presumably offering some visibility. He was also fast—blinking out of the way of that latest projectile, and then jumping off erupting spikes to avoid getting impaled.
When the demon swept its tail around, reducing those spikes to dust, the man backflipped over that tail with timing that might even impress Lady. In a split-second flash of red, his sword licked out of its sheath and carved a deep laceration into the appendage, then deflected the hail of rock in another red blur that seemed to get brighter as it went. He landed hard, stumbling over the debris of the spike field as he jammed his sword back into its sheath. He was covered in dust, and his clothes were torn in places. Nero didn’t see any wounds, though. How long had he been fighting, for the demon to look like that, for it to not be healing anymore?
Said demon howled and prepared to retaliate, but by that time, Nero had found what he was looking for.
Catch was a two-player game, after all.
“Hey, ugly!” Nero yelled, flaring his demonic power at the same time just to make sure he got its attention. The demon cut off its howl with a snarl and turned toward him just in time for the severed excavator arm to smash into its face. It reeled, roaring, and the mysterious man seized the chance. He leapt off the various smashed crates and rocks littering the battlefield, then kicked off the demon’s own knee to get level with its head.
Night fell. Nero blinked, eyes utterly failing to adjust to a world abruptly plunged into shadow save to pick out the gleaming red of the man’s hair, shirt, soles, and sword.
The sword swung. A massive red crescent tore through the dark and the demon’s neck. A blink, and Nero squinted as light poured back into the world. The man fell to the ground, staggered as red sparks flared out from his skin, straightened, and then sheathed his sword with a flourish that tickled the back of Nero’s brain. In the same instant his sword clicked home, blood erupted from both ends of the demon’s severed neck. Only, instead of blood, Nero found himself showered in a rain of crimson petals that disintegrated even as they fell.
He held out a hand to catch a few on his palm. They tickled his skin, soft and supple, until they turned black and broke apart into nothing. It was a wholly unfamiliar way for a demon to disappear.
Shaking his head, he brushed more petals off his shoulders and struck off toward where the man was standing. The rest of the demon was fading in the way Nero was used to, its power crystallized and pulled in by Nero’s forever hungry demonic nature, so this petal crap had to be something to do with the new face.
“Hey, you! Morrison didn’t double book this job, did he?”
The man, who’d been watching the demon’s carcass, startled at the sound of Nero’s voice. He glanced over and, notably, dropped his hand back to his sword. The frown on his face was damnably hard to read with that weird mask covering his eyes, but the exhaustion in his heavy breaths, sweat-soaked skin, and wavering stance spoke volumes.
“Relax, I’m not gonna start a fight about it. You look like you’d lose to a breeze right now, anyway.” The faint squealing of tires warned him of Nico’s approach. “You a devil hunter too? Can’t say I’ve ever seen a trick like that before.”
This close, he would’ve expected to feel demonic energy coming from the man if he had any to speak of, but that sense was damnably quiet, offering not even a whisper that this man wasn’t as human as he seemed.
Wouldn’t be the first time his sense of demonic energy failed him. Nero didn’t need any sixth sense to see he was damn odd.
“Okay,” he said into the quiet, and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “That person driving up is a friend of mine. Also not a fan of demons. Or getting stabbed. How about we all stay cool, yeah?”
It was more stupidity than sense that had him keeping his back to Nico’s approach. Thankfully, she slid to a sideways stop before the van could body-slam him into the new guy. He idly wondered what section of perimeter fencing had paid the price for being in her way.
She leaned out the window to his left, a fresh cigarette trailing lazy smoke that Nero could already smell. He wrinkled his nose—and so did the other guy.
“You done yet?” Nico asked. “We might just make it if you hurry. Who’s your friend?”
“Haven’t gotten that far yet, thanks. You, guy. I’m Nero, that’s Nico.”
In the pause that was an obvious invitation to introduce himself, the man looked between Nico and Nero. His lips twisted, and he said with palpable irritation, “Humans.”
