"DxD Trigger"

Chapter 1: "Devils of Death and Rebirth"

Disclaimer: Devil May Cry is the creation of Hideki Kamiya and belongs to Capcom, whatever I or anyone else may think about how they've chosen to handle the series as of late. High School DxD is the creation of Ichiei Ishibumi and Miyama-Zero, owned by Fujimi Shobo's Dragon Magazine, and licensed in North America by FUNimation Entertainment. As I have no connection with any of those persons or companies, I do not own either DMC or High School DxD and I make no material compensation for writing this story.

Author's note: As big fans of High School DxD, JOUNOUCHI-sama and I put our heads together coming up with ideas for crossovers. We narrowed it to three – Dante, the protagonist of Devil May Cry; Ben Reilly, a.k.a. the Scarlet Spider, the long-mourned clone and temporary successor of Spider-Man; and Connor, the mortal son of Angel, the vampire with a soul from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his own self-titled series. We put it to a poll as well, and the winner was none other than Devil May Cry's Dante. Hence this story, which will feature some twists and turns respective to the original DxD plot – and the Devil May Cry plot.

Enough talk, the time has come, and so have I.

"Devil May Cry, what can I do for you?" a white-haired young man in naught but leather pants and leather straps across his muscular chest answered the ringing phone. "Wait, what?!" He paused, letting the person on the other end of the connection continue with her explanation and request. "Ok, then . . . I'll come. I can do that much." He paused again, taking in her question. "No . . . they died a long time ago. They won't be making it anywhere. Sorry."

The conversation ended there, leaving the white-haired teen alone with his thoughts and memories. "Little punk," he mumbled wistfully.

It had been ten years ago, when he was still a little boy, and his mother had had business in Japan. She'd insisted on taking him and his brother along, not having anyone she could leave them with. His brother had been curious about Japan, and he . . . had simply been annoyed. His annoyance ebbed, though, when he met the family his mother had business with.

Their kid, Issei Hyodo, was one hell of a laugh riot. He seemed to always be getting himself in some kind of trouble, and he insisted that he'd have girls falling over themselves for him one day. He kept talking about an old man in the neighborhood, one who'd taught him the beauty of girlhood. The white-haired boy had thought it was funny, and not just in the "ha, ha, ha" sense, but in the "WTF is this shit?" sense. His brother, pretty much identical to him in looks if not necessarily demeanor, had just scowled at them both for being silly, while busying himself with books on Japanese history and culture. He seemed rather enamored of the samurai era, and so left himself open for a fair bit of teasing about saving pretty shrine maidens from evil.

Then there was Issei's friend, another neighbor's kid. It made him laugh out loud how dense Issei was that he couldn't recognize a girl when he saw one, despite everything that old man had supposedly taught him about girls, not that it stopped him from playing with them. Neither did his brother scoffing at them for being silly, but then his twin had been a serious sort for as long as they'd both been alive. It was a bit annoying that the girl's parents insisted on asking his mother to come to church with them, if only because it sounded so boring to him.

Then he'd gone back home with his mother and brother, and that'd been the last he saw or heard of Issei and his friend. He'd wanted to keep in touch with Issei at least, but life happened . . . actually, death happened. Death and hell . . . all because of who the man that had sired him and his brother had been. He refused to call him Father; a good father would've come saved his family.

And with the news he'd gotten over the phone, that was another piece of his childhood innocence that had been shattered. Another memory of happier, more carefree days gone. He chuckled bitterly to himself, and then he heard the phone ring again. "Devil May Cry, how can I help you?" he answered the phone, his tone cocky and self-assured. He listened to the man on the other end, and his eyes nearly bugged out in bewilderment. "Wait, are you kidding me? That's the job?" He listened again for the explanation. "You shitting me? I got a funeral to go to over there!" He listened once more. "This isn't a fucking coincidence, is it? All right, I'm taking this, and not just because I'll finally be able to renovate this motherfucker. Thanks. Later."

He laughed to himself as he ended the call. "Going to private school in Japan. Going to a funeral, too. Definitely not a coincidence." He allowed himself a wild smirk. "Time for the Devil May Cry train to get rolling!"

This young man, known only as Dante, the half-human son of hell's greatest warrior, the Dark Knight Sparda, had arrived in Japan a day before Issei's funeral was supposed to take place. He went to the Hyodo family's house, greeting Issei's parents somberly. His usual red coat was closed over his torso, as he didn't want to give Issei's parents too much of a shock walking around bare-chested. That, and the attention he'd get from the female sex on account of said bare chest could be more irritating than flattering.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hyodo, long time no see," Dante greeted, his otherwise flippant words belied by the undercurrent of sorrow in his voice.

"Dante, it has been a long time," Mr. Hyodo said. "My wife gave you the news about Issei, didn't she?"

"Yeah," Dante admitted sadly.

"And he was so happy . . . just before . . ." Mrs. Hyodo added, choking back tears.

"Happy?" Dante wondered.

"He finally got a date," Mrs. Hyodo explained. "With his demeanor, we were scared we'd never have grandkids, so when he told us he finally got a date, we were all so happy . . ."

"And who was this date?" Dante asked.

"We never got to meet her," Mr. Hyodo replied sadly.

"I see," Dante said, mentally filing away that information to follow up on later when he started investigating Issei's death.

"How long will you be staying?" Mrs. Hyodo asked him.

"A while," Dante replied. "I got a job . . . and I'm starting school here. It's just provisionary for now. Might stay longer, if things turn out all right."

"Do you have anywhere to stay?" she asked.

Dante paused, as though trying to figure out the best way to answer that question. "Actually . . ."

"You can stay with us, if you have nowhere to go," Mr. Hyodo offered. "We can catch up. It'll be like . . ."

"Like old times? Sure, why not?" Dante accepted Mr. Hyodo's offer, and Mrs. Hyodo's face gained a little more life, as though comforted by Dante having accepted her husband's offer.

"By the way, what kind of jobs do you do?" Mr. Hyodo wondered curiously.

"It's a 'help the helpless' kinda thing," Dante replied. "People who need help come to me, and I help them. For a fee, of course. I gotta pay my bills, too."

"How noble," Mr. Hyodo deadpanned.

"Yeah, I try," Dante said.

"You might as well come in and get unpacked, since you're staying with us now," Mrs. Hyodo suggested.

"Don't mind if I do," Dante replied, stepping inside the Hyodo household.

The funeral the following day was a somber affair, as expected. Dante had deigned to wear a black coat in place of his usual red, keeping it closed over his chest as his concession of respect to the other funeral-goers. There had been lots of crying, lots of speeches, and surprisingly, lots of people, many of them fellow students at Kuoh Academy. He learned that while Issei might have had a very bad reputation on account of his rampant perversions, the leaders of the student body still considered it their duty to say their farewells to a fellow Kuoh student.

One thing he noticed about the Kuoh students that showed up for the funeral was that so many of them were girls, and a great number of them were quite beautiful, in their own ways. He took particular notice of three of them, one a very busty redhead with cyan eyes, the second an even bustier violet-eyed girl with extremely long black hair tied back in a ponytail, and the third who wore oval-framed glasses and had black hair in a short pageboy cut. Dante held in a laugh at the thought that Issei had more girls around him now that he was dead than he'd probably ever had a chance at alive. He was also pretty sure that if Issei was a ghost observing his own funeral, he'd be rather disappointed by the dramatic irony as well.

Once the burial happened, many of the funeral-goers left flowers at Issei's gravestone. Dante figured he'd hunt down Issei's stash and bring it to Issei's gravestone as soon as the mourning died down a little. From what Mr. and Mrs. Hyodo had told him, Issei hadn't changed that much from when Dante had known him as kids, so he figured Issei would appreciate the stash more than the flowers.

Just as he was about to follow the Hyodos out, he felt a sudden spasm in his arm. He gritted his teeth, holding in a pained growl. The fuck is this? Dante wondered, and then a flash of red momentarily obscured his vision, with a distant roar in his ears. It faded just as quickly as it had come, leaving Dante rather confused as he went off to follow the Hyodos back to their home, after saying his goodbyes to Issei.

He periodically clenched and unclenched his hand as he went, feeling and hearing an almost metallic cracking in his joints. He'd have to figure that out later, though; it'd be time for him to start school tomorrow. He was not looking forward to wearing the uniform, even if the girls would probably look cute in theirs.

As it was, Dante managed to find himself a slight compromise that he thought worked well for him. He still wore the uniform, but with the dress shirt buttons undone to reveal a black shirt with leather straps fastening it on his torso. He also still wore his red coat over the uniform jacket, and he had shown up at Kuoh Academy riding his motorcycle. Yeah, he was gonna keep it styling no matter what this fancy private academy had to say about it.

To his utter lack of surprise, he got a lot of stares from his new schoolmates, gawking at the sheer audacity of his arrival and how he wore his uniform. It also didn't escape his notice that the female students' gawking was far more appreciative, to understate the matter, than the male students, some of them grumbling about "another pretty boy taking all the girls." He took it all in stride as he made his way to homeroom.

Mm, teach is pretty hot, Dante thought, seeing the woman at the front of the classroom with her dark hair wrapped in a mostly neat bun, her blue eyes brought out by the pair of under-rimmed glasses she wore, and her lips that were modestly highlighted by pale pink gloss. Further observation noted her long legs that were emphasized by the hosiery and pencil skirt she wore, the latter also bringing out the curves of her hips and backside. His eyes moved upward to the blue sweater hugging her torso and accentuating her breasts, before once again resting on her face.

"Why, hello . . . Mr. Redgrave, is it?" the teacher greeted, noticing Dante's presence.

"Yeah," Dante replied.

"Then introduce yourself to the class," the teacher instructed, seeming to not give much notice to his attire.

"My name's Antony Dante Redgrave," Dante introduced himself, while the teacher wrote his name in katakana on the whiteboard. "Just call me Dante, and what do they say here? Yeah, let's all try to get along, ok?"

"Thank you, Mr. Redgrave, you may take whatever empty seat you prefer," the teacher offered.

Dante went to do exactly that, zeroing in on a girl with her light brown hair in braided pigtails whose pink-rimmed glasses seemed to be flashing at him, especially with that weird grin on her face. What could he say; she seemed like an interesting person, which was how he rationalized taking the seat and desk next to hers. The girl turned to him, her weird grin becoming more of a smirk as she seemed to not only be looking at him, but leering at him. What was that again about girls in Japan being shier and more demure than girls in the West?

"Redgrave . . . nice name," she greeted him. "Mine's Aika Kiriyu."

"Nice to meet you, Aika," Dante greeted.

"Saw you on that bike of yours," Aika remarked casually. "Ever take anyone for a ride?" Her voice dipped suggestively on that question.

"Not the kind of guy who kisses and tells," Dante replied as casually. Then a flirtatious smirk formed on his face. "Unless you'd like to find out for yourself."

Aika smirked back. "I'm sure it'd be quite a ride."

Dante grinned. "I can tell we're gonna have lots of fun together."

During the afternoon lunch break, Dante spotted two of the buxom beauties he'd seen at Issei's funeral the day before. He also noticed that everyone around was staring at them with undisguised awe and admiration . . . or plain lust for their curvaceous forms. He was no stranger to gorgeous women, but there was something almost unearthly about them, not just because the red-haired one was clearly foreign to Japan in terms of her physical features.

"What's the big deal?" he wondered aloud, mildly curious.

"You don't know?!" a boy with glasses he'd seen at Issei's funeral exclaimed. "Oh, wait, you're new, punk, so I shouldn't be surprised. Let me educate you." At that, his glasses shone, just like Aika's had when Dante had first met her. "First, let's set the record straight. Those bodacious babes are what we call the two Onee-sama of Kuoh Academy. The redhead's a foreign chick named Rias Gremory, rich and hot! The other one is her best friend Akeno Himejima, who's even more stacked than Rias!"

"Thanks for the heads-up, what's your name?" Dante asked.

"Motohama," the boy replied. "And you must be Antony Dante Redgrave, the one all the girls are in such a tizzy about. Dunno how I feel about that. On the one hand, Prince Kiba being taken down a peg is fine by me. On the other . . ."

"Prince Kiba?" Dante interrupted. "Who's that?"

"Yuto Kiba, the Prince of Kuoh Academy," another boy, his head shaven and one Dante had also seen at Issei's funeral, chimed in. "All the girls love him and how smooth and refined he is." The sarcasm in the bald boy's tone was so thick Dante thought he could cut it with his favorite sword.

"Hey, I saw you guys at Issei's funeral," Dante said. "Friends of his?"

"You could say that," Motohama replied. "We went girl-watching together."

"Girl-watching. Yeah," Dante deadpanned.

"And what are you asking about Issei for?" the baldheaded boy asked.

"We were friends when we were kids," Dante replied. "Then I moved back home and that was the last time we saw each other. Funny how life works out, you know?"

"Yeah . . ." the baldheaded boy agreed somewhat somberly.

"So what's your name?" Dante asked him.

"Matsuda," the bald boy replied. "You must be that Redgrave guy all the girls are talking about."

"It's Dante," Dante said, brushing off the comment about the girls falling over him.

"I hear you and Aika Kiriyu hooked up after class," Motohama commented.

"So what if we did?" Dante answered nonchalantly. "That's me and her. Don't see the need for anybody else to get involved."

"He admits it!" Matsuda exclaimed. "You brazen devil!"

"I didn't admit shit," Dante replied. "But seeing as you're the type who'll go and spread it around no matter what I say, I couldn't give less of a shit than I do now." A bell rang. "Huh, guess it's time to go back to class." He rose from where he'd been reclining on the field that served as Kuoh Academy's outdoor lunch area. "See you punks around."

The first day of class went by fairly quickly, not that Dante cared all that much for it. True to Motohama's words, the rumors were going around that Dante had seduced Aika Kiriyu as soon as they'd made first contact, or that Aika's perversion had been so great she'd pounced upon Dante as soon as she'd seen him and made him make her a woman. High school bullshit was all it was, as far as Dante was concerned, and he just had to bear with it until he tracked down Issei's killer and made the son of a bitch pay.

As Dante walked to his motorcycle at the end of class, he saw a black-haired girl in a uniform that did not at all match the one worn by Kuoh Academy's female students in the slightest. "Who are you?" Dante asked bluntly.

"I'm . . . I'm Yuma Amano," the girl replied, sounding bashful. "And I . . . I was Issei Hyodo's date."

"Yeah?" Dante remarked, raising his eyebrow curiously. A lead had dropped into his lap, and she was kind of cute, too.

"I . . . I'm so scared . . . that he was killed right after going out with me," Yuma went on.

"Right after?" Dante repeated. "Like somebody was following you just for the chance to shank Issei?"

"Maybe that killer will come for me next . . ." Yuma murmured frightfully. "And I really . . . really wanted to see . . . Issei again . . ."

"You must've liked him a lot," Dante commented. "How'd he get you to go with him?"

"I . . . asked him . . ." Yuma admitted shyly, as if embarrassed to admit that she could be so bold as to ask a boy out on a date.

Dante smirked. "I like that. Girls don't ask guys out enough, if you ask me. If you wanna date, you should just say so upfront. World works a lot better that way."

Yuma blushed. "Would you . . . ?"

"If you're about to ask what I think you're gonna ask, yeah, let's go for a ride," Dante preempted her.

Yuma's expression brightened, and Dante smiled back. A date with this girl, the last person to see Issei Hyodo alive that wasn't his killer, could give him the clues he needed. He'd just have to ask her some questions, figure out if anything she saw or heard around Issei could point him toward Issei's killer. It also helped that Yuma had an unearthly aura of her own, not exactly like Rias's and Akeno's, though. He'd have to figure her out, too, and those two, of course; being in Kuoh Academy would give him plenty of time where the two Esteemed Sisters of Kuoh were concerned.

Dante and Yuma rode around for a while, just taking in the sights and sounds of the city. They did make a few stops every now and again, once for a meal at a fairly nice restaurant, once for the arcades, where the racing and fighting games were nearly savaged by Dante's reflexes, and once, as the sun began to set, for the local park with a water fountain in its center. "Getting to be that time, huh?" he remarked quietly.

"I did have a nice one with you," Yuma remarked.

"Did Issei?" Dante asked. "Before he bit it, I mean."

"Oh . . ." Yuma replied somberly. "You wanted to talk about him, didn't you?"

"He was my friend," Dante said. "One of the few I ever had. Somebody killed him, and whoever it was did it after he went out with you. I want to know if you saw anything."

"I didn't see who killed him," Yuma answered.

"Wasn't asking for that," Dante said. "Thought maybe you might have seen something not quite right around him while you were out together. Somebody trying to follow you, looking suspicious or whatever."

"You're like those young detectives in the anime," Yuma commented.

"Not really," Dante replied, "but now that we're alone . . . I think we can just let our hair down and be honest with one another. You don't feel like a regular girl."

Yuma blushed. "You really think that?"

"Yeah, I do," Dante said, flirtation creeping into his voice. "So what do you say? Wanna show me?"

"You don't seem like an ordinary boy, either, Dante . . ." Yuma said, and her voice dipped, becoming lower and more seductively husky. "Do you want me to tell you what I saw, when Issei Hyodo died?"

Dante's eyes narrowed. "You . . ."

At that moment, Yuma's clothes exploded into light and energy, replaced by slithering black liquid that wrapped itself around her body, hardening into a skimpy black leather costume. This was accompanied by black-feathered wings bursting and extending from her back, flared out like a raven in flight.

"Well, damn," Dante commented. "You were hiding quite the body, weren't you?"

"Yuma" chuckled sadistically. "It does feel nice not to be so confined. At least you're not as much of an eyesore as Hyodo. In fact, I think I'd gladly give you a ride before I finish you off."

Dante's eyes hardened at the casual insult to Issei. "You killed him, didn't you? Why?"

"You want someone to blame for Hyodo's death, you might as well blame the God that gave him that Sacred Gear, the last gift he ever gave you," she replied tauntingly.

"Don't know what the fuck a Sacred Gear is, and I don't care if you're some fucked-up angel . . ." Dante growled. "That was my buddy, and you're going to pay for killing him." At this, a pair of handguns, one ivory-white and the other pitch-black materialized in his hands, and he fired with incredible speed and accuracy at "Yuma," who dodged . . . minus a few feathers.

"Damn it . . . those guns . . ." she grimaced.

"Oh, you want to know my guns?" Dante taunted. "That's nice, 'cause they're gonna get very acquainted with you soon!"

"Yuma" formed a lance of pure light energy and hurled it at Dante, who shot through it with his dual guns before charging right for her with startling speed. It took everything she had not to end up with a bullet in her heart or head. She smirked at him, only for him to shoot at her with the pitch-black handgun, forcing her to fly into the air if she didn't want to get hit by the bullets and attack again with her light lance from a greater distance. This time, Dante dodged her lance and threw himself into the air, reaching her height in barely the blink of an eye to press his own attack for as long as he could keep afloat.

With surprising strength, "Yuma" threw a punch at him, which Dante barely blocked in time before he fired both his guns at her. "Yuma" darted through the air dodging the bullets, but was just unlucky enough that one from each gun grazed her in each wing, causing her to cry out in pain.

"Stings like a bitch, doesn't it?" Dante taunted her. "These sweethearts don't shoot ordinary bullets; they're not even ordinary guns. No, these babies are made to kill devils . . . and the occasional fucked-up angel . . . like you."

"Yuma" snarled and flung another light lance at Dante. He dodged this one as well, but his coat wasn't as lucky, as the light lance went through it . . . and it kind of burned him just from being so close. He could take a little burn, though, especially when it came to avenging Issei's death, as he maintained fire on "Yuma," thankful for devil-killing guns that never ran out of bullets. He fired at the ground to keep himself in the air a little longer, and propel himself a little higher from the recoil, twisting himself into an acrobatic somersault that ended in a strike that brought "Yuma" to the ground.

"Before I take your bitchy ass out of this world, why did you kill Issei?" Dante coldly interrogated.

"He was too dangerous to live," the black-winged angel replied.

"You haven't seen 'too dangerous to live,'" Dante retorted grimly. "Which is too bad, because you're about to get a good look at it." He stalked toward her, in full preparation to finish her off with a bullet to the head and the heart, if she even had one.

He wasn't prepared, however, for "Yuma" to ambush him with a strike from her light lance, using her position of weakness to slip under Dante's guard. The light pierced through his midsection, burning him from the inside, but he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream. "You really thought you were gonna finish me?" she taunted him. "That pathetic wretch was a waste of a Sacred Gear, anyway."

That was when she flew away, right before she could've gotten shot in the cold place most others would call a heart by the ivory handgun Dante was holding. "Missed," he mumbled disappointedly. "Fuck . . ." He forced himself to his feet, despite the grievous wound she had dealt him with her light lance. Despite the burning sensation he felt from the light, he grabbed it and pulled it out of his midsection, casting it to the ground . . . along with a considerable amount of blood that leaked onto an innocuous flyer that had fallen out of his coat pocket.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Dante wondered aloud, as some kind of mystic circle formed where he blood and flyer met. "Fuck, a summoning circle." He snorted, as he felt his wound healing a lot slower than usual, if it was healing at all. "Way I feel right now, whoever comes out of that portal is gonna regret it . . ."

Dante was treated to quite the surprise, as stepping out of the summoning circle was none other than Rias Gremory, the busty redheaded bombshell who was the most popular girl in Kuoh Academy that wasn't Akeno Himejima. Dante let out a low whistle.

"Not every day I see a hottie like you come through a summoning circle," he remarked casually. "So, we gonna fight . . . or are you in the mood for a little something different?"

"Don't act so cocky," Rias replied. "In your condition, you wouldn't last more than a few minutes. I'm amazed you're still alive, but I guess that's something to be expected from a son of Sparda."

"That son of a bitch is as far from my father as he could be," Dante spat. His tone softened into mild, wry amusement, despite the severity of his injury. "You were the one who called me here, weren't you? Can't forget a voice like yours."

Rias smiled warmly at him. "Yes, I was. And it's quite a good thing my familiar left that flyer in your coat."

"That was you, huh?" Dante said. "Sneaky."

"When necessary," Rias replied. "Right now, I can't afford to have you bleed out all over yourself, so I'm going to offer you a choice. Will you live for my sake, and my sake alone?"

Dante stared at her. "What kind of question is that? You may be hot, but I'm not looking to be tied down."

"It's not that kind of commitment," Rias corrected him. "And in your state, you won't last that long."

"I can heal just fine on my own," Dante retorted.

"Then why aren't you?" Rias asked. "I'll tell you – angelic light is a bane to our kind, even if you are half-human."

"So I die right here, or I go with you and you do whatever?" Dante surmised. "Not much of a choice, is it?"

"Would you prefer to die?" Rias inquired curiously, though with a tone that suggested she'd take it quite personally if Dante chose to die.

"Fuck it," Dante muttered. "If you wanted to finish me off, you would have. So let's see what you've got."

Endnotes: And so goes the first chapter of DxD Trigger. I'm willing to bet that some of what happened here you weren't quite expecting, even if it would be a losing bet as I haven't read very many DxD/Devil May Cry crossovers. In any event, the mystery of how Dante acquired Boosted Gear will eventually come to light, and for those of you who'll ask, Vergil will be showing up in a less-expected form as well. For those of you who'll ask this, too, Aika Kiriyu is in the first chapter of this story as Dante's first friend at Kuoh Academy because I am just excessively fond of that girl. Dante's name as a student in Kuoh is based on the Tony Redgrave alias he uses in some DMC tie-ins, but modified to include his real name as his middle. Enough explanations from me, though, as I'd like to hear from you readers what you thought of this. Till next time, let the angels scream and the devil cry!