Upgrade stood in what looked, at first glance, like a town that resembled London to some extent, except everything about it felt far gloomier and much darker, as if the place had been drained of whatever life it might have once had and left sitting under a permanently stormy sky.
He had only a moment to take in the tall, shadowed buildings and the narrow streets before he looked to his side and saw Gwen materialize right beside him. She was wearing blue samurai garb, complete with a metal headband and boots, and there was a shoulder pad on her left shoulder fitted with a glowing orange orb, with two dull black orbs sitting beside it. She immediately looked herself over with visible confusion, as though half-expecting the outfit to vanish the second she blinked.
"What happened?" Upgrade asked, still looking around warily.
Gwen glanced down at herself again, then back at him.
"It must have zapped Upgrade and we wound up in the video game!" she said.
"We're inside Sumo Slammer Smackdown? Cool!" Upgrade said almost immediately, before dropping down onto the ground and making an angel in the dirt. "I've always wanted to do this!"
Gwen stared at him for a second, then looked around the gloomy street with a growing sense of unease.
"I don't think this is your Sumo Slammer game, Ben."
The moment she said that, the ground around them began to emit dark mists that rolled outward along the street like smoke from some unseen fire. Ben's excitement faded just as quickly as it had appeared, and he climbed back to his feet, now looking around with a little more alarm than before.
"Okay, maybe you're right..." he said, because unlike him, these enemies did not look familiar at all.
That was the thing that made him uneasy. He had played through the entirety of Sumo Slammer Smackdown more times than he could count, and he knew the game well enough to recognize every enemy, every stage, and every strange little boss fight hidden inside it. But none of the things rising out of the dark mist around them looked like anything he had ever seen there before.
Black-cloaked, skull-faced demons emerged from the fog one after another, each one holding multiple scythes as they spread out and surrounded the two of them. Their hollow faces and skeletal shapes made the entire street look even more unnatural than it already did, and the way they moved only made them seem worse, like they had stepped out of something far more hostile than a game Ben recognized.
Upgrade quickly glanced around again, his first instinct being to look for something mechanical he could merge with, because that was usually the fastest way out of a bad situation.
Unfortunately, the gloomy city seemed to be made almost entirely of stone and shadows, and there was barely anything useful in sight. Everything around them looked like old buildings, cracked pavement, and empty street corners swallowed by mist.
"Seriously?" Upgrade groaned. "Who builds an entire city without anything useful?"
Unfortunately, while he was distracted, the scythe demons lunged.
They moved all at once, rushing him from several directions and swinging their weapons with enough force to make the air itself seem to whistle around the blades. Upgrade barely had time to react before the scythes came down from every side, striking him at once and impaling him from multiple angles.
"BEN!!"
Gwen's scream echoed through the street as she watched his body begin to flicker and fade away.
The next second, Ben materialized a few feet away in human form, now wearing brown samurai armor with a headband and a spiked side ponytail, while two glowing orange orbs hovered nearby with a black one beside them. His Omnitrix was no longer on his wrist but instead attached to a gauntlet on his left arm, which made him look just different enough to be unsettling when compared to the body he had just lost.
"Wow," Ben murmured, looking himself over and then glancing back at the spot where he had just been attacked. "I definitely don't want to do that again."
The scythe demons lunged once more, but before they could close in completely, the side of a nearby building suddenly exploded outward.
Its front door flew across the street like a missile and smashed directly into one of the advancing demons, sending the unfortunate creature flying backward into a stone wall with enough force to crack it.
Everyone froze for half a second and turned toward the source of the interruption.
Heavy boots stepped through the broken doorway.
Orfevre emerged from the building.
She was now much taller than before, with many of her features developed, most notably her chest, and her hair was now snow white with ice-blue eyes. She is wearing dark brown pants, black fingerless gloves, and a long crimson trench coat that fluttered behind her in the wind. A leather strap crossed her chest, and in her hand rested an enormous sword that looked almost as large as she was, the blade itself carrying a bone-like design with a skull embedded directly into the guard. The weapon was unmistakable to anyone who knew the game, even before she said anything.
"Damn it, why the hell am I Dante?" she murmured in visible annoyance, sounding almost offended by the situation itself.
Her gaze shifted toward the remaining demons.
Without waiting another second, she rushed forward, swung Rebellion in a wide arc, and cut down the nearest demon before smoothly shifting to her twin guns, Ebony and Ivory, which she drew and opened fire with rapid, controlled bursts. The gunfire cracked through the air while the demons staggered and fell back, only for her to turn again and switch back to Rebellion as she continued hacking and slashing through the crowd with quick, brutal efficiency.
Ben and Gwen watched in awe and surprise as Orfevre made quick work of the demons, moving so fast that it was almost impossible to keep up with her.
Then, just as the fight seemed to intensify even further, a massive demon materialized from the shadows. Towering over the others, it carried a gigantic scythe whose blade glowed with eerie purple light, and the moment it appeared, the air around it seemed to grow heavier and more dangerous.
It attacked immediately.
Orfevre side-stepped the strike with barely any wasted motion, avoiding the first blow just in time before swinging Rebellion up to meet the massive weapon head-on. The clash of blade against blade rang through the street, and Ben and Gwen watched in stunned silence as the two exchanged attacks at a speed their eyes could barely follow.
The large demon began teleporting around the battlefield, appearing from different angles in rapid succession as it tried to catch Orfevre off guard. Each time it vanished, it reappeared somewhere else, swinging its enormous scythe with lethal intent, but every attack either missed or was countered just in time.
Every time the monster appeared, Orfevre somehow reacted instantly, dodging, blocking, or striking back with the kind of confidence that made the whole thing look almost effortless.
"Aw man!" Ben couldn't help complaining as he watched, his human eyes barely able to keep up with the movement. "Why is her character so much cooler than us?"
The large scythe demon continued teleporting around, trying to force Orfevre into a mistake from different angles, but she kept avoiding it at the last possible second and responding with perfect counters that kept driving it back.
Then, without warning, the ground beneath them rumbled loudly.
The street began to crack apart.
"Whoa!" Ben nearly lost his footing. "What is going on now?!"
Everyone immediately jumped back, and even the large demon teleported away as the cracks widened rapidly across the ground. The rumbling only grew stronger, and then the earth itself exploded upward.
A gigantic tower burst up from beneath the city.
Stone and debris rained everywhere as the structure continued rising higher and higher, stretching upward with terrifying speed until it seemed to pierce the clouds themselves. Its sheer scale was almost impossible to understand at first glance, because it kept climbing and climbing until it dwarfed everything around it and swallowed the sky above.
Gwen slowly tilted her head back, and then farther back, and then farther still as she tried to follow the impossible height of it.
"What is that?" she murmured.
Nobody answered right away.
Ben and Gwen remained fixated on the tower, unable to look away from something that massive appearing out of nowhere, while Orfevre simply started walking forward with complete confidence, as if the tower rising from the earth had only confirmed something she already expected.
Her eyes never left the summit.
Far above them, standing atop the newly risen structure, a lone figure could just barely be seen against the storm-dark sky.
Orfevre rested Rebellion across her shoulder and smirked.
"Are you gonna stand there and act like some final boss?"
She knew the person she was talking to probably could not hear her from that distance, but that did not stop her from saying it anyway.
High above the city, standing atop the Temen-ni-gru, the unholy tower that served as the true gateway to the Demon World, a solitary figure looked down upon everything below.
Ever Gold stood at the very top of the tower, staring down at the world below him with a strange sense of distance, as if the place around him had already started to feel unreal.
He was taller now, with snow-white hair and ice-blue eyes, clad in knee-length boots, black pants, and a black turtleneck vest, with a long light blue trench coat draped over his frame. The coat carried a snake-like white pattern along its surface, and its golden inner lining caught what little light there was, giving him an almost regal look as it moved softly in the wind. In his left hand rested a black katana with a white handle, its scabbard held in place by a yellow sageo wrapped tightly around it.
Evan looked down at his own hand, then at the blade, and slowly realized that he had somehow turned into Vergil, the final boss of Devil May Cry 3. He had not been expecting that at all, and honestly, he had no idea how it had happened in the first place.
Ignoring Arkham, the scar-faced man who was still rambling behind him like his existence mattered, Evan glanced down at the Yamato in his hand again, then noticed that he was still wearing his Another Omnitrix beneath his sleeve.
To be fair, he and the watch were one and the same, so the fact that it had come with him into this game world was not really that surprising. Still, he raised his right hand and activated it, just to make sure it was functioning the way it should.
[Error! An unknown mutation has been detected in Ever Gold's genetic code. Beginning record protocol and genetic recovery process.]
[Genetic recovery process complete. Recorded DNA mutation successfully added to Playlist #7.]
[New DNA sample acquired.]
"It still works..." Evan murmured under his breath as his height returned to normal along with his hair and eye color. "Add the new transformation to Playlist TheBlade."
Without another word, he turned his attention back to the scar-faced man standing behind him.
Arkham did not even get the chance to finish whatever nonsense he was saying. Evan drew the Yamato and thrust it straight into the man's stomach.
Arkham's eyes widened in shock as he stared at Evan, clearly not expecting that kind of response so suddenly, but Evan only met his gaze with a calm, unreadable expression, already aware that this man was just another hidden enemy waiting for his turn to be killed later anyway.
He pulled the blade back, spun it once, and then cut down the large scythe demon that had climbed the tower to attack him. The Yamato flashed through the air, and a moment later Evan slowly sheathed it again. The instant the sword clicked into place, both bodies dropped to the ground, leaving Evan free to walk away as if nothing important had happened at all.
Since he was already trapped inside this game world, and since his Another Omnitrix had somehow recognized his half-devil form as a new transformation, Evan decided he might as well test something while he was here. If his Another Omnitrix recognizes his new identity and DNA as a new sub-human species similar to his Half-Ghost.
So he wonders, could he bring the Devil Arms in the game world back with him by storing them inside his Another Omnitrix.
So, while walking down the tower, Evan began searching for the bosses in the area, hoping to gain some Devil Arms along the way.
Once he moved down from the top level, he activated his Another Omnitrix again and immediately transformed into Ghostfreak. Using Ghostfreak's intangibility and flight, he passed straight through the wall and headed directly into the first nearby boss room.
The moment he entered the large chamber, the bright light behind him was cut off, leaving him in a much darker space than before. Ghostfreak looked down and noticed that his own shadow was moving on its own. A second later it peeled itself off the floor and rose up, taking the shape of an identical copy of him, except its colors were darker, its form shaded in black, and its eyes glowed with an ominous red light.
"Huh, you can copy my alien form... interesting." Ghostfreak murmured, tapping the dial on his Omnitrix.
Golden light erupted around him.
When the glow faded, the living black-and-white armor alien had taken Ghostfreak's place, with golden flames rising from the gaps in his body as both of his hands reshaped themselves into blazing sword-like blades.
"FlameGuardian!" he announced.
Across from him, the shadowy Doppelganger began changing as well, shifting its shape until it became an identical copy of FlameGuardian, except its fire burned in a darker, more sinister red and its eyes glowed the same eerie color.
Evan understood the boss's mechanic; he knew exactly how it worked. In complete darkness, it was invincible, but the moment light touched its body, that invincibility would break.
The golden flames surrounding FlameGuardian provided enough light to fill the room, and while Heatblast might have made a better source of brightness, Evan did not want to take the risk that the boss would simply copy Heatblast's ability to absorb and create fire, because if that happened, the entire fight would likely become a straight-up fist battle anyway.
FlameGuardian and the Doppelganger crashed into each other, their flame-bladed arms clashing with equal force.
Their strength was identical. Their movements matched each other. For a moment, neither one gained the upper hand.
Still, as the person who had improved and updated this boss, Evan already knew exactly how to deal with it.
FlameGuardian broke the deadlock, and the flame in his left hand suddenly vanished as the black-and-white armor on that arm spread and reshaped itself into a cannon. He fired a volley of fireballs directly into the Doppelganger's chest, blasting the creature backward.
It got back up almost immediately, and its own left hand began to change, trying to mirror FlameGuardian's attack.
Reacting quickly, FlameGuardian's right blade shifted, becoming a whip. He snapped it forward and wrapped the flame whip tightly around the Doppelganger's neck before yanking it toward him.
As the creature was pulled in, FlameGuardian kept the pressure going. His left arm shifted, the weapon reforming into a flaming chainsaw, and he drove it straight into the Doppelganger's chest.
Then he brought his head back and slammed a heavy headbutt into the demon, just as the whip in his right hand shifted back into a flaming hand.
The Doppelganger thrashed wildly, trying to break free, but instead of hanging onto it, FlameGuardian let it go, giving the creature just enough space to stumble back before a newly formed hammer of metal and flame came crashing down onto its head.
The Doppelganger's strength was equal to its opponent's, and it could match attacks almost perfectly so long as it copied the same set of weapons and abilities, but that only made things harder for it against someone who knew how to chain combo after chain combo without giving it time to breathe. The entire point was to keep it stunned long enough that it never got the chance to recover.
And Evan knew exactly how to do that.
After comboing it to death, the Doppelganger slowly fell backward into the shadows and vanished. FlameGuardian tapped his Omnitrix again, returning to human form, and immediately crouched down to gather a sample of the liquid shadow left behind before it could disappear completely.
He dropped a single bead of that shadow into his Another Omnitrix.
[New DNA sample acquired.]
[Data Upgrade Detected. Doppelganger is now available.]
Evan smiled as he looked down at his Another Omnitrix and saw that his shadow had returned to normal. Then he looked up and noticed an identical copy of himself standing across from him, wearing the same clothes, with the only difference being that his hair was slightly darker.
The two of them walked toward each other at the same time. Each one threw a kick. Each one matched the other perfectly.
Then came the punches, then the elbow strikes, then the spinning kicks, and every single attack canceled each other out as they moved blow for blow like mirror images that refused to break apart.
Evan looked at his Doppelganger and smiled.
The copy approached him for a moment longer, then slowly began to fade away before merging back into his shadow.