Get Out Alive [ALENCAR BROTHERS|CLOSED]

[Gabriel Alencar]

5:14 PM
3rd of January, 2012
[EXACT LOCATION REDACTED], Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

From the streets a man in a fine, black suit looked up to the top floors of Guardez Enterprises, eyes shielded from the sun. His smile thin, he stepped forward, pocketed his hand, and tilted his head forward in one fluid motion. Just another day out and about in Rio, or, at least, that's what this man wanted everyone to suspect. No need to bring panic, and no need to let on about his disability. The less people knew about Gabriel Alencar, let alone that he was back in his birthplace, the better.

As he approached the double doors, they slid open and he made his way inside. Acting as if he were looking around, the well dressed agent listened to the footsteps sounding out about him. The echoes giving him a mental layout of the immediate area, he lightly made his way forward, head low, and eventually found himself at the front desk. His smile grew as he smelled flowers, the secretary's perfume very noticeable.

"Hello, miss," he began and leaned his way onto the counter top, "My name is Agent Alencar from the Health Bureau." Pulling out a fraudulent I.D. made for him by the true organization he worked for, he allowed her time to scan it over before pocketing it again. "I'm here to speak to an executive, an Emilio Guardez I believe."

The man was wanted for more than one thing, most people around this city were, so it didn't really matter which identity he assumed. What did matter was what the Templar order was interested in, and that was the fact that Mr. Guardez was suspected to have been draining business funds and donating them to demon worshiping sects. Ritualists made all the richer, able to get their grubby hands higher up in society and within the minds of other people. The order could care less what happened to Emilio, but if names could be obtained from this man the true source of trouble could be hunted down and... disposed of.

"I... I don't believe he has any prior meetings arranged." The woman flipped through pages and sighed. "Nothing here says you can't go back and speak to him. I'm just on my way to lunch, I'll escort you."

Gabriel nodded and smiled, backing off of the counter and following the sounds of her footsteps. If he was lucky today would go by smoothly, and if not... Well, he didn't have any better way to spend his day.

[Dante Alencar]

Some men fight for what they believe in. Some further put their lives, their souls, their very collective existences on the line for what they believe in. In some cases, many die. Look to al-Qaeda. 2001. The World Trade Centre. Four thousand dead for a cause that they believe in. Fighting a "just war". And this is the question that comes along with believing, that comes along with thinking, that comes along with knowing you're in the right. It's not "how far?", but instead, "do you possess the consitution, the sheer, unbridled force of will, to go as is far enough?"

"...the financial audit report came in. I looked over it this morning." One man sat in a leather executive's swivel chair. Young. Up-and-comer in the industry. Well-tanned, groomed finely, good suit, silk tie, kept himself in good shape, trimmed makings of a respectable goatee. Early thirties. "Everything's fine, but there are just..." The executive in the seat sighed. His name was Emilio Guardez, and this was the building that he was a part of. Guardez Enterprises. One day, his father Remy, the CEO, had told him that this all, this kingdom, built on seventy years of his own family's blood and sweat, fifty of them him having been a part of it for, would one day be his. "...inconsistencies."

Next to him was a man with his back to the room, staring from the top of the skyscraper window, a la mode and square in its very conception, cradling a small, ornate glass full of bottled water with two icecubes in it. He remained silent and Emilio continued to talk. "I know, you'll tell me not to worry, that it will all be okay," The executive scrubbed at his brow as his stoic comrade continued to stand, silent, attending to the window as he had been for a few minutes now, not an audible breath of a word passing his lips. "But..." The man in the suit huffed once more. "I can't shake my worry, man, I really can't."

Guardez Enterprises had started from the bottom seventy years ago as a family-owned insurance broker's business. Literally, Remy's grandfather had been born into the favelas - and though Emilio and Remy had lived their lives in the lap of luxury, it was a point of empathic connection for the man by the window. It was the way he'd broken the ice with what he considered the weakest link, the young, brash son, and the way he'd formed his relationship, made his pitch, everything: it was the way that he'd convinced Emilio to skim cash off the top and fund his movement.

A sigh echoed out - a different one this time. It was cool, it was collected, not resenting nor regretful, and accompanied by a gulp and a click as the tanned, white-haired figure by the window finished his water and set the glass down, pressing both cold hands against the metal frame of the perfectly square panel. "You know what a leafcutter ant is, do you not, Emilio?" Bemused at first, the executive shook away his being taken aback and swiftly jerked his head up and down silently, taking up his own drink - a golden whiskey - and sipping liberally at it.

"Good." The response was almost a croon from the man at the window. "Because that is an analogue for how my movement functions." Turning around, the man revealed his face as the light from a window opposite bathed and illuminated him, the perfect image of the modern smart upper-class man; but oh, for what a lie that was. Twenty-eight, stood there with Brazilian bronzed skin, dyed, bleached white hair curled upwards into a poignant point to make a statement, a charcoal jacket and dress trousers buttoned around an open-collared striking orange shirt, and then a pair of formal black shoes. The chameleon outfit of the company executive; but the visionary was truly far from his element dressed like this, and though it was a necessity, the image stood against everything he stood for. Guiltily, part of his more easily-appeased psyche did find it somewhat visually appealing, however.

"Our aim may seem impossible, but teamwork is essential." With this, he skirted back around the varnished teak of Emilio Guardez's desk, drifting his hand along it in the faded evening sung hanging low in the sky above Rio de Janeiro. "Co-operation will bring us to our goal. One of us alone can do nothing. Thousands can change the world." With this, he rose a finger. "But," Those cold steel eyes locked with the large, vibrant emerald of Guardez's. "The purpose of the individual should not be underestimated."

A sly, coy smile curled up onto his face as the metaphor came full circle. "For much like the leafcutter ants, for the good of our colony, if we put our minds to it, we can complete truly great feats." Gesturing to the window, the apparent source for this whole thing, he sighed. For their task was far from complete yet. "We can move mountains, Emilio. And your sole financial contribution is so much more important than you recognise." A pause. "So, for the good of the group, you must not worry, brother. Things will come full circle soon enough."

The intercom flashed red and two pairs of eyes looked to it. Then Emilio locked gazes with his revolutionary comrade, who nodded gently in approving return. "Yes, Maria?" The distorted tones rang through over surrounding speakers and Emilio prepared to try his absolute best to fathom what she was saying. Girl spoke too fast sometimes. "Sir, an Agent Alencar from the Health Bureau arrived. I sent him up to your office." But that had been clear enough.

The pair of them locked gazes once more and a sense of urgency and immediacy filled the room. Normally this would not be a problem. Emilio brushed off visitors from all sorts of companies and officials looking to corrupt, bribe, or grift him. None of them managed to; in the economic world, the young executive was actually quite apt at his job, another reason for his being chosen as the movement's particular embezzler, the man to skim the layer off the top and siphon it through into dummy accounts and out into the collective one not a moment later. But the thing that raised that tone of urgency was subjective to the pair of them, and the man in the charcoal jacket skirted back around behind the whiskey-drinking executive in the chair, whose brow glistened slick with sweat now more than ever before.

He finished up his drink and hummed back through the intercom in approval. Normally this would not be a problem. But the man standing behind him was the only Alencar either of them knew, and his name was far from on the books. Perhaps it would be a coincidence - but the man in the orange jacket, the one and only, knew that coincidence had a habit of unfortunately leaving him be. Dante Alencar, was his name: and only one other human in this world held that surname that he was aware of, at least in this general area.

And the last time he'd seen him was fourteen years ago.

[Gabriel Alencar]

There was one animal that came to mind for Gabriel in this situation, and it was one of his favorites. The adorable, yet powerful, armadillo. Natural defenses allowed it to keep most predators at bay. They also kept the rain forests' population of insects under control, feeding upon the things which fed upon the trees and leaves. Especially leafcutter ants. And for each that the armadillo killed, the entire colony would suffer from the loss.

That was exactly what the Blackhaven agent was sent here to do. Disrupt the apparent order within the chaos of an organized 'liberation front', headed off by ritualists. With each step he took, he made sure to focus only on the sound of the woman he followed through the hallways of the skyscraper. Eventually he found himself upon a familiar feeling terrain, the slight push down of stepping into an elevator.

"Mr. Guardez's office is the last on the right hallway." She quirked an eyebrow at the man as he just stood there, face indifferent as he slid on his sunglasses. With a shake of her head, she reached inside and pressed the button to the top floor and gave a short, nervous laugh. "He'll be expecting you once you arrive."

"Thank you." A simple response, but short and sweet was for the best. No need to glamorize the situation in any way. The door slid closed and Gabriel pressed down upon his collar, a communication device, unnoticeable beneath the fabric of his suit, signaling out to his comrades. "First phase is complete, standby for further information."

Gabriel pocketed his hands while he waited. The elevator made no other stops on its way up, luckily enough. Everything felt smooth. Everything, from the way he was dressed to how he'd gained audience with a man who could very well become hostile, even how easy it was for him to even get in here. Security definitely wasn't what people made you believe it was these days. The long ride up, a stand and wait that lasted for nearly three minutes, eventually ended and the doors slid back open.

Good. Two minutes ahead of schedule.

"Phase two begins now." Gabriel spoke softly, pressing down on his collar as he stepped out. The AC up here was pretty loud, which would be an annoyance to most people. To Gabriel, however, this was nothing but helpful. Units spaced out upon the ceiling, each ten feet apart, allowed him to track his path down the right hallway. As the sounds grew quieter, he skimmed a gloved finger along the wall slightly ahead of his step. Soon it touched the corner of wall and he stopped, reached forward with his left hand, and opened the door to the office.

"Mr. Guardez, there's much we need to discuss." His faint smile turned into a smirk as he stepped inside, but he halted himself. Something seemed off here. There were two senses other than sight and touch which could be used to tell just how many people were in a room, and those were pinpointing sounds and smells. The first gave nothing away, all that he heard was weight shifting within a chair. The second, however, was what confounded the agent. Hair products of some sort, but there were two very distinct odors wafting within the air blown forth by the air conditioning. One was bland, the other... not so much.

"Your secretary didn't tell me you already had company, forgive me if this is a bad time." The smirk fell, and Gabriel quirked an eyebrow at the person standing, nodded, and then turned what would be his line of vision back to his primary target. "The matters at hand would probably best be discussed alone though."

[Dante Alencar]

"Mr. Guardez, there's much we need to discuss." Steel eyes widened to the impossible outer limits of Dante Alencar's sclera. His irises shook and trembled and on the basest, atomic level, it felt as if his body, every molecule and atom within it, was quivering violently. How could this... what was... this was... no... fourteen years. Fourteen years, and he returned. That olive complexion. Sightless eyes almost always closed. A formidable build much like his. So much had changed but at the core of his being, Gabriel Alencar was identical to how he had been all those years ago. Gabriel Alencar. His brother.

Dante faltered and his knuckles turned white as he gripped at the edge of the desk, his knees giving way and starting to buckle beneath him. From the little observation he'd been able to make in the time between the figure's entry and the revelation of just who this man was to him, it was easy to divine that the figure was blind. He didn't know or care how or where it had happened, and immediately Guardez looked to him and threw himself back. What was happening here? Who was this mysterious visitor!? And why was it making his partner, one of the strongest people he knew, buckle and collapse?! "Dante!" Emilio barked, leaping from his swivel chair to grasp at the visionary's bicep, trying his best to stabilise him.

"No." The Brazilian snarled near-silently, clasping Guardez' hand and tearing it from his skin. The quivering only further increased in violence. Gabriel. Gabriel had died. He had been sure of it. Fourteen years ago. No-one left the favelas. Not overnight. It was impossible. And here he was, returning to Rio almost a decade and a half later in a sharp suit and with a walk of authority, no sight, a missive for his business partner, and the inability to sense his own brother's presence. This fucking heathen. This man, the one who had left him alone - at first his presence had simply shocked and gripped Dante, but now, as he remembered all those sleepless nights in the monsoon rain, all the times he looked to an older brother who wasn't there, all the times he ran up and down the Daedalean labyrinthine streets of the favela's urban sprawl crying out his brother's name... "GABRIEL! GABRIEL! GABRIEL! WHERE ARE YOU, GABRIEL?"

A familiar presence awoke in his mind once more as the stress and hatred gripped his body. This was the Prince of Serpents, the Demon that dwelt, today dormant, most days quiet, in the very depths and halls of Dante's waking human mind whilst he walked on this side of the hellfire veil. Kurdai. He spoke in that same raspy voice, a tongue unintelligible to most. Dante. At first, the visionary tried his best to block out the serpentine creature's incursions into his mind - this was a part of his life that the Demon had no dominion over, a part of his history that the Brazilian had long since forsaken, but such simple tricks did not fool a primordial being such as he. Dante!

Stay out of this. Dante responded with a telepathic growl and pushed back the mental presence of his Demonic counterpart as best he could. Feeling the anger surge through his neurones and his very essence, Kurdai, for now, obeyed, simply staying a silent spectator in the sanctity of his mortal shell's mind. Should his intervention be required if the danger of this form's longevity came into it, the Prince would then step in. But for now, the best course of action was to watch. The snake returned to his silent state, but no less awake and alert than he had been just a moment ago. This one's mine.

Knuckles whitened and the quivering finally faltering as the last of it was reduced to a sullen tingling, Dante returned to the world of the living by pulling himself upwards and rejecting Emilio's supportive grasps once more. His olive complexion was flushed with a furious pink, and he balled both hands into fists with the primordial and obvious gesture of one thing and one thing alone: aggression. Guardez, finally getting the hint, took a step back. He had no fucking clue what was going on, but whoever this blind guy was, he had seriously pissed off the biggest rebel leader in all of Rio de Janeiro. And that was not a good idea.

In but a moment, Dante dove under his jacket to an adeptly hidden shoulder holster in which sat a freshly-loaded Colt Anaconda. Drawing it with no impediment, he eased back the hammer, aligned the sights dead-on with Gabriel's face, and at the last minute jerked the frame of the gun an inch left and pulled the trigger. CRACK. A smoking barrel and a hole in the drywall just behind his once-dead brother's head. "You." The younger Alencar whispered in tones of absolute fury.

"You are dead." Dante continued in absolute denial. "You are a ghost." This could not be allowed to happen, nor to inflict any form of pain or change on his life now. "I buried the real Gabriel Alencar fourteen years ago in an empty grave, and everything that I knew of him died with him that day." His voice was erratic, his tone heaving and seething with the purest grating anger as a vein bulged on his head and his hand still head the Anaconda out in front of him.

Silence but for a moment. "DO YOU RECOGNISE MY VOICE, GABRIEL!?" Dante was relentless, raising his tones now to a guttural scream. "THIS IS THE BROTHER YOU LEFT BEHIND ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!" And as the harsher tones of his voice faded, the Ritualist lowered his revolver, and turned his back, speaking then over his shoulder. "I do not know where you came from or what your story or your business here is, but if you have any respect for the sibling you left in that damned place, you'll turn around and leave, now." With that, he moved in his backhand the revolver once more, letting it glisten in the sunlight even though he knew that Gabriel couldn't see it.

"Or I'll bury my brother Gabriel a second time." It was a threat of the highest calibre. And all that was left now was how the blind man would respond.

[Gabriel Alencar]

Gabriel stiffened slightly, but quickly calmed himself. On the field there was one thing that you couldn't lose, and that was your composure. No matter the situation, no matter what you see or hear, you have to stay focused. This one was going to be a toughy though. His eyebrows pierced downward, and he remained silent. There was no doubt, this was his baby brother, Dante. Just what had he allowed himself to crawl into since Gabriel left?

His younger brother shaking on the ground, he held a hand up to Emilio, but the man wasn't paying attention to him at all. This definitely wasn't going smoothly anymore. Thoughts circled within Gabriel's mind of what to do. If he stopped now to comfort his sibling, while it would probably be good for the both of them, there would definitely be hell to pay back at HQ for letting a hiccup occur in this mission. Too much was on the line.

Yeah, he'd left without telling a soul. Gabriel had made some bad decisions in his life regarding home, but even with a brother here he couldn't feel anything much more than hatred for the favelas. They changed men, good men, and turned them into monsters. People you thought you could trust a week prior could be part of the group chasing you down on the next. Funny how that played out on a wider scale here.

Movement, sudden jerking motions and the snap of fabric as a gun was removed from a hidden holster somewhere on Dante's upper body. The trigger was pulled, and at that point Gabriel did step to the right slightly, but the bullet hit the wall behind him anyway. Gabriel didn't flinch, he didn't move, he only stood there and continued to listen. Words of pain, torment, cries let out of a boy who lost so much in his life. His lip twitched just the tiniest bit, but the elder brother still held his ground.

A threat to his life? After everything he'd done for this kid? Things were definitely going to change really fast.

"Are you done yet?" Gabriel asked as he turned around. "Yeah, I'll leave," a single hand went up in a wave as he continued, "but you have a lot of growing up to do if you think you'll get away with talking to your older brother like that." A step back towards the door, his heel pressed back to the ground slowly. Now was when things got interesting. The Templars were known to plan ahead damn well, at least by those who knew of their existence, namely themselves, but they planned ahead damn well all the same. Blackhaven wouldn't send in Gabriel without having every detail looked over. His hand went up to his collar and he spoke clearly so both men in the room could hear him.

"I need an airstrike. Unmarked helicopters in line, prep them for war games." He opened the door quickly and flipped out of the room, his leg holstered guns pulled from his ankles mid-turn in the air. "No survivors." His form was straight, angular, as he landed. One leg held forward and the other bent back, each pistol held out at different heights. A trained defensive stance, nearly impenetrable when Gabriel begun his acrobatics. This was going to go down no matter what the Brazilian agent decided to do, so, at least he thought to himself, he might as well do his job. Not for his brother. Not for this damned place. For the world.

Quite a scene for the Health Bureau to gawk over if they got any word of this.

[Dante Alencar]

"...you have a lot of growing up to do if you think you'll get away with talking to your older brother like that."

"You gave up any right to call yourself my brother when you left." The revolutionary spat with venom, the revolver hanging heavy in his hand. "Always with the theatrics and the lessons, aren't you, Gabriel, trying to teach me to respect my elders?" Actually gathering sputum in his mouth, as Emilio had reduced himself to a whimpering wreck, clambered now beneath his desk, Dante cocked his head off to the right and expelled a small globule of spit onto a patch of carpet nearby to show his anger and distaste. "Maybe I would have actually been able to respect you if you'd stayed around. But I guess we'll never find out."

No response. Gabriel had stayed cool, calm, and controlled all the while as the shot had rang out. At the end of the day, the pair of them had stopped flinching at gunfire decades ago; a night without a shot fired was a night outside of the favelas, simply put. Rio wasn't a nice place on the streets alone; but the slums? The slums got bad. Instead, the blind man just deflected it, stepping back and calling in onto his radio. "I need an airstrike. Unmarked helicopters in line, prep them for war games. No survivors." With that, and a deft display of acrobatics, the Templar flipped out of the room and pulled himself into a defensive stance, unsheathing weaponry. A blind man with pistols? Never a good idea. Dante scoffed.

Whatever tiny unmapped partitions of his body hadn't been completely controlled with anger - be it routed and directed or allowed to roam free and unleashed - then, had now. It was only his natural composure that stopped him from becoming a rabid, frothing wreck. Dante began to scream. "So that's it?!" He cried, crouching behind the desk next to Emilio, ignoring the cowardly executive and raising his handgun. "Destroy the things you can't face?!" The screams from room to room were verbose enough that his brother could easily hear - exchanging cries and embittered remarks before the inevitable occurred, and the visionary had to run. But he could play for time yet - and though his anger was out of check, he needed this, to shout and scream and hurl insults at the man that had left him a boy to become a man. "You always were a destructive little prick as a kid, too!"

His hand jabbed over the desk once more, clasping the revolver, and fired it twice off through the doorway, but he knew, firing blind, both shots would go wide. The windows were open in the distance. The whirring of rotary helicopter blades was drawing nearer, the faint clicks of readied machinery, high-calibre gatling guns to turn him into little more than a vessel for entry rounds, a shredded pile of off-pink mulch and shed propellants. Get out of there, Dante. They will kill you. Yeah, and he knew it perfectly well.

A guttural, primitive snarl was rising from his throat, and he felt the anger twirling at every tip and fringe of his body, as he had many a time before; this was not an unfamiliar sensation, and it was one that, in his younger years as a practitioner of the darker arts, had often preceded a blackout, or a rage which he'd swiftly learnt to control, where the Prince of Serpents and he in tandem released bouts of oft-destructive fury upon all and any things nearby. Typically it was just the odd wall he punched through, leaving it sizzling and coated with organic acids, with the touch of the reptile intertwined with his own in an angry pairing, less than gentle, to be said. The last thing he wanted to do right now was leave, bail and let this fucker that had once been his brother get the satisfaction of a chase. But he didn't have much choice. He'd come too far to back out now - in this, with Emilio, with Liberation, with life - and when it was die or survive, the Snake did what it had to.

Turning and spinning, Dante broke into a sprint from his cover at the desk - towards a pair of double doors on the right-hand side of the executive's office. Hands held close and tight around his head and moving as erratically - and as fast - as he could to allow himself the best chance of survival incase the helicopters opened fire, hoping he wouldn't see another on the opposite side in a moment, lowering one hand and balling it into a fist, he broke through a pair of exquisite and ornate double doors and flung himself into the formidable Rio de Janeiro evening heat.

On a balcony.

But he didn't stop there - revolver still held tight, a ready-and-waiting Kurdai hissing in static in his head, the two words "war games" repeating in cycles over and over in his head, Dante vaulted straight over the balcony, and before releasing the railings, swung himself forwards, the knowledge of freerunning pre-installed well in the visionary from a childhood in Rio favelas. A grunt and a thud, knowing all too well he couldn't stop moving for shit now, he landed on a balcony on the floor below, his knees absorbing most of the shock and dampening it. A tenacious look on his face coupled with a light pant, barely pausing for breath, and definitively not knowing what his Templar brother would do next, now that he'd abandoned Guardez, the revolutionary threw himself through an identical set of double doors, kicking them through the hinges open and charging in. Hopefully that would buy him enough time to avoid the helicopters and start running, as he continued his impromptu escape.

[Gabriel Alencar]

Gabriel stopped momentarily. The thought of the information he came for being destroyed gave him a twinge of guilt, but some things were unexpected. Better for this place and the documents housed within to be destroyed than left in the wrong hands. A brief sigh passed his lips before he held out his arm and pulled back his sleeve. Finding his brother here definitely wasn't what he'd hoped would come of this trip. Seeing him (not literally) was one thing, but during a mission? The situation was growing to be more tedious.

The agent reached out to his wrist and fumbled slightly with his wrist watch before finding the button to activate his CrossGear. With a dash forward, he quickly disappeared into Inferis. A hole within the building's structure on the other side allowed him easy access to the next floor, and with a jump down he crossed back to the material plane... directly next to Dante.

"You know, it would probably be best for the both of us to get out of here before the guns start blazing." A smirk crossed his face as he straightened his sunglasses. "Napalm and explosions can cause a guy's day to just get worse."

With that he chuckled and ran to the elevator, at which point he pressed the down button. As he heard the whir of the cables pulling the transport to their current floor, he grasped the inner crease between the doors and pulled them apart.

"I'll forget you were here, nobody has to kill their brother today."

[Dante Alencar]

Out nowhere with a sharp whoosh his long-estranged brother appeared, seemingly from out of thin air, barely inches from him, with a tapered grin on that tanned face of his. "You know, it would probably be best for the both of us to get out of here before the guns start blazing." The sudden materialisation... it would have send many men of a less-informed state into a grand and total stupor; yet there Dante Alencar was, whilst stunned, far from confused.

The prior doubt in his mind had been present ever since the rage had awoken from within at encountering his long-lost once-"sibling"; that call for the airstrike, the sheer and total overconfidence in his stride, the impeccable nature of his suit and his mental fortitude at being able to ignore the sensory reflex of having a single .44 round launched past his head at breakneck speeds: that sort of training only came from the best of the best; the true elites of the world. But as he rematerialised with not so much as the batting of a blind eyelid and that grin of both arrogance and assurance, not a shadow of that prior doubt remained. His brother was no fellow Ritualist, in spite of what some would call a genetic predisposition; nor was he a Demon Hunter. But he was far from a simple civilian; and he was definitely not just from the Health Bureau.

The snarl rung loud and clear in his mind as Kurdai formulated the terminology before his lips could so much as react. Templar. That meant that not even by nature of their heritage they were here damned to being enemies - their sibling rivalry aside, whether it could be subjectively considered a petty spat to a fork in the road that would change both their lives for eternity, the dice of fate had been well and truly rolled here. They were enemies not only in what lied in their hearts - but what lied in their soul. And though his abandonment would not be so easily waived - the travesty of becoming a member of the so-called "prestigious" Order was an unforgivable offense to the motives of Liberation, and to his own sentiments. "I am going nowhere." The Brazilian Ritualist stated in absolution.

"Napalm and explosions can cause a guy's day to just get worse." Where he not so utterly and venomously furious with a man who had once called himself his own brother, Dante would have nodded in some essence of concurrence - but here his rage stopped him from agreeing with anything on anywhere from a philosophical to a cellular and molecular level that the man who had once been Gabriel Zachariah Alencar posed as a simple statement. As the suit-clad man pivoted on his heel and broke into a sprint with the spooling of miniguns echoing outside of this less-than-reassuring concrete prison, he screamed back a final "boon" for what the Templar clearly hoped would be the last of his encounter. "I'll forget you were here, nobody has to kill their brother today."

Dante's hands balled up into fists on pure instinct. Looking on, watching his brother in some diluted vision, some sort of slow motion, the visionary did nothing but simply observe as those lithe, tanned hands jammed themselves between the elevator doors and wrenched them open prematurely, leaping into the tiny steel box. There the Ritualist drew back his lip into a sneer and watched as a final smirk was offered from the Templar - one that 'presumed' by that twisted code of bastardised Catholicism that what Gabriel offered was mercy. This was no mercy: this was a test. And the voice of the Prince of Serpents ran loud and clear in his mind isolating a single directive he only agreed with. Get him.

The revolutionary waited for no further trigger; as the fire from the vicious automatic rotary-barrel cannons lit up the chaotic remnants of what was an already-destroyed and empty office building, the Ritualist broke into a sprint. The shearing 25mm rounds pumped themselves from the wrought steel cylinders, launching through in a gatling motion with a gunner hidden in a completely defensible canopy beneath. The unmarked choppers bore, true to their name, no insignia or even any visible indication as to where they originated from, with not so much as a model number, and a crew of what he could only presume to be ambiguous and multinational ex-air force specialists.

Behind him the office cubicles erupted into fire as he continued to run, running until his eyes clamped shut from the omnidirectional spray of grit, his ears locked down and began to ring from the overwhelming cacophony of the twin cannons lighting up this particular floor, and his lips drew back over viciously bared teeth; it was only as the elevator doors began to slide shut that Dante lowered his body into a skid in a fluid attempt to jam his leg through the closing doors and enter the elevator after Gabriel, but as the fine-soled dress shoe made a solid clunk against the shut twin doors, it appeared it was time to find an alternative plan of action.

The pillars guarding the elevator entrance were relatively defensible, obscuring him from the helicopters' line of sight; but one lucky shot, or a few seconds of continued fire, and it was game over. They had a lock on him nowhere. There was nowhere he could go - and jamming his fingers into the crease, as Gabriel had done, yielded no positive results - the shaft doors seemingly locked into place when the elevator was mid-motion. But if there was anything that the visionary voice of the people Dante Alencar was renowned and reputed for within the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, it was for thinking quickly. A little help, Kurdai?

It wasn't a moment before the Ritualist's hand wreathed itself in a sickly off-green glow, an ethereal collection of luminescence around his palms, and Dante clamped his eyes shut. A grin drew onto his face. There was still one factor in the real world that gave the younger of the siblings the upper hand: his Amalgam. Even at its base level, the Serpent's Touch had been and would continue to be of impeccable versatility and incredible use when the symbiotic duo required it most. My pleasure. And as the glow continued only to swirl about that tanned palm, the voice rang with an ominous boom, silent to the world but with all the gravity it could hope to possess within the caverns of the visionary's mind. Rise above your adversary, with the Serpent's Touch!

The glow faded, seemingly shrinking into the top-side of Dante's hand, flowing into it with a supernatural whoosh noise; and though there was no visible change in the shape, colour, strength, or size of the Ritualist's hand or fingers, upon it there was etched a single, thick, albeit small black sigil, almost like a tattoo; yet it seemed to move and fluctuate, crease and straighten, with every tilt of the revolutionary's arm. The grin only bolstered itself further for just a moment; before the Brazilian struck the pride from his mind - there were larger things at stake here.

The celtic knot upon the back of his palm glinted with the dark force of but a fragment of the Prince of Serpents' energy; and with it, Dante rose the index and middle fingers of his own right hand - the hand in questioned - and drew a swift, jagged, wide oval over the doors. He hadn't so much as completed the oval before the effects of this movement became distinct; in brushing the doors, the Brazilian had daubed some form of ethereal, other-worldly energies upon it - infact, one that bore corrosive natures a hundred times stronger than the most potent of Earthly acids. With a continual hiss the metal bubbled and warmed at his touch, and as the Ritualist drew back his fingers, wisps of thin, metallic smoke rose up, all the while the helicopters still drilling into the - now frail-looking - pillars which guarded him on each flank.

The final touch came as the suit-clad revolutionary rose his leg and slammed the sole of his foot into the afflicted panel, snapping it free from the locked doors and sending it flying down the shaft with a serious of loud clanks as it fell from one door to another - its downward trajectory shortly followed by the fierce visionary, who had no time to be afraid of the drop, who had no time to preempt whether or not it was too far to descend without sustaining permanent damage: he only had time to hope.

THUD.

Landing with both feet atop the shaft, the Brazilian stumbled for but a moment, feeling the wind move out of him and his knee jar; but he did not falter. He did not fail. He did not cease. Instead he rose the same feet he had landed upon, bringing one of them up high, before letting it fall back down in a vicious arc upon the emergency hatch of the elevator that his own brother occupied. Such a pathetic, so-called "escape" would not dissuade the most passionate of all of the country's Ritualists and visionary leaders. Dante had sprinted through the trail of obstacles Gabriel had left; and with the final one overcome, he dropped nonchalantly, suit tore in a few places, right hand glowing with the knot sigil of the Prince of Serpents himself, and he stared down his own blind brother with those cold metal eyes, and uttered a single, brief speech to let him know that the lesser of the Alencar siblings would not be made to relent so easily.

"You may forget this from our playing as children, Gabriel," A bold sneer as he pulled himself into one of his well-known boxing stances, feet a shoulder-width apart, hand blessed with the demonic acid of Kurdai held forward in a dominant and aggressive movement. "But I'm a persistent little fuck." The hiss came through gritted teeth. "If you're going to condemn your own brother to the echelons of a forgotten world behind without so much as a hint of regret..."

Something between maniacal and genius twinkled in those fierce grey irises.

"...you had better kill him first."

[Gabriel Alencar]

Gabriel's smirk left him as the doors closed in front of his brother, and the agent simply folded his arms behind his back. Explosions of gunfire rattled the building, yet the elevator shook only slightly from the onslaught. How long would it take him to reach the bottom floor, he wondered? As he heard a thud overhead, he realized that it may not be as long as predicted.

The man sighed and backed up to the corner of the elevator, back pressed against the metal frame and arms crossed, as Dante fell into the cabin. Persistent, just as he said he was, and how he always had been. Persistent in everything, including trying his elders' patience. Another sigh and he stepped forward, waiting to hear the motion of fabric to prove a punch was being initiated, and quickly flicked the brat in the forehead using his index and middle fingers.

"That's no way to start a fight, kid. You got it all wrong, the entrance, the lines, everything. You think you're in a Tarantino film or something?" He shook his head and snapped his tongue against his front teeth in disapproval. "Wasting the flash on me, Dante, I can't even see your smug little face anymore. A shame I won't see me knock it off you for the hundredth time too."

Gabriel shook his arms out and his sleeve fell back down. Definitely not the best arena, and nobody to admire this assbeating from afar, but the Templar could deal with it. Another smile and he waited for the runt's next move.

((I suggest bunnying Gabriel slightly, causing the gun to go off and snap the wire. Whatever you think would be best though, your call.))

[Dante Alencar]

"That's no way to start a fight, kid. You got it all wrong, the entrance, the lines, everything. You think you're in a Tarantino film or something?" There he went again with the fucking patronisation. Who the fuck did his brother think he was? There was four years between them - and just because his experiences lied with the military and Dante's in the favela, it was beginning to show clear that this blind-as-a-bat brother of his clearly had issues with narcissism and a superiority complex.

"Wasting the flash on me, Dante, I can't even see your smug little face anymore. A shame I won't see me knock it off you for the hundredth time too." A vein began to bulge on the downtrodden visionary's forehead. His hands were still extended; his fingers curled into vicious, straining angles, almost like they were claws ready to rip the very soul from within his brother's chest and devour it as he sat triumphant over the Templar's body. Wasting the flash, was he? Talking too much?

"Knock?" Dante smirked, and got ready to move. "If we're going hand to hand..." With that, he began to crouch down, collecting tension in his step - trying not to give his direction away, but he knew that no Templar, even a blind one, was deficient when it came to awareness. They were the world's greatest military operatives - their reflexes were unmatched in many a case. But the Ritualist isolated his target, put his eyes on the prize: the pistol. The pistol his blind brother held with such a hilarious swagger in his hand. "...then you won't be needing this!"

[INITIATE BATTLE THEME]

With that, he lunged forwards, knowing he had the element of surprise, but knowing his brother would be ready. He watched, the events almost once more unfurling in slow-motion as the blind man raised the pistol, surprisingly well-aimed. Lowering his shoulder, Dante charged into him, the gun going off and the round thudding itself into the elevator wall behind him, over the revolutionary's shoulder, before tackling his Templar brother to the floor, the pistol going off again.

This time, however, the handgun round fired dead-on upwards, through the hatch - and by some stroke of almost comical bad luck, with a resounding twang followed by the whipping of the steel tether holding the elevator in place, not to mention the feeling of Dante's lunch starting to rise up a small amount in his stomach, gravity took hold with its steely grip and one thing was confirmed, the Ritualist wresting the pistol free by slamming his brother's fist against the floor.

The cable holding them in place had completely snapped. The luckily reinforced elevator was now gathering speed in a weighty freefall down the remaining fifty stories of the already-ruined Guardez building. The revolutionary knew perfectly well the potential lethality of his situation, but that stopped nothing - instead he grasped the pistol Gabriel had been using, now on the floor, and responded to the gunshots with his own, though much more personal assault, spinning the handgun in his hand and bringing the hilt of it down in a deft arc into the left side of his brother's jaw.

Moments later, bloody gun in hand, he leapt back, unclipped the magazine and let it fall from the well and into his open hand, before drawing the slide back, ejecting a chambered single round to clatter onto the floor, and tossing the held clip out of the hatch, bouncing against the roof of the elevator, before throwing the empty, and now-useless pistol aside. "You hear that, Gabriel?!" Dante called in a raised voice to rise above the screeching of the elevator as it continued to whoosh down the stories, plummeting to what could be the pair's doom. "No more guns! Just me and you now, so put your fucking fists up!"

With his hackles raised, he waited for the Templar he had once called his brother to pick himself up from the floor and engage him in hand-to-hand combat; there weren't many stories left, and he wanted to prove to this blind, traitorous fuck that leaving him alone to stagnate and die in the favela was the worst choice of his life. And just how would Dante Alencar do that? How would he teach his scumbag brother this self-loathing he so rightfully deserved to possess, this embittered, burning regret that belonged with him, an overhanging sword of Damocles threatening to cut his life apart with sorrow at any point in time? How?

Simple. Dante was going to beat it into the fucker.

[Gabriel Alencar]

Block. Punch, punch, block. Punch, kick, block.

The agent repeated these motions, feeling the air fly off of each of his brother's attacks. He actually couldn't remember the last time he'd fought someone with not just tenacity, but also skill. An undeniable amount of skill. Dante had really grown up since he'd last seen (literally this time) him, even though it wasn't into the man the elder of the two had hoped.

"You've definitely learned a thing or two, little brother." Gabriel smirked, leaving the last words with a draw and more power in them as another of his punches was countered. He grabbed Dante by the collar, taking a punch to the jaw, and tossed him up. The free fall of the elevator was faster than their own, so as he jumped up the two of them went up through the emergency hatch rather quickly. "Your age is showing though, Dante."

The two of them continued trading blows, even whilst in mid-air, but this had to stop somewhere. There wasn't enough time before they would reach the bottom and die in a rather cartoon-ish splat, so Gabriel did what he did best.

"Think fast!" He held a leg out to balance his weight against the wall and grabbed the edge of an elevator stop with one hand, Dante's arm with the other. The blind Brazilian gave a heavy sigh of relief and chuckled. "Not that you'd need to, eh?"

Gabriel shakily hefted his grip on his brother's arm back up before moving his weight onto his back to keep them from falling and pulling out his second pistol. He then blasted off the emergency lock next to the doors. They quickly opened, and he threw Dante in before he climbed back up himself. For all he knew the kid would just kick him back through, but that was a risk he'd have to take. They were close enough to the bottom that the fall wouldn't kill him, but broken legs weren't exactly ideal either.

[Dante Alencar]

The pair of them were indeniably locked in clutch. Somehow the blind Templar batted away every punch he threw; every kick that should have landed or thrown Gabriel against the riveted far wall of the small steel box they had condemned themselves to was clasped and rejected with ease, before momentarily riposted. "You've definitely learned a thing or two, little brother." That instinctive, bloody growl rose from the guttural bowels of the junior Alencar's throat.

"We stopped being brothers when you left me to die in that slum fourteen years ago." With that, Dante twirled around one of his former sibling's punches, grasping his wrist tightly and lowering Gabriel's guard, before he raised his second fist into a jab which connected deftly with the Templar's jaw, drawing up a rivulet of blood from the corner of his mouth. But the visionary had ignored the possibility that this run of moves - this self-sacrifice - had been part of his sibling's plan along, as he felt the man grasp him by his collar - and launch the pair of them upwards.

Seamlessly, with the downward gravitational pull on the elevator being so strong that it rendered, for just a second, the upwards leap nothing more than a suspension in mid-air as they floated through the hatch swiftly. "Your age is showing though, Dante." Gabriel howled as the pair of them began to free-fall: now simply atop one another as they plummeted to an inevitable demise below. This was it: this was the end. For all the work he'd done he'd been reunited with a brother who was going to kill them both. But if he died, so did the man who'd betrayed him all those years ago. That was price enough to pay.

One of the Templar's uppercuts to his jaw dazzled the Ritualist and made him taste blood in the roof of his mouth; and as he was recouperating, blinking away the terminal velocity of their downwards trajectory, he heard only one thing: "Think fast!" It came again in their fluent, native tongue - and it was only moments before all the falling, all the spinning, all the combat ceased immediately. "Not that you'd need to, eh?" He felt a jerk on his arm as he was swung around in the warm grasp of his own sibling, his wrist jarring in the process - and looked with the cold steel of his eyes up to Gabriel, who had just saved his life.

The adrenaline surged round in tandem with the ice in his blood; and Dante was completely taken aback. The cocktail of a vengeful hatred, a desire to tie up a loose end from an era past, and yet a strange gratitude - not only for his life being saved from a presumably rather bloody ending at the bottom of a damp elevator shaft, but for the fourteen years Gabriel did give him. CRACK. The smoking gun lowered; the elevator doors hissed open dysfunctionally. Stoically he felt himself hurled upwards and through the gap the Templar had just opened, still mulling over what to do as he rolled through the debris and rubble-littered lower floor of what had once been the Guardez Enterprises building.

When Gabriel found the time to tug himself up, however, though he considered the risk of being kicked back down into a murky oblivion - or the last few floors of it, anyway - no such assault greeted him. Instead, deftly, the Ritualist loaded another single .44 round into his Anaconda and placed the barrel at an angle that it would greet the head of the blind Templar just as he wrenched himself upwards. Though the core and very fibre of his being seethed with a conglomerate of an innate hatred forged year over year with some strange sibling obligation that vaguely resembled the love he'd once held for this man, Dante spoke in only the coldest and most absolute tones he could.

"You just saved my life." The revolutionary remarked as if it were no more than a statement of fact. "You have my thanks, Gabriel." But that wasn't the end of it. He drew back the hammer with a resonating click - the barrel maybe two inches from the tanned skin of the Templar's forehead. A pound of trigger pressure and his brother's brains would spatter all down the elevator shaft in a gruesomely artistic collage posed only as a tribute to tying off stray contacts from the rebel's past life. "Today we both walk out of here alive." He reiterated - in different words - the same statements that had spilt forth from the blind man's lips, pivoting on his heel and simply just walking away as grit and silt crunched beneath his foot.

But a look of true determination - vengeful determination - still creased the Ritualist's pallor. "But I'm going to keep looking for you, Gabriel Alencar." And somehow it crossed in with a contented smirk. "And the next time I find you, I'm going to kill you." It was very much as simple as that.

[/i]

[EXIT THREAD]

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