Bradley Threads - Blog Posts
There was a little flutter in the pit of her stomach when Dante told her that he liked when she smiled at him. This really wasn't the time for her to be fixating on some offhand comment. The shop was in shambles. Her favorite customer was...certainly more than just her favorite customer. She'd seen plenty of infernal things in her day. She hadn't expected him to be one of them, but she supposed there were worse things that could happen. It was almost nice, really, the knowledge that she finally wasn't the only inhuman one in the room.
But this wasn't the time to enjoy that either. Even said with an edge of humor, there was dread in what Dante said next. He didn't think it was just an accident. On the contrary, he seemed to expected something more sinister. Given his clear offensive experience and her rather meticulous keeping that made accidents in the collection all but unheard of, she was tempted to agree. Things like this didn't happen here, not just a demon breaking out but anything, really. The idea made her stomach turn in a much less pleasant way this time.
And it gave her pause when he asked about potentially apocalyptic additions to her collection. Bradley thought about her eldritch roommates, about the prison her titanic mother had built that the two of them were standing above, about the doors to cells that defied time and space. She didn't want to be suspicious of him. Right now though, she was starting to get suspicious of everything. That wasn't information that she could hand over lightly. "Of course I know everything that I keep here." The nymph finally replied, deliberately only answering the first half of his question. She brushed past Dante to continue picking up pieces here and there that she could. "I-I need to start cleaning. I really appreciate you saving my life, but I-" she grunted as she tried and failed to start dragging a wrought iron wall ornament out of the barely there path left through the rubble. And continued trying even when the metal dug into her fingers. "Can you come back another day? I really need to take care of all of this."
His grin grew as she grinned back at him, she was getting under his skin the more he spent time around her. "I like it when you smile like that at me - it makes my day."Dante admitted without any hesitation. He was an honest man, always has been, plus it was cute to tease her and offer her well deserved compliments because when she blushed it made him feel a certain way.
Scratching along his forearm, it didn't pass him by the way she looked at him, and he had to bite his tongue back to continue with the teasing, there were times when he actually had to be a bit serious, to the best of his abilities. Dante hummed as Bradley explained how things in here worked, with her receiving contained supernatural entities and keeping them that way. Blue hues scanned through the mess, for a moment lost in thought before speaking up.
"There's gotta be some disturbing in the force."he pinched at his chin before looking back at her. "--- Sorry, been watching a lot of Star wars lately. What I mean is, something is definitively happening. There's been an increase in little portals opening up, demons being let into the human world... And this attack onto your shop didn't feel like an accident. I think that demon was looking for something - or testing the waters for someone else."Dante continued on, pacing around the wooden floor as he did so. "Do you know every thing you keep around here? Is there something you keep well hidden that could be dangerous if it'd get into someone's hands - like end of the world dangerous?"
"You'll be the first person I tell." She promised. And the only. It wasn't as if she really had anyone else to ask for help. Bradley didn't dislike her life. It had intrigue; it had purpose. There was always something new to learn. She liked that, but it was still a rather solitary life. Everything went into looking after the objects in her care. Most of them didn't require that much tending to. Some of them required too much to be left alone for long. Time to make connections didn't come easily or often. Centuries ago, there had been three more of her kind. Sisters that she'd never known. They were long gone, faded into nothing before she'd ever gotten a chance to know them. Her parents had made one last of them to fill in the gap and left her to figure it out. She'd done a pretty good job thus far. It certainly could've been worse.
She laughed once, glad for his humor now more than ever. It cut through the weight of what had just happened. "Maybe a little bit of both," she grinned back at him. Whether he was the scariest thing in here or not, he was definitely one of the more likeable things. It wasn't just poltergeists that she kept in check. There were evils older than time locked away beneath the foundation of her shop, monsters that her parents knew needed to be kept away from the world. She climbed upstairs to her little apartment on the second floor and slept above them every night after checking that all of her safeguards were still in place. Then she checked them again in the morning before doing anything else.
This time, she did blush just a little as Dante went on. It was silly, really, how simply hearing that he enjoyed her company was enough to dust her cheeks in pink. She busied herself then, making her way to the front of the shop to turn the sign on the door to closed and then beginning to pick up some of the more manageable pieces of debris. The questions that followed made her pause. Her hand hovered over the remains of an old medical textbook. She stood from where she'd been crouching to reach it and set the pieces on a precarious bookshelf. When she looked back to Dante, her eyes caught the motion of him rolling up his sleeves. They lingered there long enough to take in his corded forearms before she forced them up. "Nothing like this, no," she replied quietly. "I have other beings in here, but they always come to me contained. It's just on me to make sure they stay that way..." Bradley trailed off. Her brows pulled together. "Why? What are you thinking?"
Dante let out a sigh as she mentioned being even with him and it hardly felt like that, honestly, just by looking at the ruined stuff around the shop. His blue eyes looked at her closely and carefully as she glanced at one specific reliquary, often he wondered what was going on through her head, even more so now. "Still --- if there's anything I can do to help, just let me know, Bradley, alright?"he insisted.
At her bringing up how he isn't the scariest thing in here his brows rose up and he chuckled. "Should I be offended or flattered?"he asked with a little smug grin on his features, showing her he was just joking. Even though the demon was beat, his senses were on alert - the attack couldn't have happened out of no where, that demon was after something. And the more he backtracked, the more it seemed like the demon wasn't after him at all, the element of surprise with Dante being present making him kill it faster.
Once Bradley spoke again he snapped out of his thoughts and offered her another grin. "I do. I mean, it made sense who you are, with the whole business you have in your little shop. Kinda put the two and two together."he admitted with a shrug. "You've got a lot of things of interest kept here. Things that some might use for something bad. So I was kinda swinging by, got some reliquaries from you that helped me in my own agenda. And I grew to enjoy your company, you're one very interesting young lady."he chuckled and procedeed with putting his sword to the side so he could take off his coat, it was already damaged from the demon fight and the bullet hole wasn't as pretty. "Bradley, did you experience demon coming after you before? Have you ever had any sort of encounter similar to this?"he asked and began rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, while his trusted guns ebony and ivory rested on each side of his ribs.
Had her mind been more settled after the commotion, she would've blushed furiously when Dante called her 'a sweet little miss', but there was still some panic polluting her thoughts. He was talking, at least. He was breathing. He was alive. That was the only thing that she needed to know right now. She never would have forgiven herself if she killed anyone, least of all him. Dante always made the usually quiet days interesting when he came in, sure. More than that though, he made her smile. He made her laugh. A quieter creature herself, it had taken a while to adjust to the unending snark of him. It had been a bit jarring at first, but now she was always hoping that he would come in.
Thank the gods he had today.
Once she was satisfied that he was just as fine as he had been when he'd strode in earlier, Bradley finally began to survey the damage. Shelves and cases had crumbled to the floor in shattered bits. There were trinkets strewn out in every direction. Some had survived. Most hadn't. Luckily, she didn't keep anything particularly valuable out on the floor. Luckier still, she didn't keep anything with any kind of real power out here either. That was too risky. It wasn't as though she was going to sell those things anyway. They were safest in her care.
So she waved a hand when he offered to have other people come handle the damage. "Don't worry about it. You saved my life and I...shot you. I think we're even. Besides, it's a delicate ecosystem in here." Even if the items out here weren't particularly significant, they still needed to be placed thoughtfully, which was why the disaster was so odd. Bradley never put anything in proximity of another object that would agitate it. She couldn't understand why there was a reliquary holding the teeth of a saint still standing next to where the shattered pieces of the demon's vessel were lying. That was a rookie move, and she wasn't a rookie. She made a mental note to check up on the poltergeist she kept bound to a puppet in the basement.
She reached for the reliquary before turning to look at Dante as he began explaining himself. "Don't worry, you're hardly the scariest thing within these walls. I'm not freaked out. Well, I'm not freaked out now." She certainly had been a few moments ago. That hadn't necessarily been his fault though. With a small sigh, she set the divine item back on the remains of a shelf. "No, I'm not hurt. I'm just... Do you know about me then?"
The look on her face was genuinely horrified that she actually pulled the trigger. He didn't see her as a type to do that, anyway, even to own a gun for that matter. It seemed like his words didn't register as she rushed to his side and looked at what was left now just a hole in his clothes and a few stains of blood on the white shirt underneath the coat. Evidently she was in shock, but once Bradley is able to take a breath, she'll realize it all herself.
"Just got my ego bruised a little that such a sweet miss like yourself shot me."Dante said with a half smirk and a chuckle. "I'm alright, Bradley. Just peachy - another demon has been put in a shithole it crawled out of. I'm sorry for the, uh... mess."he then hummed and pursed his lips as blue hues scanned her cute little shop. "I know people who know people who can take care of it. It'll be like I was never here, swear my heart and hope to die."he said a bit too dramatically with the hand over his left side of the chest.
Dante cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. "So, assume I have some explaining to do. Hopefully I didn't freak you too much when I, you know, took onto that other form. I know it looks freaky, the wings, horns, all that shenanigans. But I need you to know I'm fully in control and it's still me - I don't always change like that but I had to, in order to protect you and react quickly."he elaborated before looking her over. "You're not hurt or anything, right?"
Truthfully, Bradley was more horrified by the fact that she'd actually shot someone than the revelation that Dante wasn't entirely human. The gun had been collecting dust in the back of a drawer since she'd inherited her little oddities shop from the previous owner. She'd never had to use it before. She'd never imagined that she would have to. Most of the time, she forgot that it even existed. In all of the time that she'd looked after all of the sacred objects in the shop's walls, she'd never faced a threat, whether human or not. Fear and chaos had triggered instinct and driven the nymph towards it though. She hadn't thought; she'd just pulled the trigger, and now that the air was calming after the confrontation that Dante had come out of victorious, she felt... She felt stupid.
How had she not seen it? Dante always came in asking about things that had power, seeking artifacts that regular people shouldn't be putting their hands on. Once or twice, it would've been a coincidence. Maybe he just had odd taste in decor. More than that? She should have known. Contrary to how she felt, Bradley wasn't stupid. Quite the opposite, really. She should have put the very obvious two and two together to realize that he was something else.
But that was something to tackle later. Because she'd actually shot him. "Oh my god- you- I shot-" she blurted. Dropping the revolver with significantly less care than she should have, the nymph scrambled to her feet and rushed over to Dante. "I'm so sorry! I didn't- I was- are you-" her eyes landed on the bullet hole in his clothes that revealed unmarred flesh. No bullet, no wound even. Still, she had to ask. "Are you alright?"
open to females 30+
plot; dante, devil may cry inspired. half-human, half-demon, twin brother to vergil. devil hunter and paranormal investigator. your muse has known dante for a while now, for whatever reason you see fit. but they don't know his true nature. once a demon attacks happen in her presence, she is left absolutely afraid as dante's devil trigger works and he transforms into a demonic creature. once he is back in his human form, in fear, she shoots him. but that doesn't kill him, of course. she could be aware of the supernatural or not, it's up to you.
"------ That stung."Dante says as he grabbed onto his shoulder and saw blood there. "And you ruined my favorite trench coat, come on. Not cool."the half-demon huffed and looked over at her still holding the gun. "Can a guy just not have a gun pointed in his face every single day? I deserve a break. And a slice of pizza. Bleeding makes me hungry."Dante protested and looked down at his shoulder as it began to heal on it's own, thanks to his demon blood he reacted differently to many things, unlike normal humans or demons. And he healed quickly, and easily. The bullet got pushed out as the wound closed off, only what was left was a hole in his clothes where the bullet went through. "Look --- just put the gun down, yeah? I did save your life, just to remind you. I can explain - or at least try to."Dante shrugged and took a careful step towards her. "Bullets can't kill me, anyway - you're just going to ruin my clothes and it's kind of annoying, really."