"Hey, Lev! You good in there!?"

With his hands in the pockets of his jacket, Dante waited outside a transparent glass cube, watching as a man in a plague suit hunched over a workbench. Finally noticing his presence, the man stopped mixing the contents of two test tubes and turned the long beak of his mask in Dante's direction.

"Lil' bro! You gave me a scare back there!"

Having come out of his workspace, the first thing the bony man did was shake Dante a few times while giving him an unsolicited hug. He seemed to be in quite a good mood, even more than usual.

"I came by to drop the rest of your things," Dante said. "You'll have to set them up yourself, though."

"Whaaaat!!? Well, I guess that's fine."

Barely ten days had passed since the Alchemist had settled in his new home, and from the looks of it, he was quickly growing fond of the place. Though it was an identical copy of his White Hill hideout, the one thing it lacked was the lurking presence of the BEO and NVPD, which had once threatened all of his operation, making it infinitely better than every other hideout he had previously had. For that reason, Lev made the bold decision of moving all of his operations into the pocket dimension, and that included all of his production facilities.

"Are you sure about this, Lev?" Dante asked.

"About what?"

"Moving everything here. Won't this just force you to rely on me to get things across?"

The Alchemist had several factories around the country. Most were small-scale and fully automated to handle the production of his counterfeit medicine. The impact of moving them to the pocket dimension was going to be much more severe compared to how it would affect the production of the recreational drugs sold for profit.

Walking over to the fridge by the corner, the bony man took out two beer cans and tossed one to Dante.

"Don't worry about it too much." He said. "If we no longer have to worry about the locations being exposed, we can be a lot more aggressive when pushing our products."

Popping the can open, Dante narrowed his eyes.

"So what you're saying is that you'll drop more work on my shoulders."

Of course, since he was the door connecting the pocket dimension to the real world, Dante was now responsible for moving the products between the two worlds.

"C'mon, lil' bro. I'm paying you, am I not?" Lev said with a toothy grin.

"Not as much as I'm getting paid by the others."

Right now, Dante had several cartels on his client list. The money they paid him would have been insane only a few months ago, but now, he was making twenty times as much just from Volcan trading stocks for a day. Still, it was a considerable sum compared to what his bony friend was paying.

Of course, Dante wasn't trying to get more out of the deal the two of them have. Money wasn't much of a problem anymore, so whenever he took on a new job, it would either be because he had to or because he wanted to.

"By the way," Lev gestured toward a container in the corner. "I've finished another batch. Mind dropping it off for me?"

"Sure," Dante went over to put it into his Storage. "By the way, are you sure you don't want to take a break? Don't you have people you need to update?"

"Nah, you don't have to worry about it. I'm used to going dark for weeks on end. I just need to pop my head out once a month from now."

Dante felt a little weird about this new arrangement they were having, and more than a little worried. He had already instructed Volcan to remind him in case he forgot to check on his pocket dimensions, but what worried him the most was the chance that something might happen to him. He didn't care that much for Pepper Farm and the other pocket dimensions where he trapped goons for his own experiments, but if he were to leave someone he cared about locked away with no hope of making it out…

'I hope Suzuka cracks the portal tech soon…'

~[ ]~

Having done the rounds, Dante returned to the Red Oni Club to start his training for the day. Both Riot and Oliver were there, already done warming up. Seeing him enter the arena, the blonde one beamed with excitement.

"Hey, Boss! You're late today!"

"Yeah, yeah, I just had to take care of something."

After the first couple of weeks, Oliver no longer seemed afraid of their training session. If not for the exhausted state he would be left in, he probably would have been looking forward to them by now, but Dante refused to decrease the intensity, continuing to push him just one step away from breaking.

Smiling to himself, he was about to remove his jacket when he heard the faint sound of fabric tearing. He froze for several seconds, his expression blank, then continued. Ever since he received his MBIs and started equipping Level 3 Modules, he had been going through his jackets one after the other. What should have been a negligible increase in size was costing him, and if he hadn't made the drastic decision of tossing out all of his pants and exchanging them for a more loose option, he would have lost more than just clothes.

"Another one, huh?" Oliver frowned. "It sure is tough…"

"You aren't even that big," Riot said.

"Well, I don't usually buy from the fat fuck section." Dante shot back.

They got straight to training, and before they knew it, a couple of hours had passed. As they sat down for a break, Dante noticed that Oliver didn't look as exhausted as he would usually be around this time. He took it as a sign of his underling having adjusted to the training program. Another sign was that he no longer took as many blows, and he was starting to parry attacks more often, though that caused the number of bruises he suffered to remain the same.

'Damn geniuses…'

Sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, Dante closed his eyes and dove deep into his mind. He cut off everything, clearing his mind of all thought. As he repeated the process over the last few weeks, it became much easier, but that could only be said about the first stage. As he floated in the endless darkness, the faint sound of waves reached him.

[Dante. Riot is trying to get your attention.] As if to shatter the focus he worked so hard to gather, Volcan chose that moment to speak up. [I suggest that you keep quiet and not make a sound.]

The annoyance faded as Dante caught on to the strangeness of the situation. Keeping his calm, he slowly opened his eyes and looked to his left, having sensed the large hand shaking his shoulder. With a massive grin on his face, Riot gestured to the other side of the arena. Dante followed his gaze, and the moment he saw what the big guy was trying to show him, his eyes shot wide open.

Oliver was there, sitting in the same lotus position as Dante. He appeared to be meditating, which usually looked weird, knowing the kind of personality the blond guy had. Somehow, that weirdness seemed to reach an entirely new level this time around. His blond hair was floating upward as if blown by a faint gust of wind, and the youth himself was glowing, radiating a faint golden light that seeped into his surroundings. Dante's bionic jaw malfunctioned, and if not for the skin holding it in place, it would've likely fallen off as he understood what was happening.

He did it. The son of bitch really did it.