Disclaimer: Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry 3, Dante, Vergil, and all relevant persons are the property of Capcom and this humble piece of fiction is only my own contribution to one of the greatest games ever made or played.

Summary: My version of Code 2: "Vergil". I've always wondered what he was up to before Devil May Cry 3…not, in any way, related to my other fic, Brother Never Cry. Standalone.

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DEVIL MAY CRY

NOT KNOWING WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS

CHAPTER ONE:

IN SEARCH OF A LEGEND

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His steps echoed in the corridor, which had long lain silent and empty since the defeat of the demons. Things which had been there for the years so unkind to mortal beings stirred drowsily ere his feet passed, leaving a trail in the swirling, clogging dust. The walls remembered many things, and as the intruder—as he felt he was—trod upon centuries of grit, he fancied he heard the fading screams of thousands of victims, the low, throbbing chant of the priests who had come here to revere the power that had once filled there unholy caverns with its wrathful might. He shook his head quickly. He was not one to engage in such foolish fancies. The dead were dust, and long gone; and that was that.

A thin smile curved his lips. Yet he was here, to disturb that which should be sleeping—vanished, and forgotten, from the minds of men. But there were those who had not forgotten, and desired such a return. He was one of them, but for different reasons; those who thought he aided them would be shocked and scandalized to know his true thoughts…

He stopped, the dust falling to rest gently on his boots, and took a slow look around. What am I doing, he asked himself. Deep underground, in search of a legend. A dream eroded by the inexorable march of time. It might have seemed foolish for lesser men, but he was no normal man that dreamt of petty power. He wanted the real thing, to armor himself in it and shield his vulnerabilities. Power; that was what his kind respected, down to the lowliest imp.

He wanted the head of the Demon King.

He scowled and chastened himself. He was still far from such a thing, and a dream it was and would remain, until he had succeeded in his quest. Arkham was a fool if he believed that Vergil would not kill him; once the gate was unlocked Vergil intended to do away with a human that was rapidly and annoyingly outgrowing whatever usefulness he had offered Vergil. The man was thinking far above himself, and Vergil distrusted men of ambition. After all, he was one himself, and look where it had gotten him.

He smiled, but did not chuckle; the darkness contained many things he was not anxious to disturb, and he had a healthy respect for anything that had survived this long. He continued his silent trek through the eerie stillness that was a perfect backdrop for the sounds his imagination—his all too human imagination—continued to conjure up. The underground passages were wreathed in ghostly, tomblike silence that seemed to him like the waiting breath before the snake struck to swallow its victim whole; an anticipatory, living silence that gnawed away at his rational mind—

He was doing it again. Vergil swiftly reassessed his opinion of his human weaknesses. Perhaps the hidden passages were enchanted to make it so, to infuse all humans unprotected against the voice of evil with such screaming fear that they could never venture a step in; the perfect and most suiting weapon the Demon King could hope to use.

Was not Temen-ni-gru, after all, a monument to fear?

He walked on; now the darkness fell away into deep puddles of black in the corners before a pale, frail light that shone on somewhere before him. It was, of course, arcane in origin; he was too far underground for it to be an innocent ray of sunlight that had somehow penetrated through the layers of protection swathed around Temen-ni-gru's resting place like a shroud, assuming that sunlight was even allowed in the chambers of the Demon King in the first place. He was after all, darkness incarnate, and sunlight might have offended his delicate sensibilities and sense of theatricality. He smirked to himself as he walked, his boots sloshing through something that he pointedly kept his gaze away from.

The chill, murky air of the caverns thus far grew warmer the more he approached the light. The reassuring weight of the tachi did much to bolster his confidence; fingers around Yamato's hilt in a firm grip, he edged nearer. He turned a corner…and found the source of the light. The mouth of the next cave, i.e. the exit, was completely plugged with white, softly glowing marble. Vergil did not bother to smash it in, much less touch it; it was undoubtedly blessed and would cause him much unnecessary agony should he attempt to do so. Instead he knelt close, his face betraying its inner revulsion as the light trickled over his skin in pulsing waves. The demon inside snarled and withdrew from the holy radiance.

No doubt this was the first guardian seal. Vergil sat back and mused. Arkham had been annoyingly vague about the nature of the seals, though he had hinted that Vergil would be able to take care of them without too much of a fuss. Vergil suspected that Arkham was unsure himself, but was much too proud to admit him.

Vergil dismissed him with a shake of his head. Gritting his teeth in expectation of pain, he reached out and very quickly brushed the tips of his fingers against the warm marble. Warm, and living beneath his hand, and oddly soft…

He jerked his hand away with a startled gasp that he could not control. Bright light flared all about him, blinding him for a moment, then sharp pain wracked his innards with exquisite thoroughness. Yamato was out and sweeping before him before he knew what he was doing, and was rewarded with a hot explosion of blood that awakened the demon self. Vergil screamed as the demon within rose, tasting blood and hungry for more—and kept on rising, through his throat, in a burst of luminous cobalt. As the crested demon swayed on its clawed feet, poised to strike, the white light died and shrunk, coalescing into the form of a small dragon-like creature with pearly, almost translucent scales that seemed almost feathery, standing aloft on its two hind legs. Its pale eyes shone hotly like two stars, large and liquid, with a disturbing human quality. On its front, the beautiful purity of its scales gave way to smooth, feminine breasts reduced to a bloody mess where steaming, viscous fluid the hue of amethysts dripped slowly from the deep gash. The little lamia seemed oblivious to the wound; its small but still lethal teeth were bared in a threatening growl.

It lunged, its sleek little head questing ahead to seek his vulnerable spots. The demon did not let it; he executed a perfect turn in the air, over the head of the lamia, and landed with a wet squelch on the ground. The lamia's jaw lifted, and with a high bark expelled a ghostly sphere that gleamed with a pallid and rather unnerving glow. The demon slashed at it with the tachi, but it continued on its merry way towards him. Being equipped with instincts that assured him that whatever the sphere was, it meant no good, the demon was forced to retreat. It was not too stupid to back up against the seal, though. With a neat little roll, the demon avoided the ball, which expended itself against the luminous seal, and seized the opportunity to slash at the lamia's legs. Unperturbed by the wound, the lamia snaked forward to fasten its sharp teeth around the demon's arm. Enraged, the demon struck at the minute creature, hanging off his arm like some demonic version of the domestic vicious puppy. Long claws raked the side of the monster, but it hung on with childish stubbornness. A tail more whippy than it looked flashed up, and the demon narrowly avoided losing an eye to the vicious barbs that lined the end. The tachi sword flashed once, as it carefully slid through the chest of the lamia.

Its jaws loosened, it fell, a stiff little statue. Eyes the color of pigeon's down stared blindly into eternity as the skull bounced once against the floor. The demon, bored, slid back down into slumber, leaving behind the human. Vergil backed away warily, Yamato raised threateningly. He couldn't believe that it had been that easy—

The first guardian twitched, and so did Vergil's lips, in a wry smile.

But of course. He'd have expected nothing less from his father.

The lamia raised its head. Its eyes were lifeless and dead as river stones. He should have realized, when he had first beheld those orbs. The lamia had been dead for a very long time, until he'd awoken it from its ages-old slumber, to rise to the duty commanded of it. Time had no precedence here; its shining coat of steel-edged feathers still glittered like diamonds in the aura of the seal.

It flowed forward, not awkwardly and stumbling like so many undead had been, a testament to the quality of the reanimation spell. Its eyes burned in the darkness, not with life, but with the power of the seal it had been bound with. Vergil opened his arms and let the change overtake him; then he sprung—onto the back of the lamia. Its seemingly soft feathers cut valleys of blood in the palms of his clawed hands as he got a good grip on its mane. The lamia spat with furious protest, the barbed tail flinging up years of slime from the cavern floor in vain. The demon let the pain spur him on; his huge hands engulfed the lamia's slender throat. The lamia attempted to roll, but its body had been built precisely to avoid being overbalanced and thrown over, and now it was finding it hard to lose its footing purposely, even more so with the demon guiding it. His hands squeezed, and tore, cutting off brutally the squealing scream of the young lamia. The dismembered head was flung into a distant corner, and with ruthless efficiency the demon proceeded to tear the rest of the lamia to pieces. Even beheaded, the body was putting up a furious fight; one flailing claw cut right through the demon's skulled visage and glanced off his fangs. After the body had been ripped into several pieces, Yamato went to work, chopping the squirming pieces even as they attempted, slug-like, to reunite with their fellows.

Vergil had not been watching the head. It had been a careless gesture; as he strode past, the severed head flung itself from its resting position with remarkable agility and the delicate maw slipped around his neck neatly. The teeth were drawn against the throat with painful tightness, and Vergil's first instinct, which he acted upon, was to claw at the clamped teeth with both hands. He soon discovered the futility of this, and by that time the jagged teeth were drawing near the jugular vein with eager rapidity. His own teeth bared in a snarl, Vergil threw himself backwards, against the hard cavern wall, and was rewarded with a sickening crunch and a growing spot of wetness on his coat. But the damned head did not release its grip. Again, he slammed himself into the stone, his bruised body crying out in protest. Finally, after such intensive battering, the merciless jaws ceased its assault and became still, locked around his throat in a death grip. Gingerly, Vergil pried it apart and let it fall to the ground, whereupon the impact turned it into a small pile of dust. The rest of its body proceeded to follow it into dust, and eventually even that was gone.

A small, plaintive whisper remained. "…Magister, why do you harm your own…?"

The seal glowed fiercely with a throbbing light. Bright and dark it pulsated, and finally a scorching radiance that tore at Vergil's eyes such that he was forced to shut his eyes against the glare. A booming sound vibrated his eardrums, and when he opened his eyes at last, blinking the spots away, the seal lay sundered at his feet, leaving the way ahead clear. Vergil cast a disdainful look at the lifeless rubble littering the entrance and entered without another look back.

He had broken the first seal.

Deeper within the labyrinthine confines of the resting place of the Tower of Fear, the remaining seals flared, as though mourning the loss of their brother. Then they quietened, the imprisoned monsters within shifting restlessly in their slumber. Waiting.

Behind the last seal, Temen-ni-gru did not move. But it, and its inhabitants, knew of the destruction of the first seal. And they, too, waited.

Soon.

end Chapter One.

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Author's Ending Note: Ever since the arrival of DMC3 Special Edition, I've been stricken with a revival of interest in DMC. Hence this story. (I know I'm going to regret it. I know I will, when I'm stricken with writer's block instead.) Anyway, I hope for some honest and helpful feedback which will tell me exactly what you like and don't like about this story. It's all for your sake, you understand.

T. Axile.

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