Hello. I'm sorry I've been out for the longest time. Med school is a harsh mistress and I rarely, if ever, managed to find the time to update. Sorry to say, but Jester will not be continuing as planned due to unforeseen consequences at the time.
This is a one-shot in a crossover universe between Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. It can stand alone, but I have plans (very unlikely to be fulfilled) to make more one-shots and stories with this scenario in mind. I won't tease you further with anything - I'm not a sadist - so let's get this show on the road.
There is nothing quite like the sound of sharpened steel hitting sharpened steel. It is horrible to the ears, much like nails on a chalkboard. It causes pain to both the sword and the wielder, as the edges deteriorate much quicker when they grind against edge, as well as the fact that the follow-through to the swing is interrupted in a very unpleasant way. In a fight, it's something to be avoided as much as reasonably possible. In the heat of battle, it's not always a conscious reflex to block with the flat of the sword –
Which is why the blonde witch in the red dress was wondering why her opponent seemed to be intent on doing just that. It was as if he was trying to break his own sword, but from the rest of his moves, appeared to be a fluid and skilled fighter. The corners of her mouth raised slightly, relishing in the fact that her sword, reforged by the best blacksmith in Heaven or Hell, imbued with the essence of the best swordsman Hell had ever known, was going to come out of it without a scratch.
The quiet island-city of Fortuna stood in the background as these two fought near the seaside by the docks. There were no ships in the docks, and no other people in the inns and taverns near it, as almost everyone had gone to the castle-town of Fortuna to celebrate the anniversary of Sparda's rebellion. The waves broke against the shore in peaceful rhythm, as if to lull children to sleep. The full moon's light alone illuminated these two, and shone off the surface of the water in ripples of light. If someone else were looking at this fight, they would see nothing but the silhouettes of two extremely skilled swordsmen fighting with each other.
The witch knew better, though – to an experienced observer, they would see something like a master and a student, training together, the student exerting his effort to defeat his master, and the master doing slow, telegraphed strikes to ensure that the student would be able to defend, and blocking, dodging, and parrying the student's haphazard strokes as if she had taught him everything he knew. The man had a candle's chance in a torrential thunderstorm to win – and yet he could not stop.
They had gone into a dance of attack and defend, neither one of them giving any ground for long. With every strike they had to dodge or block, but they regained the advantage promptly by counterattacking and then lost it. None of the two had shown openings for long, and if they had it was only to goad the other into attacking. The witch loved the action and was intentionally holding back, because she had not seen a skilled enough fighter to somewhat challenge her for a while, besides Cereza. On the other hand, the man was doing his best to kill his opponent but was frustrated with every move by how she managed to block, dodge, and parry everything. It took him all of his skill to be able to bring his sword back to proper position to avoid incoming attacks, and he knew that this witch was just toying with him.
The man in blue went for a lunge but it was parried by an arcing strike. He brought his sword back to guard against a strike to his left that was far too slow to be serious. He moved to his left to attempt to interrupt the hit but the opponent's sword had changed direction by then and had moved to strike his right. He jumped back since he could not block it by then but found himself being pursued by strikes which he had to fend off by backing away and blocking as he could.
The woman in red ceased attacking after the man had gotten out of range, lowering her sword and pointing it at the ground. By no means was she tired; in fact, she was giving the other the chance to recover, seeing that he was already breathing heavily. She suspected that he was already sweating profusely under that coat of his. His face spoke of the effort he had made to be able to keep up with her.
"Are you quite finished?" she said. She had lowered her guard, true, but it was still there. The wide opening was there to ensure that she knew where he would attack next. With relaxed eyes she looked at her opponent more closely.
The man wore a blue coat with gold trimmings, silver buttons, and silver lines running next to the center of his coat. She could see that the coat itself was very expensive, and if she were a man, perhaps she would have had the same tastes. He had put his sword in its sheath, but had his hands on it to bring out in a flash if needed. What really got to her were his grey-blue eyes, which weren't even looking at hers. In fact, he was looking at her chest.
"Eyes up here, boy," she said. She didn't consider herself particularly attractive, but she knew that men could be attracted by the simplest things. Her own blood-red outfit didn't put particular emphasis on her chest, but the long hair she sported was supposed to be the most attractive feature she had. It is a little frustrating, she thought. The man did as she said in the end, and those eyes spoke for him.
The dark rings underneath his eyes told her that he had stayed awake for a long time. She wondered if his skill and speed earlier would have improved had he gotten some sleep beforehand, but the way those eyes looked at her – they were the eyes of one damned to hell.
"You have something I want," said the man, and now he was looking her in the eye to see where she was looking. It was slightly unnerving, like a tiger looking you in the eye, ready to strike the moment you look away. The hatred in his eyes was surely making him sloppy. Still, she pointed her sword to the ground, ready for anything her opponent would do.
"And what is that?" she replied. While she was confident she could defeat this person as easily as a child, she was curious as to where he had gotten that look. Not everyone can look like they had been damned to hell and managed to get out, fighting every step of the way. His determination got her interest, and her sword lowered even further.
"I am Vergil, son of Sparda," he replied, "and I will take back what is rightfully mine."
It wasn't even a blur, but a flash. She had seen him take a step forward but that was really all before she knew she had to raise her sword back up to prevent him from cutting her down. He was all but invisible when he closed that distance towards her. Her eyes widened when she saw that his face was right in front of hers. She felt a slight but sudden give from her sword, and knew that he had managed to damage one of their blades.
"Calm down you fool!" she said. She still held back, but the name of Sparda was not to be invoked as easily as this man had. If this Vergil was really the son of a legend, she had to at least be able to talk to him and find out why he was attacking her of all people. However, he remained silent and pressed his sword closer to her, with only her sword to protect her neck. It was a deadlock at this point, and the witch knew that if she tried to push back too hard she would overexert and possibly get cut by Vergil's sword. This boy was fast!
Vergil pulled back quickly and her instincts told her to move to the side. She dodged the move without knowing where it would hit, and after she recovered she could see that he was already charging towards her from where she was standing previously. She parried the strike just as easily as before. She smiled – the boy was skilled, but he was also very inexperienced. She could predict his every move easily. If this boy really was the son of the legendary Sparda, then he had so much more potential. What she was seeing right now was a mere trickle, a leak in a dam. If she had to keep it a secret, she would teach this boy how to really fight. He would become legendary himself. But first, to stop him from trying to kill her. All she had to do was disarm him or talk him down.
This was proving to be getting harder with every passing moment as Vergil was starting to be able to read her moves. She didn't want to permanently injure him – Rodin's weapons were designed to harm both angels and demons and leave wounds that would not heal by supernatural means – and he wasn't tiring whatsoever. In fact, he seemed to be drawing energy from every blocked strike, every parry, and every time that her sword came dangerously close to cutting him. She would have to deal with this problem before he got too powerful to take.
"What is it that you want, really?" She could have stopped fighting, but she was one of the last witches in the world. Defending their honor meant never being bested in a fight – the Umbra Witches after all had managed to defeat the Lumen Sages, and then gone into hiding as people started to persecute them in the name of a god that didn't really exist as such. She would only truly lay down her weapon when her opponent had died or given up.
Vergil would not give up either, and enemies talking riled him up very quickly. It meant that they had enough energy to talk when they should be fighting. He would have given up from the difference in skill level, but there was a drive – from somewhere, he could not tell – that told him to keep fighting, just like what makes water flow or what makes fire rise up. He kept thrusting and slashing, and noticed his sword somehow becoming lighter in his hands, his strokes becoming more effortless and practiced.
The witch noticed it too. "I fear we may have gotten off on the wrong foot," she said, as she deflected another strike to her head, sidestepped, and let the force of the strike fall to the ground. She struck him but he had already rolled out of the way.
"Just let me have your sword and I'll stop," he replied. He had sheathed the sword again and was waiting for an attack. She noticed that he was looking at her eyes this time around – was that disgust? or nostalgia? She couldn't read the emotion in his eyes, but she knew what she could not do.
"That's not something you can negotiate for," the witch said. She had readied her sword again, by lowering it and pointing it to the ground – but she had something else at the ready.
"Then I guess negotiations end here," Vergil replied. He started going on the attack while the witch parried and blocked everything just as flawlessly, going on the attack every now and then just so he would not gain momentum in this deadly dance of blades.
Really, the witch thought to herself, there was no way she was giving a treasure of the Umbra, not even to the son of Sparda. The blade had served her well during the war between the Lumen and Umbra, having killed several angels even without the improvements Rodin had made to it by binding an incredibly powerful devil's soul to it. It was a powerful weapon, and not something to be left unguarded.
Unless, of course, the boy actually deserved it. She was going to have to see if he really was his parents' son.
The witch went on the attack, driving Vergil back. He tried to cut in to the flurry of stabs she was using to deter his movement but he could not. While the sword hadn't cut into him at all, he was being driven back. She steadily increased the speed and intensity, but he seemed to be increasing in strength all the while. If this kept up, by morning she might actually lose.
"Stop holding back!" he grunted, as their swords locked again. He could see the friction between the two swords causing the point of contact to glow from heat. He pushed harder and harder until he saw his opponent's sword start to bend.
The witch was alarmed at this, but kept her composure. "Trust me, boy, you don't want that," the witch replied, pushing him away. "Now you're just getting sloppy!" she said, as Vergil stumbled backwards. He regained his footing and immediately lunged forward with his sword aimed at her chest. She stepped to her right to avoid the thrust, and moved to block the follow-up cut from her left, blocking with the flat of her blade as it is supposed to be.
The sound of breaking glass filled the night as both of the combatants stopped in their tracks in shock at what happened. The witch's sword was broken into shards of metal, with her grip on the hilt slackened from the shock, while Vergil's was still intact – but he too had slackened his hold on his sword. In the darkness of the night, neither of them had seen a dark haze seeping from the jagged, broken shards of the sword, going behind Vergil and entering him like a sponge soaks up water.
"You." The witch broke the silence. Her mind was still reeling – a treasure of the Umbra, a lost relic of the past, gone – because of her foolishness? Her pride? Her mind was still not capable of comprehending what she saw before her. Like a nail, the fact needed to be driven in with a hammer.
"If it broke, it was worthless in the first place," Vergil said. He sheathed his sword and started to walk away. That was the strike of the hammer that snapped the witch back to her senses. She would at least make this fool suffer.
"Stop right there!" she said. Vergil turned his head to look back, and saw that the woman had a gun pointed to his head from a few paces away. "I don't know if you are who you claim to be, but you will pay for destroying an Umbran treasure."
"You misunderstand," Vergil said, and turned around, hand on his sheathed sword. "I was not after the sword at all. This won't end well for you if you –"
He was interrupted by the gun firing at him, which he bent over to avoid. Vergil retreated by a few paces, and the witch fired another salvo of bullets at him. He drew his sword at just the right time to intercept the bullets being fired from the woman's guns. The bullets were stopped by the sword, spun rapidly by its owner to protect him, and were then deposited at his feet. The witch raised an eyebrow, but did not admit to herself that she was impressed by this feat. Vergil then flicked all the bullets back at the witch.
One moment, Vergil saw that the witch was there, stunned at his defense and attack – and the next, he saw an eclipse of moths – and he had no time to wonder where those came from, because in the next moment he felt a bullet in his head.
During the moments when the bullets were being returned to the witch, she had almost forgotten to react to the attack, in both her tension from the loss of her sword and the surprise from her bullets being deflected by a sword. It was the last thing she could do to use Moth Within – to turn herself into an eclipse of moths to avoid the damage, and in the process, activating Witch Time.
"It's a shame, really," she said, "but it ends here." She shot him in the head once – no need to go overkill, it was unbecoming of her – and then the flow of time resumed as it was. She looked at Vergil – no need for further surprises that could be averted by common sense.
"It seems we have reached an impasse," Vergil said. The witch's calm exposure finally cracked just the tiniest bit, and her jaw was left slightly hanging. He didn't notice this, however, because his hair had gone in disarray from the blood the wound had taken out, putting bangs and blood in front of his eyes. He put a finger in the hole in his head and took the bullet out. It wasn't obvious before, because the dark night had made things hard to see, but she saw that he had a necklace which glowed with a soft golden light. "You can't kill me, and I can't hurt you."
She wanted to disagree with that, but it would be far too much effort to be fighting when she could be getting another important artifact from where a witch once lived. The history of the Umbran Witches could not be allowed to die out, and… this boy in front of her, in a way, was part of it. Perhaps he knew it himself?
"Well met, Son of Eva," she said. "I am – "
"How do you know my mother's name?" Vergil replied. The corner of her lips raised ever so slightly – so she was right! He had kept his sword sheathed, but he looked as if he was about to draw it on her. At this point Jeanne knew that if she got too testy he would do his best to run her through again, and so she chose her next words carefully.
"She is" she said, pausing for effect, "infamous among our kind." When Vergil had stayed his blade, she continued. "She was quite the legend, too. She made a contract with the Dark Knight Sparda, who saved the world from being overrun by demons."
Vergil chewed on this information carefully, trying to see if there was any part of that which could explain things. He knew very little about his father, except that he was indeed a legendary figure who had saved the world. His glowing saint of a mother had taken care of him and his twin brother while their father was gone. He could accept that she had made a contract with a demon, especially if it were his father. The last time he had seen his mother, she had given them each an amulet. She said it was their father's, and that it would protect them when they were in danger. That was right before she was killed by a demon, and he was taken by a demon while his brother was impaled through the chest in front of his eyes.
"Tell me more," he said, and the witch smiled.
…
Jeanne picked up the pieces of her broken sword on the beach after Vergil had fallen asleep in one of the inns. Rodin could probably fix it – wait until he heard of the guy who managed to break it! However, she still had to get one of the few pieces of the Bracelet of Time here so that she could give it to Rodin and have it examined and perhaps reverse-engineered. Eva was particularly guarded about where she put these items, said to give complete mastery of Witch Time to those who use it. Rightfully so – allowing anyone with sufficient magical energy stores (which is to say, anyone who could brew up Magic Potions) to essentially stop time whenever they wish with no reserve would have caused chaos on the scale of what happened with the Climax Bracelet.
"Jesus. This boy is going to be so much trouble when he gets older." She walked off to the castle to get the bracelet and keep it out of the hands of anyone else who would try to get it.
Nine months later, a baby boy with white hair and blue-grey eyes was found wrapped in a black blanket, crying in an alleyway.
Disclaimers: Besides the usual "These properties do not belong to me", I would like to add that I am absolutely, in no way, implying that Jeanne is Nero's mother. We already know that Vergil is Nero's father thanks to the 3142 artbook, however.
I would love it if you left a review or any sort of feedback, however. I am looking for some sort of financial independence and want to see if I can write books to fund my way through med school. This is my way of practicing my writing style and I need to see what I should improve to get better, to the point of publishability. (I know that's not a word.)