Okay, so here it is.
Let's just say my name is Dante. I've been living under that name for a while anyway.
I got a mysterious text a few months ago. I think it was from my brother, but if it was, he used a phone then deactivated it.
He and I don't talk much. Hell, if I'm honest, we don't talk at all. I don't blame him. He figured out that demons don't live good, normal lives. Humans can, though.
No, his name isn't Vergil, but I'll call him that. Vergil lives as a human, with a good job and life.
Yes, I know his human identity, as corny as that phrase is, and no, I'm not saying.
He went to the trouble of sealing his demonic abilities and changing his physical appearance; it would be remiss of me to blithely give you his name.
Does that imply you'd know his name? Maybe.
Do you? Maybe, maybe not, but the internet is a great way to find people, even if there are thirty guys with the exact same name.
But I didn't write this to talk about Vergil, not directly. I wrote this because the text I'd been sent was a link to this site, the Devil May Cry category at fanfiction.
For all the writers on here, let me just say I'm not mad, if that's what you're worried about. I actually enjoyed some of the stories a lot. Some mildly, others not as much. Mostly, it's a writing quality issue, not content.
I even thought about just sending this to one of you and letting you post it, but after all the trouble I went to, it was easier just to do it myself on the account I had to make anyway.
Not one of your stories is anywhere near the truth, but considering most of you base your work on the video game canon, or a slightly altered version, I understand.
It would have given me the creeps if anyone had been close.
I wish our father had been the noble protector and defender that Sparda was. It would have made our childhood easier, mine and Verge's.
I do shorten his name, by the way, even though I understood both sides of that debate.
In the games, Dante and Vergil aren't close, so Dante wouldn't call his brother by a shortened nickname.
In a lot of the fanfiction, though "Vergil didn't jump", as one writer put it. They presumably grew close, since they work together, often even live together. I can see Dante calling him 'Verge' like that.
Like I said, I do.
Our father was a demon, full-fledged. I don't know if there is a distinction between demons and devils as some of the stories here say.
Our mom was a pretty, bright, vivacious girl. The epitome of sweetness and purity.
That's how Mom's stories made her seem, at any rate. She talked about her innocence. She talked about her life in wistful tones of color and light. Of happiness.
I could almost see it, when she was happy.
My father wanted to mess with her. Corrupt her, I guess. Not a Legend-dark-Lily sort of corruption, more like spoil her views on life.
Demons think that sort of thing is funny.
She met a charming, handsome young man who courted her and treated her well. When she told him she thought she was in love with him, he laughed and showed her his true face.
Not just his physical appearance. He told her things about the world, at least, as he knew them.
It broke her heart, then pissed her off.
She began chasing him, hunting him, determined to kill him for it.
Once, she caught up to him. At the time she thought she'd outwitted him, but later she believed he'd let her catch him.
They fought. In a literal and figurative sense, tearing at each other, screaming obscenities.
Then had vicious, angry sex.
That's right. Seems sort of like a love-hate thing, but I'm not sure it was.
He disappeared, she became angrier. Rinse and repeat.
After some years of this, she happened across a nice man. He made the moves on her, she went for it, then she attacked him. She believed it was the demon of course.
He wasn't, but he was fairly understanding.
She didn't tell him that her "ex-boyfriend" was a demon, only that he was not above disguising himself to trick her.
They began dating and as she fell in love with him, she stopped chasing the demon. They got married and decided to start a family.
Happy ending.
Except the demon wasn't thrilled about it. He'd had this girl's attention since she was a teen, and then she forgot about him.
For a yuppie, no less.
Yuppie - I'll call him Daniel - had business trips.
He really was a yuppie, in a lot of senses. Young, city-bred, a career man with a nice job. He did distance business meetings for his company in the days before online video conferences.
He was a good man, though. He loved Verge and me, even after the denouement.
Naturally, when he and Mom decided to start a family, they stopped all of their birth control methods.
Their baby-making efforts were quite enthusiastic.
Life went on. Daniel's business trips became more important and longer, so Mom would travel with him sometimes, especially international.
Occasionally, their nightly activities were more vigorous affairs than others. Sometimes, they just slept.
Don't mistake me. Mom and Daniel were happy, very happy. Seeing them together made her stories of what she had been before the demon seem plausible.
She eventually had good news for him: she was pregnant. They vigorously celebrated that night.
Daniel started making preparations, turning a little-used spare bedroom into a nursery, buying baby things, the works. He was ecstatic about being a daddy.
One night, he came in late, woke Mom up, and started making some aggressive moves on her.
All was well until he started kissing her stomach.
He recoiled as though stung.
"You're pregnant?!" he accused.
It didn't take much longer than that for Mom to realize who he really was, but before she could attack him, he left, apparently revolted by her condition.
She said nothing of this to Daniel and went back to being happy. She was thrilled to be rid of the demon, especially since she was happily expecting.
She birthed two healthy boys.
Yes, Vergil and I are identical twins, though not so identical now. I look like I always have, Vergil has
He's different.
We seemed to be rather normal boys, and we had the love of our parents until about age five. Or maybe only four. It's been a long time since then.
Vergil and I were fighting in the yard. I don't remember what it was about. Mom ran out to break it up, and we turned on her.
I honestly don't know which of us broke her arm.
I remember the sound of the snap, though.
She cried out in pain, and we burst into tears.
Daniel had been in the kitchen, preparing something for the barbecue we were having that weekend.
Mom was cradling her arm, resisting our efforts to come close. She was horrified by us. We were crying uncontrollably, both because she was hurt and because she rejected us.
Don't be too harsh. It can't be easy to find out that your children weren't your husband's, but a demon's.
A hated demon.
Daniel called an ambulance, smoothed things over with all the authority figures, and eventually calmed us down.
Mom told him the truth about her "ex-boyfriend".
There were tears in her eyes as she tried defending herself, explaining that she'd never known, never suspected that some of those night weren't with Daniel.
He took it well. He told her he loved her. He said he didn't care about the demon. That he believed her.
Then he said that she was wrong. No matter what else, Vergil and I were his sons, and that he loved us.
Yep, Daniel was a great guy.
He cried when she killed us.
Now you can be harsh.
She tried non-violent methods. Suffocation, drowning. Neither one worked, and we were too young to understand the funny new games she was trying to play.
When she stabbed me, then Vergil, that worked. For a while. Daniel came in after she'd done it, saw us, saw the blood, and tried to call an ambulance.
She'd threatened him, reminding him that we weren't even human. A demon's get.
Daniel was crying, cuddling us when we woke.
It was probably for the best that she was standing in front of us and Daniel was behind.
I can't really tell you what I was thinking. I only understood that Mom had hurt us, and I wanted to hurt her back.
Daniel kept us from her, struggling against our strength and ferocity until he somehow managed to calm us down.
He once, only once, told me what that was like.
"All four of us had blood all over. Your blood doesn't smell or look human. Not exactly. It has this strong smell. That's all I could think about, was the smell of your blood. I don't know how I held onto to you two. Squirming, writhing little demons reeking of strong blood. It's one of the worst memories of my life, Dante."
She forcibly put us up for adoption within a year of that, though she didn't try killing us again.
Daniel tried to stop her, tried to keep us, but she had him removed as father on our birth certificates, and gained complete custody over us.
Daniel divorced her. He made arrangements the day the custody paperwork handing us over to the state was signed. He later said he tried adopting us, but there were all kinds of legalities involved that prevented it.
Yeah, Daniel loved us.
Our father probably never knew about any of this. I don't think he had anything more to do with Mom after learning she was pregnant. I'm not even sure he knew her children were his.
I wonder if he would find the whole thing funny.
I assume that we, well I, look like him. Mom didn't have white hair and blue eyes.
Verge told me once that he met him. A random, ordinary-looking guy approached him, bluntly told him that he smelled like his family. Vergil was already living in his new life and shook his head, telling the man he didn't understand.
He said the man chuckled, sort of. It was a dark, rumbling gargle of a laugh.
Vergil is somewhat poetic.
The guy shifted his appearance. He looked very like I do, like Vergil did. Not enough that Verge thought it was me, though.
Then he shifted again, and this time he looked very demonic. The demon circled him, smelling him almost distastefully.
He growled something about humans and half-breeds that Verge didn't quite catch, then resumed his first appearance and left.
Vergil sent me this story in an email.
I talk to Vergil very little, as I said before.
Actually, I never talk to him. He sends me emails infrequently and a text once in a while.
I try replying to these things, but I never get a response, and often I find the number or address is deactivated.
Knowing his name and general location, I suppose I could go see him. I don't know what I'd say.
"Hey Verge! How's it going?" followed by his long, complicated, too-revealing inquiry on what exactly I was doing there and why.
Nah, better to let Vergil live his life, be happy.
He took the dissolution of our family hard.
We found ourselves in the strange position of being hard to adopt.
Eventually, as teens, quiet, respectful, brilliant Vergil was taken into an intellectual family.
His demonically-driven hormones and the family's teenaged daughter ended up doing something naughty. Mutual, but naughty.
He was emancipated, instead of thrown back into the system. I had to wait until I was legal.
I found him, though. I thought we'd live together, be our own family. He had already sealed his demon self and was working on altering his appearance.
He had always thought our looks were what kept away the potential families.
Later, he told me he was glad he'd changed his appearance before Devil May Cry came out.
Mom died in the interim. I don't even know what happened.
Verge sent me a text saying that Daniel wanted to see me.
When I met up with him, he said he'd found out Mom had died, but he didn't know the details. Daniel told me Vergil had sought him out after assuming his human life. They were trying to build a friendship, I guess.
I don't know how Vergil finds people.
I change phones and emails, but Verge always manages to get a hold of me when he wants to.
That has been the only time I've seen Daniel since being given up.
I don't know if he and Vergil still talk.
I don't know where Mom is buried, but every once in a while, I stop in a random church and light a candle for her.
Ever see that TV show about the hunters? Brothers in a cool car? I do what they do, in a way.
Devil May Cry, the shop, doesn't exist. I wish it did sometimes. Even a warehouse or office would be more of a home than I have now. Instead, I move from hunt to hunt, job to job. What I don't keep on my bike, I store.
Want an easy storage tip? Demon portals. Open a portal, find or build a place, secure it, close portal. No matter where you are on this side, when you reopen it, you're right there on that side.
You do need some measure of demonic power to open a portal like that, though. Being half demon helps me out there.
Depending on the case or job, I stay in motels, hotels, or client-provided accommodations.
If you're wondering why you don't hear about me or other hunters, you aren't considering the prudence of non-disclosure.
Not just for my privacy, for the sake of the clients, too. Some family that praises a hunter or brags about ridding themselves of some threat might as well put out the welcome mat to other nasties.
Monsters, ghouls, ghosts, and demons are like computer hackers, robbers, and safecrackers: the best way to make yourself a target is to say you're unbeatable or that you've faced down those things before.
Do you feel better knowing I'm out there or are you disappointed that "Dante" isn't really Dante?
I guess it doesn't truly matter either way.
I hardly expect anyone to believe this. I'm not even sure why I typed it up.
I'm still trying to figure out why Verge sent me the link.
Did he think it was funny? Was he disturbed by the twincest yaoi stories?
I thought they were absurdly funny.
Maybe he wanted to tease me about the Nero ones, or about the yaoi in general, since there's so much of it.
Or it could be some deeper, more thought-provoking reason.
If it was Vergil.
Still, everything considered, it would be funnier if I'd told him.
Who knows?
If you're reading this Verge, you know my number.
For everyone else, there's always the review function.
Or PM.
No, I'm not giving out my number, nor am I going to come by, meet you in person, go to your party, prom, homecoming, or whatever.
No social calls of any sort and definitely no booty calls.
But I guess if you wanted to ask something about me, or maybe one of my cases, I'd humor you.
I do have other things that occupy my time, and my internet access can be limited, but I can try.
Can't disappoint my fans after all.
I do want to warn you though. If you ask something, I'm going to answer it right here. I won't directly name the one who sent the question if it was sent through a PM, but the question and answer will be here for everyone to read.
-D.