The kid turned out to be a sprinter.

This particular tidbit of information didn't concern the son of the legendary Sparda at first. Dante was more of a marathoner himself – he preferred to rely on strength and stamina rather than speed whenever he could help it, but having demon blood still gave his agility enough of a boost that he could outrun most of his opponents without any real effort.

Well, not this time.

Nero's speeding form must have been a blur to the untrained eye: he jumped from roof to roof without breaking pace once, completely unbothered by the height difference between the buildings that sometimes added up to several dozen feet. If he was aware of being followed he didn't seem to be terribly distressed by it – he kept humming a melody that sounded vaguely familiar to the slayer, but even after reaching a speed that Dante considered to be his personal physical limit, he was still unable to gain enough distance on the kid to make out the actual words.

And that was the point where the son of Sparda started to grow concerned.

The girls apparently decided to wait the chase out – probably assuming Dante would make quick work of catching the young demon – so the man was forced to come up with a solution to this highly unusual predicament alone.

Ugh, he hated thinking. The little shit would have to pay for that.

Well, the gap didn't seem to be increasing between them and while Nero already proved to be full of surprises, Dante was still certain he had a vast advantage when it came to strength. He could simply wait until the brat run out of steam, which would probably happen sooner rather than later with the pace he had set. There was a problem with that plan though: the little pest could decide to smarten up and take cover among the towering buildings any given moment, and without Trish's ability to follow him purely by scent, Nero would be lost to Dante the moment he managed to disappear from the man's line of vision.

Nope, too risky.

Option number two would involve cutting the entirety of their current distance before the kid could get any funny ideas about changing course without notice, but as baffling as it was, Dante didn't see that happening without giving full rein to his devil side. Doing that however held the potential of scaring the young demon into a more violent approach, and somewhere along the way the hunter seemed to grow some serious reservations about hurting the boy unprompted. Might have happened during watching him getting dinner from a trashcan, but who was he to tell.

"Kid, wait up! I'm not gonna hurt you!"

Nero's giggle suggested that pleading innocent just minutes after admitting to being hired assassins didn't carry an unbearable amount of brilliance, and Dante felt a little grateful that the girls weren't there to witness his half-assed attempt at stopping the boy. This night was turning out to be more humiliating than what the half-breed was comfortable with.

"Hurt me?" the kid offered in an amused tone without breaking stride, one hand reaching under the back of his hoodie. "I'd like to see you try."

Dante wasn't expecting that bullet that was flying precisely towards his chest a heartbeat later, but he opted against dodging, unwilling to break the straight line he was moving in. If the brat thought he could slow him down with a few pieces of metal, he had another thing coming.

But so did Dante, apparently. The shot's impact on his sternum was almost enough to thrown him back into a halt, leaving a clean exit wound on his back that barely missed the spine. While Dante was stunned by the realization that he was hit with a bullet infused with demonic energy, the kid seemed to be stunned by the fact that Dante was… not dying rapidly? They stopped moving at the same time, blinking at each other stupidly.

"That… usually works," Nero said with an utterly confused expression, and started to examine his gun with a critical eye. Dante identified the weapon as a Smith & Wesson – an older model with a double barrel and recoil that should have sent the boy flying, even if he only fed it with one bullet at a time. A splash of crackling blue paint adorned the shiny metal just above the grip, forming some kind of flower as far as the hunter could tell. Saying that the revolver was almost as long as Nero's entire arm was only a tiny bit of an exaggeration, and despite its obvious weight it was twirled around in the tiny hand with a ridiculous ease that made it impossible for the older male not to be impressed. How the hell did he not notice that thing under the boy's hoodie?

"Look kid, I know I said we were hired to kill you, but—

Dante had to move a little to the right to avoid Nero's next bullet, which was aimed straight at the heart this time.

"…but that doesn't mean we will actually—"

He dodged again, avoiding a headshot effortlessly.

"…do it."

Another bullet was fired, but seeing it wouldn't hit anything vital, Dante let it pass through his gut. God, Patty would scold him to death for that level of laziness.

"Come on Nero, I just wanna talk. No one has to get hurt."

Or rather, no one has to get more hurt than Dante already was, which apparently wasn't nearly enough if the young demon's expression was anything to go by. Nero scrutinized the wounds on the man's torso, and after seeing how they were closed up almost completely he started to reload bullets into his gun one by one with a frustrated sigh. It didn't take more than a second for a shot to appear in his human hand, crashing the hunter's previous assessment of him as a child with 'little to no demonic energy'.

Dante was somewhat intrigued by Nero's method of loading up – he never tried preparing ammunition in advance, thinking it pointless when he could simply make it the on the spot. Also, putting effort into manually loading his twin guns would make people think he was being less lazy than it was customary, and he was not willing to deal with the expectations that would set.

"Talk about what?" Nero surprised Dante by speaking up: the furrowed brows suggested he was more interested in killing the slayer than talking to him, but Dante wasn't going to miss his chance of returning to less violent waters.

"Agnus."

"Not my favorite topic," the kid deadpanned without looking up from his weapon, making Dante smirk at the forced nonchalance.

"Who would have guessed," the devil hunter muttered under his breath, but the twitch under the boy's left eye suggested his hearing was also superior to a human. "So, are you really planning to kill him?"

"Eventually," shrugged Nero, adding another shot to the cylinder. Four down, two to go, noted the older male.

"Why?"

"Well, he does actively try to kill me," came the boy's answer without missing a beat, earning an amused snort from Dante.

"Well," he started in a bad imitation of Nero's voice, "someone does keep butchering his men like murder is going out of fashion."

It was Nero's turn to snort at that, but his tone held far less amusement than Dante's.

"He's breeding demons."

"Doesn't necessarily mean he deserves to die," answered the man, conveniently leaving his opinion on how it was actually a close call, unvoiced. Dealing with the shit they had on the alchemist was definitely not going to be forgotten.

After finishing loading the revolver Nero finally looked up and tilted his head in contemplation, sending an uncertain look at the hunter.

"He stutters?"

Dante raised an eyebrow at that.

"You'd kill someone because of a speech problem?"

"You wouldn't?" came the skeptical reply with a similar raise of an eyebrow, and Dante had to laugh at the kid's point because yeah, he totally would. Not a human, certainly, but a stuttering demon? Dante couldn't see himself sitting through a sluggish explanation of world domination plans without chopping a few heads off mid-sentence.

This train of thought distracted the man long enough to barely avoid Nero's next bullet, which still managed to graze his temple. The boy huffed in annoyance and Dante's eyes caught the halted motion of a stomping of a foot. Throw in a pout and Nero would be having an honest to god hissy fit.

"Stop moving dammit!" he hissed as he fired the remaining shots at Dante's upper body, who – deciding to humor the kid – took them with a huge smile on his face that only served to aggravate the young demon further. The new wounds on Dante's chest bled more profusely than those of Nero's previous attempt though, and encouraged by his progress the kid flipped the gun's cylinder open once more, intending to reload for another round.

"Try making them as you go."

The unexpected advice startled the boy enough to look up at the hunter, the moonlight reflecting from his sky blue eyes as they narrowed in suspicion. Dante couldn't fault the kid for his mistrust – who in their right mind would offer tips on their own execution, after all? Still, he couldn't help but want to see if Nero could pull off the same trick with the revolver as he did with Ebony and Ivory, chalking it up to the competitive streak of his demon side.

"The fresher the bullet, the bigger the oomph," he offered with an encouraging smile, only half-expecting his words to be actually true – it's not like he ever experimented with this before, but the increased amount of energy in Nero's second round made his conclusion… not completely unfounded. Kind of.

To Dante's pleasure, the kid decided to listen to him: he pushed the empty cylinder back to its original position and pointed the gun at the older male as a look of deep concentration overtook his features.

"Stay still," he hissed in a low tone, and Dante chuckled as he held up his hands in mock surrender, signaling he would heed the warning.

It took Nero a few heartbeats (and some seriously adorable glaring at his gun) to force a shot out of the weapon, but when he finally managed it, the slayer was actually forced to take half a step back upon the impact on his stomach. The wound was gaping compared to the previous ones, and Dante felt like something, that would be considered vital if he was human, was ripped to shreds inside – probably his liver, if he had to take a guess. Nero's smile could have lit a Christmas tree, and Dante found himself returning the gesture as he felt his devil side rumble in satisfaction.

The smile froze on his face a second later however, when he realized what the implications of his own reaction were. His demon wasn't competing with the young creature as he previously assumed – it was radiating an entirely different feeling, something Dante haven't felt from his devil side since he and Vergil have been kids.

It was proud of Nero, pleased to have taught him something valuable.

Now, Dante would be the first to admit that his name and the word 'stupid' weren't exactly strangers to each other when it came to other people expressing their opinion of him, but the hunter knew these accusations were based more on his happy-go-lucky manner rather than his actual level of intelligence. Sure, he pulled some crazy shit in his younger years, but the man was way past his childish phase of blatantly ignoring the inner movements of his non-human side. The damn thing was brash, arrogant and driven more by instinct than conscious thought, but it wasn't stupid. Dante gulped at what its response to the boy's actions suggested: demons don't casually assume the role of a teacher with just any creature that seems younger than them, and they sure as hell don't feel pride over their apprentice's feats… not without a damn good reason.

Dante knew it was time to clear the air, preferably before that daunting voice in his head drove him nuts. Forcing a smile again the mercenary spoke up before he could talk himself out of addressing the elephant in the room – something he was actually very tempted to do since the moment Nero leapt on that roof from the alley.

"And now that I have you in my debt —" he started merrily but stopped just as quickly, realizing he had no way to finish that though without suggesting theories that might very well have nothing to do with the truth. How do you go about something like this anyway? Hey kid, would you mind shedding that damned hood so I could see the color of your hair and make sure we are not related despite our scents being almost completely identical and my devil giving a fucking purr at teaching you to shoot with more power? Yeah, that would go over really well.

Unfortunately Dante didn't have too much time to contemplate his next move, as Nero was suddenly within touching distance, having five demonic claws forming a tight ring around the man's left ankle before he could even register the movement. The sleeve was rolled up around the demonic limb (Dante wasn't even surprised anymore at not seeing the boy do that), exposing dark purple flesh that was adorned with deep red scales and the occasional spiked outgrowth on the armor like surface. A bright blue glow engulfed the tips of the sharp talons and the veiny cracklings among the brownish hide, centering in the palm in a swirling pool of light. It illuminated Nero's face perfectly as he looked up at the slayer with a devilish smirk, tightening his grip on the trapped ankle.

"No one asked for your advice, old man."

The kid's actions left little mystery in his plans of forcefully removing the older male from the immediate vicinity, yet Dante couldn't tear his gaze away from the thin layer of freckles that dusted over Nero's pale cheeks and button nose. The man's heart jumped into his throat at the close up of the dark lashes that encircled the child's cerulean orbs, and suddenly he felt his blood freeze in his veins because no, this couldn't possibly mean what he thought it meant, but then Nero's demonic aura flared up in an oh-so-fucking familiar burst of energy and Dante blinked and he inhaled and he tried to will his body to move and time stopped like a year ago and yet…

And yet the frightening realization that he knew those eyes just refused to go away.

"Fuck."

That was the only coherent word the son of the legendary Sparda managed to push past his lips before Nero pulled the ground from bellow his feet, and proceeded to effortlessly hurl him through the air and straight towards a lower level of a neighboring building.

Dante knew how this situation would play out: he would crash into the bedroom of an unsuspecting Fortunian couple who'd be screaming bloody murder, and while he would be busy wasting precious seconds on gathering his wits, the kid would take the opportunity to leave the range of his radar. That was fine with the hunter: islands had this convenient quality of having only a limited amount of space to hide at – they would find Nero within a few hours at most.

What wasn't fine with Dante was spending those hours in an endless loop of asking the same question over and over again and not knowing for sure.

In a hasty decision the half-devil pulled Ivory from her holster mid-fall and fired a single shot with the intention of barely grazing the hoodie at the back of Nero's head, hoping to catch the material in a way that would reveal at least part of the boy's hair.

He had a rare moment of panic when the kid decided to throw his head back at that same exact moment, but thankfully Nero proceeded to lean his body back swiftly until he was out of harm's way once again – flipping Dante the bird with an overly smug grin for good measure. The hunter nearly gasped in relief when he saw the bullet passing by Nero's face safely, but in the end the kid's rapid movement achieved Dante's original goal as it caused the hood to drop down to its owner's nape, effectively exposing a mop of unruly hair that was lightly streaked with dried blood.

Nero's parting bullet caught Dante right between the eyes a mere second before he crashed into the building, and the last thing that registered on his consciousness was his demon's possessive growl of 'MINE!' as it demanded him to grab hold of that silvery whiteness and never let go again, ever.

Dante Sparda has never felt so conflicted over a color in his life.

"Dante! Dante – what actual the fuck?! Where's the kid?"

Lady was in his face before he could even properly open his eyes, thrusting the barrel of her gun under his Adam's apple with a force that would make a human's windpipe crush under the pressure. Trish's voice sounded muffled compared to the raven haired woman's shrieking.

"Lady, let him have some—"

"Don't fucking tell me what to do with the fuckhead! Dante, wake the fuck up already or I swear I—I'll shoot you again you fucking… you fuckstick!"

Wow, that was a lot of unoriginality stuffed into ten seconds. Lady was usually a lot more creative when she had to come up with degrading names to call the hunter, and Dante didn't think he heard her actually stutter in anger before. He didn't know how much time had passed since he blacked out, but the woman sure didn't sound to be suffering from hypothermia anymore.

Somehow that wasn't as much of a reassuring thought as it should have been at the moment.

After Dante finally managed to pry his eyes open, a few blinks cleared his vision enough to assess his surroundings. He was laying on the floor of what he assumed to be someone's living room (which was now decorated with a Dante-shaped hole in one wall), surrounded by debris and…about two dozen spent shotgun cartridges. Wow. No wonder the residents of the place were nowhere in sight – a supposedly dead man crashing into your apartment was one thing, but a livid woman storming in and emptying shell after shell into said dead body? The man was pretty sure those people would need some intensive therapy before they would stop pissing themselves in their sleep like toddlers again.

"Where the fuck is Nero, Dante?!"

Oh, right, he almost forgot how the livid woman was still focusing her psychotic breakdown on him. Seeing that Lady's key issue seemed to be related to his inability to keep the kid in sight, Dante couldn't help but feel like shooting him with a shotgun while he was still out was quite counterproductive if she wanted him to find the brat. Of course, that is not to say he was stupid enough to give voice to that thought.

"Don't rightly know," he ended up muttering in hoarse whisper, suspecting his throat must also have caught one of those shells during the woman's rampage. Damaged vocal chords were always fun to heal.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Lady practically sneered at him, and Dante realized that during the entire course of their friendship this was the first time he felt like the woman would be willing to go beyond a few bullets to the head. Lady's tone said she would seriously hurt him if he failed to give her the answer she was expecting.

If the tight feeling that chose his chest as its new home would persist on staying for much longer, Dante might just let her.

"I mean he ran off while I was busy recovering from your goddamned shots," he growled lowly at the woman, too tired to stop the outburst of his demon side. He agreed with Lady on the core issue: it was definitely his fault that Nero slipped away, but that didn't mean his devil was going to accept all charges just as readily. He noticed Trish glancing at him with a seriously worried look, and only the phenomenon of that rarely seen expression on the demoness' face made him realize how close to triggering he actually was.

"I wouldn't have shot you if you didn't lose him in the first place!" screamed Lady without acknowledging the threat in his voice, shoving him back to the floor when he attempted to sit up. Trish's placating words went completely unnoticed by both of them. "How the fuck did you get bested by a fucking midget?! And how the hell do you even have a kid – for fuck's sake, Dante! Is he really your son?"

And there was that word. Son.

Dante's first impulse was denial: he wanted to tell the woman that the white haired boy was in no way related to him, but he knew that no refusal of belief would make that fact any less true. The kid was his own flesh and blood, and while Dante was definitely no father material, he would never stoop so low as to reject his own kin – not even if said kin wasn't present to hear it.

And besides, the instinct to deny didn't come so readily to the slayer because he didn't want Nero. No, if anything, the devil in him was pretty much ecstatic over having an offspring of the kid's caliber: Nero was strong, fast, and quick-witted – what was there not to be proud of as his sire? So no, the boy was not the issue.

What Dante had a problem with was… himself. The reason why every fiber of his body wanted to refuse the situation was because if Nero really was his offspring, then Dante inevitably became that person. The one who failed to take care of his family, the one whose children went 'Look, dinner!' when they stumbled upon an apple on the ground next to the local fruit shop. He would become the absentee father, the one that Sparda was to him, and the one he swore to never become to anyone, not even if his life depended on it.

How the hell did this happen anyway? Well, not the technical part – Dante knew how that happened for sure – but he always made a point of letting the women he slept with know where to find him in case his trusty 75 cent insurance policy ever failed (or, you know, in case they wanted a repeat performance). Considering how vigorously he used to frequent Love Planet between Virgil's two appearances, it was hard to imagine Nero's mother to be anyone else than a working girl – so how was she not jumping at his throat when she was faced with the opportunity of getting child support?

"Dante!" Lady's voice drew him back to the present with a rather painful smack, and the horrified expression Trish sported made him realize his friends fully expected him to try and play this off. Had he not been so busy with wallowing in self-pity, he might have actually been hurt.

"Yeah," he acknowledged her previous question softly, "Yeah. He is mine."

Trish was visibly relieved by the quiet admission, but the words somehow only seemed to piss Lady off even further.

"Tell me you didn't know about him Dante, or so help me—"

"Of course I didn't— what the hell, Lady? You really think I would let him eat out of trashcans if I knew? Is that what you think of me? That Dante the jerk would be perfectly fine with his son sleeping on fucking park benches at night?!"

Lady had the decency to look ashamed at the accusation. She took a deep breath and removed her gun from Dante's throat.

"Okay," she said as she stood up and started to pace the length of the room, "Okay."

Dante knew that a whispered okay was the closest thing he would ever get to an apology from the black haired woman, but while he was still slightly offended by her reaction, he was too tired to refuse an opportunity to end the fight. His demon still demanded to take her head off for thinking so low about his 'paternal instincts', but Lady looked more distressed now than angry and those demands quickly died down to be half-hearted at best.

"Who's the mother?" asked Trish in a considerably warmer tone, but as much as Dante appreciated her usually calming approach, the topic she touched still caused him letting out an involuntary growl before he gave his answer.

"No idea, but she better be dead."

Lady came to an abrupt stop at hearing the threat in his voice, but after a few tense seconds she gave a curt nod and resumed her pacing. She could certainly understand his stance on the matter: if the boy's mother was still alive, that meant she pushed Nero out onto the streets, withholding all chances from Dante at caring for the child. If this was the case, Lady would have no qualms about seriously hurting the woman, and she was sure Dante and Trish would do much more than that if they ever got their hands on the bitch. She better be dead alright.

Seeing that her partners were both too caught up in their respective inner turmoil, the demoness decided to take the lead and held a hand out for Dante, offering to help him up from the ground even though she knew he didn't need any assistance in such a mundane task.

"Come on, I bet our resident alchemist will have a lot more to tell us this time if we give him a little… incentive."

Dante took the outstretched hand with a grateful sigh, and Lady's crooked smile promised violence on a level the island has never seen before. Sure, the mission has taken an unexpected turn and yes, they still had a lot to talk about, but none of that truly mattered right now. For now, all they knew was that if anyone would be foolish enough to try and stand between the three of them and Nero, they would teach the poor bastards a little something about how they settle family matters in Capulet City.

Agnus' apparently hasty departure from his apartment didn't come as a surprise for the trio – the son of a bitch knew what was coming his way the moment he realized that Dante had a connection to his little nighttime attacker. The mess he left in his residence suggested he wasn't planning to return anytime soon, and since the guards on duty (who were decidedly human this time) claimed to know nothing about his current whereabouts, the hunters decided to go through his belongings methodically, searching for something that could give his destination away.

His study held most of the information they gathered on him so far: besides the countless books on alchemy there were detailed reports on Agnus' preferred methods of creating demons artificially, and they even found papers on some angel creating ritual called an 'Ascension Ceremony'. The guy was so fucked in the head it wasn't even funny, but that wasn't what stood out the most if you took a look around the place. The room was in shambles– it was obvious that Agnus collected some stuff before he left, saving something he obviously deemed more important than his little projects of mass producing 'Gladiuses' and 'Cutlasses'. But what could that be?

The only clue the trio had seemed to be linked to a bunch of missing data discs: the shelving on the wall besides the door was nearly full of them, spare for two shelves in the middle that stood suspiciously empty. It was Trish who noticed Dante eyeing the shelves first and walked up to him, breaking him out of his thoughts that seemed to unavoidably crawl back to a certain silver haired boy time and time again.

"We should look at one of these," she offered as she also looked through the selection, scanning the labels that were named in the most boring fashion a scientist could possibly come up with. The top shelves were filled with discs named 'Project C', while the ones below the empty shelves were all titled 'Project G', all with an additional numbered day in each title. It didn't take a genius to figure out they stood for Cutlass and Gladius – the names Agnus decided to call his pet monsters.

"No point, he already took the good stuff," replied Dante with a disappointed sigh, pointing to the empty spots on the shelves and the few empty cases laying on the floor that were probably shattered by accident during the alchemist's hasty exit.

"I know," Trish proceeded to pick out a disc at random with the title 'Project C, day 296', and turned towards Dante with an encouraging smile, "but these may give us an idea about where his super-secret villainy laboratory is."

The hunter couldn't help but smile back at the blonde – trust her to never fail at being the thinker of the group. Trish made her way to the computer at the huge wooden desk (which already proved to have no useful information after Lady's quick scan) and pressed a button to open the disc drive, but her brows furrowed when she noticed the reader was already hosting another disc.

Project N, day 703.

Trish picked up the shiny piece of plastic with the end of a polished black nail, but she almost dropped it when her mind suddenly connected the dots.
The empty shelves. The kid's personal grudge against the scientist. Evidence that would presumably turn them against Agnus.

Project Nero.

"Hell no!" she heard Dante's gruff voice from over her shoulder, apparently coming to the same conclusion. Trish gulped at the tone but her shoulders slumped when she saw the slightly panicked expression on the man's face as she turned to him. She wanted to offer reassurance so much, she wanted to say that they had no proof this had anything to do with the boy, but she was unable to voice those thoughts because they would be lies if they were put into words. She was a devil – she knew better than to believe in divine forces, but just this once, please, 'please don't let this be what I think it is…'

"It's not necessarily—"

"Put it back."

"Dante—"

"Put. It. Back!"

Lady was at Trish's side immediately after hearing the barked order from the man, but she understood the reason for the commotion after a single glance at title of the thing the demoness was holding. She wasn't a fan of the theory that got her partners so agitated in less than a minute either, but Dante's expression suggested he was going to nuke the entire island if Trish didn't start moving right now, so she nudged the demoness who put the disc back to where she found it and closed the lid hesitantly.

Dante was practically snarling at the machine as they heard it whirl up.

The contents showed up on a blank screen: a single file with the same title as the disc itself. It was a video.

Lady was going to not so subtly suggest that Dante should maybe continue his search in another room for a while 'just in case', but the hunter's eyes were already tinted with red and she knew that if she attempted to get rid of him now, Dante just might find a way to shove her suggestions up to someplace unsanitary in a quite literal way. Knowing when she was beaten, Lady leaned over the keyboard with a tired sigh, and started to play the video.

Half an hour later, the huntress was sure that no matter what life had in store for her yet, she was never going to regret anything as much as pressing that button on this godforsaken day.


Hi there, sorry for the long wait but hey, the next chapter is almost ready, so no weeks-long waiting this time. :)

I know Dante has all those Trickster and Quicksilver moves in the games that he could have used to catch up with Nero, but they don't seem to fit into a more realistic take on the DmC universe for me, so I decided not to make use of them. Not sure if that makes the whole thing AU or not, but I guess it's not much worse than changing the uncle/nephew relation between Dante and Nero, so… yeah.

Thank you guys sooooo much for the reviews, they really keep one motivated! ;) I'm so glad you seem to like the story so far.

And since it's 3 a.m. and I'm lazy, I will just copy the stuff that still applies since the last chapter:

This chapter has not been beta read, so feel free to point out any spelling/grammar related mistakes you may find.

Reviews are also always welcome: please take a short minute to let me know if you liked what you read or not (or several minutes if you feel like giving a full critique). :) Thank you very much!