Nero never told Vergil about his hunting trips.
It wasn't that Vergil over-protected him, he just believed that he wasn't suitable for combat, at least not yet and he refused to say when. Nero was not going to stand aside to weep and wonder; if Vergil wasn't going to serve as some sort of guide then he would find a way to figure things out. He didn't need his approval or aid.
Usually Nero would go home with little scratched and wounds that would heal in a day or two, but that time was different. He felt the adrenaline reaching its pinnacle as the demon took a swing and dug its claws into his forearm almost without an effort. Blood stained his clothes and the demon's raging face until he swung Red Queen with as much force as he could muster and beheaded the creature. The claws remained inside his flesh, and taking them out was the worst kind of pain Nero had experienced.
Sometimes, he would casually mention tidbits of information to Dante, but he figured that if he showed up with a piece of his coat wrapped up on his arm as a makeshift bandage he would speak up. It's wasn't that he didn't trust him; Dante was the one that taught him a few things when Vergil had dismissed his eagerness and told him that he should learn by himself. If anything, he felt that having a conversation with Dante had an air of confidence that he didn't have with Vergil, but Dante knew that there were certain limits, and so did Nero.
Plus, he was sure the tip of a claw was still embed into his forearm and he doubted Dante had anything that resembled tweezers, utensil that was on his home's first aid kit since Vergil claimed that when he was a kid more often than not he had to remove splinters from his hands after he played with the flimsy wooden swings at the park.
Vergil was on his room with the door closed when he arrived, making Nero's stealthy plan relatively easy. He snatched the first aid kit from the bathroom and locked himself in his room. Vergil had taken away his powerful yet small speaker around a month ago after he warned him not only once, but twice to keep his music down, only to be ignored. He had nothing to muffle sounds now.
He gritted his teeth and grunted as he dug through the wound with the tweezers to remove the now fragmented pieces of nails and making a bloody mess on his nightstand as he tossed the removed pieces on its surface.
Pouring alcohol on the wound was the thing that almost made him scream.
When he was finished, he stared at his bandaged limb and the tattered coat he loved on the floor, splattered with blood. He still had to figure out an alibi for that.
Vergil didn't question his son when he saw that he was wearing a crimson sweater that he rarely wore, and merely told him to change into something else after Nero scratched his forearm and, with a little glance at his direction, and nonchalantly stated that the fabric made his skin itch.
The wound wasn't supposed to itch, at least not the way it did. He expected waves of pain as the bandages made slight friction against his flesh, but not the need to scrape his skin off with his fingernails.
He left the shower running as he stripped and carefully peeled of the blood soaked bandages from his arm.
"Shit." He breathed as he let the bloody bandage fall to the floor and stared at the foreign marks on his arm. Scratching the wound would've never made his skin look like that, not with the thick layer of bandages on it. His skin looked red, coarse, and mangled, nearly resembling scales on his elbow and moving up to the sides of his forearm. He gently pressed the ill looking area with his index finger, feeling the rough texture brush against his fingertip.
Sighing, he pulled one of the 'scales', hoping that it was just a strange looking scab and immediately regretted the action when he felt an odd discomfort accompanied with a touch of pain that made the entire area feel sore.
Perhaps he was being paranoid, but he could almost swear he saw a hint on blue on the veins that were visible on the back of his arm.
He couldn't hide it anymore, not when it was starting to reach his hand.
"I need to talk to you." Nero called out when he saw a flash of blue trailing down the hallway from his bedroom. Nero thought he was ignoring him until he saw Vergil standing outside his room, coatless, which was an odd sight. "There's something wrong with me."
"I am aware of it," Vergil stated and strode over to Nero, his eyes drifting towards the eerily glowing arm that Nero casually tried to hide behind his back, earning a glare from his father. He made a motion and Nero begrudgingly held it up for him to see.
"You have awoken." Vergil stated, making Nero frown.
"Are you sure?"
The times Nero had seen Vergil use his Devil Trigger were so scarce he could count them with the fingers of one of his hands so, when Vergil suddenly triggered in front of him he was taken back.
The atmosphere around them changed, it felt heavy, stuffed. Nero stared at his right arm as he felt a strange tingling sensation on it, making his fingers twitch involuntarily.
"I am certain." Vergil remarked, the sound of his voice heavily distorted by the change. He raised his right arm, letting Nero take in the image of clawed fingers and tough, coarse skin that acted almost like armor around his body.
Vergil definitely wasn't a sight for sore eyes.
"So I'm going to look like you?"
"No," Vergil replied as he dismissed his trigger. "You are a partial Devil; your transformation will be limited as well."
When Nero asked if there was anything he could do to about it, Vergil replied that he could get rid of the bandages. He didn't.
Sorry if it's a bit..odd.
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry and its characters belong to Capcom.