Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry. If I did, I would have a lot more money.

The core of Rapture is the Sparda/Eva relationship, so from when they meet to his death, but I've decided to toss the stuff before her death in here too. I'm not going to do a fic about her death until the DMC novella translation is released by Tokyopop so I can avoid contradicting it. That's going to be in… I think June.

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Damn it, she wanted leashes! Damn kids! Well, boys would be boys. It was only natural they would keep testing her authority. Luckily, age and guile beat youth and brains hands down, so she could usually keep them in line.

Unfortunately, she wasn't strong enough to carry battleship chains (and it would look damn weird, kids held by them), and they were too old for kiddy leashes anyway.

It was natural for little children to get lost in crowds. This was a perfectly normal piece of maternal hell.

They'd probably wandered off after something shiny. Or that made loud noises. Or that otherwise appealed to their millisecond-long attention spans.

There was a lot that would do that here today.

Loud clanging and tonal music filled the air as the procession went down the street. Chinese New Year in Chinatown, San Francisco. She'd had to visit here on bank business (she couldn't let all the people who had put their trust in a devil go broke if the bank collapsed, after all), and she'd been invited to see the sights with her children.

She hadn't been able to stop the others from going to search too. She prayed she found them first. Dante had a tendency to bite people who tried to order him around, besides her.

It was a good thing he was only mildly poisonous. That woman who had pinched his cheeks had been fine after a few days tied to her bed so she wouldn't try to fly out the window.

LSD in the drinks was always a good way to explain people seeing huge spiders, real or hallucinogenic.

She wondered how she was going to handle them when they started dating. They might be poisonous enough by then to kill their girlfriends by nibbling on their necks. Sparda had been able to shapeshift to get rid of the poison, but she had no idea how to teach them to do that.

Girls were already flocking around them. Cute little things in pastel dresses. Little hoydens! After the money. She wasn't going to let some tramp break her boys' hearts!

Although she had many available means for disposing of the bodies.

"Die!" A childish but fierce voice rang out through the crowd, followed by a loud thwacking sound. And another. And a gunshot.

Dante always managed to find the one person in a crowd with a gun and pick their holster. Fortunately the New York mob boss had thought it was cute.

The Queen of England's bodyguards had been less enthused about it. Arthur Hellsing had laughed like crazy. A man after her own heart. Now if only he would stop mentally undressing her. Apparently he'd been one hell of a womanizer, back in the day.

"Excuse, me, coming through…" She hated crowds. The current, no matter what, always went in the direction opposite to the one she was going in. Well, sane people ran away from danger.

She was crazy, of course.

And her boys had better be in mortal danger (another hunter trying to kill them before they could grow strong enough to be a threat?) or they would be running. From her.

Spare the shotgun, spoil the child.

The fuss seemed to be taking place around the front of the dragon thing.

That was right, the procession of men in a huge long costume of a dragon had passed by her just a few seconds before she had noticed the boys had disappeared (not literally, Vergil hadn't quite mastered teleportation yet).

Oh, hell.

She had thought this had been cleared up after the fiasco when she tried to take them to Disneyland!

Sure enough, the boys were attacking the head of the 'dragon.' Eva's eyes noticed a collapsed booth, one of its supporting poles the wooden staff now in Vergil's hands.

"Vergil! Dante!"

"Mom! We found a demon! Help us kill it!" Dante was pouting, having run out of ammo. He was shaking the gun, hoping that would make it get more somehow.

"Vergil, stop bashing those poor peoples' costume!"

Vergil froze. "…costume?"

"But it's too big to be a costume!"

"Sometimes, there are many people in a costume instead of just one," Eva explained, holding on to her temper with her teeth. "Remember what I told you at Disneyland after you attacked the poor people in Sleeping Beauty goblin costumes?"

They mumbled something, looking at each other with oh shit expressions.

Eva put her hands on her hips. "I can't hear you."

"Make sure it's not human first," they chorused, abashed.

"But I shot it and I didn't draw any blood!" Dante objected.

Phew. "Because there's a lot of empty space in this costume and luckily, you didn't hit any people." Eva walked forward, lifting the dragon's head and pointing to the cowering man inside it. "See!"

Vergil tried to hide the pole behind his back. Dante had already tossed the gun somewhere.

"Vergil Martin von Schwärzung, Dante Luther von Schwärzung, apologize to the poor man right now!" She helped him up. "I'm so, so sorry about this."

"Sorry Mom!"

"Sorry!" Vergil and Dante bowed. Now they remembered what she had taught them.

The man clung to her arm and spoke in Chinese. Not a dialect she was fluent in. She only knew enough Chinese to be able to read ancient inscriptions in case they were How to Defeat the Local Demon God in Three Easy Steps, and ask basic questions like, which way did the thing that bit your arm off go? "I'm very sorry sir, and I'll pay for the damages. Or rather," she glared at the boys, "you two will. I'm docking your allowance."

"But mom! We were trying to save all these people from a demon! We're supposed to do that!"

"How many times do I have to tell you, not until you're older? Kids," she said exasperatedly, turning to the man again. "What can you do?"

He said something. Was that the… Chinese for demon. Damn.

She had thought she had seen a blur of blue up above the heads of the crowd while she was heading over. She turned back to the boys and glared. "Boys! What did I tell you about showing off!"

There was an old man heading over with incense and some amulets. Shit. She recognized one of the ones that worked. Some civilians had talismans that hunters had made centuries or decades ago passed down through their families. If that was one of those…

He threw it at Dante. And that was an activating word.

"Ow!" Dante's shoulder, where it had hit, was hissing red steam. "Mom! That man hurt me!" He pointed.

Vergil was gripping the pole with a determined look in his eyes. No one beat up his little brother but him!

People were either starting to try to get away or push forward to watch. Not good. Very not good.

She couldn't take them anywhere!

"Lady von Schwärzung, are you all right?" The old banker was panting. He looked at the scene and hollered, "Police!" He turned to her, "I'm terribly sorry, your ladyship, normally the Chinese are quite good people, hard workers, except for the young men when they've had, well, too much to drink. What got into an old man like that, to throw acid on your son? I can't believe it!"

The incense made Vergil sneeze and start forward. "Vergil! Stay!"

"But Mom, he hurt…"

"I said stay!"

The crowd was gawking at Dante and at the old man, who was staring, horrified. He clearly hadn't actually expected it to work! He flinched when Dante growled. Eva couldn't see if his eyes flashed red or not. They probably had. Dante wasn't very good with control. "Dante! Quiet!"

"But Mom…!"

"Don't but Mom me! You two are in so, so much trouble when we get back to the hotel!" She would have to buy rock salt for the shotgun. Just spanking them didn't work anymore. Damn pain tolerances. Damn kids!

She was going to find Sparda, bring him back to life, have mad passionate sex, and then kill him for sticking her with these two!

Making her do woman's work! She was a goddamn housewife because she couldn't leave these two alone for a second!

The man threw another talisman at Vergil. She started forward a fraction of a second too late. She almost panicked, what if it was something stronger!

But it was a dud. It bounced off Vergil's head and hit someone in the crowd. "Ow! Mom, he's throwing things at me!"

"It's your fault for attacking the poor man in the costume!" She swatted him on the head. "How many times do I have to tell you to come get me?"

Vergil looked sideways. "It was Dante's idea!" Vergil was a terrible liar. Which was a good thing. She could always get the truth out of him. Maybe it had to do with demons being more honest than humans.

"Liar! Mom, Vergil told me to!"

"Vergil, don't lie! And don't incite your little brother! I'm ashamed of you! You're the eldest, take some responsibility!" She shook her fist at him.

The old man was staring at them, back and forth following whoever was shouting. He worked himself up to throw something at her. He stammered out… that was what they called sorcerers, people who called up demons, right?

Demon-controller. Yeah, right. She barely controlled these two. She caught it and let it fall to the ground. Dante and Vergil trained twin glares on the old man. Vergil moved to whack him with the pole. Eva caught the pole. "Vergil!"

"But Mom! He tried to hurt you!" Dante growled at the old man again. She whapped him on the head as hard as she could, then tried to hide that her hand was stinging.

The poor old man was cowering, but standing his ground.

"I say!" The old banker (what was his name? The stuffed shirts tended to blur together after a while) moved to interpose himself between them and the old man. "Leave these people alone! Police!" he called out.

"Dante! Vergil! Leave the poor nutcase alone and apologize to this poor man!" She pointed at the man who had been the head of the dragon, who didn't seem to speak English. He backed away from the finger.

"But we did apologize!" Vergil objected.

"You apologized to me! You have to treat people with respect. Now be polite!" She whacked Vergil on the head. "Say I'm sorry in Chinese!"

They bowed and did so. The man said something quickly and started to scoot away. She decided to take that as apology accepted.

"Your boys speak Chinese, Lady Eva?" The banker blinked.

"They're prodigies. They take after their father. Except that he had manners and self-control!" She returned to glaring at them. They tried to avoid her gaze.

This was not good. There were hunters in San Francisco, of course, and the old man was probably one of their contacts. She didn't want ninjas storming the hotel. No, wait, ninjas were Japanese, weren't they? She needed to read up on Asia. In her non-existent spare time.

"Oh, they seem like good children, your ladyship. Such brave little knights, trying to defend us from a monster!" The banker chuckled.

"They're little angels. When they're asleep." Fallen angels the rest of the time. "Vergil, Dante, we're going!"

"Oh, but they'll miss the rest of the parade! I'm sure this will be cleaned up quickly."

Oh, right. She was actually paying for property damages now. Part of being a respectable citizen. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out her wallet. A little over two thousand. She grabbed the dragon-man, who froze, and handed him the money. "For the dragon. Um… long!" She pointed at the costume. "…Yen!" She knew Chinese for money!

The man's eyes widened at the amount.

"Your ladyship, that's much too much!" The banker protested.

"I'm not paying it, Vergil and Dante are." She grabbed them both by the ears. Good thing they were cowed enough not to try to pull away, they could wrench her arms off. "We're going back to the hotel! And you two are so, so grounded!"

She marched off, half-dragging them. "And that means no weapons practice!"

"But Mom," they wailed.

"Can it!"