Disclaimer: I do not own Devil May Cry, nor do I make money at this.
Awhile ago I requested a fic taking place in the 'verse of the DMC comics (not the manga, an American comic series that is a rewriting of DMC1) on the livejournal group dmcexworks, and the writer who now is Gunstrap here wrote me a fic called My First Royalguard. In exchange, he requested this:
"The fanfic should be about Vergil's Iaido training. I want to have someone speculate on how he learned to fight so well. Dante seems more like a self taught, devils-own (har har) style.
Vergil however, had to learn from somebody...or through a book. But I would like a fanfic on that."
Which seemed an excellent thing to add to Rapture, so here this is. From now on, Rapture will be updating every other week for awhile.
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Ideally, she would have been able to have hunters train them. However, there was the worry about someone deciding that despite their father's heroism, her two children growing up into strong devils with a through knowledge of the forces defending earth was something that could and should be snipped in the bud: the temptation was simply too great, and she knew the paranoia of her former colleagues.
Sparda had been Sparda, the savior of them all, and there had been plenty of objections to him. There were some that had been staunch allies and defenders of his reputation, but, even so…
She didn't want her children anywhere near anyone with the strength to kill them, for safety's sake. It made her old paranoia act up with a vengeance. Not to mention that hunters had enemies, sorcerers the hunters foiled but hadn't managed to kill yet, and their homes were often kept under surveillance by the bodiless demons.
She could guess at the bounty offered by Mundus' generals for the heads of her children. The power of a god, immortality, the viceroyalty of Earth… the stars themselves would be promised, for the extinction of Sparda's line. Every sorcerer on Earth would have heard of it by now. She remembered the attempt on her own life, which would probably have succeeded save for Sparda. She would have had no chance at finding the sniper in time, and with a gun that could see through walls and fire bullets through them, accurate over a range of who knew how far, well. One would run out of gold orbs eventually, despite all the precautions you took.
There were the Vie du Marlians, but that island attracted sorcerers from all over the world: the place was crawling with artifacts of demonic power (and halfbreeds to capture and sacrifice: they'd fought Mundus, his generals wanted them dead too, or at least so reduced in number they wouldn't be able to resist the upcoming invasion.
The invasion her children needed to be trained for, as they were the best hope humanity had.
They had counted on Sparda being alive, being able to teach them and fight in the war, lead the war and make sure his children survived. Now, he was dead, and she was left with them.
She had orbs, they could have safely sparred with her, but she knew nothing about fencing and seemed to have only a minimal aptitude for it: gunfighting habits were much too ingrained to fundamentally change her fighting style now. She took some lessons, but…
And then something that she had immediately dismissed occurred to her again as she took lessons from one of the few hunters strong enough to use melee in battle, mainly to fend off demons that managed to get too close.
The experts on swordfighting were mostly unaware of demons.
She'd rejected the idea of having some expert fencer train Dante and Vergil because he couldn't spar with them: she could slip him blue orbs enough to survive being skewered when one of them failed to pull a punch, but he would ask questions and, being someone well aware of physical limits, would quickly realize they were not normal.
Also, human fencers both European and Eastern used swords that were much, much lighter and smaller.
Then she realized that to Dante and Vergil, Rebellion and Yamato were as easy to move as the lighter swords human masters used were to them. And sparring? They could spar with each other as they did gunfighting: that was in fact a much better idea than getting them used to fighting weaker humans. They needed to be ready for opponents much stronger and faster than humans.
So, in effect, they needed to learn the moves, the blows, from a human master, work out on their own how to convert them for devil arms, and then spar with each other. So, all they needed to do with their instructor was kata.
She researched fighting styles and there was simply too much to choose one, then she had the idea of looking through Sparda's address book: he knew the most interesting people. There were three people listed under sparring opponents (normal) that weren't crossed out: she called and was told one of them was dead, both of the others had moved but she managed to track them down. That was what private detectives were for, besides getting evidence of infidelity (she'd heard the argument with her ear pressed to the floor after the one her mother had hired brought her photos).
One of them was busy with tournaments for the foreseeable future; the other had retired and was living in the mountains in Japan. She decided to start with the one who had free time on his hands: he might be bored by now, teachers loved eager students who learned fast (and her children picked things up quick as lightening), and she was very persuasive when she wanted to be. Not to mention that she could tell a sob story about his old friend wanting his sons to be trained but dying before he could, loving wife wanting to fulfill her husband's wishes, cute children with very good puppy dog eyes having to worry about assassins… And she wouldn't even have to lie!
So they left the castle, where they had gone to look at Sparda's records, and headed for Japan.
They had been there before long enough for the boys to perfect their Japanese (and her to polish up hers), and explore the culture. Sparda had talked about perhaps spending a year here: he loved old Japanese culture as much as old European. She would have though he would perfer Chinese, with the tranquility and the cultural dictates, and he did find it interesting but it had been a place to travel through, not to live.
Now, of course, traveling to China was out of the question. In the Cultural Revolution, the hunters had been forced out of the country: there were some that worked in secret, but the families had been well-known and easy to target.
However, the destruction of old lore meant that there were very few books useful to sorcerers left in China. There were some regions that the government simply ignored as they ignored demon attacks and infestations, covering them up: regions that since the Civil War had been the private domains of sorcerers.
The hunter community was not looking forward to the day one of those sorcerers made a truce with the government. A sorcerer gaining power in a dictatorship would be a nightmare. Even Stalin wasn't crazy enough to expel the hunters.
No, China was not safe. There were very few people becoming sorcerers there, due to the lack of books and the fact the established sorcerers took care to wipe out the competition early, but the ones that survived there had accumulated power over decades, were firmly entrenched, and she wasn't crazy enough to take her children anywhere in reach of them.
Japan, however, except for Switzerland, had the most hunters per capita in the world, perhaps because it had once been an incredibly hot spot before the bindings had been built up into fortresses over the centuries, and perhaps also because Sparda had been there so often and trained so many. The hunter families there were some of the most friendly towards Sparda.
They would be safer there than most anywhere except the castle. And it was not safe to stay there in isolation: Dante and Vergil needed to learn the world and its people, to live outside confinement, in the real world.
Partly so they would not be helpless if anything happened to her, partly so that they would learn to care about humanity.
They needed to learn to have any chance at growing up, let alone growing up healthy and happy.
Luckily the children were past the stage where they needed blood or red meat daily, it was rather expensive here. Not that with Sparda's fortune money was an object, but still. Eva liked tempura, Vergil sashimi, Dante anything one could put wasabi on.
Sparda had hired the best to make her kimonos and other garb, creating things that looked exactly like traditional designs but that it was possible to easily rip pieces out of and create something one could fight in, but she had to make new traditional outfits for the boys once they arrived: they'd outgrown theirs already. Making a good impression was important.
They took a train to the nearest stop, which was a little town out in the middle of nowhere. There was a small inn, for people who came here to hike, but it wasn't the season.
The next day they headed up the mountain.
She thought he was in his fifties, though he looked much healthier. She ended up not having to tell him much of anything: Vergil had gone into the clearing where he was waiting before she did (the children did that sometimes, one going ahead the other staying behind her, keeping a lookout: she thought they'd picked that out from when she insisted on going ahead, they said they were big boys now and could guard themselves) and was instantly recognized as his old friend's and teacher's son.
When Sparda, or Shiro-sensei as he seemed to be nicknamed as some kind of in-joke, didn't appear with his family, the man, who insisted on being called by his first name, Seijuro as Sparda's family and the masters of his style were practically family. They had been trading techniques and sparring since the style's founder had met a white-haired traveler, who he had thought at first was a youkai and consequently attacked.
She wondered when he said that if he knew Sparda's identity, there was something in his eye that indicated he was making a joke, though she wasn't sure if it was at the 'mistake' being the truth (only he was a good youkai), or an honorable man being mistaken for a demon.
In response to her request he said that it was practically a duty to do so, and that as they were Shiro's family they would of course be naturals and a pleasure and relief to train after he had been cursed with an idiot for his last student.
So, they moved into a spare room.
Dante was very, very irritated and bored at 'waving a stick in the air,' he wanted swordfighting like he and Vergil had done, which basically consisted of bashing at each other. She told him he was here to do it properly, and reminded him she had damn well brought her shotgun, and if he was rude to the nice man… he grumbled but did as he was told.
Vergil, however, loved it, and made Dante do it too.
They quickly mastered each move and movement, graduating to more complex ones. When the instructor had them spar with each other (she'd begged him not to spar with them until they were used to sparring with each other, he'd been curious but complied: she didn't want him to break an arm and delay the training), Dante broke his wooden sword right away.
"Dante!" Eva called out, hands on hips. "I said gentle and slow."
"But that's no fun!"
"Most of life isn't fun! You do things because you need to do them, and because I'm telling you to!" The conversation was in English, which Seijuro clearly didn't understand a word of.
Dante grumbled and tried again.
And they had a problem.
Vergil could copy the movements exactly and calmly. Dante got excited too easily. He started resorting to his own moves and using his full strength no matter how much he tried to concentrate on holding back. Eva punished him at first, but he just couldn't help it.
Seijuro suggested that he practice with Vergil to ensure Vergil could learn the moves and then Vergil could spar with Dante and tutor him, with their 'perferred weapons and true strength.'
She was sure then he had some idea of the truth, but it never came out until he told them he had shown Vergil all he knew, and they needed to find another master if she wished her children to reach the level of their father, who had known the styles of all the world.
When they left, she thought for a second she would have to call to Vergil to come with them, he was hesitating at the edge of the clearing while Dante was forging ahead, eager to leave. It struck her that they had never before been so far apart: now they were arguing about which were better, guns or swords. They'd never had an argument that occurred so many times.
Well, eventually they would have to grow more distant, as they grew up and discovered different interests like this one.
But it still was sad to see.