Devil May Cry: Would you fight for me
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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"Where did this bird come from?" Nero demanded as he studied the freakish 6 eyed bird before him. The tower held no animal type demons that he had encountered so far. Mostly animated stone statues that resonated demonic power or straight up demons. There couldn't be such a bird on earth to have a beak like that and its eyes! Though given what Angus said, he wouldn't have been surprised if it was a human world bird modified into a demon.
Those multiple eyes staring at Nero soullessly caused him to turn his head slightly to glance over at Credo and Dante.
Neither men expressed any knowledge of the bird earning Nero's growing irritation. Credo stood there, in awkward stiffness, his normally immaculate uniform now sported a glaring red spot of red as wide as Nero's fist. While the back of the uniform was a horrifyingly swath of blood, blood that Credo shrugged off. But Credo had allowed himself to be turned into a demon... so maybe he just healed quickly?
Nero didn't know, and the other guy? Dante was younger than when he first encountered the man, and certainly more pissed off.
"What are you staring at then?" Nero demanded of the strange bird as he turned his attention back onto it..
The room was just becoming more unsettling by the minute for the young man. The Living Statue Room had a second floor accessible by a pair of stairs that flowed against the wall upward. The interior curve left a space in the center where there was a number of small rough statues resting in alcoves. A design reflected above on the walls, though 'those' statues were life sized. Some alcoves were empty, some not, some were empty husks, some were animated until Dante and Nero cleared them out. As they had already been stirred into action, undoubtedly due to Kyrie's desperate dash to avoid the demons.
Nero had been about to grab the door when the bird just... puffed into existence, dust or whatever that slipped through the center of the door. "If you're not going to talk then get the hell out..." Nero never finished the sentence, an idle grab with his devil bringer resulted in him grabbing what amounted to feathers, or dust. Whatever it 'did' grab, it absorbed from the bird, earning a startled squawk from the bird.
Not that Nero heard it, instead his mind suddenly yanked itself back to when he was a kid, back in the orphanage. Before Credo's parents adopted him. Those memories of the times when he would wait for someone, anyone, to come and get him. Alone, Credo and Dante disappeared from his sight as the room washed out into an empty void.
Before him was a small child that he instantly recognized as himself, who else could have that pain in the ass white hair?
"Mommy? Daddy? Please come back. I'll be good I promise! What did I do? Why don't you love me?!" The boy sobbed in a generic dirty white tunic and shorts.
Nero's hands clenched into fists as he stared down at the small child, "I don't know who the hell thinks this is funny..." he growled his voice low and dangerous. A clawing sensation dug deep into his guts and up his chest as he tried to take his gaze off the 'kid' only to fail.
"Please... Please I don't want to be here..." The child shoulders began to shake, the tears bringing a sting to Nero's eyes.
"Nero!"
Credo frowned deeply as Nero stopped moving, his expression lost any life to it as he entered a seemingly sudden staring contest with the bird. Credo moved forward, feeling the slight sharp pain in his gut where the Yamato had pierced through his gut and spine. Pain was nothing though, first Kyrie and now Nero needed him, as he pushed past the pain to reach his adopted younger brother.
"Nero."
The bird suddenly spoke, its voice dead, echoing what it heard Credo say without any effort to emulate the worry that underpinned Credo's own voice. A shot rang out causing dust to explode as the bird suddenly flew off, soaring into the air for a moment. Without another attempt at speaking the bird disappeared diving for the door and turning to dust to get through.
Credo turned to look at Dante, the devil hunter had the darker of his two guns in his hand still drawn and aimed. He wasn't the same Dante that shot Sanctus, he was younger, more alive. In fact he and Nero could have been siblings when he compared the two during their fight. Yet with the aggression and anger that Dante had expressed when he started the fight, that he now tried to help Nero felt...
Dantes' gaze slid from the doors over to Credo before he gave a shrug, "I can't kick his butt if he's zoned out."
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"V?"
"Nero... is remarkably grabby," Vergil murmured in pained surprise as the world was washed in hellish white. He could see a small boy with white hair, crying for his parents to come and get him. Bland clothes covered his frame, he stood before Vergil with his head down and rubbing at his eyes with his arm. Vergil found himself standing before 'his' crying child. He should have been angry, scold the child for crying over something so trivial. For crying when he was the grandson of Sparda.
But damn V, all Vergil wanted was to hold his child. Shame was a molten iron brand that marked him that he was so insufferably weak that he couldn't have been there. This was the closest that Vergil probably would ever get to seeing his son as a child. It was a mockery, Nero was a grown man he didn't need Vergil. Even if Vergil hadn't ripped Nero's arm off, Nero had Dante. 'If only I had more power, I wouldn't have... I could have stayed...' They wouldn't have been able to send Nero away to Fortuna. He could have taken back his son...
"Mommy, daddy, please come and get me." The child continued to plead. Even as Vergil watched, the shadow began to break down, dust filling the air and drifting about.
'This is not good, Nero must be unknowingly starting to forge his own contract with Griffon. But to do such would keep dragging these memories back up to the surface. He doesn't deserve this,' Vergil thought as he noted how directionless the dust was. Forging the familiars out of such painful memories befitted Vergil far more than Nero.
While at the same time Kyrie frowned in concern. As V leaned heavily against the wall, worry coloring her voice for the stranger. He had been fine one moment, and seemed genuinely delighted that she was a songstress of classical pieces. The next he choked out that one sentence and staggered into the wall, his gaze seemingly blinded.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kyrie anxiously asked as she looked about helplessly. There were no chairs or couches to be seen, Shadow still stood staring ahead though the tip of his tail flicked once. She wasn't a trained nurse, or even knew what affliction suddenly struck the man. Only that he had said Nero's name when whatever happened alarmed her. Was Nero ok? Did that Dante person hurt or even kill Nero? Was Credo ok? She reached out and rested her hands over his hand only to grow alarmed at how it felt as cold as the cane it held. He had these fingerless leather gloves that he wore loose, but even that gave no warmth to his hand. So she tried to rub some warmth into it as she waited for whatever to hopefully pass.
"No. But we must hurry, Nero has started forging a contract and I need to stop him." Vergil answered as he forced himself into motion, before he even was aware of the warmth covering his hand. Glancing down he noted her hands on his and had to marvel for a moment at her courage once more. Perhaps her time with Nero opened her eyes to the possibility of looking past appearances. Regardless...
Griffon could be heard via the flaps of his wings as he raced back to them, visually looking no different that before.
"A contract? With what? Who?" Kyrie asked anxiously as she fell in step behind V as he strode off.
"With Griffon, he has absorbed several of Griffons' feathers and," he paused as he tried to think of a way to explain to the inexperienced girl. "He's apparently never absorbed a living nightmare before, they were given life through my nightmares. Now unintentional though it may have been, Nero is starting to forge the self same bond with Griffon."
"I see..." Kyrie replied, and to her credit didn't continue pestering him with questions. Even if she was justified in doing so, given their connection. "And being bound to Griffon is bad?"
"Yes, the contracts are not gentle," Vergil answered as he moved. Nero's anguish was pulling as fiercely as a cord to his chest. Already Griffon was leading them back to where he found the child, though Vergil wouldn't need it now. Though it pulled less on his chest and pulled more directly on the Yamato. For a sword that was crafted to split anything asunder, it was doing its best to unite...
Suddenly it made sense. The veil that had covered his eyes about how he could have been dragged back into the living world. Suddenly it made all the sense.
Nero.
The child had been given the Yamato and his keening for his parents to get him had forged the link between the two. Yamato had intensified Nero's longing and pulled Vergil back from the grave in answer. 'If I permitted Nero to hold the Yamato again, would that keening resume? It feels foolish to think so... would the cry be for his mother instead?' It felt right, the logic was certainly sound on how he came back. Yet something bugged him, a gadfly that continued to sting at the back of his thoughts.
"I just hope we find them soon, I had no idea I fled so far in that instance..." Kyrie spoke up, more to herself than to Vergil. Ahead of them was Griffon and Shadow and Kyrie was grateful for their presence. The tower was strange through and through to her, the walls were smoky black marble in appearance yet held a warmth to the touch. It gave every room this stifling sensation that made it hard to breath.
It was the chill in the air that started to cool off her heated skin that had actually guided her in the direction that Vergil had found her. Unbeknownst to her, she had been heading straight for where Cerberus had been chained. The residual coolness of the demon still holding some sway as it dissipated through out the tower.
"Kyrie... if you could be so kind, until we find them, could you tell me a story? Perhaps how you ended up in this tower, or what you were doing before you arrived here. I need... a distraction from Nero's contract." Vergil requested, as every cry from Nero made him want to stop, it was a sound that raked along his insides. Forcing him to ponder why Nero wasn't raised in the village of his birth, and instead had ended up in Fortuna.
The city would have completed its locked down state by the time Nero was born. So there was no way for him to just be found at the orphanage. Someone would have had to had taken him there, either by sneaking in or just leaving him at the city gates. Meaning a guard would have had to have taken pity on the child.
"Well... I don't know how I got here... We woke up on the ground up on an higher level of this place."
Awareness came first in the form of sound, Credos' voice filled with barely stifled pain.
"What is the meaning of this? Give back whatever you just took!" Credo demanded, his voice strained as she opened her eyes. She could see him staggering a few steps towards her with several armored soldiers that she recognized as part of the Order between them. Only they were flying with those wings of theirs and in one's hand there was something glowing gold.
"Forgive me, you say it was holding 'something glowing gold'?" Vergil asked as they walked, his voice carried the frown he wore. As well as curious recognition...
"Yes, do you know what it is? Gold is a color often associated with several of his uniforms. I did not get a clear enough look its true, but I know he doesn't carry something that glows gold." Kyrie inquired, hoping for an explanation.
"I'm not entirely sure, though they also stole a very similar glow from myself as well..." Vergil explained slowly. 'I can not fully change back, what moment was this Credo person frozen in?' "Whatever this thing is, it seems to hold a connection to your brother and I now."
"Oh! Oh no, do you need a rest?" Kyrie suddenly asked, alarmed as she briskly walked ahead of Vergil and began looking him over with greater interest.
It was an examination that took Vergil by surprise, causing him to balk and take a step back by this surprisingly earnest and sudden action. "I'm sorry, what?"
Kyrie was preoccupied with the mesmerizing style of tattoos that covered V's upper body. No one in the Order had such markings and she was rather captivated by the design and even how they appeared on skin. But then she noted how almost painfully thin V was and wondered if he had a decent meal recently. The way the skin stretched over his ribs made her want to make him have a proper meal. "Well when I woke up, Credo was moving stiffly, I think whatever they took from him hurt him badly. I admit I don't know a great deal about demons or magic other than from stories."
Her voice drifted as she righted herself, since she couldn't see any wounds on V. So Credo must have just landed badly on something bloody. At least that's what she told herself. Turning her gaze up to meet V's she watched as he lowered his, using his thick black hair to veil his eyes.
'How can I explain to this young girl that Nero loves... I would need more information, yet even then...' Without more information Vergil couldn't be confident and say that Credo would be fine. "I confess I am unsure what that glow is exactly. But that makes returning you to your loved ones all the more important. But go on, tell me what happened next..."
"Well Credo didn't seem too upset over losing whatever that glow was..."
"How... Kyrie? Credo!" Nero could be heard behind her, causing Kyrie to sit up in alarm and look over.
There was Nero, looking between her and Credo with naked relief in his eyes as he stuck his right arm behind him.
"Oh I'm so glad you're both safe!" She began to relax when Credo's own concerned voice cracked the slowly building hope that they were done with that nightmare.
"I'm not entirely sure this qualifies as 'safe', Kyrie," her brother noted, his voice firm but quiet.
She turned to look and felt her heart suddenly stop as she took in the small red blossom of blood on Credo's white uniform. It wasn't the first time she had seen blood on his crisp white uniforms, but every time worried her. "Credo? You're injured!"
His lips thinned as he slowly nodded, Nero's voice from behind was a flurry of swears accompanying the scrambling sound as he got up.
"I'm fine, its nothing," Credo replied when Nero passed Kyrie while approaching Credo.
"'Nothing? He ran you through!" Nero replied.
'Ran through... no, what she is describing would be fatal for a human.' Vergil thought to himself. 'For Credo to sustain and survive such an injury would suggest that what they took from him.. no it couldn't have healed him. An hourglass would symbolize time, if he is frozen to a point in time perhaps before death has occurred...'
It wasn't enough though, with the library possibly holding pertinent information his mind went back to Nero again. Walls started to bleach out, and echos of that small child crying for him began to echo through out the corridor. 'You died nine months after I left... I didn't know I left you with child... if only I was stronger. If only I had fathers' power...' Vergil thought to himself.
Kyrie, sweet child, continued recounting her awakening in the tower, but the words flowed over and around Vergil...
"'So you're the reason why dad wasn't home with us that night...'" The shirtless man in the red coat said to Nero..."
Vergils' world, already frozen from Neros' cries shattered as a horrible realization began to dawn upon him.
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So if the original Familiars did not return to Vergil and they carried his nightmares of what Mundus did to him. Doesn't that mean they basically lobotomized Vergil to a degree?
Also all three Familiars seem to reflect states of dealing with abuse.
Griffon is the wise cracking smart ass, the victim tries to bluff themselves out of their situation.
Shadow is the silent, focused primal mindset when the victim goes into fight or flight.
Nightmare is the broken desperate 'get me out of here' flailing raging violence.
Note that the ability to communicate for help degrades as it goes from Griffon to Nightmare in much the same way as a victim starts to give up attempting to communicate that they need help. And all three represent the desire to protect the victim from being hurt again.
Another thought is the presence/lack of presence of Phantom. In Visions of V, Phantom is presented as another familiar. Being spawned from Vergils' thoughts though what exactly was the nightmare that it represented that V destroyed?
My personal take is that Phantom was pure negative self talk. The part of the mind that tells the victim they deserved to be punished/hurt, that they're worthless, and that they would be better off dead. While Griffon, Shadow and Nightmare retain an idea of self preservation and that all four of them have value. (And all 4 care about V and Vergil as well.) Phantom would be the one that would say 'no there is no value so lets just check out.'