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Morrison had stopped by with a simple job--a horde of Furies were hanging around an elementary school for who-knew-what reason, and it was best that they were gone before tomorrow morning.
Vergil had jumped at it. There were only so many hours he could stay in the room above the office without going mad from inactivity, and even William Blake’s poetry had ceased to hold his interest. It was a testament to how far they had come in the last few months since their return from hell that Dante had merely looked mildly concerned before agreeing that Vergil could take this job on his own. “Suits me,” he’d said with a shrug that wasn’t as lackadaisical as he probably wanted it to be. “Just don’t expect any of my pizza for dinner when you get back.”
Vergil had sneered. “You can have it.”
The fight had been far too easy. It was as though the Furies weren’t really trying to fight back, and as the last one fell to the asphalt of the school parking lot in two halves, Vergil found that he wasn’t at all willing to return to his room and the lingering smell of old pizza that filled the Devil May Cry office. He surveyed the demon corpses around him with a grim sense of satisfaction. Who knew what they would have done tomorrow morning when the students had arrived?
There must be some attraction here, perhaps further on in the school grounds.
As he sheathed the Yamato and considered where best to start searching, there came the overly familiar sound of a revving motorcycle behind him, accompanied by slow clapping. “Impressive!” a familiar voice called.
Vergil grit his teeth, wondering what on earth or in hell had brought Arkham’s daughter here. He tightened his grip on the Yamato’s sheath as he turned. “Did Dante send you to keep an eye on me?” he growled.
From the way her eyes flicked to his hand, Lady hadn’t missed his readiness to fight, but to her credit, she didn’t seem afraid. She snorted and strode past him, kicking a demon corpse out of her way. “Dante didn’t send me. I ran into Morrison on his way home and thought I’d come help. It’s been a slow day.”
“Help,” Vergil scoffed.
“Well, I would have, anyway. But it looks as if you’ve taken care of them already.”
Vergil could agree. He could say it was all fine and send her away to while out the rest of her evening doing whatever it was that Dante’s friends did with their time. But another part of him recognized the antsy way Lady walked and sympathized with it. He had had too many slow days, himself. “I have suspicions that there may be more around. Something about this school attracted them, after all.”
“Gotcha. Let’s start with the playground.”
As they headed for the row of neatly landscaped bushes separating the set of swings and slides from the parking lot, Vergil couldn’t help himself from adding, with a glance at the parked motorcycle taking up two empty spaces, “Perhaps if you had arrived earlier--”
She cut him off with a snort. “Not all of us have a sword that cuts through time and space, you know.” She drummed casual fingers on her holstered gun. Vergil tensed, but she didn’t seem inclined to draw it--yet. She glanced at him, and her eyes gleamed in the sparse light of the street-lamps.
Maybe she hadn’t been serious, but the Yamato was–well, it wasn’t whatever she was trying to joke about. “Not time,” Vergil found himself clarifying. “The Yamato allows me to teleport, yes, but only almost instantaneously.”
“Ah, yes, only almost .” There was something sarcastic and mocking in her tone that irritated him, reminded him of Dante’s refusal to take anything seriously at all, but when he glared at her he saw that she looked thoughtful and curious. “Everyone was after that sword, a few years ago,” she murmured, “and yet I never really understood why.”
Dante had filled him in on the events in Fortuna while they traveled through hell, but the idea of the Yamato being passed around and chased after like some antique heirloom--and the reminder of why he hadn’t been able to keep it in his own hands in the first place--caused Vergil to almost lose his breath.
They walked together in silence for a moment, Lady drawing her gun as they neared the bushes. “Get ready,” she said, her voice tense and…excited?
Vergil didn’t sense any demons, and he didn’t think her gun was a match for the Yamato’s grace and speed if there were any, but he humored her, this suspicious human, and grasped the Yamato’s hilt. Far be it from him to not be prepared for eventualities.
As they rounded the bushes, they did happen to run upon a couple of Furies, a group small enough that he could be forgiven for not sensing their presence, and though Lady aimed and shot, it was only the work of a moment for the Yamato to slice cleanly through them. Vergil couldn’t resist the urge to add a few flourishes--a couple of limbs went flying and a demon or two were staked to a sturdy bush before he decided to go ahead and kill them. Vergil slid the blade along his glove to clean it of demon blood and raised an eyebrow at Lady’s glare. “Don’t blame me for your slow reflexes.”
“Show-off,” Lady muttered. “It’s times like these I remember you’re Dante’s twin.”
That stung more than she’d probably intended it to. “I wasn’t showing off.” It wasn’t a lie; showing off had never entered his mind. It had simply been fun . “I simply wanted to prove how superior a weapon the Yamato is compared to those bulky guns of yours.”
Lady narrowed her eyes. “Oh?” In a flash, she had one of those guns up to his temple. “Your brother became acquainted with me when a bullet went through his forehead. You want something else to compete with him over?”
Vergil smiled slightly. “You know that one of those bullets can’t harm me any more than they did Dante. It would end in a tie.”
“Probably,” she admitted. Still, she didn’t lower the gun immediately. Vergil shifted the Yamato so that it lay against her stomach–just brushing her bare midriff. A drop of warmth entered his chest which he belatedly realized was excitement. He was having fun with this trigger-happy, contrary woman.
Lady glanced down at the Yamato and grimaced. She lowered her gun with some reluctance. “Don’t bother. I know when I’m outmatched.” She didn’t seem particularly happy about it.
Vergil stepped back to sheath the Yamato, but just as his fingers released the hilt, Lady swung her gun up and fired. There was one wild second in which Vergil expected to feel the burn of a bullet in his head with a sense of grim resignation to the woman’s trickery, but it never came, even as the echo of the shot faded from his ears. It had been aimed just beyond his head, and he turned to see the smoking body of a lone Fury a few feet away.
The strange heat in his chest cooled. He had been so focused on her--on Mary Arkham-- that had neglected his surroundings. That would not do. He knew better than most how one impulsive, reckless mistake could change everything. This was a job. Having fun, getting distracted, letting his mind become the one-track wonder that it tended toward, would result in failure. And his position at Devil May Cry was far too tenuous to allow for failure.
The woman--and bantering with her (if that was what they had been doing)--was a distraction.
Vergil turned on his heel. “I’ll patrol the grounds,” he said over his shoulder, and it was only with long practice that his voice remained even and didn’t hint at the loathing he felt toward his own weakness. “I didn’t ask for the a partner.”
Lady laughed-- laughed ! “Apparently, you need one. I didn’t see you handling that Fury.”
He stopped in his tracks, feeling a cool heat burst along his hands. Blue scales flickered along his fingers. He gripped the Yamato’s sheath. “Run back to Dante and tell him I have this handled. I don’t need a human to look after along with my own skin.”
The silence behind him almost crackled with anger. He heard Lady’s boots stomp across the grass, and her hand landed roughly on his shoulder. She jerked him to face her, and the worst part about it was that he let her. She glared at him, but this time--for the first time, he realized distantly--there was real heat in her eyes. “Are you really that upset that I proved more useful to you than that stupid sword?” she snapped.
Vergil ground his teeth together. She didn’t seem deterred by the blue demon probably staring out of his eyes. Why wasn’t she afraid of him? “Just go, Mary.” He made the name sting.
Her hand dropped away from his shoulder, and he recognized the familiar hatred that had returned to her face. Vergil hadn’t realized it was missing until it stared at him in the crease of her brow and the slant of her lips. “Fine,” she spat. “I’ll leave you to deal with this yourself. I just came here for some fun anyway. I’m sure Morrison has plenty of jobs that a mere human can deal with just fine.” She marched away, stomping on demon corpses as she went.
He turned away and headed for the school building before he could watch her leave, but he heard her motorcycle roar away. Perhaps he had been too harsh; he could admit that much, at least. Lady wouldn’t have lasted more than 20 years as a demon hunter if she wasn’t at least decently competent.
But distractions were not something he could afford. Dante and Nero were already too close to that. He would not succeed if he took it upon himself to watch over every human in this group. Dante and Nero were all he had.
He would not lose them for the price of an intriguing woman.