Disclaimer: I own nothing, Capcom owns a whole lot of trademarked stuff including Devil May Cry. Please don't sue me for writing free advertising. You're the ones profiting here, not I.

A/Ns at the end. DMC4 made me think, and although you'd need some brain tests to verify it, if you include the first novel in your timeline Dante does indeed meet the diagnostic criteria for DID, more commonly known as MPD, which Vergil will acquire in DMC4…

Yes, it's my first DMC thing in ages. If you're waiting on Angel Saga, DMC4 is Capcom's official version of how Vergil shall recover from the trauma of being tortured for ages. I own it, I lack PS3. I am watching YouTube cutscenes, though, and doing some thinking. Throwaway things I do for fun can be skimped on, things that are actually liked require quality.

Um... I suppose I could do some omakes or something for it, if you want. I am sorry to keep you waiting, after all, and if you think those would ease the tedium I'd be up for it.

Lady was having to rethink her change of mind about Dante. He'd seemed like he cared, he'd cried. Yet, whenever she tried to bring it up, wanting to have a shoulder to cry on with the excuse of giving him one he changed the subject. He did not want to talk about it, period, and what she dragged out of him was just wrong.

He'd cried for Vergil, and now he said he'd bet that idiot had gotten what he deserved, jumping into hell like that. Darwin Award, thank you for not reproducing and spreading your genes of stupid! Or, in their case, demonic nature, although he didn't say that, Lady thought it.

No human could be unaffected by something like that, only a demon could. He was utterly focused on the future, when they would come back, and it seemed as though the tower wasn't even worthy of a moment's consideration, that day to day demon killings, the hunting he'd said he lived for, were more important than the fate of his family. Somehow, it even seemed that he was happy Vergil had to be dead or suffering! He did have pensive moments, here and there, mostly as he polished his guns despite the fact he'd told her, bragging about them, that they didn't need it, that they'd been built for him by the best gunsmith ever. Who was now dead.

Nell Goldstein. Then his eyes were sad and there was a quick moment of silence before he found something to distract himself with.

She was dead, Lady found when she asked if she could commission some from her (and fish for information). Murdered. By Vergil.

In the moments he said that he was unguarded, and she could see pain, mingled anger at Vergil and mourning guilt, mourning for Vergil, and it was then she realized that this flippancy was a mask. Or was it?

She'd hated her father. She'd loved him. That had made it oh so hard to kill him.

Strange that he'd cried for him before putting the mask back on, not after taking it off.

Dante's eyes became more lost, more unfocused, finally closing, head bowed, trying finally to handle the inner conflict between Vergil as beloved brother and Vergil as mass murderer, and Lady was relieved. He was human enough for it to be there, and now he would finally be able to get it out, both of them could.

Then his eyes opened and glared at her sharply. "Damn it, I have rotten luck with women. The idiots are all over me and the smart ones know to avoid me. Can't you take a hint?" The mask? But no, there was real emotion here, emotion other than the joy of living in the moment, the pouts at setbacks that were soon gotten around.

"You need to let that out, Dante." She put her hand on his shoulder. "It's not good to keep it bottled up like that."

"I let him out, he lies around angsting and shit doesn't get done." Rolling his eyes, he shook his head.

Him? "Are you his demon side?"

"No. Human, if we're getting to pick sides, thank you. Heard of MPD?"

"Isn't that either faked or the personalities don't know the other one's there?"

"More complicated than that. Look, Lady. He was eight when he lost everything in one night. Everything. He didn't want to live, and Dante von Schwarzung was a demon magnet. A human street rat named Tony Redgrave? Why would they go after someone like that? What could a normal little boy possibly have done to protect his mother from mob assassins? Why would someone who didn't know demons existed attempt to protect people from them and attract attention? He thought he didn't deserve to live, but he'd promised them. Luckily the will to live won out, or he would have sat there until he was found and killed. He couldn't bear the memories, though, knowing what he'd lost and blaming himself, not and get anything done. It's called repression, Lady. You know all about that. Lock it away. Deal with it later, when it's safe. Only it never is." It had been for her. It never would be for him.

He leaned back, confirming that, "I appreciate the thought, and I know you want to help us both out, but the world needs the son of Sparda, not a catatonic wreck. We were one, once. For a few hours. Vergil found us. I would have kicked myself, afterwards, but I didn't recognize him because I couldn't afford to, not if I wanted to live. So Nell, Grue, Jessica, and a hell of a lot of other people died instead. A human could not handle a son of Sparda. I couldn't take him. Dante could. What finally woke him up was when Nell, the only mother I had known, died. Helping me. As flames burned around us…" That strange chaos there, as he remembered, before he stopped it, shut down that memory to focus. "That woke him up. He could deal with Vergil. But he couldn't handle the fact that his brother, who last he saw was a great guy, from what I let myself know, had become a fucking monster. I can't handle the loss of his family. He can't handle how I lost mine. So here we are."

"You were human?"

"I thought I was. I even got demonic energy poisoning, real bad, because I thought I should."

"Energy poisoning?"

"You know how you get queasy near an open portal or a whole lot of demons?"


At her honest lack of idea what he was talking about, connections seemed to be rapidly made behind those eyes. "Do you notice anything?"

"Besides the adrenaline rush? I had so much in me I barely noticed that wound until afterwards. Precision painkillers and surgical glue can only do so much. That was… I kept expecting to come off the high, like those women you hear about that pick up cars to save their children trapped under them, see they're okay, and only then notice that their muscles are screaming in agony."

That seemed to confirm some theory that he didn't voice. "Anyway, I knew that I was insanely strong and fast, I just didn't think about it. It's amazing what people can ignore no matter how many times you rub it in their faces. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it think."

"I know. It's crazy how people who were in sight of the tower can act like demons are just a myth. I think they honestly believe that. I thought it was a spell."

"Nope, it's a defense." He shook his head. "You can't live a normal life if you're waiting for the boogeyman to jump out at you. You get hauled off to asylums, like Jessica."

"Jessica?" He'd mentioned her before.

"She was the nicest person I've ever met. Had a crush on me, great cook, always helping her family out even though she was on her last legs. I had to put her out of her misery." He smiled, and the glint in that eye proclaimed that he was absolutely serious, absolutely crazy about what he said next. "And that's another reason I hate Vergil's guts and I hope… no, she wouldn't want to hear him screaming in the pain she suffered, too nice for that, but I hope her father Grue can hear it, wherever he's gone." This, this Tony, wanted demon murderers to suffer just as she did, for similar reasons. He didn't make any exception for anyone, not even family.

"I don't like the fact I'm part one of them, that I'm related to that murdering bastard, but if I don't remember I don't know how to fight him, and I won't lose again. Dante won't wake up to save his own life, or Nell's, or anyone's, but he'll wake up for family. He's still that little kid, Lady. Still crying over his mother's body, and a crybaby can't run a business, can't handle day to day life and ending it."

"So you take over from him?"

He snorted. "No, don't have control. I could get it, but that would involve magic and I don't want any more demonic stuff messing with my head. He retreats, I take over, and vice versa. We're…" He tilted his head. "It's memories, Lady. What you've been through changed you from Mary Arkham to Lady. If you'd been able to forget your mother's murder you would have stayed innocent, happy little Mary. Then your father would have killed you. This strategy wouldn't have worked there. You did a little of it, though. Tried to forget all the good things he did, so you could be indifferent to him, just a murderer, never your father. You got rid of Mary, you're Lady now. I can't afford to ditch Dante, even though he can't bear the thought of killing the one I want dead the most out of all of them. He's staying alive to kill Mundus and he wishes Sparda was alive so he could kill him for dying and leaving his mother to die. He wants the traitor, I want his son. Guess it runs in the family, huh?" It was amazing that all these deadly serious revelations had been tossed off as though they were one-liners, a huge cosmic joke, although Tony was very aware the joke was on him.

"You're normally more…" Softer than this, at least.

"We're not totally separate, otherwise I'd have no idea what the hell was going on when I got back in control and then we'd be fucked. Since we're dealing with demons we both have to share some memories, the ones we need. He's the one who was there for his mother's lectures, after all." Tony glanced at that ever-present photograph. Eva.

His eyes were slightly sad, and Lady remembered that Tony had wanted to avenge her even though he must have had to forget so much of his time with her to avoid remembering what he was. "I don't blame him for not being able to handle it," Tony said at last. "He was a kid, she, and Vergil I guess, were his world. He was never outside alone. It just wasn't safe. He had no idea how to exist without them, and he'd had it dinned into his head how dangerous it was to keep him from doing something stupid like getting separated in a crowd. He was scared and alone, and I saw a few cases like that when I was on the streets, sheltered kids who'd lost everything. Most of them ended pretty nastily and that's without the hordes of assassins and the survivor's guilt. He's got the death wish, I've got the will to live, I guess, if you're putting it in terms of picking sides." His eyes were shadowed, though. "I have to remember what devil trigger is and what it does now. Can't just let him handle it when things get that bad. It's getting tougher out there. I need to be able to only hate them, I need that black and white because I'm the fucking son of Sparda, fuck it, and I'm no nobody. I'm needed."

He looked up at her from the photo. "I'm not going to want to talk about, think about, consciously remember this conversation when I go back to thinking of myself as Dante of Devil May Cry. Too many things I can't afford to think about because it's fucking difficult to stop thinking about them and I got shit to do. Don't worry, I'm not creating a third here. The two of us are messed up enough as it is, don't want to drag someone else into this mess." A half-smile, there. "Or maybe there is a new one starting up, now that we have to share so much of the time. The person who remembers and is shaped by those things. Someone who can handle them. Someone not fucked up. Well, I can dream, even if the kid's nightmares hog what sleep we need."

"You mean someday you'll be whole again?" She hoped so.

"When I, all of me, can handle all of the crap I've been through without breaking down. Don't hold your breath. I used to look after street kids for a bit when I was Tony. Being twelve and looking after an eight-year-old, I know how to do that. I'll be fine." He smiled now, and it was bittersweet but it wasn't an empty lie: anything but.

She was so very relieved, and it showed.

"He's getting a bit better. He managed to fight him seriously, even if it meant risking killing him. Not actually trying to kill the bastard, but not holding back. I suppose the nightmares are helping a bit. That's what they're for, dealing with things. Although man, I don't remember a lot of that fight but there's this one bit that sticks in my head because hell did he sound like the kid he is. Even the prick had to laugh." He shook his head. "The instant I start drawing on his memories I start to be more and more lame. He doesn't want to laugh at them, heart's not in it and it has to be."

She'd denied Arkham was her father, or tried to. Tony was denying that he cared for Vergil. Maybe there was something left of Mary, maybe she wasn't dead as she'd told him the first time they met on the tower, so melodramatic. She should have just started shooting. At the end, there... Lady had laughed, but some part of her had cried, and that had been surprising. She had been surprised she was crying while the tears fell. It wasn't making sense, or was she just not letting it make sense.

Murderer and father. One didn't erase the other, but the paradox… She'd wanted simple. She'd wanted either for him to be nothing to her or for him to be an(other) innocent victim of Vergil.

"I suppose you're getting that sharing session you wanted," Tony said wryly. "By the way, there's something else that came up in this conversation that you're not letting yourself pay attention to. Not about me, about you."


"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, in fact you'd probably rather start shooting than hear another word, because it's that serious. Mental is to the physical as five is to one, or something like that. It's not hard to figure out, so if you need to you will."

"Tell me, I can handle it."

"Lady, it's obvious enough that the only reason you're not seeing it is that you're choosing not to, and it's for a damn good reason. Denial is a shield, that's why humans evolved it. Pure demons don't have the luxury. You'll realize it the instant you need to know, and I hope you never do."

She tried to think back for clues and there weren't any that she could find. "Is not knowing it helping me fight?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "That's why you'd be willing to shoot me to shut me up. Putting the idea into your head would be just as bad as putting a bullet into you. Worse, actually."

"Okay then. You're the expert on this." Physician, heal thyself?

"It's a human thing. World's complicated, pick out what you need to pay attention to, ditch the rest. IQ is all about how good you are at figuring out what's important. The human senses take in a hell of a lot more than you actually notice, Lady. The room smells like pizza. I bet you weren't registering that until I mentioned it." She nodded.

"What was it like, realizing you weren't human?"

He burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" She put her hands on her hips.

"Well, what do you think it would be like?"

She couldn't imagine. Realizing that he was one of the things that had killed his mother and… she had to shudder. "Okay, I get your point."

"Exactly. I don't know if I can keep them, the ones I beat, around. They're reminding me."

"Ouch. And they're really useful, too."

"I know. I can't let this make me weak, that's the entire point."

"If he was eight, and you're twenty…. Oh, right, you said you were twelve."

"Ish, if you want to look at it that way."

"Dante, this is an excuse to be immature. Are you really going to pass it up?"

He laughed again. "Point to you, Lady. I really love a fast woman. On the other hand, since when have I needed an excuse?"

"Point." Yeah, that was the truth.

"I do have a reason, though. Laughter, that's why we have it. To make things seem ridiculous. Like when that pipe broke and sprayed gunk all over your new shirt and I just knew I was going to have to pay to replace it."

She'd angrily growled at the time that it wasn't funny, but in retrospect…

"Also, if you laugh at them, it pisses them off and they make mistakes. They take insults really seriously, by the way, and you should too. Sometimes insults are spells, and you'd better kill the caster if you don't want to end up as weak as they are saying you are, or whatever, so watch out. Of course, if they can talk they're special and that means dangerous."

"You're trying to learn how to do that, aren't you?"

"Working on it. The people who know how to do it just kind of gave me this look when I asked, so I got out of there before they started elaborating on how many kinds of stupid I was. They didn't even tell Sparda." He pouted a bit. "It does make a difference, but I can't tell if I'm actually doing it, or it's the placebo effect, like virginity making you more resistant to a lot of stuff. Complete bull, but if they think it's working it does."

"Damn it, Dante, why did you tell me that!" Lady covered her ears. "If you lowered my psychic defense to make it easier to get in the sack, I'm going to fucking kill you!" She kicked him viciously.

"You had Arkham's books, I thought you knew better already!" He let her kick him, though. He did deserve that.

"You just lowered my magical defense by telling me the truth." And he deserved a physical injury for it, because she would get injured because of it.

"The truth is a two-edged sword."

"Do you think their stuff is all placebo?" Otherwise she should look into it. An actual reason to curse demons.

"Well, some people think so because they're human, but it is a rather nasty ability in the demon world and you'd have to be stupid to ignore the threat given who they've taken down. Heard of elves, Lady?"

"Of course. You mean they're real?"

"Provided they keep their heads down in the dirt and don't break the treaty, yeah. But long ago, way before the time when if you called them fairies instead of fae they still had the balls to torture you to death for the insult, their ancestors were gods. Once upon a time." Tony was vastly amused, then deadly serious. "If you go there, though, find out how to clear it beforehand, or you could be dead the moment you touch the ground."


"No, Ireland. Eiru's land. Most of the elves gave up and fled to England eventually. Even Sparda had to watch his step there. The Island of Destiny's alive and man does she hold grudges. She was around before the human world had entirely separated out of the chaos of the demon world. If they deactivated one of their four Legion devil arms they'd be as hard to find as Avalon. Falias was used to kill the dinosaurs before they acquired it and they're using it as an anchor. It's a big rock, out in the open, in tourist guidebooks even and no one's crazy enough to try to steal it. People would rather fuck with Vie du Marli's halfbreeds than curses that old." Wow. "They could kill Mundus and he knows it, Gorias can kill anybody anywhere anytime, but recapturing it's a pain in the ass and it doesn't do anyone any good to kill him if Earth gets barbequed while it's out of control. Those things are the demon world equivalent of planet-buster nukes: the devil arms of entire cities. So don't worry about Mundus using some, they're rare and if he started using them the favor would get returned."

Phew. "So they learned this magic from the island?"

"Nah, they used it to sweettalk her into helping them take over the place in exchange for being referred to by name instead of treated as property. It is demon world magic, but apparently they're better at it than anybody even though they converted it to a human-usable form. They just go for breadth. Have a few thousand people repeating a spell as songs or gossip and you've hit godlike levels. I've been cracking the books for that power, because I'd love to make a mockery of Mundus, but it's hard as hell to find anything accurate. If it's been written down, the person who recited it edited it or made it up even before the anti-pagans and racists got their hands on it. Verbal historical records have to be accurate on pain of pain, written is by definition inaccurate and therefore can be BSed." He tilted his head, though. "What is pretty reliable, although maybe inflated because they fanboy the guy, is the fact they had an utterly kickass caster who was the first guy to hit the beach when they invaded. He might have had something in the line there, who knows. They're pretty liberal about it. Back before the Irish Church decided to join the Roman Catholic Chruch there were several demons who converted and that was just fine. Now they have to fudge the books. St. Brigit wasn't once a goddess, oh heavens no!" After the mimicry he laughed, then frowned. "That's slipping a little too much."


"Dante hasn't accepted the fact that not all demons are evil. He hates his father, like I said, for failing his mother. I'm supposed to be the kill 'em all, black vs. white one. I suppose a little distance helps. After all, Tony Redgrave wasn't anything but human." He smiled again. "I suppose it's that I'm older and more cynical. Also, I have a working ego. I know I'm not evil, so therefore not all demons and people with burning skeletons in the closet are. So I think that's okay. One of us needs to be working on that issue. If he still wants to die when Mundus comes he will. We will, I will, whatever, and I plan to live and do some serious avenging." Frowning again, he added. "Bleedover. And I used to be the traumaless one. I need to watch it. Tony Redgrave wasn't supposed to think. He was supposed to play the combat idiot savant and live the role. Thinking meant finding holes in the lies I told myself. It's amazing how much a few years and twice the memories will change someone. Well, gotta do what you gotta do. It's amazing how smart you have to be to keep yourself that dumb."

Smiling again, an attractively roguish and dangerous tilt to his head, he informed her that, "I don't want to know about Vergil, but Mother would bring me back from the dead again to kill me if I get myself killed." Kicking gracefully, he did an almost-360 on a single leg of his chair and ended up almost horizontal, legs on desk. That position looked comfortable and also like it really shouldn't be. "A few months ago I didn't let myself remember that. I should work on Sparda, he's safer since we never loved him so we don't give a damn that he's dead, but she's the one we want to remember and that makes it easier to make the effort." That was what mattered. "I don't even know how he died: neither one of us can find the details. That's bad."

The details, how the dark knight himself had been brought down, were probably very, very important.

"I want to know where his grave is so I can dance on it. Or something. It's fucked up." He spun again, looking up at a sword on the wall. That sword. "It's a devil arm. Won't talk, or can't, or I don't want to hear it. Admitting the fact that you're fucking with your perception of reality constantly to serve your unconscious goals is a very scary thing to do."

"You're right." Lady didn't really like it, that there was something she would attack Dante to not know about herself. But they were both walking wounded. She, now, was somewhere safe, someplace she could take a moment to lie down in a quiet corner, let the tears come.

Dante was lucky to have an instant, there after the tower, before they came for him yet again.

She supposed she could at least shed some of his tears for him.

The phone rang: back to work. "No rest for the wicked, hey Lady?"

She was human. She had limited stamina. She could take a moment to rest.

I was discussing the Tony issue with the muse Nemi, and it occurred to me, and was verified by Wikipedia, that the different worldview, different memories (Tony firmly believes he's human) and so on fit the criteria for disassociated personality disorder, more commonly known as MPD.

The one diagnostic criterium that isn't explicit canon is that you need the switch to happen more than once, otherwise it's just a fortunately rare last-ditch mental defense measure that's certainly not a disorder, as it can make the difference between a future healthy life and utterly losing it. DID usually happens when a kid is exposed to something so terrible that they just can't handle it, so the memory gets locked away so they can function. That's repression, but if the event reoccurs… if you don't remember the trauma, you can't formulate strategies to handle it. So, over time, they can develop a 'surface persona' who doesn't remember the trauma and therefore isn't shaped by it, and a persona that does remember the trauma and is therefore deeply affected by it because they have to be able to take over and deal with it.

The difference between 'normal happy version' and 'victim of child abuse version' can become so extreme that differences in brain blood flow, electric activity, and so on can be found and measured when the different personae are in control, which certainly made detecting fakes much easier.

In the novel, Dante became Tony after his family was killed. As Dante, he was a semi-catatonic child and the target of every demon/sorcerer on the planet. As Tony, he's a human who kicks much ass and has nothing to do with demonkind until Vergil comes after him.

Vergil showers Tony in clues, but Tony/Dante does not want to recognize those clues, because Tony's ignorance is the traumatized child's best defense. However, in the end Tony is confronted with his mother figure's death for him just as Dante lost Eva. THAT woke up Dante, Tony who refuses to accept the fact he has demon powers because that endangers his cover cannot handle the threat of Gilver, so Dante is prettymuch forced to some out of that shell.

The difference between personae is denial. What information they are willing to accept, because it is memory that shape personality. Once one forms, you can sometimes get others because as everyone knows specialization is ftw. You act differently with your friends than with your boss, right? You're focusing on work instead of fun. DID is based on that, only really, really taken to the extreme. Like Tony, some alternate personae have entirely different histories/ancestry/etc. They can be fantasy lives, personae inhabited to escape a reality that has become unlivable even on the surface.

If you look at DMC3, you can get huge shifts between flippant, deadly serious and flippant not meshing well, and serious(ly corny). In DMC4, Dante can deal with serious matters and still have fun: he's not bouncing between actually enjoying this and hating it with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns.

At the end of DMC3, there's a dramatic switch between Dante's tears and him saying (with barely any irony) this is what I live for!

So, I'm wondering, especially given the huge difference between DMC1 Dante and the earlier/later ones, exactly how integrated Dante and Tony became when Dante woke up in the novel. The manga version of Dante is almost pure Tony. Also, Dante's reactions to Vergil do not fit with his reactions to what happened to the novel characters despite the fact the novel was written to fit with DMC1.

Did Dante really keep all of Tony's memories when he woke up? I'm wondering if an eight year old who woke up to find that his murdered brother had become a monster was capable of abandoning a shield he'd been sheltering behind half his life.

To flippant Dante (beginning of mission 7 boss fight) Vergil is enemy, to be treated and cut down to size like any other. He's not affected by any bond: he mocks the fact they're brothers. In fact, he's more hated than common enemies. That's very Tony. In mission 20, on the other hand… Tony who was created to deny demonhood can't beat demonic Vergil, just like in the novel. Dante has to awaken, as in the subtitle. To find that Vergil's still evil and going to get himself killed yet again. No wonder Tony takes over as soon as there's nothing left but cannon fodder and Dante's understanding of the enemy isn't needed.

Tony can't accept Dante's traumatic memories because Tony needs to keep going: he can't break down and cry, he can't have nightmares that get his stuff wrecked any more than he already does. Dante can't accept Tony's own murdered family because he needs to still be able to love his brother.

It's interesting that in DMC1, despite DMC3 (later) being canon the memory triggered by Dante's acquisition of the other amulet is not the last time he saw it, the Vergil fight, but a happy memory. He's refusing to recognize the evidence this is Vergil because he needs to fight Nelo Angelo and he doesn't want to fight Vergil. And then he's refusing to remember the other times they fought. He needs to fight Mundus, he needs to remember why he's fighting, his love for his family. 'Tony' is rare in that game, only a few flippant remarks like 'flock off, feather-face' because this is Mundus: this is Dante's fight.

DMC4 can be interpreted as Vergil working out his own issues, and the similarities between Nero and Tony are startling, aren't they? He refuses to deal with the trauma, he simply doesn't have time because Mundus' demons are coming to take him back.

It is interesting that unlike Vergil's efforts to trigger Tony's memory, Dante isn't trying to make Nero come to the obvious conclusion that he is Vergil. If Nero was ready to accept it he would, as it's so freaking obvious. It's interesting that the game in which Dante is integrated, the personalities clearly able to accept the memories the other guarded and therefore have no experiential difference separating them, the one where he can deal with Vergil and have fun at the same time, is the one in which Vergil is fractured, Yamato and his mind broken apart.

I said ages ago that Vergil couldn't possibly be unscathed by what Mundus would put the son of the traitor through. XP

As for Lady's secret… Given the novel, a human could not possibly survive Temen ni Gru. Period. Forget combat: the demonic energy spilling out of the portal would have killed them even if a demon didn't. Not to mention the well-known injury recovery and boss battle issues. The red eye's an inherited trait. The priestess did die, yet had descendants. If you believe that she's totally human given that the DMC series pounds the fact normal humans suck against demons since they die with one bullet through the head into you, then you're the sort of person that forces everyone to have to write disclaimers because they can't figure out that fanfiction site means it's fanfiction. Shame on you.

If you're interested in seeing how human demon hunters work in the DMCverse, I recommend the second novel. Beryl is given the luck of the devil, and some ammo Dante doesn't have, for plot purposes, but her limitations do play quite a role. If you're writing a human demon hunter, Beryl is as good as it gets in the DMCverse, and your character should be less effective than her unless they're also under Dante's protection (currently) and have her amount of training.

It amazes me that Tanaka of DMC2 fail hasn't admitted how shamelessly he ripped off the novels for DMC3. Lady is a Beryl rewrite, and it was the novels' author who first made Vergil badass instead of a helpless victim as per the original setup. Anyone who thinks that the novels are AU as of DMC3 needs to read them and notice that the only contradiction they have is a single illustration that could have been quite easily missed. Dante's sword is never called Force Edge in the text: take out that illustration and it's Rebellion.