DEATH .

i managed to get all my favourite lines from this fight in quick succession so i can talk about this a bit now.

nero confronting his father literally an hour after he found out he existed is the most tumultuous event of his adult life.  while he is much less obsessive about it than vergil, nero shares his father’s mantra that one cannot protect anything without strength, power, and if he can’t protect what he cares about then the validity of his entire existence is thrown into doubt.

throughout devil may cry 5, nero’s abilities are constantly downplayed by not only his surrogate father figure (dante) but literally the most human expression of his ACTUAL father’s will (V).  he doubts his own power to protect, having already let credo, his girlfriend’s brother, die with a lack of action he couldn’t afford to let dante and vergil kill each other.  and so, taking on vergil head to head isn’t some attempt at rekindling a bond with the father he never knew, he honestly couldn’t give less of a shit about vergil as a father. he’s just the most powerful person standing before him, a means to an end.  this fight is an existential battle for nero, he constantly remarks about confirming his existence throughout the scrap, he’s still doubting himself if he has the power to justify being alive and looks to the most powerful man he knows to give him some clue as to whether he can begin to accept himself as he is by beating him into the dirt.