Three women bustled inside the long unused kitchen of Devil May Cry.

A lady with two distinctly different colored was currently keeping vigil over a very charred piece of some kind of animal meat. The look in her strange eyes was akin to one watching a bomb about to go off.

"That's three pinches of salt, Trish."

The tall blonde mixing a pot of unknown liquid glared back, irritably.

"I know! I don't make the same mistake twice. I know it's three pinches….. "

"I'm thinking she is worrying about the salt part…."

The third woman had red hair which was currently tied in a tight bun. She was chopping up various vegetables with great speed.

All three women were currently waiting for their colleague, a certain Son of Sparda who was coming back after three weeks spent looking for his estranged twin brother in the demon world.

It also happened to be his birthday today.

And that was the sole reason why Mary, who had never cooked in her life was burning the outside of a steak while its inside remained completely raw unbeknownst to her, unfortunately.

Coincidentally, it was also the same reason why Lucia was chopping up every random vegetable she could find and why Trish was adding three pinches of sugar to her soup.

"He'd better freakin' appreciate this." Mary coughed as her eyes watered from the smoke that the meat was producing.

"You know he does, Lady." Trish smiled wistfully as she continued to swirl the contents of her pot. It was giving off a strong acrid smell as her plastic spatula gradually wittled away from her continued stirring.

"I am not used to cooking. Matier has tried to teach me several times." Lucia had amassed an impressive amount of minced produce on her chopping board.

Trish smirked at her red-headed companion.

"So, how'd that go?"

Lucia's head drooped sadly as she continued to chop.

"That bad, eh?"

"Damn it."

Lady wrinkled her nose in disgust as she cut into the smoking piece of charred flesh on the pan.

The inside was barely cooked, still oozing blood. She turned off the stove and took off her white, butcher's apron as she walked dejectedly to the dinner table.

Trish continued to stir her soup sadly, praying that swirling the contents would somehow make the contents edible.

She took a spoon from the drawer and was about to taste it when she noticed that the plastic spatula she had used to stir the soup was missing it head.

The soup had some interesting blue specks floating around in it.

"No need to taste that.", she muttered as she made her way to join Mary.

Lucia continued to chop vegetables. She finished chopping a carrot and made a grab for another one but there was no more. There was a huge pile of vegetable confetti left in her wake. She set her knife down and went to the dinner table where she found Trish and Mary.

Mary was holding her head in her hands and muttering incoherently. Trish had her arms crossed and was looking very gloomy. Lucia tried to form one coherent sentence that would not result in them feeling more depressed than they already were

"I'm out of vegetables."

Mary didn't even bother looking up. A loud THUMP was heard as Trish's head violently crashed onto the table.

They all sighed.

Trish spoke up first.

"I told you we should've just gotten him a new sword."

"That's too impersonal." Mary's eyes were still watering from the smoke. If anything, at least her eyes matched now; they were both red.

"Oh, come on! It's not like I'm giving him an engagement ring!"

"Yeah , but another sword? Why don't we just get him another red coat while we're at it? Besides, that one you picked for him couldn't cut through tissue." ,Mary snapped.

"That's because I wanted it to be personal! I'm not getting him a meat cleaver for his

birthday." , Trish replied.

They both fell silent again, glaring at each other.

Lucia kept to herself, not wanting to add any further damage. They had wrecked Dante's kitchen and what was supposed to be his birthday present from all three of them was unanimously agreed upon to be utterly ruined.

Mary mentally berated herself for coming up with the idea for cooking Dante's dinner. This was after all the first time she would be seeing him again in about a decade. A new weapon seemed to be the most obvious choice.

Strangely, all three of them were prepared to give Dante cash for his birthday.

She didn't know about Trish or Lucia but she herself was too much of a chicken-shit to give the wrong impression. Something too impersonal might hurt his feelings ,something she would NEVER admit to caring about. A personal gift on the other hand could give way to something neither of them could wrap themselves around just yet.

And so she chose emotionlessly cold. A few crumpled bills that amounted to about a month's worth of clients.

To her credit, Trish had chosen crisp bills for her present. Sadly, they had amounted to less than a hundred dollars. The blonde's cold indifference and professional demeanor was quite effective in hiding her rapidly growing feelings for the demon hunter.

Lucia's gift was the most personal of the three. A signed check. The young woman from the island seemed to have an almost child-like infatuation with Dante and was most eager to prove herself to him. Apparently, people on her island worshipped Dante like a god.

Talk about pressure.

At the very least, Mary was slightly comforted to find out, there were other people out there as emotionally inept as herself, possibly worse.

A few hours of waiting passed. Trish had not moved from her face-down position on the table. Lucia was sitting stiffly on a wooden chair beside the pool table. Mary was sitting cross-legged on the couch, one red boot jiggling nervously.

CREEEEAAAKKKK….

The sound of the door opening provoked different reactions from the women.

Trish's head shot up from the table. Her blonde hair was quite unkempt and stuck out in different places. It further emphasized her increasingly horrified features.

Lucia, who had been sitting surprisingly calm, flushed bright red and began to play with the hem of her shirt. She kept swallowing a lump in her throat.

Mary got up and made for the window.

"Chicken-shit to the end…" was her bitter thought as she tried to scramble out the fire exit.

But it was too late.

"Honey, I'm home!" , said a joking baritone voice. The white haired demonslayer paused and surveyed the area.

Several things assaulted Dante's senses at once.

First, was the smell of burnt….well, he wasn't quite sure WHAT was burning but a fire hadn't spread yet so it could wait.

Second was a very nervous aura around the apartment, like something had gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong.

Third, a person was obviously trying to make an escape using his fire exit. A woman….

"Pale skin, scarred gams, and an ass I'd remember anywhere."

"Hey, Lady."

A/N: Something I put together early morning. I can't be sure when the next chapter will be up but I've already formed it in my head. If all goes according to plan, it should be out in a week 