Tuesday, 4:53 am

Disclaimer: Devil May Cry and all related characters belong to Capcom. Original characters belong to me.

Tess was enjoying a wholesome night of sleep, for a change, empty of worrisome dreams. No prophetic visions which would've stirred her from her sleep and kept her awake, agonizing over their meaning. Nor was any restless spirit hovering over her, trying to get her attention, hoping for help to release itself from the troubles of a temporal afterlife in this plane. Having the gift (or curse) of second sight made that an unavoidable, but manageable problem.

Nope, tonight was a truly quiet, uneventful and absolutely ordinary night that she believed she could peacefully rest through…until her phone rang. Tess grumbled under her blanket, upset that something was disturbing her sleep. Unlike her usual busy nights of working, dealing with demons, the restless, frustrating dead, or vision-induced migraines that kept her up all night, this time she had been sleeping soundly. Snuggled comfortably in bed under her warm blanket, she was enjoying a deep, soothing slumber and did not ever expect to wake up before late that morning.

But that was not to be.

She started awake from the sharp ringing and tried to ignore it, burying her head under her pillow and hoping that whoever it was would give up after a few rings. But this caller persisted and Tess groaned under her pillow, frustrated and squirming. She turned over slowly and groped for her night-table in the dark towards the shrill sound. Her fingers finally met the smooth plastic of her bedside phone and she picked it up, pressing the answer button. She rolled over, bringing the phone to her ear and thinking to herself that it had better be a bloody world-shattering emergency...

"Mnnhhh – h-hello?" she blurted. She forced herself to suppress a sound between a yawn and a pout and combed some red hair off her face, tangled from sleep.

"So, what are you wearing, Twig?" chimed a deep, amused voice on the other side of the line.

Tess groaned and grumbled in her half-asleep state, reaching out to her night table again and groping around some more, till her hand found her rounded, digital alarm clock. She held it up to her eyes, squinting at the green, glowing LCD numbers on its face.

"Dante... it's almost five in the morning, you dipshit," she groaned in a sleepy voice. "Are you out of your mind? Nnnh...Why are you calling me at this hour, dammit?"

On the other side of the line, Tess heard an awkward pause. "Aw, sorry...were you actually asleep?" He sounded genuinely surprised.

With a rising frustration scaring her sleepiness away, Tess actually let a little grunt, squirming in bed and then pulling her blanket overhead again. "Yes, I was asleep, Dante, we're not all creatures of the night!" she growled. "I finally get a day off and hope for a good night's sleep and now you just up and call me at five in the fucking morning!"

She huffed after that angry, sleepy bout of swearing and waited for a reaction. Dante had bore that tirade without talking and she half-expected him to apologize and hang up or…just hang up.

"Ehehe..." he laughed instead – a little nervously, actually. "Ah, well I'm sorry Twig but this can't wait."

Tess sighed and suppressed a yawn. "What happened?" she groaned. Knowing him, she was expecting to hear that he'd run into some odd, hostile restless dead that he didn't know how to deal with. Or rather, he realized he couldn't kill it and needed some other way to get it out of his hair.

"Well uh..." he said, amused. "I kind of have a little problem with some…it's some kind of spirit, I guess…"

Tess groaned again at the confirmation of her suspicions, sitting up and leaned forward, rubbing her forehead with another yawn. "What did you do…?" she asked. She was certain that she'd sounded like a mother hearing her dumb teenager son had done something stupid.

Dante scoffed, trying to gauge how she sounded. "Hey now Twig, don't be sour, I've just got something here that I don't want to screw up."

She grumbled. "Dante…I can't believe you. I normally don't care what sort of harebrained jobs and stuff you get yourself into, but I expected you at least to have the courtesy to not ruin my life over it."

"Aaw c'mon Twig! You're making me regret I didn't make you tag along in the first place!" he said with a mock sigh.

"Yes, so you could just wake me up at five A.M…" she groaned again, rubbing her face and squinting her eyes with annoyance. "Okay, okay…enough of this; just tell me what the hell's happened there and what you've got…"

He hesitated a lot and Tess feared he had called to tell her that he'd somehow fucked up big time and she found herself already mentally making up some horrible curse to set upon him.

"It's…I'm not sure, actually. There's a whole lot of noise over here, and I got tossed off my feet by something," he said with an embarrassed laugh. "I think it's one of them – whatcha call those weird ladies that scream a whole lot?"

Tess sighed in a really jaded way. "A banshee."

"Yeah, uh so…"

Tess pulled her phone away from her ear as a high pitched scream and Dante's distant snark came through, making her wince badly. Then she got back on. "Okay look… that isn't a spirit. Banshees are Sidhe. Steel or iron will work. Just go at her with that. You should scare her off once she picks up your demonic stench."

"Hey!" he protested. "So just—"

"Try silver if all else fails. Just remember you can actually kill her if you try," Tess sighed. "And don't stand too close to her when she screams too loudly, I think even your ears would start bleeding…"

She heard more noises on the other side of the line. It sounded like Dante was in an old building with a lot of echo and really old piping that clanged and clattered a lot.

"Iron, steel, silver…don't hang around to listen to psycho soprano here. Got it," he said. Tess was certain he hadn't understood a thing.

"Just treat her in the same way you usually treat women. Gag her with your goddamn ego if all else fails," she grumbled angrily. "Now go be a dork and let me sleep…"

"This really is a bad time, isn't it?" Dante asked, sounding genuine in his awkwardness. If Tess had been more awake, she might've savored the rare occasion. "Okay…" he chuckled, obviously amused at her grumpiness. "Sweet—"

She hung up rather angrily, and plopped back in bed, rolling over and pulling her blanket all the way up over her head. Only then it occurred to her to wonder why Dante hadn't dealt with something as simple as a banshee. Of course, he could've stumbled into some elder, powerful banshee that was bound to take a bit more beating to get rid of, but still. She didn't ponder over it long, though. She yawned viciously and snuggled against her pillow to return to that state of blissful sleep once again. Sinking in warm, fuzzy depths, Tess snuggled against her beloved pillow, lulled to sleep by the sound of the wind. She actually felt that delightful sensation of slowly falling into sweet oblivion like a feather, cutting off all ties to consciousness and surrendering to the cozy feeling of peaceful sleep.

And then the phone rang once more.

It took her even longer to register and be yanked back out of sleep and while groping for the phone in the dark, she knocked it off her bed table. Cursing quietly and vowing to personally throttle whoever it was that called, she sat up, blurry-eyed and all, leaned over the side of the bed and picked the phone off the floor, pressing the answer button.

"Hello? Who is this…?" she blurted, suppressing another yawn.

She abruptly pulled the phone away again as all she heard was a very loud crashing noise, like electrical devices blowing their fuses and crackling, along with a shattering thud and gunfire. She rolled her eyes when Dante finally got on the line proper.

"Hey again, Twig!" he said. He really tried to sound cheerful, but he was obviously annoyed.

"I hate you…" she muttered. "What've you done now?" she added with that doing-this-for-too-long tone.

"Okay so I'm pretty sure it ain't one of them screaming ones after all," Dante said, huffing and sounding like he'd had enough. "So, what's another way to get rid – ow!" he blurted and Tess heard a faint sound of impact. "To get rid of a ghost…spirit thing?"

Tess raised an eyebrow, despite her sleepiness. She heard a whole lot of metal and masonry groaning now, like pipes and structure being warped or rattled and Dante shot off another couple of rounds. She heard another sound of impact, this time louder, like rock smashing against rock. She also heard a lot of noise like television snow that was familiar to her. She always heard that around particularly nasty infestations of restless dead or spirits, even over the phone.

She sighed, leaning forward again and rubbing her forehead. Sleep was evaporating from her faster than water in the desert. "Where the hell are you?"

"Really old factory," Dante said, sounding a little jaded. "It smells like dead rats and sewage in here. There's prehistoric machines everywhere."

"Peachy," Tess commented with a small sniffle. "I'll assume that whatever it is, it's throwing stuff at you?"

"Big stuff – speak of the devil; hang on," Dante said and she heard him drop the phone, then another impact of metal against metal, and a few moments later, the sound of something really heavy hitting the floor a good distance away.

"Yeah, it's throwing stuff at me," Dante said when he got back on the line. "Whatever it is, I can't do squat to it! Won't stand still for even one sec."

Tess quietly wished something would hit its mark – preferably his big dumb head. "Hear a lot of pipe clanging and crashes, but no voices, except maybe some demonic-like grunts? Maybe some crazy sounds like a laugh that's coming from the bottom of a sewer?"

"That's all I've hearing for the past few minutes! I can't even get a peep out of this thing," he muttered.

"Serves you right," she said dryly. "Can you see it at all?"

"I've seen something…" he grumbled as another clanging sound echoed very close to the phone. "Ow! – fucking…"

Tess smiled a bit. "Indescribable haze, like the lovechild of a drunken fog morning and a really greasy, smoky fire? With a bit of a dull outline?"

Dante paused and Tess imagined his awkward smile at her description. "Yeah, something like that."

"How big?" Tess asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed at last and scratching her thigh a little bit, pensively.

"Pretty frickin' big…" Dante said. She heard him put the phone down again and shoot furiously at something. Bullets ricocheted off metal and things fell with loud clamor.

"Right, it's a poltergeist," she said matter-of-factly and huffed when he got back on line. "You can't do much to it and I can't talk you through it."

"What!"

"It's not a ghost, just a remaining manifestation of built up energy from the people that have died there. It's not really sentient. To say the least, it doesn't give a crap about what you do. Just leave," she said and yawned.

"I can't!" Dante said and now he really sounded pissed. "Something's blocking the doors, it ain't demon power and it's even sealed up the windows. I'm stuck!"

Tess smirked. "Ooh, you got yourself a big old one. Must've been there for ages. I bet you got it all excited, strutting in there, high and mighty demonpants. It's probably leeching energy off you as we speak. And now you need me to help you…" she sighed.

"Yeah…uh, like open the doors or get rid of this thing, I guess…" he said with an awkward laugh.

"And then kill you, I suppose," she growled.

"If it makes you happy, you're welcome to try, Twig."

Tess rolled her eyes. Her comfortable, lovely sleepiness was now all gone. She felt like a harridan. "It will, and I promise I'll make it long and torturous. Just give me the address you're at…" she sighed, turning on her bedside light and picking up a post-it stack and pen. "I'll come over and get rid of this. Then you are going to treat me to a big goddamn breakfast and I don't care how broke you are. You woke me up, you're gonna have to pay the price," she muttered, writing the address down.

"Yeah, yeah, just hurry up Twig, this freakshow's starting to piss me off!" Dante grumbled.

"Suck it up and wait. No matter how big and old, that thing can't leech off you easily. I doubt it can do anything to really hurt you, other than cover you with ectoplasm if it gets close enough – or do me a favor and cave your head in with something. Don't blow up the building," she stressed. "You'll set it loose."

"It's bugging the hell out of me!" Dante protested.

"I see nothing wrong with that picture. Just sit tight. I'll be right over. Bye!" she said deadpan and hung up before he could answer.

With a tired sigh she got up, raised her arms over her head and stretched, yawning and hearing her shoulders pop a little bit from the tension. She then staggered down the short staircase between her raised bedroom and the main floor of her loft, rubbing her eyes. She washed up a little before getting dressed in jeans and a simple purple top with a black button-down shirt over it and folded the sleeves up. She made a mental note to do something about the black circles around her green eyes later; normally she wouldn't care but this time they were downright ghastly. She had no intention of hurrying, still very angry at Dante. A poltergeist, no matter how big and powerful, couldn't really hurt him badly as far as she knew. Worst case scenario, it'd throw something massive at him and knock him around. Maybe even slime him with ectoplasm or something.

Nothing she wouldn't do to him herself after getting him out of that predicament.

She slipped on her boots and grumbling, slammed the front door behind her as she left, car keys in hand. She felt lousy as her Mustang growled down the road. It was a long drive too; the old facility was well outside the city's limits. Tess found it to be a very old steel production factory, probably closed since the 1960s. She pulled up next to a motorcycle parked in front of the heavy, rusted steel gates. She knew immediately it was Dante's and sighed as she shut the engine and got out of the car with a small groan. She rubbed the back of her neck and huffed.

Even from all the way out there she could hear faint noises that came from deeper in the complex, beyond the tall and still intact brick wall that surrounded it. There was a lot of faint groaning and creaks. She found the metal doors to be open and pushed one aside as she strode into the facility, suppressing further yawns. She walked past several smaller buildings, knowing immediately whether they were the epicenter of trouble or not; she'd spent enough years tracking down poltergeists and similar entities to know by the appearance of a building whether they were in or not.

She rubbed her arms against the chilly dawn and noted that the temperature started to drop as she approached the main building of the steel production complex. That was always a sign that she was close to the source of the haunting. Tess sighed in exasperation and trudged closer, rubbing her forehead. She was quite alert now and was not surprised to see the seals over the doors and windows of the main building. She could see the conventional locks on the door had been broken; no doubt this was Dante's original point of entry. Now the door, the tall industrial windows and other entrances of the factory were all covered by a light gray sheen of shifting energies.

These were different than the demonic seals she and Dante were familiar with. It was uncommon for any type of haunting to create barriers like that, but not unheard of. Regular humans would never be able to see these barriers but would feel them as an oppressive feeling that would keep them from leaving or entering. But to keep Dante stuck was rather unusual. She prodded at the seal on the door a bit and then backstepped a bit at arm's length, held her arm out at the door and directed a exorcism spell at it. She spoke the words softly but as they rolled forth they seemed to gather in power and grow in volume, reverberating in the air until there was an almost palpable force.

The seal on the door resisted but Tess stood firm, forcing it with a further spell until the seal gave with a shudder and a noise like wood cracking and breaking. She knew the barrier would probably bounce back as long as the entity was still around. She grumbled a little complaint and pushed the heavy, rusting door open. She stepped foot inside a cluttered, dark space that smelled strongly of mildew and staleness. Old foundry machinery stood everywhere, rusted and forlorn. The place was peculiarly quiet except for that vague television snow sound that she'd heard over the phone too.

Tess grumbled again and wandered further in.

"Hey Dante!" she called out. "Are you still alive, you idiot?"

Whether he answered or not, it'd still attract the poltergeist to her. And it worked because she then had to duck to avoid a large piece of rusted metal that came her way with a soft din of warping metal. She held out her hand and belted out an incantation. The whole building seemed to groan loudly around her and she heard machinery rattle. The static grew louder and she heard a hollow mutter that sounded like it was coming from under many feet of earth.

A loud groan of metal preceded the big piece of machinery flying her way. Fortunately, Dante finally made his appearance, dashing in from between the heavy machinery with his sword in hand and with a hefty overhead strike, cleaved the man-sized piece of rusting junk clean in two, sending it on either side of them and leaving them unscathed. The pieces tumbled along the floor with loud crashing noises and one smashed onto a wall and the other came to a screeching halt, skidding on the floor.

"Thank you," she said flatly. "You look like road-kill. Phew – you smell like it too."

Dante graced her with a wan smile. He looked like he'd been thrown about quite a bit, unhurt but probably with his ego bruised. The poltergeist had managed to make a few sizable tears in his beloved coat and he had quite a lot of grime on him, a mix of dirt, rust and as she'd predicted, ectoplasm, giving off its characteristic mildew-y stink that she so detested.

"Good morning to you too, I guess," he replied. "See what I'm dealing with?"

"I haven't seen it yet, per se, but I get the idea," she scoffed. "Don't feel bad, there really isn't much you could've done. I haven't seen a poltergeist capable of creating seals like this before, but I'd heard of them."

Another bout of that underground muttering sound came through the air and this was so loud it went right through them. She grabbed Dante by the wrist and very calmly strutted further in the old factory with him in tow.

"Frickin' spirit crap…" Dante grumbled. "I knew something was up when I got rid of the Abyss infestation and I still felt something funny…"

"Oh that explains a lot," Tess sighed. "Poltergeists usually aren't driven away by demons; I guess hanging around Abysses for a while energized this one. Stupid things are like parasites, they like to sort of feed off people or places they attach to. They're frustrating as hell."

Exactly as Tess expected, the poltergeist in question continued throwing all manner of things at them, filling the air with the groan and creaking of rusty metal objects as they were being ripped off the floor and then hurled at them suddenly. Then there were the spontaneous manifestations of dripping ectoplasm in the form of a viscous, slimy substance.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" Dante groaned, boredom evident in his tone and face.

"Well I have to find the fucking thing, don't I? Do you shoot at stuff and just hope you hit the mark?" she snapped as they stopped in a fairly open area of the old factory. Dim light came through the dirty and broken panes of the skylights overhead.

"I thought you were the expert on these, Twig!" Dante groaned. "You're the one always saying how much more exciting demon hunting is."

"I didn't say dealing with ancient poltergeists is easy," she grumbled. "I don't wanna hear you complaining, you dragged me outta bed. Now shush, it's coming."

Before she was even done saying so, Dante suddenly lurched backwards as if hit by a massive force squarely in the chest. Tess felt it take but it wasn't targeting her. He went flying, with a decidedly fed-up expression, clean across half the open space and was smacked back-first against a steel support beam that held up part of the rafters and catwalks rising over the floor. He barely made a peep other than a small blurt of pain. The force seemed to be keeping him there, pressed against the column so hard that the rusty metal buckled a little with a loud groan.

"This is ridiculous," Tess groaned and quickly used her skill with controlling fire to trace a magic circle on the floor, with an upright pentacle and a series of runes all around it. She then recited a loud spell that rolled through the air with increasing, reverberating power and made the circle light up.

With a sudden roar of wind, the force pinning Dante to the metal pillar seemed to relax and a distortion of light finally brought the poltergeist's main entity into the circle. It manifested as a very vague form made of a smoke-like substance that was an off gray color with some musty white hovering through it. It shifted between billowing like grease-fire smoke and mild floating like fog. The building gave a series of hollow groans and cracks like it was settling. As the entity in the circle grew larger and more compact, almost to the size of a small car, Dante was free and landed neatly on his feet.

"You got it?" he asked, shrugging off the soreness of the initial impact and making an effort to get some muck off his clothes.

"Yeah. Sort of," Tess huffed. "It's still got some influence over the place, so don't drop your guard quite yet," she said and right on cue there was a crash in the far back, as if something big and metallic hit the floor with a loud noise. "Don't get near the circle, I don't need you giving this thing more fuel," she carried on, gesticulating to Dante to back off. He didn't argue or quip, just backed up.

Tess held up her arms, stretching one further beyond the other towards the circle with open hands and began an incantation that, like the other spells, began to reverberate with an ever-growing force and roar like thunder as she pronounced the words. The circle lit up with bright reddish light and the poltergeist writhed with undulating motions of the odd black smoke. Groans and screech noises of metal came from around them and the building itself seemed to tremble. That subterranean muttering exploded into a strong booming noise like a throaty, guttural howl that came from everywhere around them. Tess winced and seemed to suffer a little bit and even Dante shrugged slightly.

Seeing it resisted, Tess recited a further incantation that sounded distinctly as if it were another stanza to the earlier incantation. The circle of power grew brighter and the poltergeist's main form seemed to shrink onto itself and the smoky substance it was made of seemed to compact and grow darker. The howling then turned into a sharp, horrifying noise like the deathly squeals of a hog being gutted and the poltergeist suddenly shrank into itself as if it imploded with a burst of off-white light and the noises faded into their own echoes and stopped. The circle of power died off and faded as well. The feel of the air somehow lightened.

"Uugh, finally!" Tess groaned, rubbing her temples. "I thought that thing would never get vanquished," she added, letting her arms drop. "I was afraid I'd have to go to the third stanza of the Sigsaand Circle."

Dante just scoffed, looking around and then paced up to her and patted her in the back. "Hey it wasn't that bad, Twig! You did great! We've both seen worse, haven't we?"

Tess growled at him and swatted his hand off then snatched him by the lapel. "Don't start that. I'm still pissed at you, idiot."

Dante winced a little and Tess did not regret realizing her expression must've been something fierce. She felt that the idiot thoroughly deserved it.

"Aw come on, Twig, what was I supposed to do? This is the first time I've gotten stuck because of a stupid ghost thing, or whatever you called this! It's not like I could pull out a photon pack or something," he chuckled. "Think I'm happy about this?"

Unable to think of an appropriate response that was not composed of swears, she growled at him and started heading for the door as he followed. "Whatever. You still woke me up at an ungodly hour. Go get a shower and change, you smell like sewage."

She stopped and faced him again, jabbing her index finger into his chest angrily. "And then I expect you to buy me breakfast. A proper breakfast; pancakes and coffee. Or I swear I'll put enough curses on you to make your life extremely miserable."

Dante smiled wryly. "Alright… alright…" he said, holding his hands up. "I'll clean up and meet you at that diner on the corner of your place?" he said in a placating manner.

"You better. And no cheating the bill, got it?" she huffed as they made their way out of the old factory together.

Dante said nothing but as they crossed the outside gates he paused and looked at her, then laughed. It was light now, the sun just having peeked over the edge of the tree-line in the distance.

"What?" she asked a little sharply.

"I don't know how you do it, Twig," he said slyly. "You grumble that I woke you up too early and yet you've just kicked some ectoplasm ass and you're demanding pancakes for compensation… you're cute," he said and leaned in closer with a mischievous look.

Tess stared back calmly, then smiled a little bit, appearing to mellow out a little bit. She put her hand on his cheek gently, as if to wipe off some dirt.

"Ow," Dante blurted as she forcefully shoved his face back and upwards with her palm on his chin. His neck creaked a bit.

"Ha-ha, I'm sorry, Romeo," she said with a venomous tone, holding him back. "That ain't gonna fly with me. You are not gonna sweet-talk yourself outta this one, so quit trying to butter me up. Go wash up, you lech, and come buy me breakfast."

Dante, his face still pressed up towards the sky, sighed in way that vaguely managed to sound mournful. "Fine… "

She pulled her hand away and marched back to her car. "And don't be late," she added in a knowing way.

"Yeah, yeah," Dante huffed, rubbing the back of his neck but smiling. "I never let cute ladies wait!" he said as he headed towards his bike.

"I heard that!" she fired back at him and slamming her car's door shut.

Dante just grinned and mounted his bike, watching the black muscle car roar off, almost echoing the frustration of its driver.

"She is cute…" he chuckled to himself, then sighed morosely at the state of his coat. Perhaps he ought to start buying in bulk.

NOTE: Another story written at the insistence of my dear Razzmatazzy. I like horror stories and ghost and poltergeist stories are among the more interesting ones. So here's my comedic crack at one.

I realize it's a horrid ghost story, but it made for some fun writing. I don't think Tess is being particularly mean to Dante in this case…he did wake her up at an ungodly hour after all, and having been the victim of such treatment, I can tell you it makes nobody a happy cookie.

I chose to make my interpretation of a poltergeist as an indestructible force of chaos that behaves a lot like an internet troll, flinging stuff at you and beyond touching because it doesn't have a corporeal form to hurt and it doesn't work like demons. Sure, it'll leech some energy off you and make you all tired, but that's small potatoes for Dante. It's Tess specialty to deal with this stuff.

On another layer, it's a nice way to explore how these two interact; I'm pretty sure Dante would never call anybody else at that hour except Tess. Probably because while she is angry and might deck him in the face…she won't be taking his head off. I think they'd really take liberties with each other that they don't with others, because of their kind of relationship. And that makes for some really funny writing.