Author's Notes: Well...here I am again, with another V/L oriented story in the works. Let me tell you know that Demonic Divulgences and Black Candles is NOT DEAD, I WILL be putting up new chapters very soon! I was actually working on both before I decided to pursue the crazy idea of this story that's been nagging at my head for quite some time. This is quite different than the other two works, however; it's much lighter, maybe even to the point of darkly funny, it's all in Lady's first-person view...and you'll find out the rest as the story goes along. I know, I probably "spoiled" the very beginning for you in my summary; but I promise you more twists throughout the story as you witness Vergil struggling to live a human lifestyle without killing off anything in fits of random rage, and lots of other things. And exactly how he becomes one is explained, as well. So be patient with me, be loving and open-minded...and, above all else, enjoy...and review:)

The V-Files: Or, Babysitting the Devil

Allow me to tell you a brutal, agonizing story of my past few weeks of existence. I am writing to you now simply because if I write it in my diary it will be brutally torn open and spied upon, if I called you on the telephone the wire would be simultaneously tapped, and if I invited you to my home--well, you would probably be subject to Hell as all humans know it.

I'm not exaggerating. Keep that in mind. Every single event of my recent encounters and sufferings have all been firmly rooted in blatant, brutal honesty, and agonizing fact.

But before I throw you into what has degenerated into my sickening, jaw-clenching, gut-wrenching hole of a life; I believe it best to start at the beginning. For as I write this account on paper, secure every shred and every sheet urgently into my manilla folder and postmark it for your eyes only, I find it best to frame this strange mark of events at its origin. Monsters must hatch from their mother's equally monstrous eggs, just as a storm must emerge from a short-lived calm. Even now the monster is breathing his heavy breath down my neck as he draws nearer, his very presence bringing the hairs of my back on edge; I don't have much time, and I want to pen as much as I can, as accurately and as quickly as I can.

So, let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Zero

My name is Mary Arkham--or, more correctly, Mary Arkham Ann.

I changed my name shortly after I murdered my father. My mother was of British descent, and I found it only decent to revert to her surname after avenging her; I don't know why I kept my father's name, and even now I fail to find a coherent reason as of why I still do. The entire thing is some sort of twisted memorial to my former family, and so that would probably be the most logical course of explaining my actions.

You knew me as Lady. Vengeful, bloodthirsty Lady, destroying the demons that haunted my past, present, future; wielding Kalina Ann to blast away every nightmarish creature that dared to try and destroy me before I could destroy my father first. With the help of Dante, a half-demon who sought to stop his own brother, we managed to murder Arkham and bring peace back to the world as we knew it. (Even now, it's ironic, the way we both were so similar; fighting family to slake their thirst for power, unstoppable in our violent goals. Even now, I refuse to look at it as "murder"--it was self-defense, in a way, because I knew my father would come back to kill me in the end, and I had to prevent him from eliminating the last of the sane and standing Ann line.) We parted our separate ways shortly after; I spent a month with him or so, tracking down the last few demons in the area, destroying them with the remnants of my wrath towards my father--and, in a way, the wrath against myself for actually doing the deed of killing him, but it wasn't long before I desired a normal life again, a normal home.

That's what we all want, isn't it, to live calm, peaceful lives, secure little human beings in our secure little homes?

I received my wish, for a time.

At the age of nineteen, I relocated in New York, living in a quiet suburb off of the Manhattan area. It was decent, almost too quiet in contrast with the chaos of everyday city life; there were no blaring cars to wake me up in the morning, no congested streets full of the bustle of people rushing to their day-jobs, and even the sun seemed to slouch each day in the sky before awakening me a little after 8 o'clock each day. I spent a common routine of poring through the daily news for any strange occurences, any twist of events that could signal demonic behavior (but there was never any, and so I presumed Dante was doing an efficient job alone), kept the television on all day just for some sort of chaotic noise in my life. I guess you could say I grew used to the long months of battling demons and living with my rage; the chaos was a part of me, and although I was always calm and relatively happy, I was still slightly empty.

Things became a dreadful bore, a routine we humans were doomed to repeat each and every day of our lives. Waking up at the first ray of sunlight, making our beds and cleaning our apartment rooms, feeding our cat and going off to work--I was currently taking college classes five nights a week, and undergoing a dull deskjob as a secretary for a good eight hours daily--only to return to an empy building, to feed our empty stomachs, fill our empty cabinets with cleaned plates, crawl into our empty beds.

It was quite a change from shooting away demonic scum with my missile launcher, watching with savage passion as I managed to lob their stinking heads from their bodies, relishing the way my bullets tore through their skin with their resounding screams of agony.

Just a slight change, really.

My nights were still plagued with dreams--I couldn't call them nightmares, because they had grown to become a part of me, the past events of that Tower rushing through my mind like a whirlwind of memories. My father's laughing, twisted face as he stabbed through my body, the feeling of blood gushing cold through my leg as both Sparda twins watched my cries of pain, watched the Jester taunt me; and then my struggle to climb the Tower's side with only my grappling hook, my feet catching against the hard rock to keep me from falling, frantically searching for a foothold as I came nearer to my father, willing myself to keep from turning my head in fear that I would lose my grip and fall into the abyss below...

I'd wake up sticky with sweat against my bed, the chaotic scream of a television game show sending ripples of fresh panic throughout my body. And it would all feel like a dream; a little fantasy I had indulged in while younger, and this was now my reality. My enclosed prison of a routine.

But it was just like any other human life, and I was no Devil.

And then I met Allen, and things began to change. He was a regular in my office, a client of one of the lawyers whom I typed up copies of court files for. I was working overtime, my fingers aching as I typed along the keys, undoubtedly on the verge of inflicting myself with some form of carpal tunnel--when Allen came over to my desk with his warm, blue-eyed gaze, holding an even warmer cup of coffee to my lowered face. The steam brushed against my cheek and caught my attention with its heat; I remember raising my head in surprise to meet his handsome face, so confident to the point of a sort of cockiness in the way he leaned against my desk, his cream-colored sweater striking against his tanned complexion. And the tray of coffee looked absolutely tantalizing at 10 P.M. on a Saturday night, in the middle of December.

Nevertheless, I raised an eyebrow in wordless speculation to his advances, and he took the opportunity to grin almost devilishly,

"I thought you might need a break from all that work. You were looking a little flushed. It wouldn't do good for that pretty face of yours to get worry lines, would it?"

Any other day of the week, and I probably would have slapped him. Hell, I've shot a certain devil straight in his head for attempting to hit on me; why should this

overconfident bastard get any sort of leniency? But I was tired, and aching for a shot of caffeine to refuel my body. If you thought battling demons was a difficult task, work as a secretary was practically murder.

And so I leaned forward in my chair, went to take the steaming plastic cup of coffee from his outstretched hand, and brushed my fingertips against his for a moment; falling for the bait of his carefully calculated trap like a fish to a lure. It was then that I took a sip that he suggested we spend the night feeding me (and I wondered how long he had been watching me for so carefully, that he would correctly assume I did not eat until I returned home)--consequently, we went to a cafe around the corner of my damned office and conversed the night away.

The next day, he became what you would call a "boyfriend." The routine became a bit more bearable; I would go immediately from work each day to dine out with Allen, then rush to college classes, only to be greeted with Allen yet again at my apartment afterwards. I was lonely, quite obviously, and in desperate need of some sort of excitement; and so it transformed into a quick commitment, and before I knew it I was waking up to the suddenly lovable man every morning. We were never close enough to call one another "lovers," really; he was more of a simple "boyfriend," one that kept me from suffering my dreams of my former life each night, and served to entertain me throughout the day. It was one night, nestling against his broad chest, watching some sort of sitcom on the television and drifting off into sleep with his hand against my cheek, that I could truly say I had found happiness in my new lifestyle.

And then, on a rare break from work, sitting alone in my apartment, the inevitable struck as suddenly as if it were a very badly filmed, very mercilessly crafted horror movie.

I was, almost ironically, sitting against my bed, wrapped in a freshly laundered bathroom towel, slick wet from the shower and indulging in a few pages of "The Divine Comedy," impatiently awaiting Allen's arrival to greet him in my current apparel and spend the day beneath the sheets. After all, it was a day to celebrate; it was none other than the four-month anniversary of the day he so bravely confronted me at work, saving me from the constant monotonous torture of my daily life. And so I was eager to reward him with a show of a few hours of affection, strategically having placed candles on either side of the apartment entrance, sprinkling rose petals in the relatively cheap bathtub (you wouldn't normally expect that from a gun-wielding, kilt-wearing girl, would you?) and stashing a gratuitious amount of chocolate syrup in the refrigerator. I even unplugged the telephone rather viciously from the wall. It would be perfect, and I was so anxious the text before my eyes seemed to blur and distort in a million different, hormone-induced fantasies.

That was when I heard the crash.

I bolted upright instantly; it was from [iinside[/i the apartment, the sudden sickening crunching of wood and what could only be plaster that was too close for comfort. My fingers lunged with rapid speed for the pistol hidden beneath my pillow, and I jerked it to the side of my scantily-clad hip, pulling the towel close about my body in a sudden act of self-consciousness. It was undoubtedly a thief, some type of burglar who had a tendency toward violence...who else would crush their way through my apartment entrance, and then phase into an abrupt silence, other than someone with the intent of pilfering and possibly harming its inhabitants?

Slowly, I padded across the bedroom carpet, my bare feet arched to keep as deathly quiet as possible. I jerked my head to the side of the opened door, peered through the narrow hall that was as quiet as if nothing had just occured--and managed to take in a few deep, comforting breaths to ease the burst of adrenaline and anxiety pumping through my veins. As I willed myself to walk forward, my pistol cocked and held before my heaving chest, shards of glass began to litter the hardwood floor of my modest kitchen, almost innumerable as I progressed through the living room, deadly deceptive in its shimmering near-invisibility. I swore beneath my breath as I struggled to walk decisively around them, catching a few tiny shards against the soles of my feet, wincing in pain at the tiny tears in my skin. It wouldn't do good to scream, not now, not when I had no idea if whoever had intruded into my apartment was still [ithere[/i--

Then I saw it, and clamped my hand over my mouth to fight the urge to cry out. A body lay face-down against the ground, the carefully placed candles once lining the entranceway snapped in two at their frail wicks beneath its outstretched frame, a thick curtain of smoke from the explosion of plaster covering his otherwise strikingly light, heavily muscled back in a cast of pure white. Gashes lined his skin, laced with fresh blood, a few shards of shining glass still embedded within his flesh, pricks of wood interlaced in the sinewy skin--

I crouched forward carefully, my pistol still in one hand, free fingertips brushing away the shock of white hair from the unmoving face.

That was when it all clicked, all too late--

White hair.

I drew backwards as if I had been slapped; my hands slipping against the man's face, my body arching and tensing as I let out a cry of shock, so loudly I could hear it echoing down the halls through the jagged hole that was once my apartment door. Instantly I found myself falling against the floor and pushing myself with my legs and palms as far away as I could without hurting myself on the glass and debris. For a moment, the body twitched enough for the face to turn in an abrupt motion; the heavy-lidded eyes opened to reveal two sharp, blue orbs, the barely moving lips, then the eyes widened in what seemed to be recognition before falling shut in a slack, tired motion yet again.

I pulled myself to my feet, my bare legs trembling as I neared him for the second time, pushed his face unwillingly to the side as if he were a bug I was prodding with a stick. A low groan fell from his upturned mouth, and he opened his eyes again, more slowly, as if it pained him.

"...Dante?" I gasped, staring straight into the achingly familiar face, a blood-red amulet strung about his white neck, his bare chest heaving in long, deep breaths as he struggled to regain consciousness.

"Eva..." He coughed, sputtered, his voice a low, helpless wheeze; I frowned as my thoughts became filled with thick confusion, wrapping my arms around his torso and struggling to help him into a sitting position.

He slumped against me, his face lying against my bare shoulder, incredibly warm as his moist breath rose and fell against the side of my neck. My arms were entwined around his broad, naked back; and then as he coughed again, suddenly pulling away from me with the amazing force of his strong arms to regard me with nothing more than a violent snarl, I realized two things at once:

Vergil, not Dante, was lying in a heap of rubble in my apartment, glowering at me as if I were his mortal enemy.

And, to top it all off, he was completely naked.

My eyes widened and I cried out in shock for the second time that dreadful day; he lunged forward, his gaze fierce, grabbing at my wrists and pinning me against the ground as if he hadn't lost any strength while lying unconscious moments before. A sharp pain filled the back of my head as I struggled against his grip; he pinned his naked leg between my own to keep me down, his ferocious glare setting my stunned nerves on edge. Vergil had me pinned so absolutely against the ground that his body was pressed against my own; an uncomfortable feeling in my thin wardrobe, even more uncomfortable when he was breathing heavily on my bare throat, my frantic fingertips searching for the pistol that had been knocked from my hands with the force of his attack.

"Where am I?!" He demanded, practically screaming in my wincing face, "Where did you take me, you damned wench?! I'll kill you, I swear it, I'll kill you for taking me away from the demon world and into this sickening filth of a--"

His gaze twisted into bewilderment as a shrill ringing filled the tense room; my own eyes widened and we both froze at the sound of my doorbell, ringing frantically--ten, eleven times. Footsteps broke into a run at the end of the hall; and in an instant I was gazing in horror at Allen's red face, his eyes widened in disbelief, mouth contorted in pure rage, the bouquet of flowers in his hands falling in a shower of petals and thorns against the already ruined floor.

Ruined, like my life was just about to become.