So, I was reading the reviews for the first chapter and it seems some of you think this should already be in the mature section. I didn't think it should be there at first, since there was no actual sex or violence, but I do see your guys' point, what with the sex jokes and the implications. So the rating's changed now.

I'm going to be so cruel to you when I'm writing this. I'll never give you what you want and I'll make you bask in their misery before giving you even an ounce of kindness. And only because I control the outcome, so I can do anything I want to these poor characters in between. If you don't like tragic love stories, you're going to end up hating me. So make note of that before begging for the happy ending. It will come eventually, but only after everyone has suffered enough.

And hey, did you guys hear that they might be making a DMC movie? I'm really excited to hear more news about this (especially who would be directing, who would be playing Dante, and how faithful it would be to the original storyline), but I'm also really nervous. Since, you know, most video game movies tend to suck major balls. Just look at RE. I'd hate to see my favorite video game fucked up on the big screen. Devil May Cry is known as the sparkling, god-sent jewel of the action genre to video game lovers, but if the movie is stupid, the best game ever may become a joke because the movie was shit, and I would hate to see that happen. If the movie does turn out to suck, I'll just try my best to pretend it never happened. So good luck, Sony. God knows you're going to need it.

"You smell like sweat."

Dante steeled himself and leaned against the doorframe, towering over Lady and blocking her entrance into the office.

"That's the smell of a man, babe. Is it a problem for you?"

Lady wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Depends on what it's from. Who was that girl I just saw coming out of here?"

Dante looked off to the side, avoiding Lady's gaze, and then turned to enter the office lobby, the brunette close at his heels. "…A friend."

Lady clicked her tongue and stared at Dante reproachfully. "A friend," she echoed. "What kind of friend?"

"We're not fuck buddies, if that's what you're asking," Dante groused as he sat down in his chair behind the desk. "What do you care, anyway?"

Lady leaned against the desk with her hip, her arms crossed and her eyes trained on Dante's reclining form. "I don't care. I was just asking."

"If you didn't care you wouldn't have asked. So what is it? You jealous? It's okay if you're jealous."

Lady narrowed her eyes, as if she were offended by the accusation. "What reason do I have to be jealous if she's just a friend?"

Dante only inclined his head towards her and smirked suggestively.

"…Oh, you didn't. Even you're not that disgusting. She can't have been… Dante, was that girl a prostitute?"

Dante rolled his eyes in frustration. "I told you, she's just a friend, and I'm not disgusting. And contrary to your belief, paying for sex isn't the most deplorable thing in the world. Some people just prefer spending a few bucks to months of pointless meandering that might not even lead to sex anyway."

"And you're speaking from experience, are you?"

"As a matter of fact, I am. Why, just look at you. I've known you for almost a year and so far I haven't so much as seen you naked."

Lady recoiled in indignation and started for the door, waving a dismissive hand at Dante as she went. "Oh, god—I'm leaving. You're unbelievable."

Dante sighed theatrically and threw up his hands, unimpressed by Lady's outrage. "Oh for fuck's sake, Lady, don't be such a drama queen, I'm just messing with you. I'm pretty sure trying to get with you is illegal anyway. So take a seat and tell me what you came over for in the first place. Wait—it's not a job, is it? Because I really don't feel like working today."

Lady paused in her escape and tossed her head to the side, bottom lip in her mouth, her eyes still directed at the door. Finally, after a few moments of indecision, she turned back towards the white-haired man behind the desk.

"…It's not a job."

"Well, okay then. Mind telling me what it is?" Dante raised an eyebrow and beckoned for Lady to come back to the desk.

Lady kept where she was in the middle of the office. "Well, I mean, it's sort of a job." She turned to look him in the eyes and give a Cheshire Cat grin. "How do you feel about a little subtle self-promotion?"

Dante propped a foot up against his desk and pushed the chair back and forth, rocking it on its hind legs. He gazed at Lady thoughtfully. "That depends. Who will I be promoting myself to, and why?"

"Not you, me. I'm about to make us both relatively wealthy."

Dante smiled mischievously, put his foot down and leaned forward on his elbows. "I'm listening."

Lady took a few steps forward and took a seat on top of the pool table, legs crossed with her hands in her lap. "What do you know about Alexander Laepple?"

"Not a damn thing. Should I have heard of him?"

An incredulous look took over Lady's features, her eyebrows shooting up in disbelief. "You can't be serious. Every other mercenary in this country buys their weapons from him. His company makes everything from tasers to missiles to flame-throwers. I even had them modify Kalina Ann when I bought it."

"Well excuse me for not spending god-knows how much money on a suspiciously phallic rocket launcher. Why should I go buy weapons when I've already got enough to stock an armory? Granted, some of them like to talk shit to me sometimes, but they're still pretty kick-ass."

"Didn't you get your Colts from him? I thought that someone with as many weapons as you would have at least heard the name Laepple at some point." Lady glanced at the two handguns at their place on Dante's desk, before directing her gaze back at him in belated anger. "…Also, fuck you."

"Right back atcha, babe. And no, I got Ebony and Ivory from Nell Goldstein, the old lady who runs .45 Art Warks."

Lady rolled her eyes. "Figures you'd do even your weapons the weird way. Well anyway, Alexander Laepple recently started work on a new line of artificially intelligent land mines. The arid regions out here are the perfect place to do field testing, so guess where he's going to be staying for the next few months?"

"I don't know," Dante drawled with a bored look on his face. "The desert?"

Lady grinned nefariously. "Within walking distance of this office."

"Great. I'm a little creeped out that you seem to be keeping stalker tabs on this guy, but I don't see how that's going to help me pay rent."

"Well hang on, I'm getting to it. So Alexander Laepple is filthy rich. Like, the 'buy a private jet and stock it full of Bordeaux' kind of filthy rich. He's built an empire of nothing but weapons, but get this: he has no idea how to use any of them. Rumor has it he's a terrible shot. So, hypothetically, if, oh, I don't know… a demon was to suddenly appear in his house one day and cause trouble, he would have no idea what to do, and have no choice but to call…"

"…The friggin' Ghost Busters. So wait, let me see if I'm hearing this right. What you're thinking is that you want me to transform into a demon and terrorize this guy in his own house, so we can dupe him out of his own money?"

"Yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking."

"And here I was thinking you were just going to whore yourself out to him. Taking advantage of the man who sold you your own rocket launcher? That's cold."

An embarrassed frown drew Lady's brows together as she glanced towards the ground. "Normally, I would never dream of doing something like this. It's dishonest and it makes me feel scummy. But I figure a multi-billionaire losing a few thousand dollars is better than me losing my apartment and being raped and murdered at the hands of some drunk, smelly homeless guy."

The half-demon put his hands up to placate her. "Hey, you don't have to justify anything to me." He stood from his desk and sauntered casually over to where she was still sitting, cross-legged on the pool table. "But if you're so concerned about rent, why don't you just stay here?"

Dante leaned over the brunette, trapping her, his hands placed on the table on either side of her. She leaned back on her elbows to keep her distance from him. His gaze bore deep into her, making her feel suddenly uneasy.

"Not likely," she breathed. Her voice had come down to a cautious whisper. "Whenever I'm around you I get nervous."

"In a good way, right?" Lady could only stare blankly at him. "…What, you think you're gonna get raped and murdered at the hands of me?"

"I can't say I wouldn't completely put it past you."

Lady felt a wave of relief rush over her as Dante stood up straight, releasing her from the cage of his arms and looking at her in shock. "What? Why?"

"Because you say stupid stuff all the time and leer like a little pervert!" She near shouted as she sat up straight again.

Well, if that wasn't something to be angry about, he didn't know what was. "I make sexual jokes so I must want to violate you? What kind of shitty logic is that? Trust me Lady, if I really, really wanted to fuck you, you'd be putty in my hands by now. If I was really trying for it, you'd know. Trust me. You'd have to kick my face in just to keep me from being the most annoying little shit you've ever met."

Another roll of her heterochromatic eyes. "Your idea of impulse control is so reassuring."

"You know what? You try living with some little jail-bait schoolgirl cavorting around your office every other day, then you come back and talk to me about impulse control."

"You're intolerable. And I'm sixteen, asshole. Not jailbait."

"Oh."

"What do you mean, oh? Stop grinning, you freak."

"'Oh,' as in 'Thank god, I'm not a pedophile.'"

The expression on Lady's face as she jumped from the pool table could only be described as 'utter outrage.' Her nostrils were flaring and she looked ready to kill at any moment. "It doesn't matter because you won't be coming anywhere near me anyway!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors by egging on this conversation. You can sit there and pretend you're not attracted to me, but deep down inside you know you want it."

"I'm not interested, Dante," she maintained, crossing her arms over her chest. "You honestly disgust me."

"You said that already."

"I'm just trying to get it through that pea brain of yours."

"Fine, okay. I get it," he submitted.

"Finally."

They sat uncompanionably for an uncomfortable amount of time, the air around them awkward. Dante wanted desperately to say something and break the silence, but he could think of nothing. Lady seemed to be in as much of a dilemma as him, if not more so. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but kept thinking better of it, as if she were afraid of sounding stupid. Dante could admit he was a bit amused by her constantly opening and closing her mouth, until she finally decided to spit it out.

"Um… you're not like fifty years old, are you?"

Dante's eyes went wide with surprise at Lady's inquiry. "What? No! Why would you think that?"

Lady looked off to the side and twisted her hands around in embarrassment, her cheeks going slightly red. "Because demons have much longer lifespans. And in case you hadn't noticed, your hair is white."

"That doesn't mean I age slower. I'm not completely a demon so for me it just means I can't be killed as easily. And my hair is white because my father had a genetic mutation… or something. I don't actually know why it's that color. It seems kind of illogical what with the whole recessive gene thing."

"Then how old are you?"

"Twenty," he said laughingly. "Seriously, how many fifty year olds do you know that look like me?"

"There are a couple down in Bull's Eye every time I go down there."

"The bar? You're not old enough to drink."

"Neither are you."

"Pfft. I've got less than a month until I'm legal. You've got five years, so don't even try that shit on me."

"Whatever. All I know is that every time I come over here you're downing a bottle of Everclear like it was orange juice. You've been drinking since at least your mid-teens."

"…My life is hard."

"Yes, I'm sure being completely un-killable is very depressing. Now can we please get back to talking about Alexander Laepple?"

A tapping sound filled the room as Dante leaned back on his desk and drummed his fingers against the wood. "What's left to talk about?"

"Date and time, for starters."

"Tell you what, how about you just show up here whenever and I'll just come along and do my bit?"

"No, we're not doing that." Her head shook as she dismissed the idea. "We need a plan."

"We've got a plan. Show up at his place, pretend to beat each other up for a while, collect commission money. Short and sweet." He shrugged simply as if that were the end of it.

"Yes," she pressed on, "but how much will I charge him, how can we avoid too much property damage, and what will we do if he asks to see a body?"

"Demons don't leave corpses, remember? We turn to dust. I'll just hide after we're done with the theatrics. We'll charge twenty-thou and split it fifty-fifty, and as for property damage, just try not to break anything." It all seemed like a simple deal to him.

Lady sighed dramatically, deciding to indulge Dante's laziness. "Fine," she conceded, "but you had better be here when I show up. Twenty thousand dollars doesn't wait for just anything, you know."

"Yeah, yeah. Now, if that's all you wanted, I think it's about time you left."

"Fine by me. Just don't skip out on me, Dante."

"I'm not going to skip out on ten thousand dollars. Goodbye."

Lady waved idly as she walked out the door, leaving Dante as he had been.

"Well, that sucked," Dante sighed as he sat down in his chair and set a magazine over his face. "Oh hey, Dante. Let's talk about how you'll never have a chance with me, ever," he said, imitating a girl's voice by forcing himself into a falsetto soprano. "I'll walk around your office in a school girl fetish uniform but don't you even dare look at me or I'll cut your balls off. Fuckin' hell."

And then, another knock at the door.

And another sigh from the emotionally exhausted devil-hunter. "Aren't you done trying to kill my self-esteem? Shouldn't you be playing soccer at the local high school or something?"

Again, a knock.

Dante simply scowled and closed his eyes. Everyone could just fuck off.

Then, the door swung open with a whoosh and a loud 'thunk.' Dante raised his head and let the magazine fall off his face. Stumbling into his office was an overweight Italian with an excited look on his wide features and an annoyingly cheerful aura. Dante's nostrils flared in anger.

"Oh goddamnit Enzo, go the fuck away!"

The smiley Italian strolled, chirpy as ever, up to the hybrid's desk. "No way, Dante! I've got a job for you."

Dante glared at Enzo contemptuously. As if he was actually going to take a job right now… "I've already got a job, so kindly get the hell out of my office."

"What? When? Now?"

"Yes, right now, which is clearly why I'm sitting here wearing only pants," he said condescendingly, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Go away, you fat bastard, I'm about to be wealthy."

Upon hearing the word 'wealthy,' Enzo lit up, his voice becoming even more cheerful. "Really? That's great! Mind sharing some of that wealth with me? I could really use a trip to Love Planet."

"Money is for earners only, you lazy little dick."

Enzo's face fell in unsurprised disappointment, visibly downtrodden by his perpetual state of broke-ness. "You're a real asshole, you know that?"

Dante placed the magazine back over his eyes, wishing with all his might Enzo would just leave him in peace to sulk. "Yeah, I know."