Author's Note: Yes, there will be more (coming as I write them, no beta-reading, etc), and I'm sorry you enjoyed the other stories. Maybe you'll enjoy this one and blame me some more. I'm also writing a rather long one that will be going into this story. I hope I manage to finish it. Until then, have fun with this absolutely pointless story!

In Thunder Our Voices Drowned

Like a shark in its soundless and watery world, he wove fluidly in between shadowy shapes that seemed to bend and slide as he went. There, in the deep and the dark, he knew his prey was waiting. Lightning ripped through the sky and the dark objects around the room seemed to drift along under their own power in the flash, like someone caught in the flash of a camera. Silently, and reminding himself to look up more words in the thesaurus that mean 'like a ninja', he crept up to his target and waited until the next flash of lightning revealed no movement. His legs tensed. He held his breath. The time to strike was now.

He pounced!

The springs of the mattress creaked quietly in protest at his energetic landing. Mother rolled over in her sleep and squished him almost as soon as he hit the comforter. Carefully, he wriggled out from under her and snuggled up against her side. A few minutes later, there was another soft thump and the bed shifted as a small weight moved around to Mother's other side and settled there. Dante poked his head up and met Vergil's steady gaze. Thunder rolled through them and their heads swiveled first to look out the big picture windows on one wall, and then back to each other.

Vergil placed a finger on his lips and raised both eyebrows high so that they disappeared under his bangs. Dante nodded back and the two settled down to wait out the storm on either side of Mother, who slept soundly despite all the noise The Big Outdoors were making; Dante envied her, because he and his twin were too sensitive to sound and both of them hated thunderstorms with a passion, especially at night. Mother had told them that one day they would grow tougher and learn to tolerate even the biggest of noises, but Dante didn't believe her.

There was a bad moment when there was a lot of thunder all at once; when it was over, he found himself battling Vergil for space to throw his arms around Mother's waist.

"Vergil!" he hissed in a furious whisper. "My spot! No!" They sparred for another second or so before they managed to claim their own area to cling to. Mother shifted slightly, giving them more room, and the two settled back down to stare at each other with wide blue eyes.

Once in a while, one pair of eyes would slowly slip shut, only to be startled awake by another cracking boom from the sky, and they would stare across Mother's stomach into an identical pair, which would be wide with concern. The thunderstorm seemed to go on forever. Vergil finally got the idea to crawl under the covers and try to muffle the noise by sticking his head between Mother and the mattress. Dante voted to make a miniature pillow fort by stealing all of the pillows (including the one Mother's head was on) and piling them so that there was a big fluffy pile covering Mother's stomach and him. It looked like a marshmallow monster was eating her.

A particularly close boom started the two of them shivering and the bed shaking. Eva finally woke up feeling like she had gone to sleep lying on a large rock and the covers were trying to smother her. Carefully, she felt around her right side and discovered the rock under her was connected to a warm little body, which moved and made that sharp 'Hmm!' noise that she associated with Vergil. On her other side, the pile of pillows twitched.

Carefully, she withdrew her hand from Vergil and laid her head back. "Oh no," she said dryly, "my bed's infested with bedbugs. Who am I gonna call?"

"Imma suck your blood," came a high voice on her left, muffled by the pillows. Eva sighed and mentally added another item to her list of 'Guaranteed ways to tell both of them apart no matter what when I can't see their faces'.

"Shut up," the rock grumbled. "Go to sleep."

The pillow pile tilted and shifted a bit alarmingly before a hole in it appeared and a pair of eyes peeked through. "I'd go to sleep but—hey! Vergil? Where'd you go?" There was silence and Dante's eyes darted to the side to stare at Eva.

"I'm under the covers, idiot," Vergil finally said.

"Vergil's a bedbug! Squish him!" said Dante. Eva groaned and rubbed at her eyes. A rumble sounded and both of the twins flinched and burrowed closer. In Dante's case, the pillow monster took up residence on Eva's stomach and she could feel arms and a torso resting on her. Vergil, on the other hand, managed to get his shoulders all the way under her.

Mystery solved, thought Eva. She hadn't realized a storm was happening, since there hadn't been any sounds of rain tapping on the glass. That meant that—

"The TV is probably out again," she said gloomily. Their TV had always been a bit finicky about static discharges; an electrical storm would put it out of commission for good.

"Noooooooo," moaned the pillow monster.

Vergil grunted noncommittally. It sounded like her stomach was talking.

Dante evidently thought the same thing, because Eva felt his hands cup around her belly button and his breath as he called, "Hello, Earth to Vergil! How's the weather down there?"

"I told you to shut up," said Vergil darkly. "I'm trying to sleep."

"And I was sleeping, until both of you woke me up," Eva said. With a bit of scrambling on Vergil's part when he tried to escape her, she dragged him out from under her back and sat up, scattering Dante's pillow fort everywhere. Dante crouched over her lap, looking like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding car. The look on his face clearly said, 'Uh oh!' "Uh oh is right, young man," said Eva. "Both of you are in big trouble for cutting into my beauty sleep."

"We've been here for the past two hours without waking you up," Vergil pointed out from where he was pinned on his back to the mattress by Eva's arm. He was strangely calm for a boy facing certain death.

"You get brownie points for that," she said sarcastically. "You still woke me up—ah…" She squinted blearily at her alarm clock, where she could barely make out the time (4:32am). "Way too early," she grumbled at last. "Both of you are doomed because I'm going to kill you." Dante made to run away, but she caught his arm and dragged him to her side.

"I'm sorry," he said, his blue eyes wide. "I won't do it again, I promise."

"Cheap words, mister, especially since that was the line you used on me last time," said Eva, giving him a little shake.

"Idiot," Vergil muttered, and grunted when Eva dug her nails into his chest a little.

"Unfortunately, it's too early for me to be killing my own offspring with a Colt .45," she said. "So instead, both of you—" she moved Dante over to her other side and propped both of them up against her headboard, where they sat like pretty little dolls and stared at her with identical expressions of anticipation. "—get to sleep on this side of the bed and—" A few of the pillows Dante had used ended up in their laps and Eva reclaimed her own pillow. "—you will not try to use me as a blanket, a mattress, or anything else that your devious little demon brains come up with. Don't move a muscle until I come back, all right?" They nodded.

Eva threw off the covers and slouched into the bathroom, where she dug out two pairs of ear plugs—Sparda had gotten them from somewhere and gave them to her 'for the children'—and returned to find that both boys had indeed not moved a muscle, but the covers had magically been straightened out and only their heads poked out. Their eyes were still wide; for some odd reason, whenever she threatened one or both of them, they would simultaneously stop moving under their own power and their big blue eyes would track her across the room like a pair of creepy porcelain dolls. It was like they were just waiting for her to smack them or something. It creeped her out, especially in the very poorly lit bedroom where all she could see was the gleam of their silver-white hair and eyes.

Eva narrowed her eyes when she saw them but climbed back into bed without saying anything. They obediently took the earplugs and stuffed them into their ears just in time for another set of angry thundering. She watched them carefully and noted that the earplugs appeared to stop all noise completely. When she snapped her fingers next to Vergil's head and said, "Can you hear me?" he shook his head and laid back. Dante copied him and in moments, both were fast asleep and both of them started those annoying little wheezing kitten-snores they always did when they were very tired. Eva flipped the covers over their faces to muffle the noise and settled back to sleep.

The next morning, she woke up to find Dante drooling all over her collarbone and Vergil trying to rearrange her furniture more to his liking. Needless to say, the two suddenly found themselves in rather more trouble than they had been earlier that day.