He wasn't sure where the thing had come from. At first, he suspected Lady or Trish to have brought it, maybe as some sort of weird prank. After he saw the way it acted, he decided they weren't that spiteful in their jokes.
Maybe.
He'd found it lying across his desk as though it owned the whole building. When he'd tried to move it, the damn cat had hissed and scratched him. As fast as Dante was, it had actually scratched him.
Male, obviously, from the equipment he saw when the cat flipped its tail at him, and white, he'd learned, after it had bathed itself.
On Dante's chair, of course.
"Pain in the ass," he growled, shoving at the cat. It growled in return, swiping at him. It missed. This time. The white hair it had shed all over his chair, however, almost made the miss seem deliberate somehow.
Napping in his chair quickly became a chore instead of a joy. (Another reason he had strongly suspected of the cat coming from Lady or Morrison.) Whenever he was comfortably snoozing, the cat did one of a small handful of tactics: it would attack him, piercing its claws into whichever spot seemed most vulnerable and most accessible; it would attack something in the office, or worse, upstairs, usually causing damage and/or destruction; or rarely, it would climb onto his chest and "nap", which was actually more like it would flex its claws in and out of Dante's clothes (and skin), while purring louder than his motorcycle revved.
The first two maneuvers were obviously designed to make Dante vacate the chair, the former as he chased the cat for attacking him, the latter as he investigated what-in-hell the cat had destroyed this time.
The motive behind the third seemed more nebulous, or perhaps just flexible. Dante would try to ignore it, but the claws and purring would grow in intensity until he couldn't take it. He'd shove at the cat, or try to pick it up, only to be scratched for his efforts, and find the cat still parked on his chest. If he actually got up, forcing the cat down, it would happily claim his chair, with what seemed like a very smug look on its feline face.
Dante couldn't help but think the damn thing reminded him of someone.
It crossed his mind briefly to use it as target practice, but he couldn't bring himself to really pull a gun on it.
At least it doesn't expect me to feed it. Dante had seen it going around the office and nearby alleyways catching mice and rats. He supposed this meant it was pulling its weight around the place, instead of freeloading, but he couldn't really feel too thrilled about that. He'd rather the thing just disappear back to whichever circle of hell it had come from in the first place.
It really did remind him of someone.
Then came the night of the big job on Paradiso Island. Some idiot politician with more money than sense, and too many demonology books for anyone's own good, had come up with the brilliant notion of summoning a bunch of demons in order to play the hero. Pretty textbook Booster Gold, in Dante's opinion, but his thoughts had not been sought. His services, however, had been sought, after the politician's "controlled" demons refused to be defeated and banished by the man. Dante wasn't sure why the man had been so surprised considering he had summoned actual Demon Lords instead of the usual riff-raff.
The devil hunter hadn't been in such an enormous cluster-fuck in a long time (if ever), and he was duly exhausted afterwards. He crashed on his couch instead of trudging upstairs or fighting with that furball of a feline over his chair.
Pain woke him. Then he noticed the smell of demons, not just radiating from his still-soiled clothes, but from demons. They had him surrounded in the alcove, bound by spells, and pinned to the couch with Rebellion (a noticeable trend in his life, he mused).
He opened his mouth for a snarky remark, only to have the demon holding Rebellion twist it. The blade was dangerously close to his heart, and he could feel his strength fading.
Damn, how did these low-level shits even sneak up on me?
No time for that line of thinking. He knew if he didn't turn the tables soon, he would trigger, most likely into his Majin form, the Desperate Devil, as Lady called it. While the power increase and invulnerability would be helpful, he felt far too demonic, far less human, in that form. He tried to avoid the necessity for it at any cost.
He tried to move, felt his sword twist again, felt the spells tighten, and stifled a cry of pain.
There was a cry of pain. And demonic cursing. And low growling…..
Something hit his chest, a white, furry something…
Then the cat got serious, attacking the demons ferociously, hissing and spitting in tones much more menacing than he'd heard before. The demons scrambled back after fruitlessly trying to retaliate against the angry feline.
Once the demon holding Rebellion let go, the spells dissolved. Sloppy, linking the magic to Rebellion like that.
Dante shook off the thought, pulling the sword out, and grinning.
Of course it was a bit of a rout, now that he wasn't helpless. He chopped through the demons effortlessly, their escape prevented (somehow) by the cat, whose carefully calculated attacks left the demons utterly open to Dante's strokes.
It was over in less time than he had been pinned.
Smug, the cat sauntered to him, completely satisfied with itself. It rubbed against Dante's leg briefly, and Dante nearly reached down to pet him.
Then it swiped at his hand and bolted for the chair at the desk.
No doubt about it, that cat definitely reminded him of someone…
A few days later, Lady walked into the office, stubbing her toe on something in the floor.
"Ow!" she snapped, preparing to kick the offending thing.
"Wouldn't do that," Dante's voice drawled from under the magazine. "He likes that exactly where he left it."
She looked down at her foot, noticing the blue bowl she'd inadvertently kicked. A white cat flew from seemingly nowhere to swat her foot. She jumped back, and the cat pushed the bowl back to its original position.
Gold letters on the side caught the light, and she squatted down to read them:
VERGIL.