"I'm telling ya, I didn't use the last roll of toilet paper." Dante said in his defense to the angry girl dubbed "Lady" who was glaring down at him.

The two of them had decided to work together, if only for a little while but he'd suspected that it was mainly because she didn't have a place to stay.

"The two of us are the only ones who use that ceramic piece of trash you call a toilet!" She yelled at him, grabbing his desk and bringing herself across it.

Dante wasn't intimidated and merely batted an eye towards her and gave his trademark cocky grin.

"What? You used to toilets that aren't made of ceramic?" He quipped.

She only scowled in response.

"That's a really crappy way to try and change the subject you know?"

"Crappy?" He asked her absent-mindedly, not interested enough to try and make it into a joke.

"Okay, fine." She said, becoming calm as she backed away from his desk.

"So tell me, who else, other than you, has the strength and stupidity to imbed neatly-cut segments of a carboard tube into a wall which spells 'Dante rulez'?"

Dante shrugged in response, eyeing the pizza-box which had been delivered not five minutes ago.

Lady noticed his interest and walked coyly over in front of the pizza box.

"Oh. You want this?" She asked, picking up the steaming box as she walked over towards the doors of the shop and put a hand against one of them, parting them.

Dante's interest returned and he leaned forward across the desk.

"Come on. Don't joke about something like that. This is serious!" He gestured dramatically towards the box, which was more important to him than anything else in the room right now.

Well, other than his amulet.

Her eyebrows raised and the door was pushed open further.

He slammed a fist down on the desk then scowled for a moment before leaning back in his chair.

"Fine. I did it." Dante spoke without making eye contact with her.

Lady seemed satisfied enough and let the door close as she walked over to the desk and dropped the pizza box down onto it.

He immediately moved his head above the thing which was about the closest there was to a holy object to him, taking in the wonderful greasy smell before opening the box and looking at all the pieces eagerly.

"Now, who's first? Ah!" Then he carefully pulled one of the pieces of pizza out of the box and chomped down on it, chewing the thing several times before swallowing it with a loud sound.

"Best in the city!" He exclaimed in a thunderous tone which made Lady cover her ears for a moment.

She pulled her own piece out of the box and took a bite out of it, then sat on the desk, looking out towards the doors.

"How long will it be before you start getting some good customers Dante? There're plenty of calls for killing a demon or two but we won't be able to survive on the petty little payments you get from those forever." Lady commented before taking another bite out of her slice.

Dante swallowed another bite of his own before answering.

"Hey, it's not my fault. You can't expect for a portal to the demon world to open every day. And- wait, did you say 'we'?"

Before she could answer the doors to the shop were opened and someone walked inside.

She had long black hair, a dirtied and bloodied white dress and strange holes in it that looked like the most bizarre style he'd ever seen.

"Finally a customer! What'd I say, Lady? You wait for stuff and they come to ya!" Dante said excitedly as he put his slice of pizza down in the box.

"You never said that." Lady retorted, though it was in a quiet tone since she seemed to be examining the girl for some reason.

"So, what can I help you with?" He asked the girl, whose attention seemed to seamlessly alter from one thing to the other.

When she heard his question though her gaze fixed on him.

"Are you Dante?" She asked him as if he hadn't said anything.

He bit his lip a bit.

"Damn, not this again. The last time someone said my name like that I got chopped into by a bunch of rusty-ass scythes and some freak-show stamped on my pizza." He thought.

Then Dante mentally shrugged and he grinned again.

"Yeah. I know you?"

She looked down at the floor before pulling an elaborate-looking dagger which was still sheathed out from behind her back.

Lady's free hand went behind her back and pulled a gun out, aiming at the girl's chest before firing a round.

Dante's eyes actually widened a bit as he looked at the falling girl before looking back at Lady.

"What the hell'd you'd do Lady?! She was a human!"

"That blood isn't hers." She stated calmly.

He looked back at the girl again and noticed that she didn't seem to have any wounds besides the gunshot one Lady had just given her.

"So what's she a serial killer or something?" He asked her, noticing that her gaze widened in shock before he looked back at the no-longer-dead girl who was plucking at the bloody hole in her shirt.

"Why is everyone always wrecking my dress?" She asked the air, upset.

Then the girl looked directly at Dante again, taking a step towards him.

Lady fired her gun at the girl again, but she disappeared in a kind of blue after-image.

She re-appeared next to Dante, behind the range of Lady's gun.

"I'm here for you." She said blankly.

He blinked a few times; not intimidated but definitely confused.

Lady tried to aim her gun at the girl again but once again she disappeared; reappearing right in front of the demon-huntress, holding the gun-arm out.

Then, despite her struggles, the girl began dancing with Lady in a ballroom-like fashion across the whole office.

"Let go of me damn it!" Lady yelled at her in vain as the girl continued dancing for a bit before actually seeming to realize what she was doing, her gaze fixed on Dante and her head tilted a bit.

"Just give me a second. I need something to drink first." Then, to both Dante's and Lady's surprise the girl bit into Lady's neck and began sucking her blood like the girl was some kind of vampire.

Dante ran towards them and reached a hand out, about to pull the girl away.

But before he could reach her the girl disappeared again, leaving him to catch Lady who was a bit drowsy from all the blood she'd lost.

"Are you okay?" He asked her quietly.

She nodded and he helped her over to the desk so she could lean against it.

The two looked at each other seriously before he felt something soft and paper-like hit the back of his head.

He turned towards where the offending object had come from and looked up, seeing the girl tearing through the cardboard boxes on the second floor of his office.

More magazines were tossed down, or more accurately, out of her way as she continued her search.

"Do you have anything in here besides these magazines?" She asked him, holding one up by its back cover, a spread-out falling down and showing a girl with a severe lack of clothes on its pages.

Dante rubbed the back of his head, looking hesitantly back at Lady who, despite her drowsy state, still seemed to have enough energy to be disgusted.

"Uh… those aren't mine. I found 'em here when I bought the place."

The girl looked more closely at the cover.

"It says Dante."

He waved his hands in the air while trying to think of something to say.

"Uh... no. There was someone else here before me-"

She dropped the magazine and went through a bunch of others.

"Dante. Dante… Dante… red lover-" She giggled childishly when she read the latter.

"Hey who they hell are you anyway?" He growled angrily up at her.

The girl wasn't a demon and he tried his best to only kill them but she was really starting to get on his nerves.

Looking at him, the girl dropped the last magazine before hopping off the second floor, landing on the floor quietly.

"I need your help." She said to him, so much more serious than before he'd almost think she was mature.

One of his eyebrows arched.

"Well you picked a hell of a way to do that." He said, frowning a bit now.

"If you help me, this will make you stronger." The girl spoke while reaching for something in her dress.

He didn't even bat an eye.

"Wrong twin. What do you want?" Dante asked her impatiently.

Her expression became terribly depressed as she looked back up at him.

"Vergil-" The rest of her sentence was cut off as her eyes widened and then closed, the girl falling forward as she did so.

His body instinctively moved to catch her for some reason but she was already unconscious.

"What the hell just happened?" He asked the air.

"But she mentioned Vergil. Has she… met him since he jumped off that cliff?" He thought quickly before sighing.

"Lady, could you take her in back and get her on a bed?" Dante asked her without looking back; he could almost feel her surprise and anger though.

"What- Like hell I will! That freaky little vampire-thing almost killed me!"

Dante looked back at her, his gaze much more mature and stern than he usually ever was.

She stopped and scowled before sighing herself.

"It's because she mentioned Vergil… isn't it?" Lady spoke up again, but with a quiet tone.

He didn't respond, his right hand simply tightening.

"Okay. I'll do it."

Then she walked over to Dante and took the girl from his arms, pulling an arm around the back of her neck and pulling the girl towards the single door that led into the back of the building; where they lived.

Dante stood up again and noticed the doors open, but didn't bother to look over at who had entered.

"Sorry. We're closed." He spoke, still not taking his eyes from the view of the hand Vergil had cut before jumping off the cliff.

"I'm sorry to intrude," he heard a young but mature girl's voice speak to him.

She almost sounded like the girl who'd just arrived, but he figured the situation was just getting to him.

", this won't take long. I just wanted to ask if you'd seen someone."

His eyebrows furrowed as Dante looked over at the girl, noticing another person with her, a tall man with a noticeably old-fashioned outfit on and a huge guitar or cello case hung over his back.

He was surprised to see that the girl did seem just like the one who'd fallen unconscious a minute ago, though her skin wasn't as pale, she had brown eyes as opposed to blue ones and her hair was cut short.

"I wanted to know if you'd seen a girl that looks like me."


Not sure when I'll update next. Leave a review if you feel like it.