"So what do you think it is? It's obviously a curse of some kind."

Dante shrugged and picked up another piece of cold pizza. He and Lady were seated at the front desk of Devil May Cry, eating breakfast. Well more accurately, Dante was eating breakfast; it turned out the half demon didn't really care much for grocery shopping and the only consumable substances in the fridge were day old pizza and some milk that may or may not have been passed its sell-by date...

Lady had just opted for milk, the encounter in the shower before had stolen her appetite and was holding it ransom. Lady growled inwardly.

It could have it.

Dante didn't really think being stuck with Lady a bad thing, but it would make fighting a bitch, so figuring out a solution did actually register quite high on his list of priorities. However, breakfast was first on that list, so he just stared at Lady and chewed.

"Uh, hello? If it is a curse, what do you think we should do about it?" She asked impatiently and took a sip of milk, trying hard to ignore the taste.

"Dunno… Curses were never my forte. If you wanna open a portal and ask Vergil about it, be my guest.' He said and Lady glared at him. Dante shrugged it off and continued "See, I reckon the best way to kill something is to put a bullet in its head, not curse it." He finished, putting his feet on the desk and rolling his eyes when Lady made a face at his bad etiquette.

"Do you at least have some idea of where to start looking for a solution?" She asked him, feeling slightly desperate. If Dante didn't know what to do then she would quite possibly have to kiss privacy goodbye and bury it six feet under. And she had no shovel.

Even if Dante wasn't bad to look at, it was still a prospect scarier than all hell.

She brightened when Dante seemed as if he was thinking about it. After a while, Lady tapped her foot impatiently…

After a full (annoying) minute, Dante snapped his fingers and Lady's face lit up. He leaned forward, and so did she, eager to hear his solution. Dante opened his mouth and said;

"I have… No idea."

Lady's face immediately fell. It looked like she would have to borrow that shovel after all… A look of anger followed quickly as Dante sniggered at his own joke.

"Don't piss me off, Dante. I have had a very, very rough morning."

A playful look settled on his face "Not nearly rough enough by my standards." He said evilly.

Lady's eyes flashed "I mean it!" She growled.

Dante's expression hadn't changed "Oh, I know. It's just kinda hard for me to take you seriously with a milk-moustache on your face."

Lady looked defeated and leaned back in her chair, quickly licking the milk off her upper lip.

Dante made a disappointed face "Now I could have done that for you."

Lady just gave Dante an 'Oh, give me a break' kind of look and folded her arms.

Dante look ready to say something else and Lady readied herself for being disgusted, but the phone rang, interrupting him.

Yanking it off the receiver, Dante put it to his ear "Sorry, closed due to… illness."

The voice on the other end laughed slightly "Oh, you want to hear this, believe me Mr. Dante."

He frowned "Okay tough guy… You seem to know me, what's your game?"

A rush of static indicated another laugh "No game. It is simply that I need to hire both you and Miss Lady for a job. I need you to work closely together to ensure the job's success, but as I have observed you, I have come to realize that despite your obvious attraction to each other, you both seem to prefer to childishly dance around each other and it interferes with the quality of your work. In order to counter it, I placed that little curse on the two of you so you could learn to… appreciate each other's company."

Dante stood suddenly, his chair crashing to the floor and Lady looked up in surprise.

"Asshole! You think you're funny, wise guy? You get off on interfering with other people's lives?" Dante yelled into the phone. The voice laughed again.

"Yes indeed I do. Forgive me, but believe me, you'll want this job; I'm offering $20,000 in cash for you to do it. Oh, and you can't refuse or I won't take the curse off, it works better for all of us if you just cooperate. I'll call you again. Ciao, son of Sparda." And with that, the mysterious voice disconnected, leaving a seething Dante, crushing the phone in his hand.

"Dante? What happened, who was that?" Lady touched his arm lightly.

He looked down, struggling to regain his composure "Well, the good news is we have a job…"

Gotta love cliché's!

But the plot thickens! So much that it reminds me of whipped cream, which incidentally reminds me of other things... Heh.

Anyway, the title of this chapter comes from the time a friend and my sister were in art class and the phone went and nobody answered it and my friend said 'Phone!' in the way you might imagine a severely demented parrot would say it. I thought it was funny.