Are You Game?

Title: A Day in the Life
Author/Artist: thousanth
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word count: 1,231
Summary: Devil May Cry, Dante: devil hunting - just an average day
A/N: A day in the life of a devil hunter.




It's polters in the morning, and a woman at his door begging to be let in. Because she's there and there's no excuse not to, he stands back and invites her inside. He likes to think of himself as being basically chivalrous, when it suits him. Love them, please them, leave them. That kind of thing.

But it's polters and not devils, and even though he doesn't deal with ghosties - “Polters, lady. As in poltergeists? Ghosts with too much time on their hands. I don't do ghosts, I do devils. Bigger. Meaner. More my style.” - Even so, he takes the job because he can't stand to see a lady cry.

It turns out to be fast. Amulet of Sanarkii, a couple of holy words, a few blood-curdling screams and then all sorted. She doesn't want to sleep with him, but she does pay him and these days that's quite enough. He even gets back in time for breakfast, which is nice because it was two in the morning when the lady had come calling. Her money buys coffee and eggs at the nearest diner and for the rest of the morning he sits and watches the traffic passing by the window.

Human. Human. Human. Not-human, but harmless. Human. Human, hello...

He's been in trouble before for causing a scene on the streets, so he's really not intending to cause a fuss. It's the devil's fault in all honesty, because when it feels the weight of his gaze upon the side of its head, it turns to look at him. Never look, you don't know what might be looking back at you. Dante watches its eyes widen in shock as it recognises him through the diner window, and he barely has time to give it a little wave before it makes a break for it, tearing down the street on all fours, throwing caution and human disguise to the wind in its effort to get away.

He goes after it, because even if there's no money in it you never know what might happen. And besides, it's not in his nature to let a devil escape.

It's short work. A minor imp, out when it shouldn't be and not keeping its eyes peeled for the very real danger that is him. He sends it back to Hell in a scatter of ash and a disappointing fizzle of hellfire. And after that he trudges home to check his messages.

There are none, but that's to be expected. That's part of the problem of being successful in his line of work. The world only has so many devils in it, and once they get wind of where the hunters are they get very good at going to ground. But Dante's persistent. He knows the wiles and ways of devilkind, and for all the things he's never learnt about them there's always been something in him that just knows anyway. He doesn't question that instinct, because so far it's served him well and he's not one to look a gift horse in the unmentionables.

The afternoon brings with it a pile of books he's had imported from Central Asia. Dante doesn't like to give the impression that he's bookish, but sometimes it's nice to go prepared and in order to do that there's a few very obvious methods. One of them is to find someone to teach you. But Dante's never been good in class, too much like a boring life, and besides, there's few out there that really understand devil hunting like he does. It's not always what you know, it's how you do it. At least, he likes to think so anyway.

So, teachers are out. Books? Sometimes you find something useful. And thus his afternoon is spent flipping through old texts, looking at the pictures and putting the old jukebox in the corner on repeat to help him focus.

By seven in the evening he's done with books and the floor of his office is now his training space, the sword in his hands a blur of light and motion. He practices moves that would make a devil cry - speed and power, elegance and accuracy all wrapped up in one deadly package. He's good and he knows it.

When the knock at the door comes he's just about warmed up. He opens up to find his contact on the doorstep, an elderly woman with prim hair and subdued dress. She brings a suitcase almost as big as she is in with her and lays it with a thump on his desk. He's not allowed to carry it for her – all attempts are tutted away. In her youth this woman battled archdevils and sent them crying back to their mothers and she needs no brat to carry her cases for her.

She has a most impressive collection of weaponry, holy and unholy, lined up inside her suitcase, but it's the silver dagger with the arcane symbols that she's brought especially for him. Stab a devil with this, she says, a glint in her eye, and it'll be nothing but dust before you can even say snap. Naturally, he buys it. “Who could resist an offer like that from a lady like you?” he holds his hands wide and asks. Even so, he can't buy it on credit.

When she's gone he orders pizza and sits down to watch the soaps. The food arrives early, which is unusual. It takes him half a second to realise that the pizza boy isn't the pizza boy and in the time it's taken him to lean down and squint the devil has already leapt for him. It's a creature of strange angles and too many teeth and it's got him on his back on the floor of his office with a crash that heralds the death of the last of his spare chairs.

If he's honest with himself, which he sometimes is, he enjoys the fight. There's nothing wrong with a good scrap and there's nothing wrong with cleaning up scum. This devil is all teeth, claws and legs that bend too many times, and it moves almost faster than he can follow. But Dante's not the scourge of this city's demonic scum for nothing. It takes him time, and a little effort, and the noise they make is a good indication of why he no longer has any neighbours, but eventually he gets the thing pinned down and ready to die.

Before it goes he leans down to ask it why it's here. It gives him a prophecy, full of doom and the end of days, but he's unimpressed because he's heard better than that on the kids' TV channel. After that it gives him a name, Mundus, and bids him farewell, sweet prince. He kills it then, out of disgust, but mostly, out of boredom.

Once he's slung his sword back into its place he fetches the pizza box from where it ended up on the doorstep. A sniff tells him that it's not what he ordered, but it'll do. Ten minutes later the pizza he actually ordered arrives, and on reflection, that's probably the best thing that's happened to him all day.

A unexpected polter, an unwise imp, a silver devil-slaying dagger. An attempt on his life and one free pizza. All in all, just an average day.