In a large, nameless American city, that for argument's sake we'll call Hoboken, down a street populated by rats the size of Chihuahuas, was an office with a large neon sign over the door, guttering and popping like an oversized bug zapper.

The sign read "Devil May Cry", and it was listed in the yellow pages as an exterminator. It was a dingy, dark place, littered with snickers wrappers and empty bottles of Dr. Pepper, and the walls were decorated with ghastly things that Martha Stewart definitely would not have considered Good. They were in fact, samples of the owner's exterminations.

But the things the owner exterminated, while frequently having multiple legs and antennae, generally did not scurry under the refrigerator, unless, of course, it was about to throw it at you.

The owner was a handsome young man, with pretty white hair and a perpetually crabby expression. His name was Dante, and what Dante exterminated was devils.

Demons.

Boogeymen.

For Dante, it was a little bit like a cross between civic duty, and that fantasy that many people have of getting rid of the uncle in the plaid pants that smells like cheap tobacco and tells bad puns at family gatherings. This was mainly because Dante was, himself, half-devil.

You see, once upon a time, two little boys lived in an old house at the end of an old street. They lived there with their mother, who owned the sort of bookstore that good, god-fearing people didn't go to, and with their father, who was the type of person that good, god-fearing people avoided.

Beatrice Sparda used to joke with her customers that her husband was a real devil. Only, the joke was, she wasn't joking.

He was.

A devil, that is.

But he was the very best sort of person a devil could be. (which might be an oxymoron, but Sparda really was a good sort for someone born in the nether pits of hell)

Beatrice, and Sparda (who had taken on the human name of Lucas, as a knife to twist in the side of another devil who'd stayed down in those nether pits) had the aforementioned two little boys rather by accident, since both had been pretty sure there wasn't any possibility of him getting her pregnant.

With twins, no less.

With no regard for the heavy amount of teasing the two children would be subjected to, and with a keen eye for irony, Beatrice named the boys Dante and Vergil. They both had their father's lovely silver hair, and their mother's bright blue eyes. They looked, for all the world, like a couple of little angels.

Until they got old enough to start doing things like sticking forks in the wall outlets, but then that's neither here nor there.

Life in the Sparda house was as normal as things could possibly be, until all the very bad things happened around Dante and Vergil's sixth birthday. But before that, you never knew if a minor demon was going to be popping it's head out of the Rice Krispies box like some sort of deranged prize, or if Beatrice would be casting an incantation to exorcise the ghosts in her stairmaster.

Things were like this, because, before Dante and Vergil's father had come to earth, he'd waged a long and bitter war against his own people, and defeated the king of one of the less-attractive circles of hell.

When he'd won, the demons (many of whom he'd fought against) had promptly gone to crown Sparda as the new King. This was the way things were done in hell. King looks weak, contender kills king, becomes new King. It was an accepted series of events, and one that generally no one was surprised by.

Except for Sparda.

It had been noted earlier that Sparda was a good sort. He was. He was also an original thinker, which was rather rare in Hell. Demons, like angels, had not been created for free thought. They had been created to follow a master, and do what they were told, and be happy with a little extra eyeball goulash at the end of a sulfurous day. This worked fine for all of them.

Except for Sparda.

After his defeat of the old King, an unlikable three-eyed fellow named Mundus, he suggested that his fellow devils institute a democracy, a socialist republic, or a communist collective. He was a great fan of human politics, and he thought Hell would benefit greatly from a form of government that took into account it's people.

With that in mind, Sparda left them with an assortment of human documents, and took off for the human world, where he promptly met Beatrice Aligheri with her occult bookstore and coffeehouse (he just as promptly got her pregnant, as was mentioned earlier. Sparda was a smooth talker.)

The problem with Sparda's plan for a democratic hell was the demons themselves. For a few years, they just all sat around in a circle, staring at eachother and the books, hoping someone would tell them what to do.

Eventually, they decided they still needed Sparda, and began showing up on his doorstep on earth. Some of them even became regulars, and one or two even ended up as occasional babysitters, when Beatrice wasn't beating them over multiple heads with her broom for leaving slime trails on her oriental rugs, or eating Vergil's pet goldfish.

Occasionally, Sparda would go with them, try and smack them all in the right direction, and come home. One day, though, Sparda didn't come home. Beatrice had been expecting this. While Sparda was very, very brave and great believer in the potential of his people, he was also a great believer in the potential of his people. It had never occurred to him that he was probably a one-in-a-million fluke of nature, and Beatrice was pretty certain that one day, that glaring blind spot was going to turn around and bite him right on the ass.

So, the slightly overcast Sunday that Sparda kissed his wife on the cheek, and gave his boys a hug before heading off with what looked like a six-headed weasel, Beatrice had a strong feeling that in true heroic fashion, her husband was about to get himself spectacularly killed. Dante and Vergil were both three years old, and Beatrice couldn't bring herself to share this theory with them, so she told them that he'd gone home for a while. Beatrice didn't exactly want to dwell on what happened to demons when they died, especially good demons. She hoped the phrase "a better place" was apt in this circumstance.

Being a practical woman, that afternoon, Beatrice started preparing herself for the rigors of single-motherhood. Of course, even her bookstore didn't carry anything on "What to expect raising twin, half-demonic boys", so she expected there was going to be a large bit of "winging it" involved. Fortunately, the boys were shy and relatively well-behaved. Neither of them had evidenced any overt paranormal abilities as of yet. There were subtle things, like a welcome immunity to essentially everything, and a high resistance to injury - which, in Dante's case was ESPECIALLY welcome. At three, Vergil could read simple books and climbed like a skinny, white-haired monkey. Dante (younger than Vergil by four and one half minutes) was pudgy and uncoordinated, frequently falling over his own feet, let alone off branches he had been led to by twin.

All good things must come to an end, though, and when Dante and Vergil turned six, their mother was killed by some of Mundus' lackeys, and Vergil vanished, leaving Dante all alone in the world.

This all comes full circle, then, you know, because Dante had spent a very long time, in true heroic tradition, hunting down and killing the devils he blamed for his very bad fortune.

Coming back to the present, it was a foggy saturday night, and Dante was feeling more glum than usual. Money was tight, he was down to his last snickers, and he was so broke that he couldn't even afford to renew his subscription to "Soldier of Fortune" magazine.

The last several calls had not been what Dante might call "legitimate". There had been a serious dearth of demonic activity lately, and that was bad for business.

Dante was looking longingly at his final bit of choclatey/peanutty goodness when the doorchime rang and a woman bounded in.

She was blonde, beautiful, and dressed in a playboy bunny costume, replete with ears and a puffy tail positioned firmly on her rump. She looked at her watch, then at Dante and said, startled "Oh! I'm late!" and proceeded to bound out again.

Dante blinked several moments before gettng up and following her. His reasons were, in no particular order of importance, 1) She looked like she was in trouble. 2) It's not every day you see a Bunny in this neck of the woods. 3) She was really hot.

Had Dante been a more introspective person, reason #3 would have especially bothered him, since she also looked a great deal like his mother. But Therapy, in general, was wasted on him.

He chased after her into the foggy night, watching her pry the lid off the trashcan behind Raul's Bodega down the street and jump in.

"Curiouser and curiouser" Dante muttered, following her and peering down into the trashcan before it sucked him in in the most undignified and uncomfortable manner possible.

"SHIT!" was all he could add as he bounced off old sewer piping, roots, masonry, and things that even HE didn't want to consider, until he face-planted squarely in a long corridor decorated with glowing red lights. He sat up, blinking and shaking his head like a bird that had just collided with a plate glass window, before he saw the Bunny bounding off down the hall.