A/N: Due to a very uncalled for flame review that involved the cursing of one of my (three) pets, this chapter needed to be altered slightly before I could post it. I added a short flashback in the middle to clarify something that I personally thought didn't need clarification, but that's just me (Said flashback has now been reset to the original dialogue I had planned.) Apparently SOMEONE didn't get the memo that states clearly: If six years have passed something must have happened. THANK YOU IDIOTS OF THE WORLD!

Chapter 11

Steep Decline

Squee was gone.

Johnny had gone back to his home for no more than an hour. When he left, Squee was sleeping soundly in his bed, when he came back the boy was gone.

Poof! Gone. Vanished.

Nny didn't pay it much mind. Todd seemed better; he probably just went back to school. Life would resume its normal routine once more.

Hope is a fickle thing.

Shush.

Since Todd was nowhere to be found, Nny decided to take a day for himself. Wonder aimlessly about town and such.

He never realized how many stores had closed since he left. Most of them bookstores. It was eerie walking down a narrow backstreet lined with signs to stores he'd never even heard of. At one point he passed by what appeared to be a three tiered store. Three whole stories dedicated to one store! One store! Probably sold shitty scraps of fabric that pop culture decided to call clothing. Oh, the mirth!

And it only got better.

Screaming erupted from the lower stairs. Girls in skimpy clothes, pot-smokers, drug-addicts and other underground vermin came up from the basement level, hysterical, within moments.

Johnny watched the mayhem from afar. It was the hardest he'd laughed in a long time.

Kirk hadn't called today.

Tess was genuinely surprised by this turn of events. It was almost ten in the morning, on any other day Kirk would've called her twenty times by now concerning the creepy guy with the creepier basement and his 'immanent' capture.

But no phone calls. This was a good day.

Then, the phone did ring.

"Hello?"

A gruff male voice coughed into the phone nearly blowing out Tess's eardrum. "Are you, uh, Tess Rodri- Rod-"

"Rodriguez? I am, but business hours have not started yet I-"

Another cough. Tess flinched, "Do you know someone by the name of Kirk-"

"Yes." She interrupted, "What trouble has he gotten into this time?"

"Ma'am, I believe he is dead."

"You believe?"

Cough. "There are at least fifteen stab wounds, and the body is severely burned. I can only assume he's dead."

"Where are you?" He explained the location. "I'll be there in five minutes."

Knock! Knock! Knock! Pound! Bam! Bang! Knock!

"Jesus! I'm coming! Damn." Johnny leaned to look between the boards on his window. Stalker girl was standing on his doorstep. "What?"

Tess walked in front of the window, to get a better look at him. She leaned until only the boards and a few inches separated them before shouting at the top of her voice without warning:

"I stood up for you!"

Johnny rushed to open the door, "What are you talking about?"

Tess threw her arms in the air, "After all that shit you did to me, I stood up for you! I said you had changed at least a little. I stopped Devi from kicking your ass and then you pull something like this! The whole 'I'm a changed person' shtick only works if you've ACTUALLY changed!" She stepped a little closer, "I backed you this entire time. Ever since I got out I've tried to defend you in the eyes of your peers, which, coincidently, there aren't very many of! I agreed with you, I defended you, I fucking stood up for you and you kill someone as soon as I let my guard down! Kirk was right. Once a monster always a fucking monster."

Johnny was taken aback by this sudden outburst, "I haven't killed anyone."

Thought was forgotten. Tess slapped him.

"Don't lie to me! I want to help you. I want everybody to move past the ugliness from six years ago and you're making it awfully difficult."

Johnny didn't move.

"I did all this private investigator nonsense to try and tie up the loose ends." She realized it was a mistake to slap him, but it was too late to correct it, "I want the past to be behind us. All of us. Todd, Devi, Kirk, me… you. You did a lot of the work yourself! Six years" she was lost some anger along the way, "all of that time. All of that work. For what? For a relapse? For nothing?"

There was a long, deadly pause that hung in the air for minutes.

Tess sighed, "Sorry."

Johnny took a deep breath through his nose, released it, and repeated the cycle several times. His fists clenched and loosened at his sides.

She blanched. Oh shit.

He turned to her, breathed deeply, grabbed her wrist and dragged her into his house.

Through the living room, through two locked doors, down a flight and a half of stairs before he finally let go of her wrist.

"If you're not going to struggle it's pointless for me to drag you."

She followed him the rest of the way.

They reached the end of the line. No more flights of stairs, no more doors.

It was the room Tess had been locked in. The shackles. The wall.

"You see this?" Johnny was in the center of the room gesturing toward the horrifically stained wall.

"Yeah."

"Notice anything different?" he stepped aside and gave her a moment to take it all in.

Tess walked up to where he had been standing. "It's clean." She touched the wood. It sent a sharp chill up her spine. She ran her hands over every inch she could reach.

"It's real. All of it." Nny's voice said behind her "The monster has been evicted, the wall cleaned. Like I said, I'm different now."

"You still killed him." Tess took a step and continued to feel the wall. "At least you wanted to."

"I WANT to kill a lot of people." He scoffed, "Who in their right mind doesn't want to go at a pyramid of cheerleaders with a chainsaw? Who doesn't want to beat the 'free thinkers' who think it's cool to insult people who have fewer piercings than them?" His voice got farther away "Seriously who-"he stopped.

Tess turned to look at him and saw that he was studying a rack of knives on a different wall. She felt a deep ridge under her hand.

"What the-" she looked harder. She ran her hand sideways and felt another deep ridge a few feet away. The two ridges went up and down symmetrically on either side, meeting the floor and meeting each other in a single ridge about six feet from the floor.

"There's a door here."

Tess was pulled sharply away before she had time to figure out how to open it.

"There is no door." Johnny was pulling her up the stairs by her arm. "It's just wood."

"Where are we going?"

"Somebody stole my knives. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't you."

A/N: The flashback mentioned above went here. It bothered me too much to keep it up for more than twenty-four hours. So I changed it back to the original sequence, Thank you, those who agreed and thought that flashback segment was unnecessary, for putting up with my little bit of spite. Here is what was supposed to go in this section:

"What are you doing here?"

"Aww, you miss me already?"

"You're dead!"

"I was."

"How did you get back?"

"That's not really your problem at the moment, now, is it?"

Pause.

"W-What are you going to do to me?"

"Take back what's rightfully mine of course."

"He doesn't belong to you anymore!"

"That can be changed."

Pause.

"Get out. Go back to the hellhole you came from, you parasite."

Fighting ensued.

"I will not be kept locked away. I am a slave to no one. Not even you can put me back there! Give up the vessel and I might let you live."

"No. Not now. Not ever."

"Then, tonight is the night you die, Reverend."

"Get away!"

Screaming, static, silence.

"The front door is right there and you're going in through the window!"

Johnny was pushing said window open with one hand, holding on to the sill with the other, his feet pressed to the wall. "Window's open. Front door might not be."

"Why not check?"

"Why bother checking when I know this is open?" he squeezed in and held out his hands to help her in. "I can only assume you want to follow."

"Touché." She grabbed his wrists, he grabbed hers and soon she was inside the house.

"You knew not to touch my hands."

"After the big speech you made at me, I wouldn't forget."

He opened the bedroom door and crossed the hall.

"The bathroom?"

She saw him stealing gauze, bactine and tape from the medicine cabinet. "You're stealing medical supplies."

"You expect me to drive all the way to the hospital, steal supplies there, drive all the way back just to pop a few blisters?"

Tess was now thoroughly confused. "What?"

Nny sighed heavily. He shifted the supplies to his left arm and held out his right hand. "Look at my hand. What do you see?"

Tess made a quizzical face. "I see… a short life-line."

"Be serious!"

"Calluses; lots of them, especially on the balls of your palm and your fingers."

He jostled the supplies a bit, holding them with both hands now. "Have you seen Squee's hands lately?"

"Not as many. That's for sure."

"And since I have calluses and he doesn't what can you assume? I'll answer for you: That I use a certain type of equipment more often than he does and my hands have adapted to it. That certain type of equipment is my knives."

Tess followed his train of thought "Since his hands aren't used to them, instead of calluses he'll get blisters."

"Sooner you pop them, the sooner you bandage them, the sooner they heal." He stuffed all the supplies into a nearby trash bag. "Follow."

She followed him to the end of the hall, he opened a window and tossed the supplies on to the roof.

"We're going to the roof?"

"You're still asking questions?"

"You went from maniac to sarcastic jackass, nice transition."

"Don't make me transition back." He leaned out the window, turned, and pulled himself up to the roof.

"Threats, very manly." She followed.

As soon as she got to the roof, Tess saw Johnny glaring at her. "Sorry, forgot who I was talking to for a minute."

"Don't do it again." He picked up the supplies and added. "Be quiet. No sudden moves."

She cocked an eyebrow, but didn't argue.

Squee was in fact on the roof. It was truly frightening sight. He was holding his hands out in front of him, palms up, bright white blisters surrounded by reddened flesh marked areas of his palm. Deep red stains covered the front of his shirt and pants. Droplets had dried to his paled face. He was shaking and wide-eyed.

This didn't faze Nny. He sat down in front of Todd, took one of his hands and pulled out the bottle of bactine.

Tess felt like she was in the twilight zone. Watching some horror movie during that one part everybody hates. The calm before the storm. She felt it, that overwhelming sense of dread. Johnny, eyes lowered, methodically bandaging Todd's freshly wounded hands, and Todd, bloody and horrified watching every movement as though his life depended on it.

She wanted to say something. Break the tense silence, but no words came. Tess stood there on the roof staring at the two.

When Johnny was done, he looked up at Todd. They maintained eye-contacted for a few seconds before the boy folded like a lawn chair.

"I'm sorry." It started off as a whisper; the eye contact was still there. "I don't know how I got them." Todd reached behind him and pulled out the two knives that had been missing from Johnny's rack. Nny took them without comment.

"I didn't want to kill him. I don't even know-" he choked "But he just kept following me home! He followed me everywhere! I couldn't take it anymore!" He grew more hysterical with every sentence, "I just couldn't handle it! He called me names! He said things that didn't make any sense, he kept saying things about you! Lies! All of them! I asked him to leave me alone but he wouldn't! He just wouldn't go away! I had to do something! I didn't mean for him to die! I'm so sorry!" Todd pulled his knees to his chest and lowered his head down. After a couple of sobs he said, as quietly as he began "I don't know what came over me. He said he hurt Devi to get you in trouble and I just- I just lost control. I'm sorry, Johnny."

Johnny looked up at Tess, who was speechless.

It didn't take too long for the two of them to get Todd off the roof and lying down. Tess waited in the hallway while Johnny helped him to bed. He shut the door quietly and they regrouped.

"I'll Devi that it was Kirk that hit her." Tess said as they walked down the stairs. "I think we should all have a meeting."

"I have to stay here. Meeting's gotta wait." He sat down on that now all too familiar couch.

"My god, I had no idea. I had no idea it was this bad." Tess laughed as she sat on the floor. "I thought he was getting better. We all did."

Johnny nodded. "I talked to him. Told him that we would do everything in our power to help him."

"We will" Tess said with conviction.

Nny coughed. "How much can our power accomplish? He's so far gone."

Tess reached for the phone and began dialing Devi's number. "He's not completely gone."

They paused their conversation long enough for Tess to tell Devi what had happened and who had really attacked her. They debated a meeting shortly and decided to discuss it more later when everyone had and opportunity to get to the same place, apparently this included Nny.

When she hung up, Tess looked at Johnny and said: "He's not lost to us yet. There's still hope."

"Hope is a fickle thing."

With every passing hour he'll lose a little more of himself. Every time he sleeps he'll have nightmares. Every time he talks he'll want to kill someone.

"Johnny?"

Soon everything will come full circle.

"Call me Nny. We're friends now."

What are you going to do? Save him? You saw the same things I saw. There is no saving him.

"I'm flattered, I guess"

Hope? There is no hope for him. You know what you have to do.

"Are you okay?" she sounded so far away.

"Fine. Just a little headache."

Don't deny it just because it's something you don't want! It's the right thing.

"Me too. Is there any aspirin in this place."

"Not sure. Go look."

He is not a martyr.

You were?

No! I— I won't do it. He's not like me. He can be helped! He doesn't have to be fucked up forever.

Neither did you obviously.

I left.

You came back.

"In the kitchen."

Johnny's vision had darkened a bit. He felt dizzy as he stood up.

You're tired. You should sleep more.

He walked into the kitchen and saw Tess holding a couple of pills and a glass of water for him.

"You look terrible. Are you sure you're okay?"

Johnny shook his head quickly to clear the fuzziness, but that only made it worse. "I'm fine."

"You're slurring. You look drunk."

"I'm fine."

You're a terrible liar. Be honest for once. It'll do you some good.

"I'm just," he said and he noticed the slur in his speech, "a little dizzy, from the headache no doubt." His head was pounding now. From the back of his neck to his nose. His ears were ringing. Tess said something he couldn't hear.

She said it again. "You should lie down."

The world blurred a little more so that he couldn't distinguish one shape from another.

Tess set down the glass and medicine and took hold of Nny's arm.

Something lurched in his stomach. Something warm filled his nose. He started leaning, felt a pulling to the left and couldn't stop from leaning into it. A sharp pang in knee as he hit something that wasn't floor, a chair maybe.

"Can you walk?"

He didn't want to talk for fear that would upset the tenuous balance that was keeping conscious.

Nny?

His feet weren't touching the ground anymore. The room was spinning. The light was blinding him, but he was stubborn and refused to close his eyes. Something cold touched his forehead.

"No fever." Tess was close all of a sudden. Her voice pulled him out of his stupor long enough to understand just how close she really was. She was leaning on the counter, he was leaning on her. His vision cleared a bit and he re-orientated himself with his surroundings. He pulled away and stood on his own.

"Better?"

"Yeah." He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, It's over. I think I'm okay."

"Good." She gave him the pills and the glass. "Last thing I need is you getting sick."

He swallowed the pills and almost half the glass of water in one pass. "Why? You NEED me or something?"

"Yes actually I do." He looked at her as she took the glass. "Because if push came to shove, we may need someone who could take him down. Someone who could… incapacitate him."

"I could never hurt Squee. Maniac or not. He's the whole reason I looked for help in the first place. Because of him I realized just how sucky my life was and I didn't want him to go down the same world hating path I did just because some crazy guy next door took advantage of his inattentive parents. He's an innocent…sort of."

"You make it sound like you his real father or something." She snickered.

"Hardy har har. Very funny." Nny sighed. His head was still pounding. "He needs a parental figure, someone who cares, you know?"

Tess shrugged, "Don't you think you're a few years to late?"

"I'm trying."

Static filled his ears and Johnny cringed.

Tess grabbed his arm again, "Are you okay?"

"What is that noise?" he ground his teeth together.

"I don't hear anything." Tess sounded scared, "Maybe you should see a doctor." She tried to move him but it was like moving a desk that was bolted to the floor.

"I'm not sick." The static lightened a bit.

Johnny you need to leave. Now.

Why?

Don't question me just do it.

"I think you are." Tess said firmly when Nny regained himself. "Go home and go to bed. I'll stay here with Squee."

Do what she says.

"I can't… I should stay here."

Now's not the time to be the good guy Goddamnit! GET OUT!

Tess had had enough. "No. Either you walk out or I'll DRAG you out when you pass out."

She's right. Go.

Why are you so jumpy?

Go!

"Fine!" it came out a little louder than he had anticipated, but his point was clear. "I'll go. Just make sure he doesn't go anywhere. Stay up all night if you have to. If anything happens come get me. I'll be on the couch."

"Will do."

Johnny turned to leave. Tess right behind him. "Get some sleep." She said, there was a twinge of almost genuine concern in her voice. Not much, but a little. "God knows you need it, you've been taking the brunt of all this crazy." He nodded.

When his hand touched the knob the static came back with a vengeance.

No.

Leaving so soon, Johnny my dear boy? Oh I don't think so.

No!

Johnny's entire world went black and gravity suddenly became his enemy.

"Oh my god, Nny!"

Get away!

He's mine! Plus I have seniority.

If that's what you call my foot in your ass then yes, you do!

"Nny. Can you hear me? Johnny?"

You're weak. He doesn't belong to you anymore!

You don't belong here! You're inexperienced!

Get out of my head.

No one asked for your opinion.

No one asked for yours either!

Static. Silence. Then Tess gently shaking him.

"You're awake!" She smiled. Her arms tensed a bit then relaxed.

"Yeah." Johnny got up and couldn't get out the door fast enough.

What the fuck just happened.

I just saved your ass, is what just happened! Don't ever ignore me again!

…And it seems to me that Tess girl likes you a little more than you think she does.

I passed out, she got worried, big whoop.

I think you're missing the point.

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving to all.

In case you didn't know: the review as you see fit thing, does not stop me from making snide comments about flames. It helps me cope with harsh stupidity. (see first A/N) If criticism could be kept constructive, that'd be nice. Thanks.

Now that I have reverted to the original chapter posting, I can advance the plot.

Love to all of my fans who keep this story on the net. And everyone: review as you see fit.