Hello and welcome back to the story! Please enjoy this chapter and I will put my authors notes at the end of the chapters from now on which means they will be short because who wants a write a long note at the end of a long chapter? Sorry, went off on a tangent there… please review, enjoy and tell everybody about the story. Tell family, friends, frenemies, people that hate your guts and want to watch you die on the sidewalk, and everybody I left out. Even tell your pets if they can somehow use the computer without thumbs (sorry to any monkeys out there that are pets. You should be set free)

Now, as Nero might say, let's get on with this shit!

2. Achilles' heel

Nero ran along the road that led to the edge of the town where everyone was gathering to escape the blaze. Nero looked around franticly for Kyrie but she was nowhere to be seen. He was now retracing his steps, checking every building in the area where he had last seen the young woman run off too to see if he could find her. No, he would find her. He wasn't going back to the town limits without her.

He checked every house that wasn't ablaze (and then almost all the ones that were on fire) for any sign of his former lover. Finally, just as his hope was starting to wane, he found her. She was running around frantically, lost as a horse at a goat sail (man that's lost) and seemed flustered. Nero ran over to her, calling out to her. Finally he got over to him and she looked just as bitter as the day she had dumped him.

"Stop fallowing me around, Nero! If all this wasn't happening I would call the cops on you!" she said folding her arms.

Nero sighed. "Look, the edge of the town is that way Kyrie," Nero said pointing to the direction he had just come from," I know you…vi know you hate me and all but can you stop acting crazy and go over there where it's safe and evacuate the city with everyone else before you get burned alive?"

Kyrie said nothing. She just stomped off in the direction he had pointed in before and muttered inaudible language under her breath. Nero wondered if she was cursing at him but then shuck it off. Kyrie didn't even use language like that. If he had made her that mad then something was truly wrong.

Nero then took his good time with getting back to the city limits, not wanting to see Kyrie's hateful glare again anytime soon. He absent mindedly kicked a rock that was in the street as he walked, hands in his pockets. He hated how things had ended between him and Kyrie. Things had started to get uncomfortable at her apartment after about two weeks at her place. She didn't talk to him or look at him and then, out of nowhere, when he came home from a mission one night she told him that just seeing him made her sick and that she never wanted to talk to him or see him ever again. He had begged for her to tell him what he had done wrong and she had only gotten angrier and thrown things at him.

Now look where they were…

Nero sighed. Why did his life have to suck wet ass so bad? Why did all the people that he liked or cared about except for a few people either hate him, die or go away? He was pulled out of his trance suddenly when he got back to where the survivors were located. They were all running off to some secure area outside the city limits, giving him looks of hatred as they went. 'Figures' Nero thought as he tried to catch up with them 'Even at a time like this they still have time to hate me'.

Soon he had made it up the side of a tall hill that overlooked some trees and a lake. He had been here a few times before and knew that he needed to keep careful footing if he didn't want to fall off the side of a 30ft embankment and break something. He walked along casually, keeping up his guard and Red queen in his hand. No demon was going to sneak up on him without a fight. And even if it did, it wasn't going to live long. Picking a fight with him or just coming into his line of vision at this particular moment in time was detrimental to the health and life force of any demon in the area.

All was calm… and then came that fucking demonic laughter from before. Nero let out a crazed yell and people scattered. He wasn't sure if it was from fear of what had made such an awful sound or if it was from Nero's reaction but he really didn't care. None of them liked him anyway. Not a single person… why did he still live in Fortuna? He really needed to relocate after this.

Nero looked around to find the demon floating calmly behind him with its giant scissors. His surprise was so overwhelming that it caused him to involuntarily lash out with Red Queen and hit the creature in its white flat mask. To his shock, it screeched as it actually harmed the creature. Nero practically jumped for joy. The sight of the demon in pain and screaming was like the heaviest rock music on his mp3 player: soothing and all consuming. Now he knew how to hurt this thing which meant that it had to die right here and now.

Before Nero got a chance to act on this whim, however, the demon went up and diced through the air at him, scissors aimed at his head. Time seemed to slow down at that instant as Nero realized his options self-consciously. He could either jump of the side of the hill or die. Clearly, Nero had no wish to die at that moment so several shocked Fortuna residents, including Kyrie, got to watch Nero dive off the side of a rocky cliff. They all gasped, turned away and screamed at the action, knowing well that the cliff's bottom was lined with razor sharp rocks. The jump was almost suicide, death almost guaranteed at the other end.

Nero hit the ground with a spine crunching force that made every bone in his body feel like it had just broken. He was just about to thank his luck that he was alive when he hit his head very hard on a sharp rock and was instantaneously knocked out. The people that had just made it to the edge of the cliff only saw him laying there not moving with his eyes closed and automatically expected the worse. Kyrie in particularly stared in horror, fearing that her ex had just committed suicide because she, like the other towns people, could not see the demon. Nero was unknown to this, however, and was unconscious so he was assed out no matter which way he looked at it… that is, if he could look at anything.

Ah, the sweet smell of cliffhanger endings at the end of every chapter. Don't you just hate it?! I hope you enjoyed the story. –Yawn- I haven't slept in almost 2 days and my motor functions are starting to take a hit. Also, my brain isn't working very well. I can spell the long words but I lack the ability to spell the short ones like "Like" and "the" and, get this "Nero"! How do you forget how to spell the name of the person you're writing about?! –Yawn- well, I hope to see you in the next chapter. Review and keep reading, please.