A/N: Hey guys, soooo….. yeah I'm late a day, I'm just lacking inspiration to do anything but I need to get these chapters done… so yeah, it's just been a full day and I have a ton to do tomorrow…. The exhaustion is real here and it's only 10:00… yup.

Disclaimer: . .DMC.

Guest: I'm glad you like it so far :3 I like writing the interaction between the two of them, it's really fun :3 Thanks so much for the review!

Under Fire

Nero sat, listening to the phone ring a few times before Mitch picked up.

"Hey Nero," he answered "what's up?"

"Not too much," the teen answered "can we hang out? I've got a lot to talk about…"

"Uh… sure? Hold on," the partial devil could tell that Mitch had pulled the phone away from his face but he could still hear every word.

"Mom? Can Nero come over?"

"I suppose, honey is that okay?" he heard Mrs. Galvan say

"I don't mind." Mr. Galvan's deep tone came into play.

"You're good." The blonde said into the phone, despite the fact that Nero already knew.

"Great, I'll be over in a few." The partial devil hung up the phone and Dante glanced up from his cleaning of Ebony and Ivory, the younger had noticed his father did that whenever the man didn't know what to do.

"You going?" he asked and the teen nodded, glancing over at his jacket and then down at his arm before giving a small smirk and reaching out with a ghostly extension of it and bringing the jacket over to himself. He dug the bandages out of the pocket and started wrapping his arm as fast as he could.

"Didn't you quit doing that when you went over to Mitch's?"

"His dad's home right now, he doesn't know."

"You could always tell him." Nero simply gave his father a skeptical look before tying the knot on the wrapping and dashing out the door.

As the teen dashed through the streets he was too wrapped up in his own thoughts and all the things he'd learned today to notice the tired looking white demon watching from just beyond sight in the trees.

-Family of Happenstance-

"Hey Nero," Mrs. Galvan greeted when he walked into the house. "Mitch is cleaning up his pigsty of a room."

"You know I've seen it way worse." The partial devil grinned

"Yes well he still needs to clean it up, so if you just want to stay down here so you don't distract him. We have plenty of leftovers if you're hungry."

"I'm fine, I just ate." Mrs. Galvan raised a brow and the teen sighed "Okay so that doesn't sound too bad…"

"That's what I thought, honestly, you eat more than Mitch, it's a wonder you're not ten feet taller than him." She turned to the kitchen, but still saw the partial devil rub at his right arm with downcast eyes. Jackie wondered sometimes just how much the demonic blood in that boy's veins affected him, there were times that she'd seen the more violent spark in both his and his father's eyes and it worried her a little, just what did that do to a person?

When Mitch's mother left the room, Nero settled down on the couch only to realize that Mr. Galvan was in the room and had been watching him curiously. The teen blushed upon noticing and rubbed his nose, he hadn't realized he'd had an audience.

"So Nero, I didn't have much of a chance to talk with you earlier today, what with so many people in the house, how are you?"

"I'm good," The teen didn't quite know what to say to this, he'd met Mitch's dad a couple of times and to be honest, he didn't really know what to think of him, the man was kinda hard to read.

"Your arm's still havin problems? You had it bandaged every time I've seen you."

"Uh, yeah, it's kinda an ongoing thing, it's okay though."

"Have you seen a specialist about it or anything?"

"Yeah, there's not much that can be done about it, but like I said, it doesn't really bother me so…" he shrugged, hoping that the conversation would move on to other topics and he wouldn't be antagonized anymore.

"What did you say the problem was?" the teen began to internally panic, luckily Mitch bounded down the stairs at this time.

"Room's clean!" he said happily and Nero all but collapsed back on the seat.

"Just in time, Mitch you looking for leftovers? I just heated up a bunch." Mrs. Galvan called from the kitchen.

"Heck yeah!" the taller teen said with a grin and both boys dashed to the table at the promise of food. Once in there and hearing the TV in the living room turn up Nero turned to his friend with an extremely relieved expression.

"Dude, I owe you one, you just saved my ass…"

"I could hear my dad and so I just rushed down, my mom doesn't care though, why don't you just tell him?" Nero sighed

"Do you know how hard this is to explain to people?" he held up his right hand and flexed his claws out of the bandages then swore as they slipped down his fingers.

"Shitty wrapping job?" the partial devil nodded, looked at his claws then shrugged, poking one directly into a piece of turkey and popping it into his mouth. Mitch snickered and said

"You complain about it but then you can do stuff like that, I mean, I wish I could do things like that with my hand."

"I wish I couldn't, it's more of a pain in the ass than anything else…"

"Yeah right, c'mon, let's go upstairs and you can tell me about all the stuff you wanna talk about."

"Alright,"

A/N: Lame ending again I know but I'm working toward the good stuff I swear!

Till next time,

Winged Element