Otto wasn't flying. He was falling with high tech equipment. And also style. And anger. Because apparently Wing was totally dead and Otto was getting revenge.

The HUD in his helmet was counting down the seconds till Otto would hit the earth. And it was taking fucking ages.

CHAPTER 1

It was two weeks before the prologue, and Nero was hanging around an opera house in Vienna. Yes, opera houses in Austria are where the most hard-core people hang out.

As he entered via the back package, he thought about how that sentence could be phrased better. The man behind the desk looked up.

"Only performers are allowed back here, sir," he told Nero.

"I'm here for the audition. For the production of Faust. I'm auditioning for the part of Mesitotophlo-fuck!" The old man behind the counter's eyes narrowed, his hand going to a button beneath the desk, "Mephitiopholmo-shit!" the man started pressing the button, "No- look, I've got this! Mephistopholso- COME ON!" A panel from the wall slid open and several armed men came out with their guns pointed to Nero.

"GET ON THE FLOOR! GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR!"

"Mephistopheles! I'm here for the part of Mephistopheles!" Nero finally managed.

The men slowly lowered their weapons.

"Why didn't you bloody say so in the first place," muttered the man behind the counter.

"I was trying," Nero protested, "the passwords keep getting more and more difficult to say!"

"Fine, just go in, everyone else is here."

"So… are we still needed?" asked one of the armed men in thick Austrian accent.

"No, you can just bugger off," said the desk man.

"I don't bugger things! Don't think I don't know what these English words mean!" The armed man raised his gun to the desk man's face.

"It's just an expression-"

Nero decided to get out of their before things continued to escalate, so he quickly made his way down the corridor that had been revealed earlier. After a few more forms of identification that Nero found considerably easier, he finally entered a chamber where GLOVE's ruling council were seated around a table.

"Ah, Nero, it is so good to see you!" came the booming, Russian-accented voice of one of his trusted friends, Gregori, who dies in the next book. The giant of a man raised to greet Nero, gripping him by the shoulders and kissing him on each cheek. Please note that kissing is not the usual form of greeting other men for Russians, even informally. So make of that what you will.

Nero wiped Gregori's lipstick from his cheeks and after exchanging a few pleasantries, they both sat down with the other council members. Nero noticed a new member, who was wearing a mask that completely covered his features. That probably won't be important to the plot in the future. Nero knew who he was though, he was a dick. A dick called Cypher, who was a dick.

A large screen descended from the ceiling, with the distinctive silhouette of Number One shown on it.

"Good afternoon. I'm so glad you were able to make it. Actually I'm not. I don't really care. But anyway, I have studied your reports, and although there have been a couple of… unfortunate incidents, nothing that could seriously jeopardise the future of GLOVE has happened."

Nero sank down a little in his seat at the mention of the 'unfortunate incidents'.

"Anyway, to address some of the suggested ideas. Madame Mortis, although your suggestion for murdering people with cybernetically controlled sharks is interesting, if shark attacks suddenly start happening everywhere then people might use that as an excuse to try to kill more sharks, and we can't be responsible for the extinction of an endangered species. I mean, we're fucking evil, but animal cruelty is fucked up."

As the meeting continued on a similar vein, Nero sank further and further into his seat, hoping no one would mention the whole 'giant fucking plant almost kills everything' thing. Unfortunately, Cypher the Dick was a dick, and totally bought it up anyway.

The entirety of the argument can basically be summed up with this.

"Plllbbbtttt," said Cypher in an evil tone.

"Plllbbbbttt," said Nero in a calm but also slightly angry tone.

"PlllbbtTTT."

"Pllbbttttttt."

"PLLBBBBTTTTTT."

"PBBLLBLBLBLTTT!"

"PPLL-MY DICK-PBLBLLTTT!"

…

After the meeting, Nero was almost mugged by two people that totally weren't sent by Cypher. Luckily, Raven was there, earning her pay check, and totally saved him. However before they were able to interrogate the muggers, they exploded.

"Exploding muggers," muttered Nero, "what next? Pigeon Detectives?"