A/N: Alrighty, here we go, I'm trying to tell myself that I need to finish working on my saw cleaver for my Good Hunter cosplay tonight, like it's finished but I have no means of holding it in the open and closed positions so right now it just kinda flops around stupidly… but… yeah… I'm gonna type now…

Disclaimer: I own a replica saw cleaver if that counts for anything?

Guest: I suppose I could, perhaps sometime when I've got the mystical thing known as free time and am in a romantic mood. Thanks for the review!

There's Still Time

Nero watched the person next to him, she seemed to have only a limited grasp on reality and he was uncertain how much he could push her before she might snap. What if the next thing he said pushed her over the edge? He remembered the way that she'd looked at him after tearing the guts out of that troll-like monster in the alleyway, a mad sort of glee in her eyes. It was hard to read her expression what with half of her face covered most of the time and her more alien eyes didn't help the situation. He had some experience with trying to read Dante's expressions in his Devil Trigger form but for some reason that came more naturally than trying to determine how stable the woman beside him was. Katherine pulled down the scarf that she had covering her face, and the contrast between the clean skin beneath her cheekbones and the blood that spattered around her eyes made him laugh.

"What?" she asked, looking at him curiously. Nero figured he probably wasn't much better but the stripe of gook around the hunter's eyes struck him as funny.

"You… you ah, have a little bit of blood around your eyes." he said, pointing vaguely. She frowned and flicked a bit more away from her gloves.

"It is an unfortunate side effect of the Beast Plague; though I'm accustomed to anyone caring anymore." she said softly. Nero just shook his head.

"I don't, it just looked a little funny. Where are we by the way?" the partial devil looked around the chapel that they'd entered into, it was unfamiliar to him, in fact, this whole town was completely foreign. Even the moon, which hung huge and low and red, seemed strange and out of place.

"This town is Yharnam, home of blood ministration." she said, automatically, almost sounding like she was repeating something she'd heard or read.

"Is that why you stabbed some weird blood into your leg?" he asked, wondering what on earth that was all about. He's seen some weird stuff in his time but it just seemed so… unsanitary?

"It is special blood, it has healing properties." she responded, her hand going into her pocket where Nero had seen her place it before.

"Uh huh…" he said, not certain he believed that stabbing strange blood into oneself was the best idea but he wasn't going to argue with her for the moment. "Have you… always been here?" he asked, "And why is everyone… crazy?" Katherine paused, eyes drifting around the small chapel. Nero hadn't asked about the others here but none of them had jumped up to attack them so they ranked as 'okay enough' in his book.

"No, I'm an outsider, like you. However I don't recall much prior to my arrival, I know I had been ill but with what and where I'd been before…" she shrugged "As for this city. It has fallen to what is known as the 'Scourge of the Beasts', it is an infection, a corruption of the blood."

"And you still think it's a good idea to inject that weird blood into yourself?" Nero couldn't help himself. Thankfully she didn't seem put off by this statement, merely pulled the blood from her pocket and looked at it.

"You are correct, we Hunters are not immune to the Scourge. But if we don't clear the streets of those who have already fallen, who will?" she said, pocketing the blood once more before looking at him. "And you Nero? Who were you prior to entering this city? Can you recall?"

"Yeah," he said, meeting the rather intense gaze she was giving him, "I was a demon hunter, well, still am. I was on a mission, saw a weird looking lamp, touched it, still regretting that, saw something incredibly awful and then found myself here." he said, Katherine touched a hand to his shoulder and he looked to her and her strange eyes.

"You can see the lanterns?" she asked "So you do dream."

"I… still don't know what you're talking about." he said

"When you die, where do awaken?" she said, as though dying were a fairly regular occurrence.

"I… haven't died yet?" Nero said, rather confused.

"Come then, we'll go to the lantern to the Dream." she stood, walking up the stairs to a small lantern that was situated in the middle of the room. Nero frowned at it.

"That's the same lantern that I saw in the warehouse, that's the thing that brought me here." he grumbled. Katherine glanced at him and then at the doorway when the sounds of one of the creepy dudes from before leaked inside.

"Are you sure it's okay to just leave these people here with open doors like that?" Nero asked, he got the impression that they were leaving but he didn't know how or where.

"There's still time, the night, and the dream, are long." she said, kneeling before the lantern and grabbing his wrist "Come. The first time the dream can be… disorienting." she said as the small, creepy skeletal creatures popped up around her knees. Nero fought to remain still as they grabbed ahold of his boots and his vision whited out…

A/N: So I actually did go to Lowes to pick up the stuff I need in the midst of this chapter, so now I should be able to assemble my saw cleaver the rest of the way and be pretty much done with my Good Hunter cosplay and then I can move onto Maria.

Till next time,

-Winged Element