Chapter Five

In the woods, Nero ventured through the trees without any worried of whatever he encounters or wherever he goes. "Scary woods. Right. Ooh, a leaf. Ooh, it might attack me. Oh, it's a scary tree. I'm afraid." He said pretending to be scared. Nero stopped his act and continued walking. "Please. Never find my way? I'm the emperor; I can decide where to go. And not only that, I'm a lion for Vesta's sake. And the lion is the king of the jungle. Okay, where am I?"

Nero looked around his surrounding where he saw the woods were less inviting at night. Even though he's a lion, he shivered in fear like a scaredy cat. Then the bushes in front of him rustled, making him even more scared. And… a red squirrel appeared before him.

"What do you want?" Nero asked no longer scared. The squirrel held out an acorn for him. "A nut? For me? Why, I don't know what to say." He picked up the acorn like a generous person, then he threw it and hit the rodent in the head. "Hit the road, buck-tooth."

He turned to leave and stumbled down into a wolf nest. Every wolf was fast asleep and unaware of Nero's presence. However, one wolf sniffed the air, sleepily opened its eyes and noticed him. The wolf barked in alarm, and that woke the pack up.

Nero ran away, being chased by the wolves. He ran from side to side, making the wolves hit the trees. Finally he's cornered on the edge of a cliff. But Nero realized that he's actually a lion. So lifted his head up with pride and roared. But that roar was actually very weak.

When Nero seemed dead to be wolf food, Pyrrha came swinging down aiming for the pack. They moved out of the way and she swung right by. She then swung back around and grabbed Nero. "I gotcha. You're safe now." The vine from which they were swinging from catches, spun them around numerous times and bind them firmly to a log. "Or now."

The log started to break in two and it broke completely, sending them plummeting into a river. After riding through the rapids, they were luckily bounced into far calmer waters.

"I've seen better rescues," said Nero, "and I'm pretty funned out."

Pyrrha looked forward seeing a bigger fall in front of them. She widened her eyes and said to the resigned lion "Uh… your highness?"

"Don't tell me. We're about to go over another waterfall."

"Yeah."

"Is it a big one?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"…why not?"

The log fell down the waterfall and it sinks into the water. Pyrrha, freed from the log, surfaced and found Nero floating unconsciously. She swam towards him and dragged his body to shore, but he's not moving.

"Your Highness." she said trying to wake him. "Your Highness, can you hear me? Come on, breathe." But no luck. She had only one option: the mouth to mouth resuscitation. "Oh, why me?" She moved Nero into the position for the resuscitation.

Nero's tongue flopped out and apparently lions have really bad breath. He woke up just as Pyrrha leaned over him. They quickly moved back from each other with disgust.

While Nero was washing his mouth, Pyrrha was making the fire. "For the last time," she said, "it was not a kiss! It's called a mouth to mouth resuscitation."

"Well, whatever you call it," said Nero before he spat onto Pyrrha's fire, putting it out, "it was dees-gust-ing! And to think, if you'd done what I ordered you to do in the first place, we all could have been spared your little kiss of life!" He shook off the water from his fur, which put out Pyrrha's fire again. "But now that we're here, you will take me back to my palace, I'll have Vulcan change me back, and then I'll start construction on Nerolympus."

"Okay," said Pyrrha finally finished making the fire, "now look. I think we got off on the wrong foot here."

"Um-hm." Said the uninterested Nero drying himself off with Pyrrha's blanket.

"I just think if you really thought about it, you'd decide to build your pool on a different cliffside."

"And why would I do that?" All dried off, Nero threw the blanket right on Pyrrha.

"Because…. Deep down, I think forcing an entire village out of their homes just for you is wrong."

"And that's… bad?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, nobody's that heartless."

Nero took a few seconds of pause, then he said "Now take me back."

"What? Wait, wait! How can you be this way? All you care about is building your summer home and filling it with stuff for you!"

"Uh, yeah. Doy. Me. Everyone else in Rome gets it. You're the only one that doesn't seem to get with the program. Eh, Pyrrha?"

"You know, someday you're gonna wind up all alone. And you'll have no one to blame but yourself."

"Thanks for that, I'll log that away. Now, for the final time, I order you to take me back to the palace."

"Looks to me like you're stuck out here. Because unless you change your mind, I'm not taking you back."

Pyrrha walked back to the fire and started poking it. Nero, from behind her, mocked in a whisper " 'Because unless you change your mind, I'm not gonna take you back.' " He picked up an acorn and threw it at Pyrrha, hitting her on the head. She looked around angrily, and he's acting like he didn't do it. "What? I wasn't doing anything. I didn't do it. A squirrel was throwing stuff. You gonna poke that fire or what?"

Nero walked away and Pyrrha sighed "He's never gonna change his mind."

Goes so far away from the fire to lie down, Nero sighed "What can I do now?"

After a while, with Pyrrha warm by the burning fire, Nero was sleeping but shivering do to the cold wind blowing on him. Pyrrha feels pretty bad for him. So she came over and put her blanket on the cold lion. Feeling warm, Nero ceased to shiver. But quickly wake up to find a blanket on him and Pyrrha walking away without saying a word.