I hauled ass down the street, my fancy dress shoes beating the hell out of the sidewalk as the screeching of tires and the screams of true, feminine anger echoed in my ears.

"COME BACK~~~!"

I had no idea what I'd done to get her acting like this. I'd just met the girl a week ago, this tiny, cute Asian girl that had flagged me down at a Starbucks once. Just to ask me some questions as she waited for her coffee. Questions that had started to become a little personal...in a good way. We'd kind of just connected, after that.

Or at least that was what I had thought. Fuck me, right?

A truck, a barely in control eighteen-wheeler, just barely missed sideswiping me and took out a row of parking meters instead when I ducked into a Chinese place. A Chinese place that did not look happy about what had just happened outside, and what was still—Ah, shit.

"WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO KILL YOU!?"

I ducked around the counter with my jacket up in a weak attempt to hide by covering the side of my face, following everyone else out a side door while silently screaming about how she'd, somehow, found a car, another truck, and drove it right through the glass front of the shop. Not that it worked, seeing how she called out my name and, after seeing how close I was to leaving her in the dust... Her lips curled up into a sneer. Her eyes got even wider. She reversed that truck of hers, then drove back forward like she was on a Nascar parking lot and I was in her space.

That counter hadn't stood a chance. Neither had the wall behind it...or Usain Bolt's record.

I seriously had no idea what I had done to make her like this. I thought the date had been going well. Like, sure, I wasn't exactly all that up-to-date when it came to the dating scene, but I hadn't messed up that bad, had I? I'd met up with her at a nice place, something fancy, but not too fancy so that we could eat, just before we went to the movies. She picked. I paid. Hell, I even got a peck on the cheek for the wonderful date I'd brought her on.

Needless to say, I'd been flying high...up until the first truck had almost run over my foot, and the next had definitely taken out my date. The date that I had thought had just been shocked at the time... It had kind of gone all downhill from there, with her actually coming back from getting front-ended by a fully-loaded moving truck—I was seeing a pattern here—in a truck of her very own while foaming at the mouth and screeching obscenities.

I'd thought that 'Yandere' shit had just been a genre you saw in comics. Manga or whatever. A fetish for people who were into possibly getting their organs extracted while they slept in return for sex… Even if that was an exaggeration. I don't know. That wasn't my thing. Never would be my thing now, especially not after today.

"Oh, fuck!" I screamed after an upwards glance. A scream that caused everyone around to scatter with screams of their own. Just in time to evade the truck that had, somehow, found its way on top of a nearby building and had decided to make its way back down on the express route. Gravity-assisted. With her showing her teeth and cackling the whole way down while I hugged the wall and wheezed, completely out of screaming air. This was it. This was how I died.

Before she hit, I closed my eyes and looked away from my impending doom. Hopefully, it would be quick...and fuck! I never got to write my will! No one would know that they had to put my computer in a microwave!

Whoever got to use it next, most likely one of my sisters, was going to be in for a hell of a surprise.

The rush of air. A crash. The sound of breaking glass. Said glass pinging off of my slightly over large glasses and my winter coat without issues...then silence. Relative silence, other than the running of a badly treated junker of an engine. I opened my eyes with a shuddering breath.

I fear vomited in my mouth a little.

Climbing out through the shattered windshield of her slowly burning ride was my 'date'. She was bleeding from a head wound. Blood was pouring down her face while she used a giant sword, which I had no idea of where it might have come from, stabbed into solid cement so that she could lean on it. Her once nice dress was smoldering, and I could only watch in stunned horror as she straightened herself, her eyes never breaking contact with mine all the while.

Hate. So full of hate.

"Why. The fuck..." Melly, short for Melinda, snarled at me, venom positively dripping off of her tongue with each word. "Won't you die!?"

"Why won't I die?!" I replied incredulously. I couldn't help it. What kind of question was that?

I'd seen her get taken out by a speeding, multi-ton vehicle. She had, somehow, got a goddamn eighteen-wheeler on top of a Chinese restaurant. then made it do a belly flop off that same building. She had survived that. Both of those things, just before she'd capped it by crawling out of the burning wreckage of her last ride...and she had the sheer bloody cheek to ask why I wasn't dead?

Who the fuck did that sort of thing? Who… No. What the fuck had I been dating!?

"You just had to make this difficult, didn't you!? All year!" She screeched, then swung her sword at thin air making the slow sideways motion I'd been in the middle of slow to a stop. "I've been trying to kill you for a year!"

"I…" l licked my suddenly dry lips. Not that it helped much, seeing how my mouth was as good as Death Valley when it came to moisture at the moment. "What?"

"I've been trying to kill you for a year, you dumb shit!"

Now...now that was just hurtful. Uncalled for even.

"What did I ever do to you?!" I asked loudly, and slowly continued edging away from the crazy lady with the sword...and damn. A whole year? I hadn't noticed a thing. "Why would you want to kill me!?"

I was a decent guy! I paid my taxes! Called my elderly mother at least three times a week! I had a pet cat that I loved, and that loved me back! What was wrong with that?

"You won't die!"

"Well then!" I shot back, "that just clears everything up then, doesn't it!? You crazy, bug-fuck insane, buck-toothed—"

She screamed again and charged forward before I could tell her off something fierce.

Throwing myself to the side in reflex, I somehow avoided all of the glass and shrapnel covering the floor without even a scratch, even as everything went sort of...dream-like. As I scrambled for cover, I paid attention to things that weren't exactly all that important. Shock and panic doing their work, most likely. There was a shoe. Over there was a phone. Someone had left their purse behind.

I don't blame them...but it would all go towards a worthwhile goal. This I promised as I gathered the mess up in my arms.

"It was supposed to be an easy job! I arrange an accident! You die!" She easily batted the high-heel I'd just thrown at her out of the air. Then the phone. Shit! "You get reincarnated where you need to go and I get to take a vacation! BUT NO! You had to be difficult!" A beat. "Fuck!"

As she continued to rave, I snuck a peek out from behind the table I'd stuck myself behind and then started crawling for another spot of cover. She'd got her sword stuck in a wall. I might have started giggling hysterically, even before I jumped out of the window she'd driven through and started running down the street again and towards a nearby officer busily waving me over.

The screech that followed that was inhuman. The one that occurred when a red circle appeared in front of me, forcing me to come to a teetering stop while I tried to catch my balance was even worse.

I could feel liquid coming out of my ears. Vertigo. A lack of equilibrium due to my inner ear getting a beating...and I tipped forward into the swirling, red, and fucking obvious magical portal.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE!"

I fell, and I began to pray as the last thing I saw on her face was horror.

"NO!"

My balance had never been the best…but the bird I flipped her before the portal closed behind me was in fine form.

And then, things went bad again.

When I didn't hit the ground within the first second I started to worry. When I didn't hit it within the next two, I started to panic. Then, after some flailing that led to me rolling over in mid-air, I saw that I was over a city and that I hadn't, suddenly, gained the ability to fly… Well. I didn't exactly react all that well, to say it lightly.

You could have heard my oddly deep death scream, one that I chalked up to fucking up my throat while running, from miles away. I splayed out. Caught as much air as my bulk could take...and started praying to whatever higher power that could hear me as I clenched my eyes shut.

Jesus, Buddha, Flying Spaghetti Monster, glorious leader Lenin! I didn't care, just someone, anyone, save me! I did not escape a year of really subtle truck related murder attempts, only to die from a fall at terminal velocity!

"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!" I opened my eyes again, the wind forcing tears from my eyes before, in what had to be the most confusing moment of my life, I looked into the eyes of a blonde. A really, really shocked blond, just before I fell by, then past her, clipping her on the way down in the worst way possible.

My eyes crossed. I stopped splaying out. I clutched myself with a whine and I let out a roar of discontent and manly defiance.

Right in the junk, just before my death...the sheer humiliation… It could make a man cry, it could... The purse that had just wrapped around the front of my face, the one I had taken from the Chinese place for ammunition, was just mean.

When I hit the truck coming up under me, crumpling the hood under me like a cheap bit of plastic and bringing in the dark...it was almost a relief.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"I just got cock slapped by the Jolly Green Giant." Vicky rubbed her cheek and grimaced as she found something moist and sticky on her skin. A something that she didn't think anything about for the sake of her own sanity while she wiped it off on her skirt, and observed the nearly ten-foot tall, muscle-bound beast that had, somehow, ended up pelvis deep in some poor guy's engine block. "That's nice."

The giant groaned. Shifted his hips…and the truck made one last sputtering noise, then gave up the ghost with a puff of smoke.

The crowd started taking pictures. That would, most likely, be a meme before the day was out.

Vicky didn't need to be a mechanic to know that thing was totaled. Neither did she have to be a doctor to know that he probably needed an ambulance… Which is why, even as she continued to rub her quickly warming, most likely bruising cheek—that shockwave had been tough enough to bring down her field for a good three seconds—she was hitting the first few numbers to call for the local PRT.

Really... What else could she do with a new C53? Bring him home?