A/N: Hello, All! I'll keep this short and sweet; this takes place after the end of the Anime, but I might incorporate some elements from the Manga. And Kilik/Ox/Harvar/Kim will get lines here and there.

I'm going to be taking Kid's OCD as a fairly serious personal issue, too. Sometimes I'll spin it for comedy, but it'll be a source of major angst throughout. Don't worry about the depressing-versus-funny ratio, though; most stuff gets lighter and lighter as the story goes on. I'm starting off pretty heavy, though.

(I actually posted this on another account a few months ago, but took it down since I kinda disliked it. I'm reposting it cuz I cleaned it up a bit, and I hope that you guys like it too)

Chapter One:A Rendezvous

Golden eyes flickered back and forth across the Death Room. The expansive area was empty, save for the spiky-robed deity directly in front of him. The hair on the back of Kid's neck was prickling and he sighed to himself. Though he knew there wasn't a Kishin nearby, it was instinct for the reaper to scan his surroundings when the unease currently in his stomach started poking at his nerves.

"Kid, we have to be going," his father said. Lord Death, usually comical in his squid-like mask and high-pitched voice, looked at his son seriously from behind the ancient, frightening mask he only wore for business. Kid nodded, his stomach beginning to shift from uneasy to churning. His father gave him an appraising look, Kid keeping his face as straight as possible, as the two moved towards the central mirror. Kid took in a silent, deep breath as his father traced his gloved fingers over the mirror weaving a pattern so intricate that a human's fingers would not have been able to duplicate it, even after a thousand years of practice. The reaper-in-training placed his hand against the mirror next to his father, feeling a wrenching sensation as he was dragged across time and space.

After the defeat of Asura the previous year and the recent – and permanent – connection of his first two Lines of Sanzu, Lord Death had begun to increase Kid's training as a reaper. It was simple at first; just a mixture of lessons on the duties of a Death God and how to extract dying souls from their bodies without destroying them. It was all done from inside the Death Room, usually with a few cups of coffee and the comforting smell of an old tome. But that had to end at some point.

That was when Lord Death began taking Kid on the Death Rounds, where they would take the souls of the dying and send them to the Judgment Plane for, well, judgment, as Lord Death called it. Though, strictly speaking, he couldn't leave Death City, Lord Death was able to use his mirror to move his consciousness around for the Rounds, creating an almost solid, but not quite whole image of himself in front of the dying humans.

And, though Kid wouldn't dare talk about it, he hated the Death Rounds more than anything else. It wasn't the death that bothered him; he was used to it after killing hundreds of Kishins and Witches. It was that he knew, someday, it would be his best friends that he was watching die, then clawing their souls out of their corpses to send to whatever personal hell or heaven awaited them.

Kid and his father materialized in a large city on a day as dismal as Kid's mood. The rain wasn't falling, though; Time itself halted during the Death Rounds for all but the Reapers and the one they had an appointment with, in order to give Lord Death enough time to converse with the dying without an audience. Kid followed the projection of his father, avoiding the frozen people in his way. The two shinigami turned around a corner, into an alley reminiscent of those in Death City. From that alley, they turned into another, Kid's nausea growing with every step. With every Round, he was one step closer to taking Maka or Black*Star or, God forbid, one of the Thompson's souls.

The pair weaved deeper into the back-alleys. A black cat obstructed Kid's path as he turned a sharp corner, its back in mid arch and mouth wide in a hiss. He stepped over it carefully as his father stopped a few paces in front of him. Death the Kid halted beside the god, the toes of his shoes almost touching the pool of blood spilling from a dying girl.

Time hadn't stopped for her, and she was struggling for breath. By the amount of blood on the pavement of the alley, she couldn't have had more than a few seconds to go when time stopped. Her hands were gripping the identical gashes going down her sides, seeming to stretch downward from her armpit to her upper-thigh. She was leaning against the side alley, part of her face against a brick wall as she gasped in agony. A man was frozen crouching beside her, a knife in one hand and a lustful grin plastered across his blood-soaked face.

"Nicolai Moore?" Lord Death asked gently as he crouched down beside her. Using what seemed to be on the near end of her energy, she glanced up at him. Kid was sure that he was going to be sick; she was his age, if not a year younger. She might have competed for a chance into DWMA. She could have dated Kilik, or had sleepovers with Kim and Jackie. Coffee-brown hair, matted with blood, fell into her face as she looked up at them.

"P-please…" she stuttered, sn emerald green eye looking upwards at the sky before flickering closed.

Lord Death cupped the side of her face with his solid, gloved hand – instead of the large, boxy gloves he wore during the school day, he was wearing thin ones that highlighted how long and skeletal his fingers truly were – and whispered an ancient spell in her ear. It was just an image of him, but he still looked real, and could still conduct business. She opened her eye slightly; though Kid could tell that she was still dying, her anguish had been lessened.

"I'm dying?" she asked hoarsely as she looked at the deity, then let out a strangled, ill-tempered laugh. "Then again, what… what could I expect after this?"

"I'm afraid so," he said. "But I have a favor to ask you first."

"A favor for Death?" the tiniest sarcastic smile graced the half of the light-crimson lips that showed from underneath her hair. "Guess 'm all ears."

"My son, Death the Kid, is training to take over my position as a Grim Reaper. He needs practice sending souls to the next plane," he said, gesturing to the boy standing a few paces behind. "With your permission, I would like to have him be the one to take your soul. Of course, there are some risks, as he is untrained. Your soul might be damaged in the process of its removal - and for your generosity, should you choose to accept it, your judgement will be less harsh. If you would prefer me to carry out the ritual, I would completely understand."

"I'll take Death Junior," she said without hesitation, her body quivering with effort to keep breathing.

"Thank you for your consent," Lord Death said, taking a step backwards. Kid moved forward uncertainly; he really, really hoped he would be able to do this right, for her sake. This would be nothing like the last one, he promised himself, nothing like his absolute failure with the man who had last consented. His feet splashed in the blood around her, sending drops of crimson liquid onto his black trousers. Kid felt a fit of symmetry-based compulsion fit coming on, but he swallowed it down, like the lunch that he was forcing to stay down his throat. He wasn't going to let this girl's last moments on this earth be filled with him ranting. He would complete his daily ritual three times when he got home, he promised himself as he swallowed once again, forcing the bile down his throat as he kneeled down in the blood beside her, staining his knees unevenly.

"Are you sure?" he asked, trying to mimic his father's gentle manner. Something deep in her eyes snagged his, drawing him in. It felt like it clicked inside his mind, like a key in a lock. He didn't want her soul to be damaged in the process, like the man whose soul he had taken before her. "I'm not very experienced."

"I'm sure y-you'll do fine, Tiger," she breathed raggedly, glancing up at the stripes in his hair as the corners of her mouth tugged up slightly. "But this is my first time, so try to be gentle."

Kid let his mouth twitch upwards into a slight smile at the innuendo, though he felt his heart sink. She was dying, and still making jokes? She might have gotten along well with Soul, had she lived in Death City. He sighed out in preparation, gathering himself, before speaking.

"What I'm going to do is fairly simple and painless," he began, but was cut off by a second raspy laugh.

"I dunno what your definition o-of 'painless' is, but dying sure as h-hell isn't," she muttered, stumbling over the words. "And if I can ask, how am I even still… still alive?"

"You'll technically stay alive until we take your soul," Kid replied. "I'm sorry that I can't do anything more for the pain. Now, I'm going to remove your soul from your body and send it to Judgment. Do you want a minute to pray?"

"It wo-on't matter," she breathed, her head falling back against the wall behind her and her long bangs brushing to the side of her face. "Just start already."

"Alright."

Kid looked to his father for approval, which he gave with a small nod of his holographic head. Kid turned back to the girl – Nicolai – and took her chin gently in one hand. The soul dwelt deep within the heart, but had to be coaxed out through the mouth when the Reapers collected them; souls eaten by Kishin were often damaged from their forceful removal. Kid briefly wondered why Fate had sent them to collect her soul with a Kishin standing beside her and looking ready to eat it, but he shoved the thought away.

As he brought her head forward, her murmuring something unintelligible but by her pained yet amused expression probably another insinuation, his mind temporarily blanked. Before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, his mind went back to his most animalistic instinct; searching for symmetry. As his mind flashed between the two sides of her face, his golden irises widened. Sure, her hair was covered unevenly in layers of her blood, but if that were gone, as well as the cut on her cheek…

He brushed a stray piece of her bangs to the other side of her face, attempting to part her hair straight down the middle. Her eyes flickered open questioningly, as if to ask what the god-in-training was trying to pull.

"I don't believe it," he breathed, a glow rushing through his eyes and pulling up the sides of his mouth. "No way."

"Not tha-at I'm… eager or anything… but aren't I s-supposed to be dead by now?" she asked, clutching one side more forcefully than the other.

"No. Not yet. Now, sit up straight," Kid commanded as he moved backwards slightly. He needed to be completely sure, without a trace of a doubt that she was. She gave a halfhearted flinch as she tried to sit up straighter on his order, but she clearly didn't have enough strength to do so. Kid sighed and placed one hand on her shoulder and the other on her waist, scooting her up against the alley's wall.

"Kid," his father began, concerned. He was ignored by the adolescent reaper, though.

"Precise and exact," he practically whispered. "So perfect. Impossible…"

"Thanks," she replied weakly. "A girl c-can only try."

"Kid." This time it was a warning. Kid couldn't bear to look away from the girl though, not with her symmetry.

"Father, we can't take her. She's symmetrical," Kid insisted, aiming the statements at his father pleadingly though his eyes still were locked on hers. "Please, she can't die, she's a work of art! So perfectl-"

"No," the God said to him plainly, his surprisingly expressive mask expressing his stoniness. "There's a plan for her in the universe. She must die today, and her soul must be sent to Judgment."

"Father –"

"Kid." His father's voice had taken on a harsh tone, one reserved for times like this. Before turning to his son, he muttered the charm that would halt time for the girl as well so to not make her suffer, caught indefinitely between life and death while he was scolding his son. "You can't save them. There will be ten thousand more symmetrical girls in your lifetime, maybe more. Not to mention the children, the babies, the pitiful souls that beg you to take them before their time if you accidentally let them know that you can. You have to let them go on, and die when it's their time."

"But…" Kid began, but trailed off slightly, knowing that he would only restate that she was symmetrical, and couldn't die in such a demeaning, miserable way. "Please."

"I'm sorry, Kid, but I can't allow you to defy order, no matter who you want to save." Lord Death placed a hand on his son's shoulder, and though his father was merely a projection sent through his mirror, Kid could almost feel the sensation. "I'll take it from here."

Kid didn't respond. He glanced from the girl back to the man crouching a few feet away, her killer. He could recognize his frozen soul; it was one on his Father's list.

A Kishin.

A Kishin that had just murdered a symmetrical girl.

His Reaper mind processed the information at a decent speed, but far slower than his still human body took to act on the impulse. Before he could stop himself, he chanted an ancient spell, the syllables beyond comprehension, which released time from the grip of the Reapers.

"-bleed, pretty," the man said, as he had been in the middle of saying before time froze on him. It took him all of half a second to realize that Kid was standing in front of him, but less than that was used up by the young Reaper wrenching the knife from his hands.

"Kid-!" Lord Death yelled, but not before the young reaper had already severed one of the man's arms. The Kishin stumbled backwards as he approached again, groping at the stump of an arm remaining.

"You disgust me," Kid hissed, not noticing or caring about the blood splattered on his suit. He approached the scrambling man determinedly, who had managed to find his way to his feet as his blood poured out of his remaining nub. The Kishin darted around a corner in the alley, Kid summoning Beelzebub to follow. Before he could take off, a shiver raced up his arm. He spun and saw his father placing his corporeal hand on his forearm.

"No," his father said firmly, staring at his son from behind the holes in his mask. Kid paused momentarily, glancing back at his father.

But the hesitation was over as soon as it had begun, and Kid yanked his arm out of the god's grip and sped after the Kishin. Lord Death sighed, but didn't follow.

"S-Sir Death?" a voice asked from behind him. Lord Death turned, seeing the still-dying girl still struggling for breath as she was coated in the heavy rain now falling freely from the clouds above. "What the-e hell's going on?"

"Kid tends to lose his temper when it comes to Kishin," Lord Death sighed, placing his formless hand upon the girl's head. "I'm quite sorry you had to witness that."

"I've seen w-worse," she replied, still clutching her sides. "So, death now? I h-hate to be pushy, but I kinda have some… issues, here."

"Of course," he responded, and with a quick wave of his hand she was frozen in time again. Lord Death sighed. It wasn't good for a soul to be paused and reanimated so many times. Especially when her body was undergoing so much damage.

It was right then that Kid reappeared from around the corner, drenched in the blood of the Kishin.

"…Father," Kid began, but was cut off by the god.

"Go home, Kid," Lord Death said with a light sigh. "Meet me in the Death Room tomorrow at two."

"Anything. I'll do anything," he stated plainly as he looked over at the girl again.

"Home."

Kid didn't protest as the ancient magic sent him sweeping across space and back to Nevada, the last thing he saw being his father leaning over the symmetrical girl's corpse.

The last thing he saw before his vision was clouded with tears.

So, starting off with a symmetry-crazed Kid and a dying symmetrical girl.

Not cliché at all.

Sorry, but I just feel that any DTK romance needs symmetry. He's kinda all about appearances. Don't worry, it's gonna be an important emotional piece of the story later. I'm not just gonna let them be happy with the way that they look! That would be giving freebies!

Please, please review, drop by any flames/concrit you want. After all, you spent the last few minutes reading this heap; you might as well spend ten seconds on a comment. I know you've got an opinion.

Virtual caramel and hot cocoa to all!