A man walked through the outskirts of Bludhaven, muttering to himself as he examined a clipboard in his hands, tapping his pen on each name he read.
Under his breath he counted the numbers and names, Thirty thousand nine hundred people dead today, that's a new record. Simon old boy, you need a vacation.
The man named Simon ran a hand through his hair as he thought once more about why he was out in bludhaven that day. He was collecting the souls of those who their time had come, as his job as a Grim reaper requires him to do.
It was a tedious and long process, but one that was absolutely necessary.
If no one collected the souls then there would be no more people left on earth, since the souls weren't assigned to a body. Truly important, but a really tiring job, Simon thought as he adjusted his glasses.
There were thousands of other grim reapers out there just like him, but not enough that were trained well enough to collect and carry out tasks correctly.
Being a grim reaper wasn't always just a kill to kill system, it was a system with rules, guidelines and special exceptions to the natural were lots of rules but it came down to a few main ones:
One: A grim reaper could only kill if it was the person's time to die
Two: A grim reaper cannot allow a living organism to wield their weapons
Three: A grim reaper must collect the souls in their assigned area or in a radius of 100 miles
Four: A grim reaper cannot take a chosen one away from their family or home
What does the last one mean? Well….
An individual is chosen every 10,000 years, each starting off as an organic organism, a human. Instead of their souls being collected, they were allowed to reincarnate and live multiple lives until they were deemed worthy enough to become a grim, demon, or a soulkeeper.
To be assessed in worthiness, an established and professional grim reaper would have to take a human under their wing and teach them what they need to know to carry out their job as a grim reaper.
Their mentor would assign them their next lives and would have to find them, not being able to follow them through the afterlife. Eventually they would take on the task as a grim reaper and carry out the natural order, but if they showed no interest in preservation of souls and balance, they would be deemed a demon and banished to the depths of hell.
Unfortunately many demons escape from their eternal prisons and grim reapers must take up the task to eliminate them.
The normal tasks of collecting souls has piled up as of recent, leading to reapers running ragged trying to control this problem, being a few in number and new reapers came ever so rarely.
Soul keepers have tried to locate the next one as they are in charge of where the souls of the newly dead are distributed and how they are manipulated to be brand new.
So here was Simon, a tired grim reaper who had finally finished his count of new souls to collect.
He was ready to go home and collapse in bed, maybe even try sleeping, even though his body had no need for it...
But just as he was about to turn around to go home, his eyes widened as he sensed an explosion from the other side of the city, and the force of a released soul trapped in a body.
Another idiot who's dead, another soul to collect, Simon though, eyebrow twitching as he sighed in frustration.
Why are humans so damn fragile?
Grabbing his clipboard he wrote a note of one more person dying for the night, another soul to relocate.
He then refocused his attention on the soul he sensed in the distance, until a strong white glow emitted from his body, teleporting him to the other side of town.
The grim looked around the place he teleported into, quickly assessing where he was and what had happened just moments ago.
A warehouse, an explosion, but only one person is dead?…. How peculiar.
As Simon walked past the rubble and fire covering the ground, he closed his eyes, letting himself relax. One last soul for tonight.
That was it, just one more and I am home free, Simon pondered the idea of rest to himself, a smile etching at his lips.
The smile dropped however as he sensed something near him, something dead.
Simon stopped abruptly and opened his eyes, looking down in front of him. He came across a young man in a tattered suit, blood pooling beneath him, his soul glowing bright to him.
Richard John "Dick" Grayson, he thought to himself as shock overtook his features.
The little boy he had met all that time ago… has died on this very night.
-A chosen Grim Reaper-
