A/N: The darkest chapter, but it gets better from here.
So many reviews! Thank you! I didn't think that people would like it! And I promise that it will be an interesting development! ;)

Warnings:
Strange English, OOCness

Shinichi's age: 6-7
Uploaded: 2012-08-07
Revised: 2014-10-01
Chapter rating: T
Words: 2,000

Chap. 2
Survival of the Fittest

The six-year-old boy huddled behind a dumpster; he was cold and naked, and his feet were bloody and aching. It was only in the beginning of summer and the awful smell from the garbage made him want to throw up regardless of being so hungry that he thought he would die.

Despite the odds Shinichi survived. He found some old rags that he washed up in a fountain in a park during the night; the same fountain in which he washed himself once a week. Before he found out that the best place for food was outside a large restaurant he ate whatever he found in the dumpsters; noodles, half-eaten hotdogs and hamburgers, rice balls and okonomiyaki. As long as he could identify it as food, he would eat it. During the still cold nights he had made friends with a stray dog, which he named Okaasan and helped obtain food by crawling into a dumpster and throwing it out to her.

They bathed and played together in the fountain in the early morning and then slept hidden in an old foxhole in the park's forest, keeping each other warm and providing company.

Shinichi just happened to look into an adjacent alley one day and saw how an entire grilled chicken was thrown away. As soon as the waiter was gone he headed for the dumpster, but to his frustration it was locked. It took him days before he managed to pick the lock that opened the container. After what he'd eaten for over half the summer the dumpster held everything he could ever dream of, and he happily ate whatever the restaurant threw away, each day picking the lock and then closing it to avoid detection.

The summer was ending and he survived with Okaasan while being able to completely avoid the company of humans. He'd become much better in hiding, climbing and picking locks, all the while being followed by his only family member, until he one day was careless.

A grim-looking man caught him as he made his way into a dumpster and held a knife to his throat as he began to undress him. Shinichi screamed as he remembered what his second father had done and the man quickly covered his mouth, but Okaasan had heard him and came running. The dog, which wasn't starved anymore due to Shinichi's help, attacked the man, while the child crawled behind the dumpster, terrified of the world and gritted his teeth with his hands covering his ears as the dog shrieked. The man ran away, bitten and bruised, and Shinichi crawled out, only to find his family member lying on her side in the filth of the streets, bleeding from a deep knife wound in her torso.

"Okaasan…" Shinichi whimpered and stroke her fur as she weakly waged her tail a few times while letting out a small wail before closing her eyes and becoming completely still. The boy held the only family member he had close, and cried once more. He cried over the pain, loneliness and injustice of the world.

Okaasan was a big dog, a German Shepherd, which he tried to take to the park so that she could be in the forest, but he couldn't even get her a couple of meters, so in the end he held into her fur as he drifted off to sleep, completely exposed to the dangers around him.

Shinichi woke as a light shone in his face and stared into it.
"Hey, boy!" someone called out to him; a man in blue shirt and pants, wearing a blue hat with an emblem in front. Scared, Shinichi fled without recognising the symbol of a police officer. The man lost him after a while, but Shinichi kept running, leaving the area he'd gotten to know and entered a new one.

Completely lost, he kept walking and running until the exhaustion became too much. He crawled underneath a wooden fence into a large backyard. The soft grass was a pleasant exchange for the hard pavement and he crawled underneath a bush. A little while later he fell asleep, almost as soon as his head touched the ground, seeing that the sky was being coloured red as the sun began to rise.

The old and rich woman, owner of the house, went out early that day to tend to her garden and found a dirty young boy with blood on his clothes, a small cut along his throat and multiple bruises over his body. She quietly brought him inside and carefully gave him a bath. Shinichi woke up, but not enough to understand what was going on, so he just sat there with his eyes barely open, staring blankly straight forward as she cleaned him.

When Shinichi woke up a second time he was in a bed. His hair was dry, but he felt clean and could smell the shampoo. Confused he realised that he was dressed in a shirt and pants, both a little too big for him, clothes he didn't have before. As steps were heard outside the door Shinichi immediately jumped off the bed to look for a place to hide, but didn't have enough time before the door opened.

"Ooh," the old woman exclaimed as she walked inside, seeing the boy disappear underneath the bed, "you don't have to be scared. I won't hurt you." She kneeled down and looked into his hiding place, seeing the terrified child. "I thought you might be hungry so I brought you some food," a plate was placed on the floor and then pushed underneath the bed, and Shinichi could smell the delicious food; clean, newly made, warm, free from other trash and made solely for him. He pulled the plate to him and carefully began to eat it while observing the elderly woman with clear, sharp eyes, ready for any attack. "So what's your name, little boy?" she asked with a smile as she lay down with her back on the floor, but Shinichi didn't answer, "my name's Chie, you can call me Chie-obaasan."

"I'm Shinichi," he mumbled quietly.
"Hi there Shinichi, where are your parents?" The boy notably twitched at the question and grew sorrowful.
"They sold me to a new family, and my new father hated me after a while and then tried to hurt me with a knife, so I ran away," he mumbled quietly and stopped eating as he became unable to swallow.
"Such awful people! To hurt a child!" Chie cried out in an upset voice, horrified that there were people who could do such things.

Shinichi stayed underneath the bed for two weeks, only sneaking out to go to the bathroom during the night or while he heard Chie cook food for them. The old woman brought him his food and placed it underneath the bed, and then she would sit in her rocking chair, telling him stories from her life while she knitted. Her distrust for the authorities made her keep the boy without informing anyone, and since she once had been a teacher she taught him things that were way ahead of a pre-schooler, but he was eager to learn, happy that he'd found what he considered a new family; someone who loved him. But that happiness only lasted for one and a half years until her gambling-addicted son and his wife showed up for a visit. Shinichi had hidden underneath the bed as they spoke in the kitchen; he didn't trust anyone but Chie and her old friend Izumi, who came over every day for a cup of tea, knitting, gossiping and a conversation, and lately to cuddle with Shinichi.

The child heard how the couple argued with the old lady and shivered as he heard a loud scream and then running steps. Someone entered the room next to his and he twitched by every loud crash the person caused as they rummaged around.

The door was slammed open and he gasped and held a hand over his mouth. He watched how the cupboards were yanked open and the person, the woman, called out to her husband as she opened the wardrobe, finding a safe. The man, who had been in the next room, showed up and started to break into the safe, but as the woman heard the boy's strained breathing she bent down. When she looked underneath the bed Shinichi ran and sped past her.

"There's a child!" she called out, causing the man to turn around and aim a kick for him. He barely missed and Shinichi increased his speed, but fell from it when he got to the stairs. He tumbled down and then reached the main floor of the house. When he opened his eyes he saw the blood coming from Chie's crushed skull and fled, knowing that he would be the next victim if he didn't get away.

It was something completely different from running in snow only dressed in socks compared to running in the summer on the hard pavement with feet wrapped in rags. The snow was soft, yet extremely painful as it made his feet go numb from cold while it sometimes became razor sharp, and he would've preferred the pavement.

The goddess Lady Luck watched how Death made a move on the chessboard and then pulled up his black, red-laced pocket watch with a dissatisfied frown. He looked into the distance and then sent her a blank look as she made her own move.

"So," she began coldly, not really enjoying his quiet company, but at the moment he was the only one who was interested in a game of chess, "who is it that caught your attention enough to be watched?"
"My gift is dying," he answered with a sigh, "he was supposed to be a soul-deliverer." Lady Luck nodded, knowing that a peaceful soul was easy to get to paradise while an unhappy soul would fight against it since they had unfinished business in their old life, and sometimes they would be so stubborn that Death had to leave them with the living. The man in a hood and long coat made a sweeping gesture and an image of a running boy was formed in the air in beside of them. He made his move on the board while watching the boy fall and force himself up.
"And you're just going to watch?!" Lady Luck stared at him with disgust.
"I can't do anything to stop it. I am merely Kharon the ferryman," he stated calmly and watched the boy run, but the goddess instantly saw what would happen and knew how to stop it, understanding that Death was hinting for her to do something. She quickly realised that she couldn't get him back to his real family, so she did the next best thing she could think of.

Death observed the small boy trip over his own feet, just underneath a streetlamp, but the child had grown too tired to get up, and the man saw that his time changed from seconds to hours. A large truck speeded past the scene; the one that would've hit the small boy and killed him in an instant if he had continued on his path.

"Torture," Death said and turned to Lady Luck, "you of all people would be the last one that I would ever consider doing something like that. You just exchanged a quick death to a painful and outdrawn one."
"Well, I'm sitting here with the painful and outdrawn one so he can't have that one," she answered muttering while forcing Destiny's plans to change and missed how the corner of the man's mouth twitched in amusement.
"What now?" he asked, knowing that the woman would never do something without having a plan.

"Now I'm going to kick Fate's oh so holy behind," she stated with a smile and moved a piece on the board, knowing that she was the only one who could thwart both Destiny and Fate, even if they united against her.

A/N: Kharon the ferryman - From Greek mythology, carries souls of the deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron to Hades.

Answer to Guest review: D
Hmm... *checks stories* OMG! You're right! Ooh, I'm such an awful person! I just realised that I have at least two more stories that starts dark (for Shinichi) and then becomes better!

Answer to Guest review: baduk
Ooh! Thank you! :D
*cough cough* well, who knows... Okay, he is, but probably not in the way you think ;)

Answer to Guest reviews: guest0327 and midnight1906
Thank you! I'm really happy that you both liked it!