I'm very sorry for not having gotten this up last Friday. I left the copy of the chapter at my cousin's house, and I haven't been able to get it back.

So, now, get ready for chapter two... prepare for Rin acting like a normal teenage girl. A normal teenage girl, not Kagome.


Rin was smiling at a thousand watts. Also, her jaw was cracking in half. Still, she found that the newly dead liked cheerful harbingers than ominous skeletal black-robed Grims. Not that, Rin thought, anything could scare this guy. He was scary, and Rin could write a book on scary. He was a demon, though.

Rin's smile got a little more genuine after that. A demon. No one culled demons in Japan anymore. This guy was going to be such a raise. It'd be more enjoyable, though, if this guy had an expression other than impassive. Ooh, was that boredom? No, looked more like an eye twitch. Rin pulled out a small electronic device from her left pocket.

"So… your name is Sesshomaru—wow, that's archaic—and you gave yourself the surname Taiyokai—mm, subtle—and you are…" Rin paused. Dammit, she rehearsed this! She had been pretending to read from her iGrim, but given her position in the hierarchy right now, it wasn't accessible to her. Now she had to be a loser and not know. "Well, we don't seem to have your date on record. You won't mind filling it out for us, right?" So she fibbed a little. So what?

He just stared at her, looking imposing. Rin felt like was wilting. Maybe he was just nervous. "I'm sorry for your loss—I know it's tough to lose one's corporal form. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Um…" Okay, generic condolences didn't work. She decided to scare a reaction out of him.

"Listen, I'm sorry, but you've been judged already—totally irregular procedure, I swear. Usually, I just escort you to Judgment, and they reroute you to your final destination, but because of your unique situation,"—I'm tactful today she congratulated herself—"they judged you early, and given your… history… um…"

This guy would kill her if he could. His expression changed alright. He looked positively lethal, in the coldest, scariest way Rin had ever seen. The guy practically radiated hate and rage. She felt shivery and jumpy like a rabbit. Then Rin frowned. Um, excuse her inner voice said. Who exactly was the Messenger here, the Final Harbinger? Why should she be scared? It's not like she was faced with the prospect of eternal damnation! It's not like he was death made tangible! She was the Reaper, humanities bane! So there.

Rin put on her ominous face, and booted up her confidence. "For innumerable sins, for the evil you have wrought upon this green Earth in life past, you are here on sentenced to Hell, where you shall repent, or if not, shall spend Eternity as the damned. I am your Reaper, and I sow you now." With a flash, she summoned her scythe. Rin was feeling very important at that point.

Two seconds later, she felt like an idiot waving a large, pointy stick around when he vanished like a puff of cold breath.

"Wait—what? Hey! Come back!" She knew her voice was rising to the unpleasant pitch her friends teased her about, but she didn't care. Her cull was getting away, goddammit, and she was on very edge of her territory! If that bitch Aiko got her super special awesome cull, she'd scream so loud her head would pop off.

"Buddy, you're just racking up the sins! Resisting arrest, you stupid ghoul! You think no one's done this before! Come back!"


I could hear the Reaper's screams clearly. I knew with no doubt that she was right. I could not believe myself—running? Such worthlessness I had been reduced to. But she was a foe I could not fight; Hell was more the daunting.

I felt no regret for my actions. Perhaps that was necessary for the redemption she spoke of; to feel regret. If it were, I would be the damned forever. I found that a terrible prospect. To be subjugated in Hell, forever a slave—it was far worse than anything I had experienced in life. That girl was human. Alive and flesh and blood. She could not catch me, if her powers were limited to that form.

As I ran, I realized how foreign it felt. I could not feel the earth beneath me, nor the wind around me. The environment had no depth, no reality to it. It was as if the world spun and I; I too slow to catch it.

Then she was there, that human Reaper. I felt the agony of death tear once more upon me, and I saw the illusion of blood cover the ground where I lay. The human stood above me, frowning. "Listen, I'm sorry, but you can't run away like that. I won't add it to your list of crimes, but I will if you do that again." I hated her more than I hated anything, for as long as I existed.

She lifted her weapon above me, and brought it down. As I waited for the Earth to rip, and Hell's minions to suck me to its abyss, the human cleared her throat and said, "You can open your eyes now. I just took your spirit."

I was standing, and I was beside my body as I was when I left it first. The human woman was on the other side of it, giving me a feeble glare. "Not that I couldn't have sent your ass straight to Hell. I can. But I want both of us to know a few things first." She turned, and motioned me to follow. Despicable woman. "Come on. You need to know a few things. And besides, do you really want to stare at yourself all day?"

After a few moments of consideration, I followed her. Not because she told me to, but because I needed to know more to save myself.


Rin smiled secretly when she heard him get moving—or rather, sensed. She felt death, as any Reaper worth her salt should. That's why she was picked, of course. When her parents and brothers died, she knew, all the way from college in Kyoto.

Lots of people die, especially in a big city like Kyoto. It wasn't difficult to gain experience when Rin felt like she was being whisked away every two seconds to deal with another soul. In the good old days, that is: Rin had been demoted recently, so now her territory had compressed, and only covered the very outskirts of southeastern Kyoto and this wood. Now she was lucky to get a death a week.

But Sesshomaru would rack up so many points on her meter; she couldn't imagine not being promoted back to Grim.

Okay, so she lied a little to her cull. She wasn't really a Grim Reaper. She was a plain old Reaper, with the menial task of escorting the souls of the dead to Judgment. She didn't even bring them around to their family, or even their final destination.

Sesshomaru was her ticket up. She glanced behind her, and gave his general direction a little smile. Suddenly she didn't feel so miffed about him running. Maybe she'd been a little over dramatic about how she announced the state of his soul. Just a little.

But hey! She was mad then, and she hadn't told anyone their judgment in so long! If she wanted to have a little fun in a long while, who's to say she couldn't? No one, if they like being alive.

When Rin reached the edge of the wood—still in her territory—she sat down heavily on a mossy rock. Now she wished she hadn't spent so much energy before. She felt sleepy, and thick-headed. And she wished she had spent less time around the corpse. The smell was so bad it probably clung to her like the moss she sat on—ew.

She watched the opening in the trees for him, and soon he emerged, vapor-like, and casting a light that didn't shine on anything else.

"You can sit, if you want." He made no move. "Well, obviously you don't… okay, I'd ask you normally to ask me some questions, to make this shorter, but since you don't seem like the type to talk, I don't think I will."

Rin wished the man had some emotion. Outright hate would be better than an eternal ellipsis. "You're probably wondering what I did to you back there. Well, I'll tell you after my spiel, to keep your attention," Rin joked half-heartedly. She smiled a little. He didn't smile back. Duh.

"So, what I am is a Reaper of death. Usually, since I'm human, you'd call me a "Grim" Reaper." Rin did the little air-quotes. "But I was demoted two months ago, so I'm just a plain Reaper.

"Reaper's have territories, per se, no matter who they are. Their territories they have control over the dead souls, and the more land you have, the more souls, and therefore more power. This is a part of my area, and since your soul is here, I have control over you. Not like—"

"If I were to be removed from this place, you would cease to have influence over me?"

Woah. It talks, Mom. "Um, yeah. But don't get any ideas. I'll just do what I did before, and you can't leave." Rin waited for a response, but he seemed to have filled his talking quota for the day. Or week. "So, yeah. My job is to take you to Judgment, and then I wouldn't see you again. If I was a Grim, I would take you to see your family and friends one last time, maybe grant a final wish, if it's appropriate." She'd leave that definition hanging. "But since you're a demon, you can't be judged by mortal court, and I'm just to take you straight to Hell."

So she lied a little again. Sesshomaru had never been judged, because he couldn't. The demon courts that used to judge the souls of the dead demons had faded away, and mortal courts didn't have the authority to judge a demon's soul. Because of this, everyone decided it would be best if Sesshomaru just went to Hell.

Rin stood, brushing off her rear, and resummoning her scythe. "Which I guess I'll do now, since you don't have any questions."

"What was it that you did to me?" he asked instantly. Rin compressed a smile. She had hoped that would get a question—hell, a word—out of him.

"Um, yeah, sorry, I forgot," she said unconvincingly. "All I did was return your soul to your body, and then reap it again. Regular Reapers can't do that," she said smugly. "You see, I was promoted to Grim rather early for humans. I was totally on the watch to be the Grim Reaper. But then that bitch Aiko went and screwed things up! I almost lost my freaking scythe!"

"It is important to you," he said levelly. She noticed suddenly what a really sexy voice he had. Actually, what a really sexy everything now that she wasn't next to mangled, shredded, and rotting him.

"Um, yeah. Source of my power and all that. Every Reaper wants multiple scythes. The more you have the more power you have. Automatic promotions."

"You have only one."

"Yup. Only one." Actually, the voice was sexy, but he made everything sound so… monotonous.

"And if it were taken from you?"

"Then I'll cease to be a Reaper, and die. Some people give up their scythes, but most are stolen. That's another reason why it's good to have more than one—kind of like an insurance plan."

"You have the power to return the dead to life." Mr. Social Skills, you always know how to change the subject so subtly. But everyone asked that when she told them about that particular power. The just usually asked it in context. She knew came next, and she'd nip that in the bud.

"Sure, but I won't. No offense, Sesshomaru, but you're worth more dead to me than alive. Souls are worth what they are because of their importance in life. You're one of the last demons, and the first to be culled in one hundred and fifty years. I'll definitely get my promotion to a Grim if I cull your soul."

"You said that this would happen should you take another's source of power. Why haven't you?"

Scratch that, she didn't like this guy's questions. Rin felt very belittled, no matter what the guy said. Sexy voice or not. "Well, because… I'm not that strong, or that cunning. I don't care if they die, they're guaranteed a spot in Heaven, unless they do something really, really nasty, but…"

He was staring at her funny. Not funny in a good, maybe sexy way, funny in a you-look-like-chocolate-cake way. "You would consider a deal, Reaper? If I were to provide you with protection, for your powers and your life, and perhaps gain you another's you would exempt me from my sentence and return me to life?"

Um, woah.


So before anyone thinks that Sesshomaru is being OOC ("What! Deals with humans!"), consider this: Sesshomaru, for the first time in his life, has fathomed that he can't beat Rin. He can't beat anything in fact. And Sesshomaru, like anyone else who's in such a hopeless situation, doesn't want to die. He's trying to maintain his dignity, but at the same time, return to life. And Sesshomaru sees himself as pathetic, by the way. But being pathetic and dead is much worse than pathetic and alive.

Rin acts like any girl her age. She has all this super powers, and no real consequence to having them, so she's a little cocky, and a little clueless, but at the the same time, doesn't really know what to do with herself. She has a lot of growing up to do. That's why, yeah, um, she talks like, um, this.

Next chapter should be out Thursday or Friday. Review, please!