Dan

Alice and I were the first ones to wake up, so we decided to hang around in the sitting area and wait for the others to get up. I was stretched out along a sofa, while Alice sat upright in a chair. She suddenly asked me, "Do you really think that Shun's okay like he says he is?"

I had been tossing the TV remote up in the air and catching it when she said that. Before it hit me in the face, I caught it and sat the remote back on the coffee table. Sitting up, I told her, "I don't know. Why? Do you think he's been lying?" Was something like that above Shun? No. Nowhere near it.

Shun had lied to us on several occassions, so this wouldn't surprise me. Alice shrugged her shoulders. "I want to believe him, but I know his previous record with stuff like this. He hides things, and you know that as well as any of us, Dan." I crossed my arms over my chest and sighed.

Sadly, that was true as well. I had been the first to discover how bad Shun was about keeping secrets from the rest of us. "I'm sure he's going to be fine, Alice," I told her in an attempt to quell her doubts. Alice smiled faintly at me, but it was genuine nonetheless.

We sat there for several more minutes when Shun walked in. I looked at him and asked, "How ya feeling?" Shun stared at me, and by the confusion on his face, he didn't have the slightest idea as to what I was talking about. "You said last night you thought you were getting a migrane…," I added in order to try and jog his memory.

When his confused expression changed, I knew he was aware as to what I was talking about. "Oh, yeah. That. It's gone now," he told me and started to walk towards the door. Alice leaned forward a bit in her chair, almost like she was going to jump up and stop him from leaving.

But instead, she asked him, "Where are you going now?" Shun leaned against the doorframe and told her, "Just going out for some air. I probably won't be back till late, so try not to get worked up worried about me like last time, alright?" He wasn't trying to be sarcastic to her or anything like that.

By the tone in his voice, he really didn't want us worrying about him. If only he knew how hard it is to not worry, I thought to myself. Alice nodded her head once, and Shun vanished down the hall. I sat there for about five minutes, plenty of time for Shun to navigate his way through Murucho's mansion and make his way outside, then stood up.

"You too? Where do you think you're going, Dan?" Alice asked, her voice tinged with a bit of annoyance from people constantly leaving. Not wanting her to get angry at me for refusing to give her an answer, I told her honestly, "I'm going to chase after Shun and see where he's running off to, and to make sure nothing bad happens to him."

Alice stood up from her chair and folded her arms over her chest. Suddenly, I felt like there was a lecture coming on. "You know if Shun finds out you're following him, he's probably going to get mad, right?" I nodded to let her know I was fully aware of the consequences of what would happen to me if Shun caught me.

"I'm doing this for Shun's own good, Alice. Okay?" I just wanted to make sure that nothing happened to him, but I was also curious. He had left Murucho's on several occassions, telling us nothing more than he was going out for some air, and then he would come back almost after midnight.

So, I was curious to know where he was going. For all I knew, I might run across the place where he met that creep that touched my arm. Alice sat back down, already looking worn out. "Alright, Dan. Just watch yourself, okay? I'll tell the others that you and Shun left for a walk. Perhaps they won't worry as much if they think that Shun's with somebody," she told me.

I smiled and thanked her before starting to chase after Shun. I made it out of Murucho's and now stood out on the sidewalk. Quickly, I started to look around for which way Shun may have gone. A feeling started to creep up on me, and it was saying that I had already lost him.

But just as doubt started to grip my mind, I caught a glimpse of his tell-tale hairstyle. I kept an unnoticeable distance behind him as I followed. Nothing about this little excursion looked suspicious; to me, it appeared to be just a routine walk. But that quickly changed when Shun walked down the stairs into the subway station.

"Why in the world is he going in there?" I hurried down the stairs and into the station. My eyes scanned around the crowd of people, and they locked onto Shun. He was in the farthest corner of the station, leaning against the wall and blending in to his surroundings.

Still standing on the stairs, I realized that I was basically advertising my pressence here. So, I went down the rest of the steps and kept out of sight as best as I could. For almost an hour, Shun did nothing but stay in that exact same spot; never once did he move a single muscle.

"What are you doing?" I whispered to myself. Was he waiting on a train? If he had, then why come so early to catch a train that would be here this late in the day? Besides, where would he even be going? Was he waiting on somebody to arrive? If so, then who? It didn't make any sense. None of it.

My eyes then caught sight of somebody standing in a dark corridor; it was that freak that touched the scar on my arm. He was hunched over in the shadows, rubbing his hands together, and a wide smile on his face. When I followed his intent gaze, I saw that it was fixated on where Shun was standing.

It looked like the creep snickered or did something like it. Why was he even here? Was he stalking Shun or something? The thought of that, made me feel somewhat violated now. That guy had touch my arm, and now I knew he was some sort of stalker.

What if he started following me around now? As I pondered what in the world was going on here, a man in a long, black coat walked past me. A few people stared at him, wondering why he was in such warm clothing on a warm day. I tore my gaze from Shun and the creep, to the warmly dressed man.

He had a hand stuck in his pocket, and he quickly pulled it out, holding a pistol in his hands. Several shots rang out, echoing in the subway tunnels and nearly deafening me. Out of insticnt, I dove for the ground as people began to run around frantically. I watched helplessly as several people dropped to the ground and blood started to soak the marble floors. Finally registering what was going on, my eyes started to look around for Shun.

Where he had been standing, was totally vacant now. In fact, I didn't see him anywhere in the subway through the panicking people. Had he been shot or gotten out of the station? The gunman shot several more rounds, each one sending a piercing shock through my ears.

The shooting continued for maybe three minutes, more and more people joing those that had already been shot, when the police finally arrived. About twelve police officers came running into the station, each one putting a pistol at the gunman, whose eyes now portrayed an image of fear at the sight of the cops.

He immediately let go of the gun, held his hands above his head, and dropped down to his knees. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do this! I'm sorry!" he kept shouting in the already loud tunnels. The police moved in and pinned the man to the ground, where they proceeded to cuff his wrists together.

The head policeman turned to the terrified survivors of this tragedy and said, "I want everyone to slowly to leave out of the station and go into the streets above. We want to interview a few people and find out what happened here. Please do this in an orderly manner."

I expected the people to run out of the station as quickly as they could, but they calmly walked up the stairs. As they passed by, I scanned each person's face for Shun's, but didn't see him anywhere among them.

I was about to turn around and force myself to look at the bullet-ridden bodies behind me, but an officer ushered me out of the station without giving me so much as a chance to glance and those who had been shot.

Shun

The moment I heard the first gunshots, I summoned my cloak and threw it on. Now, I was hidden from everyone's sight, which was just what I needed. The police showed up and put an end to this massacre. As they hearded people out of the station, I pictured the scythe in my mind, and felt it form in the palm of my hand.

Composing myself, I shut my eyes and took in a deep breath. This was still something that was difficult for me to bring myself to do. When I opened my eyes, I saw that over ten bodies littered the floor in front of me. "I have to….Reap all of them?"

I felt like giving up right then and there. Taking one soul was hard enough to do as it is, but at least fifteen or more? It felt so impossible. How would I even manage to keep my composure while doing this? After all, I still had emotions. It wasn't like I was completely stone dead on the inside. A snickering brought me out of my thoughts, and I turned around to see Grim.

"Looks like you have a tall order on your hands, little Reaper!" He was wearing a heavily tattered cloak, but at least he was keeping himself hidden; I really doubted he was crazy enough to leave himself exposed to the police officers that were now taping off the crime scene. "Why are you here?" I asked, thinking that I was supposed to be doing this by myself and without an audience.

Grim rubbed his hands together and said, "Death informed me last night that you had another vision of a death, and I wanted to watch you in action. Is that so wrong, little Reaper?" The police started going around and checking to see who was dead, and who was still alive.

So far, nobody seemed to be. "Better get started, little Reaper! You're working on your own on this one!" Grim squealed and took a seat on one of the benches, as if he were watching a movie. I let out a heavy sigh and readied the scythe that had once belonged to Death.

After Reaping right at fifteen souls, and watching each ones life as it flashed before me so I determined where to send them, I was left utterly drained. No longer wanting to stand, I walked away from the crime scene and sat down on the cold floor. Grim was laying on the bench, his belly facing down on the wooden seat, and his feet sticking up in the air.

He rested his chin in his hands as he stared down at me. "That was quite a spectacle, little Reaper! I'm so jealous at Death cause he has you all to himself! It's just not fair!" Grim whined loudly. A monotone voice then said, "Life isn't always fair, Grim. You know that."

Quickly, Grim jumped up from the bench and stood up straight. "I know, Death! I was just kidding around!" he shouted nervously. Death appeard to be ignoring the mentally unstable Reaper as he examined over the crime scene. "Quite a job you had here," he said calmly.

I nodded, still feeling drained and run down as far into the ground as I could possibly be. Grim was looking down at me, his arms crossed over his chest as he scrutinized over me. "Looks like the little Reaper isn't as filled with fight like he usually is," he said while pouting his lip out a bit. Grim's observation was right.

After all that I had just gone through and had to do, I felt as dead as the bodies over there. Death told the Reaper flatly, "He's probably tired. A Reaping of this size wouldn't be easy for any new Reaper, or even an experienced one at that." Back at the crime scene, the police had taken their pictures and had started to clean everything up and leave.

Death turned to Grim and said, "You got to see what you wanted to, now you can go. There's nothing else for you to see here, Grim." The maniac Reaper looked at his 'friend' as if he had insulted him. "But, Death," he started to whine.

Death raised a hand and said sternly, "It's time for you to go." Grim narrowed his eyes and pouted for a moment, then smiled happily once more. "Alright, then! Bye, Death! Bye, little Reaper!" he shouted and ran down the subway tunnel, vanishing its its dark contents.

"Hope he doesn't get hit by a train," I mumbled under my breath. It wasn't intended sarcasm, but it could have been taken that way; I really didn't want to watch what kind of damage that Reaper might cause to a train. "He won't," Death told me.

"Now, tell me how everything went. Did you run into any trouble while performing this job?" I took the hood of my cloak off and sighed. "No. There wasn't any trouble. But…..These people. Hardly any of them had done anything wrong in their lives…..How could they deserve something like this?"

That question had troubled me since I Reaped the first soul from this group. I knew that all living things would die eventually, but did innocent people really have to die in such barbaric ways? "Death doesn't judge a person's time by their actions or choices; that's decided after death. It's a high power's decision to make when a person dies, and how. We, are merely the tax collectors of the soul."

Somehow, I knew that would be Death's answer. Or, at least, something along those lines. I tilted my head back and stared up at the florescent ceiling lights of the station. "If I have to do this for the rest of eternity, than I don't know how long I'll be able to keep myself together," I said under my breath.

Already, I felt like I was starting to lose my grip on myself. And when that happened, I might end up like Grim; I shuddered at that thought. "You say that now, but after a while, it doesn't bother you anymore. Give it some time," Death told me in a reassuring voice.

I sighed and stood up, slipping out of the black cloak that had been keeping me hidden. "Well, if I'm done here, then I think I'll go back to my friend's place now." My voice was still filled to the brim with fatigue, but I somehow knew that I wouldn't sleep well that night.

Death stopped me before I began to walk off and asked, "Don't you want to at least try and teleport back? You'll have to learn how to do that eventually." I shook my head and said softly, "I think I'm just going to walk back. Thanks, though." I turned my back to him and started up the stairs.


chapter title based off the song In Memory by Shinedown. i think i have math homework to do. -.- so, ima go get started on that after a snack. read, review, and other things! ~Copperpelt~