A/N: Mentions of canon suicide.
o.o.o.o.o
Leah's in the middle of a small stack of paperwork when something tickles the edges of her senses. She glances over at Rin, who is working on her own, much larger stack, waiting to see how long it takes the girl to notice.
Several minutes pass before Rin sighs. Not looking up from her paperwork, she asks, "So are you going to go check on the latest of Fate's dead chew toys to show up or would you rather I do it?"
"I'll take care of it myself," Leah stands and heads for the door. "Next time, try to tell me as soon as you know something's happened. It wouldn't do for your skills to be in question."
"Whatever you say, ma'am." Rin flips a paper over to her outbox as Leah leaves the room, completely unbothered. It's cute, almost, how much effort the girl puts into trying to be unflappable.
Leah walks lightly through the caverns and halls of her kingdom, her footsteps quiet but still audible. It's a level of noise that speaks to training not in the shinobi arts, but in high society.
(It's not quite true, but it's close enough.)
People come into the lands of the dead in a variety of ways, but where they end up is usually predicated on how they died. This time, the incessant, quiet ringing is coming from self-sacrifice, itself a subset of suicide.
(Leah usually avoids this section; those who commit suicide are rarely happy to see the afterlife, and those who have sacrificed themselves are rarely happy that they can't see the outcome of their attempt to help. They're quickly taken where they deserve to be, but the dead are constantly coming in, and the arrival spots are rarely empty.)
She follows the feeling and finds a man with orange hair and a shinobi headband for a village she hasn't bothered to learn the name of. He seems confused, but the dead generally are.
"Hello," Leah says, catching his attention. "Who are you?"
"Yahiko, of Amegakure." He says on autopilot. "Er, where am I?"
"Hel. The land of the dead, if you're feeling poetic." Leah tilts her head, considering. "I am Leah. Follow me."
"Uh…" Yahiko looks around. "Sorry, lady, but I've been a ninja for way too long to just follow a stranger in an unfamiliar place somewhere."
"You're scared that I'm going to lead you into a trap." Leah says, skipping ahead to the issue. "You don't need to worry about that. If I wanted to trap you, I already would have."
"And I should believe you because…?" Yahiko trails off, eyebrows raised.
Leah lets her smile widen, even as her thoughts begin to sour. His insistence on playing it safe is simultaneously admirable and infuriating. "Everything in this realm is under my control."
She gestures dismissively at the wall, and tendrils of stone shoot out to wrap around Yahiko's arms and neck, lifting him off the ground before he can move away. The fact that Hel stifles chakra usage is ever a boon.
"And I do mean everything." Leah keeps the man in the air for a few seconds longer, watching him strain against the stone, and then lets him drop, the walls returning to normal. "As I said: follow me."
The man grumbles under his breath as she turns around, but does end up following her. He doesn't try to attack her from behind, either, which is quite welcome. She has long since grown used to being attacked by unhappy newcomers that she had, for whatever reason, chosen to greet personally.
"So… you said this was the land of the dead?" He asks after several minutes.
"One of them, yes. You may call it Hel." Leah catches a glimpse of Yahiko's face as she turns a corner, and finds it studiously blank. How cute.
"So not everyone who dies comes here?"
"About a quarter of the flow comes here at the moment, I would estimate. Rin would be able to find the numbers for you." Leah reaches out for the door to the throne room, pausing as Yahiko asks another question.
"And your job is…?"
Leah throws a wide smile at him over her shoulder as she strides into the room, playing up the flair for drama that she'd caught from Loki's thoughts during her creation. "Me? I'm the Queen of Hel, of course."
She feels him pause behind her as she walks to her nice, large chair and ignores the way Rin rolls her eyes without looking up from her paperwork. After a full second, the man seems to snap out of whatever daze has struck him, and hurries in after her. "Wait, what?"
"I told you, didn't I? Everything in this realm is under my control." Leah rests her head on her hand, elbow on the armrest, and smirks.
"She's telling the truth. Just go along with it, and you'll probably be better off than you would have been otherwise."
Yahiko flinches on the spot and turned to look at Rin, who still has her eyes on her files. The girl makes for a comical sight, as young and as serious as she looks.
"And you are…?"
"Nohara Rin. I keep the bureaucracy of Hel running smoothly." She puts her pen down and looks up, resting her chin on the heel of her palm. "I'm basically the second-in-command, and I do all the paperwork. That means I know where you'll end up if you try to go the normal route, and while you're better off than most shinobi… I can tell you that having a job in the afterlife is much more interesting than where you're headed."
"Wait, this is a job offer?" Yahiko turns to look back at Leah, sitting on her throne with her head cradled in her palm, watching the goings-on without interfering. "Are you having fun confusing me or—?"
"Immensely." Leah cuts him off, eyebrow raised. "And yes, it is. There's something about you that the universe has picked up on, so I'd rather keep an eye on you for the time being. That said, I checked the enchantments on my way down and saw that you were a capable shinobi and less amoral than many of the same profession, so I believe you would be useful to me. What do you say?"
Yahiko blinks. "Sure?"
Leah claps her hands and smiles. "That's settled, then. I've been looking to start a Reaper squad to collect ambiguous souls for me the way Jashin's little wraiths do."
(She pretends not to hear Rin's little mutter about finally having a man around, and a pretty one at that.)
o.o.o.o.o
Next Time: In which Leah talks history, talks business, and talks to an old friend.