Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or any character present in this story. They belong to their rightful owners, and I do not intend to use them for any kind of profit.

T/W: Character death.

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Chapter One: Do You Fear Death?

Inside the fiery building was a woman running across the hallway in a desperate attempt to evade the intruders. She was wearing an expensive-looking dress which was now covered in burnt marks and splattered blood. She almost tripped when she accidentally stepped on the loose end of the dress but barely managed to maintain her balance and kept running until her lungs felt like they were burning up. There was only one thing that she could think right now: to save her eight-year old son who was now cuddling up inside her arms.

As she reached the end of the hallway, she took a left turn and opened the door facing her. It revealed a storage room with brooms and mops standing against the wall neatly in order. Without any light bulb or candlelight, the only thing that brightened the place up was the light from the outside pouring through the open door. After looking around the place, the woman put the boy down from her arms.

"Mom, what's happening?" The boy whined, not fully understanding the significance of the things that were happening around him. "I'm scared."

"Stanley, I need you to listen very, very, carefully." The mother gently stroked the charcoal hair of his son that she just called Stanley and whispered to him. "There are some very bad guys out there and they want to hurt us. Now, I will go to your dad to help him beat these people. Meanwhile, I want you to stay here and not to make any noise until I come back. Do you understand, Stan?"

She was lying. She was Sharon Marsh, the wife to the Godfather of the family, Randall Marsh. She was fully aware that there was nothing that his husband could do at the moment. In fact, she wasn't even sure if he was still alive. The Marshes were outnumbered by ten to one, and they couldn't call for the help of other members of the family because the phone line had been cut off by someone. The DeLornes had it completely planned, and the unsuspecting Marshes were caught off-guard by their well-calculated raid. It was all done for. The newspapers and newsreels at the theater tomorrow would surely report the sudden demise of one of the five Mafia clans that ruled the city. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

But the unfortunate downfall of the clan had no place in Sharon's mind now. In fact, she could hardly care about it. The only thing mattered to her was the fate of her son. She was ready to give her own life up to increase the chance of his Stan surviving this horrible incident. She was planning to be a living decoy, leading the assailants away from the storage room where Stan would be hiding. The room was covered in tiles and there was running tap water in the room, making the place relatively safe from the fire that was eating away the entire building now. The thought that this would be the very last moment that she would be able to see her son ever gave her immeasurable pain. That, however, did not change the fact that there was no other option.

"Don't leave me here alone, mom," There was, of course, no way that an eight-old-year boy would understand what was going on in Sharon's mind. Stan didn't give up imploring, thinking that she would change his mind and take him back again in her soft arms if he insisted enough. "I'm so afraid. What if they find me?"

Sharon made her best effort not to cry in front of her son, which indeed required superhuman effort. But a mother is stronger than a woman. Somehow, she managed to force a smile on her face to calm the boy down. "Oh, sweetie, don't worry. As long as you stay here, they are never gonna find you. As soon as I find your dad, I'll come back to get you out of here. Then we can be together again."

Stan pouted and stared at his mom for a second. "…You promise?"

"Yes, sweetie. I promise." She was lying again.

"Ok, then." The boy finally gave up and sat on the floor. She was the one who always taught him to keep every promise he made. In return, she always kept her promises with him. There had been no one incident where she tricked or cheated on him. He thought this time, too, would not be an exception.

"That's my boy." She, then, heard the sound of rapid footsteps quickly approaching to where they were. There was no time to waste. "Stan, no matter what happens, I love you. I love you more than anything else in the world."

The boy tried to say that he loved her too, but Sharon shut the door closed even before he could open his mouth. He then heard the footsteps of his mom going away from him. It was at that moment that he realized that he should have asked her to buy him a teddy bear as a reward for being a good, observant boy. He noted to himself to ask her for it when she comes back.

Stan sat there in the dark room for several minutes waiting for his mom to come back. The wait was becoming longer than he expected, and certainly too long for his taste. As he was hardly holding himself from the urge to open the door only slightly to peek outside, he heard the voice of an unfamiliar male, with a very deep voice.

"You sure you checked every room?" he was talking to another person.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Let's just get out of here, man. This whole place's gonna burn down in any minute." The second man responded rather anxiously. His voice was much shallower and sounded timid compared to the first man.

"No, the Mole told us to hunt down every living thing inside this house. We have to be absolutely sure. You know he doesn't like sloppy jobs, man." The deep throat insisted. Judging from the sound, they were heading exactly towards his direction.

Stan blocked his mouth with both of his hands, his eyes gone wide in fear. It was not the promise that he made with his mom that made him do that. Rather, the pure human instincts told him that the bad guys surely would find him out and probably kill him if he made any noise. He stayed completely still in a sitting position, praying that the bad guys outside the door would go away soon.

Then he heard a louse thudding noise from outside.

"Dude, fuck this. The ceiling's coming off. If there is anyone left, they're all gonna die when this whole building collapses. I'm my holding my neck out for this stupid shit." The second man now was clearly aggravated.

"Maybe you're right." The first man agreed. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Stan felt immense relief at that. The bad guys would just go away. What they said about the building burning down and the ceiling coming off worried him a little, but nothing scared him more than the two men just outside the room waiting to kill him. The footsteps that the two men were making were now quickly disappearing in the distance. Maybe he was safe, for now.

AAAGH!

It was right then, however, that Stan heard the most terrible thing that he had ever heard in his lifetime: a woman screaming at the top of her lungs in utmost pain. It didn't take long before the boy realized that the voice sounded uncomfortably familiar. Within seconds, he registered the person that the voice belonged to.

It belonged to his mom, Sharon Marsh. Although he had never heard her scream like that before, he couldn't be surer about that. She was his mom. A boy never mistakes his mom for another person.

"Mom!" Stan, not being able to contain himself anymore, yelled for his mom and bolted outside the room. Unfortunately for him, the two guys in black suits who had been jogging towards the stairs leading to the grand entrance of the house on the first floor looked back at the sound and noticed the boy that appeared out of nowhere.

"It's that kid, the son of Randall." the first man with deep throat acknowledged him. "get him, Tommy, quick!"

The second man who was just called Tommy, however, didn't have to hurry to catch the kid. Instead, the boy himself ran towards him, yelling: "Get me back my mommy!"

When Stan got near the two guys, the one called Tommy snatched him and held the collar of the boy to lift him in front of his eyes. "Lemme go!" Stan flailed helplessly to escape from the grasp, but to no avail.

"Good job, Tommy. Now hold him still right there." The deep throat cocked his machine gun and pointed it to the right temple of the boy held in the air by Tommy. He formed an evil grin on his face as he slowly pulled the trigger.

"Wait, wait, wait," Tommy then realized what the deep throat was doing and pushed his gun away by using his other, unoccupied hand. "Are you seriously going to kill him? Look at him! He's just a boy, man!"

"Tommy, don't say you forgot." The deep throat preached. "The Mole gave us an explicit order to kill every living being in this house. We even killed the girl, for God's sake! The boy has to go, too."

Wait, the girl? Were they talking about Shelly? Did they just say they killed her?

"What have you done to Shelly!" then, Stan hit the Tommy guy with his fist, using every last bit of power left in his body. The fist first met his nose, and then slipped to hit one of his eyes in the end. Tommy groaned as the wave of immense pain hit him and covered his injured eye with his both hands, thus letting go of the boy in the process. Freed from the forceful hands, Stan ran towards the stairs as quickly as he could.

"You son of a bitch, stop right there! I'll, argh," the deep throattried to follow and shoot him with the gun held in his hand but then was tripped by distraught Tommy's foot and fell on the ground with a loud thud. Stan, fully utilizing this opportunity apparently given by God himself, descended the stairs with his best speed, jumping over two, three, or even four steps of stairs at one time.

I have to get out of this place first, he thought while running, and then I should call my uncles to help me find my mom and dad.

By uncles, he meant the middle bosses and thug lords who served under his dad's command. Uncle Kenny, uncle Pip, uncle Butters and uncle Eric had been the most faithful servants of his father Randall, and each of them was followed by at least a dozen other people who knew how to fight. To Stan, there was no one on this planet who could beat those four people, especially when aided by his own father.

As he reached the end of the stairs and ran towards the entrance of the house, he noticed that the two guys that he met previously were not the only ones visiting the premise. In fact, they were hardly alone. Standing near the entrance to the building were at least three dozens of scary people in black suits, each armed in guns and pistols. They were all turning their backs on Stan, apparently trying to leave the house. He remembered that the uncles and all the other guys on his side (and therefore, on the "good" side) used to don similar outfits, although the color of the suits was slightly different: it was more greenish than he remembered. There was, however, no way an eight-year-old kid to understand the fact the tiny little different color represented the division of friends and foes.

Finally, he thought, the uncles came to the help!

"Uncles!" Stan shouted as he bumped into a figure who was walking towards the entrance. Alarmed by the sudden impact, the figure turned around to identify the source of the clash.

The man that Stan just bumped into stared down at the boy. His hair was messy grey, and his face wore numerous scars all in different sizes. The sides of his eyes were wrinkled, and his eyes wore a heavy bag, which would normally indicate that the person was extremely tired. For this person only, though, it was rather a permanent feature that he kept for all eternity. The most distinguishing characteristic of him, however, was the fact that he was the only one smoking. He dragged another puff at the cigarette that he held between the index and middle fingers on his right hand.

"Who iz it." He inquired.

Or, it rather sounded more like a statement because he didn't raise the tone at the end of his sentence. His remark caught the attention of others, all of whom turned around to stare at the boy as well. It was then that Stan realized none of the faces looking at him was familiar. He stepped backwards a little, trying to understand who they were and what they were doing in his house.

Before any of them could say anything, however, the deep throat and the guy called Tommy loudly ran downstairs and stood several feet away from the cigarette-smoking man.

"I'm sorry, sir. We tried to catch him, but he ran away." The deep throat said, panting hard from the running. "He seems to be Randall's son. Named Stanley or something"

Upon hearing that, Stan could see the eyes of the cigarette-smoking man stir. But his face reassumed the normal, tired-looking appearance soon.

"Please feel free to correct me if you 'zink I am wrong," He spoke, dragging another puff of carcinogens. "But I remember telling you to kill every living being in this place."

"You're absolutely right, sir." Tommy answered. "You did."

"Then we've got a little additional work to do." We stated coldly, pulling a pistol out of his pocket aiming up front.

Now Stan was officially scared. He didn't know how exactly the black, solid object called a gun did, but he was sure that it was capable of doing bad things, such as killing people. His dad went absolutely nuts that one day a few years ago when Stan played with a similar thing he found at one of the Randall's cabinets. That was the first and the last day that his dad ever beat him. His dad said Stan could have ended up killing himself. From that day on, he never thought of touching any gun.

He stepped further backwards. He belatedly realized that the cigarette-smoking man may not be on his side after all. In fact, he seemed to be the far end of the definition of a 'friend.'

The gun held in the man's hand made a clicking noise. Was he going to kill him? Stan was frozen in a standing position, not knowing what to do.

Bang

Stan flinched at the deafening sound that the gun made, instinctively covering his face with his arms. Strangely, though, he didn't feel any pain. At all. Isn't a gun supposed to inflict pain, though?

Then he heard a loud thud from behind. Looking back, he found the guy called Tommy was now lying on the floor in an awkward position, blood trickling out of a hole that was apparently made by a bullet. It was a terrifying sight to behold. He had never seen a dead guy before. Scratch that. He had seen dead people before, but all of them were lying in coffins dressed in nice, clean clothes. He clearly remembered the face of his grandpa lying in the coffin before he was lowered into the ground to be covered in dirt afterwards. Despite the lack of any sign of life, his grandpa's face looked so peaceful with his eyes gently closed and his hands crossed on his chest. But this was different. The startled expression that formed on the face of Tommy was telling him that he felt immense pain right before his death.

"I 'ate dealing with idiots." The cigarette-smoking man stated without even looking at the guy he just shot. The deep throat didn't realize what was going on before the gun now pointed at him.

"P, please, don't kill me," he kneeled down and pleaded for his life. "please, show mercy, my dear lord!"

"Let me ask you a question," the cigarette-smoking man didn't lower his gun. "iz' the boy dead or alive."

"You, you mean this boy?" he stared at Stan, quivering. "O, of course, he's alive, sir."

"Then does he qualify as a living being." The man holding the gun inquired further.

"Y, yes, sir. He does qualify." The deep throat didn't know what this was going, but faithfully answered the question to the best of his ability.

"Then, you knew he qualified as a living being in 'zis place. But you didn't kill him and let him run towards me." He spoke as the cancer stick in his mouth got shorter and shorter as time went by. "You know one thing I hate more 'zan idiots. People like you who don't do as commanded."

"Oh, no, no please," the deep throat finally registered what the cigarette-smoking man had in his mind. "please, I can expla…"

Bang

His sentence was cut short as the loud gunfire echoed through the large hallway. He dropped forward from his kneeling position, bullet in his head.

Stan couldn't help but to yelp at yet another terrifying sight. Unfortunately, that attracted the smoking man's attention. He spat out the now fully-expended cigarette and stepped on it to extinguish the remaining fire. He reached for his pocket with the free hand to fetch another cancer stick and brought it to his mouth. A blonde man who had been standing behind him then approached him and lighted the cigarette up for him. Having replenished the source of his addiction, the cigarette-smoking man now pointed the gun towards the little boy.

"Now, Stanley," the cigarette-smoking man inquired in his cold, indifferent voice, cocking the pistol once again.

"…Do you fear death."

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A/N: Thank you for reading this far. I'm a slow, incompetent writer, so I can't make any promise as to when the next chapter will be uploaded. I hope you enjoyed it, and please don't hesitate to tell me how you think.

Best,

-Jack Colquitt.