*NPC stands for "non-playable character."

If Brody can recover within an hour after splattering his brains across the pavement by falling five stories and landing on his head, cleaner methods of death, like bullet wounds, should take even less time. Thus most of the members of the Not Yet Dead Battlefront are up and running again within fifteen minutes; Brody's especially fast at ejecting bullets and is good to go in ten, probably because Kitty's the one who's been putting them in more frequently. Meanwhile, Sam and Brittany are up and running a couple minutes after Satan and her death scythe disappear, apparently fine after the entirety of the reality distortions are gone.

Tina, on the other hand, is still significantly incapacitated. Injuries made with Reaper weapons—the ones that can somehow transform into humans—seem to take much longer to heal. Like, instead of the usual within-the-hour, more like within-the-next 24-hours. That's why they still need the school hospital.

Kitty is floored by what she sees there.

"Sam," she threatens, bringing out the frying pan.

"I'm carrying an injured person!" Sam objects, his arms still looped under Tina's. "You can smash my skull in after I put her on the bed."

Tina groans. "This is so stupid. I can walk myself."

"Shhh, you're injured. And delusional."

Kitty resists smacking Sam across the head as she surveys the trashed room. "There isn't an intact bed in here! There isn't an intact anything!"

Sam jerks his head towards a supply closet. "There's a spare bed in there, remember? By the way: not my fault."

Over in the corner, Brody sighs. "Hey Boss, look: I did it, okay? But that new princess, he challenged your authority, so I had to—"

Clang.

Brody nurses the rapidly purpling bruise on his shoulder. "I did it for your honor, Boss," he maintains proudly.

Kitty doesn't try to hide her exasperation. "Screw your planet's honor system, Brody. You're not in the 2500s anymore."

Meanwhile, Artie's pulled out the last remaining functional hospital bed, complete with a vital signs monitor. Sam and Blaine lift Tina onto the bed.

"Hey man!" Sam yelps as Blaine lifts Tina's legs a little higher to get them over the bed's rails. "No upskirt peeking, you perv."

Blaine blushes furiously, but doesn't say anything. Even more strangely, Kitty notes, the lightest pink flush is creeping its way up Tina's neck.

Kitty takes this as her cue to say Tina's usual comment for her. "That's stupid, Sam. You can shut up now."

Sam carefully lays Tina's torso onto the bed and goes through the motions of snugly tucking her into a warm blanket. Oblivious as usual, Sam punches Blaine teasingly on the shoulder while declaring, "I can personally testify to witnessing this particular man sneaking into the girls' dormitories to have little midnight—"

Yes, Tina is definitely blushing now. The girl's never embarrassed of anything. This calls for drastic action.

CLANG.

Sam sails backwards three feet before landing on his butt. "Chats!" he blurts, sticking one finger up his nose to staunch the bleeding. "Midnight talks! Harmless chit-chat!" He grumbles incomprehensibly as he jumps to his feet. "Dude," he points at Blaine. "I better not catch you sneaking back in here as soon as we're all gone."

Blaine speeds forward and literally hurls Sam out the nearest window.

"Waaaugh…!"

"Uh, see you later, Tina," Blaine mutters before diving out the window himself.

There's silence for a brief moment before Brody quietly takes his leave. Kitty just stands at Tina's bedside

As if reading her thoughts, Tina's head swivels towards Kitty. Even tucked into a warm medical facility bed, she's still wearing her scarf. "Stop worrying foolishly. Of course I am okay."

"I wasn't," Kitty replies right away, even though it's not entirely true. "Just giving you the battle report. Everybody else is okay too. Brody received the most bullets, standing at a current total of seven, and you just saw how okay he was. As you already know, a clean cut all the way through is required to reap a soul. You may not have seen, but Ryder was the one who shot Satan dead before you…" She gestures vaguely at Tina's torso.

"He was close," Tina nods.

Kitty clears her throat. "She."

"Huh?"

"Satan. Satan's a she."

Tina contemplates this for a moment. "Hm. That makes sense."

She finds Ryder on the rooftop at sunset. His arms are folded and resting on the railing as he stares into the orange sky, and he doesn't notice her approach. And what a first day he must have had in this weird afterlife world. It totally makes sense that the guy would seek refuge up here on the school rooftop and lose himself in thought.

Kitty still remembers her first day here. It'd been pretty uneventful; she'd just dropped into the school cafeteria directly after what she knew had been her death. Nobody around her really saw her confusion as weird, and when she tried to garner information from them, she got mostly noncommittal answers that didn't tell her anything.

She'd wandered over to the gym and barely started a workout before this messed-up half-human monster appeared out of nowhere and went on a rampage through the weight room, slicing NPCs* in half and gulping down their glowing blue souls, until a figure in a black coat had also spontaneously dropped out of nowhere and sliced the monster in half with what had looked like a humming circular blade straight out of a Tron movie shot from a launcher strapped to his arm.

And in the panic of running around and screaming for her life, she'd found Sam, who also had no idea what the hell was going on or where they were and how they got here.

They starting meeting together on a regular basis, though the only reason why she could even stand to be in his presence was because he seemed to be the only other person around who thought that something was funky about this place. Still, the NPCs reacted quite realistically, spreading rumors that they were going out—up until Tina had suddenly tumbled out of the sky.

Then Kitty accidentally saved a jerkwad from getting his soul harvested by another human-monster-hybrid, only the muscled asshole turned out to be a real guy, and suddenly she had a man slave she really, really didn't want because he represented everything she was terrified of.

It's been quite a while since her first day. Sam's still the co-leader of the Not Yet Dead Battlefront (Sam insists that they use Battlefront and some punny or lame form of Dead). She's still got her ninjatastic best friend who's totally content with silent company rather than idle chatter. And, of course, she still has the man slave who insists on defending her honor at all costs, even if she kills him at least once a day.

Anyways, because it's Ryder's first day—and what a fantastic first day it's been, with almost everybody not-dying—Kitty doesn't shoot right past his ear to get his attention.

She smack him in the ass with her frying pan, though. He should be keeping his guard up at all times anyways.

"Ow—fuck!"

"Suck it up," Kitty drawls unsympathetically. "You're going to have to raise your pain threshold a ton more if you're going to survive in this world." She turns her back to the railing and leans against it, facing him slightly. "In fact, as the newbie, we'll probably use you as the dummy during staged fights. If you saw us at all while you were hiding in your tree, we do great as a team for a reason."

The new guy hobbles around in a circle, one hand pitifully holding his hurt butt cheek. Damn, he is a softie. Nothing that a couple more whacks won't fix though. "Was that really necessary?"

Kitty continues without missing a beat, ignoring his question. "Sam's an okay guy, but I'm pretty sure nobody's thought to even ask about those burning questions sizzling in your mind."

Ryder glances at her hesitantly. "What?"

Kitty folds her arms across her chest. Her handguns in the holsters strapped into her back dig into her skin, but she's so used to the pressure that it's easy enough to ignore. "Ask away," she says offhandedly. "You have questions, I might have answers. I also have guns, but they're strapped to my back." She holds up her empty hands for him to see. "So I won't shoot you, even if you ask a really stupid question."

Ryder barely quashes the fear in his eyes. Kitty savors it.

"So…" he trails off into silence. "We're… not-dead."

"Everybody on the battlefield is up and running, aren't they?" She motions down to the courtyard below, where Blaine's dueling with Jake. "Don't tell me you didn't see anything while you were hiding in your tree."

"I wasn't hiding," Ryder snaps.

"Right."

"That cat-girl." Ryder pushes himself off the railing and turns to face her, arms folding defensively across his chest. "I felt her psychic touch earlier when I first got here. She knew I would be at the cafeteria. And then, during the battle, she kept begging for somebody to rescue her."

Kitty gives him a frank stare. "We had much more important things to deal with."

Ryder glances off to the side. "I didn't recognize it at first. It's been a while since I've had to deal with clientele from the Medusa Cascade; it wasn't until I was physically close to her that she suddenly opened up and got intimate, and then I…" He suddenly presses his lips together tightly and turns away. "I'm sorry, I've said too much."

Kitty continues looking straight at what she can catch of his face. "Let me tell you a secret about this afterlife. We're all here for the same reason: we had pretty shitty past lives. What you've gone through, somebody here has more or less experienced to a certain extent, okay?" Her tone becomes a little hard and bitter at the end, she notes, but she doesn't bother fixing it.

"Really?" Ryder laughs humorlessly. "What's your story, then?"

"I'm not going to pressure you to share yours," Kitty says pointedly. "Me, though, I don't care. The last thing I ever did in my past life was shoot the bastard who raped me."