flowerbox | This Is Your Death

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character: susan sto helit

This Is Your Death

It was supposed to all be over. Her Grandfather was back, and there wasn't any more need for Susan to be...in the family business, as it were. She could go back to being normal, and doing normal human things that didn't have anything to do with skulls or ravens or anything like that.

And if she still sometimes forgot that she was meant to be normal, and walked through a door, well...that was just a momentary lapse. She was normal most of the time, and if she just concentrated a little bit harder she was sure that she could manage to be normal all of the time as well, thank you very much.

So naturally, just when she was doing so well, it all had to go and get ruined.

OH, NO, she said with dismay, when she'd felt it settling on her as she walked out of the privy. The Duty. She wasn't supposed to be doing with! Not anymore, not with her Grandfather back! What on the Disc was her Grandfather doing, that she was getting pulled in again?

"If he's decided to...to take a day off I will...I will..." she started, before realising that following that sentence up with 'kill him' wasn't really possibly in this case. "I will tell him how disappointed I am, that's what I'll do!"

By the time she'd reached outside and called for Binky, her dreary school uniform had already transformed into the black dress she'd worn last time. And she found that suddenly, without her even realising it, there was a scythe in her arms.

"Can you take me to him?" she asked Binky, but he whinnied at her and butted his head at her pocked. She reached inside, and there was an hourglass. "Alright, alright, I'll do it. But you'd better take me to him straight after."

She looked at the hourglass. There was a name at the base - the name of someone who would soon have an appointment with Death. Or Susan Death, anyway.

[[ooc: Alright, so the idea here is that your character is dead, or about to die, and Susan has to come and reap them.]]

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This one might be a strange reap, even by the standards of the Disc.

The place: New York, New York, Earth.

The characters: A giant turtle-man, and some guy dressed in a costume reminiscent of a cheesegrater, sharp blades poised to strike.

It might be nice if the turtle-man's soul is separated from his body before his head is. How much sand is left in that DONATELLO hourglass?

Susan arrives on the scene, scythe in hand, as she stares aghast at the scene before her. The cheesegrater costume is ridiculous enough on it's own, but it's at least logical if utterly stupid.

But the turtle-man?

"This isn't real," she says, more to Binky than to any of the players before her. "Giant turtle-men don't exist." She looks at that hourglass, its sand running out fast. This can't be right.

Lost his bo, surrounded by Foot ninjas, brothers presumably taken captive, he is gonna die.

That sucks.

And now some woman with a scythe and a huge white horse has just inexplicably showed up on the rooftop.

In the past, Don has been saved by squid-like aliens and a teenager with a clock on her head, so this seems like as good a chance as any.

"Help!"

Oh. Oh no. He's...he's asking her for help...

He's not real, he can't be real, but but's asking for her help and she can't let him die. Even if she knows that that's not the Duty, that choosing who lives and who dies isn't a simple as she thought it was.

She's not her grandfather. She's human, and she can't just do nothing.

She steps in-between the turtle-man and the cheesegrater man, and fades into view, scythe at the ready. She's not a trained warrior, but she's hoping it will look intimidating enough.

STOP, she says, in Death's voice. It's not like normal speech. It's more like a statement of how the universe will be.

The man in the pointy outfit is in fact a galaxy-conquering alien, but even galaxy-conquering aliens are not immune to orders issued by Death.

Then again, they're also pretty good at giving their own orders.

"Step aside," says the Shredder, his gauntleted arm still poised in midair, "or you too shall perish!"

I DON'T TAKE ORDERS FROM YOU, she says. The nerve of him! Trying to give Death - or at least Death's granddaughter - orders! NOW GO AWAY.

The gauntlet comes down, missing Susan's head by deliberate inches.

"Foot, retreat!"

In seconds, the roof is clear of ninjas, except for the turtle-shaped one. He's still crouched on the tarpaper, trying to figure out what just happened.

Susan's not paying attention to the turtle yet. She's still standing with her back to him, looking at the pale horse, who seems to be giving her A Look.

"Don't look at me like that," she says, feeling very glad that the rat and the raven weren't here to see this. "I couldn't just let him die. It's not right. Even if he doesn't exist."

She has maybe, just a little, forgotten that said turtle can still see her.

And hear her.

Why is she talking to a horse? Maybe the horse is sapient. It would hardly be the weirdest thing Don has encountered.

He gets slowly to his feet, trying to look non-threatening.

Only now does Susan finally turn, and realise she still has an audience.

"Oh...I mean. OH." she says. Now that she had actually saved someone, really saved them - even if they were a turtle-man and therefore couldn't actually be real - she wasn't really sure what she was supposed to do now.

"Ah... thank you," Don says, because that's usually a good start.

"You're not real," she blurts out, unable to hold it in any longer. "Turtle-men don't exist. We'd have learned about them in class if they did."

"Oh yes," Don quickly agrees. "I'm definitely not real. Just a figment of your imagination."

"Yes," Susan agrees, feeling rather pleased that the Definitely Not Real Turtle-Man has some sense. "I mean...YES. AND I'LL, ERR, BE GOING NOW."

"Absolutely," Don says, because he is very good at taking orders. Then: "Wait. Any chance you could help me find my non-existent brothers first?"

Susan pauses, just as she's about to hop back on the impossible pale horse. He's not real. It shouldn't matter if she doesn't help him, because logically he can't exist.

Except she knows, now, about things that don't exist. They do. Even if she doesn't like to admit it.

"What's their names?" she says, giving in.

"If they existed, their names would be Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo." A shy smile. "I'm Donatello."

"What about their last names?" She says briskly, apparently missing the shy smile entirely. "I can find anyone, but I need to know their name. Their whole name."

That's a bizarre ability, but Don isn't going to question random superpowers.

"We're the Hamato clan."

She's Death (or at least, she is at the moment). Death finds everyone, sooner or later.

"Right," she says, trying to sound authoritative. "Get on Binky, then."

She hops up herself, although there's no saddle. But Binky doesn't let people fall from his back.

"Uh." Don eyes the huge animal. "I don't really know anything about horseback riding."

"You don't need to. Not for Binky," she says.

Um. Okay.

Don vaults up onto the horse, trying to land lightly. He wishes there was something to hold onto, but, well, he's a ninja. He'll figure it out.

Edited 2016-07-26 15:10 (UTC)

The Binder bell's heavy, powerful echoes resound through the river of Death, and Lirael, the Abhorsen who just rang it and still holds it by its handle above her head, commands to the spirit returned from beyond the Fourth Gate: "Begone, do not stop or tarry until you cross beyond the final Gate. Go!"

It jerks, growling angry curses at her, but turns and flees back through the First Gate, and Lirael sags tiredly. That was more work than she'd hoped, and she still has the spirit of the young woman that particular one of the Dead had tried to devour standing beside her in the shallow water, looking only vaguely unsettled at the prospect of almost being wiped from existence.

"You can continue on now, too, you know," Lirael tells her, unaware that they have an audience in the form of an actual Death incarna at the moment, ready to reap that particular soul, as well. At least, she will be until she turns around. A necromancer, even a good one, would probably not be included in whatever keeps Death from being visible by non-dying.

She's never seen the river before in her life, and yet it's...familiar. Like it's always been a part of her, in a way. Like how death has always been a part of her, in the bone.

She looks at the hourglass in her hand, when Binky settles down on the ground. There's a name there, but...she's left with the distinct feeling that she's possibly not supposed to be here.

And yet she has the hourglass, and there's a name on it. "Uh," she says. Then, "I MEAN...ARE YOU CELIA? she asks the spirit.

Lirael actually jumps at the sound, making a sluggish sort of splash in the river, and claps her handless wrist into the bell before it can sound again. The spirit looks not at all surprised, and says, "That was my name in Life."

"Who are you?" Lirael demands, since the spirit isn't going to ask. The dead generally don't ask questions much, not unless they're the hungry type.

"You can see me?" Susan says, surprised. "But you're not..."

Dead, her mind supplied. But she didn't say it. It doesn't exactly seem, well, polite.

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This Is Your Death

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wow that took forever I'm sorry!

and now I've taken even longer, oops!