What happened

Somewhere above the City skyline, an invisible citadel appeared. It wasn't really invisible, or a citadel, per se, the combination of those words just sounded impressive.

A tiny figure dropped down from the house that was visible to select few, a great distance, considering. By the way it landed on its feet, you'd think that maybe it was a cat.

SQUEAK.

The Death of Rats didn't like cats all that much.

There was a ball of feathers sitting on the sidewalk, much in the manner a bored person might be sitting on the sidewalk. Unlike a person, the ball of feathers had to feet to rest in the street, and no head to cradle in its non-existent hands, but the feathers were definitely drooping. They weren't drooping enough to trail in the dirt of the sidewalk and get all dirty, but they weren't primed for flight either.

The ball of feathers rocked a little closer to the edge of the curb when people walked by particularly close, and more than once seemed like it was going to fall off and bounce away down the street. A little curl of smoke rose from the street-side ball of feathers, followed by a brief flare of orange light, as if it were striking a match.

Two eyes opened - on the opposite side of the smoke - and blinked up at passersby. One eye was marble-like, bright and golden with a slit pupil. The other was humanoid, with a hazel iris. Both were looking in different directions.

A pigeon waddled over. "Cooo," it said inquisitively, and pecked at a feather.

There was another burst of flame, this one far more visible and directed with more concentration. The ball of feathers lifted half an inch off the sidewalk and floated a few inches away from the pigeon corpse.

Coo, said Progo.

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It was hard to anticipate people’s reactions to being faced with a walking, talking, 7-foot-tall skeleton in a dark robe. Usually they jumped to conclusions. They would be right, of course, but everyone always assumed that Death would be malevolent.

With few exceptions, the people who see him will not remember the encounter, but they always made such a fuss when he started talking. Death was not meant to be a social creature for this very reason, though it seemed that he had developed a habit of trying to converse with anyone who was alone.

The last few days, however, had been strange. No one seemed to acknowledge him as he walked into stores; scuffles broke out more often than usual, and there seemed to be an increase in the number of near-Death experiences. This was a seemingly random busy time, and Death was curious to know what had caused it.

Or. "Who" was causing it might have been a better question. A name was being thrown around a lot, mostly amid cries of "she’s mine!" "no, she’s mine!".

EXCUSE ME, BUT WOULD YOU BE KIND ENOUGH TO INFORM ME WHO YOU ARE CLAIMING AS YOUR OWN?

The question always wielded the same answer. He remembered seeing the name on one of his new collection of hourglasses.

Death wondered if a "Barbara Gordon" could be found in the Room of Autobiographies. He left the store, with more questions than he had gone in with.

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It seemed that the City had a working system in which the existing Reapers were put on rotating shifts, perhaps, for Death did not notice a surge in deaths, but had suddenly found himself with some time in which to persue leisurely activities.

On this day, he could be found sitting in a small Indian restaurant that had a sign outside boasting "world's best curry", with a napkin tucked around the clasp on his collar, cutlery at the ready. Death was waiting for his order to arrive.

Curry rice, extra spicy. It was the way he preferred the dish.

If any normal person looked in his direction, they would find their eyes unfocusing slightly. They would try to remember what they had been looking at for the next 10 seconds or so, then turn their attention back to their food and/or companion. Those who were more sensitive to the supernatural would find it easier to identify him, and may or may not eventually forget about the encounter.

Death would not be seen if he did not wish to be, but sometimes, it couldn't be helped.

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This one felt familiar too.

Like the woman who slew vampires- Buffy, or the man who spoke the language of the Agatean Empire- Wash, the newcomer was clearly dead.

At least, she should've been dead. Dead as doornails, if it wasn't for the fact that she still breathed, talked, walked, lived.

The City is strange.

Death started to walk away from the girl who talked to her dog- he was never much of a dog person- when the air shifted.

"Who are you?"

He did not turn. He had learnt from his brief stay in the City that humans did not appreciate his appearance. I AM... SOMEONE WHO YOU MIGHT HAVE MET BEFORE.

"In that cloak? I would've remembered."

Sarcasm, laced with a hint of hysteria. Death was much better at spotting subtleties in speech now.

MOST PEOPLE WOULD RATHER FORGET ME.

There was a shuffling sound as the woman stood up. The dog was being clearly antsy now. Animals always had better intuition than humans.

"Who are you? Where am I? What the hell is going on? Vincent, stop that!"

Death could answer two of those questions, but he only answered one. YOU ARE IN THE CITY. NO ONE IS ABLE TO LEAVE, NOT EVEN I.

"The ci- Vincent!"

Her hand was tangled in the leash, and as the dog streaked past Death, the woman had no choice but to run after it. She looked backwards, but did not catch a glimpse of Death, as he was no longer there.

Once when he was a child of seven, Wash had had a very bad fever, he could remember the days leading up to it and he could remember the vivid, vivid dreams he had had. They had been about a talking clam. In other words they didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but they had seemed very real at the time.

They had seemed like this. This being the city that surrounded him, and while it seemed very real; it also didn’t make a lot of sense. A person didn’t go from landing a ship, to sitting on a park bench. Besides, he didn’t have a fever (far from it, thanks to the hole in his jump suit he was feeling rather cold) and he could remember feeling sick before the fever had hit. Maybe he had hit his head when he was landing the ship, had blacked out and –

"Wo de ma!"

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The first thought Kyle had when he felt the earth shake was, 'Damn. There aren't any signs up about how to handle earthquakes. We never had earthquake drills'. Then he looked at his light board which had fallen off of his desk smashed to the floor, and thought, 'Fuck.'

Then he saw the smoke.

That was when he finally thought to stand up and look away from his desk. How were his coworkers handling the impromptu earthquake. Or whatever it was. They weren't handling it very well at all, actually. For all he could see, they were running through the resulting smoke like chickens with their heads cut off. Kyle couldn't really blame them; they probably weren't used to stuff like this. Hell, he wasn't even completely used to stuff like this.

The art department for The City's newspaper was on one of the lower floors, so when Kyle finally got his wits together and started yelling and ushering people out of the doors, he could at least have some comfort in knowing they all had a good chance of getting out safely. No one seemed to notice when he backed away from the stairwell and ran back into the main area of the floor where all the artists had their desks set up.

He moved slowly through the smoke, making sure no one else was trapped in the room and once he was relatively sure, he raised his hand. A green gas mask covered his face, and Kyle took a deep breath, hoping that he hadn't already inhaled too much smoke. Next he created a lantern, which shined brightly through the smoke, allowing him to move quickly to the large windows.

Where was the smoke coming from? Kyle wasn't immediately sure, but he was definitely leaning more towards an explosion now. He just didn't know from where. Looking out of the windows, he could see smoke pouring from some of the lowers floors as well, and a slightly grey tinge in the air above make him think that something had to going on on the higher floors as well. Across the street people were pouring out of another office building and onto the street, pointing up at both buildings. Grey smoke was pouring from their windows as well.

The building shook again, and this time Kyle could hear an explosion coming from upstairs. It was time to get out.

Kyle backed away from the window, back into the smoke where he was sure no one would be able to see him as a green glow engulfed his body. When it died down, he was suited up completely, mask included. He had to help somehow.

Though, as he started breaking through the window so that he could fly out, Kyle couldn't help but hope that some of the other heroes in this place had heard the explosions. Because he was pretty damn sure that alone he wasn't going to be much good.

OOC: Just a note, as stated before, everyone can participate in this, whether your character wants to be a bystander or wants to try to rescue people or even wants to try and make the situation worse. Any of those options is cool! NPCs may even come and interact with your characters.

Don't worry. Something will come of this. So yes. Post!

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No one could say that Death wasn't good at his job, because he was. He generally took his responsibilities very seriously, and he had never missed an appointment yet. He was always there. He always found his way there. Which made this even more odd.

HMMM. Susan did not warn him about this. Death tapped his chin with one boney finger, and it made a hollow sort of tok tok sound. There may or may not be a smudge of sunscreen on his face. I SEEM TO HAVE MISPLACED MYSELF.

Or maybe Lancre just... changed in the time he was away. It was highly likely, given the instability of quantum, which he did not completely understand, if only because it was a wizard who had tried to explain it to him.

Death touched the wall of a building closest to him. It was very tall, and not very Lancarian, but it felt solid, like a wall ought to be.

The hiss of sand told him that he had precious little time left, or rather, some unfortunate person did. But if this wasn't Lancre, then why was he here?

...here for a reason. the world, or maybe just this one, had its ways of righting itself...

It didn't happen dramatically. It wasn't loud, or spectacular. It had a sound of a pained sigh. There wasn't even any screaming. One moment, the man had been at the top of the tall building, and the next, he was sprawled on the sidewalk, drawing a crowd, staining the bitumen with his blood.

Death watched as the last of the sand dribbled down into the lower bulb, and read the faint carvings on the wood. THOMAS GRAY? He asked, because it never hurt to check.

"Yep." The man stood up and made to dust himself off, before he realised that there was no dust. "Huh. I guess it worked, then."

Humanity. Death could never understand them. While some took careful steps to avoid him, others... didn't. YES. IT WOULD APPEAR THAT IT WAS VERY EFFECTIVE.

"Good for me. I'll see you. Or not." With that, and a very small sort of whooosh sound, he was gone.

Every one of them had been different. This one more so. Death was preparing for the inevitable "so, what now?", and was a little surprised when it did not come.

Death leaned slightly on his scythe and watched the crowd fuss over the man's shell. This was not Lancre, but there was always a job to be done.

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