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"Of course. I'm taking history of magic, biology, mystical creatures, chemistry, calculus, advance shields class, and self defense. And you?" He asked, enjoying himself.

"Of course," He said easily, and grinned, a bit self mockingly. "Why? Because I'm quite skilled in shields, if I may say such a thing about myself. But self defense...Once somebody gets past my shield, I'm pretty much useless. I'm...let's say reasonably adept at karate, but informal fighting...I'm clueless." He shrugged, sighing.

((Allright guys, were gonna do a short time skip to later that night. Nothing serious, just something to help facilitate the story a bit.))

Alec let out a long sigh as he allowed his head to hit the computer desk in front of him none too gently. It was late at night, and he had spend the better part of the day trying his hardest to find out as much about Silas as he could. He had started with news articles from several years ago, trying his best to backtrack the little weasel to where he started. Alec figured if he could find out his roots he'd be able to at least track someone down from his past that might know him better. Might know his weaknesses (if he had any). Alec's stomach growled at him audibly, and he simply patted it a few times to silence the beast. He had skipped both lunch and dinner to work on finding out about Silas, and Alec normally kept to a 3 square-a-day schedule. His stomach was not happy, and his eyes were starting to rebel against him. But Alec couldn't let small things like that deter him. He had a mission, and he was going to stick with it. So with a grunt he picked his head up and began to skim through the newest article he had found about S.Lime industries. Truly an inspired name if he ever heard one.

Somewhere else, it seemed, was not all that much better, though it was lighter. The sun had just come up, thin rays piercing through a largely cloudy and overcast sky. In the distance, the clouds were a heavy gray. They were low to the ground, with the shadows of rain under them. The grass was wet with dew, and the air was damp, and smelled rather like spring. Again there was fog, but it was much lighter and thinner – the morning fog that is burned away by the sun with the morning.

He looked down and toed the ground, damp grass and muddy earth springing under his shoe, muck sticking slightly to the soles as he walked on. An unusual cemetery, he thought as he walked through the gently curving rows of graves. Rather than in a usual array, they were arranged in concentric circles. He had never seen a round cemetery before, personally. Or had he? He felt like he had been here before, but only once, maybe twice. In the center of the graves, there was a slab of shale, a monument. Strolling over to it, he brushed the dew off with his hand, reading the smooth carved surface. It was perhaps a little too smooth, for the damp weather has caused the words to erode rather badly. Yet, he could still read it – the single, simple line.

Here lie the guardians and the guarded.

And then the names began, a bit over a hundred by his estimation, running down the sides of the stone. All of them were names he knew, too. Derrick, Devin, Esmerelda, Myia, Aiko – yes, he did remember these names. They were all classmates. All his classmates. And they were all dead, dead except him and Kai and until recently, Luna. Oh god, Luna. With a pitiful whine, he sank to the ground, staring half-heartedly up to the sky. How long had he been here? Minutes? No, it… it felt like days, honestly. Except the sun never moved, so... It could have easily been a year just as it had been a few seconds. What was time, anyway?

He watched silently as someone else came into view. The sky was finally moving again as well, the fat gray clouds rolling in front of the sun. This is other person was a young girl, extremely long black hair framing her gaunt face – what was visible of it, at least. There was a large patch over her right eye. It was metal, with a leather band around her head to keep it in place. A second, smaller band was attached to the lower part of the patch and ran underneath her ear and around the nape of her neck, both helping to secure the patch over her eye, and to form a solid muzzle-like mask over her nose and mouth. Her uncovered left eye was a vivid, inhuman purple with a fire all its own. Around her neck was a thick, heavy, metal collar, pulled up against her throat by the weight of the chain behind her.

Confused, he sat up to get a better look at the girl. He was promptly pulled back down to the ground, mud splattering from force as heavy chains burst from the ground and wrapped around his wrists and ankles. His eyes teared up and his breath caught in his throat as he waited for some sort of electric shock to come from the chains. It happened before. He had done something wrong. It would happen again. It was punishment for even thinking bad things, he knew.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he yelped, cringing.

The girl stared at him, absolutely expressionless. Slowly, she walked forward, the chains and shackles around her ankles clinking as they hit up against each other while dragging through the muck. She knelt down, her long hair coming to rest on the grass, her fingers on his forehead.

Because she had not yet shocked him, he thought it would be safe to ask a few questions, though he was still trembling slightly.

“Who are you?”

She blinked slowly, and looked around at the circles of graves, at the small monument, and back down to him.

“These are my friends,” he found himself explaining. “Their names are listed there, on the rock.” He looked at her closely again. She must have been chained up for a long time; there were red welts on her skin where the metal was constantly rubbing up against her. She wore a very loose and tattered… he didn’t know what to call it. It was definitely too short and tailored wrong to be a dress. It might have been a shirt at one point, but it was way too large for her, constantly slipping over her shoulder. She was nothing but skin and bones, he realized. And her chest… There was blood all over her shirt. On the left side of her chest, over where her heart was, there a steel lock inset into her body. He could only wince looking at it, seeing the raw and inflamed flesh there. Small wonder she was bleeding.

“Why do you have a lock in your chest? Doesn’t that hurt?”

She looked down, and slapped him.

“Maybe I deserved that.”

She motioned towards the monument, at the list of names, then to him. He looked at it briefly, then back to her.

“If you’re wondering if my name is up there, it’s not. That’s for dead people. I’m not dead… I think.”

She made a noise, much like a scoff, but it was muffled under her mask. She kept looking at him, waiting for an answer.

“…My name?” he ventured. “I…”

He blanked.

“I don’t have a name. Do you?”

She shook her head, her hair clinging to her mask.

“Well…. You don’t show me any expression…. And you don’t talk…. It’s like you have no emotions.” He tried to sit up, but the chains still had him pinned down. Oh well, the sky was still beautiful. It always was, no matter the weather.

“Do you like the name Null?”

She stared at him.

“Right…”

"That would...It would please me to have you teach such a thing to me. Thank you, Miss Yin." He said, smiling at her, feeling that strange twist on his heart again and firmly pushing it out of his mind.

Lin blushed and looked down at her plate as a large smile broke out on her face. "It is my pleasure, Ambrose. And we have gone over this before. Please call me Lin."

She giggled softly, quite enjoying herself.

After she was completely finished with her food, she looked back up at Ambrose. "When would you like to have your first lesson. I am free now. I am most late afternoons and evenings."

Oh, perfect. Absolutely perfect. A bit buzzed on demon blood, Danni looked at the Reaping summons that had appeared in her hand and grinned. She'd kept her Reaping status in Hell even after the Ancients had taken over.

The summons gave a brief summary of her assignment, and this one pleased her, since she was just spoiling to spill some blood. As a Reaper, she did more than escort spirits to Heaven and Hell. She was also in charge of going after hell demons or minions who managed to slip through Hell's fiery gates and cause trouble on the Top World.

This time, it seemed a pack of minions had broken through the gates of one of the lesser Realms and were currently causing all sorts of s**t in Russia. Why the hell they would choose snow infested, freeze your boots to the ground Siberia to massacre people was beyond her, but a kill was a kill. She wasn't going to complain...much.

But before she went, she had to pick up her Reaping partner. Sicne he wasn't under orders to kill her anymore, they were getting along much better.

With this in mind, she opened up a portal, walking through it and breathing in the scent of decomposing flesh. Oh yeah, it was good to be back.

"Sick b*****d, we got a job." She looked ahead, leaning against a blood stained wall of rock and Arzol glanced over his shoulder, absently turning a stick. A demon was tied to it and slowcooking over a roaring flame, his pitiful screams blending in with the rest of the background noise.

"Yeah, I got the summons. Gambit, take over." He said, and his Guard partner eased off the wall, spinning the stick slowly, stopping for a moment when the demon's face touched the flames. All three of them breathed in the scnet of charring flesh, and Arzol looked over at her, grinned.

"You're buzzed on the blood." He said, and she grinned.

"It was completely necessary. Let's go, partner." They hopped companionably through a portal together, and then swore in unison when they were dropped right in the middle of a Siberian snow storm.

"Ya know," Arzol said as Danni trudged with narrowed eyes along the trail the minions had left behind. Evil always left a trail. It was stench in the air.

"I think your Dragon Boy's got some relatives out here. Badass mafia." He added, and she raised a brow.

"Well they must've been the ones to report these bastards. No one else is stupid enough to live out here." She muttered, and narrowed her eyes again, this time to see.

"There're the bastards." It gave her great inner glee to wrap her hand around the hilt of the Sword of the Ancients, which she'd strapped on while in Hell.

They were in a huddle, feasting on what were unmistakably human remains. They would pay for that, she thought. The Ancients would distribute punishment, and such blatant disrespect for human life would not go unnoticed.

"You do the honors," Arzol invited, since it had been some time since he'd partnered with her. He'd always loved watching her on a mission.

Her eyes darkened, took on almost a maniacal yet somehow calculated gleam, and she moved silently, quickly. The first minion never saw it coming.

Arzol watched in admiration, his hand resting on the hilt of his own sword, as she stepped behind one of the minions, grasping his hair and dragging his head back, slicing her sword downward so that when his body dropped uselessly to the ground, his head swung in her hand, held up by the long, greasy hair.

It was this head that she threw at the minion next to the one she'd slain, who'd reared back with a hiss, his black, empty eyes wide as he reached for a weapon. The head caught him in the chest, knocked him back. The split second it took him to recover was all the time Danni needed to run him through with her sword, piercing the heart and dragging upwards, splitting in half from the chest up.


"Ok now, you don't get all the fun." With a grin of his own, Arzol leaped into the fight, and it took only a matter of minutes before Danni and Arzol were standing amidst a pile of bodies, which would soon disintegrate into ash.

"They make it too easy," Danni complained, and reached out to swipe a bit of blood off Arzol's cheek. Not his, but a minion's.

Absently, she popped her finger into her mouth, wrinkled her nose. "It's sulfur. They spent too much time in the pits." She complained, and spat.

"You have our thanks, Reaper." She cocked a brow at the voice, looked over to see a cloaked man standing amidst the snow now stained red.

"No problem...guy." She said, and the man didn't smile, but held out a pale hand. The guy, she noticed, had great hair. It was white and silky and fell to his shoulders. Almost as silky, she mused, as Ialo's...And wasn't that strange? She needed to stop hanging around Athena so much.

"I am Damir. I am part of the organization that requested your services. We are grateful." He murmured, but his eyes remained hard, almost distant.

"Yeah, sure. Part of the job description." She shrugged, signalled to Arzol, who nodded. They both stepped backwards then, into a portal that took them to Danni's tower.

"You bring it?" She asked, settling in one of the hardbacked chairs and tossing her cloak in the corner.

"Does a bear s**t in the woods? Of course I brought it. Some traditions are meant to be kept." With this said, he pulled a corked bottle out of his cloak.

"Oh yes. The old 'get drunk and solve problems after the hangover' tradition. It never gets old." And dragging out two glasses, Danni and Arzol prepared to follow tradition.

Lin put her napkin on the tray and smiled brightly. "Right now is wonderful! I am excited to share what I know about important, critical points on the body."

She stood up, took her tray to the proper area, and then walked to the entrance of the cafeteria, waiting for Ambrose.

When they were in the area outside where the defense classes usually practiced, Lin looked at Ambrose with a determined, studious glint in her eyes.

"Ambrose, what creature have you found to be the most challenging for you or your family and who is the most frequent threat?"