*Sigh*

"Didn't make it, damn."

Vistiel hit the crosswalk button and then jabbed at it again for good measure, trying but failing to keep himself from sighing as he leaned against the pole to wait. His parents and friends had been nagging him about sighing less and smiling more, but the poor luck he'd always encountered at this particular intersection vexed him to no end.

He hit the button again for good measure, then looked at his watch.

"Not gonna get there before they leave, huh.." he mumbled.

'What is the point of going anyway,' he thought. 'It's an outlet, they could just look up how to change it on the web. Surely, it wouldn't take that long.'

He suppressed another sigh. Today was starting rough.

Unfortunately, the only thing harder to come by than love were good clients and he wasn't about to completely blow off the people who'd funded him through trade school to become an electrician. Not to mention, they loved him as well. More than most people loved their children, in fact, since they chose him.

Adopted parents. Once you realize someone would give anything for you while not having a blood-related reason to, it became hard to not do anything you could for them in return. Vistiel was always picked on in school for it but now he couldn't see it as anything other than a blessing.

'She just wants to check up on me,' he thought.

His mom was no fool. Learning to change an outlet was something she could pick up in less than an hour, yet she'd rather pay him to do it. No matter how hard he'd refuse, she'd find a way to pay him. She wanted his business to succeed more than he did it seemed at times.

Hesitantly, Vistiel reached into his pocket to pull out his phone.

'Better let her know now than have her wondering.'

Vistiel dialed his mother's phone number and brought the phone to his ear, hitting the cross button one last time. He didn't understand why but something about pressing it tickled his brain in just the right way, be it the beep or the slight vibration it gave off.

He glanced to the right and spotted a man stepping off the sidewalk. The man, texting and walking while not paying attention in the least to where he was going, had just put himself in the path of a speeding police vehicle.

With quicker movements than he'd ever used before in his life, Vistiel reached out with his right hand to wretch him back to safety just in time for the interceptor to go flying past where the man should have been a half second later.

"Hey, watch whe-"

"DON'T TOUCH ME MAN!"

Without looking up, the man grabbed Vistiel's hand off his shoulder and shoved him to the side. Already being off balance from yanking the man so fast, Vistiel stumbled forward off the sidewalk right into the path of another vehicle. He lifted his hands up and cringed as a last resort as if that would save him from the inevitable.

Which came in the form of a slight jolt on his left thigh. Confused, he slowly opened his eyes and glanced up to see the truck had stopped in time with a driver that looked terrified in the driver's seat. Vistiel then stared down at his leg, not malformed and not in pieces. It just ached slightly.

He slowly let all the tension leave his body as he sighed, heart-pounding but legs staying solid as a rock.

He didn't want to die. Not really, but when looking at a list of things the man was afraid of, death wasn't there. In fact, one could say death was more on the 'looking forward to' portion of the list.

"Oh hell man I'm so-" the man started.

Vistiel pivoted and delivered a clean hook to the man's left jaw like a linebacker slamming into an unsuspecting quarterback. The impact caused the man's head to lift slightly while he stumbled backwards, eventually falling to the ground with a look of surprise on his face.

Adrenaline, anger, and this particular gentleman had overridden Vistiel's rational thinking brain and he'd already punched the man before he could stop himself. Not typically the type of man who sought fights, Vistiel couldn't deny that it felt good to hit the man for nearly getting him killed.

'This friendship is never going to get off the ground, he thought to himself. We keep interrupting each other. You tried to kill me... No, wait. First: Vist, you can't just hit people for almost killing you, it's against the rules man. The rules. Look both ways before crossing a street, let people out of an elevator before you get on, don't punch people that deserve it or... Dammit here comes that cop too.'

Warning: Soul Drain In Progress Current Progress: 10%

'What the hell? Red panel? Soul Drain?'

After chiding himself and trying to make light of the situation that would probably end in his incarceration for the night, a red panel native to this world floated before his vision. With a flick of his hand, the box disappeared and a strange headache set in. As he glanced to the right, the cop was getting out of his barely stopped vehicle and rushing across the intersection, only it seemed he was running uphill.

Warning: Soul Drain In Progress Current Progress: 50%

He stared at the notification again, wondering what soul drain did. He knew what it probably did but he'd never heard of it before. The headache got worse and the ground began to shift giving him a sense of vertigo.

The headache spiked, becoming a sharp throbbing pain within moments and his thoughts were interrupted as it finally hit him; the ground that is, as his face tried to make a cushion out of it and everything went dark.

Warning: Soul Drain In Progress Current Progress: 100% You Have Died

I look up at the darkly clothed man standing before me, confused and... alarmed? I've always prided myself on adapting to situations rather quickly but this... this is too much. Did I die?

"HAH! IT WORKED!" The madman bellows off the platform. "Told you fools it would work! You don't have to wait for the soul to come to you if it's already set that it will die!" He turns back towards me with a glare. "Think of me as a lunatic again and I'll disperse your soul, boy."

Not a madman. A genius. Prodigy. How could I not see before and what does dispersing do?

"Need to know basis, now be quiet," the man murmurs.

I shuffle away from him and over to see what he is shouting at. Looking over the edge of our platform, I see something a tad frightening. Countless more platforms identical to mine are above, next to, and below where I stand, all with the same terrifying black-clothed... gentlemen adorning each one. There is not always a... soul, if that's what I was, on each platform, though. It's more fifty-fifty on that, some of the platforms left void of souls.

Quickly, I scramble away from the ledge. I didn't see a floor but I doubt it would feel good to fall over that. If I can even fall anymore....

While backing up I realize... well I... I'm floating. I have no legs or arms. So... I float away from the ledge.

"Taking life before it is meant to be taken is not the job, Reaper! You mess with the fates! What happens if you're given a charge right now but you occupied your own station?!"

One of the nearer 'Reapers' admonishes mine. I notice the other one has a soul but it's not watching the exchange at all, it's not even moving. It's just sitting there. Floating there.

Mindless.

My madm- 'ehem' Reaper turns back to the other. "Bah, I only brought this mortal here a quarter minute before his time what are you so worried about? I'm reducing future workload! Plus, what are the chances I get another soul at this EXACT moment? I haven't had one for months! Anyway, if I do somethin' that changes fate would that not be the will of the fates at work to change themselves? Hah! Plus, only a weak soul protected by minuscule amounts of mana would let itself be ripped out with the force I used, clearly, it was already detaching."

Well, that's irresponsible. Shouldn't I be shocked? Why am I... not even worried?

A white circle opens to the left of me and from it, another soul emerges onto my platform.

I only saw one soul per platform if any so why are there two of us here on this one?

Just as I'm having the thought the circle portal begins to close and emits a suction that drags me into it in the blink of an eye. When I glance up I see the portal close completely on a backdrop of blue sky, while glancing down shows me rapidly being pulled towards... Earth?

"Hah! What are you thinking now you deranged thing? There is only one of you!" Turning around the fragmented god finally glanced at the soul. "Hmm... You look... Well anyway, we only handle one soul at a time hence the multitude of us! Though we haven't been busy recently..." he continues, staring off into the vast expanse of black. "Now let us get you processed and on your way little one, wipe that memory and get you to a new land. You died much too soon to generate any karma so you'll be placed in the same general circumstances next go 'round. Not that you even understand what I'm saying, dying as a toddler and all but you don't need to understand to be lectured...."

I try to scream, I flail my arms, and I try to cry out for help. Nothing prevents my doom as I get closer and closer to a world that is clearly not Earth. The geographical makeup of it is entirely too different to even try and convince myself otherwise what with the small island to mini continents I see everywhere, with the one exception being a large central one.

As I'm trying to do that convincing my common sense kicks in and points out the lack of wind though I'm traveling at a speed I can only assume to be supersonic, thereby helping ease the panic brain conclusion of imminent gory impact.

Also, I realize I have no arms to flail.

Seconds go by as it finally becomes apparent which continent I'm being... forcefully escorted to and to my great relief, it's the largest one. I say that for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is my inability to swim.

The other reasons being a higher chance of civilization and a safer environment because honestly, every time I ever read of someone going to an island it always ended with them being chased by insane locals or eaten by the indigenous species. Or them being stranded. Or all three at once.

The continent has a few protrusions off its western and lower sides while offering a more blunt and rounded top to eastern edges. It almost reminds me of a jellyfish the way the western and lower sections split off into tiny slivers of land stretching into the ocean.

My course puts me on the eastern side of the land, somewhere near the middle of the northern and southern extremes.

In a few moments, I am too close to the ground to see any more of the expansive planet and I begin to slow down. Shooting through a layer of clouds I emerge to what is one of the most breathtaking images I'd seen in my life. Mountain peaks rise and fall to the north and west creating a T shape while forests, as green and vibrant as a fresh Douglas fir on Christmas morning, encompass the landscape under them until they merge with fields of different grass and other plants in the plains leading to the ocean. Occasional lone peaks disrupt a uniform spread of fields, dotting the landscape with islands of trees and mountains in a sea of tan. Low hanging lenticular clouds hug the mountain peaks like a blanket being draped over knees in front of the fireplace and a blue sky tops it off with a sun just risen above the eastern ocean. There also seems to be a floating island of some kind, along with a tree half the size of the mountains leading to said island. Those are both on the other side of the northern running mountain chain though so although they are magnificent, I won't be visiting them anytime soon.

Taken by scenery I don't notice the rapid deceleration nor do I notice the town and house I've been drawn to. Casting a glance downward my eyes widen once again as I crash violently... seep harmlessly, actually, through a roof and plunge into the body of an infant that is surrounded by a man and two women.

"He's gone, Mr. Tearen." A woman looked up to the younger-looking fellow that stood across the bed from her, noting the trembling woman in his arms. The room they stood in held little else than the bed, a cradle in the corner, the three of them, and the dead infant.

The woman who'd spoken glanced out the window of the second story building she'd found herself in, looking out at the crowded street below. She wondered if she had been closer to the residential district, would she have made it? Could she have if she didn't need to fight the traffic from the Association? If they'd lifted the damn ban on flying? Or if the staircase hadn't been hidden in the back of their shop? She had seen too many of these situations lately. Then again, when you had a profession like hers, they tended to be the only things you see.

Death was inevitable, but it hurt all the more to see a friend have to cope with it.

"Try again Vanessa! He can't be gone he was just choking on some water! HE'LL BE FINE IF YOU JUST TRY SOMETHING AGAIN! If you even care about him DO SOMETHING!" Mr. Tearen shouted, breaking Vanessa out of her self-blame.

She turned towards the shaking man and responded with fury evident in her voice.

"There is no more water in his airway and he still isn't breathing, I am sorry. There is nothing I know to try. If he was cut, I could have helped. Bleeding profusely, broken bones, hell a severed leg, I could have helped Garrett! But a Healer cannot manipulate water out of a body and you know that! We can't stop suffocation, only prolong it, and I've done that long as I could."

Exhausted, the Healer was nearly yelling at this point. Stoic though she usually was when dealing with clients, it pained her to no end to lose a child. This child. The man, Garrett Tearen, clenched and unclenched his fist while rage and sorrow burned in his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks. He most likely understood what she was saying but refused to believe its truth. The woman clutching to him wasn't looking up from his shoulder and hadn't stopped crying since Vanessa arrived.

Suddenly, the sound of a loud cough followed by desperate inhale for air echoed throughout the room and all three pairs of eyes were drawn to the child that had been quite dead for the last half minute.

There, lying on the bed, was the child, now on its side and soaked thoroughly in its own vomit water.

Quickly, Vanessa released a yellow/white mist onto the child only to sigh in relief a second later as Garrett and his wife reached him. As they both looked down into their boy's face with joy, they abruptly both gasped in surprise, causing Vanessa's eyebrows to raise.

"His eyes are grey! What does that mean?" The woman said.

Glancing up without replying, the Healer took a moment to realize the question was directed at her and was clearly not rhetorical. Hesitantly, she lied her way through a hastily crafted explanation, if only to soothe her friends' minds and get the child the nutrition and love he needed at the moment instead of skepticism.

"Humans... they have a chance of this happening when going through a traumatic event or something life-changing. I've seen it once or twice in one eye but never both. The boy was as lucky as I'm sure he is weak. I would suggest you feed him and take care not to let him wander out of sight lest he drowns himself again, or worse."

With that biting remark, Vanessa turned to leave the room frustrated.

Not worn down yet not new, the second story residence was set atop an Alteration shop. As she walked out the door, she glanced right to see a hallway, then turned around to close the door. She took one last look into the bedroom, meeting the child's eyes and nearly jumped in surprise by what she saw.

The weak infant shouldn't even really be able to move yet but he had been reaching toward her with a burning gaze that seemed to demand her presence.

Confused, upset at the parents, and upset at herself for succumbing to her emotions, she roughly closed the door. She stepped forward twice and turned to the right, putting her in front of the staircase leading to the ground floor which she then descended.

Not a complicated design, the home set the staircase at the back of the lower floor in a kitchen area. Moving away from the staircase, the woman made a sweeping 90 degree right turn and proceeded out a door into the shop interior, hastily making her way to the front door. She moved out the door into the front yard and left the property, turning right down the dirt road to begin the walk back to her office.

With a final glance to the window, she noticed the bizarre dancing of a couple of tiny ethereal creatures, red and blue, as they looked in at the private scene.

"Fae," she huffed, letting a bit of fire loose from her fingertips to chase the little pests away.

'Why did it look like he was staring into my soul,' she wondered after again turning away from the home.

It's dark.

As if the thought was the gunshot of a race, a numbness settles over me and pain wracks my mind and body. It feels like I'm falling or im in a pool of jello, my movements horribly sluggish and weak. Trying to take a breath only rewards me with pain as my lungs feel heavy, like they already have a substance in them that is clearly not air.

Hearing voices above me I try to plead for help but no sound escapes. I can't force whatever is in my lungs out, barely just getting what feels like a liquid to rise into my throat.

Think you idiot think! Can't breathe... Suffocation? Liquid in the lungs. Can't breathe! CPR! NO, NO SHIT NO. I can't do that on my own and they aren't helPING ME! If you can't do CPR on someone what's the best thing to do. WHAT WOULD YOU DO DAMMIT! You'd use gravity right? Turn the man upside down! Ok not an option... his side? HIS SIDE!

Finally, my brain throwing out an idea I can work with, I try to shift left only to realize I can't exactly move my body right. Unwilling to give up, I count to three and throw all my limbs to will my body to flip to its side. Feeling a lot like trying to get a completely asleep leg to move, I get hardly any response until I throw everything I have into it. I feel the liquid inside me slosh to the left as my body jerks sideways, the liquid finally coming up and out my esophagus and slowly into my mouth. With a last, heroic in my opinion, effort, I cough as hard as I can with what little air I have to get the remaining liquid out and it finally, finally indulges me.

A spurt of liquid shoots out of my mouth and I proceed to greedily inhale all I can. Within moments of the sweet, sweet nectar known as air entering my body my eyelids finally respond to me and open, a tingling sensation permeating my body. A burning bright light coming from the window dims slowly as I flop back onto my back, gasping, eyes adjusting, and taking stock of my surroundings.

The first thing I notice is the wood. The ceiling looks like uncured, roughly cut... wood. No paint, no drywall. Strange. The second thing? The three giants rushing for me. I do my best to not look terrified as they finally realize I'm alive but I'm pretty sure I have voided my bowels so that's not going to go far into convincing them. Not out of fear, mind you, but the fact that I still can't control my body well.

Looking to the right I see two giants. That is the only description that does the behemoths any justice as they loom over the top of me. The man's hands alone look to be able to cover almost a third of my body and the fact that they are moving so fast towards me is... disconcerting to say the least.

Dark hair with brown eyes and a goatee, the man has sharp features you'd expect to see on an actor. Physique showing that he is in shape yet not a bodybuilder hints more towards a runner or swimmer.

Looking to his right slightly is a giantess. The woman has long auburn hair and a softer complexion with eyes the color of sand. Shorter than the man by a head yet still tall enough to completely dwarf me, she has the same fit build as him. I wouldn't call her stunning, but she definitely has a gentle beauty with an oval face that seems to fit well by the man's side.

Once they take one look at my face, they seem to go from excited to concerned/upset in an instant.

I know I'm not exactly the model of perfection but come on. I don't look that bad. You can claim you don't care about others perceptions of you but things that hurt still hurt...

They move their mouths and start rambling in a language I can't understand, so I move my gaze to the other side to see my third 'savior' and immediately my gaze becomes fixated on what I see. Heavenly beauty. An Angel. The woman is... handsome yes, with a stern face, sharp eyebrows, and bright green eyes, but Angel really is the only term that can possibly describe what I am seeing. Literally, as two large white wings seem to extend off her shoulders down her back and continue down until to where I can no longer see due to the horizon of my bed. With dark hair that seems to completely contrast to the bright white of her wings, her entire being screams out foreign.

I'm disappointed I didn't make eye contact as when I was turning over she was already turning her focus to the other pair. Speaking in what I assume is the same confusing language as the others in the room, she seems to be angry. Or some form of upset. I can't understand the language but even I can hear the venom in her tone.

Numbness finally receding slowly, limbs warming up, brain slowly regaining higher cognition, I see the woman turn to leave in a huff. I try to reach out and touch the beautiful white feathers but it's similar to trying to touch the sky. My arm is much too short and they are much too far away. When she turns back toward me one last time, all I can do is beg with my eyes for the beauty to come back in the room. Needless to say, it doesn't work and she leaves. My hand falls on the bed.

"What the hell man," I say, but clearly the giants don't understand.

They look down on me like they are relieved for some reason.

"Hey, where am I? Who are you?"

The two giants look at each other, uncomprehending but smiling like buffoons. Finally, unable to hold it back in the face of these two bumbling about and almost letting me die, I sigh. It's just relaxing to sigh. Like you are accepting and forgetting the trouble that just passed.

Hearing me, the woman reaches to pick me up. The combination of her grabbing at me and the shock of blood flow returning to my limbs sends painful stinging throughout my body as every limb seems to wake up at once due to the movement.

Naturally, I start yelling.

Vistiel lifted his head and looked around the room, the two giants finally gone. He was in what looked like a cradle and could still hardly move his body. The sounds of civilization drifted in through the opened window, not the sound of cars and machines, but the sound of people walking, shouting, horses stomping, and carts rolling on dirt.

Finally spotting the doorway, he tried again to lift his body only to be met by the same resistance. He looked down at himself but couldn't understand why his legs and torso wouldn't move out of the blankets. One look at his arms caused him to shriek at the short, fat, smooth, hairless things they had become.

Forcefully calming himself and clamping a hand over his mouth lest those giant, foolish demons come back, he looked again at his small malformed fatty hands and arms.

"Alright, this is definitely not normal. Status!"

As nothing happened, his eyes seemed to regain some fear.

"Status!" Vistiel yelled, looking where he believed something should appear.

Once again nothing appeared and his breathing began to hasten.

"Definitely. Ok. Calm down. Let's think through this logically. Haaaah. Let's see here, I was on the street, haaaah, hit a guy, then, haah, fell. Wait no, that red box. Red dammit! I was probably hurt severely by something then, but I-HAAAAAH, I don't remember feeling any impact. After that was the lucid trip into that dark zone with the maniac, talk about souls....'HRGHHH'"

Vistiel turned his head to his side and threw up a tiny amount of goop, looking at the nasty yellowish liquid that he'd been given to eat just a few minutes prior. As if all his emotions and panic were coming back at once, he took ten or so minutes to calm the shaking in his limbs and voice enough to continue sorting through his thoughts out loud.

"After the second soul and the white portal, I was falling to a planet. This planet I'd presume. After that, crash through the ceiling, and... the collision with a child. Suffocation. Pain. That's it. That's all. Now I'm in a child's body, I saw an Angel, one giant tried to breastfeed me, they brought out a cup with mush in it, forced me to eat it, and now I'm lying in a frickin cradle!"

Upon finishing that thought, Vistiel once again took a moment to calm down.

"Safe to say this is a lucid dream then and I'll be waking up soon. There is no other explanation for this. A dream is the only thing that makes sense."

Vistiel came to that conclusion and decided to settle in for the wait. No sense in trying to rush what he couldn't rush. He might as well sleep.

His eyes shot open wide with realization as the panic slowly settled back into his entire being.

"Son of a bitch," he whispered, "that's never happened before. No one ever dreams without the Status. Ever. It preludes every dream, tells you that you're in a dream! Lets you check it while dreaming!," he yelled out.

Vistiel clenched his hands into fists in frustration as he realized he hadn't once seen a Status box since the one telling him of his death, the one word he remembered from the panels. His mind was on fire and his body screamed in protest from trying to force his lower body to move.

"I-impossible" Vistiel exclaimed. "N-no. This... this is fake. It's not real. I'm going to wake up. Angels don't exist. I am not a toddler. I have a meeting with my folks. I'm going to wake up extremely soon and I'm going to fix their electrical outlet. This is insane and it's not REAL. I AM NOT HERE. I AM DREAMING AND THIS IS FAKE. I DON'T CARE HOW WELL CRAFTED THIS STUPID SCENARIO IS I'LL WAKEUP AND BE HOME! THIS IS FAKE! IT'S FA-"

He yelled as if to convince himself and vent frustration at the same time, causing him to not notice the man and woman entering the room hurriedly. He didn't notice the distressed look on their faces when they saw the bruises forming on his arms and legs, their shouting, or the soft blue mist that floated around him. He didn't notice the blankets falling away from him on their own and his regained mobility, nor did he notice when his vision and mind went black. All he noticed was the stupid looking wood ceiling and how blurry it was becoming.