Post-It: ETD 00:01am

[maced_eggs]

[Spam for the Dining Room, Morning]

[Last night, Mason, Grim Reaper, age 27 and dead for the last forty years, shucked off his muddy, blood-stained clothes and fell asleep on a couch in his Union Jack underwear.

This morning, Mason, still dead, wakes up on the Barge.

Mason's never been much of what anyone might call "consciously aware", or "observant." For example; he fails to observe he is not in his home when he wakes up. He fails to observe that all of his clothes have gone missing.

What he does observe is that he is bloody starving, and needs a very, very large breakfast to erase the nightmare of the day before. So after failing to observe that he is completely pantsless, Mason shuffles out of his room and off to find food.

Which is why, still half asleep and very nearly naked, is a man barging through the breakfast bar gathering up as many miniature cereal boxes in his arms as he possibly can. He doesn't merely stop when they're all gone: systematically, he goes around to every table he nears and plucks them from unsuspecting eaters when he guesses they're not looking.

Arms loaded with cereal, the mysterious, nearly naked man attempts to make a retreat.

He doesn't yet have the capacity to guess where he is at the moment, aside from the completely unhelpful "Not at home." But at least there will always be Fruit Loops.]

Comments

[maced_eggs]

[Cautiously, Mason reaches out and puts his hand on Crichton. He's feeling for a soul, looking for something he can clutch onto, grab, ease out. He'd put it back right away, of course.

But there's nothing. No handle he can grasp. And the shock on his face is enough to let John know that his powers are failing to register]

[neverfeltbetter]

Should I ask what you just tried to do to me, or should I just be grateful it didn't work?

[maced_eggs]

It didn't work. Why didn't it work?

[Now both hands come out, patting Crichton gently all up and down his arms. Mason is tres confused. Pat. Pat pat. Pat pat pat.]

Fuck me...

[neverfeltbetter]

No thanks.

Mason. Mason! Okay, cut it out. The Admiral took your powers. It's not gonna work.

[maced_eggs]

[Defeated, Mason drops his hands back into his lap, perplexed]


I can't take your soul. You're immune to my reaperish charms.

[neverfeltbetter]

You were trying to take my soul?!

[What the hell Mason? What the hell?!]

[maced_eggs]

Well, it didn't work, did it?!

I would've put it back.

[neverfeltbetter]

Mason...please tell me you are not what passes for a 'Grim Reaper' in your world.

[Tell him he connected those dots wrong.]

[maced_eggs]

Sorry, Johnny. But I am 100% a Grim Reaper.

[neverfeltbetter]

Just when I think I've seen it all.

You're not what I'd've expected.

[maced_eggs]

It's th' accent, isn't it? People are always expecting James Bond. Sorry, I don't like suits much.

[neverfeltbetter]

No, it's the lack of pants... and awareness mostly.

[maced_eggs]

Oh.

Oh, well. Right. I am a little underdressed at the present moment.

But issnot like I was expecting to come here.

[neverfeltbetter]

You get a pass on it this time.

But if you're a Grim Reaper, then who's this Rube guy to you?

[maced_eggs]

My boss. Rube's head reaper of my division. I do not like him, he thinks I fuck up, an' it's not like I mean to, right?

Should I be telling you all this?

[neverfeltbetter]

I think it's a bit late to be worrying about telling me at this point don't you? Besides, I've been learning the hard way, secrets don't last long around here.

So, if you've got a division...that means there's more than one Grim Reaper?

[maced_eggs]

[Mason starts to giggle a little, covering his eyes with his hands]

What would be the point of jus' one? Just one, for the whole of humanity, everyone dying everywhere in the world all the time? There'd be a fuckin' queue.

It doesn't work like Santa Claus, one man for all the little children in the world getting presents on Christmas Day. Death is fuckin' everywhere, an' you've got to be there when it happens, or shortly before it happens, pref'rably.


My division - my specific division - is the greater Seattle area. Covers, eh, maybe about a hundred square miles or so, sometimes further depending on who's working where, at what time.

An' it's not just all deaths. I, for example, am in External Influences. Which means...

Accidents. Homicide. Suicide.

Starting to get the picture?

[neverfeltbetter]

Yeah, got it. I guess I just never pictured death being so...bureaucratic.

[maced_eggs]

It is bureaucratic. Issa fucking nightmare. I've got performance reviews, self-evaluations, all this fucking paperwork.

And it doesn't even begin to skim the surface of what it's like. It's a job. It's a job you didn't want, that you didn't choose to take, that they won't let you leave.

But there are perks.

[neverfeltbetter]

If you didn't want it, then how did you get it?

I really hope the perks make it worth it.

[maced_eggs]

I died. That's how I got it. If they need a reaper - an' I don't know who they are - they grab one of the recently dead. I was recently dead at the time. Took over from a reaper so old he died during the fuckin' Napoleonic wars.

Well, you do get to not-die ever again, so you can basically try anythin'. And you get first pick of dead people's things, once they kick it.

[neverfeltbetter]

Reapers are drafted?

First pick of...Waoh, you steal dead people's stuff?!

[maced_eggs]

Nice word for it, yeah. Drafted. Or winning the lottery, but instead of getting a pile of money you get a job you don't like.

And the job doesn't pay. That's why you steal dead people's stuff.

Now me, I'm fine with cash. Never ever take credit cards. An', y'know, sometimes if they have no relatives I'll squat in their house for a couple of weeks. Whatever works.

Cars are trickier. Never take cars, cops look for cars.

[neverfeltbetter]

You aren't taken care of at all?

[Now that is crappy.]

I don't understand. How does it work? You still have to eat, and sleep and everything else like when you were alive?

[maced_eggs]

Not in the least, my friend. Reapers do what they must.


Yes, yes, yes, also yes. And we can't fly or walk through walls, though I should like to have done that at one point or the other.