The Reaper's Game: New York's UG

"Uh...water," Amanda answered, looking around and blinking. "Where are we?"

"One sec," Nemo replied, popping out to the shop beside them and coming out with a bottle of water, spending some of the money he would have spent on a pizza on that. "We're about half a block away from that pizza place."

Amanda drank for a few seconds, rubbing the back of her head embarrassedly once she was finished. "Sorry 'bout that. Not a lot of people get pineapple on their pizza, so I figured I'd be fine."

"You couldn't have known, I don't think it's anyone's fault," Nemo shrugged amicably.

The corners of Amanda's mouth twitched into a smile. "We got the mission yet?" she asked, wondering what was taking the Reapers so long.

"Yup, I was just about to check it when you woke up. 'S why I said that you had good timing," Nemo nodded, pulling out his phone to take a look.

"'Get to Central Park within an hour. Fail, and face Erasure.'" Dan said, reading from his phone.

"Same one..." He muttered to himself.

Amanda glanced over at Nemo, standing up and pulling her hair into a ponytail. "Race 'ya," she challenged.

"Oh, you're on," Nemo replied with a grin.

"...Kay..." Rei mumbled.

"You ok?" Dan asked Rei.

He checked his hand, and sure enough, there was the timer.

"...Fine..." Rei continued to mumble.

Amanda winced at the stinging of the timer on her hand, before taking off towards Central Park.

"Ow!" Nemo explained, sprinting after Amanda as fast as he could.

Dan sighed. "...We should get going."

Amanda kept running, glancing back at Nemo. She didn't want him to get lost.

"Uhh... if this isn't a dream... what the hell were those things?" Logan asked, with more force and agitation in his voice than he had intended. "I'm sorry, that was rude. I guess I'm just a bit..." he looked around, stopping mid sentence. Culture shocked? This is the same place I've always been... He thought back to when he wasn't this weird, skulking ghost haunting the slums he had been raised under. He snapped out of his semi-trance when he saw that the girl - Krasi - had stopped waiting for his answer to look at her phone. "O-oh, my name? I'm..." he almost didn't trust her, a complete stranger, but beside the fact that she had essentially saved him from another death, it seemed like he had no real choice. "I'm Logan. Logan Faustus."

He pulled out his own phone. Never really was any good at small talk... or girls. He shivered, unintentionally reminding himself of his own first death. Shutting his eyes as though it were tough to look on his phone and its message history... but he hadn't even opened it up.


"..." Logan said nothing at all. The memory stung his eyes with some light tears, which he brushed away with his sleeve. He turned away so that his partner would not notice his current state, and he looked back at his phone. Realizing his present lack of service, he pocketed it once more... until it vibrated powerfully. Three long buzzes, just as he had set it when he got it, to distinguish it from a Facebook message or something. Not that I get any of those... Ever. He thought to himself. He pulled his phone out again, and wiped a stray tear off his cheek, inhaling sharply to mask his emotion.

There was a message. No number he recognized, just what he assumed to be a service number. Classic. Not even other ghosts want to talk to me. Hesitantly, he opened up the text.

"Get to Central Park within an hour. Fail, and face Erasure."

"This a joke? Is this from you?" Logan asked, practically shoving his phone into Krasi's line of sight. "Not really all that funny. I barely know what's going on, you know." He hesitated. Maybe it wasn't her, but Logan sure as hell wasn't about to give her the benefit of the doubt until she explained herself. She had, after all, been the one to explain the concept of this 'Erasure' to him. Maybe he was nothing but static noise as well...

Suddenly, his hand stung. He jumped, shaking it off. "Holy shit. OUCH." Looking intently at it, he didn't see anything - or anyone - that could have inflicted a burn... though there was a sort of branding where he felt the pain. A string of numbers, gradually ticking back. "A... timer?" He was really confused now. "Can you like, explain this shit to me?" he asked of Krasi. "I need some answers. Now, preferably."

"Lets..." Rei mumbled andstood.

"Well, Logan, it is a pleasure to meet you, but I can promise you this isn't a dream," Krasi retorted simply, resisting another urge to groan. Was it that hard to believe? Mentally sighing, she realized that the answer to that would be a resounding 'yes' especially since her life before this was one plunged into the mundane. Stuff like this didn't happen in real life. It happened in video games and books and movies. Yet there she was, and there was Logan. She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, but figured it had to have been some sort of glitch. She just checked it, and there was no service. Then again, that might have been a glitch too. She frowned. Logan's phone had gone off too, and now he was waving it around in her face. She read the message. It had the smell of this 'game' written all over it. It definitely hadn't come from her. A hiss escaped her mouth as she felt a burning sensation on her hand. Opening it before her, she saw what appeared to be some sort of brand reminiscent of a timer...except the numbers were actually ticking down. As Logan assaulted her with questions in a tone she didn't particularly care for, she dug her own phone out of her pocket and looked at the message. It was the same one that Logan had received on his phone. She held it up for him to see. It was sent from the same nondescript number that Logan received his from.

The mission. The key to playing the game is to complete the mission. If you fail the mission, consider yourself Erased...

"Does that look like some sort of practical joke?" she shot at him rhetorically before closing her phone and shoving it back into her pocket. Then she held up her own timer. "And this? Does this look like a joke? Or a dream?" Letting her arm drop back down to her side, she thought about the mission. Simple enough. But Logan wasn't going to cooperate without answers. The problem was, she didn't know exactly everything about it herself, but the memories...they were coming to her. At least she could tell him something about it. "What do you think was in that text? It was a mission, obviously. It told us what to do...and what would happen if we didn't do it," she stated, the very last part of her statement tinged with a dreadful tone. "We need to get to Central Park. In an hour. That's what the timers are for. If we don't do it, we get Erased, capiche? And by Erased, I mean we're gone. That's it. Over. Done. Period. There's not going to be another shot like this waiting for us."

As long as one partnership completes the mission, all will be saved. But placing your faith into others so easily who want to win the game just as badly could wind up being a grave mistake...

They want to live again as much as we do. Fat chance. I'm not just going to slack off, she thought, her eyes trained fiercely on Logan now. "You do realize we're already dead right?" She had been avoiding that thought for a while, but it was one she had to face down eventually. This was their new reality, and there was nothing that could be done about it except play along. Krasi wanted to make sure Logan would be 'in it to win it' before they truly started. She wouldn't accept dead weight, not with something so important at stake.

Nemo kept pace with her, being roughly the same speed, maybe meter or two behind her.

As Amanda and Nemo ran towards Central Park, they soon ran into, quite literally, a problem: An invisible wall.

"Damn, they already have a wall set up." Dan said, running over. "Look for a guy in a red hoodie."

Nemo sought out a guy with a red hoodie, trying to spot one through the people going about their business on the streets of New York. When he spotted one, he practically jumped, sprinting over to the guy to see what he had to say.

"Why? Rei asked curiously.

"They're the Reapers who set the walls up." Dan explained, running up to the red-hooded Reaper.

"Clear four groups of Noise, where I can see you." The Reaper simply said.

Edited because I'm fucking dropping out of this. -.-