First of many

A young woman stands across the street as she watches a house burning to the ground. “Is this some kind of dream?” She takes a look at herself, in slight shock. “I look so ghostly. I can't believe this. I'm actually dead.” She looks closely at her room, where her dead body must now lie, and almost starts laughing as she realizes she can remember almost nothing of her time as one of the living. But then a sudden though comes to her and she asks, turning her back on the house and her old life, “Where do I go now?” As if in answer, Reaper suddenly blinks into reality before her. Reaper quickly surveys his new environment, obviously confused, but then he sees the young woman's spirit and comes to a realization. “Oh, hey.” Reaper clears his throat, trying to adopt a somewhat professional attitude. “I suppose you've realized that you're dead now.” The woman gives a slight nod. “Are you here to reap my immortal soul?” Reaper starts by saying, “I'm here to…” but decides to explain things in a different way. “Well, it's complicated. How about I just show you?” He extends his hand formally to the slightly confused woman, thinking bitterly how similar this occasion is to his first meeting with Angel. Without much hesitation, she takes his hand and then looks up at him, waiting patiently. With a reassuring smile, Reaper closes his eyes and tries to picture the place he had just disappeared from in his head, hoping somehow this will help him return. To his surprise, the image in his head is so detailed it seems just like a photograph. Though, he does not get much time to think before getting that feeling in his stomach again and shimmering away.

Angel takes the last brick-shaped stone and slides it into the ancient structure with a sigh of boredom. Now glancing at it all put together, she notices how similar it looks to one of the machines she saw in Heaven. But the real thing was much larger. And there was a tube thingy where that dome is. Suddenly, the ground begins to shake, and several lines of blue energy go zipping across the ground in zigzags toward the structure. With a small yelp, Angel jumps away from one of the blue streaks. “What the heck did I just do?” Reaper and the nameless woman reappear. He quickly notices the shaking and blue streaks. Reaper glances at Angel accusingly, despite her attempts to remain inconspicuous. “Angel? What's going on?” Angel smiles uncertainly. “I fixed something?” The ground stops shaking for just a second before the entire structure begins to rise out of the ground. As the center piece of the structure, the part the Angel had rebuilt, raises higher and higher, several sections of the brick walkways surrounding it begin to rise along with it at varying lengths, effectively forming stairs. Angel falls off one of the artificial ledges formed by the rising structure, but catches the side with her hands. Reaper wobbles back and forth as the ground beneath him turns into stairs, but regains his balance. The nameless woman, who had been accidently released from Reaper's grip, stumbles down the flight of stairs before tripping over and landing on her face at ground level. With the ground finally still, Angel drops from her ledge and then jumps down from another to get far enough from the building to have a good view. “I think it may be some kind of generator. I've seen them like this in Heaven, though there are a couple of differences.” Feeling forgotten, nameless woman picks herself up from the ground and speaks out, “Wait a second. I'm confused. Why did a temple just rise out of the ground? Why would dead people need generators?” Reaper swiftly steps down the stair to console her. “Well, I said it was a bit complicated.” The woman stares at Reaper blankly. An image of the woman named Angel floating like a real angel and holding out her hand pops up in her head. She turns her attention towards Angel, confused as to why she's hallucinating about her. Then an image of people getting sucked into giant machines pops up in her head. Angel breaks the silence by asking, “So, what do we call you?” The woman snaps out of her hallucinations. “Oh, my name is…”She realizes that she can't remember her own name and jumbles several letters around in her head to come up with something. “Just call me Metna, I guess.” Metna looks back and forth between Reaper and Angel. “So will someone please explain to me in detail what exactly is going on?”

End