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raison detre
"my version of justice is more just than yours"
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2020
- Location
- La Manchaland
"Hello! Is hot water okay? I actually wasn't expecting someone so soon."
Valente blinked once, then twice. He was just in his apartment living room a moment ago, yet he was now in an unfamiliar place. Wooden floorboards creaked under his shoes, the scent of burning wood filling his nostrils as he glanced over to the fireplace, smoke rising up to the chimney. Books upon books lined the walls from every side, so high that he couldn't even see the ceiling. It made him dizzy, feeling as if he was somewhere that was impossible. It was nothing like his dingy, dirty one-bedroom apartment filled only with the bare minimum. There was barely even any space to stretch out his legs.
"Ahem?" The voice from before rose up above his racing mind, breaking him out of his reverie. Valente's dull brown eyes followed its sound, eventually falling upon...
A skeleton pouring hot water into a cup.
"Whoa!" He cried out, his heart nearly leaping out of his chest as he jumped back.
"Well that's rude. Have you never seen a skeleton before?" The skeleton, covered in a dark robe, a hood hanging behind its neck, nonchalantly brought the cup to its teeth, opening up as it tilted the cup toward its 'mouth'. The water poured out, sliding from under its jaw and onto the robe. It looked down with its nonexistent eyes, then back up at him, as if expecting a reaction.
"Not a talking, water-drinking skeleton. Sorry, I guess I've just not experienced a very full life!" Valente protested after a moment, shoving his index finger at the thing in an accusatory manner.
"That's not very funny." The skeleton uttered monotonely, disappointed by his reaction. It set down the cup, then motioned toward a seat in front of him. It was only then that Valente noticed there was a desk in front of the skeleton. Or had it been there before? Somehow, it felt like things were just appearing and happening out of nowhere. Valente hesitantly sat down on the chair, stiffly. He shifted slightly in his suit, instinctively fixing his tie and running his palms over his clothes to straighten them up. He brushed over his black hair, flattening any bed hair he might've had. "So, you're here about the job listing, I'm guessing?"
"Job listing?" He whispered, raising a brow. Oh, right, he had been looking at job listing before this, now that he remembered. After getting laid off his last job, Valente had been on the job hunt for over a month now, eating nothing but crackers and canned tuna the whole time. He'd never had much money to his name anyway, and he'd been living paycheck to paycheck for years. Things just hadn't gone well for him after college. Not one to have a very strong work ethic, he'd been kicked out of more jobs than he could count and he'd only had the last one for about two months before they 'found a better fit' for the job. So he'd been flipping through his phone on some websites, eating some crackers with peanut butter on them when he saw a weird listing.
Bounty Hunting in Another World!
Tired of your mundane life? Check us out? We're looking for people who are willing to get down to the nitty-gritty! People are teleported to other worlds every day, and they make a mess out of things because of their ill-deserved powers. You can make a tangible difference by enlisting to our "cleanup company". Benefits and salary to be discussed in person.
Please ensure that you are not leaving behind any loved ones when accepting this job. We are not liable for any losses of life, including your own.
"Wait, that was just a joke, right? Is this one of those hidden camera shows? You know those stopped being funny after the 2000's, right?"
"First off, I still laugh my bones off to those shows!" The skeleton slammed its hand on the desk, offended. "Second off, no, this isn't a joke or a prank or anything like that. How exactly would that work anyway? You think you can just get kidnapped if it's for a show?"
"But you did kidnap me! I don't remember consenting to getting brought to this strange place."
"You pressed the accept button, didn't you?"
Silence.
"... You did press accept, right? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have been brought here otherwise."
"I, uh... fat-fingered it?" Valente scratched the back of his head, his mind getting clearer the more time went on. He did remember reading the listing and thinking it was weird, but he was going to scroll past it. His thumb just pressed the accept button as he was doing so and... by the time he had blinked, he was here.
The skeleton smacked itself on the forehead, groaning. "You FAT-FINGERED it?! I guess I should've thought that would happen, but what kind of idiot does that?" It shook its head, letting out a sigh. Come to think of it, how was it talking? It wasn't like it had a tongue or vocal chords. Was this a dream or something? "Man, that's one lousy way to die. You didn't have any family or friends around, did you? I pity them if you did."
"No, I, uh, don't have any relatives and my friends barely talk to me anymore... Wait, what did you say? Die? What do you mean 'die'? I'm dead?!" It took Valente a second to process the words, but when he did, he went into a panic. "Wait, no, no, I'm still in my late-twenties! There's no way I could die! I mean, my diet wasn't the best, but I did exercise! I drank a lot of water too. There must be some sort of mistake!"
"Nah, nah, you were perfectly healthy, especially considering the crap you ate. No, the thing is... Souls are tethered to the world they are born into. You can't just bring a person over from their original world without them dying. It's like the whole reincarnation thing, you know?" The skeleton explained casually, as if this was something elementary to talk about. To it, at least, this was probably the case.
"Then how'd I die then?"
"Instant heart failure. You know, the kind where you're dead in a matter of seconds. Yup, heart went 'bloosh'!. It was probably really painful. Not that it matters now, though. You've probably been dead for about an hour. Ushering a departed soul can be tricky, since demons and other bastards want to eat you." It shrugged.
"You killed me?! Wait, but I didn't... can't you take me back or something?" Valente was still in shock, hands on his knees, gripping so hard his knuckles were white.
But wait, why was he even upset about it? It wasn't like he had much in his life to look forward to. Honestly, he'd thought about dying a couple of times in the past, but he never could go through with it. It wasn't as if he really wanted to die, but living had become such a burden to him that it felt like he didn't have many other options.
"Well, I could, but... you'd probably just die again since your heart went kapoot. I'm an overseer of death, not some deity of healing. But if you take the job, I can easily give you a new body. Can't be expecting my employees to work without proper equipment, after all."
"An overseer of death?" He questioned.
"Yeah, right. So I probably should've introduced myself first. I'm Thal Wrocs, overseer of death through all planes of existence. Some people might call me the Grim Reaper, others may just call me Death. I personally like □□□□□□□. Oh, sorry, you probably just heard nonsense there, huh?" The skeleton thing, apparently called Thal, spoke in some incomprehensible tongues for a second there. Valente could tell it had said something, but he couldn't make out the sounds or anything. It was like they were sounds he was never meant to hear.
"Anyway, the listing pretty much said everything. See, a lot of deities live to see eons. Tens of thousands of millions of years. Some, like me, are fine consuming the media you mortals make. I personally like the ones where you make the cartoons fight each other a lot. But some are a little more... chaotic, shall we say? They'll see some person with issues in one of your worlds, where things are incredibly mundane, and wonder what they would do if they were suddenly given powers beyond their beliefs. So they do some voodoo shit, get the person killed and then pluck them off their native plane before I can do anything. Sometimes they give them some spiel about how they're destined to save the world, or sometimes they literally just tell them to do whatever they want and give them a bunch of blessings."
"I thought that only happened in fictional media." Valente nodded, listening intently.
"Now, I oversee the deaths of billions every day. It's not something that particularly bothers me if that's one billion or two billion. Death is the natural end to you mortals' lives. It's part of what makes you, well, you. How you face death and what you do with the finite time you have in your world is an important part of what makes you different than us immortals. But..." There was a pause before Thal slammed both of its hands on the desk, causing the cup of water to fall over and spill onto the wood. "It just pisses me off to see these deities do whatever they want! They don't even bring them to their own world! They just plop them down on some other pantheon because they're afraid of pissing off their neighbors. So these deities that get these 'heroes' thrust upon them want them out, but I usually don't like to get involved. I got some stipulations to my position, you see. Break them and I'll be turned into dust. But if I give you my blessings as my avatar, then that just means I'm fighting fire with fire." It coughed awkwardly. "Sorry, I just got a little angry for a sec there. Anyway, you catch my drift?"
"So, you want me to... what, hunt these people down? And do what?"
"Kill them, capture them, whatever. Just make them stop. I have some empty space in the back. Like, literal empty space. Ever heard of liminal spaces? Imagine that, but it's completely devoid of light, sound, smell, everything. I can put them in there and make them experience a million years of complete and utter solitude in what would be a second for me if you think they deserve it."
"Well... let's not jump the gun there." Valente chuckled, a drop of sweat sliding down his temple. Deities really said some outrageous things, didn't they? He rubbed his chin, thinking. "Alright, I'm in. But I'm just a regular guy, you know? How am I supposed to hunt down all these superpowered individuals like this?" He motioned towards himself, still dressed like he'd come in for a job interview. And he guessed he was, in a very literal sense, applying for a job. Just not the kind that anyone would dream of.
"I'll give you a training course, obviously! Plus, becoming an emissary of death comes with generous boons, you know. Don't worry, you won't die permanently. Even if you do get killed, I can just bring you back, though careful about dying too much over a short amount of time. The soul isn't meant to do that, so you might become, uh... a little corrupted."
Thal didn't care to elaborate on that, and Valente was fine with not knowing more about it for now. As the skeleton slid over a piece of paper and a pen, he looked down at it. It looked like any other contract, even filled with some fine print. Despite himself, Valente signed without reading too deeply into it. He might, and probably would, regret it later on when some dumb rule came up, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice here. He couldn't exactly walk out and go back home or anything of the sort.
For better or worse, this was his only real choice.
So he might as well make the best out of it.
Valente blinked once, then twice. He was just in his apartment living room a moment ago, yet he was now in an unfamiliar place. Wooden floorboards creaked under his shoes, the scent of burning wood filling his nostrils as he glanced over to the fireplace, smoke rising up to the chimney. Books upon books lined the walls from every side, so high that he couldn't even see the ceiling. It made him dizzy, feeling as if he was somewhere that was impossible. It was nothing like his dingy, dirty one-bedroom apartment filled only with the bare minimum. There was barely even any space to stretch out his legs.
"Ahem?" The voice from before rose up above his racing mind, breaking him out of his reverie. Valente's dull brown eyes followed its sound, eventually falling upon...
A skeleton pouring hot water into a cup.
"Whoa!" He cried out, his heart nearly leaping out of his chest as he jumped back.
"Well that's rude. Have you never seen a skeleton before?" The skeleton, covered in a dark robe, a hood hanging behind its neck, nonchalantly brought the cup to its teeth, opening up as it tilted the cup toward its 'mouth'. The water poured out, sliding from under its jaw and onto the robe. It looked down with its nonexistent eyes, then back up at him, as if expecting a reaction.
"Not a talking, water-drinking skeleton. Sorry, I guess I've just not experienced a very full life!" Valente protested after a moment, shoving his index finger at the thing in an accusatory manner.
"That's not very funny." The skeleton uttered monotonely, disappointed by his reaction. It set down the cup, then motioned toward a seat in front of him. It was only then that Valente noticed there was a desk in front of the skeleton. Or had it been there before? Somehow, it felt like things were just appearing and happening out of nowhere. Valente hesitantly sat down on the chair, stiffly. He shifted slightly in his suit, instinctively fixing his tie and running his palms over his clothes to straighten them up. He brushed over his black hair, flattening any bed hair he might've had. "So, you're here about the job listing, I'm guessing?"
"Job listing?" He whispered, raising a brow. Oh, right, he had been looking at job listing before this, now that he remembered. After getting laid off his last job, Valente had been on the job hunt for over a month now, eating nothing but crackers and canned tuna the whole time. He'd never had much money to his name anyway, and he'd been living paycheck to paycheck for years. Things just hadn't gone well for him after college. Not one to have a very strong work ethic, he'd been kicked out of more jobs than he could count and he'd only had the last one for about two months before they 'found a better fit' for the job. So he'd been flipping through his phone on some websites, eating some crackers with peanut butter on them when he saw a weird listing.
Bounty Hunting in Another World!
Tired of your mundane life? Check us out? We're looking for people who are willing to get down to the nitty-gritty! People are teleported to other worlds every day, and they make a mess out of things because of their ill-deserved powers. You can make a tangible difference by enlisting to our "cleanup company". Benefits and salary to be discussed in person.
Please ensure that you are not leaving behind any loved ones when accepting this job. We are not liable for any losses of life, including your own.
"Wait, that was just a joke, right? Is this one of those hidden camera shows? You know those stopped being funny after the 2000's, right?"
"First off, I still laugh my bones off to those shows!" The skeleton slammed its hand on the desk, offended. "Second off, no, this isn't a joke or a prank or anything like that. How exactly would that work anyway? You think you can just get kidnapped if it's for a show?"
"But you did kidnap me! I don't remember consenting to getting brought to this strange place."
"You pressed the accept button, didn't you?"
Silence.
"... You did press accept, right? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have been brought here otherwise."
"I, uh... fat-fingered it?" Valente scratched the back of his head, his mind getting clearer the more time went on. He did remember reading the listing and thinking it was weird, but he was going to scroll past it. His thumb just pressed the accept button as he was doing so and... by the time he had blinked, he was here.
The skeleton smacked itself on the forehead, groaning. "You FAT-FINGERED it?! I guess I should've thought that would happen, but what kind of idiot does that?" It shook its head, letting out a sigh. Come to think of it, how was it talking? It wasn't like it had a tongue or vocal chords. Was this a dream or something? "Man, that's one lousy way to die. You didn't have any family or friends around, did you? I pity them if you did."
"No, I, uh, don't have any relatives and my friends barely talk to me anymore... Wait, what did you say? Die? What do you mean 'die'? I'm dead?!" It took Valente a second to process the words, but when he did, he went into a panic. "Wait, no, no, I'm still in my late-twenties! There's no way I could die! I mean, my diet wasn't the best, but I did exercise! I drank a lot of water too. There must be some sort of mistake!"
"Nah, nah, you were perfectly healthy, especially considering the crap you ate. No, the thing is... Souls are tethered to the world they are born into. You can't just bring a person over from their original world without them dying. It's like the whole reincarnation thing, you know?" The skeleton explained casually, as if this was something elementary to talk about. To it, at least, this was probably the case.
"Then how'd I die then?"
"Instant heart failure. You know, the kind where you're dead in a matter of seconds. Yup, heart went 'bloosh'!. It was probably really painful. Not that it matters now, though. You've probably been dead for about an hour. Ushering a departed soul can be tricky, since demons and other bastards want to eat you." It shrugged.
"You killed me?! Wait, but I didn't... can't you take me back or something?" Valente was still in shock, hands on his knees, gripping so hard his knuckles were white.
But wait, why was he even upset about it? It wasn't like he had much in his life to look forward to. Honestly, he'd thought about dying a couple of times in the past, but he never could go through with it. It wasn't as if he really wanted to die, but living had become such a burden to him that it felt like he didn't have many other options.
"Well, I could, but... you'd probably just die again since your heart went kapoot. I'm an overseer of death, not some deity of healing. But if you take the job, I can easily give you a new body. Can't be expecting my employees to work without proper equipment, after all."
"An overseer of death?" He questioned.
"Yeah, right. So I probably should've introduced myself first. I'm Thal Wrocs, overseer of death through all planes of existence. Some people might call me the Grim Reaper, others may just call me Death. I personally like □□□□□□□. Oh, sorry, you probably just heard nonsense there, huh?" The skeleton thing, apparently called Thal, spoke in some incomprehensible tongues for a second there. Valente could tell it had said something, but he couldn't make out the sounds or anything. It was like they were sounds he was never meant to hear.
"Anyway, the listing pretty much said everything. See, a lot of deities live to see eons. Tens of thousands of millions of years. Some, like me, are fine consuming the media you mortals make. I personally like the ones where you make the cartoons fight each other a lot. But some are a little more... chaotic, shall we say? They'll see some person with issues in one of your worlds, where things are incredibly mundane, and wonder what they would do if they were suddenly given powers beyond their beliefs. So they do some voodoo shit, get the person killed and then pluck them off their native plane before I can do anything. Sometimes they give them some spiel about how they're destined to save the world, or sometimes they literally just tell them to do whatever they want and give them a bunch of blessings."
"I thought that only happened in fictional media." Valente nodded, listening intently.
"Now, I oversee the deaths of billions every day. It's not something that particularly bothers me if that's one billion or two billion. Death is the natural end to you mortals' lives. It's part of what makes you, well, you. How you face death and what you do with the finite time you have in your world is an important part of what makes you different than us immortals. But..." There was a pause before Thal slammed both of its hands on the desk, causing the cup of water to fall over and spill onto the wood. "It just pisses me off to see these deities do whatever they want! They don't even bring them to their own world! They just plop them down on some other pantheon because they're afraid of pissing off their neighbors. So these deities that get these 'heroes' thrust upon them want them out, but I usually don't like to get involved. I got some stipulations to my position, you see. Break them and I'll be turned into dust. But if I give you my blessings as my avatar, then that just means I'm fighting fire with fire." It coughed awkwardly. "Sorry, I just got a little angry for a sec there. Anyway, you catch my drift?"
"So, you want me to... what, hunt these people down? And do what?"
"Kill them, capture them, whatever. Just make them stop. I have some empty space in the back. Like, literal empty space. Ever heard of liminal spaces? Imagine that, but it's completely devoid of light, sound, smell, everything. I can put them in there and make them experience a million years of complete and utter solitude in what would be a second for me if you think they deserve it."
"Well... let's not jump the gun there." Valente chuckled, a drop of sweat sliding down his temple. Deities really said some outrageous things, didn't they? He rubbed his chin, thinking. "Alright, I'm in. But I'm just a regular guy, you know? How am I supposed to hunt down all these superpowered individuals like this?" He motioned towards himself, still dressed like he'd come in for a job interview. And he guessed he was, in a very literal sense, applying for a job. Just not the kind that anyone would dream of.
"I'll give you a training course, obviously! Plus, becoming an emissary of death comes with generous boons, you know. Don't worry, you won't die permanently. Even if you do get killed, I can just bring you back, though careful about dying too much over a short amount of time. The soul isn't meant to do that, so you might become, uh... a little corrupted."
Thal didn't care to elaborate on that, and Valente was fine with not knowing more about it for now. As the skeleton slid over a piece of paper and a pen, he looked down at it. It looked like any other contract, even filled with some fine print. Despite himself, Valente signed without reading too deeply into it. He might, and probably would, regret it later on when some dumb rule came up, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice here. He couldn't exactly walk out and go back home or anything of the sort.
For better or worse, this was his only real choice.
So he might as well make the best out of it.