“Hey Jean! Hurry up! You’ll be late for school.”

Jean’s eyes snapped open once again in the familiar room. This time, instead of reaching for her wrist, she rubbed her neck.

She could still every fragment of pain she went through when she died. Getting her neck snapped was hardly the worst she has been through, but it wasn’t something to shrug off either.

Previously, however bad the situation was, she was always still alive. This time, she was utterly dead. That was a completely foreign feeling.

The calling continued.

“What are you waiting for, Jean? You’ll be late for school! I told you to set up an alarm!”

Jean carefully observed the surroundings as she reacted to things the same way she did last time. She wanted to see if things would stay the same. They did except for this time, Allen didn't make the announcement to the Voyagers in the school radio system. When Jean went to C110 after school, she found most of the rest of the Voyagers already there. The rest arrived soon after.

The frown on their faces told Jean she wasn’t the only person having a Deja Vous moment.

“We seem to be in some sort of Groundhog Day situation.” Allen, once again, took control of the conversation, but Jean saw him carefully looking at the ceiling. The way he died must’ve taken a toll on him as well. Voyagers have experienced a lot of things, but most of them haven’t completely died.

“Everything seems to be exactly identical to our last run, but all of us retain our knowledge after death.” He stole another glance at above. “I suspect we will be killed and revived again and again until we find a way out.”

“Well, the goal of our mission is to escape.” Hassan commented quietly. “The question is how.”

“We need to understand what is killing us. As far as I saw, we were killed by random coincidences. A falling debris. A randomly placed nail.” Trinity advised. A woman with red hair and a beautiful curve, she was obviously keen toward the details. “If we survive pass the day, then maybe we can break through this...loop.”

Another Voyager spoke up.

“I have been in one mission where the consciousness of the dimension was trying to kill us. It did something like manipulating fate. No matter what we did, we couldn’t escape the seemingly random accidents. It’s as if our fate was decided no matter what we do.”

Trinity turned to him.

“How did you survive?”

“Well, the dimension itself was never supposed to attack us, so a Protector was deployed and erased the consciousness. I got a free win.”

The room was silent for a moment.

“Our powers are gone.” Finally, one of the other Voyagers who introduced himself as Chaos spoke up. “If we want to break out, we need to retrieve our powers first. Otherwise, we can’t keep ourselves safe.”

But Jean had a different idea in mind.

“I don’t think we can brute force this.” She remembered when Welch told her unless her powers were stronger than the world itself, she couldn’t break out with sheer power. Since she was taken into this world without having the chance to even slightly resist, she suspected that was the case.

“Then how else can we break out?” Chaos questioned. He was a large man with tattoos all over his body. Jean suspected he was a Voyager like Ares: he completes his missions by killing everyone in his way. Fair enough, but in a situation like this when powers were completely gone, this style was no longer possible.

“By following the rules. Trial Missions aren’t designed to kill us. They are designed to empower us. Whatever the purpose is of this world, in the end, it is trying to train us, and there must be a way out. If the Protectors want to kill us, they don’t need to go through all the trouble.”

“But what are the rules?” Trinity asked. “What is the proper way to break out?”

Jean shrugged. It was too early for her to say.

“I’m afraid that’s up to us to find out.” Allen concluded. “We should divide up and go through this world, explore it as much as possible. I suspect whatever happens, we will always die before the end of the day. We should try to stay alive and maybe that can break the loop, but I doubt it.”

“I say we meet back here tomorrow morning. Well, at least tomorrow for us. There is no point in going through the classes.”

“Indeed.”

As the meeting ended, the Voyagers started to disperse. Jean made her way home. As she walked, she was deep in thoughts. Just like she told the others, she believed the only way out was by following the rules. But just as Trinity asked, what are the rules?

More importantly, what are the Protectors trying to achieve in the Trial Mission? The ultimate goal was to enhance them, but how? How is stripping them of their power and trapping them in a death loop any helpful?

Another question she was worried about was how in the world did she lose the Power of Death. The Power of Death was an internal force by Welch’s standards. It was one with her very soul. From what she heard, the only ones who could strip away the Power of Death from Reapers and Reapresses were Death and the Grand Protector, but if she was indeed just one of the many Reapresses, as Death said, then it was unlikely they would personally take part in her Trial Mission.

Anyways. She decided to explore her household more. As she reached home, she opened the door and greeted her mother the way the past Jean Turner did.

“Hey mom?”

The living room was silent. Jean frowned and stepped into the kitchen, where her mother should be right now.

What she saw next made her eyes go wide open.

Two men armed with knives were standing in the living room. Her mother laid on the ground, bleeding out with a giant hole on her stomach. Both men turned to Jean. They were masked, but Jean could sense the bloodthirsty smirk behind those masks.

Killed by a desk...and now two random murderous psychopaths in her house? What the hell is going on here?

Jean didn't hesitate. The Trial Mission might have taken away the Power of Death and her mechanical minions, but it didn't take away the very thing that made Jean herself. In this case, fear and sorrow would only slow her down. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a kitchen knife. She hid it before going to school in case something like this would happen.

The two men charged forward. Jean took a small step to the side, dodging the knife of one of the men before stabbing him in the neck. Blood oozed out and Jean moved to pull the weapon out and pushed the body toward the second man. She has had quite the experience in killing. Given the position and stance of the second man, as well as the entry point of her blade, she was confident she had sufficient time to meet the second man head on.

She didn't.

All of a sudden, against all odds, the second man just appeared in front of Jean and dug his blade into her stomach. Neither space nor the death and the body of his comrade seemed to have stopped him. All Jean knew was something went through her body, and all strength left her.

The second man smirked and slashed his blade across, opening Jean up wider. Even before she hit the floor, her intestines did. Jean couldn’t stop herself from unleashing an agonizing cry as she slowly bled out.

But even during the last moments, Jean’s mind was oddly clear. What happened was, well, painful, but it also gave her a lot of clues.

Namely, she was always going to be killed by these two...let’s just call them muggers. Even if she carried a machine gun with her, nothing would be changed. The rules dictated the Trial Mission, and the rules dictated that she must die.

Why? More importantly, why the muggers and the blades? A piece of debris could get the same thing done and end her life.

Also, the exact process was weird. Details were foggy. The second man seemed to have just teleported over, but for all intents and purposes, he was still a normal human being. It was the rules of this world that made him act like this.

Jean felt like she was missing something very important, but she had no more time to think. Her human body was seconds away from dying. Slowly but steadily, she closed her eyes.

On the other side, Chaos walked down the near-empty hallway of the school. He couldn’t help but feel a shadow of anger from the bottom of his heart. He has always considered himself a confident man. After all, no foe could stand against his blade. That was why he took the name of ‘Chaos’. He believed a chaotic, lawless environment would favor the strongest, and usually, that was him.

But things have changed. He has passed through 4 missions. Countless have perished under his blade, but right now, he was as defenseless as he was during his recruit mission.

A group of large men approached from the other end of the hall. The jersey on them suggested that they were from the school football team. Some of them looked at Chaos and snickered.

Chaos’s first reaction was to kill all of these boys and burn their souls to crisp for insulting a Voyager, but he quickly took hold of his emotions. He had to lay low for now. Turning his gaze to the other direction, he tried to walk by the boys.

The boys smirked as they saw Chaos’s reaction. Suddenly, one of them bumped into Chaos on purpose.

If Jean was here, she would realize the same thing that happened to her was happening to Chaos, only in a different variation. But Chaos didn't know that. His normal human body lacked the perception he has gained throughout countless worlds. The push caught him by surprise and sent him crashing into the wall.

“Such a pussy.” The man that hit Chaos mocked.

Chaos’s eyes suddenly turned red. The push was oddly...familiar. Suddenly, his memories were brought back to before his recruit mission...before he was a Voyager.

When he was still weak…

Chaos leaped forward and punched the football player in the face, but the details started to get foggy. For some reason, despite punching the man in the face, the man wasn’t even slightly taken back. Chaos looked down and found himself no longer being the large tattooed man he was moments before. His body felt oddly weak.

It was his body before he was recruited into the Voyager program...the body of a teenage boy who neglected to exercise.

He looked up at the football players again, and this time, he recognized all of them. They were the people that tormented him throughout his childhood. He thought he has forever escaped their grip when he became a Voyager.

He was wrong.

The man punched Chaos in the face again, knocking him over and splattering his face with blood.

“What is it, Jacob? Didn't think about this when you tried to flirt with my girlfriend?”

Chaos growled.

“My name is not Jacob...I...I am Chaos! Voyager Chaos!”

The football players burst out laughing. All around, students walked out of the classroom and converged around Chaos. They laughed and joked and mocked. Many of them took out their phones and started taking pictures. Chaos, no, Jacob, screamed. All his strength has left him. His fear only added to the power of his adversaries. The football players moved around him and started kicking him. Their strikes were brutal. Chaos could feel his bones cracking and his guts rupturing. It took them nearly twenty minutes, but in the end, Chaos was moments away from death.

With his last dying breath, Jacob watched as a tall blonde walked into the circle. The leading man said something to her, and the blonde knelt down beside the dying Chaos. Jacob’s eyes went soft as the blonde held onto his hand.

And then, the blonde stood back up and dug her heels into Chaos’s forehead.

The entire time, none of the bystanders did a thing.