A pair of watery blue eyes surrounded by a nest of wild curly brown hair blotted out the night sky from Christian's vision. The two stared face to face for a second before Mia reached down and quickly secured the flask from his right hip. Chrisitan weakly protested, " I was saving that for a rainy day..." Christian stopped speaking as he noticed as the moonlight reflected a single stream down her cheeks as Mia blinked furiously.

" Listen, Mia, " Cliff started, "It's not so bad here I've already been here for a year, there's magic... you can... save a whole village from some monsters. Trust me there's nothing like seeing the face of a kid who's life you just saved-"

Mia held up one finger as she threw her head back and emptied the contents of the flask into her gullet. With a metallic clank, she tossed the empty flask on the ground. She buried her hands in her face and growled out a low and long," fuckkkkk." She sighed out a deep breath and wiped her face clean with one slow motion of her right arm.

" So you too are both dead?" She pointed at Cliff and Christian.

" Yeah," Cliff responded.

" Very much so," Christian added, " Think I was about to work on death 25 or so," Chrisitan quickly held out his fingers and grumbled. " Yup 25." He added confidently.

Mia's face drained." So this is the guy you wanted to track down? This is the guy with all the answers? Some guy who managed to die fucking five times? What kind of knowledge is he gonna have?"

" Trust me," Cliff responded, " It's like finding the strategy guide, someone who has been around this long can help us save the world, and in turn, save ourselves." Cliff finished off the statement with a twinkle in his eyes.

" No, no, no." Mia shook her head. " How is this guy going to help us do that? Didn't you listen? He's been reincarnated like 30 times. He has no idea what he's doing. Why would he keep getting sent back here if he's doing the right thing."

Christian once again started to pull himself from the ground. " Ya know... she's kind of got a point." He said with a shrug of his shoulders that sent him tumbling back to the ice.

" Great... Great." Mia whispered under her breath. " So the afterlife is some sort of game?" Mia inspected the empty spreadsheet. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own sheet. She furiously compared the two, looking over all the columns and rows. " It's a game." She hollowly whispered. The papers sank to the ground. Christian's excel spreadsheet fluttered in the air to his outstretched arm.

Crack! The brilliant blue glow of the ice that encased Cliff had dulled to a whispy gray, it crumbled away from his body ad haphazardly fell to the ground.

" Hey..." Cliff spoke unsurely," At least we get another chance, now we get to be the hero of another story. This is just a new chapter."

" I kind of liked the old one," Mia said coldly. Her eyes closed shut tightly and she kicked the air," Just when things were starting to turn around." She grasped at her head, trying to feel for something that wasn't there. " This all has to be a bad trip." She gazed up at the orange moon. Chrisitan felt a sharp breeze as Cliff blew past him, trying to salvage the situation. He truly was too nice of a guy.

Christian's finger glowed as his hand hovered over his Excel spreadsheet. All it needed was a name and it would be done, he could leave this whiny teenager convention behind him. Just the cold empty stillness of space. And the silence that comes with it. Chrisitan scribbled out his name as his parents had written it oh so many lifetimes ago. Thankfully he had shed his cool name back after one of his first runs. Let's just say you never know what a word means when you're trying to pick out a trendy new name on a foreign world.

" Hey, death guy," Mia yelled out interrupting Chrisitan's as he was finishing doting his i's.

" It's Christian, and what do you want, I'm a little busy," Chrisitan spoke while he finished doting the final i.

" Have you ever saved a world?" she asked.

Chrisitan's hand tightened up for a brief second. " Yeah, I saved the world once me and a bunch of people. It was the first time I was reincarnated."

" Did it make you feel any better?" She asked again.

Chrisitan smiled," Those times adventuring with the old gang were amazing. The fights... the fun. It was... one really great distraction." Christian finished, all traces of a smile wiped from his face. " But all adventures have to come to an end at some point. Rather its the lack of end that spelled the end of the gang." Chrisitan could see the faces of confusion and panic, the slaying of the final boss, the big bad was expected to be the end. But nothing. That's all it brought. There was no ticket to heaven. Just more of the same.

" It was a great distraction," Christian repeated.

" What happened to the rest of them, the people that helped you?" Cliff asked.

" We drifted our separate ways. Wasn't much left to fight, or explore. But not all of them gave up that there was still something out there we had to do, some switch to flip or something like that would shoot us up to heaven. I like to think I was more on the grounded side of that argument." Christian finished." Now I just made the most of what I've been given. What else is there to do?" He added with a shrug.

" I think you should stay here." Mia barked.

"It's not gonna be any different this time. " Chrisitan said with an outstretched hand," Before you say it. You can have fun saving this average fantasy world if you want. Nothing has caught m eye so far.

" Did I mention there are guns?" Cliff yelled. Chrisitan's right eyebrow perked up.

" What kind of guns?"