Congratulations, Soul Vessel! You have just made a deal with a shinigami to restore someone’s life. Consider yourself a hero...

The squeal of brakes on wet pavement and the grating shrieks of the helpless.

The crunching of metal on metal and the shattering of glass.

The warmth of blood cascading and the cold embrace of death.

Inoru could feel it, wrapping her cold hands around his small neck as he gasped for breath as the weight of the car slowly crushed him. Hero could see the shinigami smiling down on her brother beneath her feathered mask. She hissed softly as Inoru struggled for air, his little arms beating weakly against the impounded hulk of metal that was once their family’s minivan.

Hero struggled into a sitting position, using a large chunk of the steering column for leverage. She grunted as the pain in her stomach spread up and into her chest. Hero put her hand to her gut and felt the blood as it spilled from her body and onto the sidewalk. The shinigami was almost through with Inoru. Hero could see the light leaving his body. The death god could see it too. She eased her grip on Inoru’s neck and drew her mirror from a pouch belted at her side and turned it towards Inoru so that it reflected his face.

“No!” Hero finally managed to gasp. She tried to stand, clutching her stomach tightly; afraid to find out what would happen if she let go.

The shinigami looked away from Inoru and up towards Hero. “Don’t worry, I’m only here for him.” She jerked her head to Hero’s little brother as he lay on the pavement perfectly still, only his upper body free from the wreckage. She turned back to Inoru and once again turned the mirror towards him. The mirror drew the light from his chest into its black depths.

“You can’t!” Hero lunged for her, but was too slow and collapsed to the ground where the death god had been crouching before Inoru just a moment before. She shot up into the air, her black wings blocking out the sky and raining silken feathers on Hero. The shinigami slowly floated back down and crouched down to look Hero in the eye.

“Hmm…” she murmured as she lifted Hero’s chin up from the glass-littered pavement.

Hero shook with pain and gritted her teeth as she stared into the milky white eyeholes of the death god’s mask. “You can’t have him,” she spat.

“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” the shinigami asked her, her maroon lips parting into a grim smile of razorblade teeth.

The girl couldn’t answer. The taste of iron filled her mouth and Hero turned her head to coughed blood onto the sidewalk.

The dark angel laughed mirthlessly. “Humans…” She stood and turned back to Inoru, her bare feet barely touching the ground.

Hero, using all her remaining strength in this one last attempt to stop the shinigami from taking her brother, reached out and grabbed her ankle. “P-please…”

She turned back to Hero and cocked her head as she looked down at the skinny girl desperately holding on to her ankle. “Hmmm…” the death god said again. She brought her mirror up to her face and gazed into it, then back to Hero. Her light was strong. It wasn’t her time to go, but maybe she could get away with it this time, if she was careful…

“Want to make a deal?”

Hero looked up, her eyes foggy with pain. “Anything…” she whispered.

The shinigami smiled. “Excellent.” She snapped her long fingers and a scroll appeared in her hand with a puff of black smoke and a quill hovered at its side. She bent down and unrolled the parchment and shoved it in Hero’s face, the quill followed, nudging Hero’s left hand annoyingly.

“Now, the terms of agree…ment…” The shinigami stopped. Hero had grabbed the quill and was already signing her name on the dotted line. “Are you sure you don’t want to read it first?”

Hero dropped the quill and it, along with the contract, disappeared in another puff of black smoke. Hero sighed and lowered her head to the ground, the glass shards digging into her face, but she was beyond caring at the moment.

The shinigami shrugged. “Suit yourself…” she looked into her mirror once more. Hero’s signature shimmered on its surface. “… Hero Shiawase…” She looked down at the girl once more and chortled. “Nice name… It’s fitting…”

“Aaalright!” the death god sighed as she turned back to Inoru. She cracked her knuckles and knelt down beside him, holding her mirror in her left hand and placing her right hand on his still chest.

A blast of light caused Hero to raise her head again as a wave of heat hit her face, her matted hair blown straight back by its force. The light was moving from the mirror into Inoru’s chest and then it was dark and the air was calm.

Hero watched Inoru’s chest move up and down for a few seconds before smiling. “Thank you,” she said.

The death angel just raised her eyebrows. “No… Thank you…” She glanced over to see that Hero had lay back down, her cheek resting on the cold pavement and smiled. That girl will make a great shinigami when her time comes…

Inoru opened his eyes and blinked a few times, the fuzziness in his vision cleared as he looked up into the face of his shinigami. He gasped and reached up to touch her mask made of black feathers that matched her wings. She turned as the mask slipped off into Inoru’s outstretched hand, her mouth an ‘o’ of shock and horror.

Hero vaguely registered Inoru’s scream of horror as she slipped into a dark sleep.

a/n: Minor rewrites, nothing story-changing, but a new, non-italicized format looks nice...