Revenger: The Council of Deaths

Luth Harkonen; Death Incarnate and the Killer of God, was lying in a deckchair in her back yard in Ohio America, trying to figure out which kind of sunscreen a golden skinned girl like her should wear, when all of a sudden she was teleported to another dimension. This changed the scenery from a sun charmed garden to a monumental windowless hall of ebony and ivory, with herself relocated from the deckchair to a throne made of bones at the end of a long table alongside a host of other occupants. Being used to this kind of bizarre adventure, she merely placed the bottles of sunscreen down in front of her and turned to her neighbour, who turned out to be a girl that looked around her age, with bleach white skin, messy black hair, and a cheeky grin on her face.

'Hey, how's it going?' Luth asked, placing one hand on the grip of her holstered gun in case the answer was I'll kill you!, which it often was.

'Woah!' the stranger exclaimed, jumping for a second before composing herself with a nervous laugh. 'You scared me there for a second. Really shouldn't sneak up on people like that.'

'I was teleported here. Situation kind of snuck up on me.'

'Oh, you must be our newest member. In that case,' she held out her hand, 'Death of the Endless.'

Luth shook it. 'Luth Harkonen of the uh... Ohio.'

'Cool, love the trench coat.'

'Thanks, that necklace is pretty sweet.'

'I know right! No one seems to appreciate how sick it is. We are so going to be best friends, but for now we better get this thing started.' Standing, Death of the Endless waved to the end of the table, and mouthed She's here. to the large creature sat there, who cleared his throat.

 

'If I may call this council to order, then we may begin the proceedings.' the Grand Reaper announced, the collection of animal and human bones his body was made up of rattling under his jet cloak as he wrapped his knuckle on the long table. With all the seated guests quieting down, the crowned Death continued. 'Thank you, in light of the newcomer's presence I shall introduce myself and each one of you before we get down to our usual affairs.' He stood. 'I am the Grand Reaper, Death of the Falling universe and Councilman for this particular assembly.' He turned his gaze to the right where a purple robed skeleton was cracking her finger bones. 'This is Mistress Death, antithesis to life in the Marvel multiverse.'

'Good eternity to you all.' she said in a bored manner.

He was about to carry on but stopped. 'Are you all right?'

'Hmm? Oh I'm fine I just had some things I wanted to do today is all... don't get many breaks.' The Grand Reaper was going to speak when she held up her hand. 'No, no it's fine let's just get this on with.'

'Ah, okay... Well then good eternity to you too.' he replied, before turning to his left where a long skull at the bottom of a large grey sphere, was hanging to the ceiling by chains,

'This is the Shinigami King, ruler of ending in the Death Note universe.'

'As ever, this is an inexcusable waste of my time.' the monstrous creature's voice cracked out.

'There will be apples when we're done, old friend.'

'Red apples?'

'Green.'

The Shinigami King grumbled as the Grand Reaper moved onto the next guest, who was a tall, thin, green skinned being who wore blue spandex underneath elbow pads, knee pads, shoulder plates and a belt; all made out of the bones of extinct animals. He also more a riot police helmet with a visor that looked like a castle's iron gate above his ever-smiling mouth. 'This is Judge Death, mass executer in the Judge Dredd multiverse.'

'I'm going to enjoy ssssslicing you all to piecesssss.' he hissed, scraping his fingernails on the white table.

'We've talked about this, Judge. Moving swiftly on...' the Councilman set his sights on a rather cartoonish looking skeleton with glowing blue eyes, garbed in navy robes, with a scythe resting on his shoulder. 'This is Discworld Death.'

No, just death. the being corrected with a raised finger.

The Grand Reaper sighed. 'We're all called Death, Death. We need to differentiate otherwise we'll never get anything done.'

I don't see why I should have to change my name for some council, it's always been Death, and occasionally Mort to my friends, but mainly Death. Plus I'll wager I've been around a lot longer than any of you, so I should have first dibs on the title.

'Death of the Discworld universe.' the crowned being of various bones mumbled before looking to the smiling young woman Luth had spoken to. Wearing an ankh on a silver necklace around her neck, along with a plain black t-shirt with matching jeans, the girl with a eye of Horus tatoo around her right eye seemed the least threatening of the bunch. 'This is Death of the Endless, psychopomp of the DC multiverse.'

'Hi guys!' she said, waving to everyone.

'Ever in a merry mood,' he affirmed, then looking to Luth, 'and last we have our newest member; Revenger, Golden Reaper of the Reverse dimensional breaking point, who replaced Grim upon his passing last year.' The members muttered their thoughts on the death of their fellow Death briefly before the Grand Reaper continued. 'Revenger, would you like to introduce yourself? Say a few words?'

 

With a thumbs up from Death of the Endless, she stood and coughed into her hand. A twenty one year old with golden skin, long pitch hair, and gold and obsidian eyes, the Killer of God was grateful she'd still had her black trench coat and army jumpsuit on when she'd been teleported, otherwise the Council of Deaths would have been privy to the sight of the dark girl in her beach wear. 'Hi, I'm Luth actually. Revenger is my working name. I think I've seen some of you in comics but aside from that.... I have absolutely no idea what's going on, so... yeah. Hoping someone will fill me in on that in due time.' She then sat down again, to the lone clapping of the pale girl beside her.

The Grand Reaper nodded. 'Nice, short and sweet. No need to worry, Luth. I'm sure one of the members here will be happy to inform you of everything you need to know as the session goes on. Any volunteers?'

Death of the Endless snapped her hand up, no one else made a move, despite the Councilman looking their way.

'Judge Death, you haven't opted to introduce any new members yet. Why don't you take our new Death under your wing?' he pressed.

'Becaussssse I despisssssse her!' he seethed.

'You don't even know her yet.'

'Good thingssss come in time, plussss sssshe's at the other end of the table.'

The Grand Reaper crossed his four arms and looked around. 'Ridiculous... Anyone else...? No one. You're all going to be as selfish as usual and let Death of the Endless do it every time?'

'Oh she loves doing it, just get on with the presentation already.' Mistress Death groaned, prompting the Councilman to shake his head and give up.

'Honestly... Fine, Death of the Endless, show her the ropes.'

'Yes!' the white skinned goth spoke, placing her hand down.

'The session usually takes around a day, after which you'll be teleported back to your own dimension with no time lost.' he informed Luth briskly.

She placed her hands together 'Good to know.'

Death of the Endless nudged her new companion lightly on the arm. 'Best friends.'

 

The Grand Reaper turned around and summoned a blackboard of hieroglyphics from the ground. 'Now, it's been a pretty stable year for us. No megadeaths despite your best efforts, Judge.'

'You jussst wait till next year!' the weird fiend retorted.

You say that every year. Discworld Death challenged as he rolled a die between his fingers.

'I haven't visssited Disssscworld yet, I'm sure a universsse of sisssys like yoursss ssshouldn't prove much of a problem.'

Yes, perhaps you could use your lisssp powersss to sssubdue usss.

'Settle down everyone,' the Grand Reaper intercepted with a tap upon the table, 'now as I was saying...'

As the Councilman talked on, Luth became less and less knowledgeable as to the subject matter he was speaking about.

'Are you okay?' Death of the Endless asked, seeing the new member's perplexed impression.

'No, it's like mathematics class all over again.' she replied.

'That's all right, it's like that for everyone at first. What Grand is talking about is the balancing of death to life in each of our universes and multiverses, with a perfect balance of life and death being the ideal.'

'Uh huh, so what happens if there's too much death or too much life?'

'Unexistence,' the Shingami King answered abruptly from across the table; 'too much life will yield the conversion of positive energy into an ultralife: a wave of white fire that will burn everything within the realm into one conciousness. Too much death will bring about the morphing of negative energy into a megadeath, a black hole that consumes all in the plane.'

Death of the Endless seemed overjoyed. 'Wow, your majesty. That was really informative. Thanks a bunch!'

With the Shinigami King quickly looking back to the blackboard, Luth might have suspected he was a little embarrassed by his unintentional helpfulness.

 

'All right, that makes sense.' the golden girl said, nodding; 'So what do we have to do to keep the balance?'

Death of the Endless rested her cheeks in her hands. 'Well, first we compare our balances, like Grand is doing now. Mine has been the best three years running by the way.'

'Uh huh.'

'Then we brainstorm ways we can improve the balance, or keep it the way it is. Like, if there was too much life, one of us might suggest passing on a percentage of their ghosts that were still bound to the world of the living.'

'Okay.'

'Then we figure out how much life or death our schemes would lose or grant the universes in terms of percentages, find the mean of the combined results, and then compare it to the merged statistics of the other Councils of Deaths in order to find an overall average of balance in the metaverse.'

'...Are you saying we're going to have to do maths?'

'Yep.' Death of the Endless replied cheerily.

Luth whacked her head on the table.

 

A day later, Luth was teleported back to her deckchair, equations buzzing around in her head and Death of the Endless' number written on her wrist. 'Crap,' she muttered irritably; 'I forgot to bring back the sunscreen.'