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Darkness. Some day. Some night. Some dark nightfall after the incidents in High Deck which had rendered Kochiro Jinchi into a lengthy slumber, the Soldiers into a flurry and the Angels into new hiding abodes. A nocturnal creature had one more task to accomplish before moving onto bigger undertakings and away from the lower decks completely.

A lady with long black hair fallen about her back and face laid on a narrow yellow bed morosely, hugging her scantily stuffed pillow there tightly. It has grown further thinner due to this repeated ritual every night since. The lady would carry about the day in this similar morbid repetitive manner, sometimes she wouldn't even bother to roll out of be for the day. It was despair, despair so deep and churning that it caused her head to spin and made her sick in the stomach. It was a despair the kind which made her want to bleed out and desert the suffering.

But some days, she was more hopeful and would refrain from sighing and instead clean the increasingly murky shack of a home and sit in the living room's doorway, waiting for her son to return home.

But the dust had settled yet again, and she was back in her missing son's room, lonely and dredged and dreading for his welfare as she sobbed oh so tiredly into his pillow. Was he okay..? She was haunted by these thoughts. She was a young mother and she had a uniquely tight bond with her 15year old only child. So far, his little friends hadn't passed by so she guessed the friend wasn't worried. She couldn't go visit the little girls' home though for she knew not where the girl lived after years of rarely leaving home. She had no one to comfort her, no one to care and no one to pray to. She laid in her son's threadbare bed, sobbing into his pillow once more as grey light poured through the window to try vainly to soothe her.

A shadow passed suddenly, and Ms. Jinchi was startled out of her reverie. "Who's there?" she whispered softly knowing full well the dangers of her neighborhood. She pushed up onto her arms and whisked her hair out of her eyes. There had been a shadow. a shadow passing affront the bedroom window. Maybe it was....

Hastily, she got to feet and pressed her hands into her eye sockets to dry them. Then, she started across the short expanse of the room, pulling aside the curtains and stepped straight into the living room. She continued her brisk pace and untied the exhausted ribbon that tied the house's front door in place, stepping into the moonlight.

"Kochi-" she called out, standing fully outside. Mud and grass made up the narrow front yard. Across the street, plain back walls of a questionably abandoned warehouse stared ominously at her. The gurgling of the neighborhood river and and passing rodents reached her ears but no alien sound arrested her attention; no one else was up and about and this was absolute. One pattering streetlight where the mosquitoes danced told her so. In this hollowed darkness, in the dank misery of this part of Lower Deck, she should have been able to hear something.

It was a befitting atmosphere to her innards. Forlornly, miss Jinchi sighed and turned to head back indoors where it was a tad safer. She was c chilled, and this was not helping her in her invalid state, it might only serve to worsen her mysterious illness which spiked whenever she went outdoors. She didn't want to pass out and then have to lie there in the mud for hours till she regained the strength to get up. It had happened before.

She put a hand on the doorknob and it was at though her inner bleakness took form. A shadow crawled up behind her and she traced it up to the roof above her. A black being looked down upon her where it had recently taken poise and miss Jinchi's head was pulled so tight with utter despondence that she didn't even respond with any manner of surprise or bewilderment. She looked up at the shadow, casually sitting with one foot high and over within one arm's length of her and uttered dully, "who, who are you?"

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"That is not of importance," the grim reaper said. Miss Jinchi stared impossibly. If it was indeed death, she was not surprised, but as a steering competition continued for more than a deliberate time, she realized she felt no sense of danger of fear about the endearing presence before her.

"You're the LD Angel," she exhaled in a tender manner of voice.

"..." Kandai responded to nothing of that manner. He stared at the eyes seemed to pass his soul... she snapped out of the trance and gasped shortly.

"Your eyes! They're... you're-"

"I have come on behalf of your son," Kandai said softly and drew his leg up beneath him so that he was seated as a cat. Miss Jinchi may indeed recognize him and if so then he need to be on his way. Upon hearing it was news of his son however, Kochiro's mother straightened up again and frantic hope filled her dark eyes.

"My Kochiro??? Is he okay? What happened to him???" She pleaded and touched her hand to her heart. She forgot briefly about interrogating the dark visitor on his familiarity. Kandai blank slowly as a puttering street light put him in and out of focus.

"He is perfectly fine and in a safe place. He wanted me to come tell you. That is all I've come to say."

"Wait," miss Jinchi started, I'm sure of how she could get the stranger to stay a bit longer, "you can't just leave like that... where is my Kochiro???"

"I'm sorry, but there's nothing else that I can offer you." And he was surprised to find that he did indeed feel remorseful for the sad kind-looking lady before him. She was holding him with a steady motherly gaze and uncertain sorrow ridden lips blemished the pretty young face. He straightened it to his feet and continued locking gazes with the mother of his apprentice. There was nothing he could do to help her or sate her curiosity. "Look at the news sometime," he said, "maybe you might find some answers there."

"Answers to what??? Who are you? You look so familiar. And your eyes..." Miss Jinchi toyed with an idea, "they're the same as my husband's-"

At that moment, Kandai backed away across the roof and then stoop to take flight. He was to reveal nothing more. As the Eureka moment hit moss Jinchi, the visitor turned across the roof and stooped, there was a beat of air and then he all but disappeared from her sight. "Wait!" Her feet took flight and she printed around the side of the petite house. She skid to a stop and opened her mouth to protest again but there was no one in sight. She stopped puzzled.

The single street lights in the distance potted on steadily for a while and she looked up and down the street but could see no one anywhere. It was as if the encounter and not just occurred. Miss Jinchi put a hand to her forehead. "Your eyes," she said to no one but the wind, "they're the same as my husband's. And they're the same as Kochiro's."

Then she suddenly clutched the stomach and collapsed woozily to her knees, looking up into the night sky. Her breathing came sickly and shallow... but the Angel had long departed of her world.

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