Hey dudes! I'm into South Park now, so yeah.

Death is nonbinary in this one. I think that death is more of a spirit than a psychical form, but for the sake of this fic they're a hugely dramatic god-thingy. So if you don't approve of that, please leave and don't interact with me.

This is rated Teen only for the swearing. There might be mentions of sexual stuff later on, but it definitely won't be anything bad.

Enjoy!


Death angrily paced their throne room, the dramatic swish of their cloak failing to comfort them as it usually did. Their boots made loud echoes that were usually satisfying.

Death wasn't satisfied.

"What seems to be the problem, my lord?" Judy's calm voice sounded from her place at her desk.

Death paused and took a deep breath. They stalked over to their throne, almost collapsing in the onyx chair that was inlaid with diamonds, Death's favorite. "You know what's wrong, Judy. Kenny McCormick." The name tasted bitter in their mouth.

They heard a small sigh escape their receptionist's lips, but they chose to ignore it.

Kenneth McCormick had escaped from them yet again. That boy was the only person to exist who had been able to best Death. Not once, not twice, but so often that Death had lost count. They were sure Judy would know the exact number, but they were also sure that that the exact number would only depress them.

Kenny had died today. Hit by a stray bullet from one of the school shootings that went on almost constantly in that absurd town he lived in.

Death hadn't even gotten a glimpse of the boy's soul.

Usually, when people died their soul almost immediately found its way into Death's waiting room, where Death would then welcome them into his office to judge them and determine where they deserved to be placed, whether it be Punishment, Rewardance, or The Between. It was rare a soul got lost, but it wasn't impossible.

It was usually a quick fix. Death sent out one of their Hunters to retrieve the soul, the Hunter found them, bada bing bada boom and everything was fine.

Naturally, they had assumed that was what had happened almost seven years ago when a three year old Kenneth had failed to show up in their waiting room after falling out of a five story building to his death.

But then their Hunter couldn't find the soul.

The second one Death deployed hadn't found a trace of the boy, either.

Nor the third.

Nor the fourth.

Finally Death themself had gone looking, and they hadn't even found evidence that the boy had passed.

And then they had looked down at the living world.

They remembered how they had almost sent five good souls to Punishment when they had looked down and saw Kenny playing ball with his friends on the playground. They remembered taking the night off for the first time in almost three centuries to puzzle out what had happened.

They still didn't have a clue.

"... all we can, master, but the boy has still remained living." Death started when they realized Judy was talking, rattling off the same things about The Mystery of Kenny as she had been for the last four years. Death frowned.

"Yes, I know, Judy, I know. But I still want him captured, I want to know where he goes, I want to know why he won't just die." Death could hear the whine in their voice, but they were far from caring. If they really admitted it to themselves, somewhere along the way they had begun to take Kenny's reluctance to die as a personal offense. They felt cheated.

Death didn't like cheaters.

Death liked to consider themself a fair being. When they decided where a person was going, they always did so with great care and tried to keep personal biases out of the question. They wouldn't even put Kenny in Punishment because he simply didn't deserve it. That was how fair they were.

So realistically there was no good reason for Kenny to continually run away. None at all. He would have a nice existence in The Between. Death groaned. "What more can we do to get that boy dead without seeming too obsessed?" They asked.

"Well, half of the Killers are employed on Kenneth's case, but I can put some Strategizers on it as well and see if they can think of a new plan," Judy said, already reaching for the telephone. Death mulled over this proposal.

"A new plan? Yes, that could work." Almost reflexively, they waved a hand to conjure an image of Kenny, clad in the orange snowsuit he usually wore. His icy blue eyes seemed to taunt Death, even though they were devoid of emotion. With a twitch of a finger Death switched the picture to another one, this time a snapshot of Kenny with his tongue stuck to a frozen pole, something he had done for ten bucks.

Another twitch and they had pulled up Kenneth's file. They snatched the leather-bound folder from midair and cracked it open. They pulled out papers and photos and fingerprint samples and began to read, which was honestly rather unnecessary as they practically had the file memorized by now.

Their eyes slid past the boring statistics and almost reflexively landed on the typing that read Date of Death: ? They scowled at it, noting how somebody had gone over Kenny's first death date with whiteout to replace it with those offending question marks. They flipped the page, reading past ever gruesome ways the boy had supposedly died. They flipped it again and came to photos.

There was Kenny on a birthday he shouldn't be having, blowing out candles on the cheapest cake the town had to offer. There was Kenny at the tender age of six, mulling over magazines directed at people more than three times his age. There was Kenny on his first day of second grade, sitting with Stanley Marsh on the bus as Kyle Broflovski gave Eric Cartman a bloody nose and a black eye in the background.

A new plan...

"That's it!" Death shot out of their throne so fast that even monotone Judy startled, Kenny's file falling in a flutter of paper to the floor. "That's it!" They cried again, pacing excitedly. They could practically hear the pieces of their new plan clicking into place. "Judy, take the Strategizers off the case! The Killers too! I've got it!"

"Y- yes, my lord," Judy said, clearly bewildered as she picked up the telephone and dialed a number. "Jacob? Yes, Death has ordered the immediate removal of every Killer and Strategizer on Kenneth McCormick's case. Yes, immediate. No. Yes. Thank you, have a good day." She put the phone down and glanced at Death. "If you don't mind my asking, master, what is your plan?"

"I don't mind at all, Judy! Not at all!" Death was grinning wider than they had in a long time. "I realized that Kenny isn't going to come here on his own, so we have to lure him!"

"Lure him, my lord?"

"Yes!" Death snapped a finger and the images of three figures were hovering in the room. Death was practically jumping for joy. "If he won't stay on his own, you see, I'll have to make him want to stay. Make him want to show himself. So what better way to do that than take something of his?"

"Oh," Judy said slowly, eyes darting from the images of the people to Death. "Are you suggesting that we..."

Death spoke quickly. "That is exactly what I'm suggesting, my dear Judy. We kill one of Kenny's friends. Then we kill Kenny. Then we lure our friend here with his friend and offer a deal. Either he lets me keep his soul and I give his friend's life back, or the friend's soul stays with me and he can go back to his touch and go with me, but this time with an extra dash of guilt! That's a deal he can't worm his way out of!"

They didn't wait for their receptionist's response as they strode over to examine Kenny's closest friends. "Now it is simply the question of who," they mulled. His eyes first fell on Eric Cartman, and their lip curled with distaste in spite of themself. Death tried to see the best in everybody, but there wasn't much good to see in the pudgy boy that stood before them. "No, no, certainly not him," they said. "I don't want him in here anytime soon." With a wave of their hand the boy's image vanished.

"So that just leaves Stanley Marsh and Kyle Broflovski," they spoke, thinking aloud. "Hmmm. Both good people, and I'm sure I could tolerate either one of them for however long it takes for our friend to die. Hmmm."

Death was sure Judy was privately laughing at them as they preformed "eeny meenie miny moe" on the images of the boys, but they didn't particularly care. It was effective.

They were also sure the entire system thought they had gone mad when they announced they were taking the day off to kill two children.

But they were also sure that their plan was flawless.

Kenneth McCormick was going to die. And when he did, he would stay completely, one hundred percent dead.

Death would make sure of it.