Recap: Aria smiled. Maybe they would have more in common in that regard than she'd originally though. She could work with straight truth.

 ~~~

"Chance, honey! It's time for dinner," his mother called from another part of the house. 

"Are you going to come with me?" Chance asked as he scrambled to his feet. 

The mark on Aria's wrist started to burn. A single soul this time. 

"Not tonight. I have a job to go to."

"You'll be back though, right?"

"Well I do have to teach you all about being a Bridge, don't I?" Aria said with a smile. 

Chance grinned wide and nodded his head violently. "Yeah!" 

He leaped at Aria, giving her a hug. She sat there, unsure of what to do. She'd seen people hug before. It seemed like a fairly common thing, but she had never been hugged. 

"See you later, Ari!" Chance ran out of his room and Aria had to go to her next job. 

~~

Some souls made Aria resent her job, and that man had definitely been one of them. A rich guy who had always gotten what he wanted, thinking he could boss around Death, or rather, a Bridge after the connection had already been severed. Why were some so pretentious?

"I thought you were going to stop interfering?" Aria sighed. She'd only just gotten the dreaded soul to cross through his door, and Marcell was already there to pester her again. 

"I never said such things." Marcell crossed his arms. "It's not as if I enjoy coming to you, but Death has changed the circumstances on your arrangement."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Not only are you on a probationary period in terms of your work. You are also to be examined. you must be trained and put through tests. It only makes sense that someone teaching a potential new Bridge know everything about the area they are teaching."

"I am a Bridge. How much better can you get?"

"Do you know how to project yourself to any place you want to be at any time?" Marcell asked, his eyebrow raising from behind his sunglasses.

She knew how to let herself travel in the physical realm, but she'd only just ended up wherever she ended up. She didn't know she could control her location. 

"Have you mastered the hypnosis to lure your soul into submission? Or how about you ability to sense what the soul is feeling to prey off their emotion to make them more susceptible to follow you? Or perhaps you've excelled at the ability to change your appearance to fit what will work best for the soul you're to guide."

Aria looked at the ground. She knew how to do none of that. She knew all the abilities existed, there were even some others he hadn't mentioned. She had just never been able to get them to work properly. You can only fail so many times before you wonder if maybe you're just not meant to do it. She'd been able to get by using her own tactics though, and reaching the end goal was far more important than how you got there. Or so she thought. 

"I take your silence to mean you know none of that?" Marcell asked raising an eyebrow. 

Aria bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted to give her best retort, but she knew it wasn't the time. The truth was, she knew nothing she should. He and Death were both right. But she never had anyone to teach her. Not really. In the beginning, someone had explained how it all worked, and then she had been left to figure the rest out on her own. Needless to say, it hadn't exactly worked. 

"So how am I going to be taught? Hopefully you'll have a slightly better system then when I was first dumped into this role."

"Do you have a complaint you would like to make?"

Aria crossed her arms. She couldn't believe she was being thrown under the metaphorical bus for the shortcomings of the system that had been in existence since before her. It was infuriating that they wanted to punish her for their mistakes. She hadn't been properly taught, and now then it turned out that the reason she was in her current mess was because of something going wrong on her end when they made her a Bridge. 

"Actually, I would like to make one. You crank out workers or whatever we are to you, but don't take the proper steps to make sure everyone is able to fulfill their job descriptions in the way you want. No one teaches us and makes sure we know what we're doing, and apparently whatever you do to create Bridges doesn't work properly."

"Your complaints have been taken down and will be evaluated for merit."

"For merit?" Aria raised her eyebrows. "What? Do you think I just refused to learn these things? And are you now trying to deny that anything went wrong with my becoming a Bridge? Because you were basically admitting failure the other day."

"I will neither confirm nor deny because it is not up to me. I do not make the final decisions as you know. All information is gathered and taken to Death for the final decision."

"You let some little girl control every aspect of this. None of this is a toy. It's not something you can just hand over to a child. These are souls, they are people, they have lives, I even had a life apparently. These are things that need to be taken seriously."

"Death's appearance has nothing on what she does. She may appear as a child, but she is far older than you. She is as old as time itself, and to not take her seriously may be your most fatal error." Marcell's voice was hard. 

"Threats aside-"

"It's not a threat," he cut in.

"Either way. How will my teachings be different this time around if it obviously didn't work before?"

"Your teachings will be done by me."

"Great. So now I have to spend even more of my ticking ten years with you. If only I could go back in time and not touch that boy so I didn't have to deal with you."

One side of Marcell's mouth pulled up. "Look at it this way, now you get to finally learn how to be the best Bridge you can be."

"And if I don't learn something and fail one of the tests?"

"Then it will be the last test you ever take. Failing the test means the final elimination of your soul."

Final elimination of my soul? Aria thought to herself. No pressure.

*****

So now Death has changed the conditions of their arrangement. If Aria doesn't learn how to use all abilities Bridges have, then she will cease to exist. What do you think about that?

If you liked the chapter, please press the little star, and don't forget to leave your comments below! 

Thanks all,
Red Assassin