The Grim Reaper's Assistant emerged from the haunted house with a purpose.

Granted he also came out rather dusty and sore and with his face puffy from crying, and he'd had some trouble getting the door opened, and he had no idea where either his employer or adversary was, but the purpose remained and that was somewhat reassuring.

He also seemed to be doing a whole sight better than the Reaper himself, who had plummeted from the sky in bird form and landed at his feet with a squelch like some disgraced angel (which seemed appropriate enough).

Though half-destroyed as he was the bird appeared almost annoyed by Michael's presence.

“What are you doing here?” the raven stage-whispered, “It's not safe! If you've found something you ought to have signaled me.”

“And what exactly was I to do, send up a flare?” the boy wanted to retort but instead chose to ignore the bird's absurd beratement.

“How does it feel Mr. Mortality?”

With one hand Michael scooped up his employer's bent body in time to dodge yet another barrage of chains, as with a sing-song voice the killer made his presence known.

“To know that every move you make is a mistake and everything you touch is destroyed?”

“Are you sure you mean me and not your mother?” the Reaper returned flatly, before hopping from Michael's grasp and with a burst of wind changing forms.

Blood stained his clothing and he took a moment to pop part of a broken stick-figure arm back into its socket, but the Tall Man seemed unbothered by the partial destruction of his body.

With the arm that seemed to be working, he raised his scythe for battle.

The spirit seemed to ignore the taunt (and it was rather weak, to be honest) and pressed on, “Surely, after more than a century, you're weighed down by the shame of your failures? The guilt of the harm you bring others? The promises you tried to keep, broken so easily...”

“Silence, Dead One!” the Reaper shot back with a vehemence that took Michael by surprise.

Dr. Grimm smiled.

“No dull attempts at wit for that I see,” he hummed, “Perhaps you do have something you'd like removed, under all those bones?”

“I've no heart if that's what you mean,” Mr. M said before taking the offensive with his scythe.

Every thrust and slice was met with chains that, without a heart to anchor them, easily shattered; but when as Reaper drew close enough to touch spirit with scythe, his blade met the doctor's scalpel, which despite its size seemed to stop him in his tracks.

“Really,” the devil purred, “because it seems to me your bleeding heart is the whole reason that boy is here. Charity can become such a selfish thing, can't it?”

Mortality's eyes widened with an emotion Michael didn't understand.

Actually, Michael didn't understand most of this, but the realization that the monster knew he was there anyway jolted him out of stealth and quiet and into action.

Be brave for them.

Leaping forward he cried, “Excuse me!”

Both specters looked at him as though he were a mad man.

“Um,” he said, rushing on before either could stop him, “well, I thought about what ye said to me earlier, and I realized ye were right! I'm full of guilt and I don't like me heart! Please take it away from me so I can become an empty husk and be at peace!”

There was a brief instant of confusion as the Reaper's face twisted in incredulity, then horror as the spirit shot him a wicked grin.

Then they were racing toward him.

“MICHAEL NO!”

“Yes,” he thought, bracing himself for what was to come.

What followed was a flash, a break, and a cry.

Or rather, more than one of each.

The first flash was the glint of the setting sun and the newly lit streetlights on the Jack of Heart's demon knife.

The second came with the first break, as said demon knife cut through a thick, black chain it was never intended to encounter, shattering it to dust.

Then came another break was the string on Mr. MacBranain's already abused rosary beads snapped in Michael's too-tight grasp, scattering wooden bits across the cobbled pavement.

Three cries followed; a whimper of pain, a wail of endless cosmic horror, and a very human bellow of rage.

Putting things more plainly: the Jack of Hearts took Michael's bait and went for his chest with his knife. Michael, not even giving fear a chance to set in, whipped out the bit of Adeliza's chain he'd hidden behind his back and held it across his chest just as the spirit's knife fell. As the young lady had promised, the chain was utterly destroyed, and with it, all the chains the monster had forged.

Like a rain of black glass, they fell away from the spirit's neck and wrists.

Dr. Nathaniel Grimm shrieked in utter, inhuman terror, as with the chains he lost the last strand of yarn holding him to this world.

But victory came with a cost.

The knife may have shattered the chain, but in doing so it passed through it and with the last of the Heart Collector's strength embedded deep in Michael's chest.

Michael choked out his own scream as a flood of cold eviler than any the boy had yet encountered washed over him. He was drowning in an Arctic ocean, drowning in a dark vacuum of emptiness, drowning in the coldest cold of all; the cold of the dead.

Yet it was with a joyful knowledge Michael slipped under that final wave of unconsciousness: the knowledge that he had finally, finally, finally done something right.

The last thing he saw before being swallowed by the darkness was Mr. Mortality bringing down his scythe and, with a roar of fury, sending the Heart Collector to Hell.