(Universal POV)

In the loud, buzzing streets of New York City, sixteen year old Lily Woodland's fingers tap vigorously against her phone as she texts her friend, "I'll b @ your house soon! Cya!" twirling a strand of her shoulder-length light ginger hair. She can't wait for the huge slumber party she'd be attending; high schoolers barely attend parties these days. Lily smiles down at the two large white bags she was carrying. She'd saved up her whole monthly allowance in order to prepare for the treats and cosmetics so that this slumber party would be legendary! As she crosses sidewalks and roads, Lily finally spots her friend's apartment across the street. Excitement filling up in her quicker than a jet plane could fly, she joyfully sprints over the painted white pattern on the black pavement. Just as Lily's purple flat is about to touch the sidewalk, a sudden huge force slams into her with painfully powerful speed, Lily too shocked to even scream. Her whole body feeling like lead, the girl tumbled onto the hard, dark street, her head hurting like crazy. Lily puts a tentative finger up to her head, only to widen her eyes when she sees that her finger is dripping in dark red blood. All around her, people are screaming and people are on their phones calling the ambulance. But it is too late. Lily's breathing stops, and her vision is swarmed with black nothingness.

A few corners and sidewalks away, sixteen year old Hazel Jiang strolls along casually, her right hand gripped tightly on the leash her dog, Winter, is pulling. This is typical for her, since her mother always makes her walk the family's teacup Maltese, as Mrs. Jiang uses an excuse that "her boss always needed her around Seven O'Clock, for there's always a new patient." Sure, Hazel got the fact that doctors like her mom are busy, but why are they always pulled at Seven? "Gee, what a great mystery to solve!" She blurts out loud, tapping her finger against her chin sarcastically. Not that Hazel was going to complain, for she was the one who asked the family if they could get a dog. Suddenly, Winter's head snaps up, and she lets out a noisy, ferocious bark. "What is it, girl?" Hazel asks, but she already knew the answer after she gazes up at a tree. Perched neatly upon a dangling branch squatted a tiny brown squirrel, it's beady black eyes gorging into Hazel's dark ones. The squirrel focuses it's gaze at Winter, then bolts down the tree, across the sidewalk. Winter, of course, scampers rapidly after it, dragging a frightened and annoyed Hazel along, her long black braid flying in the air. Soon, they neared a bridge that connected one street to another, the water beneath it shimmering in the dawn light. Unfortunately, the squirrel leaps over the bridge and onto a branch. Before Hazel could yell, "Stop Winter!", the fluffy white furball leaps after the stupid mammal. Hazel screams in fear, but she couldn't catch her dog before she tumbles off the bridge, into the air, below the depths of the water. The sudden impact of the girl hitting the water shocks her, and she couldn't get herself to hold her breath. Hazel struggles wildly, trying to remember what her swim coach said, but the deep, dark waves swallow her whole, cursing her to never see the surface again.

To the south of the bridge, seventeen year old Alexander Grace is enjoying his soccer game. So far his team, the Leopards, were leading the game, and he can't wait to head back home with his head held high in victory. Xander grins at that thought, and races towards where the ball is running. Stealing the round object and juggling it with his feet, he heads toward the goal. Alexander's leg strikes, and the black and white ball flies into the air, into the goal. He opens his mouth in a cheer, and the coach calls them for a half-time break. "Good job, dude!" his friend calls. A chilly wind passes through his slightly spiky blond hair, and he grins. Soon, the team is back on the field, but the other team starts winning. However, a strip of hope passes through the boy as he sees that one of his teammates got the ball. Xander races up to him and yells, "Pass!" hoping to head the ball to a person towards the goal so that they could score. His teammate does pass the ball to him, and it is only when the blue-eyed boy sees the head guard on his teammate's forehead that Xander realizes that he forgot his own head guard on the bleachers. Before he can dodge the ball, the round object lands onto his forehead with a very hard thud. Pain passes through Alexander's head, and he clutches it, groaning. It didn't help matters that an opponent took no hint that he was hurt, and he shoved Xander out of the way forcefully. Now, he was holding both his head and stomach. Xander heads over to the bleachers to tell his coach what happened, but his coach is too far away, so he just decides to sit down for a while and tell him later. After half an hour, his vision swarms hazily and his head and stomach hurt even more. Alexander finally staggers over to his coach, and the next events are hard to remember. He gets taken away on a stretcher, and then passes out. The next thing he knew, Xander finds himself lying in a hospital bed. Some people above him are murmuring, "He can't make it. We might have been able to cure him if he told us this earlier, but no. The wounds are making this situation worse and worse, and we'll can't save him." Shocked, Alexander tries to scream, "No! Don't do it!" but something sharp jabs into him, and he shrinks away into the dark.

East of the hospital, eighteen year old Mark Williams sits at his room, chilling on his computer. It's not that he's spending his time playing video games, but Mark is studying to become an electrical engineer, for that is the career he wants when he grows up. As he looked at the contents of a cell phone, Mark's mind wanders towards his mother, who recently passed away from cancer. He recalled her last words to him, "You will always be my intelligent little boy." Mark sighs. Why do such horrible things happen to such amazing people? His mom, who's job involved technology and science, had inspired him to become an electrical engineer, and he was going to do that for her. Suddenly, Mark's computer flashes, then shuts down into a dark screen. "What happened?" He wonders. Mark checks the wires hanging from the computer, then followed them. When he tracks his way back to where the wires plug into the wall, a thick black wire catches his sight. There! This wire is frayed. Mark groans, then takes a pair of scissors. This was going to be dangerous. If Mark's fingers slip, then he could get electrocuted. He holds the wire tightly with his left hand, then positions it with the scissors in his right hand, ready to cut. All of a sudden, a huge gray pigeon, it's dark wings beating quickly in the moonlight, slams up into the window in front of him with a loud bang. "Ahh!" Mark yells in shock. As he jumped up in fright, his fingers slip from the wire, and a flashing shock runs from his hand and through his whole body. Mark barely has enough time to say, "Crap!" before tingles rush inside him, and Mark feels little sparks everywhere inside him. Panicking, Mark races downstairs to tell his father but halfway down the steps, his body unexpectedly turns to lead and he collapses onto the stair railing, unconsciously rolling onto the floor before his dad screams in surprise and worry.

The next week, four new coffins make their way into the cemetery, ready to be buried. People passing by stare at the hearse in the graveyard, and cluck their tongues sadly. After the four bodies are buried into the fresh soil, a nearby robin sings a cheery melody, having no idea what was going on. Little did everyone know about the mysterious stranger hiding behind a tree ...

Ariel Matthews, a terribly short-and short-tempered at that-thirty year old woman in a strange dark green suit and skirt with pinned up white-blond hair steps out in front of a tall headstone shaped like a cross. "Cory, hand me the chemicals, won't you?"

"Sure." A young man with dark hair and skin and bright brown eyes who looks to be about twenty years old calls from the back of a purple van. He takes out a bunch of bottles holding some strange red liquid, and walks over, handing a couple to Ariel. He then strides over to the four newly planted headstones. "We'll pour the chemicals down these four, right?"

"Exactly." She responds. "We do not need any more spirits rising up and interfering with our mission. Once we stop every newly deceased person from letting their ghost out of their proper grave, it'll take down one more burden, then we'll just worry about finding the agency the spirits who escaped before we did what we did started, and destroy that."

Cory nods. "Sounds nice to me."

"Perfect." Ariel's dry lips stretch into a menacing smile that could make even the happiest people cry. "Let's leave these liquids in the car instead, so no one suspects anything, while we have lunch, and after that we'll pour them in."

As Ariel and Cory head to a nearby restaurant to eat, a spirit who's about sixty years old-you can never tell how old a ghost is, for they stay the same age they were before they died-tiptoes up to the purple van. It already required lots of skill not to be noticed, but spirits are somehow weak and clumsy in the daytime, whereas they are skilled and healthy at night. Maggie switches the bottles with some similar bottles with the labels, Shape-Shifting, Invisibility, Object-Moving, and X-Ray Vision. She didn't know if the liquid in those bottles do what their labels say, but they certainly must be better than those red liquids. Maggie purses her lips at the bottles, but her eyes show sadness and misery in them.

Maggie still couldn't get over the fact how Ariel, her sweet, smart, cheery daughter who she raised, became such a sly, evil, ill-tempered lady. Her daughter began to hate her when Maggie got upset over a test score Ariel received in high school. The elder woman recalled and regretted herself saying, "I wish I had a better daughter than you!", leading Ariel to lock herself up in her room and mope, cursing herself. After a while, she began staying away from home more and more, until the day Maggie passed away from both cancer and heartbreak. Later, Ariel visited her mother's grave to say a proper goodbye, when Maggie rose up as her spirit and scolded her daughter for being "a cold and filthy creature." Hurt, Ariel replied, "I don't care, you old hag! You can go float away into thin air for all I care!"

This was both stupid and offensive, for ghosts can walk like regular people, and they do not float like in those old legends. It's just that they tend to be more active at night, when they have a weird silvery glow around them, and they cannot eat human food or else they will become very ill. In fact, they don't eat at all. They can also be forever destroyed with regular human weapons, as well, although guns do not do any damage for some reason.

A month after Maggie's death, Ariel caught her mother the same place above her own headstone, and gave her some nasty cuts and scratches, leaving Maggie dripping with strange golden blood. Then, Maggie befriended a few other old spirits, and they would sit in a deep, chilly forest with a campfire, telling silly jokes and stories. However, their moment of happiness was destroyed when they suddenly found themselves face-to-face with Ariel, who threatened the five elder fellows with a knife. They ran off at full speed, returning to their graves just on time. The next morning, the spirits found almost half the entire cemetery dripping with gold blood, which was probably because the brave spirits who saw what happened decided to defend their friends and fight Ariel, but they lost to the fight, giving up their second life.

That was when Maggie realized that her daughter must be killed, then destroyed, once and for all, so that Ariel couldn't do any more harm to innocent people.

She started a secret agency of spirits so that they could save each other from Ariel's dangerous hands. And it was only yesterday when she spied on her daughter spilling dangerous red liquid into the graves. She wondered why Ariel did that, and she found out the hard way. On the night after a person is buried, their ghost rises up as a spirit. But the graves with the red liquid never produced their owners as spirits. This was why she switched the liquid with the other four bottles. In hope that four other people could survive and help the agency stop Ariel.

The loud honking of a car snaps Maggie out of her thoughts, and she realizes that Ariel and Cory were heading out of the restaurant. She sneaks back under her headstone, and watches her daughter dump the liquid from each of one of the switched bottles onto each of the new headstones.

After the purple van drove down the street towards another place, Maggie appears out of her grave again, then examines the names on the headstones: Lily Woodland, Hazel Jiang, Alexander Grace, and Mark Williams. They were all in their teenage years.

Maggie smiles to herself. She only had to wait until midnight, when her new friends would meet her.