Jonathan had taken the same bus to occupy the shift that he took six days of the week. The bus took him to the inner city, where that mind-numbing job of his kept him eternally unsatisfied and ever bored, and yet it was the only job which he was fit to hold. Now he was simply taking the route back. He had taken the same route today, yet there was one glaring difference. How strange it was for only one element to change for the whole system, so seemingly sturdy, to abruptly collapse.

Even though they he had been staring out the window throughout his trip, he did not realize what had happened until it was too late. The next thing he realized, there was a large explosion. Jonathan's only hope, as shocking as it might have been, was that it had been some kind of attack. He would prefer it to be an attack by a strong and worthy nation, which would spark off a long and costly conflict which would scar generations, but he would also settle for the more mundane terrorist attack. His greatest fear at the moment was that his death wouldn't mean anything, and that the crash was merely due to the incompetency of the driver. Such thoughts of glory protected Jonathan from any actual fear of death.

For one brief moment, Jonathan felt death. He could feel the breath of the reaper down on him, his bloody scythe coming to collect him. Even if no such reaper had truly come down, Jonathan felt a moment more poignant than any he had felt during life, and he knew he felt his own death. However, the next moment he was clearly alive. He was not in any sort of afterlife, but at the sight of the burning bus. His body felt different. He was more fluid than he had been before, and yet he had remained solid all the same. A pinch of his arm told Jonathan that he appeared to be the same on the outside, but he was aware that something about him was different. His new fluidity made him feel as if he could move however he wanted, and the crash had left him with no injuries. Unpleasant particles filled his lungs, and so he made them vanish. How he could do such a feat was truly beyond him at the time, and it only heightened his sense of bewilderment.

The crash did not seem to have had any effect on him. On the contrary, Jonathan had felt more alive than he had ever felt in the entirety of his existence. Walking among the charred ruins of the crash the bus had inflicted, he cleared a path for himself to depart. What he was doing still remained a mystery to himself, but he let out a fireball with enough force and power to clear a path for himself. Jonathan might have done better to stay where he was and gain a ride from one of the policemen who now surrounded this place, but that would have been him thinking in the pure practicality he had been living in his first life. He knew that he was doing everything exactly as it should be. So Jonathan walked through the pathway he had cleared with his own power, the flames surrounding him not disturbing him as much as they would have in his previous life. It was not as if he was immune to them, only that he knew they could do no damage to him. He wondered how long his old name of Jonathan would still fit for him.