All was peaceful in the Celestial Elevators.

Well, mostly peaceful.

"We shouldn't have trusted him," Lily whispered, face white. In spite of being dead, both she and James looked rather good. They were dressed in their favorite outfits and appeared to be in the full bloom of youth, which of course they should have been.

If they weren't quite so dead.

"Always with the regrets," muttered their personal shinigami, poking irritably at the walls of the elevator with the tip of his scythe.

Lily ignored him. "Peter… how could it be Peter? We would have known! Oh James, our poor Harry—he's just a—"

"—baby," came the enraged voice of quite another woman. The elevator doors slid open.

"On duty too, I see, Scrabgum," muttered the Potter's shinigami as a colleague of his ushered a hopping mad redhead into the lift. "Yours one of the pitiful 'if only-ers' too?"

"How could I agree to such a hair-brained scheme?" thundered the new redhead. "Of all the arguments to lose! If he wanted to win an argument so badly, I could've given in on the one about wearing socks to bed—eventually—"

Scrabgum, the angry woman's deathly escort, inched as far away from his charge as he could possibly get within the very confined space of the elevator, which meant he was squeezing himself in between Lily and James.

"—If it hadn't been such a tragic moment—got swept up in the emotion, oh I never was good with rule twenty-five—"

"They called her 'The Bloody Habanero'" Scrabgum confided to the Potter's shinigami, shuddering fearfully.

"Um—excuse me—but did you say something about a baby?" ventured Lily, wondering if another woman was feeling her heartbreak. And she appeared to be right on the mark.

"Ye-e-e-es!" sobbed the 'Bloody Habanero', turning to look at the other souls in the elevator for the first time. "My precious little Naruto! I only knew him for an hour—oh my poor baby—and I lo-o-ove him SO MUCH—" she became incoherent for a few words, wiping sloppily at her cheeks and nose— "and his father went and sealed the Nine-Tails in him! He'll be all alone! MY POOR NARUTOOOO!"

Lily felt tears pricking at her own eyes. "I had to leave my baby behind too," she managed between hiccups. James tightened his arms around her, but didn't raise his face from where he'd kept it buried against her shoulder. "Our sweet Harry! My only comfort is that I was allowed to exchange my life for his—but he'll be all alone—"

"Oh for Pete's sake," huffed the Potter's shinigami in exasperation. "Here we are, taking you to Heaven, but is it ever good enough? Of course not! It's just moaning and groaning the whole time."

The Habanero's shinigami perked up a bit. "Say, I just downloaded that new tune—'Sorry, Bub, But This Ain't Heaven'—wanna give a listen?"

"Yes, please," said his colleague, and the huddled together over a glowing MP3 player, sharing the headphones.

The Habanero-woman paused in her hiccupping and snot-wiping to stare at them for a split second, then seemed to give herself a shake and turned back to Lily.

"My name's Kushina, what's yours?"