When Su Ming and the others found the Chief, he was holding a memorial service for a cockroach.
Having completed his task, Scarecrow immediately fled back to his station. Charlie switched personalities once again, becoming "Beautiful Polly," a pale girl in a black Gothic dress, carrying a little parasol.
This was the personality born after Charlie tried to kill herself following her rape, failed to die, and was talked out of it by "Death." That was why she looked exactly like that smiling Concept Manifestation, except she lacked the iconic Ankh Cross ornament.
Besides, her power could only kill people; it could not send them into reincarnation and grant them new lives.
She was beautiful and wore a gentle smile, but she was not Death in the end.
Su Ming was well acquainted with the genuine Death. There was nothing to worry about from a knockoff, so he paid more attention to the side of the filthy water pit.
They were still in Detroit's sewers. After following the foul-smelling current for several kilometers, they found the Chief, a disabled man, crouching at a bend where the water slowed. He held up a cup containing a cockroach.
The cockroach was not scurrying about. Instead, it stood upright and raised its two forelegs, as if praising the sun—assuming there was a sun in the pitch-black sewers.
"Chief?"
Su Ming called out to him, but the old man remained facing away from them without any reaction. The cockroach praised the sun inside the cup, while he held the cup over his head as though it contained a sacred relic.
"Niles?" Barry ran in front of him in a flash of lightning. As he called out, he reached for the old man's shoulder.
This time, the other man reacted. But instead of answering Barry