Hi guys! Well, I know I'm a bit shitty at carrying out a fic to the end (a la Chosen, At the Point of her Dagger, okay, pretty much every fic but two that I've ever written on this site), but I'm trying to change. This is my fresh new offering to you all, something a little different.

I would like to warn you that I'm dropping a few F-bombs but keeping this rated T, so you are welcome to complain or skip this altogether if you're offended by that. The premise of this story is basically that I wanted to take all the wonderful ideas of Mai HiME vampires, demons, werewolves, etc, and melt them together into a big supernatural fondue with lots of new aspects.

I'd also love if readers have a particular mythological being/entity they'd like to see in this fic, leave a review and I'll check them out. I haven't assigned all the characters to beings yet, so I'm open to ideas.

So please review, drop a line and tell me if you like it, if it shows promise, whether you'd like me to continue it. Have a good read! (And I don't own Mai HiME, just to clarify)

Chapter One: The Asset

Every time somebody called out "Doctor Kruger!", Natsuki winced, still. It just wasn't her; her mother must be turning in her grave, somewhere.

She'd been a Foundation One doctor at Fuuka General Hospital for a couple of weeks now, ferreting around behind the obstetrics consultant she'd been assigned to, and still she felt responsibility already settling on her shoulders. She had to run a load of tests that she couldn't remember the names of on a list of hundreds of pregnant women of varying… pregnantness. It was stressful, it was disorientating, and she'd never admit it was everything she'd ever dreamed of when she'd opened that letter seven years ago.

Natsuki sighed, hitched her glasses back up her stubby nose and made a face at the urine sample she was carrying. Of all the departments she could have been assigned to, obstetrics and gynaecology was not her first choice. Her best friend Chie had lucked out and was spending her first six months in A&E, and had text her on their third day to say she'd just amputated someone's right foot. Natsuki at the time had been examining a heavily pregnant forty-four year old woman's lady-bits. Glamorous, she thought bitterly, but hey, she was here, in Fuuka, doing medicine, just as her mother had asked. She felt fulfilled. But she really did want to amputate someone's limbs at some point too.

"Dr. Kruger, are you going to stare at that urine sample all day?"

Her head snapped up. "No, Dr. Nielsen. I'm just transfixed by the particular shade of vermillion."

"If you've got time to be smart with me, you've got time to check Mrs. Jones' medication out of the pharmacy." Natsuki groaned. The Pharmacy was like, three floors away. "And be back in time to insert Miss Lowe's urinal catheter."

She flipped him off to his back and strode off through the hospital. Most people knew to get away from a pissed-looking junior doctor, probably one doing a menial and unflattering job, but there were the occasional clusters that didn't know better (junior doctors callously referred to the visiting families or friends of patients as 'clusters', because they tended to feel alienated and nervous in a hospital and bunch together, shuffling around like a giant eight-legged race).

The main Pharmacy was three floors down in the adjoining building, so Natsuki had a bit of a trek before she made it across, smoothing her white lab coat down and nervously touching her stethoscope. The Pharmacy guys were not exactly chummy at the best of times.

"Morning." She tried to appear unfazed. "I need the medication assigned to this woman."

She slid the file across the counter at the grumpy-looking pharmacist, who scanned it, tore out a sticker from Mrs. Jones' file and disappeared into the cavernous back room, re-emerging with a paper bag full of different boxes. He pushed it back at her and wordlessly demanded her signature on the sign-out form.

I love you too, she thought, patting herself down for a pen. She kept losing pens. Either someone asked for one and then never gave it back, or she left it somewhere. Finally, she found one in the inside pocket of her coat and scrawled her name. "Thanks."

He grunted. The pharmacists were wonderful people.

On the way back, Chie paged her, a number code she knew meant that Chie was taking a break and was inviting Natsuki to take hers too. She paged back negative. Then Dr. Nielsen paged her to ask where she was (Mrs. Jenkins' waters had broken! Oh very dear…), so she sighed and continued with her day.

Two catheters, a birth (a boy, if you were wondering) and some fluctuating blood pressures later, Natsuki collapsed on a bench outside the back of the hospital with Chie, taking her fourth break of the day.

"I wish I was doing A&E," she grumbled, fiddling with her lighter. "I've seen enough vaginas today to put me off women."

"Nice visual." The well-known womaniser chuckled, texting at the same time. "It's great and stuff, but so tiring. That's why I get all these breaks."

"I suppose." They sat in silence. "Have you picked where you're doing your extra contribution hours?"

"Walk-in clinic." She winced. "Dull but unstressful. Oh, they're seeing each other!"

"Hmm?"

"Midwife and a consultant. What've you chosen?"

"Dunno." She scratched her head. All junior doctors had to do extra contribution hours on top of their normal hours, as part of a community improvement scheme. "I thought about geriatrics."

Chie's made a face. "Don't. Old people are horrible. Go to the mortuary."

"Dead people?"

"They need a 'consulting clinician'. Kenta from the ICU told me that he did it last year, and they never called on him at all. Basically it's an honorary job to keep the medical council happy. You should apply."

Natsuki's innate laziness, something she'd worked hard to suppress in medical school, washed pleasantly over her when she received this news. "Nice. Whom do I apply to?"

"Dr. Helene in pathology." Chie said, and then added as an afterthought, stubbing out her cig on a wall. "I would."

"You would tap anything, Chie."

"Your redhead has you on too tight a leash." She replied with a cheeky smile, standing up. "Well, I'm going to get back in now."

"But I have another fifteen minutes!"

"Sucks to be you, Natsuki." Chie disappeared through the back door, leaving Natsuki outside, unamused. She looked at her phone, seeing three texts from Nao that she hadn't answered and a missed call from the garage. And a threatening email from her landlord, too, for good measure. Brilliant. Well, she might as well go and secure the easy job with Dr. Helene.

But she had to find the way to Pathology first. Shit.

"I'm home!" Natsuki shouted as she slammed the already splintering door of her apartment closed and dumped her bag in the hall. "Oi, Nao?"

"Don't have an aneurysm, I'm coming." The woman in question appeared out of the master bedroom, hopping while trying to get her tights off. "Good day?"

"Alright." Natsuki shrugged off her coat. "You?"

"Governor up my arse again. You'd have thought the election was fucking tomorrow." Nao sidled up behind her. "You'd better get more than that lab coat off, doggy."

"Ruff, ruff." Natsuki growled as Nao's arms encircled her and started to unbutton her shirt. "I have some notes to write up."

"I have some speeches to write." Nao replied, "But that doesn't stop me."

Natsuki smirked and allowed her shirt to be pulled off. It was times like these she was glad of Nao's presence in her life- when they were on good terms. They'd lived together since forever, or at least their first years of college, and they'd been many things. Friends, enemies, a couple, friends with benefits, in an open relationship, you name it, they'd tried it. At the moment it was very couple-y, but she knew it would change once they had an argument. Oh well, she thought: Stop thinking, Natsuki, and take your knickers off. Good girl.

Be-Beep!

Her pager went off.

"Fuck."

"No." Nao gripped her as she reached for the annoying little electronic thing clipped to the skirt that had found its way onto the sofa during the flustering removal of clothing that had preceded this interruption. "If you answer your pager, you naughty girl, I'm going to-"

Drrrrr, drrrrr.

Nao's blackberry vibrated on the kitchen counter.

"Fuck."

"Now who's the workaholic?" Natsuki smirked, finding the pager with her toes and trying to pull it towards herself. She checked the number. She didn't recognise it, but that meant that it was probably quite important. "It's probably quite important." She said.

Nao reached behind her and nearly overbalanced trying to reach the counter. "Can we let go of each other?"

"I had to get my pager with my feet, you can bloody well get your phone with your hands." To make the point, Natsuki held tighter onto Nao's remaining arm. "Or we could forget your phone?"

"If you forget your pager."

They looked at each other. "We're not going to, are we?"

"Nope."

"Ah well." They detached and went to their respective devices. "Ooh, the governor has a last minute invite to a charity dinner tonight and needs me to escort him because he doesn't know shit about anything."

"Did he write that?"

"No, but it's implicit in the pleading tone of the text." Nao smoothed out her fiery hair and texted him back while trying to button up her suit at the same time. "You?"

"Dunno, I don't recognise the number." She called up the extension provided and waited. "Hello?"

"Hello? Dr. Kruger? This is Youko Helene from Pathology."

"Uh, hi again."

"Would you mind coming in? We need you to look at something."

She distinctly remembered Chie promising that Kenta from the ICU had said that she wouldn't have to do anything. Ah, well. "No problem, give me twenty minutes."

"Thanks, Dr. Kruger."

She hung up. "No fucking problem. Nao, I'm back to the hospital."

"I'm off to a charity dinner." She replied haughtily. "How to dress, hmm?"

"Well, for you it's a choice between dangerously slutty or… sluttily dangerous."

"I'm feeling dangerously slutty tonight." They made their way to the bedroom so Nao could pick dresses out of her wardrobe and Natsuki could change out of her rumpled clothes into fresher, more: 'yes, I had a life before you paged me' clothes.

"Right, I'm off, have a great night." Natsuki gave Nao a little kiss before flying out of the apartment, just managing to grab her keys before skidding into the stairwell. She grumbled, looking accusingly at her pager while she ran down the stairs. The mortuary didn't creep her out that much, but still, she'd rather not spend her Wednesday night there. Then again, dead people didn't answer back, which was brilliant. She hoped this was a one off to sign some forms or something, because she didn't fancy coming back in every night to poke a corpse for a bit. Surely the pathology people could do that?

She slipped into the residents' garages and unchained her bike, her petrol-guzzling, far-too-loud, always-breaking, second-hand piece of shit of a motorcycle. She'd always wanted a nice new one, but the chances of that were slim, seeing as how she was trying desperately to pay back her student loans and keep up with rent, and cope with the fact that the local cheap-o supermarket was being replaced by a more expensive, upmarket one. Meh. She hopped on her scum-bucket (her affectionate nickname for the bike) and started it up after several tries, eventually exiting the garage with several vicious plumes of black smoke. Natsuki coughed through the cloud and made another mental note to give up smoking that she'd forget in a couple of hours.

It was only a short drive from her apartment to Fuuka hospital, so she was striding into the path labs fifteen minutes later. Natsuki didn't much like the path labs, because they were brown and cluttered and smelled of coffee. Below them, the mortuary was cold and creepy and smelled of formaldehyde. In a kind of mixture of these two environments, the pathologists smelled of coffee and were creepy. Well, Dr. Helene was all right, as far as pathologists went.

"Dr. Kruger; thanks for coming in." Youko appeared beside her, clipboard in hand. "Follow me?"

They went down the cold, cold steps into the cold, cold mortuary, and Natsuki felt… chilly. The grimy yellow lights reflected off the rows of stainless steel fridge-cabinets that lined the wall. In the middle of the dank room, an examination table was prepped and ready for someone. Youko strode over to one of the fridges and began explaining the problem.

"Generally, mortuary work is pretty dull. Not much happens that a pathologist can't deal with. But yesterday we got two bodies in that don't quite… compute. I thought maybe I've been in path too long and I'm not up to date on the latest clinical stuff, so I asked you to come take a look."

"Right." Natsuki got her glasses out to take a look at the file Youko had handed her. The pathologist meanwhile decanted two corpses onto the exam tables. "Sorry, Dr. Helene, these figures make no sense."

"Exactly." Youko ushered her over. "This is Shiho Huit. High Schooler. Suicide." The cloth came off to reveal a thin, childish-looking teenager with crazy hair. "And this is Joseph Greer. Accountant. Suicide."

"Two suicides? Are they linked?"

"Not that we can see. Forensics were in and out."

Natsuki scratched her head, looking at their figures. "Dr. Helene, their figures aren't… wrong. They're normal. Just in different proportions… the bloodwork comes up as a direct antithesis to human ratios."

Youko's eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"Yeh." Natsuki took her eyes off the messed-up file and took a look at the two bodies. "So their blood is weird. That can happen a while after death, right?"

"No."

"Damn." The junior doctor put on a pair of gloves and examined Joseph Greer. "Anything else?"

"Look at the file."

Natsuki reopened the file. "Ah. Dr. Helene, why have you written in the comments box: human?"

"Well, I took a look at some of their antibodies and antigens. They don't stain correctly. At least, normal, where human antigens stain, those of the same type in these two don't. I can't think of anything, Dr. Kruger. I'm way out of my depth."

"Right." Natsuki looked, perplexed and baffled at the figures on the file, trying to remember diseases that could cause a change in antibody… ness.

"I've got to go and run some tests now, but I hope you'll have some luck where I didn't." Dr. Helene said from where she was already disappearing up the stairs.

"Oi!" Natsuki shouted behind her, but to no avail. "Ugh!"

She slumped down, her elbows on the side of the examination table. "Mr. Greer, what the fuck are you?"

He opened his eyes and stared at her.

"Fuck!" Natsuki launched herself back against the wall, her heart drumming in her chest. It must have just been that the setting hadn't been done very well, she told herself. No, he was blinking. And looking around. His nose was wrinkling. He licked his lips. Groaning, he sat up. A dead man sat up. Natsuki suppressed an urge to urinate. Fuck.

"Urgh…" Greer grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Jesus, what a night."

"Um." She mumbled something and he looked at her searchingly. "Hi. Mr. Greer."

"Father Greer." He corrected absently, looking down at himself. "Could I get something a little more than a modesty cloth?"

"Ah." She unfroze and for an absurd minute searched around for some clothes for him, coming back with some cords and a woolly jumper. "Here you go."

"Fantastic." He stood, stretched and yawned. "Right. So, you are?"

"Dr. Natsuki Kruger."

"Stellar." Greer scratched his chin. "It's never been you before. Has dear Kenta quit?"

Kenta from the ICU who'd used to work here. The name clicked in her mind and Natsuki became more apprehensive. So Kenta had witnessed this before, and had been fine with it. So Kenta had been talking about how easy this work was. So, therefore, Kenta had wanted Chie to come down here and see Father Greer come back to life. What the fuck?

"Uh, yes. I've got Kenta's old job."

"Then he's briefed you?"

"Uh… of course. Yeh. Sorry, he probably left some bits out."

He snorted. "I can tell you're scared. But what are you? I mean, Kenta was an Ankou, perfect for this kind of duty, which is great and all, but lacking variety, you know?"

"Ah- um, yes, I totally understand." Natsuki lied, very confused. Okay, she thought, let's break this down. Dead, not-human man gets back up, appears to know an ICU doctor who is also not human, then asks me what sort of non-human I am. Right. So, if I want to know what the fuck is going on, I should flow with it. And hope that whatever non-human I say I am actually exists.

After this mental soliloquy, Natsuki gulped and answered him. "I'm a- uh, werewolf?"

"Ah! Yes, yes, I see. Are you with the Aswald pack? How is your Alpha doing?"

"Uh, fine?"

"Then he recovered from that nasty silver arrow! Wonderful. You know, the court came down hard on the selkie that did it. Of course you'd know that, what am I saying? I'm always a little hazy after I feed."

Natsuki gulped. Something was very wrong here. "Feed?"

"Kenta didn't tell you? Vampire." He held out his hand and she shook it gingerly, feeling his cold fingers. "I suppose you get all sorts down here. That was very good acting, by the way. With Dr. Helene. I believed you didn't know what was going on. A little sloppy though, but you're new, it's excusable."

What have I go myself into? She thought.

"Right. Sorry. First day and all."

Greer nodded and stretched again, looking back at Shiho. "Ah, to be young and sleepy. Then again, she's a lamia, so she's probably drank a hell of a lot more than an old conservative like me."

"Yeh, I get that a lot." Okay, now she was going too far with this. "I mean, I've heard of that happening a lot."

"Isn't it always? And the succubi, too. Can't take a little, always have to suck a guy dry. But anyway, the night is young, and I have to sign back in with the council otherwise I'll lose my licence."

"Your licence?"

"Yes, my consumer's license. You need one if you're an energy-taker like me or this lovely lamia. Don't suppose you've ever had to apply, being a werewolf." He replied, picking blood out from under his fingernails. "Anyway, must be going."

"Have a good… night." She started as he banged on one of the columns of corpse-fridges and it was revealed as a large door into a dank underground passage. He gave her a smile and disappeared behind it, shutting the fake door as he did so. Natsuki was left stunned and quite frightened for her life.

"Shit." She sank down into a sitting position across from the exam table. "I've gone mental."

What should she do? What had gone wrong? Dr. Helene must notice that Fr. Greer committed suicide every couple of weeks. It didn't fit. That just didn't fit.

She opened up her phone and dithered over calling someone. Nao was in her charity dinner. Chie would be with a girl now. Who did she have left?

"Excuse me." An eerie, sultry voice enquired from the entrance to the morgue. "Who might you be?"

Natsuki looked up into a pair of very dangerous, very non-human eyes. Deep, deep red, resonating in tiny, almost unnoticeable circles of umber and crimson, subtle refractions of strange colours that still appeared red, like green and purple and at the same time a pure, blinding black pupil that throbbed and laughed and did a thousand other things in a single second. Natsuki's mouth went dry and her ears were filled with the thrumming of a thousand instruments, a hundred notes in pure harmony. She couldn't even see a face, just eyes, the rest of her mind somewhere else. Suddenly she wanted to tell the eyes who she was and that she didn't know anything at all but the corpse was walking and what would become of her and Nao and…

Abruptly something within her snapped and she crumpled to the floor, unaware that she'd even stood up at all. Breathing heavily, Natsuki scrambled up, grasping for purchase on the exam table. She turned and looked at the intruder. A young woman- a hot young woman- was standing in a dark coat at the entrance, her head cocked and a confused look on her wonderful face. "My, hello little song-breaker."

Natsuki trembled, thoroughly pissed off at how weird stuff was getting. She bit her lip, circling around the back of the exam table warily. "Hello yourself, little… thingy."

She smiled mockingly. "How unfortunate that you'd find yourself here, seeing what it is you have seen. I'm afraid that, like the lovely Dr. Helene, you'll have to forget this." Then, the non-human woman's face frowned. "Though you broke my song. I dislike that; if you do it again, we are in trouble."

"I'm… sorry?" Natsuki blurted out, her cheeks heating up. "I really don't understand anything. I won't tell anyone."

"Ara, I'm afraid we can't do that." She slowly stepped down the stairs, sauntering, low and casual like a predator. Then again, Natsuki thought in terror, she probably was a predator. All of these non-humans probably were. "Though I'd like to know who I'm about to kill."

"Um, no thanks." Natsuki's heart hammered the inside of her ribcage. "Though, yeh, go right ahead, I'm Natsuki, nice to meet you."

"What a lovely name." the woman replied. "Kanin na, it is just our way. Your associates can be made to forget that you ever existed. " She smiled humourlessly. "I am very practiced at that."

"Sorry, I'd rather not die in the first place." Natsuki looked around for a weapon. Not that she thought she could help it if the woman began doing that singing mind-control thing again. The exam table had a drawer below it with a load of scalpels in. Okay, that was a start. Her aim was all right. As soon as the un-human woman made a move, she'd get a scalpel in the eye. Yeah. Go team 'what the fuck is going on?'!

"I'm afraid that is not possible. Now, this can be easy, or I can take you into the council for them to declare you a liability to otherworld safety and have you executed."

Field trip to the council it is, then!

"Is there any way I could be charged not guilty?" she tried lamely.

The woman considered, her elegant eyebrows rising. Natsuki took a moment to admire her perfectly sculpted beauty, the sharp, defining lines of her face and their contrast to the neat curves of her body. Guilty and dragging herself back to the situation, she took a breath and reached into the drawer, feeling confident in the cold steel of the scalpel. The woman finally smiled. "Perhaps if Natsuki proved herself an asset more than a liability, the council president could override the laws in place."

"That's great. Because I'm a massive asset. You know, in some circles they call me Dr. Natsuki 'The Asset' Kruger? True story."

"You are babbling. That, my little song-breaker, is not a quality that an asset should possess." She stepped closer. "And apologies for my rudeness. I am Shizuru Viola, Otherworld Council President."