CHAPTER ONE : A Murder Most Odd

The air is stale. A fog hangs over the city of London like a burial shroud. The reaper stops at the body, kicking it over with a shoe. It's a rather suspicious death, he thinks as he examines the body of the young woman. Agnes Caulburn, wife of the librarian Martin Caulburn, aged twenty seven, died on March 25th, 1878 at 5pm, cause of death...unknown.

He frowns, looking at the question mark on his to-die list. How could the cause of death be unknown?

The woman's dress is dishevelled, huge slashes crossing over her entire torso and through her hat, as though she was mauled by a bear...but she is not bleeding. Her clothing is torn, but the skin underneath is unbroken. And the body is in a swamp, not in a forest. As far as the reaper is concerned, bears do not dwell in swamps. Unless he's gone mad. Which could be possible, if he's entirely honest.

Her stare is blank, her eyes open but not seeing. If anything that baffles the reaper, it is the look of utmost horror that has been frozen on her face with her death. He equips his death scythe, a grafting knife, and stabs it into her heart, hoping to get a better look at how she died from her cinematic record.

There's nothing.

There is no cinematic record. She doesn't have one. He tries it again, but once again the knife simply digs in, and no cinematic record shows. He scans her body with a spell made to trace demonic contracts, but it finds nothing. Agnes Caulburn was simply a normal human being...with a very abnormal death.

An ear piercing howl makes the reaper lift his attention from the body, grafting knife clutched in his hand. He doesn't hesitate as a growling noise comes from inside the swamp. Out of the same pocket dimension as his death scythe, he takes a radio communicator with the design of two crossed axes on the cover. No earthly creature would see a reaper and not immediately run away from them in panic.

"Luther to homeworld. I repeat, do you read me, Luther to homeworld reporting, to any department that can hear me. Full name, Luther Siegel, dispatch number 2519. I need backup. Now."

There is a few seconds before the signal picks up.

"Administrative department to Luther Siegel, your request has been processed. We are sending two dispatch members into your field- please disclose your location."

A shadow darts from the bushes behind him.

"The Brathburn swamps, an hour's travel west of London, death site of Agnes Caulburn. It is not a request, it is a necessity. We're dealing with something of demonic origin."

"It'll be processed shortly, please hold your ground until security-"

The communicator is knocked out of his hand, the connection going silent.

"-And that's what happened! My poor heart, I almost fainted! To think a reaper could be confronted with the possibility of death!"

"You're sure about this?"

"Sweetie I don't lie about this sort of thing" Grell drapes herself across my office desk, gently pushing the papers I had been working on all day out of the way with a long red-painted nail, propping her chin up with her elbow. We'd been having our daily office chat on my break. "What would I have to gain out of doing so?"

"You're always in the mood for a story." I grumble, fishing the papers she'd slid into my garbage bin out of it, and sticking it neatly in a folder. "Is Luther going to recover?"

She shrugs. "Beats me, darling. I wasn't that fond of him anyway."

"Grell!"

"Alright Alright I know how much he means to you, I overheard the wimpy lookin' gal at the front desk saying he should pull through fine, not that I cared but I'm sharing this tidbit just for you so you don't worry that pretty little head of yours."

"Do they know for sure what happened to him?"

"No, and that's the mystery of it." She peers over her glasses at me with a grin. "That's why they're sending us Dispatch Reapers out in pairs until this case is closed, it's too dangerous to go out alone anymore~"

"And let me guess. You're hoping to be stuck with William, aren't you."

"YES!" She very nearly rolls off the desk. I sigh. Of course she ignores the reality of the situation. Sometimes I feel as though I know Grell better than she knows herself - sure we're safe here in our little alternate plane of being, but she's gonna start missing her freedom to explore the world of the living to her contentment shortly enough without being tied to another reaper all the time.

It's a situation that is interesting enough to say the least. Over the course of the past few days, several bodies in a similar state to that of Agnes Caulburn were found scattered over Southern England. Not concentrated in any way, and no sign of demonic contract, but evidently not a natural cause of death, and all of the bodies were missing their cinematic records.

Usually we'd rather not get involved, but it's gotten to the point where whatever this is that's killing these humans is making it impossible for us reapers to do our jobs. Which is bad for us because if we can't do our jobs, we're the ones suffering. Not to mention the damage whatever that thing was did to Luther...

I don't even want to think about it. Of course, all reapers have our own defenses, and if fully unleashed, we could even make quick work of an angel. All in the name of duty of course, as there are severe penalties in using these defenses if they are uncalled for- and you have to get explicit permission to use them beforehand- which is imaginably extremely difficult in the heat of the moment. Whatever this thing was must've really taken Luther by surprise.

I should go see him once he's conscious again. Luther and I did our training together, we were final exam partners, though we eventually parted ways career-wise once we were admitted into the soul-reaping system. Luther went into Dispatch, specifically retrieval, and I went into Administration to become the head-honcho mechanic of the entire department.

I guess my official fancy-pants title is "Manager of the Mechanics division of the Administrative Department", but I guess all I really am is just a mechanic who does an awful lot of paperwork and yells at some people on occasion. If you need anything about your death scythe done, I'm your go-to. I do everything, from the tiny default axe scythes that everyone receives, to their customization upon promotion, confiscation upon demotion, and just about anything and everything you can imagine.

I'm the reason that death scythes can cut through anything, I have sole permission from the higher-ups to use the spell to make them as such. I make them from scratch, and if you can think of the weirdest possible thing you can to make into a death scythe, I've probably done it. Grell's chainsaw is actually my handiwork. If you look closely, my initials are engraved into the underside of the handle. L.B. Leelah Barrett.

Thanks to this garbage going on in the world of the living though, my life is about to get a lot more complicated than throwing papers, cobbling together death scythes for newbies and making my trainees nervous.

The pieces of paper I had been filing before Grell had barged in were from the forensics unit, lining up potential murder culprits, and it's now up to me to decide what to equip the retrieval unit with in order to give them a better hand in fending against whatever these creatures may be... but I'm having a very hard time deciding what kind of upgrade to give their scythes... and that's impossible to do without knowing what we're up against.

"This is harder than I thought it would be..." It's my turn to glance over the edges of my glasses at Grell, who's been freaking out happily on the floor at the idea of being partnered with William for the past thirty seconds or so that I've zoned out. "Grell, what do you think about me temporarily joining the dispatch department?"

"Ooooh, scared of letting me go alone?" she bats her eyelashes. "I knew you loved me, Lee-lee~"

"Yeah yeah, I do, but sometimes I'd love to kick your ass more." I grumble. "I just don't know what kind of upgrade to give your unit, and I'd do much better at solving this damn problem if I could see first hand what we're up against. I haven't left homeworld since I became a reaper."

"Oh, it's stellar down there~! I have so much to show you, the Tower of Pisa, the French skyline, the rivers of India at sunset, oohh it's wonderful!"

"Grell, this is for a mission. Remember we aren't allowed to do any funny business until this whole mess is all done and sorted. I also don't exactly want to leave homeworld..."

She pouts. "Bummer."

"Which is why you should back me up on this. I should go to administration tomorrow, in any case I don't want Luther back on duty until I've made the necessary adjustments. I'm gonna take his place in dispatch until he comes back."