AN: Alright, so I sort of completely forgot that I had written this story. I also completely forgot where I was taking this story. However~ I do like the premise I had based this off of and am currently re-writing the thing. Here is the brand spanking new first chapter. Thank you for reading this story, and stay tuned for less bad writing than the previous version (probably). :)

I sat stiffly, my head bowed and my fists clenched tightly inside my deep pockets. The booming echo of Darius' furious footsteps and the steady, rhythmic ticking of my watch filled the room nearly to its bursting point. It didn't take much to fill the cramped, stuffy office. Dark shelves wrapped around the walls like a python constricting its victim. An impractically massive wooden desk slashed the room into two distinct spaces, each of which were mostly taken up by hard stuffed chairs covered in scratchy upholstery. It was unpleasant, but not nearly as unpleasant as its owner.

"You are, without a doubt, the stupidest apprentice I've ever had the displeasure of training. I don't know how you even managed to get this job," Darius thundered. It was mildly shocking that such a short man could hold so much rage.

I bit my cheek, holding back a retort. I had studied harder than any other applicant to pass the Apprentice Grim Reaper exam and had earned the highest score of my entire group. To award me, I had been granted the honour of apprenticing under the head of the Humanoid Deaths Department. I had earned my way into the apprenticeship and Darius had no right to insult my intelligence.

"How is it possible to screw up this much?" He emphasized his point by flinging his flabby arm in the air, shedding clumps of rainbow confetti onto the bland carpet.

I glanced up through my lashes. "I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be-"

"Exactly! You didn't think," spittle flew from his mouth as he interrupted me. I stared with mild disgust at the gob of spit that landed on the desk. "You never think about the consequences to your actions." He glared fiercely, pausing for a breath.

Unable to bite my tongue any longer, I seized the pause in his rant to speak uninterrupted. "Sir, please be reasonable. I didn't know that the ban was in place, so surely there's some clause involving ignorance of the law? I understand now that what I did was wrong, and I apologize for it. I assure you that it will never happen again. I learn from all of my mistakes and from this one I've learnt to never allow a mortal soul into the In-Between."

Darius snorted. "From all of the mistakes you've made, you should be a genius by now," he heaved a mighty sigh before continuing, "But if you were a genius you'd be able to keep up with a conversation, which you have just proven yourself unable to do. Of course I'm angry that you voided the ban, and you will be punished accordingly, but that's not my point. Let's just back this up a bit. You are clearly too dense to absorb the basics of this conversation, so let's start with the basics of your job, shall we?"

I set my shoulders and lifted my head, preparing for a long winded beratement.

"What are we?" The condescending question stabbed at my pride.

"We have many names in the Realm of the Living- Grim Reapers, Shinigami, Valkyrie," I recited the words from memory, "We call our people the 'Grimms,' and prefer the job title 'Grim Reaper.' We are the sole inhabitants of the In-Between, a realm created by Lady Death at the beginning of time."

"Why?"

"Our realm and ourselves were created to serve Lady Death. She is an omnipotent being with many duties. It is a great honour to be granted the right to aid in Her work."

Darius nodded his bald head. "That's right. And how do we aid in Her work?"

"Living beings, whether they are human, animal, Asgardian, or giant, have a soul. While most souls find their way to The Realm of the Dead on their own after death, occasionally a soul will become lost. Or, much too commonly, if a being had died violently or had unfinished business, their soul will become trapped in The Realm of the Living. As an Apprentice Grim Reaper, it is my honour to guide lost souls and to bring disturbed and trapped souls peace. After completing an apprenticeship, fully licensed Grim Reapers have the option to continue working under the department they trained in, or to transfer to a different one."

"How many departments are there?"

"Three. The first is the Animal Deaths Department. The second is the Humanoid Deaths Department. The third and most recently formed department is the War Deaths Department. But-"

He rudely cut me off, "Correct, now would you like to tell me how someone still training in the Humanoid Deaths Department managed to be assigned to a soul from the War Deaths Department?"

"What?" My grey eyes widened in shock. "But Heidi said she died in an automobile accident!"

"She lied," Darius shrugged. "Mortal souls tend to do that. But you still haven't answered my question. How did you not only fail to walk into the right department, but also pick up a case file and fail to read the giant 'War Death' stamp on the front of it?"

"It wasn't like that," I explained, "The case files aren't kept in their departmental offices anymore. They're all just tacked to the bulletin board out in the front of the building."

"Oh, and I suppose the sunlight from outside hurt your poor delicate eyes too much to read the stamp? And I suppose that's why you couldn't even be bothered to read the guidebook, either."

"Guidebook?" I asked, too flabbergast by his lack of grasp on reality to form a proper sentence.

"The Grim Reaper's Extraordinary Guidebook to Reaping and Grimming, of course. What did you think I was talking about? You received it after passing the entrance exam, as did every other apprentice. Unlike them, you didn't even bother to-"

"No, I didn't," I cut him off, too thoroughly confused to care about manners. "I didn't get a book."

"Of course you did, everyone did." He flapped his hand in the air, as if to shoo away my argument.

"No, no one did. We haven't used training by the manual for," I squinted and counted on my fingers. "Oh, about twelve centuries now. If I've heard right, your generation was the last one to receive the books from Lady Death. Since then, there's just been silence from Her, and that fog that keeps creeping in. We've been making do with what we have, each Grim Reaper training their Apprentice Grim Reaper with their own copies of the guidebook, or if they've been ruined by time then they just go by their memories and examples in the field."

"Oh," Darius said quietly. "Oh, dear." He rubbed his forehead nervously and shifted uncomfortably on his chair. His anger had evaporated, leaving only a deathly pale face in its wake. I kept my eyes locked on his face and slowly blinked as realization dawned on me.

"You really haven't left this office for anything but the necessities to function for centuries, have you?" My quiet question seemed louder than bodily possible, a scream in the silence of outer-space. "The rumours were true?"

"There's just- just so much work to do. So many papers to file and reports to read and organize and reorganize and reread and..." He trailed off sadly, hopelessly, and defeated.

I felt tired, so impossibly tired. "Do you know about the fog? About what they say about Lady Death? About the In-Between, and the Grim Reapers, and the missing Grimms?"

He nearly bristled at the mention of him not knowing something important, but then he swallowed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Somewhat. Not the whole of it, just bits from reports passing by my desk. I know they say that She's..."

"Abandoning us?" I finished for him. "Destroying the single thing She's ever created- our realm and us?"

"Yes," Darius nearly whispered, and then returned to his usual booming voice. "Of course, that's all complete rubbish. The great Lady Death is watching over us, as usual. The fog is probably just from climate change. You've seen it first hand in the Realm of The Living- is it so strange that it might occur here as well? I have so many reports to read, so much work to do. I don't have time to talk about this and I don't owe you an explanation. I do, however, owe you a book."

I stared in stunned silence. Pity choked my throat, keeping down a hard ball of rage deep inside my belly. The tiny window of being treated as his equal was over, and it was time to return to our roles thoroughly doused under layers of denial. I decided to focus on a safe topic and asked, "Are you going to forgive my previous failures? Purge them from my records and give me a clean slate?"

"No. Even without the guidebook's guidance, your common sense should have kicked in and warned you of bad ideas. However," He spoke loudly over my rather apathetic sounds of indignation. "You will be granted another chance. With the aid of the guidebook this time, of course. If you prove yourself able to do this, you will be permitted to continue your apprenticeship. If not..." He left his threat unfinished. He reached into the drawer of his desk and withdrew a battered, thick, blue book. He awkwardly shuffled around his desk, shoved it into my hands unceremoniously, and steered me to the door of his office. "Heidi has been waiting long enough; don't make her wait any longer. You have twenty-four hours to deal with this."

My eyebrows rose in indignation. "Why do I have a time limit to fix this mistake? I've never heard of that before!"

"You have a time limit because I am sick and tired of dealing with your mistakes. If I could fix your screw up with that Jotunn last week in that time limit, there's no reason you can't fix an angsty teenager." His voice had an edge to it that warned against arguing. He fixed his watery eyes on my face.

I sighed in defeat. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Go deal with Heidi. I believe chapter three will be particularly helpful to you." And with that, he gave a mighty shove to my back and slammed the heavy door before I could ask any more questions.

I stood in the empty, dark hallway and stared at nothing in particular before sighing deeply. Darius' plan to divert me from the main problems had not gone over my head, and I found the simplicity of his plan to be mildly insulting. A single cruel remark of his banged noisily around my head.

'How is it possible to screw up this much?'

'Maybe I keep failing my assignments because I've had zero training! Maybe if you got off your rump once in a while to do your job, you would have known about the books and you would have been training me properly. Maybe then you'd stop wasting my time and maybe I would have someone to ask about stuff. Maybe, maybe, maybe.' The words burned at the tip of my tongue, and despite trying to swallow them back a few times they remained there, perched and ready to pounce the moment my mouth opened. I pressed my lips firmly together and dropped my gaze down to study my black uniform.

It wasn't fair. If Darius would just take responsibility as a trainer I wouldn't be such a bad apprentice. Take, for instance, the situation that landed me into his office this time. If I had had a trainer with me, nothing bad would have happened. I trudged down the winding corridor as my mind wandered.

Heidi Eisenberg was the youngest soul I had ever been assigned and was the root of my current problems. The case file on her had very little information, which was the usual. It outlined that Heidi had been an unrested soul for about forty years, and that she died in an unexpected accident in her home town. And that was it. There wasn't even a note on what the unexpected accident was. If my trainer had come along with me, I would have been granted access to the massive database of living and deceased beings in the Grim Reaper's Headquarters. Not only could I have found Heidi faster, I also could've learned of the specifics of her death and saved even more time on asking questions. On my own, however, I lacked the proper clearance level to access those files and was left to do things the hard way.

After some extensive and exhausting searching involving obituaries and maps, I found Heidi near the resting place of her bones in a small cemetery just inside of Stuttgart, Germany, on Earth. Among the pale marble angels scattered throughout the graveyard, her small, wispy form was nearly impossible to locate. She was also very easy to mistake for a patch of fog, as I discovered after accidentally walking through her.

If my trainer were present, I would have been able to ask why this specific soul was transparent while all of the souls I had met before on my assignments were very solid looking. We might have shared a funny story about how they felt pretty solid too, as I had discovered when one beat me with a rather heavy book a few months ago. But Darius was back in our home realm, hiding away in his office, and so I kept the questions and funny story to myself. Instead, I gave a brief description of who I was and how I was sent to help the young girl move on to the Realm of the Dead.

After much more probing and prodding than ever previously required for a soul, Heidi finally divulged that she was on her way to her high-school to give a small presentation to her class when her family's car crashed. The sweet, honest twist of her face tugged on my mind and her words twirled through my head.

"I worked so hard on my presentation, and I still have it memorized. I was so nervous about speaking in front of my class. I wanted to prove to them that...that I'm not just the meek girl who always sat in the back of the class. I wanted to show I wasn't just some wallflower, too timid to speak. I wanted to prove myself to..." Heidi trailed off and gave a nervous chuckle, "It's pretty stupid, once I think about it."

I had reassured her kindly. I could sympathize with the young girl and her need to prove herself to be more than just a person's negative assumption. For a while, I had felt the same way. Around my fourth unsupervised and failed assignment out in the field, I had given up on proving myself to be more than the failure who had only gotten her job through dumb luck that Darius had written me off as. He had decided to hate me and there was nothing I could do to change that, but that didn't mean that I couldn't help Heidi make a group of people remember her a little more fondly.

But there the problem arose. All of Heidi's schoolmates were out of school and well into being middle-aged. They were probably scattered half-way across the planet, which ruled out her being able to give her presentation directly to all of them. But perhaps it didn't have to be them directly. Maybe a random group of people would work just the same. Being able to see and hear her were pretty important parts of her presentation, but rounding up a group of psychics seemed impractical and the only other beings that could see Heidi were Grimms.

And so, I did the stupid thing that landed me in Administer Darius Kern's Office. I took Heidi back with me to the In-Between. If Darius had come along, he would have been able to inform me of the recent ban placed on bringing mortal souls to the In-Between. He would have been able to warn of the fine attached to disobeying the ban. He could have suggested a different venue, and that would have been the end of it.

But he wasn't there.

Everything went fine at first. Heidi seemed rather nervous about travelling to another dimension, so a venue as Earth-like as possible was chosen for her speech. The food hall of the Grim Reaper's Headquarters seemed to be the best bet, since it lacked any windows to remind Heidi of how different the In-Between was from modern Earth. It was difficult rounding up an audience for Heidi, but in the end, I managed to convince eight relatively pleasant Grim Reapers to listen to the most boring presentation of our existence. It wasn't Heidi's fault that we were bored, and she honestly tried to make it interesting, but the subject was completely mind numbing. Regardless, we all tried our hardest to stay awake, and prepared to cheer as loudly as possible when she was done. I clutched two handfuls of confetti, ready to throw them into the air when she finished as a grand finale of sorts.

There was no grand finale. There was the unexpected intrusion as Darius wandered into the lunch room, and then there was yelling, and spluttering, and me being dragged off to his office without another word. Along the way, I managed to trip and spill a fistful of colourful confetti onto his crisp, black uniform. It did nothing to improve his foul mood, and even less to help me out of my situation.

My feet stopped of their own accord outside the thick wooden doors of the food hall. I blinked in surprise and snapped out of my thoughts. Now was not the time for memories- now was the time for fixing mistakes. I pushed the doors open and walked to the nearest table. I didn't bother to look for Heidi, knowing that the girl would wander over in her own time.

It took thirty minutes of desperately reading chapter three before it began to make any sense. A cold breeze stirred my chestnut hair as Heidi peered over my shoulder. "What does that book say? What language is that? It doesn't look like German."

"It's not German. It's written in the language of my people. It's outlining how to complete a successful possession," I absentmindedly murmured. "Our first plan didn't work, so now we have to move on to a different route."

"Possession? Does that mean I have to... go into someone?"

I looked up from the book. "It looks that way." I snatched up a bag left behind by a Grimm from under a nearby bench and stuffed the book into it. "How did you say you died, again?" I carefully studied Heidi from beneath my eyelashes.

"Car accident," she swallowed hard before continuing. "I don't remember much of it. We were driving, and then there was this loud popping sound- almost like a gun. Isn't that funny? I suppose the tires must have popped, but I didn't know it at the time. I really thought it was a gun."

"Why would you think it was a gun? Just from the sound?" I chose my words cautiously. Darius' warning that Heidi had lied about her death made my defences rise. I hadn't been able to tell that she was lying, which was very unusual.

"Yeah, I guess so. But that's just silly! Who would want to shoot at my car? A distant relative was the one threatening to expose some terrorist group or something, but I wasn't. So why would they target me and not him? That doesn't make sense."

I was dumbfounded by Heidi's failure to mention that particular important point, but relieved that my lie-detecting skills were just as good as they had always been. Omitting facts wasn't really lying- not really. "Regardless if you see a motivation, that's precisely what happened- someone must have shot at you. In our old system you would have been categorized under a War Death, but we don't use it anymore." I paused for a breath, waiting to see if the truth behind Heidi's death would be enough to put her at peace.

It wasn't.

Heidi continued to float in front of me the same way she had been ten minutes ago and gave no indication that she was about to zip off to the Realm of the Dead anytime soon. "Well, it was worth a shot. Come on, let's head back to Earth find a human puppet, shall we?" I hoisted the bag to my shoulder and gently jogged out of the hall.

Since nothing was ever easy in my life, there was fine print for possession. The possessed must have had a connection to the possessor during their life. Seeing as her entire family died with or shortly after her, and Heidi was adamant that she had no living friends, this only left an old classmate. In some strange blessing from fate, Heinrich Schafer, an old classmate of Heidi's, was set to give a speech of his own at a gala for the local museum in Stuttgart that he donated generously and regularly to.

While Darius didn't actually leave his office to join me, he had been kind enough to call ahead and arrange a guest pass for me to the Directory of Living Beings in the Grim Reaper's Headquarters. Directions and locating lost items were not my strong points. It took six hours of searching through the directory to find anyone with any connection to Heidi, and another five hours to find the museum Heinrich was due to give his speech at. We arrived about twelve hours before the gala, and were met with an empty museum. In a panic, we returned to the In-Between to recheck the directory to see if it was the right museum. This took three hours. By then I was hungry. Very, very hungry. Stopping off at a diner in the In-Between took an unexpected two hours, but after scarfing a stack of piping hot pancakes down, I had to agree that it was worth it. Re-finding the museum also took two hours. By the time we were done, we had to wait five hours until the gala, and I only had six hours left of my twenty-four hour deadline.

As we sat on the stone steps outside the museum waiting for Heinrich to arrive, I turned to Heidi who was gnawing nervously at her lip. "I know this isn't quite the same as giving your original presentation, but you're still speaking publicly in front of a large group of people," I gently reminded her. "You're still proving you're not a wallflower by doing this."

She nodded slowly, "Of course. But how will I know what his speech was supposed to be about? I don't want to ruin the gala by messing it up. And who is it that I'm supposed to possess?"

"Just, I don't know, make something up. Ramble about the greatness of the museum, or something." I sighed in frustration and checked my watch. "The man's name is Heinrich Schafer, and don't worry, you'll know him when you see him."

She visibly stiffened when she heard his name. "Oh. All...all right." The rest of the evening passed in strangely tense silence. As Heidi amused herself by practicing her speech, I poured over the guidebook with fervour, but only made it to the second chapter by the time people began to arrive at the gala. I shoved the extremely dense book back into the sturdy bag, and focused all of my attention to scanning the small group of mortals for Heinrich.

"Um," Heidi paused from her fourth round of practicing her monotone speech. "I think they're just the cooks for the gala. And…uh…That other group is the band. They're not dressed nice enough to be guests at a gala."

"Oh, I see," I nodded and reached to retrieve my book. "Make sure to look at every face in the crowds. You never know how different he might look now." Despite the darkening sky, we were positioned in a very well lit area, opportune for observing the passing faces and reading.

After a few more hours, droves of people dressed in stylish suits and bright dresses began to arrive. "There! There he is!" She pointed to a middle-aged man with receding grey hair. "That's Heinrich." She gulped loudly and drifted after him.

I stood from the hard steps and brushed dust from the back of my uniform before following Heinrich and Heidi into the museum. Loud, joyous music greeted us, and dazzling chandeliers cast the entrance room in festive light. He slowly made his way to the front of the large, bright, vaulted room, scooping a glass of champagne up from a passing server on his way.

"When he starts his speech, just step into him and concentrate. That should cause him to become possessed." I shifted from foot to foot and jammed my thumbs underneath the straps of my bag to stop it from digging into my shoulders. "Good luck."

"Y-yes." Heidi's small voice wavered. I gave her a reassuring smile and stepped into the crowd of fancily dressed humans surrounding the small stage that Heinrich occupied. He tapped a fork against the glass in his hand and cleared his throat, calling the group's attention. As he opened his mouth to speak, Heidi stepped into him and disappeared from sight.

"Oh, it worked! I mean..." Heinrich began, "Welcome to this wonderful gala! I hope you've been enjoying yourselves..."

Heidi, while inside of Heinrich, continued her well-rehearsed speech as I examined the crowd. They all seemed to be enjoying her speech, and were quite focused on her. Content that her presentation was going well, I allowed my mind to wander.

A late comer, a handsome dark haired man, made his way down the grand staircase in the middle of the room with a golden walking stick clutched in his fist. The shiny metal caught my eye before I flicked my attention from him back to her speech. A dull thwak sounded from the staircase, but I paid no mind to it until gasps of horror echoed around me.

"...to celebrate this donation made by local artists...Oh my god!" Heidi cut off her speech and stared at the shocking scene unfolding. The handsome man stepped over the bleeding guard on the ground, and was marching menacingly to Heidi/Heinrich with a bloodied walking stick. "What are you-" She was cut off again when the man lifted her up and threw her down onto a nearby decorative marble alter.

It was incredibly surreal, to the point where I felt like I was watching a dream. My limbs felt like stone, my heart pounded in my ears, and I was unable to move. When the man shoved a strange spinning tool against Heinrich's eye socket and Heidi began to scream, I was snapped out of my daze.

"Stop! What are you doing?" I screamed at the man, forgetting he wouldn't be able to hear me. The funny thing about being a Grimm is that no one but other Grimms and the souls we help can see or hear us. In normal situations that worked to our advantage, but it was horrible when faced with the prospect of another failed assignment. I struggled against the surge of humans desperate to escape the horror of this scene, and finally found an opening to slip through. What I saw made my blood run cold.

The handsome man's dashing suit had somehow managed to change into a suit of glittering gold armour. On top of his long, dark hair, a golden horned helmet was perched. And pinned under his gold plated knee was Heinrich. Heinrich's one remaining eye was dim, dead. His other eye showed how he had died. Or rather, the lack of his other eye showed it. Instead of an eyeball, only an empty, bleeding eye socket remained.

"Heidi!" I screamed. "Heidi, where are you? Heinrich, are you here?" My eyes darted around the room, desperate to catch a glimpse of wispy fog. Nothing. Neither Heidi, nor Heinrich, were anywhere in sight.

The man stood from the marble slab and strode outside, not sparing a single glance back to the gory scene he caused. I ran after him in the blind hope that Heidi had followed the surging mob outside. I clung to that thread of hope with all my strength. If I could find her, I could still help her and the newly murdered Heinrich. I could still keep my job.

As the cold autumn air slapped my face, I caught a snatchet of what the man was announcing to the crowd of fleeing humans. "...I am Loki, and you will kneel before me." Strangely, the man- Loki, he had called himself- was addressing the group of Germans in English. The nearby clock tower chimed and Loki shouted louder to be heard over it and the hysteria of the frantic humans. "KNEEL!"

As the crowd obeyed him, I felt something draining away. My twenty-four hours were up. I was out of time, and while I didn't know for certain, I had a funny feeling that I was trapped in the Realm of the Living. A homicidal maniac just ruined my only chance at redemption. Bad luck really loved me, and I wasn't foolish enough to assume that this couldn't get any worse. But really, how could this possibly get any worse?