"Why today?" A young man asked out loud, as he sprinted through the halls of headquarters. "Of all the days I could be late, why did it have to be today?" Narrowly avoiding the other inhabitants of said hall, he deftly ducked into a room.

"Agent Milone" a secretary called from behind her counter.

"Here" Milone called out to the lady.

"Report to Operations Director Vasquez, room E3".

"Roger" Slowing his pace down to a brisk walk, Milone headed for the room, and was about to open the door when it burst open.

"I don't care what you have to do, get it done Vasquez, we haven't lost a world yet and we're not going to on my watch." A tall, lanky man stormed past him as he walked in.

"Was that-"Milone began before being cut off by Vasquez.

"Head overseer Bradley?" was filled in for him.

Vasquez was a short, black haired Mexican man. Despite being shorter than most of the guys in the office, none of them dared to get on his bad side. Last person who did that wound up disappearing. He wasn't bad however, and was quite a nice guy once you got to know him. He was also one of the few DOps that still took on newbies, teaching them the ropes of the agency and guiding them in their new "Life".

He was also a father figure for many of the field agents, and that included Milone.

"What'd he want?" was of course the reply. Milone had been known to be a bit snoopy.

"You know what I said about minding your own business Milone?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, for once you are snooping where you should be."

Taking a seat in front of Vasquez's desk, Milone reached out and took a chocolate filled pirouette from Vasquez's desk.

"What'd you mean? I'm supposed to get my first mission today, aren't I?"

"Yep, and that's what you're here for."

Vasquez paused for a moment to take a sip of his hot chocolate.

"You know about the severe lack of agents fit for the field recently?"

"How could I not, everyone else is working themselves to the bones, I didn't even see any of the other agents in the office when I came in this morning."

"Well we have a problem much bigger than the lack of agents."

Putting down his coffee, Vasquez leaned forward and clasped his hands.

"You ever heard of agent Grams?"

Milone stretched his memory. He didn't remember him among his graduating group, so he was likely a senior agent. He started to form a picture in his mind, when it suddenly clicked.

"A few months ago wasn't he chosen for the medal of resolve?"

The medal of resolve was one of the elite decorations an agent could receive, usually given to those who had to complete an extremely daunting mission, one that challenged their minds, their limits, and their emotions. The stronger an emotion, the stronger a correlated reality warp would be when executed by the agent, but an overload of dark emotions could turn an agent. The medal recognized this and honored their will to remain light and protect. It was granted less often than most of the other medals, but was a point of pride none the less.

Vasquez leaned back.

"Well to cut a long story short, he's turned. Went insane, killed a couple of agents that were with him at the time, and tore open a hole in the worldspace. It was a week before a cleanup crew could close it. We couldn't send out any agents with a hole like that open, and it created a backlog. Not to mention the fact that the hole destabilized the connection to other worlds and sent a large portion of our field agents outside of the time stream, we're still fishing for them but it'll take a few years before we can get them all."

Milone digested this for a few seconds. "How was he turned?"

"No clue. He came in looking shaken up, but okay. A week goes by and he just keeps deteriorating before he finally snaps. But that's not what you're here for is it?" Shaking his head, Vasquez paused for a moment. "No, you're here for your first mission." Finally smiling, Vasquez hands a stack of papers and a manila envelope to Milone.

Taking the papers, Milone reads through them before opening the envelope. Frowning, he shuffles some pictures around before speaking. "There's some information on some of the characters, but there's not even a speck of dirt on the dark soul in this world."

Vasquez nods his head before proceeding. "Yeah, the story itself is actually pretty new. It's a 3d model show, but we class it as anime anyway. The show itself is only on season three, and the seasons are decently short. The world isn't entirely devoid of danger, but it's nowhere near as bad as Beserk or Btoom. "

Milone gave a small sigh of relief. "Sometimes I wonder why we even bother protecting those places at all. The locals could probably handle a dark soul that comes their way… Still, it's not the world I'm worried about. It's the lack of information on the darky. No listed changes to the world, No listed changes to the people, nothing to events so far, is this really even a dark soul?"

Vasquez shakes his head. "We don't know. All we do know is that there was an energy flux coming from the world, and we think it might be a sleeper or a lost agent. That's why we're sending you. We don't have any more experienced agents to send, and while it could be a sleeper, the prospect of finding one of our missing agents has Bradley up in arms. "

Sleepers were dark souls that simply didn't have the energy or will to actively corrupt the world, or did so without warping reality. They were usually dealt with by senior agents because of their unpredictability. There was no way to know if it was a weak pushover or a sleeping giant, short of actually finding the thing.

Milone sighed and nodded. "Well, when do I leave?"

"Now, head to portal W-5 and we'll ship you out pronto. And Thomas..."

Milone turned and faced Vasquez at the sound of his first name, usually reserved for less formal things.

"Be careful, I don't want to loose another man, no matter how new you are."

Thomas hesitantly nodded before leaving the office.

Heading to the portal room, Thomas stood on the spiral marker, and waited for it to begin to spin. A few seconds later, along with a distorted vision, and he was zipping through world space. It didn't take long for him to reach the destination world, and there was a pop as he materialized.

It also didn't take long for him to realize he was falling.


Well, sorry for the late updating. I donated blood Friday evening as school ended, and felt fine. Turned out i was pretty tired when i laid down to watch a video before typing up this chapter, and before i knew it i was passed out until six this morning, when my alarm went off and i had to get ready for work. I plan to update small chapters like this daily or near daily for awhile, and if i transition into large chapters (twelve thousand or more words) then i'll compress the first few chapters I've written by then into a single starting chapter, and slow down the updates to a weekly or bi-weekly schedule. I know that after escape is more popular than this story, but i already had part of this story typed up and wanted to get some content out sooner than later, so that story probably wont be updated until later tonight/ tomorrow morning or evening. Back to this story, as you've probably noticed i don't keep the characters names the same. As the story progresses and new names are brought up i change them, i aim to eventually get to nicknames like tom for the main characters, and Vasquez for more important/ not usually seen characters. Tell me what you think. And as always, review please it'll let me know if i'm doing anything i should fix and could give me new routes for the story. Bye now :3

And I don't own RWBY