The Envoy

A/N: Thanks for stopping by to read, and I'm sorry if there are any mistakes! This is a first draft. Enjoy! ------------------

*Attention: The Lady Gaga thing is a joke. But I'm glad you found it funny haha. To Old readers: There has been quite a few changes during the first two chapters* the information is the same, but more detailed and with better language! 

Chapter 1 – Booty Call

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Underworld - the holding place for people between life and death. 

------------------1:40am, Saturday, Underworld. Winter Season.

The sun rises in the underworld as it sets in the living world.

Usually, weekends in the Underworld were hectic.  The sadistic nature of Life and the Underworld led the Death Lord "Reaper" to work especially long hours on Saturdays. Death doesn't wait till Monday morning. With one way in and only half a way out, it wasn't necessarily the nicest place to wait for permission to access the afterlife. The impatient souls would try to break their way back into the living world, or the monsters would try to leave their fiery imprisonments, or the very 'naïve' human from higher lands would try to summon the Grim Reaper himself. They never get too far. However, it was a calm day. There were no distant echoing screams, nor were there riots for better dead human (and all benign creature) rites. For the short and balding Dr. Lee, Mr. Reaper's resident gardener for the past hundred and thirty-seven years, it was too calm.

He felt no heat from the red-coated sun - no one did, not in the Underworld. He did however, feel an uncanny chill run down his spine, like a bony finger tracing his vertebraes. He finished watering the bed of marigolds and quickly made his way to visit the death lord.

The Reaper had summoned for Dr. Lee's presence.

The path towards the black barred gates surrounding the Death Lord's tower was straight and clean. Rumor has it if someone sullied the path to the tower, the Grim Reaper turned them into gargoyles. And except for the occasional gargoyle, the Grim Reaper's slick, spiraling skyscraper showed no decorations.

An old man sat outside the fifty-foot gates, cutting up a potato to pass the time. He looked quite out of place, sitting on his lil' wooden stool. A short glance at his smoldering black eyes told another story - he was the gate keeper and could haul some serious monster excretions. Dr. Lee came up to him cautiously, with his hands visible at his sides.

“Hello there Piper Tom! How's handling the security?” Dr. Lee said, making small talk. The gnarled man looked up at him and gave him an unpleasant grimace.

“When I find that dog, I'm gonna kill 'im. And I'ma use 'is hide as my new coat. Can't even rest when I'm dead 'cuz of that darn Cerberus.” he grumbled, "I asked fo' a smaller gate to guard too. But the Reaper wants to keep up 'is appearances. Them rich folks."

“He hasn't been around for at least fifteen years,” Lee wondered out loud. Rumor was Cerberus had an affair on the side and eloped the first chance he got. Time flies when you're dead.

“Still, when I git my hands on 'im I'm gonna make 'im my next dinner,” Piper stood up and gave Lee his signature glare.

“Appointment with the Reaper? I 'aven't seen many people comin' by,” he opening the gate for Dr. Lee to pass through.

There was only one door into the building. Dr. Lee opened it and was met with a pleasantly air conditioned hallway. He went up to the lone elevator and pressed for the fourth level. At the end of level four's brightly lit hallway was an unnecessarily huge thirty-foot door. He knocked on the smooth polished wood deliberately.

“Come on in,” said a muffled voice from behind the door. Lee let himself through.

“Hello Mr. Reaper!” he walked up expectantly to the death lord. The room held little decorations - mostly because there was very little room to even move. The Grim Reaper sat hunched behind a large red-wood desk, clean of everything but a large coffee mug and a couple of tossled papers. “I would have you know your favorite marshmallow fuchsias are in bloom today, and that the squirrell infestation has been dealt with!”