New Orleans is a quaint city. Placed upon the Mississippi River, upwards from the Gulf of Mexico where ships sail and steam inwards and outwards of the continent of America. It held dominance as one of the largest cities on record in the nation of its allocation, but was steadily losing its dominance and resiliency against the insurrections of the new industrial economies of the western and northeastern regions of the United States. There were various attempts to re-assert its popularity and population density reign over all the other states, but these were to no avail. It was a slippery slope down, but New Orleans knew how to ride it with its own particularly Franco-Spaniard-Americana multi-ethnical style. The streets were bustling with New Orleanians and other Americans alike, enjoying the wonderful day that was natural for cities near water-coastlines: the reign of rain. The blue skies were clouded to the point of almost night-time in what seems to be an attempt by Mother Nature herself to intimidate the good-spirits of the city into hiding in their homes and businesses like good, little New Orleanian should. They did not feel this resolution in their hearts, however. Against this was the contrast of five travelers in strangely retro clothing. All others in the crowd wore big hats with stuffed figs, small hats with hummingbirds, straight hair and curly hair, brazier sack coats and frock coats along with trousers of all shapes and sizes being complimented by top hats. These differing figures decided to style themselves with simplistic clothing's of hooded robes that were woven with pressed leather. These, as well as their shirts or jackets or any other pants they had seemingly obtained were not marked with any specialized letters or symbols, but they seemed to move together like a unit. A very closely-knit family, it would seem.

The fifth hooded figure, the last in the procession, called forth to the front of the line. "How's everyone holding up? I cannot see a single thing from back here." The silhouette's cowl seemed to slip back by itself as the person's leather, Oriental ornamented boots were slapping against the ground with a seemingly dictated stride. This was an opposite to his voice, which was laced with a German dialect with his English language, and was almost overly optimistic with a touch of thoughtfulness. A tanned right hand moved up, revealing itself from the robe's sleeve, and pulled the cowl right back over his young, yet matured features.

A voice called from the front of the line, in the first position leading the pack on the trek. She said to the previous, "You must be pretty dry back there, Ottoman, if you're so cheerful enough to ask us about how we're doing." The voice paused with the continued clacks of basic footwear upon brick-stone, either from her compatriots or from the river of strangers around them that paid either some attention or not at all to them. Then, she perked up her continuation by asking, "I just realized, if you're dry enough to stay back there with your good friend, perhaps you can take up the front with the map of this city and try and navigate us to the nearest hotel? You would do it with a lot more enthusiasm, I can guarantee that." The woman's clothing was tightly kept, to the point of spick and span besides the mud they traveled through springing forth. She seemed to maintain a plainly monotone and righteous disposition, her personality strictly professional at the moment through the lightning and wind. The tone of the cynicism was in good humor, though, revealing a hidden friendliness behind her Spartan attitude.

Another feminine voice giggled two behind the one in the front, while a second voice piped up from directly behind the woman in the front, although it was masculine. "Why won't you let me use the map? I was the one who found it." His voice was soft and apprehensive. He seemed to be more concerned about the surroundings of the city than about the current direction they were going. He looked at people, cloth, building, and even the cobblestones like they were different things to him. Foreign like an alien reality far off from his own. He had a slight British accent to his, although that was slightly muddled with by a minuscule eastern Asian regional accent.

The woman responded with a slight scoff, retorting "That would be a fantastic suggestion, Yoshi, but here's the thing: the last time I let you argue where we were going and even follow you, you led us to a town in the middle of some barren state in this God forsaken country. That would've been fine, but when we got there, we found a rejuvenating spa open for business." She tilted her head back, revealing the face of a young woman with black hair. "Do you remember what you had done there? Why I will never give you the god-damn map again?"

'Yoshi' sighed, raising its arms up in contempt and exasperation. "It was an accident, I promise you that! I have apologized time and time again, but you will not forgive me! Dairu was the one who pushed me through the door as a joke, but he has told me that he did not expect me to go into your room!"

In another retort, "You practically stormed into the room, gun-ho to look at Sami and I while we were relaxing in the bath. Do you even realize the implications of that?"

Once again 'Yoshi' had to reply, this time his voice laced with confusion and desperation. "I have been told that it is improper to walk in on a woman, so I would never do it by my own choice! That, as well as that it is best to forgive one for the complications of the situation at hand due to the ever-expanding notion of the moment! What is the matter, if I had been improper just once?"

The woman and the other girl in the group laughed. "'Improper'? What you did is called 'lechery', the very same thing that is inside those books that you keep managing to find in every town, borough, city, nation and spa we come across! And the only way you learned about that 'teaching' is because you just happened to walk into schools by random chance and managed to fit in with the rest of the students. You didn't mean to learn anything, but you did; no we have to live with it." This caused the tanned Ottoman in the back of the line to gain a slick smile under his hood, giving a small chuckle. The black-haired woman with the smooth yet stern features spawned a sigh of relief that was to be lost among the rain-drops and peoples around her. "Well, at least we won't have to banter in the pouring rain anymore. We've found a hotel." She pointed ahead towards a relatively modest inn with two floors of housing, brick foundations and plenty of window view.

The girl, whose name could be assumed as 'Sami' due to the fact that she was laughing along with the black-hair in the front, the grumbling boy that gave no fundamental differing personality trait besides a constant, nonsensical grumbling that was not even in the same language as the four other peoples' and the Ottoman walked into the hotel. The grumbling boy was the shortest of them, while the Ottoman was the tallest; the black-haired girl was closely behind, the 'Yoshi' right on her level, and Sami being the second shortest but still taller than the incomprehensible boy. All three of the entering people did not slow down to enter the lighten building. The tanned boy took off his cowl, revealing his wise, brown eyes and wily smile adorned by a head of black hair. The Sami girl took off hers to reveal a bright-eyed eastern Asian girl of just about sixteen years, a smile seemingly permanently set in stone upon her face. The small boy was a light-skinned child with a silent and an arrogant stare that spelled out, emotionally, "Do Not Bother Me".

Dairu sighed and allowed himself to take out a wallet of assorted paper money, counting through the American dollars. He looked up from the colorful paper to the darkness of the outside. There, the black-haired woman and the boy she was arguing with were waiting patiently in the rain, looking right back at him. The Ottoman shook his head lightly and turned his gaze quickly at the light-hearted but awkward conversation of the small boy and Sami. He looked back and held up his hand with four fingers held up. Four.

The black-haired girl sighed and looked to Yoshi with a softer tone, and tried to begin to say something before she was held up by the boy's hand. He nodded in silent agreement to the point. "I'll stay out for tonight, Yoko. Just try and avoid any conversation about it, like always."

Yoko shook her head in disagreement, trying to convince him. "No, Yoshimata. You are not taking this one; you have already taken the fall five times in a row. You may have the basic concept of how to be a gentleman, but there's to a certain point on where you should accept that role."

Yoshimata gave her a warm smile of comforting, and waved his hand out to the hotel lobby. "No. I'm doing this as a friend. I am your friend and theirs. We barely have any money, and we both know that I'm used to being outside like this. Besides, this is a wonderful night to be out!" He looked to the sky but found he had to squint to continue his random search of the rain-pelting clouds. He looked back down and walked into the lobby with broad steps, indicating his desire for her to just enter the building already. His smile was enhanced by the contrast of the light to the darkness, with the light beckoning behind him and the darkness embracing his face. His eyes are blue, now revealed by the calculated lowering of his cowl. He had slick, messy onyx-black hair that was even darker than Dairu's and a smile that seemed just as bright as Sami's.

This won Yoko over into accepting the fact that her friend was not going to accept her taking the fall of being outside for the remainder of the night and gave him a small smile of her own. She walked into the lobby right past Yoshimata and took off her hood with a greeting to Dairu, whom oversaw the paying of the room while the two leaders of the group took their rounds in mutual deliberations on candid acts. She resumed her militaristic personality within a blink of an eye and declared firmly, "Alright, kids, lets go! It's almost eleven o'clock and you all have to go to bed, right this second!"

Sami gave a small cheer to compliment the maternal-command of Yoko, and grabbed Joseph by the hand. "Come on, Joseph-kun! I want to show you how to draw a hummingbird! You know, like the one I saw on that lady's hat in the crowd?" She practically gripped his hand with the intensity of a clad-steel column, causing him to shriek and plead for assistance in a Romance language. Sami looked confused by the boy's language and turned immediately to Dairu, whom was laughing at the sight. "He's asking you to let go, and that he'll do anything you want to stop you." He winked with playfulness, "I should teach him to speak another language besides Italian one day. He hates the English language with a passion, but can understand it. Perhaps French will be his second?"

Immediately beaming with joy, Sami tugged Joseph along giggling. "Come on, let's go teach you some French!"

Yoshimata let himself watch the jubilation's at hand for their duration, but then his smile faded away to a blank stare of nothing. He turned away from the warmth and the comfort of being within the building and with his friends, and instead turned around to face the cold. He settled himself just a few steps away from the hotel so that it would be convenient for them to find him or to him to find them. The thunderclap in the sky and clouds shook him slightly by surprise, but he soon got over it. Yoshimata knew that his suffering out here would be better for them rest of his friends since they deserved to get a good night's sleep in the warmth. He knew he would never get one again, no matter how lethargic he was on the best of days. His dreams, whenever he was lucky enough to have them again, would always be populated by the screams of his paternal familiars and the laughs of demons from hell. The hell-fire that springs forth into the temple grounds would be the atmosphere of his terrors forever, and the one thing he had to go with to describe his torture was one name: The Millennium Earl. His eyelids fluttered and drooped, and he gave out one little curse that slipped through his gentle lips: "Damn you, Earl."