(Author's note: Speech written in italics is actually spoken or written in another language by the indicated character. It has been translated and noted this way for the reader's benefit.)

Chapter 2

"Hello?" Asks a guy's voice, tinted with a French accent. I roll my face toward the sun and the sound.

"What…?" I ask dazedly.

"Oh, you speak English. You looked like you might speak French, there, for a moment." The guy says, suddenly with a purely American accent. "Here, I'll help you up." A hand touches my back as I sit up, and I blink my eyes against the light.

"Thanks…" I respond vaguely and rub a hand over my face, looking up to see the one addressing me.

"My name's Mar. Short for Marshall, but I don't like that one, so everybody calls me Mar." The ruddy-looking boy smiles. He's probably a couple of years younger than me. "I guess you're a new arrival. You got lucky – this is eleventh sector. Not a whole lot of crime. Just a stolen banana here and there, y'know."

I squint my eyes at him. "I'm… sorry? I don't think I… understand…"

"Ah!" He exclaims and sits down next to me on the bench I woke up on. "Right, right. You see, you're in the Rukongai." He begins this explanation with a broad sweep of his hands, which continue moving to illustate his speech. "It's the outer ring of this big place called the Soul Society. All of the new souls from the dead come to the Rukongai, North, South, East, or West. Each direction is separated into eighty-four sectors, which are in order of their safety, one through eighty-four. That's why eleven is safe. The inner ring is the Seireitei, but only the Soul Reapers and the nobles live there. The Soul Reapers are sort of like a soul military. I'm gonna be one." He smiles proudly.

"Okay..." I say as my mind tries to follow the illustration produced by Mar's fingers.

"So you got it? Good. Tell you what, you can come and stay with my family at the bath house. The Lady shouldn't mind another pair of hands around." He stands up quickly, disregarding my disoriented fatigue.

"Oh, I don't want to intrude on your…" I start, cutting off as the boy pulls me to my feet. I wobble, head pulsing for a moment.

"No, no! Families here aren't real families. Almost nobody knows where their real families are. Families in the Rukongai are just groups of people that work and live together. There are a TON of people at the bath house. One more won't be a big deal." He wraps his hand around my wrist and pulls me through the people and streets, apparently making the executive decision. Several bumps and turns later, we stand in front of a formidably tall building.

"Home, sweet home!" Mar says, full of pride again, and guides me inside. He weaves through the bustling hallways within and takes me all the way to an elevator at the back of the building. He steps in and I follow him. He presses the last button on a long pane and the elevator lurches into movement just as the doors close. It raises at a painfully slow rate. Mar fills the time with more chatter.

"So, it's really cool to be a Soul Reaper – y'know, the guys I mentioned earlier – because you get to have an awesome sword that does all of this cool stuff depending on like who you are, and you get to fight these monster things called Hollows. Those are souls from dead people that had something to avenge so they turned into monsters that have to eat other souls to survive, so we have to stop them from eating too many of the good souls. Y'know like the yin yang thing? It's a really careful balance that the Soul Reapers get to take care of. So it's really an important job and you get to learn all of these cool like magic moves that they call Kidô. I'm learning to fight so I can go to the entrance exam for the academy, it's called the Shihô-Reijutsuin. You should try, too, because you seem like you'd make a really good Soul Reaper. Really steady and smart." I start to open my mouth in the pause, but he continues. "You know, I never even bothered to ask for your name. Sometimes I get so caught up in the moment! What is it, since you know mine?"

"Oh." I reply, surprised to be given the opportunity to speak. "My name's…" I stop and wrinkle my eyebrows. What is my name…? "I… I don't think I remember." I admit, embarrassed.

"That's not unusual." Mar informs me, all too helpful. "Here!" He lifts up the chain on my dog tags. "Lucky you've got one of these, huh?"

I snatch the necklace a little too quickly out of his hand and stare at the tags. That's right. Dad had these made for us in case anything ever happened and we'd need them. I guess this isn't exactly what he'd had in mind. I read the name on it slowly.

"Emiko." I say finally, soaking in the information. "Emiko Taylor. That's my name." I stare at the silver tags a moment more before dropping them to my chest.

"Cool! I'll call you Emi. It practically means the same thing, right? I really like nicknames." Thankfully, the elevator finally reaches the top and the doors slide open.

"That's okay." I tell Mar as I step out. "I like Emiko just fine." And I really don't like being given nicknames.

"That's cool. Emiko. Right." He follows me out. "Anyway, the Lady lives at the end of the hall here. You just gotta sign a thingy and she'll get you a room and everything." He hurries ahead of me to open the solid office door at the end. The room beyond seems a little shadowy, and I can't quite see who sits or stands inside.

"What are you here for?" A strong voice asks when I step into the office.

"This is Emiko!" Mar jumps in, blocking my ability to respond. "She just arrived. I told her she could get a room here with us, until she gets into the Soul Reaper academy." He winks at me as if we have some shared secret.

The severe and aged woman sitting behind the desk studies me carefully. "Rooms don't come free. You have to work for one." She tells me firmly.

"Ah, yes ma'am. I'll work." I reply before Mar can.

"Good." The woman puts on a far more congenial face, brightening her gaunt features only marginally. "We'll get you set up right away if you'll just…" She roots through her drawers and comes up with a printed form and pen, "… sign this form for my work roster and fill in the little blanks." She pushes them across her desk for me. I step forward and fill out the paper while the Lady shoos Mar out of the room. I thank her inside my head as I push the form back across the desk toward her.

"Perfect!" She says, after a short inspection of my writing, and pushes a button on her desk. "Analise, if you would be kind enough to come out here and escort our newcomer to the empty bed in your room?" She removes her finger and waits silently. A few seconds later, a French-looking girl comes through another wooden door on the far side of the room. She responds in a New Jersey accent.

"Hi! I'm Analise. I guess we'll be roomies." The Lady nods at her. "I guess I'll take you down there, then." She strides across the room and past me, so I turn to follow. She leads me back to the elevator, and, miraculously, it remains on our floor. Analise pauses for a moment after stepping in. "Actually, tell you what. Dinner's almost up, and it's best to get there early. I'll take you to the room afterward." She pushes the first button, and the elevator chugs downward. After an excruciatingly long time, now only filled with a strange silence, the big box reaches the bottom, and I follow Analise out.

"The supper room is pretty chaotic." She explains to me, now with a surprisingly cockney accent. I forget to listen to what she's saying for a few words after that, trying to understand why she had switched so suddenly. "So I think you'll have a tough time of it. Not much advice I can give you. Just go with the flow." She opens the huge doors at the end of a long corridor, pausing only momentarily to toss a last phrase over her shoulder.

"Welcome to the ball."

(Author's Note: Questions or comments? Put them in a review! I appreciate it!)