Hey guys, her's chapter tow! I meant to get this up on Wednesday, but I was busy, sorry. I actually don't know what my upload schedule is yet; I'll just go whenever till I get a better rhythm going. On with the chapter!

Chapter Two: Setup is My Favorite

?-Third Person

It was warm, no, that's not right. It was quite possibly warm. She was floating, or, maybe not, in here. If 'here' was a place. And if 'she' was a she. It was hard to be sure of anything. The (maybe) person existed. Or maybe not. But if anything was true, that was. There wasn't light, but it wasn't necessarily dark. There wasn't noise, but if they, or possibly, it, didn't do anything, it almost was like there was. Little clips of sound tidbits; parts of an unrecognizable song, laughter, a mother's soothing words, the tinkle of broken glass, etc., were repeated over and over in its mind, with no apparent pattern, but it was sure there was one. It was not sure how long it had been there, or if time was even a concept in… wherever this was. It seemed to it that there were no such things as senses in this place, for whatever reason, it did not know. It supposed it was curious; it wanted to experiment, to move, to do anything. Perhaps it was bored. It couldn't remember what happened before this; if there was a before. It decided to embrace the nothingness this place was, it was rather comforting, really.

Nope, it was definitely bored. Sitting, err, existing around, doing nothing did not appeal to it at all. 'Huh?' It thought. It felt to it a flicker of sensation, completely unlike any of the imagined ones it thought of in this state. Again, another, stronger, feeling of sensation came. There was sound this time. The sensation came again, much stronger than before, jerking it out of the quiet stillness, and into the world of light. It didn't want to have all of the sensation at once. There was too much noise, and light, and sterile smell; it couldn't stand it. There was a cry, it had come from it? It was fairly sure it was a she, and a baby. There was another cry, involuntarily coming from her. There were soothing words from an unknown female, possibly her mother, words she didn't understand. It was probably a language of some kind. There was one word in particular that really stood out for some reason. The word sounded something like 'Slaw-Jaw-Nuh', and it was different. The other words obviously had some kind of meaning to them, but this one... didn't. What kind of word doesn't have a meaning? She thought it very strange, that a word without meaning would be used so casually. Was it her name? It was possible, but it didn't feel quite right to her. Her name wasn't 'Slaw-Jaw-Nuh', it was, umm, it was... it was... She couldn't remember! She did have one, just, well, something was wrong! It wasn't there! The words the female was saying were familiar, oddly enough, but she couldn't place why. She didn't understand them, but it was like she had heard it before, enough that she could recognize the words. Maybe she shouldn't think about it. She was getting a headache. She heard the cries stop, and slowly, she began to fall asleep.

The first years passed in an instant. She was vaguely aware that she was rich, she often saw servants scurrying around, doing what, she did not know. Once, she caught sight of a strange collar on the servants, which gave her a splitting headache when she realized she recognized it. The language was still quite foreign, but when she was two, she said her first word; mom. Or, what she assumed was mom. The other words came slowly, and it took six months for her to make a coherent phrase, and another month after that for her to, begrudgingly, recognize her name. When she was four, she was learning much faster, language making sense, written words were understandable, and basic math was easy at its hardest. She was barely four when she learned her name, Sladjana. She didn't like it one bit, but without anything else to go by, she didn't have much choice. Thankfully, the servants seemed perfectly content with calling her 'Miss', or 'Master', so she had some solace.

Now she was almost five, and she could hardly sit still in her seat. She was being tutored on geography, but they hadn't even started, because she wouldn't sit still. She caught the look of discomfort on his face, and sat up and started paying attention. "Oh, sorry" she said little sheepishly, and the tutor froze, and started stuttering madly.

"What? O-o-ohh, no, there's no need to apologize, m-m-miss. Entirely my fault, I apologize." Now that was awful curious, she, Sladjana, was the one at fault, and she had every intention of apologizing for it. "Nope, I'm sorry, and that's final."

"But you did nothing wrong, I must apologize." She bit her cheek. "But you did nothing wrong, and you were uncomfortable, so I'm apologizing for that." The tutor was silent. He looked confused, and then scared, and then accepting. Had she seen the scared look? It was there so briefly, she wasn't sure.

"Today, miss, you shall be learning geography, do you know what that is?" I nodded enthusiastically, before answering, "Yes, it's, umm, it's places, and… just places, maybe." The tutor, she would have to ask his name, nodded and smiled. "Very good. To be specific, or rather, broad, it is the study of all the physical features of the planet. We will start today, with a general overview of the planet. We will study a map, and learn basic areas of the world." Sladjana's hand shot up in the air and was waving in the air. "Yes?" She set her hand down and blurted out, "What's your name, mister?" The tutor almost choked at that, before regaining his composure.

"You may call me Mr. B" Sladjana smiled, and Mr. B continued. "So, I have been provided with a map, just let me set it up real quick." Mr. B turned to the chalkboard, and started thinking as he taped up the map. 'This is probably the weirdest thing that I have ever seen. Is this kid even one of the tenryuubito? She's so... nice. And smart. The only tenryuubito I've run into have been practically monsters, with little to no idea as to how the world really works. And this kid… She's smarter than most adults. You'll never hear me say this, but I'm glad she's a tenryuubito. It would be a great shame is all that potential was squandered. How old is she, anyway, five? You'd think you're at least talking to a 16-year-old, it's insane that all that knowledge was stored inside a toddler.' He looked back at the child, to more closely examine her. She was actually quite pretty, or at least would be in her later years. She had a rich brown hair, that had a little curl at the end and bright green eyes that shouted intelligence. She was scribbling something on a piece of paper, exchanging colors; red to blue, Blue to green, green to purple, and so on.

'What's going on inside her head?Is she toying with me? There is no way in hell that a tenryuubito, even a small child like this can be so amicable. I don't like it.'

"So, today, we will study the map, and learn the basic regions." Sladjana looked up, and winced upon seeing the map. "Are you alright, miss?" Mr. B hovered near to her as she looked up with a forced smile. "Yeah, I'm fine. Please continue." He got up to the board troubled, and continued. "So here, on the map, you can see the five main seas of the world. We call them the four blues and the grand line." She winced again, but quickly covered it up with a smile. "Uh huh, so, where are we?" Mr. B looked at the girl, and her thinly veiled grimace, and decided to continue besides. "Well, good of you to ask, miss. We are on this mountain, in the middle of the map. Right here, in a city called Marie Joise." She was twitching slightly, her smile having faded.

"Is that city special somehow? It looks really big on the map." He frowned at this behavior, but decided to answer her question, as she hadn't outright asked for assistance. "Yes, it's very special, only a select few can live there."

"Hmm, and those people are?" She was sweating from the effort of not screaming.

"The tenryuubito. Like you." There was no noise. She closed her eyes, and her chair fell backwards. She was unconscious. Mr. B's eyes widened and he rushed over to her. 'What the hell is this girl? Whatever she is, she's not normal.'

Thanks to Elise447, Jisca, .63, and irenia for following, and .63, irenia, and northwind132 for favoriting.

Guest: Thank you! I hope it holds up to your expectations

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Buhbye,

Alder