• The raven haired girl yawned as she made her way to her friend’s house. She had stayed up all night because of a strange… accident… that happened the previous night. She felt that she needed to talk to some one that she truly trusted and the only person that she could think of was her good friend, Michael Conklin.

    Wiping the sleep from her strangely red eyes, the girl finally arrived at her destination. She knocked on the door and was greeted by a boy on the other side groaning. She stepped into the small house, barely noting that the place was a pig sty, to say the least. Her friend’s black pug with an under bite jumped onto the couch to gain better access to the girl’s hand, which she licked and effectively covered it in drool.

    “Gross Snaggle Tooth,” the girl said, using her black jacket as a towel. She pet the dog nonetheless and made her way to her friend’s room. She found a large mound of the blankets on the mattress that made the floor its home and she laughed at the small tuff of curly burnet hair that barely poked out of the top of the comforter.

    The girl sighed and walked around the room until she was at the foot of the bed. She had been carrying a katana with her, and was worried about any one seeing her, but the small city was more like a ghost town. Slowly, and loudly, she unsheathed her blade, laughing evilly.

    “Come, Michael,” she said, forcing her voice to sound fairly raspy. “I have come to collect your soul,” she hissed the last word and raised the blade over her head. The boy on the bed slowly sat up. He caught sight of his friend, not recognizing her at first, and screamed an octave too high.

    The girl started to laugh and resheathed her blade. The boy hit her with a pillow and grumbled. “It ain’t funny,” he defended himself. The girl sat on the bed and messed up Michael’s hair. He swatted her hand away and grinned, despite his previous anger. The girl’s mood was always contagious.

    The girl laid down and stared at the white ceiling, noticing that it was starting to become damaged by the recent, and frequent, bouts of heavy rainfall. It was quiet for a while as even the previously hyper-active pug - who had followed the girl into the room - was calm.

    “Michael,” the girl asked.

    “Yeah?” he asked back.

    “I think I’m dead.”

    The boy gave her a weird look. The girl was sitting right in front of him, but she was talking with more seriousness than he had ever thought possible. “What makes you say that?” he finally said.

    “I saw my own body after my mom ran it over with her car.”

    “What?”

    “She took it to an old dumpster and buried it with the garbage. I can show you, she said that no one would ever find it ‘cause no one ever used the damned thing. Except the local Crack-Heads who use the thing to dispose of the stuff they don’t need for their Meth Labs.”

    “Y-you’ve got to be kidding me. Katie, there’s no way that you were killed by your mom and then your body was disposed of in a weird trash can.”

    The girl raised up her sword. “I’ve never seen this thing in my life, and I don’t own these clothes,” she said. Gesturing at the black and white outfit she wore. “And yet, when my body was hit by the Tracker, I had the sword and I was wearing the outfit. I witnessed my mom cover my death, please believe me. I’ll show you where my body is.”

    There was silence for a while as the two looked each other in the eyes. Grey green staring into red, trying to make out if the girl was actually serious.

    “Fine,” he said, looking away. “Take me to where your body is and then I’ll believe you, if it’s there.”

    Katie’s smiled at that. She nodded and left the room so Michael could get dressed.

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    The pair arrived in the Soccer Field in roughly thirty minutes. Katie was off ahead, waiting rather impatiently for her friend to catch up. The day was finally sunny, though the rain soaked ground was still muddy. It was also rather humid, and Katie understood why Michael refused to run to catch up. Even she could barely run, the air was so thick in her lungs.

    “It’s over here,” she said as they entered the woods surrounding the Fields. She disappeared into the tree line, only to reappear so she knew her friend was following. They walked in the woods with much less of a distance put between them. Katie was easily dodging thorns and roots that littered the ground with unnatural grace that Michael was sure she didn’t have last time he saw her, which was the day before last. He, however, had to use her to balance himself as he stumbled and tripped and tore his baggy, black, cargo pants.

    Suddenly, the wind picked up and carried with it a horrible stench that made both teens gag.

    “The ******** is that?” Michael asked, covering his nose and mouth with his hands as if it would ward off the smell.

    “I think it’s some one else’s discarded lunch,” Katie replied, her nose wrinkled and her mouth open slightly. This surprisingly worked, and she couldn’t smell a thing.

    “Should I ask you how you know that?”

    “Easy, I puked a lot as a little kid. It sometimes smelled like that.”

    Michael reluctantly followed Katie closer to the source of the horrible smell. Three meters away, he wrinkled his nose like Katie had, and was grateful that the girl had such a variety of useful facial expressions.

    They came to a clearing, in the center of which was a very old, rusted dumpster. Trash littered the ground around the rusty metal container, and two people stood on the other end of the clearing. They were emptying the contents of their stomachs into the bushes behind them.

    Near the dumpster was a figure lying lifeless, flies attacking the flesh. Katie stormed to the two people, who she vaguely noticed were dressed in slightly the same manner as herself and even both carried a sword. With out thinking, Katie unsheathed her blade and pointed the tip to the larger person. She began to yell at them, but this was lost to Michael, who had approached the body.

    The girl had short, slightly messy, light brown hair and tanned skin. He couldn’t see her eyes, and he was glad. He knew that they were a strange shade of grey-blue-green that held more of either three colors on any given day. She wore the outfit the boy had seen her last in: a pair of worn, green camo pants, a plain, black tank top that showed a bit of cleavage if she didn’t continuously adjust it, and her favorite, black boots that had a decorative spade on the outside of each. She was also covered in blood.

    Michael shook his head and stepped away from his friend’s corpse. It was Katie, that much was certain, but he couldn’t believe she was actually dead.

    “For the last frickin’ time, tell me what the hell you two were doing with my body,” Katie raged. The two people had finally turned to face her, and on of them was stammering, not really saying anything.

    The man wore the same outfit as Katie, thought he also wore white shoulder straps and a white head band. He had black hair and eyes and looked to be about six feet tall. The other person was a petite girl with short, dark blond hair and gray eyes. She wore the same outfit as Katie and the man, but the collar of a white shirt was protruding over her top. She looked slightly frightened as Katie held her sword in a very threatening way.

    “Who are you?” the man asked. Katie growled and stepped back. “I’m Katie Larimer, and that was my body that you took out of the dumpster, now tell what the ******** were ya gonna do with it?”

    “Katie?” the girl asked, confused. “B-but there’s no one back in the Soul Society with a name like that.”

    “The ********? You know, I don’t care. Just tell me who you are and what you wanted to do with my body.”

    The two seemed to calm down, and both reached for their swords. “I’m Kiyone Kotetsu,” the girl said. “I am the co-3rd seated officer/acting lieutenant of the Thirteenth division in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads located in the soul Society.”

    “And I am Sentaro Kotsubaki,” the man chimed in. “Also the co-third seated officer/acting lieutenant of the Thirteenth Division in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads. Now restate your name and the division you belong to.”

    Katie lowered her sword and tilted her head comically to the side. Her now black hair remained perfectly straight. She looked back at Michael, who seemed to have recovered a bit. “Ano, Michael, you have any idea what these two baka-chans are babbling ‘bout?”

    Michael looked at her, surprised that she could be so calm when her corpse was lying right there in the clearing. Though, of course, she had only gone to see him only that morning, and she had been dead for a few days now, and she recovered from surprises easily enough. Not trusting his voice, he simply shook his head.

    Kiyone and Sentaro seemed a bit annoyed at being called ‘Baka’, but recovered soon enough. “If you do not remember anything from your time in the Soul Society, then you’ll have to come with us,” Kiyone said, crossing her arms.

    “Apparently you’ve misunderstood, I’ve never once been to the Soul Society, I died three days ago, the corpse is right there. It’s barely begun to decay, and yet you dunces think that, some how, I have been to this Soul Society that you keep mentioning, and yet you said it your self, there’s no Katie Larimer that has ever visited the place. So, unless you want to prove yet again how idiotic you are, you’d answer my damned question.”

    “We were sent here by orders of our Captain, Jushiro Ukitake. We were sent to exercise any and all souls that remain here after they depart from their bodies,” Sentaro said, as if it were obvious. “If you died three days ago, then you body should have started the Hollowfication Process.”

    “Well, it isn’t. what ever that is. So why the hell were you going trough the dumpster?”

    The two glanced at each other. “If you’re not a Soul Reaper, then why are you wearing the uniform?” Kiyone asked. Katie sheathed her sword and turned away. “C’mon Michael, the smell’s startin’ to get to me. And I really don’t care ‘bout what they’re gonna do anymore.”

    The boy nodded and the two began to leave the woods. The two Soul Reapers followed after a few moments. Neither were acknowledged as they followed the friends into the small town. People were just starting to fill the streets, and it was much less of a ghost town now.

    “I wonder when people will notice you’re gone,” Michael whispered as a few people walked past him. Katie shrugged, both were near laughing at the two behind them, who were effectively annoyed.

    Finally, Kiyone screamed at the top of her lungs, “WILL YOU PLEASE LISTEN TO US?!”

    Michael flinched away from the loud noise, and Katie lolled her head back and turned slightly to look at the two. Sentaro was looking at Kiyone as if she had grown a second head. The blond was panting, and Katie vaguely wondered if she should say something about someone her size yelling only to begin to breath like that. She decided against it.

    “What’s all the yelling about?” a new, feminine voice came from almost directly over the small group. Michael pretended to text on his new cell phone, so he didn’t seem too crazy to any passersby.

    “The hell are you?” Katie asked, crossing her arms and looking up at the stranger. Another petite girl was standing on the rooftop, and wore the “uniform” of the Soul Reapers. She has short, black hair, a single strand of her bangs fell into her face and her eyes were a dark shade of violet.

    “Rukia-san,” the two said in unison. They were nervous about the girl being there, and Katie laughed at their tones, only to receive a gentle elbow from Michael.