Sesame Chicken and Marshmallow Sauce, a bleach fanfic

I would like to disclaim my responsibility for this sort of fluff, but I can't. The Muse writes, and I'm just the one who pushes the keys down, but I still allow her access to a computer, and the Internet!

Bleach is owned by Tite Kubo, and all I do expand upon his creation. It's not for profit.

It wasn't a big fight. It was pretty noisy, with thuds and crashes and roars and the occasional word that made Orihime Inoue blush.

She was not in the battle. She was, forever, on the sidelines.

Toshiro Hitsugaya was in the thick of it. He had been blindsided by a Hollow that came through very quickly, right on top of him, and while he had his sword out, Rangiku Matsumoto in her turn was right on top of him, having been flung there by another Hollow, dead now. Hitsugaya couldn't swing without amputating the two most prized assets in the entirety of Soul Society, but the Hollow could.

Which meant that Orihime had two people to take care of. Hitsugaya's wounds weren't actually serious, but Rangiku was singing a whole opera of oh-my-kami-what-have-I-done over him.

The thought made her blush. Surely, Rangiku was only worried, and it was unkind of her, Orihime, to think that. "Rangiku-san," she said softly, "if you would please be calm for a moment ... and put Hitsugaya-taichou down for me ..."

Matsumoto continued to wail. Hitsugaya continued to bleed in her arms.

Sighing, Orihime held out her hands. Hitsugaya wasn't badly injured; Rangiku had a little graze, nothing more. If they wouldn't separate she would have to heal them simultaneously. Not particularly difficult, but in the heat of battle a little frightening ... she would have to go fully into healing mode, which would cost her her awareness of her surroundings for a moment. Best to do a quick check before she "left."

To Orihime's left, Izuru Kira held his own, and closer to them Chad hit a Hollow so hard it disintegrated; to her right, Shuuhei Hisagi appeared to be having a very nice day carving up a horrendous thing that wasn't as fast as he was. Rukia Kuchiki was engaged with another close to Shuuhei, her mouth set and her eyes serious. Right in front of them, and closest to her, Ichigo Kurosaki put a hand down for balance as he skidded, then raised Zangetsu and charged at the Hollow that had thrown him back.

She moved into the space where she did what she did, knowing that she could trust them to keep her safe. A few moments later, Hitsugaya stirred in Matsumoto's arms.

Predictably, his first words were, "Rangiku, put me down. Your boobs are smothering me."

Orihime lowered her hands, and all hell broke loose.

Chad had turned to help Rukia, but the Hollow she fought got in a lucky shot, and the small shinigami went tumbling off to lie in a heap. Orihime saw the way she fell and her stomach contracted. Rukia was hurt.

Ichigo turned from his own battle to shout, "No!" and attack the Hollow that had done the damage to Rukia.

The Hollow that he had been engaged with lifted its head, and focused on the little group of Orihime, Matsumoto, and Hitsugaya. It slavered, and glided across the ground toward them.

Orihime felt her heart drop. She was the only one to see destruction approach.

Then a blue-black mop of spikes sailed into view between them and their deaths. Shuuhei Hisagi had launched himself to land between the group of three and the Hollow, his thighs flexing to take the impact, and sending him upward again to split its head with a single blow. He snarled, "Screw you, Kurosaki, you've been playing with this thing?"

Ichigo's sword fell twice. Then Izuru Kira got the last one, and it was all over. For now.

Except that the entire world had changed forever, and no one noticed but Orihime Inoue.

They might have noticed that she was much quieter at dinner than she usually was. They did notice that she excused herself twice to go check on Rukia. They dildn't notice that she left Rukia if Ichigo came to see her. And Ichigo seemed not to notice that, either.

They did notice that she excused herself early to return to her apartment, saying that she had to get ready for school tomorrow.

They didn't notice that the world had changed.

Of course, Orihime mused, kicking leaves on the way home, perhaps it was only her own world that had changed. Her own world and the shape of her heart.

"Hey, Orihime ... wait."

She turned her head to see Shuuhei Hisagi's gigai limping to catch her up. "Oh, hello."

"Orihime, are you all right?" He touched her elbow.

She dredged up a smile from somewhere. "I'm fine. I'm just tired, and a little distracted. I haven't finished my homework."

Shuuhei looked down at her from his greater height. "Okay. I'd like to walk you home. I won't come in, I just want to make sure you're safe ..."

"Oh." She looked down at her hands, then back up into the narrow gray eyes. "Thank you."

They went several blocks in silence.

The streets still held a few people, and some of them, the more conformist-looking, glanced at the odd couple quizzically. A high-school girl dressed in soft colors and a limping yakuza all in black, several years her senior, who had a vulgar tattoo on his cheek, and looked so unlike her that he could not possibly be her brother.

Didn't she have anyone to protect her?

Orihime, who interpreted their looks correctly, thought forlornly that now, no she didn't. She had up until this afternoon, but not any more.

At her door, he stopped. "Orihime, tonight, you were awfully quiet. Are you sure everything's okay?"

"No." The single word was so soft he almost thought he imagined it. "I can't talk about it, Shuuhei. Things will get better in a day or so. –If I see you tomorrow, do you need to be healed of that limp?"

"By tomorrow it will probably be gone. If it's not, I'll find you, okay?" He took her keys from her, having previously witnessed that she was extremely lock-challenged, opened her door, and pushed it wide. "See you next time, Orihime. Be safe." He gave her back the keys.

"You too. Thanks," she whispered.

She got most of her homework done before she put both hands up to her eyes and gave a wrenching sob.

Done. It was done. However much she loved Ichigo ... he loved Rukia.

Shuuhei walked thoughtfully through dark, rain-wet streets, shoulders hunched.

Orihime had a strange reiatsu almost as strong as his own, but the flavor of it was very different from anyone else's he had ever known. Except maybe Kira; hers was a bit softer, perhaps, but she hadn't spent years under Ichimaru Gin, and then been betrayed by him; that slimy smiling fox-devil was enough to temper anyone.

He spared a thought to wonder if the thread he could feel in common between Orihime and Izuru was that of healing. He didn't know if their energies were like the other healers', having no basis on which to judge; when he had been around other healers, he had mostly been unconscious. Except for Isane. Did she have it too? He discovered that he knew her too deeply to be able to tell.

He heaved a sigh for his own heavy heart; he had Isane had reached the decision to part. He shifted his focus back to Orihime. Poor kid.

At Uruhara's shoten, Ichigo was sitting with Rukia, he was told, and that was fine with him. He shed the gigai in a rain-sodden heap into the bathtub connected to his own room, left it there, and went downstairs to train until he was tired enough not to be angry any more, which he hoped would let him sleep.

It took him almost to dawn to get there.

"It's unexpected," the General said.

"It's very unexpected. The boy is somewhat oblivious, but I did not expect that he would jeopardize things."

"The boy's a twit," the General said. "Do what you can to straighten it out."

A long silence got longer. "You don't mean seduce her myself?"

"Not until no other option is available." The General broke the connection.

I don't want to do that, Kisuke Urahara thought to himself.

"What's with you, Hisagi?"

They were in one of Tokyo's alleys; this one was lined with fragrant shops.

Renji bit down on a large, thick sandwich. Shuuhei smiled; watching Abarai-kun eat was almost a feast in itself. "Isane broke up with me again."

Renji, to give him credit, didn't roll his eyes. "Let it stay permanent, Shuu. You two cause each other more pain than any couple I know."

"In Sereitei, or out of it?" Shuuhei applied himself to his curried chicken rice.

Renji stopped to consider. "The only couple I know who are unhappier than you two is Orihime and Ichigo."

Shuuhei almost dropped his chopsticks. "That makes us number one, then. Orihime saw him abandon defending her and go to help Rukia, and she interpreted it correctly."

"Oh, shit," Renji said, with considerable emphasis. "That dumb kid."

"He's fifteen. How smart were you at fifteen?"

"I had Rukia for backup. I really needed it." Renji enjoyed - all right, achieved gustatorial communion with - some spicy chili-garlic french fries. He sighed, swallowed, and opened his eyes. (Shuuhei grinned.) "You got a thing for her?"

"Orihime? She's too young. And I don't think I was ever as innocent as she is."

Renji, who knew Shuu's personal history, shook his head. "Probably not. I don't think I've ever known anyone who swings as many ways as you do, Shuu. And in the middle of the circus, you're still an honorable guy."

"Come on. It'd be child molestation."

"She's sixteen. It's not, not legally."

"I'm several hundred years older than she is. That makes it child molestation, and legality be damned."

"See? Still honorable."

"Renji?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

Later that day, Shuuhei saw Ichigo, and was not prepared for the eruption of anger from gut to chest that he felt. He turned away abruptly and exited the training area, to run smack into Kisuke Urahara himself in the kitchen of the shoten.

The lean man looked at him. "What made you angry?"

"Nothing, nothing."

Urahara said, "I don't believe you, Hisagi fukutaichou-san. Something's bothering you."

"All right, but I want a cup of honest tea out of this. I don't know why you're the only one in this house who can brew tea."

"I'd like some myself. Do you like lapsang souchong?"

"Never tried it."

The tea was smoky and - not like tea. "It's different." Shuuhei couldn't honestly say he cared for it.

"Isn't it? One of my favorites." Urahara slurped happily. "So, Hisagi, what has disturbed you?"

"Isane and I look to be on the outs permanently, and Ichigo has left Orihime feeling betrayed."

Urahara said quietly, "I am sorry about you and Isane. I did know that things had changed between Orihime and Ichigo, but I was hopeful it was less than serious. You aren't attracted to Orihime, are you?"

"You're the second person to ask me that today. Orihime is too young for me, and far too innocent."

Urahara's face had sharpened. "I see. " The shopkeeper paused. "Ichigo, being a vizard, is driven by forces I don't fully understand. Not all of them are under his conscious control."

Shuuhei made an angry gesture with his free hand. "I know it sucks to be him, but it also sucks to be people around him, and especially people who love him."

Urahara looked at him from under the brim of his hat. "Yes. But Orihime is, as you say, very young. She will change and grow, and look back on him as her first love."

"So that's where it sits." Shuuhei felt the anger in his chest like a hot lump.

Urahara bowed his head. "Yes. I'm sorry I can't be of more help. Try some sugar in the tea."

He stood and left, and once his footsteps had faded, Shuuhei forewent the sugar to pour the glop down the sink.

Urahara went to his own room, a surprisingly airy and light chamber filled with books. He sat at a particular desk, and waved a hand in the air.

The face of the duty operator materialized before him. "General Yamamoto's message service, please," Urahara said pleasantly.

The operator said, "General Yamamoto is at present free. Do you wish to speak with him directly?"

"No. It's a matter of some importance, but no urgency."

The duty operator put him through. An image of snow filled the air above his desk. Urahara said thoughtfully, "General, Urahara here. I wish to report that that matter over which I was concerned has been taken over by Hisagi fukutaichou. As you said, he is an honorable man, and I am content to leave it in his capable hands. Urahara out."

The snow faded. Urahara hoped he was right.

His track record in these matters wasn't good, though. Yoruichi hated men because of him.

Shuuhei Hisagi stayed the hell away from both Ichigo Kurosaki and Orihime Inoue. The former, he felt he might injure. The latter was suffering, and he couldn't fix it.

"Fixing it" was always high on Shuuhei Hisagi's list of priorities, and he had sat with his own meddlesome instincts long enough to understand that he derived some basic self-worth from doing just that, whatever "it" might be. Dealing well with the inherent frustration of interpersonal relationships, ditto. He just wasn't as good at that.

He saw to it that the three of them shared space only in meetings, and the occasional meal at Urahara's. During one of those meals, he noticed that Orihime's face was getting thinner.

Urahara noted it too. After, he went to his room to report.

"No, it's no better," he said to the concerned face of the General. "She's beginning to lose weight."

"If the boy doesn't come to his senses, you will have to intervene. You've got a week."

"I really don't want to do that. It's hard enough to get the vizard to trust me, these days."

The General sighed. "I don't envy you your position, Urahara. Still, you know where our priorities lie."

"Yes. She's a very loyal young woman, General, and much brighter than I first thought her. I'm sure she'll respond appropriately when the time comes."

"I hope so. The fukutaicho is still involved with the issue?"

"Yes."

"Any problems there?"

"None at all. Despite his reputation, he behaves with honor."

The General grunted. "I hadn't expected anything less from a man with his history. Out."

The fukutaicho walked Orihime home again that night. "Are you getting enough to eat?" he said abruptly, four streets from her apartment.

"I'm not hungry very often, Shuuhei."

"You've got to eat, Orihime. You're getting thin." He didn't look at her face, kicked wet leaves out of his own way. "He's not worth it, you know."

Orihime walked on in silence for several steps. "How long have you known?" she whispered finally.

"Day it happened."

"Oh."

She had said nothing more beyond a whispered "Thank you" when he opened her door.

The next day he showed up at that door with a bag full of groceries. Orihime burst into tears and collapsed on her sofa. He got her a blanket, and cooked a couple of meals to the accompaniment of soft sobs from the other room. When they stopped, he popped his head around the door from the kitchen. "Don't you like marshmallow sauce?" On sesame chicken, for kamis' sake?

"Yes. I haven't thought about buying it for a while." She lay listlessly on the couch, wrapped in the blanket he brought her.

"Where do you keep it? Refrigerator or cupboard?"

"In the cupboard. It gets too hard in the refrigerator."

Shuuhei put the stuff away. "I'll be by every couple of days to cook," he said, as if it were no big deal. "I'll see if I can get Yumichika to come with me; he's a good cook too. You can't starve yourself, Orihime."

"On school days," Orihime said from the couch, even her voice lacking energy, "I can fill up at lunch."

And there are classmates you eat with, so you've got to pack yourself a meal, Shuuhei thought, but kept that one to himself. He packed up two lunches and two dinners and didn't know what to do about breakfast. Eventually, he steamed some rice. She could do the rest herself. She would have to do some of it, after all.

While the rice was cooking, he came into her living room and sat on the couch, not touching her, hands clasped and elbows on his knees. He fastened his gaze on the dead television set and said, "Orihime ... I know what happened."

"You do?" she said, big-eyed.

He looked at her. "Yeah. I wouldn't let it get to you. Combat - you know, it does a lot of weird things to people. The bond between Ichigo and Rukia may not last beyond their working together."

She had watched the hands in her lap twisting with each other all through this speech, and did not look up at him now. "Thank you, Shuuhei. I just ... don't know what to do yet."

"You will in time, okay? Believe that." To his surprise his eyes filled with tears. For Orihime and Ichigo? For Isane and Shuuhei? He didn't know.

"Has this happened to you?" she said, raising her eyes to his at the absolute worst moment in all of human history to do so, just as the tough guy wiped his eyes. Her own widened, but she didn't comment.

"Yes. I had a girlfriend named Isane. It looks like I don't, anymore." He looked down at his own hands, the back of the left one wet, then back to her.

"Over - something like this?"

"No, nothing as sudden." Her own eyes filled with tears; he thought to himself, Smooth move, Hisagi. "Isane and I argued all the time, and it got to the point where we couldn't make up fast enough." He paused. "I don't know if that makes sense."

She giggled, wiping tears, and said softly, "Oh, it does, unless you listen carefully."

He snorted. "Yeah. Well, that's what it was. I guess we're just incompatible."

"I'm sorry, Shuuhei."

"Me too, Orihime. For what it's worth, I don't think that's what's going on with you and Ichigo."

Her eyes filled with tears again. "No. I don't either. Either he loves me or he doesn't, and if he realizes he does ..." she could not finish that sentence.

He rose to put the cooked rice into the refrigerator, but stood looking down to her. "When he realizes he does, if he's got any sense. Which, to judge from what I know about the kid, is kinda debatable." She gave him a waterlogged smile. "Look, Orihime, I don't want to leave you here. I don't think you should be by yourself. But I have to be back at the shop to stand a watch. You wanna come with?"

"Yes." She rose. "Urahara-san can always find something for me to do, or I can help Ururu. I don't need to see Ichigo. –Could we stop at a stand? I'm hungry again, after smelling those wonderful meals you made me."

"Sure. I'm hungry too."

At the shop, Ichigo was in the kitchen with Uhara, just starting the climb down the ladder to the training area. He looked over his shoulder at them, said in surprise, "Orihime!"

"Ichigo." She gave him her sweet smile, went on into the other room.

The redhead looked after her uncertainly. Urahara said, "Go after her, Ichigo. We'll train later."

The boy stopped dead still in shock. "Isn't training more important?"

"Not this time."

The vizard leapt up the ladder, vanished after the girl, crying, "Orihime, wait up!"

Urahara switched the shaded eyes to Shuuhei. "What did you say to her?"

He shrugged. "Nothing important. I just told her that relationships forged in combat tend to be - transitory. I also cooked her a couple of meals. She hasn't been eating."

"There is nothing between you?"

"There is nothing between us. She's too innocent, and she'll always be too young."

"I see." The shopkeeper was silent for a beat of time, and Shuuhei started to move, on his way back to his room, but Urahara's voice stopped him. "I thank you, Shuuhei. In many ways, Orihime is as important to the success of our mission as Ichigo. If we lost her ... it would cost us time. We don't have any to spare."

Shuuhei nodded, and left.

Urahara's smile widened slightly.

"Miss Inoue!"

She turned when she heard her name called. On her way home from school, arms full of books, thinking about sesame chicken and marshmallow sauce for dinner. Maybe with some green beans and chocolate.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi approached her. "Miss Inoue? May I have a word with you?"

Orihime knew herself to be polite beyond a fault. Thus, when "Hell no!" rose to her lips, she censored it without much effort, and said instead, "Why, of course, Captain Kurotsuchi."

After her stay in Hueco Mundo, she was at least aware of the first impulse. Before her captivity at Ulquiorra's hands, she might not have been.

The clown - it was hard to think of him in any other way - stopped in front of her. She wondered how he walked the streets of Karakura without attracting a crowd, even if only a few people could see him. (Those few thought they were a] dreaming, b] still drunk, c] hallucinating, or d] insane, and thus told no one.) "Miss Inoue, would you consent to be my research subject? I can promise you no more than one surgery each day, and I'll even use anaesthetic if you wish. Would you agree to a term of one month?"

"No. I'm sorry, Captain Kurotsuchi." Orihime turned to walk away, but was stopped by a hand on her arm.

"Are you sure, Miss Inoue? Please, consider carefully." He smiled ingratiatingly, or at least that's how he thought he smiled.

She carefully moved out of reach of his touch, shook her head, put a hand to it as the world spun around. She gathered herself together, said again, "No, thank you, Captain Kurotsuchi." But the black beetles were crawling into the sides of her vision ...

Kurotsuchi caught her as she fell, and flash-stepped. Through the Senkaimon, over the wall, past the Fourth, on to the Twelfth.

He grinned as much as he ever grinned under the mask. The dispensing glove worked better than he thought it would have.

In Kisuke Urahara's underground training area, Shuuhei Hisagi leaned on a boulder and said carefully, after thoughtful consideration of just the right words to use here, "You're an idiot."

"Am not." Ichigo Kurosaki scowled, and swung Zangetsu at a totally innocent stand of tall grass.

"If you're not an idiot, why won't Orihime talk to you? I've noticed, everybody's noticed. Since she came back from Hueco Mundo she won't talk to you. She won't even spend time in the same room with you. What did you do to her, Kurosaki?"

"Nothing! Gawd, you shinigami are such perverts! I haven't done anything to Orihime! And I don't know why she won't talk to me!" The boy flushed, and held Shuuhei's eyes.

"All right. I guess I won't have to kick your ass." Shuuhei sheathed his own sword, walked away.

"Like to see you try!" Ichigo shouted after him.

"When I do," Shuuhei called back, "you'll see it, all right!"

Ichigo shouted something else, but Shuuhei reached the ladder and climbed it. Real mature, Shuuhei. In a shouting match with a fifteen-year-old over a girl who's far too young for you, and so innocent it makes you blush to think about her. Real mature.

In no very good mood, he stamped off to find Ikkaku, or Renji, or anybody else who believed in applying the anodyne powers of distilled rice wine after the mutual administration of a good thumping.

Ichigo, for his part, decapitated some more grass. Zangetsu approached him.

"You screwed it up big-time, kid."

Ichigo raised his head, and for a moment Zangetsu saw the Hollow in the boy's soul flash a glance at him. He braced for explosion.

None came. Ichigo's shoulders came down from around his ears. "I must have, I guess. I wish I knew what I did."

"You went to save Rukia, whom others would have rescued, in favor of protecting Orihime."

The kid's eyes snapped to the personification. His mouth went round. "But ... but she ... she knows better than that! It was in battle! You can't predict what will happen!"

"Whatever happened to Rukia, your agreed-upon primary responsibility was to Orihime."

The boy was silent, but his eyes held Zangetsu's. He felt to Zangetsu as if he had half an argument ready, although he said nothing.

Zangetsu said gently, "You let Orihime see that Rukia had replaced her as your first priority. Orihime is much wiser than you are, Ichigo, and she understands what she saw."

"Crap." The kid sat down all in a heap, angular knees up and elbows atop them, at the base of a boulder. "I knew I should have taken psychology."

Zangetsu folded himself up beside the boy. "What is sigh-collah-gee?"

"Teaches you how people think."

"Did you plan to use it to further deceit upon Orihime? It would not have changed this truth."

Ichigo shot him a look. His sword had a way of putting things that went right through any excuses, and even the temporary mercy of self-delusion, like they were butter. "No. Never mind. I - don't want to hurt Orihime."

"That has already happened."

Ichigo put his head back against the boulder and looked at the sky. "I'm an idiot."

"The Wolf Man just told you so. Were you only now discovering it?"

"It's hard admitting it to myself, I guess. I've been - enthralled, silly word - by Rukia ever since we met, when I wasn't busy being annoyed."

"Together, you do the work you were both destined for. That is enthralling enough. And annoyance is a fine mask for a bond too deep to cope with at your age."

The boy slanted him a bitter look. "You don't need to study psychology."

"That is good to know." The personification of Ichigo's sword stood, and Ichigo noted with some part of his mind not engaged in bitter self-recrimination that Zangetsu had no trace of dust on his garments. "I will see you again."

"You're here long enough to make me feel bad, and then you leave?"

"I was here long enough to make you understand what you did, and then I left." The personification winked out, as it sometimes did, and Ichigo was left alone with a person he was finding very hard to like at the moment.

Orihime came awake with a jolt. Where was she? The walls were white and high. This room was featureless. No windows; a door, if one existed, must be behind her. Light came in from the top, casting shadows down, where she could not see.

She wasn't in Karakura. The spiritual pressure around her ... felt like the Sereitei.

She tried to sit up, and could not.

No kind hand had fastened the straps across her forehead, above her breasts, around her hips, wrists, knees, ankles. Wide thick leather, rough-tanned on the side next her skin, cut cruelly.

There was a noise of sliding stone, and Mayuri Kurotsuchi entered her field of vision. "Ah, Miss Inoue," he said cheerfully. "So glad to see you again."

Orihime tried to say, "I reject!" but found that she was as tightly gagged as she was bound. Her eyes widened in horror. She felt as if hot lava were filling up her head behind her eyes, and spreading down into her throat, and her chest ... beyond the cruel straps, into her belly.

Kurotshuchi stood beside her, eyes flicking to her face, and saw her horror. He thwacked a filled syringe with his overlong fingernail. "There now, we can't have any of that 'I reject' nonsense until I've finished! I've decided to honor a month-long contract with you, Miss Inoue, and you'll be pleased to know that I have no real reservations about allowing you access to both anaesthesia and post-surgical pain medication. It will be a quick month. You'll barely know you were here." He bent over her bound body, and Orihime felt a strange sensation as he injected a drug into the intravenous line already inserted into the vein in her elbow. His cold eyes on hers, he said, "Well, that begins our work together. You see, I really want to know how ..." and his voice faded as her consciousness did.

"Urahara!" Ichigo bellowed. "Come on! I need to talk to you!"

Chad said quietly, "There's probably no need to shout, Ichigo."

Urahara, clearly half-awake, stuck his tousled head outside his bedroom window. "Ichigo, some of us are trying to sleep." Yoruichi's voice trailed out behind him, murmurous and unintelligible.

The substitute shinigami flushed to his hairline. "Yeah, sorry. But Orihime hasn't been to school for two days, and she's not at her house, either."

Urahara stared at him for a moment, then made a complicated motion with one hand, said, "Door's unlocked," and vanished.

Ichigo and Chad met him in the hallway. "She isn't at home or at school? No one's seen her?" the shopkeeper said, intensely for his usual state of laid-back-until-you-fall-over. He had a simple robe on, no hat, no clogs, and his scanty beard was a little heavier than usual.

"No. They found her schoolbooks on a street corner between her house and school. The police are looking for her now." Chad scowled, and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.

Urahara's brow furrowed. One thing he had failed to plan for was the murder or accidental death of any of his protégées. "All right. Give me ten minutes. We'll go to the place where her schoolbooks were found, and I'll try to trace her reiatsu." He looked at the boys. "Get to the kitchen and start water for tea. I'll send Shuuhei and Renji down to make breakfast. You'll eat with us before we start."

Urahara thought wryly that he had forgotten how much teenaged boys could eat, but Renji and Shuuhei obviously hadn't. They'd put six eggs on Ichigo's plate, and Urahara had just watched him dispatch them all, along with four pieces of toast and three cups of tea. Chad, twice Ichigo's size, ate no more than Urahara himself, one egg and a piece of toast.

He pushed his plate back. "Shuuhei, Renji, I'll need your help to keep us clear of Hollows. I'm going to try to pick up her reiatsu. We'll see - "

A scowling Ichigo interrupted him. "It's been two days, and thousands of people have been tracking through - ow! Renji, what the hell!"

Renji's big foot removed itself from Ichigo's ankle. "Just listen, Ichigo. Okay?"

The shopkeeper held the ryoka's eyes for a moment. "This is not something you need to fix, Ichigo. Let me do what I do. I haven't failed you yet, have I?"

"You've gotten the crap kicked out of me a time or twelve."

Shuuhei cocked an eye at the kid. "That's not failure," he said.

Ichigo flushed. Not his morning.

When Orihime woke again, she was still restrained.

That was high on her list of things to reject, but to do so, she had to form the words. Whatever Captain Kurotsuchi had done to her mouth, Orihime could not move her tongue or her lips. She could not even get air past her vocal cords to hum.

If she concentrated, she could not actually feel herself breathing. Was she dead? No. The leather was still there and painful. She couldn't feel any other pain, nor hunger or thirst.

It is possible to imagine yourself forming words, to feel the nerve endings fire to shape lips and place tongue and push air. Whether the impulses fire the muscles concerned is another matter.

Orihime had a very good imagination. Those who knew her would not be surprised to find she had a strong will, as well.

The leather fell free. Orihime sat up, and tried to deal with whatever he had in her mouth; when she finally rejected it specifically, it was a complex plastic thing that included a breathing tube that had obviously been placed in her throat. It was connected to a wall socket by a hose.

Five minutes after it was out of her mouth, Orihime felt her head begin to clear; unfortunately, she also felt her side begin to ache. A quick pull upward of her shirt revealed a small surgical wound closed by stitches, running from just under her rib cage about two inches down her side.

The table was high enough that when she got down from it, that incision nipped at her. Orihime had a shot at healing herself, but like most healers, she could not.

Think, Orihime Inoue. There's a way out of here. You need to find it. Otherwise, what will you be in a month, when he gets through with you?

There was a small round metal table by the door, the tilted table that had held her, a cabinet beside it of metal (locked), a sink and washbasin, and nothing else at all in the room. Orihime drank cold water straight from the tap.

The round metal table held a clipboard, on top of that lay a simple white envelope, and inside that were her hairpins. She put them on, and was aware of the comforting presence of her Shun Shun Rikki. They were, they said, glad to be with her again; it was hard to help her when they were not touching her, even from so short a distance as across this room.

The door was sekki stone, and no amount of rejection of its current state of closedness opened it.

Very well then. Orihime would have to let a person who could open it do that, and then leave after they had done so.

Orihime thought about getting back on the table and rejecting the current state of the straps. But she found she was absolutely unwilling to be so helpless again, and that having the breathing tube down her throat again was out of the question.

Somewhere in this room, she had grown a spine.

Orihime sat down in the corner that would be hidden when a person opened the door, and waited.

Urahara was holding out in front of him a device that no one of them had ever witnessed before. It looked almost exactly like a crystal ball with handles.

Except that the inside of it roiled unpleasantly with colors you didn't see outside digestive tracts, and once in a great while the thing put an eye to its fishbowl. Ichigo had been the first to see that, and had promptly lost his breakfast.

"What is that thing?" he'd said crossly to Urahara, emerging from the nearest restroom, and wiping his mouth.

The blond man did not take his eyes off a careful scan of the area in which Orihime's books had been found. "It's a Hollow I divested of most of its body and trapped in here. Its nervous system is wired into ..."

Ichigo bolted again. Shuuhei said carefully, Ichigo's fate a lurking possibility, "Probably too much information."

Urahara wasn't listening. He lowered the device. "This isn't where she was taken from. This is where her books were dropped."

Shuuhei's and Renji's mouths both dropped open. Ichigo, returning, played the part of Echo: "This isn't where she was taken?" Chad, beside him, stayed habitually silent.

"No. –I don't know what to do."

"I'll get Tatsuki," Ichigo said intensely. "She always knows where Orihime is. Let's meet back at the store." He stopped. "If she'll speak to me."

"She'll talk to me," Chad said, even-toned as always.

Urahara said, "We'll all go with you."

Tatsuki said crossly, "I have no reason at all to believe you, Ichigo."

Chad said reasonably, "You have no reason at all to disbelieve me."

She gave him a wild look. "It's true I can't feel her energy anywhere. All right, all right." She glared at Shuuhei, who felt the need to put up his hands and back away a step, and therefore did nothing of the kind. This was a human girl, after all; she had no powers.

Well, maybe a kind of good nose for reiatsu. And a pretty good brain, he had to admit later. And after she kicked the crap out of Ikkaku one day, he was willing to admit that maybe she did have powers of some kind. But that was in the future. Now, though, no powers, just an evil glare.

Tatsuki took them to the school, to one of the gates. "She always leaves by this exit," she said, barely glancing in Ichigo's direction. "I'll look for her freshest track here."

Urahara had his Hollow-in-a-ball out in front of him again, and was as uptight as any of them had ever seen him. He kept poking at the control panel, if that's what it was, and the thing inside the acrylic turned not one but three mournful eyes on him.

It made Ichigo gulp and swallow.

Tatsuki ignored them, quartered the area, her eyes internal, and finally said, "Here. This is the freshest track."

Her stiff and angry little figure walked the sidewalk, slowly and carefully.

"Here," Mayuri Kurotsuchi said crossly, pulling hairpins out of Orihime's hair. "Put them in that envelope, and put the damned thing on my desk. Then come back here."

Silent and obedient, Nemu left.

Orihime had fallen asleep beside the door.

Kurotsuchi had not hesitated to bend over the sleeping girl and inject her yet again through the IV site in her elbow. Orihime's normal sleep became a profound state of unconsciousness, and he picked up her slight form, laying it on the tilt-table with a thump.

He couldn't afford to call for help. Her file was marked with a U before its code numbers, which meant to all of his staff that he and Nemu, and they alone, were to see it, were to see the subject to whom it referred.

What that meant was that no staff member could form a bond to Orihime, feel impelled to help her, feel sorry for her. No. He wanted his month.

He, like Shuuhei Hisagi, had never seen a reiatsu like this young woman's. Not any of the other healers, nor even the ex-healer, Kira, had one like hers, although Kira's was perhaps closest. And Kira's had been changed, annealed somehow, when his Captain defected. This young woman had had no such crushing event in her life ... he didn't think she had anything in her history like the emotional bondage to Gin Kira had undergone, either. No, no tempering factors for young Miss Inoue.

He would have settled for Kira, could the fukutaichou's sudden and continued absence be explained, but this was so much better.

He opened her file, re-read his notes on the restraints, and upped the straps to the second level.

Tatsuki said flatly, "This is where it ends."

Two and a half blocks from her school, four blocks from the corner on which her books had been dumped, Orihime's trail ended.

Urahara said politely, not expressing doubt of any kind, "Her trail stops. As if she vanished."

"As if she vanished," Tatsuki said, her arms crossed in front of her, vibrating anger.

Urahara turned on the sickmaking Hollow-in-a-ball and did a slow three-sixty. Finally, he turned the thing off, met Shuuhei Hisagi's puzzled glance, went on to Renji Abarai, touched lightly on Chad, came to rest on Ichigo Kurosaki. Then he seemed to shake himself, and he bowed to Tatsuki. "Thank you," he said.

"That's it? That's all you've got to say to me? Just 'thank you'? 'Thank you, Tatsuki, now please fuck off'?'"

Heads in the crowd turned to watch Tatsuki stamp away, then focused on Ichigo, who with Chad was the only member of the group visible. Shuuhei said to him, "That friendship's in the toilet."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

Urahara said thoughtfully. "Something odd. I worked for years with Mayuri Kurotsuchi. His reiatsu's all over the place."

"That's probably not a coincidence," Renji said slowly. "Nobody ever knows what that guy's thinking."

Urahara tilted his head slightly, and smiled like a gunslinger. "Oh, I do, sometimes," he said lightly. "Ichigo and Chad, can you spend a few days in the Sereitei? I know you and Renji are stationed here, Shuuhei. I couldn't ask you both to come with us."

"No," Shuuhei said calmly, after a glance at Renji. "We'll flip for it."

Orihime woke with a start.

The painful leather straps were gone. In their place, she wore only what seemed to be heavy bracelets on each arm, heavy anklets around each leg.

But they fastened her spread-eagle onto another metal table.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi moved into her line of vision. The clown, ever smiling. He said, in his light voice with its pseudo-warmth, "So there you are! It was very naughty of you to undo my bindings, you know. This time, you'll find yourself a little more firmly fastened. You really won't want to 'reject' these bindings. They're routed through your bloodstream. Tear them out and you'll bleed to death." The cheery demeanor dropped like a stone, and Orihime found herself looking into the coldest eyes she had ever seen. He took the gag, a simpler one this time, out of her mouth, pushed a button on the console behind him, and she was free.

Orihime raised an arm with difficulty, found the bindings not just heavy but far more difficult to move than she expected. She inspected the red-and-silver thing, put her fingers on the transparent tube filled with red fluid, felt the heat of her own blood, and the pulsing of it as it traveled out of, and then back into, her body - in time to her own beating heart.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi, watching her conduct this experiment, smiled happily. "Is it clear, Miss Inoue, that you cannot free yourself?"

"Yes," she whispered.

The Senkaimon belched all of them out into the Sereitei, and they lit running. Why was it, Ichigo wondered, that he had never traveled between his world and this one without being pursued by the cleaners?

They all slowed to a stop with varying degrees of grace. Twelfth Division's headquarters glittered in the distance.

Shuuhei glanced at Urahara. "How are we going to get in there?"

The blond man shook his head. He had set a brisk pace, but a walking one. "Quietly. We can't afford to draw attention to ourselves."

Chad said, in his deep halting voice, "We're an exiled ex-Captain and a current acting Captain meddling in division business not their own, and two ryoka."

"Ryoka again? Crap." Ichigo kicked the same out of an innocent stone. "We're going to have to break in? We can't just go up to the gate and knock?"

Urahara said thoughtfully, "I know of various ways in and out. It's unlikely they've found all of them, and flatly impossible for them to have found one." He grinned. "We'll get in. We'll find her, and we'll get her out of there. They won't even know we were there. Stealth, gentlemen, stealth."

Ichigo felt his temper rise up, and with it the inner Hollow gloated and shrieked. He stamped firmly on his temper, and said, "Are you telling me that what Kurotsuchi did is sanctioned?"

But Urahara shook his head. "From what I know of the General's political inclinations, I don't think so. I don't think things are so bad right now that he would clear Kurotsuchi to alienate such a valuable ally."

"Kurotsuchi off his rocker?" Shuuhei inquired economically.

"A little farther than usual, maybe."

Shuuhei grinned. "Let's go kick some Twelfth-Division ass, and be stealthy with our footwork."

Orihime's new cell had the tilt table, a regular table-and-chair, and a softer chair in it. No windows, and no bed. No sink. No running water.

When Kurotsuchi came for her, which had happened twice now, he told her to get up on the tilt table, and she rarely remembered more of his visit than that. Two new surgical scars had appeared on her abdomen.

Surprisingly, she had little pain. She had conducted that experiment where she poked at a new wound once, and she wouldn't do it again. It proved that she could have pain, and quite excruciating pain at that. She thought he must be administering pain medication through her bracelets, but how? They weren't connected to anything.

For Orihime, the most difficult part of her captivity was boredom and isolation. That, and the fact that Kurotsuchi had apparently forgotten that captives must be fed.

On his third visit, she said timidly in response to being ordered up onto the table, "I'm hungry. I've had nothing to eat since I got here."

Kurotsuchi simply looked at her through the clown's mask. "What are you talking about? You're fed intravenously. You shouldn't have to be bothered."

Orihime said quietly, "I'm still hungry. I want something to eat, please."

"Not before surgery, Miss Inoue. It's dangerous to eat before being given anaesthesia."

"Then surgery will have to wait for a day. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty too."

He stared at her, then shook his head at her unreasonableness. "I'll arrange for a pitcher of water and a glass to be left for you after we finish for the day."

"I'm hungry now. I won't accept the surgery until I've had something to eat."

He scowled, straightened his spine, and marched to the door, the very picture of a spoiled child. "I'll get you your food today," he snapped, "but tomorrow you must undergo your surgery first."

The door shut behind him. True to his word, he returned shortly with sesame chicken (no marshmallow sauce) and some varied and slightly overcooked vegetables on a plate, and a pitcher of water.

He put them down on the table nearest the door, and did not speak to her. The door shut, and Orihime was alone again.

She ate, making herself chew slowly. She wanted to gulp it - she wanted to eat the plate, too, if it came to that. She drank two glasses of water, and made herself stop after that.

Her belly growled and ground even after she had finished. It disturbed her concentration, but did not stop her from careful exploration of her bracelets.

It was not that Orihime did not believe that Kurotsuchi had probably used a cut-down, the most invasive method, to access her circulatory system. That didn't mean she couldn't reject it. It did mean that she had to know what she was up against.

When she did know, she rejected it. The bracelet vanished. She did the same for the other arm, and then began with her ankles. She was left with four little pink holes, but no bleeding. She rejected them without a problem.

It was too bad that she had always thought before about healing herself, which she could not do, and not about rejecting the present state of somebody named Orihime Inoue, a stranger to her. That worked just fine.

This door was not sekki stone. Kurotsuchi must have thought his bracelets invincible. She picked them up and took them quietly into the corridor, where she turned left, following a breeze on her cheek.

The walls were dank and awful, home sweet home to some kind of stinking slime. Ichigo had had to put a hand to one to catch his balance, and would not make that error again.

Shuuhei was learning the same lesson the hard way. "Euuuw," he said, holding the befouled hand in front of him. "What is that stuff?"

"I don't know," Urahara said absently, "beyond knowing that you don't want to know." He had his Hollow-in-a-ball out in front of him, watching the thing do its obscene dance, eye appearing and disappearing. "She's moving. I don't know where they were keeping her, but she's out now."

"Out as in gone?" Ichigo said, hopefully.

"Out as in wandering the corridors." Urahara made the thing disappear into the folds of his coat. "Let's go find her before she wanders into someone she shouldn't, like Akon."

"Akon's not a bad guy," Shuuhei said.

"No, he's not. But he is a member of Twelfth Division. I was going to take us into the center of the Division, but now I think - ah, here it is."

They followed him through a rusted gate which guarded the entrance to a dimly-lit tiled corridor. Mysterious alcoves along it housed odd bits and pieces of machinery, and ceramic tiles displaying large number characters were set into the walls above them. Urahara read all of them carefully, then pulled out his Little Ball of Horrors, consulted it, and made another left turn. "She's this way," he said cheerfully.

Orihime had carefully rejected being seen by Twelfth Division members, with the result that three of them, including the man (if that's what he was) with the horns, had walked past her, blind to her presence.

That didn't mean she was getting any closer to the exit of this fun house. She carefully surveyed the prospects through every open door she came to.

In a cavernous room, two men were setting up what looked like a very large turd hung from the ceiling by heavy ropes to strike at a propped-up life-sized doll, or so she hoped, and two women were calibrating dials while a third figure, its back to her, took notes. She moved on.

Another area, redolent and acrid, must have been a laboratory. It looked like her high-school chemistry lab gone insane, backed up by an unlimited budget and some great special effects. Boiling green stuff climbed up round retorts connected like a pile of bubbles, crossed the large black chrysanthemum-scar of explosion on the back wall, tumbled down what appeared to be a series of glass staircases, and mysteriously became pink. There actually was a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling, and three figures in lab coats who did not look up as she stopped.

Totally awesome ... Then a fresh stink roiled out toward her, and she went on as fast as she could, without appearing to run.

She peered around a last door to see Byakuya Kuchiki, pale, calm, open-eyed, buck-naked but as always exquisitely groomed, strapped loosely to another tilt table.

A white-coated technician, who was acting as a sort of modesty panel from Orihime's perspective, made some sort of elbow-wriggling movement, and Kuchiki giggled and kicked one leg.

For Orihime, shocked open-mouthed and rooted unwillingly to the spot, realization bloomed like a flower of relief in her head: she must be seeing repairs being made to a gigai. She turned away, continued her journey.

But still ... every time she saw the upright Sixth Division Captain from now on, she would think of ... no, she wouldn't. If she did, she would laugh. If she laughed, he might ask her what was funny. Then what could she say? "Oh, I was reminded of the time I saw you naked ... and you giggled and kicked your leg like my dog used to when we scratched his belly" ... then that cold and distant look in his eyes would get colder and more distant ... no. Even if true, much better not said.

After that she gave each room a quick glance only. Keep walking don't look.

Finally, she let someone, a very harmless-looking young person carting glassware around on a cart, see her. "Excuse me," she said softly. "I've gotten lost. Can you tell me how to get out?"

He (perhaps) gave her a startled look. No kimono, no white coat - "Who are you?" he said.

And Urahara chose that particular moment to heave into sight. "Oh, never mind! There are my friends!" She gave the startled scientist/dishwasher a cheery wave, and trotted off in his direction.

"No time for greetings," Urahara said, "or recriminations," he added, glancing at Ichigo, who had scowled and opened his mouth. "Let's move."

They walked like they had forgotten that the car's lights were on: they were on their way to attend to some matter not urgent right now, but which would become so with neglect. Orihime rejected the possibility that someone would ask them why Mr. Hat-and-Clogs, three high-school students, and a thirty-something yakuza, to judge by the tattoo on his face ouch, were all strolling through Twelfth Division.

And so no one did.

Once they were out in the clean, fresh, free air, in the general Sereitei, Urahara slanted a glance down to Orihime, and said casually, "Do you want to tell me how this happened?"

Ichigo glowering in the background, Chad calmly interested, Shuuhei acting as lookout because nobody else seemed to have a lick of sense at the moment, all of them purposefully walking in the direction of the Gate, she told him the story. He frowned slightly at the end of it but made no comment.

Ichigo radiated pissed-offness while they waited for Jidanbo to open the Gate, and it intensified when Shuuhei put an arm lightly across Orihime's shoulders and dropped a kiss lightly onto her temple, saying only, "Glad you're okay."

She gave him a quick smile. "I knew you would come for me. All of you."

Shuuhei smothered the disappointment, and Ichigo the anger, he felt at the last three words. They went through the Gate and were free of the Sereitei.

Then they were in Karakura again, and the shoten door closed behind them.

Orihime, some time later, said, "But why can't I go home?"

Urahara said, "The police were called into your disappearance. They're still searching for you, or for your body. If you just show up suddenly, they're going to want to know where you were and who took you there, and you can't tell them." Fishing. Not appearing even to look at the lake, but fishing he was.

Orihime said simply, "Oh." Then her energy changed, and the shinigami, the human, and the vizard all felt it.

"What did you just do?" Urahara asked her.

"I have rejected the possibility that they were ever interested in me at all," Orihime said carefully.

In Karakura Prefect, some puzzled officials found notes on a case that made no sense. They didn't make no sense in the way cases usually didn't make no sense until they were solved; they didn't make any sense at all. When they went back to the station, no case file existed.

They put it down to overwork and exhaustion. All of them drew the double lines under the last of their nonsensical notes that meant "fuggedaboudit" in police parlance, and went on with their lives.

Kisuke Urahara fired up his private line of communication with the Captain-General, and told him all about that.

Shuuhei Hisagi, freed of his gigai, walked to the kitchen, intending to access the training area. But Ichigo and Orihime were using the area around the ladder for a pitched battle.

"But, Orihime, why didn't you tell me!" The boy, arms crossed, was scowling as always.

"I didn't want to bother you, Ichigo. You have a lot on your mind." She neatly turned over the contents of a saucepan.

Orihime had been cooking something. Disgusting. Shuuhei wrinkled up his nose, but, as well-endowed with that facial feature as any shinigami, did not budge from his position outside the door. Invisible, but well within hearing range.

Hell, if they kept this up, half the neighborhood was going to hear the kid.

"I wouldn't have been bothered!"

The girl turned from her friend to the stove, where the source of the stink was beginning to emit clouds of black smoke. "Ichigo, listen. It's okay with me if you're with Rukia."

Ichigo stopped as if he had been poleaxed. "What?"

"I said, it's okay with me if you're with Rukia." Orihime transferred the burnt offerings from skillet to plate, pushing a spatula hard at a stuck bit. "Ichigo, we've been friends for a long time. I like you for you. You don't have to be my boyfriend for me to like you."

The boy sagged into the corner, and ran a hand through his fiery hair. "I always thought ..."

"I did too. Then you met Rukia, and all of our lives changed."

Shuuhei saw Ichigo look at her and spend some time in thought, looking at her. Not hard to do with Inoue. "Orihime ..."

"I grew up, Ichigo. It took Hueco Mundo to help me get there, but I grew up." She looked down at the mess on her plate. "I have got to learn to cook."

"And you're saying I haven't? Grown up, I mean?" The kid had huffed himself up again.

"Your way is different. You're going to be in Eleventh Division, I'll bet, a warrior. I'll probably end up in Second Division."

Both men bellowed, "No! The Fourth!" at the same time, and Shuuhei stepped out of his hiding place.

The two teenagers both turned their heads to him, mouths agape. "How long have you been eavesdropping?" Ichigo finally said.

"Long enough. Good kami, Orihime, don't eat that. I'll cook for you." He emptied the plate into the sink, wrapped the burnt offerings in plastic before dumping them in the garbage so they wouldn't continue to stink up the place, and filled the scorched pan with hot water before he turned on the overhead fan. The kitchen still smelled like a forest fire.

Orihime gave Shuuhei the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and said, "Thanks."

Gruffly, he nodded, turned back to the task. "Finish what you had to say to Ichigo."

"Come on," Orihime said to the redhead, and stuck out her hand. "We'll go for a walk around the house, ne?"

He clasped her hand in his, which raised Shuuhei's hackles (but it's her choice and I can't say anything about it), and they left together.

When they got back, the energy between them had changed entirely. Ichigo was baffled; he felt rejected, but that was what he had wanted ... wasn't it? And Orihime, Shuuhei was glad to feel, had come to a new point of rest.

She was what and who she was, and she was glad for it. And so was he.

They walked into the kitchen and stopped for a moment, looking at each other. Then Orihime said lightly, "I'll see you later, Ichigo."

"Later," the boy said awkwardly, and went down the ladder into the training area.

Shuuhei dished up food for both of them. "Sit down," he said. "I want to ask you something."

She smiled at him, and his heart turned over in his chest. "What did you want to ask me, Shuuhei?"

The tattooed, much older, far more experienced but maybe not any wiser, shinigami said, "I want you to tell me the story of your life."

Orihime Inoue finished telling Shuuhei Hisagi the story of her life, and folded her hands in her lap.

Shuuhei Hisagi told her the story of his, walked her home, and kissed her goodnight on her doorstep.

Orihime went to bed, and as part of that she put her hand up to her temples to remove the hairpins that housed her Shun Shun Rikki.

Her questing fingers encountered only hair and skin.

Orihime did not quite panic. They weren't in the bathroom. She knew she had not taken them out when she was at Urahara's ... falling in love with Shuuhei Hisagi ... so they had to be ... somewhere in Twelfth Division.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi kept a very neat desk. Mind you, it was six inches deep in paper at any given moment, but Mayuri Kurotsuchi and Mayuri Kurotsuchi alone knew what each pile was, and could find any piece of paper requested with minimal scuffling.

He was not in his office when Orihime rejected the absence of her Shun Shun Rikki.

The Shun Shun Rikki had been imprisoned in that envelope, taken away from their Orihime, and then some idiot had piled papers on top of them! To say that they were not happy was an understatement.

The paper (placed by an absent-minded Mayuri Kurotsuchi) piled atop their envelope (placed on her father's desk by an obedient Nemu Kurotsuchi) fountained into the air, knocking aside other papers, which cascaded down onto the floor, and the envelope vanished in a shower of shreds. Tsubaki kicked the crap out of a few other piles while he was at it, making a thorough mess of Kurotsuchi's desk-based vertical filing system in the process, and then all six of the Shun Shun Rikki vanished with a "pop," leaving the office looking like a bomb had gone off in a paper factory.

It took Mayuri Kurotsuchi six hours to re-order his office, six freakin' hours he could not spend in a laboratory. He could not order Nemu to do it for him; she lacked knowledge of his system.

Had the Shun Shun Rikki but known of it, their revenge was very sweet indeed.

Shuuhei Hisagi was lying in bed in the dark in his room in the shoten, his hands behind his head, trying to reconcile himself to ... Orihime.

She's too young. She's half my age, if I were human. And she is human. I'll outlive her by centuries. What am I gonna do?

The wolf entered his mind, sat politely at the outskirts until he focused on it. Do not concern yourself so deeply, the creature thought to him.

But -

In the fullness of time, the wolf said to him, it is not a problem. She has yet to show you who she really is.

Which left him confused, but hopeful.

And still alone in his bed in the dark, when he wanted her in his arms. He turned over, and took out quite a lot of his frustration on a pillow which had done nothing but be in the wrong place at the right time.

Train, fight, get hurt, be hospitalized, get healed, recover, rehabilitate. If you enclose that sentence in the musical symbols which mean "repeat this passage from here to here," and for Captains and Lieutenants add the phrase "push paper," that is the existence of a Soul Reaper. Two days after he assaulted the pillow, Shuuhei Hisagi embarked upon the first and second set of instructions contained therein.

He wasn't quite sure how it happened. He hadn't been distracted, had been able to put Orihime out of his mind far enough to patrol effectively, which reassured him. He thought he'd been in love before, but he was flat wrong to compare anything he'd previously felt to what he experienced in relationship to one Orihime Inoue.

Patrol, though, had turned up a group of five Hollows, and Ichigo Kurosaki, patrolling with him, had leapt into the fray with joy in his heart and cessation in his blade. Shuuhei had called in and followed suit.

The Hollows he faced presented no surprises, but as he purified the first one, suddenly he had been thrown, hard, against the side of a building in Karakura Town by the second, and he slid down it, feeling bones just broken grind. He looked up at the second Hollow, trying to get back to his feet - the thing might come for him again, follow through its attack.

He'd made it as far as his hands and knees when he saw Ichigo Kurosaki fly to the Hollow, and purify it with one well-aimed strike at its head. It unraveled, and its black shreds flew away on the wind.

Why couldn't I do that? he thought bitterly to himself, coughed up blood, and blacked out, it hurt so bad.

He recovered consciousness just as Ichigo landed lightly in front of him. "You okay?" the orange-haired kid said.

"No, I think I ... broke something." Shuuhei coughed up more blood.

"I think you broke more than one," Ichigo said, and picked Shuuhei up with surprising gentleness. Shuuhei blacked out again.

His sense of smell told him that he was in Fourth Division before he could open his eyes. But ... Orihime? Here? He could hear her voice, but not make out the sense of her words.

Retsu Unohana smiled at the young healer. What power this girl had! "No, you did just what you should have, Orihime. You brought him here. When a healer is ... involved ... with an injured person, it's really best to have another healer do the treatment."

Orihime dropped her eyes. "How did you know?"

Unohana, a kind woman very experienced in the ways of youth, kept herself from snorting. "Your reiatsu is twined about Shuuhei's, Orihime, and his about you. I see it often in Soul Reaper couples, less often between humans and Soul Reapers."

Shuuhei croaked Orihime's name. She went to him without excusing herself to Unohana.

Who smiled, and let herself out the door to his room.

Orihime stroked the messy black hair out of his eyes. "Shuuhei," she said, "I'm here."

He said nothing, turned his palm up. She grasped it.

Several tens of centuries later, he croaked, "Orihime ... get up behind me."

"I can't. They'll be mad at me."

"... Please."

Something in his tone changed Orihime. Shuuhei was more important to her than what other people thought, and it was time she admitted that to herself, and started acting upon it.

Very carefully, so as not to hurt him, Orihime settled herself and her gigantic boobs into his back ... no pressure, just a little contact.

He relaxed against her. "... That's ... nice."

"I worry I'll hurt you." She put an arm around him, angled so that it didn't rest its weight on his body.

"No ... I wanted ... this. I'm feeling ... too punk to be ... aroused ... by those ... breasts of yours. I just ... wanted ... to be ... close to you." He paused to swallow. "It's ... too bad ... we can't ... use your boobs ... as weapons."

She giggled. "You would be the only one allowed to fire them."

"Hunh." It was little more than a harsh exhalation. "Don't make ... me laugh. Hurts."

"Okay." She put her face into the nape of his neck, breathed in his scent (also that of the light antiseptic wash every Fourth Division patient who was too badly injured to fight it [think Eleventh Division] got), and extended her healing energy to surround him.

Which was how Unohana found them fifteen minutes later. Any healer's motto was primum non nocere - first, do no harm. She went to get the "Do Not Disturb" door hanger.

Orihime, curled protectively around Shuuhei, slept lightly for a few hours, then woke as the healing energy she had extended to him terminated its processes and returned to her.

Shuuhei slept more easily, his breath no longer catching in his throat. His not-quite-handsome face had not sustained any damage in the attack, and was the blue-striped number-cheeked visage with which she was familiar; his blue-black hair was losing some of its spunk, and in consequence less spiky than usual.

She wanted to kiss his cheek. She also wanted to refrain from waking him up.

Orihime settled for extending her perception to Shuuhei, not invading his mind but simply holding it in focus. This was Shuuhei ... this was Shuuhei ... this was Shuuhei ... this was something they were going to talk about later, and do later than that if she had anything to say about it ... not that though, ick, where did he learn that? ... this was Shuuhei ... Orihime gasped as she found his picture of her, but she did not run away from it, and was rewarded with a truer self-image for her courage.

Unohana should perhaps have warned the younger healer that what she was doing had its dangers. By the time Shuuhei Hisagi woke, Orihime Inoue had fallen into love with him, and she was never going to get out.

A good thing she didn't want out, then.

Orihime was helping Ururu complete some task Jinta had pushed off on her - Ururu, that is. Jinta was off doing whatever Jinta did when he had successfully delegated his work, and Kisuke Urahara was muttering curses under his breath in the lab he sometimes worked in.

Yoruichi was sunbathing naked on the roof. Orihime knew this because the neighbors of the shoten had come to complain, but would not tell her why they were unhappy. She had had to escort them to Urahara himself, and he had closed the office door before talking to them.

Which, since she and Shuuhei had made love, seemed rather silly.

Tonight she was going to ask him about that perception she had had while he lay injured, just to watch him blush, because she liked making Shuuhei blush ... and after that she was going to persuade him that it was indeed a good thing to try with each other, ne?

"Orihime, come on. We do that together, I'll be picking up bits of my mind from as far away as Osaka."

"Osaka is not so far away, Shuu-chan. Come here. Like this, and like this. Please take your shirt off."

"Orihime ... "

"If you say no, I will stop."

" ... Ori - hime! ... Stop."

"'Stop' is not 'no,' Shuu-chan."

"Orihime."

"Shuu-chan?"

"No."

Three days after Yoruichi worked on her tan, and Orihime worked on her arts of persuasion, Shuuhei Hisagi went to meet Kazeshini.

Weather inside the world of the zanupakuto is almost entirely the creation of the shinigami concerned. Shuuhei, happy, had given the wolf bright sun and sprawling meadows rife with deer, and a den in the hillside behind it.

He approached his zanupakuto to find Kazeshini snapping at what seemed to be flies, a half-dozen orbiting his head. He kept snapping at them, muzzle flashing.

Shuuhei sat down beside the wolf. "What's going on?" he said.

"It's these creatures," said Kazeshini, not sounding unhappy. "They come with the Sunhair." Snap, snap.

"Sunhair? Oh, Orihime." Shuuhei lay down flat on the ground beside his zanupakuto.

"Why do you call her 'weaving princess'? I can see that she is a princess to you," Shuuhei's heart seemed to open a little wider, "but she does not weave." Snap, snap.

"It's her human name. Shall I ask her to call the Shun Shun Rikki back?"

"No. Mostly, I like their games" - snap! - "although this one" - the wolf spat, a thing real wolves cannot do, and Tsubaki tumbled head over heels out into the air in front of Kazeshini, covered in wolfspit - "likes to pull my hair." Tsubaki promptly zoomed off to dive-bomb himself through the creek, and returned to orbit the wolf's head with the other five. Kazeshini watched him go with a wolf-grin on his face. "The others," he said calmly, "scratch behind my ears."

Shuuhei laughed with sheer delight, and took the hint. He could not remember ever feeling so much contentment from Kazeshini before. "How long have they been here?"

"They have been here on and off since you first met the Sunhair. We know, you see, long before you do, whose soul you are matched with, because the match exists for us too, and we have no need to deny or repress it." The golden eyes came to rest on Shuuhei's without reproach in them. "My little friends came for a longer visit when she lay with you in your hospital bed. Since you laid with her in her bed, they have been able to stay or go as they wish." The wolf paused, ignoring the both Shun Shun Rikki and the flush that turned Shuuhei's blue cheek stripe purple for a moment (although Orihime was not the only one who liked to make the Soul Reaper blush).

"We are happy that you have found each other," the wolf said finally. "We were not sure you could see beyond your reservations, but we understood them. And it was not as if Orihime would not have become older and wiser in time. So all is well if it ends well, is it not?"

"It is," Shuuhei said, stretching luxuriously in the warm sunshine. "It really is. I wish she could be here with us, though."

"Oh, she can be," the wolf said, "as soon as she persuades you to do that odd thing she keeps talking to you about, the one that makes your face turn red and your - "

"Stop it," Shuuhei croaked, interrupting, his cheek stripe purple again.

"- hard," the wolf finished.

The Shun Shun Rikki buzzed him.

Shuuhei knew when he had lost a fight.

Shuuhei Hisagi had been, to his own great glee, assigned again to the Living World. He had six of his people with him, four seasoned, two new recruits: experience had shown him that this was about the best mix for training sessions.

He got them settled into Urahara's, took them on their first patrol. Got everybody back in one piece, with dinner behind them.

He smiled, remembering the new guys' pleasure in the food carts Karakura Town boasted. He'd been quite happy to eat from their offerings himself.

Because this evening, with the guys all off exploring in gigai with Ichigo Kurosaki, he was going to go see Orihime Inoue.

And while his heart might be gladdened, his stomach was apprehensive. What do you do if the object of your affections is quite likely the world's worst cook?

Shuuhei knocked on her door. He had worked out some time previous that she was such a bad cook because, paradoxically, she was so non-judgmental a person. If you did not attach the words "arrogant jerk" to Ulquiorra Schiffer, kami rest his conglomerate soul, was he still an arrogant jerk? If you did not automatically attach the word "bad" to, say, bean paste flavored with orange juice and hot sauce ... did it still taste awful?

The only problem with that logic was that to the portion of the world that was not Orihime, it quite often did. So Shuuhei was careful to eat just before he came to visit. Every single time.

He also budgeted his own funds to include dinner and/or breakfast out, if she invited him to stay the night: Orihime always invited him to stay the night. He, for his part, always accepted her invitation.

He wished that they could spend more time together. Not so much in terms of Soul Society and the Living World, and the obligations each carried, but in terms of Soul Reaper and human being. He only had another seventy or so years with Orihime, before she came to Rukongai or even reincarnated into a noble family. That was not, to Shuuhei Hisagi's way of thinking, long enough. So when they sent him here, he was careful to minutely fulfill all of his obligations to Soul Society and to the Living World, and then he came to Orihime's home.

Where he was welcomed. "Shuuhei!" Orihime said upon opening the door, and her face lit up like the sun. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Hey, this was all right. Shuuhei bent his head and returned the salute good and hearty. "I've missed you," he said, his voice thick and his cheek down on the top of her head.

One of Orihime's neighbors raised an eyebrow as he passed, and Orihime colored. "Come in," she said, and pulled Shuuhei through the door.

Without prying eyes to consider, each of them expressed to the other how he or she felt about her or him. So, some minutes later, when they got as far as Orihime's bedroom, Shuuhei felt obligated to say, "Hey, slow down, girl! You're bein' a real snake, you know that?"

"Why slow down?" said Orihime, unbuttoning Shuuhei's shirt. She did not at all mind being called a snake, as she knew that in the Chinese zodiac they were considered to be lustful; and this was a thing Orihime knew about herself ... at least since Shuuhei had come into her life.

"Um ... because otherwise I might think you only love me for my gigai?"

She giggled, which was something about Orihime that Shuuhei loved. "Of course not! It's a nice gigai, though, Shuuhei." She put her hands on either of his shoulders and kissed him. "Does it look like you, to you?"

Shuuhei considered this sentence until he understood it. "Yeah, it does. Akon got this one pretty close."

"The man with the horns?"

"They aren't like cow horns, no. They're little bumps on his forehead."

"I saw him when Mayuri took me."

This statement obligated Shuuhei to take her into his arms, and hold her there for quite a long time. This action of Shuuhei's obligated Orihime to return his gestures of affection.

When they were finished with these gestures of mutual affection, Shuuhei cuddled Orihime into the curve of his body around her, and they both went to sleep for at least a little while ...

When Orihime woke, she was quite startled to find herself in a place not at all like her bedroom.

And she was alone.

Wherever she was, the sun shone brightly, and the meadow in which she found herself was green and grassy (and quite remarkably free of cow pies, although Orihime, a city girl, gave it no credit for that).

In the background, deer bounded into a forest. Near her, a small brook burbled clear water over large flat stones.

Orihime was suddenly surrounded by the Shun Shun Rikka. "You came!" Shun'o and Tsubaki said together, whirling around her head with Lily, Ayume, Hinagiku and Baigon.

"I did?" Orihime said, quite confused. "Where is this place?"

"This is Kazeshini's home," Shun'o said. "Come and meet him."

They flittered ahead of her, playing tag with one another and dodging through flowers - Tsubaki was covered in yellow pollen after flying through a patch of golden blossoms, which made Orihime giggle.

When they neared a bank, the spirits flew farther ahead of her, zoomed over the top of it, and called in their clear tiny voices, "She's here! She's here! She came to meet you, Kazeshini!"

A wolf exited its den, which stopped Orihime in her tracks. The creature did a Downward-facing Dog that would have been the envy of any yogi in India, and followed it up with an equally exquisite Upward-facing Dog. (The yoga poses were given that name for a reason.) It carefully stretched each hind leg as it moved leisurely toward the girl.

Kazeshini seated himself about twenty feet from her. "Welcome, Princess."

Orihime flushed. "I'm not a princess," she said.

"Nonetheless, that is how my master thinks of you."

"Your - master?"

"You call him Shuuhei."

Realization dawned on Orihime. "You're Shuuhei's zanupakuto!"

"I am. Your little friends have been able to come here for some time. Why have you not come to meet me?"

Orihime colored again. "I didn't know how to. I still don't know how I got here."

"You may think of it as a dream, but it's not. This place is real, and so am I. Your dream-self is welcome among us here any time, Orihime; Shuuhei can show you how to get here when you are awake."

The Shun Shun Rikka flew excited circles around her, saying in their piping voices, "Yes, Orihime! Come and be with us! Get Shuuhei to show you how!"

She smiled at their excitement. "All right, I will."

The wolf got to its feet. "Come and sit at the entrance to the den with me," he said. "Shuuhei will be here shortly. I will take it kindly if you scratch behind my ears."

That was how Shuuhei found them a couple of minutes later, Orihime the center of her orbiting Shun Shun Rikka, scratching Kazeshini's ears well enough to have put a glazed look of contentment on the wolf's face.

She smiled at him, and said, "Hello again."

"Hello," he said, and plopped down beside her, applying his hand to his wolf's other ear. "I see you two have met."

The Shun Shun Rikka buzzed him excitedly, and then settled like tiny particles of light on Orihime's shoulders. "We've met you, too," Shun'o said, and Tsubaki, never the most gracious of communicators, added, "Yeah."

Shuuhei smiled and held up his other hand, one finger extended, so that Baigon could light on it, and watch him curiously, masked head on one side.

"And who is this?" he said to Orihime.

"That's Baigon. Ayame wears the big dress - " Ayame blushed and hid when Shuuhei smiled at her - "Hinagiku wears the eyepatch, Lily has pink hair, Shun'o has the blond ponytail, and Tsubaki - "

"Tsubaki wears the cloth mask," said Shuuhei, "and sometimes pulls Kazeshini's hair," as Tsubaki lit on his shoulder.

The wolf moaned in pleasure as Orihime's scratching fingers addressed a particularly itchy spot, and he put his head entirely in Orihime's lap, as Shuuhei snorted with laughter: Kazeshini never relaxed that far with him. Perhaps because he feared the power of his own blade?

The sun shone down on the nine of them, and though the shadows lengthened a bit, the day grew slightly warmer.

Curious, Orihime said to Shuuhei, "How did I get here?"

"What do you remember?" he said. Baigon leapt off his finger, and went to play with the others. Tsubaki put his hands into Shuuhei's spiky coarse hair, and began a vigorous mountain-climbing exercise. Shuuhei winced, and put a hand under the tiny creature. "Where do you want to be?" he asked Tsubaki, who pointed down to his facial stripe.

Shuuhei did not have a prominent cheekbone, which meant that Tsubaki had trouble keeping his balance as he walked along the shinigami's face, testing out the blue stripe by pushing at it with a pointed toe. Shuuhei tilted his head until he presented a more stable walking platform - as the sun was to his right in this warm afternoon, it was his north face - to the Shun Shun Rikka, and winced at the impact of the creature's feet. Particularly his pointed toes.

Tsubaki also peered closely at the "69" tattooed on Shuuhei's cheek and prodded the marked skin. Then he shrugged and took off into the air, buzzing Kazeshini, who was too content to snap at him, before joining the others.

Shuuhei laughed in sheer pleasure, and put his arm around Orihime's shoulders.

"I remember," the girl said, "lying in bed with you, and falling asleep after we ..."

Shuuhei smiled in remembrance. "Yeah, after." (The phrase "screwed each other senseless" did not cross either of their minds: Orihime's because she did not know it, and Shuuhei's because he never associated that verb with Orihime. Ever.) "And you woke up here?"

"Yes. - Where is this place, exactly?"

Shuuhei tilted his head again, this time to think. "I don't know how to describe it, exactly. It's the place in my head where my zanupakuto lives. The first time I met them here, I was very surprised to see your Shun Shun Rikka."

Kazeshini raised his head long enough to say, "They have been able to come here since you and the Princess - " and the wolf, also lacking the phrase "screwed each other senseless," transmitted to Shuuhei an image that left him blushing, and brought Tsubaki back to prod at the newly-purple stripe, investigating the color change, and then followed it up with, "and she will be able to come here any time she likes if you and she - " and there followed another image, this of the sexual technique Shuuhei had refused absolutely to show Orihime. The wolf's head dropped heavily back into her lap.

Shuuhei considered that technique, that whole body of knowledge and the antics he'd gotten up to for its acquisition, to belong to a younger, much more adventurous and certainly more risk-taking Shuuhei; a stranger now, who nonetheless had earned the reputation of "bad boy" that seemed to follow Shuuhei everywhere he went.

Fer kamis' sakes, he'd only been that guy for what, fifty years or so? And right out of Academy too, when you could normally expect to be sowing wild oats. But Shuuhei had excelled in this as he had in most things he set his mind to, and had left not scattered oats nor clumps of them, but whole acres.

The wolf, however, had done more than transmit this picture to him; Kazeshini had also sent it to Orihime. Who giggled, and said, "Is that all we have to do? Come on, Shuuhei, let's go home and do it right now!"

The purple stripe became positively magenta. (Tsubaki hovered to stare, but did not land.) Did Orihime have any idea of what she had just said? "Sure, squirt, if that's what you want."

Instead of jumping up and leaping off, as Shuuhei had half-expected, Orihime stroked the wolf. "I can't get up while Kazeshini is so comfortable."

The wolf rose and performed Down and Up Dog again. "Certainly you may return whenever you wish." He strolled off to get a drink of water from the stream, the Shun Shun Rikka orbiting.

You ratfink, thought Shuuhei. "I can't believe you'll do that with me."

"I can't believe you don't want to. If you don't, will you teach me how to come here on my own?"

"Never meant I didn't want to," said Shuuhei.

Orihime performed the exercise Shuuhei had coached her through the first time, and arrived in the meadow. "I did it!" she said to Shuuhei, who popped in just after she did.

"Yes, you did," he said, and took one hand. "Let's go see our friends."

For the rest of her life, whenever she went to the meadow, Orihime was always sixteen. And after her life, to her delight, that did not change.