The day was rainy, just like the past week had kept being.

Trash was slowly flooding the empty streets, riding on the endless waves the sewers were rejecting. Little by little, all the outlines of the city had become a weird blurred draft that resembled something formerly known but now half-forgotten. The dreary silence, only broken by the stubborn cloudbursts, ended convincing the inhabitants of some sort of ancestral forces awakening to mourn about an unknown loss.

At last, that was what Karin Kurosaki was reflecting on, that afternoon. She felt tense; a mood she knew was shared by all of her coworkers. She had drunk so much coffee that she wanted to throw up every single swallow she additionally took. She however tirelessly kept drinking it. It seemed like the only option if she ever wanted to finish filling her damn papers. She could easily sense that the storm was soon about to break in and tear the sky apart; which could probably be one of the reasons to the unexplainable nervousness lately.

Harassed by a never-ending series of sleepless nights, she had quickly found herself aggressively exhausted. No significant event had happened for several months however, nothing that could give an explanation to her restlessness. She didn't know if the persistent weather had an unusual affect on her, or if she actually was coming down with something. She stretched out a bit and rested her forehead in her hands, rubbing softly her temples. She wasn't only edgy; she was kind of worried about something she couldn't identify properly for the moment. And that annoyed her really, really strongly.

"Hey Rukia. I'm taking a break. I'm going to have another coffee, want some?"

"You haven't finished yours yet."

"It's cold. I don't want it."

"Well, yes. Thank you."

The brunette went out at first, sheltered from the rain by the awning. She deeply inhaled the fresh air, and appreciated the humidity for a bit. She hated smoking outside when it rained, but grabbed her pack of cigarette with an annoyed sigh anyway. She needed to relax very badly, this fucking work seemed boundless, and for once she was sleepy as hell.

Karin sat, lying against the wall, smoking quietly. She had been in the police for five years now. She never really knew what she wanted to do "as a grown-up" so she wandered from different studies to others, until the day her brother unexplainably died. No one saw that coming, and no valuable cause for this sudden disappearance had ever been given. She only learned it was during a blaze. But what was he doing here? Was it not a criminal fire? Why were the criminals never found and arrested? And how come he couldn't escape, he who was so streetwise? Those were to remain unanswered questions.

Her mother first, and then him. She certainly knew she could not avenge them, but she decided she wanted to prevent any event of the kind to occur again. She just was confusingly weary of that shit at the moment. Nothing interesting had happened for a while; it was always the same routine, amends, small infractions, papers, a few complaints, papers, false alarms, papers, always papers, never-ending fucking boring hateful papers. She wanted fucking adrenaline and fucking no papers. That was a lot of fuck.

A slow hissing escaped her lips as the thought crossed her mind. She was even tired of herself. Why on earth was she so susceptible at the moment?

She decided to come back inside and get these coffees, when she noticed bustle in the corner of the street. She remained still for a second, and screwed up her eyes, trying to focus. She almost immediately recognized some fellow agents running down to the building. Two of them briskly got in without noticing her, and the last one, Madarame, stopped.

"Kurosaki? What are you doing here?"

"Well, I'm taking a break. What's going on?"

"Haven't you heard the order? Get ready to leave in like… Thirty seconds, there is some shooting northward, we're going up there"

"Ok, I'm… Wait, what? Now?"

"Move!"

"Yes sir!"

Some action at last! She shouldn't have been happy. That happy. She decided to work there because she wanted those events to stop, she should have been glad to do papers. But fuck principles right now. She needed to be distracted of herself.

Thirty actual seconds later, she was in the car, armed and ready to kick some asses. Well, that wasn't absolutely true, but at last ready to react whatever would happen.

She was surprised however, as she saw the parking lot emptying, by the unusual amount of mobilized agents. Ordinarily, only the combat experts like Ikkaku where sent on the battlefield. She knew a few people from the crew, and hoped to join it soon. She trained hard to be admissible into the general drilling, and potentially integrate it.

She had already met Madarame and Yumichika, always stuck together. The sight of them systematically amused her. They seemed to be each other's perfect opposite, and still… She hardly knew two people getting along so well. She had encountered Tatsuki too, whom she enjoyed the company very much. And she had obviously heard about the terrifying Kenpachi. Never met him though. Except for the troops he trained with, the 11th division, very few people actually did. And if they did, it was generally not good prospects.

He was said to have mastered every imaginable weapon in the world, notably bladed weapon, which was kind of rare in the 21st century police. He nevertheless also had a solid reputation as a sniper, but was said to hate it; preferring far more being in the battlefield and directly facing his opponents. The man was reputed to be a virtuoso of the slaughtering which led him into rarely actually intervening. Only when the situation was said to be "desperate", when the security of policemen, hostages or civilians was no longer assured. He was not really sent to arrest, frighten or negotiate. When Zaraki entered the game, it was to eliminate.

Karin thought that if he wasn't on their side, he would probably be imprisoned, since murder seemed to be the logical outcome of any of his confrontations, and since he also appeared to have an animalistic hunger for blood. Being a part of the police sort of tamed his frustration, but how much was uncertain. Then, with a shiver, she came to actually doubt that they would have succeeded in capturing him and put the man behind bars.

Zaraki… This monster frightened her probably as much as he fascinated her. She dreamt to train with him, to see him execute his art. So much to learn. She wondered why she wanted so badly to learn how to fight. But that definitely was a need.

She sighed while the car was hurtling down the dull boulevards of the suburbs. She looked at the black clouds wandering over their heads. It seemed that the light was running away.

When they crossed a channel, she suddenly found herself confronted to her own pale reflection in the window. Surprised, she stared at it a few seconds, and before she could turn her head away from the vision, they were outside again, with only the rain for company in the deserted alleys.

By the time they arrived, the sky was even darker. It was something like four in the afternoon, but it looked like twilight. The deluge intensified, making the driving harder; and rendering everyone even more jumpy, if that was possible in such a situation. The storm was approaching drastically.

No one could say if the driver was really strained and hardly handled the drenched macadam, or if he just wanted to do a sort of movie-like sliding — since he almost crashed the car. He eventually managed to immobilize it safely next to the others, and all the cops swept out the vehicle, starting to run in diverse directions. They were dozens.

Imitating the others, Karin crossed the courtyard where they were more or less parked. She covered herself behind a huge trashcan half spilled on the ground and took aim at the front open door. She could see nothing but darkness beyond it. She hadn't much to do; she was just here to guard the exit. She quickly glanced all over the place. It was creepy. Well, it was a disused and abandoned building as she had seen many others, but she couldn't tell why this very place made her feel particularly uncomfortable. Was it some junky squat or something? Oh, or maybe it was just the weather. The weather made all peculiar and uncanny today. She focused again on the door. Now she just had to wait the most patiently she could.

The water was soaking everything. She felt that even her boots didn't protected her damp feet anymore, and she wondered if her gun could actually work. A flash of lightning tore the clouds above them, almost immediately followed by the sinister grunt of the thunder.

All right, the storm is here. Those fucking idiot thugs chose their moment. My life is a fucking movie today.

There weren't a lot of cops left in the courtyard, most of them being inside, she supposed. She heard fight-like sounds, screams and shots. Then all was silent again. She kept concentrating, trying to guess from where exactly the sounds were coming. Just like the door, every broken window revealed nothing but obscurity.

Then she heard one of her colleague use the loudspeaker.

"We know you're in there. This is the end. You are surrounded. Please surrender now, and you won't be done any harm."

Karin chuckled. They always tried the non-violent solutions, but it just never worked. The thunder threatened them once more. Her eyes widened as she heard a deep, husky and confident voice rumbling an answer.

"Ok. I'll surrender. I'm unarmed anyway. Please wait outside. I'm coming."

Her first deduction was that despite the elevated number of agents sent inside the building, he had somehow remained uncaught. Whether it was because he defeated them or because he was hiding was yet to discover. However she couldn't find the reason why he accepted to surrender like… Like just like that? Just because he was asked to?

The second thing that drew her attention was his voice. He sounded unexpectedly calm. She was used to fear, anger, fury, despair, madness, or cold resignation. If the noise of the rain prevented her from hearing him well, she could still tell that his voice was measured, profound, mastered.

She discerned some movement, but she couldn't guess if it was he or her colleagues. And suddenly her blood ran cold. Like, very, very cold, a cold she had never felt in her entire life, a polar cold that froze her members, clutched her heart and cut her breath. A sharp cold so painful she wondered how she had stayed conscious.

"Is Karin Kurosaki among you? I'll surrender, but I want her to arrest me."