"Just a little further. Ugh, it just has to be…"

Rukia paused to sneeze and then quickly shake the dirt out of her eyes that had cascaded down upon her head when her head hit the earth above her. Reaching forward with both hands to pull herself along, Rukia felt her fingers sink into something squishy.

Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Rukia muttered, "Gross…I really hope it wasn't more bugs…or excrement…but then again, I suppose escaping criminal beggars can't really be choosers."

Pulling herself forward, Rukia saw that she had grasped mostly earth with something gooey inside. She couldn't be sure what the goo was and quite frankly, Rukia didn't want to know.

"Things could always be better and things could always be worse," Rukia said to herself as she started moving faster through the tiny tunnel, "Not quite sure how they could get any worse…but then again, why would I want to know that?"

All of a sudden, Rukia let out a startled squeak as the ground collapsed beneath her and sent her tumbling through the air. A moment before she got enough air in her lungs to scream, the wind was knocked out of her as her back hit some kind of water.

"Good thing I learned how to swim," thought Rukia to herself as she felt her feet hit the bottom and she pushed herself towards the surface, "Drowning in…whatever this is, definitely not how I want to die."

After she surfaced, Rukia took several deep breaths of air before she continued her conversation with herself by stating, "On the other hand, knowing how to swim…doesn't that make the term 'street rat' all the more applicable to me?"

Shrugging her shoulders and moving quickly through the water, Rukia said, "Then again, it's not the things that you know that will kill you. It's the things you don't know."

Stopping for just a moment, Rukia said thoughtfully, "Though, on the other hand, knights are trained in the art of combat and so should know how not to die in combat and yet they do so all the time."

Frowning, Rukia continued on her way as she kept up her conversation with herself by asking, "Why do they refer to combat and war as 'art'? Doesn't seem like ripping out each other's guts, lopping off someone's head, severing their limbs and the like would be very appealing or artistic."

Something caught Rukia's eye and she moved as quickly as she could towards it, all the while torn between trying not to get too excited and wanting to hope that she was right. Reaching the source, Rukia let out a kind of strangled cry of triumph. She had found a hole that was just big enough for her to squeeze through and that would transport her to freedom. What she had noticed was the light of the moon shining through the hole.

"Ready or not outside world," Rukia grunted as she frantically pulled herself through the hole, "here I come!"

A month previously, Rukia had been arrested for shoplifting. It had been Rukia's first time getting caught (not her first time shoplifting) and so the punishment should have been to pay a fine to the vendor she stole from or do labor for that vendor for a specific period of time and possibly if the magistrate had been feeling especially bored of late, might have ordered that Rukia's hand be branded with a 'T' for 'thief'. However, Rukia had been extremely unfortunate. The magistrate in question had only recently been appointed and so wanted to make absolutely sure that everyone knew that he was not a man to be trifled with. As a result, Rukia had been transported over fifty miles away to the prison known as 'The Nest of Maggots'.

At first, Rukia had been terrified. It was a fact that no one who had ever been taken to Nest of Maggots came out again. No one had any idea what they did with the bodies of the dead criminals, but pretty much everyone had a theory. However, once she got there, Rukia realized something. Sure, the structure of the building was impenetrable, the guards were mean and vigilante for the most part and the chains and cells were well constructed, but there was a flaw. Nobody had ever escaped because they didn't know where to look and even if they did, they probably wouldn't have been small enough to do it. But Rukia was definitely small enough.

The flaw was that, instead of a window, each cell had a grate built into the floor where the air would flow through. It wasn't a big grate, so a grown man, even if he was grossly emaciated, would never have been able to pull the grate aside and force his way through. However, Rukia, who was petite and rather small for her age, had little difficulty in doing just that.

So Rukia had spent most of her time working on making a kind of key for her chains from a piece of the grate that she had managed to loosen and pull away. When that was complete, Rukia had timed the guards as they made their rounds and then slowly worked on loosening the grate. After loosening the grate, Rukia needed to expand the hole underneath wide enough so that she could get a good head start before the guards noticed that she was missing.

Rukia had already been running for about a half hour when she finally heard the alarm bells announcing her escape from The Nest of Maggots.

After coming across running water and washing herself and her clothes as best she could, Rukia climbed a tree, stripped off her clothes so they could dry and tried to make herself as comfortable as possible so that she could get a bit of sleep.

"Catch my death of cold without my clothes on," Rukia mumbled as she curled up into a tight ball, "or catch my death of cold with my clothes on…not that they're that warm on a good day anyway."

Thinking of something, Rukia reached over to lay the clothes overtop of her as she said, "On the other hand, if I treat them like a blanket…"

Two minutes later, Rukia was dead to the world.

A figure enshrouded completely in black walked in near silence through the forest and stopped at the exact tree that Rukia had chosen. The figure tied the horse they had been guiding to a low branch and went about starting a fire. In the distance, a wolf howled.

Author's Note:

Well...I did it again. Posted another story while I still have about seven others that a need to finish. However, in my defense, ever since I started writing fanfiction, I've always come up with a Tanabata story, so why break tradition?

Now, I know that Ichigo and Orihime have not shown up yet in this story, but they will in the next chapter, since this is my Ichihime Tanabata story for this year. I won't tell you what source material I am borrowing from just yet, but I will be honest and say that the basic plot line is not my idea. I just want to keep it as something of a surprise for now. If you figure it out, let me know because I'm really curious if anyone has an idea! :)

Hope you like it so far!