So, this one needs a bit of an explanation. This first chapter will give a really good overview of who the OC is and why she's there/how she got there. It will probably be a little easier to just read the first chapter and make your own decisions on whether to follow the story or not. As for the time frame, I have this just before the Bount Arc that the Anime added. This story will divert from the storyline the anime gave as this character is an extra.

As to how this character got started - when I was very young I would daydream about what I would do if I were in the story and a story alter ego started. Of course, this alter ego became more and more badass as I would read more stories and the character would have some how gotten to that world too. When I got older, this character stopped being my alter ego as the backstory I gave her became more and more gruesome. You'll see some of that here too. While I wouldn't mind having this character's baddassary, I would never want her past. Over the years she stopped looking anything like me and became her own character. So, here she is in the Bleach world.

Reviews and PMs are always appreciated.

I do not own Bleach, though I do like to take some of the characters out for a spin every now and then.

Yachiru was on holiday. She was at the beach with Rukia and the third seat to Squad 13. He couldn't remember her name and didn't really care. They were going to be gone for a few days so, to escape the boredom, he decided to wander some of the outer districts incognito and see if he could get anyone to fight him. It might hold his interest for a few minutes at least.

He was walking on the road connecting the Southern District 78 with District 77 when an opening appeared in the sky ahead of him and a body fell out of it. It moved and looked up at the sky.

"Gods damn you, Merlin! Always 8 feet. Every single time. I swear if I ever see you again, I will punch you in the face for every time I've been dropped from a height of 8 feet!"

It sounded female. Who was this Merlin person? Her entrance would have set off alarms and soul reapers would have been dispatched. He might as well find out what's going on. Who knows? Maybe she'd prove to be interesting.

"Hey! Where did you come from?" He called to her. He decided the body had to be female. She was dressed strangely. She was wearing leather armor and she was bristling with weapons. There were a pair of swords sticking out of sheaths on her back and a pair of handles that came up on either side of her neck. He had no clue what they were to. There was an unstrung bow strapped to her back that he could see peeking over her shoulder as well. At her waist was a long pouch and he couldn't tell what was in it. He could see the quiver of arrows hanging from the belt and another small pouch hanging opposite the longer pouch. He could see various knives in sheathes at her legs, arms and peeking out from her boots.

She turned calmly to him and folded her arms in front of her chest. Her hands were gloved but he could tell she was missing the index and pinky fingers of her right hand. "I could tell you, but it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. Let's just say that I'm not from around here and if you manage to stick around, I'll do what I can to explain it."

Her accent was strange. He took a moment to see beyond all the weapons. She was blood splattered, like she had just come from battle. Her hair was light brown and he could see blood matted in it. She was very short. He guessed she might be a little over 5 feet tall. She had a larger scar across her left cheek, following the cheek bone for the most part and a much smaller and straighter scar on her left cheek closer to her jaw bone. He could see another similar small straight scar on her neck but the rest of her was covered.

He raised his spiritual pressure. He couldn't feel any coming from the girl and wanted to put her in her place and make her understand who she was talking to. She stared at him with steel colored eyes. She should have passed out by now.

"Your entrance would have made an alarm sound. You are coming with me back to the 13 court guard. It's better that I take you in then for them to find out I saw you and didn't take you in. What's your name, girl."

"Erin."

"No fighting? Just gunna come along quietly?"

"I know how this works. I take it you have authority here?"

"You might say that."

"You are taking me in for questioning. It's the same every time. Do what you have to do, though if you try to harm me, I will kill you without a second thought."

The thought of this little thing killing him made him chuckle out loud at her. Her expression didn't change. She just waited. "Yeah, whatever. This way." He continued in the direction he had been walking in and she fell into step beside and slightly behind him, but staying to his left side.

They walked for several hours and if he couldn't see her out of the corner of his eye, he wouldn't know she was there. He didn't understand how someone wearing that much metal could be that silent. It was a little unnerving.

The stretch of road they were walking along had trees to either side as this area cut through a forest. Very quietly Erin said, "There is an ambush about 200 yards ahead of us." He started to reach for his zampakuto. "No. Don't reach for your sword. You'll scare them away." She paused. "Four to the right; two in the trees and two on the ground. Three on the left; one in the trees and two on the ground. This will be interesting. Can you fight?"

"Yeah, I can fight. I'll take the right."

As they got closer, he could see the movements of the trees and bushes that weren't being caused by animals. He decided he would take out the guys in the trees first.

To Erin, it was like a badly scripted play that she had seen hundreds of times before. A pair of scruffy looking guys stepped out of the bushes. The "leader" didn't even get a chance to say his scripted part before Zaraki charged him and ran him through. Seeing the large man moving forward, she did too. She pulled her scimitars from their sheathes and took out the other guy with a blade swiped across his neck. She quickly took out the other man with a few well-placed cuts at artery junctures and used the man as a human shield against the arrows coming down on her. She sheathed one of the scimitars and pulled a throwing knife from one of the hidden sheathes nestled in her armor and threw it at the man in the tree. He wasn't very far up into the tree so the throw was fairly easy. It slid into his throat and when he fell from the tree branch, she collected the knife and sheathed her other scimitar. When she turned around to see how the large man was doing, she saw that he had apparently taken out the guys in the trees first and was now facing off against the last swordsman. She leaned against the tree and watched as he toyed with the man. It was odd that despite the ambusher clearly hitting the large man, he wasn't causing him any damage. The large man eventually killed the last bandit and turned to Erin, hoping to get in on her fight and was disappointed when he saw her waiting on him.

He looked over her handiwork, noting the neat slices and minimal work. He used his foot to push at the third man. "What did you use on this one?"

He watched her as she pulled a throwing knife from a hidden sheath in the leather armor and then tucked it back in.

"How did you know they were there?"

"You either didn't spend a lot of time in the woods or don't care that you clomp all over the place; giving away your position. Anyone with a decent amount of wood lore would have spotted them instantly."

"Is that why you walk so silently?"

"It never made sense to me to break habits that have kept me alive." She made an "after you" gesture and he continued down the road; Erin again taking up position next to him.

After a little while of walking, he said, "You fight better than I thought you would."

She quirked an eyebrow at him that he may or may not have saw, but chose to say nothing to the backhanded compliment.

He tried again. "Any of that blood on you yours?"

"Some of it probably is."

"Did you need to see to any wounds?"

"No." Was the simple reply.

Aren't girls supposed to be talkative? I can't get Yachiru to shut up sometimes but I can barely get this girl to say anything without a direct question.

Night was falling and he left the road for the shelter of the woods around them. When he found a decent clearing, stopped and sat down. "We'll stay here for the night." He watched as the girl made a slightly confused face while touching her stomach. "Are you hungry?"

"No, but I should be. I haven't eaten since this morning." She sat down nearby but facing the large man.

"It's because you don't have any spiritual pressure. Souls without it don't get hungry."

"Souls? Is that what you call humans here? And I don't understand what you mean by spiritual pressure. What is that?"

Finally she talks! "When humans die, they come here as souls. And spiritual pressure is…." He floundered for how to describe it. "Can you see a glow around me?" She looked at him and shook her head. He raised his spiritual pressure. "How about now?" She continued to shake her head. He contemplated taking off his eye patch, but decided against it. "I don't know how to explain it then. It's how you measure your raw strength against someone else and you have none of it. I've never encountered anyone who can't sense it or see it at all, let alone not pass out around the amount I raised mine to while having none themselves."

"If you say so. How do I call you?"

"Call me Zaraki." She nodded.

She took the smaller pouch off of her belt and began rooting through it. He looked at her strangely because her entire hand was in the bag and it should have shown through on the outside, but it didn't. She pulled several other bags out of the one and after looking them over, selected one and pulled out large jugs of water and a large porcelain basin; the kind used to wash the dirt from your face and hands. She looked over at the large man and the incredulous look on his face and realized they must not have bags like this here. "They are bags of holding. Quite roomy ones too." When he continued to look at her blankly she went with a simple, "They're bigger on the inside then on the outside."

He blinked a few times and seemed to relax. His eyes stayed on the small bags, wondering what else could possibly be in them.

"I'm going to wash up." He continued to stare at her as she pulled out a few more items; some soap and shampoo. She tucked the bags back into the original and wandered away from Zaraki. When she was out of his sight, she stripped down and did her best to scrub the grime from her body. When the water got dirty, she changed it out. She dried off and changed into clean clothing similar to what she had been wearing under her armor which was a linin like material that would be light enough to wear under armor and not cause her to pass out from heat exhaustion.

She came back with her armor in her arms along with a water jug and the basin. Everything else had been tucked away.

"Did you want to wash?" She offered him the basin.

"Um, yeah. Sure." She pulled out the soap and shampoo from her bag along with a few more jugs of water, a towel and a wash cloth for him and handed them to him. He went off in another direction with the items, still astounded that it had all come from such a tiny space.

While he was gone, she pulled another basin from one of her bags and proceeded to scrub her armor of the blood splatter and the sweat and grime on the inside. It had become pretty funky and she had no intention of putting it back on when it was so disgusting.

Kenpachi was actually pretty grateful for the chance to feel clean again. It was the only thing he hated about going out and looking for fights like this; no chance to get clean unless he went to an inn and paid for it or stumbling across a body of water. His only other option was to wait until he got back to his squad. She even had soap and it didn't smell girly. Today was his lucky day. He even got to fight some people. Sure it wasn't a great fight, but it was at least a fight.

When he finished and redressed, he came back to the clearing to find the girl scrubbing her armor. He had a chance to really see what she looked like as the armor had added bulk to her. She was skinny, but well-muscled. He could see the shape of her arms and legs beneath her clothing and could tell that she wasn't a weakling. Her hair was very short and kind of spiky. Nowhere near how he wore his hair and it was by no means styled at all. It just had that look to it that she just ran her fingers through it a couple times to "comb" it and that was it.

He set the items she had given him nearby and she nodded that she saw them. She eventually finished cleaning and put everything away that wasn't needed. She left her armor where it was and strapped on the quiver and pulled the bow from the pile and strung it. She left everything else and walked into the forest without a word. He was going to stop her, but when he saw she had left everything else, decided that she wouldn't go far.

It was getting late and he was beginning to wonder where she had gone to and if she got lost when she silently padded back into the clearing carrying a pile of wood and a dead raccoon.

She set the wood and used a box of matches to start the fire. Once she was satisfied that it would not go out, she turned to the raccoon and expertly skinned it and gutted it. Kenpachi was actually pretty impressed. She even had some tall forked sticks on either side of the fire and eventually put the carcass on a spit and began roasting it over the fire, turning it when it was called for.

"Where did you learn to do that?" He asked.

"I can't remember. From a soldier, I'm sure. You can survive or starve on what you can catch jobbing for an army."

"You've been in an army?"

"Yeah, more than I can count." She pulled out a jug of water again and poured some of the water on to her hands, giving them a quick scrub.

"How many jugs of water can you possibly have in there?"

She gave a small smile. "You would be surprised." She handed the bag over to him. "Go ahead and put your hand in and feel around."

He was apprehensive about it, but she hadn't had any problems reaching in to any of the bags. He hefted the bag. It was kinda heavy for its size. He put a hand inside and was amazed that he hadn't touched the bottom immediately. Part of him figured that it had to be some trick, but he could feel the jugs and that there were even more under them. Some felt like they were made of glass and others felt like they were made of metal or plastic. Some had hard sides and others felt like water skins. The jugs were in all shapes and sizes and even though his arm was in the bag up to his shoulder, he couldn't feel the bottom of the bag yet.

He pulled his hand out from the bag. "Why do you carry so much water?" He handed the bag back to her.

"I never know when I'm going to be dropped into a desert." She replied.

"Tell me about where you came from. I've been patient."

"That you have." She turned the raccoon on the spit. "I was 25 when it happened. I was a college student who was also addicted to reading and living in my parent's basement. It was a normal day. I was sitting on my bed reading like usual and when I looked up, there was this blurry opening in the middle of my room. I thought my eyes were going and needed to get new glasses. Yes, I used to wear glasses. I was also over weight as I was no longer as active as I had been when I was still going to high school.

"I always read about all these adventures and once I realized that it was a portal, I didn't care. I wanted an adventure too and I was too stupid to even stop and think about it. I grabbed a few essential items and jumped through without even a thought to what would be on the other side. I can't even remember if I left them a note.

"I ended up in Camelot. It's about the most clichéd place I could have gone. I was taken before King Arthur and his wizard, Merlin. In all the stories of Camelot, Arthur is always young or at least in his thirties or forties. The man I was brought to was old. Merlin was old too. They looked to be similar in age. Usually the stories have him as older. In my world, Camelot was only ever a legend. It was actually believed to be a story that took 3 real kings and mashed them all together behind a bunch of magic and fake names. This was a world where he really did exist.

"Turns out that I was brought there because they needed someone with an open enough mind that wouldn't just go crazy on arrival and be unable to handle the change as well as someone that knew how to defend against an invading army. How my reading of adventure and fantasy novels counted towards that, I don't know.

"With Arthur as old as he was, he was no longer able to fight. Camelot had been at peace for so long that they barely had a standing army and the famous Knights of the Round Table had long ago disbanded. They had gotten old and members became harder to replace. Camelot still had a few knights, but nowhere near what they had in the stories I grew up on." She turned the meat on the spit, making sure it cooked evenly. Zaraki just watched her, listening to everything and no interrupting. She appreciated that. The story was odd enough without someone interrupting you constantly.

"King Arthur had no heir and a neighboring kingdom decided that Camelot was ripe for the taking. They even went so far as to notify Arthur that he was going to come for Camelot in 2 months and that Camelot could either be given or taken. Arthur didn't want that king to govern his people. Merlin had told me that he was a tyrant and abused his people. So, they turned to an outsider to tell him how to defend.

"The first thing I did was ask about conscription. Turned out that the people stood completely behind their king and men of all ages were taking up arms for their king. That at least solved one problem. The knights they had were busy training the men, so that sort of solved another problem. I took a tour of the ground outside of the castle and keep. Trees came up almost to the walls and that was a problem. The recruits were directed to cut down every tree around the keep for a mile. They got about three quarters of a mile, maybe less before the siege eventually started. That solved two problems. It gave the recruits strength training and gave me a killing ground. Movies and books always talked about preparing the killing ground and that's what I knew we needed.

"We used the branches from the trees to make sharpened poles. Large ones were set into the ground at angles so that it became hard for an invading army to just run up and smaller ones were set completely in the ground with just the point exposed. I had them make a few pit traps lined with the spikes on the bottom and had them covered up so it looked like bare ground and I had them also make channels on the ground filled with tar. If there were too many people attacking the walls at once, we needed a way to separate the army into smaller chunks. Fire would be kept near some archers and they could fire into the tar channels if we needed them to. That solved some other problems. The last major thing I did was have them block off all but one small, easily defended gate."

"Where you successful?" He asked.

"Yeah. Surprisingly enough, the preparations were successful." She had a sad look on her face when she said that and he wondered what she wasn't saying. "It was several weeks after the siege when Merlin went to send me home. I guess when he had cast the original spell, he had made it so that no time would pass in my own world. I don't know if that still stands. I learned later that magic like he was casting meant that every gesture, every inhalation and exhalation of breath, every little movement and vocalization are all part of the spell. Any deviation from the spell can result in catastrophe. Anything from exploding, burning out your magical energy or even just changing the spell are all fair game and you don't know what you're going to get until it happens. I can't remember what happened anymore. Was it a cough? Was it a sneeze? Whatever he did changed the spell. Rather than the portal forming and being able to just walk through it, I was sucked through and dropped from a height of 8 feet in the middle of a plain in a foreign world.

Merlin quickly cast a spell to keep the portal from closing, but by the time he did, the portal was only large enough for an arm to pass through. Even if he had anything to pull me up with, there was no way I could get through. He realized immediately how the spell changed. Instead of sending me back home, I was going to be sent to the worlds out of balance. When a world was balanced, I would get sent on to the next one until they were all balanced and I could go home. He did the only thing he could think of. He cast another spell that would grant me gifts every time I passed through a portal that would help me on my journey. I just wish the gift he could have granted me was the gift to go home. He couldn't cast that in the world I was in without also being there and the portal was getting smaller. When he cast that last spell, I wasn't even sure it went through at first. I've been traveling ever since. That was almost 900 years ago."

"Balanced how?"

"Between good and evil. You can't have one without the other and when they become imbalanced one way, you get tyranny, slavery and other senseless killing. You go the other way, and you get xenophobia, prejudice, and bigotry and for some odd reason, really weird religious cults." She shrugged at that.

"So, what kind of gifts?"

"Mostly mental and physical ones, though I have gotten a few magical gifts over the years." She saw he was about to ask specifics and continued. "Languages, sight, hearing, the capacity to learn all of these things. I became more intelligent, faster, longer stamina, dexterity."

"Fighting?"

"No, I had to learn that the old fashioned way, but the gifts that improved my body made learning to fight much easier." She checked on the meat and found it to be cooked. She pulled out a pair of plates and some forks from one of her pouches and used one of her many knives to cut sections of meat off of the spit. She handed him one of the plates and forks and handed over the knife for him to do the same. He took it and carved liberal amounts onto his plate.

Erin went to take a bite and then stopped. "Something wrong, woman?"

"I'm still not hungry. I thought that maybe the smell of the roasting meat would whet my appetite, but it didn't." She set the plate down, not eating anything. Zaraki shrugged and continued eating. It was nice getting fresh meat. He hadn't been expecting any unless he had stopped somewhere at one of the districts. All he had on him was some fruit, some bread, and some nuts.

Erin checked on her armor and when she found it to be dry, put it back on.

"Why are you putting the armor back on? It will be hard to sleep in."

"It's another one of my old soldier habits that has kept me alive. Always wear your armor to bed in a strange new world. Or when you're in the middle of a campaign."

"You mentioned magical gifts?"

"I have some control over the elements. It varies with the world I'm in. Sometimes I can't use it all. I don't like to use it if I don't have to. Tends to freak people out."

"Show me."

She closed her eyes and held out a hand. At first he couldn't tell what she was doing, but slowly a ball of water appeared as she pulled moisture out of the air. The ball of water got to be the size of a fist before it collapsed and she started panting. "That took more out of me then I thought it would."

Zaraki mentally nodded at the display. So she's not making it all up. She can prove at least some of her story. At first I couldn't tell if she was just delusional or what, but then she saw that ambush. At the time I thought she had maybe somehow planned it and that was why she knew it was there, but that wouldn't have made any sense. What's the old man gunna do with her? Probably lock her up and throw away the key. That's too bad. She seems to know her way around a battle.

"You should probably get some sleep, Zaraki. I'll take the first watch." She took the rest of the meat off the spit and started cutting it up and putting it in a cloth to keep it for the morning. She tossed the bones where she had tossed the skin and guts and came back to the fire. It was beginning to burn low and she went to grab more firewood while the large man laid down, accepting her offer of first watch.

False dawn was approaching and she knew she should get some rest. She didn't need sleep like a normal person anymore. It had been one of her gifts. All she needed to do was go into a deep meditative trance and stay that way for 3 to 4 hours and get all the rest she would need for the rest of the day. She was beginning to get tired, so went over to the large man to wake him up. She had noticed that he was shivering in his sleep last night so had pulled a blanket from one of her pouches and laid it over him. He was currently snuggled in to it.

She laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed a little while saying, "Zaraki!" He woke with a start and looked around, noticing the false dawn and that he had a blanket over him. "Wake me up in about 3 hours and we'll be good to continue on. The leftover meat is on a pan over the fire heating up. Don't let it burn. The blanket is because you were shivering in your sleep last night. It got pretty cold."

"Why did you let me sleep so long? Only 3 hours? Are you insane? You need more rest then that."

"I don't sleep like you do anymore. Another one of my gifts and one that has actually come in handy in the past." She went over to where she had been keeping watch from and laid down on her back near the fire, but not too close to heat her weapons or armor to unbearable temperatures. Right before she laid on her back, she removed a few throwing axes from the small of her back along with the bow and set them to her side. When he looked at her strangely, she replied, "They hit my tail bone weird when I lay down. The rest has become normal. I actually feel odd when I don't lay down with weapons strapped to my back." She closed her eyes, but her breathing never changed.

Shaking his head at the girl's strangeness, he ate the meat from the pan, and folded the blanket she had lent him. She had left out a jug of water so he drank some of it and washed his face and hands as well. She thought of everything. He even gave the pan a quick wash.

After the three hours he put a hand to her shoulder to wake her up and found a knife at his throat. He had barely even caught the motion before it was just there. And as quickly as it had been pressed to his throat, it was removed. "Sorry. Reflex." Was all she said as she got up and put the throwing axes and bow back in their places.

She also collected the pan and when she saw it was clean, put it and the blanket into their respective pouches. She took a nice long drink from the water jug and used the rest on the dying fire before putting the empty jug away.

Zaraki was looking around with an odd look on his face. "Are you lost?" She asked him. He tried to reply with authority, but it only sounded sheepish to her ears when he replied that he wasn't. Erin moved towards where the road was and pointed. He didn't say anything as he just went where she was pointing. When they got to the road, he hesitated, so she just started in the direction they had been traveling in the day before and he quickly took the lead.

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the chapter. I do enjoy hearing from you, so don't be afraid to message me even if it's to tell me you think it sucked. I do request that if you hate it, you let me know why. Heh... I always thought Sui Feng's name was spelled Soi Fon... One of the many names for me to look up the correct spelling.