A new project. Substitute "spiritual pressure" for "reiatsu", s'il vous plait.

A girl dies.

The Girl

"Frailty, thy name is woman." Hamlet, Act I Scene ii

She fell right in front of me. I heard her chain rattle as she hit the ground. I tried to wiggle free; the metal of the melted sedan dug into my ribs. I cried out, and slapped a hand over my mouth too late.

The hollow turned to look at me, but returned its gaze to the girl a moment later. It thundered past me and I almost sighed with relief.

I wrenched my foot out of the wreckage and threw myself on the sidewalk.

The girl screamed.

My mouth opened to call the hollow, taunt and goad until it left her alone. No sound came out. She had brown hair and a red shirt. And powerful lungs.

I pressed my lips together and ran as the hollow tore her apart.

I hid behind a corner and listened, silently, to her screams, as I prayed:

Don't take me.

The sound of flesh being wrenched apart made me cover my ears.

Don't take me.

It's muffled roar shook the walls.

Don't take me.

"Yasu!"

My eyes rolled to the front of the class. I had been silent the whole day, roiling wordlessly at the nonchalance of my classmates. They were blissfully ignorant of everything that mattered. Of the girl, the hollows, even of me and my wallowing cowardice. They offended me to my core.

The teacher looked at me, expecting something.

"Yes? I apologize; can you repeat the question?"

He grimaced. "Miss Yasu, I asked you to translate this passage." He pointed to the unfocused words on the blackboard.

I squinted.

"Frailty thy name is woman?" I guessed with raised eyebrows.

"I'm afraid not," he replied. "Kubara!" The student to my right straightened in his seat.

"Yes?"

"Can you translate the passage?"

"Ah, yes, I think…" He stumbled through a broken, nonetheless-correct translation.

I scowled and fought the rising blush in my cheeks. So he could translate Latin. Could he lift a sword, or see the monsters of this world?

The bell rang, and I left for home.

Barely a second inside, my mother tossed me a broom - I dropped my pack to catch it.

"En garde!" she smiled, and took up a stance with her own broom. She hopped from foot to foot, nimble and pixie-like.

"Mom, I really don't-"

"I'm home after three weeks and that's all you have to say?" she said, hand over her heart. "You wound me! Defend yourself!"

Grinning, she lunged. Her hair flew. I deflected and cast my eyes around.

"Where's dad? Dad!"

"Here," he called from the bathroom. "Listen to your mother, Ara."

Mom smirked and thrust her faux-sword at my chest. I knocked it to the side.

"No, really," I insisted. "You guys don't know-"

"Don't know what?" she asked. Her arm dropped.

"Yesterday," I started. A toilet flush heralded the arrival of my father. He was strongly built, with black hair and a short nose.

"What happened yesterday?" he asked. They were both suddenly on edge, ready to sigh in relief or gasp in shock.

"A hollow."

They blanched.

"Dear God," dad said.

"Did it hurt anyone? Did it hurt you?" mom asked urgently.

"No," I lied, and swallowed. "But I couldn't do anything. I felt… useless." I spat the last word like venom.

"There was nothing you could do," mom said. "And no harm was done." She held my face between her palms and looked deep into my eyes. I nodded despite the guilt in my stomach. They couldn't know. I could have saved that girl - done something, called someone.

"I knew we shouldn't have left," my father hissed. "I could've filed the report by myself."

"Riku," mom said, and dad's face turned. "She's fine. No harm done." She repeated, eyes flashing.

"She's not a soul reaper, Helen. She needs one of us here at all times."

"I know kido," I muttered in protest, but it didn't seem to matter. I was the daughter of two soul reapers, or more precisely, their gigais. I wasn't a soul reaper, or even a substitute; just a person with reiatsu and a few kido.

I tugged on my braid, bleached blond from root to tip. I concentrated on it as my parents argued back and forth like I wasn't in the room.

I went to bed.

Wind blew through the open window and tickled the pictures on the wall. I stared at the ceiling, hands on my stomach.

The girl's face wouldn't leave my mind's eye. She smiled off to the side, perhaps just to my left or right, but not at me. She took the hand of a beautiful woman - her mother, perhaps - and disappeared into white. Only to reappear and torture me with a bleeding face, her screams… And then, again, unharmed, this time in the arms of a stunning man clad in black. Her wedding day, and yet still young. And again, torn apart, right in front of me.

I couldn't close my eyes, so I laid awake, roiling in my guilt and anger until the sun came up.

My parents greeted me sullenly at breakfast.

School was the same.

I walked home along a familiar route, and stopped in front of a small candy shop. The door slid open, and a cat exited. Black, with yellow eyes. I bowed.

"Yoruichi."

The cat nodded back.

"Miss Yasu."

I continued on my way, wondering where she and her master had been yesterday. Where had they been when the hollow devoured that girl?

I turned the question on myself - where had I been? Cowering in a corner. No, the fault was mine, not Yoruichi's.

I reached my house and went inside. Before I could shut the door behind me, the ground shook. A wave of malevolent reiatsu pricked my skin.

A roar sent a pang of fear through my chest. A hollow. Another one. But where? It sounded close. I spun around.

"Oh. Right there."

And like that, I died.

As the daughter of two soul reapers, looking at my dead body didn't shock me as much as it did other souls. But the chain sprouting from my chest made my blood freeze in its veins.

"Please, no."

I shook my blood-soaked body, tried to go back in, but it was useless.

The hollow had struck with a spear-like arm, torn out my heart. I looked up as it readied another blow.

I could have responded in anger with a kido, even managed to flash step to Urahara's.

But instead, I glared up, shook my chain, and barked, "Kill me, you f-"

To my chagrin, it succeeded.

Even worse, when I woke up, I was surrounded by the white sands and black sky of, unmistakably, Hueco Mundo.