There are many secrets buried in the long history of Seireitei. As a shadow from the past creeps across the City of Pure Souls, uncovering the truth behind it might just be the key to survival - but the links of this story are scattered to the farthest reaches of Soul Society and beyond, and it will take more than the genius of the Gotei 13's youngest Captain to piece them back together again.

Standard disclaimer: I own Bleach. That's right, I am Tite Kubo. I am wealthy, successful and an excellent artist, I have complete control over the entire Bleach mangaverse, and I am very busy creating new chapters every week. Wait a minute, what the hell am I doing writing fan fiction? Of course none of that was true.

Rated M for violence, gore, bad language and scenes of a sexual nature (at least I hope so).

Unchained

...

Prologue

There was a girl who swallowed a Fly

...

"Unusual reiatsu spikes?"

"That's what they were saying. I couldn't hear everything but they sounded concerned, and they were certainly trying to keep it from their Captain. Apparently the Ordinary hasn't contacted them in some time - ever since they asked for an explanation. I know it's not our jurisdiction, but perhaps it would raise less suspicion if -"

"You can't just walk straight into an unknown situation in someone else's district without an excuse."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"The Ordinary assigned to the neighbouring district will be due in this evening. They won't send a replacement until after they've reported - you'll have 24 hours to do your nosing around without anyone noticing you're there, as long as you keep your distance from whatever's going on in 3600."

"Should I ask how you know that?"

"District 3601 belongs to Fifth division."

"You're telling me you still have the rota memorised from a division you were briefly in 45 years ago, and you can calulate it up to the present day?"

"Unlike you, I remember things."

"...That is not natural."

... ... ...

Suzie decided on the spot that all children were evil little monsters, and never mind that she hadn't quite reached her eleventh birthday. She sat down on the only empty bench with dramatic dejection and cradled her deflated basketball, cursing the damned bloody blasted (thanks uncle Lucah for the recent additions to her vocabulary) pigs who inhabited this particular playground. Fine, so she couldn't play basketball at all, but she loved the way it bounced and she was an enthusiastic learner, and last year Mrs Samuels had written on her report that she was very good in PE which had to count for something. They didn't have to reject her and laugh at her.

Mum had been doing habitual fussing about her settling in and Uncle Lucah had been encouraging her to get stuck in making friends and not to worry about any language barrier, so when she had spotted the little gang of children, not much older than her, who played ball in the park near Uncle Lucah's apartment, she had decided to try and join in. She had bought a basketball to bounce with her pocket money. She had bounced it around the tarmac triangle and tried to look cool but approachable. The welcome had been distinctly lacking.

Feeling humiliated and sporting a nosebleed from a particularly hard basketball-to-face introduction, she retrieved her new ball from the road and discovered it had been run over by a car and mortally punctured. Even the younger children were laughing.

"Snot-heads," she snarled, which earned another laugh because she couldn't even insult them in their own language, and she ran away to a bench in a far corner to practise looking uninterested and pretend her nose didn't throb. So much for not worrying about the language barrier. So much for thinking Japanese kids would be any nicer than the ones back home. Kids were the same the world over, horrible - at least to her.

Maybe Uncle Lucah would teach her some Japanese swear words.

I really hope puberty hits soon, she decided. I want to grow up so I can be friends with adults instead. I'm not cut out for interacting with children - they seem to see me as target practise. Perhaps I have a moron look on my face or a tattoo on the back of my head saying, 'bully me please.'

"Do I have a moron-face?" Suzie wondered out loud.

"It's a bit of a mess. You could try wiping off the blood," replied a voice from the other end of the bench. Suzie, who had squeaked and nearly jumped out of her skin when it started talking, looked round to find the bench empty and did a mental recap. Had someone been there? Had she done anything embarrassing since sitting there? Picked her nose? Of course not, it was dripping blood. She swung round again when a shadow fell across her and then, taken aback, took the tissue proffered. She was fairly sure it was a woman, but they were standing against the low winter sun and she was forced to squint.

"It doesn't really hurt," she said in an attempt to not seem pathetic, and blinked. The mystery woman was already gone, clearly displaying a colossal lack of interest. She sighed. "I'm Suzie. I'm from Hampshire. Thanks ever so for the tissue."

"Nice to meet you," said the voice, and this time Suzie leapt off the bench and and swung round. The woman was nowhere in sight.

"Hello?" She said, confused. There was no response. Good. She was now creating imaginary friends - and even they weren't interested in sticking around. At least they weren't openly hostile. Perhaps she should stick to books after all - she liked books. Books with interesting words especially. Somnambulate was her latest favourite, although she still had to look up what that meant. Somnambulate would definitely never laugh at her.

Maybe it was something to do with never staying in one place growing up, but Suzie was useless at making friends.

... ... ...

Uncle Lucah gave her an icepack for her nose and listened to her whining while he inspected the ball to see if it could be mended.

"I think I'm socially inept," she concluded.

"Of course, cricket," he agreed kindly, trying to detach thick black tape from his fingers so he could stick it over the puncture. She thought it was nice of him to make an effort, although the ball looked like it was probably terminal.

At least she had Uncle Lucah to talk to, small consolation though that seemed. If she told her mother the truth about her social forays she would probably panic about Serious Psy-cho-logic-al Damage and start a guilt trip back around the world. Uncle Lucah, at least, treated her like someone who could think for herself. He treated her like an equal - almost a grown-up - though her mother didn't entirely appreciate his attitude, especially with some of the Interesting language she was picking up, but Suzie thought her mysterious relative was downright cool. And he didn't pay any attention to her occasional hot-tempered outbursts (they were not tantrums, dammit, she had an Expressive Personality).

So when, later that afternoon, her Uncle told her to stop moping around the place and sent her out to buy him some strawberry milk from the shop on the corner, she didn't complain. After all, he usually let her have some, possessive of it though he was. It was twilight, not quite dark, when all the daytime colours were starting to bleed into one another and, but for the streetlights and shop signs just coming to life, everything looked like its own shadow. When she came out of the shop it had started to snow feathery flakes the size of rose petals, the kind that clung to the eyelashes and settled on the skin like kisses. She stuck her tongue out to catch one and stood watching until they began to slacken, then started home. She was trudging along the pavement past the bridge and trying to make clouds with her breath (I Am Dragon) when something glowing like an ember zipped in front of her nose. She blinked, and then turned her head to search for what it was. It had gone in the direction of the river, and her eyes sifted through the patches of shadow for it.

It was a moment before she noticed that there was someone standing in the sky.

Suzie stared. Forgetting the change in her pocket and the milk she was supposed to be bringing Uncle Lucah (or the fact that mum said she wasn't to wander anywhere between the shop and the apartment on pain of gruesome death) she crossed the road and followed the pavement out onto the bridge. They were somewhere over the middle of the river above one of the pylons - hard to make out clearly, but definitely person-shaped - was there some kind of tight-rope wire or something up there? It was a wonder other people weren't stopping to watch. There must be a cable or a platform of some kind - but even so it looked very daring, standing about 60 feet above the road with nothing to hold on to. Or perhaps it was a very clever kite, or a balloon. Whatever it was, it looked like a tall woman, with hair blowing magnificently in the wind. She was dressed in what Suzie guessed was a traditional Japanese costume, and light glinted of a shiny stick in her hand.

At this point, Suzie was interrupted from her fascination because she walked into a woman coming the other way. She mumbled what she hoped was an apology, but if anything the woman looked even more affronted, so it probably wasn't.

When she looked up again, she almost tripped over her own feet. Something - a shadowy, huge… something - was taking shape out of the darkening sky. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out except a hoarse rush of air, as if she'd been punched in the stomach. This wasn't real, right? No-one else was looking, so it must be something normal for them. She ought to go home. If Uncle Lucah were here he would -

A buzzy, crawly thing suddenly smacked into the back of her mouth, and the involuntary gulp of breath it caused sent it straight into her throat. She choked, gagged hard enough to stumble as she clapped a hand over her mouth feeling an impression of tiny icky wings and legs scrabbling and could only think get it OUT, and then the ground disappeared from under one of her feet and she lurched sideways, feet slipping in a small drift of slush as she scrambled to get them back underneath her. There was a glare of sound or light and a sudden lurch like falling in a dream, and cold. Cold, seeping into every part of her being.

... ... ...

Rangiku Matsumoto, Lieutenant of the 10th Division of the Gotei 13, stood suspended, sixty feet in the air above the Onose bridge, and let the winter wind thread through her hair. It would tangle, but that was nothing a healthy dose of conditioner wouldn't fix, and she liked to maintain a suitably romantic image. Having the wind whip her hair about was almost obligatory.

The hollow she had confronted here had been mid-class and not particularly powerful, just big - not a problem for her, but it was never wise to underestimate your oponent. Her senses told her there were no others in the area. It was probably time to head back.

Her messenger beeped, and she turned to look down at the bridge behind her as she fished it out of her kosode . She had been aware of some kind of commotion earlier, and from the flashing lights and the broken piece of mortality they were lifting off the road it appeared there had been an accident. She sighed. It didn't matter that she was a shinigami, responsible for the passage of spirits to the next world, it was never easy to see a child's life cut short. She could see no sign of the newly released sprit, but she silently wished her luck. I hope she gets to a nice district. She was pretty little.

Not that little was any indication of weakness, she acknowledged, as she flipped open the messenger. "Captain."

"Matsumoto," he said by way of greeting. "You are late."

"Oh, yes, the shopping in Naruki is really outstanding," she said, which on reflection probably wasn't the best way to start her excuses.

"Have you found what you were looking for?"

"Well, there is something, but I was going to have another -"

"You don't have time. The next Ordinary assigned to district 3601 will be at the Senkaimon in about five minutes."

"F-five minutes?!" She yelped.

"You had better be back in four."

Matsumoto found herself listening to the dial tone in stupefaction. Blinking, she almost dropped the Messenger in her haste to stash it back in her kosode and unsheath her zanpakuto at the same time. Five minutes! He couldn't have given her a little more warning, after sending her off on this 'errand'? Well alright - it was her idea, but all the same... There certainly wasn't time to go looking for the little girl now - if she didn't return to Seireitei before anyone arrived to notice where she was coming from there would be some very awkward questions. Like what Lieutenant Matsumoto was doing so far from her own division's jurisdiction - and so close to some extremely suspicious reiatsu spikes.

... ... ...

For a long time she remembered only colours and fear and pain. Bright lights flashing through dark, skidding white and yellow, then red and blue circling, circling. White, fading into grey, collecting in the gutters and cracked on the pavement, lacing the edge of black puddles, hazy white in puffs stolen away into a yawning darkness flecked with tiny glinting shards of light, and seeping cold. Pale pink spreading in a milky pool. Red, running in crazy patterns across grey, swirling into brackish black and flecked in garish blooms on the white, and pain bursting yellow and chasms of red across everything, black and white and all the colours running down the gutters and the drains out of the damp dark, cold stark frozen streets and unfamiliar canyons of houses, shattering, and something like she imagined falling through a waterfall would be, and a black mark like a comma fluttering through it all before her eyes.

She woke to softness under an unfamiliar sky. Sunlight trickled toward her in fractured patterns, as if she were underwater, a kaleidoscope of blue and warmth and turquoise tracing over her skin.

Drifting in her own mind she pieced through the fragments of thought, slowly sorted what was real from what could not be real, until she found in them the barest bones of her life. There were grating edges and holes in places where there should be knowledge, and following the threads, she found only snatches. She had been to get strawberry milk. Uncle Lucah would be cross that she had spilled it - for she remembered the spreading puddle of it coating the wet road. Perhaps she should go back for more. She felt her way back, to remember why the milk was on the road. There were odd gaps where unreality seemed to have tried to thread things together, but she remembered that she had been surprised, that something small and fluttering and possibly bright had flown into her throat as she crossed the bridge (an incongruous moment of disgust interrupted - eugh, I swallowed a bug) and she had jerked back, coughing, and the pavement had lurched away and then lights and speeding sound and cold creeping into her bones. She knew she had wondered for a long time, lost and thinking she should buy milk - for someone - Uncle... the name was slipping away as fast as she had remembered it. She could not find her way home. She could not find her way home - and there were dark canyons every way she turned. No, they were streets of dark houses, none of them familiar, and she was so cold. The only people were like shadows, never seeing her, always passing, until a woman with a kind face had looked at her. There had been someone else, someone who pushed her jarringly backward, out of the fabric of the world and then the shattering of everything from a point of heat on her forehead. The last pieces slipped through her reaching fingers like cobwebs, disintegrating at the touch. Even her name fell apart in her hands.

Something brushed against her arm, and she turned her head, realising as she did that though this place was silent and soft, she was far from alone. On one side, a woman drifted, floating, her eyes closed, beside her, a child looked back with a lighting wary curiosity. Her thoughts finally began to order, and move, and her face was suddenly touched with a cool finger of a breeze. She took a slow breath, and smelled grass and trees and water, and found the blood and pain she had blinked through on waking was only a memory. Moving, it took a few seconds to remember in which order her limbs should go, but when she struggled to her feet she found the water was shallow - or rather, it had carried her to the shallows. People walked past her, many of them, and a little boy, reed-thin, struggled in the water beside her until she reached down to pull him upright. He clung to her leg as she waded through the shallows until the ground beneath her feet climbed in gentle stone steps to the bank. There were strange people here, with long grey hoods covering their head so that you could only see their eyes, watching the water and the people that climbed from it. She followed a constant stream of people flowing towards a distance ringed in tall archways of white stone. The place was like nothing she had ever seen before, and as her feet left the water the feeling crept upon her that she was never going to find her way back. She had left her life behind in a jagged crush of metal and tarmac and snow.

She was dead.

... ... ...

"Ichigo - idiot, you can't just whack her on the forehead and be done - be careful..."

"It's fine. You already showed me how - with the kid before, remember?"

"It's not just a matter of taking the hilt and - concentrate! You can do serious damage to her min -GAH!"

What...

"Now you've scared her. Hey, kid, it's alright - I'm sorry, but you have to go on -"

"I've scared her? I'm not the one hitting her over the head like a barbarian - it's alright. Soul Society is a peaceful place, and you'll be safe there. You have to let go of your life now. Don't be afraid."

What...?

"Sorry my companion was so rough - he doesn't really know what he's doing."

"Oi."

Who are...oh, my HEAD...

"Close your eyes. It's just like falling asleep..."

Tedious Everyday Notes section

Well, this is a new experience for me. I haven't written for a while and I've never even come close to posting a fanfiction before - so I decided to go ahead and have a go at one in a fandom I'm not really involved with, for a series I don't actually like all that much, and it's the kind of fiction I usually detest - filled with OCs. Why I am doing this, I really have no idea. I suppose this is my idea of fun - a rewrite and reimagining of the Bleach universe that wonders off tangentially, complete with customised cast of characters. It will probably be quite silly and shamelessly melodramatic. Please feel free to run away screaming at this point.

If anyone enjoys reading this monstrosity I will be pleased to have shared it. If not, I will just write it for my own giggly entertainment and sod the world. If you have actually got to this part, I would love a review. It doesn't have to be anything much, really. I've even prepared some comments for you to copy and paste -

-I read the whole thing! Hooray, I liked it!

-I read it and it passed the time.

-I read the whole thing, why? I have wasted 10 minutes of my life.

-I didn't read it, I skipped to the end to tell you to get off the internet.

Any comments, criticisms or questions are welcome. But please be nice, I'm very delicate and sensitive.

... ... ...

There are some basic warnings that accompany this work of fanfiction:

- It's AU, re-imagined, reinvented, I took some characters and a setting and I ran off with them to have my wicked ways. Nothing in canon is necessarily true here. Don't rely on anything you know. Even whole characters are being re-imagined, or occasionally obliterated from existence.

- It's absolutely filled with OCs. I normally loath OCs. I totally understand if you do too.

- While it is probable that there will be some romantic entanglements and so on, because I'm the kind of person that likes mushy stuff, it is highly unlikely that any popular 'canon' pairings will feature prominently, if at all. There may be pairings that come out of left field. There may well be canon/OC or even OC/OC pairings. I can't stress enough to beware of the OCs.

- I tagged this with Mr T. Hitsugaya because he is the main canon character that will be featuring. I guess if another canon character emerges as prominent I will tag them as well... the truth is I have some general ideas for this fic but it is nowhere near finished, even in my head. I always swore I would never post a fic unless I had actually written it. Yet another reason I think I may have lost my mind. And if I change my mind halfway through and rewrite the whole thing, I can only apologise.

... ... ...

With love x