Authors Note: I feel like I should tell you this is my first story, so I apologise for anything I've done wrong with it. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, although there is only one reference in this chapter. Let's face it, if I did own Bleach then nobody would watch or read it because it would be BORING!

Chapter 1: The Tale of the Bright, White Light

Simone's P.O.V

First off, I just want to say that it was not my fault. No matter what anyone else (Ahem, Kit) says, I am NOT to blame. Seriously. You have to believe me.

How was I supposed to know that those chemicals were not supposed to be mixed together? We were in chemistry and I was BORED! Isn't chemistry supposed to be fun, like all explosions and that? Not waiting around for a test-tube to turn pink.

I mean, COME ON! Anyone would get bored. I was just trying to get the reaction to speed up, to make something happen. You understand, right? It's not like I knew that messing about with the experiment would magically transport me and my 4 friends to a completely awesome place, right?

Oh, so now you're confused? HA! In your face confused guy! But I suppose I should explain. Because I'm a nice and lovely person and you all love me. Aww, don't be like that, you know you love me really. Yes you do. Yes, you do. JUST SAY YOU LOVE MEEEEEEEEE! Okay. So anyway, here's the completely true story of our trip to the Soul Society.

My name is Simone Drake. I'm 15 years old but people (Ahem, Kit again) tend to tell me that I act more like a three year old who's just eaten a lot of sugar. I think that's awesome, apparently other people disagree.

People describe me as tall, slim, stunningly beautiful and incredibly terrifying. Maybe it's my long, luxurious dyed red hair with purple streaks that puts them off, or maybe my piercing and beautiful grey eyes. I don't know, I can't imagine anyone not wanting to talk to me. I'm just so awesome like that.

Anyway, the event happened one day when we were in Chemistry and it was just after lunch. Sir had told us to get into groups of four and do the practical experiment that he'd just been lecturing us on.

And as per usual I didn't have a clue what was going on because I hadn't been listening. Does anybody listen to that idiot? I know I don't, maybe that's why I'm failing this subject.

Because of this I ended up sliding over to one of my best friends in the whole world, Kit.

Kit always gets the top grades. If you team up with her you know that you're going to ace whatever you're doing. I don't have a clue how she does it, since she never seems to be listening either.

She also has this habit of being extremely mean, especially to me. She seriously doesn't care about anyone, she just goes through life glaring and ignoring everybody or enjoying picturing their demise. She never actually does anything to them though. Well, not herself. A few choice words to the right people can get anyone hurt, though. Especially when you have a glare like hers.

She gave me one look with those eagle eyes of hers and said

"No."

She does that a lot, answer questions that hadn't been asked. It's kind of creepy in an un-creepy, Kit way.

"Aww, come one Kit. PWEASE?" I begged, sticking out my famous begging lip and making it shiver. Kit glared. That is really NOT a good thing. Kit's glares are enough to burn any man to ash.

"Absolutely not"

"Pretty please?"

"I'm not going to change my mind"

"…Never?" I asked uncertainly.

"Never" she replied. I thought for a moment. Man, this was going to be hard. Kit was extremely stubborn. Then I had a flash of inspiration.

"Would sprinkles help?" Kit stared me down.

"I hate sprinkles" She replied coldly. I stared at her, shocked. She hated sprinkles? What kind of sick person hates sprinkles? I looked at her squarely in the eye, opened my mouth and shouted

"HEATHEN!" Everybody looked round to be met with quite a sight. I was pointing at Kit screaming my insults to high heaven while she just sat there, not looking at me, and copying some writing off the board.

"DEVIL CHILD, BLASPHEMIST, HEATHEN, HEATHEN, HEATHEN!" I yelled at the top of my lungs while Kit ignored me, rather rudely as well in my opinion.

By this point in time, everyone in the classroom was either cracking up or covering their ears.

I hold the world record for the longest and loudest someone has consecutively screamed. Well, not really. But everyone assures me that if it did exist, I would win hands down. They're right to have faith in me.

While Kit and I were doing our little comedy act (it's going to make us famous one day) our mutual friend Allie walked up. She must have realised what was happening because she took one look at us and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. She yanked me up to a standing position and looked me head on in the eyes.

"Shut up" she said quietly. I didn't need telling twice. I shut up.

Allie's the kind of person where if you don't obey her, there'll be consequences. Serious consequences. Consequences where you might need a trip to the hospital consequences. You understand now? Yeah, she's seriously like that.

She's the kind of person who'll pick a fight with anyone, just because she's bored. She's hot-headed and relentless, short-tempered and argumentative. She's the muscle to Kit's brains. Dumb men let her have whatever she wants, smart men run away screaming. She's shit scary.

On this particular day it just so happened that Kit was in quite a lenient mood and so the three of us partnered up together after all. Kit went to get the equipment while Allie and I stood around, not really talking. I think she may have been punishing me for the previous episode, or what Kit would call 'a lapse in sanity'. Suddenly we heard a scream from the other side of the room.

Quickly we looked round. A flash of our disgusting green uniform got caught in our eyes as a blur ran and cowered behind us.

"Stop it Jessie, it's not funny" The blur whined, edging backwards and pulling me along with her. In front of us stood a short, sweet looking girl with ginger hair pulled into two messy bunches. Freckles spattered across her cheeks and an evil smile covered her face as she held a lit taper under my nose.

"Oh come on Linn", she patronised. "It's only fire. It's not going to hurt you" the evil goblin laughed as she tried to lunge past me and catch Linn with the taper.

"You touch me, you die!" squeaked the girl, pulling me even further away. Somehow the threat lost its oomph when it was spoken by a scrawny girl with a brace lisp who was currently trembling in fear. I laughed.

"What the hell are you two doing?" I asked, removing myself from Linn's clutches. Linn squeaked again and ran to hide behind a nearby table.

"She's trying to burn me!" She wailed. Jessie, Allie and I looked at each other and laughed mercilessly.

"Don't be such a drama queen" Jessie complained. "I just want to show you the fire. See, look how pretty it is." Linn squeaked again as Jessie wafted the taper at her. Allie and I stood back, laughing at the scenery.

Sometimes being friends with Linn and Jessie has its uses. Jessie looks sweet but really she's a trained assassin. I think the technical terms are sadistic, psychopathic and pyromaniac but assassin works too. And Linn…. Well, Linn's just hilarious to torment. The poor mouse is scared of everything.

And she always ends up hiding behind me. Probably because I'm the only one who'll let her. She can't hide behind Jessie because Jessie's usually the one scaring her and she can't hide behind Allie because Allie finds it irritating and threatens to beat her up. And she can't hide behind Kit because Kit simply doesn't care. She'd probably hand her over to murderers before protecting her. Isn't she lovely?

Jessie was stopped from tormenting Linn further by the arrival of Kit, her arms laden with equipment. She shook her head when she saw us all but simply settled for her famous death glare rather than berate us all for being 'stupid'. We got the message.

We all gathered round Kit as she set the equipment out and started the experiment. Good behaviour was never our strong suit though and soon enough we were all dozing off as a result of extreme boredom.

Now you may or may not know this about me, but I can not be bored at any time. My system simply can't take it. I'm like the Wicked Witch of the Fun; boredom melts me.

So anyway, as you already know, I decided to save myself and the others and make our chemistry experiment so much more interesting by adding a concoction of other substances to the water that was supposed to be turning pink. Looking back perhaps this wasn't the best plan.

I ducked down and opened the cupboard doors. Just my luck, it was the cupboard that kept the Bunsen burners, which I somehow couldn't see mixing with the water very well. I slammed the doors shut and shuffled along to the cupboard next to it. Aha! In this one there were rows and rows of glass bottles filled with mysterious looking liquids and labelled with way-too-complicated-names. Perfect.

I removed my head from the cupboard and sat up, bringing with me a bottle of randomly selected liquid.

By now Allie had noticed I was doing something. Her eyebrows rose and her eyes lost their undeniable look of sleepiness. I grinned my mischievous grin at her and she seemed to understand what was going on.

Well, no. Actually I'm lying. Truth is she had no idea what was going on and gave me an extremely puzzled look. But saying she immediately knew is a lot cooler, don't you think? We both do.

I put the bottle on the table next to Allie and she examined it as I went in search of more ingredients. A quick trawl of my bag gave me a packet of KFC salt and a stick of long-forgotten gum and the bin supplied me with the end of a dried-up glue stick and a handful of pencil shavings.

Proud of my findings, I skipped back to the others. Allie had an amused expression on her face and Jessie was grinning and giggling. Linn had a slightly scared look on her face, like she knew whatever was going to happen wouldn't be very safe and Kit just looked plain suspicious.

"Simone, what are you up to?" she asked, her eyebrows furrowing. My eyes sparkled.

"Prepare for some fun my dear Kitty" I laughed, elbowing her out of the way and pouring the pencil shavings and the dried glue into the test tube. Next I scattered the KFC salt in. The mixture fizzed and bubbled. We inched forward to peer more closely at the concoction that was being created, even Kit was interested.

I unwrapped the gum, stuck it in my mouth and began chewing. Linn's agitated face turned into one of pure disgust.

"You're not going to put that in, are you?" she asked, scrunching up her nose. I ignored her, instead reaching out and taking the liquid chemical from Allie.

I'm not a total idiot, in case you were wondering, so of course I read the label to see what exactly I was putting in the mixture. Hydrochloric Acid didn't sound too bad, though I had no idea what it was. Shrugging, I unstoppered it and poured it in.

The mixture turned pink and started fizzing more than ever and every now and again it would give off a loud 'pop' sound and the mixture would rise up almost to the mouth of the test tube before sinking back down.

Jessie giggled even more and began to rub her hands together and gave her best, painstakingly practiced evil madman laugh.

"Bubble bubble, toil and trouble." She laughed, the pure glee in her face clear.

Allie was enthralled, leaning forward and peering at the mixture, her eyes almost touching the fizzy pink liquid.

Linn's bottom lip started quivering and her eyes started watering. She grabbed the back of my shirt and tried to use me as a meat shield, but I shook her off. I didn't have time to protect her; I was playing mad-scientist. Linn wailed and looked around frantically for another shield, becoming even more distressed when she found nothing safe was available.

Kit was just watching carefully, her eyebrows raised in slight interest but overall her face was expressionless. The only reason I could see that she was excited and interested by the experiment was because I'd known her for so long. And believe me, when you've known someone as long as I've known Kit, you know what their feelings are deep down.

Finally I finished chewing on the gum and took it out of my mouth. We all seemed to hold our breath (I know I did) as I held the gum above the mouth of the test tube- dramatic effect is awesome. Apparently the others don't agree as the next moment my beautiful, slender hand was slapped by Allie's tanned, ugly one and I dropped the gum.

Down, down, down it fell in slow motion, I kid you not this really happened, until it landed with a plop in the mixture. Nothing happened. We waited and waited and waited, our eyes all trained on the gum as it sank to the bottom of the test tube. But still nothing happened. Just as I was about to give up on the whole thing, the gum hit the bottom of the test tube.

Suddenly a bright, white light enveloped the classroom. It was so bright and so white that I had to shield my eyes from it, so bright and so white that I couldn't see anything or anyone but the bright, white light, so bright that for a moment I swear I thought I'd gone blind, so bright and so white that the only tow adjectives that would ever do it justice were bright and white.

And then the bright, white light faded to black as quickly as it had come and I felt the strange feeling of falling through a great expanse of pitch black nothingness.

Authors Note: Okay, so how did you like the first chapter? All opinions are welcome through reviews, the more the merrier! Just know that if you do like it, then you ought to review because if no one reviews I'm not going to write any more chapters! If people do review and you like it, then know that I've already started a second chapter so I'll finish it and upload it ASAP.

Flamers, surprisingly enough, are welcome. If you hate it, I want to know that you hate it :) Don't just leave me hanging people! VENT!

Thanks for reading!