Hi, guys! New story up, very Yuzu and Karin-centric. I always admired these twins, and would like to give justice to their ridiculously gifted spiritual DNA. ;) I hope you enjoy!
There are now pairings as of now, and I'm not sure if romance is going to be heavy in this fic. But I'd like to declare early on that I'm partial towards IchiRukia, IshiHime, YoruSoi, HitsuHina. That is all, and don't let it scare you away! I won't become a romantic sap, I swear. Enjoy!
This story will be following three major arcs, set in three different locations. It is set after the war against the Quincies, and I'm not entirely sure if I'll be following canon as much as I can. Ichigo will be a senior, and the twins will be in highschool. So they're all older now, since it's also after the timeskip and even more time after that. It will be rather lengthy, and is one of the more ambitious fics I've gotten around to starting. Hoping to start strong!
Also, I'll be continuing writing the other YoruSoi fic I'm working on, in case any of you care and get mad at me for starting a new fic in the middle of that one. xD
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Bleach. ;)
"What's eating you?" Karin asked, leaning back on a dining chair with a bored expression on her face. She noticed that Yuzu was chewing on her lip, a crease between her brows forming as she struggled to figure out why she felt that something was missing.
Ah. She shook her head, smiling to herself suddenly. "I completely forgot to get potatoes. What time is it?" She asked, hastily taking off her apron and putting out the stove.
"Around 6:30. But it's getting dark and drizzling, Ichi-nii's going to throw a fit if he sees you going out."
"Iie, it will be fine. The store's just down our street." Yuzu picked up the umbrella which hung by the door and checked for her keys, already half-way outside when Karin spoke again.
"I'll just go with you." Her twin said as she stood up, an unreadable expression on her face.
Yuzu shook her head. "Otou-san will be upset if none of us are home when he gets back from his patient. Just let him know where I went." She said with a wave, snapping her umbrella open and hurrying down their street. Hopefully Giro-san hadn't closed down yet, and she wasn't particularly fond of the rain.
In fact, none of the Kurosakis were.
Yuzu frowned as she felt the pitter-patter beat down harder against her umbrella. She hugged herself with her free hand, wishing she had brought a coat. It was unusually cold, and the mist was unusually thick. She shivered, walking faster to the warmth of the store which she could now see in the distance. Oddly enough, the closer she got to the store the colder and thicker the air became. It was as if some kind of energy weighed down on her, making it hard for her to breathe.
The street wasn't exactly deserted. It was dimly-lit, even more so now due to the rain, but it had a few pedestrians on their way home and a number of cars speeding through. It was dotted with trees and was a peaceful neighborhood, so there was no reason to feel unease - but she felt it anyway.
She heard it before she saw the head lights flashing behind her.
The hair-raising screech of brakes gone loose and the yell of a distant pedestrian who was too far away echoed through the street.
Everything went black for a moment, and then she felt something similar to floating; as if she were knocked out of something or something was knocked out of her. All she knew was that she hit the very solid ground and that it was enough to wake her up again. She was tumbling, there was screaming, everything was happening so fast.
When the world blurred back into Yuzu's vision, she was very confused. Why were there people screaming? Why is there so much ice? Why is it so cold? She shook her head, which was heavy and spinning. But in the heat of the confusion, she heard a familiar voice tremble out her name.
"Y—Yuzu?"
A woman stared at her, violet orbs wide in shock and brimming with tears. She was wearing a black gi and hakama, and appeared to be holding a katana which was of the purest white with an equally pristine ribbon attached to its pommel. Everything around the woman was frozen.
"Rukia…nee?"
Karin stood in a daze, mouth agape at the scene before her. Yuzu was surrounded by terrified onlookers and lying bloody on the sidewalk a few paces down the road.
She couldn't believe it, and she was glad she wasn't there to see it happen. She surveyed the scene, it was a car accident. From the looks of it, the driver had crashed into a pole in an attempt to avoid Yuzu, but it was too late, and he was lying limp in his seat as well. A few of the bystanders were already trying to pry open the metal door, while others called for first-aid.
The nearest doctor would be Isshin.
"YUZU!" She sprinted down the street, electricity and dread jolting her back to reality. She recognized some of the faces - the old shopkeeper, a neighbor or two, and they made space once they recognized that this girl was her sister. "Y—Yuzu?" Karin stammered. Not again. Not Yuzu. She collapsed onto her knees, taking bruised shoulders into her hands, shaking them - gentle at first and desperate as she continued. "YUZU, WAKE UP!"
"Karin-chan..." A weak voice said from outside the crowd. It sounded like Yuzu, and she looked around desperately. Maybe this was just a dream? She couldn't be hearing things at a time like this!
She clenched her jaw, turning back to Yuzu's limp form. She was in too much shock to apply any first-aid she might have known, and she hadn't even noticed the hot tears which were now flowing freely down her face. Not Yuzu, she repeated to herself, not her!
She wasn't sure how long she'd been kneeling there but her father had finally arrived, frantic and accompanied by an orange-haired girl who she recognized was a close friend of Ichigo's.
"MOVE!" Isshin's voice boomed, his face contorted in seriousness and panic. "MOVE AWAY! Inoue-san, please!" He begged.
Karin shuffled back, feeling herself being pulled by away by strong hands which she recognized were her father's. Inoue Orihime put her hands to her hairpins and muttered something she couldn't hear. Two bright, orange lights shot out of the pins and placed themselves at either end of Yuzu's body. She gasped as an orange light encompassed her sister, and she saw that the gashes and bruises were starting to clear out. The crowd watched in awe, backing off slightly at the sight of something they didn't understand.
"S-Something's wrong, Kurosaki-san!" Inoue frowned; sweat forming around her brow as she intensified her efforts.
"Inoue!" Another voice boomed from somewhere down the street. Was that Rukia-nee?!
Karin gasped as Rukia materialized in front of them from thin air. In her arms she was carrying... Yuzu?
She saw that Isshin and Inoue visibly paled at the sight. "No, no, no!" Isshin shot up, taking the other Yuzu into his arms and bringing it closer to the figure Inoue Orihime was healing. "Inoue-san, please try harder." She had never seen her father so desperate before. Perhaps once, also on a rainy day, but somehow that didn't seem even close to how he was today.
A low, buzzing sound caught their attention - the other "Yuzu" had begun to glow with energy, and electricity crackled around them. As if being sucked in by a vacuum, Yuzu was thrown back into her limp body and her eyes immediately snapped open. She jerked upright, panting, sweating and visibly shaking. Karin moved before she could think, wrapping her arms around her twin. She cried. She cried and she didn't care – she cried because she was scared, and she cried because Yuzu was back now. "Y-Yuzu..." Her voice was shaking.
"Karin...chan? Otou-san." Yuzu looked dazed, looking at the people surrounding her one by one. "Inoue-senpai and... Rukia-nee? Why are you dressed like that?"
"I can't believe it." Rukia said, transfixed on the scene. "Yuzu... literally died and came back."
Ichigo was going to break his knuckles trashing his wall.
"Goddammit! Where is the piece of shit of a soul in that car?! I'm sending him to hell and back."
"Ichigo." Rukia caught a bleeding knuckle in her hand, her voice laced with gentle warning. "Your body can't recover like your soul can, be careful with it."
"But Yuzu—"
"—is okay now." She said with finality. "She needs you, so go downstairs and be there for her."
Ichigo sighed in defeat, running a hand through his hair in an attempt to curb his temper. Of course, Rukia was right. When it came to what he needed to do, she always was. But it wasn't just the car accident that bothered him; it was what Rukia had brought up right after Yuzu was brought back to the clinic. Apparently, Yuzu was completely knocked out of her physical body without a chain of fate protruding from her chest. There was also the matter of Yuzu being able to fully see spiritual beings and feel reiatsu now. He was happy that she wasn't truly dead, but he'd worked so hard to keep her out of this dangers of the spiritual world.
But he supposed it was only matter of time given his family heritage.
"Rukia." He spoke, eyes softening.
"Mm?"
"Thanks. For being there, I… I'm not sure what would have happened if you weren't able to get to her soul fast enough."
"It was a coincidence. I had to dispatch a pretty powerful hollow near your house, so I wasn't able to pick out Yuzu's reiatsu approaching. But after the accident, I felt her in full-force. She's more powerful than you think, Ichigo." Rukia looked solemn.
"That's never a good thing." He set his jaw, turning around to make his way towards the door. The truth is, he felt it too. He felt Yuzu's faint but familiar reiatsu shoot up, and he had all but abandoned the hollow he was fighting at the opposite end of town.
Bigger reiatsu meant tastier souls. Tastier souls meant hungrier hollows.
Ichigo jogged down the staircase to find his family and Inoue seated around the table. Yuzu was fine – physically, but everyone seemed visibly shaken. Apparently he was the only one who wasn't there to see the whole affair happen, and this wasn't a fact that made him feel any better.
"Yuzu." He said softly. "How are you feeling?"
The younger Kurosaki only sighed, looking lost and confused. "Soul Society… Hollows… Shinigami? All this is a bit too much for one sitting."
"I know how it feels." He scowled. "And had a horrible teacher to expla—ouch!"
"I put effort into all those drawings, you ungrateful imbecile." Rukia scoffed with a foot on top of the growing lump on Ichigo's head.
Ichigo rolled his eyes, but didn't really mind when he saw Yuzu smile again the first time that night.
"I heard there was an accident at your street!" Yamato Koji, a classmate of Yuzu's who had short, curly black hair and thick-rimmed glasses worriedly asked her.
She expected this, and it apparently had something to do with a certain Urahara Kisuke and a bunny-shaped memory-altering instrument.
"Ah, yeah." Yuzu struggled to recall the fabricated answer which Rukia-nee explained to her on their walk to Karakura High, anxiously fiddling on the hem of her skirt. "Unfortunately, they rushed the driver away to the nearest general hospital since our clinic couldn't provide more than intermediate first-aid."
"I hope they're okay, though." Koji frowned. He made a face that looked as though he was going to ask more, but the bell rung and Ochi-sensei had barged in with more cheer than they were used to.
Yuzu quirked an eyebrow. "Is that a new haircut?"
"Why, yes! I'm glad one Kurosaki manages to get that right." Ochi-sensei rolled her eyes as she begun the roll call.
She yawned, unable to stifle it any longer. Paying attention in class was no problem for Kurosaki Yuzu, in fact she had the highest marks out of the three siblings. She was just so tired. It was hard not to feel that way when you've just come back to life. Sometimes, she can't even believe that all this was true. Soul Society, the Shinigami – the spiritual world in general. So this was what kept Ichi-nii away all this time, and apparently Isshin was a part of it too. Karin-chan, while not exactly included, had an idea or two, and Yuzu felt the slightest bit left out.
She sighed, lazily spinning her pen between two fingers, and tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that it was all to keep her safe. But, if her family history was any indication, trouble would find her anyway.
She chewed on her lip and set the pen down, writing the events which Rukia-nee had hastily explained to her – both verbally and in questionable bunny-illustrations – the previous night.
Ichi-nii's Ryoka Invasion. Aizen's treachery. Infiltrating Hueco Mundo. The Winter War. The Quincy Uprising.
Shinigami. Quincies. Souls. Hollo—
Yuzu suddenly sat up ramrod straight, dropping her pen as she heard it. An enormous, pained and gruesome shriek, which chilled her all the way to her bones, filled the room and hallways. She took a sharp breath.
"Yamato-kun," she called in a hushed voice. "D—do you hear that?"
Koji frowned, a bored expression on his face. "Mm? What are you talking about?"
Yuzu set her jaw. "Nothing. Nevermind."
She heard the cry another time, and it was getting nearer. She clutched onto her armchair, feeling her palms sweat out. She looked around the room, and no else seemed to be bothered. Ochi-sensei paused, however, as if she could feel the slightest disturbance in the air.
Better than the full experience, in Yuzu's opinion.
"I need to go out for a minute." She hastily muttered, abruptly standing up from her seat and dashing towards the door.
"Oy, Kurosaki!" Ochi-sensei spun around mid-lecture, frowning with her chalk still stuck on the board. "Where do you think you're going?"
"N—Nurse's Office! Gomen, sensei!" Yuzu awkwardly bowed before sprinting towards the Senior's hallway.
Ochi-sensei simply shrugged and went back to the board. "Kurosaki thing I suppose."
The younger Kurosaki flushed when she realized that she barged in on Ichigo's class, a class full of seniors, without so much as a knock.
The teacher, a nerdy-looking man with heavy glasses stared at her expectantly. "U—Uhm. Hi. I really need to speak with Onii-chan. It's u-uhm a family emergency."
When Yuzu looked over to the students she noticed that Ichigo, Rukia and the angst-ridden Ishida fellow were already halfway towards the door.
"Y—Yeah!" Ichigo continued, catching on to Yuzu's excuse. "That's actually why I need to rush out right now! See you, sensei!"
The young physics professor merely cocked an eyebrow as he watched the four students dash away. "Family affair? With Ishida and Kuchiki?"
Yuzu had no time to ask. She had to run to keep up with her brother. "You mean we're going towards it?"
"Basically." Ichigo growled in frustration. "Oi, what the hell are you doing here with us?!"
"Ichi-nii… I could hear it all the way from my classroom!" Her voice wavered as she kept up pace.
"Dammit." Ichigo cursed, "Rukia?"
"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of her." Rukia assured, keeping herself a good distance in front of the two boys. Yuzu watched with curiosity as Rukia melded into something of a commander, not the sweet-talking young lady they had accommodated in their home.
"We'll eliminate it quick and easy, and meld back into class like nothing happened." Ishida finally spoke up. "Are you sure your sister should be coming along?"
"There's nowhere else to keep her safe." Rukia answered for Ichigo.
They dashed out the building and into the courtyard. Yuzu silently hoped that Ochi-sensei wasn't watching, because if what they said about spiritual beings was true, then Yuzu, Ishida, Rukia and Ichigo would be openly gawking at something they couldn't see.
Suddenly, she felt her knees weaken. It was big, ugly, terrifying and masked. A bone-white mask contorted in an ugly expression stared down at her. Its eyes were glowing and bulging at an awkward angle, and its tongue was lolling around like a frog's. It had four limbs, all of them seemed to be hands, and it walked around as if it were a spider.
"Ta..sty." In drawled in a gravelly voice. Perfect. It talks.
Yuzu's trance was broken at the sound of shouting, and the following events happened in a blur. One minute, Ichigo and Rukia were standing beside her. Next, they seemed to 'jump' out of themselves, appearing out of thin air in black traditional clothing and swinging around ridiculous-looking swords. Ishida had conjured a bluish, glowing bow, and started shooting at the monster's vital organs.
Ichigo had less finesse and opted to hit it with his giant cleaver at every chance it got. It seemed to be working, although Rukia's more calculated strikes seemed to do more damage.
"You're a stubborn one, aren't you." Ichigo growled through gritted teeth, haphazardly swinging his blade in an attempt to cut one its limbs off. This hollow should be small-fry, but he couldn't risk leaking too much reiatsu to his immediate surroundings.
"Stronger… than you think." The hollow muttered. "Tasty!" It cried again, the sound not sitting very well with Ichigo's ears.
"It has something similar to hierro, but to a lesser extent!" Ishida yelled from below them. "My smaller arrows are barely doing it damage."
"What is a hollow like you doing roaming around here?" Rukia interrogated while she flash-stepped around, avoiding clawed hands and a darting tongue from sweeping her away.
"So many, many tasty souls here." It laughed. "New tasty souls, especially!"
Ichigo's expression went grim, and Rukia knew exactly what he was thinking. They had to dispatch this hollow for Yuzu's sake.
"Sorry, pal, but you can have a taste of good 'ol Zangetsu!" Ichigo landed on the ground and swung his sword horizontally in full force, effectively chopping off one of the hollow's arms.
When Rukia jumped at the hollow from behind, bringing down her sword in a large, overhead arch which struck the monster right at the center of its head, the figure screamed its last, painful shriek before beginning to disintegrate into nothingness.
Ichigo sighed as he dusted off his shihakusho and returned Zangetsu to his back. "That's the nasty stuff I wanted to keep you away from, Yuzu."
When no response came, he turned around sharply. "Yuzu?!"
"Ichigo!" Rukia jogged towards him in alarm. "Yuzu—"
"Is missing! Dammit, I can feel her reiatsu but I can't tell which direction she went!" Ichigo made a platform of reiatsu and started jumping up in the air, hoping to get leverage and a better visual field. Dread started piling into the pit of his stomach like lead, and he found that it was getting harder and harder to breathe. "Yuzu! Shit, we got too distracted by the fight!"
"We can split up, she can't have gone far." Ishida offered, already jogging to a direction opposite Rukia's.
"I'll track her with spirit ribbons; it will be faster that way." Rukia forced herself to calm down and concentrate.
Concentrate. Find Yuzu.
She closed her eyes and felt the world around her fade to black. Immediately, the individuals around her materialized into tangible, visible ribbons.
Ichigo. Ishida… Ochi-sensei, more students… farther… Yuzu, come on, Yuzu.
A familiar reiatsu was caught in Rukia's senses, and she pulled in harder towards that direction. Closer, closer, she could almost feel it. So similar to Ichigo's, in so many ways…
Come on, come on… there!
Rukia frowned, snapping her eyes open and reaching forward to grab the ribbon which had Yuzu's spiritual signature imprinted on it.
"I—Ichigo!"
"You found her?!" Ichigo was tense, hand resting on Zangetsu's hilt and ready to spring into action.
"Yes, but…" Rukia's frown deepened.
"What is it?" He demanded.
"Ichigo... Her spirit ribbon is red."
Hope you guys enjoyed the beginning!
As for Karin: there will be more of her next chapter, I promise. ;) We just have to get the ball rolling with Yuzu and set this series of unfortnate events into motion!
Please leave a review of what you think! xx