A/N: I'm really sorry if this is confusing. This was actually the second story I wrote about these characters (but the only one worth reading), so I didn't put much information about them. Here's some quick info:

Jisatsu Riku: 20th seat of 12th division. He's a good artist and kind of has a crush on Tame.

Seikimi Tame: 19th seat of 4th division. She can be cynical. Her Zanpakutou has the power to put people to sleep by cutting them—or her shikai can do it without contact.

Chimari Yuki: 20th seat of 4th division. Has been in the Gotei 13 for barely a year. Tame's best friend. Likes to annoy Riku.

Haru: Unseated. 12th division. Collaborates with Riku on projects.

So. Yeah. Pretty please review! I want to especially hear how you feel about the characters—which ones you like, which ones I shouldn't write about anymore. I plan to make a series of short stories about these and a few others.

Jisatsu Riku pulled his glasses out of his sleeve and slipped them on, bending close to the small model his partner had constructed. "That looks great, Haru, except for that joint there." He tapped one of the metal hinges that connected two lumpish bars. "I think you may have it on backwards." He pulled out the plans once more to check. "Yeah, it's supposed to swing this way."

Haru quickly removed the bar and popped the hinge off the end. Neither of the two was sure what they were building. They had received the plans that morning as their assignment for the day, and they were presumably drawn up by a seated officer who had better things to do than test things in the lab.

Riku looked down at the paper and added the last two rods. Then he stopped and stared, reddish eyes wide.

"Haru… what does this look like to you?"

The other shinagami pushed his black hair out of his eyes and studied the mess of tubes and joints.

"Kinda like a hand, except all the fingers are on backwards. Why?"

Riku gulped down a wave of nausea. Had they started live experiments again? No, if they had they wouldn't bother with mere models. "No reason. I think we got the wrong scroll. I wonder who got ours?"

As if in answer, an explosion echoed through the lab. In the corner, a tall male shinagami and his partner had shell-shocked expressions on their faces, which were black from soot. Their eyebrows were singed off.

Riku bit back a grin. His specialty was explosives, and from all the way over here he could see what they had done wrong.

Later that day, he was sketching quietly at his lab table. Haru had been sent on an errand, and no one else was working nearby. Suddenly, he became aware of a presence at his shoulder. He jerked and stuffed his drawing underneath a pile of diagrams.

"Let's try to keep our mind on work, shall we?"

"Yes, Captain."

He didn't look up until he was sure that Captain Mayuri had walked away.

Riku still wasn't certain why he had never been punished beyond demotion after his breakdown at the labs, when he had tried to set the living experiments free. Since then he had worked with chemicals and occasionally Kido or weapon design. But he never again worked with anything alive.

Recently he had developed a subtle liquid explosive, though he wasn't sure what use it could be put to. He checked one last time for anyone standing nearby and started sliding his sketch out again.

"Jisatsu."

Riku nearly jumped out of his skin. How did captains DO that???

"Yes, Captain."

"I need one of your water bombs."

How did he know? Riku hadn't even announced his discovery yet!

"Water bombs, Captain?" Technically, the liquid wasn't water.

"Yes, the ones you invented yesterday. I need to capture the Ryoka that are on the loose before one of the other captains do."

"Captain, they haven't been tested yet…"

"No matter. Where are they?"

Riku hesitated. True, the idea of helping capture the Ryoka appealed to him, but…

"Jisatsu, I've heard that fourth squad's head count is down by one, and they're not sure what happened to him. You wouldn't want that girl you're sketching to suffer the same fate, would you?"

Riku made up his mind. To protect his friends Tame and Yuki, he'd give up his invention.

He pushed more papers on top of his drawing of Tame, as though that would help defend her, and stood up. Rooting around in boxes he found a clear glass vial. He filled it from the jug under the table and pulled a rod with a button on the top out of a box. He pressed the button-stick against the vial and sent a pulse of spirit energy through it. Once he was sure that the liquid was synced with the button stick, he handed it over.

"Here you go, Captain."

Riku sat down and tried to look busy.

"Jisatsu."

"Yes, captain?"

"Don't try to hide things from me again."

"Yes, captain."

The next day Riku went to the window and checked the sun's position. Haru was late. Finally, he turned to one of the people working at a nearby table and asked her. "Do you have any idea where my partner Haru is? He as supposed to be here hours ago."

The girl stared back at him, her dark eyes rimmed in red.

"You haven't heard?" she whispered.

Suddenly one of Riku's memories popped into his head; Haru, as he walked past, smiling at this girl and dropping a flower in front of her. It hadn't meant anything to Riku at the time, but…

"What! What is it?"

"… Assistant Captain Nemu made the announcement earlier, before you came in. The Captain was badly wounded the other day, fighting the Ryoka." She took a deep breath before continuing. "Several others died, including Haru. They exploded." She dropped her head into her hands and started crying. Under normal circumstances Riku would've tried to comfort her but….

They exploded.

It was obvious. The liquid had never been meant for the Ryoka. How could he have simply assumed that it was? The captain had turned them into human weapons, Haru, and how many others? How much liquid had he given the captain?

He wasn't thinking anymore. He tore open a box. Haru's friend, the girl, looked up at the violent noise, her face wet with tears.

He had done this.

He snatched one of the button sticks out of the box and grabbed the jug of bomb liquid. No one else would die from this. Riku left the lab.

When he estimated he was too far away from other people to do any damage, he stopped. He synced the button stick and the jug, and then he pressed the button.

Tame, a thin girl with black hair, looked up when the explosion rattled the walls of the relief station. The patient she had been bent over eyelids flicked. She hurriedly finished sewing up the gaping would in the girl's arm and dumped the needle into a bowl of water.

"Yuki-chan?"

Her best friend and subordinate Yuki leaned around the doorway, her blue braids bouncing.

"Yuh-huh?"

Tame gestured at her sleeves and turned around, stripping off the bloodstained gloves and throwing them into the bowl. "Can you…"

"Sure." Yuki walked over and untied the white sash in the back that held up Tame's sleeves.
"What was that sound?" Yuki narrowed lavender eyes as she struggled with the knot.

"I'm not sure."

The two didn't have to wait long to find out. Barely minutes later, some of the larger squad members dashed in carrying a stretcher. On it was a badly burned body. An odd sound like a scream came from it.

Tame gasped. She had treated burns before, but never anything this bad.

"He's barely alive," one of the stretcher carriers shouted, "get the captain!"

It seemed just moments before Captain Unohana entered the room, leaning over the victim. Her motherly aura of calm infected everyone in the room. Tame felt her heartbeat slowing down. As the captain worked it became apparent that the worst burns were on his chest and stomach, leaving his legs, back, and upper half of his face relatively unharmed. Unohana pulled a shard of pottery from his chest and dropped on the floor with a clatter.

"Would someone like to help me with his hand, please?"

Tame hurried over and pried open the patient's burnt fingers. The charred skin cracked.

Something fell into her palm.

"What is it, Seikimi-san?"

'I don't know' is what Tame wanted to say, but she couldn't lie to her captain. She stared at the button stick in her hand and moved her eyes up to the patient's face.

"Riku!"

"Oh, you know him? That makes it far easier. You can do his face." From the nose down, Riku's face was a mess of burns.

"H-his face?"

"Yes. I'm assuming he'd like the same one he had before. You can start, I'm going to seal up his stomach."

And blue light began to flow from Unohana's palms. Tame gulped and moved to kneel by Riku's face, then covered it with her own sunshine-colored light.

For the next couple hours, they worked. There was nothing but light and burns and Riku screaming.

After four hours Tame collapsed. The pressure on his face made Riku try to scream again, but he had used up his voice hours ago and nothing came out but a hoarse whisper.

Unohana, no sign of tiredness on her face, motioned for Yuki to pull Tame off of his head.

And the day wore on.

It was near midnight when Tame woke up. She was lying on the floor. The darkness was filled with raspy breathing, punctuated by coughs.

"Riku?"

"… uhn…"

Tame knew he was incapable of answering her, but still she asked.

"Riku, why did you try to kill yourself?"

And he was silent. Tame drifted back to sleep.

Once everyone was certain that Riku wasn't going to die, Unohana handed care over the Tame. She spent several days healing his burns. The majority of these days ended with Tame taking pity on Riku, who was in horrifying amounts of pain now that he was conscious, and using Yumestsuki, her zanpakutou (which had the power of sleep), to knock him out. Then she would collapse herself and sleep for hours on the floor. Often during those days Yuki would show up with food, news, and something to cheer the both of them up: once she brought a flower, and the day after that she brought a Hell Butterfly she had kidnapped from it's pen, and they watched it fly around the room, Tame with a tired smile and Riku's red-brown eyes tracking it's airborne path.

Five days after she had asked him, he gave her an answer.

"I killed Haru." Tame immediately stopped washing surgery gloves (4th squad went through a LOT of them) and came and knelt by his pallet. He told her what had happened.

She didn't tell him it wasn't his fault, which he appreciated. She didn't lie to him at all.

"You can't change it, Riku. We know souls are reborn; Haru's probably alive somewhere in the living world now, right?"

Their conversation was interrupted as Yuki bustled into the room, holding a disheveled stack of papers that curled at the edges.

"Riku-kun," she said loudly, waving them in the air. During his recovery, she and Tame had dropped most formalities with him. "A girl from twelfth squad told me to give this to you, some work to catch up on." She shuffled through the papers. "Actually, it looks more like some random doodles to me, but hey, what do I know."

Riku grimaced. "Diagrams, Yuki-chan. Highly scientific ones."

"Oh, and this is scientific too?" She held up the drawing of Tame.

Tame clapped appreciatively. "That's quite good, who is it?" Yuki and Riku threw her disbelieving glances. Riku snatched the stack of papers.

"Right. I'm going to go take a bath and sleep in a real bed for the first time in a week. Yuki-chan, please baby-sit my patient."

"Yes Ma'am." Yuki sat on his ankles.

"OW."

"Hey, draw me a picture, Riku. I want a rainbow, and Captain Unohana, and an elephant…" Yuki listed ticking off points on her fingers as Tame left the room.