Chapter one:

Kurosaki Karin was worried. She was a tough girl, an athlete, and a warrior by nature. But she couldn't help it, and that made her mad. She kept plodding along the lane in the smoldering heat. Ichigo was missing, and her stupid dad wasn't even worried! He had to know something!

Didn't he? She'd learned her brother was soul reaper, but the moment she'd confronted him about it, was the last time she'd seen him. "Great!" She thought to herself sarcastically. She vented her anger on the bagged soccer ball at her waist, kicking it as hard as she was able.

It was just her luck that the damned thing found the only hole in her bag to slip through. The force of her super-kick sent the ball sailing through the air and it landing on the precipice of a small hill. The ball wobbled precariously before rolling down the opposite side. It was heading for a street. "I can't lose it, the guys would kill me!" she thought. Karin surged forward in blind determination; she would NOT let her ball get flattened under a car. She was even prepared to go running into the freeway if need b-

Someone had trapped her ball. Karin stopped short, eyes traveling up from his foot as he knelt to pick it up. Her eyes widened slightly. It was a boy about her age, dressed in a black polo and jeans, with a shock of snowy white hair.

His turquoise eyes met hers for a moment before he tossed her the soccer ball. "That was dangerous, be more careful." When she looked up she was alone with her ball and pounding heart.

"Thanks," she muttered to no one in particular. What had just happened?

That had been the day she' met him. She thought later she ought to have realized that he wasn't a normal person. A few days later, after he'd rescued her soccer team from both an angry group of middle students and a hollow, she discovered he was a soul reaper. He was the same as her brother, but she had a few surprises for him as well.

Toshirou blinked. "YOU'RE KUROSAKI'S SISTER?" He could honestly say that hadn't been expecting that.

Although thinking back on it, the truth of it should have hit him earlier. Karin had crazy athletic ability, could sense hollows and soul reapers, and had obviously encountered such oddities before. It would have seemed, to him, ridiculous if she was not Ichigo's younger sibling.

Karin nodded in answer to his question. Then she surprised him by grabbing his shoulders "Do you know where my brother is?" she asked. There was an edge of desperation in her voice. The boy paused, not quite sure how to answer. She seemed ready to wring the information out of him.

"No," he answered, and her face fell. "But," Karin's eyes shot up as he spoke "I know that he's training to become stronger." Her eyes widened and she tried to contain her smile.

"Ah- I see. So he's fine,"her voice cracked, "Thanks,". Karin rubbed her eyes, quickly smothering any escaping tears.

"Hurry up and come home Kurosaki" thought Toshiro, "You're making everyone worry about you, idiot."

Karin plastered on a smile and pulled herself together. She met the energetic Rangiku and teased Toshirou. Then Karin found herself laughing harder than she had in ages and actually began to feel a bit better. She felt lingering melancholy dry up like it was a puddle in the sun. Ichigo was okay! She'd even made some interesting acquaintances.

Of course, she did want to ask them a few questions. "Hey, Toshiro-" Karin looked up, but the boy and his subordinate were gone. They'd left nothing but a small cloud of dust in their absence, and even that had soon dissipated. "Why the hell do these soul reapers feel the need to disappear all the time?" She thought sighing. Karin wondered if it was worth it to go track Toshirou down. "If I find anything odd I've probably found him as well. He's not too different from me. I'll run into him eventually. " She shook her head, smirking a bit at the thought.

In a small part of her mind, Karin began to notice that her friends were waking up on the other end of the soccer field. Then reality hit, what on earth were they going to think?

"That was some pretty freakish wind there,"

"Dude, it even ripped a hole in the playing field!"

"Hey is Kurosaki alright-"

"Yeah,"

One turned and yelled over, "Ooyyyyy! Kurosaki! Don't worry I'm sure they'll fix the field soon!"

Scratch that, these idiots didn't have the mental capacity to think. Let alone to give her trouble by asking questions she couldn't answer. She was safe, relatively speaking. Karin chuckled a bit before sprinting over. "No point in wasting the rest of the day," she thought. "Who's up for more practice?" asked Karin.

The boys groaned.

The next day proved to be a sore one on her injured knee, but she couldn't keep herself from walking the dirt path to the soccer field for practice. When she arrived, her friends suggested they cancel the day's practice in light of the gaping holes across the field. Karin laughed at their faces, assumed they were afraid of tripping, and requested they play against her all at the same time as punishment. The boys haughtily accepted the challenge. They'd never risk being called cowards, after all. Karin had planned this, of course, as she was determined to prepare them for any more impromptu challenges.

The boys spread out, confident that she'd never get past their wall. The game started. Both teams went to opposite side and readied themselves to sprint for the ball in the middle and rallied in counting down from three.

"Three!" roared the boys.

"Two!" Shouted Karin

"One, aaaand…."

"GO!" Karin yelled, and the game had begun.

The fastest of the boys made a beeline for the ball as offense, while the rest remained to guard the goal. Karin sped over the sandy lot and reached the ball just after her opponent. He smirked and tried to dribble the ball around her to her left. Before he'd taken two steps Karin jumped in front of him kicked the ball out from under him. It went rolling towards the boys goal and Karin, sidestepping the offense, had soon caught up to it. Ball in pocession she darted back and forth, dodging the boy on offense, while running in the direction of the increasingly nervous blockade.

Karin's muscles strained and the glaring sun misted her forehead with perspiration, almost there she thought. And….NOW! Much to the surprise of her companions, Karin suddenly kicked the ball in a high arch above their heads. Their moment's distraction gave her just enough time to dive between two boys, roll to a standing position, and continue running again in a matter of seconds. The ball landed and Karin flung it into the goal while the keeper stood frozen, open mouthed. Karin swiped an arm across her damp forehead and laughed at their faces, this game was going to be fun!

She'd won of course. It'd been easy, the boys were fast and strong but lacked the coordination they needed to improve. Karin snorted softly, thinking how absurd it would have looked,to any outsider, to see a group of boys having their asses handed to them by and girl three quarters their size. She smiled as she walked through a short cut on her way home; it was a shaded little street running between two buildings.

Her knee chose that moment of course to start loudly complaining and she bent down to rub it. She paused for another second or so to duck down her head and tie her hair up. She gingerly tugged out the hair tie then gathered all of her hair in one hand to re-tie it. All of the sudden she felt a stagnant wind hit her hard in the neck, well that's weird she thought, pretty unseasonable for hot winds to be blowing…down? She pulled the elastic of her hairband into place with one final snap and looked up.

Karin found herself face to mask with an ugly hollow and froze. She cursed her rotten luck and her brain raced as she tried to figure out the situation. "I should have been paying attention," She saw it rear back and chuckle, and knew she had only moments before it struck. She glanced around, taking note of her surroundings: they were about three feet apart and hardly visible in the dark of the path; nobody would see her at odds with some unseen foe. She knew what she had to do. "I can get out of this alive, I know I can! I just have to focus," she thought. Karin took a breath, and then a running start. The monster released a great roar and with with one twitch of it's long boney neck, it dove at her.

Karin bent her knees and vaulted over its descending head. The monster, mouth agape, roared as she spring boarded off its neck, did an airborne somersault, and landed with a large kick to its center. Karin sprang to the ground, rolled to absorb the impact and came up standing. The creature dissolved, as its very particles came undone from the force of her blow. She smirked at the dissipating particles, "Easier than I thought. I didn't even know I could do gymnastics."

She looked around but the alleyway was still deserted. Nothing was left of the creature and it had left no mark on the surrounding buildings. It was if nothing had happened; and it was times like these, when nobody else saw anything, that she wondered if she had imagined the whole thing.

Karin began walking, and then stopped. She felt a cold chill down her spine, as if someone were watching her. She scanned her surroundings but saw nothing. Then she shrugged, "If there is really someone there and they're too chicken to face me, then they're no concern of mine. I'm just getting paranoid," Then she swaggered off, confident that no person or thing could ever hope to best her. Not in this world anyways.

Confident as she was in her skills of perception, they couldn't contend with a captain's concealment techniques. A few minutes ago Toshirou had been tracking the two large concentrations of power, a human's and a hollow's. It hadn't surprised him that they'd met, seeing as hollows often came seeking such high concentrations. He hadn't even been all that surprised to see Karin was the human. But Hitsugaya had, been surprised, when he saw a human being blow a hollow to smithereens with one kick. That was just…impossible.

His concealment had slipped, if only for a moment, because of his surprise. "I don't think she saw me," he thought as he watched Karin swagger off confidently. He paused, unsure at whether or not to follow her. This changed things, but he wasn't quite sure how. "I'm going to need to sit down for a while," he thought.

So, perched on the edge of a building, he tried to puzzle it all out while the sun drifted lazily towards the horizon. Eventually he came to a conclusion, and subsequently went to find Karin. By that time the sun was all but gone from the sky. He strained to see as the remaining afternoon sunlight leaked out of the sky. "Kurosaki Karin," he thought, "What am I going to do with you?". Although, he already knew the answer.