Heeeey, welcome back to my fic. My account got hacked and things went weird. When I finally got back into my account I realized that I wanted to get back to perfecting my story. So, if you've read the chapters thus far, RE-READ THEM. There are a bunch of added scenes and dialogue. My fans rock.

If you've never read one of my multi chapter song fictions, let me explain how they work. The lyrics break up each scene. The name of each chapter is the name of the song, and the artist is at the very end of the chapter. I kicked off the chapter with one of my favorite songs, World In My Eyes by Depeche Mode. If you'd like to give it a listen, I suggest looking up the Cicada Edit of the song on YouTube. Aaaamazing.

Anyways, some disclaimery stuff…I OWN NOTHING BUT A SUITCASE OF HOPES AND DREAMS! BLEACH BELONGS TO ITS ORIGINAL AUTHOR.

Let me take you on a trip
Around the world and back
And you won't have to move
You just sit still

September 3, 1787

"Uryu, is something troubling you," Soken Ishida asked his grandson. Uryu stared at the tips of his fingers where the arrow trembled with his every breath. He had to pass a final test before he could become a full-fledged Quincy. Uryu shook his head at his grandfather. "Your arrow must strike the target without a single drop of water touching it."

The pair stood beneath a canopy constructed of thatch and cloth and so did the target 100 yards away. Uryu could barely make out the tiny red circle through the torrential downpour seeping from the heavens above.

"Steady your hand, Uryu. Concentrate on every drop that falls until you can predict each new one." The instructions seemed so foreign. It would have been easier for his grandfather to ask him to pass his hand through the eye of a needle. "Your heart is beating louder than this storm. I can hear it from here. Focus yourself."

Uryu's mind flooded with images of failure. His own father had already disowned him for choosing the Quincy life over the life of a noble. But Uryu's destiny had been entwined with the Quincy's ever since his mother had been killed by one of those evil creatures. His arrow was one of anger and vengeance. Uryu had been too clouded by hatred to steady his nerves. He had trained for so long and been tested by so many high ranking Quincy's. The only test remaining was daunting, but he had to succeed for his departed mother, for his doubting father, and for his loyal grandfather.

"So much depends on my success, Grandfather. The pressure makes me uncertain of my abilities," Uryu admitted.

"You would not have made it to this test if your skills had not been approved by the Quincy's." Soken adjusted his tunic in the cold. They would both suffer a bout of pneumonia if Uryu didn't finish his task soon. He had already allowed his grandson an hour and Uryu had not moved from his attack stance with the string of the bow arched backward. "Feel the world rotating as it circles the Sun."

"Grandfather, this advice is not putting me at ease." Still, Uryu tried. He envisioned himself atop the Earth as it rotated and orbited. He looked up to follow a raindrop as it fell to the ground, then he would start on another until he started following two drops at a time and then three and then more. "What is the point of calculating when each drop will fall if I cannot stop them from falling?"

"Ah, but your heart has stopped racing, hasn't it?"

True, Uryu did feel at ease listening to the pitter patter of the rain and watching it drop, but he also knew that his arrow was too wide and would collect rain inevitably. This test had nothing to do with skill or practice; it had to do with blind luck. Uryu closed his eyes, still tuning into the light song of the storm. Then, as though he were releasing a deep breath, he released the arrow, sending it toward the target at breakneck speeds.

Uryu and Soken watched as the arrow pierced the center of the red target with a frightening accuracy. Together the men walked through the rain to inspect the arrow. Uryu retrieved it from the target and brought it closer to his eyes. "Grandfather, it's bone dry."

"Nicely done," he congratulated. Soken grinned wide at his young companion. "You realize, Uryu, that this test was not about avoiding the rain, right?" Uryu frowned at this. "Most contestants get so wrapped up in avoiding the rain that they miss the target. The Quincy's are only interested in a clear mind and an accurate shot. You've passed the final test, Uryu Ishida. I grant you the rank of Quincy. There are no more lessons I can impart to you."

Now let your mind do the walking
And let my body do the talking
Let me show you the world in my eyes

September 3, 1788

"Father! I am asking for your help!" Uryu begged, bleeding at Ryuken Ishida's feet.

Ryuken kicked his wounded son aside before crossing the room to the window. He could see Karakura in flames in the distance. The creatures had raided the town and even the army of Quincy's could not defeat them. Soon the Shinigami would arrive to succeed where the Quincy's had failed miserably. Soken and the others had been murdered by the creatures, only Uryu had survived but been badly wounded. "Did one of them bite you?" Ryuken asked, his eyes still watching the catastrophe.

Uryu thumbed the small holes where one of the creatures had sunk her white teeth into his gloved arm. His silence confirmed all of his father's suspicions.

"Do you know what this means?"

"Father!" Uryu called again in a voice that begged for his father to keep silent, but his father carried on anyway, painfully pointing out the obvious truths that haunted Uryu.

"They will hunt you down. Once one of them gets a taste for your blood, they all do. Unless it was the head of the clan. If he bites you, their venom assimilates with your blood and you become one of them. If this happens, Uryu, please take your life, lest you shame our family name further."

Uryu crawled about the marble floor, writhing in pain from the visceral wrenching he was feeling. He left bloody handprints everywhere he went before smearing them with his dragging knees.

"It's a shame, Uryu," Ryuken continued, "that on the anniversary of your admission into the Quincy clan you became the last remaining Quincy."

"You were once a Quincy too," Uryu spat through gritted teeth.

"It was a superfluous job seeing as the creatures outlived me. Only an immortal can truly have battle with another immortal. It's best that we leave the hunting to the Shinigami. My time is better spent making a success of myself while I'm still alive." Again, Ryuken kicked away his son who had been mercilessly gripping his ankles, staining his garments with sick blood. "I will not have a creature for a son!"

Uryu's body was rejecting the poison the creature had secreted into his young blood stream. He lurched like a sick animal, then released streams of toxic bile. Ryuken stepped back in disgust. "Father," he mumbled again with his insides dripping from his lips.

Ryuken dropped a knife a foot away from his son. "Do yourself a favor, Uryu, and do not disappoint the Ishida name further."

Uryu watched as his father left him to rot on the floor of the study with Karakura burning to the ground as a backdrop. He scrambled to grab hold of the knife and did not give a second thought to forcing it hard into his chest. The stinging of the blade, the pulsing of the creature's venom in his blood, and his body's dismissal of it all overwhelmed Uryu until blackness covered his eyes and he was no longer in the world of the mortals.

And it was the last time Uryu Ishida saw his father.

I'll take you to the highest mountain
To the depths of the deepest sea
And we won't need a map, believe me

September 3, 2010

"Orihime, promise me you'll make a cake or watch a movie when I leave. You can't do nothing on your birthday!" Tatsuki pleaded as Orihime pushed her out of the apartment.

Orihime rolled her eyes with a somber smile painted on her lips. "Tatsuki, I'll be fine. I'll have plenty more birthdays. I might even celebrate this one later, but this is the first one I've had to celebrate without Sora and I'm just not in a party mood."

Tatsuki gave Orihime a quick hug before finally leaving, "I know you miss your brother, but you can't mourn forever. You've only got so long on this earth." Orihime hugged her back, still faking a smile. Her friend looked deep into Orihime's grey eyes one last time. "You sure you're gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, really. Have a good night, Tatsuki."

Tatsuki nodded and headed off into the night.

Orihime waited until Tatsuki's image faded into the darkness of the streets past her home, then locked her front door, and decided to take a quick walk. Karakura wasn't necessarily safe after hours, but the thought had never crossed her mind that night. She just wanted to be out of the house for a moment and to feel autumn breeze against her skin. She wanted to feel anything other than sadness for one moment.

She had not wandered terribly far from her home. If she squinted she could still make out the lights coming from her window and the flashing glow the television cast on her futon. Momentarily, Orihime lost herself in that tranquil picture, ignoring the shadow that had crept up behind her. The world felt like a calm heaven for a few fleeting moments.

Orihime had never taken notice of how romanticized her world had become through watching cinema. Pirates were no longer cut throats or murderers; they were jaunty adventurers. A princess could fall in love with a common thief and see past the fact that he stole to earn a living. And vampires were seductive and elegant creatures of the night that always inevitably fell in love with their beautiful victims. Until that night, she could have believed such processed lies for the rest of her life. Until those teeth sunk deep into her jugular vein.

He gave her no warning. He wasn't a grandiose sexual villain that would fulfill her most secret fantasies. Orihime could barely make out his face as she thrashed about in his clutches. She noticed his lanky stature and white clothing, his long hair and his eye patch, and though she couldn't list one other distinct characteristic about her attacker, she knew she would never forget his face.

Leaving her a souvenir, the beast etched a tiny number four into her wrist with his claw like nails, as if she would forget this very special 21st birthday.

Now let my body do the moving
And let my hands do the soothing
Let me show you the world in my eyes

"Who invited you, Quincy?" Kenpachi growled. The scent of Uryu's unique blood filled the Shinigami's head. Each vampire had a distinct sent according to their clan, but Uryu was special. He had been created by Yoruichi Shihoin long ago and therefore shared the same sweet smell as all those who were part of the clan. The Shihoin clan now belonged to Soifon, but only Yoruichi possessed the power within the clan to assimilate a person into their clan. So the Shihoin clan remained small. Uryu had been claimed as vengeance for Yoruichi's fallen friends. She knew the assimilation would cause the Quincy's great shame. Unfortunately, all she achieved was an immortal vampire hunter. Uryu used his immortality to his advantage and vowed to hunt vampires for all eternity.

Uryu pushed his glasses up his nose. Sadly, he had been transformed long after his eyesight had declined, and with no medical records or identification, lasik was not an option. "Human girl survives a vampire attack from an Espada; did you honestly think I wouldn't find out? Besides, I'm the one who brought her here."

"I'm trying to keep it quiet for now. I sensed the Espada in town too, then I followed your Reiatsu." The men were just outside an intensive care room at the Karakura Clinic. They had both snuck in without the physician on duty noticing, but there was still a strange presence that keep them uneasy. "You feel it too?"

"Honestly, I was hoping that Reiatsu belonged to you, but I knew it was too good to be true." Uryu sniffed the air. "It's not any blood I recognize. I believe I've felt this pressure before."

Kenpachi crouched in the open window, ready to jump out and return to the dark streets below. "I can trust you to keep her safe from the other clans?" Uryu nodded. "Good," Kenpachi said before exiting.

For a minute, Uryu was left alone with the girl. Her wrist had been bandaged up, just like so many of the other victims, except they had all become creatures. Uryu had left her alone if only to hunt the Espada, but came back empty handed. He could have watched her for hours. After a century or two, all humans begin to look the same. From far away they all have the same attributes: they all live, they all bleed, and they all die. Only vampires escaped that fate. And now there was her. Something that looked human, with no fangs or power, but was undying. Her beauty had been lost on Uryu. He had seen a million girls with red hair, and pale skin, and grey eyes, and a heavy set chest. And just like all the others, he didn't know this girl's name.

Uryu left just before the door opened, allowing in another stranger.

"Orihime," the stranger whispered. "I know what did this to you. Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you again."

That's all there is
Nothing more than you can feel now
That's all there is

April 3, 2010

Kenpachi sat alone at the foot of his long dining table. The Kenpachi clan had been safe in Siberia for many centuries, but now it was time to hide.

Two years ago, the people of Siberia had become suspicious of the dark mansion on the cliff and the mysterious men who lived inside. There had been many unsolved murders. Every good vampire knows that when suspicion grows, the food levels drop. The clan had to be more careful in selecting prey. It was easy to pick off a vagrant or transient, but they didn't sustain them very well. Ikkaku, a younger member of the Kenpachi clan, had made mention of a place called Kusajishi, a district ran by a clan of vampires. It was supposed to be a sort of blood bank. There were many in existence. Blood banks kept reserves of blood from the homeless or the brain dead in hospitals and treated it to make it more nutritious. They also specialized in Donors, masochistic humans who willingly lent their blood to vampires in return for sexual acts.

But Kusajishi was different. They secretly collected young orphan girls from the streets, raised them to be healthy, and promised them work once they came of age. The girls were then sent to clans all over the world and treated as delicacies. This is how Yachiru came into Kenpachi's life.

She had been a special order. Kenpachi had requested something light and sweet. She arrived the next day. Yachiru wasn't even tall enough to come to his belt. Her hair was a light pink and her cheeks were rose colored. Had it not been for an overwhelming sense of shame, he would have drank the girl and left her corpse in the snow. In her eyes; however, the hope of all of humanity dangled. She genuinely thought she was on her way to a better life, so, from that day forward, Kenpachi vowed to give her one. He doted on her as he would a daughter. He dressed her and fed her and housed her in his lavish home. He trained her to fight and had hoped that one day she would go with him to free all of the girls in Kusajishi.

Yachiru had fallen ill that past summer. The doctor's weren't sure how long Yachiru had until the cancer finally killed her, but Kenapchi refused to let his surrogate daughter die this way. At the time, assimilating Yachiru into his clan was the smartest thing he could think of. If he could just preserve her, he would find a way to change her back, and the cancer would have died, and she could live happily as a mortal. However, assimilating a child was considered an atrocity among any vampire. There was no vampire code or rule book, but such an act was still unethical. Now radical activists were hunting his clan down to destroy Yachiru.

Yachiru's tiny voice awoke him from his sad and lonely trance. "Kenny…if I go back to being human, will you change with me?"

Kenpachi smiled for the first time since he had assimilated her. "Yachiru, there is nothing I would love more than to watch you grow up and die."

Let me put you on a ship
On a long, long trip
Your lips close to my lips

Orihime was determined not to let the attack destroy her spirit. She kept the whole ordeal under wraps at school. As far as anyone knew she cut herself on some broken glass when tossing out her recycling. There certainly wasn't a cannibalistic murderer lurking in Karakura town.

It would have been a hard fact for the town to swallow; the people of Karakura were used to community living. The police didn't get very many emergencies and the hospitals received more births than deaths. Orihime had spent her whole span of twenty-one years in town, never feeling in danger or peril. She knew every street and shop owner by name, and they all knew her.

That's why Urahara's Closet had come as such a shock.

The little vintage building sat between her favorite doughnut shop and the pet store. At first, she didn't see any reason to go in the small curio shop. She didn't need any knickknacks or novelty items. But she could always use a doughnut.

The door rang when she entered and old man Kindo looked up from the register. He was warm, friendly, with sweet eyes and wrinkles. Orihime knew him to give her an extra doughnut from time to time. He had never been seen without a smile.

"Oh, hello there, Orihime! I hope you're here to clean me out. I just put out fresh batches of the chocolate glazed and the maple."

"Just one for today, Mr. Kindo. Umm…" Orihime had her palms near the glass, but knew better than to touch it and leave prints for Mr. Kindo to polish. "How are the bear claws today?"

"They're fresh as ever. Let me grab you one."

Orihime could already feel her sweet tooth salivating. As she watched him retrieve the bear claw on the top of the pile, she asked, "Mr. Kindo, how long has that shop been next door?"

Kindo froze. His tired muscles went rigid. His eyes glazed over. "You mean the pet shop?"

Orihime shook her head. "No, Urahara's Closet."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, my dear." His tone was flat, almost lifeless.

"My mistake…" she said with a slight giggle.

At this, Mr. Kindo blinked and the cheeriness returned to his nature along with the color in his cheeks. "This one's on the house, Orihime. Enjoy the rest of your day."

Weird, she thought as she exited.

Deciding that the shop was now worthwhile to explore, Orihime dashed out of the shop to look in the window or Mr. Kindo's neighbor. She had never particularly had a pension for fairies, but something about the porcelain sprites in the window called to her. They had personalities, like little doll people. She pressed her hands against the glass and peered in at the tiny fairies, silently naming them to herself and making up wonderful stories about where they came from.

Past the display, the owner of the shop watched the girl.

She thought nothing of it until he beckoned for her to come in with a large wave. Orihime studied him for a quick moment. His hair was shaggy and sandy blonde, hiding beneath a straw cap. He had a strange, traditional appearance for someone who seemed so young. She entered the shop cautiously. The tiny bell above the door sounded when she came inside. Two children playing with a black cat and a stout, muscular man with a beard looked up from restocking the shelves. The man in the hat stood to meet her at the front of the shop. "Do you collect fairies?" he asked.

Orihime shook her head. With a mouthful of sweets, she replied, "Not really. I just thought those ones in the window were interesting."

"They're yours."

Orihime blushed at his offer. "For free?" she asked.

"Actually, I'd be much obliged if you could tell me how you got that scar on your wrist."

She quickly hid her arms behind her back. "Well, you see, I was tossing out the recyclables and-"

"-How you really got that scar," he interrupted.

A nervous pressure began to build in her. She had not told anyone about what really happened. The doctor at the Kurosaki clinic couldn't even tell her who brought her in after the attack. She begged the doctor to keep it all a secret and he agreed. He had not even mentioned it to his son who was a college-mate of Orihime's. Surely she wasn't going to divulge the information to a stranger. "I should really be going. Thank you for the offer though."

Orihime was rushing to the door when the man in the hat called, "Only an immortal could survive an Espada attack like that." Orihime stopped dead. "I see I've peaked your interest. Why don't you stay for a while?"

She spun around to follow the man back to a room at the corner of the store. The children and the bearded man remained, but the cat seemed to be following. The man with the hat allowed Orihime to enter what appeared to be a small dining room, then waited for the cat to enter before shutting the door behind all of them. He went through another door to retrieve a pot of tea then came back to where Orihime was nervously wrenching her hands.

The black cat stared at Orihime from her perch atop the dining room table. The man gestured at his teapot, "Yoruichi?"

The cat shook its head, "No thank you, Kisuke." Orihime gasped. "Yes, I talk," the cat said flatly. "I'm Yoruichi, and if you must know I am female. I'd rather not show my true form with so many Vampires trailing after you. If they found me along with you, they'd have a field day."

"So it was a vampire!" Orihime confirmed.

"Not entirely," the man began. "Yoruichi here is a Mystique. I am a Shinigami. That thing that attacked you was an Espada. That man who brought you to the clinic is a Quincy. While we are all immortal, and humans generalize us as vampires, we're all quite different." He instantly recognized her blank stare as confusion. "Maybe I should start from the beginning. My name is Kisuke Urahara. This shop sells what humans might call curios or antiques, but it's actually an occult supply shop for the immortal community, at least, the upstanding citizens of the immortal community. The friends you're attracting are the riff raff."

"I've never seen this shop before in my life. And Mr. Kindo-"

"Has had his mind adjusted to keep from letting out our secret. We're protected by a barrier I put up." Yoruichi licked one of her paws before continuing. "You can see the shop because I wanted you to see it."

Orihime still sat flabbergasted in front of the pair. "Why don't you ask us what you want to know?" Urahara offered.

Orihime fought to keep her terror from overpowering her curiosity. If there were vampires, and if these creatures were somehow linked to them, she did not want to be attacked again. "I don't know where to start. I guess I want to know where you all came from," Orihime asked.

Urahara let out a deep sigh as though he were about to tell the history of the universe. Orihime listened intently as he spoke. "In the mid-14th century when the Black Death broke out in Europe, a doctor by the name of Mayuri Kurotsuchi was performing experiments on peasants, hoping to find a cure for the disease. To the best of his knowledge, he had succeeded. A nobleman named Genryusai Yamamoto had come down with the plague and sent for Kurotsuchi, but along his journey down the Silk Road, Kurotsuchi also contracted the disease. Yamamoto refused to take the cure until Kurotsuchi confirmed that it had cured Kurotsuchi himself. As far as anyone knew, it did cure Kurotsuchi, so the nobleman allowed him to administer the cure to anyone who could afford it."

"Of course, that meant only the nobles had access to the cure, which is why, like me, most of the original vampires are of noble decent or peasants," Yoruichi added.

Urahara continued, "No one knows just what Kurotsuchi used in his concoction, but the cure had only mutated the virus. It gave the victims a strange blood lust that caused them to become cannibalistic. The cells of the body became mutant. Cells that were needed for repairing the body worked at accelerated speeds, but others that were needed to progress the body in age became dormant, almost petrified. The victims no longer aged and could not be harmed. It could only be spread with direct blood to blood contact. At first, it spread from the victims biting people to try and eat them."

Yoruichi looked away when she mentioned, "My mouth was usually full of my own blood from chewing on my tongue. So it was easy for my blood to spread when I bit people. The original Vampires carry the non-mutated disease. That's why we were made clan leaders. We can spread the disease in its purest form, making it easier to infect others."

"From there it was only a matter of time until this mutant disease spread and mutated more until you have the modern day Vampire." Orihime's face hadn't moved during his whole story. It remained terrified. Urahara laughed a little. "Mystiques are Vampires who dedicated their lives to sorcery. Don't worry, 98 percent of the Mystiques I know are good guys. Shinigami's are born of Yamamoto's blood. They live in sects across the globe. They hunt Vampires. They have found a way to sustain life by drinking their own blood. I, myself, am retired from the hunt, but still quite immortal."

Yoruichi leapt down and met Orihime at her wrist. She nudged against Orihime's scar. "Espadas are Vampires that feed on Vampires. They can feed on humans but normally don't because their bite is instantly infectious to humans. If the human doesn't die, they will become an Espada. They don't like having to take too many weaklings into their ward, so they don't go around just biting a human without the intent to kill. It's safe to say the Espada attacked you for a snack. How you survived isn't really the miracle. The miracle is trying to figure out how you didn't mutate."

"Anything else?" Urahara asked.

"Of course!" Orihime spouted. "I feel like I have a million questions. But mostly, I just wanna know if I'm going to be safe."

"You have a lot of dangerous people following you," Yoruichi started, "but a lot of good people following you as well. That man who brought you in, his name is Uryu Ishida. There is no one safer on this planet. You can trust him."

Orihime frowned, "How can I trust you?"

Urahara shrugged, "I guess you can't really. But Uryu is a professional Vampire killer. His business is protecting humans."

All the islands in the ocean
All the heavens in the motion
Let me show you the world in my eyes

Avoiding nights like the plague, Orihime became a creature of the dawn, trying to squeeze as many things into hours of daylight with the attack still remaining a mystery to her friends. The porcelain fairies Urahara had supplied her were to be used as warning devices. The Mystiques created them to sound a sort of alarm when an immortal was near, which was why he kept them at the front of his store and far away from him. Orihime had planted one in her kitchen, her bathroom, her bedroom. her living room, her patio, and in her purse. In the three days she had kept them, they had never sounded.

Orihime basked in the glow of the sun on her porch that afternoon. She had just finished a filling lunch and was about to study for her history exam. The fairy sitting on her deck had black hair and red wings. His face was covered by a camel colored veil. His eyes were stern and unyielding. Orihime had named him Tsubaki.

Just as her eyes had fluttered shut to send her into the world of sleep, a voice called to her, "Get up! Move! Move!" Orihime's instincts told her not to look at the door or the street below, but to look at the figurine on the railing. His wings batted about until he took flight. His lithe body came to a hover just over Orihime's nose. "Something's coming! Get in the house!"

"How far away is it?" Orihime asked with a wavering tone in her voice. She knew better than to doubt a talking curio after what she'd been through.

"Close! Get inside and lock the doors!"

Orihime stumbled inside, locking the screen and door behind her. Inside, the other fairies were already in a fury. They called to her to lock the other doors and windows. They told her to arm herself and hide. She had never fully realized just how many entryways there were in her house until she had to lock all of them. There were two windows in her bedroom, one in her bathroom, two in her living room, plus the kitchen and the front door. Orihime armed herself with the only item in her house that could be conceived as a weapon, a butcher knife from her cutlery drawer. She crawled under her futon in the living room and waited.

"What do I do now?" Orihime whispered.

The fairies all hushed her in unison.

Ding dong. She had not expected her attacker to be so formal. Lily, her fairy with pink hair and goggles, flitted over to the door to look through the peephole and assess the severity of the situation. "It's the Quincy," she said.

Orihime wiggled out from under the futon. She was cautious as she approached the door. "Be careful!" Tsubaki hissed.

While she knew she couldn't fully trust anyone, Urahara's advice still reached her. He said she could trust the Quincy and that he had found her the day she had been attacked. She had to know if that all was true. Orihime unlocked the door and opened it just enough to peek at the gentleman.

To say that he wasn't what she expected would be an understatement. She expected him to be freakishly pale with veins like a road map. However, a part of her expected him to be sparkly. The scariest part was that he wasn't any of the above. He was pale, but no more than she was. His hair was jet black, but cut in a current trend, a precise a-line. He wore glasses and had blue eyes beneath them. His muscles and face were lean and chiseled; nothing spectacular that could crush buildings or break femurs. It frightened her to know how normal these immortals could look. The Quincy donned a pair of slim black slacks, casual dress shoes, and a white collared shirt. "May I come in?" he asked. He didn't have an archaic Transylvanian accent or a smooth aristocratic ton. While he sounded educated and mature, it was nothing to be celebrated.

Orihime stepped back, allowing him access to her house. He entered quietly and did not look around her house. To the Quincy, all human dwellings were the same: they had the utilitarian devices that all humans required and were then decorated to the owner's delight. He did, nevertheless; recognize the fairies. She wasn't the first to own the set. Many humans of worth to humankind had been protected by the fairies.

"I take it you've already spoke to Yoruichi and Urahara." Orihime nodded nervously. "They must not know anything more than I do or I would have heard rumors by now." He stopped before the futon, "May I sit down?" She nodded. "Did Urahara and his talking cat get this kind of response out of you?"

"In all fairness, I came to them of my own will. I thought you were an attacker."

The Quincy flicked at one of the fairies buzzing about his ear. "I assure you, I'm not going to hurt you." Seeming to respond to his announcement as though it were the only truth they knew, the fairies returned to their posts. "Those fairies aren't perfect. They respond to changes in Reiatsu, but they can't really trace who it comes from. They will work just fine for your safety, but I might be of more service to your protection." Orihime was still studying him from across the room. "My name is Uryu Ishida. I have come to offer myself as a guard in return for your cooperation while I investigate your…unique condition."

"Reiatsu? Is that how you traced me here?" Orihime asked, ignoring his offer.

"All things, human or immortal have a type of aura. That ominous feeling you get when you know someone is looking at you, that is the subconscious projection of Reiatsu. Those who can set themselves aside from the daily clamor of life can pinpoint the variances of Reiatsu in beings. When you're involved in a tense argument, that's Reiatsu, when you have a good feeling about how a day will turn out, that's Reiatsu. It's nothing more than a visceral hunch that immortals use to identify all things on this planet." Uryu could see he had confused the poor girl. "Look at me, do you sense my Reiatsu?

Admittedly, she did feel tense, as though he would strike out at her at any minute. But she also felt safe.

"That unique mixture of slight terror and a trustworthy calm is my unique imprint your subconscious has created for me, my Reiatsu. And yes, that is how I found you." Orihime tried to hone in on the feeling, but it escaped her. She became too comfortable with that feeling and couldn't separate it out anymore. "Don't worry, you don't need to be an expert. For now the fairies will do. Besides, I mostly followed the scent of your blood."

"Nine days ago I was completely normal," Orihime murmured.

"You still are. Your Reiatsu is strong like an immortal, but still distinctly human. The only reason anyone is taking notice of you now is because of your resilience to Espada venom. They've already entered the city and are looking for you. So long as you stay in the company of a higher Reiatsu, yours will be masked." Uryu closed his eyes as though he were sensing something painful in the air surrounding him. "There's something else in this city that's overpowering your Reiatsu. Luckily for us, it hasn't come out of the shadows as an opponent." Uryu closed his eyes again. "In fact, whoever it is, is heading for your house right now."

The fairies seemed to spark to life again just as Uryu had announced the incoming visitor. Orihime's blood began to race instantly. She looked to her protector with eager eyes. "What should I do?"

"Stay calm, if it is an immortal than it no doubt senses I am here, and it wouldn't dare attack me," Uryu stated with confidence. "Besides, I sensed this presence at the clinic the night I rescued you. If it wanted to hurt you, it would have attacked you then."

Soon, there was a knock at the door, followed by a calling from a familiar voice. "Orihime, it's Ichigo." Uryu could feel a great tremor in Orihime's Reiatsu. It fluttered in strange waves, as if she were relieved and scared all over again. She opened the door without a second thought while Uryu prepared himself for a fight. He immediately sized up the red-headed boy at the door. He was muscular for a human and tall, but it didn't do much to intimidate the Quincy. What frightened him more was the way Orihime became putty in this man's presence. "Sorry," Ichigo said, noticing the guest in the apartment, "I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Oh, no, of course not. Ichigo, this is…um…" Orihime stuttered.

Uryu stepped in to grab and shake Ichigo's hand. "I'm Uryu Ishida, pleased to meet you. I'm a part of a study abroad program with my university. Miss Orihime was kind enough to open her home to me during my stay."

Uryu took note of the instant tension surrounding Ichigo. It was plain to him that Ichigo did not care for him staying with Orihime. Uryu could feel Ichigo's eyes running him over again and again. "I see. I just stopped by to see if you were going to Tatsuki's victory party tonight?"

"Victory party?" Orihime asked.

"Yes, she had her regional tournament this morning and placed first. She's throwing a party tonight. I was thinking I could walk you over since…since…" his voice trailed off.

Without even giving second thought to Uryu's permission, Orihime responded with a bounding, "Oh, I'd love to!"

"Miss Orihime, I don't think-"

"Oh, Uryu," Orihime interrupted, "I know you're not used to parties in Transylvania, but here we tend to enjoy ourselves from time to time. It's also very rude to the host to turn down an invitation. Why don't you join us tonight?"

That's all there is
Nothing more than you can touch now
That's all there is
Let me show you the world in my eyes

-Depeche Mode

Thank you for taking a chance on this story. I'll be updating soon.