Since she was very young there was always something lurking beneath the surface. Something…some would say unnatural. Something very, very dark.

It first manifested when she was six, shortly before her parents were murdered. It was around that time that she also had her first experience taking life. She ended up liking it more than she thought she would, and it changed her life forever.

For years after she and her older brother were orphaned she continued, chipping away at the human population with a happy smile on her face and the gleam of innocence in her eye, never realizing she wasn't being good.

Honestly, she didn't even care if what she was doing was wrong, it just felt good…

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

For an hour Orihime just knelt next to the corpse, sobbing. She couldn't believe what she had done; a man lay dead at her feet by her own hand. Granted, he wasn't more than a sick bastard who preyed on young girls in the middle of the night, but he was still human.

Three years ago had been the last time, after she met Tatsuki. She had been a wallflower in school then; never really making any friends, sitting near the back of the class, ect. Then one day a girl with dark, spiky hair came up to her and said "Let's be friends". Since then she had let her beautiful russet hair grow out again, and all killing had screeched to a halt.

That is, until tonight.

She played with the ends of her hair nervously, her mind unable to determine what to do next.

"Why did this happen?" she muttered, over and over again. "Why did this happen? Why did this happen? Why did this happen?..."

This can't be happening… her thoughts raged, It shouldn't happen; I stopped doing it years ago. Oh why did he have to find us? Why can't things just be normal?

Because for you this is normal.

The thought startled her. Her mind froze, unwilling to accept the notion that she didn't find killing someone repulsive and disgusting. At one time she wouldn't have even batted an eyelash at the notion, and would have readily accepted it to, but after she met Tatsuki and the rest of her friends that aspect of her she had all but banished.

Tatsuki….

Tatsuki! In her utter shock at seeing her handiwork Orihime had forgotten about her best friend lying on the ground. She rushed over to Tatsuki's side and set about examining her. The experience just before had sobered her up a bit, and she could now see her chest slowly rising and falling steadily. She heaved a sigh of relief and set about carrying her still inebriated friend inside. Once Tatsuki was safely deposited on the couch Orihime decided that the best thing to do was call the police and tell them what happened.

The police arrived twenty minutes later along with and ambulance to take the dead body away. The officer that arrived first asked her what happened, and she told him that the man had tried to rape her. As they struggled she had managed to grab the knife he had away and somehow stab him in the eye. While he was dazed she just kept attacking and apparently must have got his throat. When she finally calmed down enough to think clearly, she brought Tatsuki in the house and called the police. It was the truth apart from one detail.

She didn't tell him that she became the attacker.

"You were very brave to stand up to him like you did," the officer, Ukitake Jushiro, said. "This guy had a rap sheet as long as my arm of sexual assault and rape; I'm not sorry at all he'd dead now." Jushiro gave her the number of a therapist in case she wanted to talk with someone about it, then he signaled his partner and they both left. The sound of the door closing as they left caused Tatsuki to stir.

"Mm, keep it down!" she whined, attempting to prop herself up. "My head is killing me!"

Heh heh, "killing", Orihime thought sardonically.

"Hey, why am I at your house, Hime-chan? What happened last night; I didn't pass out, did I?"

"Hai," she nodded, "you did." Tatsuki groaned, which made what Orihime had to tell her all the more hard. "And…something else happened while you were asleep…" At that moment the siren on the ambulance blared as it and the police car pulled away.

"Fuck!" Tatsuki swore, grabbing her ears in a vain attempt to lessen the hangover induced headache. "Could those sirens be any louder?"

"Tatsuki," Orihime said, steeling herself, "the police came by just now." Tatsuki stiffened.

"They didn't catch us drinking, did they?"

"Mm-mm," she shook her head, "it wasn't that."

"Then what was it? And could I get a damn ice pack or something? My head is fucking killing me…"

Orihime really wished Tatsuki would stop using the "K" word so much…

"I have one in the kitchen; come on, I'll tell you what happened in there."

When Orihime finally finished explaining to Tatsuki what had happened the butch girl was at a loss for words.

"Wow…" she sighed eventually, "Heavy…" She rubbed the bridge between her eyes. "And you say you've been like this since you were a kid?"

Orihime had broken down and told Tatsuki everything.

"It happened around the time my parents died," the damaged princess said. Opening up to her friend had been strangely therapeutic. "It went on for years until I met you in Junior High, you were the first person to come up and talk to the 'creepy girl' in the back of the class. This is the first time since then that I've killed anyone."

"But it's only ever been bad people, right?"

"Hai."

"So then that makes you like a vigilante."

"I guess so." She never thought about it like that before.

"Sugoi! You're like Batman or something!"

"You not angry or mad at me?" This wasn't really the reaction she was expecting. "You don't hate me for lying to you all these years?"

"Are you kidding?" Tatsuki scoffed. "I'd lie about a secret as big as that too us I were you!" After a moment of awkward silence Tatsuki asked, "Could you tell me about one of them?"

"Nani?"

"One of the bad people you killed. I wanna hear about it."

"Really?" Orihime never would have imagined someone who wasn't a psychoanalyst would actually want to hear about her past. "Well, there was this one man…"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Kurosutchi Mayuri clipped the final twig from the dominant branch of his bonsai tree. He had spent much of the afternoon devoted to this task, neglecting his other duties. Now that his tree could not be clipped anymore for fear of damaging it he could turn his attention back to his other enterprises.

Namely his drug operation.

"Nemu!" he called to his assistant. "Bring me the report on the new batch immediately, and a cup of tea or something to." When his assistant didn't show he called out again. "Nemu? I said bring me the report and some eat, what the hell is taking you so long?" Loosing his patience he got up from his tatami mat and flung to door of his room open. "You useless dullard! I knew you were inept before, but this time you-"

Standing in front of him was a young girl of about nine. She had short, russet colored hair, and was holding the severed head of his assistant in her hand. In her other hand she held a carving knife, still dripping with blood.

She was staring at him with an unnerving child-like innocence.

"~Poor Nemu-chan,~" she said as if nothing in the world were wrong, "~you weren't very nice to her, were you?~"

"How the fuck did you get in here?" Mayuri demanded. "Why didn't my guards stop you?"

"~You mean the to men sleeping by the door? Oh they didn't mind; Orihime just walked right in!~"

"What do you mean, 'walked right in'? They wouldn't…"

Then the rest of what she said sunk in; "sleeping men" obviously didn't mean his guards decided to take a quick cat nap. He decided to try a different approach.

"Why did you come here in the first place?"

"~Silly!~" she scolded playfully. "~I came to kill you!~"

This he did not see coming.

He began to slowly inch his way to an antique sword that hung on the wall, "Why do want to kill me?"

"~Because you made the bad medicine that killed Sora-nii's girlfriend.~" She's doing this for her brother's girlfriend? "~Kairi-neechan was a nice girl, but she didn't have a good life. She told me that Sora-nii was the only thing that made her happy.~

"~One day I found these bad pills in Kairi-neechan's purse and asked her about them. She grabbed them from me and told me they we her prescription. Later, I saw her taking them, and then she got really quiet and happy looking. And her eyes looked really weird; like she was looking at stuff that wasn't really there. Two weeks later she was found dead in a pool of throw-up.~

"~You know, it's really neat what you can find on the internet.~"

All this time the same innocent, happy expression never left her face.

"~That's how I found you. It was really easy to, and please don't take that sword.~"

He froze, shocked that this little girl had noticed something so subtle. Since she knew anyways he grabbed the sword and lunged at her.

However, she saw this and moved to dodge, bringing the severed head up in the path of the blade. It caught in the flesh and she used it to disarm the older man, at the same time bringing the carving knife up and stabbing him in the groin. He fell to the floor almost instantly.

"Shiiit!" he squeaked out, clutching his now ruined genitals.

"~You should die for hurting Sora-nii like that,~" she said as she held his hair and began to pry out his eyes. "~I wonder if you can still see pretty things if you eyes don't work?~"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"Shit Orihime, I can't believe you took out a drug kingpin!" Tatsuki praised, making Orihime blush profusely. "You've got more balls than most guys I know."

Orihime was just sat there, playing with the ends of her hair. In all her life she would never have imagined that anyone would actually approve of who she was and what she did. To her knowledge society usually frowns on killing, close relations even more so. That's how Sora reacted when he found out.

"Have you ever killed someone who didn't deserve it?"

Tatsuki's question snapped Orihime out of her musings.

"Huh, what was that?"

"I asked if you ever killed anyone without a good reason."

Orihime shook her head. "No, I never have."

"Well, that good then." Tatsuki leaned back on the couch, "I still can't believe I'm friends with a fucking vigilante! And you of all people! Who would ever think that sweet, innocent Inoue Orihime would have the balls!"

"That's kind of the idea," she chuckled nervously. "Plus, it kind of keeps people who don't know me from before from connecting me to that person."

"Clever."

For a while they just talked about Orihime and her past, rehashing her life before she met Tatsuki in Junior High. They talked about Inoue Sora, and Orihime started to get misty eyed remembering her dearly departed brother.

Eventually, Tatsuki asked something that took Orihime utterly and completely by surprise.

"Do you do requests?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Chizuru sat on her bed with a picture of Orihime in the school swimsuit in front of her; she had her right hand down her skirt, fondling herself.

"Oh Orihime!" she moaned, "Soon…!"

to be continued…