AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you very much for the small feedback! I hope you guys will enjoy this story's overall twist! It is not as simple as you think and I am hoping that it might totally take you by surprise, but in the meantime you will have to be a little bit patient if you want to see what it is! ;) Enjoy.

As the four came hustling up to Ichigo's house and ducking in underneath the garage door, each of them began to split up around the room and start setting up their instruments; Kazuki slinging his guitar strap over his shoulder and twisting away at the tuning keys to make sure that they were all in check, Yoko adjusting the knobs on her amplifier to find a satisfactory sound that would blend in well with the others, and both Takuma and Ichigo discussing what sort of pace their music was going to be taking that night.

Ichigo's younger sisters, Yuzu and Karin, came scrambling into the room as soon as they had heard everyone.

"Are you gonna play some more of that one song?!" called Yuzu.

"Yeah that one you started to play before you all had to split last week. It sounded totally wicked," remarked Karin as she took a seat next to Yuzu in the back.

"Ichigo said he's been working on some lyrics for that one," replied Kazuki, turning his head to the two girls with a small smile. "It should be about ready, right man?"

"Yeah I've got the whole thing figured out," Ichigo replied.

"That was fast," said Yoko as she looked up at him from her bass. "When we all started doing this, you told us that you only just recently started taking up the guitar again. No experience with writing lyrics, tablature, or anything more than just the basics of how to play. But the way you function in the band, it's like you're some kinda pro who's been balancing all of that together for years."

"That's because he totally lied about it in order to impress us," sneered Takuma.

"Or because he was born with the musical talent of a genius," assured Kazuki with more than a hint of charm and admiration beaming in his voice.

"Get a room!" Takuma called back as Yoko chuckled along with Ichigo's sisters.

"Okay guys, let's start by taking that song from the top. Just play everything the way you were before and follow my lead," Ichigo announced as he made one more final adjustment to his microphone stand.

Everyone automatically quieted down and took their positions, Takuma being the one to strike his drum sticks together on the usual four-count-signal to begin playing.

And then right at that moment Ichigo's electric guitar chords echoed through the garage, a powerful and intimidating sound full of edge, which gripped the attention of everyone in the room. Ichigo's pick glided over the strings swiftly and naturally, the fingers on his left hand catching frets without a hint of uncertainty or fear of making any mistakes.

After a few more seconds of his intro into the song, the rest of the band began to join in and obediently follow lead, keeping that same heavy and fast-paced edge inside of their playing that Ichigo had introduced from the start.

Yuzu's eyes lit up with a beam of excitement just as they always had when she had watched her brother playing music with the band. It was a surreal sight that shot such thrill and admiration inside of her. There was something about the sound all four of the musicians in that garage were capable of making. Something very unique about it that screamed so much passion and honesty, and what excited Yuzu most of all, was the fact that she could so easily imagine this music coming out of a radio, or the TV speakers in the living room when there had been a music channel on.

Try as she might to playfully deny it at times, Karin could not help but feel just as amazed and taken aback whenever Ichigo and his band performed. No matter how lame she knew it was, she couldn't stop the small smile from curving upon her face as she watched her brother now and thought to herself, 'Man, he's awesome…'

And then just as Ichigo's head closed in on the microphone, there came another element of the same passion-filled energy: his singing.

It had taken him a while to become this comfortable with it, but his voice was unlike any other. It was slightly high-pitched, soft, but also strong and packed with an incredible amount of emotion. Just as his guitar playing had been. It was a voice that could carry through the air and stand out to make you listen, almost a strangely enchanting thing.

He was singing about the past again tonight. About the haunting day he had to give up his world of being a shinigami and about leaving behind majority of the people he had met along the way, most of all, Rukia. She was someone who had appeared more frequently than anyone else in his songs, because she was one of the most incredible friends he ever had the opportunity of knowing. After all of the adventures and near-death experiences they had gone through together in the life he had finally come to let go, it made it very hard not to let out these feelings and memories whenever he wrote.

But he found that it was one of the best ways to deal with them and learn how to begin moving on.

As Ichigo's two sisters sat with their eyes fixed on the band, heads bobbing and feet bouncing in time with the music, it hadn't been longer than a few minutes before a couple of more older and familiar faces peered in underneath the garage door .

Orihime Inoue and Keigo Asano.

They had both come bundled up for the winter weather and they looked extremely eager to say something, and right as Ichigo and the band had started to stop playing in order to figure out what was going on, Orihime's voice had burst out loud and clear.

"You've been invited to open for one of the unsigned bands in Shibuya!"