I don't own Bleach. If I did, I'd be paying Kubo to draw faster.

Title:The Camel's Nose

Rating:T, for teen.

Summary:It's said that if you let a camel shove its nose into your tent, the rest of it will soon follow. Tatsuki has never had a camel invade her personal space, but she's pretty sure she'd prefer the camel to this blue haired freak.

The bus was kind of old and it smelled like wasabi, but it was blissfully free of orange hair and so she liked it. She needed a few minutes to think, to try to sort out what was happening (for all the good that had done over the last few weeks), and the ride to the gym was a perfect setting.

Tatsuki did not know when her friends began thinking she was a moron, but it was beginning to burn away her last bit of patience.

It had been bad enough a few months back, when it had all started with Rukia transferring in. She and Ichigo had clicked almost instantly, in a way that Tatsuki found hard to believe. Kurosaki Ichigo did not just start hanging around people like that. It had taken her a couple of months of beating his face in at karate practice before he had started asking his mother if Tatsuki could come over. Sado, Asano and Kojima had needed weeks of proximity and school projects that forced interaction before Ichigo really started to actively hang around them. He hadn't treated Orihime as anything more than a casual acquaintance until recently and Tatsuki would bet good money on him not even knowing who Ishida Uryuu was until about the same time.

Then Rukia had come to Karakura and, for whatever reason, Ichigo had thrown fifteen years of ingrained behavior out the window and gained a second shadow that liked rabbits. He began disappearing at odd hours, his homework suffered a decline in quality and he gave lies as to why this was. Had Tatsuki not spent copious amounts of time at school with Rukia herself, she might have been convinced that they were dating, but she had and the theory did not hold water. Ichigo had never shown any interest in dating and Rukia had seemed honestly, truly horrified when Orihime had brought up the subject of her and Ichigo as a couple. He could have been tutoring her. God knew her grades were bad enough, but why would he have lied about it?

Tatsuki had inside information on this from Yuzu and Karin, who still sometimes asked her to hang out with them. Ichigo, as the older brother, was still morally obligated to at least try to ensure his sisters ate well and were responsible with their time. As the pseudo big sister, Tatsuki was under no such obligation. On days when Yuzu and Karin could finagle some time away from family and education, Tatsuki took them to arcades, theatres (both movies and plays), the water park and any ice cream, candy or other sugar-riddled, unhealthy snack shop they wished. Even better, she never needed to pay one single penny because Yuzu, who was much more devious than anyone would believe, somehow always managed to convince her father that she needed more money for new clothes that she had outgrown and donated to charity.

'Come to think of it, she has been pulling that one a lot more often lately. I wonder why?'

Well, no matter. Yuzu's status as daddy's perfect princess and Karin's three fillings aside, the answer to her question still wasn't any closer.

Rukia had arrived and things had gotten weird. Then, they had gotten weirder. She had had that black out at Orihime's house, Chad was missing for a day, Ichigo went totally fucking insane for about an hour and then popped back to normal like it had never happened, the whole Don Kanonji thing….

Every time things had become strange, at every incident where bizarre occurrences had happened, Ichigo and Rukia had been there. Then Rukia had….

Tatsuki frowned. Rukia had what? Gotten sick? Went on vacation? There was a period of… seven days? Ten days? There had been a long stretch of time where Rukia had not been around and, for some reason, she did not know where the other girl had gone to.

That was odd, even if Rukia was the new girl. Michiru, Ryo, Chizuru and Mahana had all shared their plans with her and she knew what the other girls in her class were doing just through the grapevine. Everyone had a plan for summer, always. It was practically a law. Why couldn't she remember Rukia's?

Then the weirdness had spread, touching Orihime, Sado and Ishida. They had disappeared soon after the summer festival. Tatsuki could have given the exact time and date, right down to the nanosecond, because she had woken up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night with the feeling of the entire universe sliding out of place. One phone call later and she had confirmed that Orihime was not at her aunt's house. Another one and she knew that Ichigo was not at his house.

The sole reason she had not immediately called the police was that Kurosaki Isshin, a man she had come to see as the embarrassing uncle she never knew she wanted, had told her that A) Orihime was with Ichigo, and B) they would be back sooner or later. It was an explanation that left many things wanting, details not among the least of them, but Tatsuki had complied. 'Weird' had been the name of the game for the last few weeks and it appeared that things were not going to change.

So, she had hung around town and waited, slowly going insane from a combination of worry and that new, unpleasant 'ice down your spine' feeling that seemed to pop up whenever those loud roars did.

Time had passed and they did come back, along with Ishida and Sado, who she had not known were missing. Tatsuki watched, waited and quietly added them to her list. School started up again as usual and things seemed normal, with two huge, glaring deviations:

Deviation one – Ishida, Orihime, Sado and Ichigo were now extremely close friends. It was subtle and she probably wouldn't have noticed if she wasn't looking for it, but it was there. They rarely talked to each other, but if Orihime went to the cafeteria during lunch for a drink she had forgotten to pack herself, Tatsuki would see Sado pop up from nowhere to give her some change. If Ichigo needed a pencil sharpener, Uryuu flicked him one from across the room. If Uryuu needed sewing supplies, he went to Orihime because she had begun carrying a sewing kit with her for just that occasion. If Sado forgot to tape an episode of that Wild Kingdom whatever show he watched, Ichigo would mention that he had asked Yuzu to do it and Sado could pick it up whenever.

Acquaintances did not do that. Friends did.

It wasn't so odd for Sado and Ichigo, maybe, but Orihime had only been a classmate to them not long ago and Uryuu had been the ice prince of Karakura for years. Now suddenly he had not one, not two, but three people who he not only tolerated, but liked? Orihime had gotten over her peculiarly shyness with a startling speed and behaved as though she had been through a war tour with Ichigo; aware of whenever he entered a room and sometimes knowing where he would go before he did it.

It was freaky.

Which led to deviation two – she could nearly do the same.

It wasn't just for Ichigo. Uryuu, Sado, Orihime, Kojima, Asano, Ryo, Mahana, Michiru, Chizuru, Ochi-sensei; practically everyone in their class stood out to that new found sixth sense she had discovered. Ichigo, however, remained the worst of the lot. If he was in the room, it took focus to feel anyone else. She could point a straight line to him from the other end of town. Ichigo blazed, like no one else she had ever encountered in the few weeks since it began. Whatever was happening to them had hit him worst of all.

And there was one other detail.

One tiny, almost insignificant thing that stood out.

The huge, gaudy golden badge that no one else seemed to even notice.

And Ichigo knew that was weird.

"Wait… Tatsuki, you can see this thing?"

His exact words.

He knew. Whatever this was, whatever was happening, he knew something about it.

And she had kept quiet, for some stupid reason thinking that because he was her friend he would tell her about it soon enough. Except he hadn't and things had gotten worse. She'd woken up in the middle of a field with her entire karate class in a coma and two… creatures staring at her in mild amazement that she was still moving. Orihime and Chad had shown up and she had fainted in a fight, which was sickening in and of itself. Then had come the night when the whole city shook like an earthquake was happening, except she could feel enough power to bring the sky down being thrown around her town. When she had gone outside, not entirely sure of why or what she could do, she had seen Kurosaki Ichigo, once again, in the thick of it all, glaring red murder at a man in white who stood on nothing one hundred feet above the street.

She had slipped away then, while Ichigo was busy talking with Renji. Tatsuki had gone home, made a cup of tea and spent the next few hours before school trying and failing to make sense of what her life had become.

Days passed in a senseless blur, until one day she felt a prickle on the back of her neck at karate practice. She had told her sensei that she would catch up and then she had waited.

The bastard didn't even try to hide.

He dropped out of the sky like a bird, landed lightly on the ground and started strolling toward her like he owned the school and all of Karakura too. It had taken all of two seconds to remember him as the guy Ichigo had thrown down with; the guy who had knocked Ichigo for miles and torn up the street like so much Styrofoam. He was probably an enemy and definitely dangerous.

So she had punched him.

Hard.

Ignoring the hole in his chest, the bone contraption on his face and the sword at his hip, Tatsuki surrendered to ten years of hard won martial skills and decked the prick with a textbook perfect right hook. Against her personal belief, he had actually gone down.

Then Ichigo showed up, once again following the weird (or maybe the weird followed him), and starting round two of his scrap with the blue-haired man. Tatsuki had only been able to follow them for a few seconds before the fight went out of range and she was left staring blankly into the sky.

She had had a bit of a meltdown after that.

The next three hours were spent breaking in the karate club's new recruits the hard way, with almost a dozen students leaving practice with bruises, scrapes, limps and a deep seated fear and respect of their senpai.

'Screw respecting his secrets,' she had thought after that. Whatever it was had likely just tried to kill her and she needed answers.

There had been yelling after that; yelling and swearing and hitting, but it hadn't done any good. He had told her to mind her own business. That she was seeing things. That the problem had nothing to do with her. Etcetera, etcetera.

Except that it clearly did.

Because something had just smashed her school apart like a watermelon and tried to do the same to her.

And for the past four days, she had felt that thing, that not-man, hovering around her like a mosquito. He brushed against the edges of her sixth sense like nails on chalkboard. She was starting to think it was deliberate, like he was just screwing around with her. And, just once, she had woken up at night knowing that someone was staring down at her through her bedroom window, but when she looked outside there had been no one.

It did not help matters that Ichigo was suddenly hanging around her again. No, it made them worse, because he was actively following her around like a guard dog, digging the most bullshit excuses out of nowhere to make sure that he reason to walk in the same direction that she did. He wasn't alone, either. Orihime had taken closeness to a new level and Tatsuki didn't like it, because she was all but positive Orihime was just trying to watch her back as well. Tatsuki had made the mistake of mentioning her late night fright over lunch and by school's end Orihime had 'suddenly remembered' that she forgot to pay her apartment's rent again this month and pretty please, Tatsuki-chan, can I stay over for a week or so?

It was utter garbage, but it was also Orihime and Tatsuki couldn't punch her. Every time Tatsuki brought up 'what the fuck is going on with you all lately' Orihime had either waved it off, saying that it wasn't the big conspiracy Tatsuki thought it was, or she just flat out ignored the question.

Ichigo wasn't any better. Tatsuki had punched him yesterday, but only managed to get in the one hit before he began dodging with an infuriating ease. She hadn't seen him since then, although she knew he was still following her around.

It. Was. Driving. Her. Mad.

Her sanity slipping, her patience slipped, her questions unanswered and her temper roaring like a bull in the arena, Tatsuki left Karakura High School at the end of the school day with every intention of riding the bus down to her favorite gym and demolishing any sandbags they had hooked up. She could not (deeply, truly could not) recall the last time she had felt this badly.

So naturally, seeing the man-thing with a hole in its chest and blue hair drop down from the sky to exclaim found you! after she stepped off the bus did nothing to improve her mood.

Punching it in the face for the second time, however, rather did.

Surprise!

I'm not dead.