Oops! Sorry, guys! It seems I was using the wrong term for 'spiritual power' in this 'verse. The correct term is 'reiryoku', which I will use from now on. My apologies.

Infinite Corridor

Ch 1: Heat Haze

Orihime woke in her bed on June 10th, at about 8:30 in the morning, and immediately got to work. Even though there was at least a month before things really started to happen, there was still no time to waste.

First, she wrote down everything she had learned about the timeline. This currently only filled three pages (and a small part of a fourth) in one of her school notebooks, but she would learn more this loop and add it in the next. At this point, every event was a learning experience.

Next, she came up with a schedule for the next month, until Sora's death on July 6th. The first week was spent mostly following Ichigo around, trying to increase her child form's tolerance for reiki. Since reiki was an attribute of the spirit, not the body, she kept her reserves every time she reset time. But, unfortunately for Orihime, reiryoku also had a physical component called reiatsu. Also unfortunately, resistance to reiatsu was, to a degree, a physical attribute. If Orihime didn't want to end up hampered by her own increased reiatsu, she had to spend some time around people with a lot of it. Ichigo was the obvious choice.

The second week was time for her to study on her own (sort of) with the Shun Shun Rikka, getting back "old" skills before she had to demonstrate them. She would also use this time to attempt to develop new abilities, though she wasn't feeling very hopeful about the likelihood of success in that particular endeavor.

The third week and the remaining six days after that would be spent convincing Urahara to train her and getting any help she could from him. She wasn't sure if her would quite know what to do with her, since in the original time line and every other subsequent one he had seemed rather perplexed about her existence (more so when she had appeared before Ichigo became a Shinigami), but she had nothing to lose by asking him for training before she tried to follow Sora and save him or, failing that, figure out why she wasn't able to do so. Orihime had already learned that Sora wouldn't stay home with her for any reason that day, so she had decided to do things a little differently this time.

But everyone knows that saying about mice and men and plans...

* Orihime's POV *

9

"Hey, Urahara-san. Will you help me train?"

24

"Hey, Urahara-san. I need some help perfecting an ability I'm working on."

38

"Hey, Urahara-san. Will you help me figure out how this ability works? Nobody else can figure out how it does what it does."

42

"Inoue?" Urahara turns to me for a moment.

"Yes?" I answer him without pretense, using an adult's tone of voice and word choice. I think he'll be insulted if I acted like a kid while asking him for help. Better be truthful.

"Just how old are you, Inoue? You're not nine years old. You don't act it when you're not around people you know." He looks at me like I'm some great mystery, and it brings a rather mirthless smile to my face.

Then I sigh and answer him, "Older than you think. I'm not sure of the exact year- I haven't exactly kept count- but I'm somewhere around two hundred years old, mentally speaking. I'll just go ahead and assume you want the full story, then?"

"If it's not too much trouble." He's wearing that creepy grin again.

"I wasn't lying about who I am. My name really is Inoue Orihime, and everything I told you is true... for a certain value of 'true'. When I was fifteen, I met a new classmate who seemed unusually familiar to one of my friends. That girl's name was Kuchiki Rukia." I paused a moment so he could process this.

"The person she knew was my friend Kurosaki Ichigo. I'm sure you recognize the name. Rukia had been seriously injured in a confrontation with a hollow that had come to attack Ichigo..."

"So," Urahara said, "you reversed time with your Shun Shun Rikka to try to change the outcome of the Winter War?"

I nodded, "But it will be several weeks before Sora gives me my hairpins. I want to train myself to the point where I no longer need them, ideally, but right now I just need to be able to use them when I get them. You were always our ally before- or should that be after- or befafter? Aftfore? What do you call something that happened already but it hasn't happened yet?"

"Never mind that now," said Urahara, "If we have as little time as you say we should get started."

It was miserable work, but it paid off. By the time Sora gave me my hairpins, I had enough resistance to my own reiryoku to use them without passing out. It was now time for Desperate Measures.

When Sora tried to leave, I placed a shield over the door.

"Sora," I said, "please listen to me. If you leave, you are going to die. I'm not joking. Please don't do this."

For the first time, something went right. Sora listened to me.

"Hi," I introduced myself, "I'm Inoue Orihime."

Tatsuki grinned at me. "Arisawa Tatsuki. Nice to meet you." Tatsuki didn't always end up fighting, but it happened often enough- and her personality was belligerent enough- that befriending her wasn't dangerous enough for me to expend the effort of getting her to leave me alone. Besides, the company was nice. Not everyone was willing to put up with my many oddities, and of those I got along with Tatsuki the best.

The time I spent with her was the most peaceful I knew in most loops, and out of all the people I knew, she was one of the most reliable when she helped us. Not the most frequent, but the most reliable.

*Third Person POV*

Orihime was doing math homework when it hit her.

"So if the shortest length between two... points... That's it! Hey, Shun'o! Tsubaki! Everyone!"

"Yes, Orihime? What is it?" Shun'o asked, voicing the question for all of them.

"I figured it out! My high-speed technique, I mean. Just... Look, the shortest distance between points is a straight line, right? But my ability is to reject things, right? So I just reject 'the distance between the points', like folding a piece of paper so the points are right next to each other instead of walking along the edge!"

Everyone took a moment to process that.

"It... might work. Theoretically, if we get it right, you would just show up at the second point. More like teleportation than high-speed movement."

It took a lot of tries over several loops to perfect, but perfect it they did. Orihime could teleport to nearly any location she could see, within certain limits.

This came in handy when she couldn't let her opponent touch her. Like, say, right now.

"I really don't want to hurt you! Why won't you listen to me just for a moment?"

In lieu of a verbal response, Kira took another swing at her. Orihime groaned inwardly and flickered out of the way. There really is no point in talking to him, is there? He won't listen no matter what I do.

On the other hand, if I attack him, he'll definitely die. How can I disable him without seriously hurting or killing him?

The answer came when she next popped out of Kira's swing. The outer wall of Seireitei was in sight, and maybe...

"Santen Kesshun!" Orihime changed tactics, producing her shield. She then slammed it into Kira and warped the space around him, knocking him into the outer wall and holding him there. Eventually, the constant pressure forced the air from his lungs long enough for him to pass out, and Orihime could pass without having to worry. Someone would probably be along and find him soon.

For now, she had a friend to save and an enemy to (hopefully) thwart.