Part 1 – Memories

Memories - Chapter 1

The newcomers

(Two years before prologue, in the world of the living, Karakura Town)

The bell rang at Karakura High to signal the start of first period, and all the students that had been milling about in the hallways slowly started walking towards their classrooms. In the classroom of one of the tenth grades, the students clattered around loudly, because their teacher was late. Among those students was the boy named Ichigo Kurosaki, sitting with his friends and talking.

At one of the tables behind his group sat a girl with shoulder length brown hair and dark blue eyes, her fringe falling across one of them and framing her face in a cheeky kind of fashion. Her full lips were slightly parted as she gazed absentmindedly out of the window.

Not long ago, before the summer vacation, there had been another girl in their class. Her name had been Rukia Kuchiki.

The girl was sure of it. She hadn't forgotten about her, even if everyone else had. Or seemed to. She knew for one thing that Ichigo and his friends hadn't. But one day she had suddenly vanished. The girl could sense spiritual pressure, and she knew about Ichigo and his friend's powers, and she knew that shortly after Rukia's disappearance, all their presences had vanished as well, for a brief period of time during the holidays. Now they were back, and pretending Rukia had never existed.

The girl's suspicion was that she had stayed where she originally came from: the Soul Society. She had known from the first day that Rukia was merely in a Gigai and that she was actually a Soul Reaper. And she had always sensed Ichigo's spiritual pressure.

Once she had overheard Uryu Ishida lecturing Ichigo on hiding his spiritual pressure, stating that anyone could sense it, and reproachfully pointing out that Ichigo hadn't sensed Uryu's own pressure. She had nearly laughed out loud at hearing that. None of them had ever noticed that she had any power at all. Well, she was an expert at hiding it, after all.

Someone knocked against the back of her chair, jolting her out of her thoughts. She turned and found herself looking at Tatsuki, one of her classmates, who had accidentally bumped into her.

"Oh! Sorry, Yoko-san!" she said, then turned away.

"Doesn't matter" she mumbled back, even though Tatsuki was no longer listening. While she was saying that she sensed five people who were suppressing their spiritual pressure coming up the hallway outside. Then she sensed another, out on the school grounds.

The door opened seconds later and the weirdest group of people entered.

The one standing in front was short – so short he could easily pass for an elementary student – and had spiky, silvery white hair and turquoise eyes. He had a serious look on his face and an air of authority about him, even though he lacked so much in size.

She sensed that he was the most disciplined of the five of them and he hid his spiritual pressure best.

Behind him stood a tall orange haired young woman with a very wide neckline and a pretty face. Next to her stood a tall boy with red hair tied back in a ponytail and a bandana across his forehead. His chest, as well as his partially visible forehead, were covered in black tattoos.

Behind these two stood another two people, one of them bald and carrying a wooden sword, the other with neat, black hair and some kind of feathers on his right eyebrow and eyelashes. All five of them were wearing Karakura High's school uniform, but the girl knew immediately that they weren't students. They were Soul Reapers.

Ichigo turned as the door opened.

"Jo! What's going on, Ichigo?" the one with the ponytail asked, waving.

Ichigo froze, shocked.

"Renji? …Toshiro? …wait a minute. What are you guys doing here?" he managed to ask.

The white haired boy frowned at him.

"That's Captain Hitsugaya to you!" he shot back angrily.

"Uh… yeah, fine, but… I don't understand why you're here!" Ichigo said.

"Orders from above" the red haired boy answered. "Looks like there's a major storm brewing with the Arrancars. We were sent here to join forces with the substitute soul reaper and prepare for the battle."

The girl glanced at the badge Ichigo was wearing on his belt, invisible to normal humans. 'Substitute Soul Reaper'. His powers had been acknowledged by the Soul Society while he had been away, now Ichigo was officially a Soul Reaper – even if it was only a substitute.

She frowned while Ichigo asked: "Arrancar? What the hell's that?"

The red haired boy raised his eyebrows.

"What? You're not serious, are you? You mean you've been fighting these guys without any idea who you were dealing with?"

Behind him, the black haired man sighed and dramatically covered his face with one hand.

"What are you talking about?" Ichigo asked.

The girl's head snapped to the window even before everyone in the room heard the voice of the person standing on its ledge.

"You dummy! He's talking about those guys who beat you up the other day."

It was her – Rukia Kuchiki.

Ichigo seemed both surprised and extremely relieved to see her. "Rukia…" he said.

"It's been a while, Ichigo, hasn't it?"

Suddenly the others in the classroom snapped out of their astonishment. They seemed to have recognized Rukia despite having forgotten all about her before.

"Whoa. Is that… Rukia?" "Yeah, I think she just came in through the window!" "She hasn't been at school for a while…" "Idiot! Wherever she was, I'm sure there were doors!" "Anyway, it's those other kids I'm worried about…"

While his classmates were talking, Ichigo was still staring at Rukia.

Abruptly she jumped down from the windowsill and kicked him in his face. He staggered backwards.

"What the hell was that for?" he demanded.

Meanwhile, the red haired boy had grabbed him from behind. Rukia slapped him on both cheeks.

"Hey!" Ichigo yelled, straining against the boy's hold.

"It was for your pathetic face!" Rukia shot at him.

She was now wearing the red glove invisible to normal humans that enabled her to push Ichigo's soul from his body – which was just what she did. She grabbed him by the hair and jumped out of the window, leaving Ichigo's empty body hanging limply in the red haired boy's arms.

The orange haired girl stared after them.

"I should have figured this wouldn't be easy" she said.

"That's Ichigo" the red haired boy replied, his eyes also following the two of them. "He manages to make everything difficult."

"Well" said the bald man, "You can't blame Rukia for giving him hell… with that stupid look on his face."

"You thought he looked stupid?" the orange haired girl asked. "I don't know, I thought he looked kind of helpless and cute."

"Have you ever seen a guy you didn't think was cute, Rangiku?" asked the black haired man.

"Who asked you, Yumichika?" she retorted. "Why don't you mind your own business?"

"What about Ikkaku? He said something, too!" the one called Yumichika shot back.

"Leave me out of this!" the bald one interrupted.

"This is ridiculous! All of you, SHUT UP!" the white haired boy ordered. He had remained silent all this time, but it had been evident that the four others were getting on this nerves.

The other students had started murmuring again.

"What did those guys do to Ichigo?" one of them wondered.

"They knocked him unconscious!" "Or maybe they killed him!"

The girl realized how weird it must look to those who hadn't seen Rukia drag Ichigo's soul from his body.

"Whatever. All I know is that they don't look like anyone I wanna mess with… Look at them! Do you see the tattoos all over the guy with the red hair?"

The red haired boy growled. Ikkaku said: "Don't let it get to you, Renji. It's just humans and their silly chatter."

The class continued to mutter.

"She doesn't look so weird… and he looks like an elementary student with silver hair!" "That eyebrow-guy can't be too tough." "And then there's baldy…"

Ikkaku narrowed his eyes.

"Whoever just called me baldy" he said, through clenched teeth, turning to face the class and pulling out his wooden sword, "step forward!"

The red haired boy, Renji, dropped Ichigo's body on the ground, stepped towards Ikkaku and repeated his words back at him.

"Don't let it get to you, Ikkaku. It's just the human's silly chatter."

The class collectively backed away from Ikkaku's drawn sword, while the white haired boy closed his eyes as if praying for patience.

"I can't believe I got stuck with these idiots" he muttered while Ikkaku chased Renji out of the classroom, swinging his weapon.

That was when the boy's turquoise eyes found her, still sitting calmly in her seat by the window. She held his gaze leveled while his eyes narrowed. Then he turned away and left the classroom, followed by Rangiku and Yumichika, now carrying Ichigo's body.

While she was staring after them, a girl with pink hair propped herself on the girl's desk, blocking her view of the door.

"Whoa! What a weird bunch of people, huh, Fumiko?"
The girl didn't answer at first; she was caught up in thought.

"Hey! Yoko-san! Fumiko? Are you listening to me?"

Fumiko looked up at her.

"You're right, Chizuru. They were weird. Oh, look" she said, pointing, "the teacher's finally here."

Classes passed quickly that day, it was as if Fumiko was going through her day in fast forward.

Still, that white haired boy's eyes didn't seem to fade from her mind. She had the uneasy feeling he might have noticed something about her. Maybe he knew more than he was letting on. But that was practically impossible, she was an expert at hiding her pressure.

She decided to tell her master about this after school, and as the bell rang at the end of sixth period she got up immediately and headed for the door. She wasn't going to waste any time on this matter.

Fumiko knew she had to hurry if she didn't want to run into certain people while she was visiting her master. It had never been a problem before… but then came Ichigo Kurosaki, discovering his powers and so on. And her master had taken responsibility for him as well.

Ichigo knew nothing of Fumiko's powers or of her connection to her master. Whenever he showed up while Fumiko was there, her master told her either to leave or to wait in another room. She was her master's secret, the ace in his pocket. Sometimes she wondered when her own time would finally come, when she could step out of the shadows, tell the world what she knew and when her knowledge would be needed. All she learned she told her master, she was probably part of a much bigger picture she herself knew nothing about. But it didn't matter. She trusted her master like no one else, even if he didn't tell her everything. Because he had saved her life by teaching her. She owed him her trust, at least, if not more.

That thought in mind she crossed the school grounds at a quick pace, ahead of most of the other students.

She wondered what he would have to say about this Arrancar story. He had told her all about them, but she still wondered. She had witnessed Ichigo's fight with the Arrancar, in fact it had been her who notified her master about it in the first place. But she was sure there was more to these beings than she had seen.

Her thirst for knowledge made her walk even faster. Towards her master's house. She guessed he had sensed the spiritual pressures of the arriving Soul Reapers, for he was already standing outside his door, waiting for her.

Her master, Kisuke Urahara.