I'm so sorry this took so long to post! I was on vacation for two weeks and then my computer decided to fail for a while… well, anyway, I will update at more regular intervals from now on, I promise. Also, I'm sorry about this chapter's general boringness—there is a lot that needs to be explained about my OC because, obviously, she's kind of the center of this story. There'll be a lot more interaction with the actual characters in the next one, not so much boring talking about someone who's not even in the real Bleach.

Though Yamamoto had half of Soi Fon's division searching for the newcomer, six hours of searching had yielded nothing, and dusk was falling. Pretty much ignored by the Head Captain, Kyouraku went searching for her himself.

He found her sitting on a secluded hill in the northwest corner of the Seireitei, where the shinigami rarely ventured. A cool breeze was blowing, making her long hair flutter out at her side. She was staring at the ground, huddled into herself with her arms around her knees—quite the opposite of the confident, rather proud image she had displayed to the captains earlier. As he approached, he took off his flowery pink overcoat and laid it over her shoulders. She looked up at him in surprise. He noticed that she looked much more vulnerable, and a bit younger, than she had before.

"Never really got a chance to explore, huh?" he gave her a gentle smile, which she attempted to return, but only looked miserable. She looked back at the ground in front of her.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, and took a deep breath.

"For what?" Kyouraku sat down next to her. As she was not looking at him, he felt it would be odd to stare at her, and so followed her lead in watching the ground in front of him.

This time she actually managed a small, somewhat sarcastic smile. "For coming here unannounced, when you have all just recently suffered a serious devastation? For appearing in the midst of your world, for upsetting the balance you must strive to keep? No. That was an accident… sort of. What I'm sorry for is being rude to that man, your leader… I was… trying. Very hard. I could barely keep my composure as it was, and then he came in—there was no way I could stand an interrogation by him. I needed to get out of there."

This caused Kyouraku to pause a moment, in order to organize the many questions that had just come up in his mind. Deciding to take the more friendly ones first, he asked, "Why did you need to get out?"

"Too much strangeness in there." She paused for half a second and then added, "and no, I really can't give much of a better explanation than that… not until some other things have been explained first, and as I know you have multiple questions that will lead to that, you had might as well ask them first."

Once again, Kyouraku took a moment to organize his thoughts, as well as place the new ones this last little speech had caused. "Before we get to any of that, are you sure you're all right?" He had changed his question when she bowed her head even more—she now resembled a child who had seen something terrible, attempting to hide from the sight of it.

She took a shaky breath and turned a stricken face to him. "I'm sorry," she said again, closing her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she seemed to have swallowed some of her suffering, but Kyouraku could still see the turmoil behind her eyes. "It's just so hard to pretend… to pretend that I'm always so strong. I can never be the one to just break down in front of everyone. I can't be the one who seems confused and lost. I have to be in charge. I have to have the solutions to the problems. And normally I can do that. But here… I just don't know. I have no idea what I'm doing." She let out a sort of strangled noise at the last sentence and turned away from Kyouraku.

Kyouraku didn't quite know what to say to comfort the girl. He hadn't understood half of what she'd said to him so far, but for some reason, he saw in her the same thing he'd seen in Hitsugaya Toushirou when he'd become a captain so suddenly—the pressures of being a leader, suddenly thrust upon someone who is in an unfamiliar situation, often become overwhelming. And so he decided to try to help her the same way he had helped Hitsugaya; with the truth, bluntly told and used to bring them to reality, out of their own thoughts.

"They're afraid of you, you know," he said quietly.

She turned slowly back to him. Encouraged, he pressed on, "that's why they seem so… intimidating, if I might put it that way. Really, they can be a lot friendlier. We can all help you. It's just... recently, something happened to make us all a little less open to strangers than we used to be." He stopped to think how to explain it to the girl, as Nanao had told him that she didn't seem to know what the Gotei 13 or the Soul Society was.

"I know," she whispered.

Caught off guard, Kyouraku allowed his surprise to be evident on his face as he turned back to her. "What?"

Suddenly, she looked different. The helplessness, childishness, of a few minutes before had vanished from her face, replaced by an almost eerie sort of wisdom and insight. She seemed to stare not into Kyouraku's eyes, but somewhere beyond them as she said quietly, "a great trauma… you lost three of your own. Many were injured—a betrayal of those you trusted, those you thought you knew."

A thrill of horror spiked through Kyouraku as she said the names of the three traitors as though she had been there when they left the Seireitei. "Tousen Kaname… Ichimaru Gin… Aizen Sousuke…" but the moment the words were spoken, she seemed to snap back to the present, and looked at Kyouraku instead of through him. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean to scare you. I don't know those three, I promise, I'm not in league with them or anything."

Kyouraku stared at her in shock for a few moments more before composing himself. He looked her up and down warily, but somehow, he sensed truth in her words. He did not think that this girl had anything to do with Aizen, but more—he suspected that she could turn out to be very helpful to them. He stood up, and so did Alia. "Come on," he said, "I'll take you back to the others. We can talk there, in front of everyone, so you don't have to keep repeating everything you tell us." When she looked apprehensive, he smiled and added, "I'll make sure they're nice to you."

She chuckled and followed after him, adding, "I'm not a child. Sorry to give you that impression, Kyouraku Shunsui. But I am grateful for the kindness you've offered me."

Attempting to recall when he had told her his name, Kyouraku led her back to the first division. The shinigami they passed stared unabashedly, and when they were just past the second division, a member of Soi Fon's search teams came rushing up to Kyouraku.

"Captain Kyouraku! You've located—"

"Yes, clearly." Kyouraku cut him off before he could say anything that might upset Alia again. "Go and tell the Head Captain that we'll be gathering to talk in the first division, and then kindly go and tell your captain to call off the search."

"Um… yes, captain." Alia looked curiously after the shinigami as he hurried away and said to Kyouraku, "how many did they have out searching for me?"

"A little over seventy…"

Alia laughed softly. "I didn't realize I was that difficult to find. I wasn't hiding, you know."

"Well, you have no reiatsu," Kyouraku said. "It's hard for us to locate you."

Alia regarded Kyouraku for a moment, with an unreadable expression on her face, just as they reached the door to Yamamoto's office and their temporary meeting room. As Kyouraku pulled it open, Alia said, "I hope that this 'discussion' involves as many opportunities for me to ask questions as for you, because I think I may have even more than you do."

Kyouraku chuckled and beckoned her inside, where Yamamoto, Soi Fon, Zaraki, and Ukitake were waiting, along with vice-captains Matsumoto Rangiku and Abarai Renji. Most of those assembled looked very serious; as Yamamoto did not seem to be in the mood for jokes, Kyouraku dropped his smile and bowed formally to the Head Captain before gesturing Alia to an empty seat next to Ukitake and taking the one on her other side.

Perhaps using the same natural intuition that gave her knowledge of Aizen's betrayal, Alia threw him a quick, grateful smile before looking back to the Head Captain, as though she knew that he had purposely seated her between himself and Ukitake, who were more likely to be friendly to her than anyone else in the room.

The Head Captain addressed Kyouraku first. "Captain Kyouraku," he rumbled, "thank you for finding this girl and bringing her back." He looked to Alia, who did not burst out angrily this time, but looked back at him expectantly. "Are you ready and willing now to answer our questions?"

Alia regarded Yamamoto seriously and answered, "Only if, in return, you will agree to answer some of my own questions when I choose to ask them. In addition, you will treat me as a neutral guest here. You will not act in a hostile manner toward me unless I do something to make you believe I am a threat." Alia raised an eyebrow as though daring the Head Captain to refuse her terms, but he nodded to Alia, then settled back in his chair, looking around at the other captains—evidently, he was planning to let them do the questioning and simply observe.

Soi Fon leaned forward as though preparing to say something. However, familiar with the way she tended to address people during interrogations—even if this was a very informal, polite one—Ukitake spoke before she could open her mouth. "Well, let's start with the most obvious question. Who are you?"

The girl blinked. "My name is Alia."

"Is that your given name? Or your surname? What is your full name?" Ukitake said.

"That's… my name. It's just Alia. That's it."

Ukitake looked rather taken aback. Kyouraku stepped in. "Is there a title of some sort that accompanies that?"

The girl looked thoughtfully across the table, between the other captains. "Not really, not officially, but… I suppose you could call that a title. It's just never used… Alia, fourth Annaelisien."

This time it was Zaraki who spoke. "Fourth what?"

Once again, Alia seemed to take on that wise, contemplative expression, like an old man posed with questions about his past. "It's a term in my home language. Roughly translated, it means Earth Mother or Earth Goddess, but to us it means 'mother of the Guardians.'" Before anyone could ask, she continued, "the Guardians are my people."

One of the vice-captains, Renji, spoke. "I've never heard of a race called the 'Guardians.' Where are you from?'"

Alia took a deep breath and turned to face Renji. "The Guardians are not a race, not exactly. But before I can explain, you must understand; almost everything I can tell you about myself will be foreign to you. I'm not from anywhere you know. I'm from a different world."

There was shock all around the room, but it was accompanied by sudden apprehension. Once again, Renji spoke. "You mean… like Hueco Mundo?" The others seemed to stiffen at his words.

Alia gazed around at them. "No. I assume you're speaking of another world that is connected to yours; one you can perhaps travel to and from through some sort of a barrier or gateway." Renji nodded. Alia continued. "I'm not from that kind of world. You see…" she sighed. "This is kind of difficult to explain. I'm from Earth. But not the same Earth you know. Another world, an entirely different existence within the parameters of the Earth itself."

Ukitake regarded her oddly for a moment. Then: "a parallel universe," he stated.

She turned her piercing gaze on him, and for the first time, he noticed her deep green eyes, sparkling with mystery and knowledge. "Of sorts," she said. "My coming here was an accident, and I can't get back. It goes back to me being a Guardian."

Soi Fon spoke up. "What do your… 'people' have to do with it?"

"The Guardians are children of the planet, born of the earth and chosen at birth to carry and protect the powers of the world we live on. We have the deepest connection to the Earth itself of any beings alive, and we are far more tuned into the fluctuations and the currents of life that exist… the energy of the earth. That's how I discovered this world. It took me quite a while, but during meditation, I began to feel some sort of distant power, like an entire Earth out there. While I was trying to focus on it, I accidentally latched onto it with my mind, and it turned out to be your world. Before I could stop it, it drained most of my energy to bring me here. Now, I can't get back without quite a lot of meditation on my own world, and not without waiting for my powers to recover and my energy to return."

There was a moment of rather shocked silence, and then Ukitake said, "the powers of the earth?"

"Yes," Alia said simply.

"What exactly is that?" Zaraki asked.

"The collective word the Guardians use is correaliad, but people who guess some of them seem to have split it. The true energy of the earth is simply that: energy. It's sort of like what you call reiatsu, or spirit energy. It fuels not only your beings themselves, but your powers, and it makes up everything you know—not just people, but buildings, objects, everything. You can access it because you have a certain amount of that power residing within your actual beings. It's the same with Guardians. Everything you know is made of the energy that flows throughout the earth itself. Guardians are judged at birth by the strength of the attributes necessary to being a Guardian, and holding such power. If they are judged worthy, enough of that energy is placed within their beings that they can control everything else."

"And you say that energy exists in everything?" Ukitake said.

"Yes."

"In what manner, exactly, do you manipulate that energy? How do your 'powers' manifest themselves?" Soi Fon said.

"As I mentioned, some people seem to have guessed as to part of what the Guardians' powers are. In legends and stories, they seem to create beings with the ability to control one or more of what they view as the four main elements of the world: water, meaning all liquid water and sometimes the moisture that is present in the air; earth, meaning rocks and dirt, the ground we stand on; air, meaning, of course, the air around us; and fire, which is obvious. To the Guardians, our powers manifest themselves similarly, except that it goes beyond simply what humans have predicted before—water to us, for example, means we can control the weather as well, as clouds are made of water—and that they are all missing one crucial element."

"And what's that?" Renji asked.

"Life," Ali stated. "The energy that makes up all of the earth is, after all, most obviously present in living things, and we can control those as well."

"What exactly does that mean?" Soi Fon asked. "You mean, you can kill things, or make them give birth?"

"No," Alia said patiently. "It's not exactly like that. Life is not the best word to describe what our powers do, as in your language, it mostly means the simple act of existing as a living thing. But no, we cannot make things spontaneously give birth—after all, there are certain processes necessary for that. And our control over 'life' is not limited to ending life. After all, almost every power known has the ability to kill. That is not controlling life. It is simply ending it. Our control over life is focused around access to the minds of living things, where the most energy is stored, though we limit our own access to the minds of others out of courtesy. We can control the processes that make up the very existence of life, as well as its growth and… it's difficult to explain. But I can perhaps make it easier. Watch."

Alia took the cherry blossom out of her hair and placed it in the center of the table. The captains and vice-captains looked down on it in puzzlement for a moment, for nothing happened. Then suddenly, a small green stem sprouted out of the back of the flower, out of nowhere. The stem grew and split off, becoming thicker and branching into more stems, which sprouted flowers at the ends as well. After less than ten seconds, a small cherry blossom tree stood in the center of the table. They looked at Alia, who had her hand raised, in astonishment. She turned her hand a tiny bit and the stems receded, turning back into one flower, which she picked up and put back into her hair.

"You can do stuff like that to anything… or anyone?" Renji asked quietly after a minute.

"Not all the time. We could, if there was reason, but often there is not. We do not meddle where there is no need, and we do not sit upon a throne of our power as though we are gods."

"So what do you do with that power?" Renji said.

"Mostly, we observe. Our only true duty is to protect the earth. Over time, it has left increasingly less room for us to do as we wish, as the human race seems determined to destroy the world that supports it, but we have free will outside our duty to the earth. Because one needs to be judged to be a Guardian, none of us are foolish enough to go out and wreak havoc with our powers. We live simply and comfortably in the place that provides the most sanctuary to creatures of the earth: The Forest of Alria." Alia gazed off, and a look of sadness spread across her face. "I do not know how to get back there. This place is a new earth to me, and although it is much like my own home, I can feel that it does not contain the Forest of Alria. There is only one. One home of the Guardians, because the protectors of the earth can only exist on one earth at one time. I… am stuck here, until I can figure out how to get myself home…" she looked up at the others, and a small smile found its way to her face once more. "But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm simply feeling rather homesick at the moment, as I am somewhat weak from the journey between worlds."

There was a long pause. No one seemed to be able to think of anything else to say, or perhaps they simply could not put words to their questions. Finally, a soft voice came from the corner of the table: Matsumoto spoke for the first time. "And what do you plan to do while here?"

Alia turned soft eyes on the woman, who looked more melancholy than she should under the circumstances. Alia could only guess that it had something to do with the recent incident in their world. "I will not get in your way," she said, as quietly as Matsumoto. "But as I've said, I have my own free will, and I like you people. This is an interesting place. But I can also tell that you are in a constant struggle. There is almost never true rest and peace here. I do not mind; I've endured longer and harder battles than this in my time. But if you will permit me, if you think you can trust me, I would like to help you while I am here."

She stopped and looked around at them all, as though expecting an indication of whether or not they could trust her. For some reason, none of the captains answered; all eyes turned to Matsumoto, even Yamamoto's. Matsumoto gazed into Alia's eyes for a long moment and then nodded and smiled slightly. Everyone in the room relazed.

Alia smiled gratefully and looked at Yamamoto. "If you have more questions, which I have no doubt you will, I will answer them. But for now, if you will permit it, I would like to go and get some rest, which I need badly—and the opportunity to explore a bit of your world here, ask some questions of my own."

"All right," Yamamoto rumbled. Alia stood, followed by the captains and vice-captains, and followed Kyouraku out of the room and into the new waiting world.