Disclaimer: Bleach isn't mine.
Note: I will be sticking to the way things happened in the manga, not in the anime… For those of you who only watch bleach anime, there won't be any spoilers, do not fear. In case you're not as hard-core Bleach-fans as I am, in parenthesis, I will explain some of the inside-Bleach jokes.
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Chapter 3 - Karin's Death
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Sure enough, after a few minutes of recklessly displaying her spiritual pressure, Karin wasn't disappointed in her expectations. The predator came for its prey rather quickly. Only, Karin hadn't expected the "predator" to come in the form of three separate hollows. She gulped; she knew that three hollows together were out of her league. Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she forced it away; panicking would get her killed.
Thinking at lightening speed, Karin backed up into a narrower street, calculating that the hollows would only be able to attack her one at a time. She could handle them one at a time. Aiming and kicking her soccer ball at the first hollow to try and attack, Karin successfully broke its mask. But the ball rolled out of the alley, too far away for her to retrieve. And she only saw one hollow remaining, and though it hesitated a bit before continuing onto its target, it loped towards her with frightening ease. But then Karin's brain registered the incongruity in the numbers. Three - one two. But there was only one hollow left.
'Where did the other one go?' Karin thought frantically, before looking up and seeing that the other hollow was airborne.
"Damnit!
She hadn't realized that one of the hollows had the advantage of wings. The fast-approaching hollow lunged with its long arm towards Karin, who closed her eyes for the impact.
'It's over now...'
Karin felt a pang of regret as she though about her brother. She had shrugged him off so coldly while she had taken off just to go get herself killed.
'Ichi-nii!'
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To Karin's surprise, the blow from the hollow wasn't fatal, nor did it hurt. All she felt was a sudden bout of nausea and a heaviness in the air. It was hard to breath and difficult to move, much less move quickly.
A sudden clinking noise that called Karin back to her senses. It was then that Karin realized that she was in the form of a soul; she had a chain protruding from her chest. Unconsciously, she grabbed at the long chain, finding the steel links cold beneath her fingers. Karin could see her own prone physical body laying upon the ground, linked to her chain of fate. Through the haze of her thoughts and sudden irrational urge to rip out the chain out of her chest, Karin managed to grasp at a bit of relief within her mind.
That her chain of fate wasn't broken was something in itself. Technically, Kurosaki Karin was still alive. Another bout of nausea hit her, and she coughed and retched. The two hollows were there, their red-glowing gazes looking back and forth between Karin's body and her soul. And she could do nothing to defend her body, especially as she was separated from it.
It was then that Karin realized the gravity of the situation, and began to run for her life. She had briefly considered the possibility (or impossibility) of taking her body with her, but a second wave of nausea and the swimming of her vision made her think better of it. Even besides the nausea, the chains hindered her steps, clanking from her chest and growing longer with every step she took.
The preservation of her spirit came before the preservation of her body, Karin somehow reasoned logically with a mind that was scrambled and saturated with panic.
Meanwhile, the two hollows had realized they hadn't finished her off, and planned to do so to eat the tasty soul of high spiritual caliber. (Slow AND stupid, these hollows. tsk tsk)
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Moving was painful. Every muscle she moved protested, and Karin felt like she was attempting to swim though a mass of molasses; molasses that was determined to clog her lungs. But run Karin did, for her life, or rather, her soul. If she could only hold out until she got home...
As Karin weakly ran, she mentally berated herself for getting into this mess.
Why did she have to be so stupid to think that she could bait out and defeat a hollow on her own? Why hadn't she considered that more than one hollow might come? With a wave of shame, Karin realized that her last few single victories had swelled her head and made her overconfident. But even as such epiphanies ran through her head, Karin knew that each forced step she took could be her last. Coughing and gasping for breath, Karin clenched her teeth forced herself to stumble two more steps forward. She didn't have to look behind her to know that the hollows were gaining on her. She could feel them. Finally, with one extended set of talons, the hollow closer to her attacked. Karin jumped at the last moment and escaped without any visible scathe. Or so she thought.
Until she noticed that the hollow's talons had instead, severed her chain of fate from her physical body with a spark of black flames. Karin's eyes widened.
"Shit!"
The nausea was gone, but something much bigger at stake had just been destroyed. Karin now had no way of getting back into her body. But to her chagrin, Karin had no time to just stand and worry about her chain of fate. A more imminent matter was at hand; something concerning, possibly, the damnation of her soul. Karin wasn't sure she believed in heaven, but if it did exist, she was quite sure it would be pretty hard to get into if she were eaten by a hollow.
For sure, Karin's mind wasn't working properly, but she knew that she had to get back home, to where Ichigo was.
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There, the familiar house labeled, "Kurosaki Clinic" was in sight. Then, with the last of her strength, Karin ran for all she was worth, shouting, "Ichi-nii!"
Almost immediately, Ichigo was at the door, already in his shinigami outfit. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Karin realized that he had sensed the coming of the hollows. With two swift strokes, Ichigo defeated them. This only managed to increase Karin's torrent of feelings, mostly composed of shame and self-directed anger. She could have just let her brother deal with the hollows. She hadn't needed to die just to succeed in killing one hollow and failing to kill the other two.
Ichigo, still dressed in his shinigami outfit, turned to Karin, he started to ask her worriedly, "Are you alright-"
Then his eyes fell on Karin's severed chain of fate. It was as if he did not believe what he saw. Almost pleadingly, Karin asked, "Ichi-nii…. I… I'm dead, aren't I?"
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A/N: For those that think that my characters OOC (out of character) I'm actually trying my best. And for that are even more hard-core Bleach fans than I am, forgive me if I make a mistake in details...
And I'm noticing that my chapters are getting very short... maybe I should lengthen them, and merge two chapters into one, though that may take a bit more time... hmm...