Alright, I've been wanting to update but school is killing me. I had two mid-terms and an essay in three days and then fall break, so writing has fallen a little bit by the wayside. I have made some corrections to the previous two chapters, so hopefully that smoothes over the big picture. In general, ideas keep coming to me but putting them all together in a coherent passage that I like takes time and energy, so all I can put up for now is this older passage. I wrote this almost immediately after the occurrence it describes and now this premise has snowballed into a more central part of this story. So this is a little prelude/foreshadowing while at this same time an effort to hold down the fort until I can get the next chapter put together.

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When I Realized I Was a Ninja

I had just gotten back from two back-to-back morning classes. It was maybe just after eleven o'clock; I was getting situated in my room, checking my e-mail to see if anything important had come through. After I had checked both my Yahoo and Ithaca accounts, the lingering feeling of needing to drop a deuce made a sudden surge, and I realized I could ignore it no longer. I opened the door to the hallway and heard someone in the bathroom.

I cannot say I am a big fan of community bathrooms. Bathrooms should be private places, and there's nothing more awkward, at least for me, than having to take a crap in a public restroom. So I waited a few seconds. My sandals were wet from taking a shower earlier in the morning and I had socks on, so I had to decide whether to take off my socks and go in with wet sandals or go in with just socks. The squelching of the waterlogged sandals probably wouldn't have helped my case for anonymity, so I abandoned the idea. I heard whoever was in the bathroom pull the flimsy shower curtain that separated the shower room from the common bathroom and I made my move.

I darted in, padding silently on my thin socks over the sporadically wet tiles. I slid the latch on the stall shut just after the shower started, hiding the grate of metal on metal in the cacophony of falling water. I settled down to do my business in as much silence as possible. I noticed there was a new poster on the stall door, which I began reading, since I didn't have anything else to do. I had already seen this poster before, but I read it in more detail now, and I finished the first sections on acceptable dorm room items when the shower stopped, just minutes after starting. I made it to the 'Further Restrictions' segment and was thinking that piggy-backing (putting one surge-protector into another), while potentially unsafe was an interesting idea, and 'why didn't I think of that?' when the other occupant strode out of the bathroom, shutting off the lights as he went, as is customary when the bathroom is empty. Then, with my reading interrupted by the sudden dim, was when I realized I was a ninja.

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Corny, I know. Anyway, more updates. If you haven't figured it out, I'm watching the subbed version of the Bleach anime, so if the presentation of names or switching between shinigami and Death God bothers you, I'm sorry, but not really. I'm on episode 120 right now if you've finished the series and are wondering where my perspective is at. I've made spelling/grammatical corrections in the other two chapters and I touched up the abstract to try to draw more readers. This is the old one:

A Bleach/real life cross-over where new wave Shinigami protect a college-town New York university from Hollows and more. Featuring all original characters. Some artistic liberties were taken but if you like Bleach I should think you'll enjoy this as well.

If you think that is better I'd appreciate the feedback but otherwise I'll stick the new one. I also moved the forward to the end of chapter one in the attempt to trick more people into reading my shit.