I am sorry beyond belief at how late I am posting this. I had to babysit Wednesday, Thursday, and I thought I had Friday to myself, but I got called at 10 in the morning to babysit...again. Then my sister and I decided to make a cake since it's my parents' anniversary today and we didn't finish til like 3 in the morning, and yesterday we went to this barbecue...which was really weird. Watching screaming little kids run around and drunk adults doing basically the same thing is kinda weird...so there's my excuse for having this up so late. Please forgive meh!

So...review replies!

IchiHichi1200: Thanks, and I'm doing my best to! ^_^

Anonymous: You'll find that out later in the story. I wasn't sure a while ago, but I had this crazy flash of an idea as for how to make it work last night, and now I can't wait to write it!

Ag-ro-tag: Haha it definitely reminds me to update, cause I feel bad for makin ya wait! Im actually listening to a song called Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie XD Oh, coincedences...Tomfoolery? XD Hehe I've got EVERYTHING planned out :D I do hope you enjoy my somewhat crazy storyline!

LynnieDerPooh: I'm still surprised you actually read the story, since you know nothing about bleach XD I applaud you on that, my friend. And you're just a heartless child hating person, so I'm SURE there is someone that was touched by that chapter! ^_^

uzamaki9999: Already planned out :) I decided to give Shiro his own Zanpakutou just a few hours before you reviewed. Then I spent a LONG time trying to figure out a good name, description, bankai, etc. Ugh. XD

Disclaimer: We all know this, but I guess I have to repeat it again. I do not own bleach. and I honestly couldn't care less if you decided to use my teacher characters in your own fic, as long as you say you got the idea from moi.

On with the story!


Separated; Chapter 4-The joys of school, part 1

Shiro's POV

Ichigo and I were sprinting down the halls, frantically looking left and right.

"Where is it, Where is it, where is it, WHERE IS IT?" While Ichigo was busy screaming at no one, I double checked our map, making sure to look up so I wouldn't run into anyone. I compared the map to the room next to us and groaned.

"Ichi, we've got a problem. We passed it. AND it's on the other side of campus." Ichigo froze and glared at me.

"WHAT? WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN? YOU WERE THE ONE WHO HAD THE MAP!"

I raised my arms defensively, swinging a 360 and rushing in the other direction. "We've got a minute, Ich, we can't stand around arguing!" Ichigo groaned and sprinted after me. We were nearly there when we heard a loud GONG!

"SHIT! WE'RE ALMOST THERE! C'mon!" I pushed myself harder, skidding to a halt in front of the classroom and we slipped inside. The entire class was staring at us, and I, embarrassed, raised an arm to rub the back of my neck. "Uh…hey?"

''If you two are done interrupting the entire school, please find a place to sit," instructed a man close to the front. He was average height, maybe a little shorter than me, and was a bit thicker than I was. He looked older, but not old. He had a stern face, with bright green eyes that sparkled intelligently.

Ichigo and I complied, drifting up the staircase and got seats next to each other near the middle. (A/N: Think a college lecture hall, or movie theater + desks).

"Welcome students, to Role of the Soul Reaper. My name is Katashi Hamasaki. In this class, you will be learning some history of the soul society, but mostly laws, what your duty as a Soul Reaper is, and about the different groups, such as the Stealth Force, the 13 Court Guard Squads, and the Kido Corps…"

'This guy is boring. He has a demanding voice but it's so…..monotonous….I want to go to sleep..'

I glanced at Ichigo. He looked attentive and alert, but his eyes were glazed. I chuckled inwardly. I wasn't quite sure how he got this skill, but he was quite good at it.

My mind started to drift as the teacher droned on and on and on, something that is expected on a first day of school. But tomorrow, they'd have to pay attention. We are in the advanced class, after all.

I felt someone tap my leg. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see Ichigo's hand open, as if giving me a handshake. But I knew what he wanted to do. He was just as bored as I was. I was definitely accepting this challenge. I gripped his hand, and we started up a thumb war.

Our thumbs went left and right a few times, while in our heads we silently said "1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thumb war. 5, 6, 7, 8, try to keep your thumb straight." Our thumbs went immediately straight, but I had the advantage because my thumb is longer. It was difficult since we couldn't stare at our hands, but eventually I won. Ichigo cursed quietly and withdrew his hand. I snickered at his childish reaction.

I reached into my desk and pulled out a piece of paper and an ink brush (the academy provided them) and made a tic tac toe board. I instantly put my X in the middle and he put an O on the bottom right corner. Then I put my X in the top right corner, followed by him putting O in the bottom left, pushing me to put X in the middle at the bottom, making him put an O at the top middle spot. I decided to put my next X in the middle row, on the right, and Ichigo put his O in the same row on the left. I put my X on the top left, making it a tie. We groaned. This was always how our tic tac toe games ended. Neither of us has ever won, we always, ALWAYS tie.

I put my index finger to my chin, deciding what game we should play next. Ichigo already had an idea by the looks of it, since he just stole my paper. He drew a few lines, and I smirked. Hangman it seems. He lined the letters of his word. 10 letters. Hmm….I took the brush and wrote A at the top. He sighed, and on the second and fifth letter wrote an A. He handed the brush back over, and I thought for a moment and scribbled I. He drew a head on the noose. I wrote down N, which apparently was the 3rd letter. It didn't have an M. I wrote O, earning myself a letter in the ninth spot. So now it said _AN_A_ _ _O_. I wrote T, which was in the eighth spot.

At this point I was stumped, running out of my favorite letters, so I said R, which it didn't have. My guy had a head, body and arm. Only an arm and 2 legs and I'm through. I wrote U and there were 2, in the 7th and 10th spot. Now it looked like _AN_A_U_TOU.

I smirked as soon as I figured it out. I scribbled down the answer and apparently it was right, because Ichigo flicked my forehead. The answer was Zanpakutou.

Ironically, it was written on a wall right to the left of me, so I wondered HOW I didn't figure it out sooner.

A loud GONG jerked me out of my thoughts, and I scrambled to catch up to Ichigo who was running to get out as the class was dismissed.

He darted out of my sight and as I stepped out the doors of the classroom, I was tackled. I flipped so my attacker was under me, and I instinctively pinned his arms and legs down. Ichigo was underneath me, watching me, smirking.

"Wha' the hell's your problem, Ichi? Why'd ya go an' tackle me like that? And now we're in the way of everyone! I'm gonna get stepped on!" I stood, pulling Ichigo with me, who was still smirking.

"I'm glad you still have good reflexes, Shiro! Now what's our next class? I don't wanna be late again."

I pulled out my schedule, the ones that I had with Ichigo were circled. "Um….Hoho. This outta be interesting.."

Ichigo nodded in agreement. "But moving so fast that, for some, your own eyes can't follow it? That's amazing!"

Suddenly, Ichigo collapsed onto his knees. I darted in front of him, to look into his eyes. They were dilated, and terror shimmered in them. He was clutching his chest.

"Ichigo? Ichigo!" I slapped him, successfully pulling him out of his trance, or whatever that was.

"What was that about,'' I questioned pulling him to his feet. His eyebrows were scrunched together, and he shrugged, frustrated. "I have no idea. I can tell you what I saw though." I nudged him, urging him to continue.

"Well, I was on a sidewalk at night, and I was in a Soul Reaper uniform. Like, the official uniform. And I was holding this HUGE sword, almost bigger than I was! In front of me was a man, only a little taller than me. His hair was black, and his face was completely expressionless. But I guess I was fighting another guy, whose hair was red and pulled back in a ponytail, but spiked upwards. He had tattoos all over his face and he had a sword that could extend and cut me really deep. I got the upper hand in the fight, but when I was about to win, my sword disappeared, and I realized the black haired guy had taken it. Then he blurred and disappeared and next thing I knew, I was being stabbed through the chest. I was left to die, but I could still move. I grabbed his foot to tell him that he shouldn't talk about me like I'm not there when my hand was kicked away by this midget black haired girl, who told me not to touch her 'brother.' And then next thing I know, I was staring at you."

I couldn't help but just stare at him in shock. What he just told me was so weird and unreal. "I wonder what it means," I whispered. "But are you feeling ok? Do I need to take you to the nurse?"

"Nah, I'm alright now, let's just get to class."

"At least this one isn't far. Take a left here. No, Ichigo, other left. There we go. Right through this door. Annnnnnd we're here!"

We stepped into another classroom, which didn't have desks; it simply had bleachers and a large open space in the middle of all the bleachers. There was a woman standing in the middle of the space, assumedly she was our teacher. She had a lithe body, and looked kind of petite, but I figured she was probably pretty strong.

Her hair was black, and pulled into a pony tail, and she had chocolate brown eyes, almost exactly like Ichigo's. Ichigo was spacing out again, so I dragged him over to the bleachers, going a few rows up before finally sitting down. I snapped in front of his face.

"Ichigoooo…..Ichigo…..Are you alive in there?"

He leaned forward quickly and nipped my hand. I instantly pulled it back.

"Hey what was that for? You were zonin' out again, so I was tryin to help you out!"

"Well don't snap in front of my face, of course I'm gonna hurt ya if you do something like that!"

I grumbled, but didn't answer, because the GONG sound went off again and the woman started speaking.

"Good morning students."

She paused, standing still, watching us expectantly. When no one even twitched under her gaze, her eyes narrowed.

"When someone says, 'Good Morning Students', you are supposed to respond and say, 'Good Morning Sensei'!"

The class quickly answered her saying, "Sorry Sensei, Good morning!"

"Very good. Now, my name is Kohaku Hayashi, you can just call me Sensei. If you do anything stupid or unjustifiable, then you will be punished. If you don't pay attention to me when I'm speaking, we WILL have a problem. But if you listen to me, and do what I tell you without mouthing off, then I'm sure we'll get along fine. Instead of giving you a long lecture like Hamasaki does, I'm just going to explain what you have to do to be able to achieve Hoho, or flash steps and then I'm going to give you a few tips on how to do it, then maybe we can start working on it if we have time today. So behave or else you won't get to try it!"

The class just stared at her, shocked. She was nothing like Hamasaki. She was kind of scary…..

I loved her personality, but that's just my opinion. Ichigo and I were grinning like fools, thankful to have at least one cool teacher.

'Maybe this year will be pretty awesome.'

Sensei ran through an explanation of Hoho, gave her tips, and when she was done with that, we still had 45 minutes left in class. She told us all to come down to the floor, and I grabbed Ichigo's hand and ran down the bleacher stairs with him in tow. We all got in a big circle around our teacher, and she told us to get in a line along the wall.

After we had achieved this, she pointed to the first person in line, and told them to run as fast as they could across the gym in the least amount of steps. Everyone tried, but no one in the class could achieve shunpo, but we hadn't been expected to. The GONG went off again and Ichigo and I trudged out of the classroom, angry we didn't get it right. I shook off the feeling, and brightened, remembering what our next class was.

"Hey IIIIchigoooo…"

Ichigo snapped his head toward me, glaring. "What?"

"Guess what we have neeext," I said in a sing-songy voice.

"Why should I guess? You're just gonna end up telling me anyway."

I pouted, sad that he ruined my fun. "Come onnnnnn….Why are you all depressed? You should be happy and jumping around!" I started jumping up and down to emphasize my point. I felt oddly hyper for some reason. Maybe I was just so happy to be here. After all that time in Inuzuri, this is was like a breath of fresh air, a splash of cold water on my face.

'Wait, why the hell am I going all sentimental?'

Ichigo snorted at me, but joined me in hopping down the hall. I started laughing as we made our way to our next class, Zanjutsu, hopping like 2 bunnies. I cracked up at everyone's stares, and eventually it was too much. I stopped hopping and bent in 2, laughing so hard my ribs hurt. Ichigo was simply observing amusedly.

He grabbed my arm. "Come on; let's get to our next class."

An idea flickered through my thoughts, and I snickered. I took a running start and leapt on his back. "PIGGYBACK RIDE!" I screeched in his ear, and he flinched.

"Fine, fine," he grumbled. And started running with me on his back. I couldn't help but laugh again. I just felt so….free. As we approached the classroom, I hopped off his back and walked alongside him. This classroom looked exactly the same as the last, except there was a large cabinet on one wall, probably holding wooden swords for us to work with.

I stepped into the classroom, but couldn't see anybody that could possibly be our teacher. I shrugged it off, simply pulling Ichigo with me to a seat. We were earlier to this class than the last ones, so I watched the other students pile in. I initiated another thumb war with Ichigo and I shut my eyes to try and give him a handicap, but he lost…again. "My dear friend, thumb wars with you are rather dull. It's a curse that I always win everything."

I placed a hand over my heart, as though it actually did hurt me. Ichigo simply stuck his tongue out at me and I pinched it for revenged. Then he retaliated by poking my ribs and I giggled. Wait….I giggled?

'Oh Ichigo, you are SO getting your ass handed to you for that.'

That GONG sound went off again and I scowled. That was getting hella annoying really quick. The class sat around awkwardly, mumbling to the person next to them. Then the door burst open and a tall buff man walked in.

He was pretty handsome. I'm not gay, but I'll admit that. I saw quite a few girls and even a few guys ogling at him, though he was completely oblivious to it. He had short brown hair and a strand was curled up in the middle of his forehead, and he had extremely light blue eyes.

He looked around at the assembled students before his eyes landed on me. I stared back, curious as to why he was watching me that way. It was intense, but there was something else in his gaze that worried me, but I couldn't identify what it was. Ichigo obviously recognized it, because he growled low in his throat and gritted his teeth. I was about to ask him what was wrong when the teacher finally spoke.

"Hey. Albino."

I whipped my head around to glare at him for referring to me as 'albino'. Ichigo grabbed my hand and squeezed it, because he knew I react badly when people referred to me like that.

"What?" I ground out.

"Come down here. I want to see if you can wield a sword. You have the right…body type. Oh, and bring your orange friend."

Now it was me keeping Ichigo from doing something rash. As soon as I was completely sure he wasn't going to go for the man's throat, I released his hand and we warily stood up and walked down the stairs to the main floor.

"Names?" He questioned, quirking his eyebrow.

"I'm Haku Tsukino. But you can call me Shiro. And this is Ichigo Kurosaki."

The man's eyes widened in shock at Ichigo's name, but he quickly covered up the surprise.

'What the hell was that about?'

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Sora Matsushita. Now go over to the cabinet over there and grab a wooden sword for yourselves."

We obeyed his instructions, grabbing the katanas and facing him. He was holding his own wooden sword, and it hung limply by his side.

"Now Shiro, nice nickname by the way," I growled in response to his mocking, "face me and try to knock this sword out of my hands. Ok?"

I nodded still glaring in his direction. He made the first move, darting to my left and I quickly dodged out of the way, jabbing him in the ribs as he went by. He spun to face me, and sprang towards me. I blocked the wooden asauchi with mine and pushed him off and away from me.

I leaped toward him, moving to hit him with my sword, hoping he'd block, which he did. I kicked him in the side while he was open, which made him stumble backwards. He looked kind of pissed, but that something from earlier still glinted in his eyes. And, like before, it set Ichigo off. He jumped in front of me and started fighting the teacher. I backed up, wondering what had gotten into my best friend. I caught a glimpse of his face as he spun to fight.

He looked furious, a little over-protective (like always) and was that..jealousy? 'No, I must be imagining things.'

Ichigo and Sora were fighting hard, and I could tell Ichigo was doing extremely well. For a moment he blurred in my vision, which surprised me. 'Did he just use flash step?'

I continued to gape in my best friend's direction, since I couldn't really see him well enough to gape at him. Then I heard a clatter. My head snapped towards Sora, who was staring at his hands incredulously. I turned my head to see his katana near me. Ichigo was standing in one place, watching Sora's reaction.

"Very good Ichigo. I knew you had a knack for sword fighting!"

Ichigo narrowed his eyes. "And how would you know that?"

Sora ignored him and turned to the class. "There is a demonstration of what you will be learning this year. With practice, you may all be able to knock that-" He pointed towards the fake katana "-out of my hands."

That damn GONG went off again and the class stood to go to lunch. I went over to Ichigo, who was sweating from the exertion. I clapped him on the back.

"Good job Ichigo! That was amazing! Did you realize you were using flash step?"

Ichigo smiled wearily at me and moved to go put the katana up. I noticed it was just us with Sora in the room, and I still felt wary towards our sword-fighting teacher. He sauntered up to me, a grin on his face.

"Good job Shiro! I'm sure if Ichigo hadn't stepped in, you would have been able to knock the wooden sword out of my hands too." He gripped my wrists and leaned forward. I strained backwards, trying to get away from the strange man. He had that look in his eye again.

"You will be an amazing fighter, I assure you." Then he closed the space between us and kissed me. I tried to pull back but he wouldn't let me. I struggled but it had no effect on him. Then he was gone, and Ichigo was standing, concerned, in front of me.

''Are you alright? Damn bastard. The one second I turn away.."

He spun to glare at our teacher and moved to stand next to him. He was on the ground, holding his jaw, where, apparently, Ichigo socked him.

"Stay the hell away from Shiro. Cause if you don't, it will be the end of you."

Ichigo grabbed my hand to pull me out of the classroom, and naturally I complied.

"That was hell. Maybe this year won't be as good as I hoped."

Ichigo craned his neck to look at me, and lead me over to a wall in the hallway. He leaned against it tiredly, and simply watched me. He sighed. "Listen, I want you to stick with me as much as you can. I don't want that idiot to hurt you. Ok?" I nodded. I could take care of myself, but I froze up just a few minutes ago, and if I did that again, who knows what would happen.

We walked silently down to lunch. "Thanks Ichigo."

He looked at my confusedly. "What for?"

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders in a tight hug. "For being such a great friend."

Ichigo smiled softly and hugged me back. He released me and we went down to lunch. The students that had been in our last class were staring at Ichigo but he paid no mind. We grabbed our food and sat down at a table. Ichigo laid his head down on my shoulder, exhausted from the exertion of doing flash step and fighting a teacher. I patted his orange hair while he slowly fell asleep. And while my best friend was at my side, I could honestly think that everything was going to be just fine.

Which, of course, always happens, right?


Well there ya go. I know I promised the entire school day, but by the time I finished this, it was 8 pages. So I decided to split it in half. No guarantees on the next update cause I have to babysit all week. Ugh. AND school starts in 15 days. Joy. And as to why the classes seemed so short, I was too lazy to actually type it out to seem longer, so Im just gonna say that the first day is shorter than the others.

Oh, and here's a question. Answer in a review or even a PM, but PLEASE answer. I want to please my readers.

Do you want this to be a yaoi, or just leave it as no yaoi?

It wouldn't change my storyline too much either way, but I want to know what you guys want.

Well, til next time everyone!