Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any other copyrighted material.

Oz

By: Princess Kitty1

The Warrior's Reprieve

Orihime would have never thought of herself as squeamish until she set foot in Yawn. A town made for humans, the buildings here were all big enough to accommodate her, so she was sure she wouldn't have to worry about sleeping in a giant's bed tonight. However, as she took in the sight around her, she wasn't sure she would be able to get to sleep at all. Homes had been converted into hospital wards for the hundreds of injured soldiers that had survived the trip from the battlefield at Glennacre Valley. Men, women and children alike ran about frantically gathering extra blankets, pillows, towels and medical supplies to make their guests more comfortable.

A small hand gripped Orihime's, tearing her horrified gaze away from a man whose nearly severed arm was being tended to by a healer."Are you okay, Orihime?" Nel's green eyes were wide with concern. Wasn't she at all affected by the surrounding sights and sounds? Perhaps in times of war, even the children had seen more than they should have.

"I think so," Orihime replied, forcing herself to smile for the little girl. She felt extremely nauseous, but she made a conscious decision that she wouldn't faint until they arrived at their destination. Besides, Rukia and Yoruichi seemed to know exactly where they were going.

"The Good Witch of the North approaches!" a soldier called to another behind him, who then ran ahead into a large manor at the end of the road. Before long, the manor door swung open and a man with blazing red hair – a high ranking soldier, Orihime guessed by the amount of medals and ornaments on his tattered uniform – emerged from within. He limped a little, his left arm tucked securely into a sling, his right rising to salute them.

"Lieutenant of the Sixth Division, Renji Abarai!" he announced himself.

Rukia rolled her eyes. "Does Byakuya really have you doing that, even for me?" She crossed her arms huffily. "Come on, Renji. We've been friends for years. What happened to your arm?"

"I was injured in the line of duty, valiantly fighting for my country!" he answered just as seriously.

"He was injured," a deep voice interjected, "running away and leaving his General for dead." Standing in the doorway was General Byakuya Kuchiki, leaning heavily to one side with a grimace. His lengthy black hair was down, uniform coat draped over his shoulders, and his entire abdomen was bandaged neatly. "Don't believe a word this idiot says," he growled through clenched teeth.

Rukia pushed Renji aside and ran forward, slipping underneath her brother's arm to help support him. Orihime blinked in surprise; the only family resemblance she noted was their unfortunately somber countenance. "What are you doing out of bed? You're going to tear that wound wide open!" Rukia was scolding him unabashedly, in front of the entire village and his soldiers. "I have half a mind to rip it open myself, just to teach you a lesson! Come on!" She helped him turn and they started into the manor.

Yoruichi looked back at Orihime and Nel. "Come along." She paused next to Renji, her tail twitching. "Say, is the Great Idiot of Oz around?"

"The Wizard? No, he left in pursuit of Aizen's generals after casting a spell to get us here safely," Renji confessed, slipping a hand into his coat and feeling along the inside. "However," he withdrew a small vial containing a mysterious pink liquid, "he told me to give this to you, General Shihoin."

"Freaking finally!" Yoruichi cried, opening her mouth for Renji to put the vial into.

Orihime felt her dizziness increasing. "W-Wait… Yoruichi-san is a general? And she has a last name?"

Renji looked at her. "Who's this? Does she have military clearance?"

Nel puffed out her chest proudly. "Orihime is the Promised Child," she cried, "and my name is Nel!"

Orihime chose that precise moment to double over and vomit. Nel squealed in surprise and ran for cover, away from the splatter. Yoruichi heaved a sigh and continued toward the manor, muttering a muffled question about milk. Renji ran to assist Orihime, who was swaying unsteadily on her feet. This was supposed to be the Promised Child? He suddenly had a very bad feeling about Oz's future.

…

Grimmjow Jaegerjaques stood in the middle of a dense wood, hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks. He looked to his left; nothing but trees. He looked to his right; same. Nothing but trees, birds, bugs and adorable furry creatures that twitched their noses at him like they had to sneeze. It was quiet, serene, a nature lover's paradise. Grimmjow did not love nature.

He stood amongst the trees and the critters, taking in a deep breath of earthy smells and releasing it in a long sigh. "Yep," he nodded once, twice, three times, "I'm lost as fuck."

…

Upon hearing the news of the Promised Child's arrival in Yawn, many curious soldiers and villagers went out of their ways to pass the manor and hopefully catch a glimpse of Orihime, who lay in a spare bed with a damp cloth pressed against her eyes. She groaned miserably, making a mental note to never eat gas station pastries for breakfast again. No, that wasn't fair to her Mexican attendant. The pastries probably would have digested happily had she not been dragged through a town of maimed, bleeding infantrymen.

Despite his stoic demeanor, Byakuya was awkwardly friendly. He carried an air of superiority about him which Renji said resulted from his upbringing as the son of a noble family. Along those lines, Yoruichi was also the daughter of a noble family, who had fallen out of favor with her relatives after running off to become The Great Wizard's apprentice.

"I can't believe I've been feeding cat food to a princess!" Orihime cried in dismay, absently playing with Nel's hair as the munchkin devoured one of the plastic-wrapped cinnamon rolls they had brought along.

"I'm not a princess," Yoruichi said, watching eagerly as Rukia poured the contents of the glass vial into a saucer of milk and stirred it together with her wand. "Besides, having been in the form of a cat, feeding me anything else could have made me ill."

Byakuya suddenly cleared his throat, wincing a bit. "Do I really have to be here for this?"

"For what?" Orihime looked around. "I missed something again."

Yoruichi's sharp canines glinted in what appeared to be a grin. "Just watch," she said, her excitement apparent by the rapid twitch of her tail. Once Rukia had finished mixing the pink liquid into the milk, she set it down in front of Yoruichi, who immediately went to work on drinking it. Byakuya let out an irritated sigh and turned his head to stare at the wall.

"I thought somebody would be healing me by now," he grunted.

"Oh! Right." Rukia wiped milk off of her wand and began weaving invisible symbols into the air. "This will get the job done, though not completely. The flesh will still be a little tender, so try not to move so much, please?"

Orihime would have watched the healing take place had her eyes not been glued to the transformation occurring in Yoruichi. Her feline frame elongated, bones audibly snapping and rearranging. Her ears relocated to the sides of her head, her whiskers becoming eyebrows and lashes, her tail changing into a long, violet ponytail. The black fur melted away, leaving behind dark, naked skin. Before Orihime knew it, her cat had grown into a voluptuous, exotic-looking woman who traced the inside of the saucer with a perfectly manicured fingernail and popped it into her mouth. "Delicious!" the woman sighed dreamily.

"Y-Yoruichi-san…?" Orihime said tentatively.

She may not have been a black cat anymore, but her golden eyes were still the same as she turned to smile at her mistress. "In the flesh!"

Orihime pointed at her. "You're naked."

Renji snorted and snickered. Nel licked cinnamon off of her fingers. Byakuya pulled himself up carefully and walked out of the room. Rukia decided to break the silence. "Why, yes she is! Let me conjure up something more appropriate for you, Yoruichi."

"Your boobs are bigger than mine!" Orihime complained.

Yoruichi rolled her eyes. "We can compare our assets later. There are more serious things to discuss at the moment," she said, ignoring the variety of clothing that appeared on her body, changing color and shape every few seconds before settling on a black one-piece suit with an orange jacket over it. "For example, we need to map out the safest course to the Emerald City. We were lucky to have not been attacked so far."

"Attacked…" Orihime suddenly remembered the situation she was in and sighed. "I don't want to be attacked! Can't I just tell the warlock Aizen that I mean him no harm, that I'm just passing through on my way home?"

"You could, but chances are that he won't believe you." Yoruichi stretched her human limbs, wiggling her fingers and toes. "Why should he? Your very existence threatens his plans."

"I'm no threat! I can't even use these thingamajigs…" Orihime reached up to readjust the hair clips. She could hardly grow a tomato plant. How was she supposed to draw magic out of a flower? "I mean, what do these hair clips even do?" Come to think of it, nobody had told her that yet. All they'd said was that the clips were weapons.

Yoruichi shrugged. "Nobody knows for certain – not even The Great Moron himself." She leaned back on her palms and crossed her legs at the ankles. "Originally, the pollen of the Six-Petal Flower was rumored to have the ability to heal any ailment. And in addition to that, the flowers themselves were said to control time because they never wilted or grew old. As soon as they started to, they would reverse the flow of time until they were young and luminous again. Of course, there was no way to prove it. Every witch and wizard who managed to get their hands on them couldn't figure out how the flower altered time."

Orihime fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. "If they couldn't…"

"Hey, don't be so down on yourself! According to the prophecy, the Promised Child and the flowers would have a special relationship. But, like all authentic prophecies, it didn't specify." Yoruichi stood up and put her hands on her hips. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make sure I haven't gotten rusty."

"Rusty with… where did she go?" Orihime blinked, suddenly finding the space where Yoruichi had been empty.

Rukia laughed and patted her shoulder sympathetically. "I know it's a lot to wrap your brain around. Then again, you're going home so I guess it's nothing you should worry about for too long." She smiled sadly. "I only wish that I could accompany the three of you to the Emerald City."

Renji tentatively scratched at his injured arm. "Hey, you make it sound like traveling with us is a bad thing," he muttered with a dejected pout.

"Okay, it has its perks." Rukia leaned over and tapped his left arm with her index finger. "There, you big baby. Don't you dare run off on Byakuya again. He needs you," she said, then grinned proudly and winked conspiratorially. "Not that he'll be joining us for the next battle. I had the higher ups order him to sit this one out, so Renji, you're going to be in charge!"

The blood drained from Renji's face. "What?"

"Don't complain! Weren't you just dying to prove your superiority? Well, now's your chance!"

Orihime smiled watching the two of them interact. It reminded her a lot of how her Rukia acted around Ichigo back home. She blinked as the realization dawned on her. Were this Rukia and Renji seeing each other? She pursed her lips together, deciding not to ask. They weren't being openly affectionate, so if they did have something going on, it was probably a secret.

Nel looked up from where she had been dozing off on the floor. "So Orihime, if you can use the Six-Petal Flowers, does that make you a magician too?"

"You know, I never really thought about it like that."

Having heard this, Rukia looked away from where she had been drawing on Renji's face with her wand. He suddenly sprouted a bushy black mustache. "If that's the case, maybe Aizen won't want to kill you after all."

"Why is that?" Orihime tried to smother the panic that had quickly flared up at the thought of being killed. "What is this Aizen guy trying to do?"

"I know!" Nel cried, tugging on her sleeve for attention. "The warlock Aizen believes that humans who can't use magic should be slaves to those who can, like him." She mustered up a serious expression. "And if they are utterly worthless to him, like us munchkins, they should be killed at once!"

"It's true," Rukia said, staring at her wand a bit guiltily. "He's either looking for mass slavery or mass genocide. Either way, it's a pretty bleak future for Oz."

…

"Grimmjow, where are you?"

"Quite honestly, I haven't a clue." The sun was setting by the time Aizen came into contact with his wayward assassin. Grimmjow had walked in circles for hours, eventually coming back to a tree stump he had peed next to earlier, and there was no way he was staying there with the stench.

A sigh resounded in his head. "Don't try my patience, Grimmjow. Find the yellow brick road by tomorrow morning, because I would rather kill you than find it for you."

Grimmjow winced as the oppressive magic lifted from his body. He hated having Aizen in his brain, violating his thoughts. He may have been his master, but that didn't mean he had to like the guy. In the end, Grimmjow served nobody but himself.

After walking a considerable distance from the soiled tree stump, he stopped and sat down heavily, determined to catch a quick break. He could technically go on without sleep for up to a week, but sleeping was something that he enjoyed. When he didn't get enough of it, he got cranky, and when he got cranky, people died. Heads rolled. Blood spilled.

Feelings were hurt.

"Damn it!" he yelled, firing a beam of energy into the forest that took out a mile-long row of trees. Once his eyes readjusted to the failing light of dusk, he squinted ahead into his path of destruction and caught the sight of something unmistakably yellow. "Huh. It was a lot closer than I thought," he muttered.

Now that he'd found the road, he could get some much needed sleep.

…

Byakuya was not one to sit by idly. Relaxation made him uneasy, he always had to be doing something. This impatience, well hidden by his stoic façade, was always bubbling just beneath his skin. In the days that his wife had lived, he'd felt calmer than he ever had in his entire life, and just as well, he'd become that much more restless when she had died.

"Pouting like a child because little sister had you benched?"

His scowl deepened. Yoruichi sat in his open window, blocking his view of the crescent moon. "I believe I gave specific orders that mongrel were not to be allowed in my quarters."

"As if your guards could ever keep up with me!" Yoruichi laughed, slipping into the room and landing soundlessly. "You must still be plenty naïve to think so." Her bare feet padded across the floor towards him. "How are you feeling?"

Byakuya's dark eyes narrowed at her frostily. "Just fine."

"But," she bent at the waist to tap his nose teasingly, "you could be better." When he gave no response, she lowered herself to the floor, sitting next to him. "Don't be like this, Little Byakuya. You're making me sad. I came all this way to see you – "

"You came all this way to see him," Byakuya interrupted her. "Were you disappointed?"

"Now that definitely isn't fair." Yoruichi leaned her head back against the wall. "When I heard that you had been injured in battle, I was…" She stopped herself. "Well, I wasn't much of anything. You can take care of yourself." Her yellow eyes stared at the bright moon through the window. "I mean, here I was being coddled for the last five years while you were off being a broken-hearted hero."

"Stop that."

She paused. "Stop what?"

"Pretending you're weaker than you actually are." Byakuya turned enough to grab Yoruichi by the wrist and pull her into his lap. "It really pisses me off," he growled, his lips finding her neck in the darkness.

Yoruichi gasped. "Oh, but I am weak." She combed her fingers through his hair and lowered her head, just barely brushing her lips against his. "So very weak…" Her heart clenched almost painfully in her chest, but she couldn't stop. His kisses dizzied her, excited her, left her trembling for more, and she couldn't find the will to object when he laid her out on the floor, her ponytail undone and his bandaged torso exposed for her wandering hands.

What an idiot that wizard was, giving her the means to change back when he wouldn't be there to receive her.

…

"Goodbye!" Orihime found herself quite teary-eyed the next morning as she waved farewell to Rukia and Renji. "Thank you for everything!"

"Goodbye!" Nel echoed, waving both of her small arms above her head.

"Take care of yourselves, you three!" Rukia shouted back with hands cupped over her mouth. "I'll try to keep as much an eye on you as I can! Give my regards to The Great Wizard when you see him!"

"I will! Don't worry!" Orihime turned away before she could start blubbering, sniffling and instead distracting herself with a question that had been on her mind all morning. "Yoruichi-san, why are you a cat again?"

At her feet, the sour-faced black cat paused for a moment. "Well, Orihime, there are many different kinds of spells: some permanent, some temporary… some with very specific requirements to keep them working," she muttered through clenched teeth. Of course the wizard hadn't left her a note saying that if she wanted to keep her human form, she should refrain from sexual activity. It was just the sort of thing he would do, she thought with a heavy sigh. She betrayed him, he betrayed her. What an interesting relationship they had.

But it was that sort of thing, she hated to admit, that proved he wasn't much of an idiot after all. And it was exactly that sort of thing that had made her run off with him in the first place.

To Be Continued