A/N: hAHAHAHAHAHAHAhaHAHahHAHA I'm back *sobs*. SO! Yeah. Basically I promised I'd come back what? More than half a year ago. YEAHHHHHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ^^; BUT NEVER FEAR! I have a perfectly logical reason for not coming back! Which is...SCHOOL! And also the fact that every time I started to write again I'd projectile vomit because it was so bad and run away screaming. YAYYY! So yeah. I don't really know what else to say here except thank you guys for being so supportive, and here's another chapter of TLA.

Edit: SO. I was going to post this ~a month and a half ago. Guess what? If you guessed that my computer fucking went kapoot again then hahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU WERE RIGHT. *sobbing* Anyway, enjoy this chapter and shit because I spaced out 12 times while writing it. *heart*


*insert emotional poem here*


We might die? Maybe?

The girl stared at us with large greyish eyes before giving an "eep!"

"Eek! Take whatever you want! Just don't hurt me!"

It took me a few seconds to process what she was saying, and when I did, I reeled back and held my hands up in surrender.

"Eh..! W-we're not going to hurt you! We're not going to hurt you!"

Orihime blinked a few times at that. "You aren't?"

I waved my hands in front of me frantically. "No, no! We really aren't!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Margaret pale and attempt to grin (though it turned out as more of a grimace). Molly looked over Orihime with a face that screamed "NOPE". Alexis hid behind all of us, only peeking her head out to glance at Orihime and then retract back again with a squeak.

"Oh..." she murmured to herself, making a face akin to that of a confused puppy dog's.

I had to physically restrain myself from glomping her.

She's so cute oh my God!

She shook her head a bit as she stopped zoning out and grinned sheepishly.

"Heh heh! Sorry, I'm such an airhead sometimes! It's just that I've never seen any of you around here before and I was spacing out so I wasn't sure if you were going to try to mug me or not because believe it or not even though this town looks reaaaallyyy nice, some of the people here are really, really mean-" At that point she puffed out her cheeks and imitated a flexing thug- "but that's okay because those kinds of people rarely come around, well, unless you're Kurosaki-kun because Kurosaki-kun gets in a lot of fights but he almost always wins so it's okay and-"

I believe this is the point where Ishida would step in and tell Orihime she's rambling.

As if on cue, she stopped talking and sheepishly smiled, waving her hands in the air.

"Oh, sorry I'm rambling aren't I?" she laughed. "I do that a lot."

Orihime paused thoughtfully.

"But...I haven't seen you four around town at all before. Are you new in town?"

"Ah..." I looked around the four of us nervously. Margaret elbowed me in the ribs with a strained smile. "Ummm..."

Help me, I mouthed.

The blonde rolled her eyes.

"Yes, we are!" Margaret chirped cheerfully. "We just transferred in from the United States with our school's foreign exchange student program!"

"Oh really?" Orihime gasped. "What school are you all going to?"

Margaret paled.

Shit.

My shoulders stiffened, and I felt like I was going to be sick. My hands fidgeted around nervously in my pocket before brushing against something that crinkled in my fingers. I frowned and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper.

"Um... Karakura High School?" I squeaked nervously.

Slowly, each of the others reached inside their pockets and/or whatever carrying devices were brought with them and pulled out more sheets of paper.

"Yeah... Karakura High School," Margaret muttered in confusion.

Orihime's eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas.

"Really?!" she gasped. "So do I! Where are you all staying?"

Margaret went another shade paler if that was possible. "Uhhh..."

"W-well," I stuttered, taking the reigns as quickly as humanly possible, "We were going to stay in a hotel for the remainder of our stay, but there was an error in the computer system so our rooms weren't reserved. So now we don't have anywhere to stay."

"Oh no! Is that where all of your luggage went too?"

Molly's brows furrowed. "Our what?"

"Your luggage," Orihime explained patiently. "You must have had a lot of stuff to bring over if you came in from the United States!"

Alexis peeked out from behind Molly long enough to squeak out, "I-it got lost in the flight here!"

It kind of looked like Orihime was going to cry. I'm not sure if it was because she felt bad for us or because our lies were so disgustingly unrealistic.

"I'm so sorry for you! You don't have any place to stay or any of your belongings at all?"

"Only the things that we have on us right now," Molly replied grimly. "We're looking for a place to stay right now actually."

The burnt-orange haired girl furrowed her brows for a second and then gave us a small nervous smile. "I know this might sound weird, but you all can feel free to stay with me."

Margaraet blinked. "Really?"

"Uh huh! After all, I already have a few people staying over!"

There was a chorus of "thank you"s that came from us. Orihime rubbed the back of her head shyly.

"Oh! I just remembered, I haven't even told you guys my name yet! Silly me! I'm Inoue Orihime!"

Well no shit Sherlock.

"It's very nice to meet you, Inoue...san..." Margaret mumbled, bowing awkwardly. "I'm Sichrovsky Margaret."

Alexis peeked out from behind Molly again. "I'm...Romero Alexis?"

Molly smirked. "Murray Molly."

They all stared at me when I didn't answer.

Choose a better time to space out, Casey.

"Eh? Oh, I'm Matzen Casey."

The orange haired healer smiled and bowed. "It's very nice to meet you Sichrovsky-san, Romero-san, Murray-san, Matzen-san."

Why do I have a feeling that we should've tried to hitch a ride with one of the background characters instead?


"Ah...Everyone! I'm home!"

A strawberry blonde head peeked out from around what I assumed to be the entryway to the kitchen.

"Ah! Orihime-chan, you're back from school!"

Alexis gave a small "eep!" of fear when Rangiku's full body came into site. I didn't blame her honestly. Just being in the same building as her made me feel insecure.

The Lieutenant blinked her sky blue eyes in surprise when she saw us. "Eh? Who are these people, Orihime? Friends of yours?"

Orihime laughed sheepishly. "Sort of! They needed a place to stay so-"

At that moment, Orihime was interrupted by one of the single most cliche snobby voices I have ever heard.

"Ugh! People in the world of the living are soooo vulgar!"

I paled a bit as sounds of what was probably a boxing and/or wrestling match rang through the apartment.

Someone else snorted.

"You say that about everyone who isn't you, Yumichika."

"Not everyone!" Yumichika sniffed daintily. "I actually happen to think that the fashion sense of some of the people in this world is fairly nice!"

"Quiet, both of you!" someone else, who was definitely a boy (emphasis on the boy part) snapped. There were a few murmurs of "sorry taicho".

Rangiku and Orihime glanced at each other worriedly, probably hoping that we hadn't caught most of that conversation because it was definitely loud enough for us to hear. After a few moments they seemed to shrug it off (the logic in anime never fails to impress me. It's right up there with horror movie logic) and Rangiku sighed in exasperation.

"Boys! We have guests!"

There was a sound that could only be described as a coffee table being kicked across the room and shattering into a million pieces as they scrambled to meet us. I don't care what you say, men are like cats in that they'll flip out and run to go and see something and then pretend that they couldn't have cared less in the first place and stick their nose up at it.

Yumichika and Ikkaku were the first ones to stick their head out the living room doorway like mismatched Siamese twins. Toshiro came a bit later with a look in his eyes that could be accurately termed as "childish curiosity". I'm going to say right now that I loved him with all my heart the moment I saw him and wanted to curl him up in a ball and keep him there forever.

The Tenth Division Captain's teal eyes squinted as he turned away indignantly and stuck his nose up at us with a small "hmph!" I still saw him glance at us out of the corner of his eyes a few times though.

Yumichika's feathered brows furrowed. "Who are these people, Inoue?"

Ikkaku just smirked, probably looking for someone new to intimidate.

Orihime smiled nervously and rubbed the back of her head. "These are Sichrovsky-san, Matzen-san, Romero-san, and Murray-san. They just transfered here from America and their luggage was lost in their flight as well as their hotel kicking them out so-"

Margaret made a little choked sound when Yumichika was suddenly right in front of her face, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"Ooh, this one's good," he crooned softly, fingers grasping Margaret's chin and tilting her head back and forth.

Once she was thoroughly examined, he circled the rest of us, occasionally stopping to pull gently at our hair or poke us. I flinched whenever he got close to me, and struggled to suppress a grimace when he got very close to my face and crooned, "Ooh, your eyes are a very distinguishing feature...with some makeup perhaps..."

"Knock it off Yumichika. I think you're scaring them," Ikkaku drawled before giving a very scary grin of his own.

The bald third seat's eyes skimmed over us once and then zeroed in on me with a glint that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

His hand held my head in place, and he leaned down patronizingly.

"You're pretty short, aren't ya midget?"

Oh that little shit. He did not.

My mouth opened, and just as I was about to rip him a new one, Margaret's hand slammed over my mouth. I growled in annoyance and settled on glaring at the bald shinigami, who was giving me a shit eating grin. In hindsight, I'm pretty glad that Margaret had the common sense to hold me back because we really didn't need to draw anymore attention to us then we already had.

Thankfully enough, Rangiku dished out his punishment for me.

"Be nice!" she scolded sharply, slapping him upside the head. She leaned down (come on, we aren't children, good god) with friendly sky blue eyes. "Sorry about him, he's this way with everyone. I'm Matsumoto Rangiku. The baldy you just talked to-" This was interrupted by a sharp, "Hey!" from Ikkaku. "- is Madarame Ikkaku. The girly one was Ayasegawa Yumichika. He may seem like a snob-" Another "Hey!" "- but he really does care somewhere down there. Oh, and this is Tai- I mean, Hitsugaya Toshiro."

Toshiro just gave a small "hn" at that and continued looking at us icily.

Orihime seemed nervous at the small Captain's lack of enthusiasm, so she happily chirped, "They're going to be going to school with us, Hitsugaya-san! Isn't that great?"

Another "hn."

Ikkaku, however, took the bait.

"School, huh?" he asked, leaning against the wall casually. "So when are you guys starting."

I fumbled around for the paper in my pockets. "U-um, next week it says."

"Oh, cool!" Rangiku cried. "We'll all get to go to school together!"

I sweat-dropped.

Heh heh, yeahhhhh. Going to school with some of the most abnormal kids there. Oh god, what have we gotten ourselves into?

"Hey, tell me, have you gotten your uniforms yet?" Rangiku asked excitedly.

I felt my skin pale in horror at the thought of the uniforms.

Alexis must have noticed that I was dying because she hurriedly stuttered, "Ah, n-no w-we haven't g-gotten uniforms y-yet!"

"We could pick them up for you?" Orihime suggested.

"Oh, yep, that would be great, just peachy, thanks!" Margaret squeaked.

Yep, this is it, I thought dazedly. We're all going to die.


"We're so screwed. We're so screwed," Margaret muttered later that night. "Oh god, we're going to die."

This had been going on for the past twenty minutes. We were lying on some blankets spread out on the floor of Orihime's living room, trying to go to sleep but to no avail.

"We're not going to die," Molly hissed. "So long as we stay out of the main...plot...we won't die and we'll be able to go back home."

"But how?" Alexis whispered plaintively.

"Alexis is right," I muttered. "We won't be able to somehow magically figure out how to get back home by ourselves. The only person I can think of to go to would be Kisuke Urahara. Even if we did try to stay out of any main events, we'd be starting our own subplot by going to Urahara and would most likely end up way too involved anyway."

"Kisuke Urahara?" Margaret asked in a whisper.

I sighed. "You guys don't know him. He's a shopkeeper who wears a bucket hat and is obsessed with a talking black cat."

Okay, so that might have been to much for them at the moment because all of them blanched.

"Oh god, we're gonna die," Alexis whispered.

I winced. I wanted to tell them that, no, we were not going to die, but I couldn't. If we ever wanted to even have a hope of getting back home, we would have to get involved with the storyline, and even though I'm the only one who watched Bleach, we all knew that the mortality rate in Bleach was, well, something that none of us wanted to think about right now.

"We can't really do anything about avoiding trying to get back home and being involved in the storyline anyway," Alexs whispered shakily. "But maybe we can try to do what we can to stay out of everything. S-so try not to talk to too many main characters? O-or be memorable in any way?"

"That wouldn't help much if we did get involved," I murmured. "The main character, Ichigo Kurosaki, sucks at remembering people but always ends up fighting for and with people he doesn't know anyway."

Margaret closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Casey, we need you to tell you all you know about Bleach."

I sighed. It was going to be a long night.

"Okay, so it all started when Ichigo saw these thugs knock over a memorial to a little girl- Actually, wait no. It started way before that. One hundred years ago, to be exact. There used to be a Lieutenant named Sosuke Aizen..."


A/N: Wowow this was a really short chapter. I apologize for any spelling errors there might be! I hope all of you had a happy Christmas/Hannuka/Quanza/etc.! And I hope you all have a very happy New Years! I love you all, and thank you for helping me through what has been a very tough year for me :). I'll see you all next year!

Much love,

KAi