Scheduled update! I only got 9 reviews. Not what i hoped, but it's good enough, so I'm posting this two hours early, and while I'm in school, no less! But I appreciate the reviews all the same!

Anyway, I have a poll for some stuff I would like you readers' opinion on. I haven't done a poll before so I hope it comes out right. It's on my profile, so do check it and vote!

Which squad do you want to see Ichigo in once he graduates? If you want to give me a reason as well, do so by reviewing! :)

Also, if you guys can take the time to review, do you want to see Rukia in the advanced class alongside Ichigo and Renji? She's more powerful than she's given credit for, but I want to know what you guys think!

So, here's the next chapter! Additional comments, including the names I gave Renji's friends are at the end of the chapter. Read on, and don't forget to review!

Thanks again for all the reviews, favs and alerts. I actually have more alerts after 3 chapters compared to my other story to date O.o

Disclaimer: Bleach. Not mine. 'Nuff said.


Chapter 3: Black, Orange and Red

The next day was strange. Ichigo woke up feeling different. He didn't know how, or why, just different.

"Hey Rukia," he said. She looked at him questioningly. "Do I look any different?"

She frowned. "What are you talking about? You look the same as usual. Why?"

"I don't know, I just feel different somehow, like there's some sort of… energy inside me. I've been feeling it ever since the fight yesterday."

Rukia's eyes brightened at that. "Oh right! Thanks for reminding me. I almost forgot."

"Forgot what?" Ichigo asked in confusion.

"Do you remember what happened to you before you started fighting?"

Ichigo scrunched up his face in thought. "Hmm… I know I felt really angry, then before I attacked I felt some sort of energy flowing through me."

"Yes!" Rukia said eagerly. "You were also glowing with a bluish-white aura. I didn't know you had Reiryoku!"

"Eh… what?" Ichigo asked blankly.

"Oh, it's something I call as spiritual power, because we're spirits and it's some sort of special power. Here, look!" Rukia said as she stretched out a hand, palm facing upwards. Nothing happened for a few moments until a large orb of bluish-white light materialized and hovered above her palm.

"Wow… That's so cool," Ichigo said in amazement, a childish gleam in his eye, and he scooted closer to get a closer look. "Why didn't you tell me you had something like that?"

Rukia shifted with a slightly guilty look on her face. "Well, in case you didn't have it, I didn't want to look like I was showing off. But it doesn't seem necessary now."

"What does it do?" Ichigo asked, not taking his eyes off the orb.

Rukia shrugged. "Beats me. I just found out that I had this power one day. Although, it looked like you were using it to fight. The aura you had was the same color as this. How did you do it?"

Ichigo didn't look like he was listening. "No idea," he said briskly. "Teach me how to do that," he continued, pointing eagerly at the orb.


So, as time went by, they had yet something else to amuse themselves with. According to Rukia, Ichigo had somehow been able to hit much harder when he had the aura around him. That sounded like it could come in handy. Unfortunately, he was never able to do it again, probably because he didn't know how to. What he could do, was-

"What the hell, Strawberry. How did you manage to create one that big?" Rukia asked with a hint of jealousy a few weeks after Ichigo first discovered he had reiryoku. "This is the biggest I can go, and I've been doing it for years" A ball of energy almost twice the size of hers was hovering above Ichigo's hand, which was saying something, since Rukia's own orb was about the size of her head.

Ichigo narrowed his eyes in slight annoyance. Recently, Rukia had taken to calling him 'strawberry'. She called it an endearing term. He called it aggravating. It just didn't sound at all… intimidating.

"I've no idea," he admitted, which was the truth. He didn't really know how he managed to create such a large orb. All he remembered was him wondering if he could make his orb bigger, and there it was. "Although, it does put the 'midget' part into perspective, doesn't it?" he said with a smirk.

It'd been more than a year since Ichigo died, and since then, his height had inched up slightly, while Rukia's had stayed the same. It wasn't that noticeable until they stood close to each other, but it was enough.

She growled softly at Ichigo's dig at her height. Then, she pointed her palm towards him. "Then can you do this?" she asked, and her orb of energy shot towards Ichigo.

"What the? Aah!" Ichigo cried as he scrambled to move clear of the energy. He didn't know what would happen if he touched her energy, and he wasn't about to find out. It shot past him and dissipated into thin air.

"What was that?" he asked in awe.

Rukia shrugged. "I can move my energy around. It looks awesome, but it doesn't do much; it disappears as soon as it touches something."

"Wow… teach me how to do that!" he said to Rukia, the childish gleam returning.

"Nope!" Rukia said cheerfully. "Figure it out yourself. That's for calling me a midget."


Somewhere in Inuzuri, four kids were watching a middle aged man as he stood at his stall which contained many jugs of water. He was watching every single kid that entered his line of sight with a beady eye, snarling if they got too close, obviously extremely protective of his wares.

"How many were we supposed to get again?" one of the kids, a fairly plump one, asked the rest of his friends.

Another kid with long bright red hair huffed slightly as he replied, "We've gone through this before Futoi, we need four. Which is why I needed to call all three of you; the other older kids refused to do it, and we're almost out. You really should pay more attention sometime, or one day you're going to be left behind."

"Sorry Ren-chan," the boy said guiltily.

"No matter, let's not fight right now or we'll never get this done," the red-haired kid said. He turned back towards the stall, which they were watching from cover.

"Ok, let's go through the plan again. There are four of us, so that makes things slightly tougher, especially since each of us need to carry one jug. I don't want any of you to get caught by that man, especially since he has that mean looking cleaver," he said, and all four of them collectively turned to look at the meat cleaver that was embedded slightly in the stall front. They shuddered slightly.

"We'll be fine, Renji, this isn't the first time we've done this."

"I don't deny that, but this man looks dangerous, and it never hurts to be safe. Now, here's what we'll do…"


Rukia resisted the urge to face palm as they walked. "It's been more than a few weeks already. Must you still carry that stupid stick around?"

Ichigo was walking alongside her, the stick he'd found all those weeks back still in his hands. It looked pretty weathered, but Ichigo was still carrying it around with him everywhere they went. "Well, why don't you give me a good reason why I shouldn't?"

"Because it was a hindrance, so I threw mine away, and so should you."

Ichigo gave her a look. "How is that a good reason? It's proven its worth before, so of course I still have it. You never know when it has to be called into action again."

"Whatever," Rukia replied. "It looks like it's going to break apart anytime soon anyway."

They were out walking on the streets today, nothing much on their agenda today. It was a pretty mild day. People were milling around, but it seemed quieter than usual, and there wasn't much commotion around, which was quite uncommon. Of course, it couldn't stay that way for long.

All of a sudden, they heard shouts in the distance. Frowning, they both went to investigate. The shouts led them into a two way alley, and seemed to be coming from the other side.

As they got closer, they could hear what sounded like a man shouting furiously. "Come back here you brats! I stole it with my own hard work, and I was supposed to get money from that! Give it back to me!"

Just as they exited the alley, four kids suddenly rushed past them, each clutching a jar to their chests. They were closely followed by an enraged looking middle-aged man who was brandishing a meat cleaver in his hands, shouting at the retreating backs of the kids. That normally wasn't much of a bother for the duo, but they noticed that one or two of the kids appeared to be tiring fast. It wouldn't be pretty if the man caught up to them.

"I think we better go help them," Ichigo said.

"Let's double back and cut them off," Rukia replied in agreement as they watched the kids scamper into an alleyway, and they moved to try and head the man off.


"Pant…Pant… Hurry up, Futoi," one of the boys shouted as they tried to lose their pursuer. "Man, he's persistent. Why doesn't he just give up?"

Renji looked back at them as he led the escape. He wasn't as winded as the others, but he hoped the man would tire out soon or just give up. He could only run full sprint for that long. "Maybe if you hadn't destroyed most of his other jugs, he wouldn't be so determined to catch us!" he directed at one of his friends

"How is that my fault? All I did was strap his leg to the stand. How was I to know that it was so flimsy?"

Behind them, the man shouted. "I'm going to count to ten. If you brats surrender my water before that, I might decide to spare your lives!"

"Should we give it back to him?" one of the other kids shouted to Renji.

"Hell no! We need this more than he does. And he's bluffing! Now just keep running! Hurry, he's gaining on us!"

The man shouted again. "All right, that's it! Now I'm going to kill all of you. I don't care if you give me back my water; I'll still kill you!"

"Is that a good enough answer?" Renji shouted to his friends.

They were so busy concentrating on running away that they failed to notice an orange haired kid as they ran past him. They also didn't see the stick in his hands. They also didn't see him swinging out low just as the man was about to run past him, hitting him just below his shin, sending him toppling to the ground. Unfortunately, as the stick made contact, there was a sharp 'crack' sound and the stick splintered.

"Ahh! My stick!" the boy cried to no one in particular.

That got the kids' attention. They stopped and turned round to stare in surprise at the orange haired kid, who was staring dumbly at the remains of his trusty weapon.

"Ren-chan, who is that? Do you know him?" one of them asked. Renji just stared blankly at the boy and shook his head.

"All right, who tripped me?" the man said as he started to get up.

Suddenly, a black haired girl materialized above the man and stomped on his head. The man gave a "oof!" but she didn't stop there and proceeded to trample repeatedly on his head.

After a few moments, the kid stopped, folded her arms and looked at the orange-haired boy. "Well, if you'd thrown it away in the first place, you won't be crying about it now," she said with a smirk. The boy just looked dejected.

Then, the girl hopped off the unconscious man and joined the boy, and the duo ran past the group.

"Wha… Hey! Where're you going?" Renji called as he regained the use of his voice.

"We're getting the hell out of here, or do you want the man to wake up and find you guys still standing there stupidly?"

"Ah… sure," Renji hastily replied, and they scrambled after the two of them.


"My name is Abarai Renji," Renji said to the boy and the girl when they had all taken cover in an alley. "This is Hinso [1], Futorijishi, but we call him Futoi [2], and this is Segahikui [3]," he continued, pointing to tall, shifty looking kid, the fat kid, and the short one respectively.

"Kurosaki Ichigo, and this is Rukia," Ichigo replied.

"Thanks for helping us back there. You guys were impressive!" Renji said.

"Yeah well," Ichigo shrugged. "We make it a point to help other kids in need whenever we see any," he said.

"And that man looked like he was ready to kill, and we couldn't let that happen," Rukia continued.

"That's strange. If you've been helping other kids, then why haven't I seen you before?"

"Maybe we just didn't bump into each other. We've only been doing this for about a year or so. Rukia has done it longer than that," Ichigo offered.

"Then how did you guys meet?" Segahikui asked.

"Oh, I was fighting off some bullies that were harassing me, and Rukia came to my aid. We were both loners with no family, so we decided to stick together. Besides, both our ideologies at surviving were similar," Ichigo said.

"Wait, you guys fight other older kids?" Futoi asked.

"Someone has to teach them a lesson for stealing and beating up other kids that are younger than them. It's despicable," Rukia said.

All three of Renji's friends seemed awestruck to hear her say that, but only Renji seemed to notice it.

"Anyway, we never stay in one place for long, so since you guys also move around, it would be harder for us to bump into each other," Rukia added.

Renji looked surprised. "Oh, we don't move around. We're permanently staying in a large house on the outskirts of this district."

"Why are you guys located there?" Rukia asked in confusion.

"That's because the conditions in Inuzuri are so bad that the outskirts are actually in a better condition than inside the district."

"You have a point there," Rukia said. Her eyes then fell on the four jugs of water they were carrying. "You need that much water?"

"Of course not!" Hinso said. "We also managed to snag some candy as well."

"That's not what she meant," Ichigo cut in with a roll of his eyes. "Why did you guys take four jugs?"

"Didn't we tell you?" Renji spoke up again. "This is not only meant for us; it's meant for the other kids that are waiting back at the cave."

"Really?" Rukia and Ichigo asked in unison.

"Yeah, we do. Some of these kids have trouble fending for themselves, so we take some of them in and take care of them. We currently have ten or so, I think. The house is quite huge, and we scavenge items from abandoned houses as well," Renji said with a slight smile.

"That's real nice I guess, but how do the four of you handle all the kids?" Ichigo asked.

"No no, we have a couple of other older kids to help as well, but they don't really do it willingly and end up getting selfish sometimes."

"That's bullying those younger kids! Why don't you stop them? Or better yet, throw them out?" Rukia asked in indignation.

"We would, and we've tried, but it's not really in the best interests of everyone. Besides, we need their help too. The four of us aren't enough to care for all the kids, and we can't just abandon any of them," Renji said ruefully.

"That's why Rukia and I only prefer to help any kid we come across and not take them in. Eventually, we're going to find ourselves overwhelmed, and that's not a good thing since we also prefer to move around."

"Hey!" Renji said as a brainwave occurred to him. "Why don't you two join us too? We could use the extra help as well. We've seen what you guys can do; you'll definitely make things smoother for us. Besides, the four of us," Renji gestured to the other three. "We're like family too, since we don't have any of our real family with us. We could all be together as a family!"

"I don't know…" Rukia trailed off as she looked at Ichigo, and he looked back at her.

They were both thinking the same thing. Although it was tempting to join them, they weren't really comfortable with working with others after having so efficiently worked with each other for the past year.

Also, their theft attempt was more proof that others might become a liability. Futoi had been lagging behind the rest, and given sufficient time, he would've most definitely been caught by the man, and who knows what he would do to him. But then again, they would be helping Renji and his friends with their workload as well.

"Should we?" Rukia asked Ichigo in a low voice.

"I don't see why not. We can still help any kid we see on the streets. I suppose this can be considered an extension to what we do."

Eventually, they came to a decision and turned back to Renji.

"Sure, we'll join you," Ichigo said with a smile, one which Rukia had too.


Ok, names. [1] Hinso means 'thin' and 'seedy looking.' Fits right?

[2] Futorijishi means fat/chubby, and so is Futoi

[3] Segahikui means short person. I really don't know if it's accurate since I was using an online translator, but just go with it. They aren't around for long anyways.

I'm confused between Reiryoku and Reiatsu, so I apologize if I got them mixed up.

Since Rukia knew about her powers to some extent, I suppose she should have a slightly better control over them even though she doesn't know how to utilize them.

So I really hope you guys can review once again! Hoping to break past 10 a chapter ^^! Also, check out the poll on my profile. If you want to give your reasons, do so through reviews!

Till then, see you guys on Saturday!