I do not own Bleach or Skip Beat

Chapter Three – Challenger

Setsu had managed to escape through the window, but once she'd rounded the corner into the main yard, she'd run into Tessai and a redheaded boy name Jinta, cleaning. She had dug her feet into the ground as Tessai dragged her back to the shop until he threw her over his shoulder like a doll while Jinta laughed and ran ahead to tell Kisuke. Struggling, she managed to pull off one of her lace gloves and throw it just outside the yard. Find me, Ren, she thought, fighting back tears.

Not long after, she had dozed off, but a knock on the doorframe woke her before she could fall into a deep sleep. Kisuke stood in the doorway, eyes glinting. She turned in an attempt to ignore him, but the voice of a small girl made her freeze.

"You wanted my help, Mr. Urahara?"

"Yes, Ururu. Will you help me take Ms. Kyokou downstairs, please?"

Setsu glared at the little girl and snapped at Kisuke, "That's not my name."

"Well until you tell me your name that is what I will call you." He gave one of his trademark smiles behind that cursed fan of his.

"Please come with me Ms.," Ururu said, attempting to take Setsu's hand, but Setsu withdrew glaring at the girl. Ururu retracted her hand and looked at Kisuke.

"Oh, Jinta!" Kisuke called in a sing-song voice, eyes on Setsu's face. Jinta appeared in the doorway as well.

"Move it, Ururu. I'll handle this."

Setsu remained stone-like, but internally, Kyokou was emitting hate waves towards the man watching from the doorway. Setsu tried glaring at the boy, but unlike the girl, he just smiled a wicked smile and wrapped his arms under her shoulders. Ururu came around Setsu's other side and grabbed her legs. Together, they dragged her from the room.

Control, Kyokou told herself as her inner demons began to swarm around her. I don't want him to catch any of you the way Beagle did. Don't show yourselves. It was difficult, but she stayed in control. It was infuriating that two children were dragging her through the shop like a rag doll, despite her struggles. They were stronger than they looked. Tessai was waiting for them in another room. As they approached, he bent and opened a door in the ground.No! Kyokou panicked. Don't throw me down there in the dark! She began to struggle harder against her captives, eyes widening in panic.

"Down here, you'll have lots of space," Kisuke said, giddy with whatever scheme he had in mind. "I'll leave Ururu and Jinta to play with you until Ichigo gets back."

Setsu threw a hateful glance at Kisuke before vanishing down into the room below the shop. What was below was not what she expected though. The children released her and commanded her to climb down into a vast room that seemed to stretch for miles in every direction, covered in rolling sand dunes and giant boulders. The ceiling overhead was blue like the sky outside. The room was impossible! There was no way anything like this could exist below the tiny shop Kisuke ran!

Once she reached the ground, Ururu apologized and backed away from Setsu. Her prison had changed, but now she had an even lower chance of escaping from her kidnappers. Even worse, he had trusted children to be her wardens until Ichigo came back for his training.

Setsu looked around the vast room again, stepping away from the ladder as she did so. Again, she couldn't help thinking that this room was impossible. She turned to face her new wardens and discovered that Jinta had somehow acquired a large bat that was twice his size. He casually leaned against it, guarding the way back up into the shop. Ururu was sitting on a rock a short distance away and had a book open in her lap.

Great, Setsu thought. More and more, Kyokou's feelings were beginning to merge with Setsu's. Setsu was humiliated by the way she'd been dragged and forced to climb down to this room, and Kyokou was furious that she was in this kind of situation again. Why couldn't normal things happen to her like all the other actors? Trouble just seemed to find her.

. . .

Ren was growing ever more frustrated as the day wore on. There was no sign of Kyokou, but after running into that weird orange haired boy, he had felt that she was close. He kept looping the same streets and asking everyone he came across if they had seen "Setsu." None of them had, and Ren had taken his aggravation out on yet another wall. When he did find her, he knew she'd have a fit over the bruises across his knuckles.

Sighing, he leaned against the wall and looked around the street once again, wondering where to look next. The sun was beginning to set, and he was running out of time. A flash of orange across the street caught his eye; it was the same kid from earlier! Trusting his instincts, he followed the boy. They wove through alleyways to an obscure little area that Ren never would have found on his own. The boy walked into the shop while Ren watched from a distance.

Once the boy went inside, Ren approached warily, a sick feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. As he approached the main yard of the shop, he noticed something on the ground. Stooping low, he discovered a black lace glove; it was from one of the sets he had previously bought "Setsu" when they'd gone out and wasted time the last time they had played the Heel siblings. She'd been wearing them last night. Ren looked up at the shop, Kuon raging in his ears. She's inside, Kuon laughed gleefully in Ren's head. We found her.

. . .

Kisuke stared at his monitors; it wasn't possible, and yet the readings he was seeing couldn't be a miscalculation. The girl was down in the training room with Ururu and Jinta, her spiritual pressure gathered around her like a pulsating mist. Ichigo had just walked into the shop and was being greeted by Tessai, but his spiritual pressure was so weak at this point that his machines barely registered Ichigo's presence. So what was this immense spiritual pressure outside his shop? The girl's words echoed in his ears: "Brother is much stronger than me . . . He will find me, and then he will kill you."

Kisuke read the data again. Was this the girl's brother? Whoever it was outside his shop, Kisuke had never seen spirit pressure like this. The girl had been right. He was strong, and he had found them just as she had predicted. "Well, Kisuke," he mused out loud to himself, "you told her you wanted a challenge, and here it is."

. . .

Ren crashed through the front doors, "Setsu's" glove gripped tightly in his hand. He scanned the room for signs of Kyokou and then slowly made his way to the back.

"Did you have to break my doors?"

Ren spun to find an oddly dressed man watching him from the doorway. "Where is she?" he demanded. "Where are you hiding her?"

"My, my," the man said, unfolding a fan so that it obscured the lower half of his face. His hat left the rest of his face in shadow due to the dim lights of the shop. "What terrible manners. You could at least tell me your name and apologize for ruining my doors." He stepped forward, his clogs echoing in the tiny room.

"I don't have time for games," Ren growled. "What have you done with her?"

"I don't have a clue who you're speaking of."

The man in the clogs watched as the young man struggled for words. There was an aura around Ren that suggested a barely contained violence. "I'll ask you one more time," Ren said in the deadliest of voices. "I'm beginning to lose patience. Where is she? What have you done with my sister?"

. . .

Kisuke watched the young man as he began to advance. The spiritual pressure felt more like that of a hollow than a Shinigami, but this boy was human. Even if he did have the aura of a hollow, a human wouldn't be able to withstand such immense power. However, the readings on his monitor indicated that the girl down below had a very similar spirit pressure to this man who was claiming her to be his sister. By appearances, there was no way that these two could possibly be siblings, but Kisuke knew looks could be deceiving.

"You're sister? I've never met anyone like you, I'm afraid."

"She's here," the man said, thrusting his hand forward. He was holding out a lace glove that Kisuke recognized as belonging to the girl.

Clever girl, Kisuke thought. So that's what you were doing when you broke my window. You took the other one off before Tessai brought you back in so that I would assume you had left them in the room. Very clever. "Ah," he said aloud to the young man. "You caught me!" Kisuke swung around in a circle, arms spread wide. "Follow me."

The man didn't budge. "This isn't a game. Bring her to me."

"I can't. You have to come get her yourself."

Like a tiger trapped in a cage, the man warily followed Kisuke into the back of the shop.