Bleach and all of the things it incorporates are not mine. THEY ARE NOT MINE! So, nobody sue me.


If you don't risk anything, you risk even more. – Erica Jong


Day 4


I got up before my alarm went off. Heresy, I know, but I was too keyed up to sleep for long.

I did get to spend some quality time with my mother for one, which is something that didn't happen often. It isn't for lack of trying on either of our parts. It is just that we don't have common hobbies. My mom was, and still is, a girly-girl. She cleans, she cooks, she gossips, she sews, she shops – the basic Brady mother type.

In contrast, all my attempts at cooking have resulted in the charred remains of what was once a mix of ingredients being scraped off the inside of the stove, or off the ceiling in the case of one ill fated soufflé. I can clean, but I don't get the happy vibe from doing it. I hate gossips. I find needles more useful for jabbing Ichigo in the behind during class (that was a fun morning). I do like shopping, though – just not for the same things she does.

So, it was an Arisawa women morning, which I enjoyed.

Plus, I got a cookie out of it. Mom's snickerdoodles equal YES! always.

Another run to the factory meant another morning of waiting for everyone else to show up. Was I the only one who realized an alarm clock going off meant it was time to get out of bed? Or was it just because, boot camp aside, it was still summer vacation? One of life's great mysteries, I suppose.

Orihime beat Mizuiro by two minutes, then Mizurio himself, then Yasutora, and right when he was about to reach our block, I felt Keigo's aura halt, waver and then vanish.

You didn't have to have Orihime's massive intellect to know what he was planning.

"It appears he wants to surprise us today," Yoruichi-sensei said, echoing my thoughts.

"Kojima-kun, can you sense him this time?" Orihime asked.

Mizuiro blinked in surprise and then seemed to reconsider her request. He took off the seki-seki diadem and set it on a bench nearby, then tilted his head while his eyes got glazed over.

"…No," Mizuiro finally said. "I can't feel him, even a little."

"Yoruichi-sensei, how about you?" I asked.

"No, I cannot," Yoruichi-sensei said. "It's actually quite a good thing. If I cannot feel him, I doubt any of the Soul Society's Shinigami will be able to surpass my own senses."

Well, there was that. Maybe we could just convince Keigo to go in alone and he could walk out with Rukia before anybody noticed what –

Pop.

"GUYS!"

'Ohholyshitfuckme - !'

"HYA!"

Thwack.

And that was why Orihime had to break out the Shun Shun Rikka before we even got inside the factory.


Keigo was an idiot in school, but he actually did have some common sense. You just had to hammer and chisel away at his peanut sized brain before you found it. Upon Shun'ō and Ayame returning his consciousness to him, he looked back on his actions and decided that just appearing out of nowhere and screaming at the top of his lungs while within attack range of a trained fighter probably wasn't something he should repeat.

I could have told him that to begin with.

Anyway….

BEGIN THE TRAINING MONTAGE!

…I wish.

Why the hell does Rocky get his weeks of Hell compressed into a three minute scene accompanied by inspirational music, but I, Arisawa Tatsuki, a girl who could beat Rocky with one hand, must struggle through mine the old fashioned way? I want justice!

I took a break from pounding away at the targets and asked Orihime to practice firing off Tsubaki at me. She wasn't too keen on the whole idea. It took me AND Yoruichi-sensei seven whole minutes of wheedling before she finally gave in. Tsubaki didn't take any encouragement at all.

A war cry sounded and he started attacking me.

My reasons for asking Orihime to do this were two in number – one, she needed to get more practice attacking others. Two, I needed to shock my own abilities awake. Sounds simple, right? Here's what actually happened, dashing my hopes of a nice ending to the spar to the ground with a wet, unmerciful SPLAT!

I did a good job of avoiding Tsubaki's attacks for a little while. He wasn't quite up to ramming speed, mostly because I kept ducking his assaults and forcing him to stop and re-aim, or just swing around wide and come in again. The guy could not perform tight turns at all. Had I given him the leeway to charge for a while, I'm sure he would have been going too fast for me to avoid entirely.

As it was, ten minutes of weaving around the fairy bastard was starting to wear me out. I was breathing hard and I could feel sweat soaking into my bra. I hated that, because it was laundry day for me and I was wearing a regular bra. Regular bras do not handle sweat and exercise well, not mine at least. The damn thing was twisting and the metal hooks were scratching against my skin and ITCHING!

Anyway, underwear issues aside, Tsubaki's attacks were getting closer and closer to me each time. Had I been given the time to spare, I could have looked over at Orihime and seen her twitching, either from tiredness or concern that Tsubaki would actually hurt me.

What happened next totally killed that fear for all time.

I finally didn't make a dodge in time and Tsubaki screamed in triumph before his cutting shield collided with my skin and bounced off like a paper airplane.

I felt like someone had slapped me with a ruler, but that was fading away even as Tsubaki floated back up from the floor he had fallen too.

I wasn't hurt in the least and I didn't even have my armor on!

'What. The. Hell?'

Okay, he might not have been strong enough to kill the hollow, but Tsubaki had put one big dent in her mask. Yet I didn't have a mark on me.

I was wondering what the hell was going on, but Tsubaki wasn't. He knew who he wanted to blame.

"Damn it woman!" Tsubaki hollered at Orihime. "How am I supposed to kill someone if you don't will it?!"

"What are you talking a… you were trying to kill me?!" I shrieked.

"Not kill, just maim," Tsubaki shrugged. Little asshole. "Still amounts to the same thing though. I can't to do anything unless you get your act together!" Tsubaki yelled at Orihime.

"But I didn't want to kill Tatsuki-chan," Orihime defended herself.

"Then at least let me rough her up a bit! This is training, how are you supposed to get stronger if you don't treat it like the real deal?!"

"He has a point," Yoruichi-sensei said, coming over to us from where he had been chatting with Mizuiro about… something.

"The whole point of a spar is to prepare for actual combat. If you were fighting someone who was intending to kill you, do you think an attack like that would deter them?"

"No, but…." Orihime trailed off.

Yoruichi-sensei wasn't letting up. "No buts. The defenders of the Soul Society will kill to keep it safe. They are what stand between you and Kuchiki. Understand?"

Talk about a downer.

…. Unfortunately….

…They both had a point.

'Sorry Orihime-chan.'


"Okay, come at me," I said.

Keigo looked at me like I was insane.

"No way," Keigo said.

"Attack."

"No."

"Begin."

"Not going to happen."

"Fight."

"Are you kidding?"

"Kya!"

"AUGH!"

"Asano, I will make sure at least one of us comes out of this day a better fighter!"

"HELP ME!"

Keigo vanished.

"…I wonder how long you can stay like that?"

'He'll thank me for it later.'

I was going to make Keigo stay invisible and untouchable for as long as he could push it and then I was going to make him push it for even more. Nothing like repetition and physical agony to let you know you're progressing in something. Besides, if the chicken wouldn't take me up on the offer of karate lessons, then his power was really the only thing he had going for him.

Ahem, now then.

'Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits. Huhuhuhuhuh….'

And no, I was not getting a kick out of stalking my own classmate.

… Well, not much of one at any rate.


"So, how's the reiatsu repression going?"

Mizuiro looked up at me from his sitting position on the floor space he had occupied for the past few days. I had interrupted him in the middle of his meditating, which he was getting very good at. I know this because he hadn't even looked up when Keigo knocked over a steel barrel that made a clanging sound loud enough to make Yoruichi-sensei screech. The sound had not even registered with him, I think.

"…Oh, very well, I think. I can almost keep it down without thinking about it by now," Mizuiro said.

"Really? So, no more hearing other people's thoughts?"

"Yes. Tonight I'm going to try and sleep without this thing," Mizuiro tapped the diadem. "I think I've reached the point where I can do it. I haven't just been practicing with you guys, you know. I do it when I am at home as well."

That was actually pretty cool of him. We were working with Yoruichi-sensei from early in the morning and he wouldn't let us go home until around sunset. I was dead on my feet every time I headed back to my house and I had a body that was used to strenuous workouts. Then again, it wasn't like Mizuiro was doing kata all day. Maybe he was just naturally resistant to the headaches that form with too much thinking.

"So, what's it like? Repressing the stuff, I mean."

"It's… not what you're used to. The first day, I kept getting flashes of your thoughts and drawing the reiatsu out, or at least trying to, is a lot different than getting rid of it. For one, you can feel it resisting."

"Huh?"

"It's part of you. It isn't supposed to be shoved down like. It is possible, sure, but it doesn't feel good."

"It hurts?"

"No, there's no pain. It just gets kind of uncomfortable after a while. Kind of like sitting on your knees for a really long time. It isn't anything too big, though. I'll take the discomfort over the telepathy any day."

"…Hey, Mizuiro?"

"Yes?"

"If I ever get enough money to spend a weekend gambling – "

"I am not going to help you cheat the card dealers, Arisawa-san."

"…"

"…No, I didn't read your mind."

"Darn."


"Okay, let 'er rip!"

Yasutora and I were getting some space from the others and had moved up to the second floor of the factory for practice. We both needed to kick start out powers, so working together gave us both a reminder of what we had to accomplish. Plus, he wasn't too afraid of taking a swing at me. I was too good at dodging for him to hit me too hard and he was too big for me to hurt unless I really put my mind to it.

We were both fighting with our reiatsu going full blast. Well, as close to full blast as we could get it. Both of us were still having trouble keeping it within our grasp, me more than him. Yoruichi-sensei said that if we could fight while our control was unstable, it would make fighting when we had our powers in hand easier in comparison.

Personally, I think he just likes making things difficult.

Anyway, I was waiting for Yasutora to take another go at me. The dude actually is a lot faster than you'd think. He just isn't as fast as me.

…Which is actually really good because one good hit from him would likely keep me down for a while. Yasutora doesn't have any formal fighting training, but he makes up for it with raw strength and lots of schoolyard encounters. Apparently a lot of people go after him because of his size.

I ducked his massive fist and sent a kick at his knee. It connected, but didn't do more than make him grunt. Like I said, we weren't really trying to hurt each other.

Our reiatsu didn't really add anything physical to our attacks. Holding it up like we were enhanced our spiritual senses and gave me personally something of a 'he's going to do so-and-so to you right now' sixth fighting sense. Then again, it could have just been an overall heightened state of awareness.

Still, I wouldn't have used it in a real fight. It was too much work for too little gain. Like right now – Yasutora pulling back to take a moment and reassert his control over the troublesome stuff.

I could feel it roiling around under his skin like bubbling water. The stuff just did not want to listen to him. It didn't want to listen to me either for that matter. Still, Yasutora was doing better than me. He could hang onto it for a longer amount of time. And he could funnel it into his arms for his strikes, though I didn't know why he bothered doing that. It was like packing a pipe full of air and compressing even more into it until it all found a way out. The thing was, we still hadn't found out how to direct that force. It just bled away back into us or out into the air.

Of course, that wouldn't last.

Guess which one of us figured out how to direct that released power to activate our abilities first.

Go on, guess.

"Ready?" I asked.

"… Yeah," Yasutora said after a moment.

He had pushed a lot of his energy into his right arm, so I knew he was going to go at me from that side. I loosened up my knees and waited for him to move. Yasutora charged, drawing his arm back for a swing. I jumped back, out of his range, and bent down a bit to get under his guard. Theoretically, this would allow for me to go for his stomach.

Too bad my theories hadn't accounted for a huge fucking energy blast to come right at me.

'SHIT!'

Jump to the left, Tatsuki! GET TO THE FUCKING LEFT!

…Whoop, there's a wall there.


"Tatsuki-chan?"

Shun Shun Rikka, revitalize!

…Owie.

Thankfully, the pain was receding. Not as fast as I would like, but it was going away. Gotta love Orihime. You really do.

"Stupid bitch! Why did you jump into a wall when this big guy was going at you?"

…Tsubaki, not so much.

Maybe Orihime's next task could be getting out the Shun Shun Rikka one set at a time?

Oh God, I had jumped straight into a wall. That was so damn stupid of me. Then again, considering what I was trying to avoid….

'Hey, why aren't I all crispy?'

"Sado, did the attack hit?"

Everyone was crowding around me. The blast had caused enough of a disturbance to be heard and felt downstairs, and Yoruichi-sensei had herded everyone up to see what the heck us stupid young ones had managed to do this time.

So, everyone was there to see me get healed up, except no one was looking that sick. Which was weird, because if that attack really had hit me, then I know someone would have puked from the gore.

"Tatsuki-chan, look," Orihime said urgently, pointing at me.

I looked down at my body, something I probably should have done to begin with, and saw the remains of liquid mercury type stuff dripping off of my body and dissolving upon contact with the floor.

'…NO! COME BACK! COME!! BACK!!'

"I didn't see all of it," Yasutora said. "Just a little. But I think, right when you jumped away, that stuff came out of your skin and protected you from the worst of the blast. Sorry about that by the way."

"S'okay," I muttered, preoccupied with trying to get what was left of the armor to harden back up again. So far, I was not having any luck. The most I seemed to be doing was slowing the melting down. It was dripping off less, but it still wasn't holding to my skin. Damn.

"Are you all right?" Yoruichi-sensei asked, padding up to where I was sitting against the wall.

Sadly, answering that question took my concentration away from the armor and it vanished all the way. Life doth sucketh.

"Oh, why me…?! Yes Yoruichi-sensei, I am fine."

"Well, then."

'Hey, he looks kind of mad ohholyGodno!'

Aura of Doom™.

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE KIND OF ATTENTION THAT BLAST ATTRACTED! YOU JUST BLEW A WALL OUT!"

Oh hey, he wasn't scratching me. Score.

Come to think of it, were people looking up at us?

I turned my back on Yoruichi-sensei's tirade against stupidity and looked out the huge gaping hole Yasutora had created. Yeah, there were people. Lots of people. Mostly construction workers from the site a block over.

'They look real tiny from he – OW!'

Damn it, there was the scratching.

"No staring, you stupid girl! They'll see you! All of you out the back door, now!" Yoruichi-sensei barked.

We all scrambled to comply, me especially. His claws hurt.

Unfortunately, we were perhaps scrambling a bit too quickly. We all clumped together trying to get down the stairs and back to the first floor at the same time, and poor Mizuiro got shoved down the steps by an ill-placed elbow.

With no spare time for the Shun Shun Rikka treatment, Yasutora tossed Mizuiro over his shoulder like a damsel in distress and we beat it out of the factory for the last time.

At least I wouldn't have to see those damn targets any more.


Day 5


Well, it had finally come.

My last day to get everything under wraps.

PANIC!

The night before Yoruichi-sensei had given us a set of directions to an empty lot at the edge of Karakura that would hopefully give us some privacy while we worked. I didn't know about Keigo, but I no desire for my photo to get plastered on the front page of some tabloid.

That night, while I applied Neosporin to my newest cat scratch, a plan had formed in my mind. It was stupid, it was risky and it was likely to get me killed (or mauled), but I didn't care.

I was getting my super shiny armor of speedy coolness and that was that, damn it!

The only hitch was I needed some help to do it.

Orihime was definitely out. I couldn't ask her to do this.

Mizuiro… likewise. Making me relive the whole ordeal would almost definitely work, but as far as I knew he hadn't been practicing mind control. Also, I didn't know if he was even capable of that or if his abilities ended at listening in on thoughts. Either way, I didn't want to be a catatonic vegetable because he messed up my head while trying to help.

Keigo was a definite no-no. He could surprise me by popping out of nowhere, but I didn't see him as a real threat and I was going to have to be really scared for this to work.

Which left Yasutora and Yoruichi-sensei.

Yoruichi-sensei was a definite threat to my health and safety. It wasn't just that he scared the living fuck out of me when he was mad, though that did contribute some of it. There was… okay, remember that aura of Doom™ he gets when he is mad? Well, his reiatsu leaks through to it and - while I would have to ask Mizuiro to see if this is true - from the strength of just that tiny amount, I think Yoruichi-sensei is repressing his reiatsu around us.

A lot.

Which would mean he is the strongest out of us all, probably stronger than all of us combined, and he could definitely rip me into a thousand tiny pieces, adorable kitty cat body or not.

Now, while this is good news for us saving Rukia, I simply don't feel comfortable asking Yoruichi-sensei to come at me full throttle in an attempt to give my powers the proper shock they need to wake up. A – because he might actually do it and thus kill my ass. B – because he might really be a responsible teacher and tell me to go stand in front of a train if I want to risk my life so badly.

A train would not work.

It was the blast from Yasutora that had finally gotten me to thinking that I had been going at this the wrong way. All of us had different powers. What I don't think any of us realized (except maybe Yoruichi-sensei), and what I had not realized until the day before, was just how different they were.

I'm a fighter. I think that's why my powers came out the way they did. With the others, who had never been in a karate class with a sensei saying practice and restraint and focus and only kill if you will be killed otherwise, just remembering the fear and panic while trying to yank on their reiatsu at the same time had been enough.

Me?

I repressed that fear. I repressed the mere memory of fear. I. Was. A. Fighter. It was what I had been trained to do. Do not fear, just do it. Ergo, I could remember that hollow beating the shit out of me until the sun went super nova and it would not do shit because I knew I wasn't really in danger!

I could jump away from a train. A train could not double back around to flatten me on another try. Therefore, unless both my legs were broken, a train was not a suitable threat to my life.

I had to be fighting for my life. I had to be afraid for my life or for the life of someone I cared about. I had to want to fight, to live, to win. It had to be the real freaking thing, or it was no good. I needed to be bleeding and sweating and dodging and cursing and needing that armor.

That was why it hadn't shown up since the attack on Orihime and me until Yasutora blasted me.

I hadn't needed it until there was no way for me to dodge an attack that would have flash fried me.

To get my power, I needed someone to try to kill me.

And I am totally not joking about this.

So, I poured my all into training that day. I fought my shadow until I was ready to collapse from exhaustion when Yoruichi-sensei let us call it quits.

I walked away like I usually did and kept going until I got home. I ate my dinner with my parents, took a shower and crawled into bed.

Then I waited.

The numbers on my new clock seemed to be going in slow motion.

Finally, at 11:30 at night, I got out of bed, got dressed and had the phone operator connect me to Yasutora.

And I asked him to meet me at the highway turnoff that led to the forest outside of Karakura in an hour.


He actually agreed to meet me.

When a girl calls up a guy she doesn't know that well at midnight and asks for his help, and he says he will come, it says a lot about that guy.

Yasutora, you kick ass.

I was actually the one who showed up second. His place is closer to Karakura's edge than mine. I knew it was him, not because of his ridiculous size, but because he had on a violently green tropical shirt that made my eyes hurt even in the dark. I kind of hope he is colorblind, otherwise he is severely fashion impaired.

"So, what's up?" Yasutora asked me when I pulled up beside him.

"I need your help getting my power going," I said.

"What?"

"I think I know why I've been having so much trouble getting it to come out on my own. It needs a push. It only came out when I really needed it, once against the hollow at our school and then again when you blasted me."

"So… you want me to attack you?"

Smart guy, ain't he?

"Pretty much, yeah. I can't ask Orihime to do, and Asano and Kojima aren't really suited for it."

Yasutora was silent for a moment. Then…

"…Arisawa-san, this…."

…Is something I am totally okay with?

"…Is a really bad idea."

Well, whatever. I was kind of expecting that one, too.

"I can't think of anything else, Sado. I'm running out of time and I don't want to get left behind."

'Please understand, Yasutora, please.'

"You want to help Ichigo, right? Well, I do, too. I've been fighting ever since I can remember and I know I can be a help to him if I just get my powers under control. I owe Rukia for saving me, too. I gotta pay her back for that. I can't go to the Soul Society unless you help me!"

That was all I could say.

There weren't words to express the burning in my heart, the physical ache that throbbed at the thought of my two best friends going off to fight a battle without me, to know that I was once again nothing but a burden. I hated it. I had to go to the Soul Society with them. I had to.

To be useless, to be a spectator….

That was not how I had lived my life until this point.

That was not going to change now.

But what if Yasutora couldn't see that?!

He didn't say anything. It was scaring me and I really kind of hated his guts for that.

This was it. My future was hanging in Yasutora's fingertips. He could pull me up or toss me down.

'Yasutora, you had better help me or I. Swear. To. God! ….'

"…You're like me."

Uh….

What?

Last I checked, I was not tall, dark and handsome. Nor was I a guy.

…Not that I would have minded the tall part….

"…You want to fight with Ichigo. You want to watch his back when he can't," Yasutora said.

…He got it.

He actually understood!

WOO-HOO!

"Yes, damn it all," I said.

Yasutora stared at me really hard for just a second. It was slightly creepy. The guy might be as mellow as all Hell, but he is big! He has muscles on his muscles.

"…I'll help," Yasutora finally said.

HAPPY DAY!

…Night. Whatever.

"Then let's go," I said.


Next time – Venture forth into the darkness, young knight, and awaken the strength to do battle!

And do it quick, 'cause Chad's much faster than he looks.

In regards to a certain someone asking about Uryuu's behavior during the group interrupting his training session, had it been just the guys then I think he would have been much less forgiving. However, let us remember THE PRIDE OF THE QUINCY, and how Uryuu is so damn polite that it really makes you wonder if he wasn't born back in the 1800's. It was really for Orihime and Tatsuki's sake that Uryuu put up with them all. …Mostly Orihime. I seriously can't ever imagine Ishida-kun being rude to a woman, can you?

And since I know somebody is going to bring it up, YES, Tatsuki was kind of hard on Orihime during their spar, but seriously – the girl DOES have violence issues. Orihime, that is. Not Tatsuki. She saw Yammy attacking people, one of whom was her best friend, and Tsubaki STILL didn't have enough killing intent to hurt Yammy. Tatsuki recognizes this in Orihime and is trying to gently change it. She doesn't want Orihime to lose her Orihimeness, but Tatsuki also knows that there is likely to be some nasty trouble up ahead in the Soul Society and that Orihime will stand a better chance if she can protect herself.

Above all else, remember that this is an alternate universe story, and that means there are going to be some changes in both the plot and in the characters.

Tatsuki still thinks she can and should protect Orihime from trouble, but that has begun to change into something else and it will continue to do so. Not too fast, though.

And NO, this isn't going to turn into a shoujou-ai romance. They are friends. That's it.

Ciao.