Author's Note: Hello again, our lovely readers! Welcome to Chapter Seven of Toushirou of Oz. Thanks for taking the time to read our story!

Normal = prose, italics = thoughts, inner conversations, or Toto/Hyourinmaru talking.

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or any of its characters. They belong to Tite Kubo. However, if there was an alternate universe where I do own Bleach, I will promptly give my left arm to switch with my other self. (P.S. We don't own The Wizard of Oz, either.) :)

Chapter Seven: We Meet Again

Their little group stood outside of Orihime's gingerbread house, waiting as she gave them the last of their instructions.

"Remember," she said solemnly, "you have to follow the yellow-brick road all the way to the city of Oz, where the great wizard will give you the weapons you need to defeat my sister and save the land. Along the way you will face many trials, meet new allies and important friends, and grow stronger and stronger. Use you experience wisely, and I have no doubt you will prevail. Oh, also, do you want some of my muffins before you go? They're a new recipe and I—"

"No, thank you very much for the offer, but we're good," Toushirou said hastily. "We just hunt and eat the forest animals, it's really no big—"

"You what?!" Yuzu shouted, looking horrified and angry.

"We hunt…?" Toushirou said, confused.

"See! See! I told you he was no good! I told you!" Rukia yelled.

Orihime looked slightly nauseated. "You…kill and eat the forest animals? Did you—did you at least make sure they were non-talking ones?"

"There are ones that talk?" Madarame said. "Do those taste any better?"

"You're not supposed to taste them at all!" Yuzu shouted. "They're innocent forest creatures! What did they ever do to you?!"

"Run at us so we could skewer 'em," Madarame replied. "That was nice of them."

Orihime placed her hand on Toushirou's shoulder. "May I…?" she asked.

"Uhhh…sure?" he replied, having no clue what on earth she wanted to do, but knowing Orihime, it couldn't be bad.

She closed her eyes and muttered a few unintelligible words, and suddenly a glowing light surrounded him.

It was an eerie dark red in color.

"Oh, no," Yuzu said, staring at him in horror.

"Ha!" Rukia said. "Told you suckers so! See! See! Right there is an evil aura!"

"Now, now, if he were really evil it would be black," Orihime said soothingly. "Right now he's just…tainted."

"Tainted how?" Toushirou replied, exasperated. What the hell was going on? All this fuss over a few meals of ready-made barbecue. Jeez, the Munchkins had acted like it was perfectly normal, and why else would the animals turn into instant meals if they weren't meant to be eaten. He didn't get it.

"You're the hero, and you're supposed to help the woodland creatures, not kill them," Orihime said sadly. "They were probably trying to greet you or guide you or ask for your help when they came up to you."

Oh, Hyourinmaru said. So that's why they just waltzed up to us. Convenient.

"Not convenient!" Yuzu said. "Barbaric! Our hero looks like a threat to anyone with sensing powers! How is he going to get allies now?" she waved her frying pan around in frustration.

"He'll just have to…help people when he sees them. I'm sure the trials will purify him," Orihime said in a tone that sounded as if she was trying to reassure herself as much as her sister. "It will be alright, South. We must have faith in him."

"Wait a second, wait just a second—are you telling me that because I killed those deer and rabbits, I'm evil now?" Toushirou asked."How does that even work? All I wanted was some food! Are the Munchkins getting punished?"

"Well, it's not punishment so much as people not trusting you as much now," Orihime said apologetically. "And, well, the Munchkins were always a little gray—Heroes are held to a higher standard, though, and eating people who were trying to ask for your help doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

"Yeah, don't you have an animal translator thing? Why didn't Help tell you? Or your doggie for that matter," Yuzu said, looking at Hyourinmaru quizzically.

I was hungry, the dragon replied.

"Why, you little—" Toushirou said.

If you hit me, that will probably make your aura go darker, Hyourinmaru pointed out.

"Help!" Toushirou yelled. "Am I allowed to hit him?"

"Harm an ally?" Help's voice said. "No, that would only continue to detract from your trustworthiness points."

"You couldn't have informed me of that while I was chowing down on apparent allies?!" he yelled.

"You didn't ask," Help said in a prim tone. "Besides, animal translation comes with the Munchkin translator as an added bonus feature that you must purchase—"

"Of course," Toushirou muttered. "And my experience points are too low to get it?"

"No, actually, killing the forest creatures helped gain you some points, so you've already risen a couple levels to Level Thirty-Two," Help announced.

Toushirou stared in frustration. "Wait, so killing them helped and hurt me? I don't get it!"

"Experience is experience, no matter the deed, so it helped in that way. But it defeats the larger purpose of your occupation as a Hero, so big-picture-wise, I would suggest asking Yuzu to magic your picnic basket into a self-replenishing food source instead of hunting."

Toushirou tugged on his hair, resisted the urge to kick something, and turned to Yuzu, pasting a slightly manic if still polite smile on his face. "Can you make my picnic basket give me free sandwiches so I don't slaughter apparently harmless and intelligent forest life?"

Yuzu silently took the picnic basket from his hand while the other members of his party stepped back.

"Yo, is his smile supposed to look that scary?" Madarame asked.

"I think in this situation, it's warranted," Ayesegawa replied.

Can I have a bite of that sandwich she's putting in there? Hyourinmaru asked.

Toushirou stifled the urge to scream.

How far away is this city anyway? Hyourinmaru grumbled. We've been walking for ages.

"Stop complaining," Toushirou said. "You're not the one making the trek in high heels."

You're also not the one making the trek when you could be carried in a handy little basket if your master wasn't such a meanie, his dragon replied.

"What are you, three years old?"

Actually, yes, I'm a dog remember?

"You're a dragon."

Dog.

"Dragon."

Dog.

"Dra—oh, for Kami-sama's sake, would you just shut up already?" Toushirou said. "Madarame and Ayesegawa aren't whining!"

No, instead they're singing that incessant little tune that's driving me crazy, Hyourinmaru said, flattening his head spines in annoyance (why no one could tell he wasn't a dog was completely and utterly beyond Toushirou's comprehension—honestly, what breed of dog had spiny thingies coming out of their head?).

"Hey, that tune is helping us to move faster," Toushirou said, though he privately agreed that it could be a little less...manically cheerful. However begrudgingly Madarame managed to sing it, it still sounded way too catchy for comfort.

He sighed, adjusting the gauntlets that were part of the suit of armor that Orihime had given him to help him on his quest before he left. Apparently ancient beyond memory and destined to be worn by the hero, the armor was strong, light, and extremely well-fitting, if also unfortunately…feminine. With floral designs decorating it, a skirt-like bottom, and a faint light-blue tint to the metal, it was impressive and very, very pretty.

Essentially, he looked like a very awesome warrior-woman, especially with the high heels still firmly attached to his feet. Ayesegawa tried reassuring him that the contrast between the red shoes and the silver chainmail only made him look more striking and beautiful.

Needless to say, he wasn't much comforted, though at least the chest-plate didn't have any inane indentations for his nonexistent breasts, and the helmet managed to cover most of his face so no one would know it was him at first glance.

He sighed.

"Okay, according to Madarame, we should get to Oz in about—"

"Halt, you travelers!"

Toushirou and Hyourinmaru looked up, and a few feet in front of them, Madarame and Ayesegawa stopped and did the same.

Above them was a…flock of floating monkeys who looked rather like—

"'Halt, you travelers'? Is that the best you could come up with? How much lamer can you get?" a monkey that looked and sounded remarkably like Pinta said.

"Hey, I'd like to see you do better!" the original speaker, a Ryohei look-a-like, pronounced.

"How about, 'you, there! Yes, you in the armor with your doggie and your Munchkins! Stop!'" the Donny doppelganger said.

"Oh, come on, everyone knows the way to go is, 'Hands up, mother-bleepers!'" said Pinta.

The one who resembled Kazuya covered his face with his hands and groaned. "Guys, please, can we just agree that we need to stop them and keep them here?"

"Uh…why?" Toushirou asked.

They stopped to stare at him. Kazuya cleared his throat and said, "Because the great and powerful Wicked Witch of the West is coming here to—"

"Destroy you, puny mortal!" Ryohei yelled, waving his arms. "With a ka-chow! And a ba-blam! And a hi-yah!"

Kazuya looked up at the heavens as if asking for patience. "What my comrade means to say is that she wants to see if she should decimate you now, or wait until you're a little stronger so she can have more fun defeating you," he explained.

"So you better run, Dorothy-chan!" Pinta said.

"Uh-huh!" seconded Ryohei.

"But didn't we just tell them to stop?" Donny said. "I thought that was the point of the whole thing."

"Yeah, moron, but they should try to run if they knew what was good for them," Pinta said.

"And then we could stop them like the good minions we are!" Ryohei shouted.

Madarame strode forward, unsheathing his sword with a grin. "Oh, yeah, monkey-boy? I'd like to see you try!"

"Bring it on, Munchkin!" Ryohei said.

"Ryohei, that would be ill-advised," Kazuya said, pushing his glasses up his nose with a fur-covered hand. "You've never actually fought anyone on the level of an Eleventh Division Munchkin before and won, after all."

"He's Eleventh Division?" Ryohei yelped. "Then forget that, man! Those people are freakin' vicious!"

"Come down and fight, you coward!" Madarame said, waving his sword.

"Calm down, Ikkaku," Ayesegawa said. "There's no point wasting your energy if you can't reach him. Save it for the witch."

Toushirou felt a shiver of anticipation go up his spine. Karin. He was meeting Karin in a few minutes. He smiled, a sharp grin of fierce competition brightening his whole face.

Why are you looking so happy? Hyourinmaru said. Didn't you hear them? You're only Level Thirty-Eight! There's no way you're gonna survive the fight, even with that girly armor.

Toushirou's mood abruptly sank. Oh, shoot, he'd forgotten all about the armor and the dress and the shoes—oh, Kami-sama, the shoes.

Forget the armor and the high heels—once Karin showed up, he'd kill her easily, if only because she'd fall off her broom laughing at his predicament.

He put his face in his hands and groaned audibly.

It's okay, Master, Hyourinmaru said, his tone pitying. Maybe she'll make it quick.

Karin. Quick. Yeah, she could be that way when it came to video games. He sucked in a deep breath and summoned the tiny knife that was his only current weapon—well, besides the shoes he could still barely use for anything besides walking and turning Munchkins into bunnies. If he was going to go down, he'd go down fighting. "Let's get this over with," he said, interrupting the taunting argument taking place between Karin's minions and Madarame.

"Get what over with?" Ryohei asked.

Toushirou opened his mouth to answer, but that very second, lightning inexplicably struck the ground a couple hundred feet away from them, the thunderclap following quickly after, and storm clouds turning the blue skies instantaneously dark and gray, swirling in an ominous pattern as rain began to pelt down.

"Behold!" Kazuya said over the howling winds. "The Wicked Witch of the West, the one, the only—"

An impressive figure in a tattered black dress swooped in on a broomstick, hovering right above them. A wide-brimmed witch's hat obscured most of her face, but Toushirou would recognize the curve of that grin anywhere.

"Kurosaki Karin!" proclaimed Kazuya.

It was Karin, alright, right down to the short hair, the cocky smirk, and the graceful, easy manner with which she balanced on the broom—the deep green skin was new, though, and he'd never seen her bare quite so…much…of it before.

"Whoa," Madarame said. "I didn't know going evil made people look hotter."

"Oh, look at the design of that dress!" Ayesegawa said.

Huh, Hyourinmaru contributed. Nice going, Master. At least you'll get to die at the hands of a startlingly beautiful woman.

Toushirou could only stare and gulp.

Karin moved her broomstick closer in.

"Hello, there, Hero!" she shouted down. "Are you ready to meet the person who'll be responsible for your imminent death? Huh, Dorothy-chan? Do you want to introduce me to your friends?"

"Madarame Ikkaku, here to kick your ass!" Madarame shouted.

"Ayesegawa Yumichika, at your service, here to do the same!" Ayesegawa said.

Toto, here! Innocent little doggie who merely want to survive and eat another sandwich, thank you very much! Hyourinmaru said.

Karin frowned. "Hyourinmaru? What the—you're not even remotely dog-like!"

Would people stop saying that? Hyourinmaru said, suddenly exasperated. I'm as dog-like as it gets! You see the wagging tail? You see it? Huh?

"Whatever," Karin says, ignoring him in favor of peering over their group, as if she was still looking for someone. "Hey, Dorothy-chan, you don't happen to have anyone else in your party, do you? A certain, I dunno, white-haired Munchkin maybe? Code name Goody-Two-Shoes?"

Hyourinmaru, Madarame, and Ayesegawa all turned to look at him in various stages of inquisitiveness.

Toushirou stifled a sigh. Might as well get this over with.

"Yeah," he said, taking off his helmet. "He's right here."

Karin took one look at his face and said, "Toushirou?!"

"The one and only," he said sarcastically, giving a little bow.

She took in his pretty armor, the little picnic basket he carried on one arm, and the very conspicuous, very red high heels on his feet—and promptly burst into peals laughter.

Oh, well, Toushirou thought sourly. At least she's too busy laughing to kill me at the moment.

Endnote: And that's the end of this chapter! Thank you to everyone for reading. We're glad you've read our work and we hope you have enjoyed/are enjoying/will enjoy it. :)

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