A/N Sorry It's so late guys, I've been super-busy with college work so I've really just been writing little bits whenever I found I had a few minutes free. Hope it's okay :D

And as always I love to hear from you so please drop me a comment if you want :) See you when I next update


Chapter 9

*…* = thinking
"…" = speaking


Matsumoto looked up with a puzzled expression as her captain returned to the room, she could have sworn he was just muttering something about disappearing shop-keepers, but that might have just been her imagination.

"What did Urahara want to ask you?" she asked as she slouched in front of the TV, wrist relaxed as she flicked through the channels. The very image of tranquillity.

He sighed, sitting despondently in the only seat not taken up by his lazy vice-captain. "Just wanted me to test out some new gigai he's developed."

"Well? Are you gonna?" Her eyes didn't leave the TV screen as an advert for lipstick flashed across the monitor, she pursed her lips as she wondered whether the colour would suit her.

"I guess so; I doubt anything interesting's going to happen anyway…" His words trailed off as he realised that the redhead wasn't paying him any attention. Well, it wasn't like he wasn't used to it by now. He stood up, intent on leaving; She always complained that he didn't speak to her enough, and now here he was trying to have a conversation with her and she was ignoring him.

"Wait! Captain, where're you going?" Matsumoto looked up just as he was about to leave the room, his hand resting on the door-handle. He turned around and their eyes met, his flashing angrily and hers filled with concern for her young captain.

"I'm going to go train, though I don't see how that's any of your business." He answered sharply.

"All you do these days is train and go on missions. Take a break; let yourself relax for a bit." She kept eye contact with him, desperate for him not to push himself further. It did seem that all he did these days was work and train; she couldn't remember the last time he had done anything she would count as 'fun' (although she suspected that their thoughts on what constituted fun were probably quite different…)

"Please, Captain, can you not train tonight?" She saw him beginning to hesitate and went in for the final push. "Please, for me?" She asked sweetly, her eyes wide and dewy in a well-practised kicked-puppy expression.

After a few moments he sighed, admitting defeat. "Fine, I won't train. But I can't sit still whilst I'm in this mood, is there anything that needs doing?"

She thought for a minute, her finger tapping her chin as she pondered everything which could possible need doing.

"Ah-ha, I've got it!" She answered enthusiastically, "Urahara said there wasn't much food left in the shop, you could go down to the shop and get some groceries!" Somehow she managed to make it sound like an epic adventure, instead of a trip to the supermarket. "Oh, and it would let you try out your new gigai. Two birds with one stone, Captain." She said with an enticing grin, hoping he would accept her idea.

"Hmph, fine… I'll be back in a bit." Then he turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Matsumoto just sat back on the sofa and let out a sigh of relief. At least she knew today wasn't going to be the day her captain pushed himself just that little bit too far and finally fell off of the edge he'd been teetering on for the last four years.


"Bye Sensei!" called the little boy as he left the building, one hand waving wildly in the air and the other clutching at the side of his mother's long skirt as she dragged the child away from where his teacher stood waving in the doorway.

Karin chuckled to herself; teaching the younger kids' classes always cheered her up. She didn't know why; perhaps it was because it reminded her of how her family was in a happier time. Took her back to when her and Yuzu would look up from playing with their toys to see their mother and Ichigo returning home, his hand always clasping a long-fingered hand or the edge of her skirt. How she would reach down to ruffle his messy orange hair and he would look up at her with equal amounts of adoration and joy, his expression so innocent and unguarded it could break your heart.

She missed that expression on her brother.

She missed her brother.

Ichigo barely ever came home to visit these days. When he had first moved to soul society he had come back to see them at least once a month, now they were lucky if they got a visit twice a year. She knew she couldn't blame him (it was his job after-all) but she couldn't help but feel abandoned, especially after…

No, she couldn't let herself start thinking about that again, she'd spent too long pushing that bastard out of her head for him to sneak back in now. She shoved any thoughts of the past out of her head as she began sweeping the floor.

She spent a while cleaning up, hoping to ease the burden on Tatsuki when she arrived the next morning, and once she was satisfied she stood back and looked around the room with a tiny smile on her lips, content with her work. She set the broom against the wall and left the building, locking the door behind her before turning towards home.

She trudged miserably through the streets as rain began to pelt her, the already grey sky growing even darker as thick black clouds billowed above the city. Karin sighed, pushing a wet lock of black hair out of her eyes as she kept her head down and marched onwards. Right now she just wanted to get home, get dry, and go to sleep.

She was just around the corner from the house when it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen.

She felt a sudden burst of reiatsu flare up not too far away. If the inhabitants of Urahara's shop had been in town she may have been tempted to just leave it to them, but as it stood it seemed as though she was the only one who could do anything to stop it.

She could feel the wickedness and pure destructive energy radiating from the spot and guessed it was almost definitely an adjuchas, probably of middle-level strength from the amount of reiatsu emanating from the spot on the other side of town.

She quickly ran to her house, juggling the keys between her hands as she almost dropped them in her haste, ducked inside the doorway and drew out her sheathed sword. She was gone before the door had even swung shut, locking automatically.

She ran towards the source of the reiatsu -not too far away, to the north of the centre of town- sliding her sword through her belt as she ran so that it bounced securely at her hip. She nodded happily. "This looks like it'll be a good one." She spoke out loud as she smiled in anticipation, pushing herself to run faster as she neared the spot.


Toushiro walked uncomfortably towards where his lieutenant had promised there was a very affordable corner shop. The reason he was uncomfortable was his new gigai. It felt weird, almost as though it was too tight and was crushing his spirit-body (although that was impossible since he had no physical form to ibe/i crushed.) The whole experience was really rather unpleasant.

He grimaced as he felt a drop of rain on his cheek *Just what I need! Rain!* He soldiered on as he continued his trek through the ever-increasing downpour; he was only a few minutes away from the shop and he wasn't going to turn back now. He couldn't bear to be in that building for another minute. It brought back too many bad memories…

Well, not bad memories, just things he'd rather forget. Things he was better off forgetting. For his sake.

For her sake.

He grimaced as he carried on walking; ever since Urahara had mentioned Karin he hadn't been able to get her out of his head, he wanted to see her so badly but he knew he couldn't. And it wasn't like people had told him; when he'd - admittedly quite awkwardly - asked Ukitake what it felt like to miss someone you loved the older man had told him (after gushing for about half an hour about how his "little-Shiro" was growing up) that you thought about them every day, that you would remember the smallest details about them and how they made you feel.

But if someone had asked him how he'd felt when he was around Karin he wouldn't be able to explain it; if someone had asked him to describe her face he couldn't have gone into detail. On the other hand, if someone had asked to describe what she was like he could have talked for hours, about how she was strong and smart, sarcastic and witty, how she could catch him completely off his guard and still make him feel more comfortable than he'd felt in years. He'd told Ukitake that and the white-haired captain had just chuckled and told him that obviously it was real love. When Toushiro had asked what he meant the older captain had just ruffled his hair and left, giggling quietly to himself.

"Damn useless Ukitake…" The young captain muttered as he walked towards the lit shop entrance, the doors sliding open smoothly as he stepped inside out of the rain. He scooped up a small shopping basket and –after slicking his hair out of his face—he began to move down the aisles. His mind wandered as he went about the menial task, every now and then he would look back at the list Matsumoto had hastily stuffed into his hand as he had left.

Unsurprisingly it contained alcohol.

Probably even less surprisingly, he wasn't planning on buying it for her. If she wanted to get drunk she could pay for it herself.

It seemed as though he had only been there a few minutes when he found himself at the end of the last aisle. He moved to the first free checkout desk, noticeably ignoring the appreciative looks thrown at him by the woman who was scanning his items through the machine as he waited impatiently for her to finish. He wanted to get back soon, even though he'd felt anxious and uncomfortable at the Urahara shop. There was something weird in the air tonight, and he'd really rather not be caught out in the open by whatever it was.

When the girl was finally finished ogling him and packing his bags, he paid (he was pretty sure she had given him a discount) and left carrying a bag in each hand. They weren't heavy so he wasn't really bothered by it, but during his time in the shop the rain had gotten even heavier. It was now so heavy that he could barely see five meters in front of him, and his hearing was pretty-much completely nullified. He groaned, this was going to be an unpleasant walk home.

As he moved through the pounding rain he became increasing uneasy, something was really not right. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on edge and his entire body was tense, as though readying itself for a battle. He tried to check the area around him but could see nothing through the downpour which pelted the pavement around him. His head whipped back and forth as he reached for the soul candy in his pocket.

He quickly popped it in his mouth; after all it was better to be safe and forced to handle the ridiculous soul Urahara had fobbed off on him than to be dead. He frowned as he found he couldn't even swallow it, it was as though the gigai refused to accept the artificial soul. He kept trying and found the same thing happened again and again, if anything the gigai was beginning to feel even tighter than before, as though it didn't want to let him out.

"Damn freaky shopkeeper, what did he do to this thing…?" He muttered under his breath as he resorted to trying to get his soul out of the fake body by force in the hopes that it just didn't need an artificial soul. Perhaps it was a new feature by Urahara? Gigai's with an artificial soul already built into them.

He sincerely hoped that was what was happening here, because if it wasn't then he was trapped here, with no back up, no way to get out of his gigai and get to his sword, and a large reiatsu source rapidly approaching him.

He managed to try once more before something slammed into him, sending him flying as his already-forgotten groceries scattered across the wet ground. He looked up through the rain and saw the barely-visible outline of the hollow which stood above him. He didn't know what was going on but he did know that when he next saw that stupid shopkeeper he was going to kill him! This gigai was supposed to stop reiatsu from leaking out (which it obviously didn't, since the hollow which towered above him had found him easy enough), not stop him from fighting. At the moment he was little more than a regular, unarmed, human. He tried to move and felt something twinge painfully in his back where he'd hit the concrete.

Add injured to that list and he barely had a chance of surviving, let alone winning.

He forced himself to stand and grimaced as his back and (he was guessing from experience) several ribs began to scream in complaint. He ignored the pain and pushed himself into a defensive pose, hoping that he could dodge and deflect the hollow's attacks long enough for him to come up with a decent plan.

He'd barely had time to settle into his position before blows began raining down on him; he managed to dodge most of them but they just kept coming. The first hit which landed was a punch to his stomach, luckily it didn't have much force behind it and Toushiro managed to keep his footing. He had to force himself not to double over; he knew that if he took his eyes off of the hollow he wouldn't survive this battle.

After that first punch landed the hollow grew bolder and Toushiro grew more cautious. He was making stupid mistakes as the list of minor injuries piled up, a scratch here and a punch there eventually added up and he found himself staggering under each hit.

He could pinpoint the exact moment when the fight had taken a complete downward turn. He tried to dodge a vicious slash from the hollow but miscalculated how far back he had to move. A large gash opened in his chest, and although it was shallow it was long and wide enough that it caused him to double-over in pain, his hands pressed firmly over the cut as he tried to back away from the hollow which was still mercilessly attempting to hit him.

A heavy blow to the side of his head sent him flying through the air and straight into a wall. His head hit with a crack loud enough that it was still audible through the heavy rain and he slid to the ground, his eyesight blurring as he barely managed to hold onto consciousness.


As Karin rounded the corner she instantly spotted the hollow. It was large, muscles bulged under sickly-grey skin as it leaned over a figure slumped against the wall. She assumed it was a soul who had been unlucky enough to catch the attention of the hollow which towered above it, although she couldn't be sure because of how the rain affected her vision.

She drew her sword and banged it loudly against a pipe attached to the wall beside her. "Oi, Big-ugly!" The hollow looked up, its yellow eyes glowing angrily at the human who was insisting on interrupting its meal. "Yeah, you!" She shouted, pointing the tip of her sword at the angry hollow, "Bring it on!" She said, her voice dropping low enough to be mocking but still be heard, she tilted her head slightly to the side as a smile full of blood-lust danced on her lips.

The hollow charged, she deflected it with her blade but he just carried on fighting. Anyone who saw her would think it was odd; the way her lips twisted into a smile as she gave as good as she got against the hollow which had to be at least twice her size. But she lived for this; she craved the adrenaline which pumped through her veins as she swung her sword in deadly circles, the blade biting deep into hollow flesh and emerging stained with red.

The battle seemed too short to her, but she knew she couldn't drag it out like she normally would have. She was tired from work and her earlier training, and the rain wasn't helping much either. She'd rather finish her fun early than risk being injured because she made a stupid mistake.

And of course there was the injured soul propped up against the wall to think of.

That thought cinched it; she couldn't risk the soul just because she wanted to play with the muscle-head hollow she was fighting. She swung her sword through a deadly arc, ending the hollow in one final hit.

She was already moving before the body had even finished disintegrating.

She approached the figure cautiously; aware that it might be a trap set up by a more intelligent hollow that had been using the one she had just killed. But she caught a flash of familiar silver-white hair and half-lidded, drowsy, turquoise eyes and suddenly found herself kneeling beside the wounded shinigami, her hand clutching his as emotions danced through her mind.

"Toushiro…?" She asked quietly, disbelieving. She could see his unfocused eyes searching for the source of the voice and when they finally settled on her face she smiled sadly down at him. "Look at the mess you've gotten yourself into." She said in mock-annoyance, although she couldn't bear to be angry with him when he was like this, even after everything that had happened between them.

Once he was better however… Oh, he'd get an earful then.

But right now she needed to get him out of the rain. She pulled him into a sitting position before slinging one of his arms around the back of her neck and helping him to stand up shakily. His other hand covered the slash in his chest as they began to walk slowly towards her house and the clinic.

When he spoke for the first time it was so quiet she almost missed it.

"Karin…?"

She looked down at him, only to find his face averted. "Hmm?"

He was quiet for a long time, the only sounds coming from him pain-filled pants and occasional muffled cries as his injuries were jolted.

"I'm… I'm sorry…" He wouldn't meet her eyes and she could see that he was close to passing out again. She just hoped he would last until they reached the clinic.

She made no response to his words.