Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. I own my ocs. Astonish owns the foreign quincys. I don't own aku zoku zan, Hajime Saito's trademark from Rurouni Kenshin.

Sorry for the mass delay of updating. I shall sum up the reasons in one word. College.

--

By this time, Raven had stopped struggling. It was useless anyway. If he was going to go to his death, at least he could be comfortable on the way there. The thought was sombering.

"Good. You stopped struggling like a little baby. Now you can work on not acting like you've accepted death," Yukari scolded. She wasn't exactly thrilled about having to teach either. Skilled as she was, she was more of a "you point, I kill" type of person. Finally, they reached the bottom. Shinobu and Rushin let go, allowing Raven to fall to the floor with a thud.

"Now, the training begins. Shinobu, give him the quincy cross I told you to get," Yukari ordered.

"You didn't tell me to-" Shinobu started before he was silenced by a glare. In the interest of his well being, he scampered back upstairs to get the cross. Geez. That lady needed to take it easy. She'd looked harmless enough at first sight, but then someone really pissed her off, and he got to see her power firsthand. The fool ended up a bloody mess and moved out of the country the moment he recovered… 5 years later. That was more than enough reason to listen to her. Grumbling, Shinobu yanked up a floorboard that hid their extra stash of quincy crosses. Adorned with a crystal in the center to quicken reishi flow, they were hardly the mass produced type, far more powerful and efficient.

"Hurry it up!" Yukari called from downstairs. Shinobu got a cross, put the floorboard back and hurried down. An angry Yukari meant a dead Shinobu after all.

"Geez, woman. Take it easy. Here's the stupid cross," Shinobu grumbled as he haphazardly tossed the cross over to Raven who caught it and slipped the chain around his wrist.

"Good. Now feel the reishi in the air and draw it into the cross," Yukari ordered. Raven attempted to do as he was told. The cross glowed, and a bright blue ball of reishi formed in his hand.

"Now shape the reishi into the shape of a bow," Yukari continued. An explosion rocked the room. Shinobu and Rushin were blown back. Yukari waved the smoke away and eyed Raven who was now charred black.

"Way too much power, not enough control. Did those stupid shinigami teach you nothing? I heard you were a kido specialist."

"I am a kido specialist, but this is completely different!" Raven complained as he decreased the power and only came up with a spark.

"You channel reiatsu into your hands when you use kido, so why can't you control the amount of energy needed to form a bow?"

The next attempt was closer but still far from what was needed for a decent bow.

--

In the 4th, Marisa sat bored next to Karin's bed, fingering her zanpakuto idly. Why was she even here anyway? Kratos had asked her to bring the girl to the 4th, a perfectly understandable request, but he hadn't asked her to stay. She should be training. Though she had never lost a fight before, she didn't even have to debate whether she could stand a chance against Zaraki-taicho. It was also probable that Kratos was out of her league too. He'd never seemed to be serious when he fought, and that shunpo he displayed out there must have been at twice the speed they had been fighting at. Then there was that little rumor that he had bribed Kenpachi by agreeing to spar with him five times a week. Of course, the details of the bribe were unknown except that it was a rule that the eye patch stayed on at all times. Oh well. Whether he was holding back or not really didn't matter. She just needed to get stronger.

"You know, you won't get where you want to go just by training your body."

"Kimura Liam, shouldn't you be laying low right now? You and I both know that if Soi Fon isn't after you yet, she will be soon," Marisa said without turning to see the man in the doorway.

"I see you still haven't mastered a polite greeting," Liam joked lightly.

"Yours wasn't much better."

Liam shrugged. She was right, and he was hardly going to argue.

"What's your business here? You're a smart guy, and you work like a checklist. So get to the point already."

"Well, I'm really just here because I'm constantly on the move. Plus, no one would expect me to be in a place this obvious." Liam explained, running a hand through his hair. In an instant, he had the point of a zanpakuto up against his throat.

"Don't joke around with me. I know what you want. You want me to take you into 11th division territory because it's one of the few places where the SMC refuses to go since they'd be ousted in minutes," Marisa accused. Liam put up his hands in mock surrender.

"Okay, okay. You caught me. So will you do it?"

"Fine, as long as you have a sparring match with me."

"But I couldn't possibly beat someone like you," Liam complained.

Marisa gave him a glare and he relented. It was probably unavoidable at this point. She shunpoed off and he followed a step behind. They got there without too much interference since most of the SMC was trying to do an investigation of the 12th, a difficult task since Kurotsuchi-taicho had issues with people invading his territory, especially his labs. He'd fight them every inch of the way through formalities and then activate every booby trap in the division complex if that didn't work. Who would have thought that such stubbornness would come in handy down the road? Marisa noticed that Liam was going much slower than she was and shot him a death glare.

"Don't act like I'm stupid. Just because I spend most of my time swinging my sword doesn't mean I'm not aware of what you can do."

Letting out a tired sigh, Liam nearly doubled his pace. There really was no getting around this. His pace was matched and they soon arrived at "safe territory." Oddly enough, what they were defining as safe territory happened to be defined as a death zone by almost everyone else or simply "the 11th". To most it was already self explanatory. Great. On top of that, Kratos was probably going to kill him since most of the hotel rooms were booked, leaving few choices, choices that the stoic shinigami would not be happy about. As they reached the sparring grounds, Liam reluctantly drew out his zanpakuto. Before he'd even gotten it halfway out, he was forced to twist his body to block a slash to the side. In the blink of an eye, the offending blade was running through his arm.

"Ouch. That really hurts, you know," Liam complained. The blade was twisted and yanked out.

"Stop playing around and really fight."

"Do you really want me to go all out here?" he asked nervously. Some things weren't pretty at all and he knew about quite a few of them firsthand. Marisa's blade sped towards him again in a wild series of strikes that were becoming a real pain to keep up with.

"I'll take that as a yes. Haku, Shitsumeikage."

Liam's zanpakuto was covered in a torrent of dark flames. Marisa shunpoed back, taking care to notice that the flames had stuck to her blade where they had made contact and didn't go away for a full five seconds.

"I'm no taicho but I warn you that my shikai is probably the most sadistic one you'll ever see."

--

By this time all the quincys were laughing their butts off, minus Yukari since she just never laughed as far as anyone else knew. Raven's bow had just exploded for the 10th time.

"Soichiro, are you sure this is better than one of us learning how to be a shinigami?" Yukari asked.

"He's the one doing the inventing, so the best way for him to use this is to experience it firsthand."

Yukari turned and walked out. This was getting nowhere fast. There had to be a more effective way to get the job done. Survival came first. Everything else was merely a secondary objective. No one was stupid enough to try to stop her. Raven latest attempt at making a bow exploded again. He was sure that he heard stifled laughter in his head. He tried again and the bow blew up once more. Now he was sure he was wrong. Shoukyaku and Nevar laughing their butts off at him shamelessly just like everyone else.

--

"How could you have lost them?!"

Back in the Seireitei, Soi Fon's eye twitched. How was it possible that 20 seasoned members of the SMC has lost Kratos Aurion even with Makoto tying him down. If he was in normal form it would be understandable, but he was in a gigai. It was an insult.

"Can't you just send some people to search the places he went to? He couldn't have travelled that much in one day," Ohmaeda suggested as he took a bite of a sugar charged chocolate chip cookie. Soi Fon glared at him.

"Where did you get that?"

"I dunno. Someone left it on my desk," he replied stupidly. One of the seated members inched forward.

"It was a tall man with white hair that went over his left eye like-"

"You let him in! That was Kimura Liam, 4th seat of the 12th division! He's been moving behind the scenes for Kratos for over a month now!" Soi Fon thundered. The seated member shrunk back again for good reason. No one really messed with her unless they were considerably more powerful, and most of those people just didn't care to do so.

"You! Get me the list of all 12th and 6th division members and their current status!"

The files were fetched and scoured. Liam was on standby with no current missions. It was already common knowledge that Kratos didn't either, and it would be very impractical to only meet with the quincys during vacation leaves to the living world as it would be too obvious.

"Search for any members with long lasting missions!" Soi Fon ordered.

"Taicho, this one, Kanzaki Raven, is listed as being on a classified mission for Kurotsuchi-taicho. He's been gone for a little more than a month now."

Soi Fon cursed her luck. She couldn't revoke the mission or even force information about it out of anyone unless she had clearance from the soutaicho. However, she had them now and it was just a matter of time. For starters, she was going to have a talk with Byakuya. Even if she couldn't catch Kratos, Byakuya was so law oriented that he'd never let something like this go if he ever caught a hint of it.

--

Elsewhere in the living world, specifically America, Kratos was nearing the end of his little excursion. He was now weighed down with 5 bags bigger than he was. Luckily, Makoto had finally come to a relative stop. Of course, relative meant confined to one building. Since they dropped off the 50 shopping bags off at their hotel, wasn't the load supposed to be lighter? But no! She had to take a million dollars out of his account and convert them into chips. Yes, here they were in the Bellagio casino with Makoto gambling left and right. Strangely enough…

"Yay, Royal flush!" Makoto cheered.

"That's got to be the worst bluff I've ever seen. Why's she even here?" one of the other players complained. Grumbling was heard from a few of the other players as well.

"Because she has money," came the answer from the house player. No one was really going to argue with that. As far as they were concerned, it just meant more easy cash. Several of them went all in. As it turned out, she really wasn't bluffing. Another bag of chips was filled, and Kratos was thus landed with a seventh bag to lug about. Of course they were investigated for cheating, but there was nothing to worry about. They weren't. Makoto was just ridiculously lucky and happened to be winning at everything she played, blackjack, five card stud, Texas hold'em, even the slots. Two hours later, after Makoto had passed out at a table, Kratos dragged her back to the hotel room along with the now 250 million dollars he'd cashed the chips in for. When he got there, his eye immediately began to twitch. There was only one bed. Raven really owed him for this… and he was going to kill Liam for booking them this room.

"You're too lucky for your own good," Kratos muttered as he placed Makoto on the bed and the five suitcases of money on the floor next to the nightstand. There was a knock at the door. Kratos got up and opened it. There stood several men in business suits, probably the casino owner and some of his lawyers.

"Is Miss Kamata here? We would like to offer her a job-"

Kratos slammed the door shut, ditched his boots and flopped onto the far side of the bed. Today had been way too much of a headache. At least it was over now. The knock at the door came again. Reluctantly, he got up, slipped his boots back on, opened the door, and glared the men down angrily. Just for good measure, he released just enough reiatsu for it to be visible. They all had some small degree of spiritual power and would probably be able to see it. Surprisingly, one of them actually had enough courage to speak. Of course, it was possible that he was just in denial of what he was seeing.

"Mr. Aurion, we are the owners of the Bellagio casino, and we would like to hire both you and Miss Kamata to play for us."

"No."

"We would make it worth your while, say-"

"If we're going to discuss this, let's do it somewhere else," Kratos said, glancing back at Makoto. The businessmen got the hint and led him to one of their meeting rooms. The debate dragged on for what seemed like ages with the persistent fools. When it was finally over, Kratos ambled back to the hotel room, flopped back on the bed once again, closed his eyes, and-

"Morning, Sleepyhead!"

Kratos just groaned and buried his face in his pillow.

--

I'm almost done with the next chapter of my oc story too so it'll be posted soon.