A/N: Here it is—we're already at chapter 19! In which the author pauses the plot for a bit and uses drabble prompts to develop some relationships. ;) Leave a review!

[Hair]

Ichigo was brushing his teeth one Saturday morning, having fought and defeated Shinji for the use of the bathroom. He could still hear the blonde vizard stomping down the hall, grumbling about annoying teenagers. Ichigo savored his victory, looking up from the sink to examine his reflection.

—and nearly gave himself a heart attack. He had glanced in the mirror and spotted a shaggy, disheveled monster reminiscent of some demon he had seen once in a book about Japanese yokai, standing right behind him. He spit all his toothpaste over the glass, removing the creature from view.

"Hey Ichigo, finished with the bathroom yet?" a girl he realized to be Orihime asked him.

"Errr, yeah," he said, quickly wiping up the mess with his sleeve and dashing into the hallway. He looked over his shoulder. She had pulled out a brush and had already started vigorously attacking the tangled mess on her head.

Orihime was a different person in the morning.

[Alarm]

If Hiyori had the shortest temper of the vizard, Ichigo concluded, Hachi had the biggest heart.

It was Hachi who had found their newest member and taken her in, Orihime had confided in him, convincing the other vizard to give raising the tiny human girl a shot.

He had brought in other strays since then: tiny, week-old kittens mewing piteously, dogs with missing limbs and bald spots in their fur, the strangest a tanuki with a missing ear. Kensei put his foot down each time, refusing to allow any of the animals in the warehouse, to the dismay of Hachi and Orihime, and occasionally, Mashiro, who often accompanied the largest vizard on his animal rescues.

Ichigo followed him on one of his daily excursions one afternoon, partly out of curiosity and partly out of his desire to escape one of Hiyori's nasty moods. Hachi had given him a heavy bag to carry, full to bursting with things he could only guess, but Ichigo could hear metal clinking against metal as he adjusted one of the straps.

"There's a good spot a few blocks away from our warehouse," Hachi explained as they walked. "Less likely to arouse suspicion."

They rounded a corner and found Orihime crouched next to a run-down building reminiscent of the vizard's own ramshackle home, petting a tiny orange and white kitten. It gave a heartbreaking mew and the girl opened a small can of tuna and set it down in front the creature, who immediately set about devouring its contents.

Orihime looked up. "Hey, Ichigo!" she greeted cheerfully. "Want to come pet it? It's so cute."

All of this sneaking around just to feed one tiny cat? Hachi really was a dedicated—

The door of the building slammed outward suddenly and a green-haired woman in a jumpsuit sprang into view. "HEEEEYYYYY IIIICHIGOOOO!" Mashiro shouted and Ichigo cringed in surprise. But he was more startled by what he saw behind her: a battalion—no, an entire army of cats, too many to count. They covered the concrete floor of the building in a multi-colored, breathing, mewing rug.

And every one of them was staring at the bag in his hands. A bag, Ichigo just now realized, that was filled with cans of cat food. He flinched as a little tink sounded next to him as Hachi rang a tiny bell that looked ridiculously child-sized in his massive hands.

Immediately, the horde began to descend upon him, streaming past Mashiro as they rushed out the door. Ichigo could see the hunger in their eyes. He felt a stab of panic.

"Wh-what is this?!"

[Loser]

"What is this for?" he asked, as Love lead him into their "living room."

"We're drawing straws for cooking duty," Rose explained, the objects in question clutched in his hand so that only the tops peeked out past his fingers. "Why don't you go first? You'll have a better chance of getting out of it that way," he offered kindly.

Ichigo's hand hesitated over the small bundle as he considered what he knew about the blonde-haired man. Was he the kind of person to hide the marked straw closest to Ichigo because he assumed that's where the teenager would absentmindedly choose first? Or would he assume that Ichigo would anticipate this and go for the straw farthest from him?

"Hurry up already," Hiyori barked from where she was reclining off to the side. "I'll be an old lady by the time you choose one."

Ichigo played it safe and pulled out a slender straw from somewhere in the middle. He glanced at the bottom, which was dyed black.

"Wow, what bad luck!" Love exclaimed. "Well, you're on cooking duty for the week. No need for the rest of us to draw straws then," he said to Rose.

Rose nodded and started to put them into his pocket. Ichigo's eyes narrowed suspiciously and slapped the vizard's hand, causing him to drop the straws onto the floor.

All of the colored straws, that was. Every one of them had their tips colored black.

"You cheated!" Ichigo accused, affronted.

"I like to think of it as 'playing strategically,'" Rose countered, crouching down to gather the straws. "I never said I hadn't marked all of them and you didn't ask. Really, Ichigo, that was poor oversight on your part."

A vein bulged on Ichigo's forehead with enough force to rival Kensei's.

[Help]

"I did all of the shopping on my way home from school today," Orihime chattered at him as she dumped several bulging plastic bags onto the table in the kitchen. She had carried these by herself all the way from the grocery store? Clearly Ichigo had underestimated her strength.

"I thought we might make curry today," she said, pulling one of the bags towards her. "I bought all of the ingredients for it. In this bag is the leeks, red bean paste, tuna, and broccoli. In this bag is the tofu, tomato sauce, and—"

Ichigo mentally steeled himself. The vizard ate her cooking all the time and were still breathing, clearly. But then again, they were technically dead. Did that mean they couldn't be affected by a bad meal? Would his body react differently?

He watched her pull an entire octopus out of another bag, its tentacles dangling.

Next time, he was going to make a shopping list.

[Paranoia]

The vizard fought over almost everything. Who was going to do what chore, whose turn it was to watch TV, who got to read the newest copy of Shonen Jump first.

Ichigo lost almost every fight. It wasn't that he was bad at fighting or arguing—he was one of the best. Rivaled only by Renji. Or Rukia, maybe. It just seemed like the vizard played by a different set of rules, ones that he had not fully grasped yet. And so he lost, frequently.

Orihime, on the other hand, did not. She argued with her family cheerfully and with surprising vigor. This Orihime was different from the calm, peaceable girl he knew from school. This Orihime could stand her ground against even Hiyori.

Ichigo was impressed, he admitted to himself as he soaked in the lukewarm tub (as he was the last to bathe for the day, unsurprisingly). Sometimes Orihime offered to let him go first, but he was naturally too much of a gentleman to accept. Being last had its benefits sometimes. (Probably. He hadn't figured out what they were yet.)

But it had its downsides, too. It meant the other vizards were free to watch and make comments and criticisms as he went about his business. Ichigo had started looking over his shoulder more than he used to. And bath time was not exempt, unfortunately.

A shadow passed over the translucent door and hovered for a moment. It banged open violently, as if someone had kicked it.

Someone had. "ICHIGO, SNEAK ATTACK!" Mashiro yelled and leaped into the room.

Ichigo yelped and covered himself the best he could with his hands.

"Can't a guy get any privacy around here?!"

[Overindulge]

Ichigo was not asked to draw straws to cook again. This must have been decided at a family gathering he had not been privy to. He did not complain, though he did not feel that his cooking had been bad enough to warrant a special meeting. Especially considering the ingredients he'd had to work with.

But he'd had other tasks delegated to him instead and now it was Kensei's turn to cook. And after the first bite he doubted the vizards' sanity of letting anyone else cook, ever. He collapsed on the floor after the meal, belly bulging. Mashiro poked it, giggling. He swatted her away. Rose and Shinji discussed the best way to roll him to practice in the morning.

Ichigo was in his own bubble of food-coma-contentment and couldn't be bothered to care. Glancing at Kensei in his pink frilly apron and still holding a spatula, he absentmindedly decided the vizard would make a good housewife.

He heard a snigger and looked up. Shinji was smirking at him. Lisa was tittering. And Kensei had a vein bulging in his neck.

It seemed in his stupor, he had accidentally made this observation aloud. He didn't even have time to regret it.

What followed after made Ichigo rethink his statement. Kensei would make a very bad housewife indeed.

[Happiest]

Orihime was an empathetic young woman. She was very attuned to other's feelings. She was always careful in her speech not to offend or upset the person she was conversing with, unless of course, that person was Shinji. Or Hiyori. Or Kensei. On second thought, she wasn't that careful.

But she was attentive. She liked to observe what brought joy to other's lives and help them attain it. For Lisa, it was reading her magazines (that Kensei had expressly forbidden her from peeking at, though she did anyway). For Rose, it was listening to his favorite band. For Hiyori, it was beating up Shinji. (Sometimes, sacrifices had to be made, Orihime decided).

So she watched Ichigo. She watched him inhale Kensei's cooking and argue with Hiyori and stretch contentedly, arms over his head, after he emerged from the bath every evening. But none of these rivaled how he looked during his training sessions.

She watched him one day after school in the vizard's secret underground training area, close enough to get a good view but far enough away to avoid the clouds of dust and falling debris from dirtying her school clothes. He was sparring with Lisa this time, who panted as if she had just finished a marathon. Ichigo breathed heavily too, but Orihime could see the fierce joy in the grin he wore as he lunged forward to attack again.

She did not know what drove him to train. Whether it was to protect someone he cared about or for his own personal gain, Orihime was unaware of his reasons (though knowing Ichigo, it was probably the former). But she knew now that whether he was conscious of it or not, he lived for it, for the thrill of pitting himself against another, for the simple satisfaction in physical movement, for the pride in one's own skill.

Orihime played with the ends of her hair distractedly. She wondered if that was a joy she would ever experience.

[Stealthy]

Orihime wasn't nosy. She was just a little worried, really. It had been weeks since Chad and Uryu had been at school and she just wanted to make sure they were alright. It wasn't stalking if it was out of concern for the other person, right?

She mentioned it to Rukia one day when they were having tea, and the soul reaper admitted to knowing nothing of Uryu. "He's quite a mystery," she explained simply. Orihime agreed. That boy was the definition of "aloof." It was Chad she was more concerned about anyway. "Off training with Urahara probably," Rukia said dismissively, though she failed to define who this character was and what connection he had to her classmate. So Orihime set off to find out herself. She was an expert investigator, after all.

And she was becoming much better at sensing spiritual pressure too, she was starting to realize. She had started practicing with Ichigo. She focused on him when he was training, sometimes. Energy came off of him in waves, so strongly that it diluted his figure if she concentrated on him too hard, turning him into a blurry mess of brightly colored spiritual pressure.

She tried her family next. These were more subdued—rather than obscuring their figures, their spiritual pressure merely outlined them. Orihime wondered what made Ichigo so different.

She was starting to learn how to differentiate between them, too. If she closed her eyes and sharpened her mind, she could determine with some effort who was where, and to some extent, how they were occupied. The feeling of Ichigo fighting was quite different from Ichigo sleeping. Orihime enjoyed experimenting with this ability that was slowly starting to develop inside of her.

She focused her mind now, on her way home from school. She felt Ichigo in the distance, back at home, undoubtedly training. She searched around more. She felt Rukia too, but she was not at the Kurosaki home. She was with others, spiritual pressures that Orihime couldn't recognize. She followed them.

It led her down some side streets to a part of town she had never really been to. She squeezed out of the last alley and laid eyes on a bare courtyard and a Japanese-style building with the words "Urahara Shop" printed in bold kanji above the doors. She had never laid eyes on this building in her life. But Chad and Rukia were inside, she was sure of it.

Orihime, fearless explorer, stood in front of the sliding doors and hesitated.

[Typhoon]

Almost a month had passed, and Ichigo was slowly accustoming himself to daily life in the vizard household. Each inhabitant was a force to be reckoned with on their own; together they formed a capricious beast with habits, needs, demands of its own. Learning the quirks and ticks of each vizard was not enough, Ichigo was learning, you had to learn how they functioned or (didn't function) together.

Ichigo learned how to watch for warning signs—how to determine the difference between an irritated Kensei and an angry Kensei (the size of the vein in his forehead), how to tell if Rose and Lisa were fighting or merely quarreling (if she was looking at her magazine and not you, you were safe), when to join in with Shinji in heckling Hiyori and when to avoid her at all costs (it depended on whether or not she was hungry, or "hangry" according to Orihime), and when to participate in a family argument or just watch from the sidelines.

Sometimes dealing with this circus of a family felt to Ichigo a little bit like being outside in a typhoon, drenched and shivering, with only a flimsy umbrella turned inside-out that he was desperately clinging to.

He was starting to notice that the weather was usually sunnier when Orihime was at home. The moment she set foot in the door and announced her presence, the rain dried up and the wind stopped howling, and Ichigo righted his broken umbrella with a little effort and put it away.

No umbrellas were needed with Orihime. Ichigo warmed himself in her presence. She glowed with an inner radiance that shone through her eyes and lit up her face. Even her hair seemed to glow like fire in the right light.

In all the years he had known her, how had he not recognized it before? She was the sun.