Chapter Two
Yuzu vaguely heard her sister stand from beside her. The meditation thing was clearly not working. She was just sitting there with her eyes closed, nothing truly happening. That woman from two weeks ago was nowhere to be seen in the midst of all that darkness. She was a recurring appearance in her dreams until they found Karin so she never saw her again. Maybe Urahara was wrong...
She just was not strong enough to manifest a zanpakutō spirit.
"Nothing happened for you too, huh?" Yuzu sighed, standing up and dusting off the skirt of her uniform... not that it mattered anyway. When they were out of their bodies, their clothing remained the same but it is not like the soil patch would appear on her actual body when she went back into it. "We should probably head over to sch–" Yuzu was cut off mid sentence as Karin wordlessly swung her katana at her and acting on impulse, Yuzu unsheathed hers and blocked. "Aah... Ka... Ka-chan!" Yuzu choked out in shock at her sister's onslaught but the raven haired girl said nothing, staring back with empty onyx eyes.
Karin simply broke the sword lock and swung continuously at Yuzu who matched every blow with a block. This was not right. Karin was barely breaking a sweat and zanjutsu was not her strongest suit. Sure they sparred often with swords and Karin was formidable with a sword but she always struggled with one nonetheless. She always said that the sword slowed her down more than her using her limbs would. She even did better with kidō.
Yuzu used shunpō to get away but Karin easily caught up to her, trying to strike from above but Yuzu quickly got out of the way. Despite that, she felt a small wet sensation on her cheek. She held her fingers to it and looked at it. Blood...
This definitely was not sparring. Karin would never hurt her on purpose.
"Ka-chan! What are you doing?"
Karin did nothing to respond to her sister. She only stared at her like a lifeless zombie before holding the hilt with both hands. Her mouth finally opened. "Alter, Angetsu." Karin said almost in a whisper before the sword split into two, held by a chain on both hilts before the blades disappeared off of both like dust in the wind.
Yuzu was almost lost for words... what is that shikai? It's... it vanished.
So when Karin swung her right hand sword diagonally downwards as she charged for her, Yuzu jumped back but was shocked to be hit across the chest in the opposite direction. She yelped as she fell to the ground, holding at her bleeding chest. That... that was impossible. How did she? She tried to stand up and yelled when a foot stepped on her chest, hurting her further and keeping her down.
Karin held her the hilts up vertically and the swords reformed from the wind; two nodachis that were blood red in colour with black embroidery on the blades. The emotionless stare bored through her, almost unreadable. This was not Karin... this was not her sister. Karin lifted the blades to strike until...
"Bakudō 9: Geki!" Karin yelped as she was engulfed in a ray of red light, leaving her completely paralyzed. Karin screamed, trying to wiggle her body and break out of the conundrum but she was stuck. Still, she would not stop screaming and squirming.
"Yuzu-chan, are you okay?" Tessai asked as he came over and picked her up.
"Y... yes..." Yuzu breathed shallowly as she looked at her struggling sister one final time before blackness came over her.
"This looks very familiar..." Yoruichi looked at the scene in front of her alongside Kisuke and Tessai who was healing Yuzu with kidō as they stared at the struggling girl who started screaming like a banshee, getting angrier by the minute at the fact that she could not escape. Yoruichi cocked her head to the side.
"You know this?" It was not a question from Kisuke but an acknowledging statement rather.
"Ah." Yoruichi nodded as she stared at her. "Even her reiatsu feels different. But it does not happen this quickly... at least the cases I've seen."
"That was over two hundred years ago." Kisuke mentioned. "And she did go missing for two weeks."
Yoruichi sighed. "We found her tied up in a derelict warehouse miles away from here with no one around. They wanted us to find her. Who is the question..."
"So this is more than just a kidnapping?" Kisuke asked.
"They kidnapped a girl who can take a hollow down in one punch." Yoruichi said incredulously. "I know we had our doubts but we should have smelled a rat the second we got confirmation that she disappeared." The werecat sighed. "I'll put her to sleep. Go get Isshin."
Two hours...
Two long hours...
Two fucking long hours!
Karin heard the hushed and muffled voices on the other end of the door but she was too paralyzed and too scared to move. She sat on her bed back at the Kurosaki Clinic, sitting with her thighs against her chest and her cheek resting on her knees. She was staring at Yuzu who had yet to wake up from her sleep.
Karin could not remember a thing of what happened during training but when she woke up here in her bedroom out of her body with a battered Yuzu on her regular bed, Karin was just about ready to go on a rampage and teach that low life a lesson for messing with her sister. That was until Yoruichi calmed her down and broke the news that she was that low life she was about to run off to look for.
Now Karin just felt sick.
She felt more than sick... she felt hopeless.
She felt as hopeless as she did when she saw Ichigo jump out his body and through the window, she felt as hopeless as she did when Yōsuke turned into a hollow, she felt as hopeless as she did when hollows stormed the house two years ago... she felt as hopeless as she did when her mother died. And it hurt so much that she wanted to cry but she did not bring herself to.
What is wrong with me? Karin thought with an annoyed hiss. Why can't I remember a damn thing? She held her head. Why was this happening to her? Why did she attack Yuzu? Questions just swam through her head, unrelenting to leave her alone. It hurt so much knowing that she – the first person who would risk her life to save her sister – had done that to her.
Deciding to keep herself calm, she pulled out her large sketchpad with canvas paper inside and began to draw. She had no idea what she was drawing but she just drew. Since the beginning of this week when she was found, she found herself drawing places and people she had never seen before. It scared her slightly but she could not stop until it was on paper staring back at her.
So it was only two long, excruciating hours later when Yuzu stirred and Karin jumped to her feet. Yuzu's eyes fluttered open before looking around the room and her eyes landed on Karin before she cowered back in slight fear as if on instinct. Karin could not hide her dejection at that and it was then Yuzu realised that Karin was being her usual self.
Thinking it was a dream, she shot up to a sitting position but started to wince and slowly sink back into bed. "Yuzu! Take it easy..." Karin reprimanded, helping her sister lie back down. Yuzu eventually got comfortable in her bed and huffed at the pain pounding in her chest.
"Ka-chan... what happened?" Yuzu asked in a huff after she had calmed down a little.
"I... attacked you..."
"That wasn't you." Yuzu immediately cut her off. "You were so... lifeless. It was like you were hypnotised or something. You were even using your katana."
"Eh? Me... katana... use?" Karin asked, completely lost. She sucked at using a sword so that being her first choice of weapon threw her off.
"You even released your shikai." Yuzu continued.
"I... shikai?" Karin said, blinking in confusion. "I actually have a zanpakutō?"
Yuzu sighed. "You don't remember anything, do you?"
"Nothing at all." Karin admitted in defeat, kneeling on her bedside. "Yuzu... I am just as lost and confused as you are. I have no idea what is going on. Yes, I feel like crap because I hurt you but I don't know what the hell is wrong with me."
"Angetsu..."
"Eh?" Karin questioned in confusion at Yuzu's words.
"The name of your zanpakutō... is Angetsu." Her sister repeated.
"An...getsu..." Karin tested it on her tongue and immediately, her mind flashed, giving her a mental figure of a hooded man chuckling before being thrown back for reality. She could have sworn she knew that name from somewhere but who was that man in the back of her head?
"Were you drawing something?" Yuzu asked, pointing at the sketchpad.
"Uh... yes I was..." Karin scratched her head before giving her the pad.
"Who is this?" Yuzu asked staring at the dark haired man.
"I... was hoping you'd know." Karin admitted. "I have no clue who this is but my memory is getting crappy so..." Karin sighed. "I don't know. I've been drawing random places and people I've never seen before lately so... I don't know."
"I don't know either... but I feel like I should know this person." Yuzu stared at the picture intently she flipped the page and saw another person wearing a mask and narrowed her eyes at them. "Did you draw this recently too?"
"Yeah..." Karin hummed
"Who are these people?" Yuzu huffed tiredly.
"... Soccer camp pals." Karin tried to lighten the mood but Yuzu glared at her. Karin tried to give a little crooked smile but it was not working. Karin sighed before falling back into silence and looking out the window. Her disappearance was not a laughing matter. Nothing about it was funny. All Karin can remember was taking the train to the supposed soccer training camp for girls that her school received an invite for. Everything after that is a complete blur. The eeriness and blankness that came with her disappearance unsettled her. She desperately wanted to remember what happened in the span of those two weeks... but she was scared of what memories that may bring.
There was a knock on the door before three people came in; their father, Urahara and Yoruichi. "Oh, my two beautiful daughters are well and alive!" Isshin exaggeratedly sighed and cried in relief.
"Tch! Shut up, you old goat!" Karin muttered in annoyance, having no will to punch him in the face for it while Yuzu cracked a small smile on her face. Sometimes – many times actually – Karin wondered if Isshin dropped himself and Yuzu on the heads when she was a baby.
"We are glad to see you are awake and well." Mr. Hat-and-Clogs said in his sing song voice that just bothered Karin to the core. "Did you sleep fine?"
"Yes, burning your wardrobe in my dreams did give me a sense of internal peace." Karin sarcastically mused causing Urahara to frown.
"I liked her better when she was possessed." Karin's jaw dropped at Kisuke's sideward glance and poor attempt to gossip about her with Yoruichi but her Hakuda sensei simply smacked him upside the head. "Ouch!"
"Um..." Yuzu broke the silence. "What do you mean by... possessed?"
Yoruichi looked at her two students and sighed. "I contacted Kuchiki-fukutaichō. She agreed to open her family's senkaimon for us to go through."
"Senkai– where is this exactly?" Karin asked.
"I have my... suspicions that there is something wrong with your zanpakutō and there is a chance that Yuzu's might be the same." Yoruichi said. "Once Yuzu is fine to move, we are going to Soul Society to confirm whether there is something wrong or not."
A/N: We are introduced to Karin's zanpakutō, Angetsu (Black Moon). Angetsu is a kidō based zanpakutō of the illusion sub type. The activation chant is Henkō which means Alter. One of the powers seen here is called Disintegrate. The blade disappears off the zanpakutō as an illusion. The attacks that Karin makes while using this power is not the ones that her opponent anticipates... especially since one cannot actually see the blade. The wielder only moves to confuse their enemy while the blade takes commands from the wielder mentally. Only the wielder knows how he or she will strike and where it will land unless someone has a power that reveals it or stops it.
Omake
"Are you sure this is a good idea, Kisuke?" Yoruichi asked, not fully convinced at an unusually bashful Karin who looked uncomfortable in her short skirt and then an even more unusual Yuzu who was hiking her longer skirt up her body and under her shirt. "They don't look... right..."
"Well they do have to make an appearance at school." Kisuke shrugged.
"Then why don't you use me? This doesn't even look right!" Ririn in her plushy squeaked as she walked over and observed the two teenage girls angrily. They had the audacity to pick Kurodo and Noba to pretend to be the girls at school. Kurodo was a huge pervert to be Yuzu and Noba was too passive to be Karin. If anything, she should have been Karin and Noba should have been Yuzu while Kurodo stays home. Yuzu has her heads up in the clouds enough to be quiet for a whole day anyways.
"Shh! We're thinking Ririn. This doesn't look right." The bird plushy gave up and sat on her hind. Kisuke thoughtfully stroke his chin before snapping. "I know what's wrong!"
"Finally!" The mod soul exclaimed.
Moments later, Noba was utterly red faced with embarrassment and shame in Karin's body but was a bit comfortable wearing Yuzu's long skirt while Kurodo was red faced with elation and delight in Yuzu's body as he swayed from side to side wearing Karin's short skirt. Noba tried hiding his face in Karin's shirt but got even more embarrassed at the sight of her bust. "That's better!" Urahara mused happily while both Yoruichi and Ririn facepalmed and Noba passed out from embarrassment.