A shadow flickered against the wall, gliding past the framed painted portraits of grandfather, great-grandfather, and other family members who had left for the afterlife. Dressed in her large and frilly sleeping negligee, the young woman had snuck downstairs to confront the other woman huddled in the center of the family lounge. The orange glow of the candlelight wisped and fluttered from her quicker movement, as she slid back the large oak doors to a surprised Marianne. "I know about it, my sister. It's all hidden in that box, isn't it?" The scene about them was surreal, as Francoise pointed accusingly toward the object resting on the dining table between them. "The Jade Box that Mother gave you."

Francoise placed her candle onto the table, breathing heavy now that Marianne rushed to grab the box away from her. Her blonde hair contrasted with the other woman's short and curly brown locks, as they both latched their hands onto the box. "Give me that box, my sister Marianne! Go on!!" Francoise urged, but without any luck. Fighting against each other's strength to pull, the older sister finally managed to wrestle the cursed object away from Marianne.

"No! Don't open that box!" Marianne screamed, pushed aside to the carpeted ground. She reached out desperately to stop her older sister, but it was too late. The blonde woman's hand had flipped the lid to see its innards, only for her clear blue eyes to widen as though she had seen death itself. "Francoise!! NOOOO!!"

--

It was annoying enough to have to lose most of his powers when he saved that human girl, but now it seems that she didn't have even an instance of training with a sword—Ichigo sighed that he would have to teach her himself. With that in mind, he remembered seeing Rukia's swings; they definitely needed work. And it just so happened that he saw a pitching machine somewhere once…baseball was a popular human sport, right? "Hey, what the heck are you doing!!" Ticked off at the girl for reading instead of listening to his explanation, Ichigo cradled the baseball bat on the back of his neck while holding the handle tightly. Sighing, he reached out to tap the engrossed girl's shoulder-

"EEEEK!!" With inhuman speed and agility, the small raven haired girl jumped back from her would-be attacker with the graphic novel raised over her shoulder at the ready. "…" Panting heavily with mouth agape, Rukia's eyes were wide still when she identified the pointy haired male. "OOOH! You scared me!!" She huffed as she studied today's particular scowl for the day. "I'm, uh…studying for an upcoming 'vernacular test'…"

"You were not." Ichigo replied as he spotted the girl's bluff from a mile away. "Using that to study?" His arched eyebrow slowly descended to its default position as Rukia slowly regained her composure while still sitting on the ground. "You were reading a stupid horror comic while I was explaining and demonstrating this Shinigami training to you?" His voice was stern as he eyed the girl before him.

"You don't have to be so grouchy about it…" Rukia scoffed as she finally observed the weird contraption that Ichigo was leaning on.

"…" this only managed to elicit a more irritated scowl, much to Rukia's surprise. Without a word, he casually tossed the bat in his possession at her, causing Rukia to jump back to her feet in order to avoid the cylindrical aluminum object that clanked against the ground and rolled to a stop where she stood.

Ignoring the childish response, her violet eyes looked up and down Ichigo in a curious manner. "Say…" she finally spoke out, noticing that Ichigo was covered in a fine reddish powder. "What's up with you?"

"What's up with me?" he repeated her question like a pissed off parrot. Stomping over to the strange machine, Ichigo slid open the plastic dome and reached inside. "I bet you're pretty smug with yourself right now, huh?" Walking back to her, he held up two baseball-like objects close for Rukia to see, each designed with a different picture. "What the heck are these doodles supposed to be? Are you even taking this training seriously?"

"Yeah, I am!" Rukia reacted, not sure why he would ask her such a stupid question. "You asked me to draw a head and hand on those orbs of yours, and I did it! I didn't have to, but I even took extra time to make each and every one of them an art masterpiece!" Crossing her small arms across her chest, she huffed at the strange criticism that he was giving her work.

"Y-you seriously call this…art!?" amazed and appalled simultaneously, Ichigo glanced at the two pictures—one supposedly of a head and another of a hand—to make sure they were talking about the same thing.

"Yeah! Got a problem with that!?"

"This is a hand…" He held up the pepper ball in his left as he made his argument. "And this…" Holding the regular ball in his right, Ichigo's eye twitched as he tried to hammer in this detail into the self-absorbed girl. "…is a hand with a face on it!! How the hell are you going to do this exercise properly—much less exorcise Hollow—if you can't distinguish between the two!?"

"I can distinguish them just fine!" Rukia yelled back with equal tenacity, purely annoyed by how Ichigo was acting. "You're just an ignorant boob!"

"What!?" dumfounded without a direct response to that, Ichigo could only pinch the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "Listen!" he said in a serious tone, not wanting to be bogged down by the aesthetics of art, "The head is a Hollow's weak spot. One good whack will split it open like a melon." Tossing the ball for her to catch, Ichigo continued to re-explain the basics. "This training will help you crack heads with precision, whatever the situation!"

"…" Rukia spent her attention observing the ball in her hands, trying to figure out what was so hard to distinguish about the drawing.

"Hey…" the orange haired man raised his hand toward Rukia's unsuspecting forehead. "You're not even listening to me even after I'm explaining this for a second time…" Ready to flick, Ichigo pressed the back of his middle finger against his thumb before-

"HEY, GUYS!!"

"EEEEK!!" The cheery voice sent a vivid shock of surprise up Ichigo's spine, as his less-than-masculine yelp alerted Rukia to another's presence.

"Huh? Orihime? What are you doing here?" Rukia casually addressed the red haired girl's arrival, and largely ignored Ichigo who was still picking himself up from the ground he fell to.

"Hee-hee! Shopping for dinner!" Orihime cheerily responded with an accompanying crumple of plastic. Her hand shuffled through the bag hanging off her opposite wrist before revealing the whitened stalk of vegetable and waving it about like a conductor's wand. "I bought leeks, butter, bananas, and bean jam jelly!"

'What's she planning to make?' Rukia raised an eyebrow in concern.

"Hmm?" the long haired girl's eyes turned their attention to the still recovering Ichigo, tilted just slightly from her head cocked to the side in curiosity. "Rukia…What are you doing here with Ichigo?"

"Eh?" blinking in surprise, Rukia's mind rushed to come up with an excuse, rolling her eyes away while placing a finger atop her lips in thought. "…well, uh….um…"

"Heh?" Leery eyes returned a glance toward Orihime's question, completely unsure if he was the one being addressed despite hearing his own name. Pointing to himself, the orange haired shinigami blinked stupidly as the girl stared back in equal silence. "Do I know you?"

"Idiot!" the smaller girl exclaimed with a flinch of a kick to the taller male's legs and tripped him up. Laughing nervously and loudly to cover up Ichigo's yelp of surprise, Rukia jumped between the two of them with a forced smile and rapidly flapping hands waving about. "She's Orihime Inoue! She's in our class!" Rukia whispered behind through her gritting teeth.

"Oh…really?" With a grunt, Ichigo managed to sit up a second time and exhaled softly. His eyes hovered back to the curious girl, as they both stayed silent for quite an awkward length of time. "…sup?" a casual raise of his hand was a form of a wave, apparently, as he mumbled his greeting with an oblivious tone.

'Geez…I guess he treats everyone like they're guys…' Rukia's mouth went agape at the shinigami's lack of courtesy toward the opposite sex, as she used to think that Ichigo was rude only to her.

"Huh…? Oh…just… 'chillin'..." Orihime smiled, and returned the greeting in much the same way.

'She's playing along with it!?'

Their greeting over, Orihime looked downward with a soft smile on her face. Rukia had now glanced over to her friend, wondering about the fresh dressing of bandages around the redhead's left arm. "Your arm…what happened? You fall again?"

"Huh?" As if forgetting it was there, Orihime blinked with modest movements about her supposed injury. "Oh, this? No!" Her tone made the subject seem trivial, with the corners of her mouth stretched from ear to ear with a smile. "I was run over!"

"R-run over!?" If there were a table nearby, Rukia surely would've flipped it over or if she were sitting, would've fallen off from the sheer absurdness in her friend's treatment of such an event. Baffling, really, even for a girl like Orihime. "By a car!?"

"Yeah." she responded like it was a fond nostalgia, "I went out to buy a drink last night and…BAM!" Clapping her hands together in a cheap form of reenactment, it took a moment for Orihime to continue until the momentum of the plastic bag's movement came to a neutral hanging. "I've been getting run over a lot lately." The added "Hee hee" did nothing to lower the amount of concern Rukia had for her airy friend.

"No 'hee hee'!" Rukia frowned, "That's serious! Aren't you upset!?"

"But…they didn't hit me on purpose…"

"That's not the point…" Rukia's shoulders gave in to slumping as she tried her odds against her friend's innocence. She was too tired to yelp when a light tap poked her shoulder from behind. "…" her neck craned slowly backwards to see Ichigo standing there.

"Does Orihime get hurt a lot?"

"Almost everyday!"

"I daydream…" taking the comment in stride, Orihime rubbed the back of her head with a simple smile.

"Don't be so casual about it!"

'Hmm…maybe she's just clumsy…' Crossing his arms over each other silently while watching the girls continue their own conversation, Ichigo squatted on the ground, frankly a bit fatigued over the experiences from the past few days. "…" His eyes were attracted to something in front of him, causing a focused squint of concern.

"Really, Orihime…you shouldn't be so quick to…" Rukia's soft-voice chastising immediately paused as something orange attracted her attention.

"That bruise on your leg…" Rukia practically screamed when she found Ichigo squatting next to Orihime, practically looking up the girl's skirt with no sense of regret. It took her quite the amount of restraint not to strangle him right then and there, but the injury was too pressing to override her concern. Instead, she knelt next to him to observe the injury, neither of them noticing Orihime's slight blush creeping across her face.

"Oh…I got this last night. It must've happened when the car hit me…" Orihime explained.

A twitch of his eyes alerted Rukia to something else more worrisome as he quickly stood up with a serious look on his face.

"Rukia, why are you looking like that?" Orihime bent down with a curios look on her face. It seemed that Rukia forgot that her friend was looking right at her, noticing her obvious concern.

"Huh? Oh…it's nothing…" Rukia tried to play it off, standing up as well while trying to change her expression.

"It just looks so painful." Ichigo added, stuffing his hands into his pockets as if they belonged in there.

"How did you know!?" Orihime, surprised by the boy's keen observational skills, clamored with excitement toward him. "My leg hurts worse than my arm!"

"Really?" He put on a wide eyed expression now, seeming more worried than a complete stranger would normally be. "Maybe it's paralyzed or something!? You should go to the doctor!"

"Huh? …um…"

"Why are you blushing?"

Simply watching this continue, Rukia stayed silent as her friend shuffled nervously around before glancing at her watch.

"Oh no! I'm late!" She began rushing off toward the stairs that led up a hill, her sandals slapping cutely against the bottoms of her feet.

"In a hurry?" Rukia called out.

"Yes! Shoten's gonna start!" she continued her rapid advance up the steps, jumping nearly two at a time like it was a matter of life or death.

"You gonna be okay!? Want me to walk you home!?"

"Huh!?" Orihime turned around in a pause from Rukia's offer, but waved it off like it would be troublesome for her friend. "N-no, I'm fine!!"

"Okay! See ya tomorrow then!" Noticing Ichigo's bored form standing around, she quickly elbowed his gut, eliciting a soft yelp from him. She glared daggers at him, trying to communicate that it was rude not to say bye to someone.

Just barely getting the message, Ichigo looked up the hill where the long haired girl stood, and raised his hand in the same lazy manner he did upon introduction. "…"

"Okay! See you…tomorrow!" the girl barely squeaked back a response, and scampered out of view with plastic bag in tow.

"Phew…" Rukia rubbed the back of her head while still looking up the hill, "Just watching her makes me tired…I hope she's alright…"

"That girl…" Ichigo spoke out in a contemplative tone. His eyes not looking at anything in particular, his thumb and index finger pinched his chin as if he were trying to deduce something.

"Huh?" Rukia turned, wondering what the shinigami had to say about Orihime now that she had left. "Don't tell me you li-"

"Are you two close?"

"I wouldn't say as close as Tatsuki, but well...kinda, I guess." She crossed her arms in thought, trying to remember the roots of their friendship.

"Any siblings?"

"Just one. She had a brother, an older one." Rolling her neck upwards, she sighed in a somber way.

"Had?"

"Yeah…" Rukia sighed again, this time, a bit sadder than before. "He died three years ago." She looked downward now, staring at her feet. "I remember because I opened the door. I was just about to leave for school. The doorbell rang before we were open. A girl carrying her brother on her back. They said it was a car accident. He was covered with blood." Shaking her head, Rukia took a pause for breath before continuing. "We didn't have the equipment to save him. He died while we were arranging his transfer to a big hospital. So, despite being friends with her for a while, I found out recently that the little girl with brown hair was her." She craned her neck back toward the orange haired shinigami, with a smug look on her face. "What's with all the questions, huh? Are you worried about her?"

"No. I'm not worried." Ichigo brushed off the girl's insinuative tone with bored eyes. Turning around, he began to walk out of the park as well.

"Wha!? …tch….What's wrong!?" Rukia exclaimed in confusion, annoyed by his aloof manner contradicting her honed feminine instincts.

"C'mon, we're going home too…"

'Lousy bratty…just because he's taller…' She mumbled with gritted teeth, although a spark of realization coursed through her mind at the word. "Hey…where do you go home to? You have a home down here?" Genuinely interested, Rukia wondered as Ichigo paused upon her question.

"Heh? You saying you want to come over to my place?" he asked with a smug look on his face.

"As if! Not in the least!!" Taken aback, Rukia scowled at his comment and even more so when she thought that he was probably mocking her comment about him and Orihime just a bit earlier. "And what kind of tumor do you have in your orange hair-infested brain that keeps making you say those kinds of things!?"

"Later." Yet again, he was ignoring her while walking casually up the stairs and leaving Rukia behind.

--

Upon leaving the park, it seemed that Ichigo had disappeared from sight. Rukia definitely didn't mind, not needing to know where he lived after that creepy comment of his. Already home, she was wrapped in her bathrobe, walking up stairs toward her room when she noticed her father rummaging around like a maniac—or possibly just more like himself…

"Oh, Rukia!" he gruffly called to her, just beginning to open up her bedroom door.

"Hey! Knock before entering!"

"Hmmm…" closing the door behind him, the scruffy faced doctor scratched his chin with a puzzled look in his eyes. "Have you seen my shirt and pants anywhere?"

"What? Are you getting old, or something? You're wearing it, aren't you?"

"No, no, the shirt and pants I wore when I met Misaki…" her dear father's explanation was cut short as he stared blankly at her.

"…?"

"You took a bath! I was going to take one too!"

"…" Rukia couldn't even respond to his dangerous comment. Perhaps, she could at least take a slight step backwards. "What the heck? And you wonder why Karin is so mean to you…"

"Rukia…you've gotten so cold to your father since you started high school!" Isshin leaned in toward the smaller girl with arms wide open and eyes clenched shut, only to feel a bare foot strike him in the face and send him to the floor.

"No I haven't…" she answered in a blunt manner while opening the door to her room. "And I have no idea where your clothes could be…"

"What!!" Isshin jumped back to his feet too late, only managing to strike his face against the now closed door. "My pajamas are missing too!" He added, though his voice was muffled on the other side despite his loud voice. "I wouldn't mind if you just told me you or the girls took them! Maybe because you're adding on a gold star for being a good Papa!?"

"Your stupidity knows no bounds, dad!" Rukia screamed back. She could only shake her head in disappointment over her father's antics, moving closer to her bed to start changing into her sleeping clothes. Sitting atop her Chappy Bunny blankets, she had just untied the sash to her robe before a series of soft beeps caught her attention. She looked around, unsure of where they were coming from. "What? Is Yuzu or Karin playing a game or something?" Just as suddenly as they began, the beeps stopped. "Huh…" Rukia shrugged it off, and merely continued to remove her robe-

A bang from her right caused Rukia to jump up, and look to see what had caused the—"KYAHH!!" she squealed in terror while clutching her robe closed again. Revealing himself from within her walk-in closet, a familiar orange haired burglar appeared. "H-h-h-how long have you been peeking on me, you pervert!?" It took a moment to register, but the clothing that he wore was also quite familiar as well. "Those are my dad's pajamas!!"

"Never mind that!" Ichigo ignored her accusations, and extended his arm to reveal his cell phone "It's an order!"

"An order? A Hollow's coming? Where!?"

"Time and place…" he began saying, stepping out from her walk-in closet while slipping on his red glove. "Here…" he rushed right toward the girl, ignoring her surprised look and jumped to push Rukia right out of her body. "…and now!!"

"Wha!?" They had just narrowly avoided the monstrously large hand that shot out of the bed and tore apart her pillow, sending stuffing to flutter all throughout her room. Now dressed in her black kimono and shihakusho, Rukia saw an arm pull out through a crack in the very air, red and gruesome before the rest of the monster emerged into view. Unlike the one that attacked the boy in the park, this was one humanoid, and had dark hair that breezed backwards from its lunging motion.

"GRAARRWW!"

"Aim for the head!!" Ichigo quickly ordered, just as Rukia's hand grasped against her sheathed zanpakuto at her hip.

"I know!!" As the Hollow thrashed after her, Rukia managed to swing her blade up in a diagonal path, carving through the beast's masked face.

"GRAAAAAR!!"

'Too shallow!!' Ichigo noted as she struck, though the Hollow lurched backward in pain and retreated though the now disappearing crack in the air. "It got away!" He growled and bounded toward the window. "Let's go!!"

"Wait!!" Hearing her call after him, Ichigo stumbled to a stop, whipping his view behind him to see Rukia's paled face. Panting, she stood with eyebrows furrowed and beads of sweat on her face. "What's going on?" She gulped, disturbed by what she saw when the Hollow attacked. "That was…Orihime's brother!"

Author's Notes: Technically chapter 8 of the main storyline, I've finally posted it! Ha!

Anyways, you ever been to Tekkoshocon? It's an Anime convention in Pittsburg...I went...it was awesome...

If you didn't know, Kubo-sensei is on a two month break, so the manga is on a "filler" mode. I don't care, though. This is important and life altering revelations, and I love how it's coming like this instead of those stinky flashbacks in the middle of the main arc. Same great taste, more filling.

...legalities...

Bleach has a round house kick that's so fast, it tore through the fabric of time to hit Amelia Earheart in the face, thus making her crash into the Atlantic ocean.

The boogieman looks under the bed for Tite Kubo

There is no Theory of Evolution...just a list of animals that Kenpachi Zaraki allows to live.