Orihime was breathless by the time she and Shuuhei got back to the house. Renji was still on the porch, his paperwork finished as he stood akimbo on the step, watching them narrowly. She got the feeling she'd been gone too long.

But it wasn't Renji's look of reprimand that he leveled on Shuuhei as they walked up the sloping yard to the porch that made her feel a little more than glad to be back. She'd kept her cough to a minimum on the bike as she sat behind Ninth Division's vice-captain, but as they met Renji at the porch, the cough won over.

Both Renji and Shuuhei looked to her as she put a hand over her mouth and tried to muffle the cough. She shook her head at Renji's suspicious look.

"You all right?" he asked as she eked out the last bit of cough.

She nodded, smiling quickly although her chest felt like collapsing. "Yes, fine," she said, nearly gasping from lack of air. "Just too much wind around that last corner."

"Don't start," Shuuhei said before Renji could verbalize the sharp look on his face. "All these mountains look the same."

"You got lost?" Renji nearly snapped at him.

"Not lost," Shuuhei corrected. "Just the scenic route." He looked to Orihime. "Okay now?"

"Oh, yes," she said with an eager nod that nearly brought on another coughing bout. "Would you like to come in? We have iced tea and lemonade."

"No, I'm going now," he said, taking the rolled papers from Renji and looking to the cloudy skies. "I've got a flight later this evening and I want to leave before this turns into rain."

"Oh, okay. Thanks for taking me for the bike ride," she said, keeping her breathing slower as another cough threatened.

Renji looked to her, seeing her hand go to her collar. She gave him a fleeting smile and headed into the house.

"What do you mean scenic route?" she heard Renji ask as she passed through the front room and went up the staircase.

She was on the third creak of steps when a more forceful coughing jag caught her. She hurried to the bathroom and let it go. She wasn't sure how much was from the force of the wind on the bike and how much was something more sinister. She took a ragged breath, making herself breathe slower, and looked into the mirror.

Everything was the same, no shadows on her chest as she examined her reflection in the mirror. She flicked on the vanity overhead light and peered closer. There was nothing, and as she testily put her fingers to what she called the trouble spot at the skin above her bra line, nothing happened. She sighed in relief, feeling a small catch in her chest. She'd used up all the lavender vials in the protocol kit Urahara had given her – the grape flavored ones – and would start the orange ones soon.

"Maybe they'll taste like oranges," she said aloud, not really caring, so long as the strong fluid reversed any delayed Hollowfication characteristics she could possibly have.

Hollowfication.

Even the word made her sound less human. Hollow. Empty.

She shuddered, instead focusing on the low rumble of voices from the main floor as Renji and Shuuhei spoke. She washed her face and took a moment to take out the ponytail and comb the tangle of auburn tresses into a manageable mane around her face. The day was muggy and the motorcycle ride had done wonders to cool the air for her, but it did horrors to her hair. She reattached her hairclips.

A sudden loud rattle came from her room down the hall, and she went back into the hall. By the time she got to her bedroom the curtains were twisting at the west window. She went there and pulled the window pane down, feeling the moisture in the air that promised rain. Down the hall came another rattle and she skipped out of the room. After glancing into Isane's old room, she knew it was Renji's window and went there.

Sure enough, the western window was open, the curtains whipping. She tugged the glass down, and then paused to look out. The woods were thick, leading into a forest beyond the property line that was marked by a wooden fence in stages of disrepair. They were surrounded by trees, in fact, and while she could see the outlines of some buildings further out from her northern back window in her room, she couldn't distinguish any neighbors. She knew there were people around, neighbors, but the high mountains and tall trees gave a feeling of isolation. She knew from her few trips into town with Isane that they weren't too far out.

But she felt like it.

Maybe it's just the prison break that makes it feel that way, she thought, fingers resting on the window sill as she watched the tree branches dance under the growing wind.

"Did you see something?"

She spun around at Renji's voice, squeaking an 'eep' as she looked to him in the doorway. "Oh, no. The wind was getting noisy."

He nodded, eyes on her collar. "How's that cough?"

"Okay," she said brightly, nodding.

"Good. Come on down and we'll get this put on," he said, holding up the case.

"Okay. He's gone?"

"He's gone."

They settled in the kitchen at the table after Orihime got them lemonade, listening to the wind gain in strength outside. Her eyes went to the thin newspaper pushed to a placemat, and before she could ask, he answered her question.

"It's a special edition," he said, opening the case and bringing out the green bangle, watch, and ring. "All about the prisoners." He saw her brow frown. "Just some details and shit. Nothing to worry about."

She nodded, scooting her chair closer to the corner of the table and laying her arm on the surface, forearm up.

Renji lifted the small case's false bottom to find the key and eighteen-inch chain. "Enjoy your ride?"

She nodded. "But all the turns and hills were kind of nauseating."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes."

The green bangle was made of two smooth, rounded malachite segments, and each locking onto the next and secured with the small key at the end of the chain. Renji unlocked one metal junction and eased it open. "You were gone long enough," he muttered. "Nearly forty-five minutes. Did you get lost?"

"Oh, no. But we had to take a detour," she said, watching as opened the two green bracelet segments. "They had a roadblock set up and we went around it to another road."

He nodded, reaching for her wrist. He pulled her arm closer, turning it over to see the coral bangle. He scowled. "Isane's got the key to this one. I guess we can just leave it on."

She frowned at the pinkish-red bracelet. "Is that okay?"

"I'll call Soul Society later and make certain." He fit the loosened green bangle segments around her wrist, looking up to see her cheeks blush faintly. He grinned. "Me being here isn't going to get you in trouble with a Quincy, is it?"

At first her face fell, but then she giggled. "No. It's not like that."

"Not like that?" He snapped the segments together and locked the tiny juncture with the key. "Ishida isn't the jealous type? He looks like he'd be."

"Oh, well ... it's not like that," she said lowly, watching as he tested the lock's catch. "Not anymore."

He nodded and put the chain with the key around his neck, thoughts sorting between what she could mean.

Orihime pulled her wrist closer and smiled at the piece of jewelry. "It's pretty."

"It's got a quarter mile tolerance, according to Shuuhei," he said, buckling the watchband over his wrist. It fit perfectly. He watched her slide the coral and malachite bracelets up her wrist, and then back down to her hand, jangling them testily. "What do you mean, not any more?"

This time her lashes remained lowered over the jewelry at her wrist, a slight pout at her lips as she considered her answer. She lifted one shoulder, sighing. "He's decided to pursuit his heritage, Renji. It takes a lot of concentration and, and dedication."

Renji could piece together some of what she wasn't saying. He nodded, deciding to drop the subject. She'd said enough.

She looked to him quickly, something short of hurt in her violet-gray eyes, and then she glanced to the newspaper. "Did they find the prisoners?'

"No." He thought to take the paper from her, but let her find the photos inside instead. Whatever her relationship had been with Uryuu Ishida, most of it was over, it seemed. He watched her open the newspaper, which was only the outer pages and a pullout page inside, and placed them on the table so the escaped convict photos were on display.

He put the black onyx ring on his right ring finger. Much as he wanted to feel his shinigami powers, even for a few seconds, it wasn't worth setting Orihime's de-hollowfication progress back. He leaned over the table to see the newspaper photos better.

"Nyles, Butler, Morgan, and McDarrow," she read slowly from the captions beneath the images. Morgan was an enormous man in his early forties with dark stringy hair that fell to his shoulders. Butler and McDarrow were mid twenties, both on the smaller, tightly wound side, with close cropped brown hair. Nyles was more average built with blond hair that was slightly spiked in a familiar fashion, in his early twenties.

Silently they each read the individual criminal records of the escaped prisoners, until Renji read ahead, and had read enough. He pulled the paper from her before she could read the last two details.

"They'll find them," he said, folding the paper back into a semblance of its original creases as she looked to him curiously. "Seriously bad guys, but don't worry about them, Orihime," he added, recognizing the sinking look in her face when she glanced back to the paper.

"Can we get a radio for the kitchen?" she asked, then smiled a little. "We only get three stations on the TV in the living room."

He didn't know why she was smiling about that, but he nodded. "Sure." Her eyes went back to the paper and he pushed it away. "What's for supper?"

"Oh, I'll let you choose," she said, jumping out of her chair and making a beeline for the refrigerator. "The pantry here is huge, Renji. You can almost walk into it."

He sat back in his chair, watching her rummage through the closet-size pantry next by the refrigerator. She collected a few cans and packages and went to the counter, chatting away about her last grocery shopping trip with Isane. Outside the wind picked up stiffly, gusting clouds into the sky bringing rain that began as a timid spatter at the west windows.

"I hope Lieutenant Hisagi got to the airport before the rain started," she was saying, opening the third metal can.

"I'm sure he outrode it," he said as she crouched to find a pot in the lower cupboard. He watched her hair fall to one side of her shoulder as she tilted her head to find the cookware. "Do you know him very well?"

"Hmm?" She glanced to him as she pulled out a saucepan and a small skillet. "Oh, no. Do you like anchovies with peanut butter and marshmallows? I could make a sauce."

The mention of ingredients put a halt to any miscellaneous thoughts floating through Renji's mind. "A sauce for what?"

Of all the things Szayel hated most, he was nearly one of those now. Being a Living being was as far from Arrancar as he could get, but now here he was, among them.

He hadn't wanted to go to the Living World, but that was where his test subject was, and even in his lessened condition after being restored from his Hueco Mundo lab, he could sense his workmanship.

But only faintly.

Orihime Inoue should have been sending out a loud and clear signal he could follow easily, but she wasn't.

Someone had been tampering with his experiment.

He'd followed that faint signal to the Living World, but the closer he got to it – to her – the weaker it got.

By the time he got to Chesney Hollow, the signal had all but disappeared. He decided to blame Kurotsuchi.

Now, in his most basic restored form, he was more researcher than anything, his Espada quality advantages now too low to register more than any number of three-digit Arrancar, but it didn't worry him too much.

Those could all be restored.

Besides, service among Aizen's ranks wasn't high on Szayel's list at that moment.

He was a scientist first.

And besides that, he was hungry. The world of the Living, particularly where Orihime's scent had led him, was without much for a spiritual being of his capacity to feast upon. Hunger made him edgy, and still wearing his stolen shinigami robes made him more ornery than usual.

He decided a host would be best. Something he could easily feed while pursuing and observing his Living subject. Something that would blend in with his surroundings. Something that would let him get close to his subject without detection.

He could manipulate nearly anything for his purposes, and when he saw a likely candidate lying at the edge of a cornfield at the foot of a hill, Szayel decided to take habitation.

He was in no hurry to quell his Espada-Arrancar abilities, but he subdued those urges as he ascended to the fallen form. First things first.

Nyles was lying on his side, his stomach badly bleeding into a pool of congealed blood on the ground. Szayel saw the convict's eyes open slightly as he approached.

Nyles coughed, sputtering blood and saliva onto the stubbly grass as he tried to distinguish the pink-haired man in black robes walking up to him. The gunshot wound that had taken out most of his innards was past pain, but even he knew Death when it walked up to him.

Szayel grinned at him, curious as to the man's condition. "Hell, at your service."

It took a moment for Nyles to get enough air into his fluid-filled lungs to speak. "... are you?"

Szayel frowned as he got closer. A human host might be easier to feed, but they had so many drawbacks. He stopped before the figure on the ground. "I was hoping for a better specimen. Something already intact."

Nyles closed his eyes, care gone.

"Maybe you'll do."

The soggy morning broke across Chesney Hollow under an already hot sun that promised a sultry day. The clouds had rained themselves out, but the air was still muggy, lending a stifling, unstirring feeling to the small house as Orihime and Renji went about their day.

It also let Renji know just which parts of the roof leaked. Mostly the ones over the back porch and inside one corner of the stairwell into the basement, in fact. He stood at the back door looking out the screen at the broken gutters that let the water dump right into the flower bed along the north side of the house. Beyond he could see the small garden shed, and for a moment, it looked to him like the perfect place to hide, if one were a convict on the loose.

"I'll be right back," he said to Orihime still at the table finishing her large bowl of oatmeal and cup of tea. "Just checking the gutters."

"Okay," she said through a mouthful of oatmeal.

As soon as Renji stepped out onto the wet grass he felt it, the slight twinge of something out of place, something as minute, but unidentifiable in its faintness. He crossed the yard to the shed, seeing nothing save a few birds picking at worms in the unmanaged garden plot. The shed was four-foot by four-foot, with assorted gardening and yard tools inside, most rusted and dented, but usable. The latch was still latched from the outside, and there were no footprints in the soggy dirt around it.

Renji glanced back to the house. He could see Orihime through the kitchen window over the sink, her head lowered as she ran the water. It wasn't much, but at night with the lights on, the swag style curtains would do little to hide anything.

His Soul Society communicator suddenly beeped, making him flinch. He grabbed it from his back pocket, thankful it worked, and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Renji," came Isane's voice. "Everything okay there?"

"Yes. You?"

"Yes. Shuuhei isn't so good. He got arrested last night."

Renji stopped walking, waiting for Isane to say she was joking. She didn't. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. Well, not quite arrested, but they're holding him as a person of interest. I'm not sure what that means. He got stopped at a roadblock a few miles from the airport and is at the Mooresville jail. He said he only has one phone call, so he called Captain Unohana." She sighed. "Anyway, Captain wants you to go down there and see if you can vouch for him. The authorities keep saying he's an escaped prisoner named Nyles."

Renji would have chuckled if it had been about someone else. Like Ichigo Kurosaki. "He's wearing a ring. Can't he just slip it on the other hand?"

"They took his wallet and personal items."

It sounded like arrest to him, but he didn't say it. "Yeah, okay."

"Good. I think you'll need your identifications ..."

He headed back to the house, but halfway there he lost the signal. He growled and backtracked to the car in the driveway.

"... it would be a big help," Isane was still saying. "I don't think they can hold him much after that."

He nodded, looking to the back door, mind running along what he'd thought the first time he'd seen the convicts' pictures in the paper. "All right."

"Just a formality. He might even be free by the time you get there."

He sighed, glaring at the car. "All right. We've got nothing else to do today."

"Has Captain Kurotsuchi or Nemu contacted you yet?"

Renji switched his stare to the phone. "No. Why?"

"I'll let them tell you. It's really not Fourth's duty for that. I don't have permission to say –"

"What is it?" he asked.

There was a slight pause, and then she sighed. "I can't say more if you haven't been told through proper channels yet, Renji. I'm sure Nemu will contact you soon."

He finished talking to Isane and got no more information out of her, and then went inside and told Orihime the news of Shuuhei's arrest. She was at first horrified, and then relieved, but then set into gear, grabbing the phone directory and newspaper as she followed him to the car.

"If he's not arrested," she said once they were on their way down the twisting road to town, the directory open to a map of the county, "then can't he leave?"

"I don't know how that works here, but if he could leave, I think he would have by now," he told her. They cautiously took the turns in the road, telltale black marks from Isane's driving still evident around one turn. He saw her open the newspaper, and this time he let her read the details.

She was looking at the photo of Nyles. "You know, Renji, it does kind of look like him," she decided, studying the black and white image. "If this Nyles had black hair instead of blond, and if Vice Captain Hisagi didn't have his tattoos." She read silently for a moment. "Oh, it says here that Nyles has an armband tattoo around his bicep. It doesn't say what it looks like."

He nodded. He'd read that part, too, the night before. They reached town and were quickly through it. A glint to his right made Renji look back to Orihime. The hairclip facing him was carefully set in her hair, as she usually wore them, but it made him think of something else.

"Captain Kurotsuchi assigned anyone near you his most resistant gigais," he said, hoping to sound more casual about the matter than he felt. "You think it's a good idea to have your hairpins in? Won't they affect Urahara's protocol?"

She folded the paper so Nyle's photo was facing out. "I asked him about that. He said it would be okay." She frowned at the convict's photo. "It made me wonder about it, Renji," she said after a moment, looking to the hilly scenery that sprung up as they left town. "Urahara-san said that he was trying to undo Hollowfication, but I know," she paused, her voice dropping as she dared continue, "I know he's done a lot of research on attempting Hollowfication."

This time he looked at her for a longer moment, eyes resting on the frown that extended to her whole face as she stared out the window. He turned his attention back to the road. He knew where her mind was going.

"Captain Unohana and Captain Kurotsuchi are looking after this, too," he said, not sure how much help bringing up the name of Twelfth Division's captain would be. He saw her wince a little. They continued out through the mountainous twists, the sun beating down from high in the sky as the curves began to wear on Orihime's vertigo.

The car had just made it out to the main highway that opened up to relatively flat land, leading to Mooresville, when Renji's Soul Society communicator beeped. He answered it, keeping one hand tight on the less meandering road that evened out between the bases of the mountains.

"Hey, hope you haven't left the house yet," Shuuhei said over the phone.

"I thought you were in jail," Renji said.

Orihime looked over at him, smiling. "He's out?" she whispered loudly.

He nodded, eyes on the road ahead.

"Yeah, was, but I'm out. Just wanted you to know before you left. Isane said she called you."

"We already left," Renji told him. "Where are you?"

"On my way to the airport. Again. Sorry about the false start, Renji."

"Yeah, no problem." Renji began looking around for a place to turn the car around. There wasn't a side road in sight, now that the land had flattened out decently.

"Just letting you know," Shuuhei said. "Anyway, I'm off to Japan. Damn, watch yourself, Abarai; they're really looking for these escapees. I had a dermatologist in my face for a full hour last night to determine if my tattoos were real. They'd be all over you."

Shuuhei chuckled, but Renji wasn't amused.

"But you convinced them?" he asked. He slowed the car and turned into a road that cut through a tobacco field. "How? You've got all your documentation, right?"

"I guess you haven't heard. Orihime keeping you busy? That guy – Nyles – some farmer shot him in his barn earlier this morning. They haven't found him yet, but it was a clear identification, so they let me go."

Renji grinned. "Lucky you."

A long line of static cut through the phone as Renji turned the car back onto the road.

"...I said hi," Shuuhei said mid-sentence.

"Yeah, I will," Renji said, guessing at what he'd missed, casting a glance at Orihime watching him. "What do you know about Captain Kurotsuchi in this? Anything new?"

There was a sigh. "You know how Research and Development is. I guess some entity got loose from that Espada scientist's lab in Hueco Mundo, or so they think. Something killed a Twelfth Squad member and Captain Kurotsuchi's lab listed it as having Arrancar markings. Arrancar profiles, Nemu said, and there have been traces of a resurrection. I'm not sure about the details," Shuuhei said, his tone now rushing. "I've got to go. My flight's up."

Renji scowled at the news. "What kind of resurrection?"

"That's all I know. Twelfth isn't very forthcoming with the details, so I assume it's their responsibility."

"Their fault."

"Yup. Nemu should be contacting you about it if it's important."

"All right." Renji snapped off his communicator and returned Orihime's attention. "Shuuhei says hi. He's out of jail and on his way to Karakura Town."

"Oh, good," she said with a sigh, smiling more. Her tone turned tentatively inquisitive. "Did something else happen?"

He shook his head, looking back to the road before the appeal in her large eyes extracted more of an answer from him. "Just Soul Society gossip, really."

The ride back to town took fifteen minutes, and then another twenty as the roads were blocked leading directly to the community. Renji's irritation grew as they followed detour sign after detour sign around what appeared to be a quarantined area being searched. He instinctively reached for the radio.

"It doesn't work," Orihime told him as he turned every knob and pressed anything that looked like a button on the radio. "I don't know why."

Renji muttered something under his breath, taking the next set of detour signs that led into a twisting incline where the road snaked between taller trees. The new road demanded slower speed, with a sharp drop to the passenger side that cut up the mountainside. Orihime inched further away from the door.

"You can see right down the side," she said uneasily. "I can't believe these people travel roads like this every day."

"Yeah," he said, concentrating on the road ahead. "I guess they're used to it."

She smiled a bit as the slope to her side grew less steep a moment later, the ravine below treed with younger maples and tall underbrush. She looked to his side of the road where the rest of the mountain rose in denser forest. "Are we getting closer to town or farther away, Renji?"

It was a good question. It seemed to him they were putting the mountain between them and Chesney Hollow. "I'm sure it'll cut back up here shortly," he said hopefully.

She nodded.

They turned another sharp corner of the road, and suddenly a tall figure shot from the thick trees to the car's left.

Renji didn't dare dodge to the right shoulder, because there was none, but simply slamming on the brakes sent the car skidding.

There was the thud of body on the front bumper, a man's terrified and startled glare at the windshield before he glanced off, and then an odd tipping feeling. Both Renji and Orihime saw the car hood raise as an angle, and then the sky above it.

The outside passenger tires caught the edge of the pavement and then slid off completely with a loud metal creak, rolling side over side down the slope.

For what seemed like ten minutes the sounds of metal crunching and glass breaking overrode the motor's revving, every loose object in the car taking flight as it rolled.

Orihime's scream was cut short as the safety belt caught at her chest and hips. For several long moments the car tumbled, knocking over saplings and shrubs, clearing a path through the undergrowth, throwing the occupants inside against the dashboard and ceiling. It stopped on the driver's side door, undercarriage against a tree with a loud, jarring thud.

The steering wheel had bent under Renji's grip as he tried to impossibly correct the fall. There was a skull-cracking smack of his temple on the door window, and the last thing he saw was a soft wave of auburn hair traipse across his face before he blacked out.