Heeeey, Chapter 5! Gotta say, the beginning of this chapter was so much fun to imagine happening in my head. XD

This is the new and (somewhat heavily) edited chapter.

I. Was. Fucking. PISSED. And I very well made it known, too, with the colorful slew of profanities I screamed at that asshole Urahara while standing next to my body. Well, I recovered from the dizziness I got from the sudden swoosh of what looked and felt like me being thrown outta my body first, then I started screaming.

"You son of a bitch!" I bellowed, pointing at him accusingly, "What the fuck?! You drugged me!"

"Now, now, Takanada-chan, I-"

"And now I'm on the biggest fucking trip of my entire god-damned LIFE! This is all a hallucination, but I don't give a flying rat's ass! I'll just say all this shit again when I wake up, but REALLY?!"

"Takanada-chan, please-"

"Don't you "chan" me you weird bastard! You drugged me, and now I'm tripping that I'm standing over my seemingly dead body, attached to it with this weird-ass fucking chain. What was that shit, acid or something? You put fucking acid in a PEZ dispenser? Why the hell would you sell that to… Oh my God, you sick bastard!"

Urahara heaved a huge sigh and turned to the black cat sitting on the counter, who was watching everything in what seemed to be extreme amusement. Of course I'd hallucinate about the damn cat, too!

"Yoruichi-san, please help me with this!"

"You're the one that thought it would be more fun to surprise her with this," the cat replied, smiling, "You handle it. I'm quite content watching."

Normally, a talking cat would weird me the hell out, but since I already knew to expect this kinda freaky stuff I kept going. "You're a drug dealer, aren't you?! And now you're gonna corrupt the innocent little kids that come to your shop so you can rake in more cash! Over my dead body!" The irony of that statement didn't strike me until later. "I swear to God, Urahara, when I wake up I'll kick your ass, steal your cool hat, and burn this place to the ground!"

"Takanada-chan." I froze; his entire persona seemed to suddenly change and he was almost deadly serious. Acid trip or not, it was kinda scary. Did that make me look like a wuss? Probably. Bite me. "Ah, much better!" he continued, lightening up a bit, "Now, please let me explain, alright?"

Folding my arms and crossing my legs, I sat there and sulked a bit at my situation. "Fine."

"First, you're not hallucinating, because I didn't drug you. I merely separated your soul from your body." I paled, and raised my hand. "Yes?"

"So… I'm dead?"

"Hmm, not quite. Your body is still breathing, and your chain hasn't been disconnected, see?" He tugged the chain a bit to emphasize his point, which hurt my solar plexus, where it was connected to me. I raised my hand again. "Yes?"

"So why did you almost kill me?"

"Look down at where your chain connects you to your body," he said, pointing with his cane. Humoring him –or myself, I guess, since I was still convinced this was all a really messed up trip- I looked down; where the chain connected it seemed to disappear into a mass of flames about the size of a volley ball. The chain itself was glowing red a good six inches down, presumably because of the heat of the fire.

"I ain't exactly sure what the hell I'm lookin' at here," I blurted, dead-panning. I suppose there are worse ways to spend an acid trip; I've heard stories, anyway.

"Normal chains don't look like that on normal humans; those flames aren't supposed to be there. You're special~!"

"Joy. So what, you can see my soul chain when I'm still in my body?"

"No, Yoruichi-san and I just sensed something unusual about you," he stated, fanning himself with a smile, "We didn't know what it was, so we decided to try to shed some light on the mystery."

"You're taking this surprisingly well," Yoruichi said suddenly, eyeing me curiously.

"Why the hell would I put much credence into this? This is all just a bunch of crap my brain's comin' up with as it tries to recover from whatever the hell I just ate."

The cat dead-panned. "She still thinks you drugged her…"

~~Two hours later~~

'Kay, so turns out I wasn't tripping on anything. It took Urahara and Yoruichi a bit of time, but they finally convinced me this shit was actually happening. I had, of course, asked a lot of questions; Urahara only answered what he felt like answering. Guess I was on a "need to know only" basis. Nice.

Anyway, I learned that normal Soul Chains are just that; they look like normal metal chains attached to ghosts. Urahara and Yoruichi didn't know why mine involved fire. They explained that it made my reiatsu –spirit energy or what have you- feel different than other normal humans to anyone that was capable of sensing it. I learned that the flames may or may not have something to do with my ability to see ghosts, Urahara wasn't sure yet. They avoided answering me when I asked what other things they compared the feel of my reiatsu to that made them say it was something they didn't know. And they laughed at me when I asked why the hell Yoruichi could talk.

"Maybe I'll show you sometime," had been the cat's answer.

"Right," I said, running a hand through my hair, "Not that this hasn't been a total blast or anything, but I gotta bounce; I need to get home."

"Ah yes, of course! You should be able to just step back into your body."

I did just that and it worked. As soon as I regained physical consciousness the Soul Candy flew out of my mouth and I lifted myself from the floor. Oh, and in case anyone cares, my face hurt like a son of a bitch. You know, because I landed on it. Just before I left, Urahara asked me to stop by his shop tomorrow, saying something about a test on my reiatsu.

"Sure, whatever," I breathed, tossing a lazy wave over my shoulder. I didn't give a proper farewell today; I was still pissed about him tricking me and was plotting my revenge. So if they were butt-hurt about my rudeness, well, they could suck it.

"Welcome home, Saika!" My mom greeted from the living room. I walked in to see her going through papers. "How was your day?"

"I'm exhausted and my face hurts from falling on it," I said in a monotone, "How about yours?"

"My students really seem to like me, and they're a nice bunch. It's so different from being a nurse, though!"

I could tell she was distrated with grading the papers since she didn't freak out about my revelation of clumsiness, which was fine by me.

"Yeah, but you'll do fine. If ya get any trouble makers let me know, I'll beat 'em up for ya."

"Saika!"

"Heh, kidding, kidding!" 'Sorta.'

"Anyway, dinner's in the fridge, help yourself."

~~Next day~~

My walk to school was uneventful, full of me being cranky because a) it was, in my opinion, a god-awful time in the morning to have woken up, and b) I was still plotting ways to avenge myself against Urahara and Yoruichi. Oh, and let's not forget the beautiful bruise on my face. It was like getting punched right between the eyes, because I now had two black ones and a sporting splash of purple emblazoned on my fucking forehead. Mom was horrified when she saw it this morning and I told her it was from when I fell, which was technically true. Since I don't do make-up, I was going to school looking like I got jumped.

My mood wasn't exactly lifted when I got to school, either, since everyone kept staring at me as I walked through the halls. I wasn't embarrassed so much as annoyed, since I didn't really like all the attention, but that wasn't anything compared to what I walked into when I entered my classroom.

"Holy shit!" Arisawa exclaimed, being the first to see me, "What happened to you?!"

"I fell on my face," I replied monotonously.

"Seriously?" Asano chimed, "Most people kinda, you know, catch themselves or something."

"I wasn't able to use my hands at that moment."

"Ah, Kurosaki-kun!"

Looking up at Orihime's exclamation, I saw that it was indeed Kurosaki that had strolled into the class like he was some kind of bad-ass. I concluded he was trying to keep up some sort of image. He chatted with Kojima for a few seconds, then meandered his way up to his desk, eyes falling on me. Or, more specifically, the aspect of me that had just been the subject of the oh-so-fucking-awesome conversation that had taken place early that morning.

After a few awkward moments of silence, he finally opened his mouth. "What the hell happened to your face?"

For a split second I was tempted –really tempted- to feed him some shit about being jumped by some yakuza members or something, but I honestly wasn't feeling motivated enough to talk that much anymore; I was just annoyed and wanted the day to hurry up and end. "I fell," I hissed, teeth clenched, and my tone announced that the entire conversation was over. Ginger didn't seem too pleased with my tone or all that inclined to believe what he probably thought was some shitty cover-up, if the scrunching of his eyebrows was anything to go by, but he nor anyone else got a chance to say anything about it since the starting bell rand. I plopped down in my seat, crossed my arms, and ignored the rest of the world as class started.

So, to anyone that had read the previous Chapter 5 and actually remembers it, you may have noticed the sudden lack of Rukia. This was where I accidentally started fucking up the timeline in that she shouldn't be showing up yet, considering I stated in chapter one that this story is currently taking place before she shows up.