DISCLAIMER OF D00M GOES HERE.

Hey everyone, sorry I'm late. I was exhausted yesterday. I'm sure you all know of Breaking Dawn's release. Sorry to offend any avid Twilight fans, but that book was a piece of crap, a waste of money, and a waste of time. And I do not use the word 'crap' unless I'm extremely serious about something. And I NEVER use it in my stories, even if the characters are more likely to- I simply cannot bring myself to. See how serious I am?

They stood facing each other in the empty soccer field. Toshiro had managed to get a pair of wooden swords from Urahara with slight difficulty (the stupid man insisted to know why he needed wooden ones- as if he didn't already know!). "All right, take your stance."

Karin shifted her body into what she thought would be a pretty good stance in a fight, but soon was corrected. "No. You'll leave your lower body open if you stand like that." Toshiro walked over and pulled her arms down and made her stick out her elbows. "That way you'll be able to defend your lower body and have more room to maneuver your sword." He nudged her feet into a better position as well. "You do not want to topple over or backwards."

"Thanks for the tips, but could we get started?" Karin asked impatiently. That he kept touching her was making her nervous.

"Impatience in battle is a costly error."

"Okay, oh wise-one. I'll try not to be me."

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you were impatient."

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me." She jiggled her sword. "Now can we please get started?"

"All right then. You must hit me a total of ten times. If you do, we'll spar again. However, if I hit you one hundred times before you reach ten, we end for the day."

"Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be really short?" Karin asked, mostly to herself. Just then Toshiro dashed for her and it was all she could do to barricade with her sword.

"Don't talk to yourself and don't look away from the enemy," he ordered, stepping back. Before she could respond he was at it again. This time, he managed to whack her leg. "One."

She swung her sword in the hopes of hitting him, but he managed to both stop her and hit her again. "I knew this wasn't going to be easy," she panted after he had hit her for the thirtieth time. Karin had yet to hit him once.

"Yet you do not fight against challenge?" Toshiro asked. "If something is not easy, you're not going to give it your all?"

"Of course I am!" she cried, reacting to his taunts. She swung with a sudden ferocity that Toshiro couldn't defend and promptly whacked him hard on the head. "One!"

"If I can train you well enough, you'll be able to hit me ten times before I hit you even once," Toshiro stated. He readied his sword and charged.

Unbeknownst to them, they had spectators. Several of their female classmates had come to spy, er, watch them. "What are they doing?" one of them asked.

"What does it look like? They're hitting each other with swords. And Hitsugaya-kun is totally kicking her butt!"

"I heard him say something about training her," another muttered. "That means they'll be doing this often!"

"What? No fair! Why does Karin get to have Hitsugaya-kun's time and energy?"

"Be quiet and watch," Hana ordered. They quieted down and turned back to the sparring match.

"One hundred," Toshiro announced at last. Karin was panting heavily and was sustaining some cuts.

"I managed to hit you three times. Is that any good?" she asked.

"Better than most, seeing as you hit me the most amount of times."

"I hope that means I'll be able to help you guys faster."

"It could be. Let's go home." He walked off the soccer pitch, her right behind.

"I hope Yuzu's cooking something good. I'm starving!"

He laughed. "If you're starving, I'm dying from hunger."

She laughed as well. "I hope Yuzu can handle feeding you. I'd hate for her to hurt herself trying to feed you. What in the world do you eat in the Soul Society?"

"At least five times as much as I had at lunch. Sometimes more if I've had an especially stressing day."

"It's amazing you aren't fat," Karin said in awe. She leaned closer to get a look at his face. "A kid like you- don't give me that look! -shouldn't have so many lines on his face." She traced a particularly deep one that was near his eyebrow.

"You would too if you had Matsumoto for a vice-captain," Toshiro muttered. "She never does any work. Not unless I threaten to strip her of her rank."

She shrugged. "If you ask me, you're not going to die fighting against some Hollow. You're going to die from overworking yourself."

"And you're going to die giving birth," he retorted. "Surely you've received enough hits to damage your internal organs."

She sent a swift kick in his direction. Once she heard the satisfactory cry of pain, she said, "I am not going to get married."

He winced as he put his left foot down. Shivers of pain crawled up his leg, causing him to lift it. "Why not?"

"For starters, I'm a tomboy. I'll probably be that way the rest of my life. No one wants to marry a tomboy."

"I know I'd find it a refreshing change of pace."

She decided that he wasn't talking about her and moved to a different subject. "How can I meet the spirit of my zanpakto?"

"I'm not quite sure. They summon you the first couple of times, but otherwise, if you just sit somewhere quiet with your zanpakto, you can talk with it. Mentally anyway. I tried it here and I was rudely interrupted."

"By what?"

"Another one of the shinigami that had come here with me. He was insisting that his zanpakto was being lazy and wasn't talking to him, so he was whacking it against a rock, trying to wake him up."

"Doesn't that hurt the spirit?" Karin asked, bewildered.

"No, but it makes them wake up all right." They had reached the front gate by now and Karin pushed it open.

"Hey, what were you talking to your zanpakto about anyway?" she asked as they walked towards the front door.

"Nothing important, mostly about the Hollows we were fighting." Other stuff but I don't want you knowing what that was.

"Is that all you ever think about? Haven't you ever thought about a crush or something?" she asked, somewhat amused.

He would have answered. Honestly. Really, he would have. But just then, Isshin bounced out the door and shouted something about his daughter, who immediately kicked him back into the house. She smiled at him in an apologetic way, then entered the house.

"Yuzu! We're home!" she called.

"Oh, that's great! Where were you?" Yuzu called from the kitchen. The two of them made their way in and sat at the table.

"We were playing soccer," Karin answered. "We're sorry about coming so late, we lost track of time."

"How did you get those cuts on your arms?" Yuzu asked suddenly, looking at her sister's injuries.

"Oh, these? Nothing to worry about Yuzu. I only fell on some sharp stuff in the lot."

Yuzu sighed. "You know where the first aid kit is." She went back to her cooking.

Toshiro sat in silence as he watched Karin attend to her wounds. Isshin had gone to the clinic announcing that he'd be back in time for supper, which would be in twenty minutes. "If you need me, I'll be in Ichigo's room." He headed upstairs without listening to their replies.

He entered the room with a heaving sigh. This job wasn't going to be easy at all. Yes, Karin proved to have much potential, but she still had a life to run and he wasn't in the best shape to train her. Though wooden swords made good substitutes, he needed to test her with shikai and bankai levels. The Arrancar weren't going to go easy on her just because she had only practiced with a wooden sword.

School made everything worse. Those girls were cruel to Karin simply because he preferred her above them. He knew her, that's all; he could have hung out with Yuzu if he wanted to. Plus, he couldn't get out of class so easily. After all, he was stuck in his gigai while his spiritual pressure returned.

Toshiro had made sure there wasn't any weird object in his gigai or that his gigai was deformed in any way, so he knew he'd be getting his spiritual powers back long before six months were up. But he didn't want to be here for that long. He knew that things could happen, that he could get attached to this place. It could end up like drinking alcohol or taking drugs- once you got a taste, you needed more to keep living.

He had a taste of Karakura Town, and he liked it. It was livable. But he didn't want it to become more than that. His eyes burned- were they tears? -with the knowledge that he could very well never want to return to the Soul Society. And he knew why.

A pair of blazing purple-black eyes swam into his mind's eye. Joining the pair was a mouth curved into a smile. Yes, Toshiro Hitsugaya, captain of the Tenth Squad, knew that Karin was a reason, probably the main reason that he might never want to go back to the Soul Society. It was stupid, like trying to hold flames in your hands, but it was true.

Toshiro wasn't in love with her. He was interested by her, he was a friend of hers, and he was a teacher to her. She was his subordinate, friend, and student. They were entirely different; he was ice, she was fire. Fire and ice do not mix.

Deciding to think or do less trivial things, he picked up the backpack he had borrowed from Ichigo (an old one anyway) and pulled out his homework. He had done most of it in class, but the math was getting to him. It had been ages since he had been required to do math in such a specific way. In the Soul Society math was needed, but hardly ever in this precise method. Seeing as that was the homework, well, he hadn't been able to finish in class.

Five minutes into doing his homework, he got bored. Once more he reached into his backpack and yanked out his prize from earlier. His teacher had pulled out an interesting arrangement of items. There was a phoenix figurine that Karin had picked up squealing something about Harry Potter and Fawkes, whatever those were. He himself had chosen this Blue-Eyes White Dragon plushie. The toy reminded him of Hyorinmaru in the sense that it was an icy-blue color. It was only one more example of how he and Karin were different.

"Hitsugaya-kun! It's dinner time!" Yuzu called up the stairs, jarring his thoughts. He stood up and bounded away from the desk, throwing the door open. Mealtimes were always lonely for him, since he usually ate while doing paperwork. Thus, he was a pro at keeping his papers clean.

Isshin had reappeared and was jabbering away about the new patient that had come in the twenty minutes he had been gone. His daughters listened with rapt attention as he told about the unusual burn marks and deep gashes that had criss-crossed the patient's body. At this, Toshiro began listening as well, and began asking questions.

"What did the burns look like? How exactly were the gashes placed upon the body?" It was all Isshin could do to keep up with him. At last, Toshiro was satisfied. He leaned over and whispered in Karin's ear, "This is the work of a Hollow. After dinner we go to investigate."

"I understand Captain," she whispered back.

Bahahaha... OOCness! XD

By the way, I took the Blue-Eyes plushie idea from the story Vulnerable Europa. It is a very well-written HitsuKarin fanfiction. Please, read it!

I'm sure you're ALL wondering what, exactly, the poll standings are for Karin's zanpakto's name. Well, here they are:

Honaga (fire dragon)- 6

Kakiwa (fire ring)- 2 (yes, I misspelled this)

Homai (fire dance)- 1

Honeko (fire cat)- 1

Voting is STILL OPEN. Please, vote if you haven't already! :D I'm thinking in chapter eight (whenever I finish chapter seven... ish already at nearly 3000 words without sign of stopping soon) I'll introduce Karin to her zanpakto. You have a while yet to vote!!