Castle starts tonight! Yay! I'm so excited! It is the little ray of sunshine in my otherwise dark day. Yay for Castle!

Anyways, this story's going to be finished pretty soon. And I'm not doing a threequel. I do however, have several ideas for several different stories, which I can't decide which to do yet. I may put up a poll later...

If I owned Bleach, there would be more murder mysteries.

Renji stared at them. "Kinda in the middle of a victory dance?" he asked, but the twins ignored him, instead continuing to jump around on the floor, singing 'we're awesome, we're awesome, we're awesome!' He had heard it before, when the two had completed a run with a good time, or had gotten a hundred on a test, but now didn't seem to be the time.

Byakuya came up behind him, and frowned when he saw the two girls. "More Substitute Shinigami?" he sounded incredulous. "There is something wrong with this."

"There's something wrong with these two," Renji grumbled. "They're crazy."

"Insane," Bren and Tara corrected quickly. "Not crazy. Just insane. Who's the hottie?" They pointed to Byakuya with matching looks of amusement. Byakuya made a choking noise, and Bren and Tara laughed, before turning their attention onto Kaili. Renji felt a bit sorry for her. Those identical green eyed stares could be a bit disconcerting at the best of times.

Bren had her head tilted to the side, and was frowning a bit as she studied Kaili, before a thin smile spread over her lips. She and Tara exchanged a look.

"Looking for something?" Bren asked finally. Kaili nodded.

"Need some help?" Tara inquired, standing in the exact same way as Bren. Kaili nodded again.

"Woo! Let's go on the Magical Quest for the… What exactly are we trying to find?"

"A dragon."

"We're going to find the dragon!"

"The wonderful dragon of Oz!"

Skipping, the two girls escorted a slightly bemused looking Kaili towards the back of the cave, talking animatedly. Byakuya stared after them before turning to Renji.

"Are they always like that?" he asked finally.

"No. Usually they're worse."

Janice stared down at the figures below them with barely contained glee. The gorgeous man had come to save her! She still had a chance! That was how it went, after all. The handsome prince came and saved the damsel in distress, and then they fell in love and got married and lived happily ever after. That was how this would go too, she was certain of it. The story had to work out. That was how things worked. The story always finished the same way. Always.

Suddenly, her bindings gave way and she screamed as she plummeted towards the ground. Somebody caught her before she hit the ground, and Janice looked up into the loveliest gray eyes she had ever seen.

Byakuya grimaced a bit at the blood-curdling shriek that Janice let out when she fell, but caught her anyways, although he would have loved to just let her fall to the hard floor. The looks that she kept giving him were creepy.

Janice reached up towards him. "You came to save me!" she squealed happily. Byakuya scowled down at her, and dropped her on ground, shrugging indifferently.

"I didn't do it for you," he informed her calmly. "It's my job." It was almost comical, the way that Janice sprawled on the floor, staring up at him with a look of utter betrayal.

"B-but…"

"I don't know you. I can't create any feelings of compassion for somebody that I don't know.

"Plus, he's taken," Renji murmured wickedly, wrapping his arms around Byakuya's waist.

"Yes," Byakuya agreed. "There's that too." He almost felt bad for Janice. Almost. He could've if she had been a bit nicer. And a bit quieter. And a bit less stalkerish.

Annica sat on the ground beside her mother, frowning. Kaili was there, which annoyed her. Why was Kaili the centre of attention, and not her? It wasn't fair! Kaili was stupid, and she, Annica, was the most brilliant child in the history of children. So there.

There were also those annoying singing girls, and four dragons! Everybody knew that dragons didn't exist, so why were they there? And everybody knew that it was illegal to carry weapons, and yet everybody had swords! The only logical solution was that they were dragon slayers, but if that were true, why was there no slaying happening? Annica came to the only solution left. Everybody there was stupid and crazy.

She turned to her mother, who was still sulking from her obvious rejection, and tugged on her sleeve.

"Everybody here's stupid. I wanna go."

"Go ahead," was the lofty reply. Annica looked up and found herself staring into two pairs of indistinguishable green eyes. "Nobody here likes you. But we'll warn you. There're monsters out there. Waiting for naïve brats like yourself so that they can have an easy feast."

Annica stared up at her. "There're no such things as monsters."

"No? Then how'd you get here? If that wasn't a monster that grabbed you, I don't know what it was." The two girls squatted down in front of her. "Listen. You're a little horror and no mistake. You think you're better than everybody else for no reason whatsoever. You bully to get your way. That stops here, understood? The only stupid person here is you, and maybe your mother. Because there are worse things waiting for bad children than monsters under your bed."

"There's us."

"Got that?"

"You can't boss me around. It's a free country."

"If that's so, how come you're allowed to boss everybody else around?"

Annica had no answer to that.

The two girls stood. "Think on that for a bit." They suggested, before leaving. Annica was left staring after them, with her equally bewildered mother beside her.

Mrs. Grant stood in the doorway of the hospital room where Annica and Janice's bodies were lying still. Some weird invisible monster running around town. Weird explanations on 'Shinigami' and 'Hollows'. And now this. Four people gone into sudden, unexplainable comas within a day. Everything had been turned slightly. Not upside down, because if she shut her eyes, she could still pretend that life was normal. Not fully sideways even. Just crooked enough for it to make a difference.

Quietly she turned and walked out of the room. She strode quickly down the shiny, empty polished halls, which smelt strongly of cleaner and disinfectant. But despite the nearly overpowering scent, there was still the lingering odour of blood and death underneath of it all. Under the gentle beeping and whirring of machines, and squeaking of shoes on overly clean floors, and creaking of doors, she could still hear the sobs of people being told the bad news. Even after she had left the depressing building, the soft moans of the sick and injured still rang in her ears.

No matter how much she told herself that hospitals were good places, she still hated them. She hated them for the feeling that they gave her, as though she were a child again, standing by her grandmother's bed, hearing the sobs, and seeing the weakness with which the old woman held herself, but still not understanding, at least, not until it was too late.

Yes, she completely despised hospitals. They brought back too many bad memories, and not nearly enough good ones.

Mrs. Grant's view on hospitals is the exact same as mine. I mean, I know they're wonderful places that save people's lives daily and all that but... Too many bad things happen there for me to ever like them.

Review?

-Stormy