Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.

Chapter 2: Night

Jushiro reached up pulled the two sides of his black kimono collar together when a strong breeze blew by. The forest had become significantly colder after the sun had set several hours earlier and he silently cursed himself for not wearing an extra layer of clothing. Jushiro reached into the front of his captain's haori and pulled out a white handkerchief. He lifted the handkerchief to his mouth and began to cough into the soft fabric. Pulling it away from his lips, he saw that he wasn't coughing up blood—not yet anyways.

"Captain, are you okay?" asked his third seat Kiyone Kotetsu who was sitting beside him at the front of the first wagon in the procession.

"I'm fine. The cold wind out here is just aggravating my lungs a little. Nothing to be worried about." He gave his third seat a gentle smile before turning his head back around and facing the road again.

"Ok, Captain. Let me know if you start feeling bad." They continued to ride in silence until another series of coughs began to rack Jushiro's body. "Captain, Captain!" exclaimed his third seat, her voice higher pitched than normal. Jushiro leaned over and continued to cough into his handkerchief and was nearly knocked out of the wagon when the procession came to an abrupt stop. The two horses that were pulling the wagon reared and began kicking their front legs into the air in front of them, obscuring Jushiro's view of the road. Once their front feet touched the ground again, he could finally see what had caused them to stop so abruptly. There in the middle of the road stood a man. The man blocking the road was dressed completely in black. A black mask covered the bottom third and upper third of the man's face, only revealing a pair of black eyes set against pale white skin. Jushiro quickly stood up, his right hand reflexively going to the handle of his zanpakuto.

"Hold it right there!" He commanded, his voice scratching his throat as it came out almost causing another coughing fit. The stranger cocked his head to the side, scrutinizing him for a second before reaching down for the red handle of his sword. From where he stood, Jushiro could tell that the stranger's sword was in fact a zanpakuto, although he didn't know how that was possible. He could sense no spiritual pressure coming from the stranger at all. Jushiro's grip tightened on the handle of his zanpakuto and he was about to pull it out until he felt a brush of wind against the right side of his body. He looked to the side to find that his third seat was gone. Looking ahead again, he saw that his third seat had tackled the stranger and they began to violently wrestle around on the ground.

"Kiyone, stop!" Jushiro yelled to his third seat. "He could be dangerous! Get away from him!" With that, Jushiro heard his third seat let out a shrill scream as the stranger threw her off of him, sending her crashing into the nearby woods. "Kiyone!"

Before Jushiro had the chance to run over to check on Kiyone, he was sent tumbling sideways out of the wagon. He landed on his back with a loud thud. His eyes quickly darted up to see a tall man with short blond hair who was also dressed completely in black standing where he had stood just a moment before. The man smirked at him before reaching into the front of his black kimono and pulling out a knife. He jumped down towards Jushiro, knife unsheathed. However, before the man's feet had even touched the ground Jushiro was already standing twenty feet away. One quick glance around told Jushiro that they were surrounded.

About twenty figures dressed in black had already stepped out of the darkness of the woods and were approaching the caravan. Jushiro quickly searched but found nothing—not a single trace of reitsau from the strangers who had emerging from the woods. The man who had knocked Jushiro out of the wagon was all of a sudden standing right in front of him. How could that be? Jushiro wondered. He moved so quickly—not fast enough to be shunpo, but still too fast for an ordinary soul without any reitsau.

Jushiro pulled out his zanpakuto and blocked the knife that the man had thrust towards his torso. Hearing yelling, Jushiro looked passed the man in front of him to see that all of the guards were now each fighting off the strangers that had emerged from the woods. The stranger in front of him made another attempt to plunge his knife into Jushiro's body. He easily sidestepped the attack.

A flash of silver in the corner of his eye caught Jushiro's attention and he turned his head in the direction it had come from. There laying on the ground twenty feet from him was the red handled zanpakuto that the stranger who had blocked the road had been reaching for. Kiyone must have knocked it from his hand before he could use it. At that moment Jushiro saw the black figure get up from where Kiyone had knocked him down. Seeing his zanpakuto on the ground, the stranger began running towards the abandoned weapon. Jushiro quickly kicked the man he had been fighting in the chest sending him flying backwards into the air until the motion was halted by the side of the wooden wagon.

Jushiro quickly shunpoed towards the abandoned zanpakuto reaching it a good two seconds before stranger in black did. He saw the man's black eyes widen in surprise when he had all of a sudden appeared in front of him blocking his path. The man sent a fist flying towards his stomach. Jushiro easily deflected the punch away from his body. The stranger was able to land the next punch he threw on the right side of Jushiro's face. Less than a second later, the stranger kicked him in the ribs. Jushiro fought back a yelp as he felt something crack inside. The man sent another punch flying towards Jushiro's chest. Jushiro caught the man's fist in his hands and twisted it. There was a loud snap and a yep of pain from the man in front of him. The stranger went to kick him again, but Jushiro beat him to it and kicked the man square in the stomach, knocking the air out of him and sending him flying backwards until he collided with trunk of a large tree. The man fell unconscious to the ground.

That's when it happened.

All of a sudden Jushiro's body began to burn from the reitsau that had suddenly appeared all around him. He realized after a moment that they were not new reitsaus from people who had just arrived on the scene, no—the new reitsaus he was sensing were from the people who were fighting the guards, the ones that had emerged from the woods. Their reitsau had been completely hidden until now. Considering how their reitsau levels were relatively low, Jushiro wondered how it was possible for them to have completely masked their reitsau. It took many years of practice to learn how to completely mask one's reitsau and besides himself, Jushiro only knew of a handful of other shinigami that and enough control over their spiritual pressure to be able to do so. And what had caused them to all reveal their reitsau at the same time?

A large spike in reitsau in front of him caused Jushiro to focus his attention towards the bottom of the tree where the man he had just fought lay. Large biting waves of reitsau like he had never felt before were rolling off the now unconscious stranger. The stranger's reitsau was fierce and wild, like a fire in a wheat field during the middle of summer. It burned.

The strength of the stranger's spiritual pressure was even greater than some of the captains of the Gotei 13's spiritual pressures. He was completely suprised by how the man could have possibly been living in the Soul Society with such a large spiritual pressure without anyone in the Seireitei finding out about him until now. Jushiro clutched his injured side and walked over to the base of the tree where the man lay passed out on the ground. Slowly, he reached down and tore off the stranger's mask. A long tangle of black hair fell out from underneath the mask.

Jushiro's breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened in shock.

The stranger in black wasn't a he. He was a she.

Her skin was as pale as a cherry blossom petal in the moonlight and her coal black brows were thin and delicately arched over her closed eyes. Suddenly, her thin eyelids began to flutter and then opened revealing her black eyes.

He couldn't move.

His eyes were fixed on hers. It was as if the black pools staring back at him had their own force of gravity that refused to let him look away. The sound of metal hitting metal continued to fill the night air around him as the guards and thieves continued to fight each other. Jushiro didn't even notice. He was frozen in place.

The girl blinked hard as if waking from a dream and suddenly pulled away from him, gripping the wrist that he had just dislocated and shuffling backwards until her back lay pressed flush against the trunk of the tree that she has just collided with. Her breathing was shallow and Jushiro could see her chest heaving slightly in the pale light of the moon.

"I—I'm so sorry," he stammered. "Are—are you okay?" She didn't answer, and before he could say anything else he felt his throat tighten.

A strong string of coughs began to rip through his chest, each one causing his broken rib to jab deeper and deeper into his side. Soon he could taste blood in his mouth. He reached up and cupped his hands to his mouth to stop the blood from coming out. He was so occupied with trying to breath that he didn't sense the large spiritual pressure that had appeared right behind him.

"Look out!" The voice of the girl filled the night air. Out of the corner of his eye, Jushiro could see a large clawed hand headed directly towards him. Before he could tell his body to move, the girl had already run into him sending him flying until they both crashed onto the ground, rolling over each other a few times from the force of the motion until they finally came to a stop a few feet from her previously abandoned zanpakuto.

She quickly got off from on top of him and grabbed her zanpakuto up off the ground before standing up. Jushiro quickly stumbled to feet as the hollow let out a loud howl that pierced through the night sky. The hollow was large and reminiscently looked like a three story tall praying mantis. The girl positioned herself between him and the hollow and before he had a chance to yell at her to move out of the way another violent cough shout through his chest, causing the words to catch in his throat. The hollow reared back on his hind legs and as he came back down he stretched one of his long clawed hands out, ready to pound both him and the girl into the ground. Jushiro stumbled several feet forward towards the girl, determined to pull her out of the way so that the hollow couldn't squash her. At that moment she turned her head back around to face him and she placed a firm hand on his chest, stopping him. With her other hand, the girl held out her zanpakuto in front of her.

"Stand still."

After saying that, the girl plunged her zanpakuto into the ground in front of her. A strong gust of wind shout past Jushiro tearing at the bottom of his captains' haori causing it to snap loudly. The next moment, everything went silent.

It was as if of the sound in the world had suddenly been sucked out by a vacuum.

Jushiro looked down to see that the girl's hand was still pressing against the black fabric of his kimono. When Jushiro looked back at the girl and the hollow in front of him, his eyes grew wide in shock.

The larger clawed hand of the hollow that had previously been on a path to crush them had come to a complete stop a mere foot above their heads. The bleached white mask that covered the hollow's face shone brightly in the light of the moon. Two black pits in the mask indicated where eyes should have been the hollow's long semicircular mouth was pulled up in a hideously horrible smile.

Frozen.

The hollow was frozen.

Everything was frozen.

Glancing past the hollow Jushiro could see the guards and the thieves frozen in mid action fighting each other. One of the guards standing closest to him held a knife in his had that was aimed up at the thief standing in front of him, merely an inch away from making contact with the man's stomach. Further away there was a thief who had been frozen in mid-air as he had been jumping from one wagon to the next. About thirty feet off to his left, Jushiro saw his third seat Kiyone running towards him, frozen in midstride. What's happening? He wondered. How is this possible? He had never heard of such a thing happening before, it was as if time had stopped completely.

The movement of the girl in front of him snapped Jushiro out of his stunned stupor. She removed her hand from his chest and then pulled the zanpakuto out of where she had stuck it into the ground. She sure as hell wasn't frozen like everyone else and—Jushiro brought his right hand up and opened and closed his fist several times—neither was he. He was too stunned about what was happening to say anything.

There was no other sound besides the sound of his ragged breathing and the soft thud of the woman's shoes as she walked over to the large hollow before them. In one single fluid motion, the girl jumped up and swung her zanpakuto at the hollow creating a large gash from the top right to the bottom left of his hollow mask. The hollow didn't move at all.

After that Jushiro watched as she walked around to the people who had been fighting. She removed the sword from the guard who was about to stab the man in the stomach and threw if deep into the woods. She did the same thing with the rest of the people who were frozen fighting, disarming them one by one and tossing their weapons aside.

When the girl had finished disarming everyone, she finally turned and faced Jushiro again. She began walking towards him, her right arm clutched against her chest. She sheathed her zanpakuto and then closed the distance between them. She was now standing right in front of him.

Neither of them moved. It was as if for a moment they had frozen in time like the rest of the world. She stared at him with eyes as black as the night and he could do nothing but stare back at her. Then, slowly, she lifted her left arm and pressed it once again to his chest.

With her touch came the wind. Lots of it.

It was as if someone was forcing air into him.

It dried out his throat and he began to choke on it.

The sound returned shortly afterwards. Over the sounds that came out of his chest as his lungs tried to jump into his throat, Jushiro could hear the people who had been fighting gasp in surprise as they realized that they no longer had weapons in their hands. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was able to register the fact that the hollow had began to dissolve away.

"Captain!" Jushiro looked up to see his third seat Kiyone no longer frozen and now quickly closing the distance between them. He continued coughing, unable to control the actions of his lungs. Soon he was lightheaded and could see black and white static form at the periphery of his vision as his ears began to ring. He looked back to where the girl with black eyes had been standing only to find that she was now gone.

The ringing in his ears came to an abrupt stop.

The world went black.

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