Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach

Before anyone gets confused, this chapter is the first that is told from Miya's (aka girl Jushiro met in the woods) point of view

Chapter 4: Hate

Miya hated soul reapers. She hated the way they would look down on anyone who wasn't a soul reaper. She hated the way they demanded respect just because they had power, power that used to take whatever they wanted from those who had none. She hated how hypocritical they were. She hated everything about them.

Her father had been a soul reaper and a high ranking one at that. Once upon a time, her mother had been a young talented girl from one of the poorest districts of Rukongai who had managed to make it into the Shinigami Academy. Shortly after starting as a student, she fell madly in love with her one of her teachers. She was exuberant when she found out that he loved her in return and although it was forbidden for a student and teacher to love each other, at the time, it didn't matter to them. They loved each other anyways. They hid their relationship from everyone, happy to love each other in secret if that was the only way they could be together. And for a while, they were happy.

But, her mother's fairy tale romance didn't have a happy ending.

When she had confessed to her father that she was pregnant, he told her that he didn't want to have anything to do with her or the baby. He had threatened, demanding that she get rid of it. He told her that if word ever got out about her being pregnant he would be ruined. He would lose his position, his respect, and most importantly his reputation.

So, broken hearted and betrayed, her mother fled from the Seireitei.

Miya's mother raised her in a small house on the outskirts of the Soul Society. Miya's spiritual pressure began to increase rapidly soon after she was born and by the time she was four, Miya's mother was already training her how to use her powers. She taught her how to materialize her zanpakuto, how to boil water for soup with kido, and most importantly—how to conceal her spiritual pressure entirely. Her mother was always afraid that one day her father might come looking for them. Seeing him again was the last thing her mother had ever wanted to do, so she taught Miya how to hide herself so that no one could ever hurt her.

When Miya was ten, she and her mother moved back into the Rukongai district. It was then that Miya had her first encounter with a Soul Reaper.

It was a warm summer afternoon and Miya was sitting out on the roof of her apartment building staring at the rooftops that seemed to stretch off endlessly into the distance. She heard some yelling from the street below and looked down to see what the commotion was. Standing in the street was a group of five boys about her age surrounding a tall shinigami. The shinigami was holding a small loaf of bread in his hand high over the boys heads.

"Hey!" yelled one of the boys in the group. His blonde curls bounced as he jumped up and down trying to snatch the piece of bread out of the shinigami's hand. "That's ours!"

"Humph, little street rats with barley any reitsau like you don't need food. It'd be wasted on you." And with that, the shinigami took a big bite out of the loaf of bread and swallowed. He turned around and began to walk away chewing on the bread as he went.

"Kazuma, I'm hungry," said the smallest boys in the group to the boy with curly blonde hair.

"Come on, lets go," said one of the others in the group. All but Kazuma turned to leave. From her spot on the roof, Miya could see as his hand ball into a fist and his brows furrow in anger. The blonds haired boy took off running after the shinigami that had stolen their meal and tackled him from behind. The shinigami went crashing down to the ground, the half eaten piece of bread falling out of his hand and onto the ground.

"What tha?—" exclaimed the confused shinigami but his words were cut off short when Kazuma had managed to land a punch on his left cheek. "Owwwwwww! Why you stupid little punk!" Kazuma was about to send another fist crashing into his skull but before he had a chance to do so, the shinigami threw him off of him sending him crashing against the apartment building wall. "You stupid little piece of trash. Don't ever mess with someone who is more powerful and important than you." The shinigami walked over to where the boy had fallen. His eyes were menacing and hard as he swiftly kicked him in the stomach. Miya saw the blonde haired boy doubled over in pain as the shinigami walked away.

"Kazuma, are you okay?" exclaimed the group of boys as they ran over to check on their injured friend.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he said, his voice strained and rough. He slowly stood up and clutched his stomach as he walked over to the half eaten piece of bread that had been knocked from the shinigami's hand. He picked it up and brushed the dirt that had gotten on it off before walking back over to his friends and handing the piece of bread over to them. The boys quickly split up the remainder of the bread between them. When one of the boys handed Kazuma a piece, he lifted up his hand in protest. "No, I'm okay. You guys eat."

Miya saw many other instances like the first over the years. Times when shinigami treated souls like trash just because they didn't possess as much reitsau as they did. She knew that it didn't matter whether you possessed a little reitsau or a lot—hunger was hunger. Keep a soul with little reitsau away from food long enough and he to would starve. Shinigami where nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites. They all claimed to be the saviors and protectors of the Soul Society, but in the end, they were merely protecting themselves.

Miya had decided a long time ago that she wasn't going to put up with the abuse of power from the shinigami. No, she was going to do something about it. She was going to help those who didn't have enough power to help themselves. That's why she had done it. That's why she had put together the band of night thieves and started stealing from the supply caravans that would pass through the woods at night.

Miya hated shinigami. But, at the current moment, she hated something even more than shinigami.

She hated the fact that she had been caught.

Miya sat on top of a low bed with her back pressed against the cold grey cinderblocks of a small prison cell. She'd only been sitting in the cell for the past four hours, but she was already starting to develop cabin fever. She lifted her hand palm up in front of her and attempted to make a kido ball.

Nothing. The shinigami hadn't been lying when they had told her that the cell would neutralize her reitsau.

She was starting to get worried. Without her reitsau, she hadn't been able to check on her friends to see if they were okay. They had been split up when they had arrived at the detention center and she had no idea where they were now. In fact, she didn't have any idea where she was either. She had never been to the Seireitei before.

She sighed and lifted her injured arm up and pressed it to her chest. Her whole hand was stuck in a backwards curve making her forearm and hand look like a dinner fork. It hurt like hell and she couldn't straighten it out at all. By the way one of her arm bones stood out from under her wrist, she knew that her hand was dislocated.

Unbelievable.

She wondered where everything had gone wrong. It was a simple plan to follow: stop the caravan, sneak up on the guards, steal the goods out from underneath them, and then take off running before they even knew what had hit them. They had carried out the plan flawlessly many times before, why couldn't they have done so again?

She let out a huff and brought her knees to her chest resting her forehead on top of them. A few minutes later the sound of heavy footsteps echoed down the marble hallway outside of the cell. The sound of steps became louder and louder until they came to a stop in front of her cell. She looked up, expecting to see the shinigami with the weird makeup and hat outside again. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw that it was someone else entirely.

A pale face with dark brown eyes stared back at her from behind the evenly spaced prison cell bars. Long strands of white hair framed his face and fell half way down his chest. His thick black brows were furrowed causing two creases to form in between his eyes. She had never seen such a guilty face.

"Um, hello," he said, his voice low and coarse. He coughed to clear his throat and when he continued, his voice was smoother. "I, uh, just thought I would come and check on you." She didn't answer and looked away. In the corner of her eye, Miya could see the man beginning to nervously tug on the left sleeve of his white haori. "I really am terribly sorry,' the man said in a quick rush, "I really didn't mean to, well….I….if I would have known I wouldn't of—"

"Forget about it. Now would you please quit trying to apologize?" Mia asked, turning her head to glare at him. The man's eyebrows furrowed even deeper and he cast his eyes to the ground. He started tugging even harder on the sleeve of his white haori.

"I just want you to know that I really—"

"That's enough. I believe you, alright?"

"You do?" the man's black brows lifted in a surprised expression.

"Yeah. You look like you've just killed a kitten." The man's brows remained elevated for a few moments longer before they finally relaxed to their normal position. Miya sighed and her knees slid down away from her chest.

"You're hurt!" the man exclaimed on catching sight of the injured arm she had pressed to her chest. The man took a step closer to the cell and Miya quickly started moving further down the bed away from the cell bars and the man outside them. The man stopped moving. "It looks pretty bad," he said after a moment of silence. "Let me see it. Maybe I can help."

"Don't worry about it," Miya snapped without looking at him. The man was quiet for a moment.

"Please." The utter hopelessness of his tone caused Miya to look back over at him. He looked miserably guilty. If he had looked like he had killed a kitten before, he now looked like he had killed a baby. Although she wanted to say no, there was something about those chocolate brown eyes of his that drew her in. She could tell that he was being sincere, that he didn't want to hurt her. So, even though her head told her not to, she slowly began to inch her way down the bed and towards the cell bars. She hesitated for a moment when she reached the end of the bed before slowly sticking her right hand out between two of the bars. Once her hand was outside the cell, the man slowly walked towards her and ever go gently took her injured hand in the two of his. The warmth of his hands on hers caused a shiver to shoot down her back as he ever so gently began to flip her hand over in his.

"You're hand appears to be dislocated," he said in a low voice after a few moments of examining it. "I'm afraid that if you leave it this way for much longer you might risk having your hand permanently damaged. I could snap if back in place for you." She looked up and her eyes were caught by his gentle gaze. She couldn't speak, she just nodded her head slightly.

"I'll count to three and then snap it back into place, okay?" Miya nodded again, still staring him straight in the eyes. "One, two—"

Miya felt a bolt of pain travel from her hand up her arm. It felt as if her hand had just been snapped off. She let out a strangled groan. She shut her eyes and pressed her head hard against the cell bars, waiting for the pain to stop.

"I thought you said that you were going to go on three," she groaned.

"It's worse if you anticipate the pain." She could hear a slight smile in the man's voice and looked up to see a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. She then glanced down at her hand. Besides the slight swelling around her wrist, her arm looked normal again. The man slowly flipped her hand over again. "Try it." Miya slowly began to open and close her fist. "See, good as new."

"Thank you," she said in a small voice.

"Forget about it," he replied.

The sudden sound of footsteps approaching startled Miya. She quickly yanked her hand out of the mans and back through the bars of the cell.

"Captain Ukitake, what are you doing? Get away from her!" It was the weird looking man with the makeup and hat again. Miya cringed. He had been trying to get close enough to her to draw out a blood sample since the moment they had caught her in the woods. He really creeped her out. "She isn't to be tampered with. She is a prisoner of the Twelfth Division, and until I get an opportunity to run some tests on her, she isn't to so much as even speak with anyone!"

"I'm sorry, but since when do you have the permission to experiment on people being detained?"

"Since they're being detained in my detention unit, that's when!" The man with the weird hat glared at the white haired man with his harsh yellow brown eyes.

"I seriously doubt the Head Captain would ever give you the permission to experiment on anyone being held for questioning."

"He didn't have to give me permission. The prisoner is being held on my division's property and that means that I get full rights to doing whatever I want to them!"

"Oh no it doesn't." Both men turned in the direction the third voice had come from. A second later a tall boy about twenty three years old stepped in front of the prison cell. This was the first time Miya had seen him. He had bright orange hair and a scowl seemed to be permanently etched onto his face.

"Captain Kurosaki! What is the meaning of this interruption?" exclaimed the man with the weird hat.

"The Head Captain recently informed me that there were several individuals being held here for questioning. I came here to make sure that you weren't abusing prisoners again."

"Abuse prisoners? Why, I've never done such a thing." The defensive tone then man with the weird hat had used suggested otherwise.

"Save it Kurotsuchi. We're all fully aware that you like to experiment on anyone who is detained her that you deem 'interesting.' Head Captain Yamamoto sent me here to remind you that although this detention facility is on the Twelfth Division property, it is in fact a joint detention centers for squads Five and Twelve. And, as long as I am Captain of Squad Five, no one being detained here will be subjected to your inappropriate abuse."

"What?!?! Why you little—"

"If you don't like it, I suggest you take this matter up with the Head Captain himself." The man with the weird had let out a frustrated groan before turning on his heel and stomping off down the hallway.

"He's going to be mad at you for a while, Ichigo," said the man with the white hair as he turned to face the boy with the scowl.

"Please, the Mad Hatter there doesn't scare me. Now when Rukia's mad, that's another story." The man with white hair laughed at the comment. "Now, I'm sorry Jushiro, but I do have to ask you to leave with me. You know the rules—captains from other divisions aren't allowed to visit detention centers that aren't their own unless they have permission from the Head Captain."

"Yes, of course." The man with white hair turned and nodded at Miya. He gave her a small smile before turning and following the tall orange haired captain down the hallway.

"Do you know when she will be appearing before the Head Captain?" she head the white haired man ask the other captain as they walked down the hallway.

"Tomorrow afternoon. Some of the other captains are gone and that's the soonest that everyone will be back…." Miya strained to hear, but their voices were too far away for her to make out what they were saying anymore. She let out a loud sigh and then leaned back against the cold cell wall.

What a day.

She fought back the urge to scan the area for reitsau again. It would do no good. She'd have to wait until tomorrow to find out her fate and that of her friends. At the current moment she could do nothing besides hope and pray that they were alright.

She looked down at her still slightly swollen wrist. The tall white haired shinigami was odd. He was unlike any of the shinigami that she had ever met before. Instead of having cold hard eyes, his were gentle and kind. He had seemed sincerely sorry for having injured her and had even fixed her hand. Could she have been wrong? Could there actually be shinigami who were gentle and actually cared for others beside themselves? Miya quickly shook her head as if to shake the thought form her mind.

No, even if the white haired shinigami was kind and unlike anyone she had ever met before, it made no difference.

She still hated shinigami.

A/N: Yeah! Another chapter done! I'm still working on the next chapter. Hopefully I'll have it up within the next few days. Thank you for reading!

If you were wondering, Ukitake is appolagizing to Miya because he hit her and she's a girl. Ukitake refuses to fight in the presence of women and children. He feels terrible for having fought a girl even though he had no idea that she was a girl at the time. Shunsui is the same way.

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