Disclaimer: I did not own Bleach last chapter and I do not own it now.
Chapter 9. Dangerous Departure
Hinamori awoke the next morning with a start, thinking that she was late for the trip for her exams and fights against dummy Hollow.
Rukia had woken up first today, which was unusual; usually the brown-haired girl was always up first. Rukia had walked over to her friend's bed and softly placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Hinamori-chan." She whispered while shaking her slightly. "It's time to get up-"
Before she could finish, Hinamori was sitting up straight in bed with a gasp. Rukia jumped back with a squeak of surprise.
"H-Hinamori-chan, doushita?" Her friend was leaning over in her bed, panting as if she had just broken the surface of the water of unforgiving rapids. Finally, she managed to look up into the concerned, violet eyes of her friend.
"Oh, Rukia-san its o-only you." She wheezed.
"Gomenasai," Rukia apologized. "Did I scare you that badly?"
"N-no." Hinamori shook her head. "It was just a…bad dream…" Her small voice trailed off and Rukia could just barely make out what she said. But soon, the panting girl had looked up to see how light it was outside the window and shrieked. "Oh my goodness! I'm going to be late!" She quickly threw the sheets off of her, grabbed her uniform, got changed, said good-bye to Rukia and with a wish of good luck from her friend, was out the door in a flash.
She sped down the hallways and burst through the doors, running as fast as she could across the courtyards until she reached the school itself. She did not go inside, but instead she continued to run around to the back of the building and up a flight of stairs that lead to the roof. She finally flew up the last of the steps and landed on the top of the Academy.
She glanced around and thought that everyone else had left already and that she was too late. But then she caught a glimpse of a small group of students off to the side.
They were not assembled like they were about to go fight Hollow, but more like it were lunchtime. They were all just talking and sitting there as if they were skipping class, and Hinamori thought that they were, until she saw Hisagi and two other older students standing a little way off, murmuring to each other quietly and often glancing around in disappointment.
Cautiously, Hinamori made her way over to the group of students and spotted the familiar face of Izuru.
"Kira-kun!" She piped out in excitement of seeing a familiar face. Hearing his name and her voice that was saying it, the blonde boy turned around and smiled at her.
"Hey there Hinamori-kun." He responded while turning to face her. Hinamori lowered her voice to a whisper.
"What's everyone doing? Why are we all gathered out here like this? Is there something wrong?" She asked under her breath. Izuru glanced around at the small number of students that had arrived; no more than 15, not including the sensei.
"Hisagi sensei and the others are aggravated because only a small number of students have shown up on time. It's just you and the rest of us." He sighed.
Hinamori did lighten up at the fact that she was not late, but now impatience was creeping over and she wanted to get going, although she was ridiculously nervous.
"Wait, isn't Abarai-kun supposed to be coming today as well?" She cocked her head to one side. Izuru stole a glance down to the courtyards below, but then his eyes drifted back to her.
"Hai." He said. "He is supposed to be coming today, but as usual, we can all see that he's late, just like everybody else. Hisagi sensei and the others are trying to spare time for them so that they can all get here on time to leave. We only have until a certain time when we can enter though the spiritual passage to get to the training grounds today and people like Renji are wasting our time in being late." There was a little impatience in his voice as he spoke about the red-haired boy.
Just then, Hisagi turned to the small group of students that were already assembled.
"Alright everyone, it looks like we're leaving without the rest of 'em." But only seconds later, a mob of students, including Renji, were hurriedly making their ways up to the roof of the building, shouting and blaming each other that they were going to get in trouble.
Hisagi and the two other sensei turned around at their arrival, and the purple-haired one sighed with annoyance. Then, he informed everyone to make a group so that everyone could see as he explained what they would be doing that day.
But of course, poor Hinamori was granted the view of nothing above Izuru's shoulder and the fact that Renji blocked her view to the left and to the right was a hundred-foot plummet to the courtyards below, she could do nothing more that stay put and listen.
She made out Hisagi sensei speaking. "First, we'll do simple introductions. I'm sixth round student, Hisagi." Announced the man with the purple hair who Hinamori had come to know as her favorite sensei. She did not fully understand the marking of '69' on his face, but that was unimportant to her.
Next, a shorter, light haired, girl, who just barely made the height of Shuuhei's shoulder, spoke.
"I am Kainsawa." Was all that she said before the last of them introduced himself.
"I'm Aoga." He said unenthusiastically raising one hand and then lowering it again.
"The three of us will be your guides." Hisagi spoke again.
Instantly, murmurs and whispers of shock broke throughout the crowd. Even Izuru looked dumbfounded as Renji asked him,
"What the heck? Are those Senpai famous?" Hinamori heard their hushed conversation over everyone else's, considering the fact that they were standing next to her. Izuru turned on Renji.
"You don't know?!" He hissed. "Not all of them, the one in the middle." Then, Hinamori tried to drown out the rest of their conversation and focus on the sensei like she had been told to do.
However, she overheard Izuru lecturing Renji on how he should have known that Hisagi Shuuhei was famous, and then brag about how he thought of surpassing him since he had not failed the exams.
"He's failed twice on the entrance exam for this academy. In that sense, my talent might be greater since I passed at the top of my class." He grinned, while Renji just twitched an eyebrow in annoyance.
But, Hinamori knew the actual reason of why Izuru had passed.
But, maybe it was true that he was smart and would have passed anyway without the help of special rules this year, but Hinamori held her tongue.
After a few moments of explaining what the group was about to do, Kainsawa sensei gave out instructions.
"Okay then, starting now we'll have you conduct activities in groups of three. Look at the cards we had you pick earlier and form groups with other members who have the same marking." The group began to depart and disperse, shouting out and searching for others in their group.
Now that the students had broken apart, there was more room, and so Hinamori stepped away from the edge of the building with relief and began to search for her team. She quickly saw the Izuru and Abarai had already found partners; each other.
Hinamori prayed that she would get a friend on her team as well. As she searched, she found no one with similar markings, and soon the number of team-less students dwindled, and poor Hinamori was one of the last ones. She approached Renji and Kira and overheard them yet again.
"I knew that these were for something like that." The red haired boy stated, glancing at his paper.
"But it's groups of three right? Who's the third?" Kira looked around brusquely.
Hinamori approached them from behind, and happened to see that the symbols on their papers were identical to hers. She sighed with relief.
"A-ano." Her voice was shaky with the thought of the upcoming assessment and she sounded so frail that they hardly heard her, but the two turned around. "Pleasure to work with you." Hinamori joked with sarcastic formality.
"Aw, it's just Hinamori." Renji said, unenthusiastically. Yet Kira smiled and replied to her small joke.
"Pleasure to work with you." He pretended to sound as though they had never met her before.
Hinamori could tell simply by looking at him that he was thrilled and ready to get going, and she only wished that she shared his confidence. Then, all of the students fell silent and turned when they heard Aoga sensei.
"Okay, everyone's in groups? Now we'll give a summary of today's filed training…" The sensei proceeded to explain that they would be training with dummy Hollow in a certain barrier limit. Then, Hisagi informed them that even though the sixth round students would be setting up easy locations for them to fight in, they would not assist them in battle.
"But this could be dangerous, so always have an ally in sight, understand?" He did not wait for a reply. "Let's go!"
"Hai!" Was the unanimous response.
The purple haired man turned toward the spirit gate behind him.
After the command was shouted, the massive doors parted and a brilliant white light blasted from inside it. Hisagi and the other sixth round students stepped into the light, and the younger students soon followed, some excited, some unsure, and some reluctant.
In a matter of seconds, everything in Hinamori's eyes went white and blurry.
But then, only a few seconds later, she could once again see the sharp outlines of shapes of another world.
A/N: SOOO sorry it takes so long to update, but getting the actual dialogue from the episodes is tougher than it sounds --' And sorry for the slight cliffhanger.
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