Chapter 1: In which we get into an awkward situation before we can even find out what the hell happened.
Location: Right in front of the Kurosaki Clinic, Karakura Town, Japan, Bleach, the All.
Copyright: Tite Kubo & Friends.

Last time on 'It Sucks to be Me': Myrthe and her friend Suzume are being their idiotic yet awesome selves and run into a wardrobe that promptly turns out to be a rainbow vortex instead of Narnia.

So there I sat, in the middle of the road, trying to process what just had happened. From the sounds of it, Suzume had already stood up and looked around her, ignoring whatever vehicles nearly hit her as a result.
"Hey! Junkie! Get off the road, idiot!" Apparantly, Suzume still ignored them, because the shouting continued. "Do you want to die, or something?"
"She's fine, just a bit... dazed" Suzume suddenly shouted back, followed by quick footsteps and someone tugging at my arm.
Oh. They were talking to me. Still abit overwhelmed, I let Suzume drag me from the paved road to the sidewalk.
"Seriously, Myrt, do you have a death wish or something?" she complained under her breath as we reached the front yard of a vagualy familiar building.

"Kurosaki Clinic" I read out loud.
"Ok, not a death wish, just fucking stoned-"
"No, seriously, Suus, look." I pointed at the little sign next to the little gate in front of us.
Her eyes widened.
Then they narrowed.

"What kind of joke is this?" she said loudly, looking for signs that our lovable group of friends were screwing around with us. The only response were a few passing school girls giving us a weird look.

I started laughing. I laughed rather loud, because I'm prone to laughing in a stressful situation like stepping into your wardrobe and ending up in a weird yet familiar town with your friend who thinks it's a joke. Suzume, although still a bit suspicious, started laughing too and pointed at the clinic, remaerking that someone did a fairly good job at copying the real thing. That was fake. I laughed even harder, from stress, but also because I slowly saw how comical things actually were. We had gone through my wardrobe and we actually ended up somewhere else. Suzume looked at me a little worried- maybe I was laughing a bit too hysterically.

"We're in Narnia, Suus! Anime-Narnia!" I made a wide gesture around us. Slowly, a grin spread across her face.
"We're in Bleach! That's Ichigo's house!" she laughed while pointing at the building in front of us.
"We're in Bleach-Narnia!"
"We're in Blarnia!"
At that point we just started laughing uncontrollably; in the middle of the sidewalk, right in front of a weird house that resembled a fictional house; inside a world that resembled a fictional town. We had no idea what was happening, what had happened a few moments ago and what was going to happen; but it felt good to laugh right now. Even if it the laughter sounded a bit too forced and fake.

"Not implying anything or trying to spoil your fun, but are you two ok?"
'Oh. My. God.' My inner fangirl started to squeak.
I would recognize that voice from anywhere. Apparantly, I had just embarrassed myself in front of the main character of the Bleach series, Kurosaki Ichigo, the never-smiling-always-winning-sometimes-killing hero, and one of my favourite characters from the show.

I slowly turned around and there he stood, looking like the full-fledged bishounen he was in the late evening
'I wanna run over to him and pull his orange hair to look if it's real and I wanna scream his name but that's way too scary kyaaaaaaa' my inner fangirl squeeeee'd.
'I want to sink in a very, very deep hole' the rest of my now embarassed brain groaned.

"ICHIGO!" Suzume has always been the most spontaneous of us two. She pointed at him and started to wave at him in a most enthusiastic way. He frowned his classical frown.
"How do you know my name?"
"Well" -god my voice sounds stupid-"you're the main character, so-" I stopped talking, my ears starting to glow. How do you explain you know his name because you have seen hundreds of episodes with him in it? Because he is a fictional character from a popular show you adore?

"I'm Suzume, and this is Myrthe" Suus had already recovered, apparently deciding that stating our names would magically solve everything.
"You're Kurosaki Ichigo." She pointed at him again. "You're a Substitute Shinigami, and-" I quickly elbowed her while smiling my poker-smile at Ichigo. Too late. He frowned Classical Frown Level 02.
"How do you know that?" I normally wouldn't have noticed the change in his posture, but since I was kind of staring at his bishounen beauty, I saw how he subtly tensed a few muscles and took on a more defensive stance. "Are you two Shinigami?" he asked, his voice giving away that he thought that to be highly implausible.
"No!" I let out panicky.
"Yes!" Suzume cheered simultaneously.

"I was not informed that there were any Shinigami coming here anytime soon" an even more suspicious, female voice sounded behind us. Suzume had already whirled around. "Who was that?" she shouted agressively.
"Down here" a suspicious AND angry voice responded, and I turned around as well to see Rukia giving Suzume a scorching look. The target didn't seem to care.

"Ichigo" Rukia tried to push us aside to reach her subject, avoiding Suzume's not-very-subtle attempt to pull her leg. Suzume and I exchanged a quick look as the two in front of us held a little conversation under their breath, with Rukia occasionally giving Suzume angry glares and Ichigo looking at me with an unflattering amount of doubt. After what seemed an eternity, they finally turned towards us.
"What is it, pipsqueak?" Suzume asked, her angry stare still focused on the extremely small figure in front of us.
"We were just wondering, what squad are you in?"
Four-letter word describing excrement, often exclaimed in anger, frustration or panic.

"Ehm… Do you… mind if my friend and I are going to… discuss... something? Privately?" I tried to smile as bright as I could while dragging Suzume with me around the corner.
"What are we going to do now?" Suzume whispered. Oddly enough, she somehow seemed more excited than panicked- as opposed to my sentiments.
"Why did you say yes when he asked if we were Shinigami?" I hissed panicked.
"It's a better excuse than: 'actually we are two human fangirls that love an anime of which you are coincidentally the main protagonist and we accidently ended up here after running into a wardrobe', right?" She had a point.
"But how the hell are we going to convince them? Do I look and act like I can wield a sword without hurting myself?" I had a point.
"So if I get this right we have two options: One, we tell them the truth and they'll probably think we're crazy. Two, we say we're Shinigami and once they find out we lied we still have to tell them option one" Suzume concluded.

"Let's go for option two."
"Totally." We walked back. Although it had seemed impossible before, they were eyeing us with even more suspicion than before.

"So, what squad are you from?"
"Six-"
"Four-"
Oops. Should've rehearsed that. Their suspicion had reached its peak; Ichigo suddenly took his Substitute Super Special Transformation Token out of his pocket and changed into kick-ass mode and Rukia took her Soul Candy and changed into little miss bad-ass form. I quickly put up my hands in a surrenderish gesture.
"Pleasedon'thurtmeI'msorrywe'reactually-"

"ROAAAAAR!"

Wow. Never knew Suzume had it in her- wait.
Crap
Crap
Crap
Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap fffuuuu-

"HOLLOW!"

Against my instincts, I looked over my shoulder.

It was huge. It was grisly. Its red eyes seemed to draw mine into it, holding my gaze locked on its gruesome appearance that towered over me. It kept staring at me, the red glow in the eye sockets seemingly paralyzing my body while my head scream RUN-

It let out another howl of rage, rendering me temporarily deaf. The bloodchilling sound broke the spell its eyes had cast on me; finally, my instincts took over and I took one uncertain step backwards, and another, and another, my eyes still fixed on his-

"WATCH OUT!"

I screamed as it suddenly jumped forward, my instincts and clumsy body screwing up as I tumbled backwards and fell down, lying defenselessly and helplessly on the ground, that monster towering over me and blocking my sight from the others. I heard Suzume scream something very angry and Rukia screaming back something even angrier, but at the moment, I didn't really care about anything but my own life that was dangerously close to being ended, as the thing bent down closer to me. I kept screaming, high nonsensical cries for help mixed with high-pitched sobs as I kept repeating that I didn't want to die yet, Ichigo shouting something and me saying I don't wanna die while curling up in fetal position-
The Hollow opening its huge mouth spraeding a smell of death and rotten pork-
I don't wanna die-
Another hair-raising howl-
Don't wanna die-
I closed my eyes and curled up even further in fetal position-
Don't die-
The monstrous cries suddenly stopping, my own sobs and wails suddenly painfully clear-
Don't-

"It's already dead, you know." I didn't react at first, the calm, annoyed voice seeming so unreal after all the noise before.
"Myrt, it's dead. Like, cut-into-a-million-pieces-dead. It's okay."
It's okay. Still trembling, I relunctantly opened my eyes, the brilliant light of the setting sun painful to my eyes at first. I was just about to get up from my fetal position when a blurry black spot from afar suddenly came my way at unnatural speed.
Please, no- I screamed again and went back to my previous pose.
The blurry black thing that was towering over me right now seemed to do nothing at first. Then it sighed,
"Am I really that scary?" a familiar voiced asked with a micture of amusement and annoyance.
I carefully opened one eye, saw the black shape above me and I cringed again, but when nothing happened, I opened both my eyes.

"There" the shinigami with sunset-coloured hair said with the same voice "not so scary after all, huh?"

Please make me disappear right now, I thought as I felt how blood rushed with massive amounts to my cheeks. Kurosaki grinned.

"You look pretty bad."

Somehow, that hit the wrong button.

"PRETTY BAD" I shrieked, my voice still trembling and unstable and angry "Of course I look PRETTY BAD when I just got attacked by a freaking MONSTER for the first time in my miserable 16-year-old LIFE!"

And then I started to cry again. Because I was still so scared, because I was ashamed, because I was happy to be alive, and because I can be a huge crybaby. I heard some footsteps and then there was Suzume, saying that it was dead now, that it was ok, and she kept repeating it. Overwhelmed by relief and stress hormones, I impulsively hugged her. She seemed surprised at first, but hugged me back at last. I and just sat there hugging and crying until after an undetermined amount of time, I felt calm. I took a deep, shivery breath.

"I think I liked it better when they were still on my computer screen" I muttered softly. She laughed, not because I said something particularly funny, but because I have a habit of joking about crappy events and the fact I made a fairly poor but obvious joke meant that I hadn't lost my mind and shaky. And I finally released her from my mental breakdown-hug.

"If you're done, follow me." Ichigo didn't say anything more and walked back, saying something unintelligible to Rukia who nodded. She gave me a terrifying glare and turned around and following him. It was a good thing she did that, because if she had seen the gesture Suzume made behind her back- I preferred to skip that thought. "Where are you going?" Suzume finally asked angrily.

"WE are going to Urahara's" Ichigo answered. He stopped for a second and looked over his shoulder. "Then you can tell us what you really are."

Gulp.

"If you two are Shinigami, then I am the Supreme Commander."

We were at Urahara's and enjoying some tea. Although the situation was pretty painful, I was very excited about having tea the traditional Japanese way, since I'm a total spoiled tourist. What I also was excited about was that a good deal of the Bleach cast was having tea too. At the same table. With me.

Chad, Inoue, Ishida, Rukia, Ururu, Jinta, the Creep-With-Glasses, Urahara with his fan… Ichigo with crossed arms, Suzume fiddling with her cup, me still a bit shaky. Familiar black cat on a cushion.
It was awesome to see them. It was awkward to actually be with them. I opened my mouth and closed it; I looked at Suzume, but she studied her teacup with an amazing amount of concentration.

"Then we must be the Halloween comittee" a cold, arrogant, young and familiar voice suddenly added as dryly as possible.
With a huge *GASP* Suzume and I turned around to see an odd group of people in the door opening. One woman with orange hair and a bosom that seemed made for the sole purpose of mocking Newton. One bald guy with a head that seemed to have a bishie sparkle glued to it. One whose appearance made it really hard to determine his/her gender. And two others-

"RENJI!"
"TOUSHIRO!"

I clamped my hand before my mouth before my inner fangirl could screw up any further, my cheeks suddenly feeling very warm. For a second, there was a dead silence of doom.
Then Suzume stood up within and pointed at Lieutenant Pineapple, her finger aimed at his head. For a second, I thought she was going to scream "OBJECTION", but she decided otherwise.

"YOU'RE AWESOME!"

And with that she launched herself at him, and before I could blink she was hugging him, tugging his hair, examining his eyebrows, stealing his white bandana-thingy, hugging him again and reapeating this odd but understandable behaviour. While screaming unintelligible, high-pitched and overexcited things that were meant in a very positive way.
Her target seemed too stupified to do anything; his so-called friends quickly moved away from the scene and proceeded to laugh at his face.

Me, well, I'm not a spontaneous person like Suus, and I also was sane enough to hold myself back from glomping Squad 10 Captain Hitsugaya Toushiro, prodigy of the Gotei 13, wielder of the strongest ice-based Zanpaktou. And a personality to match said weapon.

The unwilling subject of my staring had stepped forward and frowned. Well, he always frowned, but now his frown got deeper- think Matsumoto-what-are-these-sake-bottles-doing-in-my-office-frowning. And it was directed at me. I felt uncomfortably intimidated by someone who was about two heads shorter than me.

"You must be the two suspicious figures that Urahara told us about." He glanced over to Suzume, who had now moved on to Ikkaku and commanded him to do his lucky-lucky dance. "I don't think 'suspicious' is the right description, though." He glanced back to me; apparently waiting for a response. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again-
"I AM NOT BALD. I AM SHAVED!"
Saved by the yell.

"We should calm down and have some tea now, everyone" Urahara said hushingly, softly but steadily taking Suzume by the shoulders and forcing her to sit down next to me. Her cheeks were bright red - excitement? love? embarrassment?- and she longingly stared at Renji, who sat down as far as possible from us. The newcomers settled down as well; Ikkaku fought with Renji over their places; Matsumoto sat down between Inoue and Ichigo (the latter shifting a bit uncomfortably), and Ikkaku not-so-heterosexual-life partner quickly claimed the free space next to Ishida (who shifted even more uncomfortably.
Sighing very heavily, the child captain took the last remaining seat next to me, making a whole show of how relunctant he was being. At least, it seemed like that to me.
If I hadn't felt so extremely awkward, I would've been extremely excited to sit next to one of my favourite characters.
The rather heavy silence didn't really help, either. The sounds of people sipping tea were the only things to be heard for what seemed like an hour.
I have never felt this uncomfortable in my entire life.
"So, here we are" Suzume suddenly said, putting down her cup as if it was a statement on its own.
"So here you are, indeed" Urahara said, suddenly looking a bit more serious than before.

"Who are you?" Ichigo bluntly broke the silence as well. It was a sign for everyone to put down their teacups and to get on with it.
"I'm Suzume and this is Myrthe" Suzume replied calmly, not the least bit intimidated. She raised a provoking eyebrow, as if she was disappointed with his question.
He suddenly smashed the table rather agressively. I shrieked out of surprise, earning me another scorching look from my small-sized neighbour.
"Don't joke around with us!"Ichigo said angrily. "Who are you?"

"Like we said before" Suzume responded annoyed "we are Shinigami." The way she said it so casually and naturally amazed me.

"And like Captain Hitsugaya said, then we are the Halloween committee." Renji said it so dryly I somehow managed to keep my laughter in control as I remembered countless fillers where the whole cast would dress up and have pointless adventures. My white-haired neighbour however seemed to notice my inner turmoil.

Ichigo folded his arms and turned towards me. Though not as intimidating as Hitsugaya's his stern gaze made it hard to look him in the eyes.
"Earlier you said that Hollow was the first one you've ever seen. That's impossible for a Shinigami. Then you said you were 16 years old- even more impossible. And last but not least," he grinned "Soul Society sure has some weirdoes there, but they'd never accept a wimp like you in the Gotei 13." Ouch.

"So" Ishida took over, pushing up his character-defining glassed "you either tell us the truth, or we'll just arrest you as spies."

"SPIES?" Suzume exclaimed surprised.
"ARREST US?" I exclaimed scared. This wasn't how it was supposed to work out; they were supposed to be all friendly, thoughtful and most of all, helpful!

"We're not spies!" Suzume said angrily.
"Please don't arrest us!" I squeakily added panicked.
"Then what, just WHAT are you people?" Hitsugaya snapped suddenly, smacking the table with his school kid-sized hand. I jumped up startled- or at least, I was supposed to jump up, but ended up knocking my knees against the table. I could see several shinigami roll their eyes, and wished I was a beautiful butterfly.

Suzume and I exchanged a long look. "Should we?" I asked, more out of habit than because we actually had a choice. My overcompetent companion nodded. "Option two it is." She turned towards the rest.
"Just don't start laughing, ok?"
"Or arresting us" I added nervously.

And we told them everything.

It remained kind of silent afterwards. They all stared at us like we were lunatics.
Well, I would've done the same if someone told me I'm a fictional character in a fictional anime while she is from the real world and knows all of what's going to happen to you, your past, your personality.

After another eternal silence, Hats'n Sandals cleared his throat.
"Interesting theory."

F!Myrthe: I demand moar dialogue!

Me: Say the magical wooords~

F!Myrthe: Screw you.

~*~*~*~**~*~OPINION WHORE SECTION~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Welcome to the Opinion Whore Section, where your opinion only counts if it's approved by me!

Chapter one is finally done! This chapter was first divided into two chapters, but a while ago, I read my own story again and was baffled by its eyeball-gougingly crappy quality. I wouldn't even have read that crap! So I rewrote the chapter, but it's still far from good- but I thought I'd do the most eriible stuff right first and then refine it.
So now you have gotten to know F!Myrthe and Suzume a little more. What is your opinion on them?