I stared out sightlessly at the night of the mortal realm in a stupor of shock. It just wasn't possible. This couldn't be happening to me. There was just no-way this was possible...

I mentally replayed the events of the fight against the Shadow searching for an explanation or at least somewhere to start. The battle had seemed to be going okay, it was a new kind of enemy that no-one had ever faced before but I'd thought that I'd figured out a weak point. I'd finally managed to score some kind of hit on it, getting Zabimaru lodged in it's shadowy midsection. We'd been playing tug of war for Zabimaru's fangs when it had sent a bolt of dark-lightning down him that had felt like six kinds of excruciating pain. I'd been enveloped by shadows and woke up here.

I'd woke up here in the living world... as a mortal human.

I tried searching for Zabimaru again but I couldn't feel him anywhere, it was a not-feeling that was painful in it's absence. It was worse in it's way than loosing Rukia would be, granted she'd been part of my life for longer and sometimes I felt close enough to her to where it felt like she was part of me, but Zabimaru was part of my soul. It was different.

The wind was chilly with spring frost, reminding me that part of the human condition was to feel the extremes of hot and cold. I could feel them as a Soul Reaper, naturally, but they weren't nearly this bad. Even the slight breeze had me shivering, (of course, it could also be the fact that I was wearing not a stitch). I needed to get some clothes before my privates decided to try to crawl up in me and not come out.

I stood up and looked around. Out of habit, I tested the wind to try to get my bearings and discovered to my surprise and relief that I could catch scents the way I was supposed to, the spirit layered over the physical world. The ability didn't even seem to be dulled by my gigai... er, body.

:First order of business,: I told myself looking around and trying to scent the nearest human to me. :Find something to cover up with.:

I was in the bad end of town, this was evidenced by the graffiti scrawled over every available surface in spray-paint and the older model cars propped up on cinder blocks and the broken glass sparkling in the flickering streetlamps. Nearby I scented humans and the smell of trash being burned. Probably homeless. There were other humans about, too, slightly better washed ones. I headed in that direction down a dark alleyway that led out to another deserted street and paused.

Two men were coming my way wearing clothes that identified them as belonging to a particular sect of people. Their skin was painted with a long series of tattoos that were not nearly so cool as Zabimaru's had been. I noted two things in a quick glance, well three actually if you counted my automatic assessment that I could take them easily. One was that their clothes were warm, and the other was that they were threatening a mortal woman. More importantly, their clothes looked warm and I wasn't likely to get insects from them.

"... haven't been paying yer upkeep on time bitch, I'd hate to see somethin' happen to yer brat on his way back from school," one thug was saying.

:Low-rank thug, weak enforcer for the protection racket,: I assessed with a curl of my lip.

Sure, every one of those sorts carried guns these days but that didn't really worry me much. A wimp was a wimp. The sorts of enforcers who visited helpless women and threatened kids were the lowest of the low, even other enforcers pissed on 'em. So there was no problem then.

"Hey assholes," I called over in a friendly sort of manner, a feral smile of anticipation spreading over my face.

It had been a pretty shitty day for me and I was looking forward to a good brawl for getting all this pent up irritation out of my system.

"Who the fuck are you?" one of them asked me, turning to eye me.

He stared after noticing I wasn't wearing any clothes.

"I don't give my name to low-rank pissants before I beat the shit out of them," I informed him.

I pulled back and let fly. I made my heart feel good when I got a nice solid connection with his jaw. Before he could go down, I grabbed his shirt front and backhanded him, hard, with my other hand. I pulled the gun from his pants and chucked it behind me, then kneed him in the groin, twice. His friend finally got his shit together and swung at me, so I shoved the guy I'd just bitch-slapped into the new attacker hard enough to send 'em both to the ground. The second asshole tried to reach into his waistline for his own piece and but didn't get a chance to before I took a running leap and stomped down on top of the first guy. I loved the sound of ribs cracking in the morning.

"The fuck you think you are hero?" one of the guys demanded of me from around a bleeding lip. "You think yer just gonna pick a fight with us to keep that woman safe. We'll cut her and her kid."

I felt a dark part of me coil up as I seriously considered just killing them, but murdering people who pissed me off just wasn't my style, so I said instead

"I don't have anything to do with the woman. I just don't like you and I want yer clothes."

I took the bottom guys head and bashed it hard enough into the side walk that he lost consciousness. It probably wouldn't do any permanent damage. Probably. The guy on top of him was treated to my fist for as long as it was fun fer me ta beat the crap out of him. Normally I'd be the first to say that you didn't get stronger by picking on weaker assholes but I was willing to make an exception for them.

Once they were well and truly unconscious I picked out the guy who was closest to me in size and stripped his unconscious body down to his drawers. The clothes were still a little short in the leg and not quite broad enough for my shoulders but I supposed that beggars couldn't be choosers.

I stood up over their prone forms and thought maybe I should tie them up in humiliating positions just fer kicks but decided against it, for one thing it was a waste of time (however amusing) and second, I was still a lieutenant and I had my position to uphold. I'd wasted enough time on them already.

"E-excuse me," a quavery voice said from off to my right.

It was strange but the voice sounded oddly familiar, not someone I could place that I knew, just one that reminded me of someone I knew.

"What missy?" I demanded.

I didn't have time to play escort when I wasn't lookin' to, she should know better than ta go walkin' around in a place like this in the middle o' the night. Women. Not the common sense god gave a canary.

"Are you crazy? Those men work for Chiano," she said. "As soon as they wake up you're going to have a hit put on your head."

I snorted. I wasn't planning on sticking around and besides that, no human gang-lord was going to scare me.

"I mean it, you could be in serious trouble!"

I actually looked over at her and startled with an awkward squawk of surprise. The superficial details were sort of different, like her skin was ethnic-bronze and her eyes were obsidian instead of indigo, but the woman I'd just saved looked exactly like an older version of Rukia. For one wild moment in all the confusion of my situation, I thought was her, that Rukia had inexplicably found me. But no... one more glance was all it took to show me that she was another person entirely.

I breathed in, about to tell her not to worry about me when I got one good whiff of her soul-scent and froze, stock-still and speechless. I knew this scent. I had smelt it a time or two before when I'd been over at the Kuchiki Manse and, unable to control my curiosity, had poked my head into the quarters of the former mistress of the manse. Hisana Kuchiki. There was no fooling my tracking abiity, and even if she hadn't looked like an eerily exact copy of her death photo, she'd have still smelled like that room.

:Rukia's gonna flip,: I thught around my numbed state of shock.

I'd just stumbled across the reincarnation of her older sister Hisana.

Haahhh, how many of you saw that one coming? It's sorta funny, even though she got maybe ten minutes of screen-time total in the series including her little debut in the movie, I can't help feeling drawn to Hisana Kuchiki. I don;t know why. So, well, the other majorcharacter makes her debut, please look forward to seeing more of her.

I did the (shudder) math, people, and discovered that with all the chapters still yet to come, posting a new one up twice a week just isn't going to cut it. We'd be here for months if I tried, so guess what? Provided I have the time, you all get an upgrade. Three chapters a week. Hopefully anyway. The last-minute formating and editing can be a bit of a pain, but we'll see how it goes.

As always, I hope you enjoyed the latest instalment and please read and reveiw. Until next time!

~Nightheart.