A/N: By this time in the story, Yachiru looks about ten or eleven, pretty much approaching puberty.

Thanks so much for the reviews guys! Glad you liked it. As promised, here's more Karin.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. At all.

Chapter 3: Those simple sunlit days

"Um...so...what if the heroine gets kidnapped?" asked Yuzu, tapping the corner of her pen on the notebook's blank page.

"And one of the guys has to save her?" asked Karin, glancing over at her twin. "Bo-ring."

"Why is it boring?" asked Yuzu, frowning at Karin. "It's a romantic action story. Everyone loves those."

"Well, why can't the heroine just save herself?" said Karin. "Why's she have to wait for one of the guys to come get her?"

"Because she's a princess," said Yuzu. "She's never shown any fighting abilities before!"

"So? Why does she have to fight? She's got a working brain-maybe she slips out while the villain's not looking. Also, why's the villain kidnapping her in the first place?"

"Because she's the princess?"

"Yeah...?" said Karin, sitting up. "But then what? You don't just run around kidnapping princesses for no reason, you know."

"Um...I haven't thought about that before."

Yuzu frowned in thought, tapping the end of her pen against her cheek. Karin watched her sister for a moment before leaning back against the Division's wall, rubbing at her sore shoulder. The two of them were seated on the veranda of the Sixth Division barracks, Yuzu hard at work on the next issue of her story for Seireitei Communication. It had been a month since their graduation from the Academy, and the first time since then that the both of them had had a day off on the same day.

Not that Karin was particularly busy these days anyway. Unlike Yuzu, Masa, and Kohaku, her tasks as 20th Seat seemed to boil down to just training, training, and more training. Apparently, Eleventh really didn't do much unless there was something to fight, and none of the more senior officers really cared if the Division members slipped out in the middle of the day, as long as they'd proven they could hold their own in a fight. Karin had done that, at least as far as was appropriate for her rank, and over the past couple of weeks, the number of challenges for her seat she'd received had waned considerably. There had been a few tough guys like Nakashima with chips on their shoulders, but after the first couple of weeks, when she showed that she could hold her own, those had pretty much died down, and it looked like the other Division members finally accepted her as one of them.

She still got challenged to a fight quite a few times, but those were just for fun.

Karin closed her eyes as Yuzu started writing, clasping her hands together behind her head and enjoying the feeling of the sun on her face. It was nice to get out of the Division every once in a while. Dealing with the Eleventh's rowdiness sometimes got a little old, and while the Eleventh wasn't really strict compared to some of the other Divisions, it was still a Division of the Gotei 13 and it had its own rules, so it was nice to get out and go somewhere where no one questioned her actions.

"Kurosaki Karin," said a cold voice. "Why are you in my Division?"

—Alright, so maybe she spoke too soon.

"I'm visiting my sister," she said, cracking an eye open to glare at the Division's captain. "It's her day off. Is that not allowed now?"

Kuchiki Byakuya frowned at her before looking away, continuing to walk through the courtyard back towards his office. Karin glared at his back, waiting until he rounded the corner.

"Prick," she muttered under her breath.

"Karin-chan!" said Yuzu.

"Well, it's true," said Karin, laying back down. She closed her eyes. "I still don't know why you chose this Division."

"It's not too bad," said Yuzu as she wrote, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. "Sometimes, it's kind of nice."

Karin frowned, watching her twin out of the corner of her eye. After a few moments, she sighed, shrugging her shoulders.

"Well, whatever," she said, closing her eyes again.

It was a few hours later when Karin started making her way back to the Eleventh, the sun hanging low in the afternoon sky. The young shinigami placed one hand on Ongetsu's sheath, a frown on her face as she neared the Tenth. Toshiro would probably be done working by now, she reasoned, unless Matsumoto had ditched him again. That was always a possibility. Maybe she should just stop in and see if he was around. That was what girlfriends did, wasn't it? Or not. She'd just seen him yesterday, after all—she didn't want to be clingy. Not that she hadn't visited him a lot before they were in this relationship, and not that the tone of their visits had really changed much since then.

He didn't seem to mind her visiting him, come to think of it. Except in the month since the coming of age ceremony, Matsumoto had started teasing him more whenever she was over. That, he didn't seem to like. So was she supposed to yell at Matsumoto to get her off his back? Karin thought so, but maybe if she denied the teasing too much, he'd think she wasn't actually interested. And they were actually dating—

—In that moment, Kurosaki Karin realized that she had no idea how to be a girlfriend.

She scowled in frustration, scratching the back of her head. Dammit. This was so much simpler when they had just been friends.

Not that she minded—er...other aspects of their relationship, she thought, a flush spreading its way onto her cheeks. Like the kissing. The kissing was nice.

Toshiro's hands on her arms beneath a starlit sky, his grip tentative as though he wasn't sure what to do with his hands—the first few tentative kisses, slowly growing bolder—a steady heat radiating from the pit of her stomach as she pulled him closer, slanting her mouth against his to deepen the kiss—

Karin cleared her throat, feeling the warmth on her face. Alright, she admitted to herself, the kissing was very nice.

Not that she'd ever admit that to anyone.

A small foot slammed into the space between her shoulder blades, cutting that thought short. Karin's eyes widened as she felt herself suddenly thrown forward, and she threw her hands out to stop herself as she fell to the ground. She let out a small 'oof' as she hit the ground hard, her eyes narrowing as she looked over her shoulder at the perpetrator.

"What the hell was that for?!" she demanded.

"Rin-chan seemed distracted," said Yachiru, smiling up at her from where she'd landed on the ground. "So I decided to say hi!"

"You don't say hi to people by kicking them!" shouted Karin.

"You don't?" Yachiru tapped her chin, seeming genuinely confused. "Ken-chan says it's okay, though."

"That's another problem we're not addressing," Karin muttered under her breath.

Yachiru didn't seem to hear her. "And isn't that how you say hi to your dad, Rin-chan?" she asked.

"That's a different case," said Karin, holding out her hand. Yachiru took it, pulling her back up to her feet with surprising strength. Karin let go of the hand as Yachiru released her, dusting off her shihakusho.

"How's that different?" asked Yachiru, frowning.

"My dad's an idiot."

"Aha!" said Yachiru. "So I should kick Maki-Maki!"

"You do that, kid," said Karin. She straightened up her robes, frowning at the pink-haired girl. "So, what's up?"

Yachiru grinned, spinning and striking a pose. "Ta-da!" she said, indicating her hair. "What do you think?"

Karin frowned, glancing at Yachiru's hair. It had been growing longer over the years, and now she had pulled it back, into two pink pigtails on the side of her head. One of those pigtails was secured with a regular white band, the other with a hairband that had a skull and crossbones design on it.

"Pigtails?" she asked.

"They're cute, aren't they?" asked Yachiru. "Yun-Yun helped me with them! He said they'll keep my hair out of my face while I'm training! Sankecchi likes them too!" She held onto her zanpakuto sheath with both hands, smiling up at Karin.

Karin frowned at her. "Oi..." she said. "You even gave your zanpakuto a nickname?"

"She likes it!" said Yachiru.

"That thing's a she?" asked Karin, taking a step back.

"Well, of course she is! Why would you think she wasn't?"

Karin frowned, thinking back to the first and only time she had ever seen Yachiru release her zanpakuto, on a dare from one of the new recruits. She shuddered as she remembered one of the sword beasts grinning at her. "No reason," she said. "Why are you here anyway?"

"I thought we could hang out together, since we're both girls," said Yachiru, grinning. "We could go fight Hollows and then paint our nails!"

A droplet of sweat formed on the back of Karin's head. "Hey...um...don't you think that plan's a little messed up?"

"No it isn't," said Yachiru, frowning. "Because if I do my nails first, they'll just get ruined when we get Hollow guts all over them! That's what Yun-Yun said anyway."

"You really need to stop taking beauty advice from Yumichika," said Karin, flatly.

"But he's the girliest!" said Yachiru.

"Can't argue with you there," said Karin. She frowned, thinking back to what Yachiru had just said. "Anyway, I'll pass on the nail thing. It's not really my style."

"So, just the Hollows?" asked Yachiru.

"We can't really go out and fight Hollows whenever we want, you know," said Karin, frowning at the vice-captain.

"Then, we could go take sweets from Ukki!" said Yachiru. "Or sneak into Byakkun's house! He still hasn't found all my tunnels, you know. Or we can go to the ikebana club and eat the flowers! Or we could—"

"—How about we just play soccer?" asked Karin, interrupting her.

Yachiru frowned. "You have weird hobbies, Rin-chan," she said.

"Look who's talking," Karin muttered, folding her arms.

"Anyway, come on!" said Yachiru, stepping forward. "There's gotta be something we can do! I bet we could—."

"What's with all the noise?" asked a familiar voice. Both Karin and Yachiru looked up, Yachiru releasing Karin's wrist. Toshiro stood just outside his Division, a frown on his face. His arms were folded across his chest.

Yachiru's eyes widened, her smile brightening as she turned to him. "It's Shiro-chan!" she said, pointing.

Toshiro's eyes narrowed, his hand clenching into a fist. "Who is Shiro-chan?!" he demanded.

"So that's the story," said Toshiro to Karin, the two of them sitting on the rooftop of the Tenth Division barracks.

"Yeah." Karin lay back, placing her hands behind her head and looking up at the sky. "I don't know why Yachiru wants to hang out with me or whatever. It's not like she doesn't have other friends. There's that whole Shinigami Women's Association thing."

"I wouldn't say those are her friends," said Toshiro, looking over at her. "Underlings might be the word that you're looking for."

"Well, whatever," said Karin. "It's close enough."

"Maybe it's because she thinks the two of you are similar," said Toshiro.

Karin cracked an eye open to glare at him. "What out of the two of us is similar?" she asked.

Toshiro said nothing, his eyes moving towards the Eleventh Division as a shout of pain rang through the air. Yachiru had abandoned Karin when Toshiro arrived, and now looked to be leading an impromptu training session in the Division courtyard. Over the past six years, as she'd been growing, the captain had been letting her participate in the fights more and more. She stood in the center of a group of shinigami, swinging her sheathed zanpakuto around by the cord she still sometimes dragged it around with. She was tall enough to wear it properly now, but she still kept the cord. It looked like she had found other uses for it.

"Don't say it," Karin warned her boyfriend, as Yachiru gleefully jumped onto one shinigami's head before spinning and kicking another in the face.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"Like hell you weren't."

Toshiro gave her a small smile, and Karin rolled her eyes, laying back on the slanting rooftop. She muttered something under her breath about annoying guys, but he knew her well enough by now to know that there was no bite to the statement. Really, just hanging out here like this was nice. It was comfortable. If every day was like this, she'd wonder why on earth she'd been so reluctant to start this relationship in the first place. But when he smiled at her like that and her stomach did flip-flops—

—Well, that was a different story.

"Anything interesting happen today?" she asked, to take her mind off the blush starting to spread its way onto her cheeks.

"Not really," said Toshiro. "The Fifth and the Thirteenth are doing joint training."

"Ichi-nii and Rukia-nee again, I guess," said Karin, opening her eyes. She watched as a cloud slowly floated its way across the sky overhead, blocking out the sun for a moment. "The two of them make a pretty good team."

Toshiro nodded. "They do," he said. After a minute of silence, he glanced over at her. "What about you? Did you do anything interesting?"

"Went to visit Yuzu at the Sixth," said Karin, sitting up.

"How is she doing there?"

"She's doing fine," said Karin. "Her captain's still an ass."

Toshiro sighed. "I guess it's too much to hope for that you two eventually get along, isn't it?" he asked.

"Damn right," said Karin, folding her arms.

"Anyway," said Toshiro, his eyes moving towards the Eleventh again. "It's...good to see that you're fitting in in your Division. You're not having any more trouble, are you?"

"With the recruits?" asked Karin. "Not for a couple of weeks."

"And with the others?" asked Toshiro.

Karin grinned, lying back down. "Not yet," she said.

Something in her tone made Toshiro look up. "Oi, Karin..." he said, a note of alarm in his voice. "What are you planning?"

"We've got seven 19th seats," said Karin, turning her head to face him. "Mizokuchi's the weakest, Ichikawa's the strongest."

"So, you're training until you can challenge Mizokuchi?" asked Toshiro, frowning at her.

"Nah." Karin turned away from him, the smile still on her face as she looked up at the sky. "Ichikawa."

"Karin!"

"What?" asked Karin, glancing at him. "If I can't beat the strongest one, what's the point?"

"Division ranking is not a game of soccer!" said Toshiro, turning towards her.

"It's still a game, isn't it?" asked Karin, closing her eyes again. "At least, it is in the Eleventh Division."

"Honestly," Toshiro sighed, covering his face with his hand. "I'm not sure whether I should be scared for you or scared of you."

"You've got time. You'll figure it out."

She found herself grinning as Toshiro let out another exasperated sigh, closing her eyes at the feel of the wind against her face. Toshiro always managed to draw out a playful side of her that not a lot of other people got a chance to see. It was nice, she decided, just being up here with him. It was nice...

"Oh, taicho, this is where you went~," said a familiar voice, causing Karin to open her eyes and sit up. Matsumoto smiled at them from the other side of the roof, holding herself up with her arms and her...chest. Toshiro turned to stare at her, his eyes as wide as Karin's.

"Matsumoto!" he said.

"Having a date in such a public place," said Matsumoto, pressing one finger against her cheek. "I didn't think you were that bold, taicho!"

"Shut up!" said Toshiro.

"We're not—!" Karin said, at the exact same time.

The two of them paused, exchanging glances with each other. Matsumoto gave them her best innocent stare, pursing her lips in thought.

"I wonder what Kurosaki-taicho will say when he hears about this," she said. "Ooh, I know. I should tell him!"

She grinned to herself, releasing her hold on the rooftop and dropping down. Toshiro's eyes widened and he surged forward, his hand closing around empty air as his vice-captain slipped right through his fingers. "No, wait! Matsumoto—!"

A black and orange streak started making its way towards the Fifth Division, the vice-captain grinning to herself as she ran. Karin and Toshiro both jumped to their feet, looking alarmed.

"You chase her, I'll cut her off!" said Karin.

Toshiro nodded quickly, the two of them flash-stepping away.

TO BE CONTINUED

Omake: Masa-pyon and Kohaku-sama's Shinigami Diary :D (YEAH, YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT, MASA!)

Masa stares up at the title in outrage. "IWASE!" he says. "You are banned from Sharpies!"

"For how long?" asks Kohaku, with a frown, putting away the pink marker as she appears on set.

"20,000 years!"

"Eh?!" asks Kohaku, eyes wide. "So my changing your title is on par with AIZEN?"

"Fine, 22,000 years!" says Masa, folding his arms.

"Hey, wait a minute—!"

Masa ignores her, turning his attention to the screen. The zanpakuto on the screen has changed, and is now a katana with a silver hilt, a line of molten metal in the background. "Today, we are going to talk about my zanpakuto, Setsuyoku," he says.

"We're talking about yours today?" asks Kohaku, blinking. "Was that on the schedule?"

"You are not the only one with access to Sharpies, Iwase."

Kohaku gives him a flat look. "I thought I was banned for 20,000 years," she says.

"Not important!" says Masa. "At any rate, Setsuyoku's release form is liquid metal, which can be molded into anything. It has five basic forms, each of which corresponds to aspects of character that I believe are important, and reflects people that I subconsciously believe exemplify those aspects."

"Oh, is that how it works?" asks Kohaku, eyes wide. "So your zanpakuto is basically you being a fanboy, isn't it?"

"It is not!" says Masa, a vein twitching on his forehead. He smacks the screen with the pointer, causing the image to change. "Form One: Setsuyoku's projectile form. It represents nobility. It's influence—."

"Ooh, ooh, I know!" says Kohaku, raising her hand. "Kuchiki Byakuya!"

"Unfortunately, yes," says Masa, the screen changing to show the stoic captain's face. "As much as I hate to admit it, Kuchiki-dono exemplifies both nobility and the acceptance of the responsibility behind it. Next—Setsuyoku's bladed rings. They come in pairs, and represent loyalty."

"Ummm...the Kurosaki twins?" asks Kohaku.

"Correct," says Masa, the image changing to show Karin and Yuzu standing next to each other. The picture changes again as he points at it, revealing a large curved sword made of liquid metal. "Third, Setsuyoku's sword form. It represents strength, fighting spirit, and the courage to lead."

"Oh, that one's easy," says Kohaku, folding her arms. "Kurosaki Ichigo."

Masa nods, the image changing again to show the Captain of the Fifth. "Next, an impenetrable shield, representing the desire to protect. You can't guess this one, Iwase."

Kohaku frowns, thinking about it for a moment. "Shield..." she mutters to herself, tapping her chin with her hand. "Shield, shield, shield—ooh, I know! Your father and grandfather!"

"And my mother," says Masa, the screen changing to show the three of them against the emblem of the Ankoujin Clan. "You didn't get it all right, Iwase."

"Well, to be honest," said Kohaku, scratching the back of her neck. "It's...uh...kind of easy to forget your mother exists. She doesn't even get any screen time. What does she look like?"

"What do you mean, what does she look like?" asks Masa. "She's right here!" He points emphatically at the image.

"Well, yeah," says Kohaku, "But without a description, the audience won't know, y'know."

"I'm not having this conversation," says Masa. "Anyway, that's all for today."

"Wait, what?" Kohaku blinks, staring at Masa. "But that was only four! What's the fifth?"

"We don't talk about the fifth," says Masa, collapsing the pointer and tucking it back in his sleeve.

"Why not?"

"It's a spoiler."

"It's me, isn't it?" asks Kohaku, eyes starry. "Why, Masa, I'm so touched!"

Masa's eye twitches. "It is not you, Iwase!"

Q & A Time

"Alright, Masa," says Kohaku, reading a card. "Our first question is for you, from aSilentReader."

"For me?" asks Masa, sitting across from Kohaku on what looks like the set of a talk show. "Very well. I'll attempt to answer it as best as I can."

"That's the spirit," says Kohaku. "So, aSilentReader asks, 'What do you think of non-platonic relationships within a Division?"

"Unacceptable," says Masa, without missing a beat. "Such relationships are unprofessional and reflect a conflict of interest! They should not be allowed, particularly if they involve the Division's captain!"

Kohaku frowns at Masa's impassioned response, looking up over the card. "You're just upset about Yuzu and Kuchiki-taicho, aren't you?"

"As I've said," says Masa. "Unacceptable!"