disclaimer: i do not own bleach or any of its characters or locations mentioned in the manga or anime. i just own this story line and the OCs

thanks to clouds shadows, silver-wolf reborn, Dancin-Babe, XxDemonicAngel, Tari Tinuviel, and Shibien11 for joining us.

i know i know it's been a while and i'm slipping with this whole keeping a deadline thing. summer's just been a little hectic but i promise i'm working real hard at making this story awesome for you guys. hope you like the newest chapter. enjoy!

m

Chapter 12

That night, for the first time in years, I dreamt of my father. But it wasn't a dream like those that had filled my childhood; ones that featured a handsome man that looked like me who was strong and heroic and kind. He made me feel proud to be his daughter. That man was not in this dream. It did not feature him returning from important business elsewhere to embrace my mother and cure her of the unspoken terror I often saw in her eyes. He did not lift me up and twirl me around, telling me what a good girl I had been for keeping my mother safe. This dream was not a dream at all. It was truly a nightmare.

I was standing with my mother in our old house. The explosion had not yet happened, the sun was shining through the windows and everything was clean and neat the way my mother always kept it. I was watching the scene from inside my own body, but I had no control over what was happening. I was merely a spectator.

My mother's face looked angry and hurt. I was saying something to her, my voice rising, but the words were muffled as if I was listening from the other side of a wall. I wanted to stop myself from continuing to yell at her; whatever I was saying was clearly hurting her, but no matter how hard I tried to regain control, I stayed completely helpless. With a jolt, I suddenly realized I was watching the last memory I had of the two of us right before my mind went blank.

Suddenly we were both knocked to the ground, the rug underneath us stripped away. The walls suddenly dissolved and it was like we were floating in blackness. It was disorienting and strange; I could still feel a solid floor beneath us, but everything was dark except for our two bodies. Regaining control of my body, I looked up and saw such blind fear in my mother's eyes that it made my stomach clench.

She jerked backwards, like something had tried to drag her away from me. Her hands scraped and grabbed at the ground, trying to stop herself from being taken. A rush of sound came roaring back into my head as I heard her screaming. It cut right through me and I began scrabbling after her, trying to grab her wrists and hold on to her. I wanted to stand up, I could catch her better if I was running, but something held me down. Some kind of ominous pressure weighed by body down and I didn't have the strength to overpower it.

Just as I was about to reach out and grab my mother, I felt as if my body had reached the end of a leash. I jerked to a stop and then felt myself being pulled up and backwards, away from my mother who then vanished right before my eyes. I landed vertically against what seemed to be a wall and tried to push myself away, but the pressure held me there like and invisible rope. Out of the darkness, a pair of glowing crimson eyes opened like two flames suddenly sparking to life.

"My blood runs in your veins." The voice, low and full of an obsessive possession, hit me like a strong gust of wind, pushing me back against the wall even more. The words began to repeat over and over until it sounded like many voices all speaking over each other. I was able to move my arms and covered my ears as the voices grew louder and louder, each hit from them tearing at me like the claws of wild animals. Eventually there was such a commotion that only two words were even audible.

"My blood!" I felt something warm trickling down my cheek. Pulling my hands away, I felt my stomach heave and a gag catch in my throat. My arms were covered from my fingertips to my elbows in blood. In the darkness it still glistened, a deep red and it dripped off my arms in thick droplets. I held my hands as far away from me as I could and felt my stomach heave again, bringing up nothing but a scream that was lost among all the voices screaming around me.

Something flashed on the other side of my closed eyelids and there was a sharp crack like an outlet surging and exploding. I opened my eyes and the first thing I realized was that I was sitting up in bed holding my hands out in front of me. My palms felt warm and tingly and I flipped them over and over checking for signs of blood. It had felt so real, so wet and hot as if I had stuck my hands in a pot of boiling water. It almost burned right through my skin but now, in nothing but the scant moonlight streaming through my window, my hands were nothing but shaky and pale.

Looking up again, my breath caught in my throat. Across the room I could see a hole, its edges still smoldering, right through my wall. I pulled back the covers frantically and struggled out of bed, in the end just falling onto the floor. Scrambling up I walked over to the hole, staring at it openmouthed. It was the size of a golf ball at least, its edges black and ashy as if someone had just shot fire through it. Or lightning.

I looked down at my hands. They still tingled a bit like always after I used my powers. As I watched, a final tiny bolt wound its way through my fingers then disappeared. In my sleep I had accessed my Shadow abilities without consciously being aware of it, and used them. That thought sent a cold chill of fear down my spine.

What if someone had been standing in front of me? What if Emiko or Isamu had run in to see why I was screaming? I ran a finger over the edges of the hole feeling the fear sink deeper inside of me. Here I was with a power that was destructive and raw, that I could barely contain when I was awake, and now I was using it without even knowing. For the first time I really felt afraid of the power I had, afraid of what it could do, and afraid that I couldn't stop it.

Footsteps padded heavily down the hallway and I looked around frantically for something to put over the hole. I ran to my desk and grabbed a few thumb tacks and a flyer from school about a food drive coming up. Stumbling back to the wall, I managed to hang it up just as the door to my room slammed open.

Isamu's huge frame filled the doorway and his eyes were open wide, sweeping across my room. He gripped a baseball bat tightly in his hands and I stepped back against my dresser, suddenly a bit afraid of him as well.

"What on earth is going on in here!" Emiko pushed her way between Isamu and the doorway and looked at me, a bewildered expression on her face and her eyes filled with worry. Her hair was wild as if she had just rolled out of bed herself and her nightgown was a bit askew. I suddenly realized I was panting and that my t-shirt was clinging to my body where I had been sweating during the nightmare.

"I, um, just had a nightmare that's all," I said, sounding more out of breath than I thought. I straightened up straightened my shirt, trying to look like it wasn't a big deal. Emiko's expression instantly softened and she came over to me. Peeling the strands of hair that were stuck to my face away, she smiled sadly and pulled me in for a hug. Behind us Isamu lowered the bat, looking uncomfortable at the mushy sentimental path the night was suddenly traveling down. Emiko pulled away and held my shoulders, looking into my eyes.

"Was that all?" she asked, sounding relieved. "It sounded like a gun went off in here! We nearly jumped out of our skins!" She waved her arms around wildly, making some kind of sign language gesture that might get her point across better.

"No gunshots!" I said quickly, sounding a bit panicky. Isamu's eyes narrowed the slightest bit. "Just me falling out of bed," I laughed, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the idea. All the same, Isamu strode into my room and checked under my bed as well as in my closet. Then he walked to the window and leaned outside, looking around.

If I hadn't been watching him there, I would have missed it. But as his gaze swept over the yard, I saw the tree branches sway just a bit. There's no breeze tonight, I thought, feeling goose bumps rising up on my skin. Who was in that tree? Was it that cat again that always hung around driving my neighbors' dog crazy? Or was it a Hollow? Or, worst of all, was it Katsu or another Shadow? I swallowed hard, averting my eyes and hoping not to give away the petrifying fear that suddenly took hold of me as I remembered my nightmare.

Isamu left the room, seemingly satisfied that I hadn't been attacked, and Emiko gave me one last hug before following him. I shut my door after them and then sank to the floor, my back against it. I didn't want to think about the dream again, knowing I would never be able to get back to sleep, but there were things about it that bothered me more than the blood and general creepiness. There were feelings underneath the actions that affected me on a deeper level.

The last moments I had spent with my mother were a blur before, but now I remembered a bit more of that day. I had come home from school and we had had an argument, but about what I still couldn't recall. The look on my mother's face as I screamed at her was so pained and upset that it opened a hole inside me I couldn't close. A hole that had been there for the past year as I did nothing but suppress thoughts of the night I lost her. I felt such guilt rise from inside it that squeezed my insides so much they began to hurt. Surely I would have noticed in the moment that I was making my mother upset, so why hadn't I stopped? Why had I kept screaming at her? Why couldn't I stop myself this time? Had I really felt the need to do something so awful to her when she already had so much on her shoulders what with sending me to school and keeping up with payments for our home? I'd have to dig deeper to find the answers, but going back to that dark painful place inside me would not be easy, and was something I wasn't ready to do just yet.

The other thing that bothered me was the blood. I had known somehow that it wasn't mine, that I hadn't been injured. It belonged to someone else. Someone I had fatally hurt. Their blood was literally on my hands. A wave of nausea came over me as I realized this. I had never hurt anyone to the point of death before. Sure I had gotten in several scraps when I lived in Hidori, but no kid alive there could say otherwise without being looked at cross-eyed. I had broken some noses and some fingers, maybe dislocated a shoulder once or twice, but I had never ever cost someone their life.

Katsu's voice was still ringing in my ears as he had reminded me over and over that I was his blood; that we were cut from the same family cloth. That thought made my blood run cold. In the short moments I had spent with my father, I knew that I deeply disliked him. His spirit energy was dark and cloudy and ominous, going near it to get a better feel for him was impossible. He radiated the kind of evil that poisoned everything around him. He made me angrier than I had ever felt before and brought out a hatred that burned with an intensity I didn't know I possessed. It was scary to feel so out of control of my emotions. It was even scarier to wake up and find that I was also not in control of my powers as well.

Being Katsu's daughter and sharing his DNA was unsettling, but some deep part of me knew it was the truth. But what frightened me was the hatred I had seen in his eyes when I attacked him. It was so deep and so…evil, I couldn't understand how a person's emotions could even reach that far. But, did he mean by saying that his blood was mine that I would follow in his footsteps? That one day I would become a Shadow just like him? One day I would laugh at the pain of others, the way he had laughed at the memory of my mother? Children often became their parents. At least they always did in Hidori. Crack-head parents meant crack-head kids, and moms and dads who stole often met their kids in jail for the same reasons.

"No way," I said out loud, if only to further convince myself. "That will never happen."

I stood up slowly and walked to the window, feeling the cold breeze whisk away the sweat on my face. I took a deep breath and held my left hand out in front of me, lining it up with the trunk of the tree in my backyard. I let my mind clear and sunk into the part of my spirit energy that was my Shadow abilities. I felt the cord that triggered my lightning and allowed my energy to focus on it. It grew hotter and, as I exhaled, I let it flow down the cord from my center to the palm of my hand and then out to my target.

As the lightning hit my palm, Katsu's crimson eyes suddenly flashed through my mind and I felt my breath catch.

"My blood," I heard him whisper in my mind. My eyes widened and as the lightning shot from my hand, I knew something was wrong. Normally I was able to keep in control and guide the lightning where I wanted it to go. But this time, it felt like I was trying to hold a hurricane on a leash. My arm jerked like I was being pulled in the wrong direction and the lightning shot off across the yard and hit the neighbor's shed with a crash. The dog started barking and a light flicked on in their house.

No. That was wrong. It wasn't supposed to go there. I just stared at my outstretched hand, too frightened to move. It felt like something in me had unhinged at the thought of my father. No, it wasn't the thought of him. It was the sudden possibility that somewhere inside of me lurked the potential to become him.

I ran to my bed and threw myself down, flinging the covers over my head and begging sleep to come as quickly as possible.

ooo

"Hey!" Renji's voice was loud and very close. Something hard and small hit the side of my head and snapped me out of my daze.

"Ow!" I rubbed my temple and glared at him. Relaxed, as always, Renji was simply leaning against the shelves in one of the Urahara Shop's storage rooms, the hand that had just flicked me waving in my face. He had one of his stupid smug grins on his face.

"You've priced that box at least ten times," he said, nodding his head towards the shelf I was standing in front of. It was a few hours after school and we were both on shift until my training would start for the day. Looking over I saw he was right: the box I was pricing was covered in several little, fluorescent, orange stickers. My shoulders sagged and I sighed. Dropping the gun to the floor with a clack, I picked up the box and began to peel the stickers off with my nails. I had no energy at all to think of a snappy comeback.

For the past week I had been having the same nightmare night after night. There were several new holes in my wall, each covered up with flyers until I could run to the store and ask how to repair drywall. So far, I had Emiko and Isamu convinced the gunshot sounds were really just me falling out of bed. I didn't know if they really believed me, but clearly they saw how affected I was and didn't probe any further about what was happening, for which I was very grateful.

After last night's performance, I hadn't been able to fall back to sleep. Every time I shut my eyes, Katsu's were there, glowing and smoldering like embers in the darkness. His voice still echoed in my mind whenever I found my thoughts drifting, which they did a lot as I walked around the entire day in a sleep deprived stupor. I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder, afraid he was going to emerge from the shadows at any second.

"Are you ok?" Renji asked, snapping me out of my mind wandering yet again.

"Fine," I answered automatically. "I'm fine." I went to rub my face, but forgot I was holding a bunch of price stickers. They immediately adhered to my skin and I felt them tug as I tried to move my hand away. "Damnit," I whispered, hearing the exhaustion in my own voice. I turned my back to the shelves and slumped against them, leaning my head back and closing my eyes.

Almost as if I had flipped a switch, there they were just like every other time I tried to shut my eyes. Those fiery red orbs hanging in the darkness, sparking and burning into me. I quailed under their gaze and felt my stomach clench. I didn't want him looking at me; something about his gaze made me very uncomfortable. It seemed almost excited by the fact that only its memory could shake even my fortitude, which I had thought had been hardened by living in Hidori all my life.

I tried not to focus on the eyes, but an invisible force pulled me in and soon I found that I couldn't look away. I tried to open my eyes bit realized too late I was stuck in Katsu's gaze, feeling his hatred and corrupted energy swirling around me, trying to suffocate me. I thought I could smell ash as the flames that seemed to be within his eyes grew stronger and fuller. I felt warm as if real fire licked at my skin. My heart was pounding uncontrollably and I became lost in the fear.

Until something pulled at and stung my face. It was enough to release me from my imagined prison, and my eyes shot open. I was still leaning against the shelves, surprised that my legs hadn't given out beneath me, gripped them for support. In the place where Katsu's horrible red eyes had been, a pair of soft golden ones looked back at me. Renji was standing over me, much closer than he had ever been before. His shirt brushed against my arm and his hands were moving around my face. As I fully became lucid again, I realized he was pulling the stickers off of me, a strange look on his face as he did so.

His eyebrows were bunched together as if he were thinking about something very hard. Although he kept his eyes from mine, there was something I could see in them that I couldn't quite identify; some emotion I had never seen Renji show before. His hands were gentle as they peeled the stickers away, but the skin there was rough, a result of the hard work of a Soul Reaper. Each time he removed a sticker, he would press the pad of his thumb down over the spot to stop the stinging.

His eyes flicked to mine for a split second and then away again. In that moment I became electrically aware of just how close we were standing, and of Renji's other hand cradling the back of my head so my face was turned up towards his. I felt my cheeks heat up in a blush as my stomach did a backflip. I tried to turn away, but he held me still without using too much strength that it hurt. I found myself momentarily impressed by his mastery of control. How could he manage to be so strong and yet so gentle at the same time?

As he pulled away the last sticker his eyes flicked back to mine again and lingered there long enough for me to begin to feel self-conscious. I looked down and he stepped back and the electricity that had been hanging in the air between us dissipated.

"Where were you?" I looked up, confused by the question.

"What?" I asked.

"Where were you a few minutes ago?" He crumpled the stickers and stuck them in his pocket. Looking back up at me he continued, "You've been drifting off all day. Where did you go? It looked like you were in pain." His eyes hardened just a bit at the edges.

I had the words poised on the tip of my tongue, the words that I had been feeding everyone for the past year or so. I'm fine. I had so often just shut everyone out, finding it easier to deal with my emotions and thoughts on my own. Why drag anyone else down with the darkness that seemed to be constantly raging through me lately? I could have told Renji that I was just tired and needed some rest, or that I had had a lot of homework the night before. I could have told him many things and just walked away, reassuring him that I could take care of myself. I could have, if I hadn't realized what it was I kept seeing flickering in his eyes.

It was concern. Worry. Compassion, almost. And I realized then that I had seen that emotion cross his face before, but only ever for a few fleeting seconds and then it was gone. Ever since I had met him, there would be moments when I would catch him watching me when he thought I couldn't see. Moments when he regarded me with the same such expression as I saw on his face now, as if he were worried I was about to break into pieces. His eyes now roamed over my face, taking in the bags under my eyes and the paleness that came with not sleeping. Renji, for all his obnoxiousness and ignorance, was no fool. Of course he had noticed something was wrong.

I could have just made up another excuse and shrugged off this realization, but something stopped me. Something stopped me from putting up the wall I had built over the past year to keep myself safe. It was easier to do things on my own, because depending on someone else left too much to chance. Especially when they would just disappear on you. But something stopped me from holding back this time, something in Renji's eyes perhaps. Or maybe it was because he was the first person to really discover my powers? He had saved me from an attack by the Shadows just the day before, and from the snake Hollow. I trusted all of my friends, but something inside me reached out for Renji in a way it didn't for the others, but I couldn't tell what it was. I could have just walked away. But I didn't.

"I was thinking about my father," I said quietly, looking away from Renji and at the ground. He said nothing, but straightened up a bit, clearly listening. "About the things he said the other night. I've been having… nightmares about him all week." I looked up at Renji, expecting to see him start to laugh and tell me that only children still had nightmares. But he didn't. His face was straight and his eyes were hard again. For a moment, I faltered and had second thoughts about telling him. Maybe I had been wrong about the concern I had seen there, and was only wishing for it to be so. Desperation often leads to false realities.

"What are they about?" he asked, and I looked back down at the floor. Well, Sayuri, you already started this mess, you might as well finish it too. I began to tell him, slowly, about what I had dreamt of and how it was exactly the same every time. He stayed quiet and let me talk, not interrupting at all. When I was finished he leaned back against the shelves beside me and crossed his arms over his chest. I looked over at him and saw him staring up at the ceiling, his eyebrows pulled together again.

"Do you think it means something?" I asked, finally voicing the concern that had been bouncing around my head all day. Renji turned his head and fixed his eyes on mine, suddenly intensely gold.

"Do you?" Momentarily I was stunned by how heavy his gaze was in that moment. I blushed as I noticed that the gold in his eyes was flecked with brown. Unable to look away, I wasn't sure if I should keep talking to him, but my doubts were seemingly overruled. It was like once I had started I couldn't stop and his attention drew me out beyond my wall.

"I'm not sure." I pulled my eyes away from his and twisted my hands together. Looking up at the ceiling, I leaned my head back. "There were moments that felt like…it was more than just a dream. Like it was filled with…memories, almost. But they weren't really memories, I don't think." I looked over at him, unsure of how to put the feelings into understandable words. But Renji nodded as if he followed me, so I went on. "There were feelings underneath it all. Like the blood. I could just feel that it wasn't mine, that it belonged to someone else I knew. I don't know who and I don't know why I would feel that way, but I did. And when my mom was being dragged away," I paused a moment, my voice catching the tiniest bit. That part of the dream was still the hardest to think about, seeing my mother ripped away from me without being able to do a damn thing about it. "When that happened, I could just feel like it was the most important thing that I save her. That she couldn't be taken away or something terrible would happen to her, but what that was I don't know." I scratched my head. "It's all messed up."

"Sometimes dreams like those are just your mind trying to tell you something," Renji said, bending down and picking up the pricing gun I had dropped. "It's like a riddle or a puzzle. You have to figure out how the pieces all fit together and what they might mean. Then you can figure out what it's trying to tell you." He handed me the gun and turned to go. Just as he reached the door he stopped and turned back to me. "As for the part about your dad," his eyes softened a bit as he spoke this time, "You may be his daughter, but you're not him. Remember that." He grinned at me and walked out.

As he walked out of the room, Ururu slipped inside. It must be training time. Oh, joy. I followed her down the hallway to the room that housed the trapdoor leading underground. I mulled over what Renji had said. At first, it seemed reassuring. But then I began to remember some of the other things Katsu had shouted at me. That I had inherited more of his genes over my mother's, and that I would one day come to him when I realized who I truly was. Did he know something of my powers that I had yet to discover? Was there more to them than just the lightning? And why would I go to him after coming into my full potential?

I recalled the visions Katsu had forced into my mind, visions of a power so great I could destroy the entire town. Was that the level I could one day reach? A part of me recoiled at that idea, arguing that that much power would be impossible to control once it was ignited. But another part of me, a part that still lingered in the darkness ever-present in my mind since meeting my father, was intrigued. I remembered those visions and the intoxicating pleasure that had come with that power. I remembered how it had felt to be bigger than my body and to be able to do whatever I wanted with no restrictions or limitations.

It was with this mindset that I began training for the day. I was working with Urahara and Ururu and Jinta sat on a rock nearby to watch, while Tessai and Renji manned the store upstairs.

"Today I want to work on molding your powers when you use them," Urahara said. He placed his hands on my shoulders and guided me back to a raised rock with a flat surface, like some kind of stepping stone. He walked back and stood in front of me a few yards away. "All of the Shadows have molded their elemental abilities into weapons of some kind. Your lightning doesn't seem to want to take any kind of shape, which is fine, but now you need to figure out how best to use it. You can't just keep shooting out unstable blobs of lightning." I nodded to show that I was following.

Urahara unsheathed his zanpakutō and held it up before him.

"Katsu carries a blade which we all saw. What did you notice about the others though?" I thought back and recalled the awful memory of the previous night's attack. My first thoughts went to the young man. He hadn't looked much older than me or my friends.

"The earth man," I said, closing my eyes and remembering. "He had a vest with…vines I think. He uses them like tentacles." Urahara voiced his agreement and I continued, the images of the fight now surprisingly vivid in my mind. "The woman, I think she controls water, had some kind of hilt tied at her waist. But there was no blade?" I opened my eyes and saw Urahara nodding.

"Some kind of weapon made of water I would assume. How about the last man? Air?"

"He only carried fans," I said, Urahara's eyes on me as if he were waiting for a specific answer. I suddenly felt very nervous and thought carefully about what I was going to say. "Which he could use to manipulate the air in some way. Or even as aerial weapons themselves." Urahara nodded and smiled.

"Very good. In battle, and in any situation really, it's important to stay alert and take in as much as you can about your surroundings, including the people. From here you can plan your battle strategy against them, but that's for another day. Today we're going to work on giving your lightning some useful forms instead of just reckless blasts." I blushed a bit, feeling like a baby just learning how to walk on my own. Urahara was right, I had no idea how to control my powers at all.

I suddenly remembered what had happened after I had my nightmare with the lightning and how it had shot off in the wrong direction. I hadn't told anyone about that. Thinking about it, I realized it would be too embarrassing to admit to letting a silly dream affect me that badly. Urahara motioned for me to begin.

I took a deep breath and steadied myself as I had been taught. Closing my eyes, I focused my energy at my core and again found the cord that was my lightning. I extended it through my palm, then stopped and thought. I remembered the night I fought the Hollow and how I had thrown disks of lightning at the monster. Perhaps I could recreate those now? Holding the image in my mind, I focused my will on creating disks.

The energy began to flow along the cord towards my palm, but yet again, once it reached that point it shot off in another direction not as a disk, but just a blast of lightning. It knocked me off balance a bit and Urahara had had to duck so as to not get hit.

"Sorry!" I shouted, panic rising inside me. It had happened again. That same disconnect I had felt the night before. It was like something had interrupted my focus at the last second before I released the lightning, blocking it from my control. Righting myself on the rock, I started to try again.

"Watch it, Stripes!" I heard Jinta shout. I focused my energy and let it flow through my body and towards my palm, but at the last moment I felt my concentration fumble again and the lightning went awry.

"Woah!" This time Jinta and Ururu had to dive out of the way. Closing my eyes tightly and breathing hard I summoned all my energy.

"Hang on, Sayuri!" Urahara was calling, "Something feels wrong! Don't-"

But I didn't hear him. The next moment, Katsu's eyes exploded into my vision and I balked, stumbling backwards. They were so intense and were glowing so brightly I felt as if they were truly made of fire. It was like no matter where I went their gaze always followed me.

"My blood!" His voice echoed through my mind so loudly it felt like he was standing right beside me. I looked down and suddenly saw the blood all over my hands again and felt an ice cold chill run down my spine. The others were calling to me but I was trapped in my own mind, in my own nightmare.

I began to shake my arms, flinging them wildly about and trying to get rid of the blood. I tried to tell myself it wasn't real, it was just a trick, but then my father's voice spoke other words to me that had not been in my dream.

"It's not a trick, my daughter. It's the truth. We share the same makeup, the same desires and feelings." Suddenly he was standing before me, grinning as he had a few nights ago. He held out his hand to me.

"No!" I shouted, feeling myself surge with energy. My palms suddenly erupted, the lightning shooting from them with such force I fell backwards. But there was something new there as well. A feeling I had not felt before when using my lightning. There was a pleasure there that was tinted with a darkness I had not felt before. My power surged and grew to an intensity I had not yet reached. For the moment I felt in control; I felt wonderful. I was the most powerful person in the room. I could do whatever I pleased with just a twitch of my fingers. As I thought this, I felt them wiggle a bit.

There was a sharp scream from somewhere to my right as I hit my head against the ground and snapped back to reality.

Stars were clouding my vision, but once I sat up they started to disappear. Looking around I saw Katsu had vanished. He hadn't really been there. Jinta and Urahara were kneeling on the ground to my right. Ururu sat between them clutching her arm. There was a large stain on her shirt, and as I looked closer I realized it was deep red.

I felt ice cold. My stomach dropped and my eyes grew so wide they started to hurt, but I didn't care. Urahara picked the girl up and in his arms she suddenly looked very small and fragile. He started to walk quickly away towards the ladder.

"Ururu," I felt my voice catch in my throat. Fear was surrounding me, entwining with a sickening guilt that wrapped itself around my heart. I scrambled forward towards them. "No, no! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean…I don't know what happened! I just couldn't stop it or see or-"

Jinta, who was following Urahara closely, suddenly reeled around towards me, a look of pure fury on his face.

"Don't you come near her!" he shouted at me. I froze where I was, stunned at the hatred on his face. "Don't you even think about it!" His shoulders were heaving up and down as he breathed as hard as a charging bull. All I could do was stare at him. "You were messed up before, but now you're just crazy!"

"Jinta," Urahara called back to him, warning him to be quiet. But the boy wasn't finished.

"No! She's crazy!" he shouted. Turning back to me he continued, "You can't even be normal for two seconds and learn how to use your stupid 'shadowy' demon powers so you don't kill us all! You're dad was right! You are a monster just like he is! Just…go away!" There were tears in his eyes as he turned and ran after Urahara.

"No," I whispered shaking my head slowly and then much more vigorously, trying to shake off his accusations. "No I'm not. I'm not a monster." I wanted to shout that to them, but my voice suddenly failed me. I didn't know what to do. I just sat there on the ground and watched them all get farther away, three small figures suddenly rocketing towards the ceiling and the trapdoor. As quiet fell upon the training yard, I could hear how ragged my breathing had gotten, as if my body wanted to cry but the sobs and tears wouldn't come. I was too stunned to cry.

What had I done? I sank to my knees and covered my face with my hands, picturing Ururu pale and bloody, injured badly by my out of control lightning. I knew Jinta was right. I couldn't put aside my worries about my father and my dream for a little while so I could focus. I should have told Urahara about the problems I had had with the lightning the night before. I shouldn't have used it around the kids with it being so tricky.

"So stupid!" I shouted pounding my fists against the ground. I had let my fear and confusion get the best of me, and in turn had injured someone I cared very much about. I wasn't strong enough to control even myself anymore. I had become lost in the very sensations Katsu had tempted me with earlier. Why hadn't I realized that? I had embraced that power, that intensity that brought about only destruction in its enormity.

I let my head fall forward until it touched the ground and I laid there, curled up, for what seemed like a very long time. I tried not to admit it to myself. Tried to find some excuse for why it wasn't true, but I just couldn't escape the reality. What if my father was right? What if I was turning into nothing but a destructive, dark being of the Shadows?

"You may be his daughter, but you're not him," Renji had told me. But at that moment, what evidence was there that I was any better?