Flowers also burn.

Holows occurrences last year had risen an average of 243% in the area around Karakura, according to information provided by the research team. Due to the special characteristics of the area and its wide variety of humans with striking reiatsu, it was natural that these creatures would have a predilection for the place, however, the maximization of these raids was not natural at all.

If there was something that the group of researchers was clear about, it was that the parameters were adjusted from time to time, and everything depended on the quality of the spiritual power of the humans. In short, the greater the spiritual potential in the population, the greater the number of appearances of hollows. In the same way, the strength of these apparitions varied according to that potential. Strong humans meant more hollows and more power.

Therefore: Karakura was one of the areas with the highest demand for strong shinigami. The city had three to eight hollow apparitions daily before Ichigo Kurosaki's spiritual awakening. Now, up to twenty apparitions were seen daily. The complaints of the assigned shinigami were immediate.

When the data thrown by the system reached Rin, she decided to review it over and over again, always arriving at the same results. She moaned, knowing that she should call Akon. The winter war was approaching and with it the activity of the hollows became more and more dizzying

The mission of sending a captain and two lieutenants, plus two ranking officers to the city was a relief at first, but the Arrancars did not relent in their attack. They didn't know that a second spiritual awakening was threatening to break out.

For a captain of the Gotei 13 to desert to the human world and reproduce with a human with spiritual potential was clearly an unprecedented and unique situation. Of their progeny two members showed amazing spiritual potential: Ichigo and Karin. Isshin did not know what the long-term repercussions of his decision would be, and in turn, he could not have anticipated the danger that his own power would pose to his children.

Where Ichigo had taken on the burden of being a substitute shinigami and defending her family Karin had been relegated to being protected. Denying her powers had been her daily life until she felt compelled to fight in her own way the hollow specimens that harassed her; without knowing that they were mere hollows of little importance.

The discovery of Toushirou Hitsugaya as a shinigami had not only meant for her an alert about the danger that would soon come, but also the knowledge of the precariousness of her defense capacity and the true power of those creatures. To say that she was worried about her brother and her sister was an understatement, but she was once again protected by those who were stronger without being able to do anything for herself or others.

Rediscovering herself as weak when she had always tried to fend for herself was a blow to her ego, and left her with uncertainty. On that occasion she didn't get answers and with Ichigo gone, her sister crying in the corners wrapped in an air of misery and her father avoiding the conversation, she couldn't help but be filled with a loneliness that she didn't know how to deal with.

She could feel the apparitions of those creatures, and it dismayed her wherever she was. She now cared not only for her brother, but also for those shinigami who had run to defend them.

They were strong, she told herself, they would be fine, right?

Helping Yuzu with some simple tasks had always been her responsibility, but now she was desperate trying to keep her inside her home. She was completely unprotected without any sense of spiritual power, without being able to see danger and act accordingly. So she tried to do everything for her when their father wasn't there.

She could feel the power of her father almost scratching under his skin, though he refused to say a word about it.

Did no one want to talk about what was going on? Why did they keep her aside, without offering her a bit of information?

Karin took the ecological bags that her sister offered her and went to a nearby supermarket in search of the items on the shopping list that her twin had given her. Normally Yuzu was in charge of supplying them, but with the incredible number of gaps around the city Karin didn't take "no" for an answer as she determined that it would be her and not Yuzu who would do the shopping.

She was finishing arranging the food in the cloth bag when she felt a hollow appear near where she was. It was small, she guessed, the kind she could deal with if she got too close. Releasing the tension that she didn't know she had on her, she left the place with all the intention of leaving that being to whomever she was in charge of them, with the frustration that it meant.

Until he got dangerously close to her location. Her heart pounded. Was he coming for her?

No, she noticed. The spirit of a little girl, around four years old, ran ahead of her. Karin clutched the cloth bag and turned to the shop assistant.

"I'll leave this here. I'll be back in a minute!" She reported, dropping the groceries on the floor in a mess.

She ran after the spirit of the infant and told her to run to a nearby park. Karin borrowed a ball from some children who were playing, ordering them to go home. The place was packed with people, so she ran to the abandoned park where she had signaled the girl to go, hoping to minimize the crowd. She felt the hollow before she saw it, it was a hideous thing with crooked teeth.

The girl behind her screamed, the hollow of her emitted a noise that pierced her ears until she blacked out her vision. She came to her senses quickly, took the ball and threw it at the center of the white mask invested with her power. The hollow shrieked again and dissolved into thin air.

"Are you okay?" She asked the ghostly infant as he approached her. "It's already vanished, calm down."

"I was very scared!"

"I know, I know. Listen, you need to be careful. There are a lot of those things going around." She advised, crouching down next to her.

The infant turned her huge brown eyes on her and nodded, Karin exhaled and straightened up with her back to go back for her purchases. She had barely gotten a few feet away when she felt it: another pop from a hollow. This was huge.

Then another, and another. They multiplied rapidly, and honestly, she panicked.

"Girl, run away. Now." She ordered from a distance.

What was she doing? She couldn't know if there were any shinigami nearby or if they would be able to fight all those monsters. Karin was left breathless, unable to move and terrified when one of those things materialized behind her.

Her eyes filled with tears and her teeth clenched as she heard the sound of sucking and delighting the monster.

What in the world to do? Run, fuck, run!

And, dammit, she did.

The hollow licked its lips, then fixed its eyes on a new prey: her. Karin skidded through the park, running with all the speed she possessed and making dizzy jumps. She didn't think of anything else but to get that being of nightmares away from her house, running in the opposite direction. The hollow laughed at her loudly and grimly.

"Run, pretty one, run! I like souls consumed by fear!" it resounded.

She dodged two attacks before losing her balance and rolling uncontrollably on the ground. It positioned itself on top of her. Karin never thought that the hollows, as spiritual beings after all, had such a fetid smell as the one it gave off. Under her claws, her heart pounding and her lungs burning, she managed to get under it to flee.

It didn't help much.

The long-bodied monster like a snake, with six thick, stringy limbs, twisted to strike her with its tail before she could get to her feet. The hit sent her against a concrete wall. If the pain wasn't an infallible indicator of the severity of her injuries, the thud of the impact was.

The hollow of her laughed at her again, gloating at her pain.

I can't die like this... Ichigo!, she thought, but her voice wouldn't come out. The pain in her chest prevented her from speaking, but she still crawled across the floor with all determination. The only thing she could do before she lost consciousness was to turn around enough to be on her back and watch again the hollow laugh at her as he towered over her with her jaws open.

Ah, that was where the smell of it came from.

The next thing she could see was the figure of the busty shinigami standing up. She looked disheveled, exhausted, and had a worried countenance. Karin stood up, and after that the shock of her action hit her. Her body should be sore at best, shattered at worst. She looked at her hands and the chain across her chest. She gasped as Matsumoto's eyes returned to her and then he stepped to the side of her.

Her lifeless body was waiting for her on the sidewalk, next to the concrete wall where she had impacted. No trace of the rotten hollow. If Matsumoto had intended to say something, she didn't. She crossed the short distance between them and tenderly took Karin's soul into her arms and with an almost motherly gentleness of hers and pressed her against her chest. The words whispered soothingly in Karin's ear embedded themselves in her memory: This is not your fault. And then the tears she had held back that day fell in a salty trail down her cheeks, dampening her uniform.

Time slowed down, her ears closed and she felt as if she was dissociated from herself. Was there any stranger experience than looking at your own corpse? She found herself embracing this woman and she sank into her warmly for an instant.

Matsumoto gently parted and tucked her hair behind her ear.

"Karin, do you understand…?

" I'm dead." Her voice sounded strange. "Very, very dead."

She moved away from the shinigami and leaned over her body. She was bent at an odd angle, her legs broken in an unnatural, lax way. For an instant it seemed like a cloudy dream, a delirium caused by a high fever from some seasonal flu. Standing next to what was her body, looking at it bloodied and cold, the bubble she was in broke and she came back to reality with a bang.

Oh yes, she was very very dead.

" I don't want my body to be found in this state." She finally spoke. "Matsumoto, right? Please don't let them find me like this… Yuzu, no, my dad…"

Her words tangled in her mouth, and she struggled to be coherent. Two more shinigami appeared next to the woman; they were Renji and Toushiro. The surprise on her face was visible for an instant and was soon covered by a stoic expression. Renji ruffled his hair with his hands, then crouched on the ground sighing in frustration.

"Ichigo is going to kill us."

"No," Karin corrected. "He's going to blame himself for this."

"Damn." The redhead mumbled.

Toushiro moved closer to her and Karin fought her instinct to back away. He seemed to notice it, so he stopped short of reaching her.

"Your chain is broken; there is no way to join you to your earthly body again," he explained. "healing your body could give them trouble with your police security."

"It doesn't matter, if it's healthy and whole when the police arrive they'll probably say it was "sudden death" or something like that." She argued. "Damn, you owe me!"

The power of his demand was overwhelming. The shinigami looked at each other for a moment before Toushiro nodded in understanding.

— Call Orihime.

Matsumoto's embrace had managed to bring some peace and stability to Karin's jumbled mind. Two other shinigami soon arrived, she didn't know them and they didn't approach her either. The young woman cherished that moment of intimacy, kneeling beside her bruised body. Although her initial shock had worn off, there was still that feeling of unreality.

Orihime arrived much sooner than she imagined and the first thing she did was kneel beside her. She raised her hands in front of the body and soon an orange energy capsule flashed over it. Inoue cried nonstop the entire time it took to restore her body.

"Karin, I'm so sorry! So much, so much, so much!" she cried. "I can't… no, I can't…!"

"It's not your fault Orihime." She said, raising her palms in surrender. "Please don't cry, Ichigo will need your support."

"I will do my best." She moaned, wiping her face on the sleeves of her blouse. "I'll take care of Ichigo."

"Please, Orihime... Could you take a look at Yuzu for me?" she asked. "She can't see spirits and I won't be able to say goodbye to her."

Her voice broke. Torn between the sobs she refused to give, she forced herself to pull herself together. Yuzu, her beloved Yuzu. Fuck.

"Ichigo is missing and…"

"I will go for him. Orihime stated."

The rest of the shinigami looked up, slightly surprised that the girl knew Kurosaki's location when he hadn't bothered to contact any of them. Renji moved forward as he watched a group of teenagers approach.

"Go, Orihime. We'll take Karin to Urahara. I think it's best to let a human report the body."

"If we take it with us then it will be difficult to explain, especially with the body in good condition." Toushiro agreed. "Find her there."

The shinigami who introduced himself as Yumichika offered to watch the body while the rest of them returned to Urahara's shop. Captain Hitsugaya stood back for a moment and called softly to Matsumoto while Renji tried to convince Karin to climb on his back to quickly reach the store. They had failed Ichigo in the worst possible way.

Karin refused to climb onto the lieutenant's back and Matsumoto intervened.

"I want to walk." She ordered.

"Okay, I'll go with her. You go ahead." Rangiku agreed.

The rest of them nodded and an instant later, it was just the two of them walking through the city. They had gotten far away for Karin's peace of mind. At least she had achieved her goal of driving the hollow away from her home, and therefore from her sister.

" What will happen from now on?" The preteen asked.

"Well, you should go to Soul Society like any other soul." She replied.

"I do not mean that."

Rangiku looked at her carefully. Although she was no more than a twelve or thirteen years old girl, the seriousness in her eyes was not to match it. Matsumoto could see the concern on her boyish face and the battle-hardened step of a protector. She couldn't help but feel sorry for Karin in the bottom of her heart.

"We will protect your family, Karin." She promised she.

"In the same way you protect me? " She mocked.

Karin pressed her lips together, regretting her sarcasm as soon as it left her lips.

" I'm sorry, I did not mean that."

"But you're right: we failed in our duty to protect you." She recognized to her. "I can't promise that we will protect everyone but I can promise that I will take care of your sister."

"My dad changed, I don't know how to say it… uh, like when Ichigo changed. It's like he vibrates, if I listen carefully."

Matsumoto raised her eyebrow. Vibrate?

They walked at a slow pace for the rest of the trip to the store, Karin keeping quiet most of the way but not Matsumoto. She tried to fill the void by talking about Soul Society. She animatedly explained to her about the districts of the Rukongai, the divisions of the Seireitei and why her squad was the best of all in her opinion and it was clearly because it had her. Karin admitted that Rangiku made her laugh once or twice.

She was admirable for her ability to take a bad situation and turn it into a pleasant conversation.

When they arrived from what seemed like their funeral procession, locals were waiting in line outside the store. Urahara was unusually serious, rare in the face of his usual carefree and relaxed demeanor. Kisuke opened his mouth to greet her as Ichigo burst into the store with Orihime following behind as best she could.

"Hello, Ichigo." She greeted.

Her brother stared at her as if he couldn't believe it for what seemed like the longest seconds of their life, and then there was a burst of fury on him. Matsumoto positioned herself in front of Karin and Orihime tried to reason with her brother. But Ichigo was beyond reason and soon the situation escalated to a level of violence that Karin couldn't believe.

Yoruichi's intervention was necessary to disarm Ichigo, and Renji had to grab his arms and subdue him; a fight that lasted for several minutes as the substitute shinigami writhed and screamed.

"You're making this more traumatic for her, Ichigo!" Reprimanded the brunette.

When he stopped fighting and squirming, Renji released him. Ichigo fell to his knees on the ground and with a deep cry of pain that ripped through Karin, he covered his eyes and cried. Karin stepped out from behind Matsumoto and walked over.

"Ichi," she whispered, trying to bring him some of the calm that she didn't have herself. "This is no one's fault, much less yours."

Her brother looked up and she could see the pain and anger in his face. She felt that way herself. She wanted to scream at him, to claim his absence and his failures in refusing to tell her the truth. But she didn't, she pursed her lips and called on herself to act mature.

Yelling at him would have served as an emotional release, but she didn't want to keep saying things that hurt others. How would it help her? She couldn't return to her body or turn back time. Matsumoto had given her on that walk time to process her own death and also the clarity that a war was coming. Ichigo didn't need this. She didn't either, though her frustration was eating at her.

"I should have been there to protect you, damn it." He mumbled. "Sorry, Karin. Please forgive me."

"Promise me you'll take care of the old man and Yuzu, Ichi." She asked him. "And that you will take care of yourself too."

Ichigo hugged her, so tight that she thought she would hurt. He didn't want to let her go. Karin's spirit, her little and sarcastic sister. He cried again. Guilt had germinated in his heart, and it was up to him to turn it into an impulse to keep fighting.

"I'll be safe where I'm going, so focus on making yourself stronger." She consoled.

That made Ichigo reconsider.

"They won't be thinking of doing a konso to you just like that, right?" he asked, his voice dropping two octaves.

Karin blinked, confused. A konso, had he said?

Ah, the ritual that Matsumoto had explained.

"Isn't that normal? " She asked.

"Well" The shopkeeper interrupted. "Why don't we go inside and talk this calmly with a nice bit of tea?"

All of Ichigo's body language said that he was ready to retrieve his sword and fight another battle against whoever came his way so she took his hand and pulled him into the store. Ichigo followed her and Karin soon understood that she would be the one to appease his warlike mood. But honestly, she thought it would be easier.

For the next two hours, there was a lot of discussion about what to do with her. The worst thing about the whole situation was that she didn't understand a shit what they were talking about. All she knew was that her brother was demanding something about an alternate route that he himself had used to get to Soul Society ("What did you do what?" she had asked) and not use konso.

The discussion had escalated several times and finally, after many questions from her to them interrupting the chain of conversation, she came to understand why her brother was so adamant about not performing traditional konso.

She would lose her memories, would end up in some random place in the Rukongai and would have no awareness of her life on earth.

"Damn no! " She screamed out "I don't want to forget who I am."

"All souls come to soul society…" Toushiro tried to explain, but she interrupted him:

"I'm not just any soul, if my brother saved your ass as you say."

" Exactly." Ichigo nodded.

And that was how they got two sitting and stubborn Kurosaki. Basically, everyone agreed with them, but the rules of the Seireitei did not contemplate the alternative path that they demanded. The illegal alternative Kisuke had offered would put all of them in a bad situation, and Karin in one they couldn't predict. It had never been done.

"We cannot guarantee that in this way she will preserve her memories: she is a soul born on earth." Yoruichi stated calmly from her place at the table.

"That is a risk that Karin will have to decide if she is going to take or not."

They all turned to the voice that had commented this last, discovering Isshin Kurosaki opening the sliding door that led to the small room where they had been arguing for hours. The initial impact faded after a few seconds when both brothers shouted in unison "Dad?!" while the two members of the tenth squad mumbled a "Captain?!".

Isshin looked at her little daughter and placed his hand on her head, tousling her hair. Karin reacted by moving away from him in one fluid motion.

"What… and that uniform?"

"Did they call him "captain"?" Orihime consulted.

" Too much to explain." Isshin's mouth twisted

"Of course that's a lot to explain!" Matsumoto Rangiku exclaimed, suddenly furious. "You left us with all that paperwork behind!"

Toushiro rolled his eyes.

"Is that really the first thing you thought of?" He inquired.

"Ah, my third officer… or should I say captain." He corrected hisself, noticing the haori. "I'm glad to see you."

Karin watched the pandemonium build up again, flopping against the wall she looked up at the ceiling: it was going to be a long afternoon.

:-:

Hi everybody how are you? I'm translating a fic of mine into English to practice the language. So if you find any errors feel free to tell me. I hope you like it, in its Spanish version I have already uploaded four chapters.
I send you kisses, thanks for reading. I wait for you in the reviews, tell me what you think!