Bleach and all of the things it incorporates are not mine. THEY ARE NOT MINE! So, nobody sue me.

Fear is a great motivator. – John Treacy, 1984 Olympic silver medalist.

Urahara Kisuke is fucking daffy.

My reason for saying this?

That cockbite trashed my room!

I’m serious! I opened my window at 1:00 a.m. just like he told me to and a big balloon filled with red paint came flying into my room and splattered all over my wall. It got everywhere and then it started spelling out a message for me. I spent ten minutes frantically trying to scrub it off with soap and a washcloth before giving up and changing out of my pajamas. God, I hoped this was one of those things ordinary people couldn’t see or my mother was going to have a hernia.

I scribbled a note saying that I had left to catch the bus with Orihime. When morning came (if luck was with me) they wouldn’t get suspicious and try to track down Orihime’s grandmother. If they did, I was very much screwed, because she wouldn’t have any idea of where Orihime or I had gone. When I started running out towards Urahara’s shop, I felt… something. A small ticking in my chest that wouldn’t go away and jumped when I turned around to look back at my house, where my parents were asleep. It felt like someone was pinching my heart.

‘Cholesterol? Oh well, I’ll cut back on the fast food when I get back.’

I could feel my friends starting to converge. Ichigo, blazing away like a miniature sun. Orihime, a gentle presence like a fresh breeze. Yasutora, strong and steady. Mizuiro, so tightly focused that I almost missed him, just letting the barest fraction of his power out.

I could feel them gathering together and stopping before I arrived (god damn Urahara and his twisted mind). Hell, even Uryuu was there! His aura flared up not long after Ichigo and Orihime arrived to join with Yasutora and Mizuiro. The jerk had been hiding to surprise us. At least, that’s what I thought. Maybe he had just made a habit out of keeping himself out of sight? That was actually a pretty good idea….

‘He said he wanted to get back at the Shinigami for something they did to him. He might be going with us, but is he going to help us with our fight?’

Any help was help, I figured. It would also be nice to have another person with experience in the weird along for the ride. I still didn’t understand even half the stuff Yoruichi-sensei lectured me on.

I skidded to halt in front of the shop just as Urahara stepped out of its doors.

“You aren’t leaving without me!” I yelled.

“Arisawa-san, we wouldn’t dream of it!” Urahara said happily. Like he hadn’t just splattered paint all over my room. Or maybe he was smiling because he had, the crazy old fruitcake.

“Well, the gang’s all here,” Urahara said happily. “Won’t you please come inside? I’ll begin telling you all how I’m going to get you into the Soul Society. Oh, and please, pay attention. Otherwise….”

Urahara had been moving back into the shop, but when he said those words he stopped. He turned his stubbled face back to us from within the shop doorway and he smiled.

“… you won’t get there alive.”

The man would have made a killing as a motivational speaker.

After that rousing speech, we were all on pins and needles as he led us into his store. There’s nothing quite like the threat of imminent death to make you pay attention.

I didn’t see Tessai or the kids anywhere. Yoruichi-sensei wasn’t around either. He’d said he was coming with us, hadn’t he? There was suddenly a cold feeling in my stomach. Not fear, just… unease. Knowing he had been coming with us had given me a lot of confidence, but if he wasn’t….

…Well….

…Well, whatever. Rukia still needed saving and Ichigo wasn’t going to do it himself. Whatever happened, happened.

‘But he’s coming, right?’

I hadn’t really thought about how we were going to leave this world. I figured maybe Urahara had a gateway or something like that hidden in one of his closets (it wouldn’t have surprised me). Instead, he took us down beneath his shop and into something that could have been bigger than a baseball stadium.

Alongside the big question of ‘HOW?!’ was the idle wonder of how he was paying for all the electricity needed to light it up.

Note to self: it pays to be a mysterious psychotic.

I did wonder why he didn’t install an elevator. That ladder was… unpleasant, even if I would probably have survived the fall at that point. As it was, I nearly did fall when Mizuiro froze up beneath me for a few seconds. I almost stepped on his hands, scrambled around trying to find a place where he wasn’t, had Ichigo step on my hands, saw Orihime nearly kicked Ichigo’s head in and there was a moment when we were all ready to topple to the ground.

“Why’d you stop?!” Ichigo hollered down. Orihime’s shoe print was tattooed on his forehead, so I couldn’t blame him for being annoyed.

One rung below me, Mizuiro looked as confused as I’d ever seen him.

“I thought I… I mean, I felt a…. Uh, you know what? Never mind.”

There weren’t any more incidents after that. We all got off the ladder safely and I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with what I saw. I could have spent days exploring that place. I think Orihime was too, because she started gushing over it and nearly moved Tessai to tears. He and the kids had been down there waiting for us. Once Orihime said that she thought the place was amazing, Tessai was deeply touched, so I’m thinking he had a hand in building it. Then again, he works for Urahara, so maybe he’s just weird like his boss. I’m not discounting this possibility.

“Attention! Attention kiddies!”

What is this, day care?

Urahara was standing a few dozen feet away from us and waving to get our attention. He was smiling and I knew something strange was going to happen.

I was proven right when he chirped a jolly “And away we go!” right as he snapped his fingers. I felt a small surge of power flare –

- and then the ground shook slightly as four clouds of dust exploded in the distance –

- and four objects, moving so fast that my unarmored eyes only saw blurs, came together behind Urahara hard and fast enough to crash together and make my ears smart. The collision made me flinch and when I could look again I saw something that had not been there before.

It was a flat, hollow square. I could see thin lines near each corner and I realized that the things I had seen were the four separate sides of the thing. They had joined together only just then to form the square. It was huge, easily three times as tall as Urahara and just as wide. From the sound and strength that the crash had possessed, I would have thought it was made of rock, but the only thing I could see was countless sheets of paper. Maybe they were covering the rock or metal beneath them? Or maybe not. Maybe Urahara had done something to make the sheets of paper more than what the earth could give.

“All right,” Urahara said cheerfully. He may as well have been at a carnival with some cotton candy and not ten feet away from a massive structure that could topple over and crush him.

“This is what is going to take you all to the Soul Society. It’s called the senkeimon, or the tunnel world gate. Now, please listen carefully because I’m going to tell you how to pass through this gate without dying.”

I was starting to think that he liked scaring us.

“This gate,” he pointed at the square shaped thing behind him, “has a reishi henkan-ki – a spirit particle conversion machine – on the top of it. The two are attached by covering the gate with ketsugo-fu, or union tags.”

It was a measure of how weird my summer had become that I actually understood a bit of that. The square was a gate that had a spirit converter on top of it and it would convert us (our spirits?) into something else. At least, that’s what I thought he meant….

I was staring at the gate while I thought this and so missed what Mizuiro later described as ‘the funniest moment of the whole hour’ when Urahara punted Ichigo out of his own body. He’d just taken that pimp cane of his and knocked Ichigo flying, with his spirit going one way and his physical body hitting the ground.

There was some slight method to this madness. Ichigo was now one of Urahara’s demonstration props.

Ignoring the carrot-top’s angry shouting, Urahara happily pointed at my oldest friend as an example.

“The Soul Society is a world of spirits. Therefore, you cannot enter it without being spirits yourselves. However, Kurosaki-kun here is the only able to leave his body and become a Soul Reaper. The rest of you still retain your physical forms when you draw out your powers.”

Yeah, and what was up with that? Uryuu was a Quincy, so apparently that was normal for him, but none of the rest of us had any weird family history worth mentioning. Yoruichi-sensei had never mentioned anything like what had happened to us happening before and I’m pretty sure he would have if he’d heard of it. So, unless he was wrong and there was a precedent, we were a huge, glaring statistical anomaly: living humans with Shinigami-level spiritual abilities that had manifested in spite of our physical bodies. The norm was supposed to just be low-level awareness, like seeing spirits and getting vibes from objects. You weren’t supposed to be able to draw that power out into an external form before you were dead and you definitely weren’t supposed to be able to do it to the point where it was strong enough to bash and smash a Hollow. Was all of it really Ichigo and Rukia’s doing? I hadn’t heard of his father or sisters getting any weird powers, so what if it was something else?

And Urahara was still talking. Get back on track here, Tatsuki.

“…comes in! It converts the physical matter of this world – the kishi – into the spiritual matter of the next world – the reishi, which is what your spirits are built out of.”

“So, you’re saying that if we simply walk through this gate…” Uryuu asked his half-question, but it didn’t really sound like a question. He knew more of what Urahara was saying then I did, it seemed.

“Exactly! You can enter the Soul Society looking just as you do now!”

Ichigo, in his Shinigami finest, was striding toward the gate. “Okay, I got it. Let’s go - augh!”

In a surprising show of dexterity, Urahara’s cane slammed into Ichigo’s side and knocked him away.

“There’s just one problem worth mentioning,” Urahara said cheerfully, paying no mind to Ichigo’s low moans and curses. I didn’t blame him for the moans, either; I’d heard something go snap.

…Wait.

Why was Yasutora holding a stuffed toy?

…Why was the stuffed toy moving?!

Three quick strides got me over to Yasutora, while one ear stayed tuned in to Urahara’s warnings (when that creep says beware, you listen).

“What is that?!” I exclaimed.

“Cute,” Yasutora mumbled.

“His name is Kon,” Mizuiro said cheerfully. “It’s short for kaizo konpaku, or mod soul! He’s been running around in Ichigo’s body for a while now whenever Ichigo needed to go out and do his Soul Reaper duties.”

And the toy talked back to him.

The. Toy. Talked.

“H-How do you know that?”

Mizuiro smiled.

“Kon-san, I-know-everything.”

For maximum creepiness, this should be said a sing-song, happy voice with an empty, sociopathic gleam in one’s eyes.

The toy – Kon – didn’t shut up, so much as he, it, whatever, withdrew into his stuffing like a turtle into its shell.

Mizuiro hummed in creepy-teen approval and stepped away to walk towards the gate.

Yeah, that telepathy thing of his? It hasn’t gotten any less weird.

Then I felt a subtle, controlled presence right next to me and that twisting feeling in my stomach that had started when I entered the shop vanished just like that.

“Go forward.”

It was amazing, seriously, just how much more confident I felt when I heard his voice. Orihime apparently agreed.

“Yoruichi-san!”

The black cat that had systematically beaten weakness out of me for the past few days was quietly padding towards Urahara. It was strange how hard it was for me to sense his presence, even then. He had so much power within him that he made me look like a weakling by comparison, but he had such incredible, effortless control over how much he let out of him that I never knew he was around until he wanted me to know.

“Didn’t I tell you? The heart and soul are connected. The state of the heart is crucial. It is the will to go forward that will be your guide.”

‘Go forward and don’t give up, huh?’

“Have no doubt. Have no fear.”

‘Doubt is for when you’ve already lost and fear never stopped me before.’

“Do not stop. Do not look back. Do not think of those who you are leaving behind,” Yoruichi-sensei said.

“Just go forward.”

Even while I’d been poking at Kon (figuratively, of course) I had heard every word Urahara had said. Four minutes to get through the tunnel or we’d be trapped forever. Four minutes from start to finish, and even that wasn’t a guarantee. He had said four minutes – at most.

“Those who can do that will follow me,” Yoruichi-sensei said. What I heard behind those words – what everyone heard – was, and only those who can do that.

Could I really do it?

Could I trust my life to random chance and Urahara’s skill with otherworldly technology? Could I risk never growing older, never seeing my parents again? Could I step through that gate with the understanding that it might be the last thing I ever saw on this Earth?

Sure, if I had a good reason to.

Could I do it to save Rukia, who I had never really known?

Probably not.

Could I do it to pay back Orihime’s life, Ichigo’s life, my life, the gift of powers that I had come to love over only a few days, the knowledge of a whole other world out there, a greater purpose to my fighting, an understanding of why Ichigo had been pulling away from me and the others, and a future that suddenly seemed so wondrously blank?

Without a doubt.

Intentionally or not, she had helped me. She had helped me, helped my friends, helped my whole town, and now her people wanted to execute her for it. I didn’t know their laws and I wouldn’t have cared if I had. I punished people if I thought they deserved it, but every voice of fairness and justice that I had tried to build up over the years were all screaming in unison that what Rukia was getting was not fair.

Her life for ours?

It wasn’t fucking fair!

I could feel my jaw clenching, I could feel that bubbling heat in my stomach that only came with anger. It wasn’t right, none of it.

I was going to get her out of that.

“You are preaching to the choir, you know that?”

Ichigo. He looked like I felt.

And the others….

Yasutora had never seemed so imposing before. He’s so quiet, so still, that sometimes you just forget he’s there. Now, I could see every one of his muscles, could practically feel the weight of him bearing down on me.

Uryuu’s eyes were focused, almost painful so. If I tossed a rock through his line of vision, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it explode. He’d been using a bow when I’d last seen him, right? Well, now he looked like he was lining up a killing shot.

Mizuiro was as calm as ever, but there was a frightening intensity in his face now. It was like he was a completely different person. He’d always been a laid back and cheerful guy, if slightly distant. Now there was a fire in his eyes like I’d never seen before, and if he didn’t know what he could do with it, he looked like he was willing to face anything to find out.

Orihime, who I had once seen moan over someone’s discarded candy wrapper (“It was so cheerful and they just threw it on the ground!”), was staring at the gate with steely determination on her face. Whether she was going more for Ichigo or Rukia, I couldn’t say, but I knew her well enough to know that she’d never back down while either one needed her.

Were those the faces of people who were not sure?

‘Bring it on. We’ll take whatever comes and give it back twice over.’

“The moment we came here all of our minds were made up!” Ichigo declared.

He was right. It was finally settling in on me just what we about to do, but I wasn’t going anywhere except through that gate.

Who wants to live forever, anyway?

Yoruichi-sensei had stopped in front of the senkeimon and turned to Ichigo with one of those lidded looks that I had gotten so often. There were multiple meanings behind them, but I was pretty sure that one meant ‘hang on to your optimism.’

“Just so you understand, boy…. If you lose, you will never return to this world,” Yoruichi-sensei said.

“Then I’ll have to win,” Ichigo said.

“We will win,” I hissed. Failure? Never!

“Exactly,” Yoruichi-sensei said.

That was that. We were going. Urahara and Tessai took up positions on either side of the gate and knelt down. I could see small, round, shiny patches where they set their hands. They were sections of the gate that had no union tags on them. Why?

We lined up in front of the gate. Orihime and Yasutora were on either side of me, Uryuu and Mizuiro behind us, Yoruichi-sensei and Ichigo in the front. Ichigo looked like he was ready to plow through anything if meant reaching the other side. Their forms, their presence, steadied me and gave a bit more order to my racing mind.

We were really doing it.

We were going to the land of the dead.

There was a twin surge of power coming from Urahara and Tessai, each at the exact same moment. It started small and then grew. A light formed in the center of the square gate. It was just a spark at first, but as the flow of energy increased, so did it.

Then, for some reason I couldn’t see, Urahara and Tessai stopped holding back.

The light exploded like the fireworks of the festival and it gave a loud blast of noise that was just as violent. I cried out and threw up a hand to shield my eyes, but I wasn’t the only one.

“Everybody ready?” Urahara yelled. He had to yell for his voice to reach us. There was a great deal of noise coming from the gate and it was only getting louder. It was like standing in the subway tunnel with a train on the way.

“As soon as the senkeimon opens, run straight through! Don’t stop for anything!”

I knew that, we all knew that already, but the flicker of annoyance that danced up was squashed when I got a quick look at Urahara’s face beyond the searing light and the reason why he was repeating himself became clear. He was scared as well.

“Got it,” I head heard Ichigo say, or thought I did.

There was a horrible moment of doubt. Urahara, the guy who had built what was going to transport us, wasn’t sure of what we were doing. If he wasn’t sure, then –

“Good luck,” Urahara yelled, and then the power coming from he and Tessa soared!

It was as though lightning had struck through the shop to reach us. Blinding light that I couldn’t bear, noise that was enough to make my ears bleed, stale wind rushing at me from the opening that had appeared and a terrible, flat sort of heat that rode along with it. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. There was a great pressure all around me and it squeezed like a vise.

‘God what is this what is it?’

Then we were running, all of us.

Four minutes and counting.

Unsurprisingly, Ichigo and Yoruichi were first through the gate. I didn’t actually see them go through, but they were ahead of me when I jumped over the threshold and my eyes finally got adjusted to the point where I could see again. I didn’t like what I saw.

The tunnel was hell, pure and simple. It was muggy and hot like a summer day in a swamp, but there was a staleness to it. As hot as the air was, it tasted flat. There was wind, but I didn’t see how there could be. It was just there, tugging at my hair and clothes. The ground was soft and sucked at my shoes, but each step had things like dry twigs cracking under my feet. I couldn’t see very well in the gloom that came after the light show departed, but I don’t think I would have liked to even if I could have. Much later, when we out of the tunnel, it occurred to me that those dry, snapping things could have been bones. Tall walls that looked wet and organic oozed a black mist that poured down like water. It stopped before it reached us like it was hitting a barrier of some kind, maybe formed by the senkeimon behind us. The part that stayed fog free was slightly brighter and shot straight of ahead of us. At the end of the path, so very far away, was a bright point of light.

That was our way out.

I crashed through the gate and almost stumbled when I landed on that weird, soft path. Then I found my footing and pushed off as hard as I could, breaking into a flat out sprint that burned my muscles. Orihime was right behind me.

I heard thumps from behind, signs that Mizuiro, Uryuu and Yasutora had made it through. Then the light from behind abruptly grew dimmer and the noise grew louder. It sounded like an avalanche. Was the doorway behind us closing? It didn’t matter. We had to go forward. I didn’t look back. Run faster. Run.

“The… The walls are collapsing! They’re crumbling behind us!”

%#$#%# Uryuu! You can’t run fast while you’re looking backwards! Stupid nerd! Quit gawking and run! Run!

“Don’t look back – run!” Yourichi-sensei shouted. “If the koryu swallows us, we’re done for!”

Yes, you see?! Listen to the cat!

Oh, crap. The walls were collapsing behind us. No one had ever really talked about how we were getting back, either. There had been something about Urahara opening a gateway at a set time and place, and I’d heard Yoruichi-sensei mutter something about stealing butterflies if it came down to it, but that made no sense, then again, nothing did anymore, so why the fuck was I thinking you don’t need to think to run, Tatsuki, you moron!

We ran.

Ryo wouldn’t have been able to keep up with us if she had tried. There is nothing quite like mortal fear to move your legs. It wasn’t death or pain that scared me. It was the thought of dying in that place, in that disgusting, horrible, bleak place, that made me run faster. I couldn’t bear it.

Four minutes. How long had we been running? I couldn’t tell you. It was long enough that the adrenaline didn’t quite cover up the sharp stitch in my side any longer. It was long enough for Orihime to stumble once and make me curse and drag her along for a few seconds until she found her footing again. The light at the end of tunnel grew closer, but slowly. So very, very slowly.

Then Uryuu screamed.

I didn’t quite stop running, even then. I turned my head, I slowed down a little, but I didn’t stop. I’m not sure I could have, not just like that. Then I saw why he had screamed and that was enough to make me stop.

Uryuu must have gotten too close to the collapsing walls behind us. Something – a hand or a claw made out of that bizarre, creepy black smoke – had grabbed part of his white cape. A rather small, sadistic and hysterical part of me thought that it served him right for wearing such a ridiculous getup.

Things fell apart for a moment. Mizuiro reached Uryuu and tried to haul him back, but he wasn’t strong enough. Ichigo made to turn around and cut Uryuu loose with that gigantic kitchen knife hanging off of his back. Yoruichi-sensei stopped him and there was so much noise and chaos that I don’t know what he said to do it. I called the armor to rip Uryuu loose or tear his clothes or help Mizuiro pull or something, the whole goddamn situation giving me enough anger to do it – stupid Ishida what were you thinking wearing something as lame as that it has handholds everywhere you’re slowing us down and I want out of this damn place yesterday – and of course that was when Keigo popped up out of nowhere with a hand on Uryuu’s shirt and started throwing his weight in with Mizuiro’s.

What the fuck, seriously.

I think that would have thrown anybody but Yasutora, who was thankfully the other person close enough to reach Uryuu in time. The big guy grabbed Uryuu with one hand, the cape with his other and pulled. Combined with Keigo and Mizuiro’s efforts, the troublesome garment came loose and Uryuu was free.

That was all I needed to see. My armor was on and if anyone thought I was fast before, well, they were going to see something fabulous now. I turned on my heel and started sprinting, the light ahead of me now growing closer fast enough to make my spirit leap. I was getting out of there!

And then, ‘Oh crap, the others!’

I couldn’t exactly bring them with me.

I skidded to a halt, the ground piling up around my feet. The doorway was right there, not five paces away from me. It might as well have been unreachable because right then I knew without a doubt that I was never going to go through until the others were with me to do it.

I turned around.

Right behind them was a looming wall with a single bright light that seemed not so much to fall on them, as to seek them out. It looked like a freight train was coming after them. A very, extremely big freight train.

“RUN!” I screamed. “RUN FASTER!”

I couldn’t see Yourichi-sensei anymore. Between his size, the dim lighting and the distance, he was invisible. Ichigo’s bright hair lowered as he levered himself into a dash that made his previous run look like a Sunday stroll and Orihime was only slightly behind him. Yasutora had a white shape – Uryuu – draped over his right shoulder, but he wasn’t far behind the two orange-heads. Keigo and Mizuiro were practically attached to each other as they ran and I couldn’t tell who was helping who.

I don’t even know if they heard me. The noise that thing made was horrible, like a building falling down without end. That might have been what clued them in on the need to pick up the already crazy pace.

But they weren’t gonna make it.

I could see it as they drew nearer. As fast as they were going, they would be crushed before they reached me and the gateway.

They weren’t gonna make it.

The knowledge of their imminent deaths did not make it easier to understand why Orihime suddenly stopped running and turned around to face the ugly thing.

‘ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND, GIRL?!’

I screamed something to that effect, but there’s no way she heard me. As close as that crushing monstrosity was, I barely heard myself. Yasutora dashed by her – why don’t you pick her up?! – and then both of the stragglers. When they were past her, she raised her hands to her head and with a flash of insight, I knew what she intended. Not that that made me feel any better about it.

I couldn’t hear the incantation, but I definitely saw the light as three points of energy swirled in a triangle shape with a glowing yellow plate of power held between them. It swelled large and slammed against the coming danger.

What happened next was seven seconds of Acme level lunacy.

One.

Ichigo and the others ran forward. I ran towards them.

Two.

Orihime started turning around. I reached the running group. I saw Yoruichi-sensei leading the pack.

Three.

I passed my teacher and the boys. Orihime had turned around was running for the gate again.

Four.

Between my super speed and Orihime’s desperate dash, we met.

Five.

I somehow half-dragged half-carried Orihime back to towards the gate at a speed that would have given me windburn if I wasn’t covered in metal. Rather, something that resembled metal, anyway.

Six.

Orihime and I caught up with the rest of the group just as they reached the exit.

Seven.

What I would later learn was the kototsu, or cleaner, had been giving off a rising roar ever since Orihime stopped it in its tracks. It didn’t like being held back, apparently. That noise culminated in an explosion of fury that dwarfed every single other loud noise I had heard through the night. My ears died. Something gave me a very rough push from behind all over my body. I felt my feet leave the ground.

We had leapt through the first gate, but we flew through the second.

There wasn’t any ground to greet us on the other side. Just a whirling moment of nausea and dizziness and confusion as to which way the ground was.

We found it eventually.

Next time – It’s time to show just what she’s learned.

Okay, with the introduction of the SS arc, things are going to start diverting from canon a bit. One of these alterations happens next.

If you’re wondering why this chapter came out three and a half months late, it’s because I’ve been having brainstorms for stories that aren’t Chivalry. This sucks, since my sense of responsibility (not to mention my absolute love of all things Arisawa) demanded that I get cracking on this things again.

And darn F F Net's stubborn editing system. Won't let me center the beginning disclaimer and quotes anymore, grumblegrumble