Chapter One For Whom the Bell Tolls

It was Friday afternoon, and Karin Kurosaki was beginning to regret offering to go shopping with her twin sister Yuzu. She was looking for a new baseball cap, the old one was put permanently out of commission. In some ways, the loss of her hat was awesome, how many girls could say that their head gear was eaten by a giant spectral Hollow? Not many, that's how many. But in most ways it sucked, because now she had to go out and buy another one and she had to keep an eye out for those same supernatural beings from eating anything else on her person, including those parts of her that could not be purchased from the local Abercromby and Fitch.

She could have been playing football, but Karin's football game had been cancelled due to irreconcilable differences between her teammates– she didn't really get what the big deal was, a protective cup was a protective cup and wether one had it in a banana shape or not was... something she really didn't want to know any more about– who found out the rarely discussed drawbacks of sharing.

"But I prefer my member to rest pointing up!"

That jewel of a sentence was the last one before Karin broke up her little journey into boyville and sent everyone home. Did they not realise she was a girl, with no penis to speak of, and therefore should not be subjected to things so cruel and unusual?

From their blank looks, apparently not.

Apart from the complete Eww of the moment, all it afforded was to spoil a completely good time to get in some practice. So, that's how she found herself victim to her sister's insanity.

Karin had become used to her sister's penchant for pretty Lolita dresses, and had Yuzu been only slightly older she'd even go as far as calling it a fetish. She was used to it, but the predictability of Yuzu's reaction to that– that monstrously pink, hideously tooth decaying tulle trussed terror– did not mean that Karin found it any less irritating each time it happened. If Britney Spears got raped by a flamingo in drag that dress would be what it would look like. Karin eyed the exit longingly.

"Oh, Karin!" Yuzu twirled towards her holding the offensive dress adoringly, "Wouldn't–? "

"No, Yuz. It really would not." Karin replied not even pausing on her trek for the front door of the shop.

Karin was already making her way down the sidewalk when she heard the tinkling of the shop bell spring to life, and Yuzu come huffing along beside her clutching a small lilac parcel.

Karin threw a discreet side glance at what her sister lackadaisically swung to and fro as she walked.

"Yuzu, you didn't actually– "

"Buy the dress? I thought about it, but then decided that tulle made my head look fat."

"Oh, yes. God forbid that. Cuz everybody knows fat descends from your head then your arms and pretty soon your ass is as big as a Peugeot and you're eating ice cream right out of the tub." Karin said flatly.

"Oh, so you read Lucky Lean Teen, too?" Yuzu replied easily to her sister's sarcasm. Karin saw some passers by busybodies snicker behind their hands at Yuzu's rather loud comment.

"Yuzu!" Karin's scandalized expression only soured when she saw her sister burst into sparkling peals of laughter.

'Oh, ho ho ho, your face," she pointed with one hand, completely oblivious, "I never get a chance to get you. But this time I just totally flowed right through that one!"

"I'm glad my total mortification pleases you." Karin glowered, though she didn't really feel all that affronted. I mean, it was Yuzu. She was as synonymous with 'harmless' as she was to the fruit she was named after.

"Oh, Karin," her sister replied eyes wide with genuine distress and regret, "I didn't really mean it! I was in the groove and everything and you're always so funny when you say things so deadpan– "

See? Wouldn't hurt a fly, Karin thought.

"Yuz, chill. I was being sarcastic." Karin said and raised an eyebrow at her sister's compassion.

"You sure?"

"Oh, yeah. Trust me, it'd take a lot more'n that take me down." Karin replied.

"Oh, good. Because I saw the cutest little eyelet lace trimmed dress that I wanted you to try on–" her sister continued, walking ahead in search of Karin's very possibly worst nightmare.

"Uh, you were right, Yuz, my feelings have been grievously abused and I need to go home and have a cup of tea, or cyanide or– hey Yuzu are you even listening? Don't you dare go in that store!" Karin called after her sister, but the brown eyed girl had already slipped through the double doors. The bells jingled merrily and to Karin it sounded suspiciously like a death knoll.

A god forsaken hour later, Karin was ready for that cyanide laced cup of tea, but Yuzu's radiantly happy face stopped her from saying anything out right. It was Yuzu's first real smile in three days. Oh, sure, she puttered around the house grinning wanly, but since Ichigo had just up and vanished...it was not the same.

Karin was equally parts worried and pissed off. Worried that her brother had finally bitten off more than he could chew. Worried for his safety, and to some extent worried for his friend Inoue who was equally missing. The red haired girl was nice, but Ichigo was an asshole. And that's where the anger came in. Her brother was crowned king dipshit for leaving without so much as a texed 'C U l8terz'.

She was also surprised to find that she was a little angry at herself, as well. Not for anything obvious or even rational, but because she didn't really feel vindicated in her feelings of resentment for her brother, like her anger was pointless if she didn't try to do something about it. And that's where Toshiro came in.

She had not spoken to Toshiro Hitsugaya since that fateful day at the park when she was nearly eaten by a Hollow, and it was unnerving talking to the person who saved your soul from being sucked right out of you. She knew he knew something, but each time she passed by where she knew he was staying (she had not been spying, it was not her fault she had such good hearing, and if she just happened to pick up that he and his big boobed lieutenant were staying at Inoue's so be it. The fact she was crouching behind a dumpster at the time was irrelevant) she ended up getting lock kneed and turning back around. So much for doing something about it. She couldn't even approach the one person who would know something.

Karin sighed, she could feel a head ache coming on. Yuzu had stopped a few yards in front of her at a flower cart and was digging in her purse for change as the florist patiently waited with a bundle of purple flowers extended.

Karin squinted her eyes against the brightness of the day, the flowers a flourescent after image in the back of her retinas as her headache arched. The sudden crescendo of pain, like a spike of steel jammed through her temple, was almost enough for Karin to cry out. The scream startled her, at first she thought she had cried out, but the screams belonged instead to the people out on the promenade. A car careened out of control, screeching tires and burnt rubber high in the afternoon. People scattered like mindless shadows scared witless and slow.

The car plowed through outdoor tables and chairs; yellow umbrellas with bright technicolour logos pin wheeled through the air as the car devolved into a blur of white metal and cacophonous sound. Karin watched in grotesque slow motion as the white sedan headed on a crash course towards the cart of flowers. Towards Yuzu.

Karin acted out of pure terror and reflex, throwing herself those few feet to her sister and sending them both crashing to the pavement just as the car tore through the cart, glass and flower petals rained down on them like at a death march. The car missed them by inches and plowed right into a light post where it was instantly cleaved in half.

There were tears in Yuzu's wide eyes as she looked at Karin, who clung to her as if she expected one of them might fly away at any moment. Karin gathered her suddenly disheveled wits and stood. Her headache as present as ever as she walked towards the smoking wreckage, broken glass and debris scattered aimlessly through out the sidewalk. There was a muted pause and then people quickly sprang into action, calling paramedics and checking for injured when she felt a sudden pull in her chest. She heard a sudden piercing roar and she turned towards it intuitively; she was just able to make out a dark ominous shape as it slammed right into her.

Karin hit the pavement with a dull thud, gravel and broken glass digging into the soft flesh of her thighs. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision and looked around her. She was confused, what had crashed into her? And where did it go?

She looked around feeling disoriented and a little nauseous, she spied Yuzu crouched a few meters to her left. She was leaning over somebody, her face etched in something vaguely familiar, but Karin could not seem to place the look. A few spaces away lay Yuzu's discarded purple parcel, obnoxiously banal and pastel. Yuzu continued to compress her hands over the chest of the supine figure in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She was a born and bred doctor even at the tender age of twelve, and Karin felt a sudden warmth at the thought. But it was short lived, the warmth falling away from her like ice over a hotplate. Karin stared into her own lifeless face as her sister tried to breath life into her body.

Son of a bitch! Karin thought, but her anger was erased at her sister's expression.

"Please, Karin! You swore we'd d– " Yuzu could not bring herself to finish that sentence, "You swore!"

Yuzu continued the CPR as Karin stood over herself and her sister, her mind reeling, trying to make sense of what was happening. Karin didn't know what to do, she had seen ghosts, had seen those severed chains sprouting from their chests, but she never expected to be one of them! Her hand felt her chest for the chain, when she didn't feel anything she looked down. The chain was not severed. There was no chain.

A strangled sob broke Karin's concentration.

Yuzu's twined hands compressed over Karin's physical chest. Her twin's steady mantra of counting a metronome;

"1,2,3,4...30,"she prayed, "breath. 1,2..."

The invisible Karin counted along with her, "1,2,3– come on Yuzu you can do it."

Two minutes had passed since Karin had been pushed out of her own body. Two minutes had passed since Yuzu started to maintain a flow of oxygenated blood to her body's brain and heart. Karin knew instantly that not even Yuzu could delay tissue death for much longer, and nothing but a defribrillator would restart her heart.

Yuzu was really sobbing now, but her compressions remained as steady as ever. There was a strange glow coming from her sister's hands, soft and golden and warm. Karin blinked rapidly to clear her eyes. But as quickly as it manifested the glow was gone. Yuzu stopped her compressions, hand flying to Karin's pulse point to check for a heartbeat. When Yuzu sighed in gratitude, Karin nearly gave a loud whoop; her sister had done it!

Yuzu seemed to deflate with relief when she spied the paramedics, who immediately made a beeline towards the now hysterical Yuzu as she flagged them down. Karin looked around expecting to be looking out of her own physical eyes. Any minute now, she thought. Any minute, I'm gonna pop right back into my body. But Karin was not in her body. She was alive but her soul remained incorporeal. Karin tried to slip back into her body, but her hand just sunk through like she was made of air. She wasn't sticking!

"Yuzu, it didn't work!" she said to her sister but Yuzu remained oblivious, "My body's alive but I'm still here!"

A siren pierced the air, the red of the ambulance raining down over them like a blanket. The paramedic ran towards them, oxygen mask at the ready.

"She went into cardiac arrest," Yuzu explained in the rapid fire way of one who was trying to suppress their panic, "Karin pushed me out of the way and the car missed us but then she just collapsed– for no reason, she just collapsed, and I...and I didn't know what else to do, but keep up the CPR..."

"You did a good job, miss," the paramedic looked at Yuzu sympathetically, but he kept a steady pump on the breathing apparatus.

Karin watched it all with growing alarm. They strapped her body into the gurney and put her in the back of the ambulance. A little ways away another ambulance was opening its doors, but the body being wheeled in was completely covered by the white sheet and the paramedics moved much slower. Oh, Karin thought a little inanely, the driver's dead too.

Yuzu held her hand as she hurriedly went into the ambulance, fear painted blue on her face like a Matisse. Karin tried to follow but she was not fast enough.

"Wait!" she yelled, trying to reach for the doors, "Stop! That's my body in there!

Panic had settled like a lead weight into her bones and she could not seem to move fast enough as the paramedics shut the red metal doors and the ambulance sped away unaware of her presence.

Karin ran after the speeding ambulance, "Wait!" she yelled but no one heard her. She ran through the parting traffic as cars made way for the expediting ambulance, "Wait!"

Her legs gave out soon enough, and she was left panting in the middle of the street, "YUZU!"

In the distance too far to be seen, Yuzu looked up suddenly and whispered brokenly, "Karin?"

But her sister's body remained still and unresponsive. Yuzu lay her head between her knees and cried.

Karin fell where she stood, panting for breath and uncaring of the cars that zoomed by her. She was a ghost, what point was there in worrying about getting hit by a car? Karin had to laugh, to ease the tension if for no other reason. The irony was not lost on her.

You may be incorporeal, she thought, but you're not brainless.

Karin stood up resolutely, despair was not going to get her anywhere. She needed to think, to plan, but there were too many unknown variables. She didn't know wether there was some kind of mystical time restriction, what if she found a way to get back into her body but was unable to because she wasted too much time? She didn't know how it was she was ousted from her body to begin with. What if she needed a repeat dose of whatever had crashed into her? What if it was a Hollow and it was still after her soul?

Shit, Karin thought.

If it was a Hollow, she couldn't just stand here in the middle of the street like this. All her What If's were just distracting her from getting anything done. If Ichigo were here he'd tell her to quit wasting time.

And then she had it. The answer was staring at her in the face. Ichigo!

He was able to slip in and out of his body, she had seen him do it several times. He'd hold some sort of magical trinket to his chest and a pop and fizz later his soul was out the window.

Karin began to run, even as the plan was forming in her head. She needed to get home, to her brother's room and find that thing– whatever it was– and pop herself back into her body. She wasn't sure it'd work but it beat any other plans she might of come up with.

Karin ran through the front entrance of the clinic, not even pausing to open the front door. Her lithe form slipped through the concrete, glass and wood without so much as a stagger. She ran upstairs and stopped short the red number fifteen stared out at her from the dark wood of her brother's door. Karin put her hands on her knees, wheezing, trying to catch her breath.

She half raised her hand to the door to knock and in the same movement yanked it back down to her side. She flushed a deep red and grit her teeth.

What are you, she self-berated, retarded?

Karin felt doubly stupid, once for forgetting she would just phase through the door and again because her brother was not home and hadn't been for the last three days. Karin huffed and walked through the door.

Ichigo's room was always tidy. A trait she found rather odd in her brother. Not to say that he was a complete slob in other regards– her brother was fairly uniform in his neatness– but she had never seen so much as a book out of place. It was if he didn't live there at all and Karin suddenly wished he was a slob. If only to remind her that he was still around and not a soothing memory in the back of her mind like their dead mother.

Stop it, she thought, don't start that.

Karin riffled through the ordered stacks of paper on his desk. She opened the drawers and checked behind the lamp hoping to find what she was looking for. She dropped to her knees and looked under the bed but found nothing. She stood up, her arms resting akimbo and debating wether or not she should check under the mattress. She was unwilling to find anything unpleasant. And by that she meant porn. She didn't think she could handle anymore scares that day.

As she began to reach toward the mattress the door slowly creaked open. Karin snatched her hand away and stood ramrod straight, a rather guilty expression marring her other wise surprised face. The door stood open little more than a handsreath, at first Karin though it was the odd movements of an old crickety house but she soon saw what had opened the door.

"You!"

Both sets of voices blended together rather comically and Karin stood there pointing accusingly at the equally accusing stuffed animal. The little plush lion stood indignantly, one golden yellow paw pointed at Karin, the other clutching a rather large juicebox to his chest.

Karin's shock at seeing the toy become animated disappeared the moment she saw what it clutched between its stuffed paws. She had seen enough weird things in her lifetime and a walking talking stuffed lion was not even a blip in her supernatural radar. The fact that it was walking and talking could be dismissed. The fact that it was drinking her juice could not.

"So you're the one!" she hollered, "I've had to spend all my savings in restocking those, you little rag!"

Kon for the most part just gaped at her and tried to discreetly push the juicebox behind him. His little sewed tail twitched spasmodically as if it knew a secret and wasn't telling.

"You're– You're dead!" Kon stuttered.

Karin sat down on the floor indignantly and growled, "Yeah? I hadn't noticed."

Kon stepped towards her, his little fluffy feet making a swishing sound against the carpet as he circled her with cautious curiosity.

"How did you get dead? Do you even know how badly Ichigo is going to take this out on me!?"

"Oh, I'm sorry if this is an inconvenience for you," She said rising to her feet.

"I got tired of always wearing the same outfit, so I thought I'd try a different–more dead– look," she bent over and smacked the stuffed animal hard enough to send it sprawling on its back, the juice box breaking its fall rather awkwardly, "Idiot."

Kon righted himself, rolling to the side and lifting to his feet with as much flamboyant dignity as the plush toy could manage and said, "I was only pointing out the obvious, little sister."

"Don't call me that," she snapped bad mood righting itself, "And what are you anyway? Some reject from Child's Play?"

Kon scrunched his little fabric face in a facsimile of a frown and paced around her dramatically.

"No. I just happen to be a modified soul," he said as matter of fact, then in resigned voice added, "Though my current body leaves something to be desired."

"Modified soul– ?" then she waved her hand as if to physically dispel the question, "Ok, whatever, I don't even care at this point. I'm dead, I guess, and unless you can help me I need to get back to finding Ichigo's soul separating gadget thing."

"But you're dead." Kon reiterated, "That's it. It's the tunnel and bright light for you. I will miss you my dear little sister!"

The plush toy wailed and leaped like a flea and wrapped himself around her neck. She yanked at his little soft body but it snapped back like a rubber band, "Get off! I'm not actually dead– or at least my body isn't dead or... I don't know! All I know is that I'm stuck. Now, get off!"

"Nooo," Kon wailed, "If you leave me that vile creature will have nothing to keep her from molesting me!"

Karin paused for a moment. She'd never heard anybody refer her sister as 'a vile creature' and she thought she'd die before the day ever came that someone would ever accuse the mild mannered Yuzu of molestation. Karin's brow furrowed. Wait a minute, she did die!

"Ugh, enough of your babbling," she said as she finally found a solid grip on the toy and yanked it free, "Now are you gonna help me or not?"

"Oh, anything for my sweet, loving, beloved and perfect little sister!" Kon said, plastic button eyes bright with adoration.

"Okaay,"Karin said eyebrow raised in evaluation, "That was a little much."

Kon brought a paw up to his chin and regarded Karin pensively, "You think so? I thought it was pretty good myself. You know? A bit of descriptive language never hurt anyone."

Karin stared at the lion dully and deadpanned, "It's silver and shaped like a crest."

"Wha– ?" Kon looked dumbly at her as she grabbed him and flung him in the closet.

"Make sure you check everywhere! Leave no space unturned." she commanded as she dug her arms elbow deep into the space between the mattress and the bed.

"Could give a guy some warning!" She could hear the stuffed lion curse wildly inside the closet but she also heard the sound of indignant rifling. Karin payed attention to the task at hand skirting around anything even vaguely magazine shaped until finally she came upon something small enough to possibly be what she was looking for.

Karin opened her hand with anticipation. It wasn't so much crest shaped as it was flat and square.

"Oh god!" she yelped and threw the offending package in the air, "it burns!"

Kon came flying out of the closet in alarm ready for action, but was thrown back when something landed squarely on his face. Kon groaned from underneath the condom.

Karin didn't think the day could possibly get any worse.

AN.

Ichigo probably has absolutely no secrets...

P.S. that gold glow from Yuzu's hands? The one that brings Karin back to life? That's one of those healing demon arts thingies, I read there were three types: to bind, heal, and blow up apparently. I thought it was really weird that Ichigo and Karin are all Ooooh supernatural spooky and poor Yuzu isn't. I kinda like the idea that Yuzu is the only normal one though, so it was more like a fluke that it happened, borne out of desperation for her sister's life, the magical equivalent of a mother lifting up a car to save her kid.

As for my story, I tend to flesh things out a lot, so this might be one of those rather long tales. Anyway I hope you like this story and please review!

- Hats off;)