A/N: This is the SFW version. If you would like to read the gorier version, you can find it on my Tumblr or AO3.

One week had passed since Sousuke Aizen's defeat. Momo woke from her coma and was back in school, everyone else was fine, and even with exams with material he missed thanks to the whole debacle Sousuke put them through, there wasn't much that bothered him at that time.

Much was not synonymous with nothing however.

Something about Karin Kurosaki captured his fascination. As a quincy/hollow hybrid, she stank strongly of hollow, but she was the least hollow-like individual he ever encountered over the span of time they battled Arrancar and other monsters. No lives were lost thanks to the help of herself and her two siblings. He was grateful to them. But he was a thirteen-year-old prodigy in many aspects and Karin was one of his few equals. His feelings for the youthful hollow were not purely professional. Karin Kurosaki occupied his dreams at night and his wandering thoughts in daytime, it quickly cultured a boyish crush for her.

He didn't long for the simple days when he was faithful to his duty to exterminate hollows either, like Momo longed for the idyllic image Sousuke Aizen fed to them. He learned life just wasn't like that after he and Momo still adored the man who nearly destroyed their lives. Karin Kurosaki didn't complicate things that much. Ephemeral was she, perhaps, but real nonetheless.

But it was hard to know how to act upon his attraction. Karin and her twin sister Yuzu disappeared after Ichigo and Kisuke Urahara finally seized Sousuke. He didn't think it was wise to consult the shinigami about her location thanks to the diabolical individuals in their ranks- Giselle Gewelle was the first freak to come to mind. So he decided it best to not dwell on Karin until an opportunity naturally presented itself.

Wordlessly, he walked down a street lining the shopping district with a handful of notebooks in a recyclable bag in hand, head full of calculus and geometry and archery club. Life was pretty great even without her.

He took pause automatically. Strange noises made him stop every time he may or may not have heard them, often they resulted in monsters he needed to rid.

It was a wooden rattle. He knew the sound well. That was Yuzu Kurosaki's fast travel sound. She was chock full of odd powers, including a feature she called fast travel which allowed her to bounce location to location anywhere in a certain distance in seconds. She was Sousuke Aizen's magnum opus in many ways, with as many heart-breaking quirks to her personality. Being Sousuke's favorite meant she was his plaything and Sousuke liked breaking people.

But if Yuzu was there, so must Karin.

He spot Yuzu in the shady recesses in an alleyway to his side. She pointed southward. He trusted her enough to know he wouldn't be led into a death trap. Calmly he walked south, past a handful of alleys, until Yuzu finally pointed straight ahead of her towards a coffee shop across the street. He hastily jogged inside.

The coffee shop bustled with students in various uniforms and businessmen and the sounds of coffee brewing behind the counter.

It all stopped. He blinked, and there was complete silence. The establishment desaturated into various shades of gray, its patrons and the streetview were still as statues. Even liquids, the espresso which streamed from the brewer seconds ago, was suspended in space. Never had he seen Yuzu's manipulation of space, but Momo had, and he understood what she meant by surreal. Everything looked normal but it felt like the space, himself included, was only held together by a handful of flimsy fibers, like everything would fly away with a gentle nudge.

That must have been the space Yuzu called Purgatory. If she had to sequester a place for them to talk, he doubt she and Karin were around for a social call.

Yuzu appeared in a corner booth with a rattle. He sat across from her with jelly-knees. Up close, he could see Yuzu's cloudy eyes through the tiny eye holes in her hollow mask. One eye was pink, and the other was slate blue. From the slate blue eye emerged a pair of arms, gracefully pulling itself through as if it wasn't a tight fit through a hole no larger than the hole in a washer.

Karin slid out of Yuzu's mask, across the table, and sat beside him.

"Hey there," Karin smirked as she tucked her bangs behind her ears. One arm was wrapped in a linen shroud dyed brown with blood. The fact that she only looked injured with the stained linen and dark circles under her eyes was impressive. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Hey. It's been awhile." He was happy to see Karin, despite bad news was certainly what brought them. "What happened to you?"

She cackled. "Aw, don't you know to ask a girl to dinner before you go probing around her business?" His ears warmed. "What've you been up to?"

"Schoolwork," he shrugged. "The real question is what you've been up to. You just… disappeared after your brother and Urahara captured Aizen."

"Arooound," Karin sang.

"What does that mean?"

"Mostly keeping the peace in Hueco Mundo. I never realized how well Aizen kept the Arrancar on a leash. It's like herding cats that somehow learned how to use grenades and shit…." There wasn't an ounce of admiration from her, however. Karin despised Sousuke and he couldn't blame her. That monster kidnapped the Kurosaki siblings, turned them into guinea pigs, and made their lives nightmarish. He couldn't imagine the pain they had been through.

"So you're queen of Hueco Mundo then?"

Karin laughed. "More like its warden."

"Ah…."

Yuzu's nails rapped on the tabletop. Yuzu never once spoke to him (or to anyone for that matter, since she always wore her hollow mask which didn't supply a mouth hole or anything to articulate speech with), but she made her discomfort obvious. She had better things to do, all business even so sweet-looking.

"Now that's out of the way-" Karin pulled out the knot over her shoulder which held her shroud together. He gagged at the sight of the wound that ran the span of her forearm. It wasn't that he was unused to gory scenes, it was the wound being on someone he cared about.

"Don't lose your lunch before I'm finished," Karin warned him. "There's trouble in Hueco Mundo. As of yesterday, we were invaded by a foreign militia. We don't know who, or what for that matter, they are. What we do know is they're capable of carnage. I only narrowly escaped with my life thanks to Isshin."

"If they can do this kind of damage to me, then the World of the Living and the lives of everyone you love are at stake. The best I can tell you is to organize. You don't want to be caught off guard with these freaks."

"We will," he told her with a solemn nod. He already knew Karin and Yuzu would go to the Gotei Thirteen if they hadn't already. They were there as a courtesy. It made him feel special for them to personally warn him. "You get that fixed in the meantime."

Karin smiled, her lips parted slightly, from her mouth seeped a viscous white gel. It oozed up Karin's face like she hung upside-down. It quickly shaped into her hollow mask, a human skull with short horns and fangs in jagged rows like shark teeth. Her wound began to froth. He was relieved to see Karin's arm regenerate. As strange a sight, he watched Karin crawl out of her twin's skull just a minute ago. He'd grow accustomed to their strange powers soon.

"Don't worry about me, just do me a favor and look after yourself. I have plans with you," she told him.

With him, not for him. How she could make his heart soar.

The twins disappeared, life returned to the cafe.

He didn't look forward to the coming weeks. The coming months, on the other hand, he hoped to high heaven would be ecstatic.