A/N: For The Maljax for the August round of flashfics on LiveJournal. A departure from my usual style, but a fun one. XD

Enjoy!

Eia

xxxxx

Thorngrowing

xxxxx

He is able who thinks he is able.

Buddha

It was Yuzu's idea.

In retrospect, Karin kicked herself for not thinking of it first. She was smart, observant, all the things that she needed to be, but still it had never occurred to her at all.

Tatsuki showing up was unexpected but not surprising, considering. She didn't even say a word as she sat down cross-legged, dressed in her gi and somber-faced.

Then it was the three of them, and they all knew that no one else was going to come.

They were the ones who waited. They were the ones left behind when those with power went off to battle, left with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs and pray that chance would treat the ones they loved kindly. They could only wait and hope that all of those who left would return, and return intact.

It was a harsh duty.

Yesterday, Yuzu (who was at last fed up with crying into her pillow imagining Ichigo falling to a thousand different swords) had come downstairs and said "Karin-chan, I don't want to wait anymore. Isn't there any way we can be useful to Ichi-nii?"

Karin had scoffed and turned back to her bowl of noodles to hide the wishful look on her face. "Ha. Like what? Develop our own super-powers and go to the rescue?"

There was a split second of oddly meaningful silence, then...

"Yes," Yuzu cried then with a tone of wonder in her voice, making Karin turn back around to face her incredulously. "Yes! We might not be naturals like Ichi-nii and the others, but we're his sisters! Right, Karin-chan?"

To Karin's amazement, she realized that Yuzu was right. They had the same blood flowing through their veins. Their souls were made up of the same material that Ichigo's was. Why shouldn't they have power of their own?

As she thought about it, the smarter the idea looked. Karin already knew that she had some strength-- her soccer ball, kicked with all her fury behind it, could dent Hollows, if not kill them, and she hadn't even trained at all yet.

So their little band of the left behind was formed, and they had their first meeting the next evening in the abandoned park by the overpass. Tatsuki looked slightly bewildered when she arrived, as though she'd been following a sound she couldn't quite hear and wasn't sure if she was really awake or not.

"Hi, Tatsuki-chan," Yuzu said with a gentle smile. "I'm glad you're here. You should be, since there's two people that you're waiting for, not just one."

"All right!" Karin yelled to break the strangely tranquil quiet. "Let's get this party started!" She paused. "So uh, what should we do? I've never exactly tried to develop super-powers before, y'know."

There was a short silence in which Tatsuki and Karin looked helplessly at each other, burning with the need to do something but lost as to exactly what they should do.

Then Yuzu, who Karin always forgot was smarter than she acted sometimes, reached into her small pink backpack and pulled out a couple of books with strange swirly covers and odd inscriptions around the edges and spines. "I found these in Daddy's bedroom," she explained sheepishly. "They're textbooks, I think... they're hard to read but there're exercises in here which sound like they might help. Maybe."

"You're a genius, Yuzu," Karin breathed, grabbing the topmost book and flipping through it. "Ugh, it sounds like it was written by some stuffy professor last century. I don't know what half these words mean."

"Let me have it," said Tatsuki, taking the book from Karin's hands and opening it to the first page. "I can read it. I might have to look up a couple of these kanji, they're really obscure, but I think I can make it work."

Karin and Yuzu cheered, high-fiving each other. "It's a good thing you showed up!"

After poring over the books for a long five minutes, Tatsuki sat up straight and stretched. "Okay," she said, sounding terribly unsure of herself. "So, it says to sit and feel the energy in your body. They call it 'reiatsu.' When you can feel it, try to push it out through your right palm and make a ball."

The sisters stared at her. "That sounds really weird. And hard," Karin stated. "What energy?"

"When you kick your soccer ball, what do you do that makes it hurt the hollows?" Yuzu asked.

Karin thought for a minute. "Well, I just kind of really mean it," she replied lamely. "I want to hurt the hollow, so I think about that when I kick the ball."

"So you put all your angry energy into the ball," Tatsuki translated. "So pull the energy up and push it out your palm instead of your foot. Think like you're going to pie a hollow in the face with it."

Yuzu burst out into fits of giggles, and Karin desperately repressed her own snort of laughter. "Right. Um. Okay. Here goes." She closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, then furrowed her brows together and concentrated.

Moments passed, then minutes, then fifteen minutes.

At last she broke off, gasping. "I can't do it," she said, sounding close to tears. "I can feel the energy there, but I can't make it do anything. It won't listen to me."

Tatsuki frowned and opened the book again. "Maybe I missed something, like a trick for making it--"

"No, you didn't miss anything," said Yuzu, sounding oddly excited. "You just have to ask nicely."

Karin and Tatsuki whirled around to find Yuzu sitting a few steps away, cradling a merrily glowing ball of pinkish-white light. It lit up her small face and made her look like less than truly corporeal, like a beautiful earthbound ghost.

"Whoa," said Karin, awestruck, and Tatsuki nodded her agreement. "Tell us how you did that!"

Yuzu frowned and let the ball vanish. "Well, it's me, right? The energy? It's part of me, like my muscles and stuff. So it felt kind of like learning to make a cartwheel-- just using muscles in a different way than usual. The trick is not to force it to come out. It wants to come out anyway, you just kind of have to let it. If that makes sense."

It didn't, not really, but it was progress in any case. Karin and Tatsuki sat down and stared at their palms with renewed vigour, picturing enemies before them that needed smashing.

It was well after dark when they finally gave up for the day.

"Augh, why is this so hard?" Karin complained. "I kind of thought they'd just... be there, and we'd just have to make them stronger. Yeah. This is kinda frustrating."

"I didn't expect it to happen in one day, but I'm kind of frustrated too," admitted Tatsuki. "But still. I feel much better now that I'm actually doing something, you know? I'm not just sitting on my hands crossing my fingers 'Hime and Ichigo get home safely. Even if I can't do anything yet, in the future I might be able to protect her even just a little bit, and that makes me feel a lot better about everything."

Karin nodded emphatically. "Yeah, exactly. I was really sick of feeling helpless."

"Me too," echoed Yuzu.

"Well then, tomorrow?" Tatsuki said. "Same place, same time?"

The girls nodded, and they went their separate ways, smiling faintly to themselves.

xxxxxx

Over the next month, they met every day in the park at dusk and practiced until Yuzu couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. It was summer, there was no school, so they didn't need to be in bed early.

Yuzu continued to be the most talented, intuitively grasping in minutes what it took Tatsuki and Karin hours to logic their way through.

Unsurprisingly, she discovered within herself a talent for healing. The energy which came out of her was terrible at causing wounds, but very good at closing them.

Tatsuki and Karin, on the other hand, were very obviously offensive-type fighters. Karin was full of raw power, though she had a great deal of difficulty controlling it and often scorched herself and things nearby with her flailing tendrils of escaping reiatsu. Tatsuki was more about speed and flexibility than brute strength, though she had plenty of that too.

Her power took the form of making her faster and faster yet, until she could run so fast she nearly vanished.

Karin could eventually shatter trees just by hitting them right.

They were not nearly so powerful as Ichigo, or even Orihime, but they were not powerless anymore.

It made them stand a bit taller, and made the waiting a bit less tense, which was of course the original intention.

xxxxxx

The chance to test themselves came sooner than they'd expected or hoped.

Attracted by the alluring scent of burgeoning reiatsu on the wind, an inquisitive hollow came to visit, popping out of the between-place right into the park, startling them mightily. It was short and whip-cord thin, with awful sharp teeth and alarmingly red eyes. It grinned at them and licked its lips obscenely.

"Oh shit," Tatsuki said eloquently. "Karin-chan!"

"Right!" yelled Karin, racing up to Tatsuki's side and cracking her knuckles. "We can take it! Hah, it's just a little one."

"Karin-chan, Tatsuki-san," Yuzu whispered. "Please be careful!"

"Don't worry, Yuzu," Karin bragged with a smirk. "We'll pound this thing flat, you'll see."

The hollow vanished.

"Shit!" yelled Tatsuki, whirling around and just barely fending off a blow from behind. "It's fast!"

Karin grinned ferally and slammed her fists together. "I just need it to hold still for one second," she said. "Think you can catch it?"

Tatsuki started to shake her head, then visibly caught herself and nodded grimly. "I'll try."

The hollow vanished again, and this time Tatsuki vanished with it. Karin tensed, unable to see but feeling the clashing energy flying around her. "Stay far back, Yuzu," she warned. "I don't want it coming after you."

"It's fine," Yuzu said. "I can see them, I'll stay out of the way."

Not for the first time, Karin reflected on how unfair it was that her little sister was more talented than her despite being so little and pathetic the rest of the time.

"Karin!" Tatsuki yelled, sounding horribly strained. "I have it-- dammit, no I don't. Be on your guard, I'll definitely hang on to it this time."

The ground erupted in a flurry of dust and clumps of grass. Karin instinctively shut her eyes and shielded her face, knowing in the split fraction of a second after she did so that it was a stupid idea.

Something heavy and sharp-edged slammed into her lower ribcage at agonizing speed, sending her flying halfway across the park to land with a crunch on her right shoulder. Gasping for breath, she mentally screamed every swear word she'd ever learned in any language and made herself stand up on suddenly jellied legs.

"Karin-chan!" Yuzu wept, suddenly at her side though Karin hadn't felt her move. "Are you all right?"

"Do I look all right?" she snapped, holding her partially dislocated shoulder with one hand and her (most likely cracked) ribs with the other. "Sonofabitch. You are so going down."

"Hold on a minute, I'll heal you a bit," Yuzu said, obviously forcing herself to stay calm. She closed her eyes and held out her hands in a triangular pattern over Karin's shoulder, brows diving together as she concentrated fiercely. Her trademark pinkish light flared and began to sink into Karin's skin, knitting ripped cells back together and coaxing the misplaced bone back to its rightful place.

Karin stared down at her with undisguised admiration. "That feels great, Yuzu," she said through her gritted teeth. "Are you almost done?"

"Just a minute, your ribs--"

Noticing just in time, Karin threw herself sideways, flattening Yuzu to the ground a split second before the hollow tore through the air above them. Karin's ribs screamed at her, but she ignored them in favour of survival. "Run, Yuzu," she whispered fiercely, then stood up shakily and closed her eyes to better sense the hollow's presence.

Obeying the clear tone of command in her sister's voice, Yuzu ran for the small protection of the slide and crouched to make herself as small and inconspicuous a target as possible.

Freed from worrying about her, Karin relaxed and shook out her fists. "All right, you anorexic jerk," she muttered, "come and get it."

"Karin!" Tatsuki yelled again from the other side of the playground. "On three!"

Karin raced towards the sound of Tatsuki's voice, going more on sense than sight since the other two were still moving too quickly to be clearly seen.

"One!"

Stopping within a reasonable distance, Karin took a deep breath and concentrated, focusing her energy in her fists until they glowed electrically blue and hummed with the power pent up within them. "Ready," she said to herself.

"Two!"

The hollow growled furiously as though stung by something-- Tatsuki must have landed a good blow. Karin grinned. Ichi-nii had good friends.

She bent her knees, coiling herself for the spring, waiting for the word.

"Th--" Tatsuki's voice abruptly cut off with a high-pitched gasp of shock.

Not waiting to find out what happened, Karin launched herself towards the hollow, making as little noise as she could. She'd figured out some time ago that yelling at the top of one's lungs while charging at the unsuspecting enemy is a damn stupid thing to do if one is trying to surprise said enemy.

The hollow paused, conveniently becoming visible for a moment.

Biting her tongue to keep herself silent, Karin swung viciously with all the strength she had... into a suddenly empty space.

Somewhere over her head, the hollow cackled gleefully. Apparently, it wouldn't be that easy.

Tatsuki was kneeling on the ground in front of her, she noticed then, clutching her face. There was blood, horrifyingly scarlet, dripping through her fingers. When she shifted her hand, Karin saw that there was an enormous gash crossing her right eye and extending halfway down her cheek. The eye did not look to be in very good shape.

Whispering a few more swear words she'd forgotten to use last time, Karin balled up her fists. "Tatsuki, can you still catch it?"

Tatsuki looked up with her good eye and met Karin's for a second. Then, without a word, she blurred towards the left and vanished.

Karin followed her as fast as she could, focusing as she ran on returning her reiatsu to her hands. It wouldn't do to catch the hollow only to not be ready to kill it.

The swing set suddenly crumpled with the shrieking sound of tearing metal, splinters of steel breaking off and clattering against the ground. "There," Karin said out loud unconsciously.

"Three!" Tatsuki suddenly screamed from Karin's left.

Not stopping to think about it, Karin veered left and launched herself into the air. Instinct had taken over almost completely. The hollow materialized in front of her, struggling wildly as Tatsuki held it desperately from behind in a move Karin recognized approvingly from the wrestling shows she sometimes watched.

"Gotcha," she crowed, and ploughed her glowing fist directly into its face.

The white ceramic-like mask shattered explosively, raining shards on Tatsuki's head. Karin continued to follow through, cleaving her way down the hollow's throat until she reached the perfectly round hole in its chest.

When the circle broke, the hollow let out a horrendous wail like a harpy, convulsed, and dissolved into a black sooty fog that made Karin's hand feel greasy.

For a moment, Karin and Tatsuki just stood facing each other and gasping for breath. Then the reality of what they'd done sank in, and enormous grins spread across their faces.

"Hell yeah!" they yelled in unison at the top of their lungs.

"Take that, chicken-legs!" Karin crowed.

"That's what you get for messing up my face," panted Tatsuki, collapsing to the grass with a moan of relief and putting her hand over her wounded eye.

Yuzu appeared at their side like magic, weeping messily and yelling completely incomprehensible things at them that were probably about being careless and getting hurt and not listening to her.

Neither of them cared overmuch, too full of the thrill of victory to feel guilty about making her worry.

They lay there in the dark (when had the sun set? none of them had noticed) while Yuzu sniffled and healed their wounds as best she could. "I'm sorry, Tatsuki-san," she said when she was done. "I think it's going to leave a scar."

"That's all right," Tatsuki said with a wry smile. "It'll probably just make me look more badass."

Yuzu giggled and hugged her, sighing with relief. A moment later, Karin surprise-attacked them both with a giant group bear-hug from behind.

They burst out laughing in a pile on the grass, feeling like entirely new people. If they could do this much, what else could they do? How much stronger could they get? Could they maybe protect the ones they loved after all?

"You're a genius, Yuzu," said Karin, echoing her words from a month ago. "An honest-to-God genius."

Yuzu blushed. "Thanks for all your hard work," she said formally, unable to think of anything else more intelligent to say.

"You too," Tatsuki said affectionately, ruffling her hair. "You saved our butts out there. If you hadn't been around to heal up Karin, she wouldn't have been able to land that hit and we'd still be fighting... or dead."

They all shuddered, thinking of the possibilities.

"Let's make a promise," Karin said, standing up and thrusting out her fist. "None of us are allowed to die. Got it? Anybody who dies buys the others dinner in the afterlife."

Tatsuki stood and laid her hand atop Karin's. "Deal. I'm broke, so I definitely can't lose this one."

Yuzu's hands sandwiched theirs between them. She looked up at them and sweetly smiled. "I can't buy dinner with a five-dollar allowance," she said sheepishly, "so I can't lose either."

"Well, good," Karin said with a rakish grin. "I'd be super pissed-off if I died before you two wimps, so I won't be losing either."

"Deal," the other two said together.

"Fight-oh!" Karin yelled impulsively. "Fight-ooohhh!"

Catching on, Tatsuki and Yuzu grinned and yelled "Fight-ooohhh!" with her the next time, and two more times after that.

"No more waiting," Karin said as they collapsed back onto the cool grass. "No more praying."

They smiled together, then yawned enormously.

They would sleep well tonight.

xxxxxxx

Isshin jumped down from his perch in the tree and sauntered easily back home.

He grinned and chuckled to himself. Kids these days. Never knew what idiotic idea they'd come up with next.

"Masaki, your daughters are crazy. And your son makes weird friends."

The wind didn't answer, as usual, but Isshin was used to that.

xxxxxxxxx

Ichigo and the others were in for one hell of a surprise when they got back, and no mistake.

XxxxxxxxxxX

A/N: Okay, so some of that was totally wishful thinking on my part. I really want to see those three develop some kickassery of their own, and I love the idea of Yuzu being talented even though in the manga she's pretty much the only one who can't see the hollows. Bear with me.

Also, the bit with Karin not yelling at the top of her lungs is also wishful thinking. I'm sure some of you can empathize with this. XD

I hope you enjoyed it!

Eia