[bgcolor=0F4D92]Late hours of the day. The sun is now shining with an orange glow instead of the bright yellow that fills the land with energy. Is the sun setting? Yes it is. Through the forest of the second district of Rukongai, the small shinigami of the Third Division known as Tenba Gensou made her way, heading for a destination a little further off the beaten path. She had been called there by the Captain of her division, Saikokui Kurisuna, and since the small girl was afraid of.. tall.. authority figures.. she had no choice but to go.

The sun moved slower and slower down, the orange shine almost fading. The girl wondered why she had been called out at this hour, not really focusing on what was ahead. And there they were, shouting out at her. "You! Little girl! Hand over your goods!", four bandits called, obviously Rukon Citizen Criminals from the looks of their outfits, all of them carrying a long bladed weapon, as their bodies hulked over hers, causing a shiver of fear to run down her spine.

"I-I have nothing to give you! Go away!", the girl replied, a sound of fear heard in a serious tone of voice aimed at them, her hand moving down to grab her Zanpakuto, as the men walked towards her in a dominant manner, the two on the side moving to go behind her. She backed, nervous and scared, each step faster than the one before, as the bandits keep their pace too. But then the backing stopped. She was trapped. A large river was stopping her from moving, the stream being powerful enough to pull her away by the raging torrents. And so, she had to fight..

She he had to take things into her own hands!!

An attack had to be made. It was the only way.. so she grabbed the hilt of the zanpakuto and drew it, slashing out at the biggest man there, since that would scare off the others.. or so she read. The criminal moved back but got a cut over his stomach. "Baaaad move, little girl..", he replied, the men drawing their weapons and going for her. All of the bandits went for her, their weapons aimed at her. She could only duck, which she did, but, alas, it failed.

---

Seconds felt like minutes, and minutes felt like days. What.. was going on? It hurt. But.. how did it hurt? The whole body felt.. warm.. and in pain.. and.. nothing. Absolutely nothing in front of her. Everything was gone.. just.. a white color..

"I.. feel tired.. I'm just going to sleep.. for.. a while now.."

---

Rain, Rain, Rain. The warm light of the setting sun had disappeared, and clouds from the distance had closed in, the rain pouring down, filling the rivers to the point where they would flow over. And by one point, a red substance could be found, being washed away by the rain into the river, as the looted body of a small girl slept, her eyes closed as the rain washed away her blood, chilling the stone cold body even more..

This was the day that Tenba Gensou died... this was the end of.. The Pegasus Fantasy.

Three hours she had waited. There was no sign of her. The forecasted sun steadily shrunk behind a cluster of clouds she knew far from benign, its rays peeking past a baleful grey, lending to the radiant crescendo of oncoming thunder.

Kurisuna turned down the long, slanting shadow of a waiter. You should have known, chastised her inner narrative. There was no way she'd come.

She watched the other patrons take their leave, average men baptized in alcohol. The omnipresent odor of fermented rice had not tipped her off as much as their palsied, shambling gaits. Kurisuna knew this misery. She sensed, understood, burst at the seams with it. But never would she adopt the same conduit as these people; solace at the bottom of a cup got you a case file at the Investigations branch of her division.

She looked at the seat across from hers, and the unaccounted Tenba Gensou. That anyone—let alone her own subordinate—would play her for a fool had bewildered the red-head, two hours ago. As it'd dawned upon her that the 3rd seat would not be showing, she had sounded like the gloam and storm, dark with their promises. And then, like the flux of transient tides, the insanity had receded, and hunger had pinched her stomach.

Smoothly, she pushed off the table and set back her chair. The coins clattered from the Shinigami's fist before the employee could verbally accost her, and she stroked the wrinkles from her shihakushou, embittered by Gensou's absence. One of the customers neared her, and pale fingers kissed the hilt of her blade in wordless caution. There were dark, unseen angles to the 3rd district past night fall. She did not plan on sticking around for them.

Kurisuna sauntered down the gravel walkway and the fresh, elongated shadows that stole across the path. Ranks of cherry blossoms, pines and camellias with blooms as large as saucers took either side of the trail. Wisteria of petals flushed a gorgeous lavender had overtaken the tavern centuries ago, when the landlords had started taking care of their flora, but the vine's pendulous stems had yet to flower this year. She wondered whether the abundance of inebriated clients were attributable to the plant's inability to flourish.

''You better have a good excuse,'' she murmured scathingly.

---

A flicker. Something tall, light and sure-footed ghosted across the nonexistent path of stones and roots and treacherous ground, the torrential stream her only guide. It would be disastrous to fall, but she would never slip. Kurisuna had worn this route too well, navigating the scenic expanse faultlessly in spite of the downpour. Leap, skirt, alight. She had it down to a dance, a sequence of prudently selected stunts. There was the unruly tilt of a rose, the lurching of a wind-swept leaf. Always, Kurisuna managed to right herself.

But the stream. She was unused to seeing it so brutal, foaming and frothing like a mad beast. It was encroaching upon the banks. Any more and she would have to rejoin the road.

She saw it, then. A hand stirring in the flow. That unmistakable blue hair, and pale, pale skin. No, this was not possible, could not happen.

Dead. She miscalculated. Her foot missed its mark, and she fell, slapping the mud with open palms. The word throbbed against her skull, so ugly, so wrong, over and over again as she chanced another glimpse for the shrub behind which she'd spotted the would-be cadaver. A phantasm, a trick, an illusory render of how deeply Gensou had vexed her when she'd not shown for their rendez-vous.

It was still there. The cardiac murmur in her chest exploded, palpitating at a rhythm so intense she immediately felt light-headed. And she screamed, scrambled until her back was to the trunk of the nearest tree. Anything to get away from those lifeless, familiar eyes.

It struck her too fast for Kurisuna to recuperate any sense of composure. Gensou had intended to come. Then, those wounds... she knew to associate them with the katana. Chest heaving with each frantic inhale/exhale, shock restricting any and all measures of professionalism, she scanned the vicinity. The plant life was teeming with evidence of foul play, but the rain had erased all tracks between her and the girl. She could not spot Gensou's zanpakutou, either. Had it been stolen, or had she simply not carried it?

''It's all your fault.'' She collapsed like a dying star. Her balled-up frame no longer heaved and quaked as she reeled it all inside. ''It's not my fault. I didn't cause this.''

''Oh, but you did. You invited this girl. Those wounds could've very well been inflicted by you.'' At this, she shook her head. ''No. No... that's ridiculous.''

She watched, heard, felt the storm exacerbate the current. The water lapped at the 3rd seat, threatening to carry her away, to reaches unknown. Kurisuna wished it had. That she had been the one to find the child this way...

For five long minutes, she fixed the corpse with the single-minded intent of seeing it rises, bursting with color. And it was driving her mad, the way the stream toyed with it like a puppeteer would manipulate a marionette through strings and a paddle. She could not divine why she felt the way she did; Kurisuna had seen innumerable dead, had watched the life drain from her fellow Shinigami's eyes. How was this so much worse?

''Because I sent this child to her death.''

Her remains lifted, so stiff, barely yielding. It snapped her to attention. Rising and drifting away...

No. She caught her hand. Mustered the scraps of willpower necessary to haul her out of the flood and hoist Gensou across her back. It was the heavy, frigid weight of a departed child that seized her heart. But she would hold out. It was not a matter of choice. ''I'll find who did this to you.''

It was her duty to bring her back, and so she would, at the cost of everything else.

[exit]