Bleach: Derailed

[] Rukia Kuchiki

"Aren't you a little early for this kind of thing?" Kiyone Kotetsu, joint third seat of the thirteenth division, asks you. The officer is a short woman with orange-brown hair cut short and, like Rukia, purple eyes. She doesn't bear any resemblance to the other woman, though, which is easy enough to say because she's standing right next to her. The two of them, along with two more unranked members of the thirteenth division, make up the escorts and teachers that will show you how to perform konso, and demonstrate how to cleanse hollows, on the trip to the human world.

She wears a blouse with a stiff collar under her uniform, and wrist-length white gloves, which honestly puts you more in mind of a maid than a monster-fighting samurai ghost. Luckily you didn't actually say that.

There are also four academy students, and all of them except for you are in their second or third year. None are from class two. You're still not sure why someone from the thirteenth division is running the expedition that the captain of the seventh arranged. Maybe it's just on a rota, you suppose, but Kiyone asked you a question.

"I'm not." You say. "I'm ready.

The third seat looks at Rukia, instead of one of the older soul reapers.

"Shiba won the academy's recent tournament." She explains dryly.

"It's Kurosaki-Shiba. Ichigo Kurosaki-Shiba. I didn't give my old name up. I'm not a new person just because I've got more family now." You protest.

"Sure thing, Ichigo." Kiyone says. "And since that's all of you, let's be off."

She leads you through a great gate set into the outer wall of the seireitei. Members of the kido corps go in first, holding up their glowing hands as they reinforce the passage between the living world and soul society. Things are supposed to happen if it isn't reinforced -bad things- but you're not sure what and aren't very curious, as long as it doesn't actually happen, anyway.

"There's a cleaner that comes through, though it shouldn't while an entrance is authorized." Rukia says conversationally as you walk beside her. "If you hear anything other than footsteps, you'd best run in the opposite direction as quickly as possible."

"Like a maid?" You wonder, and then yelp when the short girl smacks you in the back of the head.

"No, like a massive thing that devours all it touches." She hisses.

The cleaner doesn't show up, and you have a safe trip through to the living world. For the first time in far too long, you look up at the sky and see stars. You stop and just look at them. The breeze is cool and tinged with tastes that you didn't know where missing until they were there again. The distant noise of the world around you is more full and rich than the quiet pre-industrial soul society. It's... so familiar. The city is different, but the living world is the living world.

"Ma'am, did you forget your limiter?" One of the soul reapers asks under his breath. Kiyone shakes her head, and looks at you askance.

"Can you reign that in a little?"

"I'm trying." You admit with a grimace.

"Obviously not enough." You pretend not to hear Rukia mutter under her breath, because the group is moving.

The two other soul reapers advance first. They seem to relax after a few minutes, and they are, but the way they walk... they're ready for a fight. Kiyone goes over the basics of what happens when you die, again. "Most humans have the decency to pass on to Soul Society when their bodies die, but some are too rooted in the living world to do so on their own. They have a significant person, or place, or object that they can't let go of. This is where a soul reaper steps in. Our zanpakuto can purify any soul, and send them to their proper destination. Hollows need to be killed, but a left behind soul -a plus- is so unstable that just tapping them on the head with the hilt of your sword will do the trick."

You stop by a man wearing a stained t shirt, sitting on the sidewalk and staring down a storm drain, muttering to himself. "This is a plus. Look at the chain of fate attached to his chest." The redheaded woman draws her sword and uses it to lift the end of the chain embedded in the man's ribcage. It's about a foot long. "This is a living soul's chain of fate. It attaches them to their bodies. When their body dies it starts to decay. Once it's fully gone, the plus transforms into a hollow. Passing on to Soul Society gets rid of the chain altogether, so that it can't dissolve. Or something. I may need to ask taicho about how exactly that works..."

She reaches out and taps the man on the forehead with the hilt of her zanpakuto. He sparkles for a moment and then vanishes.

"I was going to eat that."

Kiyone continues with her exposition. "There! No muss, no fuss, and the whole thing only takes a few seconds."

"...Excuse me?"

"Now the most important thing to remember is that you can't just rush up to a plus swinging your zanpakuto. That scares them, and even if the blade can purify plusses just as well as the hilt, as a soul reaper you need to be considerate of those you serve."

"Hellooo, I'm right here? Are you ignoring me? They're ignoring me. Rude! Don't you know better than to ignore people?"

You're at the back of the group. It's just a natural habit you picked up a while ago, once it started to become clear that only people like Chad were going to be taller than you. If you were in front you'd be blocking someone else's view of the konso lesson, after all. That's why you're the one to realize that the woman in the dress standing behind you is actually talking to you, or more accurately to all of you.

She's wearing one of the most elaborate, puffy white dresses you've ever seen. Short sleeves with poofed out shoulders, long gloves, and frilled thigh-length dress. She's drawn purple tear marks below each of her eyes, has a spiked hair ornament on her forehead, and her inky hair is up in two ponytails. Oh, and she's looking right at you with an expression of peeved disappointment.

"Oh. Sorry. Most people can't see spirits, which... is what I am now, I guess. I'm still getting used to it."

She must be...
[] Hungry
[] A gothic lolita
[] Clearly a cosplayer
[] Is that part of a hollow mask?