Part 1: A Chance encounter

Soi Fong leapt from rooftop to rooftop. It felt good to be back in the real world. Ostensibly she was here hunting some minor criminal or other. No one near important enough to warrant her personal attention, but it was an excuse she'd grown comfortable using over the long years. Of course the true reason behind this visit was somewhat different from the last. Her hunt for Yoruichi was over--in fact she knew her goddamn address. However, she'd realized that, while cooped up in her office after the Aizen debacle, she'd come to enjoy these fruitless visits.  It was the sights, the sounds and how fast everything seemed to change; everything except the people. They still scurried to and fro, in a desperate rush to accomplish something of meaning in their ridiculously short lives.

But it’s not really a break, she told herself. After all, regular reconnaissance of a rapidly changing battlefield was common sense.

Soi Fong paused on the edge of a rooftop and looked down into the local high school quad. The boy was easy to spot--his lanky frame, his apathetic manner, not to mention his orange hair, all set him apart from the crowd. She'd been curious. Here he was, in his natural state, the child that had unwittingly helped Aizen turn Seireitei upside down. To the eye it was impossible to imagine the depths of his power, but to Soi Fong's senses the boy radiated so much spiritual energy he was his own traveling earthquake. She scanned around for his companions. This area had an amazing concentration of strange humans. Was his power so great it was transforming those around him, or was there something about this town that was changing them all? No doubt Urahara had some opinions on the matter, but Kami-sama be damned if she was going to ask him.

While lost in her musings Soi Fong's ears detected a familiar sound. Faint, but unmistakable, it was a noise she had heard her entire life; the rhythmic pat-pit-pat of someone going through their Katas. There was the soft patter of bare feet on a hardwood floor as they danced around an imaginary opponent. A pause, followed by a dull thud, indicated an airborne attack and a solid landing. Apparently this was a day of satisfying curiosity. Soi Fong tracked the sound to a small gymnasium 200m away. Peering in through an upper window she observed a single small figure deftly executing sequence after sequence of parries, blows and high kicks.

She's pretty good, Soi Fong thought to herself, for a human. Every strike was precise and each imaginary attack flowed seamlessly into the next, but there was a distinct lack of power and speed that her fragile body would probably never overcome. Still, the particular ferocity to her movements piqued Soi Fong’s interest. She wondered what petty battle this human was training so intensely for.

Dropping in through the window she landed easily on the balls of her feet despite the 2-story fall. Just as she touched the ground the girl spun round with a sweeping kick aimed straight for her head. The little Captain was so surprised that only honed instincts allowed her to duck the first kick and then bring her arm up to block the return sweep. This girl could sense, see and touch her?! She mentally berated herself for dropping her guard. Hadn't she been thinking just a few minutes ago what a strange town this was?

The girl met her eyes and with a flash of recognition slowly lowered her leg.

"Oh," she grumbled, "It's one of you."

What's with this attitude? Soi Fong quirked her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.

"You don't seem too surprised to see a death god," she observed through her quizzical expression.

The girl shrugged dismissively.

"Excuse me, but I have to get back to training," she grunted, before turning her back on Soi Fong.

The tiny Captain bridled slightly at the curt dismissal, but retreated to the bleachers, content to observe. She felt slightly intrigued by the obvious fire burning within this spiky haired girl. She must have been doing her Katas for over an hour or more and the wooden floor had become slick with her perspiration. However the girl didn't slow down, never skipped a beat or placed a foot wrong on the increasingly traitorous polished surface. There was something about her that made Soi Fong feel very nostalgic, a certain set to those dark eyes that spoke of determination forged from steel.

"Why do you fight?" Soi Fong asked suddenly, the sharp question piercing the air between them like an arrow.

That caused the girl to miss a beat. She dropped her stance and turned around with a startled expression on her face like she'd forgotten the death god was even there.

"Huh?"

"Why are you training so hard? What's the point for someone like you?"  If the girl could see her then the girl could see Hollows. Soi Fong had no sympathy for the weak that went out of their way to get themselves killed.

"Someone... like... me?" Somehow spiky hair managed to get spikier as she bristled under the death god’s sneer.

"Exactly." Soi Fong rose slowly from her bench, then flash-stepped to a point a few inched from the girl's nose. To her credit she flinched, but didn't recoil. "A human," Soi finished.

Steely eyes met steely eyes as the girl tried to stare down a woman at least a hundred years her senior. Soi Fong's sneer turned into a grin as she realized she was enjoying this.

"How do you know I don't have special powers?" the girl retorted.

"Do you?"

"No," was the simple reply, but there was no self-pity in her young eyes. Soi Fong approved of the attitude, even if she didn’t approve of the weakness.

"Well there you go. A human."

If Soi Fong wasn’t the queen of cool stares she might have been slightly put out by the look these dark eyes were now giving her.

"I may be a mere human,” the mouth hanging a few inches in front of her nose hissed, “but I'm no coward and I can fight. You arrogant death gods aren't always around to save the day."

Not rising to the insult Soi Fong continued in a cool manner.

"You may not be a coward, but this isn’t your fight. If you see a Hollow and you don't run then you're an idiot. A dead idiot."

“Of course it’s my fight if my friends get hurt! I don’t care about the rest. No matter what it takes, I'll protect her."

"Who?"

Oops... "Uh.. my -hime."

Hime?

"You have a princess you'd die to protect?"

No wonder she'd been feeling nostalgic if this was what was motivating the girl. Soi Fong stepped back so that her eyes could scan the whole figure before her. Tightly toned arms had crossed defensively across an ample, though currently bound, chest. Lean muscle wrapped around square shoulders, slim hips and compact thighs. This was a body that had been trained seriously and trained hard, but judging from what she had seen earlier, it had been trained for competition not combat.

Tatsuki blushed deeply as she realized what she'd said. She never used that nickname in public and now she'd given an undead stranger the wrong idea.

She took it literally, she realized. What kind of fantasy world is she from?

"Whatever, just get out of my sight. You're a distraction." Tatsuki replied dismissively and pivoting neatly on the balls of her feet walked towards her towel and change of clothes.  Soi Fong, lost in thought, didn't respond for a few moments.

"You'll need speed and a weapon," she said finally.

"Huh?" Tatsuki paused, water bottle halfway to her open mouth.

Soi Fong turned to face the girl and clarified.  "With your body you'll never have enough strength to take down a Hollow with hand-to-hand and if you get hit by an attack you'll be finished. So you need some way to deal damage and you have to be fast enough to not get hit. As you are now you would die before you had a chance to protect your princess."

"Oh...” Let it slide. “Um…What kind of weapon?"

"I'll think about it", the death god replied before turning around and walking out through the door, without bothering to open it.

What the hell was that all about? Tatsuki thought to herself as she gathered her things and headed for the showers. That death god was a strange woman... and very short. With a shrug she dismissed the incident as weird, but irrelevant. I wonder what subject I'm skipping right now?