Proluge: to die

Disclaimer: This belongs to Kubo Tite. I only own this fanfictions plot.

A/N: This is the first fanfiction I've put up on the Internet, so I hope you will like it! Now I'm not going to talk anymore, I don't want to stop you from reading.

At Tatsukis place

"Keigo, what the hell are you doing in my house", Tatsuki said in an annoyed voice.

"We're havin' a party", Keigo said, "and those FOUR are not invited", he finished with a snicker. Everyone knew what and who he was talking about and why. They had all learned a bit about the world of shinigamis and soul society when they almost died at the hands of Aizen.

"I know you hate them leaving you out, but it's just you, Mizurio and me", Tatsuki retorted with a snort. "That's not really a party." She also felt left out sometimes. Orihime was her best friend after all. She also knew that it wasn't really Orihimes fault and that it was one part of her life Orihime could never share with her.

"True Asano-san", Mizurio said in his usual voice and infuriating Keigo with his formal words. When Mizurio felt bad he only needed to bully Keigo to feel better. If Keigo felt bad, he wasn't the only one to feel down and, well, it was fun. Mizurio thought that he might as well pass time doing something he enjoyed.

"Huh", Keigo snorted but otherwise ignored the comments. Instead he turned on the TV.

"Today a sad accident occurred in Karakura town", the reporter from the news said, which caught the three persons attention.

"An accident in Karakura town", Tatsuki said. "I hope nobody we knew was affected."

"You mean you hope nobody died," Keigo said, trying to joke. This time though his happy face didn't really come through, he was also worried.

"Shh", Mizurio said, he wanted to listen.

"It was a car accident", the reporter continued, "with quite a few injured and even four deaths. It's the most serious accident we have seen in Karakura town for quite a while." The room just became more and more silent and the atmosphere just more and more tense. They were all wondering the same thing, what if somebody they knew had died.

"The dead people are as following: Kurosaki Ichigo, Inoue Orihime, Ishida Uruyu and Sado Yastora", the reporter continued, hitting them all with the hardest blow and sinking the room into depths of silence.

"How could those four die", Tatsuki whispered into the shocked silence, with tears dripping down her face.

"Yes they", Keigo continued after her, his shock painted clearly on his face. "They are the ones who are supposed to be abnormally strong", he exclaimed, anger apparent in his voice. "How could they die in a car crash when they defeated a damn monster." Keigo felt his emotion overflowing, his best friends had died and to let it out he became angry.

"Their souls are strong", Mizurio said, trying to calm himself down by explaining why it was possible. His voice sounded a bit calmer than the others, he usually did not show much emotions, but he was still very shocked. His voice succeeded to calm Keigo down at least and the silence engulfed them again. With no one knowing what to say it continued until the silence felt unbearable.

"I guess they went to Soul Society", Tatsuki said in a very sad voice. Oh, god how she would miss Orihime and Ichigo ... Oh Ichigo. She had known him since they were kids. Gosh, she thought as her tears started dripping again. She would miss them all.

"Yeah", Keigo murmured. "I wonder if they'll all become real shinigamis now", he continued, plastering on a fake smile and finishing with a throaty laugh. He would keep up his happy front even when his friends had died, especially then. Once more the room became quite, no one knowing what to say.

The door burst open and in ran a crying and drenched Chizuru. "Tatsuki", she screamd. "Orihime..." She didn't come any further, her voice faltered when mentioning the name of the woman she really cared about. With tears streaming down her face, she looked at Tatsuki as if she was the only one left on earth. Chizuru was not very close to either Chad, Ichigo or Ishida, but they were still her friends and she was just as shocked as the other three. She had been with them when they almost died by the hands of Aizen.

"I know", Tatsuki said, this time she actually pitied the woman. It was obvious to Tatsuki that Chizuru had ran here as fast as she could, she hadn't even bothered to take a raincoat to protect herself from the pouring rain.

She and Chizuru had a special kind of bond, most times enemies, but still friends or at least friends of Orihime. Tatsuki looked at Chizuru and realized, that even if she was upset, she was many times better at controlling it than Chizuru. So she smiled, put up a cool front and decided to calm herself and the others down at the same time.

"They'll probably go to soul society now", she said. "With their reiatsu, they'll probably become famous shinigamis, and we might meet them when we die."

Everyone let Tatsukis words sink in and somehow they felt a little bit calmer. They still continued with what they where doing before, but the atmosphere where a bit lighter. Chizuro was crying, Keigo was playing happy, Mizurio was spacing out and Tatsuki was calming herself down and fighting to keep up a happy expression. She was not like Mizurio, she wan't used to hide how she felt.

At the Kurosaki clinic

The news of the four deaths were also displayed at the TV in the Kurosaki clinic, which was owned by the family of Kurosaki Ichigo, one of the victims of the car crash. Karin and Yuzu, the one currently watching TV, were spacing out and the room was covered in shocked silence.

"Yuzu, Karin", in came their singing farther. He was as dense as always and didn't notice the way his daughters were acting. With his sound the silence were broken and Yuzu and Karin woke up from their shocked state.

"Whhhaaa", Yuzu started crying and she was not just crying a little bit. The tears were pouring down, as fast as her eyes could possibly produce them. Together with her heart wrenching cries, came her wailing screams. "Onii-chan."

Karin would not cry, she had sworn to herself not to cry whatever happened. She would be stronger than she was when her mother died - no she was already stronger, she thought. So instead of breaking down she started to comfort her sister, comforting herself at the same time. All of it happened in a second, not giving their father Isshin enough time to react and when he did it was an over the top reaction as always with him.

"Yuzu", he started screaming. "What's wrong my Yuzu. My Yuzu darling speak to me." Running his fastest, he was in front of Yuzu in seconds and started shaking her at the same time as screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Calm down you ol' beardy", Karin screamed as a reaction to her fathers stupid reaction. At the same time she put out her fist, hitting him in the face. She had long since learned that the only way of stopping her father was with her fists.

"Karin", her father said sounding injured, but he was interrupted by her. "Ichi-nii, Ichi-nii", she said sounding desperate. "Ichi-nii is dead." First she couldn't get it out, but when she finally succeeded it sounded way to matter of fact, as if she didn't care.

"Ichigo", Isshin said sounding shocked. "Who could possibly kill Ichigo?"

"Not killed, you idiot", Karin scowled once again surprised at her fathers level of denseness. "He, Inoue, Chad and Ishida died in a car crash. Not in a battle, so it wasn't their souls that died. It was there bodies, you dense fool."

"Their bodies", Isshin said stupefied and at the same time Karin realized what she just said. "Calm down Yuzu", she told her sister at the same time as she gave her father a death glare. How freaking dense could he be, she thought. Sometimes she wondered if any of them actually were related to him. At the same time as killing her father with her glares she continued to calm her sister. "See their souls still exist, just in Soul Society instead. I'm sure we'll all meet them again." How they were going to meet was something she forgot to mention though.

With Karins speech Yuzus crying was reduced to a mere sobbing and it seemed to give her father enough time to recover from his shock. "I never saw this coming", he murmured to himself, but not silent enough that it escaped Karins hearing. With those words she got the feeling that something was wrong, something other than her brothers death. Before she could ask him though, he pulled himself together and acted as his usual stupid self.

"See Yuzu, it's nothing to get worried about", he said in his usual loud and annoying voice. "You have your daddy here and that's all that matters", he continued with an attempt to make his voice sweet, at the same time as pulling Yuzu into a giant hug. He tried to get Karin into it, but instead he got a fist in the face again.

Instead of screaming at her dad as she usually would, she continued to comfort Yuzu. "We'll probably meet again anyway", Karin said. When she looked at Yuzus face she added, "before we die". That caught Yuzus attention and she looked up at Karin, confusion clear in her face. "How", she murmured in between hugging her father and taking comfort from his closeness.

"I mean all four of them has pretty high reiatsu right", Karin said slowly so she had time to gather her thought, she did not want to say something wrong. She was just speculating. "And doesn't souls with high spiritual power become shinigamis? If they did, they would become pretty powerful and it wouldn't be weird if they could come and meet us."

"I mean, I meat Toshiro sometimes", she continued when Yuzu didn't respond to her, before she had time to think it through. When she realized what she just said, a light pink color invaded her face. How the hell could she blush about him, she thought. Her brother had just died damn it.

"You're right", Yuzu said and pulled herself out of her misery. What she didn't notice though, was that she interrupted her father from finding out what karin had meant about the Toshiro comment. Which of course made Karin eternally grateful. Karin felt even more grateful when Yuzu said she needed to go to the kitchen to prepare food and she could use that as an excuse to get away.

"I'll go with Yuzu", she said in a hurried voice. "I know so little about cooking, it can't hurt", she continued with a faltering smile. Her excuse had been way to bad. Her father should be able to sense it for what it was, but he just smiled and nodded. "It wouldn't hurt for my little girl to learn more about being a woman," he said and laughed.

Instead of hitting her father, which she really felt like, she hurried after her sister to the kitchen. She would take this opportunity of getting away before he changed his mind.

Kurosaki Isshin looked after his daughters when they walked towards the kitchen. His son had just died and it was still pretty normal. He thought it was amazing, his daughters were so strong. That thought almost brought out a bunch of big tears from his eyes, but it was no point in being dramatic if nobody was watching.

He also knew the reason why things were so ordinary, the hope of meeting their brother again strengthened them. He didn't have anything against that, he just hoped he was going to be able to keep this one bit of information from his daughters. When somebody died they lost their memories and it was very rare for a soul to get its memories back from when it was a living person.

Then it hit him. What had Karin just implied about Toshiro? He had been so concentrated about keeping that piece of information from his smart daughters that he hadn't realized it until now. Now he also understood why she had wanted to go to the kitchen, even though she hated cocking. "Karin", he screamed running to them, with giant tears dropping down his face. His daughters where so damn grown up.

At the Karakura general hospital

In the owners room at Karakuras biggest hospital the TV was also on, showing the same thing as in the previous locations. The man looking at it was Ishidas father Ishida Ryugen, the owner of the hospital.

Ishidas father was looking at the TV, listening to the news which told him his son was dead. Instead of breaking down in tears, which a normal person might have done, he shook his head and uttered two words. "That fool", he said in his usual emotionless voice. It was not Ryugens style to start crying, it was not his style to be affected by anything. Not emotionally anyway.

Sitting there he let out one of his rare smiles. "It should be interesting to see what he will do now", he murmured to himself. "What if he becomes a shinigami?" Ryugen also knew what Ichigos father Isshin knew, that when somebody died they lost all their memories from their life. It should be interesting, he thought as he rose from his seat. He had work to do.

What Ryugen never would admit to even himself though, was that he would miss that idiot of a son. He would miss him, but he had a knowledge most people did not. He knew that everything did not end after you died. He also knew what happened to someone when they died and he was sure of it since it was not just vague speculations. He would miss his son, yes that was true. Just as much as that though he would look forward to see what his son would do as dead. He was fairly sure that with his sons reiatsu, his son would not be able to live the life of a ordinary soul.

At Urahara Shoten

"Did you hear this, my dear", Urahara called out into the empty air.

"Hear what", a rough woman's voice answered, namely Yoruchi.

In front of Urahara a black cat appeared. "Did I hear what, Kisuke", Yoruchi asked again, annoyed that Urahara had not answered her the first time. She knew he probably meant to annoy her, but she was not a patient woman.

"Ah nothing", Urahara said at the same time tapping his fan to his chin. "With your answer I think it's quite obvious that you did not hear it", he continued in his very cryptic way, fighting a smile from appearing on his face. He liked annoying people and Yoruchi was one of the persons he enjoyed to annoy the most.

"Oh", Yoruchi said. "If that's the game you wanna play." And just like that she transformed into her human body, as always looking like the day she was born. Translation: she was totally naked, without a single garment decorating her body. With her very appealing body, she leaned forward towards Urahara until her mouth was right in front of his ear. "Kisuke", she whispered into his ear in a husky tone. Before he had time to react she opened her mouth and bit his ear.

"Yoruchi", he said in a calculating tone. "Is that meant to scare me?" Before she had time to answer though, he continued, in a somewhat more ordinary voice. "I did plan to tell you anyway, this is way to interesting not to tell you." With those words Yoruchi jumped off him and just as she was about to transform herself back into a cat Urahara continued speaking. "And don't transform back into a cat, it's hard to talk to you seriously then."

"Tch", Yourchi scowled but instead of transforming back, she walked back into the store to get a set of clothes. She came back wearing her usual get up. A black top with an orange jacket over and a tight pair of black pants. "So", she said, getting used to her human shape. "What was it you wanted to talk about? And give me some food, I'm freaking starving from all the stupid cat food."

Urahara avoided saying that if she didn't want cat food, she shouldn't go around looking like a cat. Instead he started to explain what he was talking about. "Did you hear that Ichigo, Inoue, Ishida and Chad died", he said with a light smile playing on his lips.

"They what", Yoruchi screamed. "Who the hell could kill them, and what are we gonna do about it?" After her scream she realized that he was smiling and it calmed her down on the spot . If it was anything as serious as it sounded he should have told her without teasing her and going through all that complicated stuff. "Can you explain what you mean", she said in a much calmer voice, but also in a hell lot more annoyed tone. When you socialized with Urahara you should expect to get annoyed.

"Well they did die", he said in a cryptic tone. When he saw Yoruchi's look he quickly continued. "Well their bodies did anyway."

"What", Yoruchi said. She sure as hell wasn't expecting this. "So you mean they are going to Soul Society", she continued when she realized what he actually was saying. When she finished talking she let out a wicked grin. A grin that would make people run for their lives.

"Exactly", Urahara said and let go of his fan to show her his matching grin, it was just as wicked.

"I was just starting to get bored", Yoruchi said. "With Aizen dead and all. But this should be fun." Then she realized something important. "You know it could take many years before they make an appearance, if they ever do."

"I think it's unavoidable that they'll appear, with that massive reiatsu they have", Urahara said, of this he was totally certain. "And even if it does take time, I'm used to wait. I mean we waited 100 damn years to get back at Aizen and give him what he deserved."

"True", she answered. "But I still can't wait", she finished with a laugh.

At Karakura 1st high school

The shocking news reached quite a few people in Karakura town, the four were quite well known. The next day in school a mourning period wear held, the only time the school was completely quiet. In the silence the students and teachers wear supposed to think about the four dead and mourn them. For the people in school who had been close to them, you could make an appointment with a special consoler, to talk about how you felt. It was not an ordinary occasion to have four students die, and the school wanted to make sure that it left as little trace as possible on the students.

In the class 4-3, which Ichigo and his three friends had been going to, the entire day was used as a 'feel free to talk about you feelings' kind of day. The class was even allowed to quit an hour earlier. The entire class was mourning the four dead persons, since they had kind of been the center of the class. Unintentionally of course.

In other parts of town funerals wear planned and it was decided to bury the four persons side by side since they had both died together and fought together in their life. All parties involved had agreed and thought it would be proper since they would probably be comrades in their afterlife as well. It was their relatives and friends, those who knew about Soul Society, way to wish them a happy relationship in death.

The town got used to being without those four though and soon got back to it's ordinary life. Their closest friends took quite a while to mourn, even though they knew where they had gone, but their lives soon returned to ordinary as well. It was a busy time for people in their class, with starting collage, last year of high school and all.

At the car accident

We now go back a bit in time and take a look on what happened right after the car accident. What we see is four persons standing, more like floating, over a bunch of smashed cars, basically in the middle of the car crash. Rain was smattering down, but it passed right through their bodies.

Ichigo looked around himself feeling slightly dizzy, as if he was forgetting something important and that something else was really wrong. What first caught his attention though was the three persons close to him. They where his comrades, that he was totally certain of, even though he couldn't recall much else.

He continued to look around himself and when he looked down he got truly surprised. He saw a car, that was truly broken, but the weird thing was it contained four bodies. These four bodies just happened to look exactly like him and his comrades, just with a bunch of blood covering them. That's when it hit him and he realized why something felt so wrong. He was hovering in the air, with rain passing through him, looking down on his own body that just happened to be covered in blood. There existed only one possible explanation. He was dead. He and his friends were fucking dead.

He looked up to meet his friends eyes and saw that they had realized the same thing. Their moods started to sink when they had realized this fact and the silence just got more and more akward. So just to break the silence Ichigo opened his mouth, before thinking what he was going to say.

"So, I guess we're dead", slipped out of his mouth and if his friends hadn't been looking at him he would have face palmed. How the hell could he have said something so stupid. Remarking the obvious wouldn't make the tense mood go away. His trademark scowl just became more and more annoyed and angry, not that it really was a big difference from how he normally looked.

"True", Orihime said with a small smile on her lips. "So what happens know? I mean it's quite obvious that something should happen otherwise we wouldn't really be here. I never believed the story that when you die everything goes dark. I always preferred believing that when you died you where abducted by space alien who took you out to outer space, where you would fight a battle for mankinds survival." Orihimes voice got more and more excited as she continued her ramble, she was totally lost in her own little world.

Ichigo had tried answering her question in the beginning, but when she just continued he decided to wait. I mean it's almost impossible to wake Orihime up from her fantasy world before she was finished imagining whatever she was imagining.

It was weird like that. Ichigo could remember all about how his friends acted and what kind of person they where, but he could not remember a single instant of time they had actually spent together. It was as if his memories where covered in thick clouds and impossible to reach. Another example of it was when Orihime asked what happened after death. He felt as if he should know the answer, but when he finally thought he had it, it just slipped away.

"Orihime, Orihime, Orihime", Chad and Uryuu said together waking up both Ichigo and Orihime from their daydreaming. When they saw that they had both Orihimes and Ichigos attention Uryru continued. "Your right Orihime, so what do we do know? I don't know about you but I feel like I have something I need to do. But it's just slipping away from me, the same way as everything else is." He finished with a bitter expression on his face.

"Yeah", the three other whispered together dampening the mood again. "I feel like there's something I gotta do", Orihime continued in a whisper, her voice sounding as if she was on verge to break down crying, "before I pass on." The others could only nod and agree with her words.

But in truth they where lost. Just as it felt as if the silence and their knowledge of how little they actually knew was gonna strangle them, a strange man appeared. The man wore a strange black kimono and a sword at his hip. He had a big afro on his head, and the only word to describe his appearance was average. At least if you wanted to be polite.

The strange thing about him though was that he had jumped down from the roof of a two floor house without looking bothered at all. He also just happened to be walking towards them in the air, like without touching the ground.

"So these four has died", the man murmured to himself. "This could be trouble, I better send them on quickly."

"Af-san", Ichigo said to the man when he saw him, without actually knowing why. "Do I know you Af-san, or did I know you?" Why had he called him Af-san, Ichigo thought. Maybe this man had answers to what they should do know.

So they have forgotten already, the man thought. Well he had heard that the people with high reiatsu forgot about their lives faster than others, since it was a higher chance that they had a relative with high reiatsu as well and thus they might be able to say goodbye to them. The dead are not allowed to say goodbye to the living though. Well I better send them of fast, of something got wrong I would not be able to handle it, he admitted to himself. Even if they had forgotten, he knew what they were capable of.

"I don't know about that", he responded to Ichigo, his thought progress had only taken a few seconds."But that is not necessary. I'm a shinigami and it is my duty to send you on to your next destination, Soul Society." He would usually go down in a more detailed explanation, but he did not want to trigger any of their memories. Shit, he was not used to this kind of pressure. He could do it, he could do it, he tried convincing himself.

"Soul Society", Ishida nodded in acceptance at the same time as feeling a strange recognition. Had he heard that name before and why did the word shinigami make him strangely annoyed and a little mad.

Chad was just silent as normal, but gave a short nod. Anything had to be better than staying here, not knowing what to do and looking down at your own dead body.

Inoue felt that she should ask what kind of place Soul Society was, what if it was like hell, but she had the strange feeling that it was kind of nice. Or was supposed to be anyway. She also felt like she had a really good friend in Soul Society, a friend she had gone through hell with basically. But where the living supposed to know about Soul Society.

"But I have something I really need to do", Ichigo murmured. It really bothered him, because he couldn't remember what. He knew there were something he needed to do, something he had to do and just for a second he saw to before him. Two pretty small girls on with black hair and a boyish style and one with brown hair and waring a cute dress. They were both looking lost and somehow he new what he had to do had something to do with them. Then it just vanished, the pictures, the remembrance. It all vanished and he felt like he was trying to catch straws.

The man they called Af-san didn't want to wait though, he was gonna send them on now. He really didn't care if he had to be rough and he thought his superiors would understand. He brought out his sword and was prepared for whatever reaction that would bring in the four people. But there was no fear, no jumping in fright, no screaming what the hell he thought he was doing with a sword. That was the usual reactions from a soul. But he guessed that their battle instincts where still left, since the only thing they where doing where watching him carefully.

As the man he thought of as Af-san prepared to bring the shaft of his sword down on Ichigo a thought hit Ichigo, or more like an instinct. "Grab my hand." It came out like a half scream and at first his friends looked at him in surprise. Af-san though, he was afraid something was wrong and hurried up. Sadly, or sadly for him, he didn't have enough time to bring his sword down on Ichigo before Inoue grabbed his hand.

Damn, this was not good", he thought. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't exactly good either. At the same time as Ichigo started to vanish, the soul burial didn't take long time, Ishida grabbed Inoues hand and Chad Ishidas. Well he didn't have much of a choice, he thought. So he just continued what he was doing, even faster then before. After this he would need a huge break to relax his nerves, he thought. Well maybe with their leaving Karakura town would become a more ordinary place.

In Soul Society

When they opened their eyes again what they saw severely shocked them. They place they were in was filthy. That was basically the best word to describe it, filthy and looking like it would collapse any second. They where standing at a green field, maybe 20 times 20 meters. Around it were houses that looked like it was going to collapse any second. The field was wet, as if it had just rained, but it was not raining right now. The grass looked sad, and a bit withered, and right now half of the filed where covered in a sort of watery mud.

"So this is Soul Society", Ichigo murmured to himself, and the three people around him either didn't hear him or just decided to ignore him, since there was basically nothing to add.

"Why did you tell us to grab your hand", Ishida instead said in an annoyed tone, he was also pushing up his glasses like he always did when he were annoyed. If you looked closely you could also see that he had a faint blush on his face.

"Well, what if we hadn't come to the same place", Ichigo said, sounding surprised that he would have to explain it. "It was more instinct than anything really."

"Tch", Ishida responded to the stupid explanation. "I wished I didn't come to the same place as you."

Ishida and Ichigo continued their bickering as they, together with their two other friends walked around to see what kind of place they had landed in.

Without their knowledge they had landed in district nr. 80, the northern part, also called Zaraki. It was one of the four worst places to live in Soul Society.

A/N: I hoped you liked the story so far and I'm probably going to update next weekend, maybe as early as Friday. I already have a few more chapters writen, so you guys don't have to worry about me stoping for quite a while! In the next chapter we will also see what happenes in the 80th district, Zaraki.

I would also love if somebody left a review and told me what they thought about mu story, since it's my first I would really like to know how I'm doing. ^-^I love constuctive criticism, but please no flames.