[i] The flickering street lamps made the white snow glow a sickening shade of bright orange in the town square. The dull thudding of a bassline to some obscure club remix accompanied the laughter and chatter of a group of teenage girls, wrapped up against the cold night. One girl, around 17, stood motionless and gaping in a black Shihakusho. The bitter chill of the night didn't seem to bother this one very much, as her gaze was transfixed upon the girl with the yellow parka.

"What's the matter, Hio? You look like someone's been shot!" teased one of the girls, leading Hioshimi through the night with them under the screeching laughter. The girl in the Shihakusho gulped, made mute against the teasing and the laughter, and stared rigidly at the girl with the yellow parka. Her hands started to shake.

"WEELLP," shouted the girl with the yellow parka, "I'm going to call it for tonight, girls, I'm exhausted! I really need some sleep." and she turned to walk away.

There was a bang, a splat, and a thud. The orange snow turned black with the blood of the girl, and the laughter shifted into high-pitched howls of grief and terror, and the girl in the black Shihakusho was left motionless at the side of the body. There was a time, long ago, where she used to try and help, in vain, to staunch the bloodflow; but her years in the Soul Society and the Gotei 13 told her, very clearly, that a wound to the head was undeniably fatal. She mused over the other options; what if she tripped the girl over? Would she have had to die even then, but the bullet wouldn't have ricocheted off the street lamp and snapped a few of the steel strands of wire holding the neon club sign in the air...would that have meant that Hioshimi would've got to live for a long and healthy life?

Oh right, the neon club sign. Hioshimi looked up as it sped towards her skull, and she shut her eyes...[/i]

...Opening them with a choked yell, sitting bolt-upright in a cold sweat in a darkened room somewhere in the barracks of Squad 8. There were two possible explanations; either her captain knocked her out and put her in her bed, or she used kido on herself in the vague hopes of getting some good rest. She really hoped it was the latter; last time her captain knocked her out, she was out for the entire day and had several late pieces of paperwork to apologise for. It looked like daytime, quite possibly early afternoon, or perhaps late morning. Her stomach told her she missed at least one meal so far.

Hioshimi grunted as she sat up, the covers rolled off her but the fog in her head remained. She can't have been asleep for long, last thing she remembered was watching the sun rise on the roof of the barracks because she had finished....had finished...something. Paperwork. Reading a book. Training. Washing her uniform. Jinzen. Sharpening her blade. Flash-stepping from roof-top to roof-top until she tired out. [i]Well,[/i] thought Hioshimi bitterly, [i]I'm always tired out anyway, so I couldn't have been leaping around the barracks like an idiot.[/i] It had to be something else, and she'll probably figure out what it was later on in the day. Probably wasn't Jinzen, either, she treats that with a lot of respect, it's unlikely she'd forget a meeting with Fuminshiyou. Hioshimi yawned, grabbing her zanpakuto's hilt re-assuringly; there it was, resting on her left side so she could draw it with her right hand. She slipped the sheathe and the blade to rest comfortably in her belt, and her eyes narrrowed.

She held a hand up in the air at the sound of a faint tinkling, and a black butterfly landed on her fingertips. She listened to the powerful, confident and composed voice of her Captain Commander talk about a Hakuda tournament - [i]Hakuda? Really? The one thing I'm not good at. Here's hoping there's a Kido tournament later on...[/i] - in around an hour. Dimly, she wondered if her Captain got the message with her for a moment, before opting to assume that he didn't and she headed outside, yelling at the rest of Squad 8 to gather around for the announcement.