Tiger Got to Hunt, Bird Got to Fly (ch. 13)
XIII. CAT'S CRADLE
Kira entered the captain's office promptly after he received the summons. The sliding door to the captain's private courtyard was pulled open, and there sat Captain Ichimaru, sprawling half inside and half out, his legs dangling off the side of the narrow strip of deck and down to touch his toes to the grass. His arms, stretched high above his head, framed the rising sun between his fingers and trapped it, crisscrossed it with string.
"Play with me."
Gin tilted his head back as much as he could from where it lay on the tatami floor of his office. It came as a surprise to Kira how he had moved to stand by his captain unbidden; without even his own knowledge, he had made his way closer to this enigma of a man. There was a sourness in his belly at the thought of how deeply his captain had ensnared him, but he took the invitation for the gesture that he wanted it to be, and he sat beside the childish bastard despite the knowledge that this man would only burn him.
Burn him if he was real, burn him if he was fake. Pinching the sides of the Cradle, Kira brought his fingers down and then up through the rest of the formation, making the Soldier's Bed.
"Does the name Sawada ring a bell?"
"What would y'know of Sawada? The bastard's long gone." Gin kept his eyes closed even as he languidly reached to slip his fingers in. Up, over, down and up again: Candles. Sensing Kira's ill mood, Gin nudged him with an elbow and a smirk. "What'll ya give me if I win?"
"There's not much of a winner in cat's cradle."
"Hmph. Don't be such a downer, Izuru."
Kira ignored him in favor of continuing their game, mindlessly hooking his little fingers under the string and working them into a form he had memorized from his childhood. It had been a while since he had played the game with two people, but the forms in this game were much simpler than those of the single player variety, so Kira barely spared them a thought.
"Sawada, huh," Gin finally said as he surveyed his next move. After a few false starts, he made a new shape. "How much did she tell you?"
"Just that your imposter didn't recognize the name." As he spoke, without wasting any time, Kira plucked the string from Gin's fingers and gave it back more complicated than when he received it.
Gin hemmed and hawed for a while before he made his move, and he did so with a flourish. "Yeah, well, my imposter probably believes you're as serious and dignified as ya present yourself t'be. He doesn't know your secret weakness for kiddy games like cat's cradle and bug racing."
Kira's treatment of the string had been getting rougher as the game wore on and he lost his patience. When the opportunity came, he grabbed the strings in the center and pulled them out, crossing, rotating them in and out and under so fast that Gin sat up in astonishment and peered at the new string figure as if it held the secrets of the universe.
"Game over. I win." If his response was brusque, that was to be expected. It was just this attitude of Gin's that Kira hated - this mask of mocking indifference that he put up whenever anything got serious, like he was incapable of letting anyone in. It made Kira feel like every time he broke down a barrier, a new one came up to take its place further down the road.
Gin continued to poke and prod at the string until Kira threw it off to the side. "Don't bother. I made the Clock. That's endgame."
"Thought ya said there wasn't a winner. Tha's sneaky, Izuru, real sneaky."
Kira sighed through his nose and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Can't you just tell me what's going on?"
"Curiosity killed the cat," Gin said.
All this frustration was coming to a head, but because the melodious, playful tone of Gin's voice made his chest tight in stupid ways, instead of an explosion, it came out as a fizzle and he settled for pleading.
"Is someone trying to take you out again? Tell me more so I can help. Please."
Gin pushed Kira's hair back and brushed a thumb over his lips. "Keep an eye on things for me while I'm gone. Please."
Bastard. He always won the games that mattered.
---
The streets of the 17th district of the Rukongai were worn, but still well-paved. The people went about on their day, and some bowed respectfully when they caught the eye of a Shinigami on patrol. Kira nodded back in acknowledgement while Tsuchida smiled and waved, especially to the children who dogged their heels.
The kids kept back a ways, and sometimes they would peek at the Shinigami from around corners, but they were definitely following. There was an air of hero-worship that made Kira both flattered and uncomfortable.
"Tsuchida."
"Yeah?" He snapped back from where he had been making faces at a little girl. The girl scampered off back to her friends.
"What do you make of the rumors that something is upsetting the balance between the worlds?"
"Uh, there are rumors about that? I dunno what that's about. Maybe they're just overreacting."
Tsuchida beamed his boyish grin and gently laid a hand on Kira's arm, perhaps in an attempt to sooth him. Kira, however, was not reassured.
"I don't know," he said. "There might be something to them. It's almost like what happened a hundred years ago, when Hollow activity increased and people from the Rukongai started going missing en masse. We learned about it in the academy, remember? The Gotei 13 ended up losing nearly half the captains at once."
Tsuchida looked to the sky and thought for a while. "I don't know either," he said, crossing his arms over the back of his head. "I just think, well, I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy. As far as anyone knows, it's just the result of natural fluctuations in the patterns of spirit particles. I know everyone's worried after the recent tragedy in the Thirteenth Division, but that's over and done with. If it was part of something bigger, the Head Commander would have sent out alerts, wouldn't he?"
"Mm." Kira grudgingly agreed.
"So there's nothing to get worked up about. Until we receive that alert, we go on treating it like a freak accident."
"...Yeah, I guess you're right."
They came to the end of the road without incident. It was a peaceful day, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. As they turned to head back into the Seireitei, Kira thought that he wanted Tsuchida to be correct in his predictions, but being that he was a glass-half-empty kind of guy, he just couldn't let it go at that. There was just… something. Something was off about the whole thing.
Kira had read the report on the Hollow that killed Lieutenant Shiba. It wasn't like any other Hollow they had seen before. What did it mean, that it would appear here? Were there others like it?
The two Shinigami made their way back in amiable silence. They passed through the gate and down familiar winding roads. When they neared the Fifth Division grounds, they shot each other knowing looks and made to cut across their former division.
Kira, absorbed in his nostalgia, almost didn't see the familiar-looking figure as it ducked into one of the lesser used buildings.
"Huh. Was that Itou-san? Going into the… Hmm…" His mind distantly supplied that the only place of note in that building was the records room, but Kira shrugged it off for now and continued on. It might not have been Itou-san at all. He was tired from patrol, and he would ask her later if she needed help.
Tsuchida, though, stiffened and came to a stop.
Kira had taken a few steps ahead when he noticed. He turned to regard his friend and broke the awkward atmosphere with the first thing that came to mind. "So, you're still joining us at the bar tonight?"
"Sorry," he mumbled, "I just thought of something else I have to do."
---
Sand.
Sand, sand, sand.
Life gives you sand, you make sand angels.
Gin chuckled to himself as he lay in the sand, admiring the moon and the endless night. He slowly, meticulously spread his limbs out wide and back in. And repeat. And repeat. Sand tickling his palms and getting stuck under clothes. And repeat. And repeat.
"What are you doing, Ichimaru-san?"
It was Luppi-kun, his favorite Arrancar, leaning over with his hands on his hips.
"I'm makin' sand angels. You should try it. 'S fun."
Luppi rolled his eyes and said, "No. It's not." But that didn't stop him from plopping down beside Gin anyway.
This was why Luppi was his favorite. He was just this little octopus-thing that crawled out of the desert one day, just another Arrancar, and not even the strongest or the most cunning. His tentacles weren't even the most obscene. He was the only one who sassed back, though, and that made all the difference.
Aizen was having another one of his private "chats" with Barragan, which really meant he was stealing Barragan's throne out from under his nose. (Gin liked to pretend to forget who the old man was every time Aizen announced a trip to Hueco Mundo. It fed Aizen's ego.) They'd fixed up the old man's castle into something much grander than it had ever been before, and there was a thriving population of Arrancar and other assorted creatures within.
The ranks continued to swell. There were enough now for Tousen to have a full class when he started lecturing them on the finer points of virtue. Yup. A full class to stare at him with blank faces because virtue? For Hollows? Whoosh~ Over their heads.
And that just brought Gin to his current predicament. They had a good thing going here. Las Noches took care of itself these days. If Aizen was gone, there was Barragan - the King of Hueco Mundo now reduced to Aizen's glorified errand boy - to run things in his absence. Gin wasn't a necessary component to any part of the day-to-day operations, and he whined as much to Luppi.
"I don't see why I gotta be here. Th'only point to me bein' here is so Aizen-sama can have his posse behind 'im to scare you all into behaving. Ya think he's punishin' me? Did he not like his birthday present? I got him an ugly mug. Maybe he wanted an ugly sweater."
"Your gift choices are appalling." Luppi scooped up some sand and flung it at him.
"Luppi~ I'm serious. We had a good thing goin'. One where daddy Aizen-sama did all the important things by himself, and Tousen and I got to pop in once a decade or so and be the cool uncles to the kiddies. Well, I'm the cool uncle. Tousen's the stodgy one."
Luppi smacked him with another handful of sand.
"It's as you said; Aizen-sama needs you here to present a united force for us poor Hollows, especially with the way the numbers have been expanding as of late. Goodness knows what we'd do if we sensed any weakness! Why, the stupid brutes would tear your limbs off until you were but a head and a torso, and then where would that leave your sand angels?"
Gin began to cackle in a way that made Luppi shift uncomfortably, but the Arrancar stayed where he was when others would have fled. "See, Luppi? This is why you're my favorite."
---
That morning, the Third Division's Captain Ichimaru Gin went on leave. He left without taking any of his possessions, and said he was headed to the far reaches of the Rukongai.
In the early evening, after Kira finished his scheduled patrol route, he met with a few friends and acquaintances at a bar. Among those was Lieutenant Matsumoto, of whom he asked about his captain's whereabouts, and to which she replied that she didn't know anything for sure, but was almost certain he was making a trip to visit their old haunting grounds. Where else would he go, if not to the closest thing that passed for a hometown? She wished she'd had the chance to go with him, but all her vacation days had been used up - Captain Hitsugaya docked them for the times she slept the day away in his office.
None of the Shinigami had noticed anything out of the ordinary that day, so it was unexpected when the first victim turned up in the Third Division that night.
---
A/N: Kira made the mistake of busting out his mad ayatori (Japanese cat's cradle) skills for a Shinigami talent show one time, and it was definitely a mistake because Gin was there and Gin makes it his life's mission to have Kira indulge in stupid games that he secretly likes. Like, WTF Gin. Why you gotta ruin a man's reputation like that?
And now random children come up to Kira sometimes and ask him to teach them. Gin is one of these children. His favorite figure is "gum", but he can't do it himself. When he tries, he gets his hands all knotted up with string, so he makes Kira do it for him. All. The. Damned. Time. And for like, forever.
"Can I stop now?"
"No."
"Please?"
"Gum~!"
Gin's so happy and shit and Kira's all gloomy and like *siiiiigh* "Gum~"
But he keeps doing it because he's a masochist sweet boyfriend like that.
(I headcanon this so hard, srsly. You can see some ayatori here.)