Bleach Drabble (437-440)
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!! So yeah. The drabbles in this set actually have a theme, though they suck.
437.
Title: Bonding
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Isshin, Ichigo
Word Count: 254
Warning/s: Really dumb. And OOC.
Summary: Isshin has many wise things to impart on Ichigo.
Dedication: Haha errrr… anyone with crazy parents? XD
A/N: I dunno. I really don’t know.
“ARGH!!!”
Ichigo wraps his hands around Isshin’s throat and shakes him as he says that, just to let the bastard know he means business this time.
Isshin flails. “Noo, Iiiiichigo!!!!!” he rasps, and then clamps his own hands on top of his son’s, moving them by sheer force of will so that they land a bit higher on his throat. That done, he lets go and gives the orange-headed boy a thumbs up and a wink. “Choke daddy like this!!”
And just like that, Ichigo feels his seething rage boil down into something akin to stupefaction and disbelief, his grip loosening unconsciously from around the older Kurosaki’s neck. “Oh my god, you’re so dumb.”
Isshin springs up to his feet like one of those creepy inflatable clown-shaped punching bags then, still winking and giving that ridiculous thumbs up. “Father-son-bonding-lesson-number-seven-hundred-and-eighty-one done! YAY!” he declares like he’s just leveled up, not sounding at all like he was being choked rather emphatically five seconds earlier.
Ichigo sighs and ambles back towards his room, feeling very, very tired. “Right. I’m going to go cry in my room now.”
It’s as if he sees some sort of signal light goes off at Ichigo’s words, and suddenly, Isshin is lunging after his son again. “Cry into daddy’s bosom, Ichi!!! Father-and-son-bonding-lesson-number-seven-hundred-and-eighty-two!! MANLY TEARS OF LOVE!”
Ichigo promptly closes and locks the door behind him, taking a small amount of comfort from the heavy “thunk” he hears on the other side when Isshin’s face impacts it full force.
“NICE MOVE, ICHI!”
“ARGH.”
END
438.
Title: I Walk With Heroes
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Ryuuken, Uryuu
Word Count: 613
Warning/s: OOC and random speculation on back-story for my part, I suppose.
Summary: Ryuuken thinks she’d had the loveliest smile.
Dedication: Haha anyone who didn’t understand their dad until they became adults themselves, I think. ^^;;
A/N: Yeah, I keep writing the same story over and over again. *sigh*
He remembers the joy he’d felt when she’s told him the first time, took his hand after a long day at the office and held it to her stomach. “We’re having a baby, Ryuu.”
Despite his exhaustion he’d smiled and kissed her, picked her up and told her he was very, very happy.
“You’ll be the best father,” she’d assured him, months later when he’d voiced his concerns to her in bed, an arm wrapped around her small shoulders as he took strength from her after another hard day, work nine-to-five and Quincy by night.
“What child wouldn’t be proud to grow up amongst heroes?” she’d added, smiling though she’d sounded more tired than even him.
It had been hard for a young medical school intern to provide for a family on his own at first, and coming to hard times she’d beamed and rolled up her sleeves and assured him that cleaning offices at night was as simple as cleaning a home during the day. Told him that the exercise was good for her.
She’d wanted to do her own part as best she could she’d said, because she was a regular girl living in a family full of heroes.
And, with some bitterness, Ryuuken thinks that it’s because of that that Uryuu won’t ever know her apart from the scarce pictures they have and the stories his grandfather had told him because he’d been too shy-too afraid maybe-to ask his father about what she’d been like.
Heroes.
A far away ideal-the kind that tramples good people under its feet.
And not something he’s willing to let his son experience the hard way-heroes don’t make ends meet. Heroes can’t pay for school, for food, for a house, for clothes.
He does his best to teach Uryuu so that his son knows the value of these things, that they’re important things he can hold in his own two hands.
Because as nice as it all sounds, Ryuuken’s discovered that saving people is at cost to yourself and those closest to you.
And ideals won’t keep Uryuu from going hungry, won’t keep him warm or safe or teach him all the important things he needs to know to survive.
He has to work hard for a good life-focus on his studies and what he wants to do with a future in which he will likely have his own a family to provide for. His own important people to take care of.
“Uryuu, I won’t condone anything less than perfect scores on your reports.”
“Yes, father.”
“Study hard and work diligently-- don’t waste your time with pointless things.”
“Yes, father.”
“Discipline yourself. Get your head out of the clouds and focus on what’s important. I won’t always be around to make sure your work gets done for you.”
“Yes, father. Sorry, father.”
He says those things and knows Uryuu hates him for them, that the boy must feel as though his father is going out of his way to be spiteful, to crush all his dreams before he’s even begun to realize them.
He doesn’t understand that Ryuuken says all those things and really means “don’t become like me.”
He doesn’t want anymore heroes. Just to make amends.
Uryuu’s mother really had a beautiful smile, he thinks. Ryuuken wishes his son could have seen it for himself, especially for having been the reason behind it so very often.
He’ll never be able to make it up to Uryuu for robbing his son of that.
No amount of trying will fix it.
For now, the best Ishida Ryuuken can do is attempt to save Uryuu from becoming just like his father.
END
439.
Title: An Experiment
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Character/s: Mayuri, Nemu
Word Count: 971
Warning/s: OOC? Yes.
Summary: Mayuri watches her grow up.
Dedication: shinigamikender and tsukishine- haha watch me do more fave-charry rape!
A/N: Mayu still TOTALLY HARD TO WRITE.
When he made her, he allotted exactly five days for her to grow up.
Day one involved learning to walk, to move. She stumbled the first few times and he made her stand again and again without reprieve, hours watching her until he’d lost his patience and gone off to do more productive things while Hiyosu was left to supervise. After the sixth hour she was able to walk towards him with all the grace of a bowlegged goat, but he surmised that for the time being, that would be passable. Her learning rate was far advanced in comparison to the failed prototypes before her, and he made a note of it in his records and trusted that her ability to control motor functions would increase exponentially with time. Her infancy ended after the first twelve hours.
Day two involved speaking and literacy. He gave her books and reports and anything with written words on them. He watched her explore them from a safe distance and wrote his findings down while Akon was forced to speak, enunciate, explain to her until she could do it herself. It took her twice as long to learn how to read as it had taken for her to speak, and speaking in itself came out to be four times as long as walking. Mayuri observed all of this from behind a glass-paneled window and was satisfied if not wholly impressed. She would pick up combat strategies as time went on and he would create special implants to be placed into her brain for more complicated matters as well as to generally increase her overall capacity once he learned the limits said brain had in its original state. Her youth ended after learning more than five thousand kanji.
Day three was one of the more trying, as he’d had to make her self-sufficient. She was showed how to dress herself, feed herself, clean herself. A machine was only useful if it could run without the need of constant supervision after all. Mayuri showed her the basics, and then left her to her own devices once again. She observed Unohana’s hair from her window and saw functionality in the design-braided her own hair back so it would not hinder her in performing the tasks Mayuri-sama asked of her. She observed the intake of food by Rin and the others and discovered how to prepare meals for herself, food that would keep her functions up as was necessary. She collapsed from the exhaustion of the past three days exactly 71 hours in and at that moment learned what it was to rest. Mayuri made a note that her progress suggested mid-adolescence.
Day four was when she could finally be of use, and she was given a tour of the facilities in the twelfth division specifically. All the knowledge she would need to be of use to Mayuri was imparted upon her in a shorter amount of time than it had taken her to learn to read and she took in every detail of each area of research fast enough that Mayuri decided that this one was worth keeping, as he’d terminated many of her predecessors upon finding them deficient here, at one of the most important stages of growth. He gave her a name then, because she would need one to answer to given the general acceptance of her existence by the twelfth division captain. As such, Nemu reached young adulthood.
Day five was the final day in which he would go out of his way to teach her anything-from there she would be left to her own devices in regards to the observation, adaptation, and incorporation of new information into her system. She was allowed outside beyond the gates of the twelfth division for the first time. Given basic information on the lay of the land and what to expect from the inhabitants, Mayuri watched from a comfortable distance as she approached others and used what he had taught her over the other stages of her growth. Movement towards. Day one. Speech. Day two. Self-sufficiency-communicating her own thoughts. Day three. Stating and acknowledging her sole function in life. Day four.
Pleased enough with his results this time around, he allowed her to memorize the outlay of seireitei and the hierarchy under which it functioned, telling her that her role in this suddenly and much expanded universe was to conceive of it as a means through which she would better serve Mayuri’s demands. An option on her list of programs. She bowed her head and said “Yes, Mayuri-sama,” and he grunted in vague approval, writing down final thoughts in his copious notes on the matter before having them filed and stored away by his subordinates for future reference. Finally, she had come to adulthood.
He supposed that this one would do just fine for the time being, but all the same, he wanted to keep the appropriate records regarding the experiment should the need to terminate her arise.
There were of course, things fundamentally wrong with this model as there had been with all the others, but the odds of perfection had been computed and declared daunting. As a pragmatic man Mayuri deigned that the girl he had created five days ago would work well enough for the time being.
If she was found to be greatly lacking after these five days he knew he could always make new Nemus at any time, and while there was something about this prototype in particular that vaguely irritated him, it was more a feeling than a fact and really, he rather preferred not to have to go through the trouble of raising new ones time and time again if he could avoid it.
As such, he marked her status as “temporarily operational” and left it at that.
END
440.
Title: Just Today
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Eleventh Division
Word Count: 481
Warning/s: No spoilers I can imagine, just randomness.
Summary: Kenpachi can’t remember her first words.
Dedication: My Dad! Happy Father’s Day. ^^
A/N: Taken from a statement my dad used to say all the time. See? I do listen to my parents every now and again.
“That’s easy. First word was “aaauuh!!” wasn’t it?”
Yumichika sighs at Ikkaku’s declaration. “That’s not a word.”
The bald death god wrinkles his nose. “The hell it isn’t. Hear it all the time when we’re beatin’ shit up.”
Kenpachi grunts and sips at his beer. “’s more like…. “aaaaaugh” I think,” he says, absently.
Yumichika rolls his eyes and looks at the dozing Yachiru sitting on Kenpachi’s lap, one of Zaraki’s arms keeping her from falling even though two tiny fists are already closed securely around the material of his captain’s coat as she sleeps. “Whether it’s “aaaauh” or “aaaaaugh” doesn’t matter- they’re both wrong.”
“Che, whatever,” Ikkaku mutters, waving dismissively at the pretty shinigami with as much coordination as he can muster after some heavy drinking. “All I know ‘s that’s the first thing I ever heard come outta her mouth.”
“It’s not a word.”
“Close enough.”
Yumichika supposes he should have expected that sort of keen observation and memory from Ikkaku, but he’s a little bit disappointed that Kenpachi doesn’t have any input to share with them today, given that it’s a rather special day. “Taichou?”
“Mmm,” he grunts, and continues sipping his beer. “Don’t remember either,” he admits on Yumi’s look. “Talks so damn much all the words run together, you ask me.”
“How touching,” Yumi drawls, dryly. “Am I the only one who remembers?”
“Probably,” Zaraki responds, saying it in such a way that lets Yumichika know that he doesn’t particularly care as he looks into the bottom of his now-empty cup. “Go’n get me another beer.”
Yumichika huffs when his attempt to reminisce goes awry, but heads to the bar anyway, leaving Ikkaku drunk and staring at the ceiling while Kenpachi holds on to Yachiru and tries to grab a handful of peanuts from the dish on the table without waking her.
He doesn’t see what the big deal is, exactly- been a long time and he can’t be expected to remember what she said last week let alone what she said for the first time in her whole damned life.
Whether it was “kick” or “punch” or “strong” or “kill” or “fight” or whatever… in the end, words are just words. All he needs to remember is that he taught her how to do those things and that she’ll always remember how.
That’s all that really matters. The fact that today is Father’s Day or whatever? Well. Just another cluster of pointless words to him. Don’t really mean a thing to him when he hears it.
He looks down at the sleeping bundle in his lap then, feels his eye twitch a bit on reflex when he notices the considerable puddle of drool starting to form on the front of his captain’s coat.
Che.
Father’s Day. Damn stupid idea if you ask him.
Why only one?
He’s got to deal with this shit every day.
END
EDITS PLZ.
437.
Title: Bonding
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Isshin, Ichigo
Word Count: 254
Warning/s: Really dumb. And OOC.
Summary: Isshin has many wise things to impart on Ichigo.
Dedication: Haha errrr… anyone with crazy parents? XD
A/N: I dunno. I really don’t know.
“ARGH!!!”
Ichigo wraps his hands around Isshin’s throat and shakes him as he says that, just to let the bastard know he means business this time.
Isshin flails. “Noo, Iiiiichigo!!!!!” he rasps, and then clamps his own hands on top of his son’s, moving them by sheer force of will so that they land a bit higher on his throat. That done, he lets go and gives the orange-headed boy a thumbs up and a wink. “Choke daddy like this!!”
And just like that, Ichigo feels his seething rage boil down into something akin to stupefaction and disbelief, his grip loosening unconsciously from around the older Kurosaki’s neck. “Oh my god, you’re so dumb.”
Isshin springs up to his feet like one of those creepy inflatable clown-shaped punching bags then, still winking and giving that ridiculous thumbs up. “Father-son-bonding-lesson-number-seven-hundred-and-eighty-one done! YAY!” he declares like he’s just leveled up, not sounding at all like he was being choked rather emphatically five seconds earlier.
Ichigo sighs and ambles back towards his room, feeling very, very tired. “Right. I’m going to go cry in my room now.”
It’s as if he sees some sort of signal light goes off at Ichigo’s words, and suddenly, Isshin is lunging after his son again. “Cry into daddy’s bosom, Ichi!!! Father-and-son-bonding-lesson-number-seven-hundred-and-eighty-two!! MANLY TEARS OF LOVE!”
Ichigo promptly closes and locks the door behind him, taking a small amount of comfort from the heavy “thunk” he hears on the other side when Isshin’s face impacts it full force.
“NICE MOVE, ICHI!”
“ARGH.”
END
438.
Title: I Walk With Heroes
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Ryuuken, Uryuu
Word Count: 613
Warning/s: OOC and random speculation on back-story for my part, I suppose.
Summary: Ryuuken thinks she’d had the loveliest smile.
Dedication: Haha anyone who didn’t understand their dad until they became adults themselves, I think. ^^;;
A/N: Yeah, I keep writing the same story over and over again. *sigh*
He remembers the joy he’d felt when she’s told him the first time, took his hand after a long day at the office and held it to her stomach. “We’re having a baby, Ryuu.”
Despite his exhaustion he’d smiled and kissed her, picked her up and told her he was very, very happy.
“You’ll be the best father,” she’d assured him, months later when he’d voiced his concerns to her in bed, an arm wrapped around her small shoulders as he took strength from her after another hard day, work nine-to-five and Quincy by night.
“What child wouldn’t be proud to grow up amongst heroes?” she’d added, smiling though she’d sounded more tired than even him.
It had been hard for a young medical school intern to provide for a family on his own at first, and coming to hard times she’d beamed and rolled up her sleeves and assured him that cleaning offices at night was as simple as cleaning a home during the day. Told him that the exercise was good for her.
She’d wanted to do her own part as best she could she’d said, because she was a regular girl living in a family full of heroes.
And, with some bitterness, Ryuuken thinks that it’s because of that that Uryuu won’t ever know her apart from the scarce pictures they have and the stories his grandfather had told him because he’d been too shy-too afraid maybe-to ask his father about what she’d been like.
Heroes.
A far away ideal-the kind that tramples good people under its feet.
And not something he’s willing to let his son experience the hard way-heroes don’t make ends meet. Heroes can’t pay for school, for food, for a house, for clothes.
He does his best to teach Uryuu so that his son knows the value of these things, that they’re important things he can hold in his own two hands.
Because as nice as it all sounds, Ryuuken’s discovered that saving people is at cost to yourself and those closest to you.
And ideals won’t keep Uryuu from going hungry, won’t keep him warm or safe or teach him all the important things he needs to know to survive.
He has to work hard for a good life-focus on his studies and what he wants to do with a future in which he will likely have his own a family to provide for. His own important people to take care of.
“Uryuu, I won’t condone anything less than perfect scores on your reports.”
“Yes, father.”
“Study hard and work diligently-- don’t waste your time with pointless things.”
“Yes, father.”
“Discipline yourself. Get your head out of the clouds and focus on what’s important. I won’t always be around to make sure your work gets done for you.”
“Yes, father. Sorry, father.”
He says those things and knows Uryuu hates him for them, that the boy must feel as though his father is going out of his way to be spiteful, to crush all his dreams before he’s even begun to realize them.
He doesn’t understand that Ryuuken says all those things and really means “don’t become like me.”
He doesn’t want anymore heroes. Just to make amends.
Uryuu’s mother really had a beautiful smile, he thinks. Ryuuken wishes his son could have seen it for himself, especially for having been the reason behind it so very often.
He’ll never be able to make it up to Uryuu for robbing his son of that.
No amount of trying will fix it.
For now, the best Ishida Ryuuken can do is attempt to save Uryuu from becoming just like his father.
END
439.
Title: An Experiment
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Character/s: Mayuri, Nemu
Word Count: 971
Warning/s: OOC? Yes.
Summary: Mayuri watches her grow up.
Dedication: shinigamikender and tsukishine- haha watch me do more fave-charry rape!
A/N: Mayu still TOTALLY HARD TO WRITE.
When he made her, he allotted exactly five days for her to grow up.
Day one involved learning to walk, to move. She stumbled the first few times and he made her stand again and again without reprieve, hours watching her until he’d lost his patience and gone off to do more productive things while Hiyosu was left to supervise. After the sixth hour she was able to walk towards him with all the grace of a bowlegged goat, but he surmised that for the time being, that would be passable. Her learning rate was far advanced in comparison to the failed prototypes before her, and he made a note of it in his records and trusted that her ability to control motor functions would increase exponentially with time. Her infancy ended after the first twelve hours.
Day two involved speaking and literacy. He gave her books and reports and anything with written words on them. He watched her explore them from a safe distance and wrote his findings down while Akon was forced to speak, enunciate, explain to her until she could do it herself. It took her twice as long to learn how to read as it had taken for her to speak, and speaking in itself came out to be four times as long as walking. Mayuri observed all of this from behind a glass-paneled window and was satisfied if not wholly impressed. She would pick up combat strategies as time went on and he would create special implants to be placed into her brain for more complicated matters as well as to generally increase her overall capacity once he learned the limits said brain had in its original state. Her youth ended after learning more than five thousand kanji.
Day three was one of the more trying, as he’d had to make her self-sufficient. She was showed how to dress herself, feed herself, clean herself. A machine was only useful if it could run without the need of constant supervision after all. Mayuri showed her the basics, and then left her to her own devices once again. She observed Unohana’s hair from her window and saw functionality in the design-braided her own hair back so it would not hinder her in performing the tasks Mayuri-sama asked of her. She observed the intake of food by Rin and the others and discovered how to prepare meals for herself, food that would keep her functions up as was necessary. She collapsed from the exhaustion of the past three days exactly 71 hours in and at that moment learned what it was to rest. Mayuri made a note that her progress suggested mid-adolescence.
Day four was when she could finally be of use, and she was given a tour of the facilities in the twelfth division specifically. All the knowledge she would need to be of use to Mayuri was imparted upon her in a shorter amount of time than it had taken her to learn to read and she took in every detail of each area of research fast enough that Mayuri decided that this one was worth keeping, as he’d terminated many of her predecessors upon finding them deficient here, at one of the most important stages of growth. He gave her a name then, because she would need one to answer to given the general acceptance of her existence by the twelfth division captain. As such, Nemu reached young adulthood.
Day five was the final day in which he would go out of his way to teach her anything-from there she would be left to her own devices in regards to the observation, adaptation, and incorporation of new information into her system. She was allowed outside beyond the gates of the twelfth division for the first time. Given basic information on the lay of the land and what to expect from the inhabitants, Mayuri watched from a comfortable distance as she approached others and used what he had taught her over the other stages of her growth. Movement towards. Day one. Speech. Day two. Self-sufficiency-communicating her own thoughts. Day three. Stating and acknowledging her sole function in life. Day four.
Pleased enough with his results this time around, he allowed her to memorize the outlay of seireitei and the hierarchy under which it functioned, telling her that her role in this suddenly and much expanded universe was to conceive of it as a means through which she would better serve Mayuri’s demands. An option on her list of programs. She bowed her head and said “Yes, Mayuri-sama,” and he grunted in vague approval, writing down final thoughts in his copious notes on the matter before having them filed and stored away by his subordinates for future reference. Finally, she had come to adulthood.
He supposed that this one would do just fine for the time being, but all the same, he wanted to keep the appropriate records regarding the experiment should the need to terminate her arise.
There were of course, things fundamentally wrong with this model as there had been with all the others, but the odds of perfection had been computed and declared daunting. As a pragmatic man Mayuri deigned that the girl he had created five days ago would work well enough for the time being.
If she was found to be greatly lacking after these five days he knew he could always make new Nemus at any time, and while there was something about this prototype in particular that vaguely irritated him, it was more a feeling than a fact and really, he rather preferred not to have to go through the trouble of raising new ones time and time again if he could avoid it.
As such, he marked her status as “temporarily operational” and left it at that.
END
440.
Title: Just Today
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Eleventh Division
Word Count: 481
Warning/s: No spoilers I can imagine, just randomness.
Summary: Kenpachi can’t remember her first words.
Dedication: My Dad! Happy Father’s Day. ^^
A/N: Taken from a statement my dad used to say all the time. See? I do listen to my parents every now and again.
“That’s easy. First word was “aaauuh!!” wasn’t it?”
Yumichika sighs at Ikkaku’s declaration. “That’s not a word.”
The bald death god wrinkles his nose. “The hell it isn’t. Hear it all the time when we’re beatin’ shit up.”
Kenpachi grunts and sips at his beer. “’s more like…. “aaaaaugh” I think,” he says, absently.
Yumichika rolls his eyes and looks at the dozing Yachiru sitting on Kenpachi’s lap, one of Zaraki’s arms keeping her from falling even though two tiny fists are already closed securely around the material of his captain’s coat as she sleeps. “Whether it’s “aaaauh” or “aaaaaugh” doesn’t matter- they’re both wrong.”
“Che, whatever,” Ikkaku mutters, waving dismissively at the pretty shinigami with as much coordination as he can muster after some heavy drinking. “All I know ‘s that’s the first thing I ever heard come outta her mouth.”
“It’s not a word.”
“Close enough.”
Yumichika supposes he should have expected that sort of keen observation and memory from Ikkaku, but he’s a little bit disappointed that Kenpachi doesn’t have any input to share with them today, given that it’s a rather special day. “Taichou?”
“Mmm,” he grunts, and continues sipping his beer. “Don’t remember either,” he admits on Yumi’s look. “Talks so damn much all the words run together, you ask me.”
“How touching,” Yumi drawls, dryly. “Am I the only one who remembers?”
“Probably,” Zaraki responds, saying it in such a way that lets Yumichika know that he doesn’t particularly care as he looks into the bottom of his now-empty cup. “Go’n get me another beer.”
Yumichika huffs when his attempt to reminisce goes awry, but heads to the bar anyway, leaving Ikkaku drunk and staring at the ceiling while Kenpachi holds on to Yachiru and tries to grab a handful of peanuts from the dish on the table without waking her.
He doesn’t see what the big deal is, exactly- been a long time and he can’t be expected to remember what she said last week let alone what she said for the first time in her whole damned life.
Whether it was “kick” or “punch” or “strong” or “kill” or “fight” or whatever… in the end, words are just words. All he needs to remember is that he taught her how to do those things and that she’ll always remember how.
That’s all that really matters. The fact that today is Father’s Day or whatever? Well. Just another cluster of pointless words to him. Don’t really mean a thing to him when he hears it.
He looks down at the sleeping bundle in his lap then, feels his eye twitch a bit on reflex when he notices the considerable puddle of drool starting to form on the front of his captain’s coat.
Che.
Father’s Day. Damn stupid idea if you ask him.
Why only one?
He’s got to deal with this shit every day.
END
EDITS PLZ.