Fanfiction | TIW 15
Title: Treading Icy Waters
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG13-ish
Pairings: I'm trying to keep distinct couples to a minimum in this story, so there won't be any specific pairings.
Warnings: Some language, a bit of angst, a taste of violence, plenty of spoilers, and lots of unnecessary pain
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline, disregarding the Bounto Arc completely. It takes place during and after the current manga arc.
A/N: I'm getting a bit tired of the Roman Numerals in the title, so I changed it. Hooray for laziness.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hitsugaya or Bleach or anything else that I do not own.
Summary: The board has been laid out. The pieces have been set and moved. The pawns are scattered across the floor, and Ichimaru’s fingers are wrapped around a stark white bishop. “That’s another check, little taichou.” The game has only begun.
~*~
“The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.”
Abbe' D'Allanival
~*~
Chapter Fifteen
Understatement of the Year
~*~
“I don’t want to hear it!”
The silence of an otherwise peaceful and quiet evening was brutally interrupted as four stomping feet made their way into the mercifully empty Urahara Shoten. Neither Matsumoto Rangiku nor Abarai Renji were very pleased with the outcome of the parent-teacher conference, and both were far too stubborn for their own good.
“Ran, I know he told you what’s going on! You know what’s wrong with him! Why won’t you tell anyone else?!” Renji instigated, repeating the question for the umpteenth time since they had left Karakura High School.
“I told you already! He didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t figure out myself! I don’t know what’s wrong!” Rangiku once again insisted as her companion slammed the door behind him.
“Why do you keep lying?!”
“You would too!” Rangiku whirled around to face him, nearly screaming now. “If Kuchiki-taichou ordered you to do something, you’d listen too, wouldn’t you?! No matter how much you may not understand him, no matter how much you may hate him, a fukutaichou always stays loyal to his taichou!”
Renji was sick and tired of hearing the same excuses over and over. He had been here for over a week, and everyone still refused to tell him what the hell was going on! He wasn’t going to play this stupid game any longer. He was going to find out what was happening once and for all! And if he could let out a bit of his frustration while he was doing it, then that was just a bonus. “The hell are you saying, Ran?! You’re starting to sound like Hinamori!”
Matsumoto froze, pale gray eyes fierce with a silent intensity. The volume of her voice had dropped exponentially, yet somehow she still managed a tone of such icy severity that even Hitsugaya would be hard pressed to imitate it. “Are you implying that Taichou is the same as that traitor?”
“No,” the redheaded fukutaichou replied, exasperated. “I’m saying that something’s wrong with Hitsugaya-taichou, and yet you keep lying to everyone about it! I’m not going to sit around and pretend to believe your bull any longer! He’s not even a real taichou anymore! Some things are more important than orders, Ran! You can’t be loyal to him if he’s dead!”
“It’s not about orders, Renji!” Rangiku shot back. “I know he’s in trouble! I know something’s wrong! But I’m his second! What else can I do but support him?!”
Renji couldn’t take this much longer. He grabbed his fellow fukutaichou by the shoulders, holding her forcefully in place. “You can tell me the damned truth! Did he tell you what’s wrong?!”
“Yes!” she finally shrieked, pushing him off with a strength afforded to her through anger and adrenaline. “If you wanna know so damned much! He told me the moment we met up again!”
“Then what the hell happened back there?! Why the hell did he run off like that?!” Renji continued to press, completely unaffected by the less muscular shinigami’s shove. He remained just as loud as her, if not louder.
“I don’t know!” she shouted, her voice scratchy and hoarse as she collapsed back into counter. She cradled her head in her hand, ignoring the painful counter edge even as it dug into her back. “I really don’t know.”
She had switched from raspy screaming to strained whispers so quickly that Renji was struck completely dumb. All of his desperate rage disappeared in that instant. When he saw her slumped into her hands like that, shivering with nonexistent tears, he knew that she was telling the truth. He groaned and, with a sheepish scratch of the back of his neck, leaned up against the counter next to her.
It took a moment to regain his voice. “I … er … Back there, you said he’d be okay, but … where is he?”
Rangiku too took some time before she could reply. But when she did, she lifted her face from her hands, and Renji was glad to see the tiniest hints of a grin on her lips. “He’s with … an old friend.”
~*~
Hitsugaya Toushirou stared apprehensively down at the untouched, fast food kid’s meal laid out before him. It reminded him of many, many things he’d seen in the past, but none of them were edible and most came with a foul stench that rather made him want to puke. His frown only deepening, he held his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat in order to get his newfound companion’s attention.
It didn’t work.
“Kurosaki-san … why are we here?” he growled under his breath instead, pushing the meal across the table. Eating that stuff was the last thing he’d want to do with it.
Finally, the older man looked up from his burger. “I was hungry,” he shrugged. “Besides, it looked like you needed to cool off a bit, right?”
Hitsugaya turned away with a huff. “That’s none of your business.”
“Aw, don’t be that way,” Kurosaki Isshin whined as he leaned over the table with a huge smile accented by bits of bun and burger yet to be swallowed. “Think of me as a daddy! You can tell me anything!”
The young ex-taichou quickly intercepted him, holding him back with his hand as a vein throbbed obnoxiously in his forehead. “What’s the real reason we’re here?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Grin morphing into a childish pout, Kurosaki returned to his burger. “Well, the guy I’m taking you to see isn’t off work yet.”
Hitsugaya grabbed for his drink, the only part of the meal that he was willing to touch, and took a long, drawn out sip. “So what?”
“But charging in while he’s busy would be rude.”
Hitsugaya nearly inhaled the straw. “And dragging me across town against my will isn’t!?”
~*~
“An old friend, eh?” echoed a voice just before Urahara Kisuke waltzed into the store front. Renji and Rangiku turned to face him, Renji’s expression rather confused while Ran looked quite a bit more accusing. “Wow. I didn’t think he’d act so fast.”
“When I showed up, he decided to take the rest of the day off,” Rangiku replied, eyeing the blonde suspiciously. “Said something about ‘Kisuke and his kid’.”
Urahara grinned sheepishly. “Well, none-the-less, I really didn’t expect that you two would be able to get permission from that guy so easily.”
“Permission? What permission? Kurosaki-taichou just left a message on someone’s answering machine saying that he had a surprise for him,” the buxom fukutaichou clarified, raising a golden brow.
Renji looked from Urahara’s disbelieving face to Ran’s questioning glare. From getting ‘permission’ to ‘Kurosaki-taichou’, he didn’t have a clue what was going on and was beginning to wonder whether he really wanted to. But one thing he knew was for sure.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
~*~
“Well, what do you think?”
Hitsugaya stared up at the familiar site with a large frown. The erotic billboard had been replaced, but he still recognized it without a problem. The sign over the doors reading “Karakura Hospital” was a dead giveaway. Kurosaki had led him to the very hospital he had first seen when he had arrived. Now, Hitsugaya had to wonder, why the hell would he do that?
“It’s a hospital,” he grunted.
“It’s not just any hospital,” Kurosaki whined. “It’s Ryuuken’s hospital! I had a feeling he was the one Kisuke really needed, but he hates the guy’s guts, so I’ve gotta be the middle man!”
“In other words, Urahara is using you,” the smaller shinigami replied, “and you’re letting him.”
“Damn straight!”
Kurosaki’s tone was so sure and his grin so broad that Hitsugaya almost didn’t believe his ears, but there was no mistake. The man was enjoying this as much as Urahara did. He spoke with Urahara as an equal, and yet he was willing to jump through veritable flaming hoops at his slightest request. Even Kurosaki Ichigo, Hitsugaya realized, couldn’t get that sort of rise out of the man. “What happened between you two?” he finally asked as they stepped inside.
Kurosaki paused after the question, staring down at his companion awkwardly before letting out a sigh. He grabbed Hitsugaya’s wrist and dragged him right through the front room and into a maze of hallways. “Not us two,” he chuckled, “us three.”
“There are more of you?”
The older man’s chuckle quickly turned into an outright laughing fit. “I guess that’s up to you to decide,” he barely managed as they stepped into an elevator. Hitsugaya decided that it would probably be best to remain quiet for the rest of the trip.
They left the elevator four or five floors later and walked down more hallways. It was quite a bit like the Fourth Division, he mused. Once you got lost, you stayed lost. But, finally, Kurosaki stopped in front of a particularly lonesome door with a plaque next to it and knocked. The plaque read “Ishida Ryuuken, Director.” Hitsugaya frowned. Wasn’t Ishida the name of Kurosaki Ichigo’s Quincy friend? He froze.
Oh, crap.
As he turned around to leave, however, the door swung open wide to reveal the stoic face of pale haired man clutching a small bottle with a skull and crossbones just above the label. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t stuff this down your throat.”
And just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, Kurosaki grabbed him under his armpits and lifted him bodily in the air until he was face to face with the angry hospital director. “Surprise!”
Ishida promptly slammed the door.
~*~
Hitsugaya Toushirou stomped through the many white-washed halls, his grimace only growing as the minutes dragged on. He had already been in a bad mood to begin with, and then Kurosaki just had to show up and make everything ten times worse. And now, to top it all off, he was lost in a hospital. A hospital directed by a Quincy, no less! The irony of it all was not helping.
That insane, old man had gone through quite a bit in order to convince the hospital director to reopen the door, but once he succeeded, he had asked Hitsugaya to wait outside and had even given him directions to the nearest vending machine. Unfortunately, the directions had been wrong. Very wrong.
“The next time he crouches, I swear I’ll strangle him…” he grunted under his breath as he turned another corner and rammed right into none other than Ishida Uryuu.
“Ah! You’re the shinigami that met us at the gate. Hitsugaya-taichou, was it?” the teenager questioned, eyes narrowing as he adjusted his glasses. Before Hitsugaya could answer, however, he continued, “What are you doing here?”
“I was dragged here against my will by one of Urahara’s lackeys,” the former taichou replied with more than a little aggravation. In truth, it took everything in his power to stay calm. What were the odds that the last two Quincies in existence would both be on the same floor of the same hospital the one day there was a shinigami visiting? Between his undeniable rage and his building frustrations, he was beginning to wonder whether he should just leave.
“Really? I wonder what for.” The boy seemed genuinely intrigued by this, but what struck Hitsugaya was how easily he believed it. That pathetic salesman really didn’t care what people thought about him at all.
But before Hitsugaya could give a sarcastic response, the P.A. system erupted. “Hitsugaya Toushirou! Hitsugaya Toushirou! Your father is waiting for you on the fifth floor, Room 535. I repeat, Hitsugaya Toushirou!”
Hitsugaya felt his hands ball into fists as he quietly seethed, letting the announcement finish. “Excuse me,” he said through clenched teeth, bowing before he turned around and began walking away with a measured pace. “I have to go kill someone now.”
Uryuu watched as the boy taichou looked up at the numbers of each door and followed accordingly. He frowned, eyes narrowing once again, and without another word, he left.
Room 535 was his father’s office.
~*~
“Toushirou-kun,” Kurosaki Isshin smiled when Hitsugaya finally made it back. “I was worried about you!”
His concern was met with a murderous burst of reiatsu. “Father?”
“They wouldn’t have let me page you if they knew we weren’t related,” the older man whined. “Besides, we have more important things to do right now than argue, right? Forward march!” Kurosaki led him into the office, which appeared to be completely normal. That was, until Kurosaki stepped toward a large painting of a huntress passively watching a stag be mutilated by a group of hounds and lifted it to reveal a winding staircase careening down floor after floor into blackness.
Hitsugaya sighed as he resigned himself to the inevitable and stepped down. “This is so clichéd, it hurts.”
“Welcome to Earth,” Kurosaki replied with a grin.
The two descended for some time before coming to another door and entering a room not unlike every other in the hospital. The walls were whitewashed, the ceiling high, but, Hitsugaya noted, there was no furniture. “What now?” he asked.
“Well, this place is specifically designed to hide reiatsu. This was where Uryuu trained to regain his powers,” the older man explained hesitantly. Hitsugaya did not like where this was going. “What’s about to happen is pretty similar to what happened back then.”
“And what happened back then?” the young ex-taichou questioned, brow raised.
“Sorry, Toushirou-kun,” he whined. “It was the only way I could get him to agree to help out!”
“What was?” Hitsugaya demanded yet again, jaw clenched.
“Anou … You might want to duck.”
Hitsugaya’s eyes widened just before he yanked his head to the side, and a giant, glistening blue arrow grazed his cheek.
~*~
Kurosaki Ichigo strode purposefully down the sidewalk, muttering curses and death threats all the while. What the hell was going on, anyway?! This made no sense at all! It was crazy! So, naturally, he figured Urahara was to blame for it all, and he was on his way there right now.
Just as he was about to offer another string of insults, however, he noticed someone else approaching. And from the small glint of moonlight on glasses, he figured it was Uryuu. “What are you doing here?” he asked when they had finally converged in Urahara Shoten’s front yard.
“I need to speak with Urahara,” the bespectacled teenager replied darkly.
“Funny,” Ichigo scowled. “Looks like we’ve both got the same pest problem.”
Uryuu didn’t reply, instead reaching out to open the door. He shook the handle a bit, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked.”
“Allow me,” the red head hissed, lifting his right leg to kick the door open and promptly interrupting an awkward silence between Urahara, Renji, and Rangiku.
“Ah! Visitors!” Urahara grinned, glad for the change in pace. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. The two high school students were in his face so fast that even he didn’t see it coming.
“What are you doing sending shinigami into my family’s hospital?”
“Why the hell is Kon running around in my dad’s body?!”
Urahara shied away timidly. “Er … Why don’t I go get some drinks?”
~*~
Hitsugaya blinked away the sweat sliding down his forehead and into his eyes as he allowed himself another hasty shunpo. And another. And another. Seriously, did that man ever stop?
His grimace becoming more defined, he allowed himself another look around the room. Ishida Ryuuken was at his tail, firing off the Quincy arrows at rapid speeds, often times even firing more than one at a time. He wasn’t the least bit tired either, the pale haired boy noted with more than a little contempt. The man’s bow was nearly as tall as he was, and the arrows he was shooting were no mere playthings either. He wielded the weapon with a dexterity he did not know was possible with such an instrument. But now was no time to be admiring another’s skill, especially when it was being used against him.
Those arrows were becoming increasingly difficult to avoid, Hitsugaya acknowledged grudgingly. And the fact that they were being created by using his own reiatsu was not helping his self-esteem any. Normally, concealing his reiatsu from the greedy Quincy’s grasp would have been an easy task, but now he had virtually no control over it at all. It was one of the most frustrating experiences he had ever faced.
Because of this disability of his, there weren’t many options available to him. He had three choices. He could keep avoiding and try to outlast the pale haired man; he could attempt to block the oncoming onslaught with Hyourinmaru; or he could retaliate.
At this last thought, however, he turned his gaze not on Ishida but on Kurosaki. The man stood in the center of the room, watching the other two running about in their interesting twist to the game of tag. His arms were folded across his chest, one foot tapping the floor in a steady rhythm. But what caught Hitsugaya’s attention was not that. It was the man’s expression. It was stone cold, observing with an icy intensity that the younger shinigami had thought impossible for the man to portray.
But, impossible or not, Hitsugaya certainly got the message. Retaliation would not be a wise option.
Grinding his teeth together, he stepped into shunpo once more, darting across the room as he pulled out his gikongan dispenser and quickly shoved the candy down his throat. His soul shot out from the gigai, which scrambled over to Kurosaki, while he ducked under another barrage. He wiped the sweat from his brow and pulled Hyourinmaru from its sheath.
All of this running was starting to get on his nerves.
~*~
“So … Dad’s a shinigami?” Ichigo barely managed through his slack jaw.
“And my father actually consorts with him?” Uryuu added, equally shocked.
“Isn’t that just grand?” Urahara beamed. “That makes you two like a modern day Romeo and Juliet!”
Renji dropped his glass as Rangiku pouted. “That play had nothing to do with any of this,” the busty woman huffed.
“But … But how?!” the substitute shinigami nearly screamed, too lost in his earlier discovery to have even realized that he had just been made fun of. “He … He’s my dad!”
“Exactly!”
“Hunh?”
“The story behind your father’s sad fate and Ryuuken’s characteristic snobbishness is a long, painful tale of conflict, deceit, and sacrifice,” Urahara intoned as if he were reciting an epic tragedy. “You guys wouldn’t be interested.”
“Oh, we’re interested,” Ichigo growled, lifting a foot and slamming it down on Urahara’s chair. “We’re all just dying to hear.”
“Indeed,” Uryuu agreed, the glare he offered the blonde salesman somehow made all the more menacing through his lenses.
“I’m already dead,” Renji grunted noncommittally, grabbing two of the stools from the behind the store counter and handing one to Rangiku. He hadn’t quite made up his mind about whether he was ready to hear all of this insanity. Besides, he didn’t even know who this Ryuuken guy was. But if they were the only answers anyone was willing to give him, than he supposed he could shut up and listen.
“Let’s hear the story, Urahara-jii,” Rangiku smiled a smile that clearly said Urahara would be a very miserable man for a very long time if he did not comply. “I haven’t heard a good one in a long time.”
“Well, since you’re all just so enthusiastic,” the cornered salesman finally acquiesced, “I suppose I could indulge you … just this once.”
~*~
Hitsugaya blocked yet another fluid arrow with Hyourinmaru’s blade, holding the hilt firmly with both hands in order to make sure he could negate the force of the blow. Breathing deeply and evenly, he eyed the man before him with growing frustration. They had come to a standstill of sorts, with neither combatant interested in taking up their earlier game again, yet neither willing to set down his weapon.
“Why are we doing this?” he asked for the third time, receiving another volley of arrows as his reply. “There’s no point,” he continued to press.
Finally, Ishida responded with actual words. “There is a point. I simply see no need for you to know of it.”
“Like Artemis and Actaeon,” Hitsugaya deadpanned, “You’re using my own power against me for your petty revenge.”
“An interesting analogy,” the stoic man replied.
“I saw the picture in your office,” the younger offered his explanation.
“I see,” Ishida affirmed, as devoid of emotion as his companion. “It is quite fitting. However, this is not for revenge.”
Hitsugaya paused for a moment, taking in this latest breakthrough. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and with a sigh, he sheathed his zanpakutou, much to the surprise of both Ishida and Kurosaki. “I don’t know what your reason is,” the boy declared, voice weary and hoarse but determined, “and I don’t care. But I am getting sick and tired of all of this idiocy. I’m not running anymore.”
He spread his arms out in the air and stared Ishida down.
“If you’re going to shoot, take your best shot already.”
For just a moment, Ishida hesitated. But just as quickly as it came, it dissipated. An unexpected smirk grew along his lips.
And he fired.
~*~
Chapter Fifteen End
~*~
That was quite possibly the worst cliffhanger I’ve ever written.
Artemis and Actaeon - Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt, also associated with the moon. Actaeon was a hunter who boasted he was better than her. For revenge, she turned him into a stag, and he was eaten by his own hunting dogs.
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG13-ish
Pairings: I'm trying to keep distinct couples to a minimum in this story, so there won't be any specific pairings.
Warnings: Some language, a bit of angst, a taste of violence, plenty of spoilers, and lots of unnecessary pain
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline, disregarding the Bounto Arc completely. It takes place during and after the current manga arc.
A/N: I'm getting a bit tired of the Roman Numerals in the title, so I changed it. Hooray for laziness.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hitsugaya or Bleach or anything else that I do not own.
Summary: The board has been laid out. The pieces have been set and moved. The pawns are scattered across the floor, and Ichimaru’s fingers are wrapped around a stark white bishop. “That’s another check, little taichou.” The game has only begun.
~*~
“The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.”
Abbe' D'Allanival
~*~
Chapter Fifteen
Understatement of the Year
~*~
“I don’t want to hear it!”
The silence of an otherwise peaceful and quiet evening was brutally interrupted as four stomping feet made their way into the mercifully empty Urahara Shoten. Neither Matsumoto Rangiku nor Abarai Renji were very pleased with the outcome of the parent-teacher conference, and both were far too stubborn for their own good.
“Ran, I know he told you what’s going on! You know what’s wrong with him! Why won’t you tell anyone else?!” Renji instigated, repeating the question for the umpteenth time since they had left Karakura High School.
“I told you already! He didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t figure out myself! I don’t know what’s wrong!” Rangiku once again insisted as her companion slammed the door behind him.
“Why do you keep lying?!”
“You would too!” Rangiku whirled around to face him, nearly screaming now. “If Kuchiki-taichou ordered you to do something, you’d listen too, wouldn’t you?! No matter how much you may not understand him, no matter how much you may hate him, a fukutaichou always stays loyal to his taichou!”
Renji was sick and tired of hearing the same excuses over and over. He had been here for over a week, and everyone still refused to tell him what the hell was going on! He wasn’t going to play this stupid game any longer. He was going to find out what was happening once and for all! And if he could let out a bit of his frustration while he was doing it, then that was just a bonus. “The hell are you saying, Ran?! You’re starting to sound like Hinamori!”
Matsumoto froze, pale gray eyes fierce with a silent intensity. The volume of her voice had dropped exponentially, yet somehow she still managed a tone of such icy severity that even Hitsugaya would be hard pressed to imitate it. “Are you implying that Taichou is the same as that traitor?”
“No,” the redheaded fukutaichou replied, exasperated. “I’m saying that something’s wrong with Hitsugaya-taichou, and yet you keep lying to everyone about it! I’m not going to sit around and pretend to believe your bull any longer! He’s not even a real taichou anymore! Some things are more important than orders, Ran! You can’t be loyal to him if he’s dead!”
“It’s not about orders, Renji!” Rangiku shot back. “I know he’s in trouble! I know something’s wrong! But I’m his second! What else can I do but support him?!”
Renji couldn’t take this much longer. He grabbed his fellow fukutaichou by the shoulders, holding her forcefully in place. “You can tell me the damned truth! Did he tell you what’s wrong?!”
“Yes!” she finally shrieked, pushing him off with a strength afforded to her through anger and adrenaline. “If you wanna know so damned much! He told me the moment we met up again!”
“Then what the hell happened back there?! Why the hell did he run off like that?!” Renji continued to press, completely unaffected by the less muscular shinigami’s shove. He remained just as loud as her, if not louder.
“I don’t know!” she shouted, her voice scratchy and hoarse as she collapsed back into counter. She cradled her head in her hand, ignoring the painful counter edge even as it dug into her back. “I really don’t know.”
She had switched from raspy screaming to strained whispers so quickly that Renji was struck completely dumb. All of his desperate rage disappeared in that instant. When he saw her slumped into her hands like that, shivering with nonexistent tears, he knew that she was telling the truth. He groaned and, with a sheepish scratch of the back of his neck, leaned up against the counter next to her.
It took a moment to regain his voice. “I … er … Back there, you said he’d be okay, but … where is he?”
Rangiku too took some time before she could reply. But when she did, she lifted her face from her hands, and Renji was glad to see the tiniest hints of a grin on her lips. “He’s with … an old friend.”
~*~
Hitsugaya Toushirou stared apprehensively down at the untouched, fast food kid’s meal laid out before him. It reminded him of many, many things he’d seen in the past, but none of them were edible and most came with a foul stench that rather made him want to puke. His frown only deepening, he held his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat in order to get his newfound companion’s attention.
It didn’t work.
“Kurosaki-san … why are we here?” he growled under his breath instead, pushing the meal across the table. Eating that stuff was the last thing he’d want to do with it.
Finally, the older man looked up from his burger. “I was hungry,” he shrugged. “Besides, it looked like you needed to cool off a bit, right?”
Hitsugaya turned away with a huff. “That’s none of your business.”
“Aw, don’t be that way,” Kurosaki Isshin whined as he leaned over the table with a huge smile accented by bits of bun and burger yet to be swallowed. “Think of me as a daddy! You can tell me anything!”
The young ex-taichou quickly intercepted him, holding him back with his hand as a vein throbbed obnoxiously in his forehead. “What’s the real reason we’re here?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Grin morphing into a childish pout, Kurosaki returned to his burger. “Well, the guy I’m taking you to see isn’t off work yet.”
Hitsugaya grabbed for his drink, the only part of the meal that he was willing to touch, and took a long, drawn out sip. “So what?”
“But charging in while he’s busy would be rude.”
Hitsugaya nearly inhaled the straw. “And dragging me across town against my will isn’t!?”
~*~
“An old friend, eh?” echoed a voice just before Urahara Kisuke waltzed into the store front. Renji and Rangiku turned to face him, Renji’s expression rather confused while Ran looked quite a bit more accusing. “Wow. I didn’t think he’d act so fast.”
“When I showed up, he decided to take the rest of the day off,” Rangiku replied, eyeing the blonde suspiciously. “Said something about ‘Kisuke and his kid’.”
Urahara grinned sheepishly. “Well, none-the-less, I really didn’t expect that you two would be able to get permission from that guy so easily.”
“Permission? What permission? Kurosaki-taichou just left a message on someone’s answering machine saying that he had a surprise for him,” the buxom fukutaichou clarified, raising a golden brow.
Renji looked from Urahara’s disbelieving face to Ran’s questioning glare. From getting ‘permission’ to ‘Kurosaki-taichou’, he didn’t have a clue what was going on and was beginning to wonder whether he really wanted to. But one thing he knew was for sure.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
~*~
“Well, what do you think?”
Hitsugaya stared up at the familiar site with a large frown. The erotic billboard had been replaced, but he still recognized it without a problem. The sign over the doors reading “Karakura Hospital” was a dead giveaway. Kurosaki had led him to the very hospital he had first seen when he had arrived. Now, Hitsugaya had to wonder, why the hell would he do that?
“It’s a hospital,” he grunted.
“It’s not just any hospital,” Kurosaki whined. “It’s Ryuuken’s hospital! I had a feeling he was the one Kisuke really needed, but he hates the guy’s guts, so I’ve gotta be the middle man!”
“In other words, Urahara is using you,” the smaller shinigami replied, “and you’re letting him.”
“Damn straight!”
Kurosaki’s tone was so sure and his grin so broad that Hitsugaya almost didn’t believe his ears, but there was no mistake. The man was enjoying this as much as Urahara did. He spoke with Urahara as an equal, and yet he was willing to jump through veritable flaming hoops at his slightest request. Even Kurosaki Ichigo, Hitsugaya realized, couldn’t get that sort of rise out of the man. “What happened between you two?” he finally asked as they stepped inside.
Kurosaki paused after the question, staring down at his companion awkwardly before letting out a sigh. He grabbed Hitsugaya’s wrist and dragged him right through the front room and into a maze of hallways. “Not us two,” he chuckled, “us three.”
“There are more of you?”
The older man’s chuckle quickly turned into an outright laughing fit. “I guess that’s up to you to decide,” he barely managed as they stepped into an elevator. Hitsugaya decided that it would probably be best to remain quiet for the rest of the trip.
They left the elevator four or five floors later and walked down more hallways. It was quite a bit like the Fourth Division, he mused. Once you got lost, you stayed lost. But, finally, Kurosaki stopped in front of a particularly lonesome door with a plaque next to it and knocked. The plaque read “Ishida Ryuuken, Director.” Hitsugaya frowned. Wasn’t Ishida the name of Kurosaki Ichigo’s Quincy friend? He froze.
Oh, crap.
As he turned around to leave, however, the door swung open wide to reveal the stoic face of pale haired man clutching a small bottle with a skull and crossbones just above the label. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t stuff this down your throat.”
And just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, Kurosaki grabbed him under his armpits and lifted him bodily in the air until he was face to face with the angry hospital director. “Surprise!”
Ishida promptly slammed the door.
~*~
Hitsugaya Toushirou stomped through the many white-washed halls, his grimace only growing as the minutes dragged on. He had already been in a bad mood to begin with, and then Kurosaki just had to show up and make everything ten times worse. And now, to top it all off, he was lost in a hospital. A hospital directed by a Quincy, no less! The irony of it all was not helping.
That insane, old man had gone through quite a bit in order to convince the hospital director to reopen the door, but once he succeeded, he had asked Hitsugaya to wait outside and had even given him directions to the nearest vending machine. Unfortunately, the directions had been wrong. Very wrong.
“The next time he crouches, I swear I’ll strangle him…” he grunted under his breath as he turned another corner and rammed right into none other than Ishida Uryuu.
“Ah! You’re the shinigami that met us at the gate. Hitsugaya-taichou, was it?” the teenager questioned, eyes narrowing as he adjusted his glasses. Before Hitsugaya could answer, however, he continued, “What are you doing here?”
“I was dragged here against my will by one of Urahara’s lackeys,” the former taichou replied with more than a little aggravation. In truth, it took everything in his power to stay calm. What were the odds that the last two Quincies in existence would both be on the same floor of the same hospital the one day there was a shinigami visiting? Between his undeniable rage and his building frustrations, he was beginning to wonder whether he should just leave.
“Really? I wonder what for.” The boy seemed genuinely intrigued by this, but what struck Hitsugaya was how easily he believed it. That pathetic salesman really didn’t care what people thought about him at all.
But before Hitsugaya could give a sarcastic response, the P.A. system erupted. “Hitsugaya Toushirou! Hitsugaya Toushirou! Your father is waiting for you on the fifth floor, Room 535. I repeat, Hitsugaya Toushirou!”
Hitsugaya felt his hands ball into fists as he quietly seethed, letting the announcement finish. “Excuse me,” he said through clenched teeth, bowing before he turned around and began walking away with a measured pace. “I have to go kill someone now.”
Uryuu watched as the boy taichou looked up at the numbers of each door and followed accordingly. He frowned, eyes narrowing once again, and without another word, he left.
Room 535 was his father’s office.
~*~
“Toushirou-kun,” Kurosaki Isshin smiled when Hitsugaya finally made it back. “I was worried about you!”
His concern was met with a murderous burst of reiatsu. “Father?”
“They wouldn’t have let me page you if they knew we weren’t related,” the older man whined. “Besides, we have more important things to do right now than argue, right? Forward march!” Kurosaki led him into the office, which appeared to be completely normal. That was, until Kurosaki stepped toward a large painting of a huntress passively watching a stag be mutilated by a group of hounds and lifted it to reveal a winding staircase careening down floor after floor into blackness.
Hitsugaya sighed as he resigned himself to the inevitable and stepped down. “This is so clichéd, it hurts.”
“Welcome to Earth,” Kurosaki replied with a grin.
The two descended for some time before coming to another door and entering a room not unlike every other in the hospital. The walls were whitewashed, the ceiling high, but, Hitsugaya noted, there was no furniture. “What now?” he asked.
“Well, this place is specifically designed to hide reiatsu. This was where Uryuu trained to regain his powers,” the older man explained hesitantly. Hitsugaya did not like where this was going. “What’s about to happen is pretty similar to what happened back then.”
“And what happened back then?” the young ex-taichou questioned, brow raised.
“Sorry, Toushirou-kun,” he whined. “It was the only way I could get him to agree to help out!”
“What was?” Hitsugaya demanded yet again, jaw clenched.
“Anou … You might want to duck.”
Hitsugaya’s eyes widened just before he yanked his head to the side, and a giant, glistening blue arrow grazed his cheek.
~*~
Kurosaki Ichigo strode purposefully down the sidewalk, muttering curses and death threats all the while. What the hell was going on, anyway?! This made no sense at all! It was crazy! So, naturally, he figured Urahara was to blame for it all, and he was on his way there right now.
Just as he was about to offer another string of insults, however, he noticed someone else approaching. And from the small glint of moonlight on glasses, he figured it was Uryuu. “What are you doing here?” he asked when they had finally converged in Urahara Shoten’s front yard.
“I need to speak with Urahara,” the bespectacled teenager replied darkly.
“Funny,” Ichigo scowled. “Looks like we’ve both got the same pest problem.”
Uryuu didn’t reply, instead reaching out to open the door. He shook the handle a bit, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked.”
“Allow me,” the red head hissed, lifting his right leg to kick the door open and promptly interrupting an awkward silence between Urahara, Renji, and Rangiku.
“Ah! Visitors!” Urahara grinned, glad for the change in pace. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. The two high school students were in his face so fast that even he didn’t see it coming.
“What are you doing sending shinigami into my family’s hospital?”
“Why the hell is Kon running around in my dad’s body?!”
Urahara shied away timidly. “Er … Why don’t I go get some drinks?”
~*~
Hitsugaya blinked away the sweat sliding down his forehead and into his eyes as he allowed himself another hasty shunpo. And another. And another. Seriously, did that man ever stop?
His grimace becoming more defined, he allowed himself another look around the room. Ishida Ryuuken was at his tail, firing off the Quincy arrows at rapid speeds, often times even firing more than one at a time. He wasn’t the least bit tired either, the pale haired boy noted with more than a little contempt. The man’s bow was nearly as tall as he was, and the arrows he was shooting were no mere playthings either. He wielded the weapon with a dexterity he did not know was possible with such an instrument. But now was no time to be admiring another’s skill, especially when it was being used against him.
Those arrows were becoming increasingly difficult to avoid, Hitsugaya acknowledged grudgingly. And the fact that they were being created by using his own reiatsu was not helping his self-esteem any. Normally, concealing his reiatsu from the greedy Quincy’s grasp would have been an easy task, but now he had virtually no control over it at all. It was one of the most frustrating experiences he had ever faced.
Because of this disability of his, there weren’t many options available to him. He had three choices. He could keep avoiding and try to outlast the pale haired man; he could attempt to block the oncoming onslaught with Hyourinmaru; or he could retaliate.
At this last thought, however, he turned his gaze not on Ishida but on Kurosaki. The man stood in the center of the room, watching the other two running about in their interesting twist to the game of tag. His arms were folded across his chest, one foot tapping the floor in a steady rhythm. But what caught Hitsugaya’s attention was not that. It was the man’s expression. It was stone cold, observing with an icy intensity that the younger shinigami had thought impossible for the man to portray.
But, impossible or not, Hitsugaya certainly got the message. Retaliation would not be a wise option.
Grinding his teeth together, he stepped into shunpo once more, darting across the room as he pulled out his gikongan dispenser and quickly shoved the candy down his throat. His soul shot out from the gigai, which scrambled over to Kurosaki, while he ducked under another barrage. He wiped the sweat from his brow and pulled Hyourinmaru from its sheath.
All of this running was starting to get on his nerves.
~*~
“So … Dad’s a shinigami?” Ichigo barely managed through his slack jaw.
“And my father actually consorts with him?” Uryuu added, equally shocked.
“Isn’t that just grand?” Urahara beamed. “That makes you two like a modern day Romeo and Juliet!”
Renji dropped his glass as Rangiku pouted. “That play had nothing to do with any of this,” the busty woman huffed.
“But … But how?!” the substitute shinigami nearly screamed, too lost in his earlier discovery to have even realized that he had just been made fun of. “He … He’s my dad!”
“Exactly!”
“Hunh?”
“The story behind your father’s sad fate and Ryuuken’s characteristic snobbishness is a long, painful tale of conflict, deceit, and sacrifice,” Urahara intoned as if he were reciting an epic tragedy. “You guys wouldn’t be interested.”
“Oh, we’re interested,” Ichigo growled, lifting a foot and slamming it down on Urahara’s chair. “We’re all just dying to hear.”
“Indeed,” Uryuu agreed, the glare he offered the blonde salesman somehow made all the more menacing through his lenses.
“I’m already dead,” Renji grunted noncommittally, grabbing two of the stools from the behind the store counter and handing one to Rangiku. He hadn’t quite made up his mind about whether he was ready to hear all of this insanity. Besides, he didn’t even know who this Ryuuken guy was. But if they were the only answers anyone was willing to give him, than he supposed he could shut up and listen.
“Let’s hear the story, Urahara-jii,” Rangiku smiled a smile that clearly said Urahara would be a very miserable man for a very long time if he did not comply. “I haven’t heard a good one in a long time.”
“Well, since you’re all just so enthusiastic,” the cornered salesman finally acquiesced, “I suppose I could indulge you … just this once.”
~*~
Hitsugaya blocked yet another fluid arrow with Hyourinmaru’s blade, holding the hilt firmly with both hands in order to make sure he could negate the force of the blow. Breathing deeply and evenly, he eyed the man before him with growing frustration. They had come to a standstill of sorts, with neither combatant interested in taking up their earlier game again, yet neither willing to set down his weapon.
“Why are we doing this?” he asked for the third time, receiving another volley of arrows as his reply. “There’s no point,” he continued to press.
Finally, Ishida responded with actual words. “There is a point. I simply see no need for you to know of it.”
“Like Artemis and Actaeon,” Hitsugaya deadpanned, “You’re using my own power against me for your petty revenge.”
“An interesting analogy,” the stoic man replied.
“I saw the picture in your office,” the younger offered his explanation.
“I see,” Ishida affirmed, as devoid of emotion as his companion. “It is quite fitting. However, this is not for revenge.”
Hitsugaya paused for a moment, taking in this latest breakthrough. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and with a sigh, he sheathed his zanpakutou, much to the surprise of both Ishida and Kurosaki. “I don’t know what your reason is,” the boy declared, voice weary and hoarse but determined, “and I don’t care. But I am getting sick and tired of all of this idiocy. I’m not running anymore.”
He spread his arms out in the air and stared Ishida down.
“If you’re going to shoot, take your best shot already.”
For just a moment, Ishida hesitated. But just as quickly as it came, it dissipated. An unexpected smirk grew along his lips.
And he fired.
~*~
Chapter Fifteen End
~*~
That was quite possibly the worst cliffhanger I’ve ever written.
Artemis and Actaeon - Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt, also associated with the moon. Actaeon was a hunter who boasted he was better than her. For revenge, she turned him into a stag, and he was eaten by his own hunting dogs.