Trust Me
Another OC-based one for my claim at occhallenge. I love Kaien, he's my baby. But then, he IS the first OC I ever made for Bleach, so I guess that's to be expected. Mirabelle belongs to my best friend and is used with her gracious permission. Mira and Kaien's rather unorthodox friendship is the product of numerous RP storylines that have been somewhat combined and meshed into the relationship that exists now.
Title: Trust Me
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Kurosaki Kaien, Mirabelle the Fair
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Bleach and it's characters belong to Kubo Tite, I just borrow them for my own use. Kurosaki Kaien is my own creation, and I will eat your liver if you steal him. Mirabelle the Fair belongs to my close friend utahimelorelei and is used with her gracious permission.
Even in the cool of night, the stillness of the pale white dunes beneath their eerie black sky was broken by little in the way of movement. Except for the occasional slip of motion across the moonlit sands as one or another small creature -- Hollows, all of them -- made their way through this world on endless quest for consumption and, in that, survival, there was little to suggest that any sort of life inhabited the barren desert of Hueco Mundo.
Velvety in it's silence, the curtain of the night was broken only by the faint sound of screams in the distance as lesser Hollows met their demise at the hands of their stronger brethren. From Hollow to Gillian to Adjuchas and perhaps -- for those lucky enough to be gifted with the ability -- the lofty rank of Vastro Lorde. That was the way of things in this silent, sterile world of monochrome colours and stillness. Life -- if it could truly be called that -- consuming life in a neverending cycle of death and rebirth.
It was into this still, soundless night that a flash of energy, a spark of colour emerged as the ragged slash grew, seemingly from the very air itself, ripping open the fabric of reality into a jagged maw. An arm stretched through, muscled yet still wirey with youth, as a shock of brilliant orange hair topping a teenage face set with violet eyes followed closely behind.
Glancing around, the boy pursed his lips for a moment, as though deep in thought before he shrugged somewhat noncommitally and lept through the opening, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, the long red corded tassel of his sword swinging with his motion as he remained crouched. Behind him, the rip in the dark sky of Hueco Mundo sealed itself as seamlessly as though it had never been.
Straightening up, Kaien cast indigo gaze across the still dunes with a sigh. Quiet. Finally. Shifting the long weight of Yamibari across his back, he pressed against the ground with the balls of his feet before he was airborne, slim black-clad form vaulting through the air to land lightly on the bone-white stone spire a scant few yards away. Plopping down, he crossed his legs, pulling Yamibari off of his shoulder, the sheathed blade balanced across his knees, chin resting on folded hands.
He liked it here, despite the fact that he knew perfectly well that his peers -- couldn't really call them friends, except for maybe Yuusuke and Hiyourin -- as well as his parents -- they were almost worse than the rest -- disapproved of his "unsuitable wanderings" into what they all considered enemy territory.
Kaien scoffed at that thought. Enemy territory, feh. Like the very world itself had some sort of label on it, and this part was bad and that part was good and things made so much black and white sense. Idiotic, as far as he was concerned. Hueco Mundo wasn't "evil". It was just a place, the same way Seireitei or Karakura or Rukongai was just a place.
The unseated shinigami -- vaizard, he was different from most of them -- wasn't about to mention his other opinions to his parental units OR to his superiors -- ironically enough, still family members, in one way or another. Expressing "radical" ideas that Hueco Mundo shouldn't be feared, should be looked at as simply another place that perhaps they could actually co-exist with wasn't a practice that netted him much of a friendly response from the rest of the Gotei-13, he wasn't about to let on that he, unlike so many of the rest of them, didn't really even consider Hollows to be evil.
Shifting, the teen flopped back onto his back, folding arms beneath orange head against the cool bone of the spire. Wasn't the whole point of being a shinigami that one defeated Hollows in order to purify them? To release the combined souls and allow those souls to return to the cycle the way that all other souls did naturally? That sure matched better with what he'd learned in Academy than the idea of "Hollows are evil and must be dealt with accordingly".
He understood, to a degree, where those thoughts came from. Hollows were dangerous, they caused deaths and destruction and of course they couldn't necessarily be allowed to roam free. But how was that any different from any creature, any animal on the hunt for it's prey. Lions, hawks, alligators. All of them hunted, all of them killed in order to survive. Hollows did the same. They simply had the -- in Kaien's opinion -- misfortune to live by consuming a prey that the shinigami had decided to protect.
It was stupid, that's what it was. Stupid to decide that something had to be obliterated just because it might eat you. They didn't go into the jungles of Africa to kill tigers just because as far as the tiger was concerned, you'd make a good meal, so why did they seem to think it was any better to send scouting parties into Hueco Mundo to hunt down and destroy stronger Hollows?
Frowning as a sudden shadow crossed his closed eyelids, Kaien sighed and cracked open one eye to peer up at the white-clad figure looming over him, flaxen hair spilling over her shoulders, hands on her hips and pale eyebrows raised over sky-blue eyes in an amused expression. Yawning, he stretched slightly, sitting up and turning slightly to glance back over his shoulder at the woman.
"Hey, Mira-Mira."
The childish nickname seemed slightly out of place, especially when applied to any of the denizens of this world, most notably the woman standing over him with her mask remnant forming a boney coronet that fanned out like small wings on either side of her temples, the points poking through platinum hair in a spray of fine bone.
That was another thing he couldn't really talk about. His friendship with one of the very creatures he was supposed to be "dealing with". Moving to the side a bit as the arrancar took her place beside him, planting palms behind her on the sand and resting her weight on arms, her long hair pooling into a puddle of buttery silk on the sand.
"Decided to come for a visit again, Kaien?"
Chuckling slightly, the shinigami hooked his arms around his knees with a nod. Visiting. That was one word for it, not that he didn't enjoy spending time with the arrancar who'd been one of his few companions as a child. It was just that his time spent in her world was as much an escape as it was a visit.
They'd met for the first time when he was only 4 or so, a solitary child playing in the driveway with a ball. Raised by parents who wanted him to know both worlds they lived in, he'd recognized the feel of reiatsu, the sense of sameness in her and himself that his own vaizard reiatsu gave. Ball forgotten in his small hands, he'd simply stood at the edge of the street and watched as the gartantua had opened and her slender form stepped gracefully out into his world.
She'd realized after a moment that his level stare was one of comprehension, and that he could see her as well as she could see his human form. He wasn't like Hiyourin or Shinji, who'd never had a "real" body, being born of two spiritual entities. But either way, the arrancar -- Mirabelle, she'd later introduced herself as -- had been intrigued by this child who not only could see her but who knew what she was and wasn't afraid because of it.
When she'd learned the name of the orange-haired, fey child who wanted to play with her, she'd understood the why of things. His parents -- most notably his father -- weren't at all unknown among those of the silent desert and so the name of Kurosaki itself had been enough to amuse her. As Kaien himself had done so.
He'd followed her that day, easily hopping through the gateway she opened, grateful to have a playmate who didn't think him "weird", and in who's company he didn't have to pretend in. And that had been the start. Amidst the initial demands of his parents that their son have nothing to do with an arrancar, Mirabelle the Fair had become his playmate, his babysitter, his adored Mira-Mira.
She'd played with him, indulged his whims, and trained the young vaizard long after his parents had come to the grudging realization that, in spite of what they thought, they couldn't stop it. At least, for their peace of mind, she'd made it clear that not only was she none of Aizen's get, but that she had no interest whatsoever in Kaien as a food source. And while trusting Arrancar went against nearly every fibre of their being, neither Rukia nor Ichigo could deny that their son had gained an erstwhile protector in a very unconventional guise.
Leaning back, he rested his back against her skirt-covered shins with a nod.
"Yeah, I guess so. Just fed up with their bullshit again. Kinda ironic they think I'm a threat when I'm the one who's got the most "peaceful" relationship with this place of all."
She let out a laugh, almost more of a scoff, and shook her head, ruffling his bright hair with one hand.
"Feh, what do you expect? As far as they're concerned, there's no point in trying to see things from anything other than their own self-righteous point of view. Otherwise they wouldn't keep all of you all crammed into one little place where they can keep an eye on you. Just like the way they look at all of us the same, regardless of the situation."
Raising his eyebrows with a sigh, Kaien couldn't help but agree. It was true, that despite the fact his father held the same rank as the other captains in the Gotei-13, it was a well-known understanding that V-div -- the Seireitei Specialty 14th Division -- was little more than Yamamoto-Soutaichou's antiquated way of building a cage and keeping an eye on the anomalies. The Vaizard.
It all came down to trust, really. Or lack thereof, he amended in his mind, the lack of trust that Soutaichou and most of the Gotei-13 had in those like him. Well, not quite like him. He'd been born a Vaizard, his Hollow already established. It hadn't been until the 12th division had discovered that a certain percentage of shinigami simply had the ability -- albeit dormantly -- to access an innerself the way he did that the division had truly been formed, thus providing a convenient answer to the question of what to do with the exiles -- not to mention his own father -- who were considered dangerous yet had still been so essential in that first pivotal battle.
"I know. They think we're all just walking timebombs, ready to go off at any time. Hell, it's pure luck that Dad and Uncle Renji were able to argue Soutaichou into trading me out for a while. Heh, maybe it'll prove to them that we don't all NEED to be in V-div."
"Not likely, kid."
Rolling her eyes, she fingered the hilt of her zanpakutou. It was a nice enough thought, she supposed. The idea that the facsist, uptight "government" of Soul Society would ever give any sort of leeway to something that didn't fit, didn't mesh with their strict ideas for how things ought to be. The world was changing, but they were doing their damnedest to keep it from doing so. It was the same with her, with the others like her.
They weren't all Aizen's. Not like most shinigami assumed them to be. Arrancar weren't anything new to the world of Hueco Mundo, they weren't something that a rogue ex-captain shinigami had created. There had been Arrancar before Aizen Sousuke's time, those now called "privaron" by his ilk. Those who hadn't been created.
She was one of those arrancar, one of the ones who had made the climb, up the ranks of Hollows from Hollow to Gillian and then to Adjuchas, where she'd found the strength to rip the porcelaine bone from her face and take the form she now held. Arrancar. Those of the broken mask.
They had lived peacefully here, in their world. Until Aizen Sousuke had arrived, with his vaunted dreams of conquest. He'd made his own arrancar, and those who had lived here, those to whom this place truly belonged, had been thrust to the sidelines. Hunted by shinigami and turncoat alike, the one assuming that she, like so many others, would stand behind the would-be god while the other seemed hellbent on bending every denizen of his new realm to his will.
And that was what the shinigami -- well, most of them, anyway -- didn't understand. Glancing down at the orange head of the boy resting his back against her shins, she crooked the corner of her mouth in an almost smile. He understood. But then, he himself was so different from the "norm" among his kind. Just like her. It was one of the reasons why she tolerated him. Why she trusted him, and by a slim degree, trusted his family and a small number of his friends. Because he trusted her... they tolerated her, would even consider fighting beside her. It was ironic, really. Fighting beside a shinigami.
Sighing slightly to herself with a faint chuckle, she ruffled Kaien's hair again and resumed her watching of Hueco Mundo's night. Yes, ultimately it all came down to trust.
Title: Trust Me
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Kurosaki Kaien, Mirabelle the Fair
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Bleach and it's characters belong to Kubo Tite, I just borrow them for my own use. Kurosaki Kaien is my own creation, and I will eat your liver if you steal him. Mirabelle the Fair belongs to my close friend utahimelorelei and is used with her gracious permission.
Even in the cool of night, the stillness of the pale white dunes beneath their eerie black sky was broken by little in the way of movement. Except for the occasional slip of motion across the moonlit sands as one or another small creature -- Hollows, all of them -- made their way through this world on endless quest for consumption and, in that, survival, there was little to suggest that any sort of life inhabited the barren desert of Hueco Mundo.
Velvety in it's silence, the curtain of the night was broken only by the faint sound of screams in the distance as lesser Hollows met their demise at the hands of their stronger brethren. From Hollow to Gillian to Adjuchas and perhaps -- for those lucky enough to be gifted with the ability -- the lofty rank of Vastro Lorde. That was the way of things in this silent, sterile world of monochrome colours and stillness. Life -- if it could truly be called that -- consuming life in a neverending cycle of death and rebirth.
It was into this still, soundless night that a flash of energy, a spark of colour emerged as the ragged slash grew, seemingly from the very air itself, ripping open the fabric of reality into a jagged maw. An arm stretched through, muscled yet still wirey with youth, as a shock of brilliant orange hair topping a teenage face set with violet eyes followed closely behind.
Glancing around, the boy pursed his lips for a moment, as though deep in thought before he shrugged somewhat noncommitally and lept through the opening, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, the long red corded tassel of his sword swinging with his motion as he remained crouched. Behind him, the rip in the dark sky of Hueco Mundo sealed itself as seamlessly as though it had never been.
Straightening up, Kaien cast indigo gaze across the still dunes with a sigh. Quiet. Finally. Shifting the long weight of Yamibari across his back, he pressed against the ground with the balls of his feet before he was airborne, slim black-clad form vaulting through the air to land lightly on the bone-white stone spire a scant few yards away. Plopping down, he crossed his legs, pulling Yamibari off of his shoulder, the sheathed blade balanced across his knees, chin resting on folded hands.
He liked it here, despite the fact that he knew perfectly well that his peers -- couldn't really call them friends, except for maybe Yuusuke and Hiyourin -- as well as his parents -- they were almost worse than the rest -- disapproved of his "unsuitable wanderings" into what they all considered enemy territory.
Kaien scoffed at that thought. Enemy territory, feh. Like the very world itself had some sort of label on it, and this part was bad and that part was good and things made so much black and white sense. Idiotic, as far as he was concerned. Hueco Mundo wasn't "evil". It was just a place, the same way Seireitei or Karakura or Rukongai was just a place.
The unseated shinigami -- vaizard, he was different from most of them -- wasn't about to mention his other opinions to his parental units OR to his superiors -- ironically enough, still family members, in one way or another. Expressing "radical" ideas that Hueco Mundo shouldn't be feared, should be looked at as simply another place that perhaps they could actually co-exist with wasn't a practice that netted him much of a friendly response from the rest of the Gotei-13, he wasn't about to let on that he, unlike so many of the rest of them, didn't really even consider Hollows to be evil.
Shifting, the teen flopped back onto his back, folding arms beneath orange head against the cool bone of the spire. Wasn't the whole point of being a shinigami that one defeated Hollows in order to purify them? To release the combined souls and allow those souls to return to the cycle the way that all other souls did naturally? That sure matched better with what he'd learned in Academy than the idea of "Hollows are evil and must be dealt with accordingly".
He understood, to a degree, where those thoughts came from. Hollows were dangerous, they caused deaths and destruction and of course they couldn't necessarily be allowed to roam free. But how was that any different from any creature, any animal on the hunt for it's prey. Lions, hawks, alligators. All of them hunted, all of them killed in order to survive. Hollows did the same. They simply had the -- in Kaien's opinion -- misfortune to live by consuming a prey that the shinigami had decided to protect.
It was stupid, that's what it was. Stupid to decide that something had to be obliterated just because it might eat you. They didn't go into the jungles of Africa to kill tigers just because as far as the tiger was concerned, you'd make a good meal, so why did they seem to think it was any better to send scouting parties into Hueco Mundo to hunt down and destroy stronger Hollows?
Frowning as a sudden shadow crossed his closed eyelids, Kaien sighed and cracked open one eye to peer up at the white-clad figure looming over him, flaxen hair spilling over her shoulders, hands on her hips and pale eyebrows raised over sky-blue eyes in an amused expression. Yawning, he stretched slightly, sitting up and turning slightly to glance back over his shoulder at the woman.
"Hey, Mira-Mira."
The childish nickname seemed slightly out of place, especially when applied to any of the denizens of this world, most notably the woman standing over him with her mask remnant forming a boney coronet that fanned out like small wings on either side of her temples, the points poking through platinum hair in a spray of fine bone.
That was another thing he couldn't really talk about. His friendship with one of the very creatures he was supposed to be "dealing with". Moving to the side a bit as the arrancar took her place beside him, planting palms behind her on the sand and resting her weight on arms, her long hair pooling into a puddle of buttery silk on the sand.
"Decided to come for a visit again, Kaien?"
Chuckling slightly, the shinigami hooked his arms around his knees with a nod. Visiting. That was one word for it, not that he didn't enjoy spending time with the arrancar who'd been one of his few companions as a child. It was just that his time spent in her world was as much an escape as it was a visit.
They'd met for the first time when he was only 4 or so, a solitary child playing in the driveway with a ball. Raised by parents who wanted him to know both worlds they lived in, he'd recognized the feel of reiatsu, the sense of sameness in her and himself that his own vaizard reiatsu gave. Ball forgotten in his small hands, he'd simply stood at the edge of the street and watched as the gartantua had opened and her slender form stepped gracefully out into his world.
She'd realized after a moment that his level stare was one of comprehension, and that he could see her as well as she could see his human form. He wasn't like Hiyourin or Shinji, who'd never had a "real" body, being born of two spiritual entities. But either way, the arrancar -- Mirabelle, she'd later introduced herself as -- had been intrigued by this child who not only could see her but who knew what she was and wasn't afraid because of it.
When she'd learned the name of the orange-haired, fey child who wanted to play with her, she'd understood the why of things. His parents -- most notably his father -- weren't at all unknown among those of the silent desert and so the name of Kurosaki itself had been enough to amuse her. As Kaien himself had done so.
He'd followed her that day, easily hopping through the gateway she opened, grateful to have a playmate who didn't think him "weird", and in who's company he didn't have to pretend in. And that had been the start. Amidst the initial demands of his parents that their son have nothing to do with an arrancar, Mirabelle the Fair had become his playmate, his babysitter, his adored Mira-Mira.
She'd played with him, indulged his whims, and trained the young vaizard long after his parents had come to the grudging realization that, in spite of what they thought, they couldn't stop it. At least, for their peace of mind, she'd made it clear that not only was she none of Aizen's get, but that she had no interest whatsoever in Kaien as a food source. And while trusting Arrancar went against nearly every fibre of their being, neither Rukia nor Ichigo could deny that their son had gained an erstwhile protector in a very unconventional guise.
Leaning back, he rested his back against her skirt-covered shins with a nod.
"Yeah, I guess so. Just fed up with their bullshit again. Kinda ironic they think I'm a threat when I'm the one who's got the most "peaceful" relationship with this place of all."
She let out a laugh, almost more of a scoff, and shook her head, ruffling his bright hair with one hand.
"Feh, what do you expect? As far as they're concerned, there's no point in trying to see things from anything other than their own self-righteous point of view. Otherwise they wouldn't keep all of you all crammed into one little place where they can keep an eye on you. Just like the way they look at all of us the same, regardless of the situation."
Raising his eyebrows with a sigh, Kaien couldn't help but agree. It was true, that despite the fact his father held the same rank as the other captains in the Gotei-13, it was a well-known understanding that V-div -- the Seireitei Specialty 14th Division -- was little more than Yamamoto-Soutaichou's antiquated way of building a cage and keeping an eye on the anomalies. The Vaizard.
It all came down to trust, really. Or lack thereof, he amended in his mind, the lack of trust that Soutaichou and most of the Gotei-13 had in those like him. Well, not quite like him. He'd been born a Vaizard, his Hollow already established. It hadn't been until the 12th division had discovered that a certain percentage of shinigami simply had the ability -- albeit dormantly -- to access an innerself the way he did that the division had truly been formed, thus providing a convenient answer to the question of what to do with the exiles -- not to mention his own father -- who were considered dangerous yet had still been so essential in that first pivotal battle.
"I know. They think we're all just walking timebombs, ready to go off at any time. Hell, it's pure luck that Dad and Uncle Renji were able to argue Soutaichou into trading me out for a while. Heh, maybe it'll prove to them that we don't all NEED to be in V-div."
"Not likely, kid."
Rolling her eyes, she fingered the hilt of her zanpakutou. It was a nice enough thought, she supposed. The idea that the facsist, uptight "government" of Soul Society would ever give any sort of leeway to something that didn't fit, didn't mesh with their strict ideas for how things ought to be. The world was changing, but they were doing their damnedest to keep it from doing so. It was the same with her, with the others like her.
They weren't all Aizen's. Not like most shinigami assumed them to be. Arrancar weren't anything new to the world of Hueco Mundo, they weren't something that a rogue ex-captain shinigami had created. There had been Arrancar before Aizen Sousuke's time, those now called "privaron" by his ilk. Those who hadn't been created.
She was one of those arrancar, one of the ones who had made the climb, up the ranks of Hollows from Hollow to Gillian and then to Adjuchas, where she'd found the strength to rip the porcelaine bone from her face and take the form she now held. Arrancar. Those of the broken mask.
They had lived peacefully here, in their world. Until Aizen Sousuke had arrived, with his vaunted dreams of conquest. He'd made his own arrancar, and those who had lived here, those to whom this place truly belonged, had been thrust to the sidelines. Hunted by shinigami and turncoat alike, the one assuming that she, like so many others, would stand behind the would-be god while the other seemed hellbent on bending every denizen of his new realm to his will.
And that was what the shinigami -- well, most of them, anyway -- didn't understand. Glancing down at the orange head of the boy resting his back against her shins, she crooked the corner of her mouth in an almost smile. He understood. But then, he himself was so different from the "norm" among his kind. Just like her. It was one of the reasons why she tolerated him. Why she trusted him, and by a slim degree, trusted his family and a small number of his friends. Because he trusted her... they tolerated her, would even consider fighting beside her. It was ironic, really. Fighting beside a shinigami.
Sighing slightly to herself with a faint chuckle, she ruffled Kaien's hair again and resumed her watching of Hueco Mundo's night. Yes, ultimately it all came down to trust.