Fanfiction || Treading Icy Waters 13
Title: Treading Icy Waters
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Action/Suspense
Warnings: Occasional language, violence, gore.
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It begins directly before the Hueco Mundo arc and diverges from there.
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.
~*~
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
-Voltaire
~*~
Chapter Thirteen
Everything in Moderation
~*~
“What did you say?” The malice in Hitsugaya Toushirou’s voice was enough to make the dogs across the street cower in submission.
“I said,” Urahara grinned as he examined the expired gigai, “that I already knew about that hollow.”
“And I suppose everyone else knew as well. They just didn’t say anything because they thought it would be amusing to see me out of commission on account of a no-name hollow.”
“Hardly out of commission,” the blonde pouted. “Just a bit beat up is all. And I’m confident that I’m the only one who knew of the hollow’s presence. I have traps and sensors set up all over this place, and it just so happened that the clumsy thing managed to trigger two or three of them the last couple of days. So you don’t have to feel quite so inadequate, ne?”
Doing his best to ignore Urahara and yet listen intently to him at the same time, Hitsugaya soaked in what exactly those words meant. There were at least five taichou-level shinigami in Karakura right now, and none of them had been able to detect the energy of a single hollow. “That means…”
“Yup!” Urahara chimed as he poked a finger into the side of one of Hitsugaya’s broken ribs. The small shinigami cursed with a surprisingly big voice before jumping back to escape the man’s killer finger.
He wanted to slap himself. That was not how he was supposed to handle pain. That was the exact opposite of the way he was supposed to react. But, damn! That really hurt!
Urahara frowned critically at the response, but quickly perked up again. “The gigai’s in bad shape, but I’ll have it fixed by tomorrow morning. Nothing to worry about.”
Despite that Hitsugaya found this diagnosis rather contradictory to his painful probe’s results, he did not reply. Instead, he pulled out the gikongan dispenser that had fallen from his pocket earlier and opened the bottom to produce a single, white orb emblazoned with a familiar flaming skull. Tossing it into his mouth, he was separated from the now empty shell. And as Urahara fiddled with the lifeless gigai, he made sure to analyze himself thoroughly. The results were confusing.
While Hitsugaya had sustained more than his fair share of injuries in his time, he had never really had to bring a gigai into the equation before. Either he had stayed in the gigai as the wounds healed or he hadn’t been in a gigai at all. The wounds from the encounter were no where on his person, but he could still feel an awkward phantom pain in his abdomen.
“Don’t give me that look. I told you it’s nothing to worry about,” the cheerful salesman waved away Hitsugaya’s concerns. “What you should really be worried about is that hollow. The reason why we couldn’t sense it as it was watching us and the reason why it was able to surprise you the way it did are two very different reasons.”
“If you have a point, please get to it,” the irate boy huffed, still uncomfortable despite Urahara’s reassurances.
“Well, whatever it was that enabled it to sneak around has nothing to do with your current situation. Its presence was completely shielded. Either that or everyone everywhere has had their senses dampened, which is highly unlikely.”
“In other words, someone’s found a way to hide a hollow from both individual shinigami and Seireitei’s sensors.”
“No need to name names, eh?” the be-hatted man smirked.
“You said there was a second reason,” Hitsugaya grunted, wanting to avoid that particular topic of discussion.
“Right, but the second one is your fault, I’m afraid,” he grinned at the smaller shinigami’s return scowl. “You have virtually no awareness of your own reiatsu, correct?”
“Yes,” Hitsugaya hazarded.
“Ever wonder why?” The impatient glare he received was more telling than any answer he could have received. “Well, the easiest way to understand it would be to equate reiatsu to a smell.”
“Must everyone imply that I have body odor?” the white haired shinigami huffed aggravatedly much to Urahara’s amusement.
“Perhaps it’s a sign,” he smirked. “But all aroma-based jokes aside, sensing reiatsu is very similar to smell. Imagine someone lighting a scented candle. For a while, the smell is very prominent, but if that is the only scent a person smells for long enough then, without even realizing it, the person stops noticing the smell. Because you are no longer in complete control of your reiatsu, your senses are taking it in as if it were a separate entity. You’re always surrounded by your own reiatsu, so you hardly even realize the increments in which your control is waning. You may not notice it any more, but it’s still there. And it’s created a barrier, messing with your senses. Anything too weak to break through that barrier doesn’t even reach. Until that hollow released his killing intent, he was far too weak for you to sense.”
Hitsugaya stood silently for a moment, watching the wall with a contemplative frown. “Do you … have any record of a prize on a hollow named Torquatusa?”
“Ah. So now it has a name, huh?” Hitsugaya refused to respond yet again. “But I doubt it. I’ve never heard the name before. Not that that means anything with him sneaking around my house like he was. If we can’t sense him, why would we have a bounty on him?” Hitsugaya sighed. It had been a stupid question, and he had known it. He shouldn’t have expected a decent answer. Just as he turned around to leave however, Urahara surprised him. “But … considering that Ururu dispatched him with a single kick, I’d guess that he was weak enough to assume that you’re still able to keep up a fairly stable amount of control. And as long as you don’t go do anything stupid, you should have that control for a good four or five days.”
The white crowned ex-taichou paused, turning back around just enough to see Urahara bend over the gigai once more. Not only had he actually answered the question, but he had reminded Hitsugaya of another one. “That girl, Ururu…” he began. “She’s … the same as Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou?”
Urahara stood straight once more, offering a steely smirk. “Similar, yes. But not the same. If I had to put it simply, Ururu is a crude, unrefined version of Mayuri’s lovely daughter.”
Hitsugaya mulled over this reply for a second before confirming, “Then, you didn’t make her.” It was not a question.
Now the be-hatted salesman could not hide his amusement. “No, I did not. I found her. Or, more accurately, little Jinta did. Would you like to hear the story?” Hitsugaya leaned against the doorway, arms folded across his chest, and Urahara took it as a yes.
“It was only a couple of years ago, obviously. But that little brat, Jinta, wandered into my store, grabbed a handful of the sweetest, most unhealthy candy in the shop, and walked right out. Well, I had a duty to my shop and to Tessai, but mostly I was just bored, so I followed him. I was expecting him to run on home or share his shoplifting expertise with friends, like a normal brat would do, but he didn’t. Instead, I followed him right into this alleyway. He leaned in to a cardboard box next to a dumpster and started giving the candy to a little girl.
“Now, you can imagine how it felt to watch some ratty kid feed an even rattier kid shoplifted candy within the confines of a cardboard box. Not to mention the fact that the girl looked half-dead. So I grabbed him by his shirt, picked up his little girlfriend, and dragged them back to my shop. Turns out Jinta ran away from home and just happened to find her while he was scrounging around for a place to spend the night. I knew right away that she wasn’t truly human so I pulled myself an all-nighter. She was most likely abandoned because the person who created her couldn’t get her to move. She was totally inanimate, like a corpse. So I tweaked some things here and there, and little Ururu woke up.
“Ururu and Nemu are similar in the fact that they are both partially artificial, but I was able to pick up on the differences rather quickly. While Nemu’s body is artificial and her soul natural, Ururu’s body is natural and her soul artificial. She’s a pretty interesting little tyke, isn’t she?” he turned to see if Hitsugaya would say anything, but there was nobody there.
~*~
Hitsugaya wasn’t sure how much more of this madness he could take. All of this illegal experimentation was getting to be a bit much for a single sitting. And it didn’t help that his head was hurting too.
He had tried to convince himself that his recent headaches were caused by nothing more than stress. His first appeared after meeting with Ichimaru once again, and the second had been brought on by his encounter with Torquatusa. Both were very stress-inducing situations. And stress headaches, as much as Hitsugaya hated to admit, were more likely than Urahara being wrong. Yet he couldn’t delude himself either. With a job like his, he had outgrown run-of-the-mill stress headaches a long time ago. And Urahara was prone to hiding things; in fact, he enjoyed it. Was he not telling him something? If so, what was it and why was he hiding it? Hitsugaya would be the first to tell anyone that Urahara was an idiot, but even so, everything he did was for a reason. Could it possibly be as simple as stress escalating the symptoms? Or was it something else?
Hitsugaya grimaced. As long as he didn’t do anything stupid, huh? As if he had a choice.
His endless musing, however, was soon cut off by what appeared to be a small earthquake. He had been heading back to the underground area hoping for a little privacy as Matsumoto and Abarai had commandeered the roof, but it seemed that he would forever be hindered in his efforts to relax. No rest for the wicked, as was often said. For a brief moment, he wondered how well Aizen slept each night. Just as quickly as the thought came though, he abandoned it and decided to search for the source of the earthquake. It wasn’t hard to find.
Plopping himself unceremoniously on a make-shift hill, he set his elbow on his knee, his chin on his palm, and watched as none other than Arisawa Tatsuki lifted her fist and slammed it into the ground. The earth beneath her broke away from the force, rocks and dirt spraying into the air. When the debris settled, she was standing in the middle of a small crater. Hitsugaya continued to watch in earnest as she performed the action again and again. Something was forming in front of her fist each time, providing the energy that was tearing apart the rocky ground. It was a bluish-purple light that disappeared and reappeared as she brandished her fist, seeming to solidify an instant before it hit the ground. The small shinigami was quite surprised. Arisawa Tatsuki was solidifying her reiatsu.
He smirked. Now this was something he could handle.
“Oi! Arisawa!”
The lanky teen jolted to attention when the ex-taichou appeared by her side, but relaxed when she realized who he was. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. “Hey! Toushirou, you promised. It’s Tatsuki.”
“Right,” he grunted noncommittally. “Where’s Inoue?”
“I made Orihime go home a while ago to cook herself some dinner, but she’ll probably be back again to see if I’ll eat some,” Tatsuki offered a sheepish grin.
“Does she know how far you’ve progressed with your reiatsu?” Hitsugaya refused to stray from the topic, despite the fact that he was sure Matsumoto would be more than willing to eat anything Tatsuki may wish to avoid. “That was quite a display for such an amateur.”
“I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” she smirked. “And, yeah. She knows. She was the first one I told. But she can’t help me too much. Those hairclips of hers make no sense to me.”
“That’s the way it should be. One’s true abilities should be known only to oneself,” he huffed. “However, you look like you have yet to gain any ability.”
“What was that?!”
“Do you know what you’re doing with that light?”
“Well, I … just sort of punch, I guess. And it just shows up,” Tatsuki replied, eyeing her hand apprehensively.
“So it’s an unconscious control. That’s the worst possible way it could develop,” the young boy sighed. “You’re going to have to fix that if you want to progress any further. Here. Hold out your arm out straight in front of you, hand in a fist.” Tatsuki frowned at this demand, but slowly, surely, did as she was told. “Now, imagine a current of water surrounding your body on all sides. Relax; try to see yourself as part of the current as well. I said relax. Don’t tense your muscles like that; let the current hold you up instead.”
He watched her close her eyes in concentration, taking in every word at face value and trying her absolute hardest to do everything exactly as he instructed. He had seen that expression, that intense concentration, on the faces of many of his division members. Circling around her, checking her posture, her reiatsu flow, he couldn’t help but smirk.
“Alright. Next, I want you to disrupt the flow. Picture the current changing its course toward your fist, as if there were a marble-sized whirl pool or even a black hole right in front of your knuckles. Don’t rush it at first; let the current flow at a steady speed. When you start to feel strained, that is when you need to pick up speed.” A long pause. “Open your eyes.”
Tatsuki’s eye lids fluttered open to meet a pale purple light floating directly in front of her fist. She stared wide-eyed for a moment before turning to Hitsugaya once more. “Wow. You’re good.”
“I ought to be. The last step is to give it a solid form. The shape should be simple for your first time; an orb will do. That whirlpool you imagined, picture it imploding.” She ground her teeth together, staring the light down as if it were her enemy. The light began to brighten, no longer purple but white, until it finally caved in on itself. Tatsuki winced at the sudden intensity, but it soon diminished, leaving what looked suspiciously like a marble floating in the air.
“Now,” Hitsugaya confirmed, “you may hit something.”
Tatsuki, still rather dazed, blinked at the crystalline orb before shrugging and letting her fist fly. The entire underground shook with the force, dirt and rock shooting high and faster than any time before. The young teen wiped her eyes of debris and dust and looked out on a huge crater at least seven meters in diameter. Well, it was huge for her anyway. “What the hell was that?!” she couldn’t help but burst.
“It was the same thing you were doing earlier,” the white crowned boy huffed. “I just taught you a better way to do it.”
“How did you know exactly how to do it, then?” she countered, leaning in to stare him in the eye.
“Like I said before,” he grumbled, pushing her away, “one’s true abilities should be known only to oneself. If you go through those motions each time, you should be able to gain speed, precision, and endurance. Keep it up and you’ll be able to add power to that list as well. Try it again, but this time don’t take so long to relax. Once you get used to the posture, it will come quicker.”
Tatsuki didn’t know what to say, so she readied herself for a second go.
~*~
Matsumoto Rangiku watched the display from a way away, a large smile growing upon her lips. He was so absorbed in teaching Tatsuki that he hadn’t noticed she’d left the roof. He was completely off guard, totally oblivious to everything except the girl in front of him, and she liked it that way. She hadn’t seen him so absorbed in anything since the last time he had gone to inspect Squad Three’s combat progress the day before they all left for their reconnaissance mission. He hadn’t been able to work with their division for a long time. He must have missed it.
She giggled. “You are still very much a taichou. My taichou.”
It had been too long since he’d really enjoyed himself. She would have liked to watch the scene a little longer. But such was not her nature. Oh well.
“Taichou! Taichou!”
Hitsugaya whirled around to face his second in command, his unappreciative pout telling all. “Matsumoto, why are here?”
She didn’t say a word. Instead, she pulled a piece of paper from between her breasts and shoved it in his face, the crazed smile of a victorious warrior threatening to take over all other features. The further Hitsugaya scanned down the paper, the wider his eyes became. Hastily he tried to snatch it from her, but she held it up where he couldn’t reach. “Matsumoto! Where did you get that?!”
Tatsuki watched with interest as the usually calm and collected shinigami’s cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment. “I stole it out of Urahara-jii’s mail box!” the busty fukutaichou chimed with glee. “How come you never told me about it?”
“Because I knew you’d do this.”
“Do what?”
“Insist on going.”
“Taichou! That’s a great idea!” Matsumoto plowed on. Tatsuki could no longer tell whether his face was red from embarrassment or rage. “I’d love to go! After all, I’m the most fit to take up the role, ne?”
“What are you two talking about?” the high schooler finally ventured.
“Oh, Tatsuki! Taichou’s so mean!” the woman began, instantly switching from playful to tearful. “I went through so much to find him again, getting Yamamoto-soutaichou to let me go, coming down to earth, even being Urahara-jii’s delivery girl! And how does he repay me? He hides this from me!”
The buxom fukutaichou now held up the same piece of paper that had flustered Hitsugaya so for Tatsuki to read as the smaller shinigami looked away grumbling. It was a letter explaining that Suzumiya-sensei, Vice Principal of Karakura High School, wished to have a parent-teacher meeting after school on Monday. She would like to discuss Hitsugaya’s and Renji’s acclimatization to Japanese life, as they had only recently arrived from America and she wanted to make sure that the change went smoothly for them.
Tatsuki baulked.
“I thought you said you weren’t old enough to be my mother,” Hitsugaya grumbled.
“I’m not gonna be your mother,” Matsumoto countered without skipping a beat. “I’m going to be the well-meaning, ever-so-beautiful eldest sister who has to go instead because your mother, as sad as it is, couldn’t leave America with you. Renji’s already agreed with it.”
“Well, I don’t. I wasn’t planning on going at all.”
“But, Taichou! If we don’t go, we’ll blow our cover!” she whined.
“It’s more likely that you’ll let something slip than it is that she’ll assume we’re shinigami because I refuse to take part in a parent-teacher conference,” he replied as cold as ever.
Matsumoto sighed. “Very well. I figured something like this would happen. I know you too well.”
“Obviously you don’t.”
“And that’s why,” she pressed on, ignoring her taichou, “Urahara’s calling to confirm even as we speak!” Her smirk was comparable to that of a demon’s, made to seem all the more wicked due to the stunned expression of her 4’4” victim.
“You went behind my back and made a deal with Urahara Kisuke just so you could take me to a completely unnecessary meeting and see me mildly embarrassed,” Hitsugaya replied, incredulous.
“Don’t sell me short, Taichou. I don’t want to see you mildly embarrassed; I wanna see you really embarrassed. And besides, who was the one who left me in Soul Society just because he was worried his second-in-command would want to do something to help him?”
“Touché.”
“So you’re okay with it?” Matsumoto held out her hands pleadingly.
“It’s not as if I have much choice,” he sighed.
“Hear that, Tatsuki?! He says I can go!” the well-endowed shinigami jumped up and down with glee before embracing both her taichou and Tatsuki in a suffocating grip of death. “I have to go tell Urahara-jii to call them up before you change your mind!”
Silence reigned for all of ten seconds before her words registered in Hitsugaya’s mind.
Then: “MATSUMOTO!”
But she was already long gone.
~*~
“Why?” Toushirou muttered under his breath, hand hiding his eyes from Tatsuki’s view. “Why?”
“Why didn’t I just strangle her the moment she first walked into my office?!”
Tatsuki jumped back at the unexpected burst of murderous reiatsu spewing forth from his small body, but what was even more surprising for her was how quickly it dissipated.
“Damn woman…” he finally sighed, turning back to face Tatsuki as if nothing had happened at all. “Oi. Who told you to stop? Try again, taking less time to conjure the images. Have the feel and the image already in your head before you even begin.”
“R-Right,” Tatsuki drew herself back into the correct posture and readied herself for another try. Before she could begin however, she frowned and looked back down at her newfound teacher.
“Do you have something to say, or are you just going to stare at me all evening long?” he scowled.
“She called you Taichou, right?” Tatsuki finally vocalized, a thoughtful expression somewhere between curiosity and self-consciousness alighting her face.
“It is- was my rank in Seireitei.”
“Ah. Well, since sensei doesn’t sound right because you’re in my class and all, and I already have a shihan… Could I call you that too?”
Toushirou looked blankly up at her for a moment before turning to the side. “Hmph. If that’s what you prefer.”
“Yeah,” she replied with a grin, looking straight out and lifting her arm to begin once more. “It is.”
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Action/Suspense
Warnings: Occasional language, violence, gore.
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It begins directly before the Hueco Mundo arc and diverges from there.
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.
~*~
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
-Voltaire
~*~
Chapter Thirteen
Everything in Moderation
~*~
“What did you say?” The malice in Hitsugaya Toushirou’s voice was enough to make the dogs across the street cower in submission.
“I said,” Urahara grinned as he examined the expired gigai, “that I already knew about that hollow.”
“And I suppose everyone else knew as well. They just didn’t say anything because they thought it would be amusing to see me out of commission on account of a no-name hollow.”
“Hardly out of commission,” the blonde pouted. “Just a bit beat up is all. And I’m confident that I’m the only one who knew of the hollow’s presence. I have traps and sensors set up all over this place, and it just so happened that the clumsy thing managed to trigger two or three of them the last couple of days. So you don’t have to feel quite so inadequate, ne?”
Doing his best to ignore Urahara and yet listen intently to him at the same time, Hitsugaya soaked in what exactly those words meant. There were at least five taichou-level shinigami in Karakura right now, and none of them had been able to detect the energy of a single hollow. “That means…”
“Yup!” Urahara chimed as he poked a finger into the side of one of Hitsugaya’s broken ribs. The small shinigami cursed with a surprisingly big voice before jumping back to escape the man’s killer finger.
He wanted to slap himself. That was not how he was supposed to handle pain. That was the exact opposite of the way he was supposed to react. But, damn! That really hurt!
Urahara frowned critically at the response, but quickly perked up again. “The gigai’s in bad shape, but I’ll have it fixed by tomorrow morning. Nothing to worry about.”
Despite that Hitsugaya found this diagnosis rather contradictory to his painful probe’s results, he did not reply. Instead, he pulled out the gikongan dispenser that had fallen from his pocket earlier and opened the bottom to produce a single, white orb emblazoned with a familiar flaming skull. Tossing it into his mouth, he was separated from the now empty shell. And as Urahara fiddled with the lifeless gigai, he made sure to analyze himself thoroughly. The results were confusing.
While Hitsugaya had sustained more than his fair share of injuries in his time, he had never really had to bring a gigai into the equation before. Either he had stayed in the gigai as the wounds healed or he hadn’t been in a gigai at all. The wounds from the encounter were no where on his person, but he could still feel an awkward phantom pain in his abdomen.
“Don’t give me that look. I told you it’s nothing to worry about,” the cheerful salesman waved away Hitsugaya’s concerns. “What you should really be worried about is that hollow. The reason why we couldn’t sense it as it was watching us and the reason why it was able to surprise you the way it did are two very different reasons.”
“If you have a point, please get to it,” the irate boy huffed, still uncomfortable despite Urahara’s reassurances.
“Well, whatever it was that enabled it to sneak around has nothing to do with your current situation. Its presence was completely shielded. Either that or everyone everywhere has had their senses dampened, which is highly unlikely.”
“In other words, someone’s found a way to hide a hollow from both individual shinigami and Seireitei’s sensors.”
“No need to name names, eh?” the be-hatted man smirked.
“You said there was a second reason,” Hitsugaya grunted, wanting to avoid that particular topic of discussion.
“Right, but the second one is your fault, I’m afraid,” he grinned at the smaller shinigami’s return scowl. “You have virtually no awareness of your own reiatsu, correct?”
“Yes,” Hitsugaya hazarded.
“Ever wonder why?” The impatient glare he received was more telling than any answer he could have received. “Well, the easiest way to understand it would be to equate reiatsu to a smell.”
“Must everyone imply that I have body odor?” the white haired shinigami huffed aggravatedly much to Urahara’s amusement.
“Perhaps it’s a sign,” he smirked. “But all aroma-based jokes aside, sensing reiatsu is very similar to smell. Imagine someone lighting a scented candle. For a while, the smell is very prominent, but if that is the only scent a person smells for long enough then, without even realizing it, the person stops noticing the smell. Because you are no longer in complete control of your reiatsu, your senses are taking it in as if it were a separate entity. You’re always surrounded by your own reiatsu, so you hardly even realize the increments in which your control is waning. You may not notice it any more, but it’s still there. And it’s created a barrier, messing with your senses. Anything too weak to break through that barrier doesn’t even reach. Until that hollow released his killing intent, he was far too weak for you to sense.”
Hitsugaya stood silently for a moment, watching the wall with a contemplative frown. “Do you … have any record of a prize on a hollow named Torquatusa?”
“Ah. So now it has a name, huh?” Hitsugaya refused to respond yet again. “But I doubt it. I’ve never heard the name before. Not that that means anything with him sneaking around my house like he was. If we can’t sense him, why would we have a bounty on him?” Hitsugaya sighed. It had been a stupid question, and he had known it. He shouldn’t have expected a decent answer. Just as he turned around to leave however, Urahara surprised him. “But … considering that Ururu dispatched him with a single kick, I’d guess that he was weak enough to assume that you’re still able to keep up a fairly stable amount of control. And as long as you don’t go do anything stupid, you should have that control for a good four or five days.”
The white crowned ex-taichou paused, turning back around just enough to see Urahara bend over the gigai once more. Not only had he actually answered the question, but he had reminded Hitsugaya of another one. “That girl, Ururu…” he began. “She’s … the same as Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou?”
Urahara stood straight once more, offering a steely smirk. “Similar, yes. But not the same. If I had to put it simply, Ururu is a crude, unrefined version of Mayuri’s lovely daughter.”
Hitsugaya mulled over this reply for a second before confirming, “Then, you didn’t make her.” It was not a question.
Now the be-hatted salesman could not hide his amusement. “No, I did not. I found her. Or, more accurately, little Jinta did. Would you like to hear the story?” Hitsugaya leaned against the doorway, arms folded across his chest, and Urahara took it as a yes.
“It was only a couple of years ago, obviously. But that little brat, Jinta, wandered into my store, grabbed a handful of the sweetest, most unhealthy candy in the shop, and walked right out. Well, I had a duty to my shop and to Tessai, but mostly I was just bored, so I followed him. I was expecting him to run on home or share his shoplifting expertise with friends, like a normal brat would do, but he didn’t. Instead, I followed him right into this alleyway. He leaned in to a cardboard box next to a dumpster and started giving the candy to a little girl.
“Now, you can imagine how it felt to watch some ratty kid feed an even rattier kid shoplifted candy within the confines of a cardboard box. Not to mention the fact that the girl looked half-dead. So I grabbed him by his shirt, picked up his little girlfriend, and dragged them back to my shop. Turns out Jinta ran away from home and just happened to find her while he was scrounging around for a place to spend the night. I knew right away that she wasn’t truly human so I pulled myself an all-nighter. She was most likely abandoned because the person who created her couldn’t get her to move. She was totally inanimate, like a corpse. So I tweaked some things here and there, and little Ururu woke up.
“Ururu and Nemu are similar in the fact that they are both partially artificial, but I was able to pick up on the differences rather quickly. While Nemu’s body is artificial and her soul natural, Ururu’s body is natural and her soul artificial. She’s a pretty interesting little tyke, isn’t she?” he turned to see if Hitsugaya would say anything, but there was nobody there.
~*~
Hitsugaya wasn’t sure how much more of this madness he could take. All of this illegal experimentation was getting to be a bit much for a single sitting. And it didn’t help that his head was hurting too.
He had tried to convince himself that his recent headaches were caused by nothing more than stress. His first appeared after meeting with Ichimaru once again, and the second had been brought on by his encounter with Torquatusa. Both were very stress-inducing situations. And stress headaches, as much as Hitsugaya hated to admit, were more likely than Urahara being wrong. Yet he couldn’t delude himself either. With a job like his, he had outgrown run-of-the-mill stress headaches a long time ago. And Urahara was prone to hiding things; in fact, he enjoyed it. Was he not telling him something? If so, what was it and why was he hiding it? Hitsugaya would be the first to tell anyone that Urahara was an idiot, but even so, everything he did was for a reason. Could it possibly be as simple as stress escalating the symptoms? Or was it something else?
Hitsugaya grimaced. As long as he didn’t do anything stupid, huh? As if he had a choice.
His endless musing, however, was soon cut off by what appeared to be a small earthquake. He had been heading back to the underground area hoping for a little privacy as Matsumoto and Abarai had commandeered the roof, but it seemed that he would forever be hindered in his efforts to relax. No rest for the wicked, as was often said. For a brief moment, he wondered how well Aizen slept each night. Just as quickly as the thought came though, he abandoned it and decided to search for the source of the earthquake. It wasn’t hard to find.
Plopping himself unceremoniously on a make-shift hill, he set his elbow on his knee, his chin on his palm, and watched as none other than Arisawa Tatsuki lifted her fist and slammed it into the ground. The earth beneath her broke away from the force, rocks and dirt spraying into the air. When the debris settled, she was standing in the middle of a small crater. Hitsugaya continued to watch in earnest as she performed the action again and again. Something was forming in front of her fist each time, providing the energy that was tearing apart the rocky ground. It was a bluish-purple light that disappeared and reappeared as she brandished her fist, seeming to solidify an instant before it hit the ground. The small shinigami was quite surprised. Arisawa Tatsuki was solidifying her reiatsu.
He smirked. Now this was something he could handle.
“Oi! Arisawa!”
The lanky teen jolted to attention when the ex-taichou appeared by her side, but relaxed when she realized who he was. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. “Hey! Toushirou, you promised. It’s Tatsuki.”
“Right,” he grunted noncommittally. “Where’s Inoue?”
“I made Orihime go home a while ago to cook herself some dinner, but she’ll probably be back again to see if I’ll eat some,” Tatsuki offered a sheepish grin.
“Does she know how far you’ve progressed with your reiatsu?” Hitsugaya refused to stray from the topic, despite the fact that he was sure Matsumoto would be more than willing to eat anything Tatsuki may wish to avoid. “That was quite a display for such an amateur.”
“I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” she smirked. “And, yeah. She knows. She was the first one I told. But she can’t help me too much. Those hairclips of hers make no sense to me.”
“That’s the way it should be. One’s true abilities should be known only to oneself,” he huffed. “However, you look like you have yet to gain any ability.”
“What was that?!”
“Do you know what you’re doing with that light?”
“Well, I … just sort of punch, I guess. And it just shows up,” Tatsuki replied, eyeing her hand apprehensively.
“So it’s an unconscious control. That’s the worst possible way it could develop,” the young boy sighed. “You’re going to have to fix that if you want to progress any further. Here. Hold out your arm out straight in front of you, hand in a fist.” Tatsuki frowned at this demand, but slowly, surely, did as she was told. “Now, imagine a current of water surrounding your body on all sides. Relax; try to see yourself as part of the current as well. I said relax. Don’t tense your muscles like that; let the current hold you up instead.”
He watched her close her eyes in concentration, taking in every word at face value and trying her absolute hardest to do everything exactly as he instructed. He had seen that expression, that intense concentration, on the faces of many of his division members. Circling around her, checking her posture, her reiatsu flow, he couldn’t help but smirk.
“Alright. Next, I want you to disrupt the flow. Picture the current changing its course toward your fist, as if there were a marble-sized whirl pool or even a black hole right in front of your knuckles. Don’t rush it at first; let the current flow at a steady speed. When you start to feel strained, that is when you need to pick up speed.” A long pause. “Open your eyes.”
Tatsuki’s eye lids fluttered open to meet a pale purple light floating directly in front of her fist. She stared wide-eyed for a moment before turning to Hitsugaya once more. “Wow. You’re good.”
“I ought to be. The last step is to give it a solid form. The shape should be simple for your first time; an orb will do. That whirlpool you imagined, picture it imploding.” She ground her teeth together, staring the light down as if it were her enemy. The light began to brighten, no longer purple but white, until it finally caved in on itself. Tatsuki winced at the sudden intensity, but it soon diminished, leaving what looked suspiciously like a marble floating in the air.
“Now,” Hitsugaya confirmed, “you may hit something.”
Tatsuki, still rather dazed, blinked at the crystalline orb before shrugging and letting her fist fly. The entire underground shook with the force, dirt and rock shooting high and faster than any time before. The young teen wiped her eyes of debris and dust and looked out on a huge crater at least seven meters in diameter. Well, it was huge for her anyway. “What the hell was that?!” she couldn’t help but burst.
“It was the same thing you were doing earlier,” the white crowned boy huffed. “I just taught you a better way to do it.”
“How did you know exactly how to do it, then?” she countered, leaning in to stare him in the eye.
“Like I said before,” he grumbled, pushing her away, “one’s true abilities should be known only to oneself. If you go through those motions each time, you should be able to gain speed, precision, and endurance. Keep it up and you’ll be able to add power to that list as well. Try it again, but this time don’t take so long to relax. Once you get used to the posture, it will come quicker.”
Tatsuki didn’t know what to say, so she readied herself for a second go.
~*~
Matsumoto Rangiku watched the display from a way away, a large smile growing upon her lips. He was so absorbed in teaching Tatsuki that he hadn’t noticed she’d left the roof. He was completely off guard, totally oblivious to everything except the girl in front of him, and she liked it that way. She hadn’t seen him so absorbed in anything since the last time he had gone to inspect Squad Three’s combat progress the day before they all left for their reconnaissance mission. He hadn’t been able to work with their division for a long time. He must have missed it.
She giggled. “You are still very much a taichou. My taichou.”
It had been too long since he’d really enjoyed himself. She would have liked to watch the scene a little longer. But such was not her nature. Oh well.
“Taichou! Taichou!”
Hitsugaya whirled around to face his second in command, his unappreciative pout telling all. “Matsumoto, why are here?”
She didn’t say a word. Instead, she pulled a piece of paper from between her breasts and shoved it in his face, the crazed smile of a victorious warrior threatening to take over all other features. The further Hitsugaya scanned down the paper, the wider his eyes became. Hastily he tried to snatch it from her, but she held it up where he couldn’t reach. “Matsumoto! Where did you get that?!”
Tatsuki watched with interest as the usually calm and collected shinigami’s cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment. “I stole it out of Urahara-jii’s mail box!” the busty fukutaichou chimed with glee. “How come you never told me about it?”
“Because I knew you’d do this.”
“Do what?”
“Insist on going.”
“Taichou! That’s a great idea!” Matsumoto plowed on. Tatsuki could no longer tell whether his face was red from embarrassment or rage. “I’d love to go! After all, I’m the most fit to take up the role, ne?”
“What are you two talking about?” the high schooler finally ventured.
“Oh, Tatsuki! Taichou’s so mean!” the woman began, instantly switching from playful to tearful. “I went through so much to find him again, getting Yamamoto-soutaichou to let me go, coming down to earth, even being Urahara-jii’s delivery girl! And how does he repay me? He hides this from me!”
The buxom fukutaichou now held up the same piece of paper that had flustered Hitsugaya so for Tatsuki to read as the smaller shinigami looked away grumbling. It was a letter explaining that Suzumiya-sensei, Vice Principal of Karakura High School, wished to have a parent-teacher meeting after school on Monday. She would like to discuss Hitsugaya’s and Renji’s acclimatization to Japanese life, as they had only recently arrived from America and she wanted to make sure that the change went smoothly for them.
Tatsuki baulked.
“I thought you said you weren’t old enough to be my mother,” Hitsugaya grumbled.
“I’m not gonna be your mother,” Matsumoto countered without skipping a beat. “I’m going to be the well-meaning, ever-so-beautiful eldest sister who has to go instead because your mother, as sad as it is, couldn’t leave America with you. Renji’s already agreed with it.”
“Well, I don’t. I wasn’t planning on going at all.”
“But, Taichou! If we don’t go, we’ll blow our cover!” she whined.
“It’s more likely that you’ll let something slip than it is that she’ll assume we’re shinigami because I refuse to take part in a parent-teacher conference,” he replied as cold as ever.
Matsumoto sighed. “Very well. I figured something like this would happen. I know you too well.”
“Obviously you don’t.”
“And that’s why,” she pressed on, ignoring her taichou, “Urahara’s calling to confirm even as we speak!” Her smirk was comparable to that of a demon’s, made to seem all the more wicked due to the stunned expression of her 4’4” victim.
“You went behind my back and made a deal with Urahara Kisuke just so you could take me to a completely unnecessary meeting and see me mildly embarrassed,” Hitsugaya replied, incredulous.
“Don’t sell me short, Taichou. I don’t want to see you mildly embarrassed; I wanna see you really embarrassed. And besides, who was the one who left me in Soul Society just because he was worried his second-in-command would want to do something to help him?”
“Touché.”
“So you’re okay with it?” Matsumoto held out her hands pleadingly.
“It’s not as if I have much choice,” he sighed.
“Hear that, Tatsuki?! He says I can go!” the well-endowed shinigami jumped up and down with glee before embracing both her taichou and Tatsuki in a suffocating grip of death. “I have to go tell Urahara-jii to call them up before you change your mind!”
Silence reigned for all of ten seconds before her words registered in Hitsugaya’s mind.
Then: “MATSUMOTO!”
But she was already long gone.
~*~
“Why?” Toushirou muttered under his breath, hand hiding his eyes from Tatsuki’s view. “Why?”
“Why didn’t I just strangle her the moment she first walked into my office?!”
Tatsuki jumped back at the unexpected burst of murderous reiatsu spewing forth from his small body, but what was even more surprising for her was how quickly it dissipated.
“Damn woman…” he finally sighed, turning back to face Tatsuki as if nothing had happened at all. “Oi. Who told you to stop? Try again, taking less time to conjure the images. Have the feel and the image already in your head before you even begin.”
“R-Right,” Tatsuki drew herself back into the correct posture and readied herself for another try. Before she could begin however, she frowned and looked back down at her newfound teacher.
“Do you have something to say, or are you just going to stare at me all evening long?” he scowled.
“She called you Taichou, right?” Tatsuki finally vocalized, a thoughtful expression somewhere between curiosity and self-consciousness alighting her face.
“It is- was my rank in Seireitei.”
“Ah. Well, since sensei doesn’t sound right because you’re in my class and all, and I already have a shihan… Could I call you that too?”
Toushirou looked blankly up at her for a moment before turning to the side. “Hmph. If that’s what you prefer.”
“Yeah,” she replied with a grin, looking straight out and lifting her arm to begin once more. “It is.”