A/n: Hello and welcome to my first Bleach fic. Sadly I have no beta but I hope that it turned out all right. Also, I, for some strange reason, really love Ishida whump fics. Thus, this and the next one that I'm working on editing have come into being. If you don't like this, I suggest turning back now.

Finally, there is really no set time line placement for this as I'm a fair bit behind in the episodes so that's why I have it marked AU.

Oh yeah, and I do not own Bleach and I'm sure Ishida is quite glad for that fact.

Chapter 1

It was nearly a full moon over Karakura town as Ishida Uryuu hopped from roof top to roof top, patrolling the city for any hollow activity. He had had trouble sleeping, so he decided that he would head out and try to work off some of his restlessness. Ichigo had been losing a lot of sleep lately because of the hollows that had been appearing so frequently at night. Ishida figured he might as well help his friend out by being ready to take care of the next hollow before Ichigo was called from bed. But so far, there hadn't been any sign of hollow activity.

Ishida was just thinking about calling it a night when suddenly a hand shot up from the edge of the roof below him and grabbed his ankle. He fell hard onto the roof top and found that he was unable to move. He could feel that his ankle had been pierced by something and he suspected that it was some sort of paralyzing drug.

A woman's voice drifted down to him as a foot in a heeled shoe crossed into his field of vision. "You certainly are an interesting human. What are you?"

Movement was already beginning to return to Ishida as he rolled over and then very stiffly climbed back onto his feet. "Ishida Uryuu, Quincy," he said as he summoned his bow. His muscles were still far too slow to react as the woman suddenly launched herself at him again, stabbing him in the neck with her nails.

His muscles stopped working again and he fell backward heavily, striking his head on the roof and knocking him out. "A Quincy?" the woman said almost in awe as she bent over his unmoving form. "Who would have thought my luck?" She reached down and scooped him up as if he weighed nothing and then carried him off into the night.

XXX

Ishida slowly opened his eyes and let out a slight groan as he came back around. The first thing he noticed was how incredibly weak he felt. Everything in his body ached and he felt as if he had just run a marathon, took out a hoard of hollows, and had been awake for several days to do so. The next thing he noticed was that he couldn't move.

It wasn't because of how weak he felt, though he doubted that he could have managed much movement because of that. It wasn't the drug still in his system either. But as he tried to move, he realized that his arms, legs, and head were restrained in very cold metal brackets that rattled slightly as he tried to shift.

He found that he was half lying, half sitting in a slightly reclined chair. Braces flipped up on the arms of the chair and held his wrists in place there. Two more braces were fitted over his ankles further down what felt like a wooden chair. His head was held back against the head rest by another brace that fitted over his forehead.

He tried to look around him, but the brace of his head was preventing him from turning his neck. All that he could see within his peripheral vision was the edge of a table to his right. Sticking off the edge of the table, though, was something that he recognized and didn't like that it was over there. It was a loop of his belt that held his five Seele Schneiders.

After seeing that, he noticed that there was something noticeably absent from his person besides that belt. It was his Quincy cross. He hadn't been without some variation of a charm ever since his grandfather had given him one when he was still quite young. It was a very disconcerting feeling to be without one now.

"So, Quincy," the smooth voice of the woman that had attacked him said from across the dimly lit room. "You're awake again."

"Who are you?" he said as he tried again to move his head to see her, but he wasn't able to turn it. He suddenly felt a rush of dizziness with the effort that he had used to try and move. He wondered if maybe he was feeling like this from the blow to the head that he had taken. Maybe he had gotten a concussion.

But that didn't seem quite right. He had had a concussion before, and although it did make him feel weak, it had been accompanied with a horrible headache and nausea. He didn't have either of those symptoms. And this weakness seemed to reach even deeper than his muscles. It was as if the strength was being leached right out of his body.

"Oh, you can simply call me Mistress," the woman said as she finally came into view. She stood over Ishida and looked down at him. She was actually quite beautiful. She was shapely with long, curly blond hair and sparkling green eyes. But it was the cold look in those eyes that betrayed her true nature. "I'm sure you're wondering what is going on, aren't you?"

"The thought did cross my mind," he told her coolly.

She laughed as him as she clapped her hands together. "My, you are quite energetic for where you are right now. I would say that you really are exactly what I have been looking for."

"And what is that?"

She smiled as him and leaned down so that her lips were just barely hovering above his ear. "Food," she whispered to him.

His eyes grew in size at what she said. He was completely at her mercy right now. If she decided to kill him right now, there was going to be nothing that he could do about it.

She snaked an arm across his body then and he tried to keep an eye on it, but lost sight of it as her hand dipped below the edge of the other side of his chair. He heard a slight scraping noise and then her hand returned, now holding a vial that was partly filled with a glowing blue liquid.

"Do you know what this is, Quincy?" she asked him as she held it up in front of his face.

He stared at it a moment before he gave a surprised gasp. "Reiatsu," he said.

"Not only that," she said as she brought her other hand over and carefully pulled the rubber stopper out of the vial. "But it is your reiatsu, Quincy." With that she brought the vial to her lips and then quickly tipped her head back as if she were drinking a shot.

Ishida stared back up at her with a stunned expression as her eyes drifted closed and a look of ecstasy spread over her features. She slowly opened her eyes again after a moment and looked back down at him. "That is the food that I wish to take from you. And you, being a Quincy, will supply me with far more than any other I have ever encountered before could."

"What do you mean?"

"You have a nearly endless supply. If you get too low, you can draw on the spirit particles in the air to create more. As long as both you and I are careful, we could continue our relationship for a very…" she leaned in closer to him so that her face was almost touching his. "…Very long time," she leaned down further and brushed her lips against his.

He tried to move away from her, but there was no where to go. She crushed her lips even tighter against his and sucked his lip into her mouth. Before he could even attempt to fight against her, she bit down on the inside of his lower lip enough to draw a drop of blood with she quickly sucked into her own mouth and swallowed it before releasing him and standing up again.

"I'll leave you for now, Quincy. But I'll introduce you to the rest of the girls in a little while." With that she turned and then walked out of his field of vision. He could hear the click clack of her heels on the wooden floor as she retreated from the room. The door gave a loud metal squeak and then clanged shut with finality once she had gone.

Ishida shivered where he sat as full realization of his predicament came to him. She had been partly right. He could draw in spirit particles from the air to supplement his dwindling reiatsu, but he had to have at least some of his own spirit pressure to mix with those particles to be able to use it like that. If he allowed his own reiatsu to get too low, there would be nothing that he would be able to do to keep himself alive.

But that meant that he was going to have to keep constantly adjusting his own internal spirit pressure and make sure that he didn't stop taking in those spirit particles for very long at a time. He had to consciously choose to draw in the particles, so if he fell asleep for too long, he could die.

He couldn't just take in a surplus of particles to last a while either. That wouldn't do any good because he wouldn't have enough reiatsu to mix with it so it would only go to waste and potentially cause him harm. He didn't know what a surplus of spirit particles would do to him if he couldn't immediately release them in the form of his arrows. It could cause internal damage.

"Kurosaki," he whispered into the dimly lit room. "I could use your help right now."

XXX

Ichigo suddenly woke up in his bed and looked around. He thought that he had just heard a voice, but there was no one else in his room. "Kon?" he called, thinking maybe it was the mod soul. But there was no answer. Then he remembered that Kon had been taken by Yuzu again and was probably locked up in her room down the hall.

He felt momentary sympathy for the mod soul and thought maybe he should go and see if he could rescue the plushy while Yuzu was sleeping. But then he heard a slight click against the glass of his window. He turned and looked at it just as another pebble came up and clicked against the pane.

Reaching over, he lifted his window up and looked outside. He was surprised to see Inoue standing out there, bending over to pick up another pebble.

"Inoue?" he softly called down to her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed as she straightened up and dropped the pebble that was in her hand in her hand. "Kurosaki-kun."

"Inoue, what's wrong? Why are you here?" he asked as he climbed out of his window and gently dropped to the ground to stand beside her.

"Oh, ah, well…" she said looking both worried and embarrassed at the same time. "You see, Kurosaki-kun, I was worried about Ishida-kun."

"Ishida?" Ichigo said. "Why? What has he gotten into?"

"I don't know," she said as she brushed a piece of hair from her neck and then looked up at him with pleading eyes as if she were afraid that he wouldn't believe her. "I just sensed him, not far from my apartment a while ago. But then, all of a sudden, I couldn't sense him anymore."

Ichigo rubbed the back of his neck as he thought about this. "He is pretty good at hiding his reiatsu, maybe he just did that," he suggested. But Inoue shook her head.

"No," she said. "Even when he does that I can still sense him if I concentrate. It's the same for you and Sado-kun too. But no matter how hard I try to find him, I can't."

Ichigo frowned at her and then nodded. He reached down and grabbed the badge that was hanging from a loop on his pajama pants. He slapped it against his chest and was suddenly standing next to Inoue in his Shinigami form while his body crumpled lifelessly to the ground. "Alright, Inoue. Let me stash my body and we'll go see if we can find him."

She smiled at him as he grabbed his body and went over to hide it in the bushes below his window. "Ok," he said when that was done. He turned to her and asked, "Now, where did you last sense him?"

She told him and he gently grabbed her and they were off into the night air, searching for clues of where their Quincy friend had disappeared to.

XXX

"So girls, what do you think?" the woman only known to Ishida as Mistress asked the group of five girls that were now gathered around The Quincy.

"He's not much to look at," one of them pouted as she stared down at him.

"Oh, I don't know," another said. "I think there is a certain charm to him." She winked at Ishida. He felt another wave of revulsion for these women come over him. But Mistress had tied a gag in his mouth so he wasn't able to reply to any of the repulsive things that they had to say about him.

"It doesn't matter what he looks like, Astrid," a third woman said as she reached down and grabbed Ishida's right hand. She pinched the space between his thumb and forefinger hard enough to cause him to gasp in pain. "He seems to be quite hardy," she said as she released her hold.

"That is the point, girls," Mistress said. "With this one, we might be able to keep from having to grab anyone for a while. And you know what that means, don't you girls?"

"We won't have to move so fast!" one said. She appeared to be the youngest of them all. Though really none of them appeared to be past their late twenties and it was Mistress that was the oldest in appearance.

"Exactly, Valorie!" she exclaimed. "One missing person won't be enough to draw their attention. But if we have to take more, we can't stay in one place for very long."

"So how long do you think this one will last?" the one that had pinched him asked.

"I'm not sure. But look at him, he's been in the chair for hours now and hardly looks any worse than when I first grabbed him."

Ishida certainly felt quite a bit worse, but he knew that he was probably doing much better than any other victim that had been taken before because he had already started to rely on his Quincy powers to keep his reiatsu at an acceptable level. Anyone else wouldn't have been able to do that.

"You are right, Mistress," the woman that had not spoken yet said. She came to stand over Ishida now and looked him directly in the eye. None of the other women had done this other than Mistress. He was a little startled by the force of her gaze. If he didn't know better, Ishida would never have thought that this woman would be capable of anything like this. Her eyes spoke of a gentle soul, not one that kidnapped people and drained them of their reiatsu to the point of death.

"This boy will be very good for us," she said and then turned and walked away. The other women took their cue from her and followed her out of the room. Once they were gone, Mistress reached down and untied the gag and took it out of his mouth.

"You hear that, Quincy? You're going to be very good for us."

"What are you?" he asked her after he swallowed a few time to moisten his mouth again. Even still his voice came out slightly raspy.

She giggled at him and then sat at the edge of his chair as she looked down at him. "We are known as Druden. You probably have never heard of us because we come from Europe. We have been forced to migrate this far to avoid the notice of those that would hunt us."

"Druden…" Ishida said as he thought about it. He thought that he might have heard the term before. "From German myth, correct?" he asked.

Her eyes grew wide as she nodded. "So," she said. "You have heard of us then. You are quite full of surprises, Quincy. What have you heard of us?"

He tired to shake his head before he realized that he couldn't. "Not much," he said. "I just remember that they were some form of witch in German tales."

"Well the tales have most of it wrong," she said with a huff as she turned her head away from him. "The tales speak of an ugly old woman that sneaks into houses at night and kills its victims by sitting on their chest in their sleep and compressing them to death. Of course this is all ridiculous."

"But you probably did start off by appearing to kill while a person was sleeping without leaving any mark or other sign of death," Ishida said. "The rest is what the superstitious minds of the time and area came up with."

"You are very perceptive, Quincy. I didn't expect to find you interesting as well as useful."

He ignored her a moment and pressed on. "So what is it that you really do?" he asked.

"Well, first of all, I'm sure you have noticed that we are not old and ugly." She paused and looked at him expecting some kind of response. When he didn't give her one, she let out another huff before continuing. "We are able to drink a person's reiatsu directly," she said. "That is what we did for centuries. But that always kills our victim right away. Once we discovered this certain metal that those cuffs are made from that leaches reiatsu from a body, we found that we were able to drain our victims of much more reiatsu before they expired."

"Slowly torture them to death rather than a quick kill," Ishida said darkly.

She turned to him and gave him an unabashed grin. "Something like that. You see, the shock to the system of a sudden drain of spiritual energy is what killed them before. Once they are dead, their spirit leaves the body along with any remaining energy. This way of slowly drawing it from a body keeps the victim alive long enough to retrieve the very last dregs of what they have to offer."

"But it also means that there are going to be many missing persons in the area in which you settle, causing a certain amount of alarm in a community."

"This is true. And that alarm is what draws the attention of the Jäger, a group that has sworn to slay all of our kind. So, to keep from drawing their attention, we move on after a short time to another place."

"But I will allow you to stay put for a while," Ishida summed up. "You're going to slowly drain every last drop of my reiatsu, using me like a rechargeable battery, until I can't manage to hold a charge any longer."

"That's right," she said as she stood up and smiled down at him. "And, Ishida, I don't care what those girls think, you are quite hansom to me." She leaned down and kissed him again, but this time it was swift and bloodless. With that finished, she turned and left the room.

Ishida lay there a few more moments thinking over everything that he had just heard. If there really were people out that that were hunting these Druden, it might be possible that they would have at least tracked the girls to Karakura already. But if they didn't return to kidnapping people, then there wouldn't be anyway for these hunters to track them here.

He took a deep breath and then tried to press against the restraints as hard as he could. But no matter how hard he pushed, or how much energy he took into his body to help him, he could not manage to so much as loosen the cuffs. He stopped after a few moments and sat there gasping.

He had been right, taking in too many spirit particles was not only a waste, but he could feel it burning his insides. He was glad that he had just experimented with only taking a small amount more than he knew he could currently process. If he had taken more, he would be in a lot more pain and possibly have even injured himself. He sighed in exasperation at his own inadequacy. There was nothing that he could do like this. His only hope now was to stay alive long enough for either those Jäger or his friends to find him.

XXX

Ichigo let out a yawn as he and Inoue approached Urahara's shop. Dawn was just breaking over Karakura town when the shop came into view.

"I'm sorry, Kurosaki-kun," Inoue said as she noticed his yawn. "I've kept you out all night."

"No, it's all right," Ichigo told her. "You were right to get me. We haven't been able to find any trace of Ishida. I'm starting to get quite worried myself. Hopefully Urahara has some ideas for us."

Inoue nodded and quickened her pace slightly towards the shop. Ichigo matched her pace and soon they were standing outside of the closed shop. Inoue walked up to the door and tapped lightly upon it. There was no response.

"We don't have time for this," Ichigo said and stepped up and grabbed the door. It was locked but he shoved it open anyway, breaking the lock in process.

"Kurosaki-kun…" Inoue said as she hung back and stared at the broken door while Ichigo marched inside.

"Hurry up, Inoue," he called back to her.

She took another look at the door and then charged in behind him.

"You! What are you doing here?" Jinta's voice met them as he jumped into the doorway from the shop to the rest of the house.

"Where's Urahara?" Ichigo demanded even as he tried to push past Jinta. The kid wasn't in the mood to be pushed around just then though and surprised Ichigo by shoving him back. "The boss is still asleep," he snapped. "And what are you doing breaking into our place anyway?"

"Please, Jinta-kun," Inoue said as she came forward. "We need to speak with Urahara-san. We think something has happened to Ishida-kun."

"Oh dear," Urahara's voice said from the next room just before he appeared in the doorway behind Jinta. "Our Quincy friend has run into some trouble?" he asked.

"We can't find him," Ichigo said. "Inoue felt his reiatsu disappear last night and we have been looking for him ever since."

"My, my, perhaps you should come in and explain it all to me," he said as he turned and walked back into the house. "Jinta, why don't you make us some tea?"

The boy scowled up at Ichigo but stepped out of their way and went to do as he was told.

Ichigo and Inoue followed Urahara into the living room and sat down around the table. "Now," Urahara said. "Why don't you start at the beginning…?"

A/n: End of part one of a three parter. Tune in next week for Chapter two. Things are going to get a whole lot worse...