Dancing Flower
Bleach Fanfiction
Family/Hurt/Comfort
Chapter 1
Blow Me Away
Only the strongest will survive
Lead me to heaven when we die
I am the shadow on the wall
I'll be the one to save us all
Blow Me Away-Breaking Benjamin ft Valora
Mai always felt that Karakura Town always looked so peaceful during the night. Perhaps it was the silence that filled her with serenity, but when she closed her eyes against the cold breeze blowing against her skin and cocked an ear towards the dark sky, she could make out the cars blurring seamlessly together on Karakua Bridge in a gentle hum.
The teen opened her gold eyes and gazed philosophically at the stars in the sky before slowly returning her attention to the town, watched as the lights twinkled in the windows of distant skyscrapers and in the homes of the occasional night owl, all from her comfortable seat atop of a telephone pole, unconcerned about bringing attention to herself.
Not when she could phase in and out of the two planes of existence at will, rendering her invisible.
A couple held hands on the sidewalk just underneath her, another were making out in the park not too far away. Mai snorted and turned her attention elsewhere. She envied these humans; most went their whole lives without ever seeing the darker side to their world. Mai wished she could live as ignorantly as them.
Mai started to drum her fingers impatiently on her knees. The breeze blew her long blue hair into her eyes and she swept it back over her shoulder impatiently, peering down at the streets below her. Incessant chatter caught her attention and she looked down to spot a family walking by. She frowned, a pang of envy she tried to ignore as she watched a boy around 6 or so swing from his parents' hands. Something she would never experience herself, Mai thought bitterly. She never understood why her father had abandoned her here in the Human World. Her mother's death was a poor excuse. If it weren't for Kisuke Urahara, she would never have known how she was different, different from humans... and shinigami.
Mai Kurotsuchi remembered growing up in the Orphanage. From the start, she had been different, an undeclared outcast. It wasn't just for her obviously exotic heritage that the other children avoided her and potential parents awkwardly averted their eyes from her own sharp, too-intelligent ones. Things happened around Mai, things that couldn't be explained.
One time Sora Kinochi, a thirteen-year-old who had been orphaned at the age of 2 and been returned to the Orphanage three times, had attempted to cut off Mai's pigtails for tattling on him because he'd been sneaking out to buy crack from the local gang. He'd pinned her down and she was helpless and she was furious to be so easily overwhelmed by a stupid drug addict who couldn't even spell "aluminum". And then she felt something inside of her, a power that frightened and fueled her outrage and she'd let loose a high, defiant screech – and shattered every light bulb in the building. She woke up later with a splitting migraine centering from her birthmark, another oddity. Sora was later diagnosed permanently deaf in his right ear.
One of a few, but very suspicious incidents that left Mai sitting alone when she ate or played and the girl had wondered if she would fade away inside those dim and depressing halls from sheer loneliness.
Until he came.
It had been Adoption day for St. Mary's Orphanage. Mai was 6 at the time and hadn't bothered coming out from under the shadow of the stairs and watched resentfully as child and adult walked hand in hand past those heavy oak doors and on to new lives. She looked away as another day came to a close and made to leave her hiding place when the doors opened. The girl hesitated and turned around to be greeted with the sight of a man dressed in attire from a forgotten era, straw sandals with socks and loose, billowing clothes under an equally loose robe or thin coat. Sly but friendly gray eyes peeked from underneath a mop of pale, sandy hair covered by a floppy, green-striped hat. He held a cane in one hand, though it didn't appear as if he actually needed it.
Despite his odd appearance, the matron of the orphanage greeted him warmly with a smile and a handshake. They talked briefly before the man turned to the remaining 5 children, who all straightened, opening their eyes wide and smiling as hard as they could in a silent, desperate attempt to appeal to this man. He observed them closely, as if looking for something only he could see. After a few moments of inspecting the lot, he turned to ask the matron something, a small frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. Mai shifted then and his eyes immediately snapped to hers. Gray brightened in an "aha, there you are" sort of way as he approached her hiding spot.
She stared up at him with big gold eyes as he smiled gently at her. Surprising herself, she shyly returned the gesture. He sat back on his haunches so they were mostly eye-level.
"What's your name?" he asked kindly. Mai didn't answer, marveling that this stranger was looking her in the eye and suddenly afraid of the hope beginning to blossom in her chest because she learned early that it was a stupid thing to do and –
He was holding out his hand for her to shake. "My name is Kisuke Urahara. Do you like candy?"
Mai nodded mutely. Kisuke's smile grew as the girl hesitantly reached out and gripped his much large hand with her smaller, darker one in a surprisingly firm grip. The girl gasped as... something coursed between the two of them. Kisuke's eyes widened and there was a satisfied gleam to his eyes when he said, "I own a small candy store not far from here. If you would like, do you want to come live with me?"
For one long, mortifying moment she thought she would cry. Mai hated to cry. It didn't change anything and only made kids like Sora think they had power over her. But... no one had ever wanted to adopt her before. A few droplets slipped down her cheeks as she nodded her head wildly and let herself be the small, vulnerable little girl that she was and suddenly throw her arms around Kisuke's neck.
"Thank you so much," she whispered into his shoulder.
Mai smiled despite the nip of the breeze and shivered pleasantly, clutching the duster closer around her. Kisuke had been the one to explain everything to her as far as ghosts and Hollows and why she could see them in the first place, but he had no explanation for her ability to phase from Living to Dead at will without her soul leaving her body. The only thing she knew about her parents was that her father was a shinigami and her mother... well, that was another mystery. And along with the information he had given her he had also given her a choice: to do something with the knowledge he gave her or live her life as a normal child. Mai chose to protect Karakura Town.
It took 10 years underneath the candy store for Mai to discover, practice and hone her skills. She had absorbed Kisuke's lessons eagerly and within 4 years had found her Zanpakuto's name and mastered Shikai in a year. Another 2 years and she was proficient enough in Hakuda and Shunpo to keep up with Kisuke. Despite his lazy, easygoing personality, the perverted shopkeeper turned out to be a relentless teacher and pushed her beyond her limits, then demanded more. She thrived under his tutelage, and her strange powers grew with her. Amplified by years of meditation and self-control, she found that her Zanpakato granted her Technopathic powers. With a thought she could fix a computer, or force it to overload with energy until it exploded. Sometimes, she would even "converse" with it. With practice, she could eventually cause blackouts in over a 2 block radius, then found out the hard way that she'd feel like a bus had run over her brain afterward.
Mai Kurotsuchi was sixteen years old now, a junior in high school and the possibility of being bumped up to a senior. Whether she wanted to was a question she had yet to answer. School was child's play for Mai and with a teacher like Kisuke; she could have gone to Harvard and graduated in a year by now.
Mai yawned and adjusted the strap across her chest that held Livewire, her Zanpakuto. In all of her research, she'd never found anyone with such an unruly and active Zanpakato like hers. Sometimes it seemed like Livewire considered herself a separate entity that was only humoring Mai as her supposed master.
The Zanpakato was the embodiment of Mai's Technopathic powers, and behaved much like a sentient machine; cold and calculating. Her favorite pastime: belittling Mai. Not a day went by without Livewire calling her weak or afraid. And if her Zanpakuto was especially irritable she had the nastiest habit of coming out of her sword and attacking her with the nearest object at hand. Kisuke couldn't really give a valid explanation for the anomaly without studying Livewire, which the moody Zanpakato refused to the point of physical harm (Kisuke found out the hard way. It took months for his eyebrows to grow back. Or so he claimed, since he never took his hat off to show anyone).
Mai just wished that her sword would pipe down and behave.
With another yawn, the lanky teen leaned back again. Then came the explosion, jolting her from her relaxed state. She stood, balancing precariously on the pole, quickly pinpointing the commotion at the Kurosaki Clinic. There were 3 spirit energies in that area, one definitely the sinister aura of a Hollow and another she suspected belonged to a shinigami. The third she recognized as the Kurosaki boy's. It didn't surprise her, considering that anybody with a lick of decent spiritual awareness could feel the power spilling out of him with an intensity that had never slackened and over the years of her patrol, only seemed to grow. When it was mentioned to Kisuke, he'd only smiled and hummed noncommittally before going off to do only Gods knew what.
Then again, she was better off not trying to understand the man's inner workings. Her mind would implode with the effort to process all that was Kisuke.
The shinigami's spirit power disappeared and its absence immediately replaced with the shocking intensity of... the boy?
Mai leaped easily from the telephone pole and soared over the houses, arriving in time to see Kurosaki facing off against a Hollow while a young woman in white robes watched the whole thing with wide, disbelieving eyes. Probably the shinigami she'd sensed.
But Mai's attention was on Kurosaki and a lot of things didn't add up because A.) The boy was dressed in Shinigami robes, B.) Was wielding a helluva big sword and then C.) Impossibly presumed to cleave said Hollow in half and collapse rather anticlimactically. About to go down and investigate, Mai noticed Kisuke stroll down the alleyway towards the scene. Mai landed easily in front of him.
"Why am I not surprised?" she muttered, matching his stride. Kisuke smirked and together they surveyed the heavy damage done to the property. The shinigami stared up at them with still-wide eyes. Kisuke bent down towards her to talk while Mai went around with the memory-replacer in her hand. It would erase the events of the last hour and fill in the blanks to explain why their property was half totaled. After that task, she then went and dragged each family member back to bed, checking them for injuries as she did so.
Finished, Mai shed her duster as she walked outside. The shinigami was braced against Kisuke's shoulder for support. She looked extremely weak and the fringes of her body were starting to fray.
"We need to get poor Rukia here back to my shop so I can get her into a Gigai." Mai hardly needed an explanation as she took "Rukia" by the arms and flash stepped back to Urahara's Shop. The trip itself wasn't a long one. She came to a stop outside the shop doors and breathlessly slid them open, looking around the dark room.
"Mr. Tessai?" she called. It took a moment for the large man to come around the corner. Mai released the Soul Reaper into his care and turned just as Kisuke came through the door. Then was unceremoniously smacked on the head with his fan.
"Off to bed with you," he said playfully. "You have school in the morning."
Mai scowled at him but complied and headed off towards the back to her room. She flipped on the light as the door slid shut behind her. Mai's room was simple. A bedroll to sleep on, a closet for her clothes and school uniform and sitting on a small table was her laptop. The teenager yawned again, longer and wide enough to make her jaw creak. Tossing away her duster and shimmying out of her shoes and pants, she flopped down on her bedroll and mentally shut off the light. She absentmindedly rubbed her forehead where her birthmark was. Two white crescent moons with their backs upon each other etched into her tan skin. Few ever saw her strange birthmark because she usually hid it beneath makeup.
She closed her eyes and waited for sleep. Unbidden, the memory of the boy and his parents came back to her, along with the emotions they invoked. It was enough to say that Mai didn't sleep well that night, haunted with never-ending hallways of the orphanage and golden eyes so like her own that watched her miserable passage dispassionately.
Eyes she knew belonged to a man who hadn't wanted her.
AN: This is the new and improved version of Dancing Flower. And at this point I think I'll be updating the name. I've changed the time frame for this story which means Mai is about the same age as Ichigo and therefore will be present for most of the Bleach Storyline. I still don't know whether or not if I want to kill her, but at the moment I'm making no plans to end her. So enjoy and please tell me what you think
UPDATE: Sent the chapter to my Beta to be fixed, so be sure to take the time to go and thank ThaBlueGRRL. Use CONSTRUTIVE CRITICISM!
Pathless Spore
