Title: Those Who Can Put You Together...
Author: Nightheart
Rating: M for Mature. Mainly for Renji's potty-mouth and some mild sexual innuendo.
Summary: After seeing a member of Fourth Squad he happens to have been exposed to on a regular basis get pushed around again, Renji finally asks the very relevant question of just why the hell do they all put up with it? And does something about it.
& & &
For a change Renji wasn't looking for a fight. Having just gotten back from laying the smack-down on a couple of Arrancars in Hueco Mundo, he'd been given orders by Captain Unohana herself (who was one woman he never wanted to cross, simply because he knew that old sayings existed for a reson, and it was a well-known proverb that "those who know how to put you together also know how to take you apart") to rest up for next few days and take it easy... the harder battle was yet to come and he had to regain his strength. At first he'd tried to "tch!" and say that a minor scuffle against some low-ranked losers wasn't going to keep a guy like him (a lieutenant!) down, but when faced with her overly-bright, overly cheerful smile suddenly decided that it was in his own better interests to listen to the good captain.
That was why he had spent the morning hanging about in the vicinity of the Fourth Squadron Head Quarters; he knew that if he went back to Sixth with nothing but idle time on his hands his captain would fill it with paperwork, and he already had quite enough thankyouverymuch. He'd already seen the interior of the treatment rooms, most of which were filled with noisy, complaining Eleventh Squad members (their own captain was apparently in quite a mood about his having missed a good fight). Unohana had chased him away from the very friendly nurses citing that he was distracting them from their work. He didn't see how that could be when several of them graciously offered to give him a physical examination in advance so he wouldn't have to wait in line when Squad physicals were due. Having been shooed off the premises, Renji, bored, was simply wandering around in the recuperation gardens they had, thinking about maybe taking a nap under the tree. So it very much was not his fault when a fight happened to run right smack into him.
Some shorter punk, running at full speed and not looking where he was going, rammed right into his chest. When his eyes snapped forward in panic Renji was startled (and realized a second later that he shouldn't be) to discover he actually knew the puny little rat. Small and slender, with large eyes... by the standards of the Eleventh Squad (which was where Renji had previously spent most of his time) the kid had "kickball" written all over him.
"S-soorrryyy!" he called over his shoulder as he scurried off, headed toward the headquarters as fast as his legs could carry him... which was actually pretty fast now that Renji looked at him.
"Ya better run ya little punk!" a deeper voice roared behind him.
Renji's eyes narrowed. He recognized the voice. Lower-rank Eleventh Squad man with a foul mouth and an even fouler disposition. Those two traits in and of themselves were actually the norm rather than the exception in Eleventh... that squad being full almost entirely of thugs who spent their time killing Hollows and brawling with each other. Renji had fond memories of the squad, but there had been one or two things about it he hadn't liked so much. The kind of crap a bastard like this guy was allowed to get away with would be one of those things.
"Gooood morning," Renji said with a bright smile. "Yajun Isinai, right?"
"What's it to ya?" he spat on the ground.
"Nuthin' asshole," the Lieutenant said in a friendly manner. Other squads might use friend, or man, but Eleventh was different in a lot of ways; squad mates and former squad mates recognized each other by the term 'asshole.'
"Jus' wonderin' why the hell yer runnin' around chasing mice," Renji said casually. "Ya got nuthin' better ta do?"
"I might. Little punk pisses me off, always starin' at me wide eyed ev'ry time he sees me," Isanai snorted, looking at the gate to Fourth that the kid had run in through like he was considering running in after the boy for kicks (literally).
"Looks like he expects sumthin' ta happen to him," he shrugged. "Makes me wanna hit 'im."
Typical street thug mentality; if someone looks like prey, you show your superiority by making sure they and everyone else know how much stronger you were. It had been a common, every-day occurrence on the streets where Renji had grown up. Renji and all of his family members in his childhood street gang had learned real quick to either stay out of the way of the larger, meaner thugs that ruled the streets, or they got hurt... sometimes badly. He'd lost a good friend to an older thug who'd been a mean drunk.
Well, I was bored anyway, Renji said, smile creeping across his face. Unohana would understand he was sure, some guys just weren't suited to peace and quiet.
Renji cracked his knuckes and pulled his arm back before letting fly with a nice textbook punch. The sweet crack of his fist impacting with Isinai's jaw was music to his ears and he made a very satisfying thump when he hit the ground.
"What the fuck?!" the guy demanded, rubbing his jaw from his position on his ass on the ground.
"Shaddap," Renji advised him, debating whether or not to follow up with a kick in the ribs or call himself satisfied.
"You think yer some kinda hero now yer not licking boots in Eleventh, bastard?" he snapped, glaring up at Renji.
Renji placed his foot on the man's chest and shoved backwards, knocking him over.
" 'Sat about lickin' boots?" Renji asked, grinding his foot downwards to prove his point.
"From where I'm standin' the only one lickin' boots here is you. Let's get one thing straight maggot, you don't get any stronger by pickin' on the weak. Yer skills'll wear off if ya do. Ya wanna get stronger, ya pick a fight with a stronger foe, otherwise yer dead weight, got it?"
Renji gave him a final shove in the chest with his foot and paced off back towards fourth, hoping to beg some food off one of the pretty nurses. He ignored the cockroach behind him as it scrabbled to his feet and slouched off.
"Pssst!" a voice hissed at him from the side.
Renji whirled, reaching for Zabimaru on instinct. He relaxed a moment later when he saw the tiny, scrawny, kid-sized form of that one little guy who'd helped Rukia escape. Renji thought he might have saved his own ass with a healing a time or two also. What was his name?
"Thanks a lot for your help," he said, bowing deeply.
That was another reason the guys from Fourth Squad kinda irritated him too, they were always bowing and submissive... No proud warrior would ever efface themselves like a little kid expecting to get smacked.
"Had nuthin' ta do with you," Renji lied.
Well it wasn't entirely a lie, he might owe the little runt but his own motivations probably came from inside his own head. Haru hadn't deserved what had happend to him back in streets of Rukon.
"Well, even if you did it for your own reasons, you still helped me out," the little guy said, bowing, yet again. Renji frowned in annoyance and wished he'd stop doing that. What he'd done didn't warrant effusive thanks.
"I really appreciate it," the kid continued, bowing yet again. "I thought I was a goner back there. He's the third one this week! And more persistent than the others."
Renji frowned again.
"This normal fer you kid?" he asked curiously.
"Sort of," Hanatarou said, ducking his head into his shoulders. His smile was shy and chagrined. "Eleventh Squad's been pretty rowdy lately because Captain Zaraki's been..."
"On the war path?" Renji suggested, nodding understandingly. He knew what his former captain's moods could be like; he could be affable enough usually, and he was kind of scary when he was in a good mood, but if he was in a bad mood... prepare to feel the pain.
"Out of sorts," the kid said diplomatically.
"Hn. What's Eleventh Squad captain's attitude got to do with you?" renji asked. "Just because old Zaraki's in a shitty mood doesn't mean anything outside of Eleventh HQ."
"Unless it does," the kid said, looking sort of apologetic. "He takes his moods out on his subordinates and they can't really do anything about it, so they in turn take their frustration out on anything they can beat up on and not have to worry about getting hurt."
"Hn," Renji grunted, acknowledging that it was often the way of things.
He'd taken his lumps in the squad just like everyone else, but it had only given him motivation to train harder so fewer of Zaraki's mean-ass hits landed or broke through his guard. However, a lot of the thugs in Eleventh were lazy sons of bitches and didn't like to spend a lot of their time in training. Lower ranked assholes mostly.
"Is it like that fer everyone, or just you?" he asked next.
"Pretty much everyone," the kid acknowledged with a sigh. "We're all safe enough in headquarters but if we go outside for our cleaning duties we can usually expect trouble. The best we can do is keep an ear out and try to avoid places without an escape route nearby and if one of them does stumble across us, run as fast as we can."
Renji blinked, out of sorts. For a moment it had been like he'd been an orphan back on the streets of Rukon; that was the standard advice that most of the "Nee-san's"gave kids for survival on the streets before they sent them out on their own. He'd gotten that advice himself at age seven before he'd been shoved out the door i=of the place that had raised him from infancy so that the next batch of hungry kids could be fed. He'd discovered quickly that, while it was good advice, it wasn't always (or even often on those mean streets) feasible. That was one major reason why kids banded together... mutual protection. The thugs that ruled the streets would hit you sooner than look at you, and the penalties for getting caught when stealing food were usually so harsh that no kid in their right mind wanted to risk getting caught without a chance to be rescued. The way of the streets was "steal what you need and fight to keep it." If you didn't learn to fight, you were prey, and prey didn't last long out there. Which, with the way Renji's mind worked, led to the very obvious (to him) question...
"Why the fuck do you take it?"
"I beg pardon?" the boy-man said.
"Sure, I can see that they're bigger and meaner than you, but that don't mean shit, not really," Renji replied.
Growing up as a young gang-leader in the Rukon streets, he'd quickly learned how to use the opponents size and strength against them. There'd been an old man who'd taught him enough in the arts of throws and holds to give him an edge to fight back with when some street thug, either restless or just plain mean, thought he could push Renji or any of his kids around and not have to answer for it. Renji had been a little punk then, but he'd looked after his own. Which was why it utterly mystified him that a grown adult would let other guys push him around... sure they were bigger than him, but there were ways that size could be taken advantage of.
"It's not how much bigger they are that we have to worry about," the little mite replied. "There are also more of them than there are of us."
"So what?" Renji said next. He grinned and shrugged a shoulder. "Just tell 'em that if they give you any crap you won't heal 'em. Assholes like that are always gettin' injured and needin' ta be fixed up. They'll straighten out real quick if you threaten to cut them off and make 'em heal slower."
The kid looked at him like he'd just blasphemed, or took his captain's squad coat off her back and pissed on it or something.
"I could never do that!" he exclaimed.
"Why not?" Renji asked, confused.
"I'm a healer! A healer can never just refuse to heal someone it's... it's just..." he faltered. "It'd be like you refusing to fight at your friends side. It's just a betrayal of who and what we are. Healers go where they're needed, do no harm, "for mercy and not for gain," and we never ever take sides. To refuse to heal someone just because we don't like them is... it's just not the sort of people we are in Squad Four. Ours is a noble calling."
"It's nobly gettin' yer ass kicked too," Renji noted dryly. "I don't get all that other crap ya jus' spouted, but you've done me a good turn a time or two so I'm gonna help you out."
"R-really?!" the boy said, looking amazed and excited.
"Yep," Renji said. "Yer clearly a weakling that thinks of himself as a weakling--"
"Hey!" the boy protested, offended.
"An I've seen yer Zanpaktou... one that puny and ineffective would be grounds for its own ass-kicking in Eleventh let me tell ya."
The boy made another offended noise and the expression on his face approached something close to a glare, a mousy one it was true, but it showed him that the boy had at least some pride, and that meant spirit. There was something there for Renji to work with. The boy wouldn't be a real fighter, but by the time Renji was done with him, he at least would no longer be a doormat.
"So I'm gonna teach you how to defend yerself. Rukon-kid style."
The boy immediately looked dubiuous.
"Stick with me kid," Renji said, smacking him on the back as a way to encourage him. The boy fell forward and Renji had to catch him by the collar.
"Er, sorry," he said righting him. "By the time I'm done with you, no-one'll be able to sneak up on ya."
"Ehehehehehehe..." the boy said, smiling weakly. "Great."
"Yer lucky I got free time on my hands right now," Renji agreed, muscling him off to an empty training court.
"Yeah, real lucky," he muttered.
Authors Note: This is me poking my nose into the Bleach fandom. I like Renji and I could fully see him acting as a rough sort of older brother to anyone he sees as maybe needing one, and I always sort of did wonder why the healers in Fourth et kicked around so much so this is sort of my answer to that. Let me know what you think.
