A Big Mistake
Chapter Two: This Means War
"They're all gone!"
"Yes," Abarai Renji said for what seemed like the thousandth time. "Yeah, all the captains are gone! They disappeared about two hours ago."
Kurosaki Ichigo couldn't believe his ears. His mouth flapped stupidly for a moment, giving his shorter companion, Kuchiki Rukia, a chance to have her say. "Why? What in the world happened?" Rukia had been in the World of the Living at the said time, thus had no idea that her Captain, Ukitake Jyuushirou, had disappeared into thin air till Renji had noticed her absence and thought to give her a call. He gravely regretted doing so. Why bring Ichigo?
"Nobody knows." He said heavily. "Kuchiki-Taichou was with me when he disappeared. We were talking 'bout Aizen and the Espada, see, and then, suddenly, he flinched. He shook it off, then just doubled over onto the desk and started panting. I tried to get him up again, but he started murmuring about how his 'mummy' wouldn't let him get honey out of the jar anymore, or something like that, then-POOF!" He clapped his hands together to emphasise the word, earning himself a murderous look from Rukia. "Just like that! He was gone!"
Rukia sighed, and turned away, allowing her violet eyes to wander around the room. They were alone in one of the many rooms where the Vice-Captains grouped to meet, one consisting of a few small windows and a long table, at which the Vices sat. The walls were a pale shade of green, and the door was one of classic wood. Ichigo and herself were standing up, while Renji was slumped in a chair, looking very annoyed, with his thick, black eye-brows furrowed and his mouth set in a hard line. To someone else, it may have seemed Renji didn't give a toss that his Captain had just disappeared and could-could-be dead, but Rukia knew all to well that that was the expression Renji took on when he was worried out of his mind, and didn't want to seem like it.
Rukia's eyes narrowed slightly as she raised her arm and patted her chin thoughtfully. "You think Aizen could've had something to do with it?" She asked curiously.
Renji shook his head. "That's what we thought at the start. But if Aizen really wanted to disarm us, why not use the technology to get rid of all the seated officers? I mean, below them, everybody's weak as hell."
"But you're not ruling it out, are you?" Ichigo demanded. "You know Aizen. He likes to play mind games, and this could be one of them!"
"We know. Of course we haven't ruled it out, its just lower on the suspicions list, is all."
Ichigo frowned hard, and then looked away, seemingly lost in thought. Rukia watched him for a moment. "I hope they're alright." She said softly.
Renji's snort brought Ichigo back to earth. He blinked a couple of times with a obvious 'Huh-what?' look on his face. "Of course they're alright, Rukia!" Renji exclaimed. "These are the Taichou we're talking about. They're strong."
Ichigo nodded in agreement, having figured out where the conversation was going. "Yeah. Don't worry, Rukia, they're fine."
Rukia didn't look convinced, but she didn't press the subject. She wanted more then anything to believe her captain and all the others were completely fine, and were brain-storming ideas as to how they were going to get back as the vice-captains worried. But she just couldn't shake the feeling something horrible was happening to them as they spoke.
/
Poke.
Hyuuga Hinata mumbled unintelligibly in her sleep, and snuggled closer to her pillow. Sunlight was pressing rudely against her closed eye-lids, but she wasn't prepared to give in just yet.
Poke.
Hinata grumbled, a little annoyed now. Sunlight couldn't poke people. Hanabi wouldn't sneak into her room so earlier in the morning, much less start poking her cheek with small, tubby fingers.
Poke.
"N...Nani?" Hinata grunted. She cracked open her eye and peered through her eye-lashes, only to come face to face with a little white haired baby with big, turquoise eyes, and a ridiculously large smile on his somewhat tanned face.
For a moment, Hinata stared at him, trying to figure just why a baby was beaming beside her; then the memoires of the previous day zoomed back and slapped the ninja across the face. With a small "Ah!" she immediately sat up, back stiff as wood, and stared wide-eyed at the scene before her.
Fourteen children of ages ranging from 7 to 4 were wandering around her room sheepishly, yawning loudly and shaking each other awake. A brown girl with short, dark purple hair was yelling "ZOOM!" at the top of her voice and running around in a circle with a cat plushie held firmly above her head, looking as though she was having the time of her life. The girl who'd been crying rivers yesterday now looked overjoyed, and was watching the black girl with almost fearful intensity.
Two boys, one with short, white hair, the other with curly brown, were playing cards. Meaning they were just looking at the pictures and laughing when they saw something that seemed funny or shouldn't be there. Huddled in a dark corner was the orange eyed fellow, muttering to himself and pulling at the lose strings of carpet. A black boy and two white ones stood apart, looking a little lost. The shortest was one with messy purple hair and squinted eyes; there was what seemed like a permanent grin plastered to his face, which gave off the most unsettling aura.
And then there was the other five kids, doing whatever they wanted, but never wandering too close to the door. Which Hinata was thankful for. She didn't want her father to find out about this. Knowing him, he would most likely throw them back outside into the cold, where they would freeze...
"Ho?" The baby boy poked her stomach gently, looking up at her with those gorgeous eyes and a confused expression on his face. Apparently, he couldn't understand why Hinata had suddenly looked startled, and stared around her room with her mouth flapping stupidly. He even seemed a little concerned.
Hinata smiled at him, and then scooped him up into the air. He sang "WEEEEEEE!" as she did so, and giggled happily when she started making plan noises.
"Hinata-sama?"
Hinata froze at the sound of her maid's voice. She unconsciously pulled the baby close-who looked a little sad about his fun being ended so quickly-and stared wide-eyed at the door. Any maid that discovered the children would be forced to tell her father by Main Branch law, a law that they couldn't fight even if they wanted to. It had become a part of them, a green symbol on their foreheads that would forever remind them of the fact that they were not Main Branch, and never would be, and that they were to follow the Main Branch's orders until death.
The children froze, too, and looked wonderingly at the door. Even the red-head looked, but, unlike the other children, he glanced over at Hinata with a worried expression on his freckled face
Who's that? It seemed to say.
"Hinata-sama?" The maid repeated, a little louder this time. "Are you awake?" A shadow appeared behind the paper-door.
"H-hai!" Hinata stammered quickly. "Don't come in!" She added hastily, as the door opened a crack.
The maid stopped abruptly, and stared through the paper at her mistress. "Hinata-sama? Why, miss?"
"A-ah, well, I, um ,want to be alone!" What a stupid excuse. "P-please go!"
The maid hesitated, but did eventually close the door. Her shadow bowed, before fading to grey, and then disappearing all together. Hinata let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. That was close...
"Your name's Hinata?" Hinata looked up to see the red-head had wandered over, clutching a phoenix-plushie to his chest.
Hinata nodded as she placed the baby beside her, who stared mucking around with her sheets. "Yeah. Hyuuga Hinata, actually. What's yours?" It had only just occurred to her that she didn't know the children's names, despite the fact she'd dragged them in out of the cold the previous night. Then again, would they even know their own names? The red-head, surely, being seven, would remember his, but the baby? He was three. The black haired girl was only four...but she's probably know her name, as long as it wasn't some ridiculously long one with a hundred characters in it...
"Mine's, uh..." The red-head's voice trailed off as his sunk back to think. His eye-brows furrowed from concentration. "Uh...Y-Yamamoto...uh...Genryusai..?...Shi...Shigekuni!" He ended triumphantly, looking extremely proud off himself. "Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni!"
Hinata blinked. That was one heck of a name. "Ah...S-so, is it okay if I call you Shigekuni-kun?"
Yamamoto nodded happily. "Yeah!"
"Okay. What's his name?" She gestured to the white haired baby, who was crawling slowly towards the edge of the bed. Hinata picked him up and sat him in her lap, where he stared around for a minute, looking confused, then shrugged his confusion off and began tugging at the sleeves of Hinata's gown. Yamamoto studied him intently, with those fiery amber eyes of his, and then retreated back into his mind once again. There was a light of remembrance in those eyes. He had obviously met the baby before last night, but couldn't quite remember where.
"...Hitsugaya Toushirou." Yamamoto said finally.
The baby stopped playing and looked up at the sound of his name. He looked from Hinata to Yamamoto and back again, then pressed his lips together and pouted. If they had called his name, why not speak? Hinata giggled, and ran her fingers through his silky hair. His pout vanished and was replaced by a goofy smile as he caught hold of those pale fingers and bent them gently this way and that. Hinata giggled once again before turning back to Yamamoto.
"Do you know all their names?" She asked.
Yamamoto looked away and stared at the children surrounding him. They had all gone back to playing, oblivious to the fact that they had come within a hair's width of being thrown back out into the winter frost. "...Yeah, I think I do." Yamamoto informed her. But he didn't look pleased about it. He looked a little confused, actually.
"Shigekuni-kun, are you alright?" Hinata asked softly, planting her free hand on his seven-year old shoulder.
Yamamoto's cheeks coloured. "Y-yeah, it's just that I can't remember why I know them." He told her. "I don't remember ever meeting them, but...but I know I did." He frowned. "It's...weird..."
"Don't worry about it. You'll remember eventually." Hinata assured him. Yamamoto stared at her, then cracked into a thankful grin.
A good hour and a half later, Hinata was clean, brushed and dressed, ready for action. It was Saturday, and her father, she discovered, was going to be away for the weekend (of course, he hadn't bothered to tell her), which was good. This way, she could relax a little and let the kids have more freedom. But she'd still need to be careful. If her father returned and suspected she was hiding something from him, he could torture one of the Lower Branch members via the Curse Mark, forcing them to tell everything they knew about Hinata's little 'secret'. She didn't want that. So she herded the kids together, draped them in jackets, gloves and snow-boots, and dragged them outside into the freezing air before anyone noticed she was out of her room.
She took them to Her Garden.
Not many people knew this, but, to celebrate her birth, he father had constructed a little garden for her and only her, cut off from the surrounding world by a tall, green hedge. Beyond the leafy wall was a sea of flowers. There was always something in bloom, whether it be summer or winter, spring or autumn. It was the one thing her father had done for her, before discovering she wasn't the most confident of fighters, lost interest in her and destroyed what little confidence she had left, before moving onto her sister, Hanabi. Now, the garden was something of a secret, and no-one but Hinata really went there. In fact, going there was a rare event for Hinata, too. She had a feeling she'd be going there a lot more now.
Sitting down on a snowy bench, Hinata let out a long sigh as the children began to go crazy in the snow.
The boy with bells in his hair-Zaraki Kenpachi was his name, according to Yamamoto-seemed to like picking on Kuchiki Byakyua, a snobby little boy who had the air of royalty drifting around him where ever he went. Just because they'd left the house didn't mean he'd stop. He rolled up some snow and squished it into a tight, messy snow-ball, and hulled it off the ground. He leaned back slightly and narrowed his one visible eye (the other was hidden behind a eye-patch), taking a deep breath as he did so. He imaged a target sign appearing on the back of Byakyua's head, and, with a small, toothy grin, threw the ball as hard and ferociously as he could.
Unfortunately, Byakyua saw something shiny in the bushes and moved out of the ball's way at the last second. It zipped past his oily black locks and across the clearing, before hitting Yamamoto squarely in the face. He fell back into the sound with a loud, painful thud.
He began to thrash around widely in the sound, beating at anything that came to close. Then he realized he'd been hit by a snow-ball, and, no, the snow wasn't attacking him as he'd feared; fuming, he sat upright and wiped the remaining white stuff off his face. He glowered at Kenpachi, who was laughing hysterically, before cracking a sinister grin and building his own snow-ball. He threw hard and fast, and it hit its target. The force of the blow was so powerful that Kenpachi flew a few feet, before falling, head-first, into the freezing snow. Yamamoto clutched his stomach and laughed, tears swelling in his eyes.
Zaraki growled like a angry dog after clambering back onto his feet. "This means war." He snarled. His bells jingled.
/
Hello again. Thank you for all the nice reviews, I'll be posting replies below.
I didn't really like the way wrote this chapter :P I think I was too lazy...Anyway, I'm still planning all this out, so it might be alittle weird at the beginning, but it'll get better ^^ Please stick with me. Now, replies...
sasuhinafan121: Really? Thats good~ No, they don't all look chibi...well, a little, I guess, since they're all kids now, but they've changed. Ukitake's hair is much shorter and his eyes are bigger... Heh, neither can I :D Ino'll be like O-o. Thank you!
The Ghost of Insanity: Thanks! Hmm, that could be cool. I was gonna bring Sakura and Ino and maybe Tenten into the story soon, as well as Kiba and Shino :] I don't see why I can't bring Naruto and Kakashi into it, too. Thanks for the ideas.
KoreanGal5: Thanks! I'm glad to hear it. The red-head was Yamamoto (but you find that out in this chap, so...). His hairs white now cuz he's so old, but it could've been different when he was little :] There aren't any red-headed captains, so I thought I'd give him the 'honour' of being one XD
Bye-bye!