There was a long pause of us walking through the city before he answered. I almost hoped he was intentionally letting me lead. Maybe I was going in the right direction. On second thought, I hoped I got him horribly lost, so lost that he had to give up and ask for directions. I've never met a man yet that would give up gracefully and admit they were lost until they had nearly starved to death or really had to piss.
"Vice Captain Kusajishi, I should never have..."
"No you shouldn't have, but you did, I smacked you, forgave you and it was done. Let it go. Now what are we looking for? Please let me find something to fight!"
He skipped ahead of me a step to stop in my path. I could have sidestepped him, or stiff armed him out of my way. For that matter I could have flash stepped halfway across town and hidden from him for hour, but Eleventh squad doesn't back down from a fight. Maybe that was what Hitsugaya wanted. I crossed my arms and waited.
He let out a long sigh and ran a hand through his hair. It looked like someone petting an albino hedgehog. "Kusajishi-kun, I'm sorry. Please let me say it. It was insensitive and I of all people should know what it is like when people make comments about someone without thinking."
Aw, I almost regretted calling him a hedgehog. "Thank you, Captain Hitsugaya."
There was another of his pauses and then he nodded. "All right. We're here to track the source of some suspicious gigai and artifacts that have been found in the world of the living."
I immediately turned to go back to the Urahara Shoten. Hitsugaya caught me by the arm. "It wasn't him. In fact, Urahara was the one that first reported them."
"Then what are we looking for exactly?"
"Look in your bag. There should be a tracker in there. We can look for their reiatsu and narrow it down from there."
The tracker was the guise of a cellphone. Actually, it was a cellphone too. It was one of Captain Clownface's better ones. I wondered if I could call Ken-san and check in, or remind Yumi to go feed Byakushi's fishes for me. Maybe later when I had a chance.
I checked out all the nice little tracking features and saw that there was nothing to track. Nothing. Not a blip of what it was calibrated to look for at all. I whacked it against the bottom of my shoe just to see if it was working.
"That would be why the Eleventh has the highest equipment budget of any squad?" Hitsugaya asked dryly.
"We get the defective stuff. Everyone knows that."
"Hm, I wonder. You seem to have a habit of smacking anything that doesn't perform the way you want it to."
"Not everything. Just the defective stuff. Where are we going anyway?"
He looked into the distance for a moment. "There is one place that I thought we should go. It makes a very good vantage point. I'll show you, if you can keep up."
I caught a glimpse of a smile before he was off and running. Not to be out done or left behind, I tightened the straps of my backpack and followed, catching him and effortlessly keeping pace beside him as we ran. The wind dragged my hair out behind me, whipping it like a flag as I matched his every move, seeing the whole city around us in flashes and snapshots as we whizzed past.
At last, he stopped to flop down on a low wall, catching his breath and leaning back against his hands. "We made it."
I sat beside him, smoothing my skirt under me carefully. The view grabbed me. The whole town was laid out before us, the sun sinking down behind it, making the river and glass glitter everywhere with colored sparkles. "It's... very pretty."
Hitsugaya pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, getting serious and quiet again. "Yes."
I settled in silence beside him, content to just share the view with him. One of the most important things I had learned from Ken-chan was that sometimes you had to just sit still and be quiet. Listen and watch, he told me. I listened. I heard the crickets in the grass begin to chirp as the light faded. I watched Hitsugaya and knew he saw something in the setting sun that I didn't see. I felt the slight chill on the breeze as it curled around him and wondered if he felt the cold too.
As the sun went down and the stars appeared, I tilted my face back and looked up at the sky, looking for familiar patterns. I'd never known the proper constellations, so I had made up my own. Ken-chan had gone along with my game sometimes. I think he even remembered a few of them.
"They're different, you know, like the moon." Hitsugaya's voice was very low and soft, almost a whisper. He seemed closer too, nearly brushing my shoulder again.
I looked closer. They were different. No Blood Puddle. No Silly Hollow. No Broken Sword. It made me sad to think that Ken-chan and I were under different stars. It was lonely.
"But," Hitsugaya leaned closer and pointed. "right over there, is a group they call the Hunter. It's supposed to look like a Quincy, or so I'm told."
I squinted and tried to see what he was pointing at, trying to look straight up his arm. His hair brushed against my cheek as I shook my head. It wasn't as pokey as I thought it would be. "I don't know... I can't see it."
I was still looking at the stars, trying to find the Quincy. Maybe I could see a bow. He looked lopsided though. I turned to point out what I thought could be a leg and found Hitsugaya looking at me very intently and twining part of my hair around his finger.
I might have been a little too much in his space. In fact, it has been well documented that I have no sense of personal space at all. Either way, it was very uncomfortable. I pulled away, smoothing my hair and holding it against my neck. "We haven't found out anything, so we should go."
He opened his mouth, on the verge of saying something when the phone started chirping. It took me a moment to figure out what it was and scramble to dig it out of the backpack again.
"Well?" He asked. "What is it?"
I frowned at the screen, going over the information again. "I... don't know. For a moment there were very good, very strong readings on the reiatsu, then they just disappeared again." I looked up at him. "Like the light from a door that opens and then closes again."
Hitsugaya growled softly under his breath. "Someone's shielding then. They're hiding whatever it is they're up to and we're only finding the evidence and slips."
I nodded to the phone. "But we can narrow it down with this."
"If they are staying in one area."
"And the only way to find out is wait and see."
He rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "This could take a while."
I stood and smoothed my short skirt down again, shivering from how the wall had leeched the heat from my body, or maybe it had been Hitsugaya.
He picked up on the shiver at once. "You should have said something if you were cold. We'll go back at once. We can keep an eye on the readings and track them tomorrow. But only after we take you shopping." He looked positively dreadful as he said the last word, as if it was a fate worse than death.
"Honestly, I'm fine. It's barely even nippy. I've been cold before and it hasn't hurt me a bit." But I was tired. Not that I would admit it to him. "Where are we staying by the way?"
The Captain looked more than pained, he looked positively morose. "Where else? With Urahara."
