Ishida Uryuu was dreaming.
The dreams of quincy are not terribly complex. No inner hollows fought to dominate Ishida's mind and no zanpakutou spirits challenged him to battle. Though he would never to admit it, Ishida's dreams were just like that of any normal, healthy young man. Normal, healthy young men dreamt of their friends and lovers; not of tall, menacing zanpakutou spirits with bad haircuts and tattered cloaks; or so he told Ichigo when the latter described his frequent nighttime encounters with Zangetsu to him. Ergo, Ichigo wasn't a normal, healthy young man; but everyone knew that already. Ishida just had to rub it in his face.
Right now he was dreaming of Orihime. They laughed as they play-wrestled and tumbled in a field of flowers near their old school, under a wide blue sky. Ishida forgot about his abduction, forgot that he was trapped in Sereitei. He even forgot to worry if his carefully- stitched clothes would get dirty or torn as Orihime pummelled him into the ground and their bodies churned up dirt and daisies. In dreams, Ishida's rambunctious, passionate side could emerge without risk of him appearing uncool and lifting the façade of solemn aloofness that he had carefully built over the years. Slender fingers playfully tugged at his shirt collar as she lay on top of him, and he folded his arms over her back, holding her tightly. Ishida didn't always feel the need to have sex with her or Ichigo. Their love for him and the familiar warmth of their presence was enough to fill him with joy.
Therefore it explained Ishida's lack of embarrassing reaction; or rather, erection; when the image of Orihime dissolved into that of a muscular, square-jawed man struggling to free himself from the quincy's vicelike grip. Even as he awoke with a start, released his grip and kicked the strange shinigami out of bed, Ishida felt vaguely thankful. It still didn't stop him from glaring at the intruder with irritation and drawing Ginrei Kojaku at the shinigami sprawled on the floor.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked, somehow managing to not sound ridiculous despite the fact that he was standing on the bed in his crumpled floral pyjamas; his hair an unruly mess and without his glasses. Hinamori was nowhere in sight.
"Third Seat Tetsummi, of this division." The man replied calmly, picking himself up. "I've been trying to wake you up. You've got fifteen minutes to get breakfast and prepare for the morning's exercise."
Ishida decided it would have been better if he didn't wake up. It forced him to remember where he was and his inescapable fate. He kept the bow and muttered an apology at Tetsummi, who simply grunted amiably and left the room, his mission accomplished. The quincy took the pouch containing his toiletries and trotted briskly to the bathroom.
Inside he encountered Izuru Kira. The lieutenant stood over a sink, an old-fashioned barber's razor in hand as he shaved away the night's stubble very carefully with the aid of his reflection in a mirror. Ishida couldn't help but find the mundane activity rather incongruous when compared to the almost feminine sounds he heard coming from the captain's room the previous night. He rubbed his smooth chin, glad that Asian men usually did not grow as much facial hair. Evidently Kira saw him in the mirror, for the blond shinigami paused just long enough to roll his eyes. Considering his own circumstances, Ishida simply had to rejoice in the small victory. He turned his back on Kira so that the lieutenant would not see his smirk. The quincy was going to join the training exercise, and looked forward to sweet revenge for the torture he was subjected to the previous night.
How wrong he was.
The exercise was going smoothly. Participants were split into two teams in the forested training park. Most of the third division, under Ikkaku and Tetsummi, were attacking a position guarded by the rest as well as the Fifth division members, Ishida, and Hinamori. Kira was absent. Ishida was equipped with a katana, a longbow and a quiver of sponge-tipped arrows dipped in white paint that left marks on whomever he hit, confirming the kill. He was currently nailing any opponents that managed to come in range with considerable satisfaction. A blunt arrow travelling at high speed still caused bruises.
"Ishida, advance to your left and take cover behind that bush. Ikkaku's reiatsu is approaching." Hinamori ordered him forward and the quincy complied, unused to massed combat but eager to take a shot at another shinigami captain. Just in time, Ikkaku burst forth from the foliage, his shikai activated; and Ishida took aim.
Several things happened at once. Firstly, Tetsummi's zanpakutou prodded at Ishida's back while the quincy fell for Ikkaku's distraction. Before he could finish telling him to yield however, Ishida's lightning reflexes caused him to swing around and fire the arrow at a dangerously close range. As soon as he did so, Tetsummi tried to protect himself by knocking aside Ishida's bow, but ended up slicing the arrow in half just as it left the bowstring. The broken arrow now possessed a sharp point, and it embedded itself in Tetsummi's lower leg. He let out a throaty yell and stumbled to his knees as Hinamori called the exercise to a halt.
Now Ishida found himself ordered by an angry Ikkaku to bring Tetsummi to the Fourth division, a task he didn't exactly relish. He imagined a demonic Retsu Unohana with horns and a pitchfork rubbing her hands together with manic glee at his return. As he supported the heavier, limping shinigami with his shoulder, a thought occurred to him.
He was carrying the medical pack given to him the previous day in the Fourth division. Surely it contained something that could help Tetsummi? Ishida had to admit that he seriously owed the third seat; after his actions that morning and the injury he inflicted. Hopefully he could even heal him and eliminate the trip altogether. Once out of sight of Ikkaku, he pleaded with Tetsummi to let him give it a try, and the shinigami agreed.
Ishida opened the bag and tipped its contents out. To his surprise, it contained absolutely nothing but hundreds of small, white spheres which poured forth and bounced everywhere like marbles, forcing him to scramble about to retrieve them. And Tetsummi burst out laughing.
"Hey quincy, do you know what those are?"
"No," Ishida hissed in frustration as a sphere evaded him and fell into a sewer opening.
"See the little skull printed on each of them? They're stimulant pills."
While Ishida and Tetsummi were away, Ikkaku's and Hinamori's teams completed the exercise and made their way back to the headquarters for lunch. The two leaders eyed each other across the table. Hinamori was the first to speak.
"I wonder how long he will last…?"
The bald captain shrugged. Procuring a quincy to train with was a bonus for the Third division, but that paled in comparison to what it was doing for the Fifth. It was a special gift for its lieutenant and captain, Ikkaku decided, one that would help him to build a good rapport with the new captain and cheer up Kira's old classmate. No one said that Unohana or the Fourth had to have a total monopoly on Ishida anyway. Breeding studs had so many uses.
"Impatient already, lieutenant? I thought you didn't want his services that soon." he replied, grinning slightly.
"No, Captain Ikkaku" Hinamori snorted indignantly, trying to maintain politeness in the face of the captain's crude jokes. "But he was getting desperate already last night. Too horny to even think of concealing his hormonal reiatsu."
"Pah! It means we're doing well. That's normal for a teenager of human years. And you," Ikkaku paused for emphasis, "are no better."
Hinamori went beet red. "Captain Ikkaku, I believe there's a human saying that applies in this situation." She snarled and thumped the table with her fist in irritation. "The pot calling the kettle black."
To her surprise, Ikkaku Madarame burst out into hoots of laughter. He slammed down his bottle (was it his second or third?) hard enough to shatter its bottom, and she dodged a flying shard of glass. Anyone observing closely enough would have seen tears of joy in his eyes as he tossed the stunned girl a beer, rejoicing in having brought back the fighting spirit of another worthy 'playmate', as Yachiru would put it. Her captain and Kira would be so pleased, and Ikkaku silently heaped blessings on the quincy's bespectacled head. Hinamori eyed the drink with astonishment.
It's a fact of life: alternate universes exist. In most of them, Hinamori never recovered from Aizen. She died, went mad or got involved in a fluffy relationship with a very short, white-haired captain. In others, Ikkaku died or married Yumichika after receiving a makeover and a wig. It tends to be pretty sad stuff. But in just this one universe, the rules of probability bent over and let themselves get fucked by Rukia with a sixteen inch strap-on.
Because in this universe, Ikkaku reached forward, peeled Hinamori's fingers open, and gave her a high-five. Together, they would turn the gentleman quincy into a raving sex maniac, and enjoy every moment of it.
An hour later, Ishida and Tetsummi returned from the Fourth division. Thankfully for Ishida, the shinigami was healed easily with a little kidou, though he still couldn't ignore the gentle, hopeful smiles that the medics kept darting his way. He made it a point not to walk past his room, not because he feared that crazed healers would yank him inside and milk him for whatever he had, but because he didn't want to be tempted by the familiar privacy it offered.
There were more exercises in the afternoon, Tetsummi explained. Ikkaku pushed his troops hard, and harder if there were other shinigami divisions to beat. They barely had time to swallow a handful of tasteless biscuits for lunch before rejoining the rest. The Third Seat also helpfully suggested taking the stimulant pills.
Which led to Ishida looking at five of them in the palm of his hand, wondering exactly how many to take. Tetsummi explained that no, they would not turn him into a mindless sex slave since everyone in the Fourth division used them when working long hours. And hadn't he barely slept the previous night? Since Unohana had given him so many (and probably expected to give him more), Ishida decided to swallow all five. The results were excellent, and Ishida spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening leaping from rooftop to rooftop and hammering Ikkaku's division so hard that the irritated captain shook Houzukimaru at him in frustration and insisted on swapping the quincy over to his side for the next day.
That night, Ishida walked in on Kira again in the bathroom. The shinigami was brushing his teeth this time. As he walked past the mirror, something disturbing caught his eye. Tiny, black hairs were visible on his chin, the last stages of puberty finally catching up with the quincy. Grunting with annoyance, he went to retrieve his shaver – a device he used barely more than once a fortnight. First he attached the disposable blade. Then Ishida applied some shaving foam to his face and began using the shaver, moving it in firm, even strokes down his jawline. While he did so, Kira spat out the last of the toothpaste and water, and turned to leave. The quincy watched him go…wait a minute, was he sniggering?! The bastard…YEEEOWCH!!!
Ishida winced at the cut he had just inflicted. Shaving cuts were always disproportionately painful in relation to their size. He forced himself to concentrate on finishing the task before applying toothpaste to the cut to soothe the sting. It was doubly humiliating to have nicked himself with a modern safety shaver in front of someone who used a naked blade large enough to slit throats with. It was an immature comparison, he knew, but somehow Kira's antique razor seemed to surpass and mock his in its sheer manliness.
Deciding that his revenge on Izuru Kira would have to wait till another day, Ishida climbed into bed with Hinamori and clapped the pillow over his ears to block out the howls of ecstasy coming from the other room and the sight of Hinamori slowly probing herself. As he tried to ignore his own hardened member, Ishida amended his earlier assessment of Kira's character. Not only was he a bastard, he was Ikkaku's bitch as well.
Somewhere in the sewers below Sereitei, a rat was on the prowl. Decades of being a spirit-creature without the need to consume food had not dampened its foraging instincts. It discovered a strange, white ball that was the size of its head lying under a grate, through which moonlight filtered faintly. The ball smelt edible.
The rat nibbled at it rapidly, clutching the pill with its skull motif in his forepaws. It had an enjoyable, milky taste, and was devoured quickly for its size. Within a short time the rat became suddenly energetic, and he felt bold enough to scamper several hundred metres to the drainpipe that led to the kitchen of the Third division. Once there, he launched several successful and undiscovered raids that stocked his underground larder with half a mackerel, a pound of cooked rice, six bananas and a chocolate bar. After gorging himself silly, the rodent still found enough stamina to hunt down five different female rats to carry out the stern task of propagating his species. Finally exhausted, the rat crawled across a garden towards his nest.
For some reason, his instincts began telling him that something was wrong. He felt slow and heavy and dull. It wasn't just tiredness or a belly full of food. The rat's fur was growing at an accelerated rate. Long strands of matted hair soon covered his eyes, ears and snout; while the tufts on his feet caught on his little claws and made him stumble. Unable to sense his surroundings properly or move quickly, the spirit-rat was easy prey to a spirit-owl that dove noiselessly from the branches above and swallowed him whole, gagging slightly because of the surprising fact that most of what it had eaten was fur.
Instinct is a difficult thing. No-one can deny it.
A/N: Sorry I haven't updated that recently…too much work. Things should speed up from here. In this chapter, I simply had to write in the fact that uke anime bishounens still have ordinary bodily functions. Must be that I'm regressing to using toilet humor or something.
BTW, Kira's absence from the exercise is a very, very significant fact.
