A/N:

- Hakkaisensei: got my PM?

- Vanessa: I don't know what I did to deserve that review, but thank you for making me blush and grin so hard :-) I hope the rest of the story won't disappoint you.

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Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

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Chapter Three: Fallen Fighting Angel

Ikkaku woke up when a ray of sunlight, passing through two disjointed planks in the wall, fell straight onto his eye. Yawning deeply, he stretched and pushed himself up on one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other. Blinking, he looked around. He could barely recognise the shack he'd entered in the night before. It looked completely different in the bright light of day. It also looked very... empty. With a jolt, Ikkaku realised he was alone in the hut. The child was gone. The blanket was still there, but when Ikkaku grabbed it, he realised that it was icy cold, which meant that the kid had left some time ago already. With a groan, Ikkaku figured that even though he had told him not to, the child had run away after all. Gah. Stupid kid. Ikkaku vaguely hoped that at least he'd waited until the rain had stopped...

Oh well! Rousing himself with a shrug, Ikkaku picked his sword up and went for the door. It wasn't like he could or should do anything for that kid anyway, so he had better forget him and get himself a nice breakfast in the village over the hill. Shivering slightly in the fresh morning air, he crossed the field, jumped the barrier, and hit the road again, walking briskly to warm himself up.

It was still very early, and apart from the birds, Ikkaku could only hear the wind in the trees and the river that ran a bit downhill from the road. Once he reached the top of the hill, though, new sounds reached his ears. Those ones were human made: several men were laughing and shouting, somewhere in a thicket of trees, not too far on the other side of the river. Ikkaku listened vaguely, until he heard some noises that made his ears perk: he recognised the distinct banging of wood on wood typical of fights. The realisation that the men were apparently engaged in some kind of battle made Ikkaku grin widely: a fight before breakfast would definitely be a great way to start the day.

Cutting straight through the fields, he headed towards the patch of trees were the sounds seemed to originate from. Sure enough, as he got closer, he started to distinguish the kind of jeering typical of people fighting or watching other people fight:

" Come on, come here! "

" You little... ! I'm gonna... "

" Ha ha! He sure showed ya up, heh? "

" Get him! "

Ikkaku had enough experience to understand that a group of men were fighting a single opponent. This was his personal favourite type of fights after all, so he'd heard those things many times before. Grinning even more at the idea of taking on either the pack of men or the man who would have beaten them all (after that fight was over, of course), he entered the thicket of woods, following the voices. Finally, in a little clearing, he found what he was searching for - and his blood ran cold, and then boiled, when he realised what was happening.

A group of men – tree cutters, from the look of them - were assembled in a circle, effectively creating a barrier around an arena where three huge men were fighting a single opponent. But that opponent was nothing more than a kid - from the look of him, the very child Ikkaku had met the night before. Dark hair, pale face, bare arms and legs : Ikkaku couldn't be sure of course, but it would have been a bit of a coincidence to find another kid roaming the same area at the same time. Not that it mattered anyway: what mattered was that this fight was simply not right. A group of grown men against a child, that was wrong, and Ikkaku was not going to stand by and let it happen.

He had to admit, though, that the kid was not doing so bad on his own. Of course he was mostly dodging shots and stopping those he couldn't avoid with a stick he was holding in his hands, but he was good at evading. He was very quick on his feet, very nimble, very agile. And when he had to stop a blow, he knew how to hold his stick with both his hands to lessen the impact. However, Ikkaku could also see huge bruises and even open cuts on his arms and legs where the blows he hadn't managed to stop or evade had hit, and he guessed that the kid would not last long at this game. Unfortunately, with the other men blocking his way out, he was trapped and couldn't escape.

With a roar, Ikkaku ran into the clearing and launched himself into the battle. To his disappointment, it turned out to be a quick affair: the lumbermen were not fighters after all, so most of them just ran away from him while those who dared facing him were easily discarded, especially since he was wielding a sword while they only had wooden clubs and their own fists. Feeling slightly grouchy at the lack of a challenge he'd encountered, Ikkaku looked around him, searching for the child, only to realise that he had run away once again. Frustrated, he called out:

" Hey! Kid! "

Nobody answered, but he distinctly heard the splashing of a pair of feet running through water or mud somewhere downhill. Trusting his instincts, he ran in the direction of the sound. He didn't bother to call again, knowing that this would only make the kid run harder for some reason. As soon as he cleared the trees, he saw his target: the child was barely a few hundreds paces away from him, running unsteadily through the fields, and falling on his hands and knees every few meters. Even as he ran after him, Ikkaku couldn't help but admire the kid's strength of will: he just kept on running, tripping and picking himself up again and again, even though his body was obviously on the verge of failing and his legs could barely carry him. He had the spirit of a fighter, that one.

Catching up with him was only a matter of seconds, and soon Ikkaku was wrapping his arms around the thin body of his little prey. The child tried to struggle for a while, but he was simply too exhausted to manage to do Ikkaku any harm this time. Eventually he gave up, his body becoming limp against Ikkaku's. His eyes were closed, he was desperately gasping for breath, his limbs were all shaking with exhaustion, he was losing blood from several gaping wounds, and Ikkaku could feel his heart pumping at an alarmingly high rate. As carefully as he could, he settled the thin body over his shoulder and carried him back uphill, towards the river. The kid didn't try to move even once, and Ikkaku wondered if he had lost consciousness. But at least he was alive, this he was sure of: he could hear him gasp for air, and he could feel the small ribcage pushing against the back of his shoulder with each breath.

When he finally reached the river, he carefully lowered the little broken body on the grass, making sure that no rock or stray piece of wood was pushing against the badly bruised skin. For the first time since he'd met him, Ikkaku had a chance to take a good look at the kid's face, and what he saw took his breath away.

That child had the most beautiful face Ikkaku had ever seen. It looked like it had been carved by an artist - a very, very talented artist. The high cheekbones, the nose, the mouth, the chin, the eyebrows, everything seemed to have been designed to perfection. The hair, black and sleek, was of course disheveled, dirty and messy, and yet it still somehow managed to look better than most people's hair on their best days. And when the kid opened his eyes, Ikkaku was greeted by two shocking, unnatural, huge purple eyes framed by thick, dark eyelashes. That child looked like some kind of fallen angel, and Ikkaku found it hard to remember to breathe while he was staring at him.

Him... A strong doubt crept into Ikkaku's mind. He had assumed that the kid was a boy for some reason, but now that he was looking at his face, he wasn't so sure anymore. Quite frankly, such beauty did not belong on a male face. And yet Ikkaku couldn't shake the feeling that his little fighting angel was indeed a boy... Bah, irrelevant! Shaking his head to help clear it, Ikkaku tried to refocus on the priorities at hand. Cute or ugly, male or female, this child was in very bad shape and needed his attention right now.

Looking into the purple eyes again, Ikkaku noticed that they were just staring into space. He waved a hand in front of the pretty face, but obtained no reaction whatsoever. The kid was slipping into a state of shock, which, given his condition, would not be a good thing at all. Ikkaku also noticed that his breathing, though it had slowed down, still didn't sound quite right: there was definitely a gurgle in there that shouldn't be here, which meant that one of the lungs had probably been hurt, which wasn't good news either.

Tearing off a piece of his own tunic, Ikkaku plunged it into the river and ran it, still dripping wet, along the kid's forehead. The whole little body shuddered violently and the kid took a sharp, deep breath, but the eyes remained worryingly unfocused. Ikkaku finished washing the pretty face, before trying to examine the rest of the body. There were large bloody stains blooming on the tunic, and Ikkaku started undoing the belt that held it together. Immediately, though, he felt the little body tense up and he heard the breathing accelerate and become much shallower. The purple eyes started roaming, still unfocused but clearly expressing a serious state of anxiety, while low, incoherent mutters escaped from the half-closed mouth. Perplexed, Ikkaku removed his hands from the belt and watched in amazement as the kid visibly relaxed. Troubled but not wanting to make things worse, Ikkaku decided to concentrate on the arms and legs first, hoping to rouse the kid back into full consciousness so he could obtain his cooperation for the rest of the examination.

Washing the exposed limbs revealed the full extent of several large open cuts, and Ikkaku soon found himself forced to tear off most of the upper part of his own tunic to improvise emergency bandages. He wrapped the thin limbs as gently as he could, but he could still hear soft moans of pain escaping the lips of the semi-unconscious child. Worse still, he noticed that the purple eyes were starting to roll back, while the eyelids were drooping. The child was losing consciousness, which wasn't desirable in his state, but there didn't seem to be anything Ikkaku could do. He tried talking to him and flicking his cheek, but nothing worked and the kid passed out under Ikkaku's helpless stare.

The good side of it was that Ikkaku was now able to open his tunic and treat his hidden wounds, but he was growing rapidly worried as he was listening to the breathing becoming slower and shallower, and he was looking at the skin taking on a very unhealthy grey tinge. Once he was done tending to the worst of the injuries, Ikkaku quickly placed the kid back onto his shoulder and started walking as fast as he could towards the village down the hill.