Disclaimer: I am the queen of all this is, all that was, and all that shall be, but since Bleach never happened (WHAT?!) I don't own it. (THE PERPETUAL PROBLEM ENDED THOUGH!)
Alright you lot. . .
I know it's been forever, and I apologize. School crept up on me real slow and suddenly became full blown torture out of NOWHERE so I had no time to finish this. And I stalled out, so I had to get more ideas (please excuse the excuse for an idea hiding as comic relief).
I am depressed at the amount of reviews I got on my other fic, I Need Help Ichigo, which is like my baby, so if you go wander over there (points at INHI) and review I would feel about a thousand times better. Am very sad. BUT THE REVIEWS ON THIS ARE FABULOUS! THANK YOU!
Anyway, onward to Shunsui! Who I actually had to write from the perspective of seeing as Nanao is –gasp– unconscious!
Mount your steed and sally forth, Pink Haori Man. . .
Chapter 4:
Grudging Diversions and Blushing Primrose Breeze
Kyōraku Shunsui was running.
Nanao, Nanao, Nanao, screamed his mind, and the ground seemed to echo his pained pleas with every footfall.
The past few weeks had arguably been the worst in his ridiculously long life.
He hadn't been sleeping well to the point that it could almost be said that he had insomnia worse than Kuchiki Byakuya.
His attention had been wandering so much that he had even misplaced Kyōten Kytoshi (he had then been obligated to spend several hours just pacifying him).
He was completely exhausted and his afternoon naps were shorter than ever. He had been training relentlessly, unconsciously fighting phantom Azirro Jizōs again and again. It was probably best that he had done so, but that hadn't really soothed his aching muscles after each rigorous session.
If he felt physical pain, he knew that his senses weren't completely dead.
If he felt physical pain, it mainly obscured the mental and emotional turmoil raging inside of him.
Food turned to ash in his mouth. Sake seemed to stick grotesquely to his tongue, but it helped him relax and forget what a mess he was for a time, at least.
The blinding pink of his haori smarted even his eyes now, and he had begun leaving it behind "accidentally" in various inconvenient places. It suddenly seemed too gaudy, almost a hindrance.
Instead, he had been wearing Nanao's sash. He slung it over his shoulder so that it fell across his chest and back, laid over his captain's coat, and tied at his left hip. Matsumoto said something about a human pageant and jokingly told him that instead of "Miss Universe" his sash should say "Real Men Wear Pink."
Whenever he touched the primrose fabric he could almost feel her there.
Nanao had been his anchor in the tumultuous sea of the Seireitei, and without her he was well and truly lost.
That was why he was currently flying towards the twelfth division, a place where he really had no business, because after hearing that Nanao was in trouble, he didn't even think. He went.
Jūshirō had been talking his ear off every chance he had gotten, and Shunsui supposed all of his friend's admonitions had finally gone to his head.
He had resolved not only to save Ise Nanao, but to win her as well.
She had been scared and insecure, and he should have known. He knew that her ice-cool exterior hid many things, and he cursed himself for forgetting that she was inexperienced and unsure of herself. He had discovered this several years ago by accident, and he had neglected to reassure her.
He should have known.
And he had to believe what Jūshirō said; that she too was a mess and that she did care for him, because if she didn't, he would quite possibly go insane.
Damn that bastard Kurotsuchi. The mere thought of Nanao struggling with him, the possibility of his—
His intense wave of anger smothered his concentration for a moment and he ran into someone.
"I am so—" he began.
"—glad to see you, Jūshirō!" Captain Ukitake finished sarcastically. "I've finally realized the error of my ways and am going off to defeat dragons, which I knew I couldn't do by myself!"
"I can fight him by myself," Shunsui growled.
"Listen. You weren't the only one told that Nanao is in danger and I want to help. Come on, you need a plan."
"A plan?!"
"Yes!" the white haired man snapped defensively and uncharacteristically. Shunsui reluctantly admitted to himself that his friend was deeply affected, so it was selfish to think that he was the only one who cared. "Maybe we can trick him!"
"No, I want to grind him into a pulp," Shunsui gritted out, attempting to push past Captain Thirteen.
Jūshirō grabbed his best friend by the shoulders and said harshly, "You can do that after you get Nanao out of the Twelfth. It will be a thousand times easier if she is safe!"
"I still don't—"
"Blast! Shunsui!" Ukitake growled. "Think! Nanao is not safe. Kurotsuchi is doing something to her. We know that much. We don't know how, or why, or even where. We have to get her out of there safe. If you care about her as much as I think you do, then you will save her first and get revenge later!"
"But he's still there! Why can't we do both at the same time?!"
"He'll slow you down and we don't know what that could mean for Nanao! And he could do something crazy, like wipe her memory or turn her into a gigai!"
"He can do that?" Shunsui asked, too shocked to struggle with Juuyshiro for a moment.
"I don't know! We have to get Nanao out of there without confronting Kurotsuchi."
After a short bout of grumbling and scowling on Shunsui's part, his shoulders slumped in defeat and he agreed to follow the white haired man back to his squad to concoct some sort of plan.
His haori was lying dejectedly in Ukitake's office, fluttering forlornly in an errant breeze.
Matsumoto Rangiku was skiving off work, like usual. However, where she was avoiding avalanches of paper was quite different than usual, and for an actual legitimate cause.
Matsumoto was outside of Division Twelve Headquarters, and she was wearing the cowl of a Special Forces Division Two reconnaissance shinigami. Without her telltale hair and assets in view and her face mostly hidden, she could be mistaken as practically anyone, besides the fact that her spiritual pressure was completely masked, a feat reserved, usually, to seated officers. Suddenly realizing this, she leaked a suitable amount out from beneath her shield, hoping that the chunk released wouldn't be enough for anyone to recognize her or to be suspicious.
She carefully pushed open one of the side doors and drifted silently into a corridor that was eerily sterile and brightly lit. She wound her way through the building until she got to the main communications room where screens and shinigami were abundant. She passed through without question, as worthy of notice as the ghost she had been so many, many years before. She paused at the main entranceway, briefly running through the floor schematic she had attempted to commit to memory. Luckily, she could sense Mayuri's spirit energy coming from the same direction she could vaguely remember his office was in, and she headed off towards his large, more private workspace. She knew that Nanao had to be in one of his private labs, but the blueprints had been very vague about the space around Mayuri's central room. They had to be close to his main office, they had to be. . .
"Urgent message for Kurotsuchi-taicho," she said in clipped tones to his third seat, deliberately deepening her voice as she stood strictly and correctly to attention in his archway.
The third seat muttered something into a mouthpiece, and Matsumoto turned to see someone in the Twelfth Division's captain robe emerge from a rapidly closing door.
A brilliant flash of pink light erupted from the chamber before the portal thunked shut. Matsumoto sank heavily to a knee, blinking rapidly to dispel the lingering bursts of primrose in her vision. It was all she could do to stop herself from staring at the man—unmistakably Kurotsuchi Mayuri, of course—standing in front of her, because he was just that: a man. A sickening feeling started in her stomach, and she forced herself to look at the floor. "Kurotsuchi-taicho! Immediate assistance is required at the division headquarters! Communications with special team Number Four are down! Increased hollow activity and reinforcements questionable, sir!"
Mayuri grunted and snapped an order at his third seat that Matsumoto barely heard. The smell of amaranth had suddenly hit her and was permeating her whole being, letting her grasp only one thing.
She'd found Nanao.
The captain dismissed her, saying that he had important business to attend to and that a few of his seated technicians would be on the way. After she had dutifully listened to some snide remark about Soifon, she bowed and trotted out, a numb feeling of pure rage smothering any other emotion and serving to check her natural reactions so that she would not give herself away.
Where to now? She could talk to Hitsugaya, he would help her, and he owed her after her valiant attempts at paperwork the night before. In her heart she knew he'd do anything for her if she asked, but she didn't quite want to go begging to him like the scatter-brained lazy idiot he was bound to think she was.
If Nanao heard her say that, she would snap and tell her that her captain was very fond of her and held her in high regard. Matsumoto smiled half-heartedly, but it withered and died as she paused in one of the horribly empty and bright passageways, her eyes alighting on a slip of pink fabric, jagged as though it had been torn from a garment. She bent down and picked it up mechanically, dispassionately.
Her fingers curled tightly around the flake of primrose and abruptly sprang into action, running and flash stepping away towards the 8th Division, as if the petal of color had blossomed her course of action in her.
She would go find Shunsui.
"What do you mean he's not here?!" Matsumoto exploded on one of Shunsui's division members as she hulked in the doorway to his office, hair and cowl askew, breasts still quite very much hidden—somewhat painfully—and gloweringly furious. "He HAS to be here."
A hell butterfly thankfully intervened for the poor girl who had just so happened to be delivering the captain's paperwork so she didn't have to tell a raging Lieutenant Matsumoto that no, she didn't know where the captain was, and no, she didn't know how to find him.
"Matsumoto-fukutaicho," the tinny voice of Ukitake reverberated from the butterfly. "You must have heard the news, and Kyoraku-taicho and I are discussing the new developments in my office. Please join us, I'd be most delighted to hear your thoughts. Ukitake-taicho, Division Thirteen."
"Thank you!" the flushed red head chirped to the bewildered girl and fairly sailed out of the room.
Those two better have something good up their sleeves, Matsumoto growled to herself as she made her way towards Ukitake's division. Because I'm too frazzled to even think of looking at that walking human machine again any time soon.
She was somewhat disappointed with the scene that greeted her when she thrust the door open to Ukitake's inner sanctum, panting slightly.
"I've got nothing, Jushiro," Shunsui was growling as he paced up and down the main room like a tiger. "Please tell me you have something that could get us out of this mess."
His best friend was leaning idly against the wall by the window, twirling a delicate flower between his long fingers and staring at the almost overcast sky. "Stop being so impatient," he murmured. "Oh, there you are, Matsumoto-san," he smiled warmly as he turned around. "Oh my, you look. . .interesting."
"I was infiltrating Robot-man's fortress," Matsumoto explained wearily, plopping herself down on a couch-like object. "I need to catch my breath. I feel as though I've ran all over half of Seireitei."
Shunsui had frozen in place and was staring at her with a mixture of horror and glee. "You did what?!"
Matsumoto smiled, slowly returning to her normal state. She knew that the indignant, incapacitating rage she was feeling was not useful to Nanao. She was less numb, and she had to be strong, had to overcome the sick feeling in her stomach, the unbearable worry, in order to help Nanao. "I went into the Twelfth Division, of course."
Ukitake had his head buried in his hands. "Oh Matsumoto. . ." he sighed.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?!" Shunsui exploded, throwing his haori in the air to land next to Rangiku, who looked at it in surprise. "He could have caught you—!"
"Oh well," Matsumoto waved her hand carelessly, "He didn't think it was me or anything, and I do know what I'm doing, occasionally."
"Oh I wish I could have thought of that," Shunsui muttered. "Do you think he'd a attack a poor, clumsy newbie who managed to develop a habit of bumping into him and spilling rather important things left and right?"
"Yes, yes he would," Ukitake sighed again, exasperated. "That is not an option."
"Anyway, I found Nanao," Matsumoto said airily, laying back on her selected piece of furniture.
" You did WHAT?!" Shunsui repeated, with more vehemence.
"She's in this rather shoddy room off of his main lab," Matsumoto reported. "I think the walls collapse." She didn't want to say the rest, but she knew she had to. "There was hot pink light spilling out of it," she muttered. "Like her pure kido."
"Her pure kido is pink?!" Ukitake asked, surprised.
"Well, yes," Matsumoto answered. "And Kurotsuchi-taicho. . .he's. . .different."
"What do you mean, 'different?'" Shunsui demanded.
"He—he looks," Matsumoto struggled to explain it properly. How was she supposed to say that instead of the diabolical and creepy metal-head she had expected, she'd been presented with a young man with slightly odd coloring who was actually hott?! She didn't even want to admit that to herself, yet. So she gathered herself and settled for something brief and to the point, "He looks hott."
Ukitake and Shunsui stared at her in horror, and she hurried to backtrack. "He changed, alright! He somehow managed to regain a human form, I guess it's what is really under that gross clown mask, and it isn't half bad, which makes him even more disturbing than usual! He has this intense blue hair and regular skin and nails and teeth and eyes and facial features. . .I don't want to talk about it."
The two men looked at each other, still trying to piece together this image in their minds. "I'm not seeing it."
"Neither am I," Ukitake acknowledged. There was a brief pause, and his face suddenly lit up. "Hey, but I think I've got something!" he exclaimed.
Shunsui was on his back staring up at the ceiling as Ukitake and Matsumoto worked out the last details of their plan.
They were currently looking for some sort of tracking device, and Shunsui had no ideas. In fact, most of his ideas had run out some time ago.
He looked up when Ukitake suddenly said craftily, "Rangiku, I like your shoes."
'Why thank you, I got then half-off from some vendor in the 17th District of Ru—oh no."
"Oh yes!" Ukitake exclaimed brightly, his hair whipping madly around him as he spun, making Shunsui stare blankly at him.
"But I like my shoes," she wailed. "They match my scarf! Why can't we use yours?!"
"They won't fit, of course. If we use them, then I'll buy you a pair of ice-blue heels," Jushiro promised.
"Really?!" She was already reaching for the sandals that were—as usual—not regulation.
"What's going on?" Shunsui asked irritably. He couldn't see how a pair of pink sandals that just so happened to be the right size for something would help anything.
"Oh my friend," Ukitake exclaimed jubilantly as he held up the busty woman's shoes. "These are perfect! We were looking for an innocent looking alarm, but I can do better with these. I'm sure my newest addition to my squad can fix these up with the normal modifications my sandals have! My sandals activate when I get hit with a particularly bad burst of my disease. They alert fourth squad, and allow the recipient of the signal to track my movements. It's been incredibly useful several times. Not only that," he strode over to a cabinet on the wall and removed a small vial from it, "I bet there is some way we can trigger the sandals to release this kido back into Nanao when we flip the release."
"So let me get this straight," Shunsui said as calmly as possible, remembering his lieutenant's razor sharp wit and cool concentration. "You are going to concoct a pair of magic pink shoes, somehow get them on Nanao, and use them to spirit her away when she clicks her heels together and says, 'There's no place like home!'?"
Ukitake and Matsumoto were laughing though, and waved off his cynicism. "They're perfect! If we can get them on Nanao, we'll have her half-way out of there already!"
"Yes, but how are you going to do that?" Shunsui asked with forced calm.
"Leave it to me," Matsumoto saluted smartly.
"And what about this diversion you two were babbling about?" Shunsui grumbled, still not clear on this portion of the intricate rescue attempt.
"I'm going to talk with Kuchiki-san!" Ukitake beamed.
"And I'm going to Hitsugaya-taicho! It'll be perfect!"
Shunsui ran through the entire plan in his head. Although it was complicated, it appeared to be their best bet. His two friends had persuaded him to see the reality of the situation, which was that he wasn't getting Nanao out of the Twelfth Division unless he used extreme caution and precision.
But there were so many things that could wrong! Most of it hinged on this diversion, first of all, and he wasn't sure how willingly it would be carried out. . .and there was the fact that he and Ukitake would have to actually TALK to Kurotsuchi for an undetermined length of time.
That could definitely go seriously wrong.
Then there was Matsumoto's undercover foray, the added factors of the temperamental Hitsugaya, the confused Byakuya, his demure sister Rukia, and any others they wished to include, the indeterminable nature of hollows, the unknowns of Kurotsuchi's vile machinery, and even Nanao's fragile condition were all variables that couldn't be accounted for, so he—obviously—had some misgivings.
His lips curled into a wry smile. Ridiculous odds. Practically insane. A damsel in distress. Magic shoes.
What on earth was he waiting for?
He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes as a breeze ruffled his hair, pulling it from it's now-neatly combed state, reminding him briefly of the seemingly far off days when Nanao had complained constantly about his dress, his hair, his drinking habits. . .
His gaze alighted on his haori next to Matsumoto, and a true smile lit up his face, the first that had appeared in weeks.
"Let's do it."
"I'll bring these straight to my lieutenant!" Ukitake beamed, brandishing the soon to be "magic" sandals.
The scent of the hibiscus and primroses in the Thirteenth Squad gardens wafted through the office and Shunsui breathed in deeply, thinking of how his best friend was getting better and how he would soon have Nanao back by his side—confidence was key now that they were going to go through with this disastrous rescue, so he had to be strong, for her.
"Here," Matsumoto smiled, handing his vibrantly pink trademark garment to him and then helping him to shrug it over his shoulders and fasten it securely. "I'm not sure if she'd recognize you without it."
A/N: Whoo hoo. I promise there REALLY will be some MAJOR Shunsui v Mayuri within the next few chapters. I decided to make this fic longer, ergo needed to postpone ass-kicking :-D
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review! If you don't Mayuri will morph into Hitsugaya's father and together they will rule the galaxy! (I don't know where that came from. . .)
P.S. The real reason I decided to finish this chapter is because I got volumes 14-17 of Bleach for Christmas and I was reading the scenes in which we are introduced to Monster-Research-Captain which REKINDLED MY BURNING HATRED FOR HIM.
On my pride as a Quincy. . .I will kill him! (even though I'm not a Quincy! I'm killing him for Ishida's pride as a Quincy!)
Wait. . .I'm not sure if I'm allowed to kill him. . . XO
Ja ne!
Conterra-san
