Paradox of Nihilism
A/N: Comic relief curtesy of Shinji and Hiyori, lol.
Revelations
"Are ya trying ta bring the roof down on our heads with yer fat ass, Shinji?" Hiyori landed lightly on the shaking metal sheets that made up the roof of the Visoreds' warehouse. "Why are ya sulkin' up here, dickhead?"
Shinji's page boy cap covered his whole face. His voice was muffled through the fabric. "I'm not sulkin', I'm thinkin'."
He heard the sound of sandals stepping on the metal sheets as Hiyori walked over and squatted down next to his head. "Ya really got weird since that girl left, Shinji. Ya ain't gonna go an' do somethin' stupid, are ya?"
"Ya mean, am I gonna run over ta Kisuke's an' run in ta Soul Society after her?" He smiled wryly from underneath the hat. "Now why would I go an' do a thing like that, Hiyori? She'll probably be back by nightfall."
The blond girl sighed. Even if he was a big stupid dickhead, Hiyori was fond of Shinji. He'd done a lot for her and inside, she thought he was one of the good ones. It was kind of pathetic, actually – she didn't think he knew how to be a bad person. That was why he and Aizen would always have been worlds apart. "No, dickhead. I wanna know if yer gonna do somethin' yer gonna end up regrettin' later. Like makin' a human love ya when we both know ya don't feel the same. I know ya ain't that cruel, Shinji Hirako."
"I wish," he replied softly.
"Nani?"
"I've already done somethin' stupid, Hiyori-chan." His grin beneath the cap was strained and bitter. "I love a human even though I know she don't feel the same."
Hiyori went very quiet. "I thought yer first love was Orihime-chan," she said, laughing weakly. "What will she think now that ya've abandoned her?"
Shinji sighed, lying a hand on his chest. His heart beat steadily beneath his fingers, the same way it had for nearly five hundred years – give or take a few decades. "Hiyori, I don't think I like red-heads anymore." He tipped the cap sideways, glimpsing a sliver of sunlight beneath the rim. "And I've decided I like small breasts, too."
Hiyori simply stood up and walked away. Because that could not possibly be Shinji Hirako. That was an imposter inside his body. Or at least that's what she'd say when everyone else asked what the hell was the matter with him. As she stepped down from the roof, she glanced around – just to see if maybe Hell had frozen over or the sun had died.
Nope.
Still normal.
Hiyori shook her head. Now that just wasn't right.
Misao watched with fascination as the students would freeze and stand at attention for the two lieutenants with them. After they passed by, the whispering would start up.
Momo and Shuhei surveyed the upcoming graduates carefully, speaking softly to each other and their new guests. "The blond girl and the heavyset man next to her," Momo said, with a startling decisiveness. "Definitely not the red-head in the front. She won't even take orders from her instructors."
"I agree," Shuhei said, nodding. "She's like an even more obnoxious, irritating version of Abarai. I don't think she can be trained against that. Let Zaraki-taicho spend her first year beating the arrogance out of her – I don't think she's worth the time and effort. I like the small boy at the back."
"Are you sure?" Momo turned her eyes away from the students to look at him. "He's really young, Shuhei-san."
He raised an eyebrow. "You were really young. Hitsugaya-taicho is only a little older than that right now. Kusajishi-fukutaicho is even younger than that."
"You have a captain that looks like that?" Shoka said incredulously, looking mildly horrified. "And a lieutenant even smaller?"
Momo smiled hugely at him, making him flush red. "Shiro-chan looks twelve!"
From the corner of his eye, Shuhei watched his niece flash Momo a look that startled and disturbed him. The sheer hatred she aimed in her direction was shocking. But then he saw the way Shoka was smiling back at Momo. She was…jealous?
"Come, Misao," Shuhei beckoned. "I want you to watch the Zanjutsu spar and Kido practices with me. They're required to show off their skills for us."
Misao followed him out of the room – but only after looking at Shoka smiling at Momo with a large scowl on her face. Poor Shoka was utterly oblivious of this.
Another lieutenant – she knew because Shuhei told her he was – stood in the practice rooms, taking meticulous notes of the students there. "She's Ise Nanao-fukutaicho. For the eighth. And over there," he pointed discreetly to a pair standing across the practice area from them. "That's the thirteenth's captain, Ukitake-taicho and the second's captain, Soifon-taicho."
"I thought checking the class was more of a lieutenant's job?" she asked, now successfully distracted. Which was precisely his intention, of course.
"Yes and no," he acknowledged. "It is considered one of the duties of a captain, but it's normally delegated to the lieutenant as a sign of good faith. I do it because I have to do all of the captain's duties now, but Kyoraku-taicho has Nanao-san take care of most of the administrative tasks in the eighth division and Abarai-taicho knows Momo-san from his Academy days and trusts her opinions. Soifon-taicho is a bit of a control freak, so it's not surprising that she elected to go in Omaeda-san's place and Ukitake-taicho doesn't have a lieutenant again since Rukia-san got transferred at the last minute."
They watched the soon-to-be Academy graduates in silence for an hour, neither of them really inclined to talk much normally. First was Zanjutsu spars, then the Kido demonstrations. Once finished, the students lined up in three rows as the lieutenants and captains surveyed them. Shuhei tugged Misao's arm, making her look up at him. "Which one was the best?"
"Huh?"
He nudged her playfully. "Don't 'huh' me. I can tell the difference between someone watching idly and someone who knows what they're doing." He smirked down at her, making her smirk back. "The Visoreds taught you something, Misao. Now show me. Which one of these students should I choose?"
"Only one?" she asked hesitantly.
"Only one," he said firmly.
She scanned the students critically. Some only looked half her age and some were at least three times older. "None of the older ones," she said immediately.
"Why?" he questioned patiently, like a teacher giving an exam.
"If it's taken them this long to graduate, chances are they're not very good," she reasoned. "And none of their reiatsu feels particularly strong."
"Good," he encouraged. "Keep going."
"Not the youngest two, either," she decided. "They were too confident of themselves and the girl nearly got herself killed. Not the tallest boy in the middle row, either."
"Why not? He has the greatest amount of reiatsu and the greatest skills in zanjutsu."
"His Kido is pathetic and he's out of control," Misao argued. "He doesn't even pretend to try to control his power, no how weak is opponent is. And frankly, I find his desire to hurt living things disturbing."
She fought to make her mouth straight as pleasure radiated off of him.
"Very good. Are you ready to make your decision?" Without showing her, he wrote down the name of that boy. As head of the security force, it was his job to make sure the second division checked those people out. That young man might be taking a trip to the Nest of Maggots – to become a permanent resident.
Misao glanced back at him for a moment before looking at the students again. "Pick her," she said finally, pointing to a stocky woman with a partially shaved head and lip piercing. She was maybe a little older than Shoka. "I suppose this is the part where you ask me to defend my decision, right?"
"Of course," he said, nodding. "Why do you think I should pick Miss…Asuzu? Her reiastsu is only fourth or fifth in the class and she's a little older than most of the other graduates here. Defend your decision."
"She had quick hands and quick feet," Misao began. "And there's something very clever about her eyes. Most of her opponents were larger and stronger than her, but she kept her cool. She took a few risks in her fights, but they weren't stupid risks. She knew she could surprise that other girl by double flash-stepping and she did. She's confident, but she's not arrogant and she didn't humiliate her opponents when they lost – and the only time she lost, she accepted it instead of throwing a tantrum like a few of her younger classmates. Her appearance also suggests the kind of artistic point of view you said the ninth division favors."
Shuhei lifted up one corner of his mouth in a smile. She felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder as he leaned forward slightly. He was…proud of her? He was proud of her! "Well now, I know at least one of you has real talent," he murmured next to her ear. "Congratulations, Misao. You just passed the lieutenant's verbal examination."
Her head turned so fast that Shuhei felt strands of hair brush his cheek. She tried to shift her wooden expression for him, showing that she was both pleased and bewildered. "You're not serious," she accused. "It can't be that easy."
He shrugged. "It was for me, Rukia-san, Iba-san, and Kira. The others did a written version or their captains devised their own ways of testing their decision making skills."
"I think I'd like to be a lieutenant or a captain, one day," she said softly.
"That better be a long time from now," Shuhei said sternly. "You won't be able to do either until you die."
She paused, then said "If I die in the human world…"
"Your soul will be expelled from your body and unlike before, you'll find yourself unable to return to it," he said quietly. "Then you'll need another Shinigami to perform the burial rites for you so you can come here."
"Does dying hurt?"
"I don't know. I was born a Shinigami." That corner of his mouth lifted again. He looked so much like her father that sometimes, it was painful. "Your humanity is a good thing, you know."
How did he figure it out, within a single afternoon? How could he know that she hated being a human? She supposed she did give herself away, being so eager to know all about being a Shinigami. "I don't see it that way," she said stiffly. "I make a better Shinigami than a human."
"Yes, but a hybrid is always stronger – both as a normal human and as a Shinigami – than either of those two races. Your brother is a Visored, too, so he's more powerful still."
"Power isn't the most important thing..." She stared at the walls of the room. "Regret is…"
"What was that?" That sounded like something Tosen would have said to him.
"It's something Papa used to say to us," she told him, her fingers absently caressing the peach-wrapped hilt of Shojohime. "'Power isn't the most important thing, as a Shinigami.' he would say. 'The most important thing is your regret. When you close your eyes to die, there should be nothing you regret doing or saying. No great wrongs you've committed against another being. Your honor is the only thing you're born with, the thing that only you can kill. Don't lose it to power and regret.' He said that as long as I could do that, I would be a good Shinigami."
"I think we would have gotten along very well, your father and I." He smiled at her but it was slightly sad.
She had to shift her face for him again to smile back.
Shinji's mouth came down on the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Her skin tasted like something sweet and flowery, something he half-remembered, as though from a dream. Strong teeth sank into the flesh hard – hard enough to leave evidence. The hand in his hair tightened, long nails scraped his scalp, and Misao cried out into the stark space of the white, cold office.
"Fuck," Shinji swore as his eyes opened, the sound of her voice as she moaned still ringing in his ears. Even through his tongue piercing, he could taste her in his mouth. For the past week this was how he found himself waking up.
He rubbed his eyes grumpily and stalked out of bed and into his adjoining bathroom to take care of the serious wood he was experiencing. He could ignore it, but he'd end up having to change the sheets in the morning – which would make Hiyori tease him about being a disgusting pervert, Lisa would ask him if he needed to borrow her magazines. Mashiro would giggle at him, and Love and Rose would give him a look. A look, which meant 'so, you still haven't gotten her, yet, huh?'.
Three minutes later (because at this point he just wanted to get it over with) he was tossing a dirty towel in the laundry hamper. "Fuck," he swore again. "She's even started to take all the fun outta jerkin' off."
He felt like he was in the midst of a three-way war.
His mind said "You shouldn't need to have sex, you're a grown ass man!"
His body said "You need to have sex – you're a grown ass man!"
His heart said "You're a grown ass man, so you need to have sex, but you should only do it with her!"
Shinji sighed as he got back in bed and stared up at the ceiling. "Well, at least we've established that I'm a grown ass man."
But that was exactly the problem, wasn't it? He was a grown fucking man and he wanted to screw around with a fifteen – almost sixteen – year old girl. Sure, that almost sixteen year old behaved like she was forty most of the time, but that wasn't really the point. Every time, he'd tell himself not to do it, not to go to that place where his hands were on her body and she was emotionally helpless to stop him. He'd tell himself that she didn't want this, didn't want him. But then she'd come out of her titanium-enforced emotional armor of hers for a split second and he'd feel the knowledge of his love in a painfully clear way and he'd end up kissing her all over again.
Misao didn't know it, but she had a perfectly good all-purpose slave ready and willing in the palm of her hand.
Pathetic, he told himself, rolling his eyes. All she has to do is be nice to me and I'm ready to be her lap dog. If she says jump, I'll ask how high. If she says three feet, I'll run for the fucking tape measure. Bloody hell. Misao is right, I need therapy – just not for the reason she thinks.
"Yeah, Shrink. I wanna fuck a girl who probably hates my guts. I only wanna fuck a girl who probably hates my guts." He closed his eyes to go to sleep. "Do you think this makes you a masochist, Mr. Hirako? Well, it doesn't make me a fucking daisy, now, does it Doc? There, I just saved myself four hundred dollars in therapy."