Chapter 21
When Hinamori didn't pick up her cell phone, Hitsugaya's thoughts grew dark. He was already in his car blasting down the empty streets of Karakura Town with Ichigo and Renji following not to far behind. He left identical troubled messages on Hinamori's voice mails and then let the phone rest on his lap, willing to let it ring. It was nearly three in the morning and it was a cold. Then his phone rang it snapped it open and hung in on his right shoulder while pressing down with his ear.
"Hello? Hello?"
"She could be anywhere, maybe she went home? Anything."
"Right." Said Hitsugaya, frustrated with denial.
"Well I've got Rukia, Inoue, Ishida and a few others out searching to plus we've got the police and they haven't seen her or Rangiku."
"I got it thanks." He snapped his phone shut.
His phone rang once again, groaning he shoved his ear piece in his phone and let it hang of his ear. It was his uncle.
"We've got information on Rangiku, she went out at around seven and she was seen exiting her apartment with a man and the people have caught sight of a black convertible speeding down the lower side of town heading towards the riverbanks."
Hitsugaya slammed on his breaks and a loud screeched echoed his not too far behind.
"The beach."
Downtown. "Okay, thanks uncle I am on my way there."
He fishtailed and was now heading the opposite direction ignoring Ichigo's horn.
When Hitsugaya pulled up behind a patrol car in front of an abandoned candy shop now covered in various graffiti, a cop was waiting. "His car was located on the five blocks from here; he's down by Onose Beach."
Five blocks damn. He turned and started to walk with Ichigo, Renji and the officer following close behind. The officer was calling for back up and spoke into his walkie-talkie. "Find them," he said into the static. "He'll kill them if you don't."
Hitsugaya shoved the remaining Tylenol pills into his mouth forcing them down with a gulp of water and threw his water bottle in the next garbage can. His felt his body loosen up, already anticipating for the drug to kick in. It was psychosomatic yet it eliminated all physical pains that he would probably experience very soon. The pills didn't work that fast but he didn't care. He had to focus. To think. How had Nichika managed to find Hinamori? Why did he take Matsumoto if he wanted Hinamori? It all added up to one thing; the guy was in need. And that worried Hitsugaya.
"How desperate is he?" Renji asked as if reading the prodigy's thoughts.
He rolled his sleeves up the elbow and flexed his fingers, they were getting stiff. "He's been obsessed with a former childhood friend," he explained. "She reminds him of an ex-lover of an affair that ended sophomore year. I would say that he's in very desperate measures. If you're asking me there's a possibility he might kill himself if he succeeds in killing them."
"So you think he killed her already?" Ichigo asked.
"No." he paused. "Hopefully."
"Why would he take them to the beach?" asked Renji.
Hitsugaya deliberated. "He'll take them somewhere where it's stranded at this time of night and has a lot of hidden places, I guess you can say somewhere he feels that it's the easiest way to kill them with water and yet it'll be safe to leave them washed away on the shore so it'll erase all evidence as to when they're discovered."
The officer nodded. "True that, the cheap bastard needs a fast death but in a way he won't get caught, no blood no foul so people could just possibly assume two drunk girls stumbled on the beach and went for a lil swim and drowned. Happens all the time."
"Let's hurry." Hitsugaya said. The officer placed his hand on his shoulder and pulled the gun out of his buckle. "You might need this but be careful because if you advance too quickly and spook him, he'll likely hurt one of them and himself. He doesn't have enough hands or thoughts to hold two hostages. He'll choose the better kill."
Hitsugaya nodded and held the pistol in his hand and loaded it with the extra bullet the cop had given him and snapped it back into place with a light 'click.'
"You killed her, you murdered Futami, Yukie," Hinamori said as she turned herself in the sand under the dock helplessly bound by ropes and duck tape. She couldn't see anything through the blindfold.
Nichika's voice was strangled with sadness. "I am sorry."
Hinamori's voice felt like the loudest thing in the world to her. She heard echoes of herself clearer through her ears that were full of water. She willed herself to sow the intake of oxygen, to relax, to make him think that she was not afraid. She had to convince him that she was strong. That she could control the situation at hand. "Sorry? Mitsuru, you're a monster. You need help. I can help you."
"You shouldn't have left me all alone you should have just accepted me." He said. She could feel the soft yet itchy fabric of an old thin scarf against her skin below her hairline at the base of her scalp, and then in the front of her throat. She reached up blindly for the fabric to rip it from her neck but it tied tightly around her neck.
She gasped and gagged while pulling at it but Nichika grasps her bound wrists with one hand, tying it tighter around her throat. Her head throbbed and filled with fire. All of her senses came to life as she adjusted her eyes and she could see him in front of her. Not a person but a dark shape as the fabric around her vision was removed.
Her mind was clarifying information: Obsessions. Kidnapped. Murderer. Mitsuru, Nichika. And now: Hitsugaya and Matsumoto. "Where's Rangiku?" her voice was raspy.
"I wonder." Nichika shifted and she saw him walking away engulfed by darkness and then moments later another figure was thrown into the sand with a 'thud.' Nichika stood over Matsumoto legs on each side and he had a gun pointed down at her forehead. Hinamori sealed herself away from a sudden wave of nausea, swallowing the warm saliva that rose to her throat at the sight of Matsumoto.
She was unconscious and naked except for a pair of pink underpants and her forearms and ankles were bruised and bleeding while being bounded with duct tape. Her eyes were slits revealing white; her mouth was wet with saliva, her hair matted in sweat that it clung to her face.
She realized with devastating clarity that it was always about her, that it had always been about her; Hinamori Momo. And she knew that she might die along with her best friend if she was still alive at the moment, he would kill them, both of them. There was no question now.
"It's all your fault," Nichika explained running his hand up her leg thankful that she was wearing jeans while his other hand ran along the back of her neck. "You shouldn't have left me ever."
Hinamori looked over at her unconscious naked friend which Nichika had now thrown a blanket over her body. It was then that Hinamori made a silent vow: She was not going to let them die. Not in the hands of a fucking psychopathic classmate.
"You can do what you want to me," Hinamori said. "But you have to let Rangiku go."
Nichika's face was all shadowed but a glow outlines his features as the moon lit the sandy beach. The corner of his mouth twitched. "I can't."
It took everything for Hinamori to keep her face composed.
"Are you going to kill her?"
"I have no choice."
Hinamori felt her personal bubble close in on her. Even if she was unbound she wouldn't get far in the soggy sand before Nichika tackled her from behind. If she tried to fight him off, he would easily just stab her with his pocket knife.
"And me?"
"Look at her." Nichika reached out tentatively and touched Matsumoto's hip caressing the soft skin, letting his finger trace the deep curve down to her slender waist and over her ribs.
"Isn't she just beautiful?"
Hinamori grimaced as Matsumoto stirred, she was alive. Oh how Hinamori still wanted Matsumoto not to wake up at the very moment. Nichika placed a long strip of duck tape over the woman's mouth before she was aware of her surroundings and then her screams became muffled by the mouth guard as she stared at Hinamori in horror.
"I didn't kidnap her peachy," he said softly. "She came with me." He closed his eyes. "And did exactly what I asked her to do." He silently lied.
"You're crazy." Hinamori said through clenched teeth.
Nichika smiled to himself as she ogled with the semiconscious girl under him. Hinamori was disgusted that she'd ever opened up to him or even touch her as he was not slowly caressing her cheek. She saw every encounter, every fumbled; the images ticked by, a sad slide show of her sad childhood. She wanted to so badly to erase everything she ever knew about the man standing in front of her but deep down she knew it was the pathetic truth; she was once infatuated with him.
His breathing became more rapid and his face flushed with arousal. He continued to caress Matsumoto as she laid helplessly on the beach bounding by ropes and tape as Nichika was now groping her, running his hand along her naked breasts. "I only want them because they remind me of you."
Hinamori told herself to be strong, that she could get out of this with her friend. "That's bullshit. You've always had it bad for teenage girls."
"No," he said, his voice cracked. "Only you, you made me into this. I never once paid attention to any other. Not until you. You did this to me." He slid his hand from Matsumoto's bosom back down her stomach, her waist and down along the waistband of her underpants.
"Stop that." Hinamori pleaded, turning her head, unable to look.
She squeezed her eyes shut as Nichika approached her and he was now extremely close to her face that his breath was tickling it. He lifted her chin up but she never opened her eyes until she thought better as his lips traced her cheek and she whipped her head to the side out of his grasp.
"Did I mean anything to you?"
"Of course, you were my best friend and possibly my second brother."
"I still think about that day after school in tenth grade. How you were standing, what you were wearing, and what we said to each other. You gave me a scrape book of our time together beginning from elementary till the day you left. I've never filled in another page because I can't fill it in unless you're there."
He touched her face again, and she jerked away and felt the fabric around her neck tighten as she retched again, forcing herself to remain still, she was afraid to move. Don't cry, she told herself. Don't.
"I remember everything about you," he said, and then she felt his lips brush against her cheek again and it made her want to vomit. "Your favourite song, Momoiro no Hana, your birthday, your favourite colour, fruit; everything. You gave me your soul and heart." He kissed her lips, dragging his bottom lip up the side of her face, leaving a path of moisture. She squeezed her eyes and hands tighter till they felt like bleeding. She could smell his sweat, and breath.
He pulled away and she could feel the scarf loosen but she was still afraid to open her eyes, afraid of what she might see. "I was happy. I was dating your best friend just to get closer to you, but you were so mature and wise beyond our age that you couldn't betray a friendship like that with Yukie. I should have never have done it, should have never put my feelings into words. But I took a chance and in the end I lost everything. Yukie broke my heart and you turned away from me and disappeared."
He grabbed her head in his hands then she felt his lips on her mouth again, his tongue pushing against her sealed lips. The fabric tightened around her throat and she gasped. Before he could succeed, Hinamori flung open her eyes, and shoved her bound legs forward. Nichika fell backward and Hinamori struggled with her tied hands and with a hard rip to the side the binding snapped off leaving her with rope burn and torn skin. She screamed at the throbbing pain as the blood ran down her hand then dripped off her fingers dissolving in the sand.
She pushed herself up and began unwinding the tape and ropes around her ankles but before she could free herself completely Nichika tackled her into the sand. He was kissing her fiercely as she struggled with shoving him off; his legs were tangled with hers. Ripping her lips away she screamed, a few feet away from her she saw Matsumoto struggling with her bindings.
"Get off of me!" Hinamori screamed and dug her nails into his chest ignoring his howls of pain. He slapped her across the face but she fought against the stinging as she continued to pinch his skin until it bled. He grabbed her hair and slammed her head into the ground, hard. She grabbed at a broken bottle within her reach and swung cutting into his skin and then he finally rolled off of her.
"Fuck!" he screamed as he clutched his new wound. He reached behind him and pulled out a silver revolver and pointed it at the petite girl bleeding in the sand. She froze.
"Momo, you should have never left me and now this leaves me with no choice," she heard the click on the gun.
"You were too good for me that's what everyone told me but you proved to me that you could be everything to me and now I wished you should have known better."
Authors Note: Will Hitsugaya make it in time?! Well you'll just have to wait and read till next time! I'll update when I get 223+ reviews! Thank you and see you very soon. :)