Sorry for the short chapter, but hopefully the vast amounts of text I'll be dumping here over the next couple of months will more than make up for it. Now that we're a few chapters in, though, I would like to know what some of you think. Leave a review. Tell me if you love it, tell me if you hate it. It's all good.


Part I

"A cursed parakeet?" Renji asked with a sneer. "What kinda fool do you take me for, Shigeo?"

"I don't, honest!" Shigeo said, shaking his head furiously. "It's just the word on the street, is all."

Ide added, "Yeah, apparently, all of its previous owners died or something. It got passed to me but," a flash of fear showed on his face, "I don't know about taking care of a cursed bird."

Renji rubbed his temples asking, "Why did you come to me, then?"

"I just thought," Ide said sheepishly, "that since you're always talking about weird stuff like this, you'd know what's up, maybe take it off my hands." He said this, raising the sheet that was draped over the bird's cage right next to him, and Renji got a good look at the bird. It was a cockatiel, if he remembered his birds right. It had pure white feathers and bright red cheeks. It cocked its head at Renji curiously, and he couldn't help but think it was pretty cute.

"I guess I could ask around…" He said, reaching for the bird. The second he grasped the handle, he heard a rumble. He looked up in the alleyway they were sitting in, saw a shadow of something, and before he could even think, he was shoving the two boys to the ground, cage in hand.

CLANG!

"Holy shit!" Ide yelled. He was pale and shaking, pointing right behind Renji. He looked back and there was a bent ten-foot-long support beam, lying right where they were just sitting. He looked down at the cage in his hand.

"You guys alright?" he asked shakily.

"Yes, thank you!" A voice said, too high pitched to be either Shigeo or Ide, and those two were probably still too busy panicking to even say anything. He looked down to the only other thing with him, the cockatiel. It cocked its head, still looking at him, and then opened its beak and said, "My name is Yūichi Shibata." Renji paled. "What's your name mister?"

And the bird was talking. The bird was talking to him. Would this be the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him. The fact that he wasn't sure definitely said something about his life.

In the end though, he really felt he had no choice but to answer, "My name's Renji Abarai."

"Don't tell me your talking to the bird now, Renji," Shigeo said nervously.

"This is getting weirder and weirder by the second," Ide groaned. Renji ignored both of them and weighed his options.

Taking home a cursed bird that had definitely almost caused his demise right then and there was probably not a good idea, but then again, if anyone could handle such a thing… Yeah, the first person that comes to mind is Rukia, but he's a close second. He was tough enough and could at least ask Rukia if this was some kind of Spirit nonsense. Besides, the little guy just thanked him for saving his life. It wasn't like he could just leave him out in the cold, now.

"I'll take this off your hands, guys," Renji decided, getting to his feet, cage in hand. The bird was still looking up at him intently. "But now," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "I gotta go. Curfew, and all." The sun was already half-way set.

"See you around, man," Ide muttered. As he was walking away, Renji heard him say to himself, "Definitely not gonna sleep tonight…" He guessed that was fair.

The neighborhood Renji lived in was not bad. Sure, it had a reputation, and most here had a lower income that average, but it wasn't bad. He knew just about everyone that lived here, including Ide and Shigeo, and they were nice people, just trying to get by. Ide may be kind of twitchy, and Shigeo may be a bit of a shithead sometimes, but they were still good people, and as for the neighborhood itself, it was cleaner than most would expect, with only the occasional tag.

"Where are we going?" the bird asked. Yeah, it was weird answering a bird, but it wasn't like Renji could just ignore him.

"We're going to my apartment," he explained, "and you're gonna have to stay quiet, kay?" His mom would be in by now, probably making dinner. That reminded him. "Hey, what do talking birds eat, anyway?"

The bird, and Renji supposed it would be rude to just think of him as "the bird", so Yūichi tilted his head to the left and then to the right, considering before finally answering, "Most people just fed me bread."

Bread. He could get bread.

"I think we have some in the kitchen," Renji said, stopping at the crosswalk. Not too many cars were going by, but there were just enough there that he knew it wasn't smart to just try and book it across the road. Plus, crossing without paying attention while carrying a cursed bird was just asking for trouble.

As if reading his thoughts, Yūichi said sullenly, "The person you were with was right, you know." He let out a sigh. "Everyone who's had me has died. Maybe you should just leave me here."

All that self-depreciation made Renji's heart sink. The bird sounded downright depressed. He had to reassure him, somehow.

"Believe it or not," Renji started confidently, "I've dealt with some weird stuff before. I've even got a friend that might be able to figure out this curse you've got."

"But it's not a curse!" Yūichi whined. Renji blinked.

"What do you mean, not a curse?" Renji asked, and just as he thought Yūichi was going to respond, he felt a large hand push at his back with just enough force to send him stumbling into the street. He fell onto his hands and knees, saw an SUV, approach, horn honking and lights blaring, and just managed to get one hand on the cage and roll away. It missed him by centimeters.

It took a minute for Renji to realize that his heart was pounding in his chest, even as he got himself clear to the other side of the road. The bird doesn't know what he's talking about. There's definitely some kind of curse on him. That's what goes through his head when he thinks about how he almost died just a second ago.

"Are you alright?" Yūichi asked quietly.

"Yeah," Renji said, gulping. "Maybe we should hurry home." He looked down to see if Yūichi would respond. He wouldn't meet his eyes.

It only took a few tension filled minutes for Renji to get to the front door of his apartment, Room 1C. He dug his keys out of his pocket and opened the door.

"Hey, Mom, I'm back," he called into the apartment.

"Hey, Renji," she said, popping her head out of the closet with an easy smile on her face. She stuck her head back in. "I'm just putting the kotatsu away. It's been getting pretty hot these last few days." With one mighty shove, she finished up and shut the door.

Miné Abarai was a vivacious young woman in her early thirties. She was speckled with various tattoos, all across her arms and legs, and every single one of them had a story that she could bother you with for hours. Renji had her bright red hair, her brown eyes, and even her long limbs.

"There was this great sale for Taiyaki," she said with a smile, approaching him. As she got a good look at him, her smile fell to a look of confusion. "Why do you have a bird?" she asked.

Shit, Renji needed to think fast. He was terrible at lying on the spot!

"I'm looking after it," he said carefully, "for Rukia." He tried to keep a straight face.

"For Rukia?" His mother asked with a raised eyebrow. "Her brother let her have a bird?" Abort mission, she wasn't buying it.

"No," he said. He might be able to save this. "Not yet, anyway. That's why I have to keep it, for now."

His mom hesitated for a moment, studying him, trying to decide whether she would believe her son or not. In the end, she just sighed, shrugged her shoulders, and said, "As long as it doesn't make too much noise…We do have neighbors, after all."

"Got it!" he said, not wasting a single moment to start rushing to his room. Then, he remembered the Taiyaki. Trying to escape from being caught in a lie or not, there was not way he was letting that go to waste. He quickly grabbed a piece from the fridge, remembering to swipe a slice of bread for Yūichi.

"Thank you!" he said, just before he escaped to his room and closed the door.

He placed the bird on his desk letting out a little sigh of relief. He'd made it. He'd survived the curse and his mom. He carefully slid the slice of bread through the bars of the cage.

"Here you go," he said. Yūichi swooped down on the bread with a little flap of his wings, and Renji watched him happily peck at it. He doubted Ide ever thought to feed the poor thing. It could be starving for all he knew.

His mind went back to his earlier thought of whether this was the oddest situation he'd ever found himself in. It made the top five, that was certain. He had a bird that can talk locked up in a cage in his room, and on top of that, he wasn't even sure if anyone else could hear it. He only hoped Rukia would know what to make of it.

Part II

"I really don't know what to make of this," Rukia said, leaning back from the cage she was just studying. Confusion was plain on her face. Great, Renji thought.

He, Rukia, Keigo, Mizuiro, and even the new kid were all sitting on the roof during their lunch break. They were the only ones up there, which was great because Renji didn't want to get any strange stares when he had to start explaining his talking bird.

"Well, I know what to make of it," Keigo said confidently. "Renji managed to train his bird to talk! I didn't even know you had a bird." He said this, peering into the cage a grin on his face as he wiggled his finger at Yūichi. The bird looked a little uncomfortable.

"Nice to meet you," Mizuiro said with a smile.

"It's nice to meet you, too!" Yūichi said brightly. Keigo clapped.

On the other side of the roof, Ichigo was leaning his head over the railing. He took one look at Rukia and jerked his head over.

"Sorry," she told Renji, a little confused. He didn't even hear her, really, and she quietly slipped away to Ichigo. He looked pensive.

"Consider this a part of your training," he said with a sideways glance. "Can you sense anything from that bird?"

"Sense something?" Every day, Rukia seemed to be finding out new odd things that made a Shinigami a Shinigami. She knew already you could sense a specific presence from Hollows, that if you got really good you could sense them from a distance and even know things like how powerful they were, but this was still the first time she was asked to specifically try and find something. "Okay," she said. She closed her eyes and tried to just feel.

Rukia wasn't really sure what she was looking for, something odd in the air, maybe. Still, she had a feeling that when she sensed it, she would know.

Bingo!

She felt a tiny…something, coming from that bird. It was a small thud, a warm pulsing, almost like a heartbeat, it was…

"Human," she said, finally. Ichigo nodded, and she suddenly realized what she had just found. "That's not a bird," she said, "that's a person."

"Well," Ichigo started, "there's definitely some bird in there, but yes, that is a Human Soul."

Rukia let out a sigh, saying, "Then there's no problem, right? Eventually the Soul will just pass on, and all's well that ends well." That's what always happened with the Human Souls she came across.

Ichigo's tight expression said otherwise. "I wish that were the case," he said with a frown, "but Human Souls don't just pop into bird bodies, and they certainly don't just fall out. We need to investigate." He was still looking at the bird, and at Renji, studying them carefully with quickly narrowing eyes. Something else was wrong.

"Do you think you know how this happened?" Rukia asked carefully.

Ichigo shook his head before saying, "No, not really, but I do know that your friend reeks of Hollow." That was exactly what Rukia was afraid of.

Part III

"Out you go, little guy," Renji said as he unlatched Yūichi's cage. The poor bird had been stuck hidden in Renji's locker all day, and before that, who knew how long he'd been cooped up in this little cage. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he needed to stretch out his wings.

"I haven't been out of this cage in ages!" Yūichi cried happily, hopping out quickly. He took one more happy step before with a flap of his wings, he begun flying around the room, circling once then twice, before settling on Renji's bed, ruffling his feathers and settling in. He was a picture of pure bliss.

Renji said, trying to seem casual, "As long as you don't make a mess, you can stay out as long as you'd like." The bird's face seemed to light up.

"Really?" he asked excitedly. Renji nodded, cracking open his textbook and seeing if he could get any work done.

Why did math have to be so complicated in High School, he wondered. It didn't make sense when it was just numbers and letters, and it certainly didn't make sense now. All these weird special equations he had to memorize just gave him a headache. Maybe he could use the distraction?

"Hey," he called to Yūichi. The bird quickly flew over to hop onto his desk. He cocked his head, ready for whatever Renji had to say. Resisting the sudden urge to scratch his chin, because boy was that cute, he instead asked his question, "How do you do that anyway? Talk, I mean."

Yūichi's expression immediately changed. He wilted before Renji's very eyes, head hung low. He had a feeling that this story wasn't a happy one.

After a moment more, the bird finally said, "I've always been able to talk, but I wasn't always a bird. I used to be a person." Renji tried to school his reaction, but he wasn't sure how well he did. This was…shocking. "I was just a kid living with my mommy, but then…" Yūichi's voice cracked. His wings started trembling. If he weren't a bird, Renji was sure he'd be sobbing, now. Still, he continued, "A bad man came and killed her. When he came for me, I reached down and grabbed his shoes. He fell down, off the building, and didn't get up again, but later, he came back."

"Came back?" Renji asked quietly. "You mean he was a Spirit?" Yūichi shook his head.

"He looked like a monster," Yūichi said, voice trembling, "but it was him." Renji wasn't quite following, but he didn't interrupt the boy to ask. "He said he could bring my mommy back to life if I ran from him for three months like this, as a bird, but it's barely been one month and so many people have already been killed because of me." Yūichi's voice broke off at the very last moment. He was trembling again, crying, and Renji had no idea what to do.

Renji was never very good with kids, much less…this, but he knew he had to try. He hesitantly reached out, patting Yūichi gently on the head with one finger, the same way he'd seen other birds be pet. For a moment, Yūichi froze, but soon enough, he stopped shaking, and seemed to lean into the touch.

For a while, they stayed like that, quiet in his tiny room. Yūichi was just trying to calm himself, and Renji, well, Renji was going over the story in his head. It was an odd one, and pieces seemed to be missing, but weirdly enough, he knew he believed the kid, and he knew that if he were in this kid's position he'd be feeling pretty terrified, too.

When the kid seemed calm enough, he finally asked, "Yūichi, when you say that man turned into a monster, what did you mean? What was he?"

The boy sniffed once, and then twice, searching for the words.

He finally said, "He was hollow."

Part IV

Not far outside of Renji's apartment, on a roof across the street, crouched Rukia and Ichigo, the latter of which was peering through a pair of binoculars.

"I don't think anything weird's going on," he said, looking carefully. He handed them to Rukia. "Here, you take a look."

Now, Rukia never really thought that hunting Hollows would ever include spying on her best friend through a pair of binoculars, and she was honestly still wondering why Ichigo even had these, but it wasn't as if she were going to question him on the subject. He probably wouldn't give her a straight answer, anyway.

She took the binoculars from his hand and took a look for herself, studying closely, trying to look through the window. The bird was just hopping around the room. Renji was nearby reading something on his desk. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary going on, just as there hadn't been for the last hour.

Looking away, she asked with exasperation, "You are positive it's a Hollow, right?" Because she was really starting to doubt it. This just seemed like regular Spirit nonsense to her, even if the whole situation of boy possessing bird was stretching the definition of "regular," and with Ichigo's powers on the fritz, it was possible that the Shinigami was wrong.

"Hey," he snapped, pulling on her ear, "who's the trained Hollow killer, again? Was it the fourteen-year-old human girl, or was it me?"

"Ow!" she yelled. "It was an honest question, and I'm sixteen!" she finished angrily.

"Tch!" Ichigo scoffed, finally letting go. "When you've lived as long as I have, kid, it doesn't make a difference."

Really? "Kid?"

It certainly did raise a question, though, and Rukia asked, nursing her sore ear, "How old are you, anyway?"

Ichigo paused. His eyebrows furrowed, and he mumbled to himself, as if he had to do calculus just to figure it out.

"Time works differently in the Soul Society," he finally said, "but…three hundred and twelve?"

Rukia's jaw almost dropped.

She was thinking he might be "just a bit older than he looks," not literal centuries older than her. He certainly didn't act like it. He spoke like the delinquent everyone thought he might be, and the most "other worldly" thing about him was his hair. Rukia just shook her head. No wonder he thought of her as a kid.

"Hey, I just told you I was over three hundred years old, human," Ichigo said with an insecure smile. "Aren't you gonna say something?" She just smirked to herself and looked through the binoculars again.

Renji was had just turned off his lights and closed his curtains. Maybe they've been here for longer than she first thought?

"I think he's going to bed," Rukia said to Ichigo. He let out a quiet sigh.

"Then I sure hope you aren't tired yet. He may be going to sleep, but your job's just begun, shorty."

Rukia glared at Ichigo, a deep frown on her face as she set down the binoculars. This was going to be a very long night, wasn't it?