A/N:Thanks to geekgirl4ever for the idea!
Hitsugaya was perched quite comfortably on the rafters above the wide white training room, casually kicking his feet back and forth with all the general innocence of a three-year-old. Below him, Matsumoto and Hirako were busy teaching Steve and Bruce – respectively – to control their reiatsu. Bruce was doing quite well, as had become customary for him throughout the training, and Hirako had practically said as much to his face. It had given the scientist a much-needed boost in self-esteem. He was now able to call upon the Hulk's massive strength and tough Hierro at will, though, like the Hollow masks, he had a time limit. Currently that limit was at four minutes – fairly short, but improving by seconds each day.
Steve, on the other hand…
"Focus it, Rogers-san." Matsumoto chided, examining the bright silver light radiating off the edges of his shield. "It's still a rather dull blade now."
Steve groaned and with that lapse in concentration the silvery-blue corona hazing over the edges of his vibranium shield cracked and shattered apart in a puff of mist. The supersoldier swore violently under his breath, and Toushiro had to try very hard to suppress the chuckles bubbling at the back of his throat. Tessa, however, had no such qualms.
"Ahahaha! That was pathetic!" she cackled in his head, the whiplash of her blue power spiraling around his mind. He smirked inwardly.
"Reiatsu is always hard to manipulate at first, Tessa-chan." He reminded the Tesseract's persona tiredly, his tone bored. "Took me a hell of a long time to quit emitting the stuff in my sleep."
Tessa seemed to think this over for a moment, then a spark of her curiosity ignited the blue flickering everywhere in his mind's eye.
"Hey, that's the spy human-dude-man-guy-person-male…"
"Synonyms, Tessa. Those are synonyms. You only need one." Toushiro groaned quietly. That had become a bad habit of hers, and it irritated him to absolutely no end. He sighed, tuning out the voices of the six, then settled down to watch Fury approach the panting captain.
"Captain Rogers, I have a mission for the Avengers. Commander Hitsugaya may accompany you if he wishes to do so." Fury said without preamble, and Steve sighed.
"A mission? To do what?"
Fury raised an eyebrow.
"SHIELD received word of a minor Hydra base which might have Loki's scepter." He replied. "They recently received a shipment of very odd technology of the same caliber that we previously used to contain the Tesseract. We need you to storm the base."
Steve nodded, glancing at Matsumoto apologetically as he strapped his shield to his back.
"Sorry, Miss Rangiku." he said. "I'll practice as soon as I get back."
Toushiro rolled his eyes and with a swift, effortless flip, leapt down from his perch high above the training Avengers below.
"Damn right you will." he sniped, digging an elbow into Steve's side, a grin curling over his young face. "That was awful."
Steve laughed a bit, quickly throwing an arm over the short commander's shoulders.
"Don't start with me, kiddo. At least I was better than you were when you began trying to pull out your Spiritual Powers, or so Miss Rangiku tells me." the American soldier jibed back slyly, grinning at the rising pink flush on Toushiro's face. "Apparently you almost brought down a roof on your head."
Hitsugaya huffed irritably and glared at his lieutenant, though he did not make a move to loosen Steve's hold on him - a fact that was not lost on anyone.
"Matsumoto, I told you to stop telling embarrassing stories about me." he complained grouchily. Hirako grinned his special toothy leer, his blond bob obscuring one of his eyes for the briefest of seconds.
"Eh, you worry too much, Hitsu-kun." he simpered. "Every one of the captains has nearly blown up a building before during training mishaps. I think you've actually got the cleanest record on that account."
"It's Hitsugaya-taicho to you!" Toushiro snapped reflexively, drawing raised eyebrows from nearly everyone in the room, Hirako especially. The Vizard scowled.
"The hell? You just let Rogers-san call you kiddo, for god's sake. Preferential treatment, much?" Hirako grumbled. Toushiro went a few shades pinker in the cheeks.
"...shut up." he retorted, the blush painting his face the same shade as Matsumoto's scarf. "I heard mission, and I heard that I could come. So let's go."
Fury's expression didn't change much, but the quirk of his eyebrows gave away his amusement. He handed Steve a thick manila folder.
"In there is all the information you need to know, Captain Rogers." he said. Then he turned to the white-haired preteen. "And remember, Commander, please fight conservatively. We can't afford for you to be knocked out of commission."
Hitsugaya scoffed a bit at the warning, but nodded his acquiescence anyhow and followed Steve from the room.
A few hours later found the Avengers in uniform - Hitsugaya out of his gigai - all loaded onto a plane which Clint was casually piloting across the Atlantic Ocean. Toushiro was sitting curled up on the floor of the plane, leaning back against the metal wall with a sort of casual, calm grace. The other Avengers were scattered around similarly to he, all save Natasha and Steve who were sprawled out next to each other, laughing at something that Tony had done. Finally, Toushiro rolled his eyes. He'd had enough.
"Alright, you two." he said mischievously. "Knock it off with the cutesy-couple thing you've got going on. I want to know the details of the mission."
The fierce blush that spread across the pair's face was hilarious, and they shot apart, stuttering and making stammered death threats. Hitsugaya just smirked, a devilish gleam in his green eyes, perfectly well aware of the snickers coming from Tony, Bruce, and Clint. Thor was the only one who seemed somewhat oblivious - and that's because he was reading.
"Come on, Steve. What's the mission?" the young SRD commander asked again, relishing that the blush wasn't adorning his face for once. The American captain buried his face in the manila folder, grateful that it could hide his flush (though Natasha wasn't so lucky).
"Uh...okay." Steve stammered out, the plane's droning hum a quiet murmur in the background. "So...looks like this is your standard breaking-and-entering sort of operation. There are two entrances in the fort's walls - South and East sides. Natasha, you and I will take East. Clint, you and Bruce take South. Tony, Thor, Toushiro, you three attack from above. Our aim is to capture the base. SHIELD will be bringing in a team of specialists to look for clues after the base is secure. Are we clear?"
Everyone nodded, and for a moment, everything was quiet. Then Clint's triumphant crow came from the pilot's seat.
"Steve, I swear to God, be a little more subtle next time." the archer said, his tone dripping with glee. Steve blinked, the pinkness coming back to his cheeks. Natasha shot him a suspicious glance.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Clint." the supersoldier replied, his tone utterly unconvincing. The assassin snorted, and suddenly the others in the plane began to laugh.
"For crying out loud, Captain Obvious, your team assignments? Really?"
Steve went scarlet, as did Natasha. Both of them refused to speak for the rest of the trip.
Toushiro surfaced from his meditations a few hours later to find Tony clad in his armor in front of him, his face serious. Thor stood right behind him, hammer in hand. Both of them were ready to go. The plane was gliding on JARVIS's instructions - it seemed that Steve and Clint's teams had already jumped out.
"You ready, kid?" Tony asked. Hitsugaya's lips pursed in distaste at the nickname, but he said nothing and merely nodded. As soon as they jumped - on Steve's signal - the plane would coast to a safe distance away and land. So the trio went and opened the hatch, standing casually on the slab of metal and wire as hydraulic pumps lowered it into the desert sky.
~"Now!"~
Toushiro barely had time to realize that shit-it-was-hot before he pitched himself forward into the sky, body moving on autopilot. His haori swirled around his waist and then his head and shoulders as he plunged towards the sandy earth below, the dragging, sucking heat pulling him down. Dear lord, he was wearing a black, bulletproof bodysuit. In a desert. Heatstroke risk, much?
With a roar worthy of Hyourinmaru's lips, he called for his Bankai.
"Bankai! Daiguren Hyourinmaru!"
The wings of ice unfolded around him, rivulets on water immediately dripping from the carved ice feathers. But he immediately felt better, the coolness of the ice wreathing his slender frame alleviating the devastating heat somewhat.
He dipped one wing into the swift currents of hot air and took off like a rocket, streaking through the sky. Below, he could hear the startled shouts of Hydra members, and suddenly the clatter of gunfire broke out. A bullet nicked one of his wings of ice, causing a spiderweb of cracks to spread briefly through the silvered rime before his overwhelming reiatsu repaired the damage, superficial as it was. Above him, his ice flowers wilted in the dry heat.
Tony's voice crackled in his earpiece.
~"I'm going in! Thor, Toush, you two follow me down!"~
Toushiro snarled, instantly recoiling against the nickname.
"My name is not 'Toush,' idiot!" he snapped, but Tony was already plummeting towards the fort, Thor on his tail with lightning snapping around his hammer. So, reluctantly, sweat already dripping down his pale cheeks, Toushiro followed. He folded his icy wings around him, curling them close to his spine, and dove towards the fort below.
The trio landed just as the Hulk's vigorous roar sounded from the south entrance, drawing attention away from them for the split second they needed to attack. Toushiro Shunpoed wildly through the groups, his Zanpakutou flashing scarlet with blood, heading away from the Tony and Thor's less precise attacks. He didn't want to be caught up in Thor's lightning or Tony's showers of heat-seeking missiles.
A bullet grazed Hitsugaya's sweaty brow, opening a thin line of red on his forehead, and he felt the six Stones surge forward in his mind, worried. He calmed them with a hurried thought, then quickly ducked under the hail of metal coming towards him and cut down the man attacking him. With a curse, he realized that the nearest doorway into the sandstone fortress was too small for his wings to fit through.
He disengaged his Bankai, and darted through the open door, running at full speed. Almost instantly he could feel the heat assailing him again, almost a physical blow to his wintry constitution, but he did all he could to ignore the aridity for now. Continuing down the narrow passage, he ran into three surprised Hydra gunmen, one of whom was felled by Toushiro's thrown dagger. The other two were quickly dispatched with a neat, low-powered Byakurai, and Toushiro flitted forward and jerked his bloodstained dagger from where it was buried in the dead man's eye socket, ignoring the growing pounding in the back of his skull.
Several minutes and thirty men later, the ice-captain's face was flushed and he was breathing heavily,, his limbs trembling slightly. He closed his eyes, standing perfectly still in the center of what had once been the headquarters of this Hydra outpost. A ring of wounded and dying men surrounded him. He gasped uneven, shallow breaths, his fingers feeling abnormally like clamflesh, and pressed two fingers to his headset.
"The control room is secure." he said, his voice a little dry. "Steve?"
~"We're in control of the base, son. Do you have any survivors?"~
"A few." Toushiro said. He was feeling dizzy, and too late he realized that he wasn't sweating anymore. For some reason he felt vaguely baffled, but by what he couldn't tell. "My blade bites deep...there's a lot of blood."
For a moment there was silence, and then Bruce spoke, his voice tired but concerned.
~"Are you okay, Toushiro?"~ he asked tentatively. Hitsugaya thought for a moment, then grudgingly admitted it.
"...I'm extremely prone to heatstroke." he said without preamble, feeling rather than seeing the world spinning violently about him. His muscles suddenly went slack, and he sank weakly onto the steaming sandstone floor, the sun shining cruelly on his pale little face. "...Ice, you know...i'melts...inthadeserr..."
His voice slurred suddenly, words losing focus, and he blinked in confusion. Why was the ground so close...?
~"Goddamnit! Tony, the monitoring tech in his suit! What's his temperature?!"~
~"...Ice, you know...i'melts...inthadeserr..."~
Steve heard the boy's voice drop into a low slur with astonishing clarity, the dazed quality of his words quickly becoming apparent. Heatstroke. Of course the kid would get it, being an ice-wielder.
~"Goddamnit! Tony, the monitoring tech in his suit! What's his temperature?!"~ Bruce yelled into the headset. For a moment there was silence, and then Tony swore colorfully, his tone low.
~"Shit. Shit shit shitty shit. He's just upwards of 41 degrees Celsius. Where was he?"~ Tony cursed. Steve's upper lip curled in a grimace, and he closed his eyes, trying to pick out the familiar, crisp, brilliant-white-ice-pine glow of Toushiro's reiatsu. After a few moments, he found it.
"I've got him." he announced, glancing at Natasha, who stood by his side. "Tony, tell JARVIS to bring the jet around. Bruce, when it lands, grab whatever you'll need to tide the kid over until we can get him back to the SRD's treatment rooms. Clint, you inform Fury of our situation."
~"Roger that, Rogers."~ Tony said, though his heart didn't seem to be in the sarcasm. Steve ignored it and took off running for the nearest opening in the fortress's sandstone walls. He ended up leaping through a window shattered by bullets, his vibranium shield protecting him from the shards of glass. Natasha followed close behind him, her sleekly beautiful face as grave as the steel of her guns.
The pair - couple, though they wouldn't admit it even to themselves - dashed through the halls, Steve following that icy-cold trail of spiritual presence until he came across room in which Toushiro lay shivering on the floor, his face scarlet with sun-fever. With a low curse, Steve walked over the the dazed preteen and picked the boy up. The young shinigami flopped like a ragdoll in Steve's secure grasp. He struggled to focus on Steve's blue eyes.
"...Seeve..." he mumbled, incoherently, trying to pronounce the American captain's name. Steve smiled reassuringly, something like fond exasperation in his face.
"Easy, son." he said kindly, cradling the boy to his chest and starting back for the courtyard where the plane would inevitably land - it was the only one big enough. Natasha ran alongside him, her palm on the boy's flushed brow at one point, testing his temperature. The couple exchanged glances, but kept going, and once they arrived in the courtyard, Bruce took over.
"Steve, get him in the plane. Hurry." the biologist ordered worriedly. "We need to get his temperature under control ASAP."
The supersoldier complied, and with barely a thought the entire team followed, watching like anxious mother hens as Bruce pulled the preteen's haori and bodysuit off, wrapping the boy in sheets dampened with cool water. Bags of ice - unmelted, thankfully - were nestled around the stricken shinigami's neck and armpits, and a frozen towelette was laid across his forehead. Only then did Bruce relax somewhat, working a thermometer under Toushiro's tongue and watching with some sense of satisfaction as the red line started to drop, slowly and surely.
"Good grief." Bruce said finally, looking up from his patient, a scowl on his face. "Heatstroke-prone, my foot. More like allergic to the sun!"
The Avengers relaxed considerably at the pronouncement, thankful that their young friend was out of immediate danger. Thor spoke up then, his tone petulant.
"Are we going to transport young Toushiro to one of your medical facilities?" the Asgardian asked. "Friend Barton claimed that your leader allowed for such an operation."
"M'fine." Toushiro slurred suddenly, his voice aggressive. He tried to sit up but fell back onto the floor of the plane helplessly, his muscles still uncooperative. Steve folded his arms across his chest.
"You are not fine." he said sharply. "You have heatstroke. You need to get to a hospital."
The SRD Commander glared, his gaze still hazy with confusion and headache.
"You're..." Toushiro's nose wrinkled up - he couldn't think of any decent insults. "You're wrong an' dumb."
The Avengers all blinked at the uncharacteristically childish response. Natasha knelt down by the boy's side, sighing, a wicked grin crossing her face.
"Anyone have a video camera?" she asked suddenly. "I think our little ice-prince here is delirious."
She turned her attention to the plane itself and called out.
"JARVIS, take an audio recording if all else fails." she ordered. "And head towards the SRD as fast as you can."
~"Of course, Miss Romanoff."~
Tony whistled, recognizing the Russian spy's plan.
"Damn, you're cruel."
The next morning, Toushiro woke in one of the SRD's two infirmary wards with a sour taste in his mouth and a pounding headache. Reluctantly, he sat up, only to find that an IV needle had been taped into his wrist and that several cool cloths had been wrapped around him. He groaned, rubbing at one eye tiredly.
"Oh, I see that you have awakened, my young friend."
Thor's bass rumble filled the air, and weakly Toushiro turned his head to look at the approaching Asgardian. Thor was smiling cheerfully, but there was something ominous about his demeanor that put the young captain on edge.
"Thor...what happened, exactly?" Toushiro's words felt blunt in his mouth, but thankfully they weren't slurred anymore. That much he remembered before everything went blurry and unclear.
"You suffered a nasty heat-stroke while in Egypt, or so Friend Banner tells me." the Asgardian said delicately, sitting down in a chair by Toushiro's bed. "You were delirious for three hours, and required intravenous rehydration as well as an ice bath."
Hitsugaya winced. Even for him, that was bad. Then something registered.
"...I was delirious." he said in disbelief, the foreboding feeling that he'd had earlier making sense now. "...you put me on video, didn't you?"
Without saying another word, Thor held out one of Tony's smartphones and pressed the play button.
~"I don' like Masmoto."~ the onscreen Toushiro slurred, unaware of the Avengers' stifled laughter. ~"She drowns...druwns me in'er chest-parts..."~
Jade eyes blinked in stupefaction for a brief second before realization sank in. The sound wasn't coming from the phone.
It was playing over the intercom.
Seconds later, Natasha's laughter could be heard in the background, and Toushiro's eyebrows twitched.
"ROMANOFF!"
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