8: Wish

Yuuko didn't often go out without Watanuki, nowadays, for a variety of reasons; if he was there, she didn't have to carry anything she might find on her trip was one of them. But, if she was brutally honest with herself, she would have to admit that going out on her own just didn't seem as fun anymore. Getting reactions out of Watanuki was as fun as it was easy, and there were too many opportunities to make the boy squawk, especially outside the house. Trips alone seemed to lack something now- and that something was a protesting Watanuki. This trip, however, had to be made, and without her 'loyal' assistant.

So, here she was, strolling down the street, following a butterfly-shaped handkerchief. It led her to a desolate looking figure, dressed all in black, carrying a sword, standing on top of a lamp post.

"Shinigami-san!" she called cheerfully as she approached, not caring if the normal humans around her heard. The woman on top of the lamp post stood to attention, looking around for the source of the call. She finally looked down, and Yuuko waved up at her. "Good afternoon, Shinigami-san!"

The shinigami jumped down, landing gracefully in front of the wish-granter. "How do you know I'm a shinigami?" she asked, glaring suspiciously at Yuuko, as if she might pull out a weapon of some kind and attack.

"Well, your red soul ribbon was one clue," she murmured. "But," her tone changed from serious to lighthearted, "I'm here on businesses."

The suspicion was still clearly visible on the shinigami's visage. "What kind of business?"

"I'm here to offer you a drink!"

Watanuki was surprised when he realized that the vice-captain and his strange baboon-snake companion were still following him. In all honesty, the boy had totally forgotten the spirits when he realized that he was late for his job. The terror of Yuuko-san's retaliation does that to a person.

By the time he did realize that strange spirits were following him, it was too late to really do anything about it since he was already at the fence. Although, the part of his mind that wasn't in a frothing frenzy of panic mused, he had made it this far and neither spirit had even attempted to eat him, and he hadn't seen any other spirits since Abarai-san and Zabimaru-san showed up… maybe this was not one of the worst things that had happened to him. It might not be a good thing, but so far, no one had tried to eat him, so for now he would reserve judgement.

Renji, for his part, was starting to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. If Matsumoto found him following a human instead of looking for her captain, she would be pissed. And that would be putting it mildly. He hoped she would be a long way away from where he was so that she'd never find out. That way, his life would be much more comfortable- as long as Matsumoto never, ever found out about today.

Unless he somehow managed to find Hitsugaya-taicho- then all would be forgiven, but the odds of that happening were like being attacked by a polar bear and a regular bear on the same day: it wasn't going to happen. Sadly, the chances of Matsumoto finding him were much better.

Turning a corner, Renji found out how right he was.

"It's you!" the human he had been following exclaimed as the two women standing outside a fence came into view. "From the park!"

"Aah, Watanuki-kun," cooed one of the women who had long, black hair. "I'm glad you've arrived. I was starting to think that I'd have to find a new part-time worker!" Renji, sadly, didn't really hear the woman's greeting, as he was staring with a sort of amazed dread at the other woman, who, coincidentally, was also staring back at him. Actually, it was closer to glaring. Actually, it was glaring.

"So, Abarai-san," the other woman, who happened to be Matsumoto Rangiku, growled, "what exactly are you doing? Searching for Hitsugaya-taicho, I hope. Though I don't think following a human is very effective."

"Er… hi Ra-Matsumoto-san. I was, er, I was- you see…" While it was true that Renji had achieved bankai, there was still the fundamental fact that this was Matsumoto Rangiku he was facing. A very pissed-off, very worried-for-her-captain Matsumoto Rangiku. There was a reason Hitsugaya-taicho put up with her, and it wasn't her paperwork skills. "I was… hey, what are you doing here?" he demanded, he brain suddenly coming up with a desperate diversion tactic.

"Something useful. Yuuko-san says she has a proposition for me." She glanced impatiently at the woman, who Renji correctly guessed was 'Yuuko-san'. She didn't appear to notice the look, however, as she seemed to be having way too much fun watching the boy in glasses rant about something. Renji had to admit, it was kinda fun to watch. The kid would flail his arms around his head like he was trying to shoo away flies.

"So, what is it? The proposition, I mean," Renji asked, trying to keep Matsumoto from prying the truth out of him; if she found out that he'd been hanging around the high school and NOT looking for her captain, she would do something that Renji would regret.

"I offered her a drink," a voice said in his ear. Renji jumped to see the Yuuko-woman smirking right behind him. Behind her, the kid with the Hollow-Bait reiatsu sulked, looking as though he had lost a familiar argument.

"A drink!"

Yuuko rolled her eyes. "Well, I had to get her attention somehow," she explained. "Catching her attention any other way would have been much too expensive."

That made Renji blink. "Wait, you're saying buying Matsumoto Rangiku a drink was cheaper than anything else you could think of? What were your other options, buying Mount Fuji?" The 6th division lieutenant couldn't help but laugh at the idea of buying the infamous Matsumoto Rangiku (who always had about ten bottles of alcohol in her office at any given time) a drink being cheaper than anything.

Yuuko's smirk only grew.

An aggravated voice from behind the group reminded Renji that that human was still there. "Don't bother asking, Yuuko-san won't give you an answer you'll understand."

Yuuko pouted at that. "Watanuki-kun, don't be mean! I always give strait answers! It's not my fault you don't understand enough of how the world works to understand me!"

Watanuki sighed. Yuuko-san was in high spirits today, and that meant trouble. Well, more trouble than usual.

"Anyway, it's time for a drink!" Yuuko-san cheered. "Watanuki-kun, lead the way!"

As the shinigami and the strange human woman had seated themselves at a table in the shop, the Watanuki kid had left to get snacks. When he returned carrying a try, he was wearing an white apron and bandana. It was a cute look, and if it were any other situation, Matsumoto Rangiku would have milked this image for all it was worth, but today, she had to find the captain. Teasing kids would have to wait.

Watanuki placed drinks in front of Renji, Matsumoto and Yuuko, but had placed two extra cups of sake next to the two shinigami.

"Watanuki, what's this?" Yuuko had asked, gesturing at the two extras as the boy tried to slip into the background.

He looked a little surprised, but then again, it was not often that one confused the Space/Time Witch. "Well, I thought that Zabimaru and, um, the lioness spirit might want some, too," he mumbled.

At this, the faint look of puzzlement turned to one of surprise. "Who?" Matsumoto mirrored the look, even if hers took a slightly astonished overtone.

"He can see zanpakuto spirits?" Matsumoto asked, looking at Renji for confirmation.

"Apparently," Renji shrugged, downing his cup of sake, looking rather unconcerned.

The surprise vanished from their host's visage, and she smirked. "Well, that simplifies quite a bit."

"Simplifies what?" Matsumoto demanded.

"Introductions first, my dear," the strange woman said. "I am Ichihara Yuuko. This," she gestured around at the shop, "is my shop."

Renji took the bait. "What does it sell?"

"Wishes." Both shinigami looked skeptical, and Yuuko sighed. "No, really. I grant wishes. For the right price, of course. You," she pointed at Matsumoto, "you, are looking for someone. How are you doing that?"

Matsumoto looked guardedly at the strange person who had offered to grant her wish. "I was looking for Hitsugaya-taicho by following Hyorinmaru's reiatsu, since I can't find his."

"Hyorinmaru?"

"His zanpakuto," Matsumoto started to explain, but Yuuko-san held up one hand.

"You need not go any further. I understand."

"You can grant my wish? Find Hitsugaya-taicho?"

Yuuko Ichihara observed the desperately hopeful face before answering in her ever-careful manner. "There is nothing you could give me that I could accept as payment to grant that wish." The upset vice captain opened her mouth to protest, but Yuuko held up her hand, and whatever protest Matsumoto had halted. "I can, however, aid you in your search."

"How?" Matsumoto's desperation grasped at any chance to find her captain. It was painfully obvious now, to every one.

The smile that appeared on Yuuko's face made Watanuki shiver. Whatever she said would make his day much less pleasant.

"No! Absolutely not!" Watanuki raged quietly. The two shinigami were waiting impatiently by the fence for the part-timer; Matsumoto-fukutaicho was, by all indications getting ready to drag the poor boy with them by his hair. The part-timer in question was furiously trying NOT to go with the strange spirits to look for another strange spirit that would lead them, somehow, to yet ANOTHER strange spirit. He didn't even know what he was supposed to be looking for!

As usual, Yuuko-san was working on the assumption that he would, naturally, simply jump at the chance to do whatever crazy errand her disturbed mind could come up with. Something that Watanuki did not appreciate, despite the fact that he, invariably, would do whatever it was that Yuuko-san wanted him to. The reasons varied. Sometimes it was some kind of dangling reward (which, also invariably, would turn out to be something totally different than what any normal person would assume was being offered), saying that it would reduce his debt if he did/increase his debt if he didn't, or some kind of verbal judo. It really didn't matter, because in the end, Yuuko-san always got her way, and he ended up, for reasons he could never fully comprehend until much, much later, always doing her bidding. It got old after the third time it happened. Very old.

Yuuko-san smirked. Actually, she was doing something similar to pouting, but anything could look like a smirk on Yuuko-san's face. "But, Watanuki-kun, you have to do this! It's just one little search. It's like a treasure hunt!"

"Treasure hunt my eye! And why do I have to do this? Don't they have to pay first? Or later?" That had actually been bugging him. Yuuko-san was obsessed with extracting payment from people, but she had been offered payment, and she had not only DENIED it, but had neglected to mention what this was going to cost Matsumoto-san. For someone who supposedly had some kind of responsibility to keep things 'in balance,' this was highly unusual. And that was like saying that Antarctica was kind of chilly.

"Watanuki-kun, you answered your own question!" she sighed happily.

"Wait, what? But, how does-"

"Now, you'd better get going! You don't want to keep our customers waiting!" She shoved him towards the two shinigami while the luckless high school student was trying to figure out how his answers fit into his questions.

He stumbled to a halt in front of two impatient-looking shinigami, an impassive baboon-snake thing, and a pacing ash lioness. Matsumoto, arms crossed, looked at him and said, "Come on. We're wasting time!" before she grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the area of the shop. He tried feebly to shake her off as they passed several people who gazed at him in open curiosity, but she either she didn't notice or she wasn't ready to let go of him because the busty shinigami's grip stayed strong.

However, Renji noticed and nudged his companion. "Ran-san, let the kid go."

"What?" She looked at him, a slightly confused look on her face.

The red-headed shinigami gestured at her hapless prisoner. "He looks weird."

"H-hey!" Watanuki huffed. Well, he was right there!

"No, I mean they can't see Ran-san dragging you, right? So..." Renji tried to get his point across.

Realization flashed across Matsumoto's face and she released the part-timer. "Oh. Right..." embarrassment followed realization across her face, quickly replaced by redoubled resolve. She turned to Watanuki. "As long you follow me to where I can feel Hyorinmaru's reiatsu, I don't care if you're cartwheeling along." The resolute mask cracked, showing desperation for a heartbeat. "I need your help. I can't find Taicho on my own," she finished.

For a breath, both Watanuki and Renji stood awkwardly next to the bereft vice-captain, unsure of what to do to comfort her. Then she abruptly grabbed the front of Renji's robes and jerked him along after her, Renji squawking in protest.

She grinned back at him. "Well, I can't really pull Watanuki-kun along, can I?" she asked impishly. "You'll have to do in his stead."

Watanuki jogged in order to keep up with the pair of speeding shinigami. Losing them would be a bad idea, since he had no idea what they could get up to if he lost sight of them, even if they were mostly focused on their search for Hitsugaya-taicho. They also seemed to be keeping other spirits away, he noticed as he caught up to the pair. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen any spirits since Renji-san had shown up at his school during gym. And Yuuko-san had given him a job. He had to follow them because she said so, if he ever wanted to be rid the bothersome, dangerous spirits that usually followed him.

As they neared the park, the temperature dropped. Watanuki shuddered, and so did Renji, but Matsumoto looked as determined as ever. The cold didn't seem to bother her, despite the fact that she... had the most skin exposed.

"Oh, I can see why you think Hyorinmaru is here," Renji said, looking around at the park.

Matsumoto nodded. "Yeah, I wasn't sure at first, but I've been growing more convinced. Either way..." she turned to Watanuki, watching him with a cat's laser-focus. "Either way, we get to find out right here."

Watanuki gulped. "Ah..." How was he going to explain to this woman that though he could see the zanpakuto spirits, he had no idea what he was looking for. He had no idea what Hyorinmaru looked like, and from what he had seen, zanpakuto spirits looked, to him, like normal spirits. If spirits could be called normal, that is. But that still didn't tell him what Hyorinmaru looked like. There was nothing that really set them off from the myriad of other spirits he saw every day. They didn't even have a consistent form, if the two he had seen were anything to go by. He opened his mouth again, preparing to speak, but the words never got past his throat. Instead, he stood and gaped at the dragon that had chosen that moment to rise its head above the treeline to look at them.

The kid could see something, Renji could tell. Mostly by the way his eyes were glued to a spot above the medium sized patch of trees that was the closest thing one could get to a forest in the city.

Rangiku-san noticed it too. "What do you see?" she demanded.

There was no reply.

"Well?" She stood directly in front of him, gripping his shoulders. "What do you see?"

He tore his gaze away from the empty-seeming patch of sky to look at the desperate shinigami. He looked very nervous, eyes flicking back and forth from Matsumoto to the patch of sky. "A dragon. A big dragon," he said, and Renji got the impression that the kid didn't really believe what he was saying.

There was no mistaking the hope that blossomed in Ran-san's face, however. "A dragon?" she asked, still not letting him go. "What does it look like?"

"It's... it's the same one I saw before," Watanuki said, almost to himself. "If it is, then, I think it's, um, made of ice."

While Renji had been unsure why Matsumoto seeing a dragon was a big thing, he understood her excited reaction to the fact that it was apparently made of ice. Every one knew that Hitsugaya-taicho practically was ice. Everything about the kid screamed 'winter' from his white hair and teal eyes, to the fact that if he got mad and let his reiatsu slip it started getting cold. Hell, the kid's zanpakuto was named 'Hyorinmaru', for gods' sakes.

So, now they had found Hyorinmaru. If they were very lucky, Hitsugaya-taicho would be there, too. If they weren't... Well, Hyorinmaru was still there. That meant that the kid was at least still alive, even if it seemed like he had vanished.

And it did seem like the mini taicho had vanished. "Uh, Rangiku-san?" Renji said after a moment. "Can you-"

"No," she snapped, cutting him off. "We should get closer, though. Maybe if we can get to Hyorinmaru... Lead the way, Watanuki-kun." She shoved Watanuki forward, toward where he kept glancing. The kid looked less than pleased. He trudged forward reluctantly, looking as morose as if he were heading toward the gallows.

Renji caught up with the weird human, and nudged him. "Don't worry," he told the boy, who didn't look at all reassured. "Hitsugaya-taicho can be prickly, but he would never attack Ran-san. Never." Especially after Aizen... best not to think about that. Thinking about what that traitor had done to Hinamori, and even to Hitsugaya-taicho himself (Aizen was a sick bastard though and through. What kind of person DID that to a kid? Never mind the fact that Hitsugaya-taicho was a force to be reckoned with among the ranks of the captains, he was a KID. People who did that needed to die, period) would only make him upset, and he needed to be calm and diplomatic-like when talking to the icy little captain.

Watanuki's face took on a slightly thoughtful cast. "Ah... Abarai-san," he started, but Renji cut him off.

"Call me Renji. We're searching for Hitsugaya-taicho, not at a meeting. You don't need to be all formal."

"Um, ok. Renji-san, I've been wondering about..." Here he paused, trying to order the thoughts in his head into communicable sentences. "You act almost like Hyorinmaru-san is Hitsugaya-taicho, but isn't he a separate spirit? A... zanpakuto spirit?" he asked.

Matsumoto decided to input something into the conversation. "A zanpakuto does have its own spirit, but it's... a reflection," she said, trailing off, trying to think of a good way to explain it to a non-shinigami.

"Hey, Ran-san, why are we telling him this?" Renji asked. He didn't know if it was against the Rules, but telling humans about how zanpakuto work was something that nobody had ever done. Not that anyone had ever really asked before, but the knowledge of zanpakuto was not usually something that was bandied about.

"Because it might help him find Hitsugaya-taicho if he knows." She glared at him. "And he asked.

"Oh. Right."

"So, anyway," she continued, "A zanpakuto is reflection of a shinigami's soul."

Watanuki made a choking sound. He looked much paler than normal. "Sh-shi-shinigami?" he squeaked. He was terrified, but tried to hide it. Death gods? He was travailing with death gods?

"Calm down, kid," Renji said. "We don't kill people, that's not our job. Our job is to guide and protect the souls of those who have passed on to the afterlife."

Matsumoto was quick to calm down her Hyorinmaru-finder. "We protect the balance of life and death," she said.

"Oh." Watanuki was still pale, but he felt better about traveling with these two now. Spirits with actual jobs were much less likely to bother him, or come after his blood (Ame-Warashi being an example of this. She didn't seem to even want to talk to him, much less eat him, and she looked human like they did). And somehow, talking about keeping things in balance was kind of comforting. But even if he did have four (or was it two? This zanpakuto spirit thing was confusing.) guards, that didn't change the fact he was headed towards a really big dragon. True, dragons were supposed to be forces of protection, and good luck, but they were still very, very large carnivores, and Yuuko-san often made it a point to talk about how delicious he was to spirits.

"Yeah, anyway," Matsumoto-fukutaicho continued, either not noticing or ignoring how white Watanuki had gone. "For shinigami with strong spiritual power, they can talk with their zanpakuto, and even stronger shinigami can basically... Er, Renji-kun?"

Renji took up the explication. "You basically materialize your zanpakuto. That's how Urahara-san described it."

"Hitsugaya-taicho is a very strong shinigami."

"So," Watanuki said, "to clarify, you're saying that that dragon-"

"Hyorinmaru," Renji said in an authoritative voice.

"Hyorinmaru-san, right. So, you're saying that Hyorinmaru-san is... can... act on his own?" Renji almost felt guilty- the kid was already looking nervous, and he didn't even know that the what the step after materialization was. He would have said Watanuki-kun was paranoid, but the kid leaked Hollow-Bait reiatsu, and you were only paranoid when you thought they were out to get you.

Ran-san turned on her charm at the nervous human. "Oh, don't worry about Taicho! He seems grumpy, but he wouldn't hurt us, and neither will Hyorinmaru," she burbled. Her demeanor, though, changed, and she was less enthusiastic. It was easy to tell that she was worried, but not about being attacked. "So you don't need to worry." She stood there for a moment, looking forlornly at the ground. Renji and Watanuki watched her nervously, not knowing what to do. Suddenly, she looked up, with a dangerous glint in her eye. Smirking, she rushed the two males, grabbed them and dragged them toward the forest. "Come on, boys! Let's find us a Captain!"

A/N: I'm so very, very sorry at how late this chapter is. Many, many things have happened in Real Life, not the least includes the abrupt suicide of my computer (taking everything with it) and Finals. I beg you're forgiviness, my dear readers, and I hope that this chapter appeases your anger. It ends rather suddenly, I know, but I decided to cut it off there and post it now rather than making you, my wonderful readers, wait longer. This chapter is also longer than the others, so...

I would also like to thank you for 30 favs, and 40 subscriptions, and (at the moment) almost 50 reviews. -bows- Thank you for your support. We are coming to the end of the story now, so please bear with me. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.