Twilight: Hello.

Kage: Yo.

Twilight: Well, I'm updating again…not really much else to say.

Kage: How about the reason why you've been brooding constantly?

Twilight: Well…it's just that I'm starting to get bored. No one else is updating their stories.

Kage: What, the stories you've got right now aren't good enough for you? What about Indebted, and The King's Note? Aren't they enough for you, ya greedy ningen?

Twilight: …You don't need to be nasty about it.

Kage: You're just being selfish.

Twilight: I know…

Kage: Feh, whatever.

. Requiem of a Wandering Spirit .

… a bleach fanfiction

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Requiem of a Wandering Spirit © Dragon of Twilight
Bleach © Kubo Tite

This introduction format © B a y o – B a y o

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CHAPTER F O U R :
"Settling In"

Opening Theme: "Houki Boshi" by Younha

Hitsugaya let out a satisfied grunt as he set down his calligraphy brush, pushing his chair out from his desk with his legs and stretching his arms contentedly above his head.

The looming pile of paperwork was gone, filed, and put away. Four hours of nonstop writing was enough time for the child prodigy to finish all the reports and other bits of paperwork. His fingers were sore, but the feeling of accomplishment that came with completing his paperwork was enough to override the discomfort of the slight ache.

Closing his eyes, Hitsugaya leaned back lazily in his chair. His fingers searched for the cup of warm green tea that his Matsumoto-induced headache had convinced him to abandon his work to make. His searching fingertips encountered a round, warm surface, and he gave a faint smirk of satisfaction as he lifted the cup of tea to take a drink.

The tea was halfway to his mouth when a white blur shot into the office and disappeared under Hitsugaya's desk, almost knocking his chair over, with him in it. He managed to keep his chair upright with an angry, startled half-yell as the shunpo-ing entity vanished under his writing desk.

However, it did make him drop his tea.

Just before the cup hit the floor to shatter with a loud crash, a dark hand shot out from under the desk and caught the cup, yanking it back to withdraw under the desk once again, taking the cup with it.

Hitsugaya stood with an angry scowl knitting it's way onto his face as he recognized the person's reiatsu. "Maboroshi, what is the meaning of—"

"Shhh, Hitsugaya-taichou!" Yuurei hissed at him from under his desk.

Hitsugaya felt momentarily taken aback as she hushed him before it turned to righteous irritation. But before he could say anything, another blur shot into his office, almost knocking him over. The shape turned out to be Matsumoto, who looked slightly harassed, an image that was accentuated by the four bags full of clothes that she was carrying.

"Sorry for almost knocking you down, Hitsugaya-taichou­, but have you seen Yuurei?" Matsumoto asked with a trace of embarrassment. "She took off after her haircut the instant we went into the makeup store!"

Hitsugaya's irate expression cleared a bit as he calmed, understanding the circumstances of Yuurei's sudden entrance even allowing him to feel a bit of amusement. Suddenly, after eyeing Yuurei's hiding place, Hitsugaya felt a brief surge of mischievousness.

"She's under my desk." Hitsugaya gave away Yuurei's hiding place coolly, waiting for the white-haired shinigami's reaction with a small smirk on his face.

Hey, she deserved it for making him drop his tea.

"Hitsugaya-taichou, you traitor!" Came from under the desk in Yuurei's scratchy voice. "I shouldn't have caught that cup for you!"

Yuurei squirmed out from under the desk, eyes narrowed in mock-anger in Hitsugaya's direction, but a small smile on her lips. Hitsugaya had to restrain himself from staring at her when he noticed how different she looked.

Matsumoto had amazingly been able to clean Yuurei up pretty nicely. The younger shinigami's white hair had been washed, brushed, cut to mid-back, and styled with layers. Yuurei apparently had been stubborn and had chosen a style with long bangs that she could hide her face behind or tuck behind her ears. But that appeared to be her only victory. She was wearing a clean, white summer yukata with a pink sakura blossom pattern, and her cloak was nowhere to be seen. Hitsugaya allowed his eyes to lower further and noticed that her feet were still bare, and that she had his cup—still full of tea—held tightly in her uninjured hand.

"Speaking of, I'd like to have my tea back." Hitsugaya said coolly, smirking, bringing his eyes up to meet Yuurei's, to find a light flush across her cheeks in either mortification or shame. She'd watched him as he looked her over.

Matsumoto apparently noticed the ashamed blush, and went over to Yuurei, dropping the bags carelessly in the middle of the floor.

"Oh, Rei-chan, don't be embarrassed! You look beautiful!" Matsumoto reassured her as Hitsugaya retrieved his tea and moved to sit down. "Doesn't she, taichou?"

Hitsugaya gave Yuurei an apathetic glance to try to avoid embarrassing her further only to notice an evil look in Matsumoto's eyes as the older shinigami stood behind the now furiously blushing new recruit. The look said, I-don't-care-if-you-are-my-captain-if-you-insult-her-I-will-get-you-back-for-it.

There also was a scary, "Praise my work" look on her face as well.

She doesn't look bad…He thought reluctantly under Matsumoto's slightly threatening glare. Out loud, he simply made a sort of grumble that could be taken either way. Apparently, it was enough for Matsumoto, because she grinned happily and grabbed Yuurei's arm before the younger white-haired girl could react.

"Come on, Rei-chan, let's get that makeover done!"

"No!" Yuurei protested instantly, her hand shooting out and attaching to Hitsugaya's captain's haori. Hitsugaya gave a start as Matsumoto's efforts started to pull him along as well, thanks to Yuurei's grip on his haori.

"H-Hey! Don't grab me!"

"B-But there's nothing closer!"

"Come on, Rei-chan!"

"No I said!"

"Let go!"

"But then she'll drag me back to that horrible pla—Rangiku, let go!"

"ITAI! Matsumoto, stop pulling!"

"I got to make Rei-chan pretty first!"

"ITAI!"

CRASH!

"…"

"…"

"MATSUMOTO!"

"Taichou, I've already said I'm sorry!" Matsumoto complained loudly as she worked, moving sluggishly as if every movement caused her torture.

"That doesn't change the fact that you destroyed the phone." Hitsugaya said flatly, watching Matsumoto sweep up the remains of the phone. His arms were folded across his chest, and he watched Matsumoto with a hawk eye to make sure she was working.

"It was Yuurei's fault too!" Matsumoto protested ineffectually, sending a glare over in the said girl's direction.

"That's why I'm reorganizing the bookcases we knocked over, Rangiku." Yuurei explained patiently, sounding like she was explaining a complicated math problem to a person with ADD. Matsumoto scowled at her and crossed her arms over her large chest, huffing.

Indeed, after the ensuing scuffle that Hitsugaya and Yuurei both seemed to have decided to forget it happened, Yuurei had taken the job of righting the knocked over bookcases and organizing the books that had spewed out onto the floor. Hitsugaya had pitched in and righted the chair and futon, both which had been tipped over in the confusion. Predictably, Matsumoto had attempted to sneak out and allow her taichou and new subordinate clean up, but Hitsugaya had caught her and put her to work cleaning up the shattered plastic phone, which she was doing with an excessive amount of complaints.

Soon, Matsumoto decided that the faster she cleaned up, the sooner she could go sleep off her slight hangover. After all, Hitsugaya had already done the paperwork. For a while, all was silent with Matsumoto collecting all the many broken pieces of plastic, Yuurei stacking the many books scattered across the floor, and Hitsugaya supervising, occasionally bending down to pick up a stray book or plastic piece. Yuurei picked up the last book, and cracked her back with a resigned sigh, turning to Hitsugaya.

"Hitsugaya-taichou, do you want these sorted by author or title?" She asked, scrubbing her hand tiredly across her face with no regard at all for her hair, which ruffled to fall in front of her eyes.

"Genre." Hitsugaya corrected, taking his icy glare off Matsumoto for a minute, to her ill-concealed relief, to look at Yuurei with an aggravated glint in his eyes.

Hmm…looks like taichou isn't going to forgive me for grabbing his haori until the mess is gone.

"In what order?" Yuurei asked softly, leaning against his desk with a tired sigh.

Hitsugaya eyed her for a moment, taking in her thin frame and fragile hold on his desk. He allowed his annoyance to fade; she didn't mean to destroy his office, she just wanted to avoid more shopping. He could sympathize with that; his lieutenant had dragged him around in a similar manner more than once.

"Let me show you, in the probable event you'll have to do this again." He offered finally, kneeling down beside the large pile of books that she had stacked.

Both Yuurei and Matsumoto looked startled, Matsumoto because he seemed to have resigned himself to letting Yuurei stay and was actually HELPING to teach her the rules of the Tenth Division. Yuurei, more in shock that her new taichou, who's office she'd just pretty much helped demolish, was offering to help with something she felt was her fault from the beginning.

"In the Tenth Division, we have a unique way of doing things, just as all the other divisions do." He continued, picking up a book and opening it to check what variety it was. "We usually organize books by genre, and paperwork by importance. This bookcase is divided into four sections; field guides, manuals, philosophy, and history. The bookcase over there—" He pointed absently to the smaller bookcase on the other side of his desk. "—is full of both fiction and nonfiction stories. The top shelf is for fiction and the bottom is for nonfiction. The fiction shelf is divided into four categories, comedy, adventure, romance (his scowl deepened slightly), and drama. Nonfiction divides into biographies, and autobiographies." He held up the book in his hand level with his face.

"Where does this one go?" He asked abruptly in a patronizing manner. "It's a biography of Yamamoto-soutaichou."

Yuurei's eyes narrowed a bit at his tone, but she took the book from his fingers without comment and got up, walking over to the bookcase across the room. Carefully, she put the book on the edge of the shelf and slid it the rest of the way in with her index finger, the exaggerated precision seeming slightly mocking. Hitsugaya nodded unenthusiastically and stood from his kneeling pose, ignoring her dirty look.

"Correct." He stated dryly. "Now that you two know what you have to do, and will do it…" Here he shot a glare at Matsumoto, who had again attempted to sneak out, leaving a pile of metal and plastic in the middle of the floor. "…I will be leaving."

"Taichou, wait!" Matsumoto protested as he turned to leave. He paused, eyeing her exasperatedly.

"What, Matsumoto?"

"Where's Rei-chan going to sleep?!"

Hitsugaya was momentarily dumbfounded (A/N: Great word, isn't it?) at Matsumoto's question. He hadn't thought about that, and the fact that Matsumoto had actually asked a practical question threw him for a bit of a loop. He was silent for a couple of seconds in a perplexed manner before he managed to come up with something in a stroke of brilliance.

"Maboroshi will stay with you, Matsumoto, until she's gone to the real world and earned some money for a room. She can use one of the spare futons in the supply room. Any objections?" It came out especially brisk, and he mentally congratulated himself for grace under fire.

Matsumoto leapt up excitedly, throwing out her arms exuberantly and almost scattering the small pile of debris that she'd spent about twenty minutes sweeping up. Yuurei's eyes widened marginally as she was forced to duck as Matsumoto's broom went whistling over her head. It would have brained Hitsugaya as well, but he'd managed to duck in time, having anticipated his lieutenant's actions beforehand.

"YAY! Yuurei-chan's going to be my roomy!" She cheered.

Yuurei blanched a little.

She liked Matsumoto, she really did. But the woman's hyper mind-set was a bit overwhelming. How was she going to keep her odd sleeping habits from bothering Matsumoto? What if she noticed her nightmares? Could she lie to Matsumoto or her new captain if it ever came up? Or would they understand?

Matsumoto hasn't said anything about my scars, and neither did Hitsugaya when he saw them. Maybe they would understand… Yuurei instantly cut that train of thought off. No, no, no. They won't understand. I won't take the chance again.

Yuurei was abruptly yanked out of her thoughts by a hand grabbing her arm.

"Come on, Rei-chan! Let's get you settled in!"

Resigned to her fate, she allowed Matsumoto to drag her away, somehow snagging all four bags of clothing with her foot as she was towed out the door. Hitsugaya sighed, and abruptly realized that Matsumoto had dragged Yuurei away before she could reorganize the books.

His eyebrow twitched.

"MATSUMOTO!"

Ending Theme: "Again" by Yui

A/N: Like I said, all will be revealed sometime soon…but not now. (Is brained by thrown object)

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Inuko93, queenofspades19;

THANK YOU!

Signing out,
Dragon of Twilight!