Twilight: Hello again, and welcome to the beloved fifth chapter update! I've never reached this mark before on any of my major stories…
Kage: That's because you're a lazy bitch.
Twilight: Shut up, fang face.
Kage: Nice one. Did you come up with that one just now?
Twilight: Yeah, and I thought it was a good one!
Kage: You would.
Twilight: What's that supposed to mean?!
Kage: That you're an awesome writer and that you pwn all n00Bs.
Twilight: …Really?
Kage: No. Couldn't you feel the sarcasm? I could. It burned my tongue.
Twilight: …You're a cruel, twisted being.
Kage: I try.
Twilight: Disclaimer, NOW!
Kage: Fine, fine. Dragon of Twilight does not own Bleach, or any other video game and/or book that was used to create your crappy plot…
Twilight: Hmph. If I DID own Bleach, Yuurei would be a character. Not even a main character, but maybe a cameo or something…
Kage: You wish.
. 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 I V E :
"Exploring"
Opening Theme: "Houki Boshi" by Younha
…Bankai is the second and final form of a zanpakutō. To achieve it, one must be able to materialize their zanpakutō's spirit in the real world and subjugate it, giving the shinigami full reign over the zanpakutō's power. The power of bankai typically increases a shinigami's power by a factor of ten. Because such an act usually takes hundreds of years of combat experience to achieve, it is rare amongst shinigami…
Yuurei clenched her teeth together tightly, trying and failing to stop a huge yawn from escaping her mouth. Hitsugaya looked up inquiringly from his fresh pile of paperwork at the sound, to the sight of Yuurei laying on the futon, pressing A Beginner's Guide to Zanpakutō into her face to help stifle the yawn.
She'd donned a loose white yukata for nightclothes, and had been on the futon reading when Hitsugaya had come in early, as he usually did. She didn't even bother changing for the day, just came in with her rumpled nightclothes and started reading. Hitsugaya noticed that there were dark circles developing under her half-closed eyes, and her hair was once again carelessly mussed up into a tangled mess of white, though it looked infinitely cleaner then when he'd first seen her. All in all, she looked drained.
"Rough night?" Hitsugaya inquired offhandedly, but with the manner of not really caring.
"Sorry, taichou." Yuurei mumbled awkwardly, sitting up and closing the book, resting it on her lap. "Rangiku snores…"
That wasn't all, Hitsugaya knew. There was a simple tone to her words that said that that she was leaving something out. She was.
Yuurei shifted as Hitsugaya glanced at her with scrutinizing emerald eyes under half-closed eyelids, feeling the sore stiffness of her back. Matsumoto letting her sleep on her spare bed was a rare luxury to her, and she'd gotten used to sleeping in uncomfortable places, having been practically homeless. The bed's softness actually began to bother her after a couple of hours.
Hitsugaya sighed inaudibly and shook his head, turning his attention back to his paperwork. "Figures. She's never quiet; asleep or awake."
Yuurei watched him silently for a moment, curling her legs underneath her body for warmth. …Was that a joke?
Hitsugaya glanced up at her, most likely noting her faintly incredulous look. "I do have a sense of humor, you know." He offered dryly.
Yuurei blinked once, quickly, before letting out a nervous cough. "Well…I'd have to say, that definitely sounds like Rangiku."
It was all she could think of to break the tension. Fortunately for her nerves, it seemed to work. The corners of Hitsugaya's mouth briefly twitched upward before he became engrossed in his paperwork again. He noted Yuurei curling up into a snug ball through his peripheral vision before he turned catlike teal eyes to the familiar printed kanji of his paperwork.
Mission report…mission report…request from Matsumoto for more time off…she never does any work as it is! Another mission report…complaint from the Ninth Division from their fukutaichou always being absent…damn Matsumoto's parties…an inquiry from the Shinigami Women's Association…no way I'm going to let them take any more pictures of me. Ukitake still has that one of me sleeping that Matsumoto took somehow…still must find and destroy it…opening for a captain to go to the real world; I'll file that away for later…what was that?
Hitsugaya looked up as he felt a sudden flow of cool air, his eyes automatically going to the couch where Yuurei had been dozing. He felt his eyes widen as he saw that she wasn't there anymore, nor was she anywhere else in the office. How'd she manage to get out of the room without him knowing? Even if he had been immersed in paperwork, he'd still be acutely aware of his surroundings, an instinct all higher-level shinigami develop after they gain battle experience. Hitsugaya should have been able to feel her reiatsu if she'd used shunpo, but she'd somehow masked it. Even the book was back on its shelf. It was like she hadn't even been there in the first place, like a ghost.
Wait…ghost…
"'Yuurei'…" He mumbled, realizing the irony in that observation. "Means 'ghost'."
Well, that's one more mystery to add to the enigma that is Maboroshi Yuurei. He thought crossly, returning to his paperwork with a frustrated sigh. I should have listened to Saburo…
The sun was peeking over the just-barely visible misty mountaintops in the distance as Yuurei stalked silently through the market like a shadow. With the sky a calm dark blue shot through with red and gold, it was an exceptionally peaceful morning. The stallholders hadn't set up shop, and most everyone was asleep. Everything was silent and still, a thin mist floating through the streets just above the ground.
Just the way she liked it.
Closing her eyes, Yuurei let the cool dawn breeze wisp gently across her face, soothing the still slightly bruised tissue of her cheek and stirring her white hair with it's icy chill. Like a wandering phantom, she roamed peacefully through the streets until the first of the stallholders came out and began setting up for the day.
Yuurei felt her lips dip downward in a small frown. The morning still seemed so peaceful, and she though ached inwardly to keep walking, she loathed the crowds of noon. Yuurei twisted her head around, searching the rooftops for a resting place. Spotting a particularly tall one secluded by ancient sakura trees, she leapt up to the edge of the roof, and using her momentum, she swung to lift herself up, surveying her chosen spot with satisfaction.
The breeze was stronger up here, and Yuurei basked in the moist coolness as the flow of air carried the sweet scent of sakura blossoms. She lay back on the smooth wood of the roof with a contented sigh that formed a white puff of vapor, blinking serenely up at the red-gold stretch above that was the sky.
The rapidly loudening sounds of shinigami walking and vendors calling from the streets below her seemed to cease as she relaxed into the hard wood of the roof, feeling it's cool, smooth surface through the thin yukata of her nightclothes. The solidity of the wood under her spine didn't bother her, having grown accustomed to sleeping on hard surfaces.
Eventually, time slipped away. Yuurei lost track of how long she laid there until the sun rose high enough to begin blinding her. Reluctantly moving her hand, shielding her eyes with a disgruntled grunt, she pushed herself into a sitting position with her legs dangling off the edge of the roof, and twirled on her rear to slide off—until a mess of black caught her eye, crawling from a manhole cover on the side of the street.
She climbed rigidly to her feet, her black eyes flicking over the bedraggled black figure that crawled from what she presumed was the sewers. Wanting to see if her hunch was correct, she used shunpo to get to the person's side, cutting through the market traffic as the souls continued on, unaware of the pile of limp black robes that had pulled itself from beneath Seireitei.
"…Are you hurt?" Yuurei asked cautiously, prodding the smelly black mass of cloth with her toe. The person stirred, and what she identified as the boy's head moved feebly, covered with matted black hair that hid his face.
Her wide eyes widened even more when she noticed the large white pack with a the medic symbol strapped on the person's back, and the familiar zanpakutō with a red gauge on the side hanging at the waist.
"Yamada?" She asked disbelievingly. How could this filthy heap of clothes be the clean, if timid, shinigami of yesterday?
He stirred and turned his head away from the ground, lifting his face toward Yuurei as she dropped to her knees beside him to blink at her through exhausted light gray eyes. To her shock, it was indeed Yamada Hanatarou, covered with filthy water and a few other substances that she really didn't want to identify.
"Y-Yuurei-san?" He mumbled, blinking slowly. His puppy like eyes widened as he realized where he was. A furious blush crept up his neck and ears to stain his face. Yuurei looked at a loss on how to react from the bright red flush.
Is he sick?
To cover his embarrassment, Hanatarou rolled over onto his back and struggled pathetically to sit up. He found an assisting, bony hand being pressed against the small of his back as Yuurei helped him sit up. Her face didn't show any reaction to the filthy water that soaked his shihakusho, or to Hanatarou's blush when he looked into her impassive face.
He let himself relax and lean back slightly into her supporting hand. His slightly eerie savior from yesterday looked much less creepy when she was wearing normal clothes and had been cleaned up. He could see Yuurei's black eyes clearly now, and not under the menacing shadows of a hood or her hair. Her eyes weren't blank now, but were slightly concerned. She was looking at him with a great deal of confusion as well, most likely at the state of his uniform.
"Yes. Are you hurt, Yamada?" She asked again, patiently. Hanatarou nodded shakily, looking away from her piercing gaze. "Where?"
"M…my arm." He mumbled embarrassedly, shifting his right shoulder with a wince. "It's not broken, though!" He added almost frantically, as if he was afraid that the girl would be angry with him for hurting himself. "I-It's just sprained."
Yuurei let it slide, taking the medic's word for it. "How did you get it?"
She also wanted to ask why he was in a sewer, of all places, but it really wasn't any of her business. Hanatarou sighed miserably and closed his eyes.
"I-I tripped while I was scrubbing the sewer walkways… a-and the mop wrenched my shoulder as I fell." He hung his head shamefully; his eyes drooping and shoulders sagging. His soiled hair hung forlornly into his eyes.
Yuurei's emotionless features softened in sympathy for the clumsy boy. Gently, she rested a bony hand on top of his head in an oddly practiced gesture of comfort, but immediately pulled it away again when Hanatarou flinched away from her light touch with a pained yelp, squeezing his eyes shut in pain. Her eyes lowered shamefully and she lightened her supporting touch on his back as well; maybe she'd offended him somehow.
"I'm sorry…" Yuurei mumbled apologetically, retracting her hand, before she noticed a dark liquid covering her fingers as it left Hanatarou's hair.
"It's ok, Yuurei-san, really." Hanatarou mumbled, reaching up to rub his obviously throbbing head.
Before his fingers reached his hairline, Yuurei's spindly left hand abruptly snatched his, yanking it back down to his lap. Hanatarou's eyes flew open again as Yuurei's supporting right hand slid from the small of his back to his narrow shoulder, as she shuffled on her knees to move behind him.
"Yamada, please stay still for about twenty seconds." She stated, rather than asked. She slid her other hand onto his other shoulder as she adjusted herself behind him, ignoring the drying liquid on his shihakusho.
Not giving the bewildered medic any chance to protest, she quickly pulled his head backward to rest against the front of her thighs. Hanatarou let out a yelp of complaint that quickly turned to a lightheaded moan as his eyes rolled back in his head and dizziness overtook him. Yuurei patiently allowed him to adjust to the sudden rush of blood to his head, quietly pondering his sensitized reaction to the change in blood flow.
There was definitely something else wrong with him besides a sprained shoulder. And with the dark red liquid that stained her fingers, she had more than enough evidence to make a diagnosis. Further inspection of the back of Hanatarou's head showed a shallow cut about two inches long where he'd hit it on something in his usual clumsy manner. Most likely hauling himself alone out of the sewer had worsened it, and the medic himself had been too disorientated to notice.
"You've hit your head, Yamada." Yuurei said softly, trying not to worsen the headache the boy was most likely getting. "Not enough to give you a concussion, but bad enough to destroy your sense of stability."
"O-Oh…" Hanatarou stuttered, most likely feeling slightly ashamed for not telling her. "I-I'd better… get back to my division, t-then."
Yuurei nodded in agreement, scooping Hanatarou up and flinging him over her thin shoulders in a fireman's carry before he could move, ignoring the now absolutely appalling stench coming off his shihakusho. Hanatarou was taller and definitely heavier than she was, so it was really the only option.
"Y-Y-Yuurei-san!"
"This the most efficient and quickest way to get you back to your division." She told him, deftly ignoring Hanatarou's embarrassed squawk of protest. She started to walk, following the road signs that led to the Fourth Division with a smelly shinigami slung over her scrawny shoulders.
Along the way, she continually ignored Hanatarou's attempts at convincing her that he was fine and that he could make it back on his own with a familiar ease. Yuurei felt her throat constrict when she realized exactly how familiar this seemed. Hanatarou drew her attention back to him as he finally went limp in defeat with a resigned sigh.
I've sure been manhandling him a lot… He's a medic shinigami; he can take care of himself. I don't need to look after him like this. It was true. She should be a little more reserved around him, stop touching his hands and the top of his head; she'd been doing quite a bit of that…
Being around other souls was starting to make her lower her barriers. And it didn't help that clumsy Hanatarou reminded her way too much of someone she'd dearly loved.
Hanatarou shifted a little from his no doubt uncomfortable position slung over her shoulders like a sack of flour, and hesitantly tapped her shoulder with a finger, drawing Yuurei out of her darkening thoughts. "Ummm…Yuurei-san?"
"Yes, Yamada?" She answered absently, coming back to the present.
"You… um, well…passed my division. It's back there." He pointed to a large white building with the symbol of the Gotei 13 with the kanji 'yon' inside it… in the opposite direction in which she was going.
Yuurei shot a grateful grimace in Hanatarou's direction, but it wasn't as mangled as the deranged grin she'd given him when they'd first met. It was getting easier for her to smile. This time, Hanatarou could see the emotion behind her contorted facial expression and he smiled timidly back at her. Yuurei twisted clumsily on her toes and started toward the building, studying it as she approached.
The Fourth Division headquarters look a lot different than the Tenth's. Yuurei observed, eyeing the large amount of aromatic flowers planted around the entrance to the hospital-styled building. The Tenth had a few flower bushes as well, but not the greenhouse that the Fourth division seemed to have growing outside their doorstep.
"Yamada?" She asked Hanatarou abruptly as she paused in front of the front entrance.
"Oh! Uh…yes, Yuurei-san?" Hanatarou questioned, startled.
Yuurei indicated the greenery with a careless wave, encompassing the large, vibrant flowerbeds and leafy bushes framing the stone walkway. "Why are there so many plants?"
"Ah!" Hanatarou smiled with a hint of pride. "Some of them are for decoration, but most of them are herbs used in the medicines that we use. We have our more common plants out here, while there's a greenhouse that house with much rarer and more valuable plants inside."
"It's a very good idea, to have ready materials always on hand." Yuurei acknowledged seriously, before she felt her face crack into a grin. "Shows how diligent the Fourth Squad really is."
Hanatarou blinked at the side of her head from his position dangling over her shoulder in astonishment before he smiled thankfully. Yuurei felt her grin soften into an almost normal smile before dropping it and pushing the front doors open with her free hand.
At the sight of all the people rushing around inside, Yuurei felt herself stiffen reflexively, memories rushing back.
I don't want to go in there.
Hanatarou squirmed on her shoulder, managing to slide from her limp grasp. As she twisted to look at him, he turned to her with a radiant smile.
"Thank you very much, Yuurei-san!" Hanatarou exclaimed gratefully, bowing, before straightening abruptly and putting a hand on his temple as his head throbbed. "Owww…"
"Oh, Hanatarou…what have you done to yourself now?" A soft, calm voice said in a scolding, motherly tone.
Yuurei snapped her head around as she felt the vague stir of a captain-class reiatsu the same time Hanatarou jumped violently and spun to face the source of the voice. A woman with black hair braided in front, kind inky-blue eyes, and wearing a captain's white haori over her shihakusho stood a few yards away, attentively looking them over.
"O-oh! Unohana-taichou!" Hanatarou stammered, bowing respectfully. "I-I didn't see you there!"
"It's quite alright, Hanatarou." Her eyes flicked to Yuurei and back to Hanatarou. "Why don't you get cleaned up? Then you can introduce me to your friend."
"Y-Yes!" He bowed again and ran into another room, making everyone he passed wrinkle their noses in disgust at the smell coming off his shihakusho.
Unohana turned to Yuurei, to find that the white-haired girl had taken an almost imperceptible step back, eyeing the elder shinigami with wary black eyes. The experienced medic let her eyes wander over Yuurei's emaciated frame, the limp hair, the bandages that ran up her arms to disappear beneath her clothes, around her neck, winding from her ankles up her legs, and the curious absence of a zanpakutō.
Yuurei was eyeing Unohana just as closely, taking in her elder's relaxed stance, calm eyes, extremely high reiatsu levels, and the air of confident but gentle authority. She'd heard rumors of this woman from the Academy. Apparently, Unohana Retsu had been able to make the entire Eleventh Division fear her, and even the mighty Zaraki Kenpachi didn't dare disobey her.
Yuurei could see why. This woman was extremely powerful. The aura her reiatsu emitted was soothing and gentle, but from what the younger shinigami could estimate, Unohana could easily crush her under only her spirit pressure.
"I haven't seen you before." Unohana stated thoughtfully. "Which division are you from?"
"Tenth division." The reply was delivered very softly.
"Really?" Unohana sounded calmly surprised.
"Yes." Nervous tension starting to take effect, Yuurei's eyes began darting rapidly around the crowded entrance hall, flickering from different people, to Unohana, to the windows, the floor, and back again.
The walls felt like they were pressing in, the people moving around faster and faster until they were just black blurs as her anxiety increased. Fortunately, Unohana didn't ask any more questions, and was silent until Hanatarou came running back in a dirt free shihakusho and dripping, but clean, hair. He almost got knocked over a few times, but managed to get through the early morning hospital rush to stand in front of his captain.
"I'm back, Unohana-taichou!" Hanatarou exclaimed needlessly, bowing. Again.
"Well then," Unohana smiled at him and started toward one of the corridors that disappeared to somewhere deeper in the building. "Let us go the garden."
Hanatarou scrambled to follow her, while Yuurei lagged behind by about six paces, glancing around while stubbornly keeping the captain in her peripheral vision. While passing the section of the division that served as the medical wing, she heard a large variety of disturbing noises and loud swearing coming from the various rooms. It was not hard to figure out that the Fourth Division regularly received a steady stream of injured shinigami, all of them most likely from the Eleventh Division.
A series of crashes and screaming gave off the impression that one of the more violent patients was throwing the medics around like dodge balls.
Maybe that's why they're so scared of Unohana. Yuurei mused as she passed a door that a medic had been thrown at the door and his face had been squashed into the reiatsu-enforced glass window on the door on impact. He let out a low groan as they passed. She knows how to deal with them.
She let out an inaudible sigh, not noticing how the hard white tile under her feet changed to soft grass. No wonder Hanatarou practically jumps at his own shadow, if this is where he works.
"Please, take a seat anywhere you like." Came Unohana's voice, jerking Yuurei out of her musings.
She narrowly avoided running into Hanatarou's back, managing to stop herself with her chest a couple centimeters from his back. Quickly taking a step back from the taller boy, Yuurei took a good look at her surroundings, and she felt her eyes enlarge in wonder.
A beautiful garden with trees, small flower bushes, and even a small koi pond met her eyes. Hanatarou had mentioned a greenhouse, but the three beautiful glass greenhouses artfully placed throughout the garden was not what she had expected to see. Light hit the clear glass panels and slanted sharply into the greenhouses, where a fine mist seemed to fill the greenhouses with color as light was reflected from the water vapor. It was beautiful.
She finally managed to tear her eyes away from the greenery when Hanatarou sat beneath a tree near the koi pond. Unohana chose to sit on the pond's sandy banks, magically producing a tea tray, complete with cups, sugar, cream, and a steaming teapot from somewhere up her sleeve.
Yuurei's eyes threatened to pop out of her head.
Unohana calmly poured out a cup with a great amount of poise. The sweet smell of hot green tea wafted into the air. The white haired shinigami quickly took a seat next to Unohana as she felt an ominous rumble from her stomach and tensed.
Having been denied food for long periods of time, the force-feeding from yesterday by that old woman had caused her stomach get the idea that it's owner was actually going to feed it more than once every four days. It was demanding food now, with a vengeance. Perhaps as payback for the abuse it had gone through.
"Any cream? Sugar?" Unohana asked serenely, whom most likely had become aware of Yuurei's stomach problems through her body language, and was waiting for her to crack.
Or maybe it's all in my head, and I'm just paranoid…Yeah, I'm probably paranoid.
"Sugar, please." Yuurei replied, slowly unclenching her muscles as her stomach made no other complaints. "A lot of it." Maybe it would quiet her stomach and appease it for another day or two…
Unohana didn't ask, but simply spooned six spoonfuls of sugar into Yuurei's cup and handed it to her. She poured another one and turned her attention to Hanatarou, who went into a stuttering fit, most likely overwhelmed that his captain was offering to make him tea.
Yuurei ignored Unohana's attempts to calm Hanatarou, and simply stared pensively into the depths of her tea. If she tilted the cup slightly, she could see a reflection of the trees above. The images rippled with every movement of her hand, but she found that she couldn't still the slight shaking.
It was nervousness, she realized. Her attention was grabbed at the sound of her name, and she forced herself to concentrate on what Hanatarou was saying.
Damn my short attention span…
"—Maboroshi Yuurei. She rescued me from being beaten up yesterday, and I… um…" Hanatarou fumbled for a word to appropriately describe Yuurei pulling him out of a sewer. "…Ran into her again today."
Unohana sipped her tea serenely, a small knowing smile pulling at her lips. "Is that so?"
"Yes." Yuurei nodded, tipping almost the entire cup of tea into her mouth in her nervousness, then coughing as she almost choked on it. The tea made her cough, but her stomach unclenched, having something to work on. She wouldn't need to eat something for another few hours.
"Well, then. You are welcome to visit anytime." Unohana said graciously, smiling at Yuurei. "As thanks for helping my Seventh Seat."
Yuurei inclined her head politely. "Thank you. I'll come visit." She dropped her gaze pensively to her cup as Hanatarou let out a delighted gasp.
Her new captain really didn't assign her to do anything, besides clean up that mess, and she was the one who made it in the first place. But then again, she supposed, she had been kind of sprung upon him unexpectedly; it was unfair of her to judge. Matsumoto didn't assign her anything either, despite being her superior; the woman seemed to have adopted procrastination as a lifestyle and perfected it to an art. She'd have to do something in her spare time, and she'd like to avoid training, as she had her reasons for disliking it. This opportunity to go to the Yonbantai was a perfect way to kill off some time. But hospitality can only stretch so far…
"Unohana-taichou?" Yuurei spoke up.
"Just Unohana will do, Yuurei-san."
"Unohana then." Yuurei allowed, tilting her empty cup contemplatively in one hand. "Are lower subordinates from other divisions allowed to explore other divisions?"
"There isn't a rule against it." Unohana said simply. "But it isn't safe for some divisions."
"…Safe?" Yuurei chanced. Unohana nodded, looking serious.
"The Junibantai taichou, Kurotsuchi Mayuri, is very dangerous for inexperienced shinigami to come across, and the same can be said for the Eleventh's Zaraki Kenpachi." The experienced medic advised gravely. Yuurei took the obvious warning for what it was; a warning.
"I-It's true, Yuurei-san!" Hanatarou spoke up fearfully, shaking slightly. Yuurei turned to face him. "I've felt Zaraki's reiatsu up close, and it was…" He trailed off, shuddering. (A/N: I felt so bad for Hana at that episode. He like…passed out.)
Yuurei nodded thoughtfully and hesitated for a second before holding her cup out to Unohana.
"More tea please."
Ending Theme: "Again" by Yui
A/N: Uh…one more chapter, and the truth will be revealed! …Maybe! (Shot)
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
., Jibun no Omoi, Inuko93, TaintedRain, Hikari6007, Solaris Arin Behemoth, queenofspades19;
THANK YOU!
Signing out,
Dragon of Twilight!