It's Friday and as promised I bring you the second chapter of my fanfiction. I'm thinking I may or may not have a schedule this time around because my classes are much more demanding this semester. It depends. Anyway, not much to say here, just another chapter. Some warnings this chapter mentions suicide, Takeru's foul language, alcoholism and metal illness.
Names you may not recognize:
Yashin Morishitta
Meaning: Ambitious
Role: Takeru's brother. Deceased
Mother:
Because Uryuu has two.
Much of Uryuu's memories about his mother were marred by illness and the smell of alcohol. There was only one instance he could remember clearly. She was slumped over the table, a bottle of foul smelling alcohol sobbing into it as if it were her best friend. As ill as she was, she was not supposed to drink alcohol with her medication but she always smelled like that bottle. She talked to it, held it. Things she never did to him. Holding his faithful companion Kuma-chan, the stuffed bear, he toddled up to his mother pushing her leg.
"Mommy...are you crying?" He asked in a small voice. His mother slowly turned her head toward him with a small, leering smile.
"No, Uryuu, of course not." She stood to her feet. "Let momma make you something to eat." He'd already eaten but she was already gone to drunkenly conjure up one of her sub-par meals. She was a mentally ill woman caring for a physically ill child. She did not hold him, read to him or even smile like a mother should. Cooking him meals was the extent of her affection.
It was Morishitta Senshi who had held him, who he could run to after a bad dream. Never his mother.
"Is Kurotsuchi dead yet?" Takeru's question caught Uryuu completely off guard. They had been walking for a while now, she still hadn't let go of his arm. He was almost afraid to ask her to.
"Wait you..." The shock wouldn't let him get the words out. "How do you know about..."
"Uryuu, c'mon. Mom knew Ryuuken was a Quincy, do you think we didn't know about the Sereitei, too?" Takeru snickered when he continued to stare at her nonplussed. "Sorry I didn't mean to break your brain there, Ikoto-san." Cousin. He forgot she regarded him as such.
"So you see Hollows and spirits?" Uryuu needed to know for elaboration's sake.
"Yup." Takeru replied with a small laugh.
"So...your spiritual pressure..." He didn't get a chance to finish.
"Let's save the explanations for later, huh? It's a pretty lengthy one. Besides I'm sure Ichigo will eventually want one too." The last sentence was supposed to be more to herself than him but he caught it anyway.
"Wait you know Ichigo as well?" There was that sly, knowing smile again. She was enjoying this, he could see it in those deep purple eyes of hers.
"Oh yeah, that's right no one ever told you." Takeru said tugging his down the street no giving him a chance to pause.
"Who never told me what?" Uryuu tried to keep his voice from going any higher than it needed to be. Takeru decided not to be so discreet with her laughing this time as she finally let go of him and strode forward a bit.
"You're still so easy to annoy Uryuu-chan." Takeru teased. Uryuu sputtered.
"Don't call me that." He refused to believe that was whining. Quincies did not whine. God, they really sounded like they were six years old again. "Really though, what are you talking about?"
"Jii-san," Soken. "Told you that Ryuuken was once a practicing Quincy, right?" Uryuu nodded. "In high school, mom and Ryuuken and your mother worked alongside two others."
"I can take a wild guess as to who those "others" were." Uryuu said with a light sigh.
"And you'd be exactly right." Takeru said with equal sarcasm.
"I feel horribly uninformed all of the sudden." Uryuu frowned. He never remembered associating with Kurosaki as a child. All he could remember was his reiatsu burning him ever since junior high. Kurosaki seared his blood and skin, fucked with his senses and just drove him generally insane since the age of eleven. The idiot never noticed him until four years later. Four goddamn years later. No one ever noticed him. No one ever listened. Perhaps that's why he ate anything Inoue dared to send his way, listened to any song Sado asked him to lend "new ears" to. Not mention why he was taking crap from a long lost "relative". "So where are we going exactly?" He didn't expect her answer to inspire any feelings of great dread and terror.
"To the Kurosaki Clinic...I could've sworn I already said that..."
It did.
Kurosaki Clinic
The minute Renji made eye contact with Morishitta Senshi, he wanted nothing more than to hit the ground running, bolt, head for the hills, run at a break-neck speed back to the Sereitei and hide somewhere, anywhere, this woman couldn't find him. How did Ichigo know this harbinger of doom? How the hell were they even related? Renji was quite obviously on the verge of freaking out when Morishitta-dono approached him with a smile.
"This is Abarai Renji, Bo-chan" Yuzu said sweetly. "He's a friend of Ichigo's. He's staying with us while...I can never remember why though..." Morishitta took two steps forward, Renji took three steps back.
"Renji, what the hell's wrong with you?" Ichigo bleated.
"Oh, uh, nothing." Just that you have the mother of a demon in your house! "Sorry, uh, you can just call me Renji." He said almost bowing. No, you shake hands here, this isn't the Gotei 13. He offered his hand to shake. Senshi took the shinigami's hand and shook it with a smile.
"Nice to meet you." Senshi said genially enough, but just as she passed him, he spied an absolutely evil smirk crossing her face. "Takeru's running late, she wanted to visit Soken's grave, since she ended up falling asleep right off the plane." She was talking to Isshin but Renji's gigai seized up in fear.
Morishitta Takeru...
Say her name three times in a mirror and she'd put Bloody Mary to shame. She'd rip you up into little pieces and put you in a blender and drink it in front of your children just for shits and giggles. Okay, that was an complete and rather disgusting exaggeration but still that girl was vicious. Renji was in a daze as the family sat down to catch up while lunch was in the oven.
"Hey, Renji, where'd you say you were from again?" Senshi asked politely. She was screwing with him, that much obvious. Did Ichigo know what Senshi really was? If she was such a close family friend, wouldn't she have told them what kind of person she was? If she was even a person... "I'm waiting."
"Oh I'm from uh...here..."
"Here meaning...?" Senshi asked for elaboration. Ichigo shot Renji a pleading look. Please, please don't make this awkward.
"Oh from the Takayo Apartment Complex..." That was Chad's place, but he had to come up with something. "My neighbor had a stove fire, I'm staying with Ichigo while they get repairs done." Ichigo's palm made firm contact with his face. That was not the excuse they agreed on. If someone hadn't knocked on the door, Renji probably would've just excused himself and left.
Uryuu jumped a little when Takeru knocked on the door like she was about to break it down. She had latched back onto his arm again like she knew he was going to try and make a run for it. She was like vice this girl, nothing could move her. He sent up a brief prayer that Ichigo would not open the door. Maybe if it was Yuzu or Karin he could make an excuse if he got Morishitta to let go of him. Whoever he prayed to didn't listen.
"Oi, Ishida, what're you doing here?" Suddenly he realized he'd been staring at Ichigo's chest for a good two minutes. "Oi. Uryuu!" He snapped his head up at the sound of his first name.
"I don't recall giving you permission to call me by my first name " He replied pushing up his glasses. He didn't make eye contact with him. He glued kept his eyes glued to the floor. He felt Takeru let go of him but he was now rooted to the floor in the shadow of Kurosaki Ichigo.
"Che, like I need your permission for anything..." Ichigo muttered. Their eyes were like wrong facing magnets deflecting each other at every turn.
"Uh, should I give you two a minute?" At the sound of Takeru's attention demanding voice, Ichigo's attention was pulled away from Ishida for a minute to settle on a girl almost as tall if not taller than him, dark skinned wearing a concerned frown.
"Oh, uh...sorry." He said. "Um...who're you?" Suddenly, that sympathetic face vanished and Takeru's left eyebrow rose slowly. Who would've thought that an eyebrow could be so intimidating? Uryuu actually took a few steps back but Ichigo's eye went wide.
Oh shit.
He nearly went mad from he revelation but before he could react or defend himself, Takeru knocked him off his feet.
"Kurosaki Ichigo! Do you mean to tell me that you don't remember me? Maybe if I hit a few more times will that jog your memory! Maybe if I put you in a choke hold you'll remember then huh?" Takeru shouted drilling the end of her knuckle into the side of Ichigo's head. Uryuu watched nonplussed.
"Cut it out!" Ichigo said attempting to crawl away from her. With an absolutely wicked glint in her eye, Takeru dragged Ichigo back and wrenched his arm up sharply.
"Not until you apologize!" Takeru declared devilishly grabbing Ichigo who was supposed to have battle-honed reflexes and wrapping her right arm around his neck. "Apologize!"
"Alright, alright! I'm sorry! Stop strangling me!" Obviously if Ichigo could still speak, she wasn't even wrapped that tightly around his neck. Takeru released him. There was a moment of long silence as Ichigo caught his breath and Takeru grimaced crossing her arms. A few seconds and Ichigo smirked up at his long lost god-sister. Takeru just couldn't keep a straight face and she dissolved into a fit of giggles Ichigo followed. "God, Takeru, you're like a tank you barely gave me any room to resist!"
"Says you! I can barely get your arm around your back anymore, you idiot!" Takeru said with hefting Ichigo up to his feet with one hand and hugging him. It was minutes after that the two realized Uryuu was still standing there eyes wide and glasses askew.
"I think we broke Ishida." Ichigo said with a quiet laugh. He waved his hand in front of Uryuu's face. "Oi Ishida!" Uryuu snapped out of his daze.
"I hear you, Kurosaki I'm not deaf!" He quipped pushing Ichigo's hand out of his face. "And now that Morishitta-san is where she needs to be," Ichigo felt an odd twinge in his heart but said nothing, "I'll be going now. Goodbye." Uryuu turned on his heel to leave fast enough so Takeru couldn't take him and drag him inside. He got two steps down the walkway before a distantly familiar voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Uryuu?" He turned to see his godmother standing in the doorway gazing at him like she'd just seen some miraculous sight. She clapped her hands over her mouth in joy. Before Uryuu could even take a step back, Senshi was on him in a second wrapping him in a back breaking hug. "Oh my god, you've grown so tall!" She squealed happily. "Step back, let me look at you." He did so but couldn't help but feel oh-so-awkward while doing it. "Holy shit, boy, you are something else. You haven't changed a bit but you look like a completely different person." She hugged him again. What was it with the Morishitta women and hugging? People didn't hug as a platonic greeting in his family nor did the majority of Japan for that matter.
Yet, it was the second, slower embrace that inspired floods of memories of a woman who smiled even though she'd been heartbroken. He remembered her stories, her laughter, the midnight shopping trips for sick children and hollering arguments about the state of the house. Apparently, his father had something against mopping. He could recall everything down to the home cooked meals and Japanese dubbed Disney movies but most of all, he remembered her embrace, a simple and silent show of affection that filled him with warmth he rarely experienced since the day his grandfather was killed. He never truly knew his biological mother because this woman right here with her arms crushing him, was his real mother.
Ichigo couldn't help but gasp a little in shock he saw Uryuu's eyes fill with tears just as the latter buried his face in the crook of his Bo-san's neck. He actually clung to her. Uryuu and emotion didn't exactly get along. Nevertheless, he was glad they were was tears of joy. He slipped inside and let them have their moment. With Bo-san acting as a buffer, maybe this wouldn't be so awkward after all. Looking around the room, he noticed that Takeru who had already said her hellos to the rest of the family and Renji weren't downstairs. He thought nothing of it.
Perhaps he should have.
Renji forced a cry of pain down his throat when Takeru slammed him against the wall of the upstairs hallway. He was lucky he even gave him and chance to defend himself. Was it possible that age had made her even more aggressive? Glancing at those blazing violet eyes, Renji would have to say "yes". This was not the girl Ichigo greeted at the front door. That girl was just a fabrication. Renji knew the real Takeru Morishitta, the one the shinigami called "Shi no Tenshi" meaning The Angel of Death. He had only known the girl at the age of twelve. Her mission was simple, she was to join a squad of her mother's choosing to assist with recon in the Precipice World. The mission started smoothly but ended with Morishitta emerging from the Senkaimon with four others including himself covered in blood wearing an expression that no twelve year old kid should wear. She tossed Ichimaru-taicho a dismembered limb. The phrase"I took care of it." had never been so terrifying.
"Why are you here?" Takeru demanded in a harsh whisper.
"I'm on assignment." Renji bleated. That wasn't the answer she was looking for.
"What business do you have with a family like the Kurosakis?" She knew they all saw spirits. To her, there was only one reason a shinigami would be with a living world family that just happened to be the offspring of a former Shinigami captain and former Substitute shinigami. She had come to Karakura Town to visit with family before going on her allotted mission, she wasn't expecting to find a shinigami already here.
"I should ask you the same question." Renji spat back. Her grip on his collar tightened and his feet slowly lost contact with the floor beneath them. There was that look again. That look of someone who'd done terrible things and wasn't afraid to do them again. "Do they know what you are?"
"No but you do and you know what I'm capable of. So answer the damn question." She answered him truthfully so Renji was obligated to oblige.
"Nothing. Ichigo knows I'm shinigami, he let's me crash here when I go on a mission." Takeru gave him one final glare before letting him go. He let out a small sigh of relief when his feet touched the ground. "I didn't think it was possible for you to become even more aggressive."
"No one fucks with my family." Takeru said dangerously. "Not even the Gotei 13." Renji firmly believed that she could even go toe-to-toe with Yamamoto if she wanted.
"How do you even know them?" Renji asked. Takeru just shrugged with her trademark smirk. Couldn't she just smile?
"Isshin-Oji," Uncle Isshin. "and mom knew each other in high school." She replied tartly. Renji couldn't totally suppress his laugh of disbelief.
"Ikoto-san! Abarai-san! Dinner's ready!" Yuzu called from downstairs. Takeru just chuckled and turned to go downstairs.
"Hey I got one more question." Renji said. Takeru rolled her eyes but she stopped just for a moment looking back at Renji with that smirk again. "Where the hell were you guys when we fought Aizen?" Takeru's smirk instantly vanished.
"None your damn business, that's where." She bitched. She joined the family downstairs.
Uryuu wasn't sure how Senshi convinced him to come in and eat dinner but here he was sitting next to Karin and gazing down at the first home cooked meal he'd had in almost two weeks. Not that he couldn't afford food, but Orihime's meals couldn't exactly be counted as such since Shaved Ice was not food especially not in the winter months.
Dinner was normal enough. Everyone seemed polite. Renji looked a little pale though. The conversation was light, jovial and routine with old friends who were basically relatives catching up with each other and being generally friendly. The elders at the tables talked like brother and sister. The youngest, even Renji, seemed to be swept up in the conversation. Everything was normal.
That was the problem.
Since when anything normal happen to them?
Much to Yuzu's dismay, Senshi volunteered to do the dishes. Despite Yuzu's fear of the dishes being improperly arranged in the dishwasher, her godmother gave her little to know room to object. Ishida joined her in the kitchen claiming it was the least he could do. Only Ichigo could tell that he had some ulterior motive.
"Morishitta-san?" He asked running a sink full of dish water.
"So formal." Senshi said with a frown. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" Sweetheart? Unlike "hon", that was an affectionate American term he was familiar with. He turned to the sink placing the dishes in one by one. Everyone started watching tv so it was unlikely they'd hear anything being said. Still, Uryuu spoke quietly.
"You...knew my mother before she was ill, right?" He asked hesitantly, not looking up at her.
"Yeah, I knew her since age fifteen." Senshi replied. "We went to high school together."
"High school was just a facade...wasn't it?" Uryuu didn't want to interrogate the woman but he prided himself on analysis. He had to know. Senshi chuckled.
"Yes, it was." That motherly looked landed on him once more. "You're were always such a smart kid. What do you want to know?"
"What...are you exactly?" Ishida bit his lip, knowing how awful the question must have sounded, but he couldn't think of any other way to phrase it. Senshi didn't take offense.
"They call us Clerics." She replied with a smile. "Quincies and the Shinigami keep the balance between Life and Death. Clerics ensure the balance between reality and time. We live in the Inbetween, we call it the Agency. I don't really know why..." She used a few cups as an example. "You see when choices are made, different realities are created." Uryuu opened his mouth to say something. "Don't try to count it, the number is far beyond comprehension. No one knows, they're constantly spawning and dying." He promptly shut it. "We just keep them them from bleeding into each other. Of course, being so many, they do so all the time creating ugly monsters. We call them Disruptions, but they're pretty much our Hollows."
"What keeps our reality from dying?"
"That's classified, but I can tell you that this reality is one of the many very special ones." Uryuu opened his mouth to speak again. "I can't tell you why." Uryuu sighed in defeat. It would probably be best not to fight a denizen that lived beyond time and space. So he asked another.
"How do you become a Cleric?" To his surprise Senshi shrugged.
"No one really knows." She replied. "I have no memory how I got to the Agency but I know that I would've died if they hadn't taken me in." She gave Uryuu a minute to absorb all the information.
"What about Yashin and Takeru?" Uryuu asked.
"You really are too curious for your own good, you know that?" Senshi asked with a laugh. "Takeru was...well she was a special case. Yashin was given to me when he became a behavioral problem." The immense sorrow that flashed in her eyes did not go unnoticed. He knew that look, the very eyes he saw when she was forced to leave him. His heart sunk low into his stomach thinking of the quiet young man who always seemed to be reading something, unconcerned with the world around him. Takeru loved her big brother regardless and Senshi showered him with praise for his intelligence. The mention of him brought on sorrow that only the loss of a loved one could spawn.
"Yashin is gone, isn't he?" Uryuu asked sadly. Senshi nodded.
"Yes. He died." Now it was her turn to avoid eye contact. Uryuu had a feeling that she would not allow anymore on the subject so he offered his condolences and scrambled for a subject change. Senshi beat him to it. "How's your father?" Uryuu shrugged.
"We don't really speak anymore." Senshi groaned. She'd seen this coming ever since Ryuuken's wife passed away. With the dishes done, Uryuu leaned on the counter looking back at his godmother who was muttering irritably in English mostly about his father. "Do you..." Senshi gave him her attention again. "Ah...nevermind."
"No, no...tell me." She sounded kind and sweet but her eyes said "you'd better".
Ichigo briefly glanced into the kitchen from his place of the couch. Senshi had Uryuu by the shoulders. They were talking far too quietly for him to hear though if he could, he'd be eavesdropping. The Soul King only knows what Uryuu would do to him if he knew he was staring at him but the Quincy looked so vulnerable. Had he ever seen Uryuu look like that? Even lying on the ground stabbed through the stomach, he was still proud and smirking. Now he saw Renji was talking about. Hunched over and glancing down at the ground looking as if he may vanish at any moment, Uryuu truly looked ill.
"Do you think he distances himself from me because of my resemblance to my mother?" It was quite obvious that Senshi was not expecting that question and she scrambled to come up with a response.
"Uryuu...what do you know about your mother?" She asked incredulously. Uryuu thought for a minute.
"Well I only know what Sensei told me. My mother and father weren't married when I was conceived. He married her because her parents asked him to." Senshi nodded. "But she'd developed a mental illness and was unfit to even take care of herself. She was institutionalized but she had to be restrained one day and she panicked. She went into cardiac arrest and died in the hospital." Senshi took a moment and nodded.
"What do you believe happened?" Senshi asked. Ishida let out another one of those bone-breaking sighs.
"I believe Sensei was just trying to spare my feelings." Uryuu replied. If a patient died because of an error of the staff, it would've been all over the news or at least his father would've sued the facility. A long uncertain pause followed. Uryuu was about to confirm something he'd suspected since age twelve. "She killed herself, didn't she?" Senshi couldn't bring herself to reply and she simply just nodded.
Ichigo was still watching from the corner of his eye, he almost felt as if he were spying. Whatever Daibo-chan had said broke Uryuu just a bit more. His shoulders sagged an inch further. There was no verbal exchange for a moment but Senshi placed a hand on Uryuu's shoulder. She got little to no response from him until he abruptly lifted his head.
"Was her illness hereditary?" Her head snapped back up at the question.
"What?"
"Some mental disorders can be passed down to..."
"Sweetheart, I know what hereditary means." She said patting his shoulder. "But why ask? Are you worried?"
"Well...I've...been having these nightmares...and..." He was cut off by the familiar roar of the Hollow. The spiritual pressure came suddenly and from all over town. All at once groups of Hollows were manifesting around Karakura Town. Ichigo Substitute Shinigami badge screamed in warning. Baffled but ready for battle, Ichigo and Renji jumped to their feet first. But when Takeru stood to follow them out, Ichigo gazed at his godsister, bewildered. He froze shocked beyond words.
"Takeru...you..." He didn't have time to ask.
"What're you standing there for Kurosaki? Let's go!" Uryuu shouted. He humbly thanked Yuzu for lunch and promptly blazed out of the door with Renji and Takeru hot on his tail. The initial shock faded in the wake of impending battle and Ichigo raced out the door to the sound of Yuzu's dismayed "Ichi-nii not you too!"
Gazing at Takeru's back, he swore to get some answers.
Look for the next chapter. Soon. Like I said I'm not planning to follow a particular schedule but look for my stuff on Fridays or Thursdays. Please review and have a good day!
With Love,
East.