Author's Blurbs
Greetings, readers! Back from my field training exercise, and with a rather lengthy (for me) update. I had a lot of fun, though I certainly am happy to be able to take a shower again (6 days with no shower in the mud and rain nasty). Reviews welcome. Opinions on both the direction, plot integrity, anything I might have missed, typos, and even suggestions are welcome. Feel free to throw me an email (just check profile), review, or IM and let me know.
Edit: Edited a few typos made in the throes of a weary Soldier deprived of sleep.
Chapter 8: The Plot Thinnens
"Really, Tessai, I don't understand how you can be good at kido, yet so bad at arranging fruit!" Kisuke sighed. The aforementioned large man was awkwardly perched on a small stepladder as he moved around oranges on display in Kisuke's shop.
"Now," continued Kisuke, "Try moving that one over there...no, the other one. Yeah, turn it a few degrees to the left. Perfect!" Kisuke clapped his hands together, a large grin on his face.
Yes, the display was perfect, as every article of fruit was placed just right to catch the eyes of any would-be customers. Kisuke considered himself an artist of science and such a specialty could be directed at people rather easily. He knew how important it was to show-off his products in just the right way. Ornate and flashy was something associated with large grocery chains, not small stores tucked discreetly in the heart of a city. No, they expected a small, humble shop with a slightly creepy, yet strangely endearing, shopkeeper. To have a rack of perfectly plump vegetables would break his credibility. So he made sure to seed at least a few subpar ones here and there, and his customers would think they were so clever for finding and not buying them. Everything, from the sloppily written signs, to the nostalgic scent of wood and spices that permeated the air, was designed to reinforce that ideal.
It was like a game, and he did so enjoy games.
"Alright, Tessai, that banana is situated weirdly. It looks too bright and out of place, switch it with that pineap–"
Kisuke was interrupted by a loud "HEY, URAHARA!?". It was such a surprise that the normally immovable Tessai, already precariously placed, tumbled forward, arms flailing to no avail, face first into the display. The fruits tumbled up and outward, a small avalanche of flavors and colors on the now prone man. He groaned a bit, twitching here and there.
Unfazed in the slightest, Kisuke turned to the owner of the voice. "Ichigo! To what end do I owe this simply serendipitous meeting to?"
The orange-haired teenager was breathing heavily, leaning forward in an attempt to gulp enough air to talk. It looked like he must have ran the entire way. "I...gasp...need...wheeze your help...".
Out came the white fan, fluttering merrily. "Oh? Do tell! Come, follow me." and he turned around toward the dining room, "Oh, Tessai?" he said as an afterthought, looking behind his shoulder, "please clean up that mess." A large muscular arm jerked, sending a few fruits to roll about on the floor haphazardly, which Kisuke took as confirmation. Humming a nameless tune, he continued on, Ichigo in tow.
"Come on, Urahara, I don't have time for this. I need your help."
"Fine. Fine." he said, stopping in the middle of the hallway, "What is it that you need? I seem to have so many visitors lately..."
"I think Yoruichi's hurt and need you to get off your ass and tell me what's wrong!" Ichigo had never been particularly adept at subtlety and the emergency made him not even bother trying it.
That caused Kisuke to turn around, and Ichigo even found himself morbidly satisfied to finally get a reaction out of the old man. A dark shadow seemed to have cast itself over the pale man's face, and his eyes seemed to burn into Ichigo from beneath the mysterious confines of the hat. "Well...if you put it that way..." suddenly the corners of the eyes lifted, the shadows disappeared, and a large smile broke out, " Let's go see what the saucy kitty got herself into!"
Despite his words, Kisuke turned around and once again headed to his dining room, completely ignoring Ichigo's previous protests. With a growl of frustration, the orange haired student grabbed Kisuke by his collar, pulling him close to his face. "Don't you care at all?" he accused, "Why is it so damn hard to get through to you?"
"Ichigo," Kisuke replied calmly, "When have I ever given you a reason to doubt me?"
"Well there was that one time..."
"Never mind that. I was trying to make a point" Kisuke interrupted hastily, his fan once again materializing out of thin air to flutter about rapidly, "And when it comes to Yoruichi, I'm always serious." The last part was said with such a somber tone of voice that Ichigo was momentarily taken aback, his hands reflexively letting go of Kisuke's shirt. The stalwart scientist continued on as if nothing had happened, humming merrily. No more accusations were flung as Ichigo followed him to his kitchen.
With a flourish, Kisuke flung aside the multi-colored beads that served as an impromptu doorway to his kitchen. "Do you know what spirit tunnels are, Ichigo?" he asked as he gestured for Ichigo to sit down.
"No." Came the simple reply to both the offer to sit and the question posed. It was pretty easy to see the annoyance and strain on Ichigo's face, and Kisuke finally decided that he had teased the orange-haired boy long enough.
"Well, think of them as actual tunnels. Passageways able to be traveled through by those with the ability to access them. I won't get into the details of how they are formed or come to be, but this very kitchen happens to have one, as does your room. As long as they are connected, once can travel between the two places rapidly."
Ichigo's eyes widened in realization, "So, the reason why you were in no big hurry was..."
The ever-glib scientist nodded his affirmation, "Because I knew that I could get to your place rapidly at any time."
Looking positively embarrassed, Ichigo rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, looking everywhere but at Kisuke. "I'm...sorry..."
"Not a problem." Kisuke replied with a smile. He could just barely feel Yoruichi reiatsu nearby, and he was stalling for time for her to get back to Ichigo's place. Kisuke chuckled inwardly, no doubt the volatile woman would be livid at the lack of warning she had of his little scheme. This, of course, just made it all the more worth it.
"Alright, let's go." Ichigo nodded his readiness.
Kisuke twirled his cane in an completely unnecessary motion, ending it with a sharp snap that left the walking instrument extended, then gave an innocuous poke seemingly at the air itself. To Ichigo's amazement, the end of the cane disappeared into air, and with a single swift swipe, Kisuke literally tore a hole through space in front of them, as if it were a piece of fabric. The inside was a swirling mass of grays and blacks, constantly twisting in eclectic patterns of chaos and disorder.
"After you." Kisuke indicated the now open hole before him.
With a gulp, Ichigo steeled himself and started for it, but paused briefly to look back at Kisuke. "Hey, old man?"
"Hm?"
"I just realized something...Why do you have a passageway leading to my room?"
"Shut up and get inside."
Rukia liked to pride herself with her degree of situational awareness. Very little got by her, and she had an observant eye for detail, at least by her obviously biased assumption. One can imagine her chagrin, then, when one moment she was sitting peacefully on the floor by her closet-turned-home, and the next was spent in a chaotic tangle of arms, legs, and poorly spewed curses.
One thing she obviously had not accounted for was the near instant materialism of Ichigo and Kisuke right above her, nor their defeat to the forces of gravity that caused them to tumble down right upon her head.
"Hey, what the hell?!"
"Kindly remove your foot from my face."
"Then get off me."
"God damnit, stop moving! My hand!"
"I said 'remove', not 'kick'."
Eventually the three managed to untangle themselves from each other, though not without even more heated curses and vows. There was much huffing and puffing, in addition to angry glares and glances, before one of them finally caught their breath enough to speak. "What are you doing just falling on poor unsuspecting people's heads? Why don't you look before you fall like an idiot?" Rukia fumed, her hand clenched at her sides as if she had to physically restrain herself from smacking her classmate, which was likely the case.
"Perhaps if you weren't so blind, you might have seen us!" Ichigo countered, one of his eyes twitching with annoyance.
"Blind? You're the one who couldn't even find a good landing spot!"
"Come on now," Kisuke intervened, physically inserting himself between the pair, "You're forgetting the real reason we're here."
At his words, both Rukia and Ichigo looked guiltily at the sleeping form of Yoruichi. After a few agonizing seconds, they both threw up temporary peace flags. "Fine. Whatever. Just figure out what's wrong with Yoruichi." Ichigo mumbled, his arms crossed.
"I'll be outside, 'cause I need to make a few reports to Soul Society." Rukia said, pulling out her phone and deliberately avoiding Ichigo's gaze.
"You go outside too. Need to perform my inspection in peace." Kisuke ushered a surprised Ichigo out the door after Rukia. With a relieved sigh, he shut the door and after a second of thought, used Benehime to summon a bloodmist wall in the doorway, totally sealing it from prying ears.
"Quite the pair, aren't they?" he said, turning around.
"You've got no idea." Yoruichi muttered, jumping up and stretching out the kinks that developed from pretending to be unconcious.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Kisuke asked, pulling up a chair to the side of the bed and sitting on it. He stared at her directly in the eyes.
"Yes. It's a great plan. It'll allow me to stay nearby without raising any suspicions. Plus it'll pay back my dumbass student for hitting me with a reiatsu empowered baseball bat."
"Still," and Kisuke's eyes shone with seriousness from beneath his striped hat, "I don't approve. His friends are one of the few things Ichigo guards fiercely, and you obviously fall under that category. If he ever finds out..."
"I don't recall ever agreeing to be his friend."
"Why did you train him then? Why go through all this trouble so he doesn't fall prey to his inner hollow?"
"To beat up Byakuya. He needed to be put in his place. And the part about his hollow, it just wouldn't do to have a berserk hollow of that magnitude running lose in the town."
"Hm, fine, whatever. I'll go along with this only under protest."
Yoruichi smirked, "As if you ever needed an excuse to work mischief."
Ignoring her remark, he dispelled the bloodmist wall. He paused at the entrance, throwing Yoruichi one last glance, before twisting the knob and flinging it open. Kisuke was greeted by two eager pairs of eyes, both waiting for the result of his "examination".
"Well?"
"How's she doing?"
In a completely inappropriate train of thought, Kisuke was reminded of the scenes from doctor drama films where the family belatedly awaits the news on the condition of a family member. It was hard to bite back several appropriate jokes in light of a such a realization. Instead, he deliberately paused and allowed the tension to build up until it became almost palpable. Right as the final vestiges of self control began to leave Rukia and Ichigo, he relented. "She's fine and not fine." Even he could admit it was a lame line, and he resolved to work on his comedic timing later.
"Whuddya mean by that?" they both said at once, practically getting cheek to cheek to stare up at him.
"Looks like she had a pretty nasty hit on the head. From what I can tell, it will result in blackout spells and whatnot for the next couple weeks or so. There is a slight possibility of it being an indication of something worse."
"Oh wow..." Ichigo mouthed, his eyes drooping with guilt.
"I'm going to assume it was you?" Kisuke asked Ichigo.
"How'd you know?"
"What other person do I know with an overabundance of reiatsu? Most likely you accidentally poured a lot of it into whatever it was that you used to hit her." The nervous way Ichigo fidgeted was enough to confirm it for Kisuke, had he not already known the cause.
"Well, what now?" Rukia stepped forward, right on cue. If Kisuke wasn't aware of her role in this entire fiasco, he'd almost believe her performance.
"We'll have to keep watch on her. And by 'we', I mean primarily Ichigo."
"Wait...why me?" Ichigo looked suspiciously back and forth between the two.
"Well," Kisuke began, entering what he dubbed "lecture mode", "There are several reasons why. One, I can't transport her through the spirit tunnel. It is way too volatile for such a malady. Two, it'd be best to not transport her at all, for head injuries are a shaky prospect at best. And three, you're the one that hit her, it'd be only natural for you to be the one to nurse her back to health. Unless," and he lifted his hat up slightly, "you'd rather not take responsibility for your actions?"
Ever one to rise to the occasion, Ichigo responded exactly as Kisuke expected when presented with a challenge, "Oh yeah? Fine, I'll do it!"
"Good!" Kisuke clapped his hands together, somehow giving physical finalization to Ichigo's proclamation before the teenager could even think about retracting his statement. "That's settled, I bid you farewell. If you need help, you know where to find me."
With one final wink, he quickly ripped a hole into the air, stepped in, and was gone in a blink of an eye. "Wow," Ichigo mouthed, "That was fast..."
"Ichigo." Rukia grabbed his attention, "She's waking up. Have fun trying to explain to her that she has to stay here for a while. I'm getting the hell out here until everything settles down, or bedtime, whichever comes first."
The shutting of his bedroom door left Ichigo abandoned in the room with the awakening woman-cat. In less than half a minute, he had been left to his own devices. With a groan, Yoruichi stood up, stretching and yawning. He suddenly felt very alone..."Awww...crap."
A sinister baleful moon shone harshly upon the bone-white sands of Hueco Mondo, the hard angles and grains catching the light ever so subtly as to reflect an eternally pale glow that made the already sinister landscape all the more surreal. Ever facet of the inhospitable world was a twisted mockery of its real life counterpart; from the soulless creatures that stalked the sand dunes, to the towering crystalline trees that shimmered in the horizon.
It was here that the soul-devouring creatures known as hollows raged their eternal struggle against the human world and Soul Society. It was a self-appointed crusade against those that had what they could no longer attain. A soul. The emptiness of this world, the way it devoured hope, coupled with the ever present ache of a missing soul, fueled their hatred. They would kill and devour, all for that temporary elation one feels upon consumption. Then, inevitably, the despair would return, and they would be forced to once again hunt the souls of the living and Shinigami. A vicious, never ending, spiral.
Amidst the sullen hopelessness of the vast desert, stood the dread castle of Las Noches. The pinnacle of hollow power stood as a solemn reminder to the lesser inhabitants of their place within the hierarchy of these lands. For within the dreary confines of the stilted towers and imposing ramparts, plotted the most powerful of their kind. The Arrancar.
High up on a single balcony, two figures stood, silently gazing out into the cold void. "A penny for your thoughts?" The figure nearest to the entrance said, breaking the silence like a thunderclap. He stepped into the light as he spoke, revealing pallid white hair, and a thin bony face that housed a perpetual smile that didn't quite touch his eyes.
"Ah, Gin, studying human expressions again?" The later asked, and this figure wore his brown hair slicked up and back, the black and white tattered robes of a Captain of Soul Society fluttering in the ever present breeze behind him, but it was his eyes that showed his true nature. Cold, brown eyes that showed a hidden cunning beneath a seemingly innocent facade.
"Ya could say that. Passes the time, ya know? So what're you cooking up, Sosuke?"
"Just thinking." Aizen drummed his fingers lightly on the railing, seemingly staring off into the distance.
Gin joined his side, leaning on his forearms against the cold stone. "Why'd you always make me pry stuff outta ya?"
Aizen chuckled, "Sorry, old friend. Was just thinking of a way to occupy my time as we wait for the Hogyoku to fully awaken."
"Oh do tell. I'm pretty bored right now."
"Remember that human?"
Ichimaru's grin got a little longer. "Yeah, feisty little guy."
"Did you sense it? A disturbance in his reiatsu?" Aizen asked the eternally slant-eyed man.
Gin nodded, his smile flickering to a half frown for just a moment. "Ya, there was a darkness somewhere in him. Never felt that before, though. Why?"
"He could be a problem. He managed to attain Bankai in only a short time, fought Byakuya to a standstill, and did this." Aizen held up his hand for Ichimaru to see, the very hand that had seemingly blocked Ichigo's sword with nothing more than a casual thought on Aizen's part. The white-haired Shinigami gasped lightly. A large, painful looking, purple bruise ran up the entire side, and the edges were just starting to change to a dull nasty yellow and green.
"I'm surprised he managed to hurt you. But why do we care?"
"Spies report that he joined Soul Society."
"Still..." Ichimaru pushed. He was used to Aizen's roundabout ways, and he knew what to ask to eventually pry the information out.
"He has an inner-hollow, Gin."
The smirk vanished, now replaced with a frown of concern. "How'd he do that? I thought ya needed the Hogyoku to achieve such a thing?"
"Not if you're human, apparently, and especially not if you have Kisuke Urahara manipulating you."
Ichimaru half drew his sword, "I could kill him now, if you want."
"No," Aizen shook his head, "That would solve the problem, but it would take away a potential advantage."
The white-haired man let his sword slowly slide back in its sheath, "And that'd be?"
"He hasn't learned to tap into it. To control the inner-demon raging inside him. Right now there is an eternal struggle going on within him. One that can only have two outcomes. One, he manages to gain control over it, and his power increases exponentially, or two, he succumbs to madness within himself, allowing the hollow control over his body and becomes a mindless monster of destruction."
"And why shouldn't I just kill him?"
"Simple," a third voice chimed in from behind the pair. This one belonged to the dark-skinned blind-swordsman, Tousen, "Master Aizen is saying that though killing him would get rid of the problem, it is possible to ply it to our advantage. If we could force him to succumb to his inner-madness, no doubt Souls Society would be forced to intervene. With such a power running lose, they would inevitably suffer losses before slaying him. It would be killing several birds with a single stone."
"Well put, Kaname."
Ichimaru's expression remained doubtful, "How'd we do that?"
"I'm sure I can figure something out. Something that will push him to the brink of despair and beyond." Aizen stared up at the pale moon, "This place is really beautiful at night."
"It's always night."
"Therefor it is always beautiful." Aizen countered, continuing to stare at the celestial being in the sky, "Either way, it should help pass the time until we're ready to strike, right?"
"You're kinda cold," Ichimaru remarked, his grin expanding far enough to encompass most of his face. A single eye was visible now, one that seemed to almost applaud and take delight in Aizen's decision. "I must say, to treat the life of a kid with such an attitude. I like it."
With that, the pale Shinigami walked away, lightly humming. When the man had left, Aizen turned to his stalwart companion. "What do you think of this, Tousen?"
"He smiles at everything." The proud man answered, taking a knee as he spoke, "I don't trust him. Someone that smiles for no reason is either a fool or a schemer, and you want neither on your team."
"You're blind, how do you know he smiles?" Aizen pointed out. He was only teasing of course, but he knew Tousen wouldn't take it that way.
"One does not need to see in order sense his sinister intent, Master Aizen." Tohusen responded smootthly. "Perhaps it is the blind man that is not confused by the illusion of sight?"
"Hm, indeed. And my plan concerning the human?"
Tousen did allow the ghost of a smile to grace his lips. "Should prove a worthy diversion, at least until the justice of our final attack is to be delivered."
Aizen pursed his lips. "Indeed."
The moon continued to shine even brighter.