Sick Day

The buzzing of an alarm clock filled the room and a pair of brilliant sea-green eyes snapped open to stare at the offending gadget hatefully; it never failed to wake her during a good dream, but never when she was having a nightmare…

A tan, slender arm snaked its way out from under the covers and reached over to grasp the white plastic clock, squeezing it as she toyed with the idea of hurling it across the room and shattering it against the wall for having the audacity to wake her from the pleasant time she had been enjoying. The plastic creaked and groaned as her grip tightened but with an annoyed sigh, Halibel released her victim and turned off the alarm and reluctantly sat up.

It was Wednesday, the so-called "hump day" of the work week. Tia rubbed at her tired, bleary eyes as she worked one last yawn out of her body before standing up and going to the closet to pull out her clothes for the day, listening for the sound of the moron in the kitchen making breakfast; Tyn always got up before her in the mornings, without fail, and would cook a decent breakfast for them both; it was, in her opinion, the one and only benefit of having him for a roommate.

She heard nothing from the living room or kitchen as she dressed, though, and when she finally opened her bedroom door, she could see that Tyn's own door across the living room was still shut.

Halibel scowled angrily; she'd woke up in a foul mood, and now that jackass was going to aggravate her by choosing today to finally sleep in instead of making breakfast? Her knuckles cracked loudly as she curled her hands into tight fists and ground her teeth together, swiftly covering the distance to his door. She began to pound on his door roughly, yelling at the fool to get up.

"Get up, you moron! Stop being lazy and make breakfast!"

"Go 'way," came the muffled reply from the other side of the door and Tia could actually feel her rage double at his defiant response.

"Goddammit, Tyn—" she began as she opened the door and then cut herself off as she began to gag on the most foul odor she'd ever had the misfortune of smelling.

"What the hell is that putrid smell?" she gagged, covering her mouth and nose with her left hand as she made her way through the small jungle of artificial ferns to Tyn's sleeping pallet at the back of the room. One of the artificial ferns had been yanked from its pot and as Tia peered down into the bucket-like pot, she began to understand the source of the stench; partially-digested red meat and the gigai's equivalent of bile and stomach acids, stewing in the uncomfortable heat and humidity Tyn kept his little corner of Hell set at.

She nudged her roommate with her foot and Tyn rolled over onto his back and looked up at her with hazy eyes and a pasty complexion, his breath positively reeking as he slowly spoke.

"I don't…I don't feel so…" was as far as he made it before he grabbed the pot and buried his face in it, vomiting. Tia winced as she heard the wet splatter of puke on puke and looked away.

Great, just great; Urahara had warned them that this could happen, had said that living in a gigai for an extended period could make them susceptible to human illness, and Tia had dismissed the notion as ridiculous.

The faux-bodies were a bridge between their spirit forms and the physical world around them, allowing them to be seen and heard by the common folk, to interact with humans while appearing to be human themselves. The ex-shinigami had tried to make it clear that the bridge worked both ways and that it allowed the human world and everything in it to interact with them as well, but Halibel hadn't fully believed it, and she suspected none of the others had, either.

And now Tyn was lying in the floor looking like an absolute trainwreck as he continued to vomit up his dinner from last night.

"I take it you're not going to work today…" Tia asked dryly, already knowing he was in no condition to be working in a kitchen around food.

Tyn just groaned as he sat the bucket back down and rolled over to face away from her, shivering involuntarily his blanket up around his shoulders.

"You can't stay in and sleep all day, you know; you're going to have to go see Urahara while I'm at work and get him to administer some kind of vaccine or antidote," Halibel told him, watching as he only pulled the blanket around his body tighter and realizing that if left to his own devices, Tyn would stay there and sleep until she got home, Urahara and the rest of the world be damned.

That meant it was up to her to drag him to a physician.

Oh, this day just kept getting better…

Biting her tongue to keep from yelling at him and stalking out of the room to keep from kicking him, Halibel went to the phone in the living room and began making calls: first to Ulquiorra, to inform him that Burger World would be short their cook today, followed by her own manager at The Oasis to explain the situation, and finally, Kisuke Urahara to get him to correct this disgusting situation.

"Look, can't you fix him?" she asked irritably, watching as Tyn came stumbling out of his room and headed towards the bathroom on unsteady legs.

"Well, I'm flattered you think I can do anything, but I'm just a simple shopkeeper—"

"Don't give me that crap," Halibel growled into the phone. "Ex-captain of Squad 12, former head of Research and Development…you made these goddamned gigais, so surely you can fix them!"

The sound of a steady stream of water impacting the standing pool of water in the toilet bowl could be heard from the bathroom and Tia curled her lips back in disgust as she realized the idiot hadn't even thought to close the damn door behind him when he went in to take a piss.

"A disease isn't the same as the gigai being broken…" Urahara said finally. "If anything, a disease is a sign that the gigai is functioning perfectly as a medium between the world of the living and your spirit forms."

Mercifully, the sound of Tyn pissing came to an end, but it was simply replaced by the sound of him retching, and then the sound of another wet splatter.

"Fine, the gigais are perfect; now make him un-sick before I murder him," Tia said into the phone, but the man on the other end of the line simply laughed.

"Un-sick?" he chuckled. "Sorry, but that's beyond my abilities. You're going to have to take him to a real human doctor."

Halibel looked back up as she heard the sound of the toilet flushing and Tyn came out slowly, wiping his face off with a wet washcloth as he headed back to his bedroom.

"Fantastic…" said Tia sarcastically. "Any recommendations?"

"One, actually… Let me give you the address to his clinic, and I'll even call and make the appointment for you."

She began scribbling down the address as a loud "thud" came from Tyn's bedroom, and Halibel was quite sure he had just fell down onto his sleeping mat.

"And for the record," Urahara told her, "he's probably not being melodramatic with his symptoms; I've lived in a gigai for a long, long time now and I gotta tell you that the first few times you catch a human virus, it's absolute hell. Over time you'll adjust to it and handle it better but for those first few illnesses, you'll probably think that you're dying all over again."

"Fine; I'll cut him a break this time," she said, hanging up the phone angrily. How dare him try and make excuses for that moron!

Glancing down at the written address again, she marched back into Tyn's bedroom and yanked his blanket away from him.

"Get up and get dressed!" she ordered, "I'm taking you to the doctor whether you like it or not."

"Not goin' nowhere," he mumbled, covering his head with his pillow. "Doctor can come here."

"Stop being a pathetic baby!" she yelled down at him as she snatched the pillow away. "If humans can deal with this crap, then so can you!"

"It's all a lie…" he wheezed, coughing up a disgusting mess of green goop into the floor at Tia's feet. "Humans don't have it this bad."

She rolled her eyes and reached down, seizing him by his left ankle and began dragging him out of the bedroom, ignoring his protests.

"You're going to a doctor, damn it," she stated with finality, "even if I have to drag you down the hall and ten flights of stairs in your underwear before cramming you into the trunk of the car."

"You wouldn't," he said, coughing again.

"Try me," she dared him as she released his ankle and turned around to meet his gaze evenly. They stared at each other for a long moment, Tia still standing over the weakened quinto threateningly.

"Fine…" he sighed, literally crawling his way back to his bedroom. "Gimme five minutes to get dressed."

"You've got three," countered Tia, placing her right foot square on his ass and using it to roughly shove him into his room.

She heard him retching into his vomit-filled flower pot again and scowled disdainfully.

"And if you puke in my new car, I will kill you!"

At least he had made it to the clinic before he started vomiting again, thought Halibel as she watched Tyn lean against the building and puke into the grass off to the side of the porch. The entire ride over had been miserable and every time he had made a sound or tried to speak, the car had been filled with the wretched stench of his breath and Tia hoped her new car wouldn't retain that God-awful smell; she'd spent months saving for it, and if Tyn had ruined it already…

He finally finished vomiting and went into dry heaves for a while before he was able to stop and Tia led him into the clinic and made him sit down in a chair off in the corner while she went to register him with the nurse.

She was a little surprised to see that the nurse at the front desk was a child, probably no more than twelve, but shrugged it off; as long as the actual doctor wasn't a kid, it didn't matter. The young nurse, Yuzu by her name tage, handed Tia a clipboard and a registration sheet asking for patient information, and Halibel went to sit a couple of chairs away from Tyn as she filled it out for him.

Name? Easy enough. Address? Also easy. Birthday?

Don't know, don't care, she thought, scribbling it down.

Age? Seriously? Asking his birthday and then his age, as if one wasn't good enough? Of all the stupid, annoying, repetitive crap questions to ask…

"How old are you, stupid?" she asked off to the side, and Tyn stared at her blankly.

"What?"

Halibel waved her hand in front of her face to dissipate the stench of his breath before asking again.

"Your age, moron; do you know how old you are, or were when you died?"

"I remember…sometimes," he mumbled, scratching his head and looking lost in thought as he tried to think. "Twenty-something?"

"Oh, that's helpful… I'll just guess, then," spat Tia, writing down the number twenty-three; she had been almost twenty-five when she died and if looks were anything to go by, Tyn should be in the same general age range.

"Twenty-three, I think," he said finally, and Halibel allowed herself a small smirk at having guessed correctly.

Sex?

Not if he was the last thing on Earth, Tia thought angrily as she put a checkmark next to "male."

Allergies? None. Pre-existing medical conditions…

Tia skimmed through the list of pre-existing conditions, knowing there was nothing there that could apply to either of them until she got to the very end, the final choice…

Not Human.

It was a strange joke, it had to be. No human doctor would put that on the registration form unless it was a joke…but then again, Kisuke had actually recommended this place, and that cast doubt on if it was meant as a joke or not.

She reluctantly put a checkmark next to it and if the doctor had meant it as a joke then she would treat it as such when asked about it. If it was meant as a legitimate question…well, she hoped this wasn't a trap set up by the Soul Society.

Finished with the registration form, Tia went back to the front desk and handed it to the nurse before returning to her seat a couple of chairs away from the diseased Tyn.

"I think I'm finally finished puking…" he mumbled, more to himself than anything. "I'm pretty sure I'm empty now."

"I hope so…" hissed Tia, holding her nose. "Now stop talking."

They sat there for a few minutes before the nurse came around and called them into the back, ushering them into examination room two, politely informing them that the doctor would be in shortly before she closed the door, locking them in the small room together. Tia opted to lean against the far wall as they waited for the doctor, while Tyn sat down on the examination table and looked at the various instruments and jars about the room and the illustrations of the human body and some of its organs plastered on the walls.

"I remember Szayel's lab had some of the lesser numeros flayed open and pinned to the wall instead of illustrations…" Tyn mumbled.

"He added a couple of humans preserved in large formaldehyde vats after you left, one of which had been completely skinned to reveal the muscle structure…" said Tia, scowling at the memory. "Szayel was a twisted individual."

Looking back, Halibel supposed that she should have taken Aizen's tolerance for the octava Espada's disgusting and immoral activities as a sign that the former shinigami couldn't be trusted, but at the time she'd thought nothing of it.

I was blinded by Aizen's words…we all were, except for…

She glared hatefully at the back of Tyn's greasy, unwashed head as he laid down on the table, yawning.

In truth, he hadn't been the only one, though of the small handful that had been distrustful of Aizen, Tyn was only one who had successfully managed to escape Los Noches and Aizen's extermination squads. Halibel remembered being hot on his heels, chasing him from the palace when Aizen gave the order to kill the "traitors" who were sowing dissent among his army; she, Starrk, and Ulquiorra had went after Tyn, and despite the fact they were each far stronger than he was, none of them came close to his speed. At the time, she and Tyn had been rather close; they'd been friends, good friends, but always the loyal soldier, Tia had sided with Aizen when he finally gave the order to purge Los Noches of all dissenters, including the Raptor Prince.

The door creaked open and a dark-haired man with a thin beard stepped inside, holding a file that no doubt contained the registration form. He looked up from the file and smiled warmly, trying to make his two guests feel comfortable.

"My name is Doctor Kurosaki and—"

Tia didn't hear the rest of his introduction over her barely-suppressed groan; no wonder Kisuke had recommended this particular doctor to them. She knew of Isshin Kurosaki, knew that he was an ex-shinigami; Aizen had informed the Espada involved in the attack on the fake Karakura town of his existence, stating that he could be a wildcard in the coming battle and to be watchful for his arrival.

"So, I'm gathering from the way you filled out the registration form that you don't know your own birthday…" said Kurosaki, addressing Tyn.

"Not really…" mumbled the redhead as he struggled to sit back up. "It's been forty or so years since I had to worry about it…'sides, she filled it out."

"Forty or so years, eh? This says you're twenty-three."

"I'm bad with math," shrugged Tyn.

"It also says you're not human under pre-existing conditions…" continued Kurosaki, grinning as he looked at the two of them. "I didn't expect either of you to be upfront and honest about it after speaking with Kisuke, but I'd have recognized you both anyway, even without talking to him; I saw you both when I was on my way to fight Aizen, while Captain Uno—"

"We get the point," said Tyn hastily, glancing back at Halibel.

"Ah, I see; she doesn't know, I take it?" asked the doctor as he began his examination, shining a small light in Tyn's eyes.

"Apparently, I don't…" growled Halibel. "I hate secrets."

"I'll tell you lat—" began Tyn, but was cut off as Kurosaki inserted a tongue-depressor into his open mouth.

"Captain Unohana of Squad 4 fixed you up from whatever nearly killed you," said Isshin casually, completely ignoring Tyn's attempts to keep it secret. "I was going to interfere at first because I thought our Mister Tethis here had actually kidnapped her to heal you and that other guy with the dark, shaggy hair, but I watched from a distance and she didn't appear to be a hostage, so—"

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" snapped Tia as Kurosaki began peering inside Tyn's ears.

"Because after everything that had happened, I thought that if you knew a shinigami had been the one to save you, you'd have been pissed…"

"I am pissed!" she roared. "I'd rather have died than let a shinigami heal me after what they did to my fracción!"

"Kisuke's a Soul Reaper, you know…" said Kurosaki diplomatically. "And so am I."

"Ex-Soul Reapers," Halibel corrected him, as if the "ex" portion made all the difference in the world.

"She wasn't the one who killed them…" Tyn said slowly as the doctor began to check the gigai's blood pressure. "She showed up after the fact. I tried to bandage you and Starrk, but you were both beyond my help… When I saw her arrive with the Kurosaki boy, I stalked her and waited for her to be alone after she began healing the fallen Soul Reapers. As soon as she was alone, I went to her and begged her to help me."

"Doc Unohana is a good woman…" offered Isshin, "she'll help anyone who's injured, enemy or not."

"I asked her to keep you sedated for an extended period…" Tyn wheezed as he spat up some more green goop, "because I knew that if you'd woke up to find her over you, you'd have lashed out and tried to kill her."

"I had a right to know…" hissed Halibel and Tyn nodded in agreement.

"I was going to tell you when I thought you might be able to handle it calmly. It was the only way to save you and Starrk."

"He knows, then?"

"He came around briefly, but she sedated him again; I think he's still a little confused as to if it was real or if it was just a dream," answered Tyn, pausing a moment before adding "Not that Starrk would have went berserk like you, anyway."

"I feel so dirty now…" said Tia, looking down at herself in disgust. "Saved by a Soul Reaper…"

"I had to do it…" said Tyn, coughing again. "I had to protect my pack. I begged and pleaded with her to keep it quiet from the other shinigami, and I was prepared to kill her to keep our existence a secret if I had to."

"More likely she'd have killed you if it came to that," said Isshin over his shoulder as he prepared something over on the counter. "Doc Unohana is a very kind and peaceful woman most of the time, but she's also one of the strongest of the captains and very adept at swordplay; I wouldn't want to piss her off."

The two arrancar went silent as they glared at each other, Tyn silently pleading for understanding while murder reflected in Tia's eyes.

"Okay, this should help fix you up…" declared Kurosaki, breaking the silence as he turned around with a syringe. He pushed the plunger in slightly, sending a small spray from the end of the needle as he approached Tyn.

"Oh, hell no!" cried Tyn, suddenly becoming very energetic and scrambling off of the examination table, moving to keep it between him and the doctor.

"I don't believe it…" said Kurosaki, grinning. "The big, bad arrancar is terrified of needles."

"I fear nothing!" said Tyn defiantly, "I just don't like the idea of being stabbed."

"Look, you won't feel a thing and after a couple of days, you should be all better."

"Nope, not happening; I'm out of here!" said Tyn, making a break for the door only to have Halibel shoot a hand out and seize him by his red hair and yank him backward roughly, slamming his back against the wall.

"Shut up before I take the needle and do it myself," she warned him as he continued struggling.

No good.

Angered, she punched him across the jaw, hard, dropping him to the cold tile floor in a daze. Not giving him a chance to recover, she flipped him over onto his stomach and jumped on top of his body to hold him down, grabbing his left arm and holding it out for Kurosaki as she drove a knee into his spine. Tyn yelped in pain, but he didn't cease struggling and despite being sick and weakened, he still had plenty of fight left in him.

In their spirit forms, his strength would be no match for hers at all, but trapped inside the oh-so-limiting form that was their gigais, even if his was currently sick and weakened, their physical abilities were very comparable to one another and Halibel wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to hold him down long enough for the shot.

The door opened and she saw Tyn's head shoot up towards the sound of his freedom.

"Hey dad, I hate to interrupt, but have you—" began the orange-haired teenager standing in the door, but he stopped short when he saw two people wrestling in the floor.

"What the hell—" he began and with a sudden burst of energy, Tyn managed to knock Halibel from his back and began scrambling madly for the open door on all fours.

"Get back here!" snarled Halibel, tackling him down again.

"Ichigo, don't just stand there!" barked the elder Kurosaki, "Help hold him down!"

Ichigo blinked for a moment, confused at what was going on, but he regained his senses quickly enough and pounced on the struggling redhead, grabbing his right arm and shoulder while Halibel took the left, pinning Tyn face-down on the ground.

And still, he kept thrashing about wildly and screaming.

"I'll be right back!" said Isshin, putting the syringe on the counter and ducking out of the room quickly.

"Let me go!" demanded Tyn, still squirming under Halibel and Ichigo's combined weight as he tried to inch his way to the door. "Goddammit, where the hell is Starrk and Ulquiorra when you actually need them?"

"They wouldn't help you here," said Tia coolly. "They'd be helping us hold you down."

"I'm perfectly fine now! I don't need a shot!" he shouted to the world, before going into a fit of heavy coughing that seemed to drain him of his energy for a few seconds.

Isshin came back into the room wheeling a large canister in behind him with a clear plastic hose and a small breath mask attached to it.

"Dad, what the hell are you doing with that?" asked Ichigo in disbelief, "You're not a licensed anesthesiologist!"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, son!" declared the doctor, clamping the mask to Tyn's face and turning on the gas flow.

"The fuck are you doing to me?" came Tyn's muffled cry through the mask as he continued to struggle against Tia and Ichigo for a few seconds before finally going still. Isshin shut off the gas and slowly removed the mask from the now-unconscious arrancar before checking the gigai's pulse.

"He should be out for a good while now," said Isshin smugly, obviously satisfied with himself as he retrieved the syringe from the counter and inserted the needle into Tyn's bicep.

"Thank God that's over with…" sighed Halibel, removing herself from Tyn's back and standing up as Isshin finished injecting the medicine into the gigai's system.

"Yep, a couple of days of rest and a few antibiotics, and he'll be good as new!" nodded Doctor Kurosaki, disposing of the needle and writing down a prescription. "Human viruses hit shinigami pretty hard too, when they've been in a gigai for extended periods, but over time you'll adapt to them and rarely get sick; I think the last time I treated Kisuke for anything serious was about eleven years ago."

He tore off the small piece paper from his prescription pad and handed it to Tia before looking down at the unconscious arrancar in the floor and then up at Ichigo.

"Ichigo, be a good son and help him into Miss Halibel's car."

"What the hell? I'm not—" began Ichigo, but Isshin grabbed him in a rough headlock and began punching his disobedient son in the face.

"Don't talk back to your father, son! Now carry him outside like a good boy before I have to put you in the Daddy Drop-Toehold again!"

Ichigo managed to tear himself free of his lunatic father's grasp and slammed a knee into his gut, forcing Isshin to bend over as the teen grabbed him by the back of his white lab coat and hurled him over the examination table.

"Crazy old man…" growled Ichigo, but he stooped down and picked Tyn up over his shoulder anyway, allowing Halibel to lead him outside to the car.

Tia left the Kurosaki boy to try and buckle the unconscious Tyn into the passenger seat by himself as she went back inside to pay at the front desk, using money she'd taken from Tyn's wallet, of course; there was no way in hell she was going to pay for his treatment.

She made just two stops on the way back to the apartment; first to the drugstore to pick up the moron's prescription and the second at the grocery store just down the street, as the little girl acting as a nurse had recommended chicken soup as a great way to help someone recover from illness. Over in the passenger's seat, Tyn was still sound asleep, his head pressed up against the window and his tongue hanging out as he drooled.

"Disgusting…" said Tia to herself as she removed one hand from the steering wheel and reached over to shut his jaw.

Parking on the street, Halibel was unable to find anyone willing to help her lug Tyn inside, and so she went upstairs first to leave the groceries and medicine in the apartment before coming back down to retrieve her roommate. She ignored the curious stares from people as she slung Tyn over her shoulder and slammed the car door shut, carrying him inside and to the elevator.

He began coughing in his sleep as the elevator began its slow ascent to the tenth floor and Tia desperately hoped he wouldn't start throwing up again, not here, not on her.

Fortunately for her, he didn't and she successfully managed to get him into the apartment and into his bedroom where she unceremoniously dumped his limp, smelly body onto his little sleeping mat on the floor roughly. After a moment's hesitation, she knelt down and placed the pillow under his head and pulled the blanket up over his body. She almost felt a pang of pity for the fool as she looked at him, picking up the still-damp washcloth he'd used earlier from where he'd dropped it on the floor and wiping some of the sweat off his face.

Only almost, though; the stench of the puke-filled flower pot assaulted her senses and killed the brewing sympathy. Cursing the entire time, she picked up the offending object and took it to the bathroom to wash it out before returning it to Tyn's room, well within reach if he should wake up and need to vomit again.

Halibel left him sleeping in the floor and went back to the living room, plopping herself down on the couch and turning on the television. Maybe there was something worth watching on, something to improve her black mood. She skipped through the channels for a couple of minutes before finally coming to a stop on the local news.

"And earlier today, a small kitchen fire at the local Burger World forced the building to be evacuated as the fire department was called in. The damage is described as minor and the restaurant will re-open for business in two to three days…" announced the news reporter, showing footage from the scene with two big fire engines parked outside the restaurant. Just off-camera, another voice could be heard yelling…

"It's not my fault! It's that bastard Tyn's! He should have been here and then I wouldn't have had to try and cook! I don't know how to work the stupid grill! It's Ulquiorra's fault, too; I should have been on the drive-through!"

"Except you don't know how to work that, either…" said another voice.

"Shut the *BLEEP!* up, Starrk!"

Tia sighed as she shut the television off and began to massage the sides of her head, wondering if she had any aspirin left.

"I'm surrounded by idiots."