"Hey, maybe you should get going," one of the thugs at the table closest to mine muttered to his companion for the night. "You know that that guy from the next sector over said about that thing being on the move."
I frowned;
:What thing? More trouble in the Rukon District? Maybe a good fight?:
"Ah don't be such a coward," the first man scoffed. "That's nuthin' but a kids story those brats tell to scare each other. feh! Comin' outta the dark!" He spat on the floor to demonstrate his disdain.
"I don' know about that Kawaki, you know how else to explain how all these people keep disappearin' an no-one knows where they disappeared to?"
"So someone helped 'em disappear," the guy replied with a careless shrug. "Business as usual, 'e's just better at it than most."
"If it was someone helpin 'em disappear," the guy insisted. "Then it would have only been local thugs, that's the way it's done, but it's all types in lotsa places but mostly kids."
I frowned at that, I didn't like the sound of this one bit. I was a former Rukon kid myself and I knew personally that life was hard and precarious enough at it was for them without someone going out of thier way to kill them off. Secondly, I agreed with what that guy said, killings an assassinations when they weren't done in passion or as a result of a fight gone wrong, were nearly exclusively done to gain status and carve out territory in the Districts. The more a persons name was feared, the more respect he was given, but in order to get that respect a person had to take on people who were already strong. Attacking kids, who could barely survive as it was, would have the opposite affect; Rukon thugs might not give a rats behind about feeding and taking care of the kids in thier turf, but if anyone threatened those that were considered "thiers" they'd have a world of hurt coming to them.
"It's justa rumor," the other guy maintained, more interested in his bottle than about the possible disappearences of children. "Kids disappear all the time."
:A low-rank hanger-on,: I judged apprasing the man who coldly assigned them to thier fate. :Or else he'd be more concerned about some new guy invading his turf.:
"Where there's smoke there's fire my friend," the first one said decisively. "Street rats don't survive without keepin' one ear to the ground, and if something's killin' 'em off and they're scared enough to be tellin' ghost stories about it... well... You can do what you like but I think I'll take the rat's advice. Don't get caught out after dark or the Shadows'll getcha."
His companion snorted at that as he stood up from the table and made his way over to the door.
I frowned again, puzzled by the new info. It was a rumor I hadn't heard before and something about it set my hackles up, but I already had a purpose in mind for that evening and anything else could wait as far as I was concerned. I turned back to my drink and considered the quandary about where I was gonna find a good fight.
Well... there was always another Hollow. Maybe I'd just nip on out to the world of the living and track some down. Half the reason I was a Vice-Captain at all was my ability at tracking, it wasn't a boast to say that I was the best tracker in the whole Seireitei. Like a bloodhound, once my nose was on the scent I couldn't be shaken.
:Speaking of scent,: I thought, frowning in puzzlement as my keen senses picked up something. It was a familiar aura, one that I recognized, but it definately wasn't putting off a good feeling. In fact the feeling I was picking up was that it felt remarkably like what I was going through right then.
"Hellloooooo boys!" a woman's voice slurred in a sing-song as the doors to the run-down bar were pushed open.
By any man's standard she was hot, she was also a Vice-Captain in the Soul Reapers. And very, very drunk.
"Barkeep, I'll have yer finest," she announced as she plopped down into a seat and put her head on the table like it was too heavy to hold up anymore. Without a word the barkeep left a bottle on her table and it was maybe a heartbeat after that that the vultures began to circle.
"Heya sweetie," one of the unwashed drunks already in the bar stood up and leered appreciatively down at her very ample bosom.
"A pretty girl like you shouldn't be drinkin' all alone," another, crowding in on the other side of her chimed in.
"We'll be more than happy to keep you company," a third assured her.
The three of them shared a look that needed no translation. My lip curled up.
"Don't hog her all to yourselves you guys," another man, all but rulling under the table from his drink slurred in. "The rest of us wanna chance to..." He trailed off into a snore. Good, one less to worry about.
I rolled my eyes a little as I reluctantly rose from my seat and silently made my way over. Better to nip this in the bud than have to clean up later, I supposed. There went my evening. I slammed my elbow none-too-gently into the guy on the left of Rangiku Matsumoto and promptly took the chair he'd been about to occupy. I set my bottle down in front of me.
"Rangiku," I said in a gruff greeting.
I was gruff, of course, because she was an unlooked for complication in what I had planned to be my own night of drinking. She was ruining my night, but I couldn't let the situation develop either, we'd fought back to back more than a time or two and even if she was a flake, she was still one of my fellow lieutenants. I didn't like it, but I was stuck for it, I had to keep an eye on her, she wasn't sober enough to keep an eye on herself.
"Why it's Ren-ji!" she exclaimed in that way that told me she was just nearing the other side of tipsy, and would exclaim happily over anything, even if someone told her there were Hollow's invading the Seireitei.
"Hey you!" the man I'd decked previously yelled at me, recovering. "Whaddya think you're--"
He shut up when my fist slammed into his face again.
"What're ya doin' here? This ain't no place for you, go back and drink in yer rooms if yer gonna git drunk," I grumbled, drink and stress making me loose the speech I'd developed to fit in and slip right back into street-dog's cant.
"They cut me off," she said piteously. "And then the first few places I went they threw me out when the guys who offered to pay for me wouldn't pay. I figured I'd go someplace cheaper."
I rolled my eyes heavenward. All the two-bit gin-joints in all the Rukon District and she had to walk into mine.
"You can't just treat our friend like that," one of the others at the table informed me, cracking his knuckles.
"We was lookin' forward ta havin' a gud time t'night and we don' want no punk in a cape ruinin' our fun, got me?" the other punk said, drawing himself up to look more impressive.
I mentally debated the satisfaction of just knocking the both of them to the floor right then and there, but the barkeep had been nice to me so I owed him one.
I nodded at the barkeep and held up three fingers, jerking my head to the table the three thugs had previously occupied before Rangiku showed up and they'd vacated their chairs like someone had lit the seats on fire. The barkeep understood and promptly set three bottles on the table.
"Sorry about your friend," I said. "My hand slipped. Twice. To make up for it, why don't you three boys have a drink on me while my friend and I have a little chat."
Their faces warred for a long moment, and it really said something about the three of them that they all decided to crawl right over to where thier drinks waited. A bottle over a beautiful woman, now I'd seen everything.
:Definitely low-rank hangers on,: I thought disdainfully. :Any thug worth his title would've made somethin' of it for challenging his authority on his own ground.:
"They're sure acting friiiend-ly," Rangiku noted in a drunken little sing-song. The three thugs were back at the table happily gulping down on the sake I'd bought them and smiling over at us like nothing had happened. I grunted with soft cynicism.
"Easy to make friends in a bar," I told her. "Buy 'em a drink, they're yours for life."
"Sooo, truuuue," she agreed happily. She seemed to look at me oddly for a minute and then said
"How many drinks to make you my friend for life?"
"You should head back," I said bluntly, already wishing she was gone so I could get back to what I was doing. Namely, brooding and wallowing in my own misery.
She didn't say anything, but she did try to pour herself a new cap full. She sloshed most of it on the less than immaculate table but as soon as she managed to fill her cup she emptied it.
"I'm serious," I persisted, partly out of concern and partly because I wanted her out of my hair. "This place is a little rough."
"I c'n take care of myself," she proclaimed at me, thumping her bottle for emphasis. "I'm going to have to now, since all men are unreliable pigs."
Great, it was worse than I thought. How did I get myself into these things? I should have just let her drink herself unconsci--
"Whoahwhoawhoa, hey!" I exclaimed, grabbing the bottle away from her. She grabbed the whole thing and started chugging it like it was milk!
"Gimme!" she whined reaching for it as I held it away from her.
"Don't chug!" I admonished her. "It's disrespectful to the booze if you drink it like that."
"I don't care about respecting the booze, if i don't get any respect why should it?" she moaned. "It's so unfair!"
"Whaddya talkin' about," I grumbled. "Lotsa people respect you. You're a lieutenant."
"I w-wanted to be h-his lieutenant!" she exclaimed, mood suddenly swinging unpredictably from sullen to on the verge of tears without warning.
:This is why I never go drinking with women,: I snarled to myself. :A woman is unpredictable enough when she's sober, it's ten times worse when she's drunk!"
"Why'd he have to leave meee!" she sobbed, reaching for the bottle again.
I let her have it. She cradled it to her sizable breast like a new mother might hold her child, weeping all the while. She polished it off and motioned for another. I'd heard the rumors about her and Gin Ichimaru, I also knew that she'd been the one to turn him in. Lord only knew what he'd said to her, what kind of twisted mind games he'd played, to get her to let him go. Of the two of us, she was definately the worse off right then.
"Why couldn't she have gone drinking with her girlfriends or something though!: I thought irritatedly to myself. :Then they could at least have spent the evening consigning all men to the depths of hell for their depravity. What the hell am I supposed to say to make her feel better?!:
I couldn't really say that all men were pigs because I'm a man. I didn't have the right to say that the former captain Ichimaru was a pig because I kinda thought that might make her mad right then; sure she knew he was a pig but she was still in love with him so hearing someone else insult him might just piss her off instead of making her feel better. Better not go there.
"Barkeep, she'll have another," I said instead.
So I sat by silently while she polished off bottle after bottle, slipping further and further into Inebriation Land. She alternately cried until her eyes got red and puffy, then railed against the unfairness of it all, then informed me that all men were unreliable, backstabbing pond scum. It irritated me, but I sat by in mostly sober silence and let her do whatever. A few brave souls tried once or twice to approach her but the first party got a good look at her uniform and lieutenants badge and promptly fled (Rangiku hadn't had the foresight to bring a cloak to keep a low profile) and the other group, not being so observant, had to be politely scared away by Zabimaru. Even in his quiescent form the wear on his grip and sheath spoke volumes about the fact that I'm a capable fighter. An hour later our table top was host to a sizable collection of sake bottles and I kinda had to give her respect for being able to hold her liquor.
:But seriously, how much more of this can I take?: I wondered when, and hour after that, I was still the captive audience to a drunken rant that was only partly comprehensible through the alcohol.
"...and I don't know who's responsible for him but someone shoulda told him you don't treat a girl like me that way! Does he even know how big my fan club is? I could have any guy I want in the whole Seireitei but I devoted myself senselessly to him and he has the nerve to not only betray the whole Seireitei but ME personally! I hate him for that, and then he goes and... and..."
She laid her chin on the table and promptly passed out. I sighed.
"Finally!" I muttered. "At least she shut up!"
I signaled the barkeep and put a pouch in his hand that contained most of my own spending money to settle the tab. She could owe me a favor later on, I could use a break from paper work.
:But if I give it to her, it'll never get done.:
"That your friend?" the barkeep asked.
"We work together," I said quietly.
Of the two of us, she was the only one officially outed as a Soul Reaper, me they probably guessed but couldn't confirm. The barkeep grunted acknowledgement. I already knew the reason he was asking.
"You gettin her home?" he asked me.
He didn't want a smell raised about a Soul Reaper getting harmed on her way home from his joint, Soul Reaper's in general and high ranked ones in particular made regular guys like him nervous, especially if they came sniffin' around for trouble.
"I'm stuck for it," I replied, pulling her limply to her feet by one arm and bending forward to toss her onto my shoulder.
I was significantly taller than she was so her feet cleared the ground easy. I wrapped one arm around her knees to keep her in place and let the rest of her just hang down my back as dead weight. She was kinda heavy. The very very faint buzz I'd worked up in my own drinking had faded hours ago so i was perfectly sober as I started back to the gate.
:That's odd,: I thought with a frown, looking about me as I carried the woman back through the streets of the Rukon District to the Gate.
There was nobody in the streets. In the world of the living it was common for the streets to stay uninhabited at night, too many things could catch the unwary in the dark. In the Rukon District however, especially in the lower provinces, the place was alive at night as well. Men and women of negotiable virtue plied their trade, musicians tried to make a coin or two busking in the streets, people danced and brawled and made out in roadside cafes. People who were fortunate enough to have permanent houses met and socialized on their porches. That was the world I'd grown up in, so I knew it well. But now there was nobody, not a single soul was out in sight. And that just wasn't right.
:What kind of monster could clear a district out at night?: I wondered to myself in puzzlement.
Rukon thugs prided themselves on how strong and tough they were, if someone challenged that strength they'd better be ready to fight. It was how one gained and kept status out there, and status was everything. Status meant you got to eat regularly and no-one would try to take your food, you got to sleep on a matress under a roof and no-one would dare steal your things, or knife you in your sleep... but status depended on your own ability to get respect and hold it by force of arms. A thug who acted in a way that even hinted that he wasn't strong enough or brave enough to take on anything that might pose a threat to his status or his turf would very quickly loose face; and to loose face would equal loosing status. No thug with ambitions for the top and for prosperity in Rukon would ever risk looking like a wuss in front of his peers by letting something run around unopposed in their own backyard. If something had sent the thugs from Rukon District fifty-two to ground...
:That's something to worry about,: I concluded, mentally nudging at Zabimaru.
He turned with a sleepy, inquiring grumble and caught my mood and roused himself. My senses suddenly sharpened. The wind carried scents of dust, and unwashed bodies, and cheap perfume and liquor. The usual scent of the Rukon Discrict was there but underlying it was something else, something I'd never smelled before. I thought about tracking it down but I was currently carrying a passenger. I couldn't hear anything besides whispers and snores. The air still tasted the same.
I felt ill at ease. There was nothing concrete to base it on but my instincts were growling in warning. There was something out there.
I shook my head... unless that something actually pounced and attacked, it was going to have to wait, I had to get this woman home to someone who could babysit her, then I'd probably just do my paperwork and go to sleep. My night was pretty much shot anyway.
:Why is it, when i have every intention of brooding on my own misery, that I get stuck spending the whole night listening to someone else's sob story?: I wondered to myself.
Sometimes it was a good thing I had that narrow-eyed mean look to me, the kind of look that most people associated with evil-looking street-punks, otherwise people might realize what a softey I was. I flash-stepped up onto the nearest building and took off across the rooftops to the distant outline of the forbidden city.
Ah, the plot thickens.. a little. Writing a drunk Matsumoto is always fun. Please review and tell me what you think so far.