"Are you okay, do you need help?" she asked, looking concerned. "What are you doing wandering around naked?"
Well, I couldn't very well tell her the truth could I? So I quickly turned it around on her.
"What about you?" I replied. "What in the world are you doin' out in the middle of the night in a place like this?"
Her face clouded over and her eyes got twice as big. That ingrained directive that told me to comfort Rukia when she was in any sort of pain reared up and before I knew it I was reaching out to touch her and tell her everything was gonna be alright. The woman was a stranger however and she saw my movement and flinched back, eying me suspiciously.
"Eh-heh," I said, smiling that bright, harmless smile I used on the nurses in Fourth.
I backed off and raised my arms to show I meant no harm.
"Sorry, it's just that, you... y'know, ya looked upset."
"I'm looking for my son," she said gravely. "He didn't get off the bus this afternoon and no-one's seen him."
:Son?: I thought, momentarily taken aback.
Hisana Kuchiki had spent all her time looking for her little sister so she hadn't had time to have children, it seemed a little strange to hear the words "my son" from her, but I realized a moment later that there was nothing strange about it... this was Hisana Kuchiki's reincarnation, not the woman herself. When people passed from one life to the next they went through The Lethe, where they forgot all about their previous lives and started in the world with a fresh clean slate, or mostly anyways. People said that they went from lifetime to lifetime on the Wheel of Rebirth making up for the mistakes of their past lives and making entirely new ones, and that the imprint of their past mistakes and attachments remained imprinted on their souls and personalities in their next lives. Not having been reincarnated I didn't know if this was accurate or not but it sorta made sense to me. I had heard that sometimes there could be a bit of a time lag between a soul's exitence in Soul Society and thier life in the Mortal Realm, I wasn't sure why or how it worked entirely, Kira thought that it had something to do with the Soul needing to find specific circumstances for its next life so that it's soul could grow, but it certainly explained why Hisana was not a fifty0year old mortal woman. The woman before me was not actually Rukia's older sister, she wouldn't even remember her previous afterlife in the Soul Society as the wife of the head of one of Soul Societies highest noble clans who searched in vain for the sister she'd abandoned in the slums to survive on her own. She was merely a mortal woman now, so it would be silly to have any expectations of her previous life of her.
:So, the Captain's former wife has a son huh? If he's gone missing... man, she must be worried sick.:
A small, petty, completely unworthy part of me felt deep down that it served her right but I quickly shook it off. It certainly did not serve her right. I knew that if I were in her position I'd be tearing the place apart stone by stone looking for him; but I was a man and a warrior... Missy here was a tiny and kinda delicate-looking woman, she shouldn't be out alone at night, something bad could (and very nearly did) happen to her.
Didn't they have other humans who dealt with that sort of thing? I kinda remembered that they did.
"Have you tried the police?" I asked her next.
"Of course!" she said clearly nettled. "But they say he has to be missing for a certain amount of time and he only just went missing this afternoon. They thinks he's out with his friends playing video games and just forgot to call, but my Alex is a good boy, he would never run off somewhere and worry me. I thought I'd try to find him myself but..."
She glanced back behind her to where the two still unconscious forms of the guys I'd just beat up were still slumped over.
"Right, gotcha, might be a little dangerous just lookin' around fer the kid on yer own. A boy's not the only sort that can go missin' in a place like this. You should be more careful."
The woman straightened her spine and looked up at me with that fearless and determined look that Rukia sometimes got when she was going to do what she was going to do and nothing would get in her way and said with just a touch of regality
"I shall take that under advisement."
In reply, my stomach rumbled. The woman, the Hisana reincarnation, looked over at me and around the lines of strain and worry on her face she smiled for what was probably the first time all day.
"You must be hungry," the woman said. "You really helped me out there, even if it seems you did it for your own reasons. The least I can do is feed you."
"Sure. Thanks," I said, still a little overwhelmed by the situation.
I hadn't really been hungry since I'd been a kid, and hungry sure felt different when you were mortal.
"I'm Renji, by the way," I said.
I didn't add on Sixth Squad Lieutenant because I didn't want her to think I was crazy, otherwise she might not feed me.
"Isana," she replied, smiling a small smile up at me.
She really did look a lot like Rukia. The similarity made me feel sorta comfortable around her.
"Nice ta meetcha," I said falling into step beside her on her way back to where she lived and glaring menacingly at anyone who so much as looked sideways at us.
"How did you come to be running around naked in the middle of the night?" she asked next.
Her voice was pleasant and mellow, with a very slight accent that suggested she might be bi-lingual.
"Capper on a real shitty day," I replied, allowing her to draw her own conclusions.
"That must have been some capper," she replied.
We approached the front steps of a run-down brick building with just as many windows boarded up as had lights shining out of them. There was more graffiti scrawls painted over the brick. The Hisana-reincarnation lived in a really rough-looking neighborhood, I could hear the distant wail of police sirens and hanging out on the stoops of nearby buildings were all sorts of people who looked down on their luck in one way or another. There were small knots of tough-looking men killing time and smoking things that probably were not legal by human law, women with clothes too revealing on bodies too skinny with wild eyes and uncombed hair walked by. On a nearby corner the subtle, sheilded movements of some kind of illegal deal going down between two people.
:Heh, just like Hangdog,: I thought to myself with a feeling of pity for the woman.
In contrast to the place she lived in, Isana looked like a bastion of cleanliness and normality. Her long, black hair was shiny and well-kept up, braided in a neat plait down her back and not left uncombed and uncared-for like a lot of the women on the streets nearby. Her hands were neatly groomed and the clothes she wore, while not the best certainly were all clearly carefully chosen from what options she had to accentuate her frame with a neat, sophisticated look that was both practical and elegant. And it wasn't so much the clothes she wore and the minimal make-up, it was the way she wore them; she was poised and refined, her movements were economic but smooth. She was a classy girl who stood out from the rough around her like a polished gem. No wonder even the Kuchiki had been gone on her, it looked like that elegance was part of her soul.
"Well here we are," she said leading me inside and up a narrow rickety stair case that my weight made creak dangerously, down a creaky, cold hall and up to a wooden door with about twenty locks on it. She took out a ring of keys and got to work.
"Home sweet home."
:Talk about yer steps down,: I thought to myself, mentally comparing it to the massive wealthy elegance that was the Kuchiki residence in her previous life. Someone must've had to cash in some major karmic negative brownie points for ditching her little sister.
I looked around the tiny dingy apartment once she got all of the locks turned over and the door opened. There wasn't much, a mattress with covers on it on the floor in a tiny alcove with clothes hanging up above the "bed". There was an equally tiny kitchen area laid out against the back wall, a rickety card table with a phone on it and a dented file cabinet that held a collection of framed photo's. I couldn't steal food from this woman's table, especially if she had a kid!
"I uh, just remembered that I, um, I don't need to eat right now."
My stomach growled loudly in protest, making a liar out of me.
"Don't be silly," she insisted. "After your getting those two men off my back, it's the least I can do for you. Besides, I haven't eaten all day either and I want to check and see if the police have gotten back to me yet or not."
She pushed the button on the machine and listened to the messages play while she walked over to the kitchen area and pulled out a few packets of top ramen from the cupboard and a medium sauce pan from the bottom cupboard.
"I should warn you that I'm a bad cook, but I haven't managed to ruin ramen yet," she said. I smiled a little at that and replied
"I don't know that it's possible to ruin top ramen. Ya can't burn water."
She was trying to hide her disappointment at not hearing any messages about her son. I walked over to the nearby file cabinet and looked at the photos there. There was one of what was clearly a younger Hisana/Isana with two adults smiling. There were several of a baby growing to a little boy that had a vaguely familiar feel to him, not anything in the way he looked directly (he did take strongly after his mother) but just as though there was something about him I should recognize.
She moved around her kitchen with poise and confidence, so having already looked at everything else the tiny run-down joint had ta offer I examined her covertly. She was a small woman, but she had the curvy figure that was usual for hispanic women of her size. She wore fitted jeans and an ordinary top but there was something about the way she wore them that made the common clothes seem like something fit for a queen. Her face was an eerie copy of Rukia's, painted subtly with make-up, but there were other differences too. Her hair was longer for one, thick and black an in a long braid down to her waist. When she looked up, I noted, she looked a person straight in the eyes and maybe I was projecting what I expected to see onto her, but it seemed to me that she had an aura of dignity and elegance about her that belied her humble surroundings.
"Do you like beef or chicken flavor?" she asked me next.
"I like either, I'm not picky," I said. Which was true.
"So, Mister Renji, what is it you do when you're not beating up thugs for their clothes?"
"Paperwork, mostly," I said honestly, wondering exactly what I was supposed to tell her about myself.
"Funny," she said looking over at me consideringly.
Those eyes of hers were even more bottomless and knowing than Rukia's were, and it was just a little creepy the way she seemed to just look right into me.
"You don't strike me as the paper-pusher type," she said honestly.
Even without the tattoos I guess there was something about me that said "brawler!" in bold letters, well good.
"I'm not," I said, amazed at her perception.
Then again, it probably wasn't that hard to tell that I wasn't much of an office worker. I didn't have the non-existant musculature of one for certain, and most office boys couldn't beat up two thugs without breaking a sweat.
"So what do you file papers for... money laundering, cooking the books?"
I blinked at her for a moment and considered the source. Those were probably the only sorts of paperwork jobs around here after all. That or drug dealing. Maybe gamblin.
"Well, I do investigations as well," I said carefully.
"You're a PI? Can you find my son?"
She told me quickly exactly where he went to school, how he got home, who his friends were, where he hung out, his interests and then detailed all of the places she'd already been and the people she'd already asked for work of her boy that day. She was thorough. This woman knew everything about her son and his habits, it was almost strange. She assured me that whatever my fee was ,she'd figure out a way to make payments. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. I felt bad for her. Finally she slowed down a bit and looked at me, tense with hope that I'd help her.
"I'm not that kind of investigator," I said with a reluctant sigh.
Her eyes looked absolutely crushed, and my instinctive response to seeing that look on Rukia's face surfaced and prompted me to say before I even thought about it.
"But if you have somethin' o' his, like somethin' he handles all the time or wears a lot, I c'n track him down fer ya."
:Renji, ya dumbass!: I berated myself an instant later.
I shouldn't be gettin' any more involved in this mortal's life, I had my own problem ta deal with, namely, figuring how how the hell I'd got turned mortal and figuring out a way to reverse it.
"Really?" her face was torn between hope and puzzlement. "How?"
She looked at me a little oddly, it was the same look that most people got when people started mentioning the supernatural around them, like it had nothing to do with them.
"Ya probably wouldn't believe it," I said.
I started slurping on the ramen she set before me with a will. It wasn't first class food but I was too hungry ta care, I'd certainly eaten worse in my day.
"Try me," she said, staring at me with those bottomless eyes from out of Rukia's face. It was exactly the same face that Rukia gave me when she wasn't bout to be sidetracked or dissuaded.
"Okay," I said shortly.
She had fed me after all. Besides, maybe if I started mentioning soul-scents and spirits she'd decide I was a nut job and try to get rid of me. That suited me fine, I had a mystery of my own to unravel after all.
So I told her the relevant part of the truth; that I was a man who could pick up on the individual scents of the soul and track them down the way a dog could follow a scent with his nose. I left out all the stuff about me being a Soul Reaper trapped in a mortal body who's zanpaktou was missing in action. If I ran across another Reaper in my current state, they wouldn't bother asking questions they'd take me straight back to the seireitei and lock me up in the tower before they debated on a good time for my execution. I'd kill myself before I'd ever let that brat and his friends rescue me. Hang myself by my own hair if necessary.
Isana/Hisana looked skeptical. So I raised my hands as if it didn't matter to me either way.
"You asked me and I told you," I said, putting it in her hands. "You don't have to believe me if you don't want to."
"...I believe you," she said quietly. "And not just because of what you said about... y'know the soul thing."
She leaned forward intently, like she was about to impart a secret.
"I can see spirits."
I blinked at her. It made sense, her sister Rukia had reiatsu out the yin-yang, she was one of the better kido fighters I knew. She could throw out two hado spells one right after the other without even needing to chant, it made sense that her sister would have the kind of spirit energy necessary to allow her to see the unseen (in this world).
"You don't believe me," she said flatly, misinterpreting my expression.
"It's not that," I said quickly.
"Really?" she asked partly suspicious and partly hopeful.
"Yeah," I said mulling with part of my mind the implications of my accidental discovery.
Should I tell Rukia about her when i got back to the Seireitei... if I got back to the Seireitei? What about the captain? This was his dearly beloved wife after all, didn't he have a right to know?
:But she doesn't remember her life in the Soul Society, no mortal does,: I reminded myself.
That was part of the deal it seemed, one lived their lives over and over again, paying for the mistakes in the last one and making new ones. Seemed damned unfair. I was always sorta glad I'd joined the Academy and taken myself out of that cycle of life, death and rebirth. Until now, that was. I didn't know exactly how much of me was really mortal, could I find a way to get popped back out of my body and regain my true form the way the kid did?
:What a pain,: I thought to myself.
I didn't want the body at all. Mortality was for mortals and I was a Soul Reaper.
"So what is it then?" she asked, interrupting my musing on my new situation.
I paused, bringing my thoughts back to the matter at hand.
"It's a long and strange story," I said evasively. "Let's just find yer kid."
She didn't need to be told twice. She quickly crossed the apartment, opening a door to a tiny back room with what I could see was covered in posters with a small bed along the wall near the door. She rummaged around in it for a long moment and came back with a small keychain with a golden bat on it.
"Alex's team won the local tournament between youth centers last fall and they gave out this to all the teamates along with the trophy," she explained. "He carried it in his pocket every day since then, except for this morning when he forgot and left it on the table. It's his good luck charm."
"That'll work perfectly," I said, holding a hand out for it.
I tried to ignore the heartfelt worried look in her eyes as she handed the luck piece over to me. It seemed I was her best hope for finding her son. Well, I guess it was one way to pay back a meal. I breathed in the scent that practically saturated the little charm and didn't even have to bother sorting it out in the back of my mouth, there was really only one dominant scent on it. I got to my feet and walked out of the apartment. The woman grabbed her jacket and followed me. I turned to look over at her in surprise.
"Where are you going?" I asked her.
She looked up at me, a quiet look of mulish determination on her face.
"I'm coming with you to find my son," she said firmly.
Rukia wore that same look on her face from time to time, and when she did there wasn't a damn thing in this or any other world that was gonna talk her out of whatever she'd put her mind to. That was half of what had killed me so much during her execution, it was bad enough that the people we worked for were gonna kill my Rukia, but it was so much worse for me to watch her give up. It was a little strange seeing that determined look of Rukia's on the face of someone who was essentially a stranger. I couldn't say no to that look. Besides, if she was with me she'd get to see her boy that much sooner.
"Let's go then," I said, shrugging with my voice.
We walked out of the apartment and she locked up behind her and I started following the scent down out of the apartments building. Since he frequented the place so often, his scent was pretty much every where starting out. I lost it at the edge of the street and caught a scent of a large transportation machine they had here in the Mortal World. I'd learned to despise them a long time ago. They completely made tracking a trail more difficult.
"He got on the bus to go to his school," she informed me. " I saw him off myself before I went to work."
I nodded and set off in the direction she indicated. The streets and sidewalks were mostly empty, except for a few very late night stragglers, many of which looked plainly like they weren't up to anything good. I got an offer from one woman even as we walked by without making eye contact. The school was only a few blocks away and it suited the neighborhood; everything was run down ragged and tired. You could tell that they'd made efforts to keep the place up, but considering the surroundings the efforts were half-hearted at best. We jumped over the fence that surrounded the darkened school and I tested the winds, trying to pick up a trace.
Well, I must say, I am overwhelmed by the love! T_T and tears of joy stream down my face like waterfalls! So happy! Thank you very much everyone, I hope you're looking forward to the next chapter it'll be up soon.