"... and so he'd upended the whole bowl of flour on his head," she enthused as if she were telling the most amusing thing in the world.
Of course, to her it probably would be. There was a saying in the mortal realm, one of the fringe benefits of parenthood was having found a whole new way to bore people.
"There was mess and stuff everywhere! And there he was right in the middle of it, just laughing his bald little head off. I think he thought it was Christmas or something."
She'd just finished telling yet another story about her son. She'd been regaling me with them for the last three worlds. Apparently she'd decided that we'd known each other long enough that we were friends. After the third baby story I'd started wishing that she still saw me as this intimidating warrior guy that she had bound like a tiger by the tail. She'd at least been a lot quieter.
:I guess some of her stories are kinda funny though,: I thought.
It was a world I hadn't been a part of for longer than I could remember. I knew that I must've had a family, or somethin' like one, once, otherwise I wouldn't have been alive in the mortal world. The closest thing I'd ever had to family had been Rukia and the gang... and that hadn't turned out so well. I wondered, just a little, what it was like to be part of a normal family. All the Rukon kids who don't remember their old lives secretly wished they could, though no-one ever speaks about it because it's just too private and too painful. Had there been anyone who'd grieved when I'd disappeared, had anyone looked for me? I couldn't imagine it, anyone trying as hard to find me as Isana was trying ta find her own little boy, and a small secret part of me felt envious of this kid I hadn't met who had someone who cared about him enough to brave unknown dangers in uncertain company to bring him home safe.
"So what's it like being a grim reaper? I mean, you aren't exactly what I was expecting when I pictured Death," she chattered on.
"I get that a lot," I answered truthfully. "Seems a lot of mortals have this image of a skull in a dark cloak with a scythe, but really those are just symbols. The dark cloak represents the Great Mystery, the skeleton all that remains behind in the mortal realm, and the scythe well... that's obvious, it's for reaping. But anyway, yeah... I guess it's a job. I like it personally, I get ta fight Hollows, which is always good fun fer me. The paperwork's a pain in the butt, but it's better than starving on the streets."
"Starve?" she questioned. "But aren't you... y'know, dead, verdad? How can you starve if you are not living?"
II know it sounds a little strange, but the soul can starve for things when yer dead as easily as the body can when yer alive."
I decided against telling her about the Rukon District and the Seireitei, why disillusion her? The living always seemed to be looking forward to seeing what happened after death, many of them devoted their whole lives to what lay beyond the other side. To those of us for whom the Great Mystery was no mystery at all, their actions made little to no sense; don't eat meat on certain days (or don't eat certain kinds of meat), believe this and not that, follow this book and not that one... what did it matter? As long as you didn't do the kinds of things to other people that created Hollows then chances were that the hellgate wouldn't open for you.
:I guess it'd give away the game if we told them all though,: I reflected to myself.
Isana started up another story about the sort of mischief her little boy got into and I listened with half an ear as we scrambled up and over the rough rocky terrain of this world. The world we'd landed in after our fight with Djinn (unfortunately it was not the kind the granted wishes, instead, it seemed to be a variety of ifrit that relied on fire) was as abandoned as the others. This one had a very rocky terrain, boulders piled atop boulders with scraggly little trees growing in the crevices between them. There was a tiny little river cutting its way through the crannies of the place. We were following the little river far below since one, it was easier, and two, it seemed to be the path marker that the Shadow was using as well.
I was currently carrying Isana on my back as I flash-leaped from boulder to boulder, trying to stay as much on the direct trail of the Shadow as possible. We'd been on the road for three days now and had camped out in the strange Realms in the Dangai twice so far. Each time Miss Isana had insisted on certain (in my opinion time-wasting) amenities such as setting up her tent to sleep in and the inflating-mat thing so that her delicate self would not be forced to sleep on the hard cold ground. I had no such troubles certainly, since it hadn't rained in any of the worlds we'd stayed on yet I'd simply put my back to a nearby tree or rock near the fire to rest against, laid Zabimaru against my shoulder, draped a blanket around me and slept relatively soundly. Last night my sleep had been interrupted twice by encroaching hostiles but Zabimaru and I had taken care of them quickly. I had ta say that the Denkou Hou sure came in handy for frying enemies without having ta get up and slice them in half. Just point and shoot.
Traveling the young mortal woman her somewhat difficult sometimes, I had to carry her around a lot because she was only a mortal woman and could not do any of the warriors tricks that I knew, such as flash-step or even glide-step. She wasn't in even that great a shape, I mean, she was healthy enough I suppose, but she couldn't keep up a jog for any length of time so I wound up putting her on my back as I sprinted across the flat terrains of the worlds we crossed where the trail was clear and there was no sign of threat. It was no worse in the Academy days where they had made us sprint for miles with thirty to forty pound weights on our backs to build muscle and endurance. If we got into rough terrain (like the one we were in now) that involved climbing around on hard surfaces I carried her then too, otherwise we'd just be all day at it. My mortal gigai was heavier than I liked so I had to use more reiastu than usual to move the way I was used to but I kept it going.
:I've gone from proud Lieutenant of the Sixth Squad to Mortal Woman's Beast of Burden in under a week,: I grumbled to myself.
There was no-way that I was ever going to admit that, since I was so far from anything that looked like home and cut off from all my friends and support, I was feeling just a little bit glad of the company... even is she was annoying and mortal and wouldn't shut up about her kid.
I sensed the humming energy of a recently activated gate nearby and was unsurprised when the direction of the scent-trail changed subtly. I wondered, not for the first time, how much farther I was behind the Shadow I was chasing down. Several days it had to be, there had been more detours than made me happy already.
"Eeep!" Isana squealed as I took a particularly long leap through the air across the stream-cut gorge in front of us and landed a little hard on the other side. She slipped a little bit in her grip around my shoulders and scrambled to keep a tighter hold though she was in no real danger of falling off.
"Next time warn me when you're going to do that!" She berated me, thwacking me across the back of the head with a hand she freed from its death grip around my neck for the purpose.
"What?" I asked blankly.
"You just suddenly jumped and... we were airborne. I was terrified!"
I looked down the nearly sheer drop off that tapered down into a very sharp valley with its tiny little stream trickling down in the bottom of it and then back over to the other side about ten or twenty feet away from where I had taken a simple standing reiatsu-fuels flash-leap across and I supposed I could sort of see her point. It was a long way down and a normal human wasn't used to the sorts of feats that a Soul Reaper like me took for granted. Looking down through the empty air at what must have looked to her like certain death had probably not been very fun for her.
"Sorry," I said lamely even as I rolled the thin cold air over my tongue to pick the trail back up.
There were no leaps that were nearly as dramatic as that one and once we reached what seemed to be the tops of the cliffs and they leveled out a bit (relatively anyway) I started sprinting along in a ground-covering lope to get us to the platform I could see in the distance that seemed to be our destination.
I followed the scent trail up to yet another gate platform. As a matter of expediency I'd taken to just carrying her piggy back over the starpaths between worlds so that we could cross quickly, I did not know for certain if the paths that crisscrossed the Dangai were anything like the tunnel that led to the Soul Society with its watchers and the Cleaners so in my book it was far better safe than sorry.
I pushed an orb of my reiatsu at the quiescent Gate node and the gate silvered over in a glowing liquid silver that irised open onto the shimmering white starpath. As soon as the gateway stabilized I flashed into it, quickly speeding along it and emerging on the other side.
"Whoa!" Isana said, immediately throwing her arms up over her head in a semi-panicked gesture. "We come in peace!"
:Hn. This one's got people in it,: I thought to myself as I took in the sight.
All the other worlds we'd been through had been uninhabited by anything other than feral little spirit critters that I'd cheerfully been fighting my way through and the occasional Guardian Spirit that seemed to have been left behind to keep an eye on things, unless of course you counted the Court of Genbu and the (former) Katschei's Realm. None of the Realms we'd visited had had what definitely looked like people in it though, I mean, their features were...
:Actually, now that I look closer at 'em, they don't look Human,: I thought.
Their features were universally slim and sleek, their cheekbones all high, their eyes slightly slanted, their faces pale as marble, chins and features both smooth and sharp-angled with a slightly feline cast to their faces, their hair all blonde as spun sunlight, and they had pointed ears. They also all had weapons pointed directly at us. Some wore elaborate suits of armor with straight swords drawn and held at the ready, others had arrows on silver-chased bows nocked and partly drawn pointed our way and there was something in the quiet of their stance and demeanor that said that they wouldn't have any troubles with hitting at least one of us.
Time for some diplomacy. Trying to look as nonthreatening as I could, I very gingerly set Isana on her feet and pushed her behind me. I was her protector after all. They watched our movements through narrowed eyes, not moving a hair or twitching a single muscle but watching us as intently as any cat had ever watched a mousehole.
"I'm Renji Abarai, Lieutenent of the Sixth Division of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads of the Court of Pure Souls," I said straightening to meet their gazes straightforwardly. "I don't mean any of you or yours harm, myself and this mortal woman here just want to cross this realm. We're tracking a Shadow, one that stole her child away from her and I turned me... as you see me."
They didn't move, didn't relax, didn't breathe a word of sound but all the same they seemed to confer with each other somehow. Even my sharp senses didn't pick up a flicker of movement but, as easily as my Captain had ever moved, several of the pointy-eared warriors moved out of the way in front of us. Just like my boss coming out of flash-step, two more of the pointy-eared people suddenly appeared out of the thin air before me. All of the other people guarding the gate when I'd stepped across it had been wearing armor of one form or another but not these, these wore elaborately cut clothes of silk it was difficult for me to tell exactly which were the males and which were the females, for they were, of a race, both either efeminately masculine or maculinely feminine. The two before me were clearly civilians of one form or another, their clothes were many layers f what looked like a delicate sort of silk in a cut that looked like nothing I'd ever seen before.
"Mortals," one said in a bemused, world weary tone that somehow managed to sound strangely musical as well.
"It has been many many years since we have had mortals in our Realm," the other one, I thought this one might just be a her, said in a conversational tone.
"Our Lord has commanded that you shall be brought before him," the other said, bowing politely at me.
"We'd love to visit and chat," Isana said, giving them her brightest diplomatic smile. "But we're in a hurry, so if you don't mind we'll just take a raincheck. We've gotta get tracking this Shadow, we're days behind already. So we'll just be going now."
She tried to step around me and through the crowd. They didn't move but suddenly somehow the air was filled with a feeling of threat. I pulled on Isana's shoulder and put her back behind me.
"You heard the woman," I said firmly. I was always ready for a good fight, but we were sort of in a hurry. "We're in a hurry so..."
"A Shadow has trespassed on our Realm without proper permission," one of the civilian pointy-eared people said to the other.
"They grow bold in recent years," the other noted.
"Shall we request of our lords that the mortals be allowed to track it?"
"It seems boring, and we have visitors so seldom. It really would be unfortunate to let them pass without some recompense. It has been so long since we have had a mortal to make sport with. No, I do not believe our Lord would make an exception so easily."
So basically, we were going, whether we wanted to or not.
"Renji," Isana said, drawing in closer to me as the warriors mysteriously closed in around us in an escort formation.
It was weird I hadn't seen them move, they were just simply there, looking lie they had always been there and for a moment my mind played tricks with me, making me wonder if I hadn't just imagined them someplace else. It was like a cross between my boss flash and my former Boss Aizen's mind warping abilities. They'd probably be fun ta fight if it came down to that, for now we'd play the diplomatic card.
"Looks like we've got no choice, play along for now," I grumbled.
Get ready for mostly useless filler arc. The next two or three chapters will be nearly completely pointless, but fun, I promise. Anyways, as usual please read and reveiw and I hope you enjoy.