I'm not sure I'm satisfied with this chapter, really. I can't shake the feeling I portrayed Gin slightly off. Maybe I tried too hard, I dunno.

Either way, enjoy.

X-X-X

The Striking Snake

ch2

Gods of Death

X-X-X

Gin had always been an early riser. Although his creepy factor caused many people to believe he would be a night owl by nature, the fact was that Gin loved the morning sunlight. Something about feeling the sun's rays after sleeping all night revitalized him completely.

Thus, even though it was only just after dawn, it took Gin mere seconds to realize that he was not where he remembered collapsing last night.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. His room was exactly as he'd left it, although the door was closed.

He got up, padding silently across the floor, and opened the door.

Nothing unusual in the upper floor. He briefly looked in on the girls' room, but Karin and - he breathed a sigh or relief - Yuzu were both unharmed and still sleeping soundly. He moved on, heading downstairs.

In the combination living room/kitchen, he found... well, rubble. Silly of him to expect otherwise. Curiously, though, the huge hole in the wall had been blocked with wooden planks. DIY home repair certainly hadn't featured last night.

In fact... the hole in the wall hadn't been that shape. It had been smaller, and less square. There had been soot from Rukia's Kido blast, which was missing.

Perhaps he had dreamed the peculiar events from last night? Gin was not usually one to doubt his own memory, but the evidence truly did suggest that the supernatural encounter was a figment of his imagination. After all, everything seemed different from -

Gin's eyes focused on the knife rack in the kitchen. Every handle was in its usual place. He advanced warily.

He pulled out the shortest knife, the one he remembered throwing. It was pristine, with nothing to suggest unorthodox usage. His hand moved on, and grasped the handle of the long chef's knife. He pulled it out of the rack -

The blade was broken, several inches above the handle.

His grin carried real glee as he looked down - to find that the cloth of his shirt, the same one he had been wearing when the hollow attacked, had a small vertical incision in it perhaps two inches long positioned directly over his breastbone.

Gin laughed softly to himself. "Ya almost had me fooled," he whispered to no-one in particular.

He was interrupted by the sound of his father coming down the stairs to open the clinic. Gin quickly put the broken knife back, and opened a cupboard as if he was merely making breakfast.

As Isshin walked past, Gin turned his best creepy grin towards his father. "Dad, I can't help but notice the... unplanned aperture in the front wall," he said. "Care to explain it?"

"Huh?" Isshin looked up. "Didn't you wake up?"

Gin merely raised an eyebrow. He didn't want to make any definite statement on his activities last night

"Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting you sleep like a rock. 'Like a frozen reptile,' that's what you said." He scratched his chin. "Well, around midnight last night, a truck lost control on the street and crashed into the house. The driver pulled out and drove off before I could get the license plate number, but some of the neighbors had woken up and they helped with the boards."

Gin did not let his mask slip - it wasn't a stretch to believe that a Shinigami would have the means to alter memory. "Huh. How long'll it take to get fixed?"

"Don't know. A few days, maybe."

"Hmm." Gin ceased his fake searching of the cupboards. "Aah - I'm not hungry. I think I'll just head to school early."

Unnoticed by the usually observant Gin, his father's eyes watched him warily as he left the house.

X-X-X

Gin arrived at the school at his usual time - that is to say, about five minutes before the janitor unlocked the building. He picked the joke of a lock on one of the windows as he usually did, and let himself into the school.

Gin liked watching people, although he had gotten good at going unnoticed, since most people did not like to have him watching them - some had likened his gaze to that of a snake waiting to strike. The early risers would be in school presently, and he liked lurking around the corridors to observe them, idly wondering what set them apart from the other students that tended to come in later.

However, his time as the lurking snake passed quickly enough. Karakura High traditionally started classes early, and before long, he was obliged to file into his classroom with the rest of his class. Honestly, the classes themselves bored him quite a lot; Gin could pick up an hour's worth of teaching in the first five minutes. However, he rarely grew tired of watching the people in his class, so at least it wasn't total drudgery.

He glanced around the classroom. There were a few people that he at least tentatively considered friends - or, at least, people who didn't consider him too creepy to speak to. Orihime Inoue, Tatsuki Arisawa, Keigo Asano, Yasutora 'Chad' Sado - special mention for being the only person in the class who was taller than Gin - and maybe one or two other names. Gin had few friends, but he found it didn't bother him much.

"Attention, class. We have a transfer student arriving today!"

Gin's attention snapped towards the door. Two oddities in a row; the hollow attack, now a transfer student. He reflected that it would be interesting, to say the least, if the transfer student was somehow the Shinigami from last night -

"Class, please welcome Rukia Kuchiki!"

Gin's eyebrows threatened to meet his hairline. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear...

Given that the rest of the class could see her, he had to assume that Rukia was in some way emulating a solid body. Her shihakusõ was gone, replaced with the appropriate uniform, but her deep purple eyes belied the facade of innocence; when her gaze met Gin's for a moment, there was no mistaking it. It was Rukia all right, and she was not happy to be there.

Unsurprisingly, she made a beeline for the empty seat beside him. "Hi!" She said with a plastic smile. "What's your name?"

Gin's snake grin did not shift a millimeter - his false smiles were made of more lasting materials than plastic. "Gin. Gin Ichimaru. Pleased to meet you."

"I don't have the textbooks yet," she said quickly. "Do you mind if I borrow yours for this period?"

She held out her hand in a gesture of request. Written neatly on the palm were the words 'say anything and I will kill you.'

Beneath his mask, Gin smirked to himself. "Of course, Miss Kuchiki. Welcome to Karakura High."

X-X-X

"Where are we going? This place is totally empty."

"Aah – well," said Gin, "people avoid me most of the time, but there's always a chance someone's listenin' and I'd rather not be seen as any crazier than people already see me as."

Rukia glared. "Very well, you have me as a captive audience. What do you wish to say?"

Gin scratched the back of his head, the grin shifting into a perplexed look, albeit exaggerated. "Not ta put too fine a point on it, but... why are ya here?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I killed the hollow, my family's safe. Job done, right? So why haven't ya gone back to... the afterlife, or wherever you Death Gods live?"

"It's called Soul Society," she replied angrily, "and I can't."

"Huh?"

"Only fully-fledged Shinigami can pass freely through the senkai gates." She avoided his eyes.

"And you're sayin' ya aren't one? Ya seemed confident when - "

"I lost my power, idiot!" She almost yelled. "That wasn't a normal reiatsu transfer last night - you sucked me dry! I barely have enough spirit energy to stay alive, let alone use a senkaimon! I'm trapped in this gigai body to prevent my soul from decaying out of weakness!"

Gin actually stopped grinning for a moment. "Oh," he said. "That's kinda, uh, unfortunate. I'm guessing that means the power didn't leave me when I went back to being a human." He looked down at himself. "Can't for the life of me figure out where it went, though."

"Fool," she replied. "I altered your soul, not your human body. When Urahara-san put your soul back into your body, your power was sealed up just like any other Shinigami's would be if they entered a gigai. If you were to leave your body, you'd find yourself dressed as a death god again, sword and all."

"But, why me?" Asked Gin. "I can only assume there's gotta be more Shinigami around. Why d'ya need to hide out at my school?"

"There are more. Thirteen divisions of us, in fact. But the reason I need to hide out here is..." She took a deep breath. "I need you. Karakura Town is my patrol area, and currently, the only active Shinigami here is you. I need... I need you to take over the task of slaying hollows here, until I recover."

Gin scratched the back of his head, his grin never wavering. "Ehh- sorry, but I think I gotta say no to that," he replied. "I don't like to see people killed, but I ain't nice enough to stick my neck out for total strangers."

Rukia looked crestfallen. "But..."

"Not happenin', sweetie. Sorry." Gin turned to leave.

Like a switch, Rukia's contrition was gone completely. The tall, grinning boy seemed able to infuriate her with no effort at all.

"Fine, looks like we'll be doing this that hard way!"

"Eh?"

Gin fell flat on his face as Rukia's hand forcefully caught the back of his head. He rolled over and sat up, rubbing his forehead. "What the hell did you..." He paused, realizing that the sleeve on his arm had inexplicably turned black.

Rukia pulled a strangely patterned glove off her hand. "As you may have guessed, yes, I pulled your soul out of your body." She narrowed her eyes. "Now follow me."

X-X-X

"Not that I mind sitting around and watching people on the street, but..."

"Just wait," replied Rukia shortly, looking over the park grounds. "It will be soon."

"What will?"

"Just because I'm being supported by a false body doesn't mean I have nothing at all left." She pulled out a phone-like device. "A century or two ago, the previous captain of Division 12 deployed a network of millions of reiatsu detectors in most populated zones on earth. This thing is a receiver for them, and it's telling me there's a ghost near here."

"Oh, that's right," said Gin. "I suppose so. I've seen a ghostly kid around here a few times before. Comes out to play around noon."

"Mm. Would you say he's your friend?"

"Nah, never talked to him. Just seen him sometimes." Gin idly twirled his wakizashi.

"Good, then you won't have a problem with the fact he's about to be attacked and eaten by a hollow."

"Eh?" The grin slipped for a minute, although Gin put it back on quickly. His sharp retort was cut off by the sound of a scream. The ghost of a child burst from the bushes in the park, a spider-like hollow hot on his heels.

Gin jumped up, his shortsword in his hand.

"Stop!"

Gin turned back to face Rukia, his grinning mask suddenly whole orders of magnitude more menacing. "I don't like being made to say 'eh?' twice in less than a minute," he said, his voice calm. "Why do ya want me to stop?"

"You said it yourself," Rukia replied. "You won't stick your neck out for total strangers."

"What?" Said Gin. "I mean, yeah, but this kid's right here."

"Right here, a hundred miles away, it makes no difference!" Rukia shouted. "This is what you are choosing, Gin Ichimaru! To leave Karakura town defenseless! To leave the dead souls of this place to their own fates! Oh, you would save the ones that would appear before you, but they are nothing, nothing at all!"

Gin almost widened his eyes in shock; the tiny Kuchiki had never displayed such forcefulness before.

"The ones that are easy to reach are hardly a dent in those who you would miss! This is not a job that can be done by half-measures, Ichimaru!" She paused for breath. "Either you make the effort to save them all, or you damn them all by your inaction. If you save the child now, you are committing yourself to a brutal and thankless task! To save souls and slay hollows when and where it becomes necessary; to protect the balance of Samsara at all costs; even - should it come to that - to risk your neck for the safety of strangers. These are the duties of a SHINIGAMI!"

Gin's grin didn't waver.

"Okay then," he whispered.

The hollow finally caught up with the child, knocking him down. It raised its foreleg to strike, and brought it down.

Nothing happened.

It looked back, to see a tall Shinigami leaning against the severed stump of its leg and twirling a wakizashi in his other hand.

"Bye bye now-" Gin sang cheerfully. The blade flicked across the hollow's mask, and the monster collapsed, beginning to disintegrate.

'Touching it to the forehead...' That's what Rukia had said. Helping the boy up, Gin touched the hilt of the shortsword to his head, and the ghost's body glowed bright blue.

Gin stared, slightly awed, as the boy's soul morphed into a ball and began shrinking. As it shrank, the ball became brighter, until at the size of a pinpoint it was painful to look at. Then it vanished.

"He has passed on," said Rukia from behind Gin. "So you accept these duties?"

Gin turned around. "I ain't accepted any more or less than what I did last night," he said. "I won't protect even a single soul for 'duty' or 'honor,' miss Kuchiki. I defended that boy for the same reason I defended my family: 'cause I wanted to. And - honestly - don't tell me you're any different."

"No different? What do you - "

"Ya defended my family with your life. Don't tell me you were thinking about 'duty' when ya jumped in front of that fish-faced hollow. Ya wanted me to stay alive, nothin' else. Sacrifice like that means nothing if it doesn't come from the heart."

Rukia didn't meet his eyes. "So... you won't help me?"

"I didn't say that." Gin sheathed his sword. "I may be creepy, but I'm not the kind of guy that can sleep easy with unpaid debts. I can't guarantee I'll lay my life on the line for my 'duty', but for now... the least I can do is run your patrols for ya."

Rukia smiled almost as widely as Gin. "I wasn't expecting a philosophy lesson, but... thank you."

X-X-X