Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Dark Heart Dawning ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

 

 

Chapter Three

 

Uryuu Ishida frowned distastefully as he held up the ruined garment, slightly disgusted with the amount of dirt and blood that were ground into the fabric. He had barely been awake five minutes when he received a summons to come to the Urahara Shop before school. Naturally, he had gone, thinking that perhaps that oddball genius of a shopkeeper had detected some sort of movement from Aizen... but he'd thought wrong. The real reason he'd been asked to come to the shop that morning was so that the proprietor could ask him for the use of his sewing skills.

 

“Can you fix it?” came the inappropriately serious voice of the man in the striped hat.

 

“It's completely shredded across the midsection,” Uryuu told him.

 

“But can you fix it?” Urahara repeated.

 

Uryuu sighed and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath to compose himself. This was what he had been reduced to since the end of the Winter War? An on-call seamstress?

 

“No, not even someone with my skill could fix this garment,” he informed the annoying man. “It's completely ruined. Better to just throw it away.”

 

“Then I suppose our guest will just have to join Yoruichi in walking about naked!” Urahara remarked cheerfully, earning a smack up the back of the head from the dark-skinned woman sitting next to him that was nearly hard enough to knock off his hat.

 

“Guest?” Uryuu inquired, more out of curiosity than surprise. He had felt the unusual form of reiatsu when he first set foot within the shop, but refrained from making any comments about it lest it be the result of one of Urahara's many experiments, knowing that the proud inventor would end up talking his ear off if he thought someone might be the least bit interested in what he was currently working on.

 

“A young woman was attacked by a hollow last night,” Yoruichi explained. “Ichigo brought her here so we could tend to her injuries. That dress belongs to her.”

 

Uryuu held the ruined lavender sundress up once more and examined the jagged tears running from the side seam nearly to the other side of the garment across the front, along with the large bloodstain that permeated practically the entire central portion of the dress' back.

 

“It's a wonder she survived the attack at all,” he commented, imagining from the state of her clothing that she must have been nearly disemboweled by the hollow that attacked her.

 

“The dress makes her injuries seem worse than they really were,” Urahara remarked, as if reading his mind. “She had three somewhat deep gashes in her left side, but they weren't anything Tessai couldn't handle.”

 

“Then why did you bother having Renji go after Orihime?” Yoruichi asked.

 

“Now, now, Yoruichi-san... You and I both know Tessai's strengths lie in hadou and bakudou, not healing kidou. We couldn't very well risk the girl's life.”

 

“That's a real nice thing to say about one of your best friends, Kisuke ,” she admonished him. “Have you forgotten he used to be the captain of the Kidou Corps?”

 

Uryuu cleared his throat to remind them of his presence before they became too engaged in their squabble, laying out the ruined dress on top of the low table before him.

 

“I can make her a new dress, but it will require some materials,” he told them. “I am also going to need her measurements.”

 

“I'll go get them for you,” Urahara offered, hopping to his feet. Yoruichi grabbed the edge of his dark green overcoat and tugged it sharply, pulling him back down to the floor and earning a surprised yelp from him.

 

“I think Uryuu is quite capable of taking her measurements on his own,” she said through clenched teeth, thoroughly tired of him acting like a horny teenager desperate for some way to cop a feel of a pretty girl. She rose to her feet, casting a glance toward the boy seated across from them, and Uryuu stood, as well.

 

“You stay here,” she ordered Kisuke, pointing a stern finger in his face, then left the room and escorted Uryuu to the room where the girl was being kept.

 

“Oh! Good morning, Mr. Uryuu,” Ururu greeted him from her post next to the unconscious woman, bowing slightly. She had taken over the duty of watching over her when Orihime had grown too tired to keep her eyes open any longer, and her own, normally wide blue eyes were now heavy-lidded from her lack of sleep the previous night.

 

“Good morning, Ururu,” he replied with a kind smile, then froze just inside the doorway of the room when his eyes fell upon the figure lying in the middle of the floor, a small sound of surprise escaping his throat. He turned to look at Yoruichi, silently asking her a question with his eyes, and she simply nodded in reply.

 

“Ururu, you look tired,” she said as she went over to where the child was sitting and crouched down beside her, reaching up to gently stroke her hair. “Why don't you go get some sleep, and I'll take over watching the lady?”

 

“O-Okay,” she stammered quietly before pulling herself to her feet. She wavered slightly, rubbing at one of her tired eyes with her hand, then bowed deeply in gratitude to the woman taking over her duty for her and made her way toward the door. Before leaving the room, she paused and turned back, her young face looking a bit uncertain.

 

“Are you sure it's alright?” she asked meekly. “Mr. Kisuke told me I was supposed to stay here and guard her.”

 

“It's fine, Ururu,” Yoruichi assured her with a nod. “If Kisuke has a problem with me relieving you of your watch, he can take it up with me.”

 

Ururu nodded, smiling a bit as she muttered her thanks, then left the room and headed for the small bedroom she occupied at the other end of the hall.

 

“Close the door,” Yoruichi instructed Uryuu as she sat down on the floor, tucking her legs to the side. Uryuu complied to her wishes, carefully sliding the bedroom door shut before taking a seat on the other side of the unconscious woman.

 

“So you noticed it too, huh?” she asked once they were both sitting down, nodding her head toward the figure between them.

 

“Yeah...” he replied softly, his blue eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the appearance of the woman who had survived the hollow attack the night before. “There's something strange about her reiatsu. It doesn't feel like any I've ever encountered before.”

 

“Kisuke and I noticed the same thing. The difference is subtle, but it's definitely there.”

 

“Do either of you have any ideas about what it means?” he inquired, lifting one of the girl's pale hands, his glasses sliding down his nose a bit as he bent over to better examine it.

 

“Not a clue,” Yoruichi told him with a heavy sigh. “We have our theories, though.”

 

“Theories?” he wondered, looking up at her and pushing his glasses back into place.

 

“Kisuke thinks she isn't any threat to us,” she stated, her voice holding an edge of displeasure, “but she may be connected to Aizen, somehow.”

 

“Do you have any proof of that?” he asked her.

 

“Well... No... We don't have any actual proof that she's connected to him,” she admitted. “But it seems very likely, once you think about it.”

 

“Innocent until proven guilty, Miss Yoruichi,” he chided her. “Besides, I don't think Aizen would be ready to make a move yet, so soon after taking all the damage he did in the last battle.”

 

“You sound like Kisuke,” she grumbled.

 

“She seems human,” Uryuu mused aloud, returning to his careful scrutiny of the girl's appendages. “But...”

 

“But what?” Yoruichi asked when he allowed his voice to quietly trail off. Uryuu laid the girl's arm back down at her side and sat back on his heels with his legs tucked under him.

 

“Humans' spirit ribbons are white,” he told her, his eyebrows coming together as he frowned in confusion, “but hers is black. I've never even seen a black one, before.”

 

Yoruichi had guessed he might say something like that. It perfectly matched the feeling she and Kisuke had experienced the night before - dark, somewhat foreboding, and definitely not like the reiatsu of any human or shinigami they had ever come across in all their years.

 

“Let's just get her measurements, shall we?” she suggested after a moment of tense silence, flashing a smile to help brighten the atmosphere between them.

 

Uryuu was happy to oblige, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the unconscious woman before him as soon as possible. He dug around in his school bag for a tape measure and took the necessary measurements as Yoruichi helped him position the girl's body in order to wrap the tool around her. Once he had all the information he needed, he quickly jotted it down into a small notebook and rose to his feet, assuring her he would have a new dress ready for them in the morning before hastily leaving the room and putting the entire shop behind him.

 

On his way to school, one thought kept popping up in the forefront of his mind: If Urahara really did intend to let that girl stick around once she was better, then he must be even more insane than Uryuu had originally thought.

 

*********************

 

Renji grumbled as he shifted his position on the floor, raising his head slightly to check that the girl was still out cold before laying back down and closing his eyes once more. He didn't understand why he had to be stuck with the afternoon shift of watching over her. She was unconscious. She wasn't going anywhere. Besides, Urahara had volunteered to do it. So why did he have to be the one made to suffer by being cooped up in a room without so much as a radio, much less a television, keeping watch over some sleeping chick.

 

“I don't trust Kisuke alone with her,” Yoruichi had told him when he whined to her that he didn't think he should have to be the one to take the job. “Besides, there's something I want you to do for me.”

 

He had to admit, it had been kinda cool, going behind Urahara's back like some sort of spy on a secret mission. Yoruichi had given him explicit instructions on what he was to do, then threatened him with “a horrible death the likes of which you cannot even begin to imagine,” should he let the details of his little task slip to anyone other than herself.

 

The 'mission' had been simple enough: Take a picture of the girl and send it to Soul Society to see if the Department of Research and Development could come up with anything on her. Yoruichi had told him she really didn't expect them to have anything on file, but she still wanted it done, just in case they already knew something about her. Renji had asked why she was so desperate to find out everything she could about the girl, but all that she would tell him was that she believed the girl should be considered a possible threat.

 

“Yeah, right,” Renji mumbled to himself, stretching out a bit more across the floor. How the hell did an unconscious woman pose a threat to them? What was she going to do, take up too much space?

 

He felt the sensation almost as soon as the thoughts entered his mind, and his eyes flew open. Sitting up, he regarded the figure lying before him with a sense of confusion mixed with a bit of fear. She certainly didn't look the least bit imposing, but that sudden wave of reiatsu that had pulsed from within her had been unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. His own captain's reiatsu could often times inspire dread in those who didn't know how to deal with the vast amount of power, but this was somehow different. It felt like he was drowning in darkness, and he broke out in a cold sweat as he suddenly realized he couldn't breathe.

 

Almost as abruptly as the sensation had hit him, it was gone again, and the room felt still and calm once more. Renji swallowed nervously and reached up with a shaking hand, wiping away some sweat that had began to run down his cheek, his breath coming in slightly shallow gasps. He scrambled backwards until his back hit the wall and pulled his legs in to his chest, wanting to keep as much distance between himself and the girl as the confines of the small bedroom would allow.

 

In the last minute and a half, it had become very clear to him why Yoruichi thought the girl might be dangerous.