Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Dark Heart Dawning ❯ Chapter Five ( Chapter 5 )

Kisuke quietly took in Daria's appearance as she pulled herself up into a sitting position, causing Yoruichi to have to abandon the spot she'd taken up on her chest in favor of sitting on the floor next to him. The girl was still fair-skinned, but not nearly as deathly pale as she had been when Ichigo first brought her to the shop. Her hair cascaded halfway down her back, and was a much lighter shade of brown now that it had dried out, with some natural golden highlights that shimmered under the lighting as she moved. Long lashes framed her green eyes, and she blinked them several times as she regarded him curiously, a spark of fear still evident on her face.

“Novikov, huh?” he mused, and she nodded silently in response. “That's a very Russian-sounding name.”

“I am originally from Russia,” she told him. Her Japanese was strangely accented, as was the case with most foreigners, but otherwise excellent.

“Do you mind if I call you Daria?” he asked her. “Or would you prefer Miss Novikov?”

“Daria is fine,” she replied as she looked around the room. “Where am I, anyway?”

“This is my home,” Kisuke told her. “I own the shop downstairs, as well. Do you remember what happened to you?”

Daria sighed a bit and closed her eyes, her brow furrowing in concentration as she tried to remember the last thing that had happened to her before she lost consciousness.

She had been walking home from the market, not really paying much attention to her surroundings, when suddenly there was a strange sort of howling noise nearby. Frightened, she had stopped walking and turned toward the direction the sound had come from and found herself face-to-face with a huge creature with a white, skeletal-looking face and long claws. At first she remained completely still, hoping that if she didn't move it wouldn't notice her, but the creature lunged at her instead. Daria had jumped backward in an attempt to avoid the strike, but the creature managed to catch her side with its sharp claws.

Gasping softly, her eyes flew open and she threw back the comforter, lifting the oversized t-shirt bearing some sort of logo that she was wearing and checking for the wounds the creature had inflicted upon her.

“I don't understand...” she whispered, running her fingers gingerly over the flawless skin. “That thing... it... I was...”

“It was just a scratch,” Kisuke assured her. “We treated you once you got here.”

“Bullshit,” she said, her eyes meeting his angrily. “I felt that thing's claws sink into me. I felt them rip right through my body.”

Kisuke frowned a bit. So she did remember being attacked by the hollow... Moreover, she was apparently able to see it, as well. He had hoped she didn't have the ability to see them, which would have made it much easier to convince her that she had imagined what happened to her. He supposed he could always just use a kikanshinki on her, but first he needed to determine if she knew anything else.

“Do you remember what happened after you were attacked?” he asked her, trying to change the subject so he wouldn't have to explain how her wounds had healed so quickly.

“I blacked out pretty quickly after that,” she told him. “But I remember these two people... It sounded like a guy and a girl. I didn't really see them, though.”

“And that's all you remember?”

“That's all,” she said, nodding. “How long have I been here, anyway?”

“The young man you heard brought you here yesterday,” he informed her.

Daria blinked in disbelief upon hearing she had only been unconscious for one day. She had looked at her wounds briefly before passing out, and there was no way they could have healed that quickly. Furthermore, she still didn't know what that thing that attacked her had been or where it had come from.

“How... How am I still alive?” she asked quietly, speaking more to herself than to the man kneeling next to her.

Kisuke let out a sigh and sat down on the floor, lowering his head and pulling his hat back down over his face as he spoke.

“There are things in this world that most people never see or even know exist,” he began, choosing his words carefully. He didn't want to make the poor girl even more frightened by coming across as a raving mad lunatic.

“I believe that,” Daria said calmly, and he lifted his head to peer at her from the shadows of his hat.

“What you saw – that thing that attacked you – is what's known as a hollow,” he told her. “Hollows were once simply the spirits of those who have passed on but, unable to rest in peace, they lingered around this mortal plane until their grief and loneliness corrupted them and turned them into something far more sinister than a mere ghost.”

“That's the first time I've ever seen anything like that,” she replied, taking everything he was telling her extremely well. He had really expected her to think he was insane, talking about ghosts and evil spirits.

“Most people can't see them,” he clarified for her. “Only those who are sensitive to spiritual entities are able to. Incidentally, those are also the people that the hollows prefer to attack. Some can see a faint outline or sense the presence of a hollow without being able to see it clearly, but those who can actually see one completely are usually quite rare.”

“Usually?” Daria wondered.

“Let's just say that Karakura Town throws off the curve a bit,” he told her with a small smirk, not wanting to divulge too much information right away.

“So this hollow thing attacked me because I was able to see it?” she asked him, and Kisuke nodded in reply. “That thing was huge. How were those two people I heard able to get away from it?”

“Those two people were Ichigo Kurosaki and Rukia Kuchiki,” he answered, earning a sharp meow from Yoruichi. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, silently telling her it was alright, then continued speaking. “They're shinigami: spiritual beings who help those who have died pass on to the Soul Society – the afterlife, if you will – as well as defeat hollows in order to cleanse the corruption from the souls within them, thus allowing them to pass on peacefully, as well.”

“So they're not human?”

“Ichigo is,” Kisuke informed her. “He's sort of a special case, but that's a bit of a long story. Really, he's just a normal high school kid.”

“A high school kid who goes around killing monsters no one can see. That's real normal,” Daria remarked a bit sarcastically, causing his lips to curl upward in a small smile. Perhaps he should have worded it differently.

“So those two killed that hollow, then brought me here?” she asked, putting the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind.

“That's right,” he said. “After you arrived, my friend tended to your wounds and I gave you a special potion to help you heal.”

“Who are you people?” The question came out in a slightly accusatory tone, her eyes narrowing a bit at him.

“Me? Well, I'm just a simple but handsome shopkeeper,” he answered a bit flirtatiously, looking up at her with half-lidded eyes and a smile. Yoruichi jumped into his lap, sinking her claws into his thigh, and he jumped a bit as he let out a yelp of pain, causing Daria to laugh.

“Looks like someone wants attention,” she said, reaching over and scratching the cat behind its ear. Yoruichi leaned into the touch and purred, secretly glaring at Kisuke as Daria continued to fawn over her.

Kisuke watched as Daria's small hand smoothed over the dark fur on Yoruichi's back and saw that it was trembling ever so slightly. His gaze moved back up to her face and he studied her closely, but no longer detected any hint of fear in her eyes. In fact, she looked quite content as she continued to pet Yoruichi, speaking quietly about what a 'good, sweet kitty' she was.

If only you knew... Kisuke thought, smirking as he brought one of his hands up to pat Yoruichi's head.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, thinking her trembling was probably due to her not having eaten in at least twenty-four hours. She nodded silently and he lifted Yoruichi up off his lap and placed her in Daria's before getting to his feet and going to the open doorway.

“Ururu!” he called, and within moments the small girl was standing before him, eager to serve whatever purpose was asked of her. “Could you please bring our guest something to eat?”

“She's awake?” Ururu asked, her wide blue eyes growing even bigger in surprise. Kisuke nodded, and the girl skipped around him and stood in the doorway, bowing politely before the woman sitting up in the bed.

“Welcome to our home,” she said, respectfully. “My name is Ururu Tsumugiya.”

“It's very nice to meet you, Ururu,” Daria said in response, giving the child a kind smile. “My name is Daria.”

Ururu smiled and rushed off to the kitchen, and Kisuke chuckled a bit at how happy she seemed. She never would have admitted it, but she had been almost as worried as Ichigo that Daria wouldn't survive. He had looked in on her the previous night while she was keeping watch over Daria and found her kneeling next to her, head bowed and hands clasped together in silent prayer. As tough a fighter as she was when it came to protecting those she cared about, Ururu was really a sweet and gentle girl who never wished harm on anyone.

He turned to look back into the room, where Daria had resumed playing with Yoruichi, and found her dangling a necklace she was wearing around her neck in front of the cat's nose. Yoruichi swatted at the large emerald that hung from the long golden chain with one of her paws, and Kisuke wondered just how long she planned to keep up the ruse. He supposed she had her reasons.

What was even more jarring than seeing Yoruichi acting like a playful little kitten, though, was the fact that Daria's reiatsu had completely changed. There was no longer any trace of that darkness he and Yoruichi – and possibly Renji, based on the way he was cowering in the corner when they relieved him of his watch duty – had felt. It was almost as if they had simply imagined it being there.

Something was definitely not right about this girl, and he'd be damned if he let her get away from him before he figured out exactly what it was.

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

Yoruichi padded silently down the dark hallway, listening carefully to the sounds around her. Everyone in the house was asleep. She could hear the soft murmuring of Ururu in her room, and Jinta talking in his sleep next door – apparently dreaming of being a baseball player, again. Tessai was snoring, as usual, and the sound of slow, even breathing could be heard coming from the room Daria was in. The only person who sounded like they might be awake was Kisuke.

Curious about what he was up to so late at night, she morphed out of her cat form and silently slid open the door to his room before changing forms once again and sneaking inside. The room was pitch black, but her feline vision allowed her to see just fine in the darkness. She found Kisuke sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, eyes closed and head bowed, lost in meditation.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting down in front of him.

“Examining her reiatsu,” he replied without moving. Even though she hadn't made a single noise coming into his room, he had still been able to detect her presence. “I'm sure you've noticed the difference since she woke up, as well.”

“I did,” Yoruichi told him, nodding slightly.

“So I am trying to find out where, exactly, that darkness we felt went,” he said, then sighed. “But I'm not having much luck, I'm afraid. Perhaps I should try from inside her room. It was much easier to keep tabs on her yesterday, when I could easily feel it from here.”

“That's why you wanted to put her in the room across from yours?” Yoruichi asked, blinking in surprise. “So that you could monitor her reiatsu?”

“Yes, although I was just intending to do so in case she ended up taking a turn for the worse,” he explained. “That way I could quickly take the appropriate measures. But once we felt that darkness within her, I knew I had to keep an eye on it. Why else would I have put her in there?”

Yoruichi gave him a look that said, 'You know why,' but refrained from making any comments. Instead, she remained thoughtfully silent for a long while, just listening to the sounds within the house.

“Kisuke?” she finally said after several minutes had passed.

“Yes?”

“Did you see that necklace she was wearing?” she asked, and he finally opened his eyes and looked up at her.

“The one she was playing with you with?” he asked in reply. Yoruichi nodded. “What about it?”

“There was some sort of symbol engraved into the face of the emerald,” Yoruichi told him. “I don't know what it is, but I get the feeling I've seen it before, somewhere.”

“What did it look like?” he questioned her, watching her tiny cat face scrunch up in concentration.

“It looked like two crosses... One was upright, and the other was at an downward angle, running diagonal from left to right with the top of the cross being at the bottom. The upright cross had an open circle connected to the bottom, and the other one had what looked like a V connected to the bottom of it.”

Kisuke listened carefully to the description, mentally drawing the symbol in his mind. Yoruichi was right, it did seem somehow familiar. However, he was having just as little luck remembering where he had seen it as he was having trying to sense the dark reiatsu within Daria.

“I'll ask her about the necklace in the morning,” he said.

“No,” Yoruichi protested. “You can't, Kisuke.”

“Why not?” he asked, confused.

“How are you going to explain how you even know about it?”

“I saw her using it to play with you, remember?” he reminded her.

“Yes, but you weren't nearly close enough to see that symbol on it,” she argued. “How are you going to explain knowing about it being there?”

“I could always say a certain little kitty told me,” he suggested in a teasing voice. Yoruichi swiped her claws across the back of his hand, causing him to hiss a bit in pain.

“Idiot! In case you haven't realized, I don't want her to know I can talk,” she scolded him. “Let her think I'm just some normal house cat.”

“Why? I think she can handle it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “She took the news about the hollows rather well, in my opinion.”

“Yes, a little too well, if you ask me,” Yoruichi practically growled. “A normal human's response to hearing a story like that is denial that such a thing could ever really exist.”

“Perhaps she's just open-minded about the occult,” Kisuke tried to reason with her.

“Or perhaps she's in league with Aizen and already knows all about the hollows,” Yoruichi spat back, completely ignoring the earlier message from Captain-Commander Yamamoto in favor of her gut instinct. “She could just be playing you, Kisuke, and you'd never know it because you always want to protect pretty girls in distress.”

Kisuke's eyes narrowed slightly. Yoruichi had just crossed a line by questioning his judgement. Yes, he had made mistakes in the past in his calculations. He still felt guilty for not figuring out sooner that Orihime's capture had been a ruse to trap Ichigo and the others in Hueco Mundo in an attempt to keep them out of battle during the Winter War. But he always had at least one backup plan, and she should know him well enough by now to realize that.

“My instincts tell me she wasn't putting on an act,” he said, a touch of anger in his voice.

“And mine say she's dangerous and can't be trusted,” Yoruichi replied. “Either way, we need to find out about that necklace.”

“So how do you propose we do that?” he asked her, wondering what her plan was if she wasn't going to let him be the one to do the asking, knowing she likely already had one.

“You just leave it to me,” she said, her golden-yellow cat's eyes gleaming confidently. “I'll get to the bottom of this.”