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Fanfiction || Dead Man Walking 04
Title: Dead Man Walking
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Shimizu Kouryuu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Adventure/Suspense/Mystery
Warnings: Sporadic gore, language, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy identical to the supposedly late taichou appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
~*~
“Dead, I fall asleep
Is this all a dream?
Wake me up, I'm living a nightmare”
-Time of Dying, Three Days Grace
~*~
Chapter Four
Ethereal
~*~
Shimizu Kouryuu walked slowly down the crowded sidewalk, hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground. He didn’t pay attention to any of the surrounding shops nor the cars, mopeds, and bicycles out in the street. He’d never liked the noises of the city. He preferred to be somewhere up high and away from it all, but he’d gotten used to it since he’d moved here and had learned to tune it out.
His steps seemed aimless for the longest time, as if he hadn’t the slightest clue where he wanted to go or perhaps was just wasting time. But finally he turned a corner and approached an old florist’s shop. Standing out front was none other than Suzuki Nyoko.
“Good afternoon, Kouryuu-kun,” she smiled brightly.
He nodded a bit awkwardly, hands still deep in his pockets. It was strange, meeting Nyoko outside of school like this. Not a bad strange, just … strange. Unlike him, however, she seemed unperturbed. She waited patiently as he chose a flower, another daffodil, and they left the store together. She didn’t try talking again until they were almost to the cemetery.
“The flower is for your … parents?” she ventured hesitantly. He nodded again, and she seemed almost exasperated. “Why only one?”
“I didn’t buy it so that I could dump it on their graves,” he huffed. But when he realized what he’d said, he shrunk back again. “…It’s for something else.”
Despite the gruff and secretive nature of the statement, it did cheer her up. At least now he was talking. “Ah. Well, um … actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“I kind of figured.”
Nyoko smiled sheepishly, then turned away. “I pass the cemetery on my way home from photography club, and … I see you there a lot.” She was trying and failing to sound casual. Really, it just made him feel even more awkward. “I’ve heard stories about what happened. I don’t know the real story and I won’t ask, but er … I just wanted to let you know, well, I lost my mom a while back, so I kind of know how it feels, and, um, if you ever want to talk to someone about it, you don’t always have to go to the cemetery alone.”
Kouryuu blinked stupidly. She had started to speak faster and faster the further she went until he almost couldn’t understand her at all. And now she was staring resolutely at the ground, her face quickly taking on a bright red hue. She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked back up, but he made sure to look away before she could catch him. “I … didn’t know your mom had died. Sorry.”
“N-No!” she stuttered, frantically waving away his concern with frantic hands. “It’s okay! Really! It was a while ago, and Dad’s always trying so hard to do everything right for me.”
“Like Nee-san?”
“Yes!” she beamed. “Just like Akane-san! And I’m sure her parents are trying their best too.”
Still smiling, she reached out to hold his hand. It was not uncomfortable. In fact, Kouryuu rather enjoyed it. The uneasiness, the awkwardness, they all seemed to dissipate with that smile. And what she said actually made him feel better. He felt the need to smile right back, to let her know that this was just the sort of thing he had seen in her since his first day at Mashiba Junior High, the reason that he put up with Miki and Takeshi every day. After another moment of silence, he finally resolved to look up.
“Nyoko-kun, I-”
And he stopped dead.
“Kouryuu-kun? Kouryuu-kun, what are you looking at? Kouryuu-kun?”
But he didn’t answer. He hadn’t even heard. He could only stare right over her head at the large, grotesque black and white monstrosity looming over them, an aura of bloodlust overcoming his entire body. It was like a twisted, deformed cross between an elephant and a tree, bulky limps braiding outward until they ended in three, whip-like branching fingers. There were no longer any cars, any people. There was nothing in his world but the monster, Nyoko, and himself.
No. No, that was wrong. She didn’t belong there. This wasn’t her world. It wasn’t his either, his mind protested, but he still wasn’t listening.
He pulled her close by the wrist, and when he had both hands firmly on her back, he shoved with all his might. She stumbled forward in surprise. “Run!” he shouted.
“Kouryuu-kun, stop-!”
The gnarled limb met its mark. It swung with all the force of a cannonball directly into his gut. He heard something that sounded distinctly like ribs cracking, tasted the foul blood cascade into his mouth, and then rammed right into a brick wall. Another crack followed by a disturbing snap as his neck whiplashed and the back of his head slammed against the wall. A flash of light. Then darkness.
~*~
His eyes slowly flickered open. Everything was blurry, and he swore there was something in his throat clogging his windpipe. He didn’t know where he was or why he was on the ground, but he wasn’t about to find out if he kept lying around. He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, surprised when the action led to an unexpected, metallic noise. He looked down.
There was a chain coming out of his chest. He had hardly even grasped this concept when he saw what was on the other side of the chain. Nyoko was crying, screaming for help as she cradled something in her arms. She was cradling him. Only it wasn’t him. He was here.
What the hell was going on? Oh, right. His eyes widened as the monster aimed for Nyoko next. He looked frantically for something, anything, to stop it. But there was nothing. So he used the only thing he had. He bolted forward and plowed into the back of the creature’s knee. It lost balance, but only enough to distract it from Nyoko and sets its mind on a new target. Him.
Its eyes seemed to glow in anger from behind the mask, and before Kouryuu could realize what had happened, the deformed limbs were upon him again. Adrenaline was the only thing that kept him from falling flat on his face when he rolled out of the way. But just as he’d gotten to his feet again, he was yanked right back down to the ground. Around his wrist was wrapped one of the branchlike tentacles.
Oh, shi-
He flew into the air, knowing his wrist must have popped right out of its joint, and then he met concrete. He wasn’t even aware of being picked up again, but when his vision settled he was back in the air, staring down at a still frantic Nyoko. Couldn’t she see what was happening? Why wouldn’t she run away? Oh … that was right. The chain, Nyoko crying, a second him, lying motionless.
So this was what it was like to die…? None of the spirits he had ever talked to had mentioned anything like this. He could feel hot breath against his skin. That would be a mouth, he realized dazedly. So he was going to be eaten by a nonexistent monster. What a stupid way to go.
HOW DARE YOU…
Kouryuu’s eyes went wide. What had that been?!
“Oi, Ugly! Behind you!”
A huge blade then proceeded to cut through the monster’s mask like so much marshmallow, slicing it cleanly in two. Unfortunately for Kouryuu, after the mask disintegrated, the rest of the monster did too, including the whip-finger that had been holding him up. He fell, and landed right on top of something very hard and very orange.
“Gah! Jeez! Since when did you souls start to get so heavy?!”
Kouryuu could only manage a half-hearted grunt as he half-rolled, half-stumbled off of the orange lump. His whole being ached like mad; he was sure at least half of his body was bent the wrong way. Well, maybe not body… He wasn’t in his body right now, was he? Ugh. It hurt his head just to think about it.
He tried to get away, but an arm shot out from behind him and held him fast by his shoulder. “Calm down, kid,” the orange lump demanded, his voice urgent. So Kouryuu probably looked as beaten up as he felt then. That was going to make things difficult. “I said calm down,” he repeated when the boy did nothing of the sort. “You’re not dead, and your girlfriend isn’t about to die in the next minute either, okay? Rukia will be here in no time. She can put you back in your body, heal you up, and you two can be back on your merry way in no time. Alright? Just trust me.”
Kouryuu did not trust him at all. It may have been true that he’d saved them from that monster, but that only meant he was even more dangerous. “Eh? White hair? That’s pretty rare.” The hand on his shoulder began to turn him around. He struggled, but the orange lump was clearly the stronger of the two. Plus, he hadn’t just been slammed into the ground by a living, breathing tree branch, had he? “Kinda reminds me of another brat I used to kn-”
He met the orange lump face to face and saw his supposed savior for the first time. It was actually a bit of a disappointment; he looked like some high school cosplayer. But when his eyes widened in disbelief and his jaw dropped nearly to the floor, Kouryuu decided he’d had enough. This stranger was bigger and stronger than him, not to mention he was carrying a friggin’ cleaver. Kouryuu finally resorted to the utmost taboo. He bent his knee, slammed it up between the orange-top’s legs, and ran like hell.
~*~
“Ichigo!”
The redheaded substitute shinigami looked up between tears at the sound of the voice. Any other time, he would have simply huffed a “better late than never,” but not this time. Oh, no. That had hurt! Who knew the brat could kick so damn hard!
Rukia ran around the corner, followed by a jumpy Kon. They had been eating out at a little takoyaki place, but Ichigo had run off without a word and left her to pay for it. She wasn’t exactly in the best of moods either. And so when she saw Ichigo on the ground, she couldn’t afford not to shove it in his face. “Ohoho!” she laughed, putting on a well practiced air of superiority. “What happened, Ichigo? Did you actually let some pathetic, little hollow beat you up?”
“Not the hollow,” he grunted through clenched teeth. Rukia frowned. What did that mean? Who else could have done it? There was no one here.
“What happened there?” Both Rukia and Ichigo turned at Kon’s inquisitive tone as he pointed at the brick wall with his foot. In a small cross-section between four bricks, the mortar had cracked and the bricks had actually been displaced. Blood splattered ominously up from that point, red on red. But the owner of that blood and his little girlfriend were gone. All that was left was some dying flower lying trampled into the sidewalk.
“The hollow was attacking someone? And you let him get away? Ichigo, we have to use the kikanshinki!”
“Rukia!” She stopped, and with a painful wince, he pulled himself back to his feet. “Get Kon out of there. I need my body. I’ve got to go talk some sense into that girl before she lets him kill himself again.”
“Again?” Rukia screwed up the bridge of her nose in confusion. “Who?”
Ichigo didn’t answer. With one last indignant huff at the nerve of that little brat, he set Zangetsu back in its place at his back. Heh. That was where he used to have his zanpakutou too. He frowned. Surprises like this were never good.
But Rukia seemed to understand his urgency, and he was back in his body in no time. Kon, back in plushy form, clung to Rukia’s shoulder. “So … this girl… Was she hot?”
The tension exploded and before either of them really realized what they were doing, Kon was on the ground in a stuffing heap. They looked at each other awkwardly. Neither remembered being the one to hit him. But at the very least, Kon’s comment seemed to have brought them both back to their senses.
“Ichigo…” the shinigami trailed off, violet eyes betraying her concern. “What happened? Who could have attacked you?”
He was suddenly overwhelmed with thanks that she hadn’t realized just where he’d been attacked. “A whole lot of stuff that didn’t make any sense. That’s what happened,” he grunted. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, already walking away. “What other shrimp could possibly get that injured and still be able to run off?”
Just what exactly was Ichigo implying? “What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” she shouted back frustratedly, running after him with a wobbly Kon on her heels.
He stopped, and she nearly ran into his back. “I swear…” he muttered under his breath, his shaky voice giving away his anxiety. “I swear it was Toushirou.”
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Shimizu Kouryuu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Adventure/Suspense/Mystery
Warnings: Sporadic gore, language, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy identical to the supposedly late taichou appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
“Dead, I fall asleep
Is this all a dream?
Wake me up, I'm living a nightmare”
-Time of Dying, Three Days Grace
~*~
Chapter Four
Ethereal
~*~
Shimizu Kouryuu walked slowly down the crowded sidewalk, hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground. He didn’t pay attention to any of the surrounding shops nor the cars, mopeds, and bicycles out in the street. He’d never liked the noises of the city. He preferred to be somewhere up high and away from it all, but he’d gotten used to it since he’d moved here and had learned to tune it out.
His steps seemed aimless for the longest time, as if he hadn’t the slightest clue where he wanted to go or perhaps was just wasting time. But finally he turned a corner and approached an old florist’s shop. Standing out front was none other than Suzuki Nyoko.
“Good afternoon, Kouryuu-kun,” she smiled brightly.
He nodded a bit awkwardly, hands still deep in his pockets. It was strange, meeting Nyoko outside of school like this. Not a bad strange, just … strange. Unlike him, however, she seemed unperturbed. She waited patiently as he chose a flower, another daffodil, and they left the store together. She didn’t try talking again until they were almost to the cemetery.
“The flower is for your … parents?” she ventured hesitantly. He nodded again, and she seemed almost exasperated. “Why only one?”
“I didn’t buy it so that I could dump it on their graves,” he huffed. But when he realized what he’d said, he shrunk back again. “…It’s for something else.”
Despite the gruff and secretive nature of the statement, it did cheer her up. At least now he was talking. “Ah. Well, um … actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“I kind of figured.”
Nyoko smiled sheepishly, then turned away. “I pass the cemetery on my way home from photography club, and … I see you there a lot.” She was trying and failing to sound casual. Really, it just made him feel even more awkward. “I’ve heard stories about what happened. I don’t know the real story and I won’t ask, but er … I just wanted to let you know, well, I lost my mom a while back, so I kind of know how it feels, and, um, if you ever want to talk to someone about it, you don’t always have to go to the cemetery alone.”
Kouryuu blinked stupidly. She had started to speak faster and faster the further she went until he almost couldn’t understand her at all. And now she was staring resolutely at the ground, her face quickly taking on a bright red hue. She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked back up, but he made sure to look away before she could catch him. “I … didn’t know your mom had died. Sorry.”
“N-No!” she stuttered, frantically waving away his concern with frantic hands. “It’s okay! Really! It was a while ago, and Dad’s always trying so hard to do everything right for me.”
“Like Nee-san?”
“Yes!” she beamed. “Just like Akane-san! And I’m sure her parents are trying their best too.”
Still smiling, she reached out to hold his hand. It was not uncomfortable. In fact, Kouryuu rather enjoyed it. The uneasiness, the awkwardness, they all seemed to dissipate with that smile. And what she said actually made him feel better. He felt the need to smile right back, to let her know that this was just the sort of thing he had seen in her since his first day at Mashiba Junior High, the reason that he put up with Miki and Takeshi every day. After another moment of silence, he finally resolved to look up.
“Nyoko-kun, I-”
And he stopped dead.
“Kouryuu-kun? Kouryuu-kun, what are you looking at? Kouryuu-kun?”
But he didn’t answer. He hadn’t even heard. He could only stare right over her head at the large, grotesque black and white monstrosity looming over them, an aura of bloodlust overcoming his entire body. It was like a twisted, deformed cross between an elephant and a tree, bulky limps braiding outward until they ended in three, whip-like branching fingers. There were no longer any cars, any people. There was nothing in his world but the monster, Nyoko, and himself.
No. No, that was wrong. She didn’t belong there. This wasn’t her world. It wasn’t his either, his mind protested, but he still wasn’t listening.
He pulled her close by the wrist, and when he had both hands firmly on her back, he shoved with all his might. She stumbled forward in surprise. “Run!” he shouted.
“Kouryuu-kun, stop-!”
The gnarled limb met its mark. It swung with all the force of a cannonball directly into his gut. He heard something that sounded distinctly like ribs cracking, tasted the foul blood cascade into his mouth, and then rammed right into a brick wall. Another crack followed by a disturbing snap as his neck whiplashed and the back of his head slammed against the wall. A flash of light. Then darkness.
His eyes slowly flickered open. Everything was blurry, and he swore there was something in his throat clogging his windpipe. He didn’t know where he was or why he was on the ground, but he wasn’t about to find out if he kept lying around. He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, surprised when the action led to an unexpected, metallic noise. He looked down.
There was a chain coming out of his chest. He had hardly even grasped this concept when he saw what was on the other side of the chain. Nyoko was crying, screaming for help as she cradled something in her arms. She was cradling him. Only it wasn’t him. He was here.
What the hell was going on? Oh, right. His eyes widened as the monster aimed for Nyoko next. He looked frantically for something, anything, to stop it. But there was nothing. So he used the only thing he had. He bolted forward and plowed into the back of the creature’s knee. It lost balance, but only enough to distract it from Nyoko and sets its mind on a new target. Him.
Its eyes seemed to glow in anger from behind the mask, and before Kouryuu could realize what had happened, the deformed limbs were upon him again. Adrenaline was the only thing that kept him from falling flat on his face when he rolled out of the way. But just as he’d gotten to his feet again, he was yanked right back down to the ground. Around his wrist was wrapped one of the branchlike tentacles.
Oh, shi-
He flew into the air, knowing his wrist must have popped right out of its joint, and then he met concrete. He wasn’t even aware of being picked up again, but when his vision settled he was back in the air, staring down at a still frantic Nyoko. Couldn’t she see what was happening? Why wouldn’t she run away? Oh … that was right. The chain, Nyoko crying, a second him, lying motionless.
So this was what it was like to die…? None of the spirits he had ever talked to had mentioned anything like this. He could feel hot breath against his skin. That would be a mouth, he realized dazedly. So he was going to be eaten by a nonexistent monster. What a stupid way to go.
Kouryuu’s eyes went wide. What had that been?!
“Oi, Ugly! Behind you!”
A huge blade then proceeded to cut through the monster’s mask like so much marshmallow, slicing it cleanly in two. Unfortunately for Kouryuu, after the mask disintegrated, the rest of the monster did too, including the whip-finger that had been holding him up. He fell, and landed right on top of something very hard and very orange.
“Gah! Jeez! Since when did you souls start to get so heavy?!”
Kouryuu could only manage a half-hearted grunt as he half-rolled, half-stumbled off of the orange lump. His whole being ached like mad; he was sure at least half of his body was bent the wrong way. Well, maybe not body… He wasn’t in his body right now, was he? Ugh. It hurt his head just to think about it.
He tried to get away, but an arm shot out from behind him and held him fast by his shoulder. “Calm down, kid,” the orange lump demanded, his voice urgent. So Kouryuu probably looked as beaten up as he felt then. That was going to make things difficult. “I said calm down,” he repeated when the boy did nothing of the sort. “You’re not dead, and your girlfriend isn’t about to die in the next minute either, okay? Rukia will be here in no time. She can put you back in your body, heal you up, and you two can be back on your merry way in no time. Alright? Just trust me.”
Kouryuu did not trust him at all. It may have been true that he’d saved them from that monster, but that only meant he was even more dangerous. “Eh? White hair? That’s pretty rare.” The hand on his shoulder began to turn him around. He struggled, but the orange lump was clearly the stronger of the two. Plus, he hadn’t just been slammed into the ground by a living, breathing tree branch, had he? “Kinda reminds me of another brat I used to kn-”
He met the orange lump face to face and saw his supposed savior for the first time. It was actually a bit of a disappointment; he looked like some high school cosplayer. But when his eyes widened in disbelief and his jaw dropped nearly to the floor, Kouryuu decided he’d had enough. This stranger was bigger and stronger than him, not to mention he was carrying a friggin’ cleaver. Kouryuu finally resorted to the utmost taboo. He bent his knee, slammed it up between the orange-top’s legs, and ran like hell.
“Ichigo!”
The redheaded substitute shinigami looked up between tears at the sound of the voice. Any other time, he would have simply huffed a “better late than never,” but not this time. Oh, no. That had hurt! Who knew the brat could kick so damn hard!
Rukia ran around the corner, followed by a jumpy Kon. They had been eating out at a little takoyaki place, but Ichigo had run off without a word and left her to pay for it. She wasn’t exactly in the best of moods either. And so when she saw Ichigo on the ground, she couldn’t afford not to shove it in his face. “Ohoho!” she laughed, putting on a well practiced air of superiority. “What happened, Ichigo? Did you actually let some pathetic, little hollow beat you up?”
“Not the hollow,” he grunted through clenched teeth. Rukia frowned. What did that mean? Who else could have done it? There was no one here.
“What happened there?” Both Rukia and Ichigo turned at Kon’s inquisitive tone as he pointed at the brick wall with his foot. In a small cross-section between four bricks, the mortar had cracked and the bricks had actually been displaced. Blood splattered ominously up from that point, red on red. But the owner of that blood and his little girlfriend were gone. All that was left was some dying flower lying trampled into the sidewalk.
“The hollow was attacking someone? And you let him get away? Ichigo, we have to use the kikanshinki!”
“Rukia!” She stopped, and with a painful wince, he pulled himself back to his feet. “Get Kon out of there. I need my body. I’ve got to go talk some sense into that girl before she lets him kill himself again.”
“Again?” Rukia screwed up the bridge of her nose in confusion. “Who?”
Ichigo didn’t answer. With one last indignant huff at the nerve of that little brat, he set Zangetsu back in its place at his back. Heh. That was where he used to have his zanpakutou too. He frowned. Surprises like this were never good.
But Rukia seemed to understand his urgency, and he was back in his body in no time. Kon, back in plushy form, clung to Rukia’s shoulder. “So … this girl… Was she hot?”
The tension exploded and before either of them really realized what they were doing, Kon was on the ground in a stuffing heap. They looked at each other awkwardly. Neither remembered being the one to hit him. But at the very least, Kon’s comment seemed to have brought them both back to their senses.
“Ichigo…” the shinigami trailed off, violet eyes betraying her concern. “What happened? Who could have attacked you?”
He was suddenly overwhelmed with thanks that she hadn’t realized just where he’d been attacked. “A whole lot of stuff that didn’t make any sense. That’s what happened,” he grunted. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, already walking away. “What other shrimp could possibly get that injured and still be able to run off?”
Just what exactly was Ichigo implying? “What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” she shouted back frustratedly, running after him with a wobbly Kon on her heels.
He stopped, and she nearly ran into his back. “I swear…” he muttered under his breath, his shaky voice giving away his anxiety. “I swear it was Toushirou.”