Warning:I do not intend to hurt anyone's national feelings! Please keep in mind that this is only a work of fiction, taking place in imaginary places with fictional characters and their subjective opinions, which in no way reflects what I think! If you read on, don't take anything you see here personally!

Warning2: This chapter is dark! If you don't like that, don't read on!

Chapter 10

The Obon Festival

Part 1

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Yoruichi walked down the wooden floored corridors, passing the 1st Division offices that occupied the outer part of the building. Only half an hour earlier she had received a butterfly from the High Captain, with a strange, curt message, saying that her presence was immediately demanded in his office. Yoruichi didn't know what to make of it, but she began to worry; she was certain Captain Yamamoto wouldn't call on her like this unless there was some trouble.

She had almost reached the huge, double door of Yamamoto's office when they opened and Morihashi stepped through them. When the man noticed her, he stopped for a moment then bowed deeply, politely.

"Captain Shihouin!" he said with a smile. "Good day to you!"

Yoruichi nodded in acknowledgement and as she watched him leave, she felt the vague, nagging feeling that she had had all afternoon that something wasn't right strengthening. She had never seen Morihashi glad nor happy before! She was practically certain that was something this man was not capable of! It almost seemed unnatural in him, and Yoruichi could hardly suppress the desire to quickly glance around for unexpected assassins, or in all probability, flying pigs.

This feeling grew even stronger as she entered the High Captain's office.

Captain Yamamoto was sitting behind his desk, browsing through a pile of papers before him. The anger radiating from him through his reiatsu hung in the room, settling by the walls like a dark cloud of smoke and filling the air with an almost tangible tension. He hardly glanced up when he noticed her and without a greeting he motioned her to come closer.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, picking up a few pages from the stack before him and pushing them into Yoruichi's hands.

She immediately recognized it. It was a background check, a detailed analysis on Kurotsuchi Mayuri's mental condition and achievements from childhood up to the point when he finished the Shinigami school, along with the opinions given by his teachers. Every little crime, even the smallest misstep he ever made or could be accused of making, was listed in the document, beginning with the mysterious death of his mother. With red ink someone also stamped the word "failed" on the top of it.

Yoruichi could also remember sharply the conclusion drawn at the end of the report: Kurotsuchi Mayuri was marked as mentally unstable, a danger to both society and himself.

"This report was written by one of your men, wasn't it?" asked Yamamoto sharply. "Explain to me then how is it possible that I have been told that this Kurotsuchi is a member of the 4th Division right now? Why is this man not in the Maggot's Nest, Shihouin?"

Yoruichi closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts. She had known that this day might come sooner or later, yet she had always hoped she could avoid the confrontation and solve this problem before anyone else noticed it. This wasn't really about Mayuri, she knew. Mayuri was just a rookie, a nobody, and he was certainly not important enough for the High Captain to bother with his case. The problem was that this whole situation looked like it was Yoruichi's doing; as if it was she who had abused her power as the leader of the Secret Ops.

And in a way, that wasn't entirely untrue.

"I did not expect this from you of all people," went on Yamamoto bitterly. "Your clan has served Seireitei for generations, fighting against crime. You should know better than anyone else why our laws are as they are! Why we cannot make any exceptions to them, for any reason! Not even for the sake of family!"

"That man is no family of mine," said Yoruichi calmly. "We are only distant relatives. My grandmother and his father were siblings, but there hasn't been any interaction between our clans for decades."

There was nothing unusual in this. Lesser clans often tried to marry their children into the great noble families to gain prestige and connections, while the greater clans jumped at the chance of sharing the lesser clans' wealth. Over the past thousand years the whole nobility of Seireitei slowly became related to each other in one way or another; but this was only business, nothing else. Yoruichi had met Mayuri just once in her whole life, as a child, and he didn't make much of an impression on her. She vaguely remembered him as a weird, silent boy with a dour expression.

She cleared her throat.

"I made the decisions I did only because I thought they were for the best, sir," she said evenly, keeping her eyes on Yamamoto. She wondered how much the High Captain knew, if this was merely a test to see if Yoruichi would be willing to admit her part or would try to lie about it. If he knew the whole truth, Yoruichi was certain that denial would only earn his wrath. She had also realized that the rest of the captains weren't there yet, so this wasn't an official interrogation. "Please, let me explain what happened! I will tell you everything."

The High Captain nodded for her to continue with hardly veiled impatience.

"A few months ago," began Yoruichi, "I got reports on the strange disappearance of a few low ranking shinigami. Apparently they took their leave to visit some friends or families in Rukongai and they have never been seen again. At the beginning we believed these men had simply defected from the Gotei 13, but after some searching we learned that in the past few years many spirits have disappeared from Rukongai too, in a similar manner. They just left their homes and never returned again."

"How could this go on for years? Why hasn't it been investigated yet?" interrupted Yamamoto suddenly.

"Because we didn't know about it, sir! Some of the humans claimed they have reported these cases, but for some reason, these reports have never reached the 2nd Division," said Yoruichi.

Yamamoto nodded.

"What about the disappearances?" he asked.

"So far we believe a shinigami must be behind them. Some of our leads point towards the 5th Division, but we are still continuing our search for suspects and witnesses," said Yoruichi. "I have launched an inside investigation, and I have found that some of my men were regularly taking bribes - many of which we traced back to clan Kurotsuchi."

"Are you trying to say that you didn't know about Mayuri until the investigation?" asked Yamamoto, his thick brows drawn in a frown.

"Yes, sir," nodded Yoruichi. "After I learned what happened I did not intend to let him go free, but he was already a member of the 4th Division and I couldn't arrest him without revealing what had happened."

Such a revelation could have proven disastrous for the Secret Ops. They would have lost all the respect and fear earned by hard work, and the fact that all this seemed to originate from a relative of the leader of the Omnitsukido didn't help either. They would have not only looked corrupt but weak too.

"So, I had Kurotsuchi watched," continued Yoruichi. "I needed him to do something, to commit a crime that is serious enough to have him arrested for it," she explained. "We have reason to believe that he broke the law on many occasions, and he can be connected to the fire that destroyed a part of Rukongai a few weeks ago. I also have solid evidence that he is involved in ethically highly questionable experiments. This, however, isn't enough to arrest him."

She left out the detail that many witnesses would have gladly testified that they saw Mayuri lighting that fire in Rukongai with their own eyes, because she didn't want to implicate Urahara in that case if she could avoid it.

"What happened to your men? The ones who were bribed?" asked Yamamoto suddenly.

"They have been dealt with and were made an example of," said Yoruichi and then she added with a wry smile: "Making side deals will not be tolerated in the Omnitsukido."

Yoruichi glanced up at the old man, hoping to catch any sign betraying his thoughts, but Yamamoto's expression was unreadable.

"I realize that this doesn't justify my actions," she said severely, bowing her head. "I know what I did was wrong, but I have chosen what I believed to be the lesser of two evils!"

Yamamoto didn't answer immediately. He just continued to look at her, stroking his long mustache thoughtfully.

"If I were to follow protocol I would demote you from your position. That is what you deserve," he said eventually. "But you have not given any reason before to doubt your devotion to the Gotei 13, and because of this I am willing to believe your explanation. Your actions and your incompetence will have consequences, but you shall remain a captain for now."

Despite herself, Yoruichi felt relief washing over her.

"The problem of Kurotsuchi Mayuri still remains, however," Yamamoto went on. "As soon as he returns from the World of Living, I want him arrested and his case sent to the Office of 46, and I don't want to hear about any more delays or accidents this time. Do you understand, Shihoin?"

"Yes, sir!" said Yoruichi, but her stomach clenched as she thought of Urahara. She wasn't sure how her friend would take this news. "What should I arrest him for?"

Yamamoto thought a bit.

"For the murder of the concubine of Lord Kurotsuchi," he said at last. "All the evidence you need is in the dossier on my desk. Collected on the order of Captain Urahara." then he added. "Apparently he grew tired of Kurotsuchi sneaking into his laboratories"

Yoruichi froze.

"By the order of... Captain Urahara, sir?" she repeated. She couldn't believe what she was hearing! She opened the dossier and took a look at the pages inside, but to her shock she saw Urahara's personal seal on them all. Then she remembered Morihashi's smile as he went past her in the corridor, and in that instance she understood everything.

"As you wish, sir," Yoruichi said, bowing.

"Good," said the High Captain with a nod. "Dismissed!"

As soon as she left the High Captain's office, Yoruichi hurried to the 12th Division to tell Urahara what had happened, but she had hardly entered the compound when a young lab assistant stopped her.

"If you are here to visit Captain Urahara, he isn't here!" said the young man. "He left for the Obon Festival in the Living World this morning. He will not return for days!"

-oOo-

Karakura town was hardly more than a rapidly growing village and a few dozen separate farms collected under a name. It was surrounded by fields and scraps of woodland. It had a little square next to the river, a newly built hospital and a factory somewhere near its outskirts which covered the town with a smothering, bitter, yellow smoke every day. All in all, it was just like many other towns around the country which were rising desperately on the wings of the industrial revolution after the first hard decades of the Meiji Era. It was completely unremarkable, but Mayuri found this place exciting none the less.

He had never been to the World of Living before. The humans he usually met in Soul Society were such foolish, whining and unreasonable creatures that the idea of a world full of them didn't sound like something he ever wanted to waste his time on. But now... Now he wanted to take a walk around the town, to sneak into the factory and to take apart something, anything, but preferably one of those curious looking horseless iron carts, one of which almost hit him only half an hour after he arrived. He wanted to take a good look at how humans could make them move so mysteriously, but every time he tried to sneak away, Mr. Pig caught him.

"I am watching you Kurotsuchi," he grumbled. "If you dare make any trouble while we are here, if you as much as disappear for longer than five minutes, I swear to all the Gods of the Universe I will get you fired from the Gotei 13! I won't let you make me look like a fool in front of everyone! Am I clear?"

So, now Mayuri was sulking alone at the river bank, near enough to the square that he could still feel the nauseating, heavy smell of fried food and hear the song of the Obon dancers and (not for the first time in the last few hours ) he silently swore that he was going to kill Mr. Pig one day. Preferably in a slow and painful manner.

The other shinigami were forming small groups, drinking and laughing. They should have been watching for hollows but the day had passed so uneventfully so far, they felt they could allow themselves to loosen up a bit. Everyone knew that there wasn't a sane hollow that would try to attack with so many shinigami around. Mayuri couldn't fault them; he was bored too, and that was the last thing he wanted.

Unoccupied, his mind had a tendency to wander back to him, and the fact that Mayuri managed to mix up their kimonos and now he was smelling like U.K. didn't help at all either. It was a nice smell though, it was warm and spicy with a tinge of expensive tobacco, and every time Mayuri caught it, it made his heart beat faster and his stomach heavy. It brought back the memories of the previous night, and every time he thought of that, Mayuri's pulse quickened. He couldn't help but wonder if U.K. was in the Living World too, if he too was boring himself to death in some similar, small town under the lead of some similarly idiotic officer, but he almost immediately berated himself for these thoughts. Shouldn't last night have gotten that man out of his system after all?

He hid his face in his hands with a frustrated sigh. Now he began to doubt if he had made the right choice.

Momotaro's voice woke him from his musings as he threw his arms with a yell around Mayuri's neck. He had a sword almost as long as he was tall hanging from his shoulders and he was positively drunk.

"Yoooo Kurotuchi-saaaaaan!" he said giggling and the heavy smell of alcohol hit Mayuri. "Why are ya sitting here all alone? We are having a paaarty! Come and have a drink!" he grabbed Mayuri's wrist and began to drag him towards one of the groups, but with a swift move Mayuri drew his hand back.

"Whatever for? Apparently you are drunk enough for two of us," he said angrily. "What would you do if a hollow attacked us now?"

"I would hide behind you, and order you to kill it," snickered Momotaro. "I would say: Kurotsuchi! Kill that hollow for me! I am an officer, you know!" he said proudly, while he sank to the ground and spread out on the grass. "C'mooooone, Kurotsuchi-san! I know you love to hate to be here and you love to be grumpy about it, but you should try to loosen up sometimes!"

Mayuri only shrugged with a dismissive huff.

"Come to think of it, I wanted to ask you..." Momotaro sat up suddenly, his expression turning a bit more serious. "Will you come to my wedding? It will be next month at the..."

"No," Mayuri interrupted him.

"Oh," blinked Momotaro, surprised. "Why?"

"Because I will be too busy to come, I am afraid" stated Mayuri not sounding too 'afraid' at all.

"How do you know that? I didn't even tell you when it will be!"

"I have a hunch," replied Mayuri dryly.

"But you must come!" Momotaro's brow furrowed as he tried to think up a good reason why that was so. "You live in my home!"

"So does a legion of cockroaches," said Mayuri with a sigh. "Did you invite them too?"

"Well, no," Momotaro shook his head, "but they aren't my friends."

"We are not friends!"

Momotaro looked at him a bit confused, with hazy, drunk eyes. He cocked his head to the side like a little sparrow as he tried to digest this piece of information, but as he failed he just shrugged and stood up.

"I really think you should try the sake," he said and shook his head with the cheerful ignorance of the comfortably and thoroughly drunk and patted Mayuri's shoulder. "You need to relaaaax!" With that, he turned around and returned to his drinking partners.

A few moments later Mayuri heard a cackle of laughter and then Momotaro's drunken voice raised in a song about a wizard and his staff. Mayuri could only catch a few lines from it on the wind.

A wizard when young has a staff that is small.
It's puny and weak, ineffective withal...

Really now, thought Mayuri burying his face in his hands, could this guy become any more irritating?

It grows with his power until it stands tall
As his fame and his glory expand!

...He cherishes it, and he calls it his friend,
and he frequently takes it in hand..."

... and Mayuri just couldn't help but wonder if Momotaro was actually aware of what he was singing about.

Probably - he thought - someone should go there and explain it Momotaro...

Or - he added with a grin - probably he should wait until tomorrow, when Momotaro would be sober enough to understand it, and tell him then.

-oOo-

Hours crawled by slowly and nothing happened. Mayuri didn't move from the river bank. He didn't want to mingle, and he was not interested in the festival, so he just lay on the smooth grass, staring at the night sky. Among all the things he hated, the Obon festival was very nearly the worst. It was not only dangerous and pointless in his opinion, but it also brought back bad memories. It was the time of the year when his mother died.

She was what Soul Society called an "administrative mistake". Gaijin, the dark or pale skinned, round eyed, strange foreigners of the west were a rare sight in Soul Society. They had their own afterworld (Mayuri suspected every country did) and although, from time to time, the rumor of one or two of them being sighted in Rukongai cropped up, they never remained there for long. They usually disappeared within a few years. In Soul Society the population was even more homogeneously Japanese than Japan itself in the Living World, so these strange foreigners with their unusual languages and habits were often marked as rude barbarians and were greeted with the same mistrust and rejection everywhere.

Dumped for apparently no reason in the strange and contradictory world of Soul Society, all alone, these people were lost, wandering souls. Yet, some of them did manage to build up some human relationships. This was how Mayuri's mother, a woman with weak nerves, who was born to be admired in the Living World, ended up as a tool of what was considered "eccentric sexual taste" in Soul Society, and a concubine of a man whose cruelty was legendary.

Mayuri of course didn't know anything about this as a child and even when he learned it later, he didn't give it much thought. He hardly had any memories of his mother, because he had barely seen her at all. Since Lord Kurotsuchi's wife couldn't stand the sight of her husband's concubine, he moved Mayuri and his mother into the family's summer cottage near the hills along with a handful of servants. It was a huge house for two people, and there was only one rule in it: Mayuri had to stay out of his mother's way. This, however, was something easily done, because she almost never left her room.

Mayuri was about seven when one evening as he was playing in the corridor, he noticed that the door to his mother's room was open a crack. He peeked through but the room seemed empty, so he tiptoed in, ready to run if needed. Despite meeting so rarely with her, Mayuri was terrified of his mother. It was commonly known in the household that she had an... issue. Sometimes she threw tantrums and broke everything into pieces in her room, ripping every fabric to shreds while yelling and screaming unintelligible things in her strange, childish sounding tongue. Once she had beaten up a servant girl who tried to stop her so badly, the poor girl was confined to bed for weeks - or maybe for longer, but Mayuri didn't know how long because Lord Kurotsuchi fired her a few days later for not being able to work.

Once Mayuri's mother calmed down, she usually moved to another room of the house, closed the door on herself, and disappeared for another month. She seemed to be almost constantly tortured by - what she said was - a terrible headache, and it generally made her snappish and short tempered, but sometimes it grew worse, and at these times she could break down completely at the smallest provocation. Once Mayuri accidentally dropped and broke a small hand mirror. When she noticed it, she went into a terrible fit of anger; she hit her son again and again, yelling and screaming what an intolerable, ignorant little fool he was, until the servants had to drag her off him. Ever since then he had tried to avoid her as best as he could, but this time his curiosity took the better of him.

The room was a mess. The air was heavy with the stale smell of sweat and perfume. The floor was covered with magazines, empty sake bottles were laying everywhere while brushes, vials and makeup jars were left all around on the mats. Mayuri poked about a bit, flicked through the magazines, spilled out the perfumes and opened the makeup jars. Within a few minutes he had completely forgotten where he was, he got so immersed in this game. He only realized his mistake when the door slid open behind him and when he turned he saw his mother standing there.

It took him a few moments to recognize her. The woman had wide, dark eyes, and long hair that was thick and wavy, much like his own. The servants told him sometimes that his mother was beautiful, but back then, as a child, Mayuri couldn't decide if this was true or not.

"Oh, it's you," she said with a lazy smile. She was leaning against the door frame, with mad light in her eyes, stinking with the sickening, sweet smell of alcohol. "And here I was wondering if some thief broke in."

At this point Mayuri, who had frozen in his fear and surprise, found his voice. He quickly tried to slip out past her leg, mumbling that he was sorry, but the woman caught him.

"Where are you going?" she complained. "I am your mother. Why don't you ever want to be with me? Stay!" she put her arms around him, and drew him into a close, tight hug. Mayuri could feel her hot breath on his ear. "You must stay here if I say so! You will never leave me, will you? You are my child, you can't leave me. You are mine," she purred as she stroked his hair.

Mayuri was fidgeting uncomfortably in her arms. He was hardly ever touched and never more than what was completely necessary, and now this hug was just too much, too sudden and way too intimate for him. He didn't like the way this woman smelled, he didn't like how her damp, long hair pressed to his face, but most of all he didn't like the tone of her voice. She sounded calm and sweet, but there was tension behind her words, like the calm before the storm. He carefully tried to break away from the hug, but her sharp fingernails dug so hard into the soft flesh of his tiny arm that he hissed in pain.

"Stay!" she snapped and suddenly all kindness was gone from her voice.

Mayuri obeyed. He could still remember vividly what happened last time he didn't. He tried to stand as still as a statue in the stifling hug, hoping if he did as he was told, he could be free faster.

"Good," she whispered.

She dragged Mayuri to the small dressing table by the wall, and pushed him down to sit in front of it. Then she knelt behind him and ran her fingers through his hair again.

"You have such a beautiful hair," she said with a little chuckle. "It is so soft, and its color..." she picked up a brush from the table and began to comb Mayuri's hair with it. "It has the color of peacock feathers."

Mayuri sat so stiff, his muscles began to ache, but he didn't dare to move. He was afraid even the smallest motion could annoy her and would earn him a beating again. Instead, he was staring into the mirror on the table, watching all her movements in its reflection with wide eyes.

"One day we will run away from here. Just you and me!" she went on smiling, and she stroked his head. "Then I will take you to my home and I will show you peacocks. Would you like that?"

These words calmed Mayuri down a bit. It seemed she was in one of her talkative moods again. Sometimes, when her demons left her in peace for a length of breath's time, his mother had these. She told him tales about a land where she was born in the World of Living, where the gods were golden, red and blue, where monsters with striped hides lurked in the forests, and creatures huge as a mountain with white teeth hanging out of their mouths and a noses long enough to sniff even the top of their own heads lived. Mayuri loved these tales.

"Peafowls are beautiful, magical creatures," she went on. "They don't age, and even the deadliest poisons can't harm them. They are immortal. The rich keep these birds in their gardens as guardians against the venomous serpents of the jungle."

"Immortal? Like a phoenix?" asked Mayuri.

A shadow crossed the woman's beautiful features.

"No," she said slowly. "Phoenixes aren't immortal. The fools in this world believe so only because phoenixes are reborn again after their death," her face contorted into a contemptuous grimace. "What sort of an immortal needs to die first to stay alive?" She pouted indignantly. "How absurd! Peafowls don't die. Ever."

The brush fell out from her hand and hit the floor with a loud knock and she grabbed his arms roughly and spun him around.

"This is why I named you Mayuri. Do you understand?" her voice turned strangely dark. "Don't die, don't ever die! Because once you die you will only suffer..."

Mayuri nodded frightened.

"Mayuri..." she repeated. "Peahen. It is a beautiful name for a girl..." she said with a bright smile. Her voice was wavering.

A grimace crossed Mayuri's face.

"But I am not a..." he began but quickly stopped himself as he noticed the look on his mother's face, but it was already too late. The woman's expression froze in a frown, her pupils had widened, and suddenly her grasp tightened around his arms.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she snapped, spinning Mayuri around and shaking him hard. "Don't you dare look at me like that! Do you hear me?" she screamed and she drew back her hand and slapped him across the face. "Don't you dare look at me with those disgusting eyes of yours! You look just like that stupid old man! Stop it!"

Mayuri was too stunned to react. He just stood there for a few moments, staring at his mother in shocked silence. Hot tears pooled in his eyes, and rolled down his face before he could stop them. His cheek was burning where he had been hit, but this pain was nothing compared to the terror he felt. He didn't understand what he did wrong this time; he tried so hard to be good! He couldn't understand why he was punished now; he couldn't see a logical reason to it! The whole situation was too irrational.

"Are you deaf? I said stop this!" the woman hissed as she slapped Mayuri again, then she grabbed his arm hard and dragged him to the door. "Get out! Get out!" she screamed, pushing him out to the corridor and slamming the door behind him.

Mayuri ran into his room and slumped into the corner, crying, wishing his mother would just disappear from his life somehow. If only someone would come and take him away somewhere far from her, or make her suddenly vanish somehow... - but even Mayuri knew these were only the wistful thoughts of a child. Nobody would come! Nobody would protect a child from their own parent. Nobody cared.

And why should they? Nobody had ever asked for Kurotsuchi Mayuri to be born, and now that he had been, he probably should have been simply glad to exist and be kept - only Mayuri couldn't feel this way. He saw the other children on the streets, how their mothers treated them, the tender love of a family, and he felt betrayed. How could others have such normal, loving parents, and why did he have to be stuck with this?

"If only I was never born..."he whispered between muffled sobs. "If only she would die!"

That day, however, someone was listening to his wishes. That was the day when his dreams began.

They were subtle at first, hardly more than a soft susurrus of voices on the back of the wind. They were strange, alien voices, twisted and dual-toned, nothing that could have belonged to a human, yet they sounded sympathetic, almost friendly. He could close them out if he wanted, but when he tried to listen he thought he could make out a few words.

She shouldn't...

Why do you allow her to...? You shouldn't let her...

We could protect you...

Usually he forgot about them as soon as he woke, but they had returned each night like a fateful friend, whispering in his ear. As time passed, these dreams became stronger, and sometimes Mayuri thought he could almost make out the words, while other times, the voices stayed completely absent. Instead he found himself on the bank of a black river, in the middle of a strange, dark desert, with dead sand under his feet, mounds built of rocks and stones around him and the image of a sparkling, white walled city up in the night sky.

It was years later when he at last understood the importance of these dreams, but it was already too late by then.

It was the time of the Obon festival back then too, and his mother was in a worse mood than ever before. Souls could leave the otherworld, but only if they were called on. The living crafted little horses and animals out of vegetables, placed them on the sacrificial altars, and they became magical steeds in the spiritual world. When people didn't have magical gates at hand, only these creatures could take a soul between the worlds.

Mayuri wasn't sure what his mother expected. Probably she believed if she could at least once slip away from there, she could find her way to the place she belonged to. She would sit in the garden for days, often without sleeping, watching the sky and waiting for something that never came. Nobody had ever created a vegetable horse for her. Nobody had ever tried to call her back.

With each day of waiting, she would become more and more bitter, and with each year it would be worse. It wasn't different now either. She sat in the garden, unmoving and silent like a statue all day.

Mayuri had set up bird traps around the yard to pass the time and collected the songbirds he caught with them in a cage on the veranda; on sunny days their song filled the garden and the house. If his mother didn't like them, she had never complained before. But today suddenly, without a warning, she jumped to her feet and stormed into Mayuri's room, ripping open the door with a violent jolt.

"I have had enough of this!" she yelled, her eyes were blazing with anger. "Make them shut up, or I swear I will!"

Over the years Mayuri had learned to know the difference between the "right answer" and the "sensible answer" in such situations, but he was tired of always being the sensible one. He was tired of always avoiding the arguments, and cringing in the corner in fear. He was at that age when one is not exactly a teenager yet, but had already stopped thinking about himself as a child. He felt bold, defiant and very independent, and to show this to her, Mayuri gave an answer he knew would drive her even more mad, keeping his voice deliberately calm:

"No. They are birds; it is their nature to sing. If you want silence, plug your ears up!"

His tactics worked. Her brows furrowed, and her eyes darkened.

"How dare you speak to me like this?" she hissed in anger, and she crossed the room with a single leap and grabbed his arm in a grip so strong he cried out in pain. For all his momentary rebelliousness he was still just a child, much smaller and weaker than her. "Who do you think you are, my dear? You won't speak like this to me! You will do what I tell you!" she yelled and shook him hard.

Tears burned in his eyes, and with a half sob, half growl he snatched his arm away from her grip, but this had only earned him a hard slap across his face.

"No, I won't!" Another hit came, and this time Mayuri couldn't hold back his weeping. "I won't because I can't! Don't you see? What you ask of me is impossible!"

Impossible... This word rang in his mind again and again, and suddenly, for the first time he heard the voices despite being awake.

She is hurting us! She shouldn't...

She has no right...

"Oh?" she said lowering her voice. "Do you think you are so great? So mighty and clever?"

"No, I don't..."

She should stop!

"Do you think you know what is possible so much better than me? You are too full of yourself. Who do you think you are?" she repeated. "You are but a snotty brat!"

I can help you...

"Why do you hurt me? I did nothing wrong now!" Mayuri said, sniffing. "It isn't because of the birds, is it?"

His words must have touched a raw nerve because the woman seemed to pause, if only for a moment before she found her venomous rage again.

"You are just like your father!" she spat at him, her voice full of frustration and disdain. She bared her teeth and for a moment she looked like a beautiful, twisting asp. "A selfish, arrogant, cold-hearted monster!"

Mayuri wouldn't have believed before how much these words stung him, especially since he felt it should be he telling this to her. He burst into tears again, but he was also trembling in fury. He felt stronger than ever before, as if a strange, foreign power was bubbling up in him.

"I hate you!" he shouted at her, hoping his words hurt her as much as hers did him. "You are crazy!"

She should die! the voice whispered in Mayuri's head, and such a strong wave of anger washed through him like he had never felt before.

"I wish you would die!"

"What did you say?" the woman exclaimed in shock.

Yes! Die!

"Die!"

And then the world vanished.

-oOo-

It would probably be wrong to say that Mayuri awoke, because waking up usually comes with more light and space and an awareness of his body, but he was slowly beginning to gain back his consciousness. He was in darkness; a warm, airless darkness, like under the covers of a bed. There was a strong smell of water and Mayuri thought he could feel the sand under his body - although he wasn't entirely sure where his body was.

He wasn't afraid; the whole place felt strangely familiar, as if he had arrived home.

Mayuri, said a voice, and Mayuri recognized it as the one that he had heard in his dreams before. It sounded like a child, but it had an undertone to it, as if an old woman was repeating every word said at the same time.

"Where am I?" he said.

You are safe, answered the voice.

I took you and hid you from the eyes of those who would hurt you. You are safe now, here, with me.

"Who are you?" Mayuri whispered, almost fearfully.

I am the savior of children, the voice said.

I am the protector of the lost and the unwanted.

I am...

And suddenly Mayuri knew what it wanted to say:

"...Jizo," he whispered.

So close, the voice chuckled. But not exactly...

The world began to swirl around Mayuri, his head felt light and he felt a pull suddenly, as if some force was sweeping him upwards from the depths of an ocean to the surface, to the light. He woke up with a jolt and drew a breath as deep as if it was his first.

"Are you alright, son?"

As the world stopped swirling around him and shapes began to edge out again from the hazy patches and blotches before his eyes, he saw an elderly man kneeling above him. He had an open, honest face; wide and wrinkled, yet ageless in a "somewhere over his middle ages" way. Behind his round glasses his dark eyes were warm and sympathetic.

"Are you alright? Do you hear me?" he repeated again, and he was visibly relieved when Mayuri nodded. "You scared me there a bit, my son. Not a kind thing to do to such an old man!" he said with a kind smile.

Mayuri looked around. He was home again, lying on a futon in his own room. The sound of some sort of bustling filtered through the door, people were speaking hurriedly, in agitated voices, a woman was crying somewhere, and Mayuri was certain he could hear his father's voice too. He was yelling at somebody, and from the tone he sounded terribly angry for some reason.

Mayuri slowly sat up.

His head was hurting and he had an unusual, sickening feeling in his stomach, something he had never felt anything similar to before.

"Who are you?" he asked the old man.

"I am Doctor Miura, your mother's physician," replied the old man. "How are you feeling?"

"I am feeling strange. My stomach..." his stomach had chosen this moment to omit a loud rumble. Mayuri's eyes widened in terror. "What was that? Am I going to die?"

"Of hunger? I most certainly hope not!" replied Dr. Miura with a good natured smile and then sent to the kitchen for some food.

"Hunger?" repeated Mayuri, surprised. Hunger was something he had only heard about before, as something some adults experienced, but not he. "Is this what they call hunger?"

"I believe so," said the old man. "Have you never been hungry before?"

Mayuri shook his head.

"It isn't a very nice feeling," he stated disapprovingly. He felt he didn't like being hungry much.

"Indeed it isn't," agreed the doctor, watching him thoughtfully. "But it will be gone in a moment, just eat a little." In the meantime a servant - much to Mayuri's surprise, one he had never seen before - arrived with some soup and rice on a tray. He wanted to ask the doctor who it was, but before he could open his mouth the doctor commanded him to eat.

Simple rice had never tasted this good to him, and he had hardly taken a few bites before he had to admit that the doctor was right! The pain in his stomach was suddenly all gone.

"Do you remember what happened?" the old man asked him, and Mayuri told him all about his argument with his mother and how he fainted suddenly afterward. He carefully left out the part about the voice in his head - he wasn't sure what the doctor would think of him if he told him that. He suspected that hearing voices that weren't there isn't exactly normal.

"So you were arguing, and you got agitated? Maybe scared or angry too?" said the doctor, thinking.

Mayuri just stared at him. These questions began to annoy him. Then suddenly he remembered something:

"Where is my mother?" he asked, and not waiting for the answer he jumped up and ran out the door, down the corridor to his mother's room, before Miura could catch him.

"Wait! Don't go in there!" But Mayuri was already at the door, and had opened it.

Inside two saffron robed Buddhist priests chanted prayers and shook paper tasseled wands to drive away evil spirits. The air was grey with the smoke of strong incenses and someone had drawn a line of salt across the windowsills and the door to trap the contamination of the death in the room.

His mother was lying on a futon. Her lovely face was contorted in pain and her lips blackened. Her hair was lying around her in a tussled mess, smeared with vomit that also stained her kimono and dried on the smooth skin of her face.

Mayuri was staring at her unmoving form, and in a sudden shock he realized:

"She is dead, isn't she?"

"I am afraid so," said Miura behind him, slowly. "I am truly sorry, son."

Mayuri nodded.

"I know it feels terrible right now," the doctor said and squeezed his shoulder warmly. "If you wanted to be alone a little... to cry..."

"Would that change anything?" Mayuri asked levelly.

"No," admitted Miura.

Mayuri only nodded again calmly, then turned around and returned to his room.

-oOo-

The doctor left to talk to his father, and Mayuri was sitting alone in his room, staring at the wall, thinking. He was shaking. He felt sick, and guilt sat in his stomach as a heavy stone. His eyes were burning, red and hot, but he didn't cry. He couldn't.

His mother was dead, and he killed her. Of course he said he wanted her to die, but he didn't in his heart honestly think that anything would happen! He said those words from the safety of the knowledge that they don't matter! Only, it seems, they did, and now there was no way to turn things back.

He thought of the mysterious whispers in his head. He wondered if it was some sort of a demon or some evil spirit. He was certain its appearance was somehow connected to what had happened, and wondered for a moment if he should have told about them to the doctor, but he almost immediately shooed this thought away. It was better if nobody knew about that. Who knows what his father would do to him if he learned that his son got possessed or went insane and killed his concubine!

A shadow passed before the door of the room, and Mayuri saw the silhouette of a man kneeling down before it.

"Kurotsuchi-sama!" said the man and he opened the door, and bowed before Mayuri. "Your lord-father wishes for you in the yard!"

When Mayuri entered the yard, he found the doctor and Lord Kurotsuchi in what seemed from afar a heated conversation. His father looked furious, but not exactly shaken. He was walking up and down, stomping in his rage like some evil, angry dwarf out of a child's tale. He looked not so much as a relative in mourning, but more like a merchant who had just learned that he had lost a valued possession reserved for sale. When he noticed Mayuri, he motioned the boy to join them.

"The good doctor here told me something very interesting about you," Lord Kurotsuchi said, shooting a stern glance at doctor Miura who was wringing his hands worriedly next to him. "He said that you have reiatsu. What's more, he believes that you may have awakened that power within you somehow and that was what caused all," he vaguely waved a hand around, "this. Is it true?"

"My Lord..." began Miura in a nervous yet clearly disapproving tone, but a move of Lord Kurotsuchi's hand silenced him immediately.

"Answer, boy!"

Mayuri was glaring at his toes, not daring to look up. He had no idea what a reiatsu was, or how one went about to "awaken" it, but he suspected if he said this, it would only make his father even more angry.

"My lord, he has no way to know it!" objected Miura quickly.

"I see. Then we have no choice but to test it," stated Lord Kurotsuchi, and he reached out, and touched Mayuri's shoulder.

Suddenly, the whole world began to shake for Mayuri. He tried to scream but he couldn't. Air skipped from his lungs and his bones turned into jelly as he fell to his knees. He felt as if icy fingers grabbed and squeezed his heart and with a strong tug something had tried to drag his soul out. It had hurt so much, tears began to flow from his eyes and with all his strength he tried to oppose this unusual force. He tried to push against it both with his muscles and his mind, but it felt as if he was trying to stop a tsunami with just his hands. The tide was sweeping him away, but when he felt his consciousness slipping again, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Mayuri was kneeling on the ground, panting as the world slowly stopped spinning around him.

"My Lord! Please!" Mayuri heard the doctor's apprehensive voice. "You can't do that! He is still weak from what happened to him today!" Kurotsuchi, however, ignored him and dragged Mayuri back to his feet.

"It is true!" he said, a little surprised and thoughtful. "As weak as it was, I could feel your reiatsu pushing against mine." He turned to Miura. "Well, it seems you were right, doctor. I am in your debt! Tomorrow, I will send one of my men to your house with your payment. You may leave now!" and with a careless move he motioned for the other man to leave.

When the doctor was out of earshot, he turned to one of his bodyguards, and to Mayuri's horror, he said:

"Follow him! Make sure everyone sees him return home safely." The guard nodded. "And then make sure he doesn't get a chance to tell anyone what he saw here today!"

Lord Kurotsuchi looked his son up and down.

"A shinigami, eh?" he said, stroking his chin, watching Mayuri thoughtfully. "Maybe I have not paid as much attention to you as I should have. I believe it is time to change that. But first, we should take care of this mess you made."

Mayuri watched his father barking some orders to his underlings, who disappeared into the house. A few minutes later they came back, dragging a portly old woman, an old man and a servant girl with them. Mayuri recognized the older woman as the cook. He liked her a lot. She was always smiling and she always put some extra mochi away for him. The old man was someone who Mayuri often saw tending the gardens when the weather was warm. The girl must have been new in the household, because Mayuri couldn't really place her, but now they all looked pale and shaken, and the servant girl was weeping silently, with huge, shiny tears. They were, as Mayuri learned later, the only servants who survived - the rest died the same mysterious way his mother did.

One of the soldiers forced them all on their knees before Mayuri, their heads bowed deep.

"What is happening?" Mayuri asked at last, when he could muster up the courage.

"Because of you, I have made a fool out of myself," replied his father. "The whole Omnitsukido of Seireitei, every policeman and all my own guards are trying to find the assassin that supposedly snuck in here to murder my family. How do you suggest I should solve this situation without losing face? Hmm? Shall I go and tell them I already have the murderer? My own son?"

"It was an accident," whispered Mayuri, trembling, through his sobs.

"I don't care if it was," stated his father dismissively. "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that it has happened, my beloved lies dead and justice demands that the culprits shall be punished."

Mayuri's eyes widened in shock when he realized what his father was talking about.

"But they are innocent! They have done..."

"Nothing?" Lord Kurotsuchi retorted impatiently. "They die now for letting an assassin into my house and letting it go free. And because dead men don't speak."

One of the soldiers stepped forward and drew his sword behind the servant girl.

"They die now," went on Lord Kurotsuchi, "so you can live. Watch it. This is all your doing."

-oOo-

Months later the bird cage was still hanging on the veranda, but it was almost empty. Only one, lonely, green feathered little bird was hunkering on one of its perches silently. It was watching Mayuri closing the cage on him with its last companion crying heartbreakingly in the boy's hand.

Mayuri took it to his desk, where everything was prepared for his little experiment: the wood was covered with thick soft paper; pins, sticks and knives were lying in a neat line at the sides, shining in the afternoon light, and a small, unpainted china bowl sat in the middle.

After a moment of hesitation, Mayuri held the bird above the bowl, picked up the knife and drew it across the bird's tiny throat. He watched how it tried to fight and break away, how it fluttered its tiny, fragile wings to avoid its fate. Then, at last, its movements slowed down, its head fell forward with a weak rattle breaking through its open beak. The deadly white lower lids of its eyes slowly slid up and with that the bird froze.

Mayuri watched it with a strange, detached curiosity, and a tiny spark of satisfaction over the realization that this was done by him. The bird died, because it was in his power to kill it. It was his decision, his choice. For the first time in a long while he felt that he had control over something, even if it was such a measly thing as the life of an animal.

He was a little surprised, though, how little did the bird's death touch him. Death was just death. There was nothing complicated in it.

It was simple.

Unremarkable.

-oOo-

Mayuri awoke to the sound of battle. It took him a few moments to realize that he was back in the present again. The streets of Karakura Town were echoing with a roar - deep and angry - the sound of clashing steel, and the pained cry of the wounded. Someone was screaming orders, and shinigami were running around with weapons in their hand.

"Wake up! Wake up!" cried a familiar voice, and as Mayuri looked up he saw Momotaro emerging from the chaos of black robes. His face was pale, and his expression horrified. "We are under attack!" he said. "Hollows are everywhere!"

..

.

.

..

A.n.:

"A wizard's staff has a knob on the end" is a song by Heather Wood. If you were a Discworld fan, you know which song this is! :)

I am pretty sure Tite Kubo named Mayuri after the Japanese word "mayu", meaning cocoon, and meant us to associate him with caterpillars and butterflies instead of peafowls. But when I realized what the name Mayuri does mean in another language, and seeing how Szayel is already associated with phoenixes (and how he had his ass kicked by Mayuri himself), while peafowls have this legend about them, I thought this association fitted Mayuri just as well as "cocoons". Strangely enough the color of his hair, eyes and face paint seem to fit to this image too. Just take a good look at a peacock!

The place Mayuri is dreaming about is NOT Hueco Mundo, but I strongly suspect there is a connection.