Dislcaimer: I do not own Dresden Files or Bleach or anything that anybody else in the known universe could sue me for. I own nothing.
AN: All right, a little note here to get everybody started up. This story takes place four years before the Bleach main storyline and just after Summer Knight in Dresden Files storyline. Which actually puts the current storylines at about the same time. This story will be just before Jinta and Ururu come into the care of Kisuke, and I take a couple of other liberties considering parts of his past that we can only really guess at this point. I've worked hard to keep it as even as possible between the two storylines, and have worked out every bit of reasoning I can muster to justify differences so the blending process is easier. Please, I hope you like it and if you have any constructive criticism I am perfectly open to it. Enjoy!
Trial By Error
Kisuke Urahara spent hours each morning before opening making sure everything was as neat and tidy as possible. People liked neat and tidy shops; it made them think that they were in a respectable establishment. The night of the grand opening about two months ago, Kisuke hadn't been able to sleep. So instead, he'd cleaned and cleaned and straightened and cleaned some more. He could never remember forsaking that much sleep for anything other than one of his projects; a habit he'd been trying to kick since his teens. Lately when he couldn't sleep because of some technical problem with his latest toy he would saunter around the shop just doing what needed doing. It kept his hands occupied while his mind wandered. Although he learned quickly that some things need to have one's complete attention. For example, whenever he was working with box cutters. He had quite literally put his blood, sweat, and tears into the shop's creation due to inattention with a sharp, pointy object.
And now everything, all his hard work over the last couple months, lay in shambles at his feet. Shelves were toppled over on each other, many of them broken irreparably. Anything plastic was in relatively good shape but anything glass had smashed upon contact with the tile. The freezers had been left open and their contents spilled out onto the floor. Long melted ice cream was now useless. Beers in glass bottles had also broken when smashed onto the ground, splashing the floor with puddles of colorful liquid. The beer created a pungent stench that mixed horribly with the cheap perfume already in the air, filling it with a variety of scents that made his nose itch. This combination of smells and broken glass promised to make his cleanup job not only nauseating but also potentially hazardous.
He wouldn't even bother to save most of the merchandise that was destroyed. It was pointless. Besides, if he was a customer and he learned that he was being sold goods that had undergone this kind of vandalism he might not come back to that shop. It would take Kisuke forever to pay for the damages. As it stood, if he hoped to avoid going completely out of business he wouldn't be eating for a week.
He didn't know how long he stood there, surveying the damage to his shop and pondering what to do next. All the while he stood there, he continued fighting the childish anger in the back of his mind. The shop was his...and somebody had snuck in and torn it apart.
"Kisuke?" a voice called out from the front door. He turned his attention upward to discover one of his favorite people standing in the doorway watching him observe the damage. Chocolate skin covered by a simple white T-shirt and tight jeans, both of which brought out the color of her skin and the sinew of her amazonian frame. Her violet hair was pulled back into a fighter's ponytail with a few wild bangs framing golden eyes with vaguely feline slits. Those golden eyes were narrowed in concern.
"Yoruichi," he greeted. "Come in...be careful of broken glass." The last was added when he saw all she was wearing on her feet were a set of yellow flip-flops.
She stepped through the door. Literally through the door. The glass was smashed enough for her to fit through. "What happened?"
"I went out for a night. I had to check in with my...contact." 'Contact' meaning the person who supplied him with the soul reaper goods he couldn't sell lawfully.
"They tore the place apart..."
"I kinda noticed that."
She ignored him and absently shoved a jagged edge out of her way with the tip of her flip flop, "Do you think a soul reaper did this?"
Kisuke nodded. It had occurred to him. He hadn't originally thought them so petty, but exiles weren't supposed to be living it up. It was a distinct possibility. "Maybe..."
"You set up wards before you left?"
Again, he nodded, "I had some written down. They were pasted on the walls."
"You know that if you get one brush stroke wrong on those they can be completely ineffective?"
He touched a fallen shelf, testing to see if it could be salvaged. "Yes, Ms. Shihonin, I'm well aware of that. But it's unlikely. I've written that set thousands of times. It shouldn't have failed against a simple soul reaper. And this is just too small potatoes to get a captain involved." The shelf withstood a couple of shoves, before falling completely apart on the third. Of course...it would have just been too damn easy if he could have reused the old shelves.
"Humans?"
"Nah. The ward I used was supposed to turn rascals away too. It was meant to keep out everything from hollows and soul reapers to...mice."
"They didn't steal anything?" The question was more of a statement as she examined the wounded cash register. The poor thing was smashed on the floor so badly that its monetary guts were littered all across the hard cement.
He didn't say anything, quickly becoming fascinated with a little detail he hadn't noticed before. Perhaps if he looked like he hadn't heard her then he could avoid the verbal thrashing for a few more moments. He had enough problems as it was without her pointing out something he was already well aware of. It wouldn't do to lie to her either. Childish, maybe, to pretend the problem didn't exist. But if soul reapers, any soul reapers, had been the ones to take it then he was screwed whatever he did. It would be long gone and he in very serious trouble.
"They didn't steal anything did they?" she said, a little more of a growl added to her words.
"They stole my self-esteem if that's what you mean..." He was still examining something, going on the off chance that he was in luck.
There was no need to look behind to see her realize what his silence was hiding. He could hear the horribly exasperated sigh that came from her. "They stole it didn't they?"
He found himself walking the perimeter now, his eyesight completely focused on the ceiling. "...Yeah...only thing they took in the entire shop."
"Damnit, Kisuke..." she said suddenly, using the tone of voice a parent uses after their child has run across the street to fetch a ball; a strange mixture of anger and worry, "If a soul reaper took that and brought it back to the Soul Society they can gut you!"
"Relax, I don't think a soul reaper took it."
"But you just said it might have been a soul reaper."
"I'm disproving that theory right now." He opened the door to the storage room and stepped inside. "Look at the lights."
Yoruichi glanced up at the bulbs just above them. Her eyes narrowed. "They're scorched." She was starting to catch on, which was good.
"Bingo. Fuse box is blown too. Whatever it was it completely fried the wiring of the building."
Yoruichi was blinking at him, searching her memory for anything that could have caused that kind of damage. The fried electrical system was giving Kisuke a pretty good idea of what was behind it. Hollows and soul reapers, spirit energy in general, wasn't made to affect the world around it. It could affect people who had high enough levels of it themselves, and it could react to the physical world in high concentrations, but not the world around it. Spirit energy existed on a spiritual plain, a different dimension of reality. It only interfered with technology when that spirit energy was transformed and used in the physical world.
For example: a soul reaper and a hollow are fighting in a hospital. Each is made up of high concentrations of spirit particles that can cause damage to and interact with the physical environment. However, even the most sensitive electronics in the hospital wouldn't be affected by the spiritual energy radiating off the two combatants.
Some people with high levels of spirit energy went their whole lives unable to manipulate it to their advantage. A very select few were born with the ability to manipulate their energy strictly on the spiritual plain, allowing them to fight hollows and other creatures of the spirit.
Then there were those in the class all there own. Those able to bring their spirit energy into the physical world and manipulate it there. A side effect was interference with electrical currents. There were fewer overall of this type than the populations of those with high levels, but many more than those able to manipulate their energy on the spiritual plain. The Nan Wu, the practitioners, the mages...
...The wizards.
VVVVV
Harry Dresden woke up from his usual nightmare to Mister's playful bats at his face. The cat's claws weren't extended, mercifully. If they were then Harry figured he would have a hard time charming possible clients that day, what with his face cut to ribbons and everything. That and he would have woken up a lot sooner. No, he knew from personal experience he would have woken up sooner. The kitten he'd picked up on the street soon learned that kitty scratches were not the appropriate way to wake up Mr. Dresden.
"Outta my way, Fur Face, I'm up," Harry yawned as he crawled out of the warm covers and his warm feet touched the cold floor. Mister gave him a long glance, as if to make sure Harry intended to get up and feed him and not go back to bed. With a sniff, Mister disappeared into the kitchen/living room that made up the rest of Harry's apartment. Harry seriously considered nabbing a couple more minutes of sleep, but a quick glance at the clock told him it was time to face another day, earn another dollar, and hopefully live to face the next one.
His apartment was small and basic. There were none of the modern things such as stoves or refrigerator. A couple of dirty clothes still rested on the sofa. Eh, he needed to clean that up. A zombie had slimed one of them and he'd been procrastinating taking it to the dry cleaners. He always got looks at the smell. And he guessed that as a result the couch had become something of a dumping ground for clothes that got likewise slimed. Naturally, an underlying smell of something rotting was becoming increasingly noticeable. Damn, it used to be cleaner. What happened? Oh right, vamp girlfriend.
The most he had in the way of decorations were some old movie posters and the occasional ward that kept the beasties from coming in and messing the place up...worse than it already was, that is.
With great force of will he pulled himself out of bed and shuffled into the apartment. He opened the ice box and pulled out the carton of milk, with every intention in the world of pouring himself a nice, nonabrasive morning drink.
That was his intention until all that came out of the milk carton was a thick, lumpy cream-like substance and a foul smell that filled the apartment so completely it made him force down a dry wretch.
He had air in his tires, no heat in his shower, and clusters in his milk. Yep, he lived a glorious life alright.
He was still recovering from a spell he'd been tinkering with relentlessly not too long ago; a spell he'd hoped would cure his...ex...girlfriend of her vampirism. He'd gotten next to no real work done because he'd spent so much time in his lab. As a result he'd barely been able to pay his rent the last couple of months, much less eat anything that Murphy or the Alphas weren't kind enough to buy for him. But he'd started shaving again and he'd cut his hair in such a way that it didn't look absolutely atrocious to any possible clients. He felt like he was getting back on his feet and thought this month held promise for just that.
Who would have thought it would take the world ending to get him back on the right track?
All of a sudden, the sound of a ringing phone interrupted his momentary diversion into his own thoughts. He walked over and picked it up. "Hello?" He answered.
"Harry?" A feminine voice said from the other end of the line.
"Last I checked."
"Cut the crap, Dresden, I'm not calling for a friendly visit."
"What's up, Murph?" He said more seriously. Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, head of Chicago PD's SI unit. In other words, leader of the Department's dumping ground for everything from cases nobody else wants to officers no one else wants. In the eyes of the Department Murphy's sole purpose is to take all of those messy, messy cases and package them up all nice and pretty. As a result Murphy and her folks had seen their fair share of supernatural crimes they couldn't solve.
ENTER: Friendly Neighborhood Wizard.
"I've got work for you." There was a dark, foreshadowing tone in her voice. He'd known her long enough to know what it meant.
He sighed, his heart sinking despite the thought of eating on his own buck for once, "I'm sorry to hear that..."
VVVVV
The apartment was a nice one, at least ten times larger than his own. It probably would have felt a lot bigger if not for the police investigators and paramedics cramming into every corner of the room, taking pictures and notes. If they were anything like Harry they were probably trying to forget why they were there at all. He felt it the second he walked in; the dreaded presence of death that clung to the apartment like thick smog. It added to the sense of claustrophobia in the room. Even the vanilla humans must have been feeling it, if the fidgeting and occasional nervous glances were any indication.
He made his way through the crowd, ignoring the strange, even hostile glances he got until he found a circle of detectives discussing something in the living room. Harry had been expecting a violent crime scene. Like hearts-exploding-out-of-chests violent. Or a disembowelment maybe. Disembowelments were popular among the denizens of the Nevernever. It was a classic that wasn't likely to go out of style anytime soon. Maybe a decapitation. Impalement. And countless other nasty deaths that added to his nightmares.
A man lay on the floor in front of the circle of detectives. He was anywhere from his late twenties to early thirties. Everything about him screamed sophistication; black slacks, black turtleneck, gelled back black hair. It fit with the rest of the apartment, which was almost exclusively white. He looked like he was passed out, a little pale from death, but extremely peaceful. As a matter of fact the only splotch of red on the entire scene was from the glass of wine he'd obviously dropped when he had died.
A blond woman stood in the circle of detectives. With her lovely locks and height that placed her almost two full feet below him she could have looked like someone's kid-sister, but the grim set to her jaw and the way she held herself told everybody in the room who was in charge.
"Hey, Murph," He greeted as cheerfully as circumstances allowed. Then more seriously, "What do we know so far?"
"Joshua Takanaka, 34, no obvious signs of death."
"He was carrying a bottle of wine when he kicked, might be poison."
Murphy nodded, "Yeah, that's what I thought too, but there aren't any of the normal external signs of poison. I know they don't all fit the same bill, but we'll still have to wait and see how the tox screen comes back."
"There aren't any other possible culprits?"
"You mean does he have a knife sticking out his forehead? Trust me, I looked." She ran a hand irritably through her blond locks. "Come with me, there's a reason I called you."
She took him back through the people surveying the crime scene to a large closet in the man's bedroom. Like everything else in the apartment, everything in the bedroom was either white or some version of cream color. It had the insanely tidy quality of either somebody who didn't live there much or who was neat to the point of bordering on obsessive compulsive.
Murphy slid open the closet door on the side of the room. Harry's eyes immediately narrowed in concentration as this new piece of evidence settled into the scene.
It was a shrine. There were statues of gods and goddesses that Harry recognized as Japanese, but not much more beyond that. Symbols were carved onto the small box that the statues and incense stood on. Harry knew he would have to take some pictures and try and find out which gods they were, and what the symbols meant. It was as he was taking in the shrine that he spied something he hadn't seen before. He looked around the bedroom then glanced into the bathroom. His suspicions were starting to look like they had more and more merit.
"So, let me guess, he was some dark wizard's servant or something and they were working on...Harry? What are you doing?"
"Looking for something," he said as he strode over to the larger area of the apartment and looked left and right quickly before heading to the kitchen. He glanced behind the microwave. He stood in the middle of the room for a moment to process the information he'd just gathered. 'Ah hah' moment.
"Dresden!" Murphy called, "You've got that look in your eyes, what's going on?"
"Didn't you notice how neat this place is? That everything looks so new?"
"Yes."
He turned to face her, "It looks new because it's hardly been used, if at all. There isn't a TV anywhere, no stereo either. He doesn't even have an electric toothbrush. The microwave isn't plugged in. Neither is the freezer. And I'm sure that if you look close enough the gas won't be hooked up to the stove and the shower won't connect to the building's hot water heater."
Murphy caught on, "You're saying he was one of you?"
Harry couldn't resist the short laugh, "Are you kidding? How could he be one of me when I'm one of a kind?"
A small smile quirked on her lips, "Charming, unique personality aside, was he a wizard?"
"Yep. Looks that way."
She started looking around. "But if that's the case why even have things like a microwave or freezer? Or a stove, for that matter?"
Harry shrugged. "Maybe he was one of those wizards trying to ignore who they are. Or maybe he needed to keep up appearances for some reason. Guests would wonder if he lived in this nice apartment and didn't have those nice things that usually come with nice apartments...Hey, I need to go get something and come back, but before I go there's one more thing I want to check."
He left the apartment and came back a minute later with a bunch of crystals in his hand and a water jug filled with salt. "May I?" he asked.
"Sure, I'd say we've seen all we can see."
He took the salt and poured it in a circle around the body. Once done, he placed the five crystals at five separate points so that if the lines were to connect they would form a pentacle star. He made sure these points were lined up with the man's arms, legs, and head. Then the wizard stood back and surveyed the scene.
Murphy looked at him, then back at the setup, then back at Harry. "What are you waiting for?"
"This is going to require me using my second sight."
"You don't like doing that?"
"No."
"Is it dangerous?" she asked, worry creeping into her tone.
Harry shook his head, "Not to you or the people in here."
"But...to you?"
He didn't quite know how to answer that. In a way it was dangerous. Anything he experienced in his second sight would always be just as vivid as if it had just happened. They became the nightmares that he sometimes worried would drive him crazy after enough years passed of doing this. But it needed to be done, just like everything else he did these days.
So, instead of answering her at all, he closed his eyes and hesitated in opening them again. Was he afraid of what he would see? Absolutely. He'd already seen a lifetime's worth of nightmarish things through his sight, and he really didn't want to add to that list. When he finally got up the strength to open his eyes, the first thing he saw was Murphy. Only, she wasn't the Murphy he knew by normal sight.
In the Second Sight he saw the truth of things. Everything in the world around them was something at its base, and the Sight let him see that. With people this translated into what their souls looked like. Nothing could be hidden from the second sight, and there were some people that hid their souls for a damn good reason.
Murphy's image wasn't like that.
She was glazed with the brilliant, shining glory of a warrior angel with her sword sheathed and her wings in a resting position behind her. Her blond hair shone like the sun, giving her the subtle appearance of a halo. "Harry?" she asked in worried tones that sounded far away and echo-y in his second sight.
He tore his eyes away from her and glanced at the rest of the apartment. Whatever had happened in the apartment took place in the evening; he could see that from the faint traces of black magic covering the place. The dawn had covered most of the tracks that would be left behind by the magical perpetrator, but that proved that some form of dark magic had gone down here.
The circle of salt and crystals made a cylinder of white energy inside it meant to trap any traces of energy left behind on the body. Strangely, the only energy remaining was the faint traces of the dark magic that Harry was sure had been used to kill the man. There wasn't any trace whatsoever of the man himself.
That was really, really off. Any being inhabited by a soul should have had some kind of trace of the person left behind. Even if the death wasn't particularly violent or a ghost was left behind, there should have been at least some trace of the person. It was like there was just nothing left.
He closed his eyes and turned off the sight.
"Are you alright?" Murphy asked him.
"Yeah, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Or as...complete as I thought it would be."
"What's that mean?"
"I think...I don't know what I think. I mean it's like he left no impression." At her questioning look he continued, "You, me, that guy over there dusting the place for prints, we all leave an impression on the world around us. The things that belong to us carry parts of us with them. How long and how strong depends on our attachment to the object. Our deaths are usually where we leave the biggest imprint. That's what ghosts are really. Like the guy in the movie who's obliterated by the space monster and all that's left after the flash of light is a human-shaped dark smudge on the wall behind him. How big that smudge is depends on a lot of factors. But to leave no smudge at all just goes against the rules." And that was not freaking fair.
"How does that happen?"
Harry was about to answer, but he stopped himself. How did that happen? "There are a couple of creatures that feed on peoples' essence that I know of, but I'll have to do some research to see if that means a total disappearance of self. In the Nevernever I'm aware of a few things that prey on ghosts, life energy, etcetera. But they're extremely rare and most aren't exactly powerful enough to survive outside the Nevernever for any length of time. Opportunistic hunters, too, and if they attacked a human on our plain they certainly wouldn't be powerful enough too feed off a practitioner of any caliber, much less kill them. It would be like a coyote trying to take down an elephant."
"What about vampires?"
Harry inwardly groaned, he'd been hoping against that possibility. True, the base of what vampires ate was life energy. Red Court and Black court drank blood because it was a link to the person's spirit. As life blood spilled out so did life energy. The Black Courts especially practiced this. They were basically animated corpses, and they needed someone else's energy to keep the engine running. The Red Court had living bodies so blood doubled as a food source, but their bodies also needed the high spiritual levels they got from feeding. It was these high spiritual levels that made sure they could leap two-story buildings in a single bound or brush off a bullet in the chest. Then there was the White Court, who Harry didn't know all that much about, except that they were the closest to humans among the vamps and they fed solely on life energy. Although instead of ripping chunks out of their prey's necks they used emotion to feed.
But since the victim didn't show any external signs of having his throat torn out or having been bled dry that ruled out Black Court and Red Court. The more he thought about it the more a White Court vamp became his primary suspect.
Yes, the vampires. The vampires who the White Council were at war with. How anxious he was to deal with them again in all their icky, psychotic glory. Yippie. "Maybe. I hope to high hell not but maybe. I'll have to do some more research. Like I said, I may have to come back to the scene later." They were leaving the apartment now, and almost the second he stepped out of the threshold the feelings of anxiety dissipated. Some people thought it was bad enough in a crowded elevator with other people breathing and radiating heat, but unless those people were empaths they didn't know what it was like to feel emotions gathering in a room. High emotions gathering behind a threshold was an unpleasant feeling, and he was happy to leave.
Murphy nodded thoughtfully, "Well. Tell me as soon as you find anything..." Then, casually, "Have you eaten?"
"Ditto, and no."
"Come on, part of my payment includes meals...for now."
They were out in the hallway now, "Ouch. Does that mean that you wouldn't feed me if I didn't happen to be dirt poor?"
She snorted, which was exceptionally good for someone with such a cute nose, "Don't kid yourself, Dresden. You aren't even dirt poor."
They smiled and did their best to forget about the case with their usual playful banter. Murphy was the only one he knew who could walk away from a crime scene and be making jokes and snide remarks about his monetary value minutes later. "In that case I suppose it's good that money can't buy happiness."
"Or in your case, sanity."
Chapter End