A/N: I know it's late. Updates for this story will probably be pretty slow from here on out.

He sat aimlessly on a sagging cardboard box, watching the strutting chickens in the coop behind the rickety orphanage with a certain mindless anticipation. It had been a month since his first email to Hydra, and since then he'd only had one correspondence with them concerning the agents who were coming to pick him up. Two of them were supposedly rather young, in their late teens to early twenties, but had incredible skill. The third was a man somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five years of age, and was an experienced mercenary soldier from somewhere in Russia.

If all went well, they would be arriving today to retrieve him.

He scattered a small handful of seeds over the chickenwire fence around the makeshift chicken coop and watched with some amusement as the hens strutted over to peck at the ground. Then Due Huu dropped down beside him with a smile, the worn shirt he was wearing torn on one side. Toushiro shot him a sideways glance, acknowledging his presence, then turned back to the chickens. Due Huu grinned.

"They still remind me of you, you know." he said, shoving his friend's arm playfully. Hitsugaya lifted his nose into the air.

"I have far more intelligence than a mere bird." he retorted disdainfully. "You, on the other hand…"

"Hey!" Due Huu leapt on him with a growl, and Toushiro yelped as he was knocked off his box and into the dirt. Then he summoned up his mischievous side - which came remarkably easily after the month of practice - and rolled, pinning the taller boy beneath his wiry muscle. They wrestled around in the dirt, shoving each other's faces into the ground and growling playfully at each other. After a moment, they started laughing, the play-fighting quickly becoming a competition to see who could pin the other to the dirt for longer.

There was a shout from behind them then, and without breaking stride, Shouta jumped on top of the two older orphans, giggling like a madman. Toushiro flashed a grin at him, squalling in protest as Due Huu sat on his stomach.

"Shouta, help me!" he called out, and the young half-Japanese boy screeched with laughter, tackling the fourteen year-old off Hitsugaya's midsection with a war cry. Due Huu yelled in mock protest, allowing the smaller, younger boy to mash his face into the dirt. Hitsugaya then rejoined the fray, smirking, and Due Huu retaliated with a war cry of his own, shoving Shouta into Toushiro's gut and toppling over on top of them, creating a dogpile with Hitsugaya lying breathless on the bottom. After a few minutes of breathless panting, the three began laughing again, and Due Huu pushed himself off his friend and the younger boy with a wide grin. He offered them a hand.

"Truce?" he asked, and Toushiro just rolled his eyes, accepting the offered hand. But then, with a sharp jerk, he pulled Due Huu back to the ground and sat on him with a smug grin. The Vietnamese boy yelped.

"Truce." he said, ignoring Shouta's laughter. Due Huu glared up at the smirking teenager, but couldn't hold his mock annoyance long. He started laughing again.

"You've always got to have the last word, don't you?" he said with a grin, accepting Hitsugaya's hand as he clambered to his feet. Toushiro considered for a moment, feeling oddly relaxed in the playful, friendly atmosphere. The hardship of his captaincy rose to the forefront of his mind, illuminating his absolute need to be the final authority on everything. He sobered without realizing it, his mask sliding back up over his face and locking firmly into place.

"Yeah, I guess." he said quietly. Due Huu and Shouta looked at him, nonplussed by the sudden distance in his eyes.

But then a loud commotion came from inside the orphanage, the sound of breaking clay echoing in the dripping summer heat. Diu Phuong's pleading wail was drowned out by the belligerent bellow of a man twice her size, and several of the young children could be heard faintly crying. Due Huu shot to his feet, looking pale, and Hitsugaya's emerald eyes narrowed. Both of them recognized that voice.

Nervously shifting his stance, Due Huu turned to look at the white-haired boy, fear clear in his gaze. He swallowed hard.

"You…you said you can get out, right?" he whispered, the heavy tread of the labor man's boots growing louder as the man exited the building and walked around the orphanage. Toushiro set his jaw.

"Yes." the single word was confident, and so when Duong Quan stepped in front of them, his nasty face twisted by expectation and pleasure, some of the tension had clearly left Due Huu's shoulders. Flanking him were two goons of forgettable face and stature, but each carried heavy iron clubs in their hands, crusted black fluid evident on the grey metal. Toushiro hissed at the sight of it, instantly recognizing the sight of old, dried blood. Shouta cowered away from the men, hiding behind Toushiro after a moment's thought.

Duong Quan approached Due Huu first, a simpering smile on his face, and grinned evilly as the fourteen-year-old trembled.

"Well now. Your month is up." he said, his voice sickly sweet. "Do you have my money, boy?"

The teenager swallowed hard, then nodded and reached into the pocket of his ragged shorts, pulling out a wrinkled wad of relatively colorful bills. The stack consisted mostly of large-numeral bills, and as the boy held it out with shaking hands, a mildly displeased look crossed Duong Quan's face. It was very clear that he hadn't been expecting Due Huu to manage to buy his freedom, but the man took the child's money and counted it. Then he grunted.

"Fine. You are no longer my concern." he snapped. Then he swept a beady gaze onto Hitsugaya. "But the pretty one, however, will have to come with me now."

Toushiro tensed as the cruel slaver pulled a pair of heavy leather restraints from his belt and stepped forward. He let his lips peel back in something like a snarl, acutely aware that his gigai's limited strength would not benefit him if the men were to attack. He'd be subdued in minutes. Due Huu stepped between the labor man and his friend, eyes wide.

"Wait - Toushiro has already found his way out-"

"That wasn't our deal." Duong Quan cut the boy off sharply, malice entering his glare. "I gave you an extra month, and in return, your pretty little friend is mine. I don't recall allowing him to buy his way out of my service."

Toushiro felt his stomach drop as Duong Quan smiled coldly at him, obviously seeing nothing more than a child with a pretty face and a slight figure - easy to abuse. The tall man took a step towards him, false kindness on his face.

"If you behave like a good little boy, I can promise that you won't be mistreated." the man said pleasantly. "But otherwise…I have plenty of customers who get off on others' pain."

The lack of a Hydra presence was like a gaping void at his back, and despite the roaring of his pride crying for him to stand his ground, Hitsugaya knew he wouldn't stand a chance. He took a nervous step away, knowing that his face was paling rapidly, and then with one last glance at Due Huu, he bolted. But he didn't get far. The crushing pain of one of the iron clubs slamming into his knee with deadly force and the sharp gunshot-crack as his leg broke sent him tumbling into the muddy dirt road in front of the orphanage, his face white.

Toushiro felt real panic rising in his chest as he screamed silently, his broken leg twisted awkwardly behind him, obviously unable to bear his weight. The gigai's humanizing power didn't help either, allowing what a shinigami would consider a bearable injury to send Toushiro's keen mind into a fog. The only thing he was truly conscious of was the pain flaring up his thigh in white-hot bursts of crippling agony. He vaguely felt Duong Quan's hand close around his throat, brutally choking him, and spots burst across his vision as his oxygen supply dwindled. Due Huu's screaming was audible in the background, as was Shouta's and sobbing of the other children in the rundown orphanage.

Suddenly the air split with thunder, and Duong Quan's hand slackened. Toushiro blinked the dancing lights from his eyes, gasping for breath through the shock of his injury and asphyxiation, then watched in mute surprise as the tall man slumped over sideways, cruel eyes glassy. The corpse hit the ground with cold finality. Silence fell. Even Duong Quan's two henchmen were silent.

Then a young woman with long reddish-brown hair in loose curls appeared over him, her dark eyes strangely gentle. She reached out slowly, sliding her fingers to the side of his neck. He flinched at her touch, the bruising on the sides of his throat protesting the contact.

"Are you Toushiro Hitsugaya?" she asked in heavily accented Japanese, her voice throaty. Toushiro nodded weakly, then choked.

"Hail Hydra." he coughed out, and the young woman of perhaps nineteen years smiled with a slight bit of relief.

"Pietro, Axel, this is him." she called out. "It seems your bullet was not wasted, Axel."

Toushiro turned his head to see a tall man with a permanent scowl and a graying beard emerge from behind a nearby sagging builiding. In his hand was a powerful-looking gun, and strapped to his belt were two pistols accompanied by lots of ammo and several wicked-looking knives. This man's eyes narrowed as he saw the child lying in the street, biting back cries of pain.

"I don't waste bullets, girl." he grumbled. Then he scowled deeper, approaching the prone boy with a calculating look in his blue eyes.

"The package is damaged." he noted with some disapproval. His glare shifted to the lonely matron of the orphanage, behind which most of the children were hiding, Due Huu and Be Chau excluded. Diu Phuong shrank back slightly from that cold glare. The young woman with rich brown hair sat back on her heels, sliding her attention to the awkward angle of Toushiro's leg. She frowned as well.

"We can carry him, then." she said with some finality. "But the bone will have to be set when we return to our base."

Axel rolled his cold eyes, then glared into the brush behind him as a young man with pale blond hair and a scraggly beard stepped from the bushes. The young newcomer grinned sheepishly at the older man.

"I did a patrol lap - seems that guy was part of the local human trafficking ring. Nobody who will be missed." the blond said with a shrug. He shook some leaves from his hair, then frowned down at the young woman, who was currently examining the broken bone. Toushiro's face was still pale from pain, obviously not fully aware of his surroundings.

"Ah, the boy is hurt." he said, his voice sounding concerned. "How bad is the injury, Wanda?"

Wanda lifted her face, her brow furrowed.

"He will not be able to walk." she decided, and turned her attention back onto Hitsugaya's white cheeks. "Can you carry him, Pietro?"

The young man shrugged nonchalantly, then walked over and squatted down beside them. He smiled in a friendly sort of manner.

"You're Toushiro, right?" he asked. "The boy who hacked through an intelligent computer system?"

Hitsugaya blinked up at the mop of pale hair, noticing absently that it was about the same color as his own, albiet a few shades darker and yellower, then nodded weakly. Pietro's eyes lit up in a grin, and he laughed.

"Damn." the one word was full of appreciation, and Hitsugaya felt himself instantly warm to this likable young adult. Then Pietro slid his arms under Toushiro's thin shoulders and thighs, a look of warning on his face.

"This may hurt a little." the man said, his accented voice tinged with a veiled apology, but then he stood and picked the boy up, and Toushiro wheezed in pain as his broken leg shifted position. It burned like fire - how the hell did humans survive with such a low pain tolerance?

Then Due Huu stepped forward, his expression wary.

"What are you going to do with Toushiro?" he demanded, gaze flickering from Wanda to Pietro to Axel and back again. Pietro grinned reassuringly at the fourteen-year-old.

"We will take him to America - after all, he paid for it." the young man said easily. The children in the orphanage noticeably relaxed, as did Due Huu, but then the two goons with iron clubs marched forward, scowling deeply. Duong Quan's body was stepped over, ignored entirely.

"Now, hold up. That kid is our property." one of the two snapped. "He's coming with us."

Pietro, Wanda, and Axel all just stared at the man, unimpressed. And then Wanda raised her hands. Red energy wreathed her fingertips and wrapped around the tall man's throat, lifting him into the air. Her dark eyes glowed with a spark of red light, the sinuous twisting of her fingers somehow both innocuous and malicious at once. The man who had spoken scrabbled at his throat in horror, eyes going wide, his lips turning blue. Wanda watched evenly, her expression unemotional. Then she dropped her hands and the red energy disappeared. The man fell gasping to the ground, hacking violently.

"I do not think," the young woman said quietly, "that you wish to cross Hydra."

The man who was still standing was a ghostly shade of white, the iron club in his hand held protectively in front of him, and at the sound of Hydra's name he backed away hurriedly, glancing down at Duong Quan's body. Axel grunted in grudging approval, then turned away and headed back into the jungle from where the Hydra agents had come. Diu Phuong, on the other hand, stared at the young woman in something like horror mixed with vague confusion.

"You…you are a witch…" she whispered. Wanda merely looked at her.

"I am not a witch." she said in that throaty voice of hers. "My powers are the result of experimentation I and my brother willingly underwent with a power source from another world, a world perhaps similar to the world of the alien Chitauri that attacked America last year. It is science, not magic."

Diu Phuong looked unconvinced, but Toushiro let the tension release from his shoulders, knowing that Pietro would pick up on his acceptance of the story. Then Due Huu walked right up to the young woman, his jaw set.

"You…you can protect Toushiro, can't you?" he said shakily. "So please, help him get away from here safely."

Wanda gently put one of her hands on the boy's shoulders, her dark eyes warm.

"Of course." she promised. Then she turned to Pietro and the young teenager wincing with pain in his hands.

"Shall we go, Pietro?" she asked lightly. The pale-blond man nodded. And then with a flash like quicksilver, they were gone, racing into the Vietnamese jungle at speeds Toushiro didn't even know that existed outside of Shunpo. He stayed suitably quiet, unable to prevent a hint of real uncertainty to mix with his feigned timidity. Wanda's powers felt uncomfortably familiar, and Pietro's incredible agility and speed hummed with a similarly golden thrum. Even with the cloaking power of his gigai…

He swore he could feel Animen's touch lingering on their DNA.

And hello, Pietro, Wanda! Who's excited for this?

Review, please!