If I get one more letter from a college I didn't apply to (Especially one that mixed up my graduation date with that of my youngest sister, don't these people do any research?), I swear to God I am going to kill something. And shopping online for a present for my little sister? STRESSFUL. I don't even know if it'll get here on time… or if my parents will skin me when they realize I ordered her a wallscroll from Japan… heheh… they were the idiots who gave me the credit card…
Oh well, you don't want to hear about me. You want more story.
First of all, I want to say that I am floored that this got as much positive feedback as it did. I was expecting maybe two or three reviews. I got seven, and most of them actually seemed articulate. To everyone who gave reviews, constructive criticism, and all those who gave this story a look, thank you.
I'm going to try and update once a week, on Tuesday (yes, even next Tuesday. No promises for the day after Christmas, but I am going to try). I'm hoping a schedule will keep me from becoming eratic, but if I think a chapter needs another edit, I'll hold it back. My commitment is to the best quality story I can produce. After such an outpouring of interest and appreciation, I feel that you deserve it.
Disclaimer: I should think it rather obvious that I don't own Bleach or Harry Potter. After all, I'm not rich and Ichigo and Rukia haven't kissed ONCE yet…
Oh hell, there goes the whole 'not committing to parings so early in the story' idea. Eh, not a big deal. With me, that one was sort of inevitable. (It IS my favorite paring for Bleach...) Although, how long it will be before it shows up… that's another story…
Chapter One – Anything and everything(will go wrong)
(AN: It is approximately eleven o'clock of September 8th in Boston, Massachusetts)
"Sorry about the light, Mr. Weasley," the secretary said, drawing the blinds shut to block out the harsh light of the late morning and gesturing for him to take a seat. "Mr. Yates will be with you shortly."
Arthur Weasley was forced to endure more complicated legal doublespeak and lawyers, both magical and muggles with a surprising insight into the magical than he had ever encountered in the rest of his life combined, but as far as he could tell, it all boiled down to one thing. There was a rather simple problem with gaining custody through legal methods: as far as the muggle world was concerned, the Weasleys didn't exist. No birth certificates. No places of address. No tax forms. And with no magical community to speak of in Japan, that meant that all legal channels were dead.
"Ah, hello Arthur," said Felix Yates, the young lawyer handling his case. Felix was handsome, bright, and personable, and unlike the other lawyers he seemed to project at least a veneer of honesty, but Arthur couldn't bring himself to trust him. Everything he had seen so far from the man seemed more like a smokescreen than anything else.
"Good afternoon, Felix… I trust you didn't call me here to tell me about more difficulties? I'm beginning to think it might be better to leave my cousin's daughter where she is," he sighed.
"I assure you Arthur, even though things seem difficult now, we at Benson and Jakes have a long history of making these annoying problems go away," the smarmy lawyer assured him. "The muggle community is especially hard to operate around in America and overseas, but we're the very best at getting what you want. Some of my associates are taking care of it as we speak."
Arthur wasn't an idiot, he knew what the man was hinting at. "You mean kidnap, don't you?"
"Let's not use such an ugly word, shall we? We're 'forcibly transferring custody'," and then, in a tone that made Arthur think that the man might be being honest with him, he added, "It's really for the child's own good, if someone doesn't take custody of her soon she'll end up in muggle foster care. That's a nightmare I wouldn't wish on any child, magical or otherwise."
"No," Arthur said, very flatly. He was sick of being treated like an idiot, sick of people trying to manipulate him, and sick and tired of dealing with these people. They made him feel unclean. "I've had misgivings about this from the beginning, and I cannot… will not… condone having a child taken from her home against her will. If that is all that you can think of, I think that we no longer have anything to discuss. Good day," he pushed away from the desk and turned to leave, but the lawyer grabbed his arm.
"Arthur, please, hear me out…"
"I said good day, Felix," Arthur said coldly, drawing his wand. "I will not say it again."
Felix's eyes flashed angrily, and his hand twitched to his own pocket before he could master himself, letting Arthur go and turning away before he spoke again. "You really have no idea what it's like out there, do you?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm talking about outside the barrier. Really outside the barrier, not just the difference between the protection that the Greater barrier back in Europe offers you from the Lesser ones here."
"This is the closest I have come to leaving the barrier," he admitted reluctantly.
"Okay," the lawyer said, his falsely helpful and understanding expression back. "Let me take you for a drive."
"Absolutely…"
"All I'm asking for is an hour of your time, in which I want you to reconsider your decision. If you're still certain that your cousin's child is better off where she is, than by all means, we will not make any attempts to move her."
"…very well," Arthur said, putting away his wand somewhat sheepishly and feeling curious in spite of himself.
Arthur actually knew a great deal about muggle cars after all the work he'd put into the Ford Angelina, and could tell that Felix's car was exceptional in all regards. However, he didn't feel like giving the man the satisfaction of listening to him gush over it as he normally would have, and kept his admiration and questions clenched behind his teeth.
"We're getting close to the city limits," Felix said cheerily, "But we'll be outside the barrier in another block or so."
"Another… you mean to tell me that you don't have the entire city covered?"
"When the original city was built, the barrier went up with it. The city expanded rapidly over time. The barrier did not… and cannot, unless we take it down and put it up again. Which I do not think we can do, Boston is rather far from the earth's main Ley lines, which we traditionally use to power our barriers. The ones who made this barrier originally managed to divert some energy from one of the Lesser Currents… and all thirteen of them died to do so. Taking down the current barrier would result in the destruction of that channel, which might be fatal for whoever tried it… and re-constructing it to make the new one which would definitely be fatal. You can see why we weren't eager to extend the border?"
"I understand," Arthur said, although he noted that the area they were passing through seemed to be one of the poorer sections of the city. Much as he'd like to think that that hadn't been one of the determining factors… he held a government position and knew that people in the government wouldn't undertake such a controversial project for the sake of people who wouldn't be able to contribute a significant portion of money to their campaigns later on. "How will I know when…"
There was a… tingling was the only word for it, like goosebumps spreading all over his body, and then a sudden sensation of openness. Arthur looked back in amazement and he could actually see the barrier, like a shimmering silvery dome.
"Welcome to what we like to call No Man's Land," Felix said. "Take a look around. What do you see?"
Arthur looked. And gasped, in spite of himself.
Clustered just outside the barrier were ghosts, hundreds and hundreds of ghosts, all of them muggle as far as he could tell. Unlike the ghosts he was familiar with, they were in full color, and there were chains hanging from their chests. Some of them had gaping black holes opening up in their chests. These seemed most intent on getting across the barrier; they kept lunging at it while howling obscenities. All of them, however, seemed interested in crossing.
"How can there be so many ghosts? And why…"
"They are waiting to cross over," Felix said simply. "Not that we know much about Soul Reapers, but about once a month five or six of them come through and clean this out…"
"Excuse me… did you say Soul Reapers? Do you mean to tell me that they actually exist?" he asked. He had heard of Soul Reapers, of course… but what little he knew about them came from half-remembered tales from his childhood,
"Of course they do. And from what little we know of them, they will attack you if you encounter them. The Great Purge really happened too, you know. Every single human with a touch of magic outside the barrier gone from this world within a year, even the women and children… Anyway, there don't seem to be enough of them to keep this from building up, or maybe they just don't care much for people who wall them out of their cities, but you can always find people trying to get in here. Some of them are just curious, but a lot of them either died in Boston or lived here at some point in time, or have relatives who live here. They're trying to make peace with their deaths, or trying to see loved ones one last time."
"Well, what about the ones with the holes?
"Do you mean the half-demons? Don't worry, until those holes are open completely, they're not dangerous. The Soul Reapers will take care of them before that happens. They have little love for our kind, but they do more or less uphold their oath to be fair to all of the dead."
"Is it like this everywhere outside the barrier?"
"Well, this is an unusually high concentration, but yes. You can find ghosts wherever people have lived…" their conversation was interrupted at that moment by an earsplitting roar. "Ah, I was hoping that there'd be one here today."
"Wh-what kind of monster was that?" Arthur demanded.
"We call them demons," Felix said, getting out of the car and ignoring the stream of ghosts fleeing in the opposite direction. "I believe that the Soul Reapers call them Hollows… rather apt, really, if unimaginative… ah, here it is."
A… creature… rounded the corner of the now-deserted street (The muggles that had been walking there had disappeared too for some reason), a creature that somewhat resembled an elephant on its hind legs (although that was probably the bulky body and the suggestive shape of its white mask) It had a huge gaping hole in its chest, through which buildings and a flash of sky was clearly visible.
"Reducto," Felix shouted before Arthur could ask any more questions. The spell hit the things arm, blowing a fair sized hole in it which spattered black blood everywhere. "Aim for its mask! It doesn't just eat the souls of the dead, it'll eat us too if it can get its hands on us!"
That seemed like a very good idea, seeing as the huge creature was a lot faster than it looked. "Impedimentia!" Arthur shouted, and the spell stopped the monster in its tracks. Before either of them could finish it off, a second creature swooped in, this one strongly resembling a harpy. The shriek it emitted from its oversized white mask nullified Arthur's spell, leaving the monster free to squash him like a rather annoying, furless rodent…
"Arrgh, don't just stand there you fool! Protego!" The spell managed to stop its fist from crushing their heads in, but if they hadn't leapt backwards the minute Felix had cast the spell, they would probably have been stomped flat, for the protective barrier collapsed shortly after. "And of course there had to be two… why wouldn't there be two, the one day I come out practically alone…" The winged demon swooped down at them both, forcing them to roll gracelessly out of the way. When Arthur got back to his feet, the first demon was bearing down on him, running on all fours and now looking very much like an elephant…
Those tusks on its mask are going to impale me if I don't do something…
Arthur's mind went blank for a moment, then… "Deflagare!"
The effect was instantaneous, and a lot more than he had expected. Normally, the Flash Fire Curse simply set the target on fire, this caused the overlarge demon to go up like a torch, fire rising in a column about a hundred feet into the air, utterly obliterating it. Felix used the distraction to shoot another Reductor curse at the winged demon, destroying its white mask. The creature screamed and seemed to dematerialize with a flare of blackish light (if light could be black…).
Arthur swayed and fell to his knees. "What… just… happened….?"
Felix grimaced. "There's a lot more mana in the air outside the barrier. When you panicked, you drew in as much as you could… and as a result, you're exhausted. Here, let me help you to the car…"
Arthur waved the man's hand away angrily and dragged himself to his feet. "Why did you drag me out here? What are you trying to prove?" he asked irritably.
"Simple. The demons we fought were of the very lowest level, probably made sometime within the last two or three years. Babies, as they reckon things. And we both almost died. In Karakura, where your cousin's daughter lives… according to what little observation our overseas agents have been able to do, you get five or six of these materializing in the town every day. The place is like a magnet for them, although we don't know why, and every year it gets a little worse. I can't think of a more dangerous place for anyone to live, let alone an unchaperoned, unsupervised teenager. Whether she wants it or not, she needs to get out of that place. Especially if she has any magical ability at all. We wizards are special treats for them."
Arthur said nothing, the memory of fist and horn coming at his head fresh in his mind. "…you've made your point," he said at last, bitterly.
Felix smiled at his client as the man dragged himself back to the car. He enjoyed dealing with honest people, they were so much easier to nudge in the right direction.
Abruptly, his cell phone went off, and he picked it up before the client could react. "Yates here."
"It's me," said the man on the other line, and indeed, he had no need to identify himself. He was Felix's best overseas operative. "I'm ready to tidy up that business transaction."
"Well by all means, go ahead. It must be getting pretty late over there."
"Late? Heh, it's so late it's early, but I'd rather get things done than stay in this miserable little town one more night. You'll have the package within twelve hours or less."
"That'd be a relief. And the other issue? The financial one? It would be a great help to my client to have that straightened out. He hasn't brought it up, and it would be rude of me to press, but I think that taking care of the package might be a strain on his family's resources without it."
"The proper documents have been provided, and I imagine they'll satisfy everyone involved." Excellent, he'd managed to get the forgeries in place, and felt that they'd hold up long enough to get everything out of the country. After that, well, it would be out of the muggle's hands.
"Thank you. First class work, as always. I don't think we pay you enough."
"…my salary is more than handsome…"
"Nonsense, you deserve something of a bonus for this one, I know it's been especially trying. What about a vacation?"
A snort. "You can't afford to give me a vacation, I know more languages than anyone in your firm. My wife could use something nice though… I'll get back to you on that when I'm back in the office. As they say over here, Ja ne,"
"And good-bye to you too." He hung up and headed over to the car. Today was going exceptionally well.
(Writing note: it is shortly after 1am on the morning of September 9th(no clue where Karakura is supposed to be, so I went with Tokyo's standard time when I put this in the time converter)
Inoue Orihime was, at that moment, trying to relax with her favorite desert (Vanilla ice cream topped with caramel and wasabi sauce, yummy!), but it didn't seem to be working very well. It had been a week since school had started and she had gotten that note, and…
Nothing had happened, unless you counted the transfer of Hirako Shinji into their class, which seemed to count a lot for Kurosaki-kun. The seemingly benign transfer student was putting Kurosaki-kun on edge, and Orihime knew they were arguing, if not what they were arguing about. Asking Kurosaki-kun about it would accomplish nothing, she knew from experience that he would brush it off and try to take care of whatever it was by himself, but something was telling her that he needed help this time, and needed it now.
Also, Ishida-san had disappeared on the second day of school, and had just returned today. Oddly, the Quincy powers that he had burned out in the Soul Society had returned, and, if anything, grown stronger. Orihime had no idea how he had accomplished such a miracle (Maybe Kuchiki-san would have some idea, the next time she visited from Soul Society), and was very, very happy for him. She knew him well enough from traveling together in the Soul Society to know that losing his powers had been painful for him.
The second oddity in his return was that, instead of the mixed-up rivalry/friendship he'd had with Kurosaki-kun, there was… nothing. Ishida-san said nothing to Kurosaki-kun at all, no matter how much the other boy pestered him. Although, something told Orihime that Ishida-san was upset with the new situation.
Still… even with all the problems in their personal lives…
Things were too quiet. She knew that, in the core of her soul. And she had a horrible feeling that something was going to happen soon…
A glance over at her clock told her that it was pushing one thirty, and if she didn't want to be exhausted tomorrow, she was going to have to go to bed now. With a sigh, she shoved one last large spoonful of ice cream into her mouth and went over to the sink to rinse out the bowl. No sense in leaving it dirty until the next morning, when it would only be harder to clean…
With a faint whisper of… something… the lights went out, and Orihime blinked hard, trying to readjust. Now, she knew she'd remembered to pay the electrical bill this month, and there wasn't a storm or a Hollow in the area, so why had the lights gone out? Was there some sort of accident that had knocked out a power line? Or maybe, someone doing maintenance had been distracted by a…
She screamed in shock at the sound of the shatter of breaking glass in the room she'd just left, a noise she would never mistake for any other. She still heard it in her nightmares sometimes, whenever she dreamed about her brother's death. Before she could register much beyond the fact that it couldn't be a Hollow, because she didn't sense one anywhere nearby, an odd dark mist started to fill her apartment at an alarming rate. She ran instinctively for the door which she could only half-see in the gloom of her unlit apartment, trying to get outside and wishing, not for the first time, that she could scrape together enough extra money to buy herself a cell phone.
Kuchiki Rukia stretched luxuriously. Even though it hadn't been very long since she had left the human world, she was happy to be back. Despite the fact that 'back' meant moving around in a gigai, there were plenty of advantages to balance out the discomforts of the false body. Anyway, she wasn't really thinking about that, or why she had been sent back in the first place. Since she had already gotten herself re-enrolled in Ichigo's high school and taken care of the others (despite the fact that they weren't going to be here for two more days, she'd been sent ahead to make sure that there wouldn't be any problems), she was taking a break to simply enjoy the breeze. There wasn't much wind in the Soul Society, and precious little rain. (Even less in the Seireitei, the noble clans considered something as unpredictable as weather to be beneath them, and the scientists of the twelfth division had managed to augment the barrier that prevented intruders to bend wind and storm away long before Rukia had been born.) Even though she still disliked rain, she enjoyed the night breeze on her face.
Okay, maybe she was still trying to figure out how best to make her entrance tomorrow. Ichigo's face would be… amusing, no matter what she did. She was still considering whether she should go to his house first, or simply wait until school and surprise everyone at the same time. Well, as far as Ichigo was concerned, the ambush-at-school was nothing new, so if she was going for all of them at once, it would have to be something… spectacular. Like climbing in through the window.
Nah, far too flashy, although amusing to contemplate. She was supposed to blend in, that was part of the mission, and she knew enough about the human world to know that normal people did not climb into buildings through windows, especially not windows on the third floor. So, what could she do special, just for Ichigo? Going to his house now and slipping into his closet to crash for the rest of the night… now, that would be funny the next morning…
A crashing noise and a scream from a few streets over, started her out of her reverie, especially when she realized that the scream was Inoue…
Her hand pulled a candy tube out of the pocket of the dress that Ishida had made for her as she was running, but once she realized that she didn't sense a Hollow anywhere in the area she slipped it (somewhat reluctantly) back where it belonged. For human punks, even in this scrawny gigai, her fists were more than enough. And a lot less conspicuous than people being thrown through the air by something that no normal person could see…
As she rounded another street corner onto Inoue's street, however, she was beginning to reconsider her considerations for 'normal people'. First of all, all the lights on the street were out, something that she knew happened rarely unless something supernatural was involved. Secondly, she could feel something abnormal in the air, a type of spiritual pressure that she had never encountered before. The closest thing she could compare it to was Ishida's Quincy powers, but that wasn't quite it either…
Third, of course, was the plume of unnaturally dark blue smoke rising from the window of Inoue's apartment, and the two people standing in front of it intently, as if waiting for something. And there was something very… off about them. Oh, she supposed if she had met them at any other time she might have thought otherwise, but what would two young men dressed in what went for formal attire in this world be doing standing in the street in the middle of the night?
"Excuse me!" she shouted as she got closer, deciding to play innocent for the moment. "Any idea what happened there?"
"What are you doing here?" asked one of the men in very heavily accented Japanese. "Little girl should be at home."
"I live just down the street, and that horrible noise woke me," she said, slipping into the false persona that had served her so well at Ichigo's school. "My very best friend lives in that apartment, and when I saw all the smoke I just had to come and see what was wrong and if she was alright! Did you see anyone come out yet?" she asked anxiously.
"No, no one," the second one replied.
"Oh…. do you think she's still in there? Do any of you have a cell phone? We should call the police… but my home phone didn't work when I tried earlier, all the power seems to be out. Do you think that it was some sort of electrical fire?" she asked, doing her very best to combine stupid, innocent, and scared out of her wits.
"Scott…" the first one muttered to the other.
"I know," he replied, in English, so fast that she almost didn't catch it at all. Luckily for Rukia, she could recognize the change of stance that someone exhibited when they drew a weapon, or she probably would have been standing there laughing at the sticks that they pulled out of their strange jackets when the twin arcs of blue-white light blew a rather impressive crater in the street where she had been standing a few moments before. She landed gracefully in a crouch over a dozen feet away.
"I see you are even less normal than I thought you were," she said coldly, all trace of the naïve idiot that she had been pretending to be completely gone.
"You're not exactly normal yourself, little girl," replied the second one. "Are you… a Quincy?" he asked, fumbling over the unfamiliar word.
This time, she really did laugh. She just couldn't help herself, although she got control of herself fairly quickly. A Quincy. A Quincy! These people, for all that their power was strange beyond anything she had ever encountered before, were as spiritually blind as… as Ichigo! She could have howled!
"No," she replied simply. "I am not." And she would have said more, probably would have ditched her gigai then and there, if Inoue hadn't staggered out the front door of the apartment complex, coughing and clearly fighting to stay conscious.
"K-Kuchiki-san?" she gasped.
"Inoue!" Rukia shouted. "Are you okay?" Damnit, those idiots were between her and Inoue, and there wasn't time to ditch her gigai.
"H-hai. What's going on?"
"Brent!" the second one, Scott shouted.
"On it!" and the first one, Brent, grabbed Inoue around the waist. The girl barely had time to shriek in surprise before they both vanished with a popping noise.
...this chapter was getting really long, and that was the best place to end it.
I'm serious.
It also increased your chances of getting an update on time next week.
...yeah, I'm screwed, aren't I?
(Oh, by the way, I made up the Flash Fire Curse (Deflagare). It's not a 'real' spell. Since there arent't very many attack spells in the Harry Potter books, you'll probably be seeing a lot more of my invented spells.)