Chapter Text
It’s the first time he’s been to a place like Karakura.
As a shinigami, his general objective is to assist souls that continue to linger on earth pass on to Soul Society, an in-between realm for the deceased to reside. In Japan, at least. He doesn’t know how it is in other countries, but he supposes they have their own spiritual entities that manage the flow of souls. Sometimes shinigami will have to make trips to others countries to retrieve souls, Japan’s citizens having moved away but still ultimately tied to their country of origin. Renji hasn’t had too many trips to the Human World himself, certainly not enough to have seen another country. He’s still considered young for a shinigami, the farthest he’s been sent was Kanazawa.
Which wasn’t anything like Karakura.
It’s not that the town is exceptionally pretty to look at or anything, but the atmosphere is notable to any shinigami with above average reiatsu sensitivity. It’s like a blanket of spiritual energy covers this town. He doesn’t know what the source of all that reiryoku could be, but it unsettles him. This is not a normal town.
He sighs explosively and rubs the side of his face. Whatever, he’s not here to think, he’s here to play babysitter to the other shinigami. The eleventh division don’t typically get sent to perform konso, the act of sending deceased souls to Soul Society. The work is considered “too delicate” for the division that makes up the majority of the Gotei 13’s front-liners. They’re less grim-reaper and more grim-warrior. But theres no war to fight and the division members have to do something other than drink and get into fights with each other. So here they are, a small group of them, led by Renji himself, sent to try and aid dead souls in passing on.
“Ora! Quit your snivelling and let me hit you already!”
Renji turns to the noise to see a subordinate chasing the spectre of a poor elderly woman. She’s floating around in circles shouting “Oh my! Oh goodness!” And his dumb cadet just keeps chasing her while waving his zanpakuto around.
He’s very tempted to smack his palm against his forehead, but that would be unbecoming of a high ranking officer such as himself. He’s here to prove that he can lead a mission, not complain about how annoying his job is. That’s for later at the pub.
“Oi,” he addresses the cadet, walking over to the scene. His subordinate stops his antics to regard him, face still contorted in anger. Tch, no respect.
The lady he was chasing has stopped to look at him too. Renji takes advantage of her stillness and wordlessly bops her on the forehead with the hilt of his own zanpakuto. She looks shocked for only a second before a look of peace settles over her and her soul sinks into a circle of blue light, a jigoku kocho appears where her soul once was. Flapping it’s wings as her soul is officially sent on to Soul Society.
He ticks an eyebrow up at his subordinate, as if to say “there, was that so hard?” Out loud he says, “We’re here to retrieve souls, not scare them. Try to show more tact.”
The guy looks like he’s about two seconds away from spitting at Renji’s feet, so Renji lets his reiatsu flare a little, enough to remind this asshole who’s in charge. That’s the only complaint Renji has about being in the eleventh, everyone there is constantly trying to test you. Respect has to be earned in the eleventh, you aren’t given it just cause you’re a ranked officer. That’s what makes Zaraki an amazing captain, it speaks volumes that there is not one person in the eleventh that would dispute their captain’s strength.
The cadet backs off, loosing his angry sneer, but he does kiss his teeth at Renji. “Ain’t my fault she was scared,” he grumbles, slinking off to regroup with the others.
Renji rolls his eyes when the guy’s back is turned. Right, cause I’m sure you were the picture of compassion and understanding, he thinks and sighs to himself again. This is exhausting. He’s happy to be a sixth seat. He’s happy that he has a chance to prove himself to his superiors, but he’s going to tear all his hair out if he has to deal with this crap for longer than necessary. Maybe that’s why Ikkaku’s bald.
Just as he’s about to join his fellow division members, he feels a reiatsu unfamiliar to him. It’s a brief flare, but it’s significant enough in strength that it’s got his attention. “Yo!” He calls out to his subordinates, “I’m just gonna check on something. I’ll be right back, so none of you shitheads better get up to anything while I’m gone!” And then he uses shunpo to dash to the approximate location of the reiatsu signature.
He lands softly on wet grass, making sure to dampen his own reiatsu signature. He doesn’t know what he’s up against, but with how much reiryoku is in this one town, he bets that it’s a beacon for hollow, who are always hungry for spiritual energy. He keeps low to the ground and scans his surroundings. Whatever he felt earlier is quiet now.
He stays still and focuses his senses. He’s always had sharp senses, thats what his superiors have always told him, both in the academy and in his division. He didn’t get admitted into the top class at Shin’o for nothing.
Once he strains his ears he can hear someone crying, someone young. And when he opens his nostrils to breath in deep, he smells mostly rain and wet earth, but he also picks up a faint scent of blood in the air.
He proceeds cautiously with his hand poised over his zanpakuto’s hilt, ready to draw his sword if need be.
He drops his stance the moment he sees the source of the crying. “Oh no,” he whispers.
By the edge of a swollen river, there’s the soul of a little boy bent over his mother’s corpse, which is covering a tiny body underneath her own. The woman’s torso has been shredded by something long enough and deep enough to have gouged through her back and into the boy. Whatever got them must have been a hollow, theres no way another human could have done that. He surveys his surroundings with renewed focus.
What’s odd is that he can’t see or sense the woman’s soul anywhere. She died only recently, the smell and colour of her blood is still fresh, so her soul should be nearby, like the boy’s is. Unless—
The hollow ate her soul.
No sooner has he put his hand back on his zanpakuto’s hilt that the hollow makes it’s presence known. He hears the kid gasp and immediately maneuvers himself in front of him.
It doesn’t look like much of a hollow, but Renji can feel that it definitely isn’t a shinigami or a regular soul. It’s form is curiously human despite not being Arrancar level. The hollow kinda looks like his friend Matsumoto, but with coppery hair and eyes.
“Mom!” He hears the kid shout. And thats when it clicks. He’s heard of this hollow before. “Grand Fisher” has successfully evaded being killed by shinigami for fifty-four years. Notorious for using a “lure” in the shape of someone his victims can’t kill. The hollow probably plans on using the form of the kid’s mom to bait the kid and make it harder for Renji to guard him. He can already tell this fights gonna be a pain in the ass. “That’s not your mom kid,” he says without taking his eyes off the hollow, not that he thinks the kid’ll believe him.
And he doesn’t. The kid darts past him to run to his “mom.” Renji allows himself the briefest moment of self-pity as to how shitty his night is going before readying himself into an iaijutsu stance.
“Ichigo!” The lure kneels down and holds it’s arms out as though making to embrace the kid, looking all sweet and worried as any mother would. This hollow is good.
The kid, Ichigo, has his small arms raised to hug it back, tears and snot streaming down his red face. But before the hollow can wrap it’s arms around the boy, Renji uses shunpo to instantly come between them, severing the lure’s arms clean off with the quick-draw of his sword. He hears the kid scream.
The lure posing as the kid’s mom attempts to look horrified at the loss of it’s arms but gives up quick enough, lips curving in a smile. “Guess that won’t work on you, hm?” The face of the woman peels back like curling paper to reveal a black and white koi lure. The lure flys a little ways and attaches itself to a red string on a white mound poking out of the surface of the nearby river. The mound moves and a large white mask and olive green fur emerge from the water. As the hollow stands from where it was hidden in the river, Renji can see how big the hollow really is, but he doesn’t panic. He’s fought bigger.
“Lucky, lucky~” Grand Fisher croons in a deep voice as he steps out of the water, his body is a weird cross between a primate and an amphibian, with a large black hole in the middle of his torso that signifies him as a hollow. He looks like a big hairy frog with a hole punched out. “Lucky me. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a shinigami of considerable reiatsu.” Then he opens his big mouth to lick his big square teeth. “I was going to sneak up on your little friends over there,” he points a red finger in the general direction of Renji’s squad, “but I think you’ll make a more satisfying meal.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He quickly flicks his eyes to the kid behind him. He’s been strangely quiet about being confronted with a scary looking hollow. Most kids would be screaming and crying or trying to run away, but he’s just staring in shock.
I don’t have time for this, he flicks his eyes back to Grand Fisher. He needs to focus so he can kill this hollow, make sure the kid’s soul doesn’t get eaten, and get back to his squad so he can round up this mission without anyone else getting hurt.
He doesn’t wait for Fisher to make a move. Adding a touch of shunpo to his movements makes his swings faster and hit harder. It immediately puts Fisher on the defensive, the hollow having to dodge Renji’s strikes, but his zanpakuto catches his arm on an upswing, and Renji once again, severs Fisher’s hand.
The hand goes flying and Fisher jumps back a ways using his frog-like legs. He isn’t laughing now.
“So you can cut me, you wouldn’t be the first,” he adds like he’s trying to mock Renji, but he knows he’s got Fisher thinking twice about attacking. This hollow hasn’t lasted this long by being rash. Thats the most unnerving thing to Renji, this hollow isn’t like the others he’s had to slay. He’s not mindless or uncontrolled, and if he’s cognizant enough to strategize then that means he’s devoured a lot of souls.
Fisher brings his handless arm in front of him and with a ferocious growl a new hand burst from his forearm, regenerating himself as though Renji never put a scratch on him.
Shit, he tsks at himself. He shouldn’t have given Fisher the opening to do that. Another thing he hates about hollows like this one is that their abilities get a hell of a lot more annoying. He contemplates using his zanpakuto’s shikai but he stubbornly refuses to use it unless he has to. If he can defeat Grand Fisher with nothing but his sealed zanpakuto, it’ll prove he’s become just that much stronger, just that much closer to his goal. So he decides on some good old fashioned taunting. “Ya gonna attack from way over there Fisher? Too scared to get close?” He goads, making sure to smirk sharply at the hollow.
“…You know who I am? Hm. That must be how you knew about my lure…” Surprisingly, Fisher doesn’t rise to the bait, his teeth curve up in a smile, as much as the rigid hollow mask will allow. “But do you know how I make them?” And then the hollow moves.
Faster than he’d expected, Renji barely gets his zanpakuto up to block Fisher’s hand swiping him. Another swipe and another, the only sound the clang of steel from his sword as he blocks each gorilla-like swipe. Now Renji’s the one on defence.
He twists and spins to put himself at Fisher’s side instead of his front. Now that he’s out of swiping range, he makes to stab Fisher in the side. Just as he’s about to thrust his sword in, something pierces his leg. He looks down and sees Fisher’s hand extended towards his leg. There are ridiculously long claws protruding from his fingertips now, and one of them has gone straight through his calf.
“Damn it,” he curses, and pulls his arm back to stab this thing anyway, pain or no pain, but Fisher uses the fact that Renji’s kind of attached to him now and swings his arm in a wide horizontal arc, flinging Renji off his finger.
He hits the ground like a skipping stone, bouncing a couple times before groaning as he rolls to a stop. Okay, that hurt.
He attempts to get his bearings fast, to right himself, but he’s unsteady with a hole in one of his legs. It doesn’t help that when he spots Fisher, the hollow has a new lure.
No.
Fuck.
He doesn’t know how, it must have something to do with those claws, but damnit, of all the people he knows, Fisher really did pick the one person he can’t raise his sword against. He does his best to assume his stance, to keep his centre of gravity low and his sword gripped in both hands, but his leg is bleeding badly and his hands are less than steady. For the first time in this fight, he doesn’t know if he can do this.
In the decades that have past he’s only been able to glimpse at her from afar. Decades of distance and silence and he still misses her like crazy.
“Just give up shinigami.” Fisher lumbers towards him leisurely, the disguised lure swaying with his movements. “I can see it in your eyes. You won’t be able to beat me.” The hollow stands to his full height, casting a large shadow over Renji as he looms over his paralyzed form. The face of his best friend smiles serenely at him, head haloed by the black hole in the hollow’s chest, and he’s so focused on her face that he doesn’t notice the encroaching red hand.
Or the kid.
A cero blast beams past his head and over his shoulder to incinerate the entirety of Fisher’s left arm. Fisher stumbles back and roars in pain, jerking the lure back as well, and it’s enough to break the spell he was under. Renji shakes his head clear and refocuses. A cero is not a good sign, it means a high level hollow is here, quite possibly an Arrancar. But when—how.
He turns his head over his shoulder and his eyes widen at who he sees. The kid has his hand raised, smoke wafting from his open palm. The look in his eyes is not a look any child should have. Those eyes are cold, but besides that, there is a white, skeletal looking mask on the kid’s face.
“Hey mister.” The kid lowers his hand, and Renji doesn’t understand how the kid can have a hollow mask but no hole in his heart. What the fuck? How is that even possible? “That thing, that monster…he killed my mom, didn’t he?”
He opens his mouth to answer but Fisher seems to have recovered and is out for blood. He barrels past Renji and heads straight for the kid. The kid, for his part, simply raises his little hand again and faces down the stampeding hollow with a steadiness no child should be capable of.
A wide mouth opens to devour it’s next meal but before it can clamp down on the small body, a burst of black reiatsu envelopes them both.
Renji coughs and fans the cloud of dust thats kicked up away from his face. He blinks away the sting in his eyes as he runs over towards the kid. He hopes Fisher didn’t eat him.
He can hears some sort of squelching noise coming from the dust cloud, accompanied by grotesque cracking and ripping. He holds his sword in front of him when he hears gnawing and approaches slowly, hoping to slay Fisher in one strike while he’s distracted.
But it isn’t Fisher who’s breaking bones and stuffing his face. As Renji comes closer and the dust settles, a little tuft of spiky orange hair is revealed to him, bent over the mass of green as he tears into flesh and buries his face in gore.
Renji knows his eyes must be as wide as saucers, mouth pulling into an unconscious grimace at the horror in front of him. He has only ever read about hollow that do this, that devour each other in order to absorb their abilities and grow stronger faster. He’s glad he’d only read about it before until now, if he saw this when he was still just a student, he’d have puked.
He doesn’t know what to do but watch. Does he try to purify what’s left of Fisher’s soul? Would it matter? Maybe Fisher lived a terrible life as a human and the jigoku no mon would take him away to hell anyway.
The hollow child seems to remember his presence then, and opens his mask to screech at Renji in a way that is really quite terrifying given that the kid still has bits of green fur in his teeth. He goes back to devouring Fisher.
Renji looks to the tiny form that’s busy ripping and shredding into the hollow that devoured his mother’s soul, and knows what he has to do. It’s extremely rare for the soul of a child to become a hollow. Their natural innocence and purity makes it almost impossible for them to experience the level of despair that creates a hollow. However, the longer souls linger on earth, the more they run the risk of succumbing to that despair. Even souls that have the best intentions to stick around can lose their hearts after enough time. That’s why these souls are called hollow, and why they have holes in the middle of their chests. They’re lost souls constantly yearning for something and devouring other souls in attempt to fill that void. Hunger is a part of their nature.
And this kid is already strong enough to unleash Arrancar level attacks, to overpower a hollow that gave shinigami trouble for decades. Renji positions his sword above the kid’s head, right in line with his little neck. The kindest thing he could do here is purify the kid’s soul. He could be quick about it, swing his sword sure and fast. Kid won’t even feel it.
He gulps as he looks down on the spiky bent head, his hair is the weirdest shade of orange, it’s like a poofy tangerine coloured dandelion.
The kid looks up at him and screeches at him again, though quieter this time, looking between him and Fisher as he shifts on his haunches like he’s not sure if Renji will steal his food or not. Like this, the kid isn’t so much a kid as he is a snarling wild animal.
Which is exactly what the nobles and other students at Shin’o said about him.
That’s when Renji knows for sure he can’t do it. He knows he should. Despite being just a kid, the boy is now also a hollow— a frickin’ strong one—and he’s most likely only going to get stronger. He might end up eating scours of souls, and it’ll be all Renji’s fault for not doing what needed to be done, no matter how awful.
Those yellow eyes blink up at him, tilting his masked head, and the look is so reminiscent to childish curiousity that he thinks the kid must still be in there somewhere, or maybe thats just his imagination. Either way, Renji sheaths his zanpakuto. He’s made his decision.
He pulls the ends of the white headband he always keeps wrapped around his forehead and bends down to wipe the kid’s face with it. There’s blood and guts and grim all over him.
“Abarai!” A voice calls in the distance. “Abarai-san!”
Renji snaps his head in the direction of his squad. He should be getting back, he’s definitely taken longer then he said he would.
He looks back at the kid and his heart clenches. His eyes are wide and owlish, looking the most child-like since he fired that cero, but the sound of pounding feet alerts him to the fact that his squad is approaching, and if any of them see the kid, they definitely won’t hesitate to kill him, or they’ll expect Renji to. So he rises to his feet, letting his headband fall out of his hand and onto the grass. It’s ruined now anyway.
He throws one last look over his shoulder at the kid before he leaves and adamantly does not look back afterwards. He feels inadequate and wrong-footed and still…not okay about this, but he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s just going to have to pray that he hasn’t made a huge mistake.
He shunpos to the cluster of familiar reiatsu signatures, startling one of the cadets when he suddenly appears beside him. He’s glad he caught up to them now, they were getting too close to the river.
“Sir,” one of the other cadets greets. Finally, someone with some decent respect for the chain of command around here. “There were two hollow that came up on the detector at your location,” he says while lifting up said hollow detector. “One of them had a pretty big signature. We were just on our way to assist you.”
Just has he’s about to answer, the asshole from earlier points dramatically to his leg. “Oi! You’re bleeding!”
Renji closes his eyes and counts to ten. Gee, I didn’t know. Thanks for telling me. “There were indeed hollow over by the riverbank. They were stronger than I anticipated, but they’ve been dealt with,” he informs his squad to let them know that there is no more danger. He doesn’t mention Grand Fisher, he doesn’t want anyone snooping back where the kid is. He sees the cadet look at his detector with a scrunched brow, mouth opening to say something. Renji closes his hand around the detector and squeezes it hard. “So lets wrap it up for tonight and head back to the senkaimon. It’s been a long night,” he announces purposefully and when he takes his hand away, the screen of the detector is cracked and useless. He limps with his squad back to their rendezvous point, away from the boy.
And because he didn’t look back, he doesn’t see the kid shuffle to stand over to his mother’s corpse. Doesn’t see the tiny fist that clutches his headband like a lifeline or the garganta that manifests behind him.