THE DEATH AND THE STRAWBERRY [STAR-CROSSED REMIX]

We fear what has no form.

For once, Rukia would have liked for a mission to go smooth. Just once, it would be nice for some easy, leisurely  fieldwork. Something that involved the proper amount of determination, strength, and diligence, without all those pesky, unexpected third party surprises she couldn't stop from happening. Light on her feet though she was, quick-thinking since childhood, extraneous factors beyond her control were not a few of Rukia's favorite things.

Balancing her weight along taut power lines like an award-winning gymnast, Rukia now discovered that these factors included, but were not limited to, chatty teenagers with spiritual power. Two of which happened to be strolling down the street below.

The first was a pencil of a boy with glasses and dark, parted hair; he didn't seem to understand the concept of spirits being able to see and hear the living, and kept urgently muttering to his friend, a taller, more muscular boy with a mane the color of the sun. They both looked irritated with permanent frowns stuck to their foreheads, as if the mere presence of the other boiled their respective blood. There was something funny about their reiatsu, something different she couldn't quite put her finger on; their reiraku, too, it was white but...these weren't ordinary I See Dead People types, at least that much she could determine.

She was about to pivot and take her tightrope acrobatics elsewhere when it occurred to her that curiosity had gotten its cat-killing hands on her. Cocking her head to the side, and with a small, almost defeated sigh, she stretched out her senses to feel for any hollows wreaking havoc in Karakura Town. The mission, she reminded herself, was more important than satisfying her intrigue. But Rukia detected nothing, nor did her pager when she checked it. Knowing she had nothing better to do than wander around, she decided she would follow.

Continuing her precarious walk, Rukia idly listened in on the hushed conversation between the boys. She only caught glances lit only by streetlamps and the moon, but based on the uniform and her studies of the human world, she assumed they were in “high school.” Age was always difficult to ascertain. To someone who could exist for over 50 years and barely change in appearance, the body didn't reveal much by itself—nor the eyes. Eyes could be weathered by hardships other than years. From her guess, they were younger than they seemed, and too melancholy to be so, so young.

The two—she had dubbed the orange-haired one as Lion and the one with glasses as Four Eyes (Rukia had always favored the classics)—were incredibly intent on her, while completely ignoring the fact that she was neither deaf nor blind to their obvious exclamations and gestures.

“Don't you know what she is?” demanded Four Eyes.

“Uhm, a cosplayer?” guessed Lion, clearly at a loss. Rukia grinned. For someone with such great spiritual power, he was rather green.

This apparently exasperated Four Eyes more than it amused. “No! I'll give you a hint—”

“Don't patronize me, Needlepoint.”

“You said you'd stop calling me that!” He took a deep, calming breath. “She's a ghost.”

Lion rolled his eyes dramatically. “I figured that, I'm not stupid. What live person would walk along power lines? But...a...cosplaying ghost? Did she die at a convention or something?”

“You are hopeless!” groaned Four Eyes, hitching his bag on his shoulder.

“You know I can hear you two,” she shouted once she couldn't take any more of their bickering. With astounding grace, she leapt from her perch and descended directly in front of the boys. As anticipated, they were much larger than she was, but that had never stopped her from putting up a fight before. Her adversaries' underestimation of her, as well as her startling speed, were her greatest strengths.

Four Eyes curled his lips in a snarl. “Got business here, Shinigami?”

“A shinigami? Her?” asked a bewildered Lion, pointing rudely.

Ouch.

“I've been assigned to defend Karakura Town. You should be grateful,” she defied proudly.

“You're not welcome, Shinigami,” growled Four Eyes. “We can't just let you waltz around our town like you own the place.”

“Speak for yourself, Ishida. I don't have any of that 'Quincy pride' territorial bull shit,” said the other, rolling his neck to turn to look directly into her eyes. Despite what he said, the look he gave wasn't friendly.

Quincy. These boys were Quincies. That explained the unique feel of their reiatsu. Nothing had trained her for this. She hadn't expected a turf war, just your run-of-the-mill, human world mission. Quincies were just whispers, memories. She was too young to have seen any, and had graduated from Shinigami Academy too early to know much about them: just that they didn't belong. They were supposed to be extinct—no, that wasn't the word. Annihilated. Exterminated.

Still, looking at these two boys, she couldn't help but see them as only that. Boys. Headstrong, brash boys. Surely not worthy of such slaughter...She wiped the look of shock off her face, showing the clean slate she had perfected since her emergence into nobility. Devoid of emotion, with a slight arc of the eyebrows. She had ways of making herself look tall as a skyscraper with just an adjustment of confident posture.

Smirking, Lion sized her up and down; following the contours of her body normally wasn't a long journey, but he seemed to take his time. He licked his lips, cocked his head to the side before adding (for her benefit and at her expense), “Besides, I'm not about to beat up on a girl half my size.”

Unfazed, Rukia scoffed and folded her arms across her chest. “Don't flatter yourself.”

Four Eyes—no, Ishida, Lion had called him—frowned, and half-whispered to his companion, “Was she commenting on your size or your ability to best her? Do you think she purposefully meant it to be a double entendre?”

“Does it matter?” Lion hissed, eyebrow twitching.

They were amusing for a pair of idiots who weren't supposed to exist, Rukia would give them that at least, but they were wasting her time. She had a mission to attend to, and the more she dawdled with idle chit-chat from locals the less face time she got with Karakura's resident dead. This was her first trip to the world of the living, she wasn't going to let some young upstarts screw it up for her. Just when she was opening her mouth to say something clever and demeaning—

Without warning, Lion and Ishida's expressions shifted drastically. She sensed the hollow behind her half a second too late—only managing to surge forward and tackle the two boys, pushing them to the ground and shielding them with her own body. The beast's claws tore through the skin of her back, leaving angry red marks and blood rushing out.

The hollow leaned back on its heels, looking pleased with itself as it held up its bloodied claws to inspect.

Blocking out the pain, Rukia rose, twisting around and unsheathing her sword in one smooth movement. Blood was oozing down her back, over her legs and seeping through her robes. Her shihakusho was in tatters, hanging off her shoulders. Trying to size it up, Rukia was running out of time and tactical options. There would be no clever strategy against this one. The hollow towered over them, dark, curved markings all over its body. It stood on two legs, its black lips curled back in some kind of ghoulish smile revealing tombstone teeth. Her vision blurred, but she moved with the force of a typhoon.

“You idiot!” she heard from behind, Lion's angry voice—but it was too late she was already slicing into her adversary.

Too shallow. She swore, setting down on the ground hard, with much less grace than usual. The hollow roared in a way that mirrored her frustration; teeth gnashing and cracking from the impact, blood spurting out of its eye where she had slashed. When it screamed, its great maw revealed the second mouth, second row of teeth.

The Lion, Ichigo, clasped the Shinigami's shoulder to scold her on he recklessness, but he words died on his tongue. He took a step back—it hadn't been long since he was introduced to the world of hollows and Shinigami and Quincies, and had never seen one up close. The size of it stole his breath, the scream filled him with cold fear that reached around him like tightening ropes. Its crushing presence weighed down on him. Rukia turned around, seeing his expression: it was one she knew well from Academy. It took one glance to know he'd never fought or even seen one of these behemoths before.

“Green” hadn't even begun to cover it.

She shook him off; she wouldn't hear orders from such a rookie. “Your reiatsu may be strong, but it's probably what attracted it.” Her lungs heaved suddenly, only managing to gasp out, “Back off.”

Rukia instantly regretted her words as she watched him take another step back, a haunted look in his eyes. He looked back at Ishida, who had apparently hit the ground too hard, groaning and half-conscious. “You mean, I did this?”

She tripped over her own tongue trying to right the situation, “Oh, now is not the time for—” But she was cut off by the wide swipe of the hollow's claws, which raked into her flank. Ichigo's head snapped to the side, watching in a helpless panic as she was whipped around and slammed into the concrete wall lining the street.

Stumbling from the indent she had made in the wall, Rukia forcibly swallowed down the mix of bile and blood that chased up her throat, the wounds on her back deepening and sloshing red onto the pavement. The beast had tore open a rent in her abdomen, but she didn't dare look down to assess the damage. As she raised her sword, suddenly heavier in her hands, a bright light lanced across her line of vision. Then a thud! sounded and Rukia wasn't sure in which direction to swivel her head, deciding on a quick turn each way.

Down went the evil spirit's arm—turn—and there was Lion, elbow raised high, fingers slack. In his other hand was a shimmering black longbow, the length of his height. He was poised for another strike before Rukia yelled, “No!” and he hesitated.

The hollow roared, turning and running in the opposite direction. “Shit,” muttered Lion. He looked at Rukia, raising a hand. “Stay here.”

“No, don't destroy it,” she commanded weakly, trying to push herself up.

“It's going in the direction of the hospital. My family—”

Rukia grimaced, leaning heavily on her sword. Their eyes locked onto each other, something of a silent conversation passing between them. Knowing it was a decision she would regret, she simply instructed: “Go.”

He didn't need to be told twice, sprinting off after the monster. What Ichigo did hit was shallow, as he only haphazardly shooting off the arrows of reishi. Ichigo had trained with Ishida and his grandfather since he was young, and his aim had been nearly unparalleled; in the heat of the moment, however, he couldn't do much more than fire desperately one after another, only managing to wound it superficially—but it was enough to get its attention. The hollow whipped around, acrid smoke rising from the craters Ichigo had made in its thick, armored skin. It bellowed menacingly, beating its chest with the one arm it had left.  The thing ran right for him, and Ichigo relaxed the tension in his shoulders. He gathered reishi to a point, “notching” the arrow that would fell his foe, inhaling slowly, then released the arrow with the breath. It flew true: the beam of light halved the hollow before it dissipated into nothing.

The longbow reverted back to the small, obsidian pentagon he always kept on a chain in his pocket. He allowed himself only a moment's satisfaction before rushing back to the Shinigami's side. She was unsteady, and he caught her when she lurched forward, his strong arms wrapping around her. Her sword fell with a clatter as he eased her down, sinking to the ground.

“You shouldn't have done that,” she muttered once he had laid her out. He was loath to put her on her back, but it was the stomach wound that he was most worried about.

“What, saved my family?” he replied, annoyed, but more distracted by her injuries. She kept a stained hand over her abdomen, as if holding in her insides.

“Destroy the hollow,” she told him with a strained voice before coughing up yet more blood onto the pavement.

He ignored her criticism on Quincy ways, peeling back her hand and the tattered cloth over the injury. She was too weak to protest. He made a face halfway between disgust and clinical detachment. “I'm going to have to cauterize it.” The Shinigami swore under her breath. This wasn't going to be pleasant.

Ichigo turned, calling to Ishida, who was just now stirring, “Ishida, get my bag, call my mom. She'll be able to treat her.”

“You defeated the hollow without me?” he groaned, but complied.

“Yeah, you can bitch about being useless later,” Ichigo threw over his shoulder. He rummaged his pockets before he asked his cousin for a pencil.

“Why are you doing this?” blurted Rukia.

Lion gave her a quizzical look. “You were wounded because of me. I'm not just gonna let you die because of me,” he replied, as if it were obvious—easily deconstructing thousands of years of hatred between their two races. Then he added quietly, “You're not like they said you'd be.”

Neither are you, she thought.

“Here,” he offered, holding the pencil to her lips. She parted them, biting on the wood.

Ichigo retrieved the shiny black pentagon from his pocket, turning it over in his fingers like a worry stone. Squeezing it in his palm, the bow winked into spatial existence. It wasn't something Ichigo had ever done, but there was no time to think too hard about it: all he knew was that there was fire within him. Something deep and trapped that he could harness through the bow. He grit his teeth, gathering heat in the tip of his fingers as he drew them back as if drawing an arrow. The light was hot and blue, a plume of flame in his hand. He gave her an apologetic glance—to which she nodded in a get-it-over-with manner—hovering but a moment over the wound, before finally connecting to her skin.

She screamed through a clenched jaw at the sudden new wave of pain. With the agony so immense and concentrating on one place, she struggled to remain conscious. The pencil snapped between her teeth, splintering in her mouth. She spat, but she stuck it out, remaining as still as possible as Ichigo did his work. When he was done, she finally relaxed, chest heaving.

Her eyelids threatened to close, fluttering like butterfly wings. “Stay awake,” he urged.

“I'm alright, I'm alright,” she murmured.

Ichigo checked her pulse. It was slowing. Panic rose in him; if he failed to save her now—no, this wasn't going to be like his dad all over again. She was going to live.

“Keep talking, okay? You're gonna be fine.” He was just regurgitating what he'd heard his mother tell patients in pain, try to distract her from it. He didn't know if it were a truth or a lie, for her benefit or his. Her eyes closed. “Shinigami? Shinigami, you hear me?”

“It's not 'Shinigami,'” she corrected weakly, looking up at him through half-lidded, vibrant indigo eyes. “It's Kuchiki Rukia.” The Lion smiled at her, something normally so sinister with teeth and teeth and...it smiled warmly.

“I'm Kurosaki Ichigo,” he replied. At least she was still conscious, still speaking. He had to keep her awake.

“The Lion has a name,” she slurred dreamily, the barest hint of a return grin on her lips.

Ichigo quirked his eyebrows, not sure what to make of her delirious comment, but only said, “Let's pray it's not the last time you hear it,” before scooping her up to carry her to the clinic.

Thus, the arrow is loosed.