“Hollows? Hunting? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not giving Ichi-nii a run for anything.”
//Karin is indie again! She’s been affiliated with a group for awhile, but it has officially come full circle. I’ve made a second Karin blog affiliated with another group, Bleached Asylum, because that blog isn’t allowed to interact with anyone who isn’t affiliated.
So Karin’s a free independent woman here again!
That being said, there haven’t been many people to write with lately so I’m putting this blog on a semi-hiatus until further notice. I’m not giving her up, don’t worry.
Thanks for your understanding!
PS I’d change the affiliation status in the FAQ if I could, but tumblr’s theme customization isn’t working for me right now.
It came as no surprise that his ‘explanation’ wasn’t exactly crystal clear and he involved terminology that no normal person probably ever should have the knowledge of. To tell the truth, he could hardly blame his younger sibling for being so confused because he was in the same boat as her when he first began learning about all of this… stuff. Furthermore, he still couldn’t say confidently whether or not he understood the world he was somehow thrust into – a world of monsters and spirits, which humans should never get involved with in the first place.Then again, Ichigo wasn’t exactly your average human.
A hand raised to the back of his head, blunt nails idly scratching into his scalp, his lips quirked up slightly. “I guess it’s just not that easy to explain. I don’t even understand all of it.” He admitted it, though begrudgingly, that he was lost as she was.
More or less.
Most of the concepts involving the spiritual world were explained to him through the means of drawn diagrams. And by diagrams, that meant sucky drawings involving bunny rabbits, bears, or any other creature Rukia could think of to explain things to Ichigo. To be honest, it just confused him further most of the time rather than helped at all.
“Kon is…” Trailing off briefly, the elder Kurosaki sibling’s thin eyebrows furrowed as he searched for the words to say—ones that wouldn’t completely confuse his poor sister. “Kon is someone who comes in handy whenever I need to… Leave my body for whatever reason. Like you saw back there, if I just use the Combat Pass then my body just drops wherever and it’s a pain in the neck because most people assume I’ve died and end up calling an ambulance.”
That truly was the best explanation he felt that he could come up with. Almost stumbling then, the given information that the Mod Soul looked at dirty magazines while in his body with seemingly not a care in the world was no mystery to him, considering he’d caught Kon more than just a handful of times.
“He just… does whatever he wants with no real concept of what repercussions they’ll have for me.” Though he detected the tone in her voice when she referenced Inoue, it only confused him and despite that, he decided against voicing such confusion when he felt her flinching against him. With a slight frown marring his face again, he squeezed Karin’s shoulder in a pathetic attempt to show his sympathy.
“That makes more sense, I guess.” Her gaze, which had been previously fixed upon the front door to the clinic as they approached it, moved to Ichigo’s face. She rolled her eyes in a way that was intended to playfully dismiss any ugly feelings he may have been experiencing. That sad little way he squeezed her shoulder made something dark stir in her heart. It was as if he didn’t know what to do with her. Things weren’t effortless, and they hadn’t been in a long while. Part of her just didn’t want to deal with that right then and there. There was a childish portion of her —and that portion was larger than she cared to admit— that just wanted to chide him with a facetious comment and an elbow to the ribs.
But she couldn’t always hide behind that.
“If he didn’t care about the repercussions for you, you should’ve talked to him. Hell, I’d have done it if I’d known what was going on.” The words could have been cutting, but they were punctuated with an indifferent shrug instead. She imbued it with the notion that things were the way they were. There was no sense in making him feel guilty about the past.
They finished the pathetic limping journey to the clinic, Karin chuckling quietly under her breath as they reached the door. “I’d better get cleaned up before Yuzu sees and freaks out.” The last thing they needed was to have a crying Yuzu on their hands. “I think the first patient room on the left is clean and prepped for use. There should be a fresh stock of bandages in there, too.”
She cut a quick look up at him as if to make sure he was following what she said. She knew far more about the operations of the clinic than he did, seeing as she’d helped out as a basic assistant in times of dire need. Whether or not that was legal was not a question she ever bothered to ask their father. And now she didn’t mind it since she knew just what to do in situations like this.
In a moment that was so fleeting that it could have been imagined she squeezed his shoulder with the hand that had been so carefully wrapped around it. It was an echo of the squeeze he’d given her, and it wasn’t clear if it was mocking or sincere. Most likely it was a mix of both. Their height difference made keeping her arm there awkward during the whole trip home, and the squeeze just made her grimace at the reminder of how sore she was becoming. But it was nothing she couldn’t handle.
“Let’s go inside and I’ll show you what to do. Bandaging this up is so easy even you could do it.”
(Source: sardonic-skeptic)
“It’s a start.”He didn’t blame her for being kept out of the loop. While she was younger, keeping her ignorant had been done on purpose, to keep her safe. She still wasn’t very old, especially by the standards of Soul Society, but she was old enough to make her own choices about the world around her. His voice held no condemnation, and neither did his face. Instead, he spoke to her as he might to Ururu, gently and with kindness.
“A Shinigami keeps the balance between the World of the Living, which we are currently in, and the Soul Society, where people go when they die. Hollows are corrupted souls, and a Shinigami protects the people in the World of the Living by purifying the corrupted souls before they can do too much damage. The then-purified soul can go on to Soul Society, then, and the cycle of reincarnation remains intact. Too many Hollows could upset the balance, as could certain techniques that destroy the soul instead of purifying it.”
“Your brother became a Substitute Shinigami to protect your family when the Shinigami who was assigned to protect Karakura Town became injured in the line of duty. He trained, and became very strong, while going on missions to protect his friends from harm. During these missions, he became stronger still. Yes, he needs to leave his physical body behind to do this.”
He would avoid going in depth with an explanation of the Gotei 13 if he could. It really would be useless information to her, and Kisuke would rather avoid answering any questions about his own (admitted not entirely clean) past.
Probably more like extremely shady. Yeaaaaaaaah.
Certian techniques that destroy the soul. That phrase jumped out at her, but she couldn’t quite understand why. It wasn’t as if he’d put any sort of special emphasis upon it. It wasn’t even that she understood entirely what the phrase even meant. It was the curiosity of the thing.
So there were other techniques that the Shinigami didn’t use?
Did that mean there were other supernatural beings running around who used those techniques?
Well now she was getting ahead of herself.
“Yep, that sounds like my big brother.” She grimaced, “Always running off to rescue somebody. He even thinks of me as some kind of damsel in distress and that really—” She stopped halfway, her sarcastic frown ebbing away into something more serious. “I guess he hasn’t really been into the whole protecting thing as much lately.”
This still felt like a surreal dream. It was like something out of a movie. She’d known about her brother’s secret double life for years, but hearing another person affirm that fact made a fresh wave of weird wash over her. When she got the chance, she was definitely going to give Ichigo an ear full about his habit of lying to her about it. If that chance ever came. Whenever she felt like unleashing her wrath about that matter, something stopped her. Even a simple calm conversation on the matter had never quite happened and she couldn’t help but acknowledge that she had to take some of the blame for that. Neither of them were the best at communicating.
Her gaze flitted away from Urahara and she tugged absent-mindedly at the collar of her school uniform. “Something happened to him.” It wasn’t a question. “I don’t think everything that’s happening to us— I mean, him now is just a part of the job for a shinigami. And I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t do something to help the big brother who has done so much for me, all right?”
Daddy was a knight in shining armor…by *NEKO-2006
Neko I LOVE your artwork
