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rinusagitora · 24 days

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I've turned like sour milk.

Fandom: Bleach Characters; Karin Kurosaki, Toushirou Hitsugaya, Momo Hinamori, Shunsui Kyouraku, Shinji Hirako, Lisa Yadomaru, Roujuurou Outoribashi, Rangiku Matsumoto, Izuru Kira, Shuuhei Hisagi, Renji Abarai Pairings: HitsuKarin-centric, mentions of RenShuuKiraHina, Rannao, ShinRose, & ShunUki Words: 4.2k Summary: Karin's dead now like she's always wanted. She's lucky enough to be housed by Momo and her spouses, but her troubles are far from over. Warnings: References of suicide & self-injury AO3: works/54973525 A/N: Written for HitsuKarin Week 2024.

Karin left the World of the Living wearing shorts and a tank top, barefoot having left her shoes on the bridge. Now she wears a white kimono, folded over like she's a corpse. She can't stop fiddling with the sleeves. She isn't used to their bell-shape. She isn't used to the fabric.

They trek through Ichibantai. The division is, more or less, what Karin expected it to be: antiquated. The floorboards squeal while Momo and Toushirou guide her towards the soutaichou's office. The building is a labyrinth, almost dreamlike. Evergreens cast shadows on the walls no matter where they are or how deep they venture. It's unnerving.

She knows this plane is but a graveyard. The overwhelming majority of the people here have died and carry that horror with them and it shows. Toushirou is now a century old. He still remembers the Russo-Japanese War and cholera. He got misty-eyed when she cracked a joke that he died on the can, and she's never felt as much of an awful person since, even after they made up. Naturally, the plane in which these people reside reflects the dawning of mortality, especially at night when the veil is thinnest. The knowledge of this doesn't keep the most primal parts of her from bristling.

They pause in front of a massive, carved door. Momo repacks her tobacco pipe, lights it with a spark from her snapping fingers. She takes a deep breath and knocks.

Shunsui is not what Karin expected. He opens the door, fixing a lively kimono over his shoulders.

"Hello. Thank you for meeting me at this time," he says. She smells sake on his breath. Her heart pounds. There's an odd emittance from him. Everyone has an aura. Toushirou's aura provokes the image of a dragon coiled around a snow-capped mountain. An icy exterior with a longing for stability found in authority. Momo's is a balefire in a meadow, or pushing around chicken in search of divination. Shunsui's aura is harder to peg. It's like a jack-in-the-box, if the puppet on the spring was a live snake. He is not the facade he dons.

"Soutaichou," Momo says. The three bow in unison. "Thank you for your accommodations. I understand it's after hours, but I presume you understand why I'd like to get this finished sooner rather than later."

Shunsui steps aside and they enter the office. The rice paper doors are open to a manicured stone garden. It's warm, despite it being late spring now, and she sees a kotatsu and a fire going in the pit.

They take a seat around the kotatsu. Karin's legs ache the second she assumes seiza. The way Shunsui lounges makes her think they're being too formal, or that he loves seeing others prostrate.

"I'm sure you all understand these are most unusual circumstances," Shunsui says.

Momo smiles. "Is anything to do with the Kurosaki usual?"

Shunsui hums. He pours four glasses of sake. "Neither of you were present for Kuchiki's execution, but Kurosaki gave us the opportunity to save her from the execution and bring light to Sousuke's crimes. I can appreciate disruption."

He slides sake glasses over to them. Karin gingerly takes her cup and sips. It burns. This is far from her first taste of liquor, but it's strong shit. She's fuzzy the second it hits her belly.

"Kurosaki-chan," Shunsui says. His cup touches his lips. "What were the circumstances of your death?"

Toushirou chimes, "She--"

Shunsui's hand lifts to stop him. "I want to hear it from her."

She's staring into the eyes of a nasty spirit while they drink. Her throat will be slit if her gaze averts.

There's a dozen reasons why she drowned herself, each worse than the last, and increasingly private. She's never been good at politics. Even with the Gotei's multiple life debts to Ichigo, she's certain whatever she says will be held against her.

Karin gnaws on her lip and says, "This is all I've wanted."

"To die?" Shunsui says.

"No. To become a shinigami."

He chuckles. "But a short eighty years, and I'm sure you would've accomplished it."

"Eighty years of bumping into things isn't a life," she argues. "I'm sure you've seen my work, Soutaichou. It's all I want."

"Being a shinigami isn't all about exorcism," he says.

"I know. Toushi-- Hitsugaya-taichou is secretive, but he tells me there's a lot of paperwork no matter where you go."

"You've wanted this for a short... what? Five? Six years?" You understand we live forever unless we're killed or starve, right? Eons of fighting. Of dreary paperwork. Of the world ending. Over and over again."

Karin's heart pounds. She wishes it was dread. Instead, it's the thrill of a roller coaster. Of a promise. Of fresh love.

"May I ask a question, Soutaichou?" Karin says. He waves as permission. "In your years as a shinigami, have you been unfulfilled?" Shunsui is quiet. "My issue isn't as simple as disliking school. Even when my grades were okay, I'd look around what I could do with those skills, and all of it just seemed like a chore. Nursing was fulfilling, but I never had the bedside manner for it. The times I've battled hollows, and the times I've worked with your officers, have been the only times my skin has fit right.

Karin slides her cup onto the tabletop. "You ask why I killed myself. I couldn't go on, day after day, in skin that fit wrong."

"You're so much like your brother." Shunsui sips. "You've always done what's right for you."

Karin frowns. "Is that--"

Toushirou interrupts with, "That isn't an inherently bad quality, Soutaichou. Ichigo Kurosaki and his companions took out over half of our biggest threats for the Winter War during their excursion to Hueco Mundo. I'm confident our losses would've significantly increased if we faced the full force of Aizen's Court." He sips. "She has just as much to offer, and without Kurosaki's shortcomings."

Shunsui's gaze drinks her in. "Then what are your shortcomings, dear?"

Karin swallows. She isn't sure what else to do other than tell the truth. "I'm not always good at listening to authority. I have a temper as well," she replies.

"A temper?" Shunsui reiterates.

Momo scoffs. A cloud of tobacco billows around her face, and she says, while ashing her pipe into a ceramic tray, "All due respect, Soutaichou, our own have far more dangerous tempers. Is it not Mayuri Kurotsuchi-taichou who beat his lieutenant and daughter up until her demise during the Wandenreich invasion?"

"Kurotsuchi-taichou's usefulness is undisputed."

"That's exactly what I mean. Whatever shortcomings Karin has are a fraction of what we have in our uppermost echelon presently. You yourself acknowledge that acting against authority isn't inherently bad. Was it not you and the late Ukitake-taichou who rebelled against Central Forty-Six and your predecessor's orders for Rukia's execution? Do our present captains not have destructive tempers? Were we not founded on slaughter?"

Shunsui taps his cup with his finger. "I see now why you are so special to Nanao."

"I was given lucidity once Sousuke's influence was erased. She values that."

Shunsui leans back on his palm. "My niece has lived a thousand years and accrued wisdom of the ages for it. You have been the only one to share that, and at an infinitesimal age. Your input is one of the few I can take at face value."

There's a wave of indignity from Toushirou that Karin chooses to ignore for now. He's always butthurt when people aren't falling over his prodigal skills.

Shunsui stands and they stand with him. He circles the kotatsu and meets Karin. "It would be an honor to have you as our own, Kurosaki-chan. Once the exams open, you'll take an aptitude test, and your education at Shin'oureijutsuin will begin.

Karin smiles and bows. She can't believe this shit worked. "Karin is fine, Soutaichou. Thank you."

Shunsui bows, and they bow afterward. "Best of luck to you all. Good night."

Karin follows Momo and Toushirou into the night. He grabs her hand. She's fuzzy from booze, but optimistic.

"Well, that went spectacularly," Momo sighs. She takes a moment to puff from her pipe. "Now that that's done, let's go make merriment. Supper should be ready, don't you think?"

Toushirou sighs. "I'm just glad Muguruma's cooking skills are rubbing off on Hisagi."

"He's always been a good cook, you're just spoiled by Obaa-san's cooking."

"Yeah, yeah..."

Karin's heard a fair amount of Momo's husbands from Toushirou. He doesn't seem to get along with them, but tells her their relationship was more strained a few years ago, before the wedding. She's having trouble recalling any of their names, but knows one of them is a close friend of both Ichigo and Rukia, which is bad news for Karin. Ichigo's friends always seem to take his side. They always seem content squashing her under his heel.

Where else can she go, though? She isn't ready to move in with Toushirou so soon. As much as she loves him, she's filled with foulness. She isn't sure he can survive much more of her insanity. Of her self-destruction. God knows killing herself isn't the end of it. Wounds still fester within her.

Momo and her husbands reside in a classical double-decker with a garden and a spacious engawa. She hears ducks nearby and there are potent, joyous waves from within, wafting over her with the sound of laughter. It makes her chest ache.

Momo opens the door to a long entryway where their sandals are shed. "Toushirou, go ahead and meet the party. I'm going to get Karin out of those clothes."

"Alright. See you in a minute," Toushirou says to Momo. He turns to Karin and kisses her cheek. Karin smiles while fiddling with her sleeves. "You too."

Momo takes her past a remarkably open and modern living area, up a set of stairs, through a hallway lit by magical lights, and into a bedroom. She opens a closet brimming with bedding and boxes, and pries one from the neat pile, briefly opening it, and frowns. "Ugh, I might have to loan you something of Shuuhei's. You're much... flesh-ier than I am."

That's one way of putting it. Karin isn't tall. Taller than Momo, but it isn't terribly uncommon for anyone to be taller than Momo. The issue is she's as endowed as an hourglass. Her breasts are large, her hips are wide, and her arms and legs are as thick as the haunches of a horse. This has been a deliberate effort, of course. Karin loves nothing more than to be the image of power. But it does spell difficulty when she needs to borrow clothes from others. When Jinta and Ururu would take her home, each of them covered in the blood of hollows, the only one she could dream of fitting into was Tessai's drawstring pajamas while her clothes were in the wash.

Momo does find a suitable kimono. It's sleeveless and slate blue. Momo removes it from the box in search of an obi, and scoffs when she doesn't find one. "Ugh, I'm sorry. My husband wears... unique accessories at home. Let me grab an obi from my uniform to affix it, dear."

Karin pulls apart the obi holding the kyoukatabira she wears, sheds the rest she wears, and dresses in a loin cloth and the yukata. Momo finds a belt to shut it. It's clear these clothes were made for someone with a much flatter chest than her own. In order to keep the hem even, Karin keeps the collar open. She wishes she had tape to prevent a wardrobe malfunction. But ultimately it is workable.

Momo smooths the fabric over Karin's shoulders. "We'll get you some clothes soon, dear. This will have to do tonight, though," Momo says. "Are you okay to go downstairs now?"

"Better now than never."

They descend the stairs and Karin is taken to a large dining area brimming with jovial atmosphere. She hears laughter and smells hot food. The rice doors are open to a garden with a pond and something like four ducks. There are so many people here. At least a dozen. Karin recognizes Rangiku, and there's a redhead built like a brickhouse that Karin is certain she's seen around Karakura. He's likely Ichigo's friend.

Upon seeing Momo and Karin, the attendees lift their glasses and shout, "Banzai!"

Momo smiles and they take their seats. "This is a spectacular turnout for a last minute gathering," Momo says. Karin crosses her legs on the floor. "Thank you all for coming. You're our dearest friends, and I hope that our ward will find friendship among you all."

Karin bows from her seated position. "Thank you all for having me."

Rangiku laughs and waves her hand dismissively. "Oh, you're too formal! This is a party, isn't it?"

Toushirou reaches over with a cigarette. She takes one in her lips and takes a drag once he lights it. A scrawny blond man, simply swimming in a shinigami uniform, shovels various dishes and two drumsticks from a fat turkey onto her plate. Karin thanks him, noting the gold wedding band against his gray skin. His reiatsu is a weird piecemeal of misery and something like four others. It's weird. Karin is curious, but doesn't have the opportunity to ask about it when Rangiku asks,

"Well, Karin-chan, how are you feeling? Death treating you well?"

Karin isn't sure whether or not Rangiku knows that Karin committed suicide. She chooses not to broach the subject. "In truth, it's a lot to take in all at once. I'm fortunate to have Toushirou and Momo as guides."

"That you are," another blond man chimes. He walks over, shooing Toushirou to sit behind her, and sticks his hand out. "Shinji Hirako, captain of gobantai. Pleasure to meet you."

Karin delicately shakes his hand. "Likewise."

"So, we got a Kurosaki here permanently. What plans do you have?" Shinji asks.

"I imagine similar goals you had as a cadet. I'm here to become a shinigami."

"Yes, but why? What are you looking to get out of this?"

"Mah, Shinji, leave the poor thing alone," a bespectacled woman says. "It's her first night here. At least let her eat."

Karin picks up a drumstick as Momo giggles. Shinji sticks out his tongue at her. "Ever an ally, Yadomaru-taichou."

"You live with him long enough and learn to to equip some balls." The woman slides over. "I'm Lisa Yadomaru, captain of hachibantai... ignore Shinji's curiosity, he's always looking to get something."

Karin hums while she chews chicken. It's practically melting in her mouth. "It's a reasonable question. Soutaichou wanted to know the same."

"A reasonable question with more appropriate timing," Lisa says. Karin sees Toushirou and Shinji wrestling for the seat next to Karin in her peripheral. "Why don't you tell us about yourself first?"

She shrugs. "There isn't much to know about me. I hunt hollows. I used to play soccer. Toushirou and I have been dating awhile." The rest of it is too painful to talk about right now. Later. If ever.

Lisa chuckles. "Yeah, there's nothing quite like the field. It's a pity I must spend most of my time behind a desk."

"Oh, I understand my time will likely be spent the same way."

"Well, thankfully, this place is... a bit of a behavioral sink. There's a lot of us, there isn't always a lot to do, and so you'll have plenty of debauchery to engage in." Lisa sips sake. "Are you queer, Karin?"

Karin blinks. "That's quite a segueway."

"I promise it's related," Lisa says while Momo giggles.

"Well... yes. I'm a woman. I'm not particularly picky about my partners, so long as, um... well, so long as I'm topping if that makes sense." Karin smiles bashfully. She hasn't really talked about her sexuality with anyone but Jinta, Toushirou, and Ururu. It feels different. "I like more effeminate people, though."

Lisa says, "Ugh, yeah, those femmes have me by the belt at all times. Anyway: conservatism is prominent here, but most of us here are queer in some facet."

Toushirou finally wins back his seat. "Yeah, I've noticed the same. I mean, wasn't it Hirako and Outoribashi who married first of... er, for lack of a better word, the group?"

"Yes. Point being, you'll have your fill of whatever your poison may be. And if you get into my division, there's plenty to go around," Lisa says, winking.

Rangiku chuckles. "Oh, stop trying to play matchmaker for Yayahara-chan. She does just fine on her own," Momo says.

"None of you guys are any fun," Lisa whines.

Karin asks, "Who else is here?"

"Oh, dear, there's many," Momo says. "Here we go. You've met Rangiku-san, Shinji Hirako-taichou, and Lisa Yadomaru-taichou--"

"Yadomaru-san is fine," Lisa says. Karin nods.

"My spouses are Renji, Shuuhei, and Izuru," Momo says, pointing each of them out. Renji and Izuru, Izuru being the one who served her food earlier and Renji being the redhead she recognizes, are sitting with a carafe and another very large man that Karin is fairly cerain is either yakuza or bousouzoku judging by his cartoonishly large pompadour. Shuuhei is fitting over a pork bun with a lithe, green-haired woman. "The man with Renji and Izuru is Tetsuzaemon Iba-taichou. He's a dear friend of ours." Rangiku snorts and Momo glares at her. Karin's eyebrow cocks but she doesn't have further time to inquire. "Shuuhei is sitting with his co-lieutenant Mashiro Kuna. Their captain is the short, white-haired man sitting next to them, Kensei Muguruma-taichou. At the end of the table are Roujuurou Outoribashi-taichou, Izuru's captain, and Nanao Ise, my longtime friend, Rangiku's wife, and the Soutaichou's lieutenant."

The sheer amount of people here is a little overwhelming, and it's worse feeling what all of them feel. The longer she stays here, drinking in the infectious jubilation, the more she wishes she was alone. She only just suffered the grief of a couple dozen people; the ire of Ichigo and Yuzu, the confliction of her best friends. One would expect this feast would be a welcome departure from the last couple of days but it's all too much. Karin would rather have some time to process and to wallow.

The likelihood of her retreat is a different issue. Momo and her spouses were kind enough to offer their home as lodging. It would be incredibly rude to snub their efforts with her escape.

Roujuurou makes his way over, sitting behind Karin. She scoots herself around and bows to him.

"Hello and welcome to the Seireitei, Kurosaki-san," he says.

"Karin is fine," she replies. Roujuurou smiles.

"Your brother was our ally, and we, the Vizard, owe him. We owe you by extension," Roujuurou explains. Karin tries to brush off her brother's mention. "I am captain of sanbantai. Anything you need, I'll do what I can to provide. I know the same can be said for my husband Shinji."

Karin wants to say she doesn't want her brother's debts. Instead, she asks, "Vizard?"

He hums. Lisa says, "We're kind of like a hybrid of shinigami and hollow. We're not arrancar. Arrancar are... um... sourced from hollows. We were, and are, shinigami with hollows inside of us. Your brother is the same way."

"Well, it's more complicated than that according to Urahara, but yes," Roujuurou says.

"You know Urahara and Tsukabishi?" Karin asks.

"We were exiled with them after Aizen's experiment on us failed," Lisa explains.

"Well, yes, but it's more accurate to say they sacrificed their comfort to save us," Roujuurou says. "We would've been executed, or worse, if they hadn't ran with us."

Karin hums. "They are especially popular."

"More like infamous," Toushirou quips.

Roujuurou stands. "It was good meeting you, Karin. Take care. Again, my offer is indefinite. Whatever you made need."

Karin bows as he leaves. Toushirou squeezes her thigh, and she shoos him off. He leaks hurt.

"I'm going to fetch my husbands so they can introduce themselves as well," Momo says, standing. "Toushirou, could you fetch more sake?"

"Um, yeah, sure," he says.

Karin swigs a drink in her moment of privacy before standing to meet Momo's spouses Izuru, Renji, and Shuuhei. They're all much taller than she, even Izuru, who is simply swimming in his uniform.

"Karin, these are Izuru, Renji, and Shuuhei," Momo says. Renji nods to her.

"Hi," Karin says. She bow politely. "Thank you for having me."

"Welcome, Kurosaki," Renji says. He claps her on the arm and she winces. His slap doesn't sting as much as the name.

"Karin is fine," she says.

"Y'know, I didn't recognize you at first," Renji says, "you've grown up a lot."

"Yeah," she agrees.

"More importantly, what was it like living with Ichigo Kurosaki?" Shuuhei asks.

Momo says, "Let's leave those questions for a later time." Momo rubs Karin's back. "Do you have any questions for them, Karin-chan?"

Karin glances between them, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. She wants to ask why Izuru is comprised of something like four different reiatsu, ask how well Renji knows Ichigo, why Shuuhei is interested in her brother, but it all locks up in her throat. It embarrasses her. Normally, Karin is assertive and fearless, but she's tired now. Everything feels like a damn landmine.

"Naw," she says, "I think we'll get to know each other along the way."

Karin sits through another two hours of questions she doesn't have answers to, conversational topics of varying interest, and exorbitant alcohol consumption. By the point in which party-goers are peetering out, she's seeing triple and wobbling.

At least she's numb.

She does have the wherewithal to help with cleanup.

She wrings out a rag in the sink. Momo squawks, "It's your special night! It's like your birthday. Birthday girls don't do the cleaning!"

Izuru snorts. "You're always cleaning up after your birthday," he says. Momo's glare could very well have cut him, judging by how quickly he escapes the kitchen.

Karin unrolls the rag. "I's fine," she slurs, "leas' I shoul'do."

Momo sighs. "Karin-chan, I'm grateful for your help, but you need to lay down."

"Naw," she insists, brushing past Momo and tripping on her foot. She catches herself in the doorframe. Thankfully, she doesn't have the means for shame just yet. She'll leave it for the morning.

Momo sighs. "I'll have Toushirou take you to your room. Shuuhei had it made earlier today."

Karin hums. She looks at her hand and the rag's gone. Momo has it flung over her shoulder and it occurs to her just how sloshed she is.

"Yeah, okay," Karin replies.

Momo whistles and Toushirou makes his way down the hall with an armful of dishes. Momo takes them, kisses his head, and Toushirou wraps Karin in a hug. He kisses her. It twists a knife in her chest she's only now aware of.

It's a chore getting upstairs. He has to drag her up because her feet aren't working, and it brings tears to Karin's eyes. Embarrassment, namely.

She doesn't know if she can do this with him anymore. This isn't any different than the times he's held her in the shower while rinsing off the blood from her wrists.

She's laid on her futon, hugs his shoulders, and kisses him. His thumb pets her cheek.

Karin sniffs. "Toushirou, I know you can't... I know you can't feel others the way I do, but I'm in a lot of pain now." She wipes her tears away. "I don't know that I can do this now."

Dread washes over him. It's almost enough to make Karin hurl. "What?"

"I think a big piece of me broke when I jumped. All I feel is pain and resentment and... and I think to every time you rushed to my side when I couldn't take it anymore, when I'd gore myself, and I'd feel your pain."

"I don't know what you're trying to say." His voice is shaking.

Karin squeezes her eyes shut. Her tears roll off her temple and into her hair. "I can't do this to you anymore."

He licks his lips. "Are you breaking up with me?"

Karin sobs. She holds him and lays their heads together. "Can you wait for me?"

He sobs. "I don't understand what I did to... to prompt this."

"You're not listening," she says, "I broke, Toushirou, and you've mopped up after me for so long. I can feel when you're in pain. I can't do that to you over and over again when this is supposed to fix me."

He sits back on his legs and runs his hands down his face. Karin props herself on her elbows. There's four of him, coalescing into an image of confusion and hurt, before separating into six spinning, blurry iterations, blurry in her watery eyes.

Toushirou sighs and says, "You've... you've been everything to me for years."

"This is supposed to fix me." She's still in pieces now.

His chest heaves while he licks his lips and pushes his fingers through his hair. "You're drunk." He stands. "Good night, Karin."

He leaves and rips her heart out with him, connective tissue and arteries and all.

Karin muffles herself as she sobs. Rolling onto the bedroll, snot blows onto her hand while she screams into her skin.

She knows better than most that shit gets worse before it gets better. The anguish of it isn't anything she'll get used to.

#bleach #hitsukarin #karin kurosaki #toshiro hitsugaya #hitsukarinweek2024 #shinigami karin au

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rinusagitora · 4 months

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Eau de Vie Poire

Fandom: Bleach Characters: Toushirou Hitsugaya, Karin Kurosaki, Momo Hinamori, Kisuke Urahara, Jinta Hanakari, Ururu Tsumugiya Pairings: HitsuKarin Words: 3.8k Summary: Karin got into college and Toushirou's had an okay growth spurt, so they're doing pretty good as far as he's concerned. What better Christmas present is there than boning your girl for the first time? Warnings: ABSOLUTELY shameless smut. AO3: works/52817095 A/N: HKGE 2023 gift for PinkDreamTiger on twt!

Momo's complaints become fog in the wintry air. "Lord," she says, "it's bitter today! Ugh, if spring doesn't spare us this torment...."

"You're all pink," he teases while elbowing her ribs. "Frostbite will soon take your nose."

"What? Lord, you're so mean," she hisses. "At least I don't have some freakish tolerance for this weather! Your eyelashes have frosted and you're fine with a light coat!"

He deserved that.

But he doesn't have any acerbity left inside of him. Sousuke took his sister from him for so long, destroyed reality, and replaced it with his mechanizations. It drove Momo mad for a few months. Their relationship wasn't repaired for years. But they're together again, brother and sister. It's all he wants now.

She stops outside of the Senkaimon and hugs him. "I love you, Toushirou, my brother," she says while cupping his cheeks. "I do hope you enjoy your vacation."

Toushirou hugs her. "I'll miss you, Onee. I hope you and your husband enjoy New Year's."

"We will. I'll see you next year."

"Yeah, see you next year."

It only takes him a few minutes to emerge in the World of the Living. He's met by Kisuke Urahara in his shop's otherworldly basement. Toushirou still isn't sure how he feels about Kisuke. He always gets the jeebies from Kisuke, but what unknown doesn't give anyone the jeebies? His girlfriend seems to like Kisuke and his company well enough, anyway.

"Hello, Hitsugaya-kun," Kisuke says while unfurling his fan. "Are you traveling with Jinta and Ururu today?"

"It's Hitsugaya-taichou," he says. "But yes. We agreed to go to Karin-chan's together. We're doing a gift exchange at her place."

"Ururu told me about it," Kisuke says. He claps his fan shut on his palm. "I'm just glad you all have each other. Our kids never had real friends before you and Karin-chan, you know."

Toushirou smiles. This is one of the reasons he can't bring himself to entirely hate Kisuke and his family. Yes, he's old, but living in the body of a boy forever has made him feel like a boy lost in a sea of far more experienced elders. But Jinta, Karin, and Ururu have made Toushirou feel less of an arbiter and more of an actual fucking person.

He slips into his gigai and meets Jinta and Ururu upstairs. She hugs him.

"Happy Christmas, Toushirou-kun," she says. Jinta proceeds to clap him on the back.

"Hey, man, how goes?" he says.

"Am I too early?" Toushirou asks.

"Naw," Jinta replies. "We ain't even doing, like, dinner."

"We are, she's just ordering pizza. Well, pizza and ribs," Ururu says.

Toushirou laughs. "Good by me." He definitely won't turn his nose up at home cooking, but the discovery of pizza altered his entire worldview for the better.

Apparently, it'll just be the four of them. Ururu tells him that Ichigo and his wife are seeing her family. Isshin and Yuzu are in Okinawa. Originally, Karin was supposed to join them, but couldn't schedule it around her classes. Which is fine by him. Toushirou isn't Ichigo's biggest fan. Ichigo was weird when Toushirou first started dating Karin. Were it about him being in his eighties, whereas Karin only turned eighteen in May, Toushirou would completely understand. But Ichigo seems to think Karin is in jeopardy in Toushirou's custody like he's going to deflower her. Toushirou knows he isn't a force to be reckoned with, but he's seen how Karin treats hollows and he's pretty sure Karin would snap his spine without a second thought and step over his corpse.

Karin waits outside the gateway of the Kurosaki home while tapping away on her iPhone. Once they're closer, she stands, waves, and hugs each of them.

"Hey, guys," she says. When Toushirou is kissed by her, he gets butterflies. "C'mon in. I know it isn't, like, homemade, but we don't want a repeat of the last time I tried cooking, do we?"

"I'm fine with 'za," Jinta replies.

"Agreed," Toushirou says. He's not one to turn his nose up at home-cooked meals, but the discovery of pizza altered his entire worldview for the better.

Karin dishes everyone a slice before taking a seat on the floor and adjusting her shorts. "I hope it wasn't too much trouble coming here during the holidays," she says.

"Not at all. Shit's always slow in winter. No one wants to go out when it's cold outside." Toushirou's shoulders bob while he folds his slice. "The real question is how it's going on your guys' end. I imagine the holidays are much harder as a student."

"I expected it to be harder. I'm not saying it's breezy or anything, but I'm able to pump out what I gotta to make time for myself." Karin proceeds to take a huge bite. Jinta kicks her foot under the table.

"At least you've got prospects," he says, sighing. "I think I'm doomed to work at my dads' shop for the rest of my natural life."

Toushirou cocks his eyebrow. "What? He didn't forge you guys' documents or something?"

"We haven't asked. It feels... ungrateful," Ururu says.

Jinta sighs. "Yeah. I mean... they've done lots for us." He kicks his legs onto the coffee table. "Asking 'em for a way out just feels like a massive fuck you, y'know?"

Toushirou pats his shoulder.

"Aaanyway," Karin says, "I got everyone's presents here! Hang tight. I'll grab them."

Jinta practically inhales the rest of his slice. "Hang on, I'm coming. I saw something huge in there earlier."

"I can carry it," Karin laughs.

"It's not heavy, it's just huge. You're gonna roll an ankle, man."

Toushirou stands, takes Ururu's plate, and grabs another slice for each of them. "Your brother's matured a lot."

"He has," Ururu agrees while she takes her plate. "I think having you and Karin has helped. Being konpaku divorces you from humanity, but..." she trails off while picking up her slice, and smiles. She's pretty while ruminating. Not the same way Karin is pretty. Toushirou is pretty sure Ururu isn't interested in dating men anyway. Rather, Ururu's pretty in the way serenity is pretty. The kind of pretty that makes him envious. "But having you guys makes us feel normal, y'know?"

"I do."

There comes a crash and a storm of colorful language, some of which Toushirou hasn't heard before. Jinta and Karin can be spectacularly creative with their vernacular. Toushirou and Ururu share a bemused glance before setting their food aside and journeying upstairs.

"I told you it was cumbersome," Jinta barks while he and Karin squat to pick up a dented present wrapped in red and white paper.

"Oh, shut it, dumbass! If I didn't have you to contend with, I could've done this so easily!"

"Quit arguing," Ururu groans. She strides between them and lifts it with ease Toushirou isn't sure he could accomplish with any meaningful results. Another reason to envy Ururu. It just seems to embarrass Jinta and Ururu, however.

Toushirou helps carry the rest of the presents downstairs. Karin pushes aside the table before setting the pile down and sorting through them.

"Um, okay, these two are your's, Toushirou," Karin says while she passes a pair of boxes in peppermint and pink wrapping paper. He can tell you almost instantly these were wrapped by Jinta and Ururu respectively.

It's better than Toushirou's brown paper, at least.

Karin passes out the rest of the presents before they begin opening them. Of course, Ururu starts with her enormous present, peeling off the striped paper, popping open the box, and sliding out a foam structure. She gasps and applauds.

"Oh my god, how did you get this?" she gasps as she pries a massive assault rifle out of the foam. Toushirou's jaw hits the deck.

Jinta merely sniffs with a snide smirk. "Oh, I made it. Although, Dad helped with the smaller parts. But I did the heavy lifting. He just read the instructions. We tested it and everything so it's a fully operational killing machine."

"That's a really thoughtful gift, but my dad would kill me if he found out we had a gun in here," Karin hisses. Ururu slips it into its sleeve.

Jinta receives a pair of gauges from Karin and gushes about how long he's wanted to pierce his ears, a pair of reflective sunglasses Toushirou found for him a couple of months ago, and apparently, Ururu bought him a baseball signed by someone famous as Toushirou is fairly certain sent Jinta straight to Heaven. Ururu's remaining gifts are necklaces he bought at a flea market and a pearl-handle knife from Karin. Toushirou becomes increasingly concerned by the amount of weapons Ururu has amassed today alone.

Karin makes Toushirou open his presents next. Jinta and Ururu bought him a spectacular tapestry of dragons.

"The authenticator-guy said it's a relic from the seventeen hundreds. We saw it and it was so you," Ururu explains.

"I'm surprised you could even afford this," he says.

"The vendor owed our family a favor, so he was happy to discount it," Jinta says while he rolls it and drops it into the tube.

Karin is beaming when he opens her present. It's a ring box with a trio of rings. By far, his favorite is the dragon head in silver. Hyourinmaru is even pleased, purring within him like a cat.

He's never considered accessorizing, but this changes his mind with this.

"Oh, wow," he says, slipping them onto his fingers and watching them glint in the overhead lights, "this is... these are spectacular, babe."

"I'm glad you like them," Karin replies. She's practically glowing and it's making him flutter. "I was worried they wouldn't be your thing, but Ururu said they'd still be nice decorative pieces, if you so chose."

"I love them," he promises.

He loves her more than anything, he thinks.

Eventually, they begin chatting. Jinta and Ururu excuse themselves later in the evening, leaving him and Karin alone in the home. Perhaps it's the hormones of nascent manhood, but it gives him ideas that set his heart pounding.

Karin slips onto his lap and folds her alabaster legs one over the other. His hand lays on her thigh while she kisses him.

Can she feel his heart pounding? The thought makes him paranoid.

"I'm glad you got to come today," she says. Her elbow lays on the cushion and she sets her temple on her fist. "I missed you."

"I missed you too," he replies. Her eyes are steel gray but somehow soft. He could swim in them like mercury. "I love you."

Karin kisses him. Her arms fall around his shoulders. It makes him inflate. She laughs while he adjusts his hips. It makes him worry he's inadequate.

"What?" he says.

"Nothing," Karin promises. Her hand falls down his neck and chest while they resume kissing. Her lips are soft, and her tongue laps at his lips.

Frenching once sounded unappealing, but as Karin presses past his teeth, he wants to smack his past self for being a goddamn fool.

They fall onto his back. Toushirou's fingers find her knees and pull them towards his pits so her pelvis lays flat on his lap. She giggles.

"What?" he croaks. Karin kisses his jaw and hums.

"You've just got wood."

"I-Is it, like, small or something?"

"Not at all." Karin sits up. Her nails scrape down the front of his shirt and it makes him buck. He wants to take it off so he can feel it on his skin entirely uninterrupted. He's stopped when Karin's fingers loop under the hem of her shirt. He's so excited he's almost sick. Almost. When she whips off her shirt, revealing a sports bra pressing her tits up and in, he salivates, but she's far from finished.

"H-hang on," she says. "This is always the hard part..." It takes her a minute to pull off her bra. Her shoulder pops as she pulls it off her bulbous chest and she grunts while pushing it over her head. Her breasts fall over her ribs, nearly reaching her navel. Her nipples are milk chocolate on her breasts. He reaches to pet its peak with his knuckle, and throbs under her pussy when meeting her soft flesh billowing around him.

"God, you're gorgeous," he remarks airily. It's like a dream here.

Karin smiles. "I figured you'd enjoy yourself."

She dips and kisses him again. Her hair falls around their face and he hugs her, flattening her breasts against his, drawing his fingers up and down the dimple of her spine. She hums and purrs.

"I should probably take you upstairs," he says. He kisses her neck before digging his teeth in. Karin's moan echoes against the walls. "This can't be comfortable for your back."

"Okay," she says.

It's a little awkward trying to stand up with her in his lap, but he's able to carry her by the backs of her thighs while they giggle and race upstairs. Toushirou fumbles with her doorknob before Karin reaches behind her and opens it herself. He stumbles inside and falls hard onto her mattress which squeals like a rodent beneath their descent, but she kisses him and keeps her legs loop around his hips, grinding his length against her while he's tongued.

"Sweet lord," he shudders. There's no way he can keep up like this. Her crotch makes his underwear sticky with precum, and he can already see himself driving into her pussy while her eyes roll back in her head and her tits rock like the tide.

Toushirou sinks to his knees in front of the bed. Her legs pull his shirt up to his pits until Karin apologizes and unhooks him. He whips it off and tosses it to one side.

With her legs open, Toushirou unties her shorts. Karin lifts her hips up while he pulls them down past her knees. He kisses the inside of her knee while she pulls her feet out and she giggles.

The exterior doesn't look like anything he imagined. He knows a lot of girls shave, but he didn't anticipate there there being two sets of lips, let alone the inside lips are longer than the outside lips. He pushes it apart with his thumbs and finds two holes, which makes way less gross than peeing and fucking with the same hole. When he kisses the exterior, it's a little prickly, on the outside, but the inside is smooth, plush, and wet. Toushirou is reminded here that he genuinely has no fucking clue what he's doing, but he hikes her legs over his shoulders, draws his tongue up and down the inside of her lips, and hopes for the best.

It's a strange taste. Not something he dislikes, but not something he's going out of his way for. Now, the way she shudders and slips her fingers in his hair is something he'll be coming back for time and again.

Karin says, "You're too low," and her fingers slip under his chin. She lifts him to an inflamed piece of her cunt. "Concentrate on-- oh god," she says.

He gets the point. Toushirou eagerly laps at the swollen hood of her clit and wants so badly to stroke himself but finds himself lacking while multitasking. He can come later. Right now, he just wants to see Karin squirming in ecstasy.

"Yesss," she says while pushing him by the back of his head against her. "Oh, baby, you're-- oh god," Karin's side curls towards her hips. One of her hands covers her mouth while she moans. He grabs her wrist and pries it off her. Instead, she props herself on her elbows and shakes. "Oh, that's good honey, that's good..."

He could purr like a cat now. Her approval has always given him stirrings, but this makes him drip.

"Keep it up, just like that," she says. He picks up the pace and she smacks him. "I didn't say faster, I said to-- ohhh, you're a quick study, Toushirou, you're a-- oh my god--"

She falls onto her back and her legs extend. He knows she said to keep doing as he was, but he pushed up her hood with his thumb to reveal the head of her clit and rubs it with his tongue. She pushes him hard against her, fingers splayed against the back of his head like she palms a basketball, and pleads, screams, for him to keep going until her breath is gone and all that's left are long moans. She writhes as he rides through her climax, milking it for everything, for every appraisal he'll receive once she finishes.

She pushes him off her cunt and he catches strings of her orgasm before licking his lips. She bites her lip with a heady gaze. "That... that was... wow," she says. His chest swells and he smirks. "Go rinse your mouth out. We're not finished."

Toushirou wants to keep the taste a little longer, but he's beholden to Karin's orders, functionally enslaved to her whims. He rinses his mouth before blotting his face dry and staring at his erection in the mirror in the bathroom. There's a wet trickle meandering towards his sac. He's got no idea where this is going but likes it. She could collar him and he'd be damn grateful.

He returns to Karin's bedroom to find her on all fours with her ass in the air. Toushirou runs his fingers through his hair and turns away with a string of swears.

He definitely could've seen this coming, and it's something he wants, but this is his first time. He knows from whatever gross boy-talk from the academy and the office that men don't last long. She's way out of his league and this is probably the most terrifying thing to end tonight would be to come prematurely. And, yeah, she's come already, and he's definitely going to come, but it seems unfair to take a pounding and not get anything out of it.

Karin finds him outside the door. Her eyebrows are upturned. "Did I come on too strongly?" she asks.

"What? No," he replies, "I'm just... really, really close to finishing and it's... it's embarrassing."

"Don't be embarrassed," she says. Her palm glides across his shoulders. "It's... I mean, I've fingered myself, but it hasn't really gone anywhere. This is for you, honey. I wanna fuck you."

He blows air through his lips. He knows she doesn't mean to, but there is something spectacularly seductive about how it's said. Maybe it's the candor.

He kisses her before she pushes him inside. Karin pulls him onto her like a blanket. They part from their kisses, only briefly, so Toushirou can feel for her entrance with the head of his cock in hand. He thinks he's found it for a moment and slides forward, but it's only her lips and she laughs when he slips onto her pubic bone. It makes him hot with shame.

"Hey, it's okay, here." Karin folds her knees to her chest. It spreads her and gives him better access. Toushirou is easily able to slip inside of her.

The clinical technicalities are easily described. She's soaking wet and pillowy. The feeling, on the other hand, is ineffable. He moans as warmth and relief and need overcomes him, and inadvertently gyrates. Toushirou has to anchor himself on his forearms on either side of her head and take a breather.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Better than okay, I'm just trying not to come just yet," he says as he lays his forehead on her breast. The hum Karin utters gives him the impression she's impatient and his performance anxiety returns.

He kisses her with tongue and slowly rolls his hips forward. Her splayed hands run down his spine and onto his buttocks, where her fingers and nails dig crescents into him. He pushes his weight onto his hands to free his bottom side of his weight for thrust. The friction of pistoning into her is ecstasy. Toushirou moans, hard, basking in her. Karin's hands float onto the back of his shoulders and she joins in Toushirou's noise-making. He parts to see her eyes have shut.

"Harder," Karin tells him, and it sends electricity down his spine. Toushirou picks up the pace and the sound of clapping flesh-on-flesh and the squeal of her box spring.

"God, yes," Karin hisses. Her arms fall back, so Toushirou pins her legs up by the backs of her knees and resumes. His back and abs burn, but god, does he feel great. He feels his orgasm build and coil inside of his pelvis. "Oh, don't fucking stop, Toushirou, you're-- oh god," she continues while writhing. Karin founds herself while her eyelids flutter. Her gorgeous, steel-gray irises have rolled into the back of her head.

The visage makes him snap and he shakes. For a moment, his rhythm stutters while ejaculating. It's like high tide overcomes him, an orgasm better than whatever mediocre results onanism gives him. But he can't stop. At minimum, he wants the bragging rights to making her come twice in less than ten minutes, and be able to prove it to a skeptical audience.

For the second time that night, Karin tremors and chokes and utters long, deep, hoarse moans, as musical as her squealing bedsprings. She's shivering around him, milking his cock, and it's like a dam breaks.

He tries to keep pace while spilling into her, so Karin's orgasms can be as good as his is, because it's magical. It's the best thing he's felt in years.

It ends. He falls onto her mattress and pants like he ran a marathon. Karin swings her arm over him and kisses his eyelids.

"You're a fucking Olympian," she giggles while turning onto her back. He likes how her breasts jiggle.

"I'm surprised I lasted as long as I did," he confesses while rubbing his cheek against her pillow. Her praise makes him flutter inside. "The fuck did we wait so long to do this?"

"Oh, I would've been so bad."

"The great part of owning a pussy is the impossibility of being bad in bed from what I've been told."

She laughs. "Fair enough... let's wash up. I need to run out for some morning-after pills."

He looks down at his flaccid penis. "Does this even, like, work like that?"

"Good point. I'm not sure... I'll ask Urahara-san. Can you start the bath for me while I call?"

It feels weird to talk to Kisuke about their sex life, but there's no one else to ask, so he starts the bath. She comes back a few minutes later and pulls her hair tie out and shakes out her hair. She's beautiful like this, he thinks. He'll never understand why men complain about their wives. Karin kisses him, tells him he doesn't have any potency, and Toushirou's pretty certain he wouldn't care either fucking way, because this woman is the one of his dreams.

#bleach #hitsukarin #toshiro hitsugaya #karin kurosaki #hitsukarin gift exchange 2023 #eau de vie poire means pear liquor fyi #I'm Hilarious

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rinusagitora · 5 months

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Just a reminder that sign-ups close on November 27th!

& join us on Discord! https://discord.gg/gmpGSBBHSE

Art done by @rinusagitora

#bleach #hitsukarin #karin kurosaki #toshiro hitsugaya #one of us #hitsukarin gift exchange 2023

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rinusagitora · 5 months

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Banner I drew for this year's HitsuKarin Gift Exchange!

#bleach #hitsukarin #karin kurosaki #toshiro hitsugaya

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rinusagitora · 5 months

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It's that time of year again, folks! The yearly HitsuKarin Gift Exchange is underway. Signups close November 27th.

& be sure to join us on Discord! https://discord.gg/gmpGSBBHSE

Artwork done by Mod @rinusagitora

#LET'S GOOOOOO

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rinusagitora · 6 months

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Momo isn't having a good night!

#bleach #momo hinamori #sosuke aizen #renji abarai #gore /

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rinusagitora · 6 months

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A few sketches I've done over the last few months, ft OCs I've been roleplaying with!

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rinusagitora · 7 months

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I'll be the villain you blame.

Fandom: Bleach Characters: Momo Hinamori, Sousuke Aizen, Nanao Ise, Izuru Kira, Shuuhei Hisagi, Renji Abarai Pairings: badship AiHina, minor RenShuuKiraHina Words: 2.5k Summary: A study in invisible labor, gender inequity, & rage. Warnings for abusive relationships, cannibalism, & mild gore. AO3: works/50610688 A/N: I forgot what list I used for this & can't keep a schedule worth shit, so I'm just posting it now lmao I used various black metal, In This Moment, & Otep songs as inspiration. There are so many good ones.

"What do you mean you won't make dinner?"

It's not a question, but a demand for a damn good answer. Momo is elbow-deep in a wash basin bubbling with soap and waterlogged shitagi. Sweat pours down her sides from her pits.

"I have shit to do," he replies.

Her teeth grind. "And I don't?"

"You're washing laundry."

Thank you, Captain Obvious, and here she thought her hands were cramping from doing nothing.

"These stains are going to take hours getting out," she says, "so unless you want dingy laundry or dinner late, I need you to make us some food."

"I'm going to an Association meeting. I'll be eating there."

Momo's seen the Shinigami Men's Association. It's an excuse for officers to goof off.

"Okay. And what am I going to do for food after washing the laundry? It's going to be late when you finish."

Sousuke rolls his eyes. He doesn't even shut the door behind him when he fucks off.

It's times like these Momo wants to take his skin and put it through a wash cycle while he cries for help from their bed. See how he likes it.

Momo ought to, at least, lock the door behind him. He'll have to sleep on the engawa and explain to a passerby why that it. Briefly, it makes her smile thinking of it. My wife locked me out because I'm a piece of shit who dicks around while she scrubs my house clean. What a bitch, right?

It's pipe dreams. Even if someone catches him sleeping on the engawa, he'll make her look like a hysterical cunt.

---

He's home at three. Wakes her up to regale her with the fun he had while the Men's Association sang songs around a campfire.

Momo groans. "Honey, I need some sleep before we go into work."

He snorts. "You've slept for hours."

She really hasn't. There's maybe four hours under her belt. The bottoms of his socks took hours to whiten completely. Part of her was tempted to leave it, but picturing her husband in gray laundry just reminded her how bad his feet smell, and she couldn't bring herself to neglect it the way he's able to.

"I'm really tired, Sousuke, laundry took forever."

His face scrunches. "God, is it such a chore for you to listen to me?"

Momo wants to laugh, but knows it would start an argument she's much too tired for. "Fine. Go on."

She tries to sleep while he blathers, but he doesn't stop talking until the blue light of morning peeks through their window.

---

Sousuke takes a sick day. If Momo joins him, nothing will get done in the office, and he'll bitch about it for days like it wasn't something avoided easily enough by just having made dinner.

Nanao sometimes visits during lunch breaks. Momo thinks their friendship spawned of their mutually useless men. Her uncle can't even be bothered to wear socks or spit out poisonous reeds he chews on.

At least his feet don't smell as bad.

"Oh my god, you look exhausted."

Momo hums. "Sousuke was out late and woke me up when he came home. I couldn't go back to sleep."

"On a work night?" Nanao says while she scowls.

"It was a Men's Association gathering."

"Well, that's stupid," she says while unpacking bento. "I brought goodies, though, if you'd like to take a break."

The smell of soup and steak wafts to Momo and it makes her misty-eyed. When is she ever cared for? How long have she and Sousuke been married, and what has he done for her?

Momo wracks her brain while she and Nanao eat but can't think of a single chore he's done, or even a single thank you he's uttered.

---

All she wants to do is sleep when she comes home, but Sousuke has other plans.

"The irori is full," Sousuke says. Sure enough, the pot is laying on coals. "I have some paperwork to finish. Can you clean it out before dinner?"

Momo's teeth grind. "What's this paperwork?"

"November's budget."

"Wasn't that due yesterday?" she says.

"Yeah, but I was busy,"

"Busy goofing off with the Association members."

Sousuke scowls. "Can you just clean the fucking hearth?"

Her teeth grind. "Fine. Please run a bath for me."

"I told you, I have to do the budget."

"The budget that was due yesterday. Yesterday, which you spent hours goofing off during, instead of working."

"Will you stop nagging me?" he snaps. "Just clean the fucking irori."

Momo takes a deep breath. There's a beat of silence between them. "I'll clean it... please run me a bath so I can wash off when I finish."

"I just told you I'm fucking busy," Sousuke says.

Another beat of silence. "You can't take ten seconds to turn a fucking faucet?" she says.

"You can run it yourself. You're a big girl."

She curls her fists and utters a long groan. Her teeth grind. A headache radiates into her skull. "Indeed. I'm also a big girl who hasn't slept since three in the morning, am very tired, and would like a bath after cleaning the irori. I'm fairly certain your budget can be turned in twenty seconds later than it would be without you running a bath for me."

"What the fuck is this martyr act about? Seriously, you're behaving as if I've shot you."

"I don't know how to explain it anymore clearly than I have already!" she snaps.

"You haven't explained shit, Momo!" he returns with equal vitriol. "You're blathering on about nonsense like I'm some fucking criminal. What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?"

Something inside Momo snaps like a dry twig.

"You fucked around last night instead of doing the budget, and now it's overdue, then you woke me up, chat for hours about how much fun you had procrastinating the budget so I've gotten no sleep, then you called off work because you fucked around too late to get any meaningful sleep before we're supposed to go to work, which left me to pick up your slack, and when I come home utterly exhausted, you can't even bother to turn a faucet for me while I get filthy cleaning out the motherfucking hearth. Is that fucking clear enough, Sousuke?"

His hands slam on his desk and he flies to his feet. It rattles Momo like he's going to hit her. "I don't have to fucking listen to this shit, Momo. I'm your superior officer and you will treat me with respect I'm owed."

"You're my husband! You asked me to marry you because you loved me!" Her scream is so shrill that she wonders if the windows will shatter in its wake. It would be nice to be validated. To have some fucking control. To turn Sousuke into a pin cushion of glass shards. Maybe then he'll listen. Maybe he'll tiptoe around her instead and give into her whims so she can fucking rest.

He spits on her instead.

The glob of saliva and mucus rolls down her cheek. It leaves a trail like a snail. She's stunned while he storms out. It's like there's a delay between her and reality. Like time decompresses. When it returns to normal, there's an explosion.

Momo throws her fist into the wall. It gives underway. She's bleeding and full of splinters when she frees herself but can't bring herself to give a flying fuck. Instead, she storms out like Sousuke, hearth be damned.

She needs a fucking drink.

She doesn't even know the name of the bar she storms into. Momo thinks she scares the bartender because he doesn't make a peep when she asks for a pitcher of beer, just places it in front of her a few moments later. She doesn't even use the provided glass and tips it into her open mouth instead. Some of it dribbles onto her collar but she doesn't fucking care because it doesn't even begin to wash down her outrage.

"Hinamori?"

Beer goes down the wrong tube when she hears her name. Izuru takes a seat like nothing happened. For a moment, his fair face has semblance to the wall she put her fist through, and her brain feeds her an image of his skull exploding around her right hook. It makes Momo want to throw up.

Izuru pats her back. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"No, it's fine, I'm just a little absent-minded because I haven't slept well."

Momo hates that she's making excuses, that she's covering for her husband, but she isn't sure she has it in her to be told she's making mountain out of mole hills, even if it's by a dear friend.

"I can tell," he says. "Hey, Abarai and Hisagi are with me, why don't you drink with us? It's been awhile."

Momo kind of doesn't want to, but isn't able to concoct a reasonable excuse to decline, so she follows Izuru to their booth.

"Hey, it's been awhile," Shuuhei says while she slides into the booth next to Renji. "How's it going?"

"Fine," she fibs politely, then sips beer like she isn't a ravenous, vexed alcoholic.

Renji looks her over but he doesn't say anything. Momo wonders if he's clocked her exhaustion. He's always been good at reading people.

Shuuhei laughs. "Good to hear. We thought something was wrong when we saw you pounding your drink."

Momo groans. "It's fine. My husband and I just got into an argument and I wanted to blow off some steam."

"Makes sense," Renji replies. He reaches under the table and rubs her leg. It makes her head fall onto his shoulder. For now, she'll chalk it up to exhaustion.

"Marriage seems... hard," Izuru says.

"I can imagine so," Shuuhei says.

"It's just..." Momo trails off. She pinches her sinuses so she doesn't start bawling her eyes out. "I just don't get why he can't do simple things. Like, I was cleaning the irori when I asked him to run me a bath, but he threw a tantrum over it for some reason."

Part of her expects them to shrug it off, to call her hysterical, but Izuru says, "I don't understand why that would be a chore for him."

"Thank you," she says with wry laughter.

"Yeah, it's not hard," Renji agrees.

Momo takes another drink. "I'm sure all couples argue about chores." She hates herself more for bitching about him and then covering for him. It feels wishy washy. It feels like malicious lies.

"Sure, but... I don't know. It doesn't seem hard to just run a bath while you clean," Izuru replies.

It's times like these Momo wishes she married Izuru. It makes her sad she thought poorly of Izuru's intentions. For now, she'll chalk it up to exhaustion, like the day dream she has of being facedown in her pillow with Izuru's fist around her neck while he rails her slick pussy.

She laughs. "I thought so too. Alas, I'm the insane one asking for a simple favor."

"Why'd you even marry him?" Shuuhei asks. "He's unpleasant to be around as, like, a whole. He's pedantic."

"He was different not too long ago." Alas, this is her punishment for fucking her superior. Blow up the relationship and the squad blows up. Her career blows up. Everything blows up. The shrapnel will only go into her face, and he'll be unscathed, even if she screams about his incompetence from the rooftops.

Momo should've fucking married Izuru. He isn't an asshole even if he doesn't put his socks in the hamper.

---

In the lulls of her contributions to their conversation, Momo daydreams of each of them kissing her sore limbs and making love to her. Of being passed around them. She doesn't say anything even after taking her home around eleven. It's later than Momo would've liked but she didn't really want to escape their company after Izuru bought them a round of tequila shots. They took her home because she could hardly walk between exhaustion and intoxication.

Momo knows she passed out the second she covered herself in her quilt, but it's like she hasn't slept a wink when Sousuke shakes her awake and kisses her.

She's expecting an apology, but then he unties his obi. He's hard.

He's an asshole and expects her to fuck him at three in the morning when she's exhausted and angry. Somehow, his sobriety makes her even angrier, like this shit would be better if he was wasted.

Momo throws a right hook into the center of his face. Bones crunch under her fist, like the wall, and he squeals like a stuck pig.

"You wanna fuck after everything you said?" she screams in disbelief. "You can't even be bothered to fucking apologize?"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Sousuke howls while he clutches his face. He's like a petulant child. It makes her cunt recede into her pelvis.

"What's wrong with me? It's four in the morning! I haven't slept hardly five hours since yesterday morning, but you wake me up after a huge fight when I'm utterly fucking exhausted to fuck me like you weren't a raging fucking asshole earlier!

Sousuke doesn't get a word in before Momo is on her feet and knees him. He's pushed into a fetal position, grunting and crying, and it's oil on fire.

"You're the most neglectful fucking asshole I know!" she screams. "You can't do anything! You're seriously a fucking baby and you expect me to fucking spoon feed you! If I wanted to marry an infant, I would've robbed a fucking cradle!"

Magic coils in her hands. Her rage is consistently underestimated, the same as her labor is unappreciated and unreciprocated. She could spend months cleaning his home-- his home, because it's not hers, its not theirs, she's just a maid-- without so much as a thank you or a finger lifted to help.

It coalesces as fire in her palms. It barrels into Sousuke's face and roasts his hair and his skin. The smell is acrid, but there's no air for him to scream. She can see him trying to but all it's doing is burning his insides. There isn't enough oxygen to scream, not when its eaten by fire.

Sousuke wheezes when the fire stops. Momo assumes his vocal chords are fried. It's pathetic and blissful.

Momo recenters and sends fire to his crotch. She'll find better cock.

---

She's quite bedraggled and the floor is blackened once she finally finishes. Sousuke's top layers are charred to shit. The smell of burnt hair is long gone, and there's just the smell of seared meat now.

It makes her belly rumble.

There's the issue of the body, of course, and the most horrific epiphany occurs to her while her chest heaves.

He can't make dinner. Why can't she make him into dinner?

---

Momo sends a courier to Izuru, Renji, and Shuuhei inviting them over for dinner when she goes to work in the morning. She sliced Sousuke's buttocks and thighs into steaks, rubbed them with chilis and spices, and served them over potatoes, onions, and asparagus. There isn't a clean plate in the house before the night ends. They even help with the dishes.

#bleach #badship aihina #renshuukirahina #momo hinamori #sosuke aizen #izuru kira #renji abarai #shuhei hisagi #goretober 2023

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rinusagitora · 1 year

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Commission for @blloodhands! Ty Jo.

$5 emergency commissions open! IM or email rinusagitora@gmail for more info.

#bleach #shuuhina #momo hinamori #shuhei hisagi

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rinusagitora · 1 year

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The time has come...

... for HitsuKarin Week 2023 prompt list!!!

We've chosen to release the prompts more than a month ahead of time so folks have time to put something nice together.

I for one work full time & have the time management skills of a saltine.

Additionally, we have other events in the works for this year! On May 15, Sign-ups for our Summer Collab event will open!

We at HitsuKarin Week are excited to see what y'all come up with! Be sure to join the HitsuKarin Fanclub on Discord (remove spaces): https:// discord . gg/7G27A9eAyQ

Artwork by @duckirubb3r & @almightybuttcheeks

#hitsukarinweek2023 #(vibrates)

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rinusagitora · 1 year

Photo

Banner for HKW 2023, w/out the text.

Commissions are open!

#bleach #hitsukarin #karin kurosaki #toshiro hitsugaya

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rinusagitora · 1 year

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Hey everyone! It’s that time of year: HitsuKarin Week 2023 is underway!

Be sure to fill out this form for the moderators so we can ascertain dates & gather prompts (remove spaces): google . com /forms/d/1RfEmbat14uksayHhZSSwMOdV588cvmFsrviT_JTySkI/edit

Join us on Discord (remove spaces): discord . gg/frmpJ9A9Nx

Artwork by @rinusagitora

#bleach #hitsukarinweek2023

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rinusagitora · 2 years

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Author and captain of manslaughter and bloodshed, tells all things past and to come, gains the minds and love of friends and foes causing love among them if desired, incites homicides and can make a man invisible.

Commissions are open!

#brimstone and roses #lazbea #beatrice rosario #lazareth blaize #bradley blaize #adult /#bnr is PERFECT for demonic symbolatry

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rinusagitora · 2 years

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Y’all pls read Speremint’s Brimstone & Roses it’s so good omg

#webtoon #brimstone and roses #lazbea #lazareth blaize #beatrice rosario #bradley blaize #bea rosario

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rinusagitora · 2 years

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The changing of the tides.

Fandom: Bleach

Characters: Karin Kurosaki, Yuzu Kurosaki, Ichigo Kurosaki, Renji Abarai, Izuru Kira, Shuuhei Hisagi, Akon, Shuukurou Tsukishima, Momo Hinamori, Toushirou Hitsugaya

Words: 5.8k

Summary: Merpeople!AU. WARNINGS- recreational drug use, major character death, cosmic horror; The end is foretold by the disappearance of the sea serpents.

A/N: Written for @thewhisperingdeep fanzine.

AO3: works/41955684

Gargantuan serpents have ruled the ocean for as long as life has made their home in its waters. Generations pass and they remain until conquest claims them and recycles their flesh as food and bones as shelter and tools for the masses.

The natural order is venerated as a result. Birth, life, reproduction, death, consumption. All things outside the cycle, that which is unnatural, are calamitous and loathsome. Ruins, masses of hollow and angular planes dotting the ocean bottom, are omens of devastation. Alien artifacts found are destroyed by magicians or given a wide berth so they do not pollute the order worshipped by ocean-dwellers.

The end is foretold by the disappearance of the sea serpents, where nothing is behind to repurpose, and there are no rulers to command the denizens of the seas.

---

Karin only dreamt when she was ill. She was healthy, so they came few and far between as a result.

She was made by her companions to hole up in their father’s home to recuperate once they noticed the severity of her delirium. Disorientation and indolence. But Karin hated caves, even when she lived there as a child. Even if it had enough space to fit their enormous bodies, it was too tight of a squeeze for her to feel comfortable. She always pictured the walls giving in and the rubble crushing her.

The seaweed bed made for her was destroyed while she thrashed in her sleep, haunted by terrible images of blinding lights and bellies unzipping. Of water clouded with blood and intestines until even the most piercing luminescence was smothered by its density.

Her eyes opened to her father shaking her. Karin breathed a sigh of relief to be free of terrible hallucinations.

Yuzu was more youthful, despite being her twin. It was because she didn’t chew kanakusa, psychoactive seaweed digested by sharks then preserved in brine pools. She inherited their mother’s fairness, with pale hair and red tendrils, unlike Karin, who inherited their father’s darkness. Black hair, black bell, black tendrils. Yuzu glowed through the darkness while Karin disappeared into it. It sometimes made Karin jealous, until she remembered she inherited her mother’s fury and passion. Her emotional likeness was better than her physical likeness.

When their mother Masaki was murdered, her body fed Karin, Yuzu, and their brother Ichigo until they bloated. It was a common ordeal, but it gave Karin mixed feelings into the present. The grief over never seeing their mother again, the bliss from absorbing her essence. They kept her bones. Karin wove Masaki’s teeth in her hair and Yuzu shaved Masaki’s ribs into jewelry, like beautiful talons.

Karin absorbed Masaki’s odd dreams with her flesh. Witches called them premonitions, but they were always so cryptic. She wasn't smart enough to decipher them. Karin didn't classify herself as a witch for that very reason. Witches solved riddles, while the rest of them scratched their heads like buffoons.

She rubbed her eyes after blearily taking in Yuzu. She then glanced around the cavern. Their kind traveled with at least one companion, oftentimes unremarkable that used their enormous bodies as shelter in exchange for companionship in the lonely ocean. “Where are my marrer?” she croaked.

Yuzu pet her hair. “Outside.” Even though she was comforting, Karin sensed her disquiet.

“What has you unsettled?”

“Ichigo and Renji are outside as well… they want a word with you.”

Ichigo’s visitations were a welcome change of pace. He was swamped with errands since he began serving the serpents. Karin only saw him from afar and never long enough to flag him down before he disappeared into dark waters. Social calls were non-existent. He only wanted to see her for whatever schemes the serpents had in motion.

Karin respected the serpents a great deal. They took care of herself and her sibling after Masaki was murdered. The serpents she met, Toushirou and Shinji, were compassionate. But she feared them. The magnitude and their influence and sheer power made her feel small and scared. The ocean was their possession, and they could bring its end with a flick of their tails if they so desired. She gave them a wide berth as best as she could.

She lifted herself out of the ruined bed. “I’ll see what they want.”

Karin’s companions loitered in the mouth of the cave. Kei’s lips were downturned and worried. He was always anxious, but Kazuya, Ryohei, and Heita were just as worried as he. Kazuya rubbed his arms hard enough that he shed scales.

“Be calm,” she told them, “I won’t be long.”

Karin saw Ichigo from afar, glowing through the waters due to his paleness. Their father called them phantom jellyfish, enormous beings whose tendrils billowed like ether.

Renji was a shark. He was a fearsome creature, bulging with musculature, fashionable scars, and rows of jagged fangs spanning from his lips down his pallet. But he was friendly. Karin felt like he was a giant pillow or another brother. He teased her and she teased back. He told her stories about the sea serpent he served. Byakuya was covered in mollusks and blooms of colorful coral. Long ago, Renji helped Byakuya crush a terrible sea serpent whose name and body was lost. It was a fierce battle.

Karin was grateful to Renji, too. He introduced Karin to his wife Momo, who became her very best friend. Momo was a witch. Perhaps not the most frightening or revered, but notorious enough that she was feared. She was the lover of the nameless sea serpent. The one who murdered Karin’s mother, and required the teamwork of all the serpents and their thrall to kill. She cursed him so his name was forgotten and his body unusable. The invocation of her vehemence was worse than death. She was kinder than their compatriots made her out to be. Momo kissed her head and showed her fascinating parlor tricks that made Karin feel like the world was wonderful.

Karin hugged Renji, and then Ichigo. Renji pulled a clamshell filled with kanakusa and pressed a wad into Karin’s hand. She chewed it.

“Yuzu told me you were ill. I hope you’re feeling better,” Ichigo said.

“I think I’m over the worst of it now,” she replied and did not elaborate. He didn’t need to know about her awful dream. “Where are Keigo and Mizuiro?”

Keigo and Mizuiro were Ichigo’s companions, the way Kei, Kazuya, Heita, and Ryohei were her companions. They usually accompanied Ichigo for menial tasks, but he left them behind when something serious arose. It put a pit in Karin’s stomach. She nervously clung to Renji to keep her anxieties at bay.

"Karin, we need a favor from you," Ichigo replied.

"Alright."

"I know you befriended Toushirou. We want to know if you've seen him as of late."

Karin shook her head. "Not for some time. My fever lasted for a while. My companions made me rest here, so I haven't seen anyone but them or our sister since I came here."

"How long ago was that?"

Karin spat out a glob of kanakusa. “I don’t know. The fever blurred the passage of time,” she said. “Why are you asking me these questions? Is Toushirou hurt?”

Ichigo and Renji shared a glance and Karin’s heart thumped. Fear washed her like cold waves.

“His thrall haven’t seen him for some time. Not even Rangiku,” Renji said.

Rangiku wasn’t the most reliable thrall to Toushirou, but his most loyal, and most useful. She played a key part in rallying efforts against Momo’s former lover, and the scourge of the ocean. Karin met her many times and each was memorable, rife with hallucinogens, alien oceanscapes, and mischief. She always made Karin feel acknowledged. It was, perhaps, the most useful skill to have in peacetime.

It was worrisome that she, of all people, who got along with everyone, hadn’t seen him.

Karin’s father told her about the prophecies when she was younger. The end came when their rulers vanished without a trace. No bodies behind to reuse, but horrific vanishment, with only their memory remaining. The ocean decayed in their absence.

Karin crossed her arms. “Have you spoken with Momo? She should be able to conjure something to hunt for him.”

Ichigo shook his head. “We haven’t. We were hoping this wouldn’t escalate to necessitate magic.”

“I’ll assist the search, then.” Karin had a few tricks she could use to locate Toushirou. Friendship with Momo gave Karin access to horrible creatures worse than she. Creatures with reach that spanned the ocean, networks larger than even the most mammoth serpent. Ones Ichigo and Renji refused to associate with when the circumstances permitted it.

Renji squeezed her. “If you find him, go to Momo. She has the means to contact us,” he told her. She nodded.

***

Karin gathered Kazuya, Kei, Heita, and Ryohei, and left for the open ocean.

“Where do you plan on starting the search?” Kazuya asked as they swam.

“With friends,” Karin said.

Their brethren were too fearful of the terrible things in the ocean. That which was unnatural was abhorrent, but the definition of natural was often narrow by those outside the magical class. It was why witches were feared. But those ostracized except in the direst of times were often the most useful. And the ones Karin most easily befriended.

Shuuhei and Izuru were Momo’s husbands, like Renji was her husband. They weren’t witches but incredible in their own right. Attuned to the pulse of the ocean, like the ocean was their pulse. Karin didn’t understand what the ocean’s pulse was, but they found it at the bottom of the deepest valley, and it connected them with the ocean and everything in it. They would know where to find Toushirou, or where to start, once they tapped into it.

They steadily descended. Karin felt like she was being squeezed and rung out, like how they processed kanakusa. The appearance of her companions warped. Shrunk and flattened.

The only denizens at those depths were serpents, shrimp, and mollusks. Karin felt like she was breathing stones. Heita burped bile and blood. Kazuya clutched his chest. He gasped, “I cannot continue! I feel myself collapsing. Dying!”

Karin stopped. “Ascend,” she ordered. “I’ll return once I finish.”

Kazuya, Kei, Ryohei, and Heita shared a glance before they nodded and retreated. How they accomplished nonverbal communication was a mystery to Karin.

The well-being of her companions was her responsibility. They needed her for shelter and fed off her scraps. As badly as she needed their company, she’d have no more company if the pressure of the deep made them implode.

It wasn’t much longer before music penetrated her. The pulse was magnified by the drumbeat Shuuhei made from the preserved hide of his and Izuru’s late masters. Their names were Gin and Kaname. Each was as destructive as the serpent whose body and name Momo sought to erase.

The drumbeat shook her bones and innards. The kanakusa was kicking in, highlighting the waves and debris in lovely hues of gold. The energy rushing through her head, pumping in her brain and through her veins, was good, even if her insides felt like they filled with blood. It reminded her of the rush sharks experiences as they tore apart smaller fish, and the smug satisfaction lantern fish had when they coaxed their brothers and sisters into their bellies. The mere existence was magical. Thrilling. The water shook her, and it shook with her, and she shook with it. It felt like she was diffusing into the waters. Was it the fabled pulse of the ocean?

Shuuhei and Izuru played in an arena of vents spouting boiling water. A cloud of algae shrouded them, and they played through it, pounding their drugs with their fists so swiftly in the deep, dense water, that they blurred. The vents added an endless melody, a monotonous rumble of rushing, sizzling water.

Her eyes shut as she reveled the enchantment of her bones shaking. But they noticed her, and they stopped playing, and her bones stopped shaking. Her eyes opened and she missed the euphoria.

Shuuhei swept her into a hug. “Hey! It’s been a while. Look at you, you’re gorgeous.”

He was a shark able to throw his jaw out of his skull. He called it distention and a goblin. It made Karin feel good that he owned his unusual appearance. Sometimes she wanted to emulate it and become comfortable with her phantasmagorical qualities when, according to him, the alternative was wallowing in misery. He was as much a brother to her as Renji and Ichigo were.

Karin was close to Izuru too. He was gutted years ago on angular ruins and put back together, but he was a miserable bastard long before that. Renji told her a cruel serpent named Gin warped him into a fatalistic and ruthless creature when Karin was born. She was never told what the serpent did to make Izuru calloused. Karin wasn't sure she wanted to know, either, because Momo rendered her serpent nameless and missing. Some things were best left private to not open old wounds.

But Izuru made Karin feel justified in discomfort and anger, and he adored her best friend Momo as her husband. It was hard not to love him.

Izuru played with her hair. He swept it behind her shoulders. “Your hair is longer… it’s beautiful.”

“The shrinkage makes it appear longer than it is,” she replied, smiling as she squeezed their arms. “Unfortunately, I’m not here on a social call.”

Shuuhei raised his eyebrows. “So you say… but you’re high on kanakusa.”

“It’s a long story. And potentially time-sensitive.”

Izuru folded his arms. The dark spots on his skin turned gold before they dimmed. “Is this about Toushirou?”

“No one has laid eyes on him in some time. Not even Rangiku. She, Renji, and Ichigo are in a tizzy trying to find him. I was hoping you two would have feelers out for him,” she told them.

Izuru and Shuuhei shared a side-eye. Even if Karin was buzzed, she knew they were displeased. Neither of them liked Toushirou. They thought he was bratty and ineffective. Karin was sure they would be more than pleased if Toushirou perished. But Karin believed in the prophecies. Moreso, she liked Toushirou. She could cope with his death, but she needed to find him first.

“Truthfully… we haven’t been searching. We haven’t felt anything from the pulse, either.”

“That’s not a good sign,” Karin replied.

Shuuhei shrugged. “It ebbs and flows. It’s not unusual to lose touch, even down here where it’s strongest.”

“But you don’t know where he is?”

“I’m sorry,” Izuru said. And he was. She saw it etched in his face. He was a pleaser. Sought the approval of Momo and his husbands, and those he, at the very least, regarded as allies. “I know someone who may be able to help you, however, if you’re able to tolerate the brine pools.”

Karin asked, “Where kanakusa is processed?”

“No. Mayuri’s territory.”

Her lip curled. “Oh.”

Mayuri was a malicious sea serpent. She refused contact with most of his thrall because most of them were never-do-wells. Karin’s favorites were the never-do-wells, as long as they weren’t Mayuri’s. Mayuri made the very rocks rot and crack. His brine pools were as volatile, burping acid and swarming with indiscriminate predators he employed to guard his secrets.

Shuuhei clasped her shoulder. “I know it isn’t ideal.”

“It isn’t, but I’ll survive,” Karin replied with a gentle smile. “Who am I looking for?”

“His name is Akon. He’s a competent witch, and you will be safe in his care.” Izuru said.

She nodded. She met Akon once before. He was a smarmy and mucosal hagfish. Karin always felt like he wanted to pull out her guts and play with them while she writhed.

But he and Izuru were on good terms. Akon, at the behest of his serpent master Mayuri, was the one who put Izuru’s guts back together after his disembowelment. She wasn’t sure they were friends as much as they were two warped individuals who meshed in the way warped individuals meshed. Feeding off each other’s twisted ways. The difference was that Izuru was endearing. Akon was a fucking degenerate.

The meaning of Toushirou’s disappearance was far bigger than she, however.

“I must leave. Time is of the essence,” Karin said. She hugged Izuru and Shuuhei once more and ascended to meet her companions.

Kei asked, “How was it? Did you find anything useful? Did they find Toushirou?”

“They probably just had an orgy,” Ryohei mumbled.

Karin smacked Ryohei upside his head. He yelped. “There’s no need to be crude,” she said. “But no. Izuru and Shuuhei aren’t able to tap into the pulse now. Izuru gave me another lead, however, so we must go posthaste.”

She swam between them and they flanked her. Heita asked, “I know I’ll regret asking, but where are we going?”

“A servant of Mayuri will be able to help us locate Toushirou.”

Heita groaned. “Of course.”

“That’s why you don’t ask questions,” Ryohei told him.

***

The brine pools Mayuri’s servants populated were as alien as Karin remembered them being. Rangiku took her once. She met Akon. They got high on kanakusa, and Akon made Karin feel like parasites crawled over her.

The waters were noxious there. Karin’s throat itched and it felt like her skull was swollen. Kei, Kazuya, Heita, and Ryohei hid in her bell, hoping her tendrils would circulate breathable water, but it didn’t save them from the rash of saline water. Kei coughed and scratched his eyes. She was tempted to tell them to head back to the cave she was made to recuperate in, but couldn’t muster the words. How anyone tolerated that climate was puzzling.

It was rare to see inside any cave from afar. But Akon’s home glowed with shelves of luminescent fungi. It was stale inside but lived in. Karin collected her tendrils to keep from knocking over scrolls Akon fashioned out of hide.

Akon mashed a concoction of ingredients Karin didn’t recognize. He didn’t notice them until Karin called him by name.

“Akon, Izuru sent me here.” She hoped Izuru’s name would keep him from dissecting her.

He glanced up and flexed his jaw. It spanned from his face to his chest, filled jagged and teeth he chipped from gnawing flesh off bones.

He, at least, didn’t require pleasantries. “What for?”

“We’re searching for Toushirou. He’s missing.”

“Serpents are difficult to locate by nature.”

“No, he’s missing. Rangiku doesn’t know where he is. Several of Byakuya’s thrall are searching for him, as well.”

Akon frowned. “That is troublesome.”

“We were hoping you would be able to utilize your magic to locate him,” she said.

Akon rolled his shoulders. He hummed. “I can. But I need something from you.”

“Will it help find Toushirou?”

“No, but I’ll help find Toushirou when it’s finished,” he said.

Karin frowned. She should’ve seen something like that coming. Akon was a selfish person, and favors were his currency. She didn’t want to be his gopher or experiment, but Karin needed to hear him out.

“Mayuri requires golden bones from the Ruins,” he said, “he saw them glinting through a hole in the ruins and wants them harvested.”

The Ruins were a strange, angular structure that sank before Karin was born. Ocean-dwellers gave it a wide berth because it was the zenith of the unnatural they feared and reviled. Karin saw it from afar once, and they ran. It emitted death. The very image inspired horror, it made Karin’s guts bubble with anxiety. She wasn’t thrilled to run errands for Akon, but having to search the Ruins was the absolute worst.

“Fine,” she replied. “I’ll fetch the bones for you. But I want nothing to do with Mayuri.” She didn’t want to be the thrall of the serpents, especially Mayuri’s.

“Bring them to me, and I’ll give you his location.” Akon’s eyes turned into crescents like he was smiling. “I’ll see you soon, Karin.”

She hoped she returned alive.

Without another word, Karin flipped around and returned to the dark ocean. Her companions freed themselves once they were away from the toxic brine pools.

Kazuya asked, “Are you okay?”

“It was a short exchange. We have that to be grateful for,” Karin said.

The Ruins weren’t far from Mayuri’s brine pools. In the darkness, its shape emerged through the darkness. Flat, angular planes. Shrimp didn’t occupy it, and there wasn’t a hint of barnacles on its surfaces. A bubble of vacancy entombed it. It didn’t even stink of death. Death, a natural part of life, was accepted and grieved. The complete vacancy was unnatural.

Momo told her the Ruins appeared one day. It was long before even her father’s time. The serpent Momo now served, Shinji, a long crab with pincers able to snap whales in half, told Karin of the day it sank. It barreled to the seafloor like a curse from the beyond and kicked up a cloud for ages. When the silt cleared, the serpents and witches condemned it. No one has touched it since. Certainly not Karin.

Approaching it, she felt like she was in trouble. Like she betrayed Momo and her loved ones. Karin swallowed bile.

She and her companions circled the exterior. They peered in through round holes, even in shape and equidistant, except when long openings punctuated the exterior with thick flaps waving in the tide.

Karin held the flap open. She peered in and frowned. “Stay here for the time being. It’s too tight to fit all five of us.”

Kei hugged his sides. “In, out, I don’t want to be anywhere near here.”

Karin pulled her tendrils over her arms and swam in. Maneuvering inside posed a challenge. She was too large to swim the pathways as she swam through the open ocean, so Karin pulled herself through it with her hands.

It wasn’t a long expedition. A skeleton with a split tail was tangled around a rod. Their teeth glittered gold. She had never seen ocean-dwellers with golden teeth before. When their teeth chipped they either waited for a new one to grow in or lived with it and pureed food between stones if the situation called for it. Their teeth yellowed or grew malformed, but never gold. It was unnatural and foul.

She pried them out with her fingers. They cramped unmercifully until she held the golden ones in her palms.

“What a coincidence,” she heard from behind her. Karin twisted while her heart seized, and she snarled when she saw who addressed her.

His name was Shuukurou, a spiny oarfish. He once conned them into thinking he was their family’s friend and then attempted to take Ichigo’s life. His execution was ordered by the serpent Byakuya but he vanished before it could be carried out.

She wasn’t surprised that a contemptible ocean-dweller like him made his home in the Ruins. She would make it his grave.

“Look who it is… what imbecile would reveal himself to me?” Karin hissed. “Me, who shall celebrate your demise at my hands?”

He glanced at the bones, and then at her. “You’ve taken my treasure, haven’t you?”

“Like you tried to take my brother’s life?” Karin felt like she was boiling in her rage.

His eyes narrowed. “You’ll succeed the same as I succeeded: not at all.”

Karin was good in a fight. It was how she sustained herself. Phantoms didn’t have fancy tricks like luminescence or camouflage, so they relied on brute strength to catch and consume prey. Her family was famous for their combat efficiency.

When Shuukurou lunged, she caught him by his jaws. He thrashed and tried to snap his teeth to skin her, but wasn’t able to free himself from her grapple. As she held Shuukurou at bay, she cocooned him in her tendrils, coiling until they overlapped, and she squeezed him. A howl of rage and agony ripped from his throat. Still, Karin squeezed and pushed his jaw open. It dislocated with a satisfying crack. As his organs collapsed, blood gushed into her face from his throat.

She yelped. Shuukurou dug his thumbs into her eyes and she screamed. Her tendrils loosened and he slipped free. His fangs plunged into her arm. She screeched unholily. Blindly, she thrashed her arms and tendrils until they found purchase. Karin curled her fists around the crest sprouting from his head. She yanked him towards her and held his head in her biceps. Shuukurou writhed. He pounded his fist against her biceps. He scratched and spat, to no avail. Karin loathed him. She wanted him dead and would squeeze the life out of him to do so.

His struggle died out. Karin, through a haze of blood and scratches, saw his mouth gape and his eyes bulge. She pushed him away and counted the gold dots clasped in her hand. Karin held onto all of them.

Karin pushed his corpse away and found her way outside. Her sight was returning, although her eyes still stung. Kei caught her arm.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he asked. “You’re covered in scratches.”

She rubbed her eyelids. “All that matters is it’s over. Let’s get these back to Akon.”

***

The return trip was shorter somehow. Compared to the Ruins, the brine pools were less eerie. Karin gave Akon the golden bones, and he turned them in his fingers.

“These are magnificent,” he cooed. His praise made her skin crawl, and she rubbed her arms to brush off the bugs. “Solid gold. I’m amazed by how pure they are.”

“Just tell me where to find Toushirou,” Karin said.

Akon gave her a wad of herbs. “Chew this. You’ll be given visions of his location, and the aftereffects will serve as a map to his location."

Karin wordlessly chewed it. The herbs were sour and it made her face pucker.

The effects were immediate. Karin groaned as she was overtaken by images. Momo's red tentacles swirled as she strummed a strange, fibrous instrument with a fat, hollow back. The strings she played sour notes and billowed crimson and cerulean, the most vivid colors Karin ever saw, and they mixed into gorgeous violet. While her sour notes played, frames of her weeping and stirring herbs in her mantle flashed before Karin, splitting into red and blue hues before reconverging into a cohesive image.

Karin emerged from the hallucination with a chill. She wanted to throw something through Akon's head, something to pummel him to a pulpy mess of shattered bones and lumps of blood.

True to his word, though, the water illuminated orange. It twinkled in the water, shook with the currents like an eel.

It wasn't Akon's fault her vision didn't yield Toushirou's location. It wasn't encouraging, however. Had he been spirited away, as the prophecies predicted? Were they inaugurating their extinction through their search for Toushirou? Was he altogether dead, and Akon's magic unable to locate the remains?

Karin felt especially urgent. The beacon pointed towards Momo. She needed to leave.

"Thank you, Akon. I need to leave."

"Yes, yes," he said monotonously, waving her out, "you must ensure life as we know it isn't ending. Best of luck."

Karin swam into the open ocean, following the trail of orange waves that guided her to Momo. There was a pit in her gut. She didn't dare tell Kei, Kazuya, Heita, and Ryohei about her vision, however. They would leave her in a heartbeat.

***

Karin was malaised for the entire trek. Her worries were disorienting like she was being spun. It made her taste bile.

Momo was feared because she made her lover's name and body disappear and was reviled because of her home. An odd, angular body fell into the ocean and spilled horrid-tasting ink. It was unnatural and feared for that reason. Momo ripped apart the planes and shaped them into a home.

Karin didn't understand why Momo would do something so ominous. Anyone betrayed as she was, though, couldn't be well emotionally. Perhaps it was easier for Momo to steer into repugnance.

Her home appeared in the distance, highlighted in an orange aura. The rumble of water stopped, and Karin glanced back. Her companions were frozen in the water with their gazes focused on their tails. She frowned.

"What's on your mind?"

"Karin, he isn't here," Heita said, "and if he is, he isn't living."

She stared back. "What the fuck are saying." It wasn't a question because she knew what he was saying. What Kei, Kazuya, and Ryohei were thinking: Momo slew a serpent. That she was mad and harbinger of death.

Heita grimaced. "I'm just… I'm just saying that Momo has a history of doing awful things to serpents."

Rage filled Karin. "You stupid fucking fish!" she bellowed. Her tendrils swarmed him. "How dare you compare this to the schemes of that awful serpent!"

"Look at her home, Karin! We have heard the stories. The horrors these unnatural things do to us and our monarchs! She lives in an omen!"

"Leave my sight before I kill you," she bellowed. The water shook like vents boiled it and she smelled urine. But they escaped as fast as their tails could carry them.

She was hurt and betrayed. It was an open wound in her ribs. But time was of the essence, so Karin didn't have the time to grieve. She turned towards Momo's home before their silhouettes were consumed by darkness.

Momo was fraught. Before Karin was even through the entrance, she heard bowls and shells clatter. She saw fungi, the pleated skin of trilobites, and whale teeth thrown into a mortar. Momo chewed kanakusa. Shreds floated from her open mouth.

Karin knew nothing about magic, but her mentor's mania couldn't be anything good.

"Momo," Karin said. She yelped and flipped around. Her hand pressed against her hand.

"Good god, Karin, you can't sneak up on me like that!" she snapped.

"It's an emergency."

Momo shook her head. She bawled. "I know! I know, I'm sorry. I woke up with a terrible feeling but none of my spells have found him!"

"Is he dead?" Karin whispered. Her voice shook anyway.

"I don't know. This concoction is… is my last chance. If it doesn't work, there's nothing I can do! There's nothing I can do, and it's my fault that the ocean will die."

Karin took Momo's hands. Their eyes met, Momo wild and fearful. Their tentacles interlocked. "We should do it together."

She hesitated, then pulled a wad of algae from her mouth. "Chew on this. I need my drum."

Karin sucked the wad of kanakusa from Momo's fingers. Its juices gushed down her throat, and gold ribbons unfurled in the waves.

Momo's drum hung on the wall. She pulled it off the hook, held it by the rim, and drummed it with the other. Slowly, it penetrated Karin. The pulse of the ocean. She was one with the depths, connected to everything that touched the water.

Momo's concoction billowed crimson ink. Karin's eyes shut as it shrouded them. Visions accosted her. It made her skin prickle and her guts wrap themselves in tight knots.

She saw crests of saltwater crash and foam. A shape as unnatural as The Ruins cut through the water, illuminated by veins of flashing, jagged lights behind it. The air rumbled, not like Shuuhei's music, hypnotic, but cacophonous pops that Karin feared would cause her ears to bleed. The living ruins sent lines of hard rings into the depths where they sank and danced in the waves. She was entangled in them. They cut her to the bone and dragged her to shallow water where she bloated and hemorrhaged until her belly split and spilled her insides.

She saw deaths a hundredfold. Even the mighty sea serpent, Kenpachi, strong enough to make tsunamis and level mountains in the depths, thrashed as terrible weaves caught him and dragged him up.

It was the fucking end.

Her vision cleared. Karin convulsed, spewing bile into the saltwater. The sensation of her splitting remained. Momo shrouded Karin in a hug, entangling their limbs and squeezing her shoulders. They wept together, and Momo rubbed her arms like a sister or a mother.

"I don't want to die," Karin wheezed, pulling Momo tight around her like a blanket. She pictured her companions' bodies distorting above the water, bloated until they popped, intestines spilling onto unnatural things. Unnatural deaths. "Momo, I don't want to die like that."

"I know. I know," Momo said, holding her tightly. They rocked in the water, stirring it until Karin heard it rumble in her ears.

Momo turned her around and pressed a kiss against her head. She stroked Karin's head, face warped into a woeful grimace. "We could die on our terms before the ocean is razed. I can make it painless."

Karin felt like her chest was collapsing. "What about Ichigo and Yuzu? I can't leave them."

Momo pets her hair. She kisses her head again. "I love you so much, Karin. You're like my sister."

They hugged. "I love you too, Momo." She laid her cheek on her shoulder. "Is this goodbye?"

"I don't want to die like that."

Karin didn't blame her. Momo always wanted a peaceful death. She was going to take poison and fall asleep and rot without a care in the world.

She didn't want to leave Momo as a result. They floated together, suspended in grief and love. Karin held Momo tight and hoped to absorb Momo into her so Karin would never be without her best friend.

Karin left Momo's home. Karin hoped Momo's husbands would find peace somewhere because it left like a graveyard.

***

Karin felt hollow. She didn't feel the waves or the euphoria of kanakusa. Instead, she blindly floated through the ocean.

She stopped. In the depths, she saw shrouds of darkness, like her own tendrils, but giant. "What the fuck?"

She chased after it. Only serpents could be so large, but there were no phantom serpents that she knew of.

It turned to face her. Karin knew, the same way she knew Toushirou was gone, that it was her father. Had he grown into a serpent? Were they grown, and not created?

"Father!" she shouted. "Isshin!"

He swam to her left. She made a beeline for him. "Father! Father, stop!" she screamed. "Please!"

The water rushed past them. Karin froze, remembering the prophecy, of them being lifted into shallow waters, rupturing, and suffocating. A weave tangled her and swept her up. Karin ripped at it, shrieking, but it was oily and slick. She was going to die.

Her father captured it in his tendrils but they easily tore. Water rushed past her and deafened her to horror.

Her face swelled shut. Her joints ballooned, and her gut popped. It seared. White-hot, worse than her dreams. The end came with tragedy and agony before the blissful snuffing.

#bleach #karin kurosaki #toshiro hitsugaya #ichigo kurosaki #momo hinamori #yuzu kurosaki #renji abarai #izuru kira #shuuhei hisagi #akon #shukuro tsukishima

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