• "I really think you ought to see this, taichou."

    Matsumoto Rangiki was uncharacteristically subdued. Her tone of voice caught the attention of Hitsugaya Toshiro, buried as usual in mounds of paperwork. He looked up.

    "And a new arrival from Rukongai is important enough to -"

    "Taichou."

    They were interrupted by a 4th Division underling, bowing as he entered. "We have a name, at least. She says her name is Sharon."

    "Sharon? What kind of a name is that? And what business of mine is it?"

    Exchanged glances with Matsumoto told Hitsugaya this was no ordinary situation. "All right, I'll come. Explain on the way."
    ______________________________________________________________

    It was unusually quiet, even for the 4th Division. Sure, they liked it quiet for recuperating shinigami to get rest. But this was different. It was as if the sound were... muffled, or something. Even normal sounds - walking in the halls, shuffled papers, the opening of a door - weren't what they should have been.

    Matsumoto stopped them with a whisper. "We won't be able to talk beyond this point, so I'd better wrap up the explanation here," she said softly. "Once they figured out it wasn't laryngitis, deafness, or mass hysteria, it wasn't hard to pinpoint the source. Every sound within a certain radius of her just disappears. I could shout at the top of my lungs and there would be no sound to transmit. Even now, I'm trying to raise my voice, but I bet you can't hear above a whisper."

    Hitsugaya shook his head in response. "I can barely hear you now. And the effect is worse the closer you get to her? How did they find out her name?

    She shrugged. "They said it's not consistent; at its worst, there was no sound in the entire 4th Division complex. When it backed off, they could talk within a few feet of her, but when she said her name, it clamped down again. She must be calming down for us to be able to talk this close to her. What bothers them most, however, is the colors and the cold."

    "And not everyone can see the colors, right?"

    A frown creased Matsumoto's face. "That's what is so confusing. The few who can really 'see' the colors say that when it goes gray, it gets cold like ice. You're the resident expert on ice. If she really has something with her as strong as Hyourinmaru, you're the most likely to help her get it under control. And she'd better get it under control fast. Already the part of Rukongai where she was found is in an uproar, and even isolated, she's causing trouble in Seireitei. I wonder what could have possibly happened that she finds her only defense in silence."

    Hitsugaya closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "Let's see what we can do."
    ______________________________________________________________

    Indigo. A pulsing indigo, like a velvet night sky.

    Laced with cracks, black and red - pain and terror; grief, anger, and hate.

    Then - pinpoints of brightest white - and grey ash, covering the cracks -

    Matsumoto shivered, halted in her tracks. Everyone had felt the blast of cold that came with the grey. Hitsugaya blinked, startled, his eyes growing wide. He knew that sensation. No. That emotion. It was the same emotion that drove him after Momo-chan to the shinigami. It was the same emotion that made him leave Obaa-chan when he saw what he was doing to her.

    She didn't want to hurt anyone anymore.

    But she was doing it the wrong way. Instead of healing the hurt places, she was trying to eliminate them, and herself with them. And in the process, she was releasing - what? Something that called out to her just as Hyourinmaru had called out to him, when he felt the death on that icy plain. And it didn't want to let her go, any more than Hyourinmaru had wanted to let him go.

    It was not happy. And it wasn't afraid to let everyone and everything around it know that.
    ______________________________________________________________

    For the moment, speech had returned.

    Unohana Retsu had finally managed to sedate the woman. The 4th Division had regained peace, for the time being. And Hitsugaya had a mystery to solve.

    “What can you tell me about her? Where did she come from? Do you have any information about her time before she came to Soul Society? Who did her soul burial? Anything would help.”

    Unohana flipped through a chart. “We really don’t have much. She just appeared in District 1, as confused as any new soul could be. Physical appearance: Red hair, brown eyes, glasses, pale skin, freckles. She seems to have come from the American part of the living world. We aren’t sure who was covering that area, so no information on the soul burial. There seems to have been a bit of confusion over which unit would have to do duty and something about a poker game – the winners got sake and the losers got America duty. In any event, when she arrived, she panicked, and most of District 1 lost sound for half an hour. She must have been close to the wall, because we were getting the effect in Seireitei. There were a number of instances of shinigami reporting being unable to speak or hear that resolved mysteriously after leaving the affected area. All were checked out here and medically cleared. Once it was determined the cause was in Rukongai, she was found fairly immediately. Attempts to communicate have been limited at best – you saw what happened when she got scared again – and the point where we got her name, she had been left alone for a while and then panicked when she saw shinigami. The rest, you know.”

    Hitsugaya knit his eyebrows in frustration. What sent her here, and what was she running from? Why would she react to such extremes? And what on earth was that… that thing… that felt so much like Hyourinmaru and at the same time so very different?

    “Thank you anyway, Unohana,” he replied. He had a few things to research. Like zanpakuto, and how other shinigami had found theirs. He rubbed his arms as if he were trying to get warm. If his theory was correct, he had to find a way to reach her before that spirit took control. The question was, how?
    ______________________________________________________________

    Back in the offices of the 10th Division, Hitsugaya was clearing his desk in preparation for taking a few days to solve the problem. Two Hell Butterflies came, both from the 12th Division but with very different messages. The first was from Kurotsuchi Mayuri – he wanted to know what it would take to get the new arrival as a research specimen. Before Hitsugaya could tell him where to put that idea, the other message startled him. It seems this… woman… hadn’t had a soul burial. Could not in fact have a soul burial. Because she was still alive.

    “She is still in the living world? But how…”

    A whisper, in the back of his mind. Hyourinmaru.

    I heard her calling.

    My Dragon of Earth.

    Hell to my Heaven,

    Yin to my Yang,

    Sorrow to my Joy,

    Heat to my Ice,

    Darkness to my Light,

    Shadow to my Sun,

    Silence to my Song.

    Where is she?

    Where has she gone?

    Stunned did not begin to describe how he felt. The implications for Soul Society – and for himself – were staggering to say the least. Hyourinmaru was not implying a rival. He was implying an equal.

    A mate.

    In that still-living woman dwelt a dragon Hyourinmaru’s equal.

    And she wanted to die.

    He left a message for Matsumoto and left for the living world.