sirenspull_logs | The ornament of a house

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The ornament of a house

Who: Hitsugaya (

icy_heavens) and Kazuma (

readyforwar)
When: February 25, afternoon
Where: Kazuma's apartment
Summary: Just two friends hanging out. Kazuma discovers that Hitsugaya has actually learned something about video games.
Warnings: These two swear occasionally. Otherwise, I got nothing.

It wasn't an uncommon thing for him to do here, visiting Kazuma like this. Especially in the wake of the recurrence of the attacks of last Valentine's, and the current threat of soulless vampires roaming about at night. Hitsugaya always made it a point to check up on his friends.

He didn't bother entering the building proper at first. That was inefficient. He knew exactly which apartment was Kazuma's and instead headed straight for the window.

Before he could lift his hand to knock, he heard Kazuma's voice spout off a virulent curse. Hn. Nothing seemed to be untoward, though, so Hitsugaya didn't bother worrying about it. And then rapped firmly on the window to get his friend's attention.

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"Shit! Stupid--!"

Kazuma's swearing was cut short by the knocking on the window. It was a common noise now days for him, so he didn't jump or act surprised in the least.

He sighed instead, running a hand through his messy hair as he paused his game and set the controller down, going to the window and flipping the latch.

"Hey," he said after pushing it up and open, leaning on the windowsill.

Ah, there. Everything was fine, just as he'd expected. Maybe it had just been one of those games that Kazuma played so often. Many were the times he'd come to visit in the middle of a gaming session.

As he hadn't yet been properly invited in, he stayed where he was. "Hey. Doing all right?"

The question was standard fare, almost reflexive. It was kind of interesting how easily Hitsugaya had found himself falling back into his old habits in this place, in spite of the months he'd been gone in his own world.

"Yeah. Killing time with games, same as always," Kazuma said with a faint smirk. A quiet meow sounded from behind him and soon enough Kana was perched on his shoulder, staring at Hitsugaya curiously with her tail swishing back and forth as if to say 'why are you still outside? You should be in here petting me!'.

Kazuma scritched under Kana's chin and moved back, pulling her in to his arms.

"Come in. Nadeko and Dash are at work right now."

He calmly vaulted himself up over the windowsill and into the apartment. The sole tolerable thing about having not grown at all in the past year and a half was that he could still do something like this without having to squeeze through.

... And the cat was staring at him again. He was never quite sure what to do with animals; all he really knew was that they wanted attention. He gave Kana a light, awkward pat on the head in an effort to get those eyes off of him. It probably wasn't going to work.

"Sounds like you were having trouble with the one you're playing right now."

Kazuma shut the window after he was in without so much as a second thought. Akira had often come in through his bedroom window on the second floor, so that by the time Hitsugaya had started coming in through the living room window Kazuma never argued against it.

Kana made a slightly annoyed noise at the lack of attention, but jumped out of Kazuma's arms and padded over to the couch in the living room where she hopped up on the back of it, apparently waiting to see if anything more would come of his presence.

"Yeah... I just got it so I'm not as good at it as I am with others..." he shrugged, figuring hearing him blather on about video games wasn't what Hitsugaya was there for.

Lack of attention? He'd patted it on the head; what more did the damned cat want from him? Hitsugaya didn't dislike animals, but showing affection and such was rather a foreign concept to him.

For crying out loud, he would make fun of Hinamori to make her feel better. It was completely backwards, and something he had just stumbled upon one day, but it worked. He'd stopped questioning why. That girl just wasn't normal.

As for what he was here for . . . Well. He needed a reason to come and see friends, now? He just came. That was all.

"Have you tried adjusting the settings?"

She wants ALL the attention, Hitsugaya! All of it!

But even Kazuma knew Hitsugaya wasn't going to give in to a cute face and fur, so he returned to the couch and gave Kana more pets behind her ears and under her chin.

"Yeah, I did that a little while ago and it's not help--..."

Wait.

Wait.

Was Hitsugaya giving him... video game advice?

Kazuma turned to stare at him, unsure if that's what it was or just a lucky guess.

"... it's still not working," he continued slowly, "The difficulty is still too high for the level I chose."

There was only one cute face Hitsugaya would ever give in to, and he'd deny like hell that he found it cute. But as she wasn't here, he didn't have to worry about that.

His eyebrow went up at the staring. "What?"

Oh. That he'd said something about video games, perhaps? It had just slipped out. Just like he'd had the briefest, vaguest flash of a memory of Kazuma while he'd been fighting Yukio back home. He shrugged.

"The last oppenent I faced back home had an ability that involved video games."

"... an ability... that involved video games..." Kazuma echoed flatly, staring at Hitsugaya all the while. He just couldn't wrap his mind around it.

"People who could utilize the 'soul' of a particular object. His was a portable game system."

He wouldn't claim to have a complete understanding of a Fullbringer's powers. And in all honesty, he only knew as much as he did about Yukio's because the stupid kid hadn't known how to shut up.

That he'd been so talkative had been useful, in the end, but still rather tiresome.

"Created pocket dimensions where he controlled all of the 'settings'. For whatever reason, he thought I'd be an entertaining opponent, so he made sure I was in the same one that he was."

Idiot kid. With the way he'd gone on, it was as if he'd never been in a real fight his entire life. Starting off with a shinigami captain was way out of his league.

That was...

Kazuma didn't know what to make of tat. It didn't surprise him at all that Hitsugaya had picked up on it so quickly, but it was still not something he had ever expected to hear out of him.

"... wow," was all he could manage in the end.

Had Yukio been smarter about the whole thing, he could have been extremely dangerous. As it was, Hitsugaya hadn't even needed to go into shikai release to resolve things.

"Which isn't to say that he had any idea what to do in a real fight; he was far more interested in ranting and declaring himself the god of his own world than in actually paying attention to what was going on."

How stupid did someone have to be to get caught in their own trap like that? Honestly. It hadn't taken much effort to figure out how to handle that kid.

Kazuma had to groan at that, rolling his eyes.

"I hate people like that... I'm serious about my games, but I would never be that egotistical," he sighed, continuing to pet Kana just so she would get the attention she so desperately wanted. "I never even bothered to reclaim my title in OMC after I lost it because it was never about the status for me. It was sport, that's it."

"I always seem to wind up facing the most tiresome people."

Though he did have some measure of grudging respect for Halibel, in spite of what she'd been and who she'd served. She'd been an intelligent combatant who was actually concerned for the fate of her subordinates.

Even so, he hadn't been able to muster up any sympathy for her when Aizen had killed her. She'd still been an Espada, after all.

"He craved attention. Evidently, he hadn't gotten enough of it as a child." He very nearly rolled his eyes. Certainly, Yukio's parents had treated him like crap, but that justified none of his actions. "I pretty much got the idiot's life story; he didn't know how to shut up. It was annoying as hell."

"I've noticed that from your stories..."

It had been more than evident, in all the things Hitsugaya had told him. Really it put the bullies of his own world in to a whole different category of 'pathetic'.

"So just because he wanted to fight you he felt the need to monologue like a bad villain?"

Of course, in all fairness, Hitsugaya was not difficult to annoy. But he seemed to be a magnet for people who would even get on the nerves of the more tolerant. He'd really prefer if someone else would get those opponents for a change.

"He wanted to fight me because I was seeing through his virtual clones better than anyone else. As for the monologuing . . ."

He took a moment to pop into the kitchen and pour himself a glass of water. He'd been here enough times that he felt comfortable enough to do something like this without asking. And he didn't see the point in making someone do something he could easily do himself.

He came back into the living room. "He'd already been talking, and he'd let something slip that could distract him further. So I brought it up to deliberately piss him off."

The simple phrase, 'You were abandoned by your parents' was what had really won the fight for him. Any rational thought Yukio had been in possession of before that had been gone.

Kazuma turned around as Hitsugaya left to the living room, leaning on the back of the couch with his arms resting on the couch, listening curiously.

"Well... that's probably better than actually doing the whole... bad villain rant," he said with a soft sigh. Sometimes he really had to wonder about the sanity of the people in his friend's world.

"Do you think it's easier to deal with when they act like that?"

Hitsugaya wondered about it sometimes, too. Far too many people seemed to be touched in the head in some way. Ukitake's two third seats were some of the most insane people he knew. Even the captain himself was crazy outside of meetings half the time -- giving him candy because they both had white hair? What the hell? And Kuchiki's fixation on that Wakame Ambassador. Matsumoto's circular logic . . .

He refused to acknowledge his own odd little quirks. Like how he still took afternoon naps because Granny had told him it would help him grow tall. And that he would still spit watermelon seeds at Hinamori or call her a bedwetter if he felt the situation warranted it. He was sane, thank you.

"Easier, perhaps. But I'd rather have an opponent I can respect on one level or another."

The people surrounding Hitsugaya reminded Kazuma more and more of his crazy, eccentric family. Only slightly more... insane. And weird.

Okay maybe not that much like his family, but there were similarities.

And there were even more similarities to how Kazuma always felt the odd one out because he wasn't high strung, or demanding, or in to geeky things like anime or comics, or obsessed with the family history, or because he was the calm one most of the time, or whatever weird quirks his family seemed to have that he didn't. Sure he had quirks but they weren't like the rest of the Jinnouchis.

If anything he was probably the closest in personality to his great grandmother, and to the rest of them that was just plain weird..

"Can you really respect anyone who is stupid enough to go after you? You own anyone who's even tried..."

"It's more in the way of how they'd conduct themselves, if they showed they actually valued anything important."

Those who were loud, boastful, or reckless -- or some combination of all three -- were just about the damned stupidest people that could possibly exist. There was nothing respectable about that. But there were other ways.

He took a sip of his water. "I mentioned that back when I'd been originally Pulled, that I'd been in the midst of a battle. I had some respect for that opponent. She fought intelligently and actually gave a damn about the lives of her subordinates."

As for that other part . . . Tch. He wished. It wasn't always that easy. He glanced at Kazuma out of the corner of his eye.

"I've had difficult fights. And fights that I've lost."

Halibel had been a good test of his abilities; they'd had some similar powers, and it took some thought as to how to work around the stalement. And as to the fights he'd lost, there was only one word:

Aizen.

"... it's hard to imagine you losing..." Kazuma admitted quietly after a few seconds had passed. He looked away, remembering there had been a point in his life when he found it hard to imagine himself losing. And then he had. Against something that wasn't even a human opponent on the other side of a computer.

And unlike his other battles, but very much like what Hitsugaya did all the time, that one HAD been life or death for everyone around him. And he had failed at it.

There was a reason he'd never taken back his title as "King" in the OMC, after it was all over.

He shrugged again, though his face was distant. He certainly wasn't going to go into detail, but he would at least say something.

"Happens occasionally. You don't become a captain by accident, but as shinigami go, I'm still really young. My power isn't fully mature yet."

There were those that would say that Hitsugaya had an arrogant streak. And he did. But he was honest with himself on this issue. He had a lot of room to grow in his abilities, and he knew it. Had been working on it even harder since the war had ended.

Because the level he'd been at before hadn't been enough to protect her.

"I see..."

He wasn't sure where he stood anymore on that. He'd never thought he was the arrogant type until Kenji had finally called him on it a few months after that fateful meeting at the clan house that had been nearly destroyed by Love Machine's attack on OZ. And he still wasn't entirely sure he agreed on the assessment. A part of him just wanted to believe that even if he no longer held the title he was just that good and Love Machine had only won by way of cheating and power mongering the very system it had hacked.

But there was a lot about the world beyond OZ and the OMC that Kazuma had just ignored for so damn long. The longer he was in the port, with Nadeko and his new found friends, the more he began to question of maybe Kenji had a point. It wasn't like the older boy was any more mature or well versed in the world than he was, but to be the one to call him out on it...

A sigh escaped him for some reason he didn't fully understand (what was there to be moody about all of a sudden?) and he stood, giving Kana another pet before moving in to the kitchen to get his own drink - a can of soda from the fridge.

"Well... for what it's worth... I'm glad you do win most of the time."

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The ornament of a house

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