I'm sure this has been done many many times before. I just hope to put a new spin on it.
The Fourth Void
A Crossover fic of multiple kinds
Chapter 1
Vice-Captain Abarai knew something needed to be done. He just didn’t want to be the one to do it. Figures that he would be a likely candidate. There were plenty of low-ranking enlisted men who could speak English- there needed to be, in order to patrol all the parts of Earth that spoke it- but most of the desk jockeys and high level officers that could actually put the smackdown on a powerful arrancar couldn’t speak a lick of it. Normally, this didn’t matter, as beating up on hollows doesn’t require speaking to the dead souls of an area; the cleanup crews can handle a “Wholes, get out of the way or get blasted to pieces” for them.
But Abarai knew this situation was different. For the first time since the death of the Quincy tribe, the Soul Society had to negotiate with people from the living realm. Something that required tact and diplomacy. Something Abarai Renji was not going to do.
He pulled a Hell Butterfly from the cage on his desk and reeled off a quick message to the Tenth Division in English, to the only other officer he knew that spoke it.
Matsumoto, the Tenth’s vice-captain, could speak English. Matsumoto liked any opportunity to get out of the office and away from paperwork. And, most importantly, Matsumoto could negotiate, especially when dealing with men. Her two centrally located ‘friends’ saw to that.
He opened the window behind him, releasing the black butterfly. It flapped quickly, out of his sight in a matter of seconds. He turned back to his own work.
A few minutes later, it returned, bearing an unusual reply. “Thank you for pointing this out, Abarai. Very perceptive. Already left. Will handle the situation immediately.” But, while it was in English, the voice was not Matsumoto’s voice at all. It was Captain Hitsugaya’s, her superior officer.
“Huh,” Abarai mused, as he put the butterfly back in its cage. “Didn’t know the runt spoke it.”
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Hitsugaya had never been to Illinois. He had no reason to go. No major cities of interest, no major attacks. He wasn’t even sure why he accepted the job in the first place. Abarai should have done it himself. Sixth Division had discovered the local anomaly, so they should be the ones to solve it.
However, something of… interest, for the lack of a better word, had been spotted there, one that Hitsugaya had actually heard of some time ago. As there had been conflicting reports, and there were no casualties associated with the situation, he had let it go for more pressing matters.
To be honest, there was a reason why Histugaya wanted to go. A person, rather, a ghost had been spotted protecting a city called Amnity Park who was not a registered shinigami. And that person looked just like Hitsugaya, only older.
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Somewhere on Earth, another dimension very far away from that of where the shinigami lived, a fifteen year old by the name of Daniel Fenton, half paying attention to his English lecture, sneezed loudly.
It wasn’t the first one of the day, either. He hadn’t been feeling particularly good all week. He could feel the mucus dripping in a viscous glob down and out of his left nostril. To anyone else, this would be only seen as mildly gross, but to Danny, this was an immediate threat. He put one hand up to cover his nose and mouth, while the other shot down into the recesses of his backpack to find a tissue. Successful, he brought it up to his face and (he hoped) discreetly removed the offending remains.
He took such care of such a small thing for one reason alone: the fluid was neither clear nor yellow, but a thick and glowing green, with the color and luminescence of sci-fi radioactive sludge. Even after wadding it up in the tissue, he could clearly see a glow come through. Danny did his best to quietly tear out a sheet of lined paper from his notebook and crushed the tissue in that. The glow wasn’t snuffed completely, of course, as he’d discovered fairly quickly from learning of his unusual predicament, but the paper blocked out enough that someone glancing into the trash bin wouldn’t notice.
Mr. Lancer, his English teacher, would often call him out on his (poor) test scores, (lack of an) attention span, and (nigh nonexistent) work ethic. Danny was aware that he was not the brightest bulb in the box. However, he was no means the most burnt out one, either.
Most of the time.
He coughed, breathing out a visible stream of cold air that jutted out a few inches, hitting the girl sitting in front of him squarely on the neck.
“Danny!” the girl squawked, jumping a few inches out of her chair. He saw her shiver for a split second and felt like a jerk.
“’Great Expectations’, Fenton!” Mr. Lancer snapped, eyes on Danny. “What did you do to Paulina?”
“I’b sowwy, Midduh Lancah… I’b jusd weally sick,” Danny croaked. It was definitely getting worse, and that wisp of smoke could have simply been him being sick and being a… Or, it could have been a sign of something really bad that he did not want to have to deal with at the moment.
“Just… try not to sneeze and cough all over your classmates. And if it gets any worse… I suppose I can write you a pass to send you home.” Mr. Lancer sighed. “You know what, you look like a ghost. Hold on a minute and I’ll call the main office.” He stepped out of the classroom, probably to wave down whoever was on hall duty.
Two of his classmates, a girl and a boy, smirked quietly.
Mr. Lancer returned two minutes later. “Your sister is driving you home. Get better, Danny. We’ll discuss missed work once you are well enough to not sneeze all over it.”
Mr. Lancer may hate Danny’s academic record, but he was driven by seeing his students at their best. And he probably didn’t want to get sick from Danny again, either.
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Jazz started up the car, and helped Danny in. She couldn’t remember the last time that she saw her brother this sick.
“I don’t know where Mom and Dad are, but if they’re at home, you’d better cover your nose with your hand until you hit your room,” she chided, noticing a little of the green ooze dripping out.
“God a tissue?” Danny asked. “I’b glad Lancah led be bail, I’b out.”
“Nope. You’re just going to have to keep it in, little bro. We’re almost home”
“How can you eben understand be?”
“The same way I can tolerate the fact that you accidentally phased through my bedroom while I was changing last week. You’re my brother. Oh, nobody in class noticed, right?”
“I dink so. By ghost sense wend off in class, bud Paulina jusd thought I coughed on her.”
“Wait, your ghost sense went off? In class? Could you tell who was there?”
“Id usually does when I have a cold. I don’t think id will…” he started, but before he could finish, three things happened almost simultaneously. Jazz parked the car in front of their house, Danny’s ghost sense went off again, and the two teenagers noticed a sullen looking white haired boy fiddling with a coin at their front steps.
He didn’t have the traits of any ghost Danny had ever dealt with, as he was neither glowing nor floating. He looked solid, too. However, both Danny and Jazz immediately knew that something was not quite right with the kid at their stoop.
Especially when he waltzed right up to their car, glaring. “Daniel,” he said curtly, “I need to talk with you.”
