Crows x Souls

Chapter 268 – Her Counter-strike

“You’ve been pretty intense these past weeks.” Yoruichi said with a rare dispassionate tone. 

She watched him work with an ashy façade – two of his fingers over one of his eyes while a dozen crows flew overhead, their eyes the spotted red of the 3 tomoe Sharingan – her arms folded while her feet tapped impatiently. 

“The situation calls for it.” Itachi replied without turning to face her. Like clockwork, a crow would fly in from the outside and join the ring of avian, which prompted its beady eyes to turn red, and in response a crow would fly out and away from the ring, maintaining the murder ring of a dozen.  

Itachi looked ruffled, which was a rare sight for him, and it wasn’t just in his dirt stained clothes. There were bags under his eyes and the stress lines on his face had drawn deeper which made him look haggard and old.

“Is that the excuse you’re telling me?” she asked, unimpressed at the pathetic deflection. She walked unbothered into the ring of crows and stood in front of him. 

“You’re drifting, Itachi.” She said bluntly. Her words weren’t random and they weren’t a simple mask of worry. 

“I’m focused.” He rebutted. It wasn’t something as simple and inane as him working himself to the bone for weeks. She knew that and so did he. 

“That too.” Yoruichi surprisingly agreed. “But from where I’m standing that focus is two-faced.” She took in a soft breath. 

“You’re drifting, Itachi.” She repeated again. 

Itachi finally focused on her, despite her standing in front of him for some time now, and his sole eye crinkled at the edges. 

“I’m not so shallow as to let my roots grow stunted.” Itachi responded. 

She scoffed and her face twisted in brief disgust as she did. When she looked at him, it wasn’t with disappointment, no, but it was something close but not as harsh. 

He was falling into bad habits. 

Itachi saw the look on her face and the look in his eyes changed for a brief second. He sighed. 

The fingers over his eye dropped and uncovered the trail of blood that had dried on his face under the eye. 

“I’m not so far gone as to leave myself empty, Yoruichi.” He finally said. 

She almost scoffed at that but she held herself. “I wouldn’t care if it was anyone else and they were just pushing themselves in order to do their job.”

“And you care because?” Itachi asked, this time making a scowl highlight Yoruichi’s features. 

“Because I say I do.” She said, expression equal parts daring and chastising. “Or do you want me to say it in more words?”

Itachi’s retort stalled so he just shook his head and cleaned the blood under his eyes. 

He knew the reason for her displeasure, and if he was being honest with himself, he was glad she was here, standing in front of him, and telling him to his face, in discreet words, that he was being a hardheaded fool. 

The whole thing started a few weeks ago, after the meeting with Tsunayashiro Akifusa, and he had directed his ROOT to a culling. 

The death toll shot up in such a short time that the Noble Clans were too shocked on how to respond. 

It was such an efficient killing that it implicated both the ignorant participants and the neutral fence sitters. Even treasonous plots that were yet to be hatched were cut down indiscriminately. 

He was certain he had burned all bridges of future neutral cooperation with the Tsunayashiro, Kasumioji and possibly the Kuchiki Clan with his actions. If they were generally dismissive and derisive of his person before then he was sure that they were just a step below genuine hatred after his last stunt. 

And that was where Yoruichi’s concern came in. 

Her mixed worry/disdain was not because of him antagonizing the Noble Clans, but because of the clear signs of him purposely slipping down a dark slope with his only escape rope slicked in the slippery grime of ‘duty’. 

She knew about his clan, about what he did and the reason why he’d done so, and so she could recognize the signs of him reverting back to the man who would excuse every action he made in the name of duty. The makings of a coward who was afraid of the responsibility of judging his own morals. 

She didn’t care about the killings— it was something she’d done one or two times during her tenure. What she cared about was Itachi using it to taint his morals into something he hated— something that wasn’t Itachi. 

She cared because his life’s journey was her investment and hence for her sole enjoyment, and she won’t stand for him or anyone spoiling her entertainment because of uninspired choices/developments. 

He was hers because she said so. She’d let him know as much. 

“I wouldn’t have stooped that low.” He said after a moment of quiet. 

“Look at yourself, Itachi.” She gestured to him with her eyes. “It’s not a matter of how low you go. The problem is that your knees are considering relaxing around it.”

Six Divisions and three Noble Clans – those were the spheres involved in Itachi’s recent culling and it had sparked no small amount of panic among the Shinigami, especially with the joint-cooperation of the 9th and 11th Division. 

“I don’t condone such stupidity.” That was all it was to her. Sheer stupidity on such a grotesquely unsightly scale. “Not in anything I considered mine.”

She turned around to leave, her eyes still holding a dim gleam of how repugnant she found the whole thing. 

“Don’t make me repeat this again, Itachi.” The warning was the only thing she left behind as she disappeared. 

Itachi ran his fingers through his loose hair with closed eyes as a wave of shame washed over him. 

He could defend himself and his actions from Yoruichi’s words but the disconnect came from the fact that he resonated more with her words than he did with his reasons. 

“What a strange way to show affection.” He muttered to himself. She was such a strong-headed woman that he was effortlessly swept up into her orbit in every situation he found himself in with her. And in his heart he knew that he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

As if reading his mood, a crow landed on his arm and tilted its head at him. 

“Snake, refrain.” He said to the crow. “Tell the others.”

The crow cawed and flew away with heavy flaps, breaking the perfect ring in its departure as four other crows trailed behind it for a while before splitting up. 

. 

……….

Yoruichi settled in her office with a dour expression on her face. The same expression had been on her face for the past week and it was all she could endure before stomping over to Itachi to shout calmly in his face. 

She was a very vain and selfish person. Anyone who dug three layers deep into her person would know, but unfortunately there were only a handful of people she’d allowed to do so. 

Her reasons for wedging herself between Itachi and his funk was solely due to the fact of how boring he was becoming in her eyes. 

Her affection was so insidiously tepid that she’d put the object of her affection into a mold that allowed growth but abhorred cracks. He was allowed to grow and fail and surprise her with his story, but there was a line she wouldn’t allow him to cross. 

“Now that is a rare look on you.” The door to her office opened and Kisuke stepped in with a humorous flourish. 

She looked up at him, held it for a moment, and scowled in irritation as a smile threatened her face. 

Kisuke read her frustrations and the smile on his face grew wider. 

“Eh, is that you, Yoruichi?” He asked in mock seriousness. “Just what—who put you in such a mood?”

She scoffed, but it was clear that her earlier mood was largely gone. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for laughs right now, Kisuke.”

The eccentric Captain smiled under the rim of his hat. “Is that so? What a shame.”

Yoruichi sighed and slumped back into her seat. That exact tone of his was a huge indicator that she wouldn’t be getting any work done until he leaves. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Kisuke prodded with the stealthy grace of a Captain’s Bankai. 

Yoruichi looked at him with genuine confusion. “What do you mean? 

Kisuke only smiled. “I know you more than most, Yoruichi. You’ll have to do better than that to play oblivious to me.”

She squinted at him and he returned it with an unbothered smile. 

“Shut up.” She ended up saying. It was as much as a direct admission than if she’d kept quiet or made up a shoddy deflection. 

Kisuke shrugged but the twinkles of amusement in his eyes could not be hidden. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

He sat on the edge of her table and adjusted his hat so that it cast a partial shadow over his eyes. 

“So tell me,” he started, drumming his finger on the table, barely able to keep his excitement under control, “when did our unruly princess start doing affection?”

“Excuse me?” She huffed in faux disbelief. “I show affection. That’s my whole thing!”

Kisuke laughed. “Then allow me to rephrase that bit.” He wagged his fingers in her face. 

“When did our royal princess start doing romantic affections?”

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