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Chapter Text

It didn’t take long for Ichigo to deal with the hollow that had popped up, and he came back alone – because Rukia ditched him to go harass the shady shopkeeper over a promised check-up on her gigai – just as the elder Ishida pulled up in a newer Mazda into one of their three parking spots.

Ichigo made the mistake of making eye contact with him, and he froze for a moment beneath the cool blue gaze as the man got out of the car and approached. Then he passed him by without a word, like he didn’t see him before pausing at the door, “It wouldn’t do for the host to be later than the guest, Kurosaki.”

Not one word said about how he was in a shihakushou despite that he knew the man had seen it – had judged him for it even – before the look in his eyes was gone like it had never been.

Ichigo tried to open the door because he could see on the other side was his body, but it was locked, and his key was on his body. The elder Ishida reached past him and knocked.

A moment later they could hear through the door, “Ichigo! Ryūken-!” then the sound of someone hitting the wall, and Yuzu yelling, “Stay out of the kitchen until I’m done, Dad!” Followed by the sound of dramatic weeping, “Masaki, our children are so mean-!” before it was abruptly cut off by the unmistakable sound of someone choking and a body being dragged. Then through the glass doors, they could see Karin – with Goat Face caught in her headlock, half-dragged half-walking backwards with his back bent at an awkward angle behind her – come for the door.

“I don’t think this is good for Daddy’s back, Karin!! Is this some new expression of filial love?! OW!!” There was a loud snap-crack-crack-crack before he whimpered softly – “Karin!! If you’re not careful, you’ll hurt Daddy!!”

She opened it after dropping Goat Face on the ground, to give a small smile towards the elder Ishida, “Just in time, Yuzu’s just about done with dinner.” – before jerking a thumb for Ichigo towards where his body had been left against the wall in a poor attempt to make it look like he was just taking a nap – “Get back in your body already, Ichi-nii. Yuzu is two seconds from going apocalyptic if someone ruins the first Family Dinner Night by being late.”

Karin didn’t bother stepping over where Isshin was curled up on the ground coughing, bouncing up onto his hip and laying him flat as she jumped off, leading the way for the elder Ishida as Ichigo slipped back into his body.

Then he knelt at his father’s side as the older man wheezed, looking like he’d thrown out his back, “I was gone for twenty minutes, what did you do to piss Karin off?”

Isshin recovered instantly, flinging himself at him and wrapping his arms around him like an octopus, wailing dramatically, “I don’t know!!”

He didn’t react fast enough to catch him before he was already attached, then he was immovable, and he ended up dragging him with as he went into the house where everyone else was.

Yuzu was ruling over the kitchen, humming the latest song on the radio as the Devil Cat laid across the top of the fridge watching Ishida. Ishida had ended up sitting on the couch, with Kon in his lap, staring him down as the plush doll did its best to not break out in a cold sweat.

Ichigo couldn’t quite tell if that was because Ishida knew Kon wasn’t just a plush toy lion and was trying to see if he’d crack under his gaze, or if it was because he was inspecting the needlework that he’d done to the toy body. Either way, he looked away from Kon, who immediately sagged in relief from no longer being the focus of Ishida’s intense gaze, to look at his entrance, pushing up his glasses, “You’re late.”

His eye twitched, “Karin just said Yuzu was only about done with dinner; I’m not late.”

Ishida smirked, “Early is on time, on time is late and late is unacceptable.”

Karin went and picked Kon up and dropped him in a chair at the table that she’d finished setting up, even if looked like Kon kind-of wanted to cry as the elder Ishida’s gaze had been drawn with the motion and he was now giving him a similarly intense look as his son had, except more intense.

Because it was undeniable even within just five minutes with the two Ishida that they were very similar, with the elder being just the more concentrated, more intense, version.

The man opened his mouth, “What is that?”

Isshin threw himself away from him, doing a little spin before picking Kon up and proudly displaying him like he was Rafiki, “This is my newest child, Kon! Isn’t he adorable!!”

There was a long silence from all of them as they just stared at Isshin.

All four of his children immediately thought are you an actual idiot?

The longer it went on, the more it looked like Kon wanted to die inside, which was rather impressive because he was doing his best to keep up his impression of ‘just a toy’ and yet had broken out in a cold sweat.

The elder Ishida pinched the bridge of his nose looking exasperated, “Isshin, you do know that’s a-”

Ishida’s eye twitched as he jabbed a finger at Ichigo, “Only you-! Why is always you that brings this sort of nonsense into my life!?” – looking two seconds from having a minor meltdown right there in their living room – “Is this the same ‘animal’ that made noise in your bag a couple of days ago-!”

Yuzu popped out of the kitchen, abruptly elbowed him in the stomach, and as he bowed over, shoved him down by the shoulders back onto the couch, held out a hand that Karin then put a steaming teacup in that she then shoved in his face with a sickly sweet smile, “Ishida-kun, if you ruin dinner, I will ruin you.”

There was a gold sheen to her eyes and her smile felt almost fanged beneath the polite façade.

He quietly sipped at the tea as everyone took a small step away and out of her way as she went back into the kitchen. The elder Ishida turned toward Isshin, only the other man’s eyes were watering then he threw himself at his wife’s giant poster – after gently putting Kon down on the table – and sobbed on it, “Yuzu takes after you so much, Masaki! Daddy’s so proud of her!”

He sighed, “Really, what did you see in him, Masaki . . ?”

Karin held out a cup of tea for him, and gestured to the couch next to his son, “We wonder that every day.”

It was quiet for a moment – aside from Isshin wailing in to the poster, “You loved me, didn’t you, Masaki!?” – as he took a sip of tea, the younger Ishida nursing the last few sips of his own beside him. Karin perched on the arm next to the other teen, “So, Quincy? You guys and Mom?”

“Yes, and you three as well. Not that I would encourage you to pursue learning those skills, as it is better to leave hollows and the sort to shinigami and instead focus on the living.” He took another sip of tea before continuing, “As the Quincy as a whole are pointless in this modern era, where once we would have been hired out to protect others that could also see but not fight, but outside Karakura Town, those can see are rather rare nowadays.”

Yuzu poked her head out of the kitchen, squinting at the elder Ishida, “Is Karakura that different?”

Ishida, Goat Face, and Karin all at once glanced at him, and Ichigo really wanted to be offended because it wasn’t his fault. Only, he’d been on all his class trips out of town and nowhere else seemed to have quite as many ghosts as Karakura did on a regular basis. Karin would have noticed on her own class trip last year, and if he remembered right, Ishida had been abroad last year for an exchange program so he would have noticed too.

The fact that the one (true) shinigami in the room was looking at him made it a bit undeniable though.

Ichigo crossed his arms and made a face at the wall, because it still wasn’t his fault that his mere presence seemed to affect the world around him; it was a coincidence.

(No matter what Tatsuki – or Rukia – said.)

The elder Ishida took another sip, then put his empty cup down, “It used to be that most people, most places, could see spirits, if only vaguely. Hence many of the myths and stories we have of ghosts, spirits, and demons, world-round. Gradually though, that changed, and it was that fewer could, but better. Not so with Karakura.”

Ishida pushed up his glasses as his father didn’t continue, picking up where he left off after a moment, “There are some places were the veil is thinner, where spirits are more easily seen, naturally. Places like Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland and the Black Forest in Germany. Then there are places where the veil is thinned by mass death, and the dead linger for too long, left unchecked and unattended. Places like Flanders Field in France and Aokigahara in Yamanashi. Grandfather believed Karakura was a combination of both types, and it has influenced its residents.”

Karin squinted at the elder Ishida, “If people can see more here, and are more at risk of attracting a hollow, then isn’t being a Quincy a good thing, if it can prevent what happened with Mom from happening to someone else?”

The silence that followed was an icy weight around all of their necks, because for all that the elder Ishida looked calm, there was an anger in his eyes that said no it can’t.

After a moment, Yuzu broke the silence with a small handclap from the kitchen doorway, “If everyone would take a seat, dinner is ready to be served.” – coming out and retrieving tea cups, but pausing before she went back into the kitchen, narrowed eyes sliding from one person to the next until she’d met everyone’s “No upsetting topics during dinner.”

Karin tripped their father when he made to rush into the kitchen to ‘help’, “Yuzu’s already banned you from the kitchen today, Goat Chin!”

Ichigo paused when the elder Ishida just watched Karin squabble with Isshin when he tried to drag her down with him to the ground only to epically fail, before Yuzu popped her head back out with a glare towards their father for causing problems, “You just lost a portion of your meat for dinner.”

Isshin wailed into the ground from where Karin had pinned him, “No! My precious meat!”

The elder Ishida still looked a little icy, but there was something around his eyes like longing and grief for something he’d almost had and lost.

Ichigo politely ignored the grief, “They’re both whirlwinds.” – Karin snorted at that, and he narrowed his eyes at her, his mouth moving before he could think, to say – “At least Yuzu can cook, unlike you and Kukaku.”

(She always got so impatient, and threw gunpowder into the flame, charring everything and seasoning it with smoke.)

Isshin tripped over nothing in the process of getting off the ground, staring at him like he’d seen a ghost, but Ichigo wasn’t paying him any attention as he started to pick up the bowled-up rice, Karin bringing over the sesame oil and the last of the five rice bowls after putting salad on the plates. Then Yuzu started plating up the mackerel simmered in miso, and they brought out the five near-identical plates as she finished adjusting the last two.

One of which was for the Devil Cat, with the mackerel sitting on a small bed of salad and rice with sesame oil drizzled over top, that she then put down next to a bowl of fresh cold water at the foot of the table by her seat.

The other for Isshin, with most of his dinner salad, and the rest equally small portions of rice and mackerel because his last in-house check-up had revealed high cholesterol and she’d put him on a diet.

(He’d been calling the shady shopkeeper nearly every day to complain about it ever since.

Urahara had hung up on him every time after the first.)

No said much of anything as they quickly all dug in, not until Isshin turned toward the elder Ishida, “Want to hear a joke about nitric oxide?”

“N.O.”

Ishida started squinting at his father, “Did you just-?” but Isshin cut him off, acting all forlorn, “Once . . I told a chemistry joke.” – before there was a beat of silence – “There was no reaction.”

Karin started, “Dad, no.” but Goat Face was not deterred, “I could tell you a science joke . . but all the good ones are Argon.”

The elder Ishida didn’t say anything for a moment as he plucked his mackerel out of Isshin’s chopsticks, “I don’t zinc so.”

Karin started looking pained when Isshin opened his mouth again, Ishida just looking at his own father like he’d grown two heads, “I don’t always cause an action, but when I do, it provokes a reaction.”

Yuzu just smiled as Ichigo shared a commiserating look with Kon, “I find this humerus.”

The elder Ishida then sniped his mackerel back from Isshin again as the other man beamed at Yuzu for playing along with their bad science jokes, deadpanning, “Science jokes should only be done periodically, Isshin.”

Ishida just stared at his father like he had no idea what was going on anymore, before throwing a sharp-eyed look toward the Devil Cat when he snorted at the joke.

Yuzu hummed as she finished off her mackerel, “You must have a pH of 13 because your jokes are just basic.” Isshin’s eyes started getting watery before he rushed over to wail at Masaki’s poster, “Masaki-!”

Aside from a grown man’s caterwauling, it was quiet for a moment as the rest of them finished their meal until Karin said, “You are the result of 3.9 billion years of evolutionary success. Can you at least try to act like it?”

There was a dramatic gasp before Isshin was picking Karin up and spinning her – and Yuzu a moment later – around and around in hugs, “I knew you guys liked my jokes!”

Ichigo was sure that he was going to regret this – taking part of this tomfoolery – later but he couldn’t resist as he looked dead-eyed at Ishida and said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate.”

Ishida just put his head in his hands, looking so done with the world and everyone in this room. His face was a study of betrayal.

Ichigo was pretty sure that he saw the elder Ishida crack the smallest of smiles for unnerving his son, but if he did, it was there and gone before he was carefully setting down his chopsticks once he was done with his food, “From what I understand final exams for the term are coming up for the first years. How are your studies going, Ichigo?”

His last bite of mackerel went down the wrong pipe in his surprise at suddenly being addressed, as he’d been under the impression that the elder Ishida would have socialized with them the bare minimum amount and they’d already exceeded that. The look Ishida was giving his father backed that up, like he wasn’t sure what was going on anymore but he neither trusted it nor liked it.

Karin eagerly came over to smack him on the back to help clear his throat as he coughed, before Yuzu offered him a glass of water. Once he could breathe again, he glanced at Ishida while trying to convey why is he asking me that?? but all he got was the hint of pity as his not-friend pushed up his glasses.

“Err, good?”

Ishida’s father looked at him for a moment, “Good?” – and Ichigo suddenly realized what the pity was for as that gaze intensified – “Are you perhaps not being challenged enough? Students should be constantly striving to be better if they intend to go to a reputable university.”

“Um, no.” Ichigo couldn’t help but notice how it was university or nothing for after graduation-

“Do you not intend to go to university?”

Ichigo didn’t know?? He didn’t know what he wanted to do after graduation. He still had the form to fill out about his tentative after-school plans by the start of next term, so that Ms. Ochi could help him formulate the next two years of classes during the last term before the end of the year. He hadn’t given it much thought so far this term what with the whole substitute shinigami business taking up all his spare time.

The older man sighed softly as he correctly read the look on his face, “If you do not know yet, then make sure you at least have the grades so that you don’t end up in some third-rate college like your father because your grades are all a mess for anywhere better.”

Ishida looked at his father like he was two seconds from demanding an exorcism, if he thought he could get away with it.

Ichigo looked at his father with a confused look, because how did Isshin get his medical license when he, at the minimum, had no birth certificate, no vaccination records, no school records, and no high school graduation certificate because he’d been a shinigami squad captain prior to twenty years ago.

He buried his head in his hands without explanation because he did have a medical license, right?? He’d at least had to go to medical school, if he’d been practicing medicine for almost twenty years.

 . . . Isshin was a fraud, how hadn’t they’d been sued yet?

No, he knew the answer: Urahara. Urahara had faked all of Isshin’s paperwork, which probably explained the random grades because it would be in character for the shopkeeper to pluck grade averages out of a hat.

Isshin just grinned while sheepishly scratching at the back of his head, “You say that, but it got me study-dates with Masaki, which led to real dates.”

“Mom was your tutor??” Ichigo lifted his head up some at Karin’s exclamation, the younger girl looking somewhere between aghast and traumatized, “You dated and married your tutor.”

The Devil Cat snickered, and he didn’t even need to say anything for Ichigo to know he would have been sing-songing Hot for Teacher~ if not for the Ishida present. The elder one still glanced over, looking straight at the cat, his eyes narrowing slightly with suspicion because the Devil Cat really didn’t act like any normal cat, and it was really obvious that it was something only in the shape of a cat.

(Yoruichi, you used to be better at this- You just don’t care, do you?)

The not-cat just grinned cattishly, all but waggling his eyebrows like I dare you to say something.

Ichigo dropped his head back into his hands.

Chapter Text

Rukia had really wanted to be nearby for the Kurosaki-Ishida dinner because she knew the answer to what was up with the whole extended family would come up – along with the reason why Ichigo didn’t abide by the rules of the world if his mother had been something else; if she had been something more than just a plus human, along with his shinigami father.

Only, she’d known that if she had just hidden upstairs and hid in Ichigo’s room, that the elder Ishida would have revealed that she was there.

It had been as good a reason as any for her to have go to Urahara to see if he could do anything about the soul wound that Tessai thought she had. The shopkeeper had taken one look at her and started fluttering his fan in that irritating way that she’d figured out was him stalling for time because he had bad news.

It was the same thing he’d done after he’d found her in whites, Ichigo passed out in the street after defeating his first hollow. The same thing he’d done before he’d told her that she’d become a criminal in the eyes of Central 46 for giving her powers to a human, and with that would come with her imprisonment to the Maggot’s Nest when, not if, it was found out.

She’d suspected as much then, and now, he didn’t need to say a word for him to say there wasn’t anything he could do. She’d become sealed in this gigai; become all but a plus human if Central 46 didn’t send somebody for her.

After a long moment, his fan snapping shut so he could lightly bop her on the head with it, he’d quietly said that if Central 46 didn’t come for her within the next month, she’d lose her powers entirely, but once she was essentially, human, there was a chance that she’d become something like Tatsuki. Something between a plus human and a shinigami, unlike Kon, unlike whatever Chad and Orihime were becoming.

It might take time but he had no doubt that she’d call Sode no Shirayuki to her hand again, because Ichigo repaid his debts and if it didn’t happen just by being near him, he’d make it happen.

There had been guilt in his words, in the way he’d said them, and she’d waved it off, because what did he have to feel guilty about for her choice to give Ichigo her power; it’d been her choice that would see her imprisoned or become powerless.

She’d ran off before he’d said anything more when her pager had gone off with the warning for a hollow in ten minutes, give or take five minutes. Just as she’d turned a corner, she’d seen Ishida with his father, who gave her a look not unlike the elders of the Kuchiki clan had – and still did, somewhat, whenever her lord brother wasn’t around – since she’d been adopted as he drove past her.

Then her pager had beeped again in warning, and she’d spotted Ichigo looking a little lost outside the clinic, and she’d impatiently waved him to meet her half-way, “There’s a hollow! Let’s go!!”

Chapter Text

Ichigo didn’t much know how the rest of dinner went despite being right there, doing his best to ignore it because he didn’t think he could take another revelation like his father was a fraud who’d only maybe went to college for his doctorate and that his mother had tutored him so he’d get there. He really didn’t want to think what else could come up now that they’d brought those two heavy hitters out.

Not until dinner was suddenly over, and Yuzu was dragging both him and Karin to see the two Ishida out to their car.

He got to watch the two have a tense stand-off over Ishida getting in the car with his dad or him walking home, before Yuzu rushed inside and brought out leftover mackerel and he mildly had to get in the car for the sake of the food. Then she called out their good-byes while he and Karin were still suffering the revelations from dinner and extracted the promise to meet up next Thursday for another family dinner.

Ishida looked mildly pained when his father had agreed.

Ichigo stalled out there, just watching the car drive off until he couldn’t see it anymore when he heard his sisters start to discuss how it was obvious that the elder Ishida had less than zero interest in passing on anything about being a Quincy, and thus, their best bet was to wheedle information out of the younger. He wanted to be able to claim plausible deniability over whatever they did, because he did not doubt that they’d get their information, but he couldn’t tune them out entirely if he wanted to make sure they didn’t go too far.

Mostly because he wasn’t sure how willing Ishida would be to share, and the two wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Rukia came around the corner the car had gone around, staring after them for a moment before her pager beeped and she turned around to look directly at him, her eyes narrowed as she gestured for him to come to her, yelling out, “There’s a hollow! Let’s go!!”

Chapter Text

“No hollow again!? What’s going on?!” Ichigo narrowed his eyes at the spirit huddling on the ground in a back-alley before looking at Rukia, “How many times has it been already this week!? I thought you got that stupid pager fixed!”

She was glaring at said pager, fiddling with it as she checked it over again for the tenth time since the last time it had worked following the Kurosaki-Ishida family dinner. It had worked prior to that, and there had been nothing unusual that had happened between when it had and when it hadn’t to explain why it wouldn’t be, “Ten. I did. I don’t think it is broken, honestly.”

Ichigo threw his hands up in the air, frustrated at being dragged out again from where he was reviewing for finals for a hollow that wasn’t there, again.

“Gimme a break! It’s the middle of finals!!”

Rukia’s eye twitched, “I know!”

He jabbed a finger towards the damn pager, “This is all the fault of your busted pager! Go get it properly fixed, you cheapskate!!”

“I’M TELLING YOU: IT’S NOT BROKEN!!” Rukia shoved the thing back in her dress pocket as she jabbed a finger right back at him, “Do you think I want to be out here anymore than you do?! I got finals too!!”

His lips thinned, not quite sure what was going on, but something was going on, clearly, “Is there another shinigami around here who keeps getting to the hollows before we can get there!?”

“Um . . No?” Rukia chewed on her lip after a moment, “Shinigami have clearly defined territories, so I don’t think that’s the case.”

He just stared at her for a moment, because really, were they just ignoring the fact his dad, Urahara and Tessai were technically shinigami?

(Which was not to mention those eight others he sometimes got a sense of, and even sometimes caught a glimpse of.)

Isshin wasn’t much of one right now, what with his reiatsu being so low, but he was a shinigami. Then there were retired(?) shinigami like Urahara and Tessai, though for some reason, he really wouldn’t put it beyond Urahara to be out on the lam.

(Oh, he’s definitely exiled. He created something he shouldn’t have, and it caused a huge mess, that fucked up more than a few people’s lives. If not for Yoruichi and Tessai, they would have all been executed, starting with Urahara.)

Hiding right in the open considering Rukia knew about him – and the fucker definitely had blackmail on somebody that meant as long as he didn’t give them cause to drag him back, they’d didn’t dare; Urahara was shady enough for it.

(The other eight were at least hiding, and they were undeniably, actually, hiding from Soul Society from the way they stayed the hell away from Rukia.)

She winced as she met his dead-eyed stare, “Those three don’t count-” “IT WAS SCARY!! I WAS REALLY, REALLY SCARED!! THANK YOU!!”

The spirit that had been curled up in a ball the entire argument suddenly sprung forward, and Ichigo was moving out of the way, foot rising to stomp him down out of reflex before the fact it wasn’t Isshin throwing himself at him registered. He was still pissed though that he was out here instead of rushing to review, because if he came behind Ishida in the rankings, that little asshole was going to be so smug the next family dinner, “THEN GO THANK WHOEVER SAVED YOU!!”

“Oof!!” The spirit hit the ground hard.

“Hey! Wait, Ichigo!!” Rukia kicked him away, before kneeling next to the teary-eyed man, “You saw something scary!? Then there was a hollow here!” She threw a pointed look at him, and he huffed and looked away because so what! Just because there had been a hollow, didn’t mean that her pager wasn’t still broken, before she grabbed the spirit by the shoulder, leaning forward with a sharp smile, “Tell me! Who defeated the hollow and saved you!? What kind of person was it!?”

The spirit blushed at Rukia’s close vicinity, “I . . I was scared so I had my eyes closed, so I didn’t really see. . .”

Rukia straightened with a dark look, and the full-grown man made a high-pitched eep! noise before starting to babble, “S-s-s-s-sorry! I don’t know what for! But Sorry!!!” – falling forward into a deep bow with his head touching the ground between his hands, “Please forgive me!!” He raised his head up just slightly so he could offer up a figurine in his hands, “You can have my magic girl Megalon figure!”

In unison, Ichigo smacked it aside with Rukia, the opposing directions breaking the scantily clad pre-teen girl between their fists.

The spirit wailed, “MEGALON!!!” As he blubbered, crying as he tried to gather up the bigger pieces of his figurine, Ichigo pulled out his zanpaku-tō, “All right, let’s konsô—"

“Huh!? What’s konsô!?” The spirit started rapidly back-pedaling, abandoning the broken pieces of ‘Megalon’ as Ichigo mercilessly approached, arm drawing back for a swift jab with the butt of his blade, “Are you going to stab me with that sword-!?”

Chapter Text

Keigo was the last to finish the last final in their class, “I’m finished!!” Then he dramatically flopped onto his desk as Mizuiro picked the papers up to drop off in the teacher’s lounge, crying, “And . . I’m dead!!!”

Ichigo picked up his bag now that they were clear to leave, with Keigo finally done. He deadpanned, “Don’t worry, one bad score isn’t a ticket to cashier alley!”

Keigo didn’t have just one bad score though, it was multiple, and had been multiple since they’d started taking class ranks. Admittedly, they weren’t terrible scores, but he wouldn’t qualify for the top fifty without some serious effort. He’d probably breach rank fifty in a term if he tried, but Keigo just wasn’t much of a test taker. Ironically, he did better on that one test where he randomly rolled his pencil for multiple-choice than he did where he tried to narrow down possible choices to the right one. Memorably, he’d tanked a different test by giving all the right answers one line off.

Fresh tears budded up in Keigo’s eyes, “Well said! Thanks, Ichigo!! We morons can wallow in misery together!!” Ichigo’s eye twitched at being called a moron while Keigo practically made the air around them twinkle in dramatic shoujo-fashion, “We’ll be friends for life!”

Mizuiro practically radiated amusement as he popped that bubble, the asshole “Well, you should wait to see the test results before you say that.”

Keigo’s head whipped around so fast that Ichigo nearly got smacked in the face with his friend’s hair, “What do you mean, Mizuiro??”

Ichigo knew what Mizuiro meant by that as he lifted up a paper for Keigo to read, because he’d managed to hide his rising rank all these years and now the gig was up, “Look, this is Ichigo’s ranking in the mid-terms.”

The paper being the first semester’s high scores for first years. Mizuiro’s smile was placid as Keigo squinted to read it, “Dude, only the top fifty get their names on here. Why do you think Ichigo is on . . here—?”

It read: Rank 1 – Ishida Uryū (Class 3), Kunieda Ryô (Class 3) – Score: 688; Rank 2 – Kurosaki Ichigo (Class 3) – Score: 686.

Keigo’s face was a dramatic slideshow of shock and surprise in quick alternating succession before he whirled back towards him, “S-second!? Second out of our whole class!? Does this mean you’re second out of all three hundred and twenty-two students in our class!?” – practically vibrating in place before tears started budding in his eyes – “NO WAY! HOW DID YOU GET ON THIS LIST!?”

Ichigo didn’t blink twice at the tears; Keigo started crying anytime he was overcome with emotion, with any emotion, “I’m not in any clubs so I have nothing to do at night but go straight home and study.”

It used to get Keigo bullied something fierce as a little kid, being such a crybaby. Tatsuki laughed sometimes at him about how he’d barely left behind being a crybaby himself only to pick up somebody worse than he’d been.

Keigo became a study of betrayal, “Nothing to do!? I ask you to hang out with me all the time!! You always turn down my invitations!!” Ichigo winced a little at that, because he did feel a little bad about that but Rukia’s damn pager always seemed to go off- “While we were out having fun like idiots, you’ve been locking yourself in your room learning! You weirdo!! NERD!!”

Keigo rushed off to the other side of the room with huge dramatic tears streaming down his face, but Ichigo didn’t feel the least bit bad anymore when Keigo quickly made to pull out fake coke-bottle thick glasses like some sort of gag gift from his bag against the back wall. His face must have been something else because Keigo froze, then shoved the glasses back into his bag.

Mizuiro looked a little impressed at that; Ichigo had a feeling that despite his words, it was about cutting Keigo off before he started, “Wow, you really do study hard, don’t you?”

Ichigo wondered if the sarcastic lilt was intentional, or if Mizurio just spoke so much sarcasm that everything he said just sounded a touch sarcastic now. It was hard to tell sometimes, but Mizuiro looked sincere, so he answered sincerely, “I guess? Having orange hair makes my life hard enough. No matter how many times I tell the older guys it’s not dyed, they still wanna kick my butt. And the faculty all have their eyes on me, which sucks. I’ve got a bad temper, so I get into fights easily. If the faculty hassles me, I usually mouth off. Then they say I have a behavior problem and the whole thing snowballs. I’ve got a lot going against me, so I try to keep my grades up. The faculty doesn’t ride you so hard if you have good grades.”

He wiped a hand down his face after a moment, “Though now I also have an . . uncle that wants me to get into a good university, unlike what my father had.”

As such, he felt the weird twitch his face gave at mention of his father’s schooling because Isshin was a FRAUD, but it went uncommented on – partially because Mizuiro had met Isshin and understood the man was something else – in favor of the other part of the statement, “You have an uncle?”

Ichigo met Mizuiro’s gaze dead-eyed, “He’s my mother’s cousin but he has a son my age. We found out about him a couple of weeks ago, and Yuzu called him Uncle at the latest family dinner. It was . . allowed.”

Chad reached over and patted his shoulder in silent support as he fought the urge to bury his head in his hands, “Goat Face could care less about what, if any, plans I have for after school, but not him. He wants me to do at least as well as Ishida, so that I have opportunities regardless of what I choose to do after I graduate.”

Mizuiro smiled, then changed the subject, “So, where’s Rukia, Strawberry?”

The little shit quickly side-stepped a half-hearted smack for the unappreciated nickname. The fact that he didn’t connect didn’t bother him when it wouldn’t do anything to deter Mizuiro anyway – the last five years of trying to find something to deter Mizuiro hadn’t – it would only make him feel better about the more common reading of his name. He had to give a token protest though, or Mizurio would take it as implicit permission.

Mizuiro was the sort if he was given a centimeter, he took a kilometer before anyone realized that he had. Case in point, the fact he had ever female upperclassman’s number and no one quite knew how, or how their boyfriends hadn’t beaten him up for his ‘we’re just friends’. Ichigo knew for a fact, that at least once, he’d actually been dating an upperclassman when older boys came to see who their crush was dating and thus refusing their offers for dates.

“Why you asking me? I’m not her keeper.”

Ichigo’s eye twitched at the shit-stirring yet still bland I’m-not-up-to-no-good-I-swear! smile Mizuiro had, “Well, you’re always together.”

He threw Rukia under the bus in a heartbeat, “She moved in near me, and our families have known each other a long time. She gravitated to me because I’m familiar. I’ve been tutoring her because she’s beyond behind in a couple of subjects.” – completely – “Then because of the TV incident, everybody’s been giving us creepy looks. I try to avoid her completely at school, but there are already all sorts of rumors about the ‘nature’ of our relationship!”

He gave Mizuiro a bit of a stink eye, because he had no doubt that Mizurio already knew every rumor there was going around and had probably made a fair few of the ones flying around just for his amusement.

“No way!” His smile just proved it, “That sucks!”

Keigo’s sweat drop from behind their friend confirmed it.

Ichigo smiled at Mizuro, fully committed to throwing Rukia under the bus because if he was going to suffer, she was going to suffer too. He didn’t remember all the details, but he had fragments of memories of a redhead skulking around like a kicked dog from a distance and Rukia ranting about how ‘Renji’ was avoiding her. He was petty enough to give the person behind the rumor mill new information if it got him made old news, “Anyway, those rumors that we’re dating. Completely false. She’s got somebody. Ask her about her childhood friend, she’ll go on for hours about him.”

Chapter Text

Rukia sneezed before hastily wiping at her face when her pager quietly beeped.

She glared at it for a moment for its single piteous beep, “Y-you got to be kidding me!” Then she set it on the ground, pointing a finger at it self-righteously, “Damn that Urahara! He’s never around when I really need him! But he’s always right there when he’s not wanted! You call yourself a businessman?!”

Rukia would have liked to blame her pager problems on the eccentric shopkeeper never being available for her to get it fixed, but he’d looked it over after he’d checked her over and he’d declared it in better shape than her; there was nothing wrong with it.

After a moment of a one-sided stare-off, she crouched to pick it up to see if she’d gotten orders when it beeped again, twice in quick succession. Her eyes widened when it gave a time and location – in less than ten minutes, and near the twins’ school.

She grabbed it and booked it.

Chapter Text

“Ichi-Ichigo!!”

At the sound of Rukia mildly panicked, he turned away from where he was quickly coming to regret saying anything to Mizuiro with how his friend’s eyes gleamed with an unholy light, towards her.

“We need to talk!”

Rukia grabbed him by the arm as she didn’t pause passing by where he’d been standing just outside their classroom, rushing them out of the building.

For a second, he thought she somehow knew that he’d given his gossip-mongering asshole friend information about her childhood sweetheart, “H-hey! Let go!! Don’t you know about the rumors flying around about us already!? Do you want to add to them?!”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t care! It’s a hollow! Whine later!!”

Ichigo rapidly back-pedaled to stay upright, seeing out of the corner of his eye Mizuiro give a Cheshire grin directly at him that said he’d just given the asshole more fodder for his rumor-mongering, and mentally sighed. He wasn’t even sure why he’d tried to salvage his reputation at this point, after Rukia and Kon had completely ruined it – though maybe it was pride – but it was undeniably ruined now.

“Hollow!? Is there really?”

As she dragged him off, they passed by Ishida. He met the other teen’s eyes as Ishida turned his head to watch them scramble away, pushing up his glasses with the hand wearing a familiar bracelet.

A silent taunt and acknowledgement of what Ichigo had forgotten amongst exams: Ishida was a full-fledged Quincy.

(He hadn’t seen Ishida draw his bow, but he’d seen a Quincy fight, vaguely. He’d seen the elder Ishida, then even somewhat seen his sisters, pull the bow – and had even pulled a ‘bow’ himself – and what were bows if not long-range weapons.

A Quincy could fight from anywhere in line-of-sight.)

Rukia didn’t slow down even as Ichigo realized why there had been so many false alarms this week; Ishida had been sniping the hollows.

(Trying to undoubtedly prove that he was better than him at managing this sort of extra-curricular and schoolwork because he was quietly more competitive than anyone else that he’d ever known.)

“Oh, that asshole!”

As such, even as Rukia dragged him off worryingly, frighteningly, close to his sisters’ school, and even as a hollow had shown up, he was not surprised when a moment later lightning grated against his senses then a streak of blue light collided head-on with the hollow.

Ishida hadn’t even tried to hide his sniping this time.

Ichigo had been willingly to give Ishida the benefit of the doubt, that maybe he didn’t know he’d been on-route to any of the hollows of the past week – even if he’d already figured Ishida did know – but it was unmistakable now: Ishida knew he’d gone out for this hollow, and had still sniped it.

He’d made an about-face even as Rukia let out a wordless noise of frustration, flailing a hand up at where the hollow had been because it wasn’t the pager that had been the problem all week. Then he turned towards where there was the sense of salt and lightning sitting heavy on the back of his tongue that made him think Ishida, before he was following the royal blue-edged blue-tinted silver spirit ribbon’s pull.

Rukia followed him after a moment, “Where are you going?!”

His eyes narrowed as he homed in on the sense of Ishida as it started to move away from near the school, going in the opposite direction and it was all he could do to not let the distance between them grow.

“Hey! Ichigo!!”

Kon had taken his body home like he hadn’t all week since the first couple of false alarms, so there was no reason to return to the sky before he pursued Ishida and ignored Rukia’s questions.

“Are you ignoring me!?” Ahead of him, Ishida stopped, then turned around. Rukia took advantage of how he paused in return to get up in his face, “Where are you going, Ichigo! There’s nothing over here.”

“Squabbling? How ugly.”

Rukia startled, turning sharply to where Ishida had come over in an all-white get-up with familiar dark blue at the hems, and though he couldn’t currently see it, there was undoubtedly a pale blue six-pointed star on his back. She squinted at him, “What’s with the get-up? Playing mad scientist-?”

Without looking, Ichigo reached out and slapped a hand over her mouth before she continued because Ishida had come to some sort of decision here; he’d chosen to wear these clothes with intentions.

(He’s come as a Quincy while you wear the garb of a shinigami. He’s come to make a declaration.)

“What is it, Ishida?”

He tilted his head slightly, “Hmm, there’s another hollow coming.” – just before Rukia’s pager beeped, as Ishida pointed off to the side of town – “That way.” He looked over his shoulder at them, “You can’t sense it, can you, Kurosaki?”

Ichigo stretched out his senses, trying to find that grating bitter feeling that he’d slowly started to recognize as a hollow’s presence, but even if he’d gotten better, he couldn’t find it. Not even with Ishida’s hint.

(Most can’t until it starts to come through. Even among Quincy, it’s not quite common.)

Ishida raised his right hand, bracelet twinkling at his wrist, before it glimmered and a bow of light formed, an arrow notching itself as he drew back his left hand.

He released it just as Ichigo finally figured out where the hollow was, just in time for blue light to collide head-on with it. The hollow shattered.

(It’s gone . .)

(Now it’s not even a snack. A butterfly at least is a delicacy, a caterpillar just tastes nasty.)

“My name is Ishida Uryū, a Quincy. And I hate shinigami. In other words, I’m saying . . I hate you.”

Chapter Text

Ishida left while Rukia looked between them, question marks practically floating around her head because Quincy didn’t mean anything to her. Ichigo just watched him go.

It wasn’t quite that he didn’t know what to do, but while Ishida had made his declaration, it hadn’t been a hostile declaration. If he was hostile, he would have attacked regardless of them being distant cousins and classmates. Ishida’s words and his actions weren’t quite lining up to the same thing again so Ichigo was inclined to do nothing if Ishida didn’t instigate.

Once Ishida decided on where he wanted to take this declaration in truth, instead of giving lip-service to the Quincy-shinigami feud, he’d respond in kind.

In the meantime, they had their third family dinner, which had somehow been more awkward than the first – as the second one hardly counted with how both him and Ishida hadn’t been mentally present while trying to cram just a little more review in before the last few exams.

The elder Ishida had seemed to have had some idea of what was going on though, because there had been a look that he’d given his son when Ishida had ignored him, while Goat Face had just blabbered on about how he should make up with the other teen regardless of if it was his fault or not.

There had been a loudly whispered aside about how he’d have to be the one to apologize because an Ishida doesn’t apologize even if they are baldly, and obviously, in the wrong. Followed by a pointed look to the elder Ishida about how clearly tacos were the best no-utensils-required food and certain people refusing to admit it, had gotten the elder Ishida to snap his chopsticks in half.

Yuzu hadn’t blinked before she’d been handing out another pair, not even looking over from where she’d been happily chatting with Ishida about some sort of stitch, then blindly grabbing and sinking the broken pair into the appropriate bin. The rest of the family had silently handed over ten yen each for her making the shot; one hundred from Isshin because he’d instigated the loss of another pair of chopsticks.

Otherwise, it’d been a relatively quiet dinner with the only other moment of tension being over what their expected scores on the exams would be.

Which was entirely because after the first dinner, Yuzu had called a family meeting and subsequently pinned a list of banned topics from the dinner table. Highlighted three times and traced-over multiple times with sharpie was the only topic on it: spirits.

(Ichigo figured that anything that Yuzu couldn’t see was probably under that umbrella until otherwise stated.)

There was a list of other topics that could only be brought up after dinner, for the sake of keeping the peace/their sanity: their mother and Quincy were on that list.

Chapter Text

Their scores for the final exam went up on Friday.

“Wow!” Tatsuki pat at Orihime’s head, the other girl leaning into the touch with a smile, “Third, huh? You’re awesome, as always.”

Ichigo glanced over at where Tatsuki’s name had solidly landed at ninth, a marked improvement from where she’d been hovering between twelfth and fifteenth. Doing her homework with Orihime had already been showing an improvement, with her math scores benefiting most. This combined with how Orihime apparently had a habit of spouting out random English words, meant that Tatsuki’s language scores had also benefited immensely. The two improvements had done wonders for her overall scores.

Michiru looked over with wide eyes, “Wow! I didn’t know you were that smart, Orihime?!”

She’d typically been around fourth or fifth place from what he vaguely remembered Tatsuki bragging about from the previous last couple of exams. Then with the reappearance of her brother as a hollow and moving out of her busted apartment not long before mid-terms, Orihime had fallen to seventh. Apparently, living with Tatsuki had also been good for her if she’d also scored significantly better.

“You might not think it when you look at her pretty face, but she’s always been pretty smart.”

Orihime blushed bright enough to match her hair at the praise, even as Ichigo sighed with the inevitable scene that was going to take place now.

Goat Face was going to blubber to his mother’s portrait about having such smart children, while completely ignoring the fact that Tatsuki wasn’t on their family registry and wouldn’t be unless he married her. Her father had already threatened to sue him over it.

(He hadn’t pressed about Orihime being added to the registry for some reason, and Ichigo was pointedly not looking too closely at that. It was bad enough that he’d got a glimpse of Orhime scribbling something like her name, with a different family name than Inoue.

He pointedly wasn’t thinking about who she might have a crush on. If it wasn’t Tatsuki, she’d sulk and drag him off to the dojo so she could work out some of her upset on him, literally.)

“Ryô’s second?” Michiru looked at the name above Orihime’s, while Chizuru draped herself over her back.

“She excels in both the literary and the martial arts. And she’s the freshman class rep!” The redhead was grinning, proud of her friend, “She went to nationals for track too!”

Keigo made a quiet ah hah! noise, “So that’s why the teachers don’t bother her!”

Tatsuki raised her foot up to kick the other girl away only for Chizuru to fling herself to the side to evade, before saying casually, “Well, I’m going to nationals too.” Casually mentioning this like it was old news, brought everyone else up short and completely dove-tailed the conversation away from Keigo’s comment.

The whole group stared at her before there was a collective, “Eh!?”

Tatsuki blinked, “What? Didn’t I tell you guys? I won the city tournament in May.”

Ichigo vaguely remembered something about it, but it’d been a couple of months and he’d been a bit busy since so it’d slipped his mind that Tatsuki would be going off to Tokyo soon.

The tournament had been not long after Kon had shown up, and not long before his mother’s death anniversary, so she’d just sent him a short text saying she’d won. It’d been Orihime who’d said something about her moving on to nationals the next school day, gushing all about the showing Tatsuki had made during the tournament.

He wasn’t sure if it had come up for anyone else but going by the responses – Chad’s slow-blink, Keigo and Michiru’s no!!, and Mizuiro and Chizuru’s frowns – he was going to go with that she’d forgotten to.

She smirked, “Our judo team rocks this year! The girl who’s won three nationals has joined the team,” – then gave him a look for the fact he’d declined to join the club – “and the boys’ team is going to nationals, too.” He rolled his eyes at her; the team was clearly doing fine without him, and anyway, it was good that he wasn’t tied down to the team considering he would have had to quit to help Rukia.

Her eyes flicked over to the list of scores, lips curling up like a certain devil cat’s, “Too bad you refused to join the team, they’d probably win if you went, but it certainly helped your scores.”

Keigo’s head whipped around so fast that he whipped himself in face with the long ends of his hair, but he wasn’t paying that any attention as he scanned up the list looking for Kurosaki Ichigo. He seemed to have forgotten the conversation before, because he got to about fifteen considering he didn’t notice Chad or Tatsuki’s names just above that, and sighed in relief, “There are no other traitors among us. None of us made the top fifty!”

“Excellent, captain!” The look on Mizuiro’s face said that he hadn’t forgotten but was playing along anyway for maximum amusement.

Then Keigo glanced up at the top.

Rank 1: Ishida Uryû; Kurosaki Ichigo: 894.

Keigo immediately looked betrayed, face scrunching up like he couldn’t bear to see the paper as he reached out and covered Mizurio’s eyes, “No! Don’t look, Sergeant Kojima! Reality is brutish and ugly!! It can only pollute our pure hearts!!”

Mizuiro looked amused behind the hand on his face, “Yes, sir, Captain Asano!”

Keigo made a face at him, “We hate you Ichigo! We’ll never let you hang out with us again!!” – before turning to Chad – “Right, Chad?! You can hang with us; you’re not on that vile list!”

Chad reached out and tapped at where his name sat just below Tatsuki’s, at tenth.

“What?”

Keigo and Mizuiro both made horrified faces as they realized they were the only ones – because Michiru sat comfortably at forty-two, and Chizuro at a surprising twenty-three – not on the list. Mizuiro slumped in an ashamed ball against the wall, because it wasn’t that he couldn’t get on the list, he just didn’t try to do more than average, while Keigo jabbed one shaking finger at them all, “S-s-stay away from us!! You’re all possessed by spirits! Smart, evil spirits!!”

Keigo gripped Mizuiro under the arms and started dragging him away, “You deceivers!!!”

They just watched, before Tatsuki was the one to say, “And yet, they’re nowhere near as obnoxious as they used to be. They might actually feel left out.”

Ichigo called out after them, because he’d noticed that somebody’s name also hadn’t been on the list, “Don’t worry, you got Rukia to keep you company!”

Tatsuki punched him in the arm, “What? She failed half of her exams, doing worse than even Keigo. I thought idiocy loved company.”

Chapter Text

Ichigo had no intention of forcing the issue with Ishida, but Yuzu had made it astoundingly clear this morning that he better apologize before the next dinner or else. Karin had added her two yen that as long as it was resolved, he didn’t actually have to apologize for his mere existence – because they both seemed under the impression that was the actual problem here, and it was a little annoying they weren’t entirely wrong from what he understood himself.

He was inclined to just let Ishida work through it on his own, but the vague sense of Ishida he’d picked up recently, was giving off this hiss-spark-crackle feeling today; like he was just itching to pick a fight, so he thought it was probably better to head him off. He wasn’t the best at defusing a fight, but if Ishida wanted some sort of fight – and it was probably not a fist-fight, but they had just tied for top score, which the glimpse of Ishida he’d caught when the list came out said he might have taken it a little personally, so it wasn’t entirely out of the possibilities – he’d let him have it.

Then Ishida could have the weekend to sulk before Ichigo would have to start seriously considering if the or else was bad enough to try to prevent any further, since he’d made his attempt and Yuzu might be satisfied with that.

(Unlikely, but he’d made the effort and he couldn’t actually make Ishida accept any sort of apology, so he might not suffer more than being her taste-tester for the next couple of weeks instead of something like being her lackey for a few weeks to few months.)

Ichigo waited until class was over, before looking over at where Ishida was sat at the front of the room. Orihime leaned over his shoulder, “If you want to talk to Ishida, we don’t have crafts club today so now is good.”

He startled, hand clutching at his chest where his heart had tried to escape from it because he hadn’t sensed her come close at all, but she wasn’t looking at him, “Oh, he’s leaving!” – and instead watching Ishida pack up his bag – “Wait! Look! Michiru’s taking her torn doll to him!”

Michiru came over to Ishida with a purple plush toy that honestly looked a bit like a Rukia rendition of a ‘cat’; only vaguely cat-shaped, and even less passably than the Devil Cat. He only recognized it could be a cat because he’d gotten used to Rukia’s drawing-aided rants, and there had been one or two over the Devil Cat’s un-cat-like-ness. It could also be a rabbit though, because the two looked almost identical in Rukia’s drawings, barely able to be differentiated by the ear length when put side-by-side.

“What’s he got?” Ishida was pulling something out of his pocket, that squinting, he couldn’t quite make out, “A pencil case?”

“No, it’s a sewing kit.”

They watched how in moments, he’d pulled out thread and a needle, threaded the needle, then stitched up the side of the ‘cat’ where the stitching had come out. He gently tossed it back and Michiru beamed, “You fixed him!! Thank you, Ishida-kun!!”

“Don’t do that.” He pushed up his glasses, gaze flickering over to where they were blatantly watching, “It was nothing.”

“Uh . . oh. Okay. S-sorry.” Michiru practically deflated, shrinking in on herself before leaving quickly.

Orihime clicked her tongue at the sight, “See that?” – then pouted a little – “If it weren’t for his mouth, he’d be considered a nice guy by everyone else. He’s actually quite kind when no one is watching and is quite willing to offer help if asked. He just comes out sounding so gruff.”

She glanced back at him, “Did something happen between you two?”

Ichigo really wanted to know what made it so obvious. It wasn’t like they interacted much, and neither of them had been acting much different the few times they had been for more than the five seconds it took to cross paths while at school.

“Well . . kinda? There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding, I think.”

She nudged his shoulder, then bounced off to where Tatsuki had come back, “Then be quick to fix it! You’ll regret it otherwise.”

Chapter Text

Rukia wiped a hand over her face once she was finally free of the teacher’s lounge after a long and uncomfortable talk about her studies and the giant gaps in her modern knowledge. It was tiring to keep up the quiet respectful act for such an extended period while being Ms. Ochi’s sole focus.

Ichigo had been helping her pass so far on the day-to-day, but they’d both known there was a lot that hadn’t been covered during the months she’d been here that would be assumed she’d already know when it came time for testing. It had been too much to cover by the time that she’d accepted that she might permanently be stuck in the Human World, and maybe even if she’d done her best from the beginning back in April almost four months ago. Since she hadn’t been able to even halfway pass as just another fifteen-year-old girl like she was supposed to be, now Ms. Ochi was carefully suggesting that if she couldn’t get her scores to an acceptable level by the test retakes in the summer, that she would have to hold her back a year.

She’d also gotten reminded that even if she didn’t know what she was planning to do after school, that she needed to at least think about it.

Though, apparently, she’d done badly enough on the tests that Ms. Ochi was asking to talk to her ‘guardian’ to see if there was anything that might be impeding her studies at home. Rukia thought it would be a valid concern if she was actually living with Urahara, but she’d avoided living at his shop by free-loading in Ichigo’s closet, though the way Ms. Ochi had asked implied she’d met the eccentric shopkeeper and thought it really might be the cause.

The problem was that having Urahara play up his eccentricity, while giving her some leeway over her studies because ‘peaceful’ was a pipe-dream for more than an hour at a time in that shop, would likely back-fire. It was going to cost her who knew what no matter what she asked him to do, and she shuddered to think about owing that man a favor, but even just him finding out how badly she’d done in her studies was going to be humiliating.

Urahara was too much of a wild card to know if he’d just wave off her bad grades once away from Ms. Ochi, if he’d help her fake her grades, or if he’d insist on ‘helping’.

The frustrating part was knowing that he’d been living in the Human World long enough to probably actually help with her missing knowledge. Particularly because Kon had had even less knowledge over all, and he was doing well enough to follow along in class and do decently for the homework on his own.

It was straight-up a little annoying that he might be doing well enough to barely pass on his own if he’d taken the tests. Not that she’d admit that she was that far behind him, because she wasn’t.

Worse though, was that this felt a bit like a repeat of the Academy before her lord brother had adopted her. She’d been trailing behind Renji a little, barely qualifying while he didn’t for the advanced class by virtue of her kidō scores when compared to his non-existent ones. Then she’d been put directly in Squad Thirteen with less than a year of schooling instead of the full six or graduating, and Shiba-fukutaichou had to tutor her to make up for the missing five years.

“Rukia!!”

She blinked as Keigo threw himself at her, arms outstretched and tears running freely down his face, before reflexively stepping aside. He skidded on the ground before springing back up relatively unfazed despite the skid mark on one cheek, “How’d you ?”

Rukia almost wanted to ask where his usual dramatics were but figured that would just incite him to more. It did make her wonder why he was so dramatic around Ichigo then, and if he was intentionally mimicking Isshin to that degree.

Mizuiro was frowning at his phone as he ambled along after his friend, “Ichigo only said that you did worse than Keigo, but Keigo’s scores aren’t actually that bad. He just bombs tests.”

She demurely looked to the side, staying silent for a long moment and letting that speak for her. It was embarrassing that the only thing that she scored well on was language with ninety-four out of a hundred points, and decently on math with eighty-three points and government with eighty points. At least she’d gotten a minimum of sixty points for current events, P.E., and English. She’d done abysmally on history, science, and world history/politics though, with none of the three subjects breaking two digits.

Mizuiro winced as Keigo guilelessly waited for a response, “It can’t be that bad.”

Out of a total of nine hundred possible points, she’d gotten four hundred and fifty-nine.

“ . . it’s that bad.”

The three of them were quiet for a few moments processing that, because Rukia had done her best to not look like an idiot whenever she took part in class and she’d fairly succeeded prior to this. Then Keigo choked on a laugh, quickly trying to smother it and his smile at Rukia’s unamused look, “You’re an idiot too!”

He didn’t seem to notice the tick by her eye as she tried to suppress the urge to thump him on the head for the unfair assessment. She thought Mizuiro might have though, even if he didn’t say anything as Keigo started walking away snickering, hands clasped behind his head, “I got six hundred and ninety-three, and Mizuiro got seven hundred and four. You’re officially not a nerd!”

Chapter Text

Ichigo took a moment to send Rukia a text that he was going home first – and getting her response, a middle-finger emoji, a full five minutes later; proof that she’d officially spent too long around him and Tatsuki if that was her response to him being a bit of an asshole – before realizing that Ishida had already left in the meantime.

Not that it took long to catch up, as Ishida was neither hiding his presence nor had gone that far in the first place.

Between exiting their classroom and leaving school grounds though, at least half his class in ones or twos had pointed out the direction that Ishida had gone, with Ryô giving him a faintly disappointed look from beside his shoe cubby, “Go work out your whatever with Uryū already. If he’s still passive-aggressive critical by Monday and makes Michiru feel bad again, I won’t cover for your weirdness next time you’re possessed.”

She left him there staring after her for a moment, feeling like he’d just been called out and forced to take responsibility for Ishida’s behavior. He wasn’t entirely surprised that his long-time classmates knew when Kon was in control of his body, but Kon had thought he’d finally gotten ‘surly and brooding’ down and Ichigo had pretended that Kon came off as such, and not more ‘pouting kitten’ for his own sake. He hadn’t realized that the class – and he was smart enough to realize that Ryô had been speaking not just as Michiru’s friend but as their class president – had been covering for some of the slip-ups Kon had been making.

In retrospect, it explained why Ms. Ochi had yet to sit him down and ask if everything was all right at home considering Kon’s behavior sometimes.

He scowled after her back at the sixth time that someone had insinuated that it was his fault for Ishida’s recent behavior – which really wasn’t that different from how Ishida had been acting before the family dinners started, and they hardly interacted any more than they had then – and that thus, it was his problem to fix.

Ishida was his own damn person, and if the class had a problem with him, the class should tell him themselves.

“Are you going to follow me all the way home, Kurosaki?”

“Damn. Busted.” Ishida had come to a stop in the middle of the deserted side-street somewhere in the Mashiba district, not quite turning around as he side-eyed him over his shoulder. Ichigo came a bit closer, not that he’d been trying that hard to be sneaky either; apparently neither of them had wanted to put this off, “How long have you known?”

Ishida had already proven he was a lot better at sensing people and things, so the real question was why he had played along like this for as long as he had.

“You allow your spiritual energy to radiate with foolish abandon.” Ichigo wanted to point out that it was a lot harder than he made it sound to not do that, and he had gotten better since he’d started to remember before, particularly since Goat Face had never actually taught him how-to, “A psychic monkey would notice you.”

His eye twitched, “What was that?”

“You can’t even sense the energy of others when they’re right under your nose. You’re a danger to yourself and others blind and deaf as you are.”

“Hey-!” Ishida cut off his protest, “I sense your unusual aura the moment I enter town if I leave it – anyone who can, does, and can feel it from as far away as the far side of neighboring towns – and I was aware you became a shinigami in early April.”

Ichigo narrowed his eyes at his cousin, lips thinning because he was aware that his power wasn’t hidden very well. He knew it was dangerous; his mom wouldn’t have died, and he wouldn’t have (re-)met Rukia if he’d just been able to hide it instead of having it out there like a beacon for an all-you-can-eat-buffet.

(Except I bite back and will eat them instead!)

The problem was that his power wasn’t like it had been before, and the tricks he’d remembered – that Rukia had (re-)taught him – to control his spiritual pressure didn’t work for him now.

He used to have been able to stopper his reiatsu like water inside a bottle, but now it churned, and moved in ways that were violent and senseless, while being dense and heavy. Before, he’d learned to bottle it up from when it was the size of a puddle, and he’d adjusted each year to how it grew to an ocean. Now, he couldn’t tip it all into a bottle without spilling it everywhere before it ran over down the sides with the volume, and he couldn’t even try with the current running over the figurative tiny metal flask without singing his fingers. All he’d managed was to ground the ‘lightning’ but the way to do so was juxtaposed to bottling the sea, or calming the monster hiding in the depths, and useless to handle the growing storm sitting heavy atop it.

Telling him of how he’d failed – was failing – to not endanger his family was unnecessary.

“I’m even aware of Kuchiki’s true identity.”

Ichigo watched him closely then, because whatever his complicated feelings towards him for being both family and foe, Rukia didn’t have that. She would be next to helpless if Ishida decided to act on the blood feud between Quincy and shinigami. He didn’t think Ishida would do anything, but there was a faint curl of his lips to how he’d been saying shinigami, that made him think there was some personal reasons for the animosity, enough that there was some legitimate concern.

(There was still something in him that looked at Rukia, and saw wide, anxious eyes that she hid first behind a demure attitude, then cockiness, that remembered how she’d quietly asked questions when alone that she hadn’t gotten a chance to be taught beforehand.

She’d once been something that he’d protected and had now become someone he chose to protect. He wouldn’t let her suffer for him again.)

They watched each other for several long moments, gauging if one of them would make a move now that Rukia’s former(?) status was exposed.

(She hadn’t said anything, but Ichigo knew she’d lost most of the power she’d retained when giving him some – or really, most – of her power. He didn’t quite know why she wasn’t recovering – wasn’t even retaining any of it anymore – but it felt permanent.

Rukia had become effectively human sometime in the last four months.)

It wasn’t in Ichigo’s nature – now or before – to pick fights though, for all that he welcomed them, and thrived in them. Ichigo knew it wasn’t in Ishida’s nature to blame Rukia just for being a shinigami either.

Ultimately, it felt a little like a test – like Ishida was just waiting for him to show his true nature, to be like what he believed shinigami were. Well, he’d be waiting a long time then: he was nobody but himself.

(Very literally. Despite his attitude, he was self-aware enough to know that cryptid was a more than an apt description of himself, and with that, came the fact he was one-of-a-kind. He couldn’t be anything but himself and would never fit fully on either the Quincy or shinigami side of this feud.)

After a few tense minutes, Ishida shifted to more fully face him, then a dozen or more reiraku appeared around him.

Ichigo wasn’t surprised at the sight, not considering that Ishida clearly knew how to sense people, and more than well enough for this, “You know what these are? Then you’re not completely hopeless. If you were any good at this, you’d have noticed mine—”

His hand snapped out and caught the ribbon hiding behind Ishida’s shoulder, “Blue-tinted silver is for Quincy, right?”

(No shinigami can know that the edges are fading to royal blue, or his life would be forfeit for his blueblood; for the proof that he is descended directly from Him.)

There was silence for a moment, Ishida just looking at him blankly before adjusting his glasses, “I honestly can’t tell if you’re actually an idiot or if it’s all an act.”

Ichigo felt his eye twitch, a vein popping at his temple, “I can’t tell if you just have no filter or if you intend to insult everyone around you all the time.”

“Maybe you’re just sensitive to the truth.”

Ishida’s glasses caught the light, hiding the look in them. Ichigo rolled his eyes, making an annoyed noise deep in his throat as he stepped back, dropping Ishida’s reiraku, “There’s a difference between being unaware, untrained, and letting sleeping dogs lie, Ishida.”

His gaze shifted from Ishida to the other reiraku hanging around them, bright colors mixed in amongst the white; Urahara and another’s crimson as well as a platinum and a pale red, eight maroon, the elder Ishida, his sisters’ blue-tinted silver fading to crimson, Goat Face’s silver-streaked crimson, Kon’s darkening pale red, Rukia’s fading crimson, Tatsuki’s smoky grey-streaked crimson edged in platinum, Chad’s and Orihime’s platinum, and a handful of other platinum.

(He knew all of them, aside from the four platinum scattered around town, and well. Not all of them knew him as he was now, and if he’d caught glimpses of people that he remembered but had never met in town, he pretended to not notice when they stared. They’d already been very careful to not be seen by Rukia, and he’d figured that they were afraid of Soul Society finding out they were here.

The maroon concerned him a little, because he couldn’t quite grasp what it was supposed to mean, but they’d been co-existing for months maybe years without problem so it was a problem he’d maybe deal with after he dealt with whether or not he should go to Urahara about Rukia’s fading powers.)

Ishida didn’t look away, watching him for a moment. Ichigo thought he might have been trying to decide which he was, but the answer wasn’t so simple as being either one or the other.

“Your spirit ribbon is shinigami red, Kurosaki, and shinigami don’t let those dogs sleep if they could be wolves after their sheep.”

He didn’t know what he knew until he did, which left him constantly fluctuating between untrained, half-trained, and well-trained depending on if he knew something and if it still worked for his new state of being. Regardless of training or awareness, he wasn’t looking to start a fight, particularly without more cause than ‘you’re different than me’.

He’d been on the other side of that too many times to perpetuate it willingly.

“Would you like to play a game to see who’s superior – a shinigami, or a Quincy? I’ll show you just how worthless shinigami are.”

Ichigo didn’t think Ishida wanted to either, when his words felt like a warning, for him and not to him.

Chapter Text

Uryū would admit to being surprised that Ichigo knew what reiraku were, as despite how he’d said it, he knew that Ichigo was largely untrained. Rukia hadn’t made a bad impression, per se, but she was undeniably a shinigami, and it showed.

It was there in how bodily concerns like sexual attraction and illnesses flummoxed her; in the faintest hint of elitism when it came to societal concerns like war and economics; in the lack of understanding for things like nationalism, religion, and cultures that differed too far from Japan. There was a wall between her and human matters; a certain lasses-faire to the short time affording to life and the fear of death and what came after, that brought with it a detachment to the here and now.

Not to mention that her time management could certainly use some work.

Ichigo’s strongest points – his compassion, and his ability to empathize despite differences – would be dampened beneath an immortal’s apathy.

Which didn’t even account for the fact that, in his opinion, Rukia was a mediocre shinigami. He wasn’t expecting miracles since Ichigo’s reiatsu had been never really been controlled, but some control shouldn’t have been beyond her to teach him. His fighting tactics were unrefined, one-dimensional since he didn’t account for what he couldn’t get up close to hack and slash, which left him vulnerable to more cunning hollows.

Annoyingly though, the fact that he bull-dozed right through any hollow he found shouldn’t always work. Yet, because Ichigo had an overwhelming amount of dense and heavy reiatsu, he hadn’t met a hollow that he couldn’t ultimately overpower, and likely wouldn’t because the stronger hollows didn’t typically come back to the human world after they’d gotten to a certain point.

However, typically didn’t mean always, nor did it mean that there weren’t other unusual events that happened. More so because Karakura was a hotspot, with more stronger hollows, more hollow packs, and just more hollows overall.

Eventually, what Rukia had taught his cousin wouldn’t be enough, and if Ichigo lost, death wouldn’t be the worst possible fate. Nor being devoured.

His grandfather had told him that Quincy had developed the bow for many reasons, safety chief among them. It wasn’t just because from a distance, there were better chances to strike unnoticed and act quickly across large distances with minimal casualties, it was also in how there were parasitic hollows that could infect someone and take them over from within.

If Ichigo was infected, Uryū knew there would be casualties before someone could take him down. His family, minimally, and his friends, likely. Tatsuki, at least, would refuse to believe that Ichigo couldn’t be saved if there was even the slimmest chance; even if she would take him down viciously considering how the tail end of Ichigo being possessed back in May had gone.

As it was, he was half-convinced that Rukia was spiritually blind.

She might have taught Ichigo about reiraku, but he doubted she understand even half as much as Ichigo had figured out in four months. Otherwise she would have attacked Ichigo and his sisters for the hollow tainting them before her powers had begun to degrade. She would have attacked him and his father for being Quincy, then would have gone after all those in Karakura who’d begun to see, and who had developed a fledgling way to defend themselves from hollows, because the shinigami that came to Karakura were always too slow.

Not to mention, she relied too heavily on her pager, and couldn’t sense the change in the ambient reiatsu that signaled a hollow’s appearance on her own. Ichigo wasn’t quick about it, but at least he could.

Uryū was a half-baked Quincy himself, as his grandfather hadn’t finished teaching him before he was killed, but he was confident that he was at least more competent than Rukia. Ichigo needed to learn more than Rukia could apparently teach him before he got his family killed.

The key would be to straddle the line between mortal danger and the appearance of mortal danger, which meant taking risks.

“A game?”

He doubted that Ichigo would abandon Rukia though, and if the only way he could convince Ichigo to not become a shinigami was to destroy whatever faith Ichigo had in what she was teaching him, he would.

“Yes. For you to see that this world can do without shinigami.”

Shinigami were worse than useless, usually incompetent and always too slow; both letting and leaving people to be killed by hollows. The only thing they were good for was to send a soul on to await rebirth, as otherwise it was better to destroy one errant soul than have it devour countless more while waiting for it to be cleansed.

Chapter Text

Ichigo crossed his arms, eyes narrowing, “No way!”

Fighting Ishida wasn’t the goal here and wouldn’t prove the point Ishida wanted to make because he wasn’t a true shinigami, barely a placeholder for the real target of Ishida’s issues with them. Not to mention, they’d already proved if it came down to shinigami vs. Quincy when it came to taking care of hollows, Quincy had the advantage with range.

“Why not?”

Ishida didn’t look amused at his refusal to play along, but he had no interest in this ‘game’, “Me, fight you? Why should I? What’s in it for me? Obviously, you’ve got some issues with shinigami, but that’s between you and your psychiatrist!”

“So, you’re afraid?”

Ichigo laughed, the edge of it distorted, watery, at how Ishida was trying to goad him, “Nope, not falling for that! I’m just saying, that between the two of us, there’s no contest.”

His lips curled up slightly into something sharp, “You want to bring a gun to a knife fight, and if you get distance, I lose unless I can close it again quick. It’d be a different story if we fought man-to-man, but then that would put you at a disadvantage with those spindly arms.” – giving a careless little shrug – “I don’t need a demonstration to know the failings of one side or the other; I’ve already seen them.”

Ishida looked at him, then pushed up his glasses, “I cannot compare to a wannabe delinquent like you, that’s quite true.”

His eye twitched at the pot-shot, “Rude! I’m a model student whose only infraction lies in my natural hair color. I’ve never been suspended and have hardly gotten any demerits my whole school career.” – jabbing a finger at the other teen – “I even get along with my classmates, unlike you. You can’t even accept a simple thank-you without scaring people away.”

Ishida’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, before he continued like he hadn’t just responded in kind to the attack on his character, “You got your shinigami powers from Kuchiki, which makes you only a ‘substitute’ shinigami. Without her, you can’t even protect yourself from hollows, let alone protect anyone else.”

His smirk wavered, then flattened at the indirect jab at his mother’s death and his part in it; Ishida had taken it too far with that. His eyes glinted with gold as a watery howl echoed in his ears, lips twisting up into something jagged and hungry, “What. Did you just say?”

Chapter Text

Rukia had snuck into Ichigo’s room, expecting to see him waiting to mock her more over her grades, but he’d been gone. She wasn’t terribly surprised that he was gone, and she even had an idea where he was - or more accurately, who he was with.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t as reassuring as it was supposed to be.

She’d been struggling to understand what had happened in her fuzzy memories between the Kurosaki family plus the elder Ishida and Tatsuki, and the Grand Fisher, but Ichigo’s explanation hadn’t helped a lot. Trying to find out more about the Ishida had been less than informative and had just left her with more questions, but it wasn’t until Ishida had shown up and declared himself a Quincy that things had started to clear up.

With only one year at the Academy behind her, Rukia knew that she was missing out on quite a bit, but she did remember there had been a mention of humans who’d developed powers of their own out of necessity, back when the boundary between the worlds had been weaker. It’d been glossed over, but still a warning of how a shinigami had to deal with hollows, and that anyone else doing so – that anyone else being allowed to – was a threat to the safety of the worlds.

The name Quincy had come up, if briefly, as an example of such existences.

With everything else that Shiba-fukutaichou had needed to teach her, a history lesson had been the least of his concerns, and she’d forgotten all about it in the decades since.

She’d only remembered that it was possible for a human to be able to deal with a hollow when she’d realized that the Kurosaki family was going to die and giving Ichigo her powers to act on her behalf was the only way to save them. Urahara had since informed her of what she’d been vaguely aware of in regards to the consequences of doing so, and she’d already decided to accept them, but he hadn’t said anything then that there those in Karakura that could have dealt with the hollow even if she failed.

He certainly hadn’t said anything about ‘Quincy’, and she wasn’t aware of how long he’d been in Karakura, but it had been more than long enough that he knew the Ishida were here. He was certainly skilled enough to know they were here even if they’d been hiding, and he didn’t have the excuse of having only a tiny fraction of her power, which was just barely enough to still see, to explain not knowing.

Ever since Ishida had declared an animosity towards shinigami, she’d been trying to call him for more information before the situation escalated, but he hadn’t been answering.

“Whoa-whoa-WAAAAH?!”

Rukia was afraid the situation was about to escalate, so she couldn’t let him get away with ignoring her calls any longer.

“AAAH! N-nothing! Sir!!”

Tessai turned away from where he held the boy that had taken up residence at Urahara’s shop up at his eye-level to look down at her, “What can we do for you, Kuchiki-san?”

“Where’s Urahara?”

He held her gaze for a moment, taking in how her knuckles were white around her pager and she’d been chewing anxiously on her lip if she didn’t stop herself. He tilted his head towards the shop, and she opened the door to see him lounging behind the counter, “Ah, hello, Kuchiki-san! What can I do for—?”

Rukia chucked her near-useless pager the moment she saw his stupid, smiling face. It hit his cheek, knocking his head back with the force and sending her pager spinning off into the shelves of sweets.

“Answer your damn phone! I called you a hundred times and you never responded! What terrible customer service!”

She hoped it bruised as she scowled at him while he rubbed his cheek with a sheepish smile, “Oh . . sorry. We’ve been busy lately; you must have called when we were out of the store.”

Which was a load of bullshit; he lived here and she’d called over and over every day the last two weeks at many different times of day, not to mention that Orihime had visited after finals and he’d apparently been here then and she’d called while the other girl had been leaving. The only reason why she hadn’t come over personally before this was because she’d been busy, and the situation had looked like it would hold in the meantime.

She was starting to think he was trying to avoid her considering that he’d been doing this not-answering-his-phone schtick for more than a month, though perhaps longer, when considering his impromptu week at the beach. Rukia just didn’t know why he would be.

Her lip curled faintly, “You’re also my ‘guardian’. It’s not why I’m here, but I actually did need you in that capacity, asshole, and I haven’t been able to get in contact with you for something much more important than my grades.”

The boy came in through the open door, “Hey, lady, where’s that mean dude with orange hair? You’re always with him, isn’t he your boyfriend?” – looking high and low around her, checking as if Ichigo would pop out of the ether, which she thought was valid, considering Ichigo’s Ichigo-ness might one day extend to space-time manipulation – “I can’t stand him, I hope you dumped him!”

“Now, Jinta, that’s not nice.”

Rukia chewed on her lip, “Ichigo . . is probably up to his ears in trouble even as we speak. That’s why I’m here; why I’ve been calling you. I have something I need to ask you, and I don’t think there’s time for any of your doubletalk.”

His fan dropped, eyes serious as he met hers, “What is it?”

“A Quincy.”

A faraway look settled on Urahara’s face, “Quincy? Now, that’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.”

Rukia cursed again the fact that she’d gotten to know so little of Soul Society’s history with her early entry into the Gotei 13. Too often was she running around deaf and blind to things that had happened before she’d left the Rukongai, as Ichigo kept waking sleeping dragons from where they’d been buried in the sand unseen.

(First challenging everything she knew about hollows, and whether they could be reasoned with, if they were necessary to kill, if they could just learn to control their hunger. Then what happened to shinigami who died, and whether they could – would – remember how to fight hollows after they were reborn, beyond himself which she had finally decided to consider a special case, uniquely Ichigo, before it was clear Don Kanonji and Tatsuki remembered. Followed by the konpaku and whether they had their own souls or just facsimiles of one. And most recently, where the line was drawn between a plus soul and a shinigami, and if death was a requirement or just a guideline.)

“You know what it means?”

Ishida had made it clear there was animosity between shinigami and Quincy, and as such, it was dangerous with how lopsided Ichigo’s powers were for him. He was too inexperienced and too powerful without any control, to be the one handing something that had the weight of history like she thought a possible shinigami-Quincy conflict had, and that needed someone less blunt and perhaps more tactful.

(Ukitake-taichou would be so helpful here, strong and gentle and kind.)

If – when – it came to a fight, Ishida was an opponent that was ill-suited to Ichigo’s fighting style, particularly when he’d yet to learn anything beyond sword techniques that she hadn’t even taught him. He would need kidō, or shun-po, to help him close the distance Ishida would create for his bow, and she wasn’t qualified to teach him those things, nor was she able to anymore.

Chapter Text

Ishida took a half-step back before holding his ground, “I doubt that you could deal with a single hollow without Rukia to guide you. Not to protect yourself, and not to protect anyone else.”

If he realized what he was implying, he didn’t show it, but Ichigo don’t think he knew what he’d implied and yet, he didn’t back down despite the fear he could practically taste. The fear was enough to dump cold water over his anger, and for him to curb it some.

It didn’t mean his smile was still anything nice, “All right. I’ll play your ‘game’.

He popped Kon’s pill in his mouth, glad to have had the forethought to have convinced the konpaku to leave the stuffed animal after he’d ditched Rukia. Admittedly, it had been more in the spirit of just in case there was a hollow showing up while Rukia was busy elsewhere, as this wasn’t the first time they’d split up – nor the first time that while she’d been elsewhere, he’d stumbled across a hollow and it had been a very good thing that he took Kon with him most places – but he’d hoped to have not needed it now.

With the ease of lots of practice, he stepped out of his body and Kon caught himself before he face-planted, sinking into a one-kneed crouch, gaze flickering around. He frowned, “There’s no hollow . . ?”

Ichigo jerked a thumb towards Ishida, “I got business with him.”

Kon straightened, then saluted him, “Got it! Enjoy the only action you’ll get!” – before taking off at a run – “I’m going to hang out with Keigo and Mizuiro!”

“You cheeky—!” Ichigo flipped a finger at the long-gone back of his body as Kon ran away at world-record-breaking speeds, “I’m going to ask Yuzu to make him the most over-the-top pink princess dress for that.”

He sincerely hoped that the three of them only played video games; Kon had been discovering an interest in gossip watching Grey’s Anatomy with Yuzu. Mizuiro would leap upon – and Kon would eagerly give – any first-hand accounts of events or people of ‘interest’. He’d preferred not to come to school on Monday only to have everyone whispering about his ‘relationship’ with Rukia – or Ishida, because Kon liked Rukia and he’d throw Ishida under the bus in a heartbeat to protect her.

Ichigo turned back towards Ishida, to see that he was watching Kon, and clearly drawing some conclusions regarding a few things since Kon had showed up. He didn’t exactly have anything against Ishida figuring that out, but that conversation could wait until after they’d resolved Ishida’s problems with him, “Let’s hear the rules of this ‘game’.”

Ishida looked back towards him as he pulled a mint tin from his shirt pocket, popping it open to hold up something that looked a bit like a Mentos, “We’ll start with this.”

Ichigo squinted at it, something about it giving him a bad feeling, “Huh? What’s that?”

“Hollow bait.” His eyes went wide, flickering sharply to Ishida’s as he continued, “When I scatter it, hollows will begin to converge on this town. Whoever defeats the most hollows within twenty-four hours, wins. Agreed?”

“No!”

As much as he liked to give Rukia crap about blaming him for the strange things around Karakura, he was aware enough to know that she had a point. He remembered enough to know that his reiatsu now seemed to escalate things, otherwise the chances to have seen such things as Sora Inoue’s return to sanity, Yûichi and his mom’s abnormal states, and Kon, shouldn’t have all been within a month – it should have been closer to a shinigami’s lifetime, at least.

“What are you thinking?! No way!”

Literal hollow bait sounded risky as it was, but that didn’t account for him. His reiatsu was all over town, and there were at least, twenty-six others with significant enough reiatsu to change their color of reiraku.

“Everybody in Karakura would be in danger!!”

Panic was building in him, and his reiatsu reacted in return while he hastily explained before Ishida acted, pure gold eyes narrowing in on how Ishida’s fingers squeezed around the hollow bait, feeling how his nostrils flared at the sweet scent it gave off as a watery howl echoed in his ears, “Do you realize how many people have reiatsu here!? Most of them can’t defend themselves, then there are who knows how many more who can just see! It’s at least half the town!!”

(LET ME EAT HIM! LET ME EAT IT!)

Ishida paused, mouth opening slightly but words not coming out for the questions Ichigo knew he had.

“Urahara created this weird-ass site for the ‘Flying Boy of Karakura’ and at least half the town seems to have found it! Everyone seems to have recognized it was Kon – or well, me, since it’s my body – before telling stories of me being possessed, or talking to ghosts, or fighting hollows! There are pictures of me in a shihakushou!! There’s a fucking counter for how many people have seen me like that, and last I saw, it’s enough for half the town!”

His hand slowly drooped, and Ichigo darted forward, one hand tightening on Ishida’s wrist as the other grabbed at the bait. Only, the moment he touched it, it splintered, too fragile for the manhandling it’d been put under.

They both, with feeling, said, “Fuck.” “Fick.”

Chapter Text

“Yes.”

At the sound of Tessai’s voice, Kisuke blinked away memories of long ago, of when he’d been an unranked squad member thrown against Quincy in a conflict that had always left him with a bitter taste in his mouth to think back on.

“It brings back memories.”

Sometimes, he remembered those kills with more bitterness than some of the other more questionable ones that came after, and he’d been glad that he’d been long divorced from Soul Society when he’d met Masaki. It had kept him up sometimes, thoughts of what would have been ordered of him to find out from her if he’d still been a part of the Gotei 13.

(They’d thought they’d wiped out any direct descendants of Yhwach long before his time with the Gotei 13. Even if Masaki would have been one of three left – the last descendant of the direct family that had escaped the purge of some nearly eight hundred years prior according to her, and whose family the Ishida could claim descendance from Yhwach by – they hadn’t been confident enough to try to figure out how the Quincy had been able to fight and kill hollows when they couldn’t find them so easily anymore, the survivors driven underground. By the time it had occurred to figure out how, all those that were discovered, made sure to take as many shinigami with them as they could when they died.)

To be able to have someone of Yhwach’s blood alive would have an incomparable treasure-trove of information for a scientist like him to figure out the how Quincy fought and killed hollows from.

It had kept him up increasingly, after he’d helped save her life, that if Soul Society had found out about her while she lived, that he would have doomed her and Isshin to truly terrible fates. For each – and together – had become something different, than what they had once been; now unique existences that he doubted would ever come about again.

(At least Shinji and co. would have just been killed for what had changed about them.)

He’d been kept up more so, after Ichigo, and the twins, were born.

(If Soul Society had gotten their hands on them, there would have been equal odds of whether they’d be immediately killed simply for existing, living paradoxes of hollow and shinigami and Quincy combined in ways that shouldn’t work together, or forced into science experiments that would never end to figure out how they managed to exist.)

“Let’s see, it’s been . . two hundred years since I last heard that word.”

His fan snapped open to cover his face as Tessai blatantly lied to protect the Kurosaki family. They couldn’t acknowledge how they knew the Kurosaki family, if they wished to hide why the family couldn’t exist or be eradicated from existence.

The four of them were in direct opposition of everything that Central 46 had decided was the way of the worlds in the absence of the Soul King. Their existence alone threw doubt on nearly every way the shinigami treated everyone, and whether they were truly right to. They proved co-existence was possible between Quincy and shinigami, that hollows weren’t simply driven by instinct, that when shinigami were reborn they could remember, and that plus souls weren’t as helpless and incapable of defending themselves as shinigami liked to think. Ichigo alone threw every pre-conceived notion about how the worlds worked into the fire, and for that, change – which Central 46 hated – would come to the Soul Society, whether they wanted it to or not.

(He, personally, lived for the day that Ichigo would step foot in Soul Society. Tessai would bring the popcorn, Yoruichi the alcohol, while he brought comfortable chairs to somewhere high with a good view of Seireitei, so they could watch the fireworks as Soul Society both imploded and exploded all at once when Ichigo bull-dozed his way through whoever of the Gotei 13 was in his way.

Yoruichi was already cackling about how bent out of shape Byakuya would become when faced with Ichigo, and all their similarities. She wouldn’t admit it, but she missed the boy that would screech and scream after her when she stole his hair ribbon, and was aware that the next time he properly saw her – because she had visited/terrorized him in her cat form – he would be fully trying to kill her. In her eyes, Ichigo would be only good things for how inflexible and rule-bound he’d become after his wife had died and his last act of defiance had been to adopt her sister.)

If Rukia put the pieces together, she could figure out easily that Ichigo and the younger Ishida being cousins meant that Ichigo wasn’t just a shinigami-by-blood, but a Quincy as well. They wouldn’t enlighten her though, just as they wouldn’t confirm that it was solely through Isshin that the two of them were linked to the family.

“Two hundred years?? Why?!”

Kisuke smiled behind his fan as her head whipped towards him, amused at the panic building behind her eyes because while she may not have quite figured it out, she had figured out enough to know Ichigo being linked to a Quincy was not good.

“What exactly, is, a Quincy?”

He answered his own question without waiting, knowing that the Academy had long since stopped teaching this – simply because they’d felt no need to, after they’d nearly succeeded in committing genocide on a whole group of people that made them look bad – and Rukia would never had heard anything about Quincy beyond a reference to the name, and some negative connotations.

“The Quincy were a clan dedicated to fighting hollows. They were scattered all over the world at one time, each one linked to another, tracing back to the original Quincy. They all perished, two hundred years ago.”  Kisuke tilted his head slightly with a shrug, “Or, supposedly, as you’ve seen.”

Her eyes were wide, voice faint because she was smart enough to know he meant they didn’t go quietly into the night, and therefore had an idea of who had caused that and what that meant here, “Perished?”

“Yes. People with powers like Ichigo’s recognized the existence of hollows. Originally, all Quincy were children or disciples of the first, and all the ones after were born from those twenty-six, from what I understand. They began to develop their spiritual powers, to fight the hollows, and vanquish them like shinigami.” From the shadows of his hat, he glanced over to where Ichigo’s reiatsu changed, went heavy as it sunk over the town and clung to the skin of everyone with even a lick of reiatsu, “However, they had very different ideas of how to accomplish this, and over time, a deep rift developed between shinigami and Quincy. The crux of it, was whether hollows should be cleansed, or destroyed.”

Color washed out of her face as it seemed to register how dangerous that was to any target of the Quincy, “Shinigami use their zanpaku-tō to cleanse the hollow of its sins and send its soul to Soul Society, but to Quincy, a hollow deserves only destruction.”

He could feel Ichigo’s reiatsu settle over him, wrapping him up like a blanket against the cold, and Benihime chuckled softly, amused at the idea of this child attempting to protect them.

“Perhaps it’s an understandable sentiment, as hollows devour human souls and they murdered the Quincy’s friends and family.” Kisuke had once agreed with them, as he’d seen the children that he’d lived with in the farthest edges of the Rukongai be devoured, and the grief had been overwhelming. No shinigami had come to help then, and no reassurances were offered after when he’d finally found some.

He loved Yoruichi but born-shinigami could not understand the grief that settles heavy in the human heart and thirsts for vengeance, no matter how he’d left those children behind to die to survive on his own. All she could offer was to bring him back with her, an escape from uncertainty even if her family had thought him simply a pet for her amusement. She’d trained him out of a sense of curiosity to see what he’d do, not a sense of empathy. Not until he’d nearly died at the hands of Quincy had she seemed to grasp why the Quincy felt as they did, when faced with the question of what would become of his soul if he died.

“The Quincy could not truly know what became of those devoured souls, when no shinigami could ever show them at peace even after they managed to cleanse the hollow, particularly when it sometimes took lifetimes for a hollow to be killed and the devoured souls freed to re-enter the circle, then lifetimes more to be re-born once they healed from the ordeal.”

Kaien – Ichigo – was proof of the time it simply took for even a strong and stubborn soul to find its way back into the cycle.

“Human lives are simply too short for the reassurance to have meant anything, if it was even offered.” He only knew as much because he’d had nothing but time here in Karakura after it had become clear that there was nothing that he could do to reverse the hollowification on Shinji and the others, and he’d had the good fortune of being within sensing range of his re-birth to confirm that it was Kaien’s soul, “Which is doubtful, considering the shinigami’s stance on tracking those that have died and been re-born.”

She’d understand without him saying a word that if she’d been mortal when Kaien had died, that she might have died before ever seeing his soul again and would have never be able to confirm it was him without doubt.

“Without that reassurance, they insisted on killing hollows to avenge their dead.”

The way she bit her lip, looking troubled, told him she had understood that the Quincy hadn’t been entirely wrong. It was hard to blame someone for something that few ever got to realize, and the living had to simply take on faith no matter how they searched.

“This eventually led to their downfall.”

Chapter Text

Uryū watched the bait shatter into thousands of pieces, each smaller than the last, before starting to drift off, to settle across town and realized he might have miscalculated.

No, he knew he had miscalculated as he looked at Ichigo’s gold eyes, his reiatsu heavy and clinging on his skin. He could feel how Ichigo’s reiatsu was hastily trying to wrap around all those whose reiatsu was high enough to register and realized Ichigo might have understated things when right now, more than half of the town was lighting up because of Ichigo. Ichigo’s friends and family, that strange little shop run by a shinigami, their class, their reiatsu were all spiking, reacting to Ichigo’s reiatsu prodding it.

Ichigo probably had no idea, but his reiatsu was trying to awaken any power those around him had in an attempt to prepare them for the hell that was about to descend on them.

His breathe came out in a mist before the very air crackled with Ichigo’s power, and storm clouds began to gather in the sky above their heads.

Ichigo’s hand suddenly fisted the front of his shirt before slamming him down on the ground, black flickering on the edges of his too-bright eyes “Get rid of the bait!!”

His breathe was knocked out of his chest, voice escaping him for a moment because those eyes were a hollow’s – and had he been too late already? Yet- Yet, Ichigo’s reiatsu felt the same, just a little denser, and nothing else had changed about him.

He took a chance that he was still talking to Ichigo, “Be. Sensible. I can’t do anything about how the bait is spreading. Soon, hollows will flock to Karakura, lured in by the bait.”

“Instead of pushing me around, you should be running.” Ichigo’s grip slackened, letting him sit up as his hand dropped entirely, before he stood up to face him head-on, “It won’t be easy to defend an entire town from the hollow hordes.”

Ichigo’s eyes were wide, meeting his before they stood back to back, both of them looking out at each half of the town, “We’ll need to put aside your issues then, Ishida, if we’ve crossed the Rubicon.”

“Our issues.”

Uryū smirked, lifting one arm and pulling up his bow and firing at the hollow that broke through the sky as it began to rain, “That’s one. Cousin.”

Chapter Text

It had been a long time since Yoruichi had felt so unsettled, and on edge.

Her instincts had always been good for trouble – mostly because she was the cause more often than not – and so many years leading the Onmitsukidō had honed that sense to a sharp edge, as she learned each and every sign that something was about to go tits-up.

It hadn’t quite been the then-inexplicable feeling when Hirako had taken Aizen as his lieutenant, or when Kisuke had near-disappeared for a week when he created then immediately tried to destroy his hogyoku, or what had pulled her back to Karakura only to find more than half of the Quincy in the town had died. Not until the school day had ended and she’d been draped over Yuzu’s shoulders as she shopped, then every hair on her back had stood on end like she’d been zapped.

Every instinct had said then hell is about to descend, then hollows began to converge on Karakura in numbers she hadn’t seen in more decades than she wanted to admit to.

She’d stopped in front of Yuzu and looked at where Ichigo’s reiatsu was spiking – drowning out everyone else’s – and felt true fear. Not because even a hundred more hollows were a threat to her well-being, or that Karakura couldn’t be protected. Not even if the worst happened and a rift between here and Huecho Mundo formed.

The fear was because each and every Kurosaki child had the potential to be a calamity that could destroy the balance of the worlds if they ever lost their hearts to grief or rage, but one was far worse than the other two.

Ichigo was a devastation that would have no equal as he grew into his powers; equally balanced between human, Quincy, hollow, and shinigami. However, his power would always cleanse a soul instead of devouring or destroying it. His soul remembered being a shinigami too strongly – a Shiba through and through – even if his very nature was too kind-hearted to destroy a soul. Each side complementing, and bleeding into each other as a true water-type.

Karin was a catastrophe that would become a devastation; the hollow in her caged between Quincy and shinigami, contained by her humanity and each keeping the others in check. She could destroy, even devour, but she would cleanse a hollow’s soul; the Quincy in her had uniquely entwined with shinigami for something like a wildfire that destroyed and cleansed all at once.

It was Yuzu that was the calamity, as unlike Ichigo or even Karin, her shinigami powers inherently bolstered her Quincy and hollow sides in a way that only the rare air-type Shiba could.

While the Shiba almost always came as one of three elements, the very element that most defended the heavens only appeared among them rarely. They were supposedly rare because they were very weak early in life, a late bloomer that didn’t start to strengthen until others had already reached their peaks. Their powers made them uniquely suited to support their stronger siblings, naturally bolstering them from a simple rain or flame into a typhoon or wildfire. Yet, if Kukaku’s records were right, when they began to peak, they’d far outclass their siblings in sheer power as they manipulated the atmosphere itself.

More so than Karin, Yuzu could destroy or devour a soul before they had a chance to be cleansed.

More so than her siblings, Yuzu’s nature was not as kind; Ichigo would fight and exhaust himself nearly killing an enemy, and Karin would beat them black and blue and threaten to kill them but would stay her hand, but Yuzu would kill an enemy before they had a chance to come back stronger.

One day, she’d make a great addition to the Onmitsukidō, just like she’d known Kisuke and Soi Feng would be, and maybe even better than any of them because she was warm and true in way that neither she or Kisuke had ever managed to truly emulate. She genuinely smiled and loved without conditions, but she’d also cut a bitch without hesitation. She’d not break beneath the strain if left there, and still have friends and family outside of those that had been/were associated with the Onmitsukidō.

If her (self-imposed) exile was ever lifted, Yoruichi would have to recommend that the Onmitsukidō experience a sale day with Yuzu because housewives were vicious when somebody stood between them and a good deal. It would be two parts hilarious and one part informative.

Yuzu was still young, and her powers were immature, but a life-or-death situation like this had the real potential to be, could awaken them earlier and that could upset the careful balance the girl had reached internally with her powers to throw her near-permanently to devour or destroy instead of cleanse.

Chapter Text

Kon had come to an abrupt stop moments before it began to rain, when his sense of Ichigo suddenly cackled. He’d gotten very good at feeling out the echo of another in Ichigo’s body after he’d started to spend time regularly inside it, and it had taken him longer than he’d like to admit figuring out what it was. They were blended so naturally into Ichigo’s reiatsu, that it didn’t register without specifically looking for them, and even then, it was hard to tell.

Ichigo’s soul was a combination of two-parts shinigami, what he knew now to be Quincy, something else that he couldn’t quite name – and hollow. He hadn’t known what to do with that knowledge; a part of him – the part of him that remembered what he’d been created for and would never forget – wanting to act, but Ichigo wasn’t a hollow. He’d never once acted like he’d been taught hollows did – not that it meant much, considering what he’d heard about the memorable hollows that had appeared to Ichigo since Rukia had come into his life – and it wouldn’t matter anyway, to him.

Ichigo had given him a chance – had protected him from shinigami; had been willing to fight shinigami for him – and he’d return that.

The whole Kurosaki family had welcomed him despite knowing he wasn’t like them – strange eldritch beings that they were, because Yuzu and Karin were very much like their brother, with a little more evenly shinigami and Quincy, and Isshin was a shinigami run through with a Quincy’s power – or even a real soul. They treated him like he was one of them; had even gone so far to adopt him and legally make him one of their family.

The one time he’d seen the shopkeeper who’d sold him to Rukia since their first face-to-face meeting, the man had smiled behind his fan, and called him Shiba Kon, brother of Ichigo. Like it meant things more than he could understand.

He’d understood a little, after turning the title over in his head that his own reiatsu was changing, taking on the distinct shinigami flavor of Ichigo and his father; something undeniably shinigami and yet also, elemental.

Less heated than Isshin’s, and more solid than Ichigo’s, something earthy.

It was comforting and reassuring to know that to shinigami, he’d appear like one of their family, in truth.

As such, he felt like he should do the family name proud when he could see hollows start to descend on Karakura, and Ichigo’s reiatsu was all they could sense, drawing them in as he and the younger Ishida began to fight them. He’d told Ichigo he was going to Keigo and Mizuiro, so he’d go because their reiatsu were weak but still present and if a hollow got close, they’d notice the two.

He’d protect them, and if a hollow appeared beyond his abilities, he’d grab the two from Karakura Honchou and run.

Chapter Text

Tatsuki had felt when Ichigo had wrapped his reiatsu around her moments before an impending sense of doom hit her. Her water bottle had been half-way up as she paused, thoughts of her training for nationals and how she’d been glaring at a pair of dead lovers floating by, coming to a screeching halt by the scent of something sweet reaching her. There was an echo of a howl in her ears, something distant that had her lips curling up to bare her teeth at it before the sound of her coach distracted her from it, and the sound faded off, “Hey, Arisawa! Break’s over! Get in here!”

“Sorry, I need to go!”

“Arisawa?!”

She made to leave as is, not bothering to get her stuff when part of her whispered to move away now, only to stop short with the presence of Orihime, “Tatsuki! Can I talk-?”

Tatsuki grabbed her arm, pulling her with as she moved with a purpose as it began to rain, the water cold and heavy despite the light downpour, “Let’s walk and talk.”

There was something grating at the edge of her sense of self that was hungry, from within and without. The hunger from within, she could deal with, but going to where people were felt dangerous, and leaving to somewhere else less populated had become a top concern. The fact that she could sense hollows popping up around Karakura, hence the sense of hunger from without, made it the top concern.

Luckily, Orihime had found her before she’d had to go to her, because Orihime’s reiatsu was being wrapped in Ichigo’s – and thus, strangely dimmed, harder to find – but she was still at risk. They were a risk to their classmates, being targets to hollows without any way to defend themselves let alone the others – or not a group, anyway; she could handle one or two if it came down to it – and the only way to protect them was to get away.

“You sense it too, then, Tatsuki?”

“The hollows? Yeah.”

Orihime tugged on her hand, and she looked back to see Orihime pointing up, “No.” – before following her finger to a massive disturbance overlapping part of the sky – “That.”

Chapter Text

Chad paused mid-step at the feeling of Ichigo nearby, glancing around for his friend just as it began to rain, unusually cold for this time of year.

“What’s wrong, Chad?”

Only, he wasn’t around. Instead, all he had was the increasing sense of danger. It wasn’t yet scraping at him; just a general sense that he’d started to register when Ichigo would run off during class, as a hollow being in the area.

“Uh, nothing.”

It wasn’t anything to worry about yet, not unless it got closer, and chances were Ichigo would take care of it soon.

Still, he was on edge as he caught up with Shigeo and Harutoki, arm thrown up over his head to shield his face from the rain as he shepherded them forward and away from here.

Chapter Text

Yuzu looked up at the clear sky as it began to rain, frowning slightly. It wasn’t often that the weather took her by surprise anymore, always seeming to know when she should have her umbrella handy even without listening to the weatherman. She hadn’t expected this rain, and somehow, the skies were still clear, just a wispy smudge of tinted grey clouds that didn’t even hint at possible rain let alone the sort of dense rain that was coming down.

Strangely, the air had a hint of sweet alongside the familiar scent that she’d swear was Ichigo. Thoughts of why she was smelling her brother was secondary to how she realized abruptly that she was craving something sweet.

“We need to get home now.”

She blinked, looking down at where the king of cats had stopped in front of her on their way home from the Hiroyaku Supermarket with an unusually serious look on his face. There was an edge of worry in his deep voice that had her agreeing immediately, shifting her grip on her bags to clutch it against her chest as she turned to run after the black cat.

Chapter Text

Tatsuki turned from where the sight of the sky had slowed her to a near-stop at the sound of windows breaking and screams.

“What was that?!”

“Was anybody hurt?!”

“What the- What happened?!”

“All the windows on the first floor just shattered!”

(Sharpen your talons on the intruder to our aerie, fledgling!)

Orihime’s voice was hardly a whisper as it wobbled, pointedly not looking at where all the noise originated from, “There’s a hollow here.”

Tatsuki immediately went on alert, bronzed steel folding itself over her knuckles as she reached, feathers settling behind her ears as her eyes sharpened. Her gaze flicked from corner to corner, over every crevice and ledge, before settling on the rooftop as she caught a glimpse of something.

“Hime! Let’s leave Tatsuki behind and go home together~” Chizuru called out to Orihime as the other girl’s grip went tight on her arm while the hollow came closer, crawling up to the edge and revealing some of its tentacled, bulbous body.

She didn’t look away, keeping her eyes trained on the hollow as Chizuru walked up from behind them, “Orihime? What’s up-?”

Chizuru forced herself between them, pushing herself in front of Orihime, separating them, “Did you finally snap? Why did you bring a real weapon to school??”

Tatsuki smiled, glancing aside for a moment with gleaming copper eyes, “If you can see it, run.”

There was a blur of movement above that had her turning back to see the hollow jumping up and off the building, Orihime gasping softly as the hollow made a full appearance in all its grotesque glory.

Chapter Text

Urahara lifted his head suddenly, drawing her out of her thoughts as his gaze sharpened on something behind her as rain started to come down heavy. Rukia watched as he then folded his fan up and tucked it into an inside pocket of his haori, while his other hand reached for a cane hidden behind the counter.

“What’s wrong?”

Something about the way he’d dropped his affable eccentric shopkeeper act nearly entirely, looking for once like the veteran shinigami she’d heard he was, was deeply unsettling. She didn’t know what rank he’d been as Ukitake-taichou hadn’t enlightened her to it, but she’d known he’d at least had to have been fairly highly ranked, though she’d originally doubted he’d been higher than a third-seat.

She’d doubted because she hadn’t believed that a lieutenant or captain could just leave the Gotei 13, not without being hunted down and killed for desertion. Now, though, she could believe it. Particularly because she could almost sense that his cane was truly his zanpaku-tō, disguised like Yamamoto-soutaichou’s, his reiatsu filling the room and making her drop to her knees like a captain when asserting their authority.

Rukia knew that she’d weakened, but if he wasn’t at least a lieutenant, then she’d fallen a lot further than she’d thought.

Her pager started to beep, going off rapidly then silencing. She pulled it out with a little bit of a struggle, hands shaking with the way his reiatsu started to rise, climbing higher and higher with each passing second, “The message is . . gone? So soon? Ichigo’s unusually . . fast today . .”

The pager went off again, just as she started to recognize the cloyingly heavy reiatsu clinging to her, “Again?!”

Even if Ichigo didn’t have the best control over his reiatsu, he’d still figured out how to not smother the area with his reiatsu and instead just lightly coat it, pulling it back little by little. Now, it was heavier than it had ever been since she’d given him her powers.

She could feel her reiatsu struggle against the weight like she was dying and struggling against a (much) stronger opponent; her reiatsu strengthening and growing in ways that it hadn’t since her days in the Rukongai when every day was life-and-death and just being in the vicinity of a hollow had boosted her reiatsu by large leaps and bounds.

Then she could feel it start to gather in amounts that she’d forgotten the feeling of in the months since coming to Karakura, and then it be retained.

“Hmm . . it went blank again.” The way Ichigo’s reiatsu smothered hers felt intentional, like Ichigo was trying to jumpstart her powers – and he’d played along with her lies that nothing was wrong so far – which meant, the only reason she could think he would do otherwise, was if there was a threat. Only, she didn’t think Ichigo had quite that much control for something like that.

Yet, something still made her think it was possible and that there was a reason for it, no matter what her pager said or did, if it was malfunctioning or not.

Rukia glanced at where Urahara’s reiatsu continued to rise, his shadowed eyes narrowing off in the middle difference, before looking back down at her pager, “Is this thing actually broken? It never seems to work right.”

The pager began to go off again, “Again . . it must be broken. There’s no way hollows could be appearing at this rate—”

Only, it didn’t stop, just got louder, more aggravated, the noise overlapping before it became one continuous tone, giving off so many readings that she couldn’t even try to see where and when the hollows were appearing.

She raced over to the door with a bit of a stumble to peer out through the rain and saw the sky – saw the massive crack beginning to form – over the top of the town proper.

“What’s wrong with the sky?! Is there some chaotic supernatural event happening!?”

Her legs gave out beneath her because whatever it was, it was beyond bad, something so well past what she had even the faintest idea of what to do with that the Hell Gate was practically a pleasant memory compared to this. She watched blankly as the hollows on this side of town started to break away from where they were swarming to come towards the shop, before she realized why Urahara had been rising his reiatsu.

He was pulling them away from whatever was attracting them in town.

Somehow, somehow, she knew that Ichigo was over there, right in the thick of it. Ichigo was alive, somehow, despite the overwhelming numbers, somewhere in the middle of the tens – maybe hundreds – of hollows she could see appearing above the streets, their numbers so thick they were a smear of black only broken up for a second by flashes of blue light.

He wouldn’t be for long though, if even some of the hollows surrounding him weren’t diverted as two people could only do so much, no matter how powerful, when faced with overwhelming numbers.

Chapter Text

One hollow had barely finished dissipating to leave behind a butterfly winging off before another, then two, then four, then seven, began to take its place.

Ishida didn’t hesitate to start shooting at them, muttering something under his breath that almost sounded like, “Soft-hearted fool.” – before counting – “Two. Three. Four.”

Ichigo snarled as he attacked the one that had dropped down on them from the opposite direction, cutting clean through its mask, “You’re seriously-!” – Ishida interrupting him – “Five. Six.” – as he cut clean through its mask – “Going to count right now!?”

“Of- seven, eight- course. Just because- nine. The game was- ten. Ill-advised- eleven. Doesn’t make it any less-twelve. Valid.”

He cut through another two, wanting to turn his head and glare at the idiot who’d (unintentionally) started (or at least, when the bait had broken) this mess but knowing better than to turn away from where he could sense hollows start to descend upon them en-masse, “ . . two. Three. Winning or losing won’t matter if we’re dead.”

“Thirteen.”

Ichigo took out another – “Four.” – before Ishida responded, “Then you better hope that we’re not the only ones- fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Picking the hollows off. You’re the only one they can sense- eighteen, nineteen. If they don’t get close to anyone else- twenty, twenty-one. With reiatsu- twenty-two. They won’t notice them.”

“Fuck. Five, six, seven.”

“Indeed. Twenty-three.”

There were hollows slowly circling them, barely held at bay by how Ishida’s arrows weren’t entirely confined to straight lines and only one or two would break forward at a time to attack, “Eight. Nine. Are you saying that if we die, the rest of town is screwed?”

“More if you die. Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. Your reiatsu is hiding essentially everyone else. I can only get a vague sense from a few others, but most of them can take care of themselves.”

“Eleven, twelve. Thirteen.” Ichigo really wished that he had some area attacks instead of just a wide area of attack, because all it would take was four hollows coming at once to start to overwhelm him, “Then don’t let us die. I got your back, so keep them at a distance- wait, most? Fourteen, fifteen. Who can’t?!”

Ishida didn’t answer, so he desperately tried to get a sense of his sisters and his friends.

(Not his dad though; he was fairly certain that Isshin was a cockroach in human form.

Vague memories had come back(?) of times where a woman had laughed maniacally, wobbling slightly even as she continued to drink straight from a bottle, before launching a massive firework at the man. Isshin had survived that mostly intact, minus his eyebrows and two-thirds of his shirt.)

Yuzu was by the Devil Cat, and the few hollows nearby were dropping like flies before they could get close. Which further proved the faux cat was not a cat in the slightest.

They were dropping around Isshin, and the elder Ishida too; gone nearly as fast as they showed up.

Tatsuki was with Orihime, and Kon was with Keigo and Mizuiro.

Rukia was by Urahara.

“ . . Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one.”

“ . . Sixteen. Seventeen.”

Chad; he couldn’t see hollows, even if he could hit them. Karin; she could see, and possibly hit them with her bow, but she was still his little sister, alone.

He knew why Ishida hadn’t said anything though, because there was nothing that they could do other than what they already were. More specifically, there was nothing he could do, and if Ishida left him to go to them, he would die when he was overwhelmed with sheer numbers and then everyone would be in danger.

Chapter Text

Rukia had not lingered after realizing the danger Ichigo was in, rushing off in his direction, seemingly unaware of how her breathe was misting the air now. He’d watched her for a moment, wondering how much of his plan would have to be adjusted now if her soul was not so much bonded to but was given the chance to assimilate the hogyoku.

Ichigo had accidentally absorbed the bulk of her power and the remainder should have been shortly after absorbed by the hogyoku, but Ichigo had been subconsciously feeding it the bulk of its energy since he’d pulled it out of its containment, which had already changed his plans from merely hiding it within her soul, to be destroyed when she died, to it bonding with her and potentially giving back all of her power and then some more if it was compatible with her zanpaku-tō, with the best case scenario that it then transcended her. As Ichigo’s reiatsu blanketed the town, the hogyoku was sucking up as much of it as it could, and Ichigo had somehow managed to both bolster Rukia’s reiatsu and nearly overfed the parasite, sending it in a close approximation of a food-coma with his impression of it being sated.

Kisuke wasn’t quite sure if it would bond with her anymore, even if she didn’t assimilate it. As par usual for Ichigo, previous assumptions were no longer holding true as the hogyoku began to develop a sentience after more than a century of silence.

That boy already had two zanpaku-tō, even if one was dormant and still recovering from being devoured by a hollow while likely hosting a third considering the state of Rukia’s powers; and was a singularly unique Quincy-hollow-shinigami hybrid. He already went against the worlds’ order just by existing, and even before he started throwing long-held rules out the window and made his own. If the hogyoku chose him as its master, there literally wouldn’t be anything he couldn’t do with that over-glorified wishing stone.

It would do well for his long-term plans for Ichigo if the hogyoku chose him, but long-term plans didn’t survive first contact around Ichigo. After Kon, it was clear that Ichigo would only loosely follow where his plans lead him. It wasn’t even that he was unpredictable, but the more specific the plans he made around and involving Ichigo, the more likely Ichigo would then take a flying leap in an opposing direction with no warning.

As always though, it was a solace to know that for as much of a headache as Ichigo was for him, he’d be an outright aneurysm for Sousuke who was much more detail-orientated and orderly. He almost wished that he could be there for when he met Ichigo, because he’d savor the look on his face when Ichigo refused to cooperate with his plans in any manner. Even after meeting Ichigo, Sousuke would underestimate how independent Ichigo was and all his plans would fall like a house of cards around his ears, again and again, but he would fool himself into thinking that it was all according to plan. It wouldn’t be to plan, not unless they were acknowledging the mangled Frankenstein monster of more than a dozen different plans as the plan, and even then, the result wouldn’t be what was intended.

Chapter Text

“We’re going to miss the cheap lunch-hour prices! I’m to make you pay the extra five-hundred-yen price if we do, Chad!”

Chad blinked as he realized he’d slowed, looking around for something, “Huh? Hey!”

“Yeah, I know you don’t have it! That’s why we should go! I’m not one of you spoiled students who gets to eat just for being alive!”

“I subsist on almost nothing! I’m barely alive! I live for my next meal!!” He took a step towards Shigeo and Harutoki, only to pause as his sense of danger suddenly spiked, and he moved, bypassing how Shigeo had made to grab the front of his shirt, “What did I just-?!”

He started pushing them forward regardless of how they dragged their feet until they started walking on their own again, answering his unfinished question, “You live for your next meal, so let’s go!”

Shigeo righteously nodded as he took the lead, “Don’t get meat unless it’s on sale! Make sure it’s past its expiration date – you’ll get a discount for taking it! Repeat after me – thou shalt not pay full price at Safeway!!”

Chad made a mental note to bring Shigeo around the Kurosaki clinic, so that Ichigo’s dad could make sure that didn’t have any adverse effects on his friend’s health, and he was sure that Yuzu would gladly send him out with leftovers that he would be then ‘encouraged’ to come get every few days. If Shigeo had any intentions to refuse the hand-out – not that he thought he would, as Shigeo would gladly abandon his pride for good food that he didn’t have to pay for – then Yuzu would find something for him to do for her.  There were decent chances that she’d have him accompany her grocery shopping and be her pack-mule, and she’d probably pay him if it was her monthly all-out shopping trip.

There was a rumble more felt than heard, before something hit the ground behind them with a loud kaboom.

“Whoa . . that scared me.”

“Wha . . What was that?! A gas explosion?!”

He turned around and saw the air shimmering in and over the crater that had appeared in the street, and it was like when that steel beam had fallen on him, and the car accident a few days after that. He knew there was something there, something dangerous – likely a hollow.

“An explosion!!”

“Call the police!!”

“Chad! You okay?!” Shigeo was coughing, squinting into the shimmering haze like he could almost see something, “What is that!?”

The haze moved, and his sense of danger spiked. Chad turned and pushed the other two away, just before there was an impact where they’d been.

“Whoa!”

“Argh!”

“Shigeo! Harutoki!! Run to the Kurosaki clinic!”

Chad didn’t know why exactly, but he knew they’d be safe there as after Yûichi, Ichigo had implied that if something happened, that was where they should go. Keigo and Mizuiro had laughed it off and said that was obviously where they’d go if they were hurt, but the rest of them had caught he wasn’t talking about normal concerns. It was hard not to when how they’d all been attacked by hollows recently, and each time, Ichigo had shown up to deal with it; they could tell he was talking about if there was a hollow.

They hadn’t directly talked about it – that Ichigo could deal with hollows, that Rukia wasn’t like the rest of them, that Tatsuki could fight back while Chad couldn’t see and Orihime couldn’t hit – but knowing that there were hollows – knowing what hollows were, that they existed – they knew that, and knew they were vulnerable.

Ichigo had changed, matured – his eyes old like his grandfather’s and a weight on his shoulders that hadn’t settled before – in the time since Rukia had shown up, and he’d asked that they go to the clinic if there was a hollow nearby.

Chad didn’t think he would be able to do as Ichigo asked when the haze struck out, snapping a street sign next to him like a toothpick. It had thankfully ignored the other two as they’d hesitantly moved away, but it also meant that it was after him.

“Sorry, Ichigo.”

It followed as he turned away and ran down a side-street, separating further from the people who weren’t lingering, dispersing without even an attempt to gawk.

“Chad!?”

“Chad?!”

There was a vacant lot not too far away where he hoped to lead it where no one else could get hurt.

Chapter Text

Orihime had never forgotten her brother’s reappearance, what he’d become after his death. The memory had been fogged for a few hours, but it’d become clear once more as she turned it over again and again in her mind.

Her brother had pulled a terrifying mask from his face to smile at her.

Her brother had tried to kill her, consumed with loneliness, with hunger, face hidden and eyes dark with jealousy and bright with madness.

Her brother had loved her above all else.

Tatsuki had remembered that night too; how her wall had truly been destroyed, that they’d both nearly died, that Rukia had come to help as Ichigo defended them. They’d talked about it, and Ichigo had explained some things, away from Rukia’s hearing because she hadn’t approved of them even remembering.

Orihime had understood why she disapproved, because if it hadn’t been her brother, she wouldn’t have wanted to remember.

Ever since then though, she’d begun to see – hear – sense – things that she hadn’t before.

Tatsuki had explained some of why – that Ichigo was the cause and their sight was the effect – but they’d stayed out of the growing number of unusual events in Karakura. Some of it was intentional, but most of it was circumstantial just by them being elsewhere at the time; as they didn’t have the power to do more than to comfort the distraught dead, without either the power to send them on or to protect them, and as such they’d be no different than sight-seers.

Now, though, she’d found herself staring directly at the first hollow she’d seen since her brother. A gasp escaped her at the sight, and she took a half-step back from where she stood behind Tatsuki and Chizuru.

“You can see me, can’t you?”

Her first thought upon seeing it was I wish I hadn’t seen it, quickly followed by I’ve got to get away from here. The rising sense of danger had already been enough for her to seek out Tatsuki in the middle of her practice, to grab her and leave because the school had the same air as her apartment had had in those minutes just before her brother had broken through the wall. The feeling of Ichigo’s agitation settling on her skin moments before it begun to rain with a clear sky, had affirmed the need to leave.

The sky looking so strange had distracted them, and now it would cost them.

Tatsuki snarled up at the hollow where it now hovered above the courtyard just ahead of them as she pushed Chizuru back and stepped forward, raising her hands up in front of her as her voice sharpened, cut through the air like a hawk’s cry, “I can see one hell of an ugly bastard, yeah. Is that you?”

“Run, Chizuru!!” Orihime grabbed Chizuru’s arm, pulling her with as she rushed to create space between them and the hollow, trusting that Tatsuki would watch their backs as they got out of the way of her fight, “Fast!!!”

Chapter Text

“Run? No.”

The blades of her bagh nakh began to shimmer faintly with a golden light, the echo of large clawed hands catching hers as the familiar voice of a man, a hawk’s screech overlaying the sharper sounds, spoke in her ear. She didn’t hesitate to repeat his words as the hollow shot tens of something from its strangely uniformly-pockmarked head, letting the echo guide both hands down and across, “Setsudan Hane,——!”

Wide curving streaks of pale light cut out across the courtyard, and through the projectiles as clouds of sand fell in their wake to dust the ground. The sense of feathers at her back, around her, slowly began to fade.

(—— is This One’s name!!)

“Aaaahhh!!”

“Wha-what was that?!”

Tatsuki mentally eyed the way that eccentric shopkeeper was relieving Ichigo of some of the hollows’ focus and marked his shop off as a place to seek refuge, then the cracks of lightning across her senses coming from around the hospital were thinning the growing horde there, as she tried to identify where they could go. The hospital would be good, but it was just far enough that until they could get close enough and she could flag the archer down to clear a path, it would be dangerous. Running now would only the hollow here at their back, so even if she couldn’t defeat it, she had to drive it off long enough for them to run.

She met the hollow’s eyes as Orihime shakily straightened from where she’d curled up around herself behind her, “I’m- I’m not hurt? None of them hit me?!  . . But how?”

Its eyes narrowed, “You’re not a shinigami, not really. So what are you?”

She grinned wide, the sides jagged and sharp as her hands tightened around what a part of her long-dead, whispered was the basic form of her zanpaku-tō, “Your worst nightmare.”

Chapter Text

The sudden rain, heavy and cold – and that strangely, to her, made her think of Ichigo – had brought an abrupt end to their soccer game. The five of them were huddled beneath an overhang near the vacant lot, waiting until the downpour, which despite the water itself hitting heavily was really only coming down rather lightly, evened out or ended.

Karin didn’t think it would end soon, and even if it did, there was something curling low in her belly, that told her to go regardless.

She was glad that the rain at least seemed to be dampening that weird sweet smell that had sprung up just before the sudden rain-clouds broke, because prior to it, there had been a hunger settling into her bones that made her want to hunt. Her fingers had sparked before she’d caught herself, trying to curl around a bow that hadn’t been there and yet- nearly had.

Karin was very glad that right now their mom’s bracelet was with Yuzu, because if she needed the bow, she’d have it. She didn’t think she would though, not with the faux-cat following her twin around so much – it had already maybe-summoned somebody to help when they were being attacked at their mother’s grave.

Somebody who her brother had – begrudgingly – explained was likely to be a ‘shinigami’, there to take care of the ‘hollow’. She’d gotten the basics from him, but not much more because she’d honestly prefer to know nothing – and he hadn’t volunteered anymore because he’d likewise prefer to tell her nothing but she had demanded to know – and it was more than enough to know she needed to go now, before she put her friends at risk with the howling she could just about hear in the distance.

“Sorry. I got to go.”

The four boys blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment, “Huh?”

They also were shivering slightly, their eyes just a touch too wide like they could almost tell on an unconscious level that something was wrong here, “Hey, wait! Wait, Kurosaki!”

Karin didn’t stop, didn’t slow as she made to go straight home, only to get to the fence-line when she saw one of Ichigo’s friends come barreling around a street corner and to a halting stop right in front of her just before he ran into her. His breathing a little heavy, face a little pale and eyes squinting as he kept glancing behind him, looking for something but not seeing it, “Ichigo’s little . . Karin!”

Her eyes widened as something came out of the alley he had and made straight towards them, but before her mouth could open, to yell and warn him, or anything, he was diving forward, one arm wrapping around her as the hollow brought a fist down where they’d been.

Chapter Text

Ichigo saw the rising numbers – saw how even if they wanted to leave here, the only way out would be through the horde of hollows now encircling them – and repeated a word he’d sworn to his mother that he wouldn’t repeat.

“Skesdreck!”

Not two seconds later Ishida corrected him on how to say a word he had heard once when he was four, “Scheißdr- forty-three, forty-nine. It’s scheißdreck.”

He kicked aside a hollow as he cut through three more, “Thirty! Are you seriously correcting my pronunciation right now?!”

“You were butchering it- fifty-four. You’re arguably more of a Quincy than I am- sixty-one- since your mother was from an elder line, sixty-eight- a direct descendent where the Ishida are technically an offshoot, seventy-three- so even as a gemischt, you would outrank- seventy-nine, most echt and it’s actually offensive that your German is so atrocious. Eight-two. If there were other Quincy alive, they’d never believe you’re even a gemischt.”

If it wouldn’t have gotten them killed, Ichigo would have given Ishida a what-the-ever-living-fuck look right then because not important right now.

“That’s not even- we have bigger problems! Lecture me after we make it through this, right now we need to move before we get completely overwhelmed!”

“Any place is as good as here. Eighty-eight. Changing our surroundings isn’t going to help with these numbers and how hollows can come from- ninety-seven! Every direction but down; grounded as we are.”

Chapter Text

There had been a burst of pressure behind her and Orihime had pushed Chizuru in front of herself, then curled with her arms protecting her head as Tatsuki had risen to match it, then overcome it.

Her eyes had been wide as she’d checked herself over, some part of her still having been expected to have been hit by something, hardly hearing herself as she realized that she was fine. A glance at Chizuru showed that she was okay too, if looking a little shell-shocked where she was knocked down staring back at the hollow.

Orihime briefly, but fervently, wished that Rukia was here with her magical memory-suppressing pez stick, as Chizuru had terror written all over her face, and she’d probably happily forget all about today as her voice came out hardly a whisper, “What- what is . . that?”

She glanced back, at how Tatsuki stood defiant in front of the hollow and thought for all that Sora had looked grotesque as something part-snake, this hollow was worse. Nothing about it even slightly hinted that it had once been human, not in its appearance, nor in how it eagerly attacked them without a second thought, or even a shadow of guilt or regret.

When the hollow spoke for the second time, Chizuru’s face washed out entirely, and Orihime quickly took advantage of how the hollow’s attention appeared to solely be on Tatsuki, to yank on Chizuru’s arm and drag her behind a step or two as she ran until she ran with.

The way it said: You’re not a shinigami, not really, so what are you.

Orihime would never forget the menace behind the demand barely phrased as a question. It was curious but it also clearly didn’t really care about an answer, only that it considered Tatsuki as a clear and certain threat to itself just by existing.

A nervous laugh then bubbled out of her at Tatsuki’s quick answer though, at her deadpan tone as she sassed the hollow. However, the way her voice scratched at her ears like diamond on steel, not heard but felt – the way she felt more dangerous here than the hollow – it made her uneasy.

Chapter Text

After realizing the sort of danger Ichigo was in – that Shiba-fukutaichou was in again – Rukia hadn’t been able to stay at the Urahara Shoten.

It was like sixty years ago all over again. She knew Ichigo wasn’t her former lieutenant, not entirely, and that this wasn’t that terrible hollow that devoured his zanpaku-tō then controlled his body and consumed his soul, but the odds were against him in the same way. Maybe, he could overcome it in a way that he hadn’t then, but like then, she wouldn’t let his heart get lost.

She’d be there for his death if that was all she could do, so he didn’t die alone and unremembered.

She’d fight beside him this time, even if she was still weakened, and wouldn’t stand aside this time.

(Affection. Worry. Grief. Need. Protect.)

“Hakudo Four!! Byakurai!!!”

Sode no Shirayuki was still quiet in the back of her head; a distant presence that she could hardly sense but stronger than she had been in months. Rukia could almost believe that if she just reached, her zanpaku-tō would be in her hand, for her to wield, but there was also the sense that if she tried, her zanpaku-tō would simply be too weak to manifest long and then it would take longer for her to return to her hand for good.

Still, her sword would be better for her reiatsu reserves to deal with how many hollows there were as she made for Mashiba, but her kidō worked better to keep her from being overwhelmed.

(She wished her lord brother was here with how his zanpaku-tō, Senbonzakura, would be ideal when facing this sort of numbers.)

Regardless of how, she would cut a path through to Ichigo.

Chapter Text

Tatsuki smiled at how she could hear Orihime and Chizuru get away, shifting onto her back foot as she raised her hands up in front of her chest, tracking every minute shift of the hollow’s tentacles, and watching to see if it would try that head-trick again.

She didn’t know what it had meant to do, because she’d foiled it spectacularly, but the ones she had missed – there was something strange about them – as they flickered against her senses. The ones embedded into stone, wood, and dirt were dying off quickly, but the ones that had caught on something living – on classmates who’d been shot through windows – they were overwhelming her sense of them, weak as most of them were.

As they began to move away, she absently tracked their halting, unsteady movements. Every time she tried to give most of her attention on the hollow, something about the movement had her gaze shifting aside onto them.

The way they moved, like puppets – puppets struggling against their strings – limbs jerky and flailing, stumbling on nothing, body bending in strange ways – tears in their wide, afraid eyes as their limbs moved against their will – it was familiar.

Too familiar.

The hollow began to laugh with a disturbing yuk yuk yuk, the echo fading out, “I don’t like to fight myself, so I fire seeds from my head, and they take over my victims! I make my proxies kill each other for me—!”

(“It’s fun to watch my victims struggle against my control and fail! Awake and aware inside as I puppet their body against their will to attack their friends and family!”)

A vicious snarl ripped out of her throat at the overlapping words, cutting him off; an echo of something dark and sharp as it cut through the air on steel feathers. She dashed forward with speed, leapt up with feet folded up, to above the tentacles rippling over the ground, her talons extended out to the sides.

The hollow’s eyes were an acid-yellow-on-black opened wide behind the bone mask, before her feet crashed into them, shattering part of the bone as her talons cut through four of its tentacles in one broad sweep down beneath her before she bounced off and away.

The tentacles had hardly begun to fall to where it’d been as the bulk of its bulbous body flew back. Then it screamed as it tried to curl around its broken face mid-air; cracks running throughout from where the eyes had been caved in on impact, over half of its pockmarks collapsed in as she’d kicked up off it. A good third of its tentacles fell behind it from her second and third strikes as she’d kicked off.

Tatsuki smiled, wild and mean, “It’s fun isn’t it? Watching us kill each other for blood-sport. As long as someone dies, that’s fine, right?”

The smile widened at the way the hollow tried to limp away, shuffling backwards with the intent to escape.

(She’d tried that before, and it hadn’t worked, had it? The last of her squad, having held that parasitic hollow off more than long enough for back-up to arrive after she’d sent a runner back. Yet that back-up had never arrived as her zanpaku-tō shattered in her hand and devoured its pieces. She’d tried to escape, to come back at a better angle, as to ambush it and avenge her squad – and the other half of her soul as she cried inside amongst barren sands – but then it had swallowed her too.

A part of her had remained aware, and watched her body be found with no one questioning why it remained so long after her death when she should have burst into reishi long before, not until it was too late. She’d watched friends who’d come to grieve for her, to ask permission to seek out the hollow that had killed her, be killed themselves by her hand. Then it had killed her husband, by her hand, and she’d faded away into the dark, lost to the madness consuming Kaien now as the hollow dragged her soul inside its stomach with it into his body.

She remembered; She remembered everything about that night.)

If the hollow thought it could escape her, it was sadly mistaken; it would die here and now, and she hoped it went to hell like a certain other hollow should have.

Chapter Text

Orihime didn’t look back again, dragging Chizuru with her as she ran, not sure where she’d go other than away from here.

“What’s going on? What was—?”

Chizuru’s question cut off as people began to stream out of the buildings around them, stumbling and bleeding, veins pronounced around the injury and something starting to come out in the middle of the green ooze drooling down amongst the blood.

A disturbing yuk yuk yuk laugh came from behind them, the echo fading into something casually cruel, “I don’t like to fight myself, so I fire seeds from my head, and they take over my victims! I make my proxies kill each other for me—!”

It was cut off by a vicious inhuman snarl, practically rage personified, then the hollow screamed shrilly with pain. Abruptly, it then felt afraid even as her feeling of Tatsuki changed, morphing into hot metal/feathers/sand; giving of the echoing sense of overlapping steel shifting, realigning like feathers in the wind.

Orihime couldn’t help the instinctive step back when that something in the wounds on their classmates burst out entirely into the open, revealing themselves as eyes, each one’s iris an acid yellow.

The people gave off low, stuttering moans, half-gargled words that almost sounded like run.

Some of them started to shake, then fell to their knees, eyes wide and reeling in every direction as they began to foam at the mouth. Others raised clawed hands to their wounds, fingers erratically twitching as they tried to grasp at the eyes and their blunt nails cut into their own flesh instead, blood freely drooling down as they kept digging.

Chizuru gasped from beside her as she recognized one of them as Ryō, who was clawing intently at her hip, blood splashed up to her elbows and fingers unable to be seen past all of it. She lifted her head at the sound with a weak smile, looking directly at Chizuru as she yanked the eye clear out with the flesh it was embedded deep in coming with, “Run.”

Between one blink and the next, Chizuru dashed forward, skidding on her knees as she caught her friend before she could fall over entirely when her leg gave out from the violent removal of the growth. Ryō’s face was death-pale, tight with pain as Chizuru struggled to pull her up off the ground without touching her wound, the other girl’s arms tight around her shoulders, “You. Idiot.”

Orihime grabbed the back of Chizuru’s shirt, pulling her up with Ryō in a princess carry in her arms. The other girl’s voice was a little watery, yet defiant as she straightened up, back-to-back with Orihime as they were slowly surrounded by their controlled classmates, “You’re the idiot if you think I’m leaving you behind to save myself, Ryō.”

The hollow started to shakily laugh behind her, “I won’t be the first to die! That belongs to your pretty little friend!”

Chapter Text

The hollow hit the ground where they’d been with a loud boom.

Chad pushed her behind him as he squinted at the haze, “Is that- Is that a hollow?!”

He looked back at her wide eyes, where she was staring in front of them, face pale. He could almost see sparks fly off her fingertips as her jaw tightened despite the fear in her eyes, “You can see it?”

“Are you kidding? Can’t you!? It’s as plain as day!”

Chad almost wanted to laugh, because of course she could see being she was Ichigo’s little sister; it’d be more surprising if she couldn’t.

Karin took a step back suddenly, just as his sense of danger spiked, “Look out! Behind you!!”

He turned into her, catching her against his shoulder as he hoisted her up, and darted to the side, skidding sideways as the haze hit the ground again where they’d been standing. Quickly looking back, the haze was gone, disappeared into thin air.

“Open your eyes! It’s to our right!! Run!!”

Chad didn’t hesitate, dodging back and sprinting back towards the fence-line, trying to think of whatever other places were nearby that might actually be vacant. If not, the warehouse district wasn’t far, maybe ten more blocks.

“Hey, can’t you see it?”

“ . . I see a shimmer.”

She was silent for a moment, hands fisting into his shirt. He could feel a bit of a static shock around her hands, flickers of light that he could just barely see out of the corner of his eye, and it felt familiar. He couldn’t quite name it, but there was something familiar about the feeling, the weight and the static. It went beyond the way she clearly felt like her brother did to him, but it was undeniable too, the sense of Ichigo she gave off; that sense of Ichigo-ness.

“Okay, then I’ll be the eyes! You be the legs! Okay?”

It didn’t take him long to realize what she was saying, but he should have realized she would have. She was too much like Ichigo to run away when she could help, “N-No way!!”

“Yes way!! It’s our only hope! It’s going after us! Specifically! If Ichigo can fight, why can’t we!?!”

He remembered that he’d been able to smack aside a hollow even if he couldn’t see it; it’d been part of the reason why he’d thought he’d had a chance because if he had been about to go down, he would go down fighting so it couldn’t hurt anyone else. With Karin acting as his eyes, their chances of winning increased significantly – but with it came risks. To effectively be his eyes and for him to protect her, she had to stay close to him.

“Here it comes!! Dodge right!!”

He leapt back and felt air rush past him, lashing out while he knew where the hollow was.

“Whoa!”

Karin scrambled to cling to his neck when his arm moved from under her, fist hitting something that felt vaguely like flesh. Something that couldn’t be mistaken for human; being too solid and hard, and too thick with what he guessed was its wrist being thicker than his shoulders were broad.

“Go right!!”

In a heartbeat, he realized that he couldn’t dodge in time and trying would only expose Karin to the full force of the hit. He curled over her, arm wrapping around her back and hand cradling the back of her head as the hollow’s other hand knocked him away.

Chapter Text

Chad didn’t go right. Instead, he curled over her, pushing her face into his shoulder as he shielded her from the swing of the hollow’s arm.

She felt the impact through his body before they went flying, but she wasn’t hurt even as they hit the still-hard ground, thick mud splattering all over them. The familiar scent of iron – of blood – suddenly filled her nose, the warmth running through displaced mud towards her face and starting to pool beneath her cheek.

Karin squeezed her eyes shut as her teeth ached, then shimmered with gold when she opened them, hands curling sharply into Chad’s shirt, fingertips pressing into his warm skin and feeling the strong beat of his heart.

“Kurosaki!?”

“What happened to you!?”

“Who’s the big dude with the blood?!”

“Did you do that to him?! Did you beat him up?!”

She forced herself up and out of Chad’s protection, and bared her teeth with wide, panicked eyes, “Stop!! Go away!!! Get outta here!!!”

Pinta was pale as he took a step back at her vehemence, but his stance firmed as he jabbed a finger her way, “Hey! What’s your problem?! We’re just worried about you! Why are you always so mean?!”

Karin saw the hollow pull back its arm, looking directly at her friends, and a snarl ripped out of her throat as her hand closed around a bow made of blue fire. She shouldered past them as she knocked a bolt of moonlight and released it.

Chapter Text

While they were flirting with getting overwhelmed at any moment, thankfully it seemed Urahara at least, had realized what situation they were in. A notable portion of hollows were now being diverted over to his shop as his reiatsu started to rise and overwhelm his, or at least in Mitsumiya and parts of the rest of eastern Karakura.

In the opposite direction, it seemed that the elder Ishida had Karakura Honchou – and a good portion of Minamikawase, or at least the part with the clinic – locked down from his place at the Hospital.

Notably, the elder Ishida’s reiatsu felt agitated, with what felt like a pointed annoyance directed their way. Ichigo couldn’t even see the hospital from here clearly even if the horde of hollows were gone and he had a clear line of sight, and yet he could swear the elder Ishida was glaring at them from the roof.

The fact that a few reiatsu arrows had come daringly close to grazing Ishida on their way to hit a hollow he’d missed in his now-endless barrage of arrows was probably not an accident; they felt a little too much like warning shots to be an accident, even as if they saved their asses.

The way Ishida’s phone went off twice, playing a deceptively upbeat ringtone for who was undoubtedly calling, and in an undeniable mood about the possible – likely – theft of hollow bait made it quite clear the elder Ishida would be having words with his son after this.

“So, I’m assuming your dad didn’t know—”

“Does yours know that Kuchiki is living in your room?”

“ . . Touché.”

Ichigo managed to get four hollows at once as Ishida’s voice went pitched as he realized that yes, Rukia did, “She is?”

“Fuck off, she set up camp in my closet because she didn’t want to live with that outlaw masquerading as an eccentric shopkeeper. She keeps borrowing Yuzu’s clothes because she is a midget and won’t admit she needs to go shopping in the pre-teen section.”

“ . . You take living in each other’s pockets to a whole new level, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo saw an opening in their ring of hollows and took it, throwing Ishida over his shoulder in the process. To his credit, Ishida barely fumbled his next shot from the abrupt change of position as he cut their way out, “I know I’m asking a lot from you, Kurosaki, but do you have a plan here?”

“Yes, and you do know I can drop you, right?”

“Du kannst mich mal.”

If Ishida likely wouldn’t have died if he loosened his grip on the back of Ishida’s legs with the way he was thrown over his right shoulder, Ichigo would have, just for that; he wasn’t stupid, he could tell through Ishida’s deadpan that he’d said something like fuck off.

Chapter Text

Why are you acting so mean?

Blurrily through the blood, Chad saw blue fire form in Karin’s hand, partially solidifying into a bow as a bolt of lightning, crackling and reeking of power was notched and aimed in one smooth motion. He could hear his abuelo’s voice in his ear as he watched.

What did it accomplish? You hurt those who hurt you, but then what?

The bolt of lightning was released as he felt the echo of his grandfather’s large warm hands on his once-thin shoulders.

You’re very strong, Chad. You’re tall, handsome. You were born with all the things people wish for.

The solidified moonlight cut through the air with a shriek, the snap-crackle-hiss of flame and a heat shimmer left in its wake. He could taste salt on his lips, from the tears that he’d shed as he realized his grandfather was disappointed in him for his choices.

People who are different always get picked on. I don’t what it’s like in other places, but in this world , that’s how it is.

It hit the haze with a flash of light, throwing the whole area in sharp relief and he saw. He saw the hollow as it howled, one side entirely gone, turned to char and ash.

But, Chad, learn to be kind. Kinder than other people.

It began to fall towards the kids – towards brave Karin, who stood her ground despite her small body, who even now was pushing the others out of the way at the expense of herself – and his hands fisted while he pulled himself up to his feet.

You’ve got big, strong fists. You need to learn to use them for good.

His left arm curled around her, lifting her up and out of the way as he threw his right fist with a prayer to his abuelo on his lips, his coin warming in his pocket.

Before his eyes, reflection-less black ink spilled across his skin, from his palm over his knuckles and up his arm to above his shoulder, a dark magenta stripe outline in bone-white cutting through it extending up from his middle and ring fingers to edge the two-pronged guard near his neck. He could feel the hollow’s face fold beneath his knuckles and the mask breaking as it flew back but not hit the ground, shattering in mid-air before black butterflies flew off in its wake.

Chapter Text

As the king of cats ran, sometimes his shape would flicker, blurring out then into sight again.

Yuzu didn’t realize he was protecting her until his shape fuzzed out, into something she would almost see as a humanoid shape standing in front of her, a warm arm held out in front of her as they knelt a step ahead.

Then the world blurred, shuddered, as complete and utter silence fell.

She squinted as she could almost see a giant set of doors rise out of the ground, a skeleton on either side, three prayer ropes tied to each outside rib and its fellow corresponding rib to bind the door. Her skin prickled at a sound she couldn’t hear, just like that night when the wall of the clinic had come crashing in.

Then there was the feeling of a pull behind her belly, and she could almost see the skeletons slowly flex their hands before the ropes began to quietly snap as the spirit in front of her said something she couldn’t hear clearly. The noise lost as if from a distant, but she could hear something that almost sounded like hell.

Yuzu’s nose wrinkled at the cool vaguely sulfuric fog that smelt almost burnt as the doors opened and the ropes started to drag a blurry humanoid shape in.

Through the gate was an empty street without any of the blurs she could see fleeing from the pair of open doors present on this side, before between one blink and the next, it rippled and was replaced by something that she could see: a red-faced red-clothed man nearly as tall as the gate, his arms thicker than her father was tall with a very broad chest, and a square crown on his head framing his ink black topknot. On either side of him was a pillar with a disembodied skeletal head atop, one a woman and the other a man.

The giant’s dark eyes were wide and angry, slanted upwards as he glared at the blur the ropes were dragging beyond the gate while he read from the scroll in his hand, “Daisuke.”

Then he looked out, his brows furrowing, before he waved a hand and the skeletal heads moved, bouncing out past the gate. As they sunk into the ground, he looked down towards her.

(Inside her head, it went very still, very quiet, with the sense of wanting to hide but unwilling to cower even to a god – because this was undoubtedly, Enma-ō; the ruler of Jigoku.)

His gaze softened, then he was kneeling on one knee, to bring himself closer to her eye level, and the spirit in front of her tried to push her back, but something had her evading to hold her ground and face him. He looked amused at that, and the spirit said something that had him start to chuckle.

To Yuzu, it sounded like the tolling of funeral bells, “It is good to see you again, — —."

She squinted at him when the name he called her by fuzzed out behind static, before he seemed to shrink closer to the size of her father if bulkier, still kneeling before her as one hand slowly reached out and caught hers, “It really is good to see you, —, it has been a long time and I have missed you.”

(Seeing him like this, between one blink and the next, he shrunk even more still, to something closer to Ichigo’s size as she seemed to stand even taller than he was now, before he was smiling crookedly, looking a bit like Karin if she was a man.

She knew what he had just called her by even if she couldn’t hear the long-dead word, because it was the bond they chose for each once so long ago.)

He turned her hand until it was palm up, then dropped an onyx ōgi bira kanzashi with finely carved dangling bone from the intricately carved fan with a city on the sea on it, “I have been holding onto this for you, for you to have again.” – a wry, almost sad, smile curling his lips – “I’ve given it to you twice now, please don’t make it a third time.”

Then he was stepping away, growing back to his full size once more, “Let me assure you, —, your world will not fall before mine. I will not let it.” – then looked at the spirit still beside her – “The balance will be kept, despite some’s efforts, and I will punish those at fault, not Seireitei.”

Chapter Text

Karin turned In Chad’s grip, pressing her feet into his back for balance as she leaned back, bow drawn and another bolt notched as she watched the hollow fly back, then shatter and leave black butterflies to fly off in its absence.

Her gaze drifted to his arm, taking in its new – strange – appearance as she realized the worst of the danger was past with the hollow now double-dead, before slipping down to the ground when his grip loosened, “Hey, big guy, what’s with your arm?”

Then she remembered that he’d hit the hollow square in the face despite being little better than Yuzu in the sight department, “You hit it? But I didn’t tell you- how? I thought you couldn’t—?”

Chad turned towards her half-way, raising his left hand up for a thumbs-up.

Her bow faded away entirely as she dropped her head into her hands at the dorkish move that she expected from her dad, not one of Ichigo’s friends – that wasn’t Keigo – before raising her head up with her hands dragging down her face. It gave her a front-row seat to watch him tilt, then fall over in slow-motion.

His thumbs-up stayed up the entire way down even as she reached out and tried to catch the strange arm to slow his fall so, he didn’t his head again, but fell atop of him instead.

“Chad!?!!”

Karin scrambled off him, eyes flicking up and down his huge body for any new or previously unseen wounds.

“ . . Are you hurt, Karin?”

She stared at him for a moment, blinking rapidly to stop the tears that wanted to fall in her abrupt relief that he was okay, or at least enough to worry about her, “You big dummy! You’re the one who’s hurt!!”

“Oh . . that’s . . good.”

Her eye twitched at the echo of a familiar phrase, before her foot lashed out without thinking and kicked him in the shoulder with everything she had, “No! It’s not good!! You idiot!”

“Ugh!”

His strange hand cupped where she’d kicked him, looking genuinely confused about what had just happened, but she did not care, “It’s not good!! It’s a tragedy! The word ‘good’ does not apply here!! That’s men’s logic for you! You’re just like Ichi-nii!!!” Karin threw up her hands, a wordless sound of anger and exasperation escaping her because there were no words, “I can’t stand your macho nonsense!”

She jabbed a finger down at him, “Don’t move and don’t fall asleep! We don’t know how bad your wounds are and we don’t want to aggravate them more than you already have, but you might have a concussion at the least.”

Her eyes narrowed as she tried to think of what would be the fastest and safest way to get Chad to the clinic, not eager to leave him when he’d basically be hollow bait but unable to move him herself even if she wanted to risk it without explicit need. Using a phone and calling him would be simplest, but she didn’t have a cellphone – though considering the events over the last couple of months what with the maybe-hollow that had broken the wall of the clinic, what had happened on her mom’s death anniversary, and now this, it was probably only a matter of time before Goat-Chin got the whole family cellphones.

(And cried to Mom’s poster about their babies growing up.)

She was already, preemptively, dreading her father finally upgrading from a pager he barely used, because he’d probably immediately find the emojis and try to be ‘hip’.

“Your dad is at the clinic, right?”

Karin glanced over at where Donny was chewing on his lip, eyes stuck on the blood on Chad’s face and collar. Pinta elbowed him, until he looked away, “We can go get him!”

Usaka looked between the two before pushing up his glasses, glancing aside with the tips of his ears bright pink in his still pale face, “Y-yeah! He saved us, didn’t he? It’s least we can do!”

The three of the ran off, leaving Ryôhei behind, “H-hey!”

He took a step after them, but stopped, and pointedly not looked at her, “Sorry.” Then he ran after the others without giving her a chance to respond.

Karin wiped a hand down her face with a soft huff, “ . . Those idiots, I know they didn’t mean it.”

Then she side-eyed Chad, whose hair was wetly sticking to his face in the rain, and she nudged him with her foot, “I know I said don’t move, but we should try to get you out of the rain.”

“ . . I’m good.”

This time she intentionally kicked him, aiming directly at where she’d kicked him before, “Who knows what sort of nasty things are in this dirt getting into your wound!?”

“Ugh!”

She wrapped her arms under his, then slowly started dragging to the overhang she’d been under with her friends earlier, knowing that at least part of the reason he’d stayed where he was, was because he couldn’t gather the strength to do so after possibly-summoning that strange armor for his arm that still lingered. Karin struggled to get him sitting up, but helped as much as he could, and they sat in silence for a moment, taking shelter from the rain.

“ . . You kick just like your brother.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, “Maybe he should kick you harder!” – jabbing a finger right into the bruise she’d probably given him – “Protect yourself a little more, idiot! I’m sturdier than I look. Even if I’m not as good as Ichigo, I do know the basics of karate; I can take a throw like that no problem. Probably would stick the landing better than you with your big body.”

Chapter Text

Tatsuki paused mid-step toward the fleeing hollow, smile fading so fast it was hardly a memory, as she turned on her heel and ran for Orihime and Chizuru.

Their classmates, bleeding and infected, had surrounded them, slowly circling closer to the now-three girls, with Ryō bleeding in Chizuru’s arms from a large jagged wound in her upper thigh; the hollow’s foreign reiatsu being crushed beneath Ichigo’s for all of them.

Some of their classmates dropped down on their own, foaming at the mouth as their own small reiatsu – backed up by Ichigo’s as his whipped into a frenzy – fought back against the foreign reiatsu trying to take control. They passed out beneath the weight of Ichigo’s reiatsu as it was much too strong for them to bear, ultimately pinning them down to the ground as the hollow’s reiatsu was forcibly dissipated. Their own reiatsu flickered and faded, disappearing almost entirely beneath the growing sense of Ichigo, and the rain began to fall harder, leaving stinging welts on her skin where it hit.

Others had enough control that they’d begun digging at the eyes, which had begun to smoke faintly with each drop of the heavy rain that hit them, weakening, and one by one, those that had stuttered to a stop, bending over as they clawed at their own flesh, then yanked the eyes out. They collapsed to their knees, bleeding freely from the wounds they’d exasperated, but free of the hollow’s invading reiatsu as Ichigo’s reiatsu crushed it beneath his before it drained away entirely.

Tatsuki lashed out with her feet and tagged the judo boy reaching out for Chizuru in the face, “Assholes!”

“Tatsuki!” “Tatsuki!!”

Orihime kneed a different boy between the legs, dropping him like a stone as blood arched through the air in the wake of the other boy while he flew back and skidded across the ground on his back, nose broken and teeth cutting open the back of his lip. Two more skidded back as well as she used a talon to cut across an eye, stabbing through and impaling them as her palm smacked them across the cheek and chest where their extra eye was embedded, pushing them away from Chizuru and Ryō.

With a little space, her gaze flicked over to Ryō’s hip and thigh and couldn’t help how she winced because it was bad. The blood flow seemed to be slowing as rain ran over it, and as it washed off the excess, it appeared to at least not be getting worse; which, the way Ichigo’s reiatsu had gone heavy on all of them might be playing a part in that, his control not fine enough to do more than put some pressure over the wounds and stem the blood-flow a little, but unable to stop it without risking killing some of their weaker classmates with his increased spiritual pressure to the whole area.

A cold sweat had broken out on Ryō’s pale face, eyes tight with pain as she smiled weakly, “Thanks.”

Chizuru was struggling beneath the other girl’s weight, but her gaze was resolute; clearly refusing to let Ryō go no matter the difficulty or personal risk it put her in, unable to fight and unlikely to be able to run away at any speed with her in her arms.

There were tears in Orihime’s eyes, before her shoulders sagged with relief.

Tatsuki turned back to the hollow, and though it wasn’t visible behind her bagh nakh, she flipped the bird at it, “Hey, fuck-face! You made Orihime cry!! I have a long-standing rule to beat the shit out anyone who does that!”

A quiet laugh was startled out of Chizuru behind her at her words, like she’d wanted. Ryō’s voice was sharp with pain, and knowing, “No knight. But a dragon. For the princess.”

Chapter Text

Tatsuki rolled her head back to glance the other three, eyeing through the current of rain the few classmates that were still in the hollow’s control, before grinning with teeth as she lashed out, kicking and smacking them aside.

“It’s a pity I can’t breathe fire then!”

Knocking them all aside, as she slowly pushed the three back, throwing her arms wide as she made sure to keep attention on her, “What’s the matter!? I’m just one girl!! Won’t one of you give me a fight?!”

“Indeed, no matter what you are, you’re just one girl!!”

More classmates burst out of the building, likely having been on the other floors; a whole swarm of them twice as many as previously even as some continued to drop, foaming at the mouth as Ichigo’s reiatsu pressed down on them and forcibly dissipated the hollow’s reiatsu.

Tatsuki slowly flexed her hands as she eyed a path through their numbers back to the hollow, her earlier plan to drive it off changing to keeping it entirely focused on her if she couldn’t outright defeat it, “Orihime, when I say go, take Chizuru and run and don’t look back.”

“T-Tatsuki!!”

Greenish ooze was running down its face now from where she’d broken part of its mask, an eye or two starting to sprout from amongst the mess she’d made of the pock-marked head and focusing on her.

Even if she wanted to, Tatsuki doubted she could leave now anyway.

“Go to the hospital—!”

Michiru broke out of the crowd, blood running down from how an eye was embedded deep in the back of her left shoulder near her neck with pronounced veins running across and up over her cheek, the tears running down her face nearly invisible in Ichigo’s rain. Tatsuki reached out, talons extended to try and pierce the eye on reflex, only to jerk to a stop just shy when Michiru angled herself away and putting her neck in the way, hesitant to strike blindly so close to arteries.

Then a clawed hand snapped out and grasped her shoulder tightly as she faced Michiru’s wide, watery eyes head on, “I’m . . sorry.” The hand squeezed, blunt nails digging deep enough to bleed, pinning her in place momentarily as hands came from many directions when the rest of the crowd surrounded her.

Tatsuki grabbed Michiru high on her shoulder in return and stabbed directly into the eye on her neck even as she was yanked back her against a clammy, fever-hot body. She fought against the arms holding on tight around her arms and wrists as Chizuru yelled, “Tatsuki!!”

Michiru fell to her knees, hand clasping over low on her neck against the empty wound even as fresh blood oozed up from shallow cut from flanking talons to run down overtop, only to be washed away by the rain. Her eyes were wide, as she shakily scrambled back with her other hand towards Chizuru and Ryō, voice labored as Ichigo’s reiatsu focused in on her, forcing out the remnants of hollow reiatsu beneath its weight, “Wh-what just- happened? What’s- that??”

As Tatsuki continued to fruitlessly struggle, Chizuru stumbling back with Ryō reaching out and yanking Michiru to her feet to come with, the hollow began to laugh disturbingly, nasally, “Yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk!!!”

Orihime didn’t move back from where she stood, hands tightening into fists and lips thinned in anger. Tatsuki couldn’t see what look was on her face as her head was yanked back by her short hair, gaze forced towards the hollow to watch as it turned its head to face its surviving pock-marked towards them while its reiatsu rose behind the pock-marks, “The livelier they are, the sweeter it is to see their faces contort in agony!!”

Not until Orihime took first one step closer then two, gaze now on her, then she saw the way her eyes were bright with determination; saw that she knew what she was risking coming closer and didn’t care.

The hollow shot more of those seeds and Tatsuki snarled behind clenched teeth, digging her toes into the ground for leverage to yank herself free, kicking herself up and out as far as she could into the way.

(It seemed like again, Kaien would be forced to end her life to protect others, even as he cried inside to have to raise his blade once more against someone he cared for.

At least — would still there for him to spread her fins out to shelter him from the rain.)

Chapter Text

Kisuke sat on the edge of the porch in front of his shop watching the hollows begin to converge on them, Tessai next to him, “Bakudo 81: Danku.”

 Kidō sprung up first around the shop, boxing it in on all sides, before springing up on each edge of their property for two-fold protection of a safe-zone and a kill-box.

His old friend didn’t need to say the name of the kido out loud, not even as a focus in place of the chant with his mastery of this particular kidō but did anyway in quiet protest for needing to do so for one of his plans so unexpectedly. If not for the kids, he wouldn’t have used such a high-level kidō, if at all.

If truly necessary, he would take the kids down to the bunker below the shop and prepare to bolt from Karakura, but by the point that could prove to be needed, things would have to be much worse. The horde of hollows wouldn’t warrant that, nor even if the cracks in the sky began to truly converge and opened a path to Huecho Mundo for a Gran Menos.

Tessai wasn’t even upset at him as he could sense Ichigo’s situation just as well as him and understood why he’d brought a horde down on them. It was just a reminder for the last time that he enacted a plan without a word before outside of extenuating circumstances; when they’d lost half the shop to an abruptly malfunctioning experiment that destroyed everything not under kidō protection.

Tessai would have locked him out of his lab for a few years if Ururu had been hurt then, but instead she had destroyed the other half of the shop thinking they were under attack by Soul Society. Not that they would dare considering it would be mutually assured destruction with how much blackmail he had on certain high-ranking members of Central 46. Nor with how many backdoors he had into nearly every part of the Seireitei that would let him remind the other members of Central 46 that he had been very good as an Omitsukidō assassin before he’d been the prison warden. He’d made his point before he’d been locked entirely out, and if necessary, he could work around how a senkaimon rejected his reiatsu.

Mayuri sent him butterflies once every couple of months every time he thought he had found – and taken over or destroyed – any of those backdoors – not that he had found even a fraction of them, or had truthfully succeeded in locking him out entirely from the ones that he’d taken over – before derailing into what he’d recently invented to gloat to someone able to understand. Sometimes Kisuke even responded when he managed to make a better version of one of Mayuri’s inventions, before getting a near-immediate response of the other scientist calling it trash and swearing to make one better than anything he could with his proper equipment.

The fact that Mayuri had no interest in things like gigai was what kept him in business with the Gotei 13 despite his exile however, so held back on upgrading the pager to an actual phone fully capable of taking advantage of the human world’s satellites. Or at least, until he finished his own satellite to put him in the market for cell service for shinigami.

Behind him, Jinta threw open the door with an exuberance that had it make a worrying rattling noise and had Tessai sighing slightly at how they (he) would have to replace it again. In the last six months, they’ve had to replace the door five times and they were not looking forward to Jinta’s teenage years and hoped that he at least stopped testing his boundaries soon. Both children were so rough on their house; almost comparable to the Eleventh Squad in destructive capability if not for Tessai’s long-standing efforts to keep their home intact.

The boy was quick to bounce on his heels as he practiced swings with his bat, “I’m ready! Where the hollows at!?”

Ururu followed silently behind him as she finished adjusting her head- and hand-gear for it to fit snugly and securely, before looking behind him at where hollows were banging soundlessly against the closest of the kidō walls around the lot, “On your left.”

Kisuke smiled behind his fan when Jinta startled with a bit of a scream at seeing a hollow up close; the boy had seen one before but it had been at a distance, while some of these hollows hardly looked humanoid anymore and instead more like the monsters out of the B-rated cinema. He glanced over at Tessai, “Is the camera ready for baby’s first hollow fight?”

“H-hey! I’m not an infant!”

He solemnly nodded as he finished prepping their modified polaroid camera so it was on the right filter to capture spiritual beings and phenomenon – unlike the proto-type that he’d sold to some ghost-hunters a few decades back to catch a glimpse of lower reiatsu beings – before snapping a photo of the red-faced Jinta and Ururu as she obligingly held up a V just like he’d taught her.

“Now, now, Jinta, I know you’re not a baby. You’re simply a mini-human adult with minimal life experience.” Kisuke’s eyes curved up behind his fan as Tessai hummed shake it, shake it out as he shook out the photo then handed it over for him to put in the pastel yellow photo-book that he was pulling out from his kusode. Jinta made a sound of protest as his face went bright pink at seeing the book, which was full of photos from Ururu’s earliest days as an improved version of Mayuri’s faux-soul ‘daughter’ and the years since, as well as all the photos they’d taken of Jinta since they’d adopted him.

Every major and minor event had been documented for them to look back on for the centuries they’d outlive Jinta’s human life, no matter how embarrassing it was to the boy now, he’d understand when he made them grandparents.

The photos of his face the two times over-zealous social workers had stopped by after hearing of ‘the gay shop-keeper couple with kids’ to ‘inspect their living conditions’ when the two of them had taken turns cross-dressing to send them off with their tails between their legs, was just for their amusement however. Yoruichi would find the whole experience hysterical and then demand to see them in dresses herself, before she broke into the two’s homes and pettily scratched up their furniture in their defense.

Kisuke snapped his fan closed, “You being a mini-adult, it is my job as the adult to prepare you for life, yes? One of the things an adult should be able to do is to deal with small-fry like these hollows if they are to protect their family.” – then pointed it in a random direction in front of them – “Open the gates!”

Tessai obligingly opened the kidō wall to the direct right of where he was pointing, letting in a single hollow into their kill-box. Ururu’s eyes tracked it instead of his finger, trusting her other senses over her eyes as he’d taught her to, but Jinta fell for it still, “There’s not—!”

He smiled as Ururu reached out and caught Jinta by the back of his shirt, “It’s sink or swim, Jinta!” – then threw him directly towards the hollow – “Hit the hollow with your bat!”

Not that he’d let the boy get eaten, he’d step in before then, but the best way for a plus soul to raise their reiatsu was to believe they were in a life-or-death situation. This was as safe as they could make it, with his bat and them right here; unlike his memories of when an only-little-older Yoruichi had chucked him face-first into a horde of hollows, when he’d been about the same size and equivalent age as Jinta.

That had been the day Benihime had broken all the rules for a standard shinigami’s zanpaku-tō and appeared without having once been an asauchi and manifesting along with his blade; all to protect him.

(I protect what’s mine, Kisuke, and you are mine.)

Chapter Text

Even if he hadn’t intended to do anything with the knowledge, Ichigo had absently tracked where the eight maroon reiraku gathered, only to nominally disappear behind kidō barriers to hide away. A part of him had been debating on dropping by one day, maybe put a name to half-remembered memories where he thought he might have been friends with some of them. Admittedly though, he’d figured that if he was going to break their status quo, it’d be to smack one of them with the rolled-up magazine of terrible horoscope predictions, then throw Urahara under the bus for revealing their ‘secret identity’.

(Maybe also laugh at the bob the blonde man had now considering how vain he’d been about his long hair before.)

“Are you going to say what your supposed plan is?”

The fact that the number of hollows coming to Karakura weren’t thinning – that even with Urahara pulling a portion of them, and the Devil Cat and elder Ishida picking off stragglers – meant that they needed reinforcements. It was a dick move to pull a train on somebody else in a game, but it wasn’t like the eight (former?) shinigami couldn’t handle it; he remembered four of them in white haori, and stronger than him then. These hollows wouldn’t take more than a moment for any of them to deal with.

“We’re going to cause some grief with our kiting of the hollows.”

“That’s your plan? To lead the hollows away?!”

Ishida sounded so judge-y for someone who had been kill-stealing for the last week, “Do you have a better plan then?!”

“That’s not even a plan! It doesn’t even make sense!! This isn’t a video game!”

“Do you have a better plan!?”

Ishida didn’t say anything for a moment, just shot down some hollows that got to close as he leapt up and pierced through another hollow in front of them, “Are we leading the hollows somewhere or to someone?”

“Both.”

“That stalker’s shop?” Ishida sounded just a touch hopeful at that idea.

“Stalker—? Do you have a stalker Ishida?”

Considering the elder Ishida had this pretty boy look going on, even in his mid-thirties, and Ishida very clearly took after his father in looks, Ichigo would not be surprised if one – or both – of them were the target of a stalker. However, he was also certain that their personalities would scare off any stalker from fixating on them too long.

There was also how the elder Ishida gave off the vibe that if they weren’t scared off on their own, then he’d make their lives hell. Yuzu had been practicing in the mirror how to give off the same vibe, with disturbingly success.

“No, you do.” Ichigo’s eye twitched at Ishida’s you dumbass tone as he continued, “That guy that set up a stand outside of school about you! Didn’t you see all those photos he had of you?!”

“Do you want me to drop you!?” Then it clicked who Ishida was talking about, and snorted, “Urahara?? He’s weird but he’s a family friend. No, not his shop.”

Even if it was easy to imagine Urahara as a stalker, strangely, it didn’t rouse any concern. There was this vague feeling that Urahara wouldn’t dare to.

(He couldn’t quite put a face and a name to who, but one of the women in his family – his mom? Kukaku? – had put the fear of god into Urahara.

Yoruichi had been rolling on the ground laughing in the backgroud.)

Ishida sounded almost put out over his refusal, disturbingly, “Then what is your ‘plan’?”

“Seriously, do you try to rub everyone the wrong way? I could hear the quotation marks around plan.”

He sniffed, and Ichigo almost dropped him for how elitist it sounded, “You’ve yet to give any plan for what we’re doing that is hardly any more descriptive than attack.”

“I should drop you.”

Chapter Text

The rain continued to come down steadily without any sign of stopping.

Karin squinted up at the hazy dark clouds, blinked, then made a violent sound of disbelief that had him looking at her as she turned towards him and pointed up at the swirling clouds, “Do you see that?!”

Chad looked at where she was pointing, but the clouds themselves were hazy to his eyes, reeking more of Ichigo than of rain to him, “ . . No.”

She buried her head in her hands than pointed blindly at the clouds, “So, those clouds are because of Ichi-nii? Right??” – not waiting for his answer, though he slowly nodded regardless because that made as much sense as anything else about Ichigo’s Ichigo-ness, as Rukia put it – “They why is there- how is there- a dragon?? A dragon!”

Chad looked back up at the clouds, but he still couldn’t see anything specific, least of all a dragon. If this rain was more spiritual power than earthly water however, it made sense that he couldn’t see a dragon swimming in it, though there was this shimmering haze in the clouds that made him thing there was something hidden within it.

If Karin said it was a dragon in the hazy clouds, then he was inclined to believe her with how much better her sight was then his.

She threw up her hands and started pacing back and forth in front of him underneath the overhang, glancing back and forth between the rain clouds and where in the distance, he had the feeling Ichigo was, “Is there anything normal in my family? Goat Chin is a complete wierdo, Mom was apparently a Quincy and we’re cousins with Ichigo’s nerd rival and Yuzu’s sewing circle friend, Yuzu has probably a third of the city covertly under her thumb, and Ichigo is a certifiable cryptid. Goat Chin adopted a possessed stuffed animal as a second son, and has been trying to adopt Tatsuki, who I’m pretty sure talks with wild birds, for years.”

Chad wasn’t surprised at all of that, because he’d been friends with Ichigo long enough and met the Kurosaki family enough times, but he’d also not ever listed it all out at once. Some of the things she was saying were new – this ‘Quincy’ thing and Tatsuki talking to birds notably – but others while also the first he’d heard of them, weren’t hard to believe.

Isshin was eccentric, and no one would be surprised that he’d adopted a possessed stuffed animal. On the other hand, it was strangely not hard to picture Yuzu as some sort of part-time mini-Yakuza boss and he didn’t quite know why.

“We have a talking cat, Chad. A talking cat.” Karin looked a little haunted as she stared off into the middle distance, “Which is a lot creepier in real life than Sailor Moon makes such a thing out to be.”

She blinked, shaking it off when they spotted a large tanned man jog towards them.

Chapter Text

Kisuke was quite proud of the kids for only needing him once to step in as they haltingly figured out how to work together to take down hollows, even if Jinta had yet to realize that was more for his benefit than Ururu’s. As Ururu could handle up to a seated shinigami without problem and these hollows weren’t anything special that the average unseated couldn’t take care of them. She was more corralling them to put them right in the path of Jinta’s swings and keeping them from being overwhelmed as they were attacked by two hollows at a time.

This was also valuable data on what improvements he needed to make for Ururu to further surpass Nemu because the other faux-soul had little combat ability of her own while Ururu could actually hold the lieutenant seat on her own seat if he was still the captain of the Twelfth Squad. It appeared that her reiatsu reserves could do with a little deepening of their own for stamina, and perhaps learning a little kidō as well to supplement her hakudo fighting style, but her strength and speed were more than acceptable for her level and any higher and Tessai would be displeased when she broke another wall adjusting to it.

As if summoned by even the thought of further upgrading Ururu, Tessai returned, and with Ichigo’s friend Sado in his arms and Karin perched on his shoulder, where she was shooting down hollows with the same disturbing ease that her mother had once.

“Sado-kun! Karin-chan! What a pleasant surprise!”

Karin shot Jinta’s target, “Du kannst mich mal!”

Kisuke gasped loudly, fan in hand coming up to his chest at hearing the twelve-year-old curse just like Masaki had giving birth to her, “Did you- did you just tell me to bite you? Your father is going to be absolutely scandalized at the bad words the younger Ishida must be teaching you!”

Her eyes narrowed, and he was moving his head to the side when she shot an arrow at his head, singing the side of his hat, “In what world is us dropping in with hordes of monsters descending on us, a ‘pleasant surprise’!? Do you have more screws loose than Ichi-nii claimed?!”

He pulled it off to properly look at it, where she would have nailed him clean through the forehead if he hadn’t moved, then set it aside to show Isshin later. He’d properly cry to Masaki’s poster in pride at their vicious daughter making her first murder attempt, and indirectly tell him all about how he’d happily help her cover it up.

“One where ‘zombies’ don’t actually exist. Spirits can’t possess a dead body long, and certain not ‘turn’ the living. Most of the ‘living dead’ aren’t even dead in the first place, and just mistakenly believed so.”

She jumped down off Tessai and pulled the door open – pointedly stepping on his hat in the process – to let them go in ahead of her as she side-eyed him, “I see you’re not even going to try to bullshit me into thinking you’re completely sane.”

“It’s a very fine line between genius and insanity, Karin-chan. To find the former is to risk the latter, and it’s hard to successfully avoid being labeled some variation of the latter in pursuit of the former.”

Tessai came back out before she could find an answer to his perhaps more candid response than she was expecting, then she held out a hand, “Where’s your phone? I need to call Goat Chin and tell him where we went.”

Kisuke pointed behind the counter where their rotary phone was hidden, “Over there. If you take any of the nearby candy, please leave the appropriate change on the counter.”

Chapter Text

Orihime hardly heard Michiru as she saw Tatsuki’s amber-gold eyes go wild and desperate.

Her hands fisted against her hips in anger at seeing Tatsuki try to claw and bite, kicking at whatever she could reach, fighting however she could against their classmates’ hold. Her feet started to move on their own closer, glaring at the hollow with rage as she made straight for her friend, not sure what she intended to do, but something – anything – if it meant Tatsuki could do what she couldn’t: fight.

It had never bothered her before; her inability to fight – not because she couldn’t but wouldn’t – because she never wanted to be the man in her earliest memories. Orihime didn’t remember much about him, or the woman he beat on, screamed at, but she’d realized early on that they were her parents, the people her brother had taken her from the very moment he could.

They hadn’t been good people; spiteful and cruel, too willing to hurt each other for nothing more than because they could.

Her brother had never kept alcohol in the house, or drank for a reason, just like he had never raised his voice at her, not even as a hollow. It was the same reason why she’d hadn’t fought back even when her hair had been sheared short against her will. They’d feared more than anything, becoming like them.

Yet, now, she could feel his anger clawing up her throat, warming her belly as she watched Tatsuki struggle, drawing blood and breaking bone but unable to get herself loose. She felt the hollow’s reiatsu start to rise behind those pockmarks and knew it was going to shoot more of those seeds; knew it intended to shoot them at Tatsuki, to turn her against them.

“The livelier they are, the sweeter it is to see their faces contort in agony!!”

Orihime didn’t care if she got hit by one of those seeds, if it meant that Tatsuki didn’t. She’d tear the eye out like Ryō had, before she was made into one of the hollow’s proxies and hurt Tatsuki.

Tatsuki snarled low in her throat, eyes wide as she tried harder to yank herself free, before as Orihime reached out to shield her, her legs swung out – one shoulder making a dull pop as it was yanked free of the hold to trail limply behind – then curled around her. Tatsuki squeezed her thighs around her hips from behind as they hit the ground in a tangle of uncoordinated limbs with Tatsuki bowed over where she’d pinned her to the ground beneath.

The seeds hit Tatsuki in the back with fleshy thwacks. Blood splashed down on her as eyes grew; one against the left side Tatsuki’s neck, another on her side below that arm, a third on the back of her right thigh and a fourth low on her back by her right hip.

The rain falling heavy now, pooling strangely beneath them while above them, the clouds swirled and twisted with a glimmer of something large and finned swimming amongst them.

“How do you feel? The seeds I shot into you are now taking over your body. Soon, I’ll be able to control your movements.”

Tatsuki smiled faintly, the edges blunted jagged edges as black swirled in her left eye, her brown-fading to amber-fading to gold eyes squinting up with a hint of amusement, voice gargling out almost inaudible past the way veins went pronounced on her neck and up across her cheek, then running down her arm, “He thinks he can control- Fool.”

Orihime’s eyes went wide at the way Tatsuki’s voice changed, deepened, sounding distinctly masculine with the last whispered word.

“So, how shall I make you pay for interrupting my fun with that girl. You must suffer—”

“Shut up.” Tatsuki’s voice was overlaid with the drag of metal on metal, a shriek that cut through the air like a hawk’s scream, only deeper as a man spoke with her. Then she pushed herself up onto her knees above her, one arm limp between them.

“What?”

“I said, shut up.” Tatsuki slowly rolled her shoulders back as more feathers seem to thread into her hair, laying heavy on her nape with a strange metallic glint, “You’re going to then let the others go without a word of protest.”

Behind Tatsuki, the hollow narrowed its eyes, “Hm. Do you not understand the position you’re in?” – gradually approaching with its eyes on Tatsuki’s bagh nakh and how they rested on the ground, before one tentacle reached out, slowly curling loosing around her neck to tilt her head up and to the side – “Your lives are in my tentacles—"

It hissed, tentacle pulling back sharply as those new feathers cut deep where they dragged against it, before Tatsuki lunged up and after it, teeth sinking in as her right hand aimed its talons in a wide swipe across its mask.

“Tatsuki!!”

“Gra—!!” It reared, then over-balanced and fell on its back, Tatsuki following as her (sharp) teeth stubbornly remained latched on despite how she was smacked around by flailing tentacles, talons twisting into what remained of one eye, “AHHH!!!”

Orihime pulled herself up, feeling her nails dig deep into her palms as impotent rage boiled in her belly, frustrated tears budding up even as she roughly scrubbed them away; not sure what she could do now other than watch. Then she saw the tears running down Tatsuki’s cheeks, the resignation in her eyes as a tentacle wrapped tight around her middle with a snap-crack and threw her aside with a roar, “DIE!!!”

“TATSUKI!!!”

She scrambled up and raced after her even knowing that she wouldn’t make it enough to catch her before she hit the ground. She still had to try; Tatsuki had always protected her, defended her, been there for her when she needed her most.

Chapter Text

Uryū knew Ichigo wouldn’t drop him, not when doing so would leave him at the mercy of the horde of hollows following them as Ichigo ran towards the eastern outskirts of Karakura, but he was still felt concerned at the way he casually said I should drop you.

It was a little too much like Yuzu as she’d casually threatened to stab him a thousand times with her needles if he refused Ichigo’s apology for ‘whatever he’d done’. The older women in their sewing circle had just laughed, thinking she was joking, but she’d had the exact same look on her face as his father had the first – and only – time that he’d unthinkingly cursed at him, so used to his disdain towards Quincy that he’d not thought he’d known German.

It was objectively terrifying, more so because she was a twelve-year-old girl, and not his actual father.

The promise of eternal regret also should not look so unassuming. Nor so much like disappointment.

It was bad enough that since they’d started spending Thursday with the Kurosaki family, Ryuuken had changed his well-established routine to silently eat breakfast with him like he was trying. Uryū was certain that Yuzu had gotten to him too, not that he knew how to feel about that, or that apparently, she ranked higher in their families’ hierarchy than both adults.

Not dropping him was clearly merely temporary in Ichigo’s eyes.

“There are some maybe-shinigami just outside of town, that are strong enough to not die when we come by with our hollow followers.”

Uryū risked turning away from the hollows to stare blankly at the back of Ichigo’s head because had he just said they were running to maybe-shinigami. Not even shinigami – or former shinigami – but maybe-shinigami like he wasn’t sure or they weren’t shinigami anymore.

Ignoring Isshin and Rukia – the latter because she hadn’t known what Quincy are and the former because he’d had kids with one of his mortal enemies – all other shinigami would kill on sight any Quincy they found if they were real shinigami, former or not. If they weren’t shinigami and Ichigo couldn’t identify what they were, then they should be going far away in the opposite direction.

“There are maybe-shinigami that are hiding out outside of town, strong enough to not die faced with a horde of hollows, and your plan is to lead the hollows to them.”

If the hollows didn’t kill them, the maybe-shinigami would.

“Can’t you feel it Ishida?! Something’s wrong here! There are too many hollows, and we can’t keep this up for however much longer the bait will keep drawing them to Karakura!”

Uryū wanted to argue on principle, because he couldn’t afford to fail or falter when Karakura depended on them to not fall to the hollow horde, and that they didn’t need any shinigami but Ichigo was right. His fingers were beginning to bleed and ache, and his reserves were only so deep even supplementing them with the reishi from the environment.

He couldn’t argue Ichigo over this because his grandfather would not have approved of him putting his pride over the safety of the town. It stung that he couldn’t argue Ichigo, because if he couldn’t do this, then he wouldn’t be able to avenge how his grandfather had died six years ago because of shinigami if small-fry like this was too much.

The sky was cracking above where he’d released the bait, slowly beginning to combine as the hollows not following them were gathering where the reishi was becoming dense and heavy around the largest cracks, concentrating hollow reiatsu. He didn’t know what would happen if they continued to do so, but it would be undeniably bad – and he had the feeling that if they didn’t do something to slow or stop them – then there wouldn’t be a Karakura anymore, soon.

It was enough to put everything else as secondary to drastically drop the number of hollows quickly; even whatever consequences would come for dropping in on these maybe-shinigami.

Chapter Text

There was a quiet crack and a soft golden glow on either side of her face, before her hair fell into her face as her hairpins shattered into six pieces.

The world seemed to freeze for a moment as three glittering sky-blue blurs darted ahead of her from beside her, sliding beneath Tatsuki as pale orange light flickered into existence within their formation and gently caught her before she hit the ground; the other three blue blurs spinning out around and around her, kicking up the wind as it spun around the rain and slowly began to expand to shelter Chizuru, Ryō, Michiru, and Tatsuki within it with her.

“Wh-What is this?!”

“You hurt the wrong person. I show no mercy to anyone who hurts Tatsuki!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tatsuki flown low over the ground and gently lowered next to where Chizuru knelt with Ryō on her lap, Michiru leaning against her, pale. The four of them weren’t going to be going anywhere now, and it was up to Orihime to finish what Tatsuki had started.

“Y-you won’t show mercy to me?! What are you? Where does your empty confidence come from—”

Orihime glared at the hollow, taking in fully how badly Tatsuki had wounded it; half of its face was bashed in and oozing green, multiple acid-yellow eyes sprouting in the mess of its cracked formerly pock-marked head, more than half of its tentacles cut off and even more bleeding.

“What is that look?”

Ichigo had told them that a hollow was defeated ‘by cutting through the mask’, and she didn’t know how she was going to do that, but Tatsuki had nearly finished the hollow off with her talons.

“What are those gnats around you?!”

Orihime looked at the six glittering sky-blue blurs as they flew closer.

“You noticed us! We’ve always been close to you, waiting for your acknowledgment.” One darted ahead of the rest, sky-blue bleeding out for white and dark pink as he got closer, before a small man landed on her shoulder; dark blue scales running along the hairline of his long blonde hair in a loose topknot, slitted golden yellow eyes curving up happily beneath rounded eyebrows, and dressed in a long knee-length tunic with a dark red hem folded close to the right and long sleeves cut open at the elbows, with a royal purple obi around his waist, long black legs ending in feet with two long bird-like toes, “It’s nice to properly meet you, Orihime.”

The other five zipped over, sky blue bleeding out for royal purple, emerald and lime green, pink-flushed white and royal purple, azure and sky blue, and blood red and black, before three more small men and two women were in front of her.

The blonde smiled wide and toothy, “We’re Shunshun Rikka – the six princess-shielding flowers – and our job is to protect you! We are your power!!”

Orihime startled back, “Fairies! Fairies are talking to me!!”

The blonde smiled wider, “Hmph. Nice reaction! Very nice!! But you’re wrong! We’re not fairies.” – then darted closer, right up in her face – “Like I said, we are your power. We’re the power of your soul, awakened by your need. In essence, we are you—!”

She clapped her hands over him, not quite believing what she was seeing, “Owowow!! Hey! Just because you didn’t get my explanation is no reason to capture me!!” Her grip loosened as he grumbled, “It’s not like many people can see us anyway! Only people like Ichigo—” – then tightened because Tatsuki had said Ichigo was the cause, and their sight was the effect – “OW!! We were born of his power and your brother’s love for you, then granted life by your will.”

Orihime released him just in time for the blood red-and-black one to run feet first into the blonde’s face, “There’s no time for introductions!! Captain Talky McTopknot!!!”

“That hurt, Tsubaki!”

 Tsubaki was a small man in a sleek black body-suit with blood-red racing stripes over his arms and legs, extending out onto the wings protruding from his lower back, a long white cloth tied over his lower face like a bandana and excess wrapped around his neck, while his clawed hands and two-toed feet were covered in dark-blue scales, with similar scales at the corners of his slitted golden yellow eyes below dark spikey turnip-like hair.

“Good! You’re saying stupid things!!” His eyes narrowed at her, jabbing one hand at her again and again as he snarled out bossily, “Woman! You don’t need to know who we are or where we came from!! All you need to know is how to use us! That’s it!!”

She blinked, “Use?”

One of the other small men started energetically yelling, “Our job is to create a ‘shield’ and to ‘reject’!!” He was alabaster-skinned with a mohawk of solid moonlight and a pair of long whiskers off his upper lip, a large eye-patch over his left eye with a long horn extending from his opposite temple above his remaining slitted golden yellow eye, dressed in a stripped high-necked emerald body-suit, waving long black nails and restlessly stomping dark-blue scaled two-toed feet in mid-air as he talked, “To activate us, you need your heart and kotodama, or spirit chant!!”

“Here it comes!” Tsubaki brought her attention back to the hollow, “You dare to ignore me!?”

“Yahoo! We’re ready, Orihime!! Just call our names! I’m Hinagiku!!” The energetic man posed dramatically like a kid’s show superhero. Then the large brawny man moved up beside Hinagiku, “I’m Baigon!”

He was dressed in a wide-necked, long-sleeved pink-flushed white tunic with red hems, red ceramic plates trapped onto his thick upper arms with stylized white blossoms half-off the front edge, and a thick royal purple rope tied around his waist into a bow at his back that his wings extended from. A wooden mask over the lower half of his face was painted with plum blossoms while long spiked dark-blue fins flared out in place of his ears, similarly colored scales covering his two-toed feet, and most of his head shaved aside from a diamond of long pale purple hair in a long braid hanging down his back with a blossom hair tie.

One of the two women, dressed in an azure-blue bathing suit detailed in scales, her sky-blue wings extending off her hips, a pearl necklace around her neck, with long moonlight hair dipped in bright pink pulled up into three buns atop her head with royal purple ribbon and tiny silver bells. Transparent yellow goggles covered her golden-on-black eyes and were framed by flared long spiked dark-blue fins in place of her ears. She bounced on dark-blue scaled two-toed feet, “I’m Lily!”

The blonde smiled kindly even as the hollow’s reiatsu rose behind his remaining pock-marks, “Repeat after me! Hinagiku, Baigon, Lily.”

Orihime took a leap of faith, “Hin-Hinagiku! Baigon! Lily!” – and the words she needed came to mind as she yelled it with the blonde – “S-Santen Ketsuhun!! I reject!!”

The three aforementioned fairies shot out in three different directions to form a triangle in front of the five of them before pale orange light formed between the three of them, catching the seeds against it with a loud bam! Bam! Bam!

“What . . ?”

“Those three reject beyond the shield. They create a barrier between you and the enemy, and reject any attack aimed at you.”

“What is that?!”

“And the two of us” The blond moving beside the other female fairy, “Reject behind the shield. We reject destruction in the area behind the shield, or in other words, we reverse any damage done to the person behind the shield.”

There was faint blue blush to this one’s pale skin with dark-blue scales along the hairline of her wavy ink black hair cut princess-style with small round eyebrows above slitted golden yellow eyes. She was dressed in a royal purple kimono with a heavy veil over her head parted around her face, giving her body a fleur-de-lis shape like an iris, with a pale-yellow half-oval at the base of her sleeves, down from her waist, and the base of each wing for the appearance of ‘petals’, while two-toed feet peeked out below, white aside from a black v arching over top from the junction of the toes like geta.

They flew over together to Tatsuki, who’s head was now in Michiru’s lap, looking nearly death-pale and her breathing labored. Then separated for one on either side of the other four, “Now. Say our names. I’m Shunô! She’s Ayame!”

“Shunô! Ayame!”

“And repeat this kotodama—!”

“Sôten Kishun!! I reject!”

Pale orange light formed between the two in an oval shape, casting the four all in its light beneath it, and the seeds in Tatsuki faded away to nothing, spilt blood wiping away like it never was, and the wounds in all three of them disappearing.

Orihime fell to her knees in relief, “Thank god!”

“Quit your blubbering, woman! Call upon me now!!” Tsubaki darted around her face, forcing her gaze to follow until she was looking back at the hollow, “I’m able to reject on both sides of the shield! I blow a hole in the enemy, creating a shield inside that rejects what lays behind and beyond! In effect, I slice the enemy in two!”

“Tsubaki! Koten Zanshun!!! I reject!!!”

He darted forward in a blur of golden yellow light, a sonic boom echoing as left in his wake was the hollow, cut cleanly in two. That then crumbled and fell apart before it realized what had happened, to leave black butterflies fluttering away amongst the rain from where it had stood.

“I—"Orihime was suddenly exhausted as she collapsed backwards, gaze consumed by black as she passed out thinking she was watching a dragon swim through Ichigo’s rain clouds, acid-yellow eye bright, “ . . did that?”

Chapter Text

Kon startled away from where he was half-heartedly playing an arcade game with a high-strung Keigo when his sense of Ichigo changed. The rain outside started coming down harder, and on the edge of his hearing, there was something – not quite an animal roar but not a woman’s scream either – echoing.

Keigo, who despite his resolute decision to ignore anything and everything weird about today since he’d joined them, immediately noticed, “W-what is it? You hear something??”

He knew what Keigo wanted him to say, but he was hesitant to, when behind the increasing sense of Ichigo – and a secondary sense of Ichigo high in the sky near the school – was something that felt dangerous. As it was, a hell gate had opened near Yuzu, and Karin had been driven into the embrace of that rogue shinigami Urahara to seek shelter from the hordes of hollows descending on Karakura.

“Yes.”

Keigo threw himself away from the game, wide-eyed and looking half-a-step from descending into complete panic, “Hear what?? That eerie woman??”

Kon squinted at him, and Keigo started to babble, shaking slightly as he clung to his arm, “A woman is crying and screaming and calling for Ichigo to say her name and she sounds like the ocean at night when a storm is building but why is she calling for Ichigo when you’re right here, right??”

Mizuiro answered as he shoved his phone in his pocket away from where he’d absently doing something with it since the rain had started, “You’re not Ichigo but that other soul, right, Kon.”

“How- when- um.”

Keigo clung tighter, knuckles going white and surely leaving bruises on his arm, but he didn’t look surprised if a little pale.

“So, you know?”

“You guys don’t really act at all alike; it’s really quite obvious. The whole class knows and has already figured out that Ichigo is too soft-hearted to exorcise you if you’re not a threat, and you’re not one if he let you around his sisters.”

Kon sweat-dropped at that, already hearing Ichigo sigh long-suffering at their complete and utter inability to keep anything a secret – the only thing that might still be a secret that he knew of is how Ichigo’s mom was a Quincy, and that was really only a matter of time with their track record about the existence of hollows and Ichigo as a substitute shinigami with the greater portion of Karakura – before weakly laughing, “I’m his brother? We share custody of this body?”

“Are you dead??” Keigo’s voice got impressively high and face abruptly pale like he was two seconds from fainting since he really wasn’t good with anything supernatural despite long-standing friendship with the number one supernatural hotspot Ichigo.

“No- no! I’m a- I was- Ichigo saved—”

Mizuiro suddenly got a very understanding look on his face, “Ah”

“Okay, so, there’s no good way to explain without explaining a lot of other things, and this really isn’t the time for it, but the basics are: Ichigo saved my life. He brought me home, and Isshin adopted me. I don’t have a proper body of my own, but my souls are not compatible with normal humans.”

That got understanding from both of the other boys as they shared a look, “Only Ichigo.”

Mizuiro laid a hand on his other shoulder, “Ichigo really does have a special talent of reaching out to people despite his delinquent look. Ochi-sensei thinks he should be a social worker for foster kids.” – then glanced outside – “So, do I need to make a bomb or two to deal with whatever Ichigo is probably right in the middle of?”

“B-bomb??” “B-omb!?”

Despite its pitch, Keigo successfully muffled his voice so no one else in the almost deserted room heard him and called the police on them, his eyes as big as saucers. Mizuiro shrugged like he was just talking about the weather or baseball, “Mom taught me a few things before she left on her latest deployment. She explicitly banned me from ever using said knowledge outside of dire necessity, but doesn’t this qualify?”

Kon looked outside and saw the cracks in the sky, the hordes of hollows beginning to converge on them, “Yes, but I don’t think a couple of bombs is going to do any good. Let’s just go somewhere safe and hold off on the bombs for now.”

“Ichigo said go to the clinic, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, the old man is former military with a specialization in supernatural weirdness.”

Keigo was staring blankly, “Bombs? You know how to make bombs, Mizuiro??”

“Mom taught me as a mother-son bonding activity – and because her work has made her a bit paranoid. She’d prefer I be able to take care of myself no matter what the situation is. Long story short, our house is kitted out for the apocalypse, of nearly every kind.”

“That’s why we’ve never been to your house??”

Chapter Text

Tatsuki had resigned herself to dying again, body once more not in her control, but in a happy surprise, even as seed after seed had embedded into her flesh and tainted reiatsu started coiling through her body, it hadn’t been able to take control.

A hawk had been screaming in her ear; the massive form practically swooping down over her shoulder in a steep dive and catching the wriggling, snakes of the hollow’s reiatsu in its sharp talons and slicing it to ribbons with a prejudice until it was a bloody mess left at the side of the road. A man had been screaming with rage in her ear, yelling, NEVER AGAIN—!

The hollow hadn’t been able to take control of her body, and so she’d continued to fight, until it had crushed her middle and threw her. Then all she’d known was pain, and as oblivion took her, she’d never expected to wake again.

Her eyes had tried to focus back towards Orihime as she flew through the air; not needing to see her to know she was crying now for her. Ichigo’s reiatsu coiled like a serpent’s tail then, wrapping tight around her as the sound of a dragon – angry and grieving and raging – echoed in her ears.

Between one blink and the next, she wasn’t landing on hard concrete but sand.

As she shakily sat up, looking blurrily around at the endless sand as it started to shift and shake, a distant rumbling growing louder and louder as her eyes flicked around trying to find out where it was coming from. Only in seeing the way the waters of an oasis rippled towards her had her looking out just in time to see the sands explode. Then something massive escaped them for the sky, twisting and coiling and sliding through the air like water while ragged, torn fins along its spine fluttered uselessly and blood ran in rivers down seemingly-endless scales.

Tatsuki realized she was looking at a dragon as it opened a jagged bloody mouth to roar soundlessly at the wide expanse of clear skies, climbing higher and higher before the sky flickered. Then upside-down skyscrapers seemed to reach down from a swirling grey mass, and a cold breeze swept through the sands as heavy rain began to fall.

The dragon’s efforts re-doubled, spiraling higher and higher to breach past darkened windows only to hit something with a meaty thud and snap of bone, blood spraying as the sky rippled.

It screamed before trying again, and again, throwing itself again and again as Tatsuki watched with wide-eyes, not understanding what was happening, where she was, nor when she’d registered a heavy thump in the sand beside her before she’d been wrapped in warm feathered arms, cinnabar and sandalwood filling her nose.

“Never again, fledgling, never again.” A large hooked beak pressed against her cheek from behind as it leaned into her, a familiar male voice speaking into her ear while she was pressed beneath feathers, “I have lost you once to hollows, and I won’t again. I won’t! I will bury the world in sand as I slice all who stand before me with my talons before I lose you again!”

She blinked as he wrapped around her like a needy child, taloned feet clutched deep into the sand against her hips as large wings surrounded her nearly entirely, “It was already a miracle that I returned to you at all, with our bond forcibly shattered and you locked behind death’s door. If not for —, I might not have found you!”

Tatsuki found herself spitting out feathers as he tried to push her entirely beneath him, struggling enough that she could see how the dragon kept trying to get to the skyscrapers and was denied.

Her zanpaku-tou spirit – and that was what she was sure he was – tilted his head against hers as he watched the dragon as well, he began to explain softly, why there was a dragon in their inner world, “After she sheltered me and her partner sheltered your soul in the hollow’s belly, our worlds became conjoined, connected, and then I sheltered her when you were reborn first. Then his soul returned as well, but before she could, it was already inhabited by another. By virtue of how weakened she was, she could not oust them and take her proper place, but nor could they integrate her as should have happened if she lost to them.” – pausing as they watched the dragon drop like a stone briefly before surging right back up to keep trying without falter – “Despite how his soul remembers her, and wants to welcome her home, it is confused over what to do with two zanpaku-tou spirits. If he could hear her, he could force the doors open for her but until then, she beats herself up trying to break them open.”

Tatsuki squinted at how part of the sky seemed to glitter with a thin sheet of ice, turning the rain into snow as she could swear that she felt the presence of, “Rukia?”

“Indeed. A bridge between her world to his formed when she gave him some of her powers, before her spirit then fled the invader of her own world to seek refuge in his. It is what is protecting her but the presence of another spirit has further confused his soul, and now bars the doors for —."

She sweat-dropped at how Ichigo – because this could only be Ichigo (Kaien), that he was talking about.

(She remembered vaguely, how with her soul weak and battered, fading away beneath the press of tens of others, he had wrapped around her; a wordless promise that he would protect her.)

Of course, his instinct to protect others was so strong that even death could not stop him from doing so, and that even unaware – because he was, no doubt – if somebody came to him seeking protection, he would offer it without hesitation.

(More so because it was Rukia who had come to him for protection, and Kaien had had a soft spot a kilometer wide for the girl, while Ichigo considered her a precious friend.

It was perhaps fate that their story hadn’t ended with his death, to continue in his next life. Tatsuki wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they had known each other across their other lives, or would in their next lives, considering how quickly they took to each other again and again.)

Then between one blink and the next, she wasn’t looking out at the sky above sand anymore, but the sky above concrete, and yet through a haze of pale orange, she still saw a dragon.

It looked much more whole, though considerably smaller than the monstrosity she’d just been looking at, as it swam through rain clouds with acid-yellow eyes focused down towards her. Her face scrunched up at how she was pelted in the face with Ichigo’s rain, before sitting up with a groan, tension draining from her body with how she could tell the hollow had been defeated while she’d been knocked out.

“Ugh, what I’d miss?”

“Tatsuki!!”

Then she was being wrapped up in too many arms and being cried on, “Oh my god, you’re alive! We’re alive!!” “We thought you were going to die!”

She blinked down at Michiru and Chizuru, then over at where Ryō as the other girl shakily stood up and walked over to where Orihime was laying sprawled on the ground, “Orihime!?!”

Ryō reached out a hand to feel Orihime’s pulse, only to pause above her shoulder, face circling through a number of expressions before disbelief settled, “She’s- She’s just asleep. Looks like she passed out from exhaustion.”

Tatsuki sagged slightly with relief, before turning her head to see Tessai was approaching at a speedy jog from the street. There was an unusually severe look on his stoic face, “Arisawa-san, are you and your friends alright?”

Chizuru and Michiru tensed against her as Ryō shifted in front of Orihime, and in a heartbeat, he slowed, body language changing entirely to project harmless as much as possible with how big he was, voice gentling, “Is anyone hurt?”

“Yeah, we’re not anymore, but the hollow that was here was using everyone else out here as proxies after shooting them with seeds. The seeds got either ripped out or popped, so the wounds are still there even if they might not bleed out in the immediate future.”

He knelt beside the closest of their classmates, a boy from another year that had passed out beneath Ichigo’s reiatsu, hands hovering over him as he began using healing kidô without a chant, “The hollow was defeated, not driven off?”

Tatsuki opened her mouth to say yes, before pausing because she didn’t actually know if it had been other than a gut feeling, or what had happened after passing out, because no one had answered her question yet. She glanced at Ryō, who glanced down at Orihime, “I didn’t see everything because most of it was hazy, but Orihime defeated the monster that had been attacking us after you went down.”

There were stars in Chizuru’s eyes as she elaborated, “There was this glow around her head before there was six glittering blue fairy lights that made the most adorable bell sounds!” – Michiru nodding along before finishing – “Orihime directed them to form a shield and to attack the ugly monster before healing us!”

Looking over at Orihime, Tatsuki noticed her hair pins were laying on the ground next to her, shimmering faintly, as they registered separately and as an extension of Orihime not unlike a zanpaku-tō to her.

“Huh.”

She didn’t know how, but they did, and she was going to blame Ichigo for it. He was undoubtedly the reason for it.

As a couple of their classmates groggily woke up, Ryō began to boss them around before they could start asking questions of what happened – or in the case of their classmates, simply said Ichigo’s name and they nodded in understanding – then sending them home. Chizuru hopped up and darted over to Ryō when she stumbled, then remained hovering at her side while Michiru glanced between Tessai and her for a long moment, perhaps sensing that she had something that she wanted to say privately to him, before joining the other two.

Tatsuki carefully pushed Orihime’s hair back with the strange hairpins, “That weirdo shopkeeper knows how Orihime defeated a hollow, doesn’t he? I can tell these are like but are not, a zanpaku-tō.” – then pulled her up on her back as he nodded – “He know what’s up with the sky too?”

The strange crack across the sky having grown while they’d been dealing with the hollow, with a low rumble just beyond her hearing and the growing feeling of impending doom heavy on her skin.

“Yes, he does.” He moved onto the next classmate before continuing, “I will stay here for now, until everyone is healed.”

Ryō nodded at her as she flexed her hands, feeling the ghost of her bagh nakh, before running towards the Urahara Shoten, “That outlaw better have answers.”

Chapter Text

The heavy and mildly oppressive silence underlined by the soft twang of his bow as it released reiatsu arrows, carrying Ishida’s unspoken agreement that his plan wasn’t blatant stupidity like his tone had implied, was broken by a disbelieving squawk.

“Why is there a dragon in your rain clouds?!?”

Ichigo blinked, glancing back at where Ishida was looking, “Huh.” – then squinted as the sapphire scales and aquamarine mane felt familiar – “Did not expect that.”

“What did you expect then?!”

“Honestly, I’m not even sure how we have rain. Yuzu didn’t say to grab an umbrella this morning and she’s never wrong for the weather.”

It was quiet for a moment, “Put me down.”

“What—?”

“I said: put me down. I can’t do it anymore! Just for once, obey the rules of the worlds!! Stop making the impossible possible! Don’t summon dragons, by accident!” Despite his words, Ishida wasn’t flailing much, and not enough to make him drop him forcibly, but Ichigo wasn’t going to abandon him to die because he seemed to be having a little bit of a meltdown (again) over his Ichigo-ness, as Rukia called it.

“Hey, don’t blame me! I didn’t make it rain—!”

“Yes, you did! It’s a rain made up of your reiatsu, idiot! It’s what’s hiding everyone else and making you the target of all these hollows! You literally blanketed the town with your reiatsu!”

Ichigo wasn’t going to drop Ishida, no.

A familiar man with his blonde hair in a bob and dressed in a casual suit, jumped onto the roof of a warehouse as he approached, “Hey, asshole! Catch!”

“Catch—?!”

He was going to throw Ishida instead.