A/N: Set after Aizen's defeat and before the Lost Substitute Shinigami arc. I hope you enjoy it.
Disgrace
His stomach drops whenever his friends hastily leave the classroom, one after another.
Ishida is always the first to leave in a hurry. Sometimes he just runs outside the classroom without even bothering to make an excuse. Just the other day, Ichigo almost smiled when he overheard their teacher talking to Ishida about his worsening chronic bladder infection.
Sado follows more often than not, and Ichigo realizes his friends are going to be pissed when they find out that Chizuru has been making lewd suggestions as to why Sado and Ishida always seem to leave so quickly after each other. He knew he was pissed when he found out about the theories for his own frequent disappearances.
Inoue doesn't always go. Ichigo can tell that she wants to, that she wants to grow stronger, but something seems to be holding her back. Sometimes she gives him an apologetic smile, and he tries to answer it, before looking away. When she does follow their friends, she always excuses herself with a big smile and, more often than not, an outrageous reason she needs to leave. It leaves most teachers so stunned that they don't stop her from leaving the classroom.
Today, Ichigo is more distracted than usual.
Had he been paying attention, he may have noticed the fear flashing through his friends' eyes – a clear sign that, whatever they were sensing, it was definitely out of the ordinary.
All three of his classmates suddenly shoot up in their seats. Ichigo doesn't bother turning around, and only hears the rustling of clothes, and sees Inoue out of the corner of his eye.
"Sensei!" They shout simultaneously.
"I need to feed my fish!"
"I left the stove on!"
"I'm going to follow my dreams and become a mime. I need to learn to speak French!"
Their teacher does make an attempt to stop the three of her students from running out of the classroom without her permission. Experienced with their antics as she is, she tries to block the door, but Ishida manages to slip through, right under her outstretched arm. Inoue makes a beeline for the window, and slides down the drain pipe. And when someone with Sado's build comes running towards them without showing intent of slowing down, even their fearless teacher feels compelled to step aside.
"Ishida-san! Inoue-san! Yasutora-san!" She shouts after them. "Get back here! Class is over in five minutes!"
Ichigo feels quietly amused by his friends' excuses to leave the classroom. Before, he never knew how they left class and what terrible excuses they came up with.
After all, it used to be him who was first to leave.
Ishida never slows down enough for Inoue and Sado to catch up to him. A part of him always fears they will get in the way and that they will get hurt in the process. After all, he's the only one who uses archery, who can bring about heavy damage while remaining at a distance. He ignores Inoue's shouting behind him, and continues running towards the source of a terrifying – and slightly familiar – reiatsu.
Ishida remembers feeling reiatsu like this before and it worries him. Aizen is gone, Gin and Tousen are gone, and all of the Espada are supposed to be gone.
He spots the figure standing in the sky, and he realizes that the blue-haired arrancar, judging by the bone covering his jaw, is showing off his reiatsu on purpose. Ishida realizes that the arrancar wants to draw them out.
He kneels down, takes aim and shoots.
His arrow is dodged with precision, and the arrancar spots him. A grin spreads across his face, and it's only a matter of seconds before that same grin is just a few centimeters removed from his face. Ishida receives a fist to his chest, and his body is flung into the concrete wall behind him with a tremendous force that forces the air out of his lungs.
"So, that little shit doesn't bother to show up in person anymore, nowadays?" The arrancar says, and as Ishida opens his eyes he can only notice how utterly insane the man in front of him looks. "Unacceptable."
Somehow, Ishida managed to keep holding onto his bow. As he tries to use it, the man in front of him notices and simply slaps it out of his hands. He grabs Ishida's head, and bashes it into the concrete behind him until Ishida sees and feels no more.
Sado doesn't hesitate when he sees Ishida being attacked and punches the guy with all his might. The arrancar drops Ishida to the ground, a bit startled, more than anything.
Inoue just told Sado about this arrancar, the one with a personal grudge against Ichigo. Sado may not have personally met this arrancar before, but he remembered that this was the one who had been able to dismiss Ichigo's bankai and vizard powers with alarming ease. In Huenco Mundo Ichigo had beaten him eventually but it hadn't been an easy fight.
Even as he punches the man, Sado realizes that his chances may be very slim to none.
"Disgusting!" Grimmjow snarls, as he grabs Sado's arm and break it, as if it is a twig. "Doesn't that shit do anything himself anymore? Sending you weaklings after me. Tell me where that bastard is, or the other arm goes too."
Sado remains tight-lipped.
Grimmjow doesn't ask twice and breaks his other arm too.
Sado was the one who noticed this was the route Ichigo takes when walking home from school. He asks her to call Ichigo and distract him, to make sure that doesn't just walk right into the arms of the blue-haired arrancar in five minutes.
"Inoue?" Ichigo asks, confused. "Aren't you-?"
"Kurosaki-kun," She interrupts him. She tries her best to sound like her cheerful self. She can hear Grimmjow shouting from where she's calling Ichigo, and she's thankful that Ichigo can't hear it. "I left my bag in the classroom. Could you bring it to my house, please?"
"Of course," Ichigo says, after the slightest hesitation. "Inoue, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Kurosaki-san. I have to go now. Thank you for—"
She gets interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream, and her thumb pushes down on the button to end the call.
She sees his shadow at her feet, before anything else.
She doesn't dare look up. Her memories of Grimmjow aren't happy ones. He skewered another Espada in front of her with the bare hand she had just reattached to his body, he had annihilated the two female arrancar who had been attacking her to the point that there was barely anything left of one of the two, and he had hurt Ichigo so badly…
"Woman," The familiar voice says, "Where is that fucking Shinigami?"
She shakes her head quietly, and he pulls her hair and drags her to his eye level.
"Tell me. Now."
Grimmjow tosses the bleeding woman to the ground, and finds himself running out of ideas. He hadn't considered that finding Kurosaki would be difficult. Sending other people after him wasn't just a great personal insult, it was fucking weird too. Why would that weakling Shinigami travel to Huenco Mundo to save that woman, only to be too lazy to fend off an invader in his hometown? Did that arrogant ass think he was above fighting Grimmjow now, just because he had defeated Aizen?
Clearly, Kurosaki needs someone to teach him a lesson – before killing him.
Of course, he's entertained the thought that Kurosaki is simply too scared to fight him, but something is off. He can't pinpoint the bastard's reiatsu anywhere. And he had searched for an agonizing thirty minutes, wanting to surprise the little shit. Only afterwards had he started flaunting around his reiatsu.
He is sorely tempted to kill all of the bastard's weak lackeys just to punish him.
"Ichigo?" Keigo asks him, uncertainly. "Are you alright?"
Ichigo stares at the cellphone in the palm of his hand. He's unaware he's been holding his breath ever since Inoue ended the call, split seconds before he heard someone scream. He'd recognized the voice: it was Sado – and Sado doesn't scream unless…
"Ichigo…?"
He quickly pushes past Keigo, and runs out of the classroom. Most of his classmates left already, and Ichigo rushes down the stairs and makes his way towards Inoue's apartment. He's not even sure why he does it. He just hopes that all three of his friends are already there, unharmed and laughing at Sado for screaming about something stupid.
He hopes so. He does.
But Ichigo has seen and heard enough to be able to distinguish an agonized scream from any other type of scream. And he knows.
The minute he arrives at Inoue's door, he starts to knock. When she doesn't open, he starts bouncing. He sees the curtains behind the window of Ichigo's elderly neighbour close, and he vaguely knows he's probably scaring the poor old woman to death, but he can't bring himself to care.
When he stops bouncing on the door, right after Inoue's other neighbour – an unshaved, angry looking man – shouts at him to take a hint, he realizes that he forgot to bring Inoue's bag. He even forgot his own bag. He rediscovers his cellphone, tightly clutched in his fist.
With trembling fingers he calls Inoue. She doesn't answer and he tries again. This kind of powerlessness, he'd only experienced it a couple of times before… and it's messing him up. She still doesn't pick up, and he tries Sado, who also doesn't answer. He curses himself for being too stubborn to ask Ishida's number. Desperately, he calls Inoue back again, and this time she picks up.
"Inoue!" He shouts into the phone, "Are you okay? I'm at your house, where are you? Inoue…? Hello?"
His answers are met with an eerie silence. After a few more hellos, he thinks something must be wrong with their connection. Something must be… He dials her number again, and once again, the phone is answered but he is only met with silence.
He ends the call.
He's not sure what he feels exactly, when he sits down on the porch in front of Inoue's house. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know where his friends are. He has no way to find them without running around mindlessly.
Inoue told him to go to her house for a reason – that's what he knows. He knows his friends count on him to be here. He knows that, even if he does find them, he would only be in their way.
He's blind and deaf to the world of ghosts, Shinigami and hollows now.
There isn't any way to help out his friends any longer.
"Kurosaki!" Grimmjow shouts into the weird device in his hand. He figured out it is some type of communications device the moment he saw the bastard's name appear. "Bastard, I'm here and I've killed your friends. Don't you dare ignore me!"
The phone goes dead again.
Words cannot describe how enraged Grimmjow feels. That woman manages to have the shittiest communications device that exists in this world, just his luck.
"This is all your fault," He snarls to the unmoving body on the ground.
He drops the phone on her head for good measure, but immediately scrambles after it when it starts ringing again. Kurosaki again, the hypocrite who only saves his friends when they're trapped in another dimension, what a complete fucking asshole. This time he doesn't start screaming into the phone immediately, but it's only because he's scrambling for words, something that will convince Kurosaki to come to him.
"Inoue… say something, please."
The voice sounds broken, and Grimmjow moves the device away from his ear. He frowns at it. Just for a moment, Grimmjow wonders if it isn't the device that's failing but Kurosaki himself.
"Kurosaki-san!" The man says, cheerful as ever.
Ichigo can't even be bothered to ask where Urahara got his phone number. As soon as it started ringing, he answered. He feels slight relief when he actually hears another voice on the other side of the phone, even if it's Urahara.
"Where are Inoue, Sado and Ishida? Are they okay?" He interrupts anything the man might have wanted to say.
"They completely fine. No need to worry, Ku-"
"Are they with you at the shop? Should I come—"
"No, no, no," Urahara says on the other side of the line. "Where are you, Kurosaki-san?"
"In front of Inoue's apartment," Ichigo replies, slightly reluctant.
"Stay right where you are. I'll come get you."
Before Ichigo can say anything else, the call ends. He's not surprised Urahara seems to know where Inoue lives. For a while he just stares at the phone in his hands, fixated on the time, as it slowly ticks away. Then he lets the phone drop to the ground and just sits there.
He is useless.
It is just his luck that he had actually finds the Shinigami while scanning the area from the sky. It helps that the little shit happens to have an unusual hair colour. At first, he thinks he may have been mistaken, because there is absolutely no reiatsu coming from that particular part from the town.
He uses sonido to move closer, and realizes that he has finally found his insufferable target. He moves even closer, until he is just two meters apart from the Shinigami. For a moment, he waits for the Shinigami to look up.
He wants to see the terror appear in his eyes, but for some reason the bastard just keeps staring at an ugly device in his hands, not paying Grimmjow any attention at all. Grimmjow even resorts to clearing his throat.
"You bastard," Grimmjow snarls after three seconds of patience, "Are you still fucking ignoring me? What part of my message did you not get? The part where I killed your friends or the part where I am about to kill you?"
The device in the bastards hands slips to the ground and for a moment Grimmjow thinks the Shinigami has fallen asleep. He is about to annihilate the shit out of that bastard, when he is stopped by a voice behind him.
"My, my, Grimmjow-san, isn't it?"
The perkiness of that voice is enough for Grimmjow to decide that he hates its owner. He turns around and sees possibly the most obnoxious man of all Karakura Town standing behind him, if his appearance was anything to go by. It's a man with a fucking hat and clogs.
"Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Urahara Kisuke," The man says, with a cheerful smile.
Grimmjow is about to turn his attention to Kurosaki again, already bored with the other man who is obviously trying to stall him, but the man manages to grab his attention again.
"You are the Sexta Espada, right?" Urahara inquires, "From what Kurosaki-san and Inoue-san told me, you seemed to value an equal fight in the past. So, this comes across as rather low to me, Grimmjow-san."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Grimmjow snarls, not liking the man's tone. He doesn't discriminate. If this man wants to fight him too, he'll take both him and the Shinigami on, and then some.
"Doesn't it strike you as odd that he doesn't respond to you, even after you told him you killed his friends? You must know him better than that."
"Spit it out, already."
"Kurosaki-san lost all of his powers. Are you going to fight someone who can't see and hear you, Grimmjow-san? Doesn't that go against—"
After all of the aggravating things he had done to catch his adversary's attention in the past hour, Grimmjow can't say didn't see this coming or that he didn't suspect at least something was wrong. Still, it doesn't stop the rising anger in his chest – which is saying something, as he had truly thought that he already reached his anger limit about fifteen minutes ago.
"When the hell did this happen?" Grimmjow shouts but he doesn't wait for an answer. "Hell yeah, I'm going to beat his ass into oblivion for allowing this to happen! We had a fucking deal."
Grimmjow notices that Urahara changes his stance slightly as he is speaking and that he's holding his cane as if it is a weapon. Upon the word 'deal' he seems a bit puzzled and pauzes.
They're both startled when Ichigo shifts from his position on Inoue's porch with a frown on his face. He picks up his cellphone from the ground with an annoyed expression.
"What the hell, Urahara? Tardy bastard." He mutters under his breath.
Grimmjow stares at the Shinigami, or former Shinigami or whatever.
"Kurosaki-san had to sacrifice his powers to defeat Aizen," Urahara says behind him, sounding airy and annoying as ever since the three minutes Grimmjow has known him.
"What a fucking idiot," Grimmjow snarls.
He turns to Urahara with a snarl, and points in Ichigo's direction.
"That there is just a disgrace. I'm not going to waste an ounce of my time on such a stupid, useless bastard. I hope he gets eaten by a fucking hollow. That shithead."
The man stares at him, his face carefully neutral, and Grimmjow fumes.
"You better make sure he recovers his powers. I will be back, make sure to tell him I said that. Next time I will remove that shit stain from the face of the earth, whether he has his powers back or not. Put him out his misery, that worthless human."
With that, Grimmjow disappears from sight.
Kisuke releases a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding when he feels the arrancar's presence leave Karakura Town. It would've been truly disastrous if it had come to a fight with the arrancar, especially with Ichigo so nearby.
He isn't just thinking about the bodily harm, too, as he studies Ichigo's miserable face.
He returns to his body with a quick shunpo.
Ichigo jumps up when he sees Kisuke approaching, even forgetting to berate him for being late as he starts asking questions about his friends. Kisuke tries to assure him that they're fine, that there had been a slight complication with a hollow but everything turned out alright in the end.
By the time they arrive at the Urahara Shoten, Inoue has at least healed all of them to the point where no one is bleeding and Sado can freely move his arms again. For that he is thankful, because no one feels like telling Ichigo the truth about what happened.
It's their turn to protect him.
And in the following months, Kisuke can't help but notice, slightly curious, that the blue-haired arrancar doesn't bother to set foot in the human world again.