AN; Edited after a slight misinterpretation. Also, most people seem to prefer "Nova" to "Noba", so I've changed that. But there's really not much I can do otherwise if no one gives me any feedback.
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Chapter one: Premonition
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It was a late hour, as usual, and the night's silence was only stirred by the deep breathing of Urahara Shop's sleeping residents. Only one solitary pair of eyes were open and staring vacantly into the darkness of the room, if one was liberal enough to call what Nova had in his current form eyes.
It was this feeling again. This strangely overwhelming sense of uneasiness that pressed down against his chest and kept tugging him out of his sleep, interlaced with the sensation of another being's reiatsu. Somehow, his Bount sensor was acting up, but the reiatsu he felt could not belong to a Bount, seeing as they had been extinct for quite some time.
But the mystery was not to whom that reiatsu belonged. Nova knew that by now. There was no denying it any longer.
"… Sado."
The name slipped out of him in a hoarse, barely audible whisper. He fixed his gaze to his lap and knotted his hands tightly together as a silent expression of his distressed mind. How could Sado possibly trigger his sensor? Even if he had been a Bount, he lived much too far away for the sensor to be able to notice him. Could this mean… that Sado was in some sort of trouble?
Nova slid down from the desk he had been sitting on and scurried towards his currently sleeping comrades. He had to check if Sado was all right, but there was little he could do outside of his gigai, and he would need help from either Claude or Ririn to get back into it. The choice was obvious. Of course Claude was going to be less than happy about being woken up, but he could never get… violently angry.
"Claude," Nova called out as he drew near the pink rabbit, shooting nervous glances in the direction of a lightly snoring Ririn. "Claude…"
The lack of reaction made Nova gently attempt to shake him into life, but received only a few muffled grunts in response.
"Claude!" – a sharp push, then a moment of silence before the plushy body suddenly twitched and let out a panicky gasp of, "No, Madame, the buffaloes are gone!"
"Claude!"
"Wh-wha…?"
It took precisely three seconds of sleep-ridden confusion to pass for Claude to fully come to his senses and was, as Nova had anticipated, not very delighted.
"Nova…?" he groaned in annoyance. "What are you… how dare you wake me up at this hour? Go back to sleep!"
"I cannot."
"Heavens, boy, what do you want? It's the middle of the night!"
"I'm sorry," Nova replied sheepishly, "but I need your help to get into my gigai."
"Your what?"
Long pause.
"Now?" Claude exclaimed in exasperation. "Can't that wait until the morning?"
"It cannot." The tortoise plushy retracted into his collar in shame, desperately desiring his zipper mask. "I think Sado is in danger. I need my gigai to make full use of my powers so I can help him."
"In danger?" Claude's annoyed tone was suddenly tinged with bewilderment. "What makes you think that?"
"Please, just help me get into my gigai," Nova pleaded. Claude gave off a weary sigh and strained to stand upright. "Alright, alright, I'll help you if you calm down a little. Just don't make this a habit."
"No prob -"
The sentence was brutally cut short by Claude thrusting a long, fluffy ear down his throat. "Of all people-!" the pink bunny tutted through his comrade's strangled gagging, "You have hidden it well this time, hope I don't take any of your stuffing… oh, there it is!"
Nova stiffened as he felt the downy surface of Claude's ear envelop his soul core, and seconds later, the autonomy he had over his plushy form was ripped away from him. Being so helplessly restricted inside a little marble, severed from the senses and ability of a body, was a sensation Nova was certain he would never quite get used to. Finally, Claude reached his gigai, and it was with a sharp ripple of relief that he felt himself extend beyond his core, into lean limbs and warm muscle tissue.
"There you go," Claude chirped as Nova shot his eyes open and sucked in a sharp breath of air, "try to be back before breakfast, Tessai wouldn't like it if anyone was missing. Oh, and say hello to Chad from me!"
"I will."
Nova stared after Claude as he left before gazing down his gloved palms and splaying his fingers, breath hot against the navy-blue fabric of his mask. It hadn't been that long since he last was in his human form, and already he was starting to forget what it was like. But as long as his power still worked…
Alright. Here goes nothing.
Nova closed his eyes in concentration as he forced spirit power to his hands, amassing it until it ripped through the firmament to his own dimension and created a gate he could pass through.
I hope you are okay, Sado.
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That creation in front of him could not possibly be food. Renji wasn't entirely sure what it was, but food did certainly not look like that. Or smell like that. Or…
Wait, did it just move?
"S'matter, freeeloooader?" Jinta queried, his face cracked into a giant, ill-spirited grin. "Can't handle Tessai's cooking?"
"Just shut up, -" the redheaded shinigami nearly spat, pausing to find something really hurtful to say, "- you brat."
Somehow, Jinta did not appear horribly emotionally wounded by that remark – in fact, his smirk grew even wider, much to Renji's chagrin.
"Now, now," Urahara cooed joyously as he scratched his fan against his temple. "We should not fight at the table when Tessai-san has made us such a nice breakfast!"
The aforementioned cook himself had yet to touch his own food, opting instead to sit completely still while radiating a biting frostiness that made everyone tilt away from him. "It seems -" he began, very slowly, etching grave displeasure into every word, "- that we are missing someone."
"Ah, that Nova," Claude sighed lightly, sounding almost paternally disappointed, "I did tell him to come back before breakfast."
"What?" Ririn snapped her face towards him. "You know where he is?"
"Oh, indeed! He missed Chad so terribly, so he redressed in his gigai and went to see him."
Renji's eyebrows immediately vanished under his headband. "Nova said that?"
The obvious shock originating the question made Claude chuckle as he flapped an ear dismissively. "No, no, you silly freeloader -" this caused Renji to press his lips into a hard, angered line, but the chirpy Modsoul took absolutely no notice of it "-Nova would never just say anything like that. He spouted some nonsense about Chad being in danger, without any explanation of course, for how could he possibly know that?" There was a sudden perk to his voice as Claude marveled over his own cleverness. "No, old Claude knows better! Finally, Nova has a friend he does not actually need to talk to, so it's only natural that he wants to spend more time with him. But Nova is much too shy to just say it outright – his poor head would probably explode from the embarrassment if he tried."
Ririn frowned. "He could at least have waited until after breakfast before stomping off like that. Dumbass."
A sigh of exasperation blew past Renji's lips as he turned to Kisuke in a silent accusation of how could you make your Modsouls this annoying, but stopped himself in surprise over the sandal-wearing man's abrupt change in demeanor. Every trace of his previous cheerfulness had completely slipped off his facial features, eyes hidden underneath the slanted rim of his hat. In deep thought, apparently. Renji did not quite like it when Kisuke turned like that, because it usually meant that he would send someone to do something for him, and that someone usually ended up being the good-fer-nothing freeloader as Jinta so lovingly called him. And true enough…
"Abarai-san."
Renji cursed inwardly. "Nh?"
The fan was unfolded in one swift flick of its owner's wrist and now sheathed the lower half of his face. "I would like for you to attend school today."
"Huh?" Now this was a surprise. "What for?"
"I want you to -" Kisuke faltered a little as he weighed his words, "- to keep an eye on Kurosaki-san. See if you notice anything unusual about him."
Renji stared blankly at him for a few moments. "… You want me to spy on Ichigo?" he asked eventually, the clear disbelief in his tone making Kisuke cringe.
"… It sounds so bad when you say it like that."
At this point, Jinta could not keep himself quiet any longer. "Of course he doesn't want you to spy on Ichigo, you dumbass," he snapped. "He wants you out of the shop before your lazy ass starts growing roots into the couch."
"What did you say!?"
Renji's initial reaction was to get pissed off until he suddenly realized what a golden opportunity this was. "Well," he chirped with an unusually loud and cheery voice, "I'll be late for school if I don't hurry! It seems I won't have time for breakfast." That last part was added with a remorseful tinge that couldn't have sounded more insincere had it not been for Renji 's accompanying facial expression as he bounced to his feet and leaped across the shop.
Just before exiting, the following reassurance bellowed by the pale-haired shopkeeper nearly made Renji bite a hole through his lower lip in aggravation; "Don't you worry, Abarai-san! We'll save some for you when you return!"
The shinigami opted right there and then not to come back until he was certain that everyone was fast asleep so that he could arrange a mysterious disappearance for the remains of that hideous foodstuff before it managed to cause him any impairment.
---
A good three hours later, Renji stood by the entrance to the school and scanned the heads of passing students in search of Ichigo's fiercely orange mane. Soon enough, he found the person in question, standing in the shadow of a tree and in the company of someone with hair almost as ginger as his was.
"Renji-kun?"
There was an implicit question in Orihime's saucer-eyed stare as Renji advanced towards them. Ichigo chose a more straight-forward approach.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Renji smirked. "What does it look like? I'm going to school."
"Why?"
"I felt like it."
A brow slanted suspiciously up Ichigo's forehead. How he managed to do that and still keep his characteristic scowl was a mystery. "You're lying out of your ears, Renji," he boldly stated.
"I am not!"
"You would never willingly come to school and the day is almost over."
Renji blinked. "Is it?"
"C'mon. What are you really doing here?" Ichigo demanded to know.
"I told you, I felt like it!" the shinigami snapped, taking offence at the accusation of being a liar, then added, almost as an afterthought, "Oh, and also, I had to get out because they kept insisting on me eating something really weird."
Ichigo found that even recognizing exactly who Renji was talking about did not make his statement less mystifying. "Huh? Don't you always complain that they deny you food all the time?"
Renji frowned. "Why do you think I'm escaping in the first place? Who knows what they might have put in it. I'm not eager to find out."
Ichigo agreed that he did have a point, after which the conversation crumbled into a slightly awkward silence. "… So, where's the big guy?" Renji asked after a while, curious what had happened to Chad since the Modsoul went to see him. Ichigo shrugged.
"If you're talking about Chad, he hasn't been here today."
"Sado-kun never misses school," said Orihime, thoughtfully tapping an index finger at her chin. "And he's never sick either…"
"There's a first time for everything."
"Maybe… he was kidnapped by aliens?"
Ichigo's eyebrows vanished under his bangs, more because of the gravity in her tone rather than the actual suggestion in itself. "… How is that more likely than him being sick?"
"Don't you see?" Orihime inhaled deeply as she prepared to unleash her theory on her stunned conversation partner while Renji had become unusually quiet and glassy-eyed. His head rang with the few worthwhile words Claude had vented during breakfast.
"… He redressed in his gigai and went to see him… spouted some nonsense about Chad being in danger…"
Now both Nova and Chad were missing. Renji bit at his lower lip.
Damn.
Maybe that wasn't just 'nonsense' after all…
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