Disclaimer: I own neither Bleach nor Kyou Kara Maou, I'm just having fun here. No harm or profit intended.
--
Several weeks later
Tatsuki picked up a sheet of paper that had been ripped out of a magazine. It showed a picture of a man with long white hair modeling the latest fashions of three months ago. "Hey, who lost this?" she asked aloud and held it up. The only people of the class still around to hear her were Ichigo and his friends. The rest of their classmates had gone home already, impatient for the weekend to start.
There were a few seconds of silence. When, after that time, nobody had claimed it, Rukia stepped forward. "Ah, I'll hold on to it until we find out whose it is." She hesitantly held out her hand. Her cheeks were reddened.
"You're blushing," Ichigo whispered behind her back. That earned him a glare and a hand raised for a slap, which he ducked away from easily.
Ishida tsk-ed. Then he took the picture from Tatsuki to hand it to Rukia. Before he did, he looked at it. "I know this guy. He disappeared, right? I wonder what happened to him."
Rukia shrugged. "No one knows. He was just gone from a photo shoot one day."
Orihime glanced over Rukia's shoulder at the picture. "I always thought he was a lost traveler from another world, looking for his friends. He went away because he found them, and so he could go home." She stared out dreamily, probably imagining the reunion of this model with a group of his white-haired friends, or something.
Tatsuki laughed and patted Orihime's head. "You and your imagination. It's certainly unique." Orihime just smiled.
"Hey, are you walking home with us?" Ichigo asked while Rukia secured the picture in her school diary.
Orihime's smile disappeared. She shook her head, then looked down. "No, sorry. I'm going to visit my brother today. It's been a while."
"Oh, right." Ichigo looked away. He was silent for a few seconds. "Don't be sorry, just go," he then said gently.
"I'll go with you, Orihime," Tatsuki volunteered. "A graveyard's no place to be alone."
All of them walked to the school gates together. "See you tomorrow, then," Ichigo said, waving his goodbyes to Tatsuki and Orihime as they went in one direction and the rest of the group in the other. They were about halfway to his house when Rukia's phone beeped. The warning it gave wasn't necessary, as the sensation of Hollows was unmistakable. By the strength of it, there had to be quite a few, and close by. There was something else there, too. Another presence that Ichigo recognized almost immediately. He looked at Rukia. "Shouri is here?"
Rukia didn't dignify that with an answer, and Ichigo didn't wait for one. Neither did the others. They were all running full speed in the direction of the threat before Ichigo'd finished talking. When they'd gotten a little closer, Rukia and Ichigo stopped briefly to get out of their bodies, into shinigami form, but that took but an instant, and they caught up with Chad and Ishida quickly enough.
They found six Hollows attacking a group of six people, who had formed a circle to cover each other's backs. Right when the group arrived, a great wave of water rose up from the nearby canal and formed itself into a hand. The hand grabbed the head of one of the Hollows and crushed it. Yep, definitely Shouri. "Smash the masks," someone shouted, as the Hollow dissolved and the hand moved on to a new target, slapping that target away from the group under assault.
Two of the defenders, both carrying swords, broke out of the circle, dashing toward another Hollow. One ran up its tail while the other, someone with long white hair, distracted it by feinting in and out of its strike range.
That was all Ichigo had time to pay attention to, because at that point one of the remaining Hollows noticed him and charged. By the time he'd slashed it in two, his friends and the others had dealt with the rest, too. But not without some casualties. The strangers that had engaged a Hollow together were both injured, the one with the long white hair pressing his left hand to his right shoulder and the other one limping along supported by a black-haired kid with glasses. All of them were also dripping wet, courtesy of Shouri's party trick.
He said kids, but… now that he had the chance to consider them, three of the group looked to be about Ichigo's own age, while the other two strangers were adults. And Shouri, of course. The latter was fussing over one of the kids, the black-haired one without glasses. Hindering Shouri in that was the third kid. He had to be a foreigner, with hair that shade of yellow. He was loudly chewing out the black-haired boy for being careless and spineless. He added force to his arguments by gesturing with a sword.
The target of the blonde kid's ire shook off the tirade as well Shouri's concerns when he spotted Ichigo looking at him. He stepped closer and bowed. "Thank you for the help, shinigami-san."
"Kurosaki-kun," Shouri interrupted, apparently only now realizing exactly who had come to the rescue. "I hadn't expected to see you here." He inclined his head slightly. "Thank you once again for the help."
The boy's eyes widened and he looked up at Shouri. "This is the shinigami you were talking about, Shouri?" he asked, indicating Ichigo. Then he grabbed Ichigo's hand and shook it excitedly. "I'm glad I got to meet you, Kurosaki-san. I'm Shibuya Yuuri."
"Hi. Uh, no problem. " Ichigo scratched his head. He didn't really know what to do with all the enthusiasm. It wasn't as if he'd actually done that much. He decided to let someone else deal with it. He pointed over his shoulder at Rukia. "Rukia stole all the glory back then, anyway."
"She's here too? Then I'll have to thank her as well. Please excuse me." Yuuri bowed again quickly and trotted off to introduce himself to Rukia, leaving Ichigo with Shouri.
"Your younger brother?" Ichigo asked, seeing that Shouri was still keeping his eyes on Yuuri.
"Yes."
"Why'd you bring him along on whatever you're doing? Especially here. This place attracts Hollows like nobody's business."
Shouri cleaned the droplets off his glasses and replaced them on his nose. "I didn't bring anyone. He insisted on coming here. I tagged along for his protection, as did the others." He turned his head to look Ichigo in the eye and forestalled the next question. "As for why we came here, I think he or his friend," he pointed at the other black-haired kid, the one with glasses, "can explain that much better than I can."
More introductions followed, with enough bows and handshakes to make Ichigo dizzy. He wasn't used to this kind of formality. Most of his introductions happened at swordpoint. Anyway, the black-haired kid with glasses was Murata Ken, a schoolfriend of Yuuri's. The blond kid was Wolfram von Bielefeld. He was apparently Yuuri's fiancé, which Wolfram was very insistent about and Yuuri treated with a kind of amused embarrassment. Shouri's look warned Ichigo to not ask any further. For some unexplained reason, the entire group consisted of Mazoku, though only Shouri had displayed any supernatural ability beyond being able to see the Hollows and shinigami.
The swordsman who had run up a Hollow's tail to cleave the head in two and paid for it with an injured leg was Conrad Weller. The man shook Ichigo's hand firmly, as if he was hardly injured at all. In fact he needed to be supported by Chad to even remain upright.
The final member of the party –- the swordsman with the injured arm -- drew another slight blush out of Rukia. And indeed, he looked just a little familiar, but it was Rukia's uncharacteristically demure behavior rather than his name, Günter von Christ, that let the coin finally drop. And then Ichigo had to fight to keep a straight face.
"It would seem that even Inoue-san's imagination is sometimes right," Ishida remarked under his breath. He didn't seem to have any trouble keeping a straight face, though. "It's a pity she's not here to see it."
"Shame Orihime's not here, period," Ichigo answered him at normal volume. "There's people here that need healing. She could do a lot of good." Conrad and Günter were most badly hurt, but Shouri, Wolfram and even Murata also carried cuts and bruises. The only one of the group who wasn't injured at all was Yuuri. Ichigo spoke up even louder, so that Rukia could hear him from where she was examining Günter's shoulder wound. "Hey, Rukia, anything you can do?"
Rukia shook her head. "Sorry."
Yuuri spoke up from next to Conrad. "I don't think the healing spell Gisela-san taught me works on Earth." He was crouching down, holding his hands over Conrad's leg just like Ichigo had seen Orihime do several times, but nothing was happening.
"We could just take them to a doctor," Shouri suggested.
Ichigo turned his head, surprised. "That works? Wouldn't there be problems with the whole 'not human' thing?"
Shouri pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I've been to doctors all my life and I've never heard any protests. I'd say there wouldn't."
Conrad also spoke up. "The physical differences are small and subtle. People would need to know what to look for in order to notice."
"So it's just the spirits that feel different," Ishida said.
All of the Mazoku looked at Ishida curiously. "I suppose so," Shouri finally said to him.
"There is a certain difference in feeling between Mazoku and humans," Günter added. "In Shin Makoku everyone seems able to tell, but I haven't come across anyone who could distinguish us here, yet. Apart from you, Ishida-sama." He bowed to Ishida as deeply as his arm allowed, and then did the same toward Ichigo. "And Kuchiki-sama and Kurosaki-san, naturally, but I had supposed that to be a shinigami trait."
"Yeah, well, whatever, let's just get them to a clinic, then," Ichigo said. He wanted to get this over with. He liked Shouri, but he had more important things to do than stand there and chat. Besides, having wounded people just standing around probably wasn't helping them, either. He checked his mental map of the area. "Damn, I guess my dad's clinic is closest. He's going to be asking troublesome questions." He briefly considered leading them to the next nearest clinic, but then shrugged and discarded that idea. "But it'll get back to the old man anyway if I take you anywhere else, and then I'll still get the questions. Let's go."
--
