At first Keigo thought it was one of Oshima's runts.
Those guys had been screwing with him through the entirely of his high school year, and that too because they thought he was Ichigo's cheerleader or something during The Fight™. Which - No. Quite the opposite actually, Keigo was definitely not on Ichigo's side because rumours about his orange hair had actually freaked him out enough to cause a mental breakdown when he discovered that him and Chad were going to be in his class.
Although he'd changed his mind post-fight and did in fact become Ichigo's biggest cheerleader, regardless of how the latter might see it.
The point was: Oshima decided that Keigo was weak enough to be picked on alone, but not helpless enough to be picked on while Ichigo was nearby. Which would explain the plethora of sneakily stolen bike tires, groceries and, on a particularly nasty occasion his Nintendo 3DS, every time he went home by himself.
Lately they had also taken to stalking him with absolutely zero discreteness and sending him threatening messages in the poorest possible imitation of Liam Neeson. By this stage, Keigo almost couldn't take them seriously.
So it was quite the horrible surprise when this time, his stalker not only caught up to him but also managed to (rather easily) cover his face in a black mask with hands that felt far too professional for them to belong to a teenage thug.
That's when Keigo realised that he was probably getting kidnapped.
If asked, he will passionately tell you that he resisted with all his might, kicked and screamed himself hoarse, made sure he landed at least one hit on his offender. In reality Keigo froze in fear for one whole second, and in the next he was unconscious.
He woke naturally, much like waking up from the wrong side of a long, afternoon nap. It took his eyes a few minutes to flutter open and adjust to the slightly dull lighting in whatever room he was. He still felt sluggish and vaguely realised that he was expertly cuffed to a chair, but he could not bring himself to panic yet. Keigo felt slightly lightheaded, as if he was floating somewhere. He felt drugged. He was probably drugged.
"Wha-?" he gave up speaking when he felt his mouth go drier than the Sahara. He looked around and saw that instead of a damp, dark warehouse, he was kept in a sophisticated room with expensive-looking, dull metallic walls that somewhat resembled a honeycomb. There was no door that he could see, hell, no two-way mirror either.
Except for him on the chair, it was barren. It looked exactly like what a cell would in some posh-ass asylum. Or like, the Pentagon.
Shit.
Was he in the Pentagon?
The panic Keigo was so desperately wishing to arrive came in like a freight train and suddenly all he could think of was 'Holy shit holy shit holy fucking shit I'm gonna die this is definitely not Oshima's work fucking shiii-' until he was promptly cutoff by a disembodied voice which made him squeak in fright and Keigo was pretty sure he peed his pants.
"Mr. Asano, I recommend breathing deeply in counts of 3 to stave off the panic." the voice said.
"Fuck." was all Keigo heaved in reply. He was so screwed, he was so fucked. This was it. This was the end, he was going to die and there will be nobody to find his body because he was pretty sure he was in a lab and they were going to experiment on him oh my god oh my go-
"Mr. Asano." the voice sounded slightly more human this time and Keigo opened his eyes (when did he close them?! They were controlling his movements now, oh god) to see a man in a crisp black suit standing a few feet away from him.
How did he even get in?
"There's a camouflage door behind me," the man (now labeled Penta-man in Keigo's head. Stressful situations often rendered his imagination scarce so that was all he could come up with) explained.
Okay, so Keigo said that out loud. They were totally controlling him. "No we're not. You're understandably in a state of fear and anxiety, but I can assure you, you have nothing to worry about."
"I-I didn't do a-anything! I swear!"
Penta-man nodded, "We're aware Mr. Asano. We just wish to ask you a few questions, after which you can leave immediately." Who's we?!
"You ki-kidnapped me!" Keigo exclaimed, now trembling. He was going to cry any second now.
"Yes well. That could have admittedly been handled better, but as I said. Only a few questions and you're free to go."
"W-who are you?" he stuttered meekly.
Penta-man paused slightly, not that Keigo noticed, he was too busy trying not to die of a heart attack. "We call ourselves Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. Essentially we take care of government and security affairs, so you can relax. We're the good guys here Mr. Asano."
"That's what the bad guy would say!" Keigo officially had no idea where he was spewing this word vomit from. He should know better than to talk back to his captors for god's sake!
The cuffs that held his hands to the arms of the chairs suddenly opened. Not-Penta-man-But-Equally-Government-Guy smiled calmly. "That's true, but you will have to take my word for it. Five minutes is all I ask of you. Then we will personally escort you back to your doorstep. Safe." He added at Keigo's mortified expression.
There was clearly no point in arguing. Whoever these Strategic thingamajig were, they probably won't let him out until they got what they wanted. Keigo supposed opening the cuffs was just a sign of good faith, he was pretty sure this guy could take him in two seconds flat.
Hell, maybe he was the one who roofied him in the first place.
Keigo shoved those thoughts aside and nodded hesitantly.
The man smiled again, but it looked a little less creepy.
"We'd like to know everything about your friendship with Kurosaki Ichigo."
What.
So this was not the first time Keigo got into trouble because of Ichigo. Oshima and Not-Penta-man had that in common. But the whole situation was a series of firsts for Keigo: not only did he lose his kidnapping virginity to someone not homeless (Keigo would count that as a win sometime in the future when this incident feels funny enough) but was also asked how many times he and Ichigo hang-out each day.
The answer to the latter was an honest and meager amount of once, something Keigo found quite sad. Ichigo almost never wanted to hang and now that he had soul reaper powers-
Oh.
Oh.
So that's what the government wanted to know. Keigo could have smacked himself for not realising it sooner, but the guy's questions were so generic and vague that Keigo answered accordingly. It didn't even occur to him to talk about Ichigo's shinigami abilities, but that could be blamed at the staunch repression of last week's actual supernatural disaster. Keigo however, suspected the man got what he wanted anyways. Because true to his word, Not-Penta-Man wrapped up in five minutes and he was safely dropped home in a drool-worthy black Lexus (the side of the car had the logo of the agency with the initials S.H.I.E.L.D. which, in Keigo's opinion, was much less of a mouthful).
Keigo didn't know how he felt about some secret government body knowing about this secret - even if you could really call it one, there were only so many 'earthquakes' that Karakura could have without making it suspicious. Hell, he didn't even know if he was talking to the Japanese government, too busy trying not to piss himself. His captor - ahem - interviewer was definitely Japanese and didn't have any tattoos as far as Keigo could tell, so he probably wasn't involved with the Yakuza.
Probably.
He should go to Urahara's shop to tell them what happened. As much as he didn't like that asshat, maybe he'd know something about it.
Apparently Urahara did know something about it.
Meaning: Urahara knew something about it but acted dumb to show that he didn't know anything about it. All he left Keigo with was a "we should be careful then. I'll see if I can find something on them", which to Keigo's now very alert brain read "don't look into this again or else".
Well then. That's that. Keigo would happily transfer this responsibility to someone who actually knew what they were doing and forget about this whole situation. He's much rather suited for staring at boobs and playing video games and staring at boobs in the video games.
Life was so much easier that way.
Of course, then he had to go and get attacked by another hollow.
A/N: Here is chapter 2! I've decided to go through a slightly more comedic route than TASS, and so the genre of this story will be action and mild humour - or at least my terrible attempts at it. Chapter 3 will be up next week 'cause I'm trying to stay ahead of my posting. But to anyone who stuck around, thank you so much! And to new readers (if any), hi! You can view this story on ao3 as well.
-SA