Curses!
Chapter 2
"The question I would most like answered at present," Byakuya Kuchiki said in a stern voice, "is why my lieutenant is currently naked." He frowned at Ichigo as though it were his fault, adding "Very naked, in fact."
While Ichigo attempted to explain without really knowing what was going on himself, Renji strode around Byakuya's office being, as Byakuya had stated, very naked. He eventually found his way to the cupboard where his spare uniform hung and decided to put it on since there were ladies present. Said ladies were currently throwing themselves at Toshiro, who was hiding behind Renji's desk, waving his sword at them threateningly. He wondered if he could actually get away with killing them, especially Rukia, who had decided to nickname him 'fluffy'.
"-And we think it escaped to the human world." Ichigo finished explaining, glancing over at Uryuu, who was sitting in the corner of the room sewing himself a dress. It was slightly disturbing how well he was coping after his initial hysterics. Then again, he'd always been slightly girly anyway...
"Well, I take it you're going to go after it. I cannot have my lieutenant walking around naked whenever this thing deems it necessary to eat through his clothes." Byakuya pointed out, slightly disappointed that Renji's clothes seemed to be staying on for the time being. He hadn't realised the tattoos went that far down.
"Nah, we were just gonna let it run rampant in the human world." Ichigo rolled his eyes. Ignoring him, Byakuya stared around at the wreckage of his formerly painfully neat office and sighed in a put-upon way.
"I will be coming with you." He decided.
"So will I," Toshiro put in with a growl, throwing a chair at Matsumoto. "Back, you harpies!"
"Then we'd better leave the women here. Well, except Uryuu." Ichigo grinned.
"Har har. My women's intuition tells me you're an idiot." Uryuu answered, having become even more bitchy since his transformation. It had been hard to achieve, but somehow he'd managed it.
"Can we please leave now?" Toshiro almost whined, his voice taking on a slightly desperate note as the women edged closer.
"I think we should pay Urahara a visit. He'll probably know how we can track it." Ichigo suggested, and it seemed as good a plan as any. Byakuya nodded and swept past, grabbing Renji on the way out.
"Don't think I'm leaving you here to parade around naked." He growled. Renji grinned.
"This is going to be a very long mission..." Toshiro muttered, scampering out of the office and slamming the door behind him, locking the women inside.
"Weren't you a guy the last time you were here?" Urahara greeted Uryuu, who happened to be at the front of their little group. Uryuu simply bitch-slapped him casually and walked on inside, now wearing a dress version of the Quincy uniform. Ichigo thought it looked quite nice, and grinned at Urahara as he too walked on inside.
"Get me inside before the women find me!" Toshiro growled, also rushing past and into the depths of the shop. The final two were Renji, who walked on in with a big grin on his face, as naked as the day he was born, and Byakuya, carrying a number of spare uniforms. He had a slightly glazed over look in his eyes, with made Urahara smirk.
Sauntering in after the rabble who'd invaded his shop, Urahara dismissed his two assistants, who he decided were much too young to see Renji in the altogether. Taking a seat demurely at the low table, he took a long sip of the tea he'd been drinking before the doorbell had chimed. Finally he looked up through his curtain of hair, raising an eyebrow at Ichigo in question.
"Long story short, everyone is cursed, Mayuri did it. We need to find him. He's possessed by a tic tac." The ginger soul-reaper explained.
"Nice!" Urahara exclaimed, seeming quite happy with the turn of events.
"It's not nice! Women are chasing me! Do you know how many times today I've almost been suffocated by breasts?!" Toshiro screeched, at his wit's end. Urahara didn't really understand why that was a bad thing, but he let it go.
"I'd also like to get back to normal. I don't have the hips to wear dresses." Uryuu claimed, although Ichigo, eyeing him up, begged to differ.
"I don't care either way." Renji put in, pouting like a four year old as Byakuya forced him into another spare uniform.
"I do." Byakuya glared.
"Well, let me consult my files and see what I can do." Urahara grinned, hopping up and fiddling with a cabinet in the corner, which seemed to be full of bits of torn paper, keyrings and stuffed animals. "Let's see, let's see..." He murmured to himself, rooting about in the piles of junk inside the cabinet. Eventually he came up for air with a stuffed teddy bear, which he tossed to Toshiro. A moment later he came to sit back down at the table, a piece of flowery note paper in his hand.
"All right, I don't have anything here which can track it, but I know where you can get help with that. Also, if it works on the same principle as a mod soul, you can trap it in that teddy bear. It should block its powers."
"Should?" Byakuya frowned, getting a shrug in reply from Urahara.
"No returns." He grinned, then spread the flowery paper on the table in front of them. "You've heard of King Enma, of course." He stated. "His son, Koenma, has a team of detectives working here in the human world. If you visit him, I'm sure he'll have something you can use. His team use demon tracking devices all the time. Also, he owes me."
"Owes you? For what?" Renji asked, having found another bottle of sake from under the table somewhere.
"It involved marmalade, and that's as much as I'm telling you. There are certain things it's better not to talk about in polite company." He said with an evil grin.
"Polite company?" Renji muttered, looking around at the current group. Ichigo was looking bored because he hadn't been able to fight anything for at least ten minutes. Uryuu was sitting in a chair with one leg crossed, filing her nails. Byakuya was frowning at the wall and thinking deep thoughts, which were probably also quite filthy because his eye kept twitching. Toshiro was cowering in the corner, looking annoyed and clutching his zanpakuto and the teddy bear to his chest like a lifeline.
"As polite as I usually get," Urahara shrugged.
"Right, we're off. Where is this Koenma?" Ichigo demanded, getting to his feet.
"You'll find him in the spirit world, it's the first place you end up when you enter." Urahara supplied helpfully, handing the flowery paper to Ichigo. "This is a map to the nearest portal. Good luck!" He grinned, giving a little wave and then quickly shooing them out of the door. He didn't need his neighbours getting any more concerned, they already thought something very strange was going on in the shop. Probably because it was.
An hour and a half later, after wandering around the town and trying to follow Urahara's map – which he'd drawn in crayon – they arrived at a multi-storey car park. That seemed to be what Urahara had meant by the big pink H he'd drawn on the map, so they went inside and down to the basement level where there were very few cars parked. Uryuu, being quite good with sensing disturbances in the force, led them right to a black hole in one wall, which he proceeded to push Ichigo through. To prove it wasn't a portal to doom, he jumped in after and the rest followed reluctantly. Toshiro just hoped there weren't any women on the other end.
TBC
