The Iron Sole Alchemist and the Soul Reapers (Chapter 3) Spirit Hunter
by Howlin
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)
The next day in class, nobody remembered Ichigo's odd behavior the previous day. Obviously, Rukia had tampered with their memories again. This seemed to be a common practice among supernatural beings with memory altering powers no matter what world they were in. It still bothered me. Rukia hadn't done it maliciously, but an honest explanation about what had happened seemed like a better answer to me. I didn't press the issue.
When Ichigo arrived, he was acting unusually friendly, to the point his friends commented on it being odd. I took Rukia aside and asked, "Is that the mod soul in his body again?"
"No," said Rukia. "Kon's inside a stuffed lion plushie back at Ichigo's house."
"Kon?" I asked.
"It's the name we decided on for the mod soul."
"Okay," I said. "So, why is Ichigo acting like that?"
"I have no idea," sad Rukia.
"Hm," I said. "I guess I'll leave him be. If there's anything you guys need, let me know."
Rukia didn't get any orders or hollow alerts that day. Since I was already familiar with the course material, I spent hte day organizing my notes and observations about soul reapers, hollows, and mod souls using a cypher that made it look like I was taking notes for class. At lunch, I asked Rukia to push the soul out of one of my Grief Seeds using the red fingerless glove she used to push Ichigo's soul out of his body. It didn't work, but it had been worth a try.
Ichigo and Rukia didn't come to school the next day. Asking around, no one could say one way or the other where Rukia was, but it turned out today was the anniversary of the death of Ichigo's mother, and that his family made an annual visit to her grave. That explained Ichigo's odd behavior the previous day.
I wondered what it meant for a soul reaper to have dead loved ones. Could Ichigo go to the Soul Society to visit her? That train of thought led me back around to a number of things I still didn't understand. Foremost among them, why was Ichigo the one fighting hollows and performing konsos when he needed Rukia to explain everything about being a soul reaper to him?
I was pulled out of my thoughts by Keigo, who got my attention, did an odd gesture involving crossing his arms over his chest and curling his fingers toward his shoulders and called out, "Bwa ha ha!"
"Are you okay?" I asked him.
"Wait, you seriously don't know where that's from?" demanded Keigo.
"No," I said.
"Spirit Hunter!" exclaimed Keigo. "It's the most popular TV show in Japan! How could you not have heard of it?"
"I'm an exchange student," I reminded him. "Does that show even air in Brittan?"
"I'm not really sure," said Mizuiro contemplatively as Keigo deflate. "The ratings in Japan are twenty five percent, but internationally, I'm not sure."
"So, what about this show?" I asked Keigo.
"Not that you would care," said Keigo getting up off the floor, "but they're shooting an episode right here in Karakura Town, down at the abandoned hospital."
"So what is this Spirit Hunter show about?" I asked.
"Oh, I love that show," said Orihime, entering into the conversation. "It follows the adventures of the superhero Don Kanonji as he battles evil spirits and protects the innocent."
"Evil spirits?" I asked.
"He's a medium, so he can see things the rest of us can't," explained Keigo. "But even though the spirits are invisible, you can see the things they do. Sometimes there are footprints that don't look human at all. Other times they try to fight him by throwing things at him. It's awesome!"
"We're planning on going down to the hospital tomorrow to watch it live," said Mizuiro. "Keigo was trying to invite you along."
Keigo's description sounded a lot like what I'd been seeing around Ichigo and Rukia. I smiled and said, "Sure, I'd love to come along and see."
* * *
"A hollow attacked at his mother's grave?" I asked the next day before classes started.
"That's right," said Rukia. "And not just any hollow. It was the hollow that killed Ichigo's mother seven years ago. We call him Grand Fisher, and he's been able to evade the Soul Society for over fifty years. Ichigo fought him and drove him off, but Grand Fisher escaped."
"That's awful," I said. "If I'd been there-"
"Nothing would have changed," said Rukia firmly. "Ichigo refused help fighting Grand Fisher, so the only thing that would have changed is one more person would have seen a battle he thinks of as a failure. I'm telling you this so you won't ask Ichigo about yesterday. He took it pretty hard."
"Sure," I said. "Hopefully he'll feel better when he hears Spirit Hunter is filming an episode in Karakura Town."
Ichigo turned out to be more annoyed than enthused about the show coming here. Attempts by Keigo, Mizuiro, Chad, Orihime, and Rukia to get him excited about it only served to annoy him further.
"Do you not like Spirit Hunter?" I asked him when he withdrew from the others who were doing the "Bwa ha ha" gesture at each other.
"My dad and my sister Yuzu love Spirit Hunter," said Ichigo. "Me, I can't stand shows like that."
"How come?" I asked.
"I've been able to see spirits since I was little," said Ichigo. "Since way before Rukia made me a soul reaper. And I don't like the idea of people trying to make money off something people can't see for themselves. They have no idea if this Don Kanonji is really doing what he says he is."
"I think I understand," I said. "Years ago, a man came to my town claiming to be a prophet. He showed off powers he claimed were miracles from God that proved he was a holy man. It turned out, he was a con man, trying to turn us into his own private army. His so-called miracles were just him using alchemy. I studied it myself because I didn't want to be fooled again."
As I spoke, I felt something probing at my occumency barriers. It was seeking to draw the memories I was describing to the surface. I let images of Father Cornello's masses rise up, and allowed the scene of the Elric brothers exposing Cornello as a fraud to replay before my mind's eye. Then I forced an image of myself saying, "Have you seen enough of my memories yet?" to the surface directly in the way of the psychic intrusion. As I suspected, Ichigo jumped back.
"What the hell was that?" he demanded.
"Remember how Rukia couldn't erase my memory?" I asked. "I can protect my mind from being probed too."
"Probed? You mean I was reading your mind just then?"
I nodded. "My training let me detect your intrusion. I could have stopped it entirely, but even though I'm ashamed of having fallen for Cornello's lies, I don't have anything to hide about that time in my life. You really didn't know you were doing it?"
"No," affirmed Ichigo. "I mean, sometimes when I'm trying really hard to understand someone, I sort of imagine what they must've been through. That was all real?"
"I don't know about all of it," I said, "but that's what happened just now."
"You'd think if you were a mind reader, you'd know about that," said Ichigo. "Sorry about that."
"Don't worry about it," I said. "Just don't be offended if I block you out sometimes. It's nothing personal, but some of the stuff in my head is private, you know?"
"Yeah, no problem," said Ichigo. "Likewise, try not to be offended if I end up poking around in there anyway. I don't really know when I'm doing it or how to control it."
That evening, I took Loki down to the abandoned hospital where Spirit Hunter was being filmed. A large crowd of the town's residents had gathered. I was surprised to see Ichigo there after our conversation earlier that day, but as he was standing near an older man and two girls who looked about eleven, he'd probably sucked up his dislike for the show in order to appease his family.
Well, most of his family. While the black haired man I took to be Ichigo's father was excitedly making the "Bwa ha ha" gesture with the brown haired girl, the black haired girl looked annoyed and embarrassed to be seen with them.
I greeted my various classmates and introduced Loki around. As the production crew started moving everyone into position, a number of people started to look very nervous and uneasy, like they could hear something the rest of the crowd couldn't. I popped in the Mad Eye and looked around.
A spirit was there. It was a man with a chain of fate attached to his chest, wrapped around his wrists and around the building's structure, binding him to it. Where the chain attached to his chest, a hole had partly opened. Rukia identified the spirit as a demihollow, a transitional point between a normal, intact spirit, or whole, and a cannibalistic hollow. At this stage, a konso could still send him intact to the Soul Society without any issue. She further noted that it would take months for this transformation to complete unless someone deliberately messed with the hole in his chest. She made plans with Ichigo to come back after the show and perform the konso.
The show began with the entrance of Don Kanonji. He took to the stage by parachuting out of a helicopter. The man was dark skinned with black hair. He wore a black, fur trimmed hat, a black cape also trimmed in white fur, dark glasses with gold rims, and a pair of gold bracelets. He had a small, well groomed mustache and long dreads sticking out of his hat.
He was definitely a performer, warming up the crowd and hamming it up with wide gestures, loud, dramatic pronouncements, and catch phrases familiar to his audience. Once that was accomplished, however, he turned straight toward the demihollow and examined him. Don Kanonji, self proclaimed century's premiere spiritualist, actually could see spirits.
I couldn't make out all the details, but the demihollow seemed to be shouting in Don Kanonji's face, trying to drive him off with insults and intimidation. Then Don Kanonji did exactly the wrong thing. He took his cane and drove it into the hole in the demihollow's chest and started prying it open while proclaiming he was sending hm over to the other side.
Ichigo and Rukia hopped the rope barriers and rushed to stop Don Kanonji, but they were tackled by security. I rushed through the crowd, using my Ultimate Escape technique to pass through the bodies of the people in the crowd. Security wouldn't be able to stop me.
Then I ran into a person I couldn't pass through. The man who'd come to take Kon was there. He was wearing the same green coat, wooden sandals, and green and white striped bucket hat. And now I knew his body wasn't made of normal matter just like Rukia's wasn't. Moreover, colliding with him had been like running into a brick wall. He didn't even budge.
He casually poked Ichigo in the back of the head with his cane, and Ichigo was expelled from his body. In soul reaper form, the security staff weren't holding Ichigo down any more, and he wasn't visible to the crowd. Ichigo glanced back in confusion to see what had shoved him out of his body. The man who'd done it waved at Ichigo with a fan and said, "Hello. Don't just stand there like a lump. Get to work already."
While Ichigo rushed toward Don Kanonji, the large man who'd been backing up the man with the hat quickly retrieved Ichigo's body from security. I made sure I wasn't partly phased through anyone and got the attention of the man with the green coat and hat.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Oh, that's right," he said. "I haven't introduced myself. Kiske Urahara, owner and proprietor of the Urahara Shop."
"My name is Tessai," said the larger man with a bow.
"I'm Greed," I said.
While we got introductions out of the way, Ichigo knocked Don Kanonji away from the demihollow and started explaining what was going on. Unfortunately, the brief delay by seccurity meant Ichigo had arrived too late. The chain of fate shattered, and the demihollow cracked and exploded in a burst of light. Don Kanonji was celebrating, but Rukia wasn't. She had her cell phone out and was frantically checking something on it. It didn't take me long to see what she was checking for.
An orb of light descended to the roof of the hospital where strips of green flesh coalesced out of the air and formed the body of a froglike hollow, complete with a large round hole in its chest. At first, the face of the demihollow was visible on the creature's shoulders, but he screamed and vomited up a white substance that instantly hardened into his mask.
The hollow rushed down the building at Ichigo and Don Kanonji. I moved to step forward and lend a hand, but Kiske grabbed me by the shoulder saying, "A hollow of that level won't be a problem for Ichigo. He won't show up on the cameras, though. Best not to make too much of a fuss at the moment. Besides, it seems this Don Kanonji has a bit of power himself. Why don't we let them handle it?"
Ichigo had grabbed Kanonji and dragged him inside the hospital, luring the hollow inside in the process. I looked between Kiske and Rukia, then nodded tentatively. He was right. Ichigo has fought much stronger hollows than this one based on what I'd seen of the brief exchange before Ichigo had taken the fight inside the abandoned building. For now, I decided to focus on questioning Urahara. He beat me to the punch.
"So, your powers only function on ordinary matter. Is that right?"
"For the most part," I said. "Just what is it that you're made of?"
"Well, as you've probably guessed, the body I'm using to interact with people is an artificial shell called a gigai, same as Rukia uses."
"And they aren't made of matter," I said, "despite looking and acting a lot like normal matter to casual observation."
"The term is reshi, or spirit particles," said Urahara. "It's the same substance souls and spiritual dimensions like the Soul Society are made of."
"Tell me, is that what this is made of?" I asked, taking a Grief Seed out of my pocket. "I know it's not normal matter."
"Now this is interesting," said Urahara, taking it and examining it closely. "Do you mind me asking where you came by it?"
"I brought it with me from another universe," I said. "Can you tell me anything about it?"
"I can say I wouldn't want to run into whoever made it in a dark alley," replied Kiske. "It's mainly composed of reshi, but I also recognize some advanced materials I've only ever seen in experimental quantities."
He tossed the Grief Seed back to me, then added, "If I were you, I'd be very careful of who I showed that to."
At that point, the hollow caught up with Ichigo and Don Kanonji inside the hospital. The cramped quarters and Ichigo's impractically huge sword allowed the hollow to get a free shot in and prevented Ichigo from ending the fight quickly.
"I see. That eye does more than let you see spirits, doesn't it?" said Kiske. "Being able to look through walls is a very handy ability. I'd ask to borrow it so I could see the fight, but my eyes don't grow back when they're gouged out."
At that point, the hollow smashed through an outside wall on an upper floor and climbed to the roof. Ichigo's sword was stuck in its shoulder, and he was dragged along for the ride. Don Kanonji ran up the stairs to catch up.
On the roof, Ichigo unstuck his sword from the hollow's shoulder. Now in a more open area, he'd have less trouble, but a lucky shot by the hollow pinned him to a railing with a fast hardening goo spat from the creature's mouth. Don Kanonji intervened, holding the hollow's mouth open with his cane. He then clenched a fist and energy crackled around it as he yelled. Extending that palm toward Ichigo, a tiny ball of blue light appeared and drifted lazily toward Ichigo. When the ball touched the goo restraining him, it exploded with the force of a hand grenade, freeing Ichigo.
The hollow finally snapped the cane and batted Don Kanonji aside, but its lucky breaks ran out and Ichigo cut it down. As the hollow dissolved, the image of the man it had once been was briefly visible before it too faded away.
"Well, this has been an enlightening trip," said Urahara, adjusting his hat. "If you'd like to talk more, you should stop by my store some time. You won't find a better selection of imported Soul Society merchandise anywhere in the world of the living."
Kiske and Tessai walked off. I turned to Rukia and asked, "What's his deal?"
"Kiske is a Soul Society exile," explained Rukia. "His crimes earned him banishment from the Soul Society, but as he hasn't caused any real trouble in the past hundred years, we overlook his smuggling of Soul Society goods as long as he's willing to sell them to our agents on long term deployments to the world of the living."
"Where exactly is this shop?" I asked.
"I'll draw you a map," offered Rukia.
The resulting map was a crayon drawing of the streets with Kiske's shop marked by a cartoon bear wearing Kiske's hat. I thanked her, folded up the map, and headed back home with Loki.
Once back at my lab, I jotted down notes on what I'd learned that day. Once I'd committed my observations to paper, I took out Sloth's Grief Seed and held it in my hands.
"Noah said your consciousness is dormant when you're like this," I said to the Grief Seed. "You don't have a body, so no ears anyway. But I wanted to tell you anyway, just in case. I'm getting closer to understanding what happened to you. I'm... I'm sorry it's taking so long."
Once the tears started coming, there was no putting a lid back on those emotions. I'd held it together this far by focusing on the basic science and mechanics of souls as this world understood them. But one more day coming home to an empty lab and the absence she left in my life was finally impossible to ignore.
"We were supposed to be exploring worlds together," I said, wiping my nose. "By the time I've learned enough to fix you, will there be any mysteries here left for us to explore together? Will I figure it out soon enough for you to meet Ichigo, and Rukia, and Kon?
"The Gate said I'd find the answer in this world, and I won't give up until I find it. So, if it takes a long time, I don't want you to worry. I love you, and... and I miss you."
Putting his head on my lap, Loki offered his presence, for which I was intensely grateful. I stroked his head and said, "You died, but I forged a Philosopher's Stone and brought you back. This is going to be harder, but we'll get her back too."
Realizing I was going to be useless for any task that involved thinking straight, I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I felt a wince of pain on noticing once again that Sloth wasn't beside me, then I set about my morning routine.
I jotted down what I could remember of last night's dreams in my bedside journal. I'd analyze them for omens later. Next, I picked up the remembral I kept on my nightstand. The magical device, spelled to glow if I'd forgotten something, remained dark. I returned it to its stand content that I hadn't had my memories erased or tampered with.
Next, my eyes turned to my foeglass. The magic mirror showed me my enemies. In another universe, with no way to traverse the Gate, Kyubey was a distant, shadowy figure, distinguishable only by his unique profile. Other more humanoid figures had appeared in the glass since coming to this world. They were still shadowed and distant, impossible to distinguish features, but much closer than Kyubey. Two of the figures had been advancing over the past few days. Soon, they would be close enough that I'd be able to recognize them if I saw them in the real world.
"The good news is none of the people I've actually met are in there," I said aloud as I climbed out of bed.
I fed Loki, did a routine check of my garden, got cleaned up, and headed off to school.
Author's comments:
Kiske is a scary intelligent person. It's easy to forget when you're used to him, but the way he breaks everything down with so little to go on is an incredibly unnerving thing.