Haru looked at the date. Tomorrow was the day she died. When Ichigo first learned that the shadowy forms he saw were in fact the souls of the dead. It was after the incident that Haru and Ichigo learned they had magic.

"It's tomorrow," said Haru.

"I know. Any ideas how to get her off our back?"

"Oh, I have an idea alright. She isn't going to like it though," grinned Haru evilly.

"What is this?" she asked.

"A potion to see what sort of animal you can turn to," said Haru.

Unknown to Rukia, Haru had mastered the art of lying his ass off without getting caught. It came in handy when he was pretending to be Ichigo.

Rukia looked at it with misgivings. Ever since she drank one of Ichigo's potions, she had been wary of them. (She later tried a hair changing potion made by Haru, and was horrified to learn that Ichigo was horrible at potions.) She downed it with distrust...and abruptly turned into a rabbit.

She blinked, and realized Haru was grinning evilly at her.

"I'm sure Yuzu wouldn't mind carrying her new doll with us," said Haru.

Ichigo walked in, took one look at the rabbit, and started howling with laughter.

Haru stayed behind, having released Rukia from the prank he pulled on her an hour ago. He was about to go find Isshin when he felt the earth tremble. But it wasn't an earthquake.

He looked around...and his face paled. Before him was a hollow...but not just any hollow.

It was the hollow who had killed their mother, and left them with only Isshin.

The hollow was clearly after Karin and Yuzu. Haru paled even further.

"Karin, Yuzu, why don't you conjure some flowers for Mom?"

"Haru, you know we're not allowed..."

She took in the look on Haru's face.

"Something's here, isn't it?"

Haru said nothing, but his eyes spoke volumes. Karin took out her wand, and Yuzu followed her lead. The twins conjured some pretty flowers for their mother, while Haru placed a spell that would keep the weeds from growing.

The hollow didn't leave. It appeared more interested in them, meaning it was smarter than the rest. Most hollows never went after mages, because they were more trouble than normal humans.

However, whenever a hollow did target a mage, then it usually got a massive power boost.

There was a reason why Japan trained their mages to teleport within their third year. With the amount of fallen spirits that inhabited and hunted in the country, teleporting was the last line of defense for a mage.

Yuzu and Karin were going to start that training by next week. And Haru wasn't nearly as good at teleport as Ichigo was.

Too bad Ichigo wasn't anywhere near them at the moment, and his spirit sense wasn't good enough to feel the danger nearby.

Haru took a defensive stance, and told the girls to find Isshin. While the man pretended he couldn't see spirits (Haru had seen him glancing every so often at Ichigo's ghost visitors, so he knew it was an act and didn't mention it) he would still be able to protect the girls.

The hollow sneered at him, and knew he was a better meal than the brats the boy was protecting.

"Such a delicious morsel..." he sneered.

"Hado 30: Pale Fire Crash!"

The blast of blue flames hit the hollow, but did very little damage. Without warning, the hollow's claw swiped at Haru, and caused the teen to crash onto a nearby gravestone.

Haru could tell three of his ribs were broken. His healing wasn't nearly as good as Yuzu's. Karin was more of a defensive and long range attacker.

Haru got up, and tried to move. Even though he was aware of how phenomenally bad an idea it was. He didn't dare teleport, because he could end up far, far worse than just with a few broken ribs.

He managed to get a few feet, since he could tell where Ichigo was at any time. He tried to go for his brother, only to have his soul thrown out of his body courtesy of the hollow. Apparently the monster didn't feel like dealing with eating his entire body.

Haru blinked, and realized most of the pain was gone. Then he saw something that horrified him more than the creature who was trying to eat him.

It was a grotesque parody of a baby, only it certainly wasn't one. The thing looked like a cross of a snake, a hollow, and some deranged madman. If Haru had been in his body, he would have been fighting the urge to vomit at the sight of it.

The hollow didn't care about the baby thing, he was more interested in Haru. He destroyed the soul chain, and the resulting blast of energy caught Ichigo's attention from nearly half a mile away.

Why he was that far, Haru had no idea.

Ichigo grabbed Rukia and teleported them. The soul reaper then had been talking to blinked in surprise.

Ichigo was horrified by the sight of the baby thing, but his horror grew tenfold when he saw Haru in a soul reaper's outfit.

"HARU!"

"Ichigo! This freak is the one who killed mom!"

"WHAT?"

Ichigo took out his oversized sword, and prepared to kill the hollow. Haru would never lie to him about something like this. Ichigo knew Haru had been hiding something ever since Rukia showed up.

And know he knew. Haru knew who killed their mother, but he had no proof until now.

Rukia took one look at Haru's sword, and knew something was off about it. For one thing, she knew for a fact he had more spiritual power than that. For another, the hilt looked far to detailed for an unnamed sword.

"Haru, what's his name?" she asked.

Haru blinked, and listened.

"I've always known his name. I just didn't care about his powers."

Ichigo crashed next to him. He looked pissed. Haru had an evil idea.

"Hey Ichigo, do you think now I'll be able to summon my familiar without the block?"

"Probably. Can't be any worse than I'm doing out here," he growled.

Haru's evil grin grew to disturbing proportions, as a circle sprang out from beneath his feet.

The hollow before them paused. He had never had mage prey before.

The circle grew...as something powerful started to come through the dimensions. Haru was one of the most powerful mages in Japan, having beaten out an elder practitioner for the title.

He rarely made enemies of people he beat, usually because of his blunt honesty about needing more experience and knowledge before he had a right to boast.

Rukia stared at Haru. Before, when she sensed his spiritual power, he was barely at a third seat's level.

But his magic was an entirely different story. It was Captain level or even higher easily! It seemed that Ichigo was the powerhouse when it came to soul powers while Haru backed him up with his insane magic levels. It was an even balance of reishi and magic with those two.

The power levels of the circle were almost as bad as Haru's magical potential. Whatever he was summoning, it was almost as strong as Ichigo, if not worse.

What appeared threw everyone off guard. Instead of some insanely huge beast...what Haru got was a large bone white cat with fierce looking eyes.

Ichigo patted his brother amused.

"You just can't say no to the cats, can you brother?"

"Shut it. If you had any sense, you would feel his power levels are close yours, you ass."

"The fuck? How did I end up in this piss ant place?"

Haru snickered. He could tell that his familiar was fun already.

"Sorry, but I needed to summon a familiar and you got picked. What's your name anyway?"

The panther stared at him. He had heard of mages before (any above Menos class had) but he had never seen one before. And he would have heard if there was a soul reaper with mage powers.

"Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez."

"Right. Nice to meet ya Grimmjow. Judging by the gaping hole in your torso, you must be a hollow. If that's true, are you hungry at the moment?"

Grimmjow stared at him harder. Then he saw why the kid asked. Standing there absolutely amused was Grand Fisher.

Annoying bastard, but he had never pissed him off enough that he felt the need to devour and consume his powers. Grimmjow remembered something his fraccion had mentioned about an orange haired soul reaper being on Fisher's list.

Looked like he had interrupted Grand Fisher's little game. He didn't feel like killing the bastard just yet.

"This is the best you pathetic humans could come up with? A lowly Adjuchas?" sneered Grand Fisher.

On second thought, if he helped this kid out now, he could reach Espada level a lot quicker!

Grimmjow snarled at him, looking fit to rip the hollow's throat out.

Even with Grimmjow's enthusiastic strikes on Grand Fisher, and Ichigo's insane power levels, the hollow escaped.

But he wouldn't be coming after Ichigo anytime soon. With the amount of damage Haru, Ichigo and Grimmjow did to the hollow, it would take months, if not a year to recover.

Isshin gave Grimmjow an odd look, but said nothing when Haru explained that the hollow was his familiar.

In a short week, Grimmjow had found that he rather liked playing the part of a familiar. With Ichigo's nonexistent spirit control, he could eat as many hollows as he wanted. And the World of the Living was a hundred times more interesting than Hueco Mundo.

(Haru had been delighted to finally find a subject for his dissertation, and grilled an amused Grimmjow about hollows. It was one of the rare subjects no one had ever really broached in depth.)

Haru didn't mind that Grimmjow returned to Hueco Mundo every so often, to visit his fraccion. Who were highly amused he had somehow gotten roped into being a familiar. Haru was a very good partner, since he could keep up with Grimmjow's panther form.

Grimmjow had been surprised and pleased when he learned the human he had been saddled with as a partner could turn into a black panther. And Haru had no issues with him swearing, only that he keep it to a minimum around his sisters.

He found it hilarious that Haru encouraged him to locate Ichigo's new hiding spot for his stash every week. Though he had to admit, Ichigo had good taste in porn.

Though for some reason there was an equal number of yaoi in that stash...

Everything seemed relatively peaceful...until for some reason the number of hollows began to drop off in the town. Grimmjow was pissed about that, because it meant he had to work even harder to eat prey.

He took to hanging around Ichigo, mostly because unlike Haru, Ichigo had absolutely no control over his powers and was therefore a walking bait for hollows.

Only the strongest of hollows would even dare to attack Haru, which was the only reason Grimmjow accepted the position of familiar. Haru could injure the stronger hollows enough that Grimmjow could finish them off and get stronger.

Ichigo stared at Uryu. He was the reason why the hollow attacks had dropped off so dramatically?

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"As long as the two of you were mages, I didn't care what you did. But now that you're both soul reapers, you are now my enemies."

"...You do realize we only have their abilities, not their affiliations right?"

Uryu blinked. He wasn't expecting that sort of comeback.

"Haru and I are hardly on the side of the soul society. I just help Rukia out because it's my fault she's stuck."

"Oi 'Berry, who's the four eyes?"

"He's the idiot who's been cutting down on your approved snacks," Ichigo said with a grin.

Ichigo and Grimmjow got along like a house on fire. After the family got over the fact he could turn into a rather human looking hollow (with hair that made Ichigo feel vindicated for not having the only odd colored hair in the house) the two just clicked.

It didn't hurt that Grimmjow could keep up with Ichigo on his games. Haru and Karin came close, but Ichigo was the undisputed gamer in the house.

Grimmjow kicked his ass six times out of ten, to Ichigo's delight. He hadn't had a worthy opponent in a LONG time.

Chad was good, but he wasn't much of a conversationalist and he usually ended up chatting Haru over healing potions. For some odd reason, Chad had yet to reach his full height, and as a result his bones tended to creak quite a bit. Haru had helped the teen experiment with potions to ease that problem, but so far he hadn't found anything to get rid of the aches.

Ichigo always teased Haru about his height, but as Haru liked to remind his brother, quite loudly, that while he was less than five inches shorter than his brother in height, he had it where it counted.

Ichigo always shut up after that comment. Though Haru did find the blushing that the girls sent his way after making it extremely annoying.

Haru had told Grimmjow he was free to harass Ichigo so long as he left the humans alone. According to the Adjuchas, the hollows that were drawn to Ichigo's untrained spiritual powers were nothing more than snacks to him.

Haru could honestly care less how many of the weaker hollows the panther ate, so long as he didn't get a stomachache from it. Grimmjow had laughed when he heard that one, because it was highly unlikely such weaklings would give him any indigestion. Unless one had been a real scumbag in life.

He had eaten a few of those, and they always gave him the worst case of gas.

Uryu stared at the hollow, shocked that Ichigo was standing beside it without trying to kill it. Before he could aim his bow at it, the hollow looked him dead in the eye and said "Try it, and I'll rip your throat out. I ain't like the weaklings you've been culling for the past week."

"He...can talk."

"He's not a regular hollow. According to him, there are varying levels of power in their world, and he's stronger than the ones that usually show up."

"He can talk. Why aren't you attacking him?"

"Haru's familiar. He would be pissed if he learned that I killed it when it hasn't caused us any trouble," shrugged Ichigo.

Uryu lowered his bow. This was just the biggest piece of evidence that Ichigo was nothing like the soul reapers who had killed his grandfather.

Ichigo could honestly care less about Uryu's powers. He was more concerned with protecting everyone he cared about.