Substitute for the Substitute
As he tapped the spirit's forehead with his zanpaktou and watched it cross over to the Soul Society, Anrak reflected on his short time as Kurosaki's replacement. In the past eight hours, he'd covered about thirty-two miles in the city, performed five konsō rituals, but had yet to find a single hollow.
"Why am I here again?" he muttered to himself.
Indeed, this was a waste of his skills; the actual shinigami assigned to Karakura, however weak he was, could handle this by himself.
Still, on some level, he supposed his presence was a necessary precaution; Karakura had seen a lot of activity the past few weeks, and while it was slow presently, that could change at any time.
Let's hope it changes soon, growled an irritated Kagi.
For himself, Anrak was at least pleased with helping five lost souls find their way; after all, helping spirits cross over was a shinigami's primary duty, and he took a great deal of pride in it. Kagi, on the other hand, would only be happy when she tasted the black blood of a hollow.
You make it sound like a bad thing!
It can't always be about fighting, Kagi.
Not surprisingly, she ignored his reply and continued sulking. Anrak scowled as he tried to block out her complaints; he really didn't want to end up arguing with her today.
The schools were letting their students out now, and Anrak perched himself on top of a streetlamp as he watched the humans pour out from the building. He smiled, remembering his own days at the academy and how he'd always looked forward to getting out of those stuffy classrooms at the end of the day.
A person's true education in life, he mused, didn't come from words in a book or notes on a blackboard inside a cramped room; it came from going out into the wide, open world and experiencing things firsthand.
He watched the students leave the campus, and was quite surprised when one of them began shouting hysterically and pointing at him.
"What the hell? There's some samurai guy up there! Don't you people see him? What's wrong with you?" exclaimed the teen in a very overly-dramatic fashion.
A dozen or so pairs of eyes turned upwards at the streetlamp, and then promptly turned away as they saw nothing.
"Really, Mr. Asano, your imagination is out of hand… " muttered another teen beside the boy as he tinkered with a cell phone.
"B-b-but he's right there, I swear!" pleaded the first kid. No one paid him any attention anymore, however, and kept walking…
… except for one girl with short, dark hair, who continued to stare at the streetlamp. Asano had moved on, muttering something about everyone else being blind, but the girl stood there and stared, meeting Anrak's gaze evenly. He held up a hand, favoring her with a slight wave before he flash-stepped away, reappearing on the roof behind her.
She apparently couldn't sense where he'd moved to as she didn't turn around and look up, but he could tell from her body language that she was surprised.
He was surprised, too; it was rare for an ordinary human to be able to see spirit beings, and he'd just encountered two.
Must be Kurosaki's school; his uncontrolled reiatsu has been affecting his classmates, reasoned Kagi, sounding nearly as surprised as he was.
He nodded. It made perfect sense, after all; continued exposure to high concentrations of spirit energy was known to affect creatures in the world of the living, and that was the very reason why lieutenants and up had eighty percent of their power sealed away via the gentei reiin, or 'soul-limiting seal' when they visited the human world.
The sudden cry of a nearby hollow attracted his attention, snapping him out of his thoughts and back to reality.
Finally! cheered Kagi.
Anrak dropped to street level and sped off in the direction of the howl, almost as eager for some action as Kagi was.
He found his prey only a couple of streets away, a moderately-sized catlike hollow, clinging to the side of a building. He drew his zanpaktou and leapt at the beast, intent on cutting it in half, but his blade only carved into the brick wall as the beast took off, sprinting as it clung to the side of the building.
"Great, a runner… " he mumbled.
A runner was generally a shinigami-sized hollow that had only bestial intelligence, and while they were incredibly aggressive and predatory towards lost spirits and humans with high reiatsu, they had an instinctive fear of shinigami and would flee when confronted by one, forcing a chase.
Anrak supposed that he could use his shunpo to end it quickly, but that might be boring; a good chase through the city could be mildly entertaining-
-and that was as far as his musing got as a pair of hands grabbed him and chucked him into the passenger seat of a pink car. Moving quickly, his 'kidnapper' ran around to the other side of the vehicle and hopped in the driver's seat.
"Don't you worry, kid; we're gonna catch that bad spirit!" he declared as he cranked the engine and floored the accelerator.
What the hell was this? A third person that could see spirit beings?
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
"Don Kanonji, the century's premier spiritualist!" declared the dark-skinned man as he removed his hands from the steering wheel, crossed them over his chest, and gave a loud, boisterous laugh. Seeing this, Anrak panicked and lunged for the steering wheel, attempting to keep the vehicle from careening into anything as the fool finished laughing and finally took control again.
"Are you out of your freaking mind?" snapped Anrak, a vein throbbing in his forehead.
Kanonji ignored the question, instead asking if he was a friend of Ichigo's.
Kurosaki, hissed Kagi.
Anrak just groaned.
Why am I not surprised that this nutjob is an acquaintance of his?
While he wasn't a driver himself, Anrak had spent enough time in the human world to understand a few fundamentals of the road, and he was quite sure that Kanonji was breaking a few dozen road rules, not the least of which was the speed limit. Be that as it was, he could see the hollow up ahead now, back on ground level as it dashed through the streets, zigzagging around cars.
Kanonji managed to get the car alongside the beast as it moved onto the sidewalk, knocking humans out of the way as it ran in fear.
"Can you hit that thing from here?" asked Kanonji.
"Let's see… " said Anrak, leaning out the window without his sword. It had been a long, long time since he'd practiced his kidō, least of all the spells that took precision, and he hoped he remembered enough to get the job done. He held out an open hand, aiming his palm towards his target.
"Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south! Hadō #31, Shakkahō!" he cried, summoning forth a ball of red fire that he shot towards the fleeing hollow.
The catlike creature swiftly dodged the shot, which instead blew up a public mailbox, sending blue metal and charred letters everywhere.
Gritting his teeth, Anrak tried again, but at that moment, Kanonji swerved the car to avoid rear-ending another vehicle, and the sudden movement jarred Anrak, disrupting his aim as he shot into the street itself, destroying the pavement. He saw a manhole cover get launched some thirty feet into the air before it came crashing down on a parked car, destroying the front windshield and triggering some sort of irritating alarm.
You're doing more damage than the hollow is! laughed Kagi hysterically.
Anrak frowned and pulled himself back inside the car, looking over at Kanonji.
"No, no I can't." he said, answering the man's earlier question.
The hollow turned a corner, and Kanonji cut the wheel sharply to follow suit, the car going up on two wheels momentarily. Anrak looked out of his passenger side window and saw the ground rising up towards him forward and braced himself for a rollover that thankfully, never happened as gravity pulled the car back down onto all four wheels again.
"You don't have any way to stop it or slow it down?"
"My bakudō skills are even worse than my hadō skills." he muttered.
"Kid, you really need to practice that stuff." chided Kanonji.
"Yeah, try telling that to my captain… " Anrak said sourly. Seriously, did this fool even know what bakudō and hadō were?
The hollow had moved back onto the street and gotten ahead of them again, and Kanonji paid as little attention to street signs as the beast did.
"Hey, Kanonji, that red light means 'stop', right? Right?" asked Anrak as they rapidly approached a busy four-way intersection.
"Don't you worry, I got this!" whooped Kanonji as he sped up instead. Eyes wide with terror, Anrak clutched the interior handle of the car door and screamed as they shot through the intersection, cutting off a half-dozen cars that were forced to swerve to avoid a collision, leaving a small pile-up behind them and a lot of angry people.
As he forced himself to calm down, he briefly saw Kagi inside his inner world, rolling around on the ground and clutching her sides as she laughed at the situation.
I'm so glad you're amused, he thought sarcastically.
She was too busy giggling to respond as the car hit a bump and went airborne, and Anrak latched onto the door handle in panic again as the pink monstrosity sailed through the air. Time seemed to slow as they flew before finally snapping back to full-speed as the car came crashing down hard, sending a shower of sparks into the air as the car's underside hit the concrete.
And still, the hollow was ahead of them.
The flash-step option was really starting to look good right about now.
"Look, just pull over and let me out and I can end this… "
"Don't be silly; how you gonna catch that thing on foot? Kid, you got a lot to learn if you're gonna be my apprentice."
"Your what?" shouted Anrak, not believing the nerve of this guy.
Kanonji nodded solemnly.
"I can see you've got a lot of potential, just like Ichigo, and it is my duty to help you realize that potential!"
Anrak's hands clenched into fists as he contemplated bashing the other man in the head as Kagi continued to laugh uproariously, tears streaming from her eyes by now.
His temptation evaporated as he saw the hollow make a sudden turn and dash into an office building, crashing through the glass of the front door. Kanonji saw it, too, whipping into the parking lot abruptly and neatly fishtailing into an open parking space.
Freedom!
Anrak didn't even wait for the engine to shut off as he threw the door open and escaped the pink death machine that was Kanonji's car. He dashed into the building, following the hollows trail through the broken glass. The wooden door leading to the stairwell was splintered open, and he ran inside, sprinting up the steps three at a time, looking for a sign of which floor the creature had come out on.
It was the door leading to the fifth floor that called out to him, what with being completely tore off its hinges and all, complete with frightened shrieks coming from the humans.
He burst through the open door and found himself in a maze of office cubicles, with papers and files flying everywhere, the humans looking about wildly for an explanation as to what invisible force was tearing through their workspace. While Anrak couldn't visually see the creature itself for the cubicles, the flying papers, noise, and shaking cubicle walls made it easy to follow.
He opted for what appeared to be a short-cut, intent on heading it off at the pass. As the hollow rounded a corner, Anrak was waiting, and he lunged forward, tackling the creature. The two went tumbling down an aisle before the hollow managed to use its powerful hind legs to kick the shinigami off and send him crashing into and through a cubicle, completely destroying it and the desk computer that had been within before coming to a rest beside the water cooler.
Kanonji finally made it up the stairs, announcing his arrival with his obnoxiously loud laugh and declaring that "The spirits are always with you!"
"Mister Kanonji, you have to help us! We're being attacked by evil spirits!" cried one of the female office workers.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me; they're asking him for help?
"Don't you worry none, citizens! One of those spirits is my new apprentice, and he's going to help me exorcise the evil spirit!"
Anrak growled, and helped himself to a small cup of water from the cooler, not caring how it looked to the humans in the room at this point. He drank down the cool water and discarded the empty paper cup over his shoulder, trying to ignore crazy Kanonji and his antics as he went back to stalking his prey.
Quietly, carefully, he crept around the office, stretching out with his reiatsu to find the hidden hollow. The humans had quieted down with Kanonji's arrival, proving that the man was good for something after all. Finally, he located his target on the other side of a cubicle partition, hiding and waiting for him to pass.
Death from above! cried Kagi gleefully inside Anraks head as he leapt over the cubicle wall and came down on top of the creature, grabbing it in a headlock and punching it's masked face repeatedly, taking out the frustrations of his nightmarish day on it.
The hollow struggled valiantly, and after taking a dozen or so blows to the face, managed to squirm free and attempted to run.
"Not this time!" shouted Anrak, lunging forward and grabbing it by the tail tightly. The hollow shrieked and kept trying to run, but Anrak had the tail in a death grip with his left hand as he drew his zanpaktou with his right.
He allowed himself a small victory whoop he normally reserved for stronger foes as the blade sliced the creature in half from behind, shattering its body into thousands of tiny now-purified spirit particles. After a lengthy and maddening chase through the city and dealing with crazy Kanonji, Anrak felt the small victory cry was well-deserved.
"The evil spirit has been exorcised!" declared Kanonji, which earned him a loud chorus of cheers from around the office.
Anrak stood there, literally invisible as the humans heaped their praise and thanks upon Kanonji.
It hurt to have someone else credited for his work, to be sure, but it didn't matter in the long run; the job was done, the hollow slain, and despite all the destruction caused, no one had been injured.
It was the best way to look at a bad situation, really.
He let Kanonji drink in the accolades, and while he was occupied with that, Anrak used the distraction to retreat back into the stairwell behind him, retraced his steps back out of the building, and using his shunpo, vanished before Kanonji could find him again.
He wasn't sure where he was heading as the sun set, other than somewhere far, far away from that deranged lunatic Kanonji.
Eventually, he found himself standing in front of Urahara's shop. As he stood there, contemplating whether or not to bother Kisuke, the front door opened and the former squad 12 captain stepped out, wearing a ridiculous green haori and an even more ridiculous green-and-white hat.
"Long time no see, Ushii." grinned Kisuke easily. "Rough day?"
"You have no idea, Kisuke."
"Why dont you come on in and tell us about it?" offered the elder shinigami, gesturing towards the open door. At that, Yoruichi appeared in the doorway, holding a bottle of sake and grinning mischievously.
Anrak laughed and followed the two into the shop. Relaxing with old friends was truly the perfect way to end a bad day.
