Sorry for taking so long for this one. I like to have a chapter or two done before I update, and I managed to delete about two thousand words of my last chapter before realizing that if I hadn't been so quick to refresh it and see what I still had I could have saved my work with a simple 'undo'. That, and because it's midterm week, and I have all sorts of busy things to do. Well, midterm weeks due to a truly obscene amount of snow storms.

Yes, I changed the title. I was using my working title before, and I finally came up with something I was happy with using. Sorry for any confusion!

Chapter Six: A Game of Catch

Yoruichi was a happy, happy kitty cat. She watched as her little kitten spun around and shunpoed towards her again. He had picked up the basics fairly quickly, especially for someone who was not very familiar with the concept. When asked, he had said that some of the people he now recogized to be shinigami had moved very quickly, but that he hadn't been able to figure out how. Even if he had gotten his eyes used to following quick movements, both by watching the shinigami and later snitch-chasing in Quidditch.

Although Yoruichi knew very little about the wizarding sport, she could see how being able to see low to average shunpos would increase his ability to see a quick moving golden ball half the size of her fist, and vice versa. In fact, she wondered if something like that off broomsticks could have been adapted into a training exercise for the Onmitsukido, or even shinigami in general.

No, it would not be a viable drill for shinigami in general. There were often too many factors to keep track of in one of their (admittedly few) battles that something that small would just have to be taken and dealt with by the shinigami. Hollows generally weren't subtle or tricky enough for that sort of thing. Until the Gotei 13 finally got their acts together about Aizen and his cronies, or Aizen shattered them and made them get their act together, that was all they would be dealing with.

Her kitten was certainly making progress, learning as he went. She would make him fast enough to outrun whatever shinigami they sent after him. People from the Living World who could deal in the affairs of the Soul Society beyond seeing the odd ghost were few and far between, and generally shinketsu. However, the boy was excetionally strong as far as sensing the dead went, and had odd powers to boot. Then there was the fact that Sev was fairly certain that the boy wasn't shinketsu despite his sensing and his odd powers, which meant that he was even more of a mystery to her and Kisuke.

The boy was going to in danger when Soul Society heard of him for being able to see them, if nothing else. It would be doubly certain if they ever heard about those powers of his. In reality, the only question was going to be who reported him, when, and whether he would become a lab rat of the Twelfth's Research Division, a prisoner possibly of the Maggots' Nest, or just plain killed in the Living World (and possibly the Soul Society) to get rid of the problem. The boy might be good, but no one can keep a secret (especially one as large as this when he definitely wasn't going to stop using the powers) forever. This was a problem because she was quickly getting attached to the messy-haired kid. She wasn't going to let the Soul Society take him from her.

In her distraction, Harry slipped up to her for a quick tag. By the time she had registered the touch, he had already leaped away, laughing gaily. Yoruichi grinned at her new student. It was good that he had taken advantage of her distraction, he wasn't going to have to break through any odd moral walls or arrogance about letting the enemy knowing you were there or something. It's such a pity that I didn't find him first, she thought.

"Harry-neko!" She called out, drawing her student back to her. The boy came quickly, and she was satisfied with his progress. It would be a while until he could catch her, but he was decently skilled for someone who had only been at it for a day. "Let's add another element to this game."

Harry, already used to the idea that he was a kitten to this woman, felt his face twist into a partial grimace, partial smile. Any new element would certainly help him in the long run with surviving this crazy but fun person, but it would probably hurt for a while until he got used to it. His legs ached a bit from the initial exercises from the shunpo and before he learned to properly regulate the energy he used there. "What is it?" he asked eagerly, despite his slight trepidation.

"Stealth next," Yoruichi thought aloud. "Then tracking. You've got the basics of moving quickly down, that will only improve with practice. It needs to be something you can do without much thought, or it will be useless in the sorts of high-stress situations you'll need it most in." Her tone was the most serious he had seen her use that day, and he paid more attention. "So, what do you know about stealth?"

Harry sat on a nearby boulder. "I've done my fair share of pranking," he said cautiously, "So I know how to sneak away from the scene of the crime. I've also had to sneak around some when my relatives were sleeping to not wake them. Does that help?"

"Some." Yoruichi wondered why he was sneaking around his relatives if not for pranks, but left it. If there were issues...well, the boy wasn't there anymore and despite how he seemed to resemble Severus when he wanted to, he really didn't look overly much like her friend. If there were issues there, then in the middle of a training session was not the time to suss them out, especially if they weren't hindering his actions at that moment. And if there were issues, she could be sure that Severus already knew about them. "Well, the next exercise you are going to be doing is to sneak from one side of the area we used to flash-tag to the other. Use boulders or whatever, but refrain from using your magic. This isn't meant to test your competency in that."

"Got it, Sensei!" Harry called out before disappearing again in a fit of shunpo back to the nearest end of the agreed-upon area.

Following this was several hours of what seemed to Harry to be brutal torture. Yoruichi, satisfied that the basics of all three skills had been absorbed enough by Harry to be useful to him, had decided to play another game of tag as a finale. She was still holding back, given that he was an absolute rookie in all but sensing, but she was holding back slightly less than before.

Even so, he was still gaining deftness with his new skills rapidly. Admittedly, most of them he had had some experience with (all but shunpo, really) so his reiryoku already was familiar with the patterns it needed to use to use various skills in their most basic forms, which had expedited this part of Harry's training rather easily. It wasn't as if Yoruichi knew much about this, but she was able to guess, knowing what she did about the young man's own powers.

For someone who had never properly worked with his reiryoku before, he was doing amazingly well. She was extremely proud to be a part of his process. The next time she got to train him, she would have to properly test how much he could use at the moment, and work on using his reiatsu a bit. It wouldn't do for the boy to be fazed by a little reiatsu-enhanced KI, after all. And...

"Tag." Harry's voice, slightly cracked by lack of water in a dusty environment after long exercise, sounded from behind her as she felt a small jab to the back. She spun around to tag him in return, but he had disappeared again. Yoruichi narrowed her eyes and threw out her senses but she couldn't find him anywhere. Realizing that this was his technique that Sev had mentioned, she tried again, as thoroughly as she could, to find him. She didn't know if she was surprised or not that she couldn't sense him at all from a reiatsu standpoint, and that her physical awareness, though not what it used to be while she was an active member of the Gotei 13 by any means, was giving her nothing. He had to be here somewhere, he wouldn't leave the training area she had chosen, but she couldn't have told anyone where he was at the moment on her life.

Suddenly the ground she was standing on rushed up to meet her no she was falling into it and in her surprise she didn't get away quickly enough. She issued an involuntary yelp, followed by an exclamation as she tried in vain to free herself from the earth. She was buried up to the neck, and sending disruptive bursts of reiatsu seemed to be doing nothing to weaken the structure. Suddenly her kitten appeared in front of her, grinning madly.

"Hey, Harry-neko, mind letting me up now?" Yoruichi asked, face tilted up as to not inhale from the rock dust that covered the ground.

"That depends." Harry put a hand to his chin in an overly fake thinking pose, trying and barely marginally succeeding in hiding his exuberance at the success of his scheme. "Do I pass for today?" He snorted as he realized what he must look like to the cat woman, but figured that it was less than the flair for the dramatics she had shown around him in the last few hours and decided to leave his hand where it was. If she had a problem, she could deal with it at her leisure...when she was out of the ground. He could always put her back there if necessary.

Yoruichi looked down at herself-well, the ground where her bust should have been if she were not in a hole in the middle of the training grounds with all but her head surrounded by unforgiving dirt, anyway, and scoffed at him bemusedly. "Do you really have to ask, kitten?"

Harry shook his head sheepishly. He also looked where Yoruichi was looking before figuring out what she was seeing.

"So, do you mind letting me up? I know I'd like something cold to drink after all this training, if not food, and I'm sure you're no better, brat." she remarked. At his stomach's annoyed grumble, she amended the statement. "Food for you, definitely."

The boy snapped his fingers and she was standing on solid ground. Yoruichi stumbled gracelessly at the sudden dispatch of the dirt holding her in place. "Kitten?" She asked.

"It was an illusion, Yoruichi-sensei." He helped her up. "The snap was just for effect." Yoruichi broke out laughing, and he quickly followed. The two began the trek back to the ladder to the outside world at a walk, giving Harry a moment to recover.

She put her hand on his head for a moment, stopping them both. "Good job, kitten." His slightly surprised smile complemented her own satisfied one. The pair shunpoed the rest of the way.

Once they managed to drag themselves upstairs, Yoruichi bounded into the sitting room they had left Urahara and Snape in. "Kisuke! Severus!" She called out, drawing out the first vowel sounds of both of their names. Realizing that they were both drunk, she continued. "What have you two been up to while I've been training the kitten downstairs, hmmm?"

The pair managed to look up at her blearily. Urahara pulled his hat over his ears in a futile attempt to dampen the sound of Yoruichi's voice, which rang through the room. Yoruichi took their non-response as a sign to continue her commentary. "You've probably been up all this time drinking, if you're both this drunk. Neither of you are lightweights, I know you both better than that, you reprobates!"

"Yoruichi-sensei," Harry cut in. "Maybe you should go a little easier on them, like lowering your voice a bit and maybe some sympathy? They are old friends who haven't seen each other in years, after all." His soft tone earned the gratitude of both men, who had already managed to begin their hangovers. This gratitude was doubled when he produced a pair of sobering potions and another of hangover remedies.

"Fine, kitten." Yoruichi pouted. It would have been fun to tease the two men for a while longer, delighting in their winces, which were completely and totally their fault. Really, Kisuke knew better than to give her such an opportunity. It wasn't as if she hadn't done the exact same thing several times in the past. "I think it might be time for you to go home, kitten. Come by again, I've got so much more to teach you! And don't forget to get something to eat before you crash."

Harry blinked and looked at the time. "You're right, we should get some sleep. I have enough food for a snack back home, I'm sure. " He got a grip on Snape's arm and pulled him up as far as he could. "I'll be seeing you sometime, ne?" Snape said his goodbyes as well, before the both of them grabbed their cloaks from where they had left them and trudged across the street, presumably for Harry's snack and then straight to bed.

After they left, Yoruichi looked over to Urahara and plucked the hat off of his ears so he could hear her better. He looked up at her warily. He then paled at her rather...charming smile. "You know," she began, "We could offer them housespace. It isn't as if we are lacking in room." Her voice was predatory despite its casual tone. "So, what d'you say?"

"You just want more of Potter-san's time, Yoruichi." Urahara rebutted as he picked up his hat and put it securely back on his head.

They both knew that he was right, but that didn't keep Yoruichi from making another argument, any she could think of. "It would mean an improvement in food. I hear that my little kitten is quite the cook. From Sev, that's a high complement." She licked her lips in anticipation. "We would just have to make living here be worth their while."

Urahara started. "Edible, homemade food?" He shook his head wistfully as he picked himself up and made his way to his bedroom. While Snape's potions were godly, he still needed a good nights sleep both because of the hour and because of the alcohol.

Yoruichi grinned as the seed was planted. With a bit of luck, her little kitten would be living with them in no time at all.

While Urahara and Snape were drinking the times away and Yoruichi was introducing Harry to the basics of moving quickly and finding his target, the Ishida family had a small family meeting.

"Father, you wished to see me?" Uryuu sat at the small table across from his father. The abrupt summons were definitely something to be curious about, and therefore something he would definitely not blow off. It was indeed a rare occasion these days that he met with his father, rarer that his father initiated the contact, and rarer still that he did not know beforehand what the meeting was to be about. It had been this way since he moved to his apartment, on his last birthday.

"Yes. Do you have any outstanding plans for tomorrow?" Ryuuken put the pen he had been tapping on the paper in the open folder in front of him down as he looked at his son's face.

Uryuu shook his head. "No, I'm free tomorrow. What is going on, Father?"

Glare from the setting sun reflected off of Ryuuken's glasses, momentarily hiding his eyes. "An old friend of mine is in the process of moving to Karakura. While he is familiar with the town, he now has a young apprentice who has not been here before, and does not have the time to show him around while he puts together his shop. He is a few years older than you, but the only other person here with whom Severus is familiar who has a child is Kurosaki. I'm told that the boy, Potter-san, has the day mostly free, especially if you go early. They will be reopening the apothecary next to the Urahara Shoten, and should be living there."

"Fine." Uryuu said. "Is there anything in particular you think I should show Potter-san?"

Ryuuken took a moment to think about his question. "Introduce him to the Kurosaki children. Especially the boy."

"Fine." Uryuu repeated, and he left, wondering why Kurosaki in particular, and what sort of connection there was between his father and the boy's teacher, who his father called by that strange name, stranger than the boy's, even, and what sort of connection either of them had with Kurosaki. Not having enough pieces to complete any of his puzzles, he decided to put it out of mind until he had more information, and that he had better get to sleep soon if he was to show the boy around in the morning. He wasn't entirely sure where the Urahara Shoten was, after all.

Ryuuken sat back in his chair and pulled his glasses off, rubbing his sore eyes. He wondered just how he had gotten to this point in his relationship with his son, who was almost at the point where he wouldn't be calling him 'Father' any longer. He knew exactly where that point was, having been there with his own father.

He just wanted what was best for his boy, but Kanae was always the one who knew better how to be a family. After her death, there was nothing left between them but sorrow. She would have hated this, she wouldn't have stood for the distance. Then again, it should have been impossible for Uryuu to live past her death when her death was for such a reason. That was no comfort, because he didn't know if he would be a person still or a robot if he didn't have at least Uryuu, aloof Uryuu, to care about from the shadows of his young boy's life.