Ichigo sighs, closing the door of his room behind him. He tosses his backpack on a nearby chair and sinks onto his bed.
His closet door crashes open. He leaps to his feet, whirling around.
Rukia hops out of his closet, waving a cell phone at him. "Ichigo! It took you long enough."
Ichigo levels a finger at her. "You're in my closet!"
"That doesn't matter. We have an order!" She makes a palm thrust at his chest with a gloved hand.
"Woah, hold on!" Ichigo catches her hand by the wrist. "What do you mean it doesn't matter? What the hell were you doing in there? Have you been sneaking around my room?"
"I'll have you know I haven't done anything," Rukia sniffs. Her expression becomes serious again. "We can deal with this later. The hollow is most likely after your friend."
"What?" Ichigo's eyes widen. "Tell me sooner! Where?"
Chad glances around, waiting for the light to change, and dashes across the crosswalk when it does. He cradles the birdcage in his arms. It's about the length of Ichigo's forearm, but seems like a toy next to him. He has his eyes down, focused on running, but glances up at a screeching sound of brakes. His eyes widen. A wildly swerving car is careening straight towards him.
"Chad!"
Ichigo tackles Chad from the side, shoving him out of the way. Chad goes sprawling on the ground, Ichigo scrambling up next to him. Behind them, the car barrels into the hubcap of another with a deafening crunch of metal. Ichigo winces.
"Chad! Are you okay?"
Chad picks himself up off the ground, careful of his birdcage. He rubs at his head, his eyes skipping over Ichigo entirely. "What… hit me?"
Oh, yeah. Invisible.
Chad's eyes widen as they look past Ichigo to see the two-car wreck now blocking up half the street. The first car's hood is near completely crumpled, smoke pouring out from under it. Other cars behind it skid to a stop, swerving to avoid the blockage.
Rukia lands in front of Ichigo from a flying leap off a car roof, running at Chad. "C'mon! We have to get out of here."
Chad blinks. "New girl?"
She grabs him by the arm as she runs past, not slowing down. "No time for explanations. Let's go!"
"Um, new girl?" Chad says, jogging after Rukia so she won't have to drag him, something that wouldn't be very successful anyway. "What's happening? Where are we going?"
Rukia glances around, then slows to a stop, gasping for breath.
"Okay. I don't think it followed us." She looks around again, frowning. "Ichigo?"
Ichigo hops down from a roof and lands next to her. "Followed us? Are you sure there even was a hollow?"
Rukia crosses her arms. "Certain! Just because you can't—"
"Uh, new girl?" Chad says, following her sight but finding nothing. "Are you talking to Ichigo?"
"Don't worry about it," she says.
Chad peers down at her from behind his fringe of hair. "You said it was following me. Do you know something?"
"Well, that depends on what you think I know," Rukia says airily.
"Can you see ghosts?" Chad says.
Not a flicker of emotion shows on Rukia's face as she looks over Chad with an analytic eye. Rukia's poker face is really something to be reckoned with, Ichigo thinks.
"Hm," she says. "That's an intriguing idea. Where did you get that from?"
Chad lifts the parakeet cage in his hand a few inches. "Yuuichi. He said he was a little boy. Said he was being chased by a monster."
Ichigo notices the black eyes of the bird set straight on him. He walks up to it, furrowing his brow.
"What's going on?" he says. The bird huddles under him as if trying to shrink. "You… Do you know something?"
"I'm sorry!" the bird cries, flapping its wings. The tips clip the bars of the cage, knocking one or two feathers loose. "I'm really, really sorry, mister, it's all my fault!"
"Hey, it's okay," Ichigo says, softening his expression. He reaches a hand toward the cage, unsure on what to do. "Calm down, okay? If there's a problem, I'll deal with it."
"No! You can't!" it says. "He'll get you! You're in danger, and it's all because of me!"
Chad is watching the bird very carefully. "Who… are you talking to?"
"He's your friend!" It turns to him and raises its wings earnestly. "The one you asked about. He's got a sword and he's wearing black like that nice man who tried to help me."
Chad frowns. "Ichigo?"
"Yeah, hey, Chad," Ichigo says somewhat awkwardly. He frowns at the parakeet. What had it said? Another shinigami talked to it, but the soul in the parakeet hasn't been konsou'd yet…
"Ichigo is a ghost?" Chad says to Rukia.
Rukia waves a hand. "He's part-time." She walks up to the cage next to Ichigo. "Yuuichi, what were you just saying? There was another man who tried to help you?"
Yuuichi drops his gaze to the ground. "There were two. They said they would fight the monster, but— but—" He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "I told them to run away, but neither of them listened. They said it was their duty. But I didn't ever see either of them again!"
The bird's tiny body is trembling. He buries his head under one wing, his voice muffled. "They tried to fight but it got them. There was a lot of blood, and screaming, and explosions, and the monster was laughing! And you guys have been really nice to me, and… and I don't want the same thing to happen to any of you!"
"Yuuichi," Chad says quietly.
Ichigo nods. He straightens up, brushing off his knees. "Don't worry about it, Yuuichi." He turns to Rukia. "Where's the hollow?"
"Ichigo!" Rukia snaps. "I'm not sure if you understand how serious this is. This hollow's managed to kill at least two shinigami. It's on a completely different level from the weak ones you've been dealing with."
Ichigo waves a hand, tilting his head back at her. "Oh, don't worry about it." His lips curl into a humorless smirk. "I'm on a different level too."
He leans down and rests a hand on the parakeet cage. Yuuichi shifts his wing aside, worried eyes peeking up at him. He gives the boy a reassuring smile. "It won't get me. I'll take out the monster for you, okay?"
The parakeet sniffles and hangs his head. "Be careful, mister. Please."
"Um, Ichigo," Chad says.
"Huh?" Ichigo glances up. Chad's eyes are focused on the parakeet instead of him. He hesitates, looking puzzled or maybe skeptical about talking to someone who's not there.
He finally addresses Yuuichi. "Is Ichigo gonna fight the monster?"
The parakeet nods morosely. "I want to help," Chad says.
Ichigo sucks in a breath. "No, you can't! It's not—" He looks to Rukia. Truth be told, he's getting fed up with being passed over in conversation.
"Chad," Rukia steps forward, "you have to understand, a hollow is beyond a human's ability to combat. However you feel about this, you must leave the job to Ichigo and me."
"I'm tough," Chad says. "I can handle it."
"You can't even see it!" Ichigo says in frustration.
"Exactly," Rukia says. "You won't be able to see it." Her voice softens. "Please, trust the two of us. We've done this before and, now that we know this hollow is coming, we can make a plan."
Chad nods slowly.
"A plan?" Ichigo says. "What for?"
She points her nose in the air and gives him a you're-being-dumb look. "Why? Because our hollow vanished right after the attack, and we have no idea where it is!"
"Wait, so you can't even find it?" Ichigo waves a hand at her. "I thought your fancy shinigami phone told you."
"It doesn't work that way, you fool," she snaps. "We cannot detect hollows until they emerge into the physical realm. That's why we must wait for orders from the Soul Society."
She whips out a small notepad and a marker from her pocket. "Here, allow me to demonstrate."
"No, no, that's okay—"
"Observe," she says, drawing a circle and scribbling in a black area around it. Chad steps forward as if interested, and she soon has herself a miniature audience of him and Yuuichi. "When hollows are not in the World of the Living hunting, they hide out in the boundary dimension between this one and Hueco Mundo. They cannot be detected there, only when they're about to emerge into this world."
Chad leans closer, peering at the paper. "...Is that a hollow?"
Ichigo crosses his arms. "That's a bear. Seriously, I've never seen anyone whose drawings—"
He gets a magic marker brandished in his face. "What about my drawings?"
"Nothing about your drawings!"
Rukia looks away. "Hmph. Moving on with the plan." She flips a page of the sketchbook and taps her marker on it absently. "We need a way to trap or lure the hollow. It's probably hiding because it doesn't want to face us head-on in combat." She looks up sharply. "But there's one question I have. Why is it so intent on pursuing Yuuichi?"
"I dunno," Ichigo says. "Doesn't seem like it's to eat him. More like it's using him for—" He trails off awkwardly, deciding it's maybe not the best idea to call a little boy 'bait' to his face.
"He hurt my mom," Yuuichi says quietly. "I made him fall and he died, but he came back and wanted revenge." He hangs his head. "He put me in the bird and said that if I escaped from him for three months, he would bring my mom back to life. But… everyone who helps me gets eaten by him!"
Rukia stiffens. "He said he would do what? "
"It's a lie," Ichigo says, a cold fury held in his voice. He's glaring down at the ground, clenching and unclenching his fists. "He can't bring back the dead. No one can."
The parakeet blinks and the beginnings of tears gleam in his eyes. "Then, I won't ever see my mom again?"
"In the afterlife," Rukia says with a gentle smile. "She'll be waiting for you there."
Yuuichi sniffs. "I miss my mom."
"It'll be fine," Ichigo says. "Just you wait, we're gonna get rid of this hollow so you can rest in peace."
"There's something you have to know about it," Yuuichi says. "It can make explosions with—"
Rukia jumps as a beeping starts up from her cell phone. She snatches it out of her pocket. "The hollow's here! It's—" She pales, staring down at the phone screen. Ichigo cranes his neck, trying to get a look.
She looks up at him, eyes frantic. "Ichigo, it's headed for your house!"
Ichigo freezes. He snatches the phone from her hand and stares at the blue glow of the screen. It seems to take a long time for his eyes to interpret the figures and the blinking dot on the map.
"Shit." The phone trembles in his hand. He turns, tosses it at Rukia without looking. "I'm going!"
She nods. "We'll catch up."
Ichigo is already gone in a blur of flash step.
Ichigo leaps from the roof of his house down to the street.
"Dammit." He shoulders his sword. "Where the heck is that hollow, anyway?"
He tenses, then whirls around, swinging his sword in an arc of steel. It bisects three tiny hollows in mid-leap. Ichigo hops backwards as their bodies fall to the ground in a wet splatter.
"What the heck?" He pokes tentatively at the slimy globs spilling out from the bodies and squirming on the ground. The hollows have no innards or blood, just a clear fluid. They all look identical, too.
He whirls around as another one jumps at him, intercepting it with his forearm and grabbing hold of it. It shrieks and a glob of liquid shoots from its forehead at him. He ducks, tossing the hollow aside, but the spray catches him across the shoulder and arm.
"Gah!" He shakes off his arm with a shudder. The wriggling things cling on stubbornly. He grabs onto one of them, digging his fingers in to get a grip on its slimy body, and tugs on it to feel a sharp stab of pain from its teeth hooked in his skin. "Leeches?"
The one in his hand is crushed in a spray of dripping goo. "You're not gonna get me that easily."
He shakes off his hand, looking around. "What are these things, anyway?"
'Not hollows.'
Another one leaps at Ichigo from atop a wall. He impales it with his sword and pins its body to the floor. It flails its claws at him, hissing and squeaking.
'See? They don't have reiatsu of their own.'
"Huh." Ichigo leans closer, studying the creature. "How does that work?"
'It's more of a collective, or… ah, I see. Its reiatsu is connected to some other hollow, probably the one controlling it.'
Ichigo looks around. 'It's nowhere near here,' his hollow says.
A door creaks open behind him. Ichigo turns around to see Karin standing in the doorway, head poked out and looking annoyed. Her eyes widen as she catches sight of him.
Rukia hears feet pounding on the sidewalk behind her, even over the gasp of her own breath. "Chad," she says, not turning around. "You're coming?"
Chad grunts in assent. Rukia is silent for several seconds, her eyes fixed on the ground as she runs.
"It'll be dangerous," she says.
"I know."
They go on running without more words. Rukia flips open her phone as they come to the next intersection, glancing at the map. Her steps slow.
"It's gone," she says, frowning at it. "Is Ichigo there already?"
Something behind her brushes at the edge of her senses. She skids to a stop, then whirls around. "Chad! Something is—"
A crack of pain hits her head, and when her sight clears she's lying on the hard concrete and blinking spots out of her eyes. She hears Chad's footsteps as he runs back towards her, but mostly she's paying attention to the shadow looming over her. Her eyes focus on the familiar sight of a leering white mask.
"What a shame," the hollow says. "The little gang's all split up. And with no shinigami here to protect you, what will you do now, girl?"
(Ichigo: Oh, hey Karin. Just a hypothetical question, how do you get leeches off you?
Yuzu: I'll go look it up~!
Karin: I dunno, maybe you burn them off you. Or do you put salt on them? Wait, no, that's slugs.
Ichigo: If you don't know, then why are you saying?
Karin: Ah! You impale them through the heart with a wooden stake!
Ichigo: That's vampires!)
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