The air that went up past Ichigo's wings was cold and damp, the sun that shone brightly to his left not making a difference to the temperature.

Far down below, he could see the big, dark shape of a lake in a sudden clearing within the trees. Max had assured them the day before they were getting closer, slowly but steadily. He couldn't hear anything, though he could see the vague shapes of children splashing about and playing, but the wind as he flew far above them at a high speed. He watched as the head of a little blonde child tilted upwards, followed by a pale hand. They were surely going to tell their parent(s) about the bird people flying above them but they would be gone by then. Well, it was better, Ichigo supposed, than telling your peers as a young child that the boundary between the dead and the living blurred when it came to you.

Sure enough, down below, a suspicious figure grinned to himself as he heard the young girl rave to her mother as the woman combed the hair of the girl's younger brother through with her fingers. Bird people; it would seem they were on the right track.

They looked down at their fingers as they rubbed their hands together in a sort of sick glee. With conflicting emotions, they noticed their fingertips were sticky with the browning red of drying blood. In an ideal world, they would never have to rid themselves of the colour but, as it was now, especially among children, such a thing would be suspicious.

Still, in such close proximity to the perfectly clear waters of the little secluded lake, it was a shame not to dye the water.

Max landed, soon followed by the rest of her flock. They were in the forest beside another park. This one, though, was filled with people, bustling with life. Children of all ages ran around with smiles on their faces and laughter pushing past their lips.

Ichigo looked around, pausing for a second when he saw a couple of young girls who reminded him of his own sisters due to their startling semblance. As he stood there, staring absently with something much more subtle than his usual scowl on his face, he saw something else that surprised him. He started as he began to walk forwards.

"Geta Boushi." he mumble as he took a step forwards. Max stopped him, clasping his arm.

"Where are you going?" She didn't sound very happy.

"An old friend of mine is here."

"What, from japan? Why?"

"Who knows why that man does anything?" he sighed "But, still, if he's here it's probably for a reason." She loosened her grip and stared after him in exasperation as he sped up into a slight jog and made his way across the park.

"Kurosaki!" the man exclaimed with an unnerving smile, face shadowed as ever beneath the cover of his hat. He was attracting odd looks from passersby.

"Why are you here?" he asked, happy to finally be able to revert back to his first language after so long.

"You're in trouble."

"When am I not?" Ichigo shrugged but he knew he should stay on his toes.

"Listen." Uruhara told him, fumbling a crumpled piece of paper between the fingers of his right hand "don't open this," the paper was, in fact, an envelope "until there is nothing else you can do." he warned in a hushed voice "they might be here."

"They?"

"You know," Uruhara insisted "You know exactly who they are. They aren't what you think." his voice had dropped in volume again and he had crouched slightly, knees braced.

Abruptly, he straightened and his face was overtaken by a wide smile, very much contrasting the expression he had worn a moment ago. "Goodbye Kurosaki!" he waved, fan in hand, as he turned on his heel. Ichigo waved back unsurely, watching the man until he passed behind a car, suddenly disappearing.

Nudge watched as Ichigo came wandering back to the group, unsure as to whether he was dazed or just as curious as she. She could feel her heart beating within her rib cage, every other pounding accompanied by a question. He was facing the floor, lips moving as he seemed to speak for himself. She didn't get a word of it - she supposed he was speaking to himself in his language rather than hers.

She didn't get the chance to ask him. He passed right by her, still mouthing words silently not responding to her first question - a simple "You okay?" went unanswered. Somehow, she didn't think she was being ignored; he hadn't heard.

Max's eyes trailed him as he continued to walk past them, still deep in thought. As he began to walk out of her view, her feet began to follow. With a wave of her hand and a mumbled "Fang, you're in charge for a minute." she followed him through into the forest.

She saw him wander, walking straight into the thorny branches that covered the path he walked, each one lashing at his arms, legs and clothes. She was a bit more careful, guiding each one away to clear her path as she passed.

He sat when he came upon the trunk of a fallen tree. He put his head in his hand as he continued to murmur to the floor. Somewhat hesitantly, she sat beside him. He didn't seem to notice.

"You okay?" she ventured, knowing Nudge's earlier attempt at the exact same thing had been futile.

"Does something feel wrong to you?" he said quietly after a moment, straightening his posture.

"With what?"

"Kille Inconnu."

"The murderer?"

"No," He said, stretching out the word "the florist."

"Alright, no need to be sarcastic."

"I'm stressed," he told her in an attempt to excuse himself.

"What feels wrong to you, though? There's nothing right with a serial killer, is there?"

"But this feels too wrong..."

"How so?"

"I feel like this is familiar-" he was cut off.

"You better not be trying to tell me you know something about this!" She warned.

"Nothing of the sort."

"But why are you so affected now if you aren't trying to distract me while you wait for him?"

"Because Uruhara just told me something was more wrong than I thought it was." he withheld the information about the flimsy, creased envelope he ran his fingers over as it sat in his jacket pocket.

"Uruhara? Is that your friend?" he nodded "He was here to warn you?"

"Yeah." he swung his leg, hitting the log with his heel.

"But why does he know?"

"He knows because he is Uruhara."

"That doesn't make sense." she complained, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Neither does being raised in a cage and getting wings due to the small percentage of avian DNA you posses." He stood "Yet that still happened and, I'm sure, is continuing to happen."

"Not for much longer!" she smiled, determined, springing to her feet.

He nodded his approval as they walked back to the flock.

"Say," Ichigo asked as they sat there on the dewy grass of the park as a group some time later, "Would anyone happen to have any change?" He hadn't any left "We can get a newspaper - we won't be in the US for much longer so we won't get many more opportunities to catch up if we can't read the language. I feel like something has happened."

"Kille Inconnu?" Max asked, almost certain of the answer, as she passed over for quarters "You've made me a bit more wary of them..." She felt a chill run down her spine as, momentarily, her vision was stained with red.

Sure enough, Ichigo had been right. He didn't even need to flip open the paper to see that. There, on the front page of the paper the young Hijabi woman had presented him with a smile, was an image of a lake so familiar it was unsettling...

That river was surrounded by police tape, the waters murky and clouded, as the article informed, with blood.

Ichigo sat back down before he began to read and, from over his shoulder, max too took in the piece of journalism. As they sat there, even on the constantly warming day, both of their blood ran cold. Gazzy took the newspaper from Ichigo with nimble fingers.

"Them again?!" he exclaimed loudly, drawing the confused gazes of a few people to him as he stood there with a newspaper in his hands.

"Who?" Nudge asked him.

"That stupid killer," he told her, a bit more quiet after his little sister shushed him "Kille inconnu!"

"They've killed someone else?" Iggy asked.

Gazzy prepared himself to answer but never got the chance. Ichigo spoke up first, still staring straight forwards and looking disturbed "No." Iggy made a confused noise as Ichigo took a moment to pause "they have killed another ten people," he wasn't done, continuing again after another pause "at the lake we flew over yesterday."

Max was suddenly struck with the realisation that the monstrous human being (an identity she was beginning to doubt since hearing Ichigo spread some type of cryptic light upon the topic) seemed to be wherever they were.

"They're close." She mumbled as the realisation dawned on her "Surely they aren't after us?" She didn't really want to hear the answer.

Ichigo rolled the already misshapen envelope between his fingers again. He sighed. "I doubt it."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But we can't let him distract us."

Max agreed "We need to save those kids."

There was a sense of victory, they thought, that came with instilling fear on people like that. It made them jumpy and left them vulnerable; when they were as scared as that they were easily distracted which left the real attacker with a wide open opportunity.

But that didn't feel right here. That boy with those immense secrets not even his comrades knew, the one with the unmissable, easily recognisable appearance they could not forget - how hideous that colour was! - was too used to being a target he had learned to turn the tables. They realised, as they traced a pattern on the cool metal with scarlet they were no longer aware of the origin of, it was only a matter of time.

They supposed it wouldn't be too much of a hindrance. They liked a challenge and deadlines were great motivation. With a wide smile that scared the young Hijabi woman who had been watching them through narrowed eyes enough to avert said eyes, they realised the end should be drawing near. It was coming, the time was coming to drown everything in red.

They supposed she would be a good place to start.

The park had emptied of all but that strange, nondescript figure crouching by the swing-set, running a finger over the side of the pole she could not see. She had forgotten about the job she had been doing, about the stack of newspapers tucked beneath her arm and the change jingling in her coin-purse. She was completely entranced.

Then the figure had turned and she had been urged to do the same, suddenly petrified. That smile was inhuman, the teeth too sharp and stained, not yellow or brown, but with faded pink, sitting in the jaw in jagged rows like tombstones. There seemed to be an excess of them.

She inhaled deeply, squeezed her eyes shut and balled her fists as she turned back.

That terrifying visage was right there!

They smelled like blood and, all of a sudden, she was aware that the figure she was seeing was the same present in the publication she was selling.

When the police arrived at the scene there was no one there but a woman who had already been completely taken by rigor mortis. Her lips were already blue. The weapon was at the scene as it always was, no fingerprints.

The poor woman was taken away after the scene had been photographed and her corpse outlined, her face the true image of terror.

It always seemed to be a teenager who found Kille inconnu's victims. The poor girl who was sat there, sobbing as one of the officials draped a blanket around her shoulders, cradled her in a motherly hug and tried to convince her to calm down.

How could she? She had, after being concerned about her insufficient presence at home, gone looking for her sister beginning and ending at the park she had said she spent the day at, only to find the poor college aged girl laying there in a pool of her own blood.

The investigator wandered the scene, wincing every now and then, soon requesting for the poor sister to be escorted home. She noticed the newspapers on the floor, sitting beside them a dropped coin purse, just as bloodstained as everything around them. The newspapers were everywhere and it was incredibly likely some had been blown away.

It was intriguing. Upon checking, she had discovered the coin purse to contain a total of twenty-five dollars and, just like the weapon, no fingerprints besides those of the victim. What, if not money, could be the killer's motivation? How sick did one have to be, even if it was right there, not to have even been tempted to take money when it was right there?

Suddenly, everything she knew about criminals was being tested. There was normally some type of motive or just a reactionary action when the chance was presented. There was usually some type of insanity or trauma in the making of a serial killer. Somehow, she didn't think that was the case here. It was common for criminals to slip up, but this one had taunted the police force all over the country for so long, not once making a mistake even though their mark and weapon was left at the scene of every crime. They weren't careful yet they were and it was terrifying. They were no closer than they had been when the threat had first emerged.

The blood soaked newspaper, she realised, hosted a front page article about the same killer as they were investigating. They had been printed in monochrome and the article had a picture of the lake where the last crime, only the day before, had been committed. She was aware that it was now pretty accurately coloured.

Ichigo went back to the park that night. They had been sleeping in trees again and he had left in shinigami form, desperately hoping his body would not fall during his adventures.

There was a hollow at the park, terrorising the spirit of a woman in the midst of a crime scene. Painfully, he had seen both the woman to whom the spirit had belonged and the scene before.

She was crying and screaming as she ran, clutching her arms over her head as she was driven into a dead end, crouching with her eyes shut, bracing herself.

As the hollow bore down on her, he ran at the beast. He drove his zanpakuto into the beast's flank, eliciting a piercing roar and drawing its attention. The woman's spirit could not move, frozen with fear and staring at him, his sword and the monster he was battling with a look of terror in her eyes. She had clutched her hands over her chest, over her chain.

The beast recoiled and Ichigo sprung forwards, extending his blade and driving it in a harsh arc down through the head of the monster. Its mask broke as a familiar, unpleasant sight appeared.

But, as seemed to be the case with everything recently, something was so very wrong. The gates appeared in the sky above him, but they were different.

They were open.

At either side of them were creepy, inhuman hands clawing at them. The sinner whom he had just brought to their end was sucked into the gates that finally slammed shut after his entry, hitting the clawing hands and causing them to retreat. He watched on, confused and worried.

Then he turned to the spirit of the woman. She was staring up at him with wide, coco-coloured eyes.

"I've seen you before." She squeaked, still clearly in a state of complete and utter terror "What are you?"

"I'm a shinigami," He told her, not beating around the bush. He wasn't good at this "Do you know what has happened to you?"

"I'm," She sounded resigned "dead." he was thankful she was aware, too many people were not "Kill Inconnu killed me - my body is over there."

"You know a lot." he crouched next to her, hilt of his sword resting on the ground beside him "most people don't."

"What was that thing?"

"Hmm? Oh! That was a hollow. They are corrupted souls for lack of a better term. You see that chain in your chest?" her eyes had not left his blade but she nodded nevertheless "Souls become hollows when their chains go or when another hollow turns them, unless they were evil in life. Just like that hollow - those gates are where evil people go."

"And what about me?"

"That's where I come in. It is a Shinigami's job to send plus souls like yourself on to the afterlife."

"So that's a real thing, then?" She asked, clutching at her hijab, suddenly smiling a little bit.

"It is." he raised his sword and her eyes shifted again.

"How do you do that?"

"With this." he held out the gargantuan blade before him.

"How?" She barely choked out the words.

"Like this." He flipped the blade and pressed the end of the hilt to her forehead.

"Thank you," She said as her spirit began to fade "Shinigami."

When Ichigo returned to the tree and his body he could not sleep. It wasn't the discomfort that was stopping him from sleeping, he was mentally exhausted, it was the oddity nagging at his mind. For the first time in a while, it wasn't Kille Inconnu.

Why were the gates open?