Katsuki spent the rest of the day with her.

Even after she'd stopped chattering about the test of courage and her evil plans to send everyone else screaming into the night. During which time they either sat close together in silence or he asked her questions in an effort to get to know her/understand her better.

He tried not to ask anything that would be too close to 'what happened to you're sister's' because in all honesty, just from the few brief displays of emotion when her family was mentioned- he already knew that they had been killed by someone. And talking about it was...traumatizing to her.

So he tried to steer away from those questions as much as he humanly could. And instead asked about some of the scars that he'd seen on her body the night before. And so far, he had learned several things about Ichigo.

One, was that he'd been both very right and very wrong about her being fragile. Because she was both. She didn't appear all that fragile on the surface. Her personality was a lot like...well, he had no true words to describe her personality. But she seemed the type to simply roll with the punches.

But all the same, she was both fragile and not. Which he still didn't understand all that well, but decided that he didn't need to really get it to get it. Get it?

Another thing was how she dealt with all of the bad situations, fear, trauma- how she took each of the things centered around those, and she compartmentalized them was beyond fascinating. Her ability to reason and understand things that would normally not be reasoned nor understood was also astounding.

Her mind was probably at least fifty percent more analytical than anyone else he'd ever come across.

Her temperament- she was more about the long term effects than the short term ones. An insult today meant nothing, tomorrow. However there were still things that set her off in the here and now that made her want to bludgeon the occasional person to death with a something.

Her words, not his.

But at least he understood that she wasn't the type to hold a grudge. Which was awesome, he supposed as this fact finally registered with him completely.

Because, damn he lucked out there big time. And now he really fucking knew it.

Another thing was her IQ. She didn't seem like it, but she was incredibly smart.

So much so that his mind clocked her intelligence level to be somewhere between 'Oh she's smart' and 'Oh shit, she's smart'.

The first time he'd spoken with her the night before, he'd leaned towards the first one. But now, after speaking with her a little bit more today, he was seriously leaning towards the second.

And he suspected that such thoughts probably had a severely panicked and hysterical undertone to them once the realization truly hit. He himself wasn't exactly immune to this. He was just better at hiding it.

But what was truly scary- and he wasn't even joking about this either; was the fact that she could out strategize just about everyone present at the camp easily.

Which is probably where that 'Oh shit, she's smart' thought would originate from.

Her ability to strategize, and out think others was also incredibly dangerous when combined with her ability to execute specific tasks at the drop of a hat and without absolutely no warning whatsoever.

All in all, his assessment of her startlingly placed her in a ranking that he'd only ever used to classify one or two others. All Might, and Aizawa-sensei were both the scariest people that he had ever encountered before that could actually manage to truly scar him shitless.

And now- for some insane reason, Ichigo topped them both as the scariest fucking girl in the world.

Honestly he was tempted to tell her not to bother scaring anyone tonight during the test of courage. All she had to do is walk up to someone and quote how high her IQ was and a majority of the kids present would run screaming for the hills. Especially if they were smart enough to understand what she was really telling them.

And then there was the last little piece of information that he'd learned thus far.

Who was her parent? He knew that Aizawa-sensei had introduced her as someone 's kid. But the fact that he hadn't introduced her actually spoken of who her parent/parent's were, was just a little bit surprising to him. Usually, teacher's kids used their parent's names like shields to protect them from other kids.

The fact that Ichigo hadn't done this, meant either she didn't know that she could. Or she did, and she simply didn't care for the slightly dirty tactic because it meant that she would be hiding behind someone else and expecting them to protect her from her peers.

Somehow, she didn't strike him as the hiding type. But didn't really answer his question of who her parent/parents were.

So she told him. And his mouth dropped open in shock because he certainly hadn't expected her to tell him Aizawa-sensei's name. No wonder the man had been so thoroughly pissed at him last night.

He groaned and dropped his head into his hands and stayed that way for several heartbeats before finally raising his head again and saying, "I'm going to die..." It wasn't a question. Merely a statement of fact because he had stupidly bullied the man's kid.

Which meant that it would be an utter miracle if he left the training camp both alive and in one, whole, functioning piece.

Ichigo scrunched her nose up a little bit at his words, and simply said nothing. Because in all honesty it was a miracle to her already that he was still alive as it was. And while she couldn't promise him much of anything considering how pissed her guardian had been about the previous evening's events- she could at least promise that she wouldn't actually let the man kill the poor guy.

He could maybe satisfy his craving for his blood a little bit by maiming him though.

A tall man dressed in black clothing with his hair tied back in a ponytail looked out over the side of the mountain at the see of emerald green tree tops and closed his eyes for a moment so that he could focus on finding someone. He'd felt an oddly familiar spike in power from this area and had practically damn near killed himself to come running here to find the person responsible.

A vision of eerie blue eyes and long strawberry hair fluttering around a young, hauntingly beautiful face willed his mind as her name left his lips in frustration and worry.

"Ichigo…"

Ichigo Kurosaki was by far one of the strongest and most frustratingly difficult people that he'd ever had the misfortune of meeting before in his life. But she was the defeater of Aizen the man whom had become a God. The chamion of those who needed a champion.

And she was his friend and adopted sister figure.

It had been nearly three months since she had vanished from Karakura Town without a fucking trace.

And though he didn't doubt that at least a few of her closest friends knew where she was at almost every moment of the day...Kisuke, Rukia, and Chad weren't fucking talking.

They certainly weren't spilling any of her secrets to anyone.

Rukia and Kisuke wouldn't tell anyone anyways. They were of the firm belief that the girl deserved peace.

And yeah, he agreed with them, but since the higher ups had handed down orders- there wasn't a whole lot that he could do aside from try and find her and warn her about what was happening since it would affect her as well as everyone else.

He already knew that Chad was on the move. The boy's loyalty to her had proven to be beyond admirable over the years. And hadn't really changed all that much despite her absence.

The moment that Kisuke had told him what was going on, the kid had packed up and left town within an hour to try and find his friend and protect her. The last that he'd heard anything about the teen, he was hanging out with some dumbasses that called themselves the League of Villains pretending to be a baddie for the sole purpose of sniffing the girl out.

He was good at his self imposed job too.

He certainly blended in with his fighting skills and such.

And if not for the fact that Kenpachi, Ikkaku, and Yomichika had gone after him to keep an eye on him, just in case he got in over his head- he'd think that Chad had actually switched sides.

Feeling the not so subtle warning touch of Ichigo's power pushing back at him, his eyes snapped open and he felt tears well up a little bit before he quickly blinked them away. She was here. Excitement filled his entire being. Finally, finally he could see his friend again.

He could help her keep her current life even if it meant he had to die for it.