Kensei had just finished preparing the oxygen tank and pulling the defibrillator over to the nearest cot when Akisame finally made his appearance. And man, oh man did the other man ever look upset. Sure to the casual observer, he looked the same as he always did.

But to someone who'd known him for years, it was literally all Kensei could do not to move away from him.

He'd never felt anything quite so...so terrifying before. And he'd been around long enough to witness several of the others losing their cool and flying into rages before. Including the elder.

But none of them and their rages had ever inspired such a terror-stricken feeling of utter dread in him.

Akisame moved quickly once he was through the door with the girl. Kensei could see that she was in a bad way by the nearly chalky white parlor of her sweat dampened skin. She was unconscious, her head lolling back on her neck at an alarming angle, and her breaths...

He'd only heard such difficulty breathing from people with deadly, severe cases of pneumonia, or lung disease.

Laying her down on the cot that Kensei had prepared, Akisame grabbed the oxygen mask and took a moment to fix the knob on the tank and then covered her face with it before then quickly telling him to grab some medicine's from the medicine cabinet across the room.

He was specific about what he needed, and Kensei wasn't about to argue with the man. He simply wasn't stupid enough to argue with him while he was this upset. Akisame would tear him limb from limb if he wasted his time arguing with him when he could be getting what the man needed to help stabilize the girl's condition.

It took both men working together less than ten minutes to get Ichigo comfortable enough to rest normally. And that was mostly due to the fact that Akisame had injected her with a weird cocktail of pain killers, sleeping meds, and something else to slow her heartbeat so that it wasn't beating quite so quickly anymore.

Once Akisame was sure that she was finally resting, he sighed and quietly moved away from her.

"Is she alright?" Kensei asked worriedly.

"She is now. But she'll have to stay on bedrest for a few days because of this incident."

Kensei hummed as he watched his friend run a slightly shaky hand through his dark hair before saying, "Kenichi will be beside himself with worry once he finds out about this."

"Kenichi will just have to get over it." Akisame said with an audible bite of menace to his tone. Upon realizing how he must have just sounded to Kensei, he softened his tone a little bit and then said. "Besides, I plan for you, Appachai and Sakaki to keep the boy busy with training."

"Oh sure, foist the boy off on us why don't you." Kensei said dryly before glancing back at the girl again. And sighed upon realizing that Akisame would likely be too busy to bother with training Kenichi for a little while and then shrugged as he said, "Oh well, I suppose that if all else fails then one of us could arrange for Shigure to take him out into the woods and hunt him for a few days."

"I bet the Hayato would like that. He doesn't have enough entertainment to occupy his time as it is."

Kensei gave him a slightly evil smirk. "Shigure would like it too. You know how she likes to use people for target practice."

Akisame grunted as he pulled his chair back away from his desk and settled himself in it. He was likely going to spend the next hour or so observing Ichigo, and keeping a close eye on her present condition before he'd make any attempts to move her to her bedroom to rest more comfortably for the next few days.

In the meantime, he supposed that he could keep himself busy checking over some of his equipment and supplies and making a note of what he would need to buy/replace soon.

Seeing that Akisame's thoughts were preoccupied for the moment, Kensei quietly excused himself to go and see what the others were up to and maybe tell them what had happened so that they could be aware of Ichigo's present condition.


Ichigo only woke up once in the two in a half hours she'd been in the clinic. And it only happened because Akisame was in the process of moving her to her bedroom.

And he accidentally wound up jostling her a little bit without meaning to. As a result, she'd given a full body jerk in his arms and her eyes flew open in alarm. And then she'd looked at him as if she'd like nothing more than to tear his head off and toss it down the hallway.

Honestly it really was a very mean look, and if he were anyone else he might have actually been afraid. However he wasn't. So the look had absolutely no effect on him whatsoever.

He merely chalked the look that she given him up to being upset over being awakened so suddenly, possibly because she was a grumpy person when awakened, and decided to ignore it. Soon after which she slowly began to relax, lay her head back onto his shoulder where it had been previously and then closed her eyes again.

Several moments later, he was slipping into her bedroom and laying her down on the futon that had been bought for her to use as a bed while she stayed at Ryozanpaku.

Once on the futon, she automatically curled up on her side and sighed as she buried her face in the pillow that had also been provided for her, while he took a moment to slip her shoes off of her. And then once that was done, pulled the cover up over her so that she wouldn't catch a chill and then started to get up and leave her alone to sleep for a little while.

He was already planning to have Miu come up in a few hours to help her change into some night clothes, and see if she could maybe feed her something before he gave her the next dose on pain meds. And was almost to the door when he heard her ask very softly, "Who are you?"

Pausing just before he slipped out of the room, he looked back at her wondering if she were sleep talking. Since sleep talking wasn't exactly all that unusual an occurrence for the residents of the dojo, he figured that there was no harm one way or another if he answered her.

It wasn't like she was still totally conscious so she probably wouldn't recall anything that he said to her now, the next time he saw her anyways.

"My name is Akisame. I'm one of your brother's masters." He replied and then waited a moment to see if she would say anything else when she asked.

"Safe?"

It was a strange thing to ask someone. Especially if one was simply sleep talking. But the question caught him off guard and made him turn to look at her for a moment. He felt...torn here. And was uncertain what he should do in regards to the question.

Part of him wanted to reassure her that yes, Ryozanpaku was very safe. And she was thereby safe by extension. However he also sort of wanted to go and get Kenichi and see if he could somehow help to reassure her. Actually, maybe that wasn't the worst idea in the world at the moment.

The boy was her brother after all.

"Safe?" She asked again, this time managing to crack an eye open a sliver and look at him from over the pillow. He swallowed past the sudden lump forming in his throat and nodded his head, yes. Her eye closed again and she fell silent, this time he realized that she was completely asleep again.

He stood there for a moment longer, just in case and merely watched her for a heartbeat or so before then deciding that he'd overstayed a bit too long, and then left the room.