Ichigo has a very morbid and evil sense of humor.
"So Ichigo actually went after this...Aizen ya-hoo?" Sakaki asked again for clarification. Because like the others, he was finding it hard to believe that a little girl would go after someone- a lunatic with military training, and affiliations with terrorist organizations no less.
Honestly he was having a hard time wrapping his head around what he was hearing. And from the grim looks on some of the other master's faces, they were having a hard time believing what they were hearing too.
Nijima nodded his head again. "She did." Nijima said grimly. His expression reflecting something...dark that he must have been thinking of. "To be honest, he didn't really give her much of a choice in the matter."
"Oh? How so?"
"He tried to recruit her to work for him." Everyone was eerily silent for a heartbeat or so. "And when she refused...he went after her friends, classmates, and a bunch of innocent people. She blamed herself for everyone who got hurt. So she did the only thing that she could think of-"
"She fought back knowing that he wasn't going to stop." Akisame said, his expression thunderous as Nijima nodded his head.
"Yes. And believe me- it wasn't easy for her. She had a lot going against her. Her age, being untrained... She practically threw herself into a lion's den full of heavily armed, and superiorly trained people."
"How did she manage to survive? I mean, even I couldn't do something like that! And I've been trained by grandpa since I was a toddler." Miu asked.
"As I said before, she makes the master's look like little angels by comparison. What she lacks in skill, she more than makes up in sheer brute force and brutality. She's inventive too. Freakishly so. But if you really want to see what she can do-" He pointed a clawed finger to the box of DVD's. "Those contain bits and pieces of her life since before everything happened. Before her mother's death, Aizen- all of it. But if you're really curious then I'd start watching at disc ten. And move on to disc thirteen, and then seventeen through the rest of them. In that order."
Nijima left sometime after dinner, after hooking up the positively ancient TV so that Kenichi, Miu and the masters could delve into the DVd's unhindered.
However, unlike Nijima's suggestion to start with a specific disk number- the masters wanted to be as thorough as possible and wound up watching all of them.
The first of which were fairly boring and consisted of Ichigo as a toddler, laughing, playing and...staring blankly into space from time to time and talking to herself? But gradually over the next few video's, Kenichi, Miu and the others began to see a little bit of what Nijima was talking about. Ability wise.
Ichigo truly was a very unique and special child. While on the surface, she appeared to be just like any other young child between the ages of two and ten. However, unlike so many other children- she possessed a certain knowledge and awareness of the world that people didn't usually see in such young children.
She knew it all. The good, the bad, the ugly and everything else in-between.
As far as each of them knew, a vast majority of children were usually protected from this.
So in one video where she appeared to be around five or so, when she walked up to a policeman and pointed somewhere off screen and said, "The baby is hurt." The man had been quick to react because he thought that there was an actual baby that was somewhere nearby, injured.
What he found was a mangled and half eaten corpse that had sparked an investigation into the death of the child. He had even taken little Ichigo and questioned her about what she had seen.
Whatever she told him, led to the arrest of a monster. A pedo that had preyed upon and murdered his victims. The news paper clippings alone was testimony to that.
The next video was almost just as bad. Almost, being the operative word.
Little Ichigo seemed to literally be tripping over bodies that no one else seemed to even know about. And the weirdest thing about such instances was that the damned child was never anywhere near the spots where the bodies were found!
In one video she even predicted a couple of earthquakes, a land slide, and bombing that took place in different parts of the world- yet was on the evening news mere hours later. And after seeing that she was right; she grabbed the TV remote from what they all could only assume was one of her parents hands and muted the TV and asked, "What's wrong with me?"
Because apparently even at the age of...five? Six maybe? She was already incredibly aware of the fact that she was vastly different from other children. However the fact that she would even think that something like her abilities were wrong, was...alarming. Sad even.
But they supposed that if they experienced the ability to literally trip over corpses and predict disasters then they all might think that there was something probably seriously wrong with themselves too.
Seeing a woman get up from the couch, Kenichi muttered in awe. "Oh wow, that must be Misaki."
"Ichigo's mom?" Miu asked as he nodded his head before she then said. "She's so pretty."
They watched as the woman wrapped her arms around little Ichigo and pet her short hair comfortingly as she said, "Sweetheart, there's nothing wrong with you."
At which point little Ichigo roughly pushed the woman away and then motioned with her hand towards the news of the incidents and then asked in a disbelieving tone. "Are we even watching the same thing here? To my knowledge, other children can't predict disasters all the way across the world. So don't sit there and lie to me as if I'm stupid, mom. Something is clearly wrong with me, and I want to know what."
The way that the girl spoke was odd to them at first.
But then Kenichi pointed out that the way that Ichigo was speaking was different from other kids her age. She spoke like an adult. Whereas most children her age would speak softer, with an element of innocence that she had either lost- or was simply suppressing at the time.
Kensei voiced his thoughts on the matter and firmly believed that she lost it while tripping over bodies years earlier, and though Kenichi was loathe to admit it, his master was probably right.
Misaki had no answer for little Ichigo as far as what was wrong with her went. So the girl threw the TV remote aside and walked off to be alone.
In the next video, Ichigo was older. And from the looks of things, her mother had been dead for a while. She looked like she was nearly eleven or so, and had grown considerably. Her hair was the same color as her late mother's. A nice blend of strawberry blond with an orange hue to it. It was short like a boy's, and looked just as wild.
She even dressed like a boy instead of like the young lady that she was. She even walked and moved in a mannish manner.
But that was neither here nor there.
In this particular video, she was surrounded by running and screaming people on all sides. They could hear a series of loud booms, see the ominous red-orange of fire, and heard the near deafening sounds of shattering glass and something incredibly heavy falling not far away from her.
She ran ahead instead of running away like anyone with common sense would. And just barely skidded to a stop when half of a marble building collapsed into the street in front of her, narrowly escaping possible serious injury or even death.
However even the idea of being hurt or killed didn't seem to deter her from moving ahead again.
In fact, they could clearly hear people calling for help. And sure enough, the girl threw herself into the mess and started grabbing people- the injured, the dying- their state didn't matter all that much as long as she managed to get them to safety.
And this was even where Nijima's remark about having something fall on her head came into play. While evacuating some of the people- a huge building came crashing down on top of her.
There was a brief flicker of surprise on her face before she appeared to be crushed underneath the heavy weight of stone and steel. However it didn't seem to have hurt her all that much.
A few bruises, a bloody gnash on one of her cheeks and right above one of her eyes. And that seemed to be it.
The next few shots of the video consisted of her lifting up and tossing aside several tons of broken, jagged, and partially melted materials and then looked around- possibly for anyone else that needed assistance- and upon finding none left, went on her way as if nothing had happened.
The next video was one of the ones that Nijima had told them to start with.
Disk ten, had video of Ichigo and a small, petite black haired beauty with wide violet colored eyes. And the moment that the girl said the others name, recognition flickered to life in Akisame's pale eyes.
"Rukia."
"What?"
"Rukia. That small girl is one of Ichigo's friends." Akisame said as they watched the video of the two together.
At first it was a little bit difficult to tell if the two girls liked each other or hated each other. Rukia would punch Ichigo for just about any perceived slight imaginable. However instead of getting irked or even pissed about always being the smaller girl's punching bag, the taller girl would just laugh as if it were the funniest thing in the world to rile the other girl up.
This particular video had the kids on a school trip into the mountains for 'survival training'. Which was probably something P.E. related since having a bunch of kids out in the woods for any other reason was just plain wrong.
Ichigo was standing in line next to Rukia with the leather shoe lace to one of her shoes in her mouth, and seemed to be chewing on it as everyone else listened to someone telling them what they were going to be doing. Which was learning to survive some weird apocalyptic scenario where they were the last of human kind and had to 'survive' off of the land.
Which meant, hunting, tracking, killing their own food, making a camp, camp fire and a bunch of other stuff. And to be even meaner about it, they were being graded on how they preformed.
Ichigo still stood there chewing on her shoe lace like a goat. While several people on either side of her couldn't stop laughing about something.
Finally whoever had taken them on the trip decided that they had talked enough and told the kids to scamper off, however before any of them could so much as take a step Rukia raised her hand and asked if the person in charge could please get ichigo to stop gnawing on her shoe lace like a crazy person.
Ichigo countered by raising her hand after being told to spit the shoe lace out and said, "A little warning before everyone runs off. We're over three hundred miles away from the nearest signs of civilization, any medical care facility, and help should anyone truly need it. So when you are out here, trying to learn how to survive- you are literally taking your lives into your own hands. That being said-" She cast her little friend a devilish look and grinned as the dark haired girl suddenly ducked her head to hide her amusement as she went on to say. "As someone who is standing here chewing on a shoe lace like a goddamned crazy person- out here it's literally survival of the fittest. And for any of you stupid enough not to understand what I mean, I'll dumb it down for you. Any of you that fall down and don't get back up will be considered fair game."
"And for those of you that still don't get it- I will eat you. I can't say it any clearer than that. Out here, the weak die for a reason. So please, run off willy nilly and don't pay attention to where you're going. Because I'm already hungry and you people are nothing but meat to me."
She smiled at everyone and they could clearly see the nervous looks that she was getting from her fellow students as they suddenly heard someone say, "Change in plan! Lets go home and eat cheese burgers!"
The kids didn't even grumble or put up a fight. Which was just a little bit disappointing to the masters, especially since they wanted to see just how dedicated to the 'I will eat you' that she had said a few minutes prior.
The kids did however practically run away from Ichigo.
Leaving her behind with Rukia and several others who were all laughing hysterically as she finally pulled her shoe lace from her mouth and knelt down to lace her shoe up again looking incredibly pleased with herself.
"Aww, what are we going to do about survival training now?" Another girl asked in a bummed tone once she finally finished laughing.
Ichigo finished up relacing her shoe and then stood back up and slung an arm around Rukia's slender shoulders and just smiled as she said, "We'll come back over the weekend and play a nice long game of night tag."
"Night tag?" The girl asked curiously as a boy with glasses chimed in.
"What about survival training?"
"Night tag can double as survival training." Ichigo said easily. Not the least bit worried about any sort of survival training. "Because you haven't lived until you've run through this area when it's pitch black outside and you can't see jack."
"Have you run through the area while it's dark out?" The same boy with the glasses asked.
"No. But think of it this way, at least if I get taken out by a tree limb or something- the rest of you have a more decent chance of making it out of the woods. Or ending up like me before the night is over...it really goes both ways."
"Fifty-fifty huh?"
"I'm in." A boy who looked like he was nearly as tall as Hayato said as he leaned down a little bit so that he was eye level with the girl.
Ichigo grinned and hollered, "Yay! Chad's in! This is going to be so much fun!"
"Yay! Count me in!" The other girl cheered. Rukia joined in soon after while the boy in glasses looked at the others doubtfully, and then sighed.
"Alright. I guess I'm in too."
After which the kids all loaded themselves onto a bus with their other schoolmates and got cheese burgers before they were all dropped off at home.
There was a brief time skip after that before the video started back five days after the 'survival trip'. Everyone was standing on a ledge on the side of a small mountain that overlooked the large wooded area below.
Ichigo was looking over the ledge at the woods below with a slightly mischievous gleam in her eyes as the others all walked over to her and checked the area out for themselves. Barely ten minutes later Ichigo was laying out the rules to the game of night tag. And before she could even finish a truck appeared with several other people.
Three or more of whom looked like adults.
A platinum blond guy in a striped hat walked over with a couple of kids, a woman, and a few others and invited themselves to the game.
However there was one alteration. The man decided that he was going to pit his people against Ichigo and the others. And he came armed with actual weapons.
Katana's, gloves, a missile launcher with a dozen or so mini missiles, knives, a bow and arrows and a few other things were handed out amongst everyone. All of them equally as deadly as everything else, after which the kids all threw themselves over the ledge and disappeared into the woods below.
Everything got quiet for a little while after that. But it didn't last for long since the little girl with the missile launcher blew up half of the damned trees and everything else with them in an effort to flush Ichigo and her friends out.
It didn't work though. Thank god.
However after a while, each and every one of the kids were found and everyone engaged in some sort of fighting. And to be honest, none of them were half bad.
Rukia wasn't shabby with a sword. Neither was Ichigo for that matter.
Though the smaller girl was given a traditional katana that suited her size and build. While Ichigo somehow wound up toting around this monstrous, wicked looking black bladed sword that was as long as she was tall, and as wide as her torso.
The damned thing didn't even have a proper handle or guard on it! Hell, it didn't even have a sheath for her to put it away in!
But that wasn't the truly surprising part. The truly surprising part was just how well she managed to use it, and maneuver with it so easily that was really baffling to them. She could lift it with one hand- despite the obviously heavy weight of it. And could run faster than a normal person could even with it weighing her down.
It was incredible. But not nearly as incredible as what she could do with it when she fought.
She and the blond guy squared off and nearly killed each other.
The two of them were laying in the middle of a totally ruined and burning clearing. The man was swearing up a blue streak and then some, sounding thoroughly disgruntled and shockingly enough- pissed.
"Jesus, fuck! I can't believe you would do something so- I mean, what the hell?! Were you trying to signal space Batman? Goddamn." He shouted as he slowly got to his feet and looked around at the damage that the two of them had caused.
Ichigo didn't move a muscle. She did however laugh hysterically when they both heard someone shout in a slightly panicked tone, "Kisuke! Have the aliens finally landed? Is the invasion starting?!"
To which the blond man threw his hands up and shouted back, "That's what I'm trying to figure out!"
