Catching up to her was easier than he'd expected it to be.
Especially given the fact that she hadn't bothered to go very far in the first place. Just to the corner grocery store where he more or less trailed after her at a discreet distance as she did some light shopping. If one could call buying a small mountain of raw red meat, fish fillets, several pounds of shrimp and some chicken. Some fruit and five tubs of chocolate and caramel toffee ice cream- light shopping.
None of which sounded utterly terrible.
But he was betting that she was planning to gorge and make herself sick with the ice cream since she was anxious about her upcoming heat and was probably wanting something familiar to help calm her.
It wouldn't have been a bad idea.
If not for the fact that the ice cream was dairy. And to his knowledge most older felines tended to be lactose intolerant. He wasn't sure if the same could be said for a lot of people with animal based quirks, so he was only making an educated guess here.
But some people tended to have more animal in them than human.
At the moment, she seemed like she were trying to figure out what she would need to get immidaitely. However because she seemed to know next to nothing about her feline needs, she was at a loss as to what to do.
He wanted to help her. To just walk up to her and hand her everything that he could possibly think of to help make things easier on her. But if he did so- he was fairly certain that she would bolt ad he might not find her again for another six months or more.
And that was completely unacceptable to him.
Which begged the questions, how was he going to approach her? And how long did he have until her heat hit? She wasn't showing any immediate outward signs of it. So...days? Maybe a week or so?
That would have given him some wiggle room as far as preparations went. He already had some vague ideas as far as far as where he could place her to keep her safe during the duration of her heat. He had spare room at his home. And even some at Might Tower.
He could fix a nice comfortable place for her to stay at either one.
And it wasn't as if he'd take advantage of her. He pretty much didn't interact with people outside of simply speaking to them. And he generally kept any contact to an absolute minimum. He knew that that might be a little bit troublesome while she was in heat, but at the same time, she might also appreciate the distance.
Physically at least.
And he could ask Recovery Girl if she could maybe help him with any information that he was lacking. As well as some planning. Plus having another person who was expertly medically trained around- might go a long way as far as putting Ichigo at ease around him. After all, they were both female.
And Recovery Girl could easily toss him out of the house/tower if he accidentally did something wrong to upset her. Hell all she would have to do was brain him with her needle/cane and he'd be more than happy to leave the two alone for a while.
He was even perfectly fine with sleeping outside if he had too. As long as Ichigo was comfortable and taken care of, he didn't really care what happened to himself.
Once she had paid for her things and left the store, he followed her out- mentally berating and agonizing over the fact that he was basically stalking the poor girl as he followed her two blocks over to a not-so-great part of town. Where he watched in fascination as she took some time to feed some stray animals some of her recently bought hamburger meat that she'd gotten. As well as take the time out to hand some of the stuff that she'd bought to some people who looked as if they were living on the streets.
Honestly he'd never seen such deplorable conditions for so many people before. And he could tell that a lot of them weren't in the best of health, or even living well. They were covered in filth from head to toe, their hair was greasy and matted their clothing threadbare of stuck to their dirty skin.
Some of them were in such poor health that they were emaciated like himself. But even further along. Their skin stretched tight over fragile bone, their eyes and cheeks were so sunken in that they were hollow. But what scared him- really, really scared him- was the fact that some of them were small children between the ages of eight and eleven.
His stomach, churned uncomfortably as bile burned the back of his throat and he had to blink away the tears that were threatening to well up and spill down his face. As he watched her take the fruit and some of the ice cream out of her bag along with a couple of containers of meat and hand them to the oldest of the kids and tell him what to do with them.
The boy nodded soberly and all of them took a moment to latch onto her and hug her. Their small voices spilling words of gratitude and thanks and she took a heartbeat or two to pat them all on the head and promise to bring them more soon.
How she could manage to muster up the strength it took to walk away from those tiny precious children, he would never know. It was more than obvious to him that she didn't want too. He could tell that something in her wanted to stay put and make sure that the kids were taken care of and made well again.
Maternal instinct perhaps?
He could already tell that she was a natural born caregiver. Which might explain a little bit about her reluctance to leave them. But then again, he couldn't imagine any sane person wanting to leave them in the cold in such a state to begin with.
He had already fished his cell phone out of his pocket and was rapidly typing out a text that he would send to several different pro-hero agencies to see if they would be okay with helping to get the children and the other homeless people off of the street and getting them medical care and such.
Since it was him, and his former pro-hero identity still carried a lot of clout, he doubted that anyone would really deny him this. Once the text was sent, he started to put his phone away when an automatic response chimed.
Curious, he lifted his cell up to eye level and let out an angry growl when he saw that Endeavor had already responded with a great big 'hell no'.
Okay he took it back, he didn't know anyone who would deny him expect for that man. But then Endeavor was an asshole. So it wasn't an absolute surprise that he'd said no.
It didn't mean that it didn't upset him quite a bit though.
No matter, he could be a jerk whenever he wished to as well and would take a great deal of pleasure dragging the man's pro-hero name and status through the mud on national TV for his denial.
Especially since he heard his phone chime a few more times and took a few moments to quickly scan the texts from some of the other pro-heroes and their agencies. They were totally on board with his plan and would be setting out to collect everyone once they arranged everything.
It would take an hour, maybe two tops since he'd told them that his request was a time sensitive issue. But hopefully within the next hour or so, the kids and the rest of the homeless would be on their way to a much safer and cleaner and possibly healthier location for them.
They would get taken care of, he silently vowed to himself. He'd see to it personally if he had to. And by removing them from the streets and seeing that they were cared for he had effectively given Ichigo one less thing to worry and stress over.
Slipping his phone back into his pants pocket as he started walking again, he was hard pressed to keep his eyes on the girl instead of the children. Part of him wanting to make sure that they were okay for himself. While part of him was chastising him for taking his eyes off of the girl even for a second.
After all, years and years of difficult and strenuous training as a hero couldn't be undone. And he knew better. However training and hindsight were two very different things. One could be controlled and the other...not so much. So when he turned the corner that he'd seen her take a few moment's prior and found himself suddenly being violently shoved back to the point where he fell, well...he didn't know what to make of it until he looked up at the irked girl's face.
"Eeek!" Was all that he could manage to get out before quickly flipping himself up and back onto his feet just in time to avoid her managing to actually injure him with a well placed punch that broke the pavement underneath her dainty little hand.
"I've had just about enough of you Mister," She growled as she pulled her hand up and away from the shattered stone and slowly stood to her full height as she demanded. "What the hell do you think your doing following me?"
He looked at her, and then looked down at the damage that shed done to the pavement and then looked back at her again before making a split second decision. The first option he had here was running.
After all, he wasn't All Might anymore. Sure he still contained some of the lasting vestiges of One for All. But that didn't necessarily mean that he wanted to get into a knock down drag out fist fight with the girl.
His other option was to throw himself at her feet and beg her forgiveness. Which would be more appropreate he supposed. However in his panic, he chose a little bit of both.
He turned and made an attempt to flee while shouting all kinds of panicked apologies and nearly knocked himself completely unconscious when he ran right into a telephone poll head on and then hit the ground dazed and in pain. He was vaguely aware of the girl muttering a few choice oaths, her cat ears and tail visibly twitching in agitation as she practically stormed right up to him, and knelt down next to him, and then settled a small hand on one of his shoulders and growled at him to fucking breathe.
During which time Toshinori dazidly thought, that despite his initial 'fleeing' reaction to her anger, she seemed rather...nice. Maybe even a little bit sweet. However he was having a lot of trouble catching his breath at the moment, so it was just a tad bit difficult for him to manage a decent breath.
Something that must have alarmed her considerably since he could see her features soften somewhat before everything suddenly went dark on him.