It was another forty five minutes before Yourichi emerged from the back room, looking tired and exhausted, followed by an equally exhausted Rukia down the hallway and into the sitting room where all of the other shinigami and ryoka who had been fighting today were gathered. She did a quick head count of the figures crowded into the narrow space. Yes, all eight of them were here now, ten if you counted her and Kisuke.
Yourichi yawned and straightened up, flexing her back to work a knot loose that had formed after three hours sitting on the floor and working healing kidou. She reached up a hand to swat her hair back out of her face and began to listen to what Renji was saying about the Hollow attacks that they had been fighting from her place just inside the doorway.
"How is the girl," Kisuke asked quietly, looking to where Ichigo was pacing in the corner, his hands clenching and unclenching as he moved back and forth restlessly, oblivious to everyone and everything else in the room, oblivious to the sounds of people talking all around him. "He's going to wear hole in the tatami mats if he doesn't stop soon."
"She'll live. The wounds aren't that bad. Fixing the collarbone of her shoulder was the worst once I got the bandages off her feet. Can you run those through one of your thingamabobs later to see what was covering them to make them so stiff?"
Kisuke gave her an odd look and then nodded, turning back so that they could both hear more of what was being said with a muttered comment about thingamabobs and gadgets.
"So, by all the calculations that anyone has managed so far, when the weird disturbance showed up on the radar was when we went from fighting two midlevel arrancar to fighting over a thousand weak hollows without any warning. Rukia, you were the one closest to the damned thing when it arrived. Did you find out whatever the fuck it was?"
"An injured shinigami who Yourichi-san and I just spent three hours working on being diverted from wherever she was headed into the middle of Karakura town."
Renji blinked for a second. "Everyone who was supposed to be in the human world fighting is here. How did an unauthorized shinigami manage to open a gate and sneak through unnoticed with all of Soul Society watching?"
Yourichi let out a sigh, "That is because she didn't, Renji. I don't think she's ever even seen Soul Society. She had already been in the human world and was trying to escape from being dragged to Las Noches when Kisuke decided to meddle and bring her here."
A cacophony of swearing erupted at this announcement, broken off suddenly by a brisk "Enough," from Hitsugaya.
"Whatever she is, we need to request for her to be brought to Soul Society in protective custody for questioning, at least until we know whether she is a threat or not." The captain rubbed his temples. "Dammit, what else do we know about this?" he finished, waving one hand in a vague, disgusted gesture.
"Masumi."
"What?"
Ichigo stopped pacing and stood still, shutting his eyes as if in pain before answering. "Her name is Dakamoragu Masumi."
Renji and Chad both started at the name sharply, staring dumbly for a second. Chad recovered first, speaking softly, obviously hurt by the loss.
"Dakamoragu -san is dead? But, how? She was alive in class today! Ichigo, are you sure?"
"I know that, Chad. My sister is refusing to leave her side until she wakes up because of just how badly those bastards tortured her and Karin felt it. That is why she was here in the first place, because she came looking for me as soon as she felt Masumi die."
Renji spluttered for a second before he blurted out "But why in all of damn fucking hell would those bastards pick a little fucking mouse like Dakamoragu -san to do that to? She doesn't have any spiritual power otherwise someone would have noticed even a little. But none of us have seen anything around her, not even Ishida! Even Chizuru and Asano show more reiatsu than she does. There is no fucking way that Aizen is going to go to all the effort of killing a completely normal college student who works as the English tutor and making her into a shinigami!"
Yourichi rubbed her ears, glaring in annoyance as she waited for the ringing sound she heard to fade enough that she could hear the silence that followed Renji's shouting. "Renji-kun, that is enough! We are taking this to the back room. Ichigo, shut up. I'm not going to hurt her. I just need to check the girl's feet to see if it is safe to rebandage them yet and the sooner everyone sees her, the sooner she gets to Soul Society. Now all of you, quiet or you'll wake her up and I am going to be really pissy if I have to redo the stitches in her shoulder."
It was the best idea any of them had to solve this and from the looks on their faces they knew it. No one uttered a complaint as they followed Yourichi back.