Hello everyone! This chapter is again completely Daricio's with a little bit of my own editing. (Original fanfic: fanfiction.net/s/4321805/1/bFamiliar_b_bFaces_b)
Answers to reviews:
Mel72000: Haha, yeah. The original story of course belongs to Daricio and I just had to keep that little scene in there because it was so funny.
Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet: Not a lot changed in this chapter except for some grammar stuff. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing (and your occasional suggestions).
Ppsh: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing. The concept idea is from Daricio but I intend to make it my own Happy reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
Chapter 3 – A Familiar Shop
Kon, Rinrin, Claude, and Nova were all peeking around a doorway in the back of Urahara's shop, trying to figure out why there was a short, orange-haired kid wandering around by himself and wondering whether they should actually do something about it.
He didn't seem to be causing any trouble; in fact, he treated the boxes and things on the shelves as if they would shock him if he touched them. Instead, he was simply wandering, looking around at everything in slight interest.
"Who's the kid?" Rinrin hissed to the others.
Kon glared at her. "How would we know that, idiot? We noticed him the same time you did!"
"Shut up, Kon!" the girl snapped back.
Kon ignored the girl's irritable reply and returned his attention to the mysterious kid. "What's he doing back here?" he asked.
Claude shrugged, rubbing the tips of his fingers across the brim of his hat contemplatively. "Kids are generally highly curious, so if the door to the back of the shop was open, he could have simply wandered in."
"Except that Urahara-san places pretty powerful barriers on the rooms back here so only certain people can get through," Rinrin noted crossly. "How did he get back here?"
Claude opened his mouth to offer an explanation, one finger raised in the air pointedly. He stayed like that for a moment and then slumped. "No idea."
"You're helpful," Kon snorted. "What should we do about it? Where's Urahara?"
"I don't know. Talking with a customer, I think," Rinrin replied.
Nova quietly pointed out the boy's clothing. "He's from Rukongai. A lower district."
"You're right... That's odd, then why would he be here?" Kon mused.
Rinrin frowned at him. "Baka, obviously a shinigami brought him here. That's probably who Urahara-san's talking with right now."
"If that's so, then we should leave the kid alone," Claude noted. "We don't want any unnecessary attention from Soul Society on us..."
"Still, maybe we should at least ask the kid who he is," Rinrin suggested.
"Sure, you do that," Kon said, rolling his eyes and folding his arms. "Just don't make me do it; kids and I don't really mix."
"You say that as if any of us and kids really mix," Claude pointed out.
Nova interrupted them quietly. "He found our plush forms."
The other three all whirled to face the doorway again, looking in. The boy had indeed stumbled upon the low shelf where the four plush toys sat and was looking at them curiously. Slowly, he reached out and picked up the stuffed lion, turning it over in his hands.
Kon fumed. "Oh, no you don't..." He stormed into the room, announcing his presence with a terse, "Put it back, kid."
Immediately, the plush was back on the shelf and the kid was staring up at him in shock, but in a heartbeat his look changed into a challenging glare. "I didn't take anything!"
Kon scowled at him. "Sure, you didn't. Only someone with a guilty conscious says stuff like that. How'd you get back here, anyway?"
The kid became a little uneasy, probably knowing he really wasn't supposed to be there, and began to shift from one foot to another. "Urahara-san and Kuchiki-taichou were talking, and it was boring, and the door was open, so..."
Kon's mouth fell open slightly. "Byakuya's here?"
The kid looked confused. "Bya...kuya? No, I meant Kuchiki Rukia-taichou..."
Kon blinked and then smiled. "Ah, Rukia-neesan! That makes more sense. Why did Nee-san bring you here?"
"You know Kuchiki-taichou? Doesn't she get mad when you call her that?" the boy asked, ignoring the question.
Kon laughed. "Only when I try to hug her. Rukia-neesan doesn't much like the fancy titles, just so you know. Her brother is also a captain, so if you call them both Kuchiki-taichou, things get confusing."
The boy nodded quickly. "Kay." He looked up at Kon curiously. "You have orange hair, just like me..."
Kon scowled at him, running one hand distractedly through his neatly trimmed orange hair. "Yeah, you've got Ichigo and Urahara to blame for that one."
For some reason, this caught the boy's interest. "Really? What'd Ichigo do to your hair?"
"He existed." Kon said shortly. Several years before Ichigo's disappearance, Kon had insisted that Urahara make him a gigai so that the other mod-souls wouldn't have that advantage over him whenever Ichigo actually had to use his body. Urahara had insisted on the orange hair, since apparently "nothing else would look right." Kon was still ticked off about that...
Suddenly the orange-haired teen noted the lack of honorifics added to the name. "Hang on; you added taichou to Rukia-neesan's name, but nothing to Ichigo's? Did you know him or something?"
The boy frowned nervously, apparently unsure how to answer this. "Ano... maybe? I kind of don't remember..."
"I see... Is that why Nee-san brought you here?" Kon frowned at him.
He thought about this for a moment. "I dunno if I'm supposed to tell anyone. Rukia-taichou says I'm not supposed to say."
"Really?" Now Kon was interested. "What's your name, kid?"
"What's yours?" he shot back.
Kon smirked at him. "Going to play it that way, huh? Fine, I'm Kon. But you can call me Kon-sama."
The kid wrinkled his nose at him. "Yeah right. Why would I call a teenager 'sama?'"
"Because I'm awesome, that's why! Besides, I'm older than you!"
"As far as you know!" the kid said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Secret!" the kid said, scowling at the teen.
"So you're just a nameless, ageless, annoying, orange-haired kid, then?" Kon scowled back.
The boy scowl changed to a devious smirk. "And you're just an irritating, perverted mod-soul. So?"
Kon froze. "How did you know that?"
Abruptly, the boy's smug look disappeared, replaced by sincere confusion and apprehension. "Know what?"
"You called me a mod-soul!" Kon accused. "How do you even know what a mod-soul is?"
His features went blank as he thought about this. "I... I don't know what a mod-soul is. I don't even know why I called you that. I think I might have known someone else named Kon once...?"
Kon looked him over suspiciously. "Kon isn't exactly a popular name. I certainly don't know any other Kons..." That and he could count the number of people who knew about mod-souls on two hands...
The boy shrugged slightly, looking even more confused. "I don't know..." the boy muttered so softly that Kon almost couldn't hear it. "I remember random stuff when I'm not paying attention, but when I try to remember, it doesn't work."
Kon frowned at him. "That's really odd."
The boy nodded. There was an awkward silence for a moment before the kid decided to break it with a random topic change. "So what are those?" he asked, pointing at the shelf that held the four plush forms.
"... They're stuffed animals."
The kid shot a look that said "duh." "Well, I figured that... I meant, why did you get mad at me for touching them?"
"I don't care about most of them. Just the one that's mine," Kon said indignantly.
"Oh." he grinned. "A teenager has a stuffed animal?"
"Hey, watch it, kid." Kon scowled at him. "Just don't touch it."
"Or what?"
"Or else. Just don't touch it," Kon repeated. The kid smiled mischievously. Then the inevitable occurred.
Within a few seconds, Kon found himself chasing the kid around in a mad rage.
"Give it back, brat!"
"Make me!"
Rinrin, Claude, and Nova were no help whatsoever and instead stood at the doorway, laughing at Kon's misfortune.
When Rukia eventually walked on the scene a moment later, she found, to her great amusement, Kon and the kid in a fierce tug of war match with the stuffed lion.
"Let go, you're going to rip it!"
"Then you let go!"
"You let go, brat!"
Rukia cleared her throat, catching both of their attentions. The kid immediately released the stuffed lion, causing Kon to fall to the floor in surprise. After a brief moment of confusion, Kon recovered, caught sight of Rukia, and launched himself happily at the shinigami.
"Neeeee-saaaaaaan!"
Abruptly, Kon found himself on the floor, Rukia's foot on the back of his head pressing his face into the floor. His next words were muffled. "So cruel, Nee-san!"
She smirked at him. "You haven't changed a bit, Kon." She turned her attention to the kid, who was observing Kon's situation with wide-eyed curiosity. "Urahara-san would like to talk with you for a while."
The kid nodded and silently left the room, giving Kon one last backwards glance before heading back to the main shop.
Rukia removed her foot from Kon's head, letting him get up again. "What were you doing?" she asked with obvious amusement.
Kon scowled. "What do you think? The brat stole me; I had to get me back!"
"It sure took you a while to catch him, mister super-enhanced leg strength!" Rinrin teased as the other three mod-souls entered the room.
"Maybe you didn't notice, baka, but the kid was using shunpo," Kon deadpanned. "What kid from the Rukongai can use shunpo?"
Rukia smirked. "A very special Rukongai kid."
Kon rolled his eyes. "Secret, right? That's what he said."
"Correct." Rukia confirmed. "But considering he might be spending a lot of his time around here, the four of you should be told, but this does not go beyond these walls."
"Like who are we going to tell," Kon scoffed, and then the rest of her words registered in the teenager's mind. "Wait, you're actually going to tell us?"
"Mmhmm." Rukia turned away, folding her arms and looking smug. "So how did you like your first conversation with Kurosaki Ichigo in two years?"
All four mod-souls gaped at her. One by one, things began to click in Kon's head. Orange hair, allowed through the shop's barriers, didn't use honorifics with Ichigo's name, knew about mod-souls, used shunpo...
Kon stood, a vein throbbing on his forehead. "I'm going to kill him."
xXx
Ichigo and Urahara were seated at a low table. The man in the funny hat sat silent for a moment, examining the boy across from him with interest. "Tell me as much as you remember from your life before Rukongai."
Ichigo frowned at him. "Nothing, at least when I try to remember. When I'm not paying attention, random facts pop up. Like, I accidentally called Kon a mod-soul earlier, but I've no idea what that is..."
Urahara nodded, thinking this over. "What about when you first arrived in Rukongai?"
"Dunno. I was confused at first, but people just told me that losing most or all of your memories when coming to Rukongai is normal." Ichigo said.
"That is true," Urahara mused. "When a soul comes to Soul Society, young souls are left how they are and they lose little to none of their memories, while older souls are reset. The older they were, the less they remember their previous lives..."
"That's what Rukia-taichou said, but if you all knew that, then why is everyone so surprised that I'm little?" Ichigo asked, confused.
Urahara shook his head. "You had come to Soul Society before. Not only that, you were also a captain who came to and from Soul Society often. Technically, when you became a shinigami, your physical body died and you simply possessed it after that. So I suppose we all assumed that since you didn't get reset every time you came to Soul Society before, that you had no real connection to your body anymore and therefore wouldn't be reset when returning to Soul Society after its death..."
"Oh. Then why-"
Ichigo's question was interrupted by a slight commotion outside the door leading to the back room. The sound was immediately followed by Kon bursting through the door.
Rukia close behind him, yelling, "Kon, don't!"
Kon ignored her, pointing at Ichigo. "Are you really Ichigo?" he demanded.
Ichigo scowled at him. "How am I supposed to answer that?" he shot back. "What would you do if someone randomly came up to you and asked, 'Are you really Kon'?"
Kon let out a noise of irritation. "You know what I mean, brat. Are you really that Ichigo?"
"That's what everyone keeps telling me," Ichigo said in slight exasperation. The same questions were getting really old by now.
"Then why didn't you-"
Without warning, the main door to the shop slammed open and something large launched itself at Ichigo's head, emitting a loud scream. Caught completely off guard, Ichigo instinctively dodged to one side, grabbed a hold of the thing's legs, and slammed it forcefully into the ground.
It was at that point that Ichigo realized that the thing was a person.
"Twelve-years-old and I still have nothing left to teach you!" the man sobbed. Ichigo couldn't tell if it was from sadness or joy.
Ichigo stared at him. "Who are you?"
This made the man sob harder, this time it was definitely sadness. "My only son has forgotten me!"
Two girls entered the shop right behind the man. The one with darker hair took one look at the man collapsed on the floor and gave an irritated sigh. Hitting the old man over the head, she yelled, "Knock it off, you knew he wouldn't remember you!"
He bawled. "Why must my daughter be so violent? Nobody has any respect for me any more!"
"Nobody ever had any respect for you!" the girl shot at him, twitching.
The other girl turned to Ichigo apologetically. "Don't mind them. I'm Yuzu. This is Karin. We're your sisters. And that's our dad."
Ichigo stared around at all of them. He didn't know a single one of them, but apparently, this was his family...
Quietly, he asked, "Is he always this crazy, or just right now?"
Karin scowled. "He's always this crazy," she confirmed. "And sometimes worse."
"Hey, I can be very serious at times," his dad protested.
Urahara interrupted the argument before it could begin. "So how much were you three told?"
"Not much," Karin said with a frown. "Just, 'hey, your older brother was found, except that he's now your little brother, and he doesn't remember anything,' so nothing informative. What happened?"
Urahara began explaining his theory that Ichigo had been reset. Ichigo turned back to where Kon had been standing, only to realize that the teen was no longer there or anywhere else in the room.
Looking around curiously, he tugged on Rukia's sleeve. "Where'd Kon go?" he whispered so as not to interrupt the other conversation.
Rukia-taichou smirked. "He left in a hurry. He's scared of Yuzu."
Ichigo blinked, glancing over at his supposed sister. There was nothing particularly threatening about her... In fact, of everybody here, she seemed to be the least scary... He turned back to Rukia. "Why?"
"I'll explain later," she promised.
Urahara finished his explanation. "So the main problem is that little to no research has been done on exactly how people lose their memories when they're reset. If it was a total memory wipe, then there's really nothing we can do. However, if it simply blocks access to memories, we just have to figure out how to remove the block."
"Considering he can still remember random facts about things, it's likely the memories are just blocked," Rukia commented.
Urahara nodded. "Even then, though, it's still possible that some of his memories got wiped... It'll be impossible to tell how many until we figure out how to remove the block."
"How are we going to do that if nobody's ever done research on memories before?" Karin complained.
"Trial and error," Urahara said. "One thing that may be important to note is that Kurosaki-san has always typically performed best under pressure. He does things because he has to, not because he wants to. Likewise, he now appears to have the most access to what little memory he has whenever he's not thinking about it, especially when he needs it."
Rukia-taichou nodded. "Like suddenly remembering how to shunpo," she added.
Ichigo blinked at her. "What's shunpo?"
"The moving really fast thing."
"Oh."
Urahara-san nodded. "Which proves again, he doesn't exactly remember how to do things or what they're called; he just does them."
"That's not necessarily because of this memory problem, though," Rukia-taichou pointed out. "When he was first learning this stuff, he did the exact same thing. He just did stuff suddenly, like standing on air, or sensing spirit threads, and even his Getsuga Tenshou attack, and then he learned the names and techniques later..."
"True..." Urahara agreed, waving his fan in front of his thoughtful expression.
Yuzu frowned. "Doesn't that mean that he might actually not remember things, and that he'll have to be re-taught everything?"
Urahara shook his head. "No, he does keep remembering random information about people. Again, that means that at least some of his memories are still in there somewhere. It's just a matter of finding out how many of them, and how to get them."
"So what do you plan on doing?" Ichigo's dad wanted to know.
"Well, I do want to know how much of his shinigami abilities he has retained. Obviously, asking him about them won't help, because if he tries to think about it, they'll be blocked. So for now I'm just wanting to set up some targets in the underground training area, give him a sword, and see what he does with it," Urahara suggested.
Rukia nodded. "I'm all right with that, as long there's no actual battles with people. Kenpachi tried that earlier and it didn't work so well."
Ichigo turned slightly red. "Well, he was big." he defended himself. "And scary. And a captain."
Rukia laughed. "True. But don't let any of the captains scare you. To be honest, I think you could probably still beat most of them even like this."
Ichigo looked doubtful at this.
Urahara smiled. "Well, we'll soon see. Follow me, everyone!"
With that, Urahara stood and began to lead the small group to another part of the store.
Following the man doubtfully, Ichigo couldn't really say that he was fond of the creepy smile the odd shopkeeper had hidden behind his fan.
Words: Ano - Um; Taichou - Captain; Nee-san - term of endearment, usually for older sisters;Baka - Idiot/Fool/Stupid
Just a note, Yuzu can now see spirits. I would assume she would eventually be able to do that after living several years with three spiritually aware people. Yuzu and Karin would be around 19 years old since Ichigo disappeared around when he was 23.
~Bluesky21543