I'm not going to sugar coat it. I dun goofed up with the last chapter. I had a lot of spelling mistakes despite me using a spellchecker and some of the words were auto corrected into words that didn't make sense. All of that is technical difficulties, and I will get that sorted out soon. I do not own Bleach.
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Panicked was not a word that Urahara used to describe himself, ever, pretty much. Sometimes he was unpleasantly surprised, or taken off guard. But he would recover and fix the problem. What the arrancar in front of him was saying, about Aizen building an army in Hueco Mundo, that made him panic.
Urahara had built up a character profile of how he expected his nemesis Aizen to act. Aizen fell in the category of shinigami that hated hollows with a passion. Aizen building an army of hollows in Hueco Mundo didn't fit Urahara's profile at all and this meant that he didn't have a plan for this.
With his mind still raceing, Urahara was frantically making and discarding plans so that he could find a way to counter this new development.
Meanwhile, Ichigo was looking at what Urahara had for sale in his shop. Most of it looked like candy, but after he broke the lock on the door leading to the back he found a lot more interesting stuff. He picked up a red glove with a flaming skull on it and smelled it. Based on its reiatsu, he guessed that it could push a soul out of it's body. Interesting but not especially useful, Ichigo put it back on the shelf and continued his exploring.
It was slightly harder to brake the lock on the second door. This room appeared to be a sleeping quarters of some kind, probably the shopkeeper's. It was sparsely decorated, with potted plants here and there, but nothing caught his attention until he saw a picture on a high shelf.
The picture depicted Urahara, with what appeared to be midget shinigami girl, a giant mexican teen, a orange haired girl with D-cups, and a tall pencil thin nerd wearing glasses and a white cape with stylized blue crosses.
Ichigo was going to dismiss the photo, when he took a second look and something caught his breath. It was their expressions. All of the people in this photo were smiling.
On some basic level this disturbed Ichigo. How could they be smiling? They seemed relaxed, and … even seemed to enjoy each others company.
Gears were seemingly grinding together in Ichigo's head. It was like a complicated math problem for him: other people + unknown = happiness + satisfaction.
Ichigo wanted some of that. The kids in the photo appeared whole, as if their life's were fulfilled and they had nothing to worry about. Ichigo clutched the photo and walked out of the room.
Urahara was broken out of his brainstorming by someone tapping his shoulder. He jumped and turned around to see the hollow he had invited into his shop holding a photo of him with Uryū and his friends and pointing at it animatedly.
"I want this." Was all Ichigo said, thinking that the shopkeeper would understand what he was trying to say.
Confused, Urahara replied, "What do you mean Hollow-kun?"
Ichigo snorted, "Theses guys have what I'm looking for and I want what they got, isn't that obvious? What do I have to do to have what they have, I'll do just about anything, just tell me!"
Urahara still didn't seem to understand, so Ichigo rolled his eyes and clarified for him "I want to be happy like they are in this picture."
Understanding dawned on Urahara. Hollows ate souls in an attempt to fill the void in their hearts they gained upon dying with unfulfilled desires. By consuming souls they hoped to fill their hearts so that they could have the satisfaction of being whole that they so desperately looked for. As a hollow evolved, their desire to became whole just grew and grew instead of diminishing, while he was still a captain, Urahara theorized that only the most powerful of Vasto Lordes didn't possess a hollows trademark hunger, and that was only because a they were satisfied with having become as powerful as they had.
It seemed to Urahara that Ichigo had evolved into a Vasto Lorde, and was not yet satisfied, so he became an arrancar hoping that an increase in power would make him happy, but it did not, so he grew bored and subconsciously led himself to seek out something that could fill the void in his soul.
Ideas clicked together in his head, and Urahara smirked. He could use this to his advantage and find a way to take down Aizen. Before he did that however, he had to take care of this arrancar.
Urahara snapped his fan open again and switched from "mad shingami scientist mode" to "crazy powerful friendly shopkeeper mode".
"Of course you can be happy like Ishida and his friends hollow-kun!" Ichigo let out a sigh of relief. "However," Urahara continued causing Ichigo to tense up "there will be several things you must do in order for this to work."
"What do I have to do?" Ichigo questioned cautiously while setting the photo down.
"Mmmm, not too much." Urahara began looking Ichigo up and down "Does your mask come off Ichigo?"
"Uhh, no. My mask is really hard, and its never even been cracked, so it doesn't move at all." Ichigo replied awkwardly, surprised by such a sudden question, "Why do you ask?"
"One of the things you need will be a gigai, or an artificial body, so that you have some physical form. I can make one for you, but it would help if I knew what your face looked like. Would you mind if I made it so your gigai had a mask attached to it as well?"
Ichigo shrugged, indicating that he really didn't care. Then he snapped his fingers "Make sure that my gigai has my awesome pants though. I made these myself and I want to make sure that everyone knows how cool they are."
Urahara nodded in complete understanding, fingering his hat lightly. "You will also need to have a very specific diet hollow-kun." Seeing Ichigo cock his head to the side in confusion he elaborated "It wouldn't be right at all if I allowed you to go around and eat living souls left and right, so if you want to stay here and obtain your goal, you must eat only hollows." Seeing that Ichigo agreed Urahara continued "We also need to do something about your level of power."
"What do you mean?"
Urahara explained "When shinigami with captain class reiatsu come to the living world, they have power limiters placed on them so that the reiatsu they release does not cause harm to any living souls. You seem to be repressing your reiatsu rather well, but if you slip up, human lives will be in danger. Also," Urahara continued, "your reiatsu is a dead giveaway to Soul Society that there is a Menos class hollow in Karakura Town, and I'm guessing that you don't want to have to deal with captains coming after you." Urahara said the last bit with a smile, sending shivers down Ichigo's spine.
"What do you get out of all this?" the hollow questioned.
Urahara laughed. "I'm not doing all this for free! Heavens no!" He smiled evilly at Ichigo, "The gigai, not to mention the limiters you need, aren't cheap. Your going to have to work off the debt that you will accumulate, and best of all, you will work for me to do so!"
Ichigo shifted uncomfortably. "What kind of work are we talking about here?"
"Not much, I just need you to do... paperwork, inventory, heavy lifting, dealing with customers, babysitting, exterminating hollows, cataloging, more paperwork, fighting alongside Soul Society against Aizen, even more paperwork, looking for new products for the shop, taking care of cats, assisting with target practice, laughing at my jokes, convincing certain vizards to go along with my plan, painting advertising to attract customers to the shop, and finally, continuing to call me cool hat guy when in the presence of certain individuals."
Ichigo was stunned, then he looked at Urahara with could best be described as a brief moment of fury. Expecting Ichigo to call him out on making him work with shinigamis if he agreed, Urahara braced himself for the worst, what happened however…
"I hate cats. I absolutely refuse if I have to take care of cats. Get rid of that condition and I agree, otherwise I'm out of here."
Urahara was dumbfounded. "Your okay working with shinigami?"
Ichigo nodded his head. "Don't get me wrong, I do hate shinigami. I only hate them because they'll try to kill me seven ways from Sunday, it's completely different if I'm working with them. If I'm working with them they won't try to kill me, so I won't have any reason to hate them. It's pretty simple. I hate cats unconditionally though and don't want to have to take care of them."
Urahara smiled behind his fan. This was perfect. He held out his hand to seal the deal. "I think that can be arranged employee-Ichigo. Congratulations on gaining employment at Urahara's Shop."
Ichigo shook his hand and nodded thankfully. Then he let out a giant yawn, traversing between the spiritual void vertically had taken a lot out of him and made him tired. He got up and nodded his head aprreciatively. He started walking out "Thank you cool-hat dude. I'm beat, so I'm going to find a tree somewhere to crash in. See ya tomorrow for work."
Urahara nodded and watched as his new employee left. When he walked out he got up and started moving quickly. If he wanted to have the gigai finished by tomorrow he needed to move fast. He practically giggled thinking of what was to come.
He went into his back room and gathered the necessary tools. Leaning over his workbench he began his work.
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The next day, Urahara could barely contain his excitement. With the arrancar working for him, he would get leverage over Aizen's army, and if he smudged a couple of details, he could tell the vizards that they had a new potential recruit, thus he could discovers where their hideout was. Not that he didn't know the general location of course.
Ichigo made it into the shop around 10 o'clock in the morning. In Urahara's personal opinion, he looked like shit. His clothes were much worse looking, even more dirty and torn then they were before. It also looked like he had a tire track running down his face.
Seeing Urahara looking at him he clarified "I found a nice tree to sleep in. It was high off the ground and was at the top of a hill so I had a nice view. Unfortunately for me, this ment that when I turned over in my sleep then I rolled over 50 feet downhill through shrubs that tore my clothes apart and onto a roadway where I got hit by a semi truck… I don't have the best of luck when falling asleep."
Urahara didn't even try to understand and just Ahhed in acknowledgement. Wasting no time, he beckoned Ichigo into the back room. There was a high metallic table with a white sheet over it, covering what appeared to be a body.
With a lot of zest, Urahara pulled the sheet aside, revealing to Ichigo… Ichigo. His gigai looked just like him with three key differences. His hollow hole was gone. He was wearing normal human clothes. And his mask, instead of just being fused to his face, was held in place by a series of straps and buckles. Looking it over for issues, there weren't any, and Ichigo approved.
Before Ichigo could step into his gigai, Urahara stopped him and handed him a paper bag. Opening it up, Ichigo found a strip of white bandages, like the ones he wore instead of a shirt, and a bird skull necklace with leather ties. Ichigo looked up and gave his employer the "look".
"Listen, I don't even want to know what creepy satanic bullshit you're into. But for the love of god, count me out of it."
Confused Urahara said "What do you mean?"
"Seriously, bird skulls rate at least a 8.5 on the creepy scale. If you want me to wear this then I assume that if I do, I'll be forced into some demonic contract, and I'll have to do whatever you say, which isn't really that different from me working for you normally, but it will be demonic!" Ichigo crossed his arms and lay the bag on the table next to his gigai.
Urahara didn't understand what Ichigo was trying to say but he clarified what he had handed to him. "The bandages I gave you will serve as the limiters we discussed yesterday. The necklace is a very special invention of mine however. Do you notice the color of the skull?" Ichigo looked in the bag again to see that the skull was yellow. "If the skull is white, your normal reiatsu will be released from you. However, if the skull is yellow, like it is now, than your hollow reiatsu will be detected as human, albeit with streaks of hollow reiatsu in it. This will help you blend in with the more spiritually aware occupants of Karakura Town. You can change the necklace's color by pumping a little bit of your reiatsu into it."
Ichigo sheepishly apologized and wrapped the limiter around his upper left arm and put the necklace on. He leaned his cleaver in the corner, and lay on top of the table. He entered the gigai and slowly got up off the table.
He found his center of gravity and got up on his feet. He turned torwards Urahara and saluted "Reporting for duty Mr. Cool-Hat Dude. I'm ready for anything."
Happy to have an employee actually happy to do what he said for once, Urahara told Ichigo what he had planned, "Your going to do something new Ichigo. Something that you've never done before."
"I'm up for trying just about anything, except for gay sex and rape, at least once."
Sweatdropping, Urahara continued, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take that backpack," Urahara pointed torwards a giant hiking pack larger than Ichigo "and set up a food stand at the local high school. You will then man said food stand and sell the stand's product to the student body there, you must set up the stall before the student's lunch time. On top of that, if a hollow gets within school grounds, you are to take care of it, so that the hollow can't take a bite out of the spiritually aware teens there."
Ichigo nodded and then waited, trying to get Urahara's attention. "What is it?"
"I don't know the way to the high school your talking about."
"Check the uppermost left pocket on the bag, you'll find a map with my recommended route highlighted."
Accepting that his first job was going to be him selling food to teens, Ichigo picked up the giant hiking pack (with no difficulty whatsoever even with the bag waging over a ton), shoved his zanpakuto into it, and started jogging to the school knowing that he had to make it there before lunch started.
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Tatsuki let out a sigh of relief as the lunch bell rang and she got released from English and her class could finally get some food. It was especially bad in class today with Keigo thinking he knew how to speak English and he screamed out loud for the entire school to hear "I shan eatz yoess vocabulari!", he embarrassed the entire class, including the teacher and had to be escorted out. What made it worse was that Uyrū, Orihime, and Chad were all gone today even though school was still going (A/N: Pretty sure this deviates from cannon but not 100%.) and they couldn't balance out Keigo's weirdness. Even the new exchange student Rukia was gone, and the weird part was that whenever Tatsuki mentioned her to anyone, they didn't seem to know what she was talking about and looked at her like she as crazy.
She pushed those thoughts to the side however as getting something to eat right now was much more important. She woke up late and didn't have a chance to eat breakfast, then she forgot to grab the lunch she had prepared for herself last night, so she was practically starving. Thanking god that she had money to spend on food, she stepped off of school grounds and looked around for a good restaurant or a food stall to eat at.
Other students seemed to have has the same idea as her and they were also looking for somewhere to eat. Tatsuki didn't want to eat with complete strangers, so she started looking for a food stand that didn't have a lot of customers. She lucked out when she saw a simple sandwich stall that didn't appear to have any customers right across the street from the school.
She walked right up to it and saw that the orange haired teenager running the stall had his back turned torwards her. She coughed to get his attention and her eyes widened slightly in shock when she saw him.
She couldn't see his face. All of it was covered by a horrifying white skull mask with the only color being three red stripes beneath one eye. And his eyes, his eyes didn't have normal coloring to them, instead, his eyes were pure obsidian black with bright yellow irises.
She was about to turn around and get away from this creep, then she heard his voice. It was warm and friendly, instead of creepy and cold like she imagined to be. He simply said, "Hello valued customer to Urahara's Shop: Sandwich branch division. How may I serve you today."
His friendly introduction was apparently all that Tatsuki needed to confirm that this guy wasn't going to drag her into an ally and kill her while she tried to order.
"Umm… this is the first time I've heard of this place so I don't know what to order. What do you suggest?"
The teen seemed appreciative that she hadn't fan away screaming so he replied "I don't know about those othe guys," he gestured to the stalls the other students were eating at "but at this stall we have a dream. A dream that every valuable customer, like yourself, deserves to eat the kind of sandwich that they ask for exactly the way they asked for it. That means that all you need to do is tell me what you want to eat and I will whip it right up for you."
"If you'll make anything, I want three egg salad sandwiches."
The masked man nodded his head and got to work preparing Tatsuki's lunch. While he was doing this, Tatsuki watched him and tried to place exactly where she had seen the type of mask he was wearing before. Then she remembered.
For the last couple of weeks, she had noticed Ishida and Rukia leaving the classroom abruptly and dashing outside. She watched them, and was amazed the first couple of times when she saw them fighting giant masked monsters right in front of the school, Ishida using a glowing bow and arrows, and Rukia shooting fireballs and using a katana. None of the other students seemed to see them doing it however and she never brought it up with anybody because of it. This guy seemed to wear exactly the same kind of mask that the monsters Ishida and Rukia fought however.
While Tatsuki was thinking the guy finished making her three sandwiches and handed them to her once he wrapped them up. "Thank you for you business, that will be 57000 yen please."
Tatsuki's jaw dropped. "What's with this price! It's rediculous!"
The man looked at her with what Tatsuki could only guess was surprise, she couldn't tell with the mask on, and replied "I'm not from around here and I don't exactly know how much stuff costs, my boss didn't say how I should price the food however. I heard that you can't buy anything at all for a single yen, so I added generously to the price of all the food I sell here."
Tatsuki changed her mind. The reason no one was getting there food here wasn't because the guy running the stall wore a creepy mask, it was because all of the food was rediculously overpriced. She grabbed the guy by his collar and brought him right up to her face.
"Listen, I don't care about your creepy eyes,"
"I have a condition."
"or the creepy mask you wear,"
"It's part of my native culture."
"you charging that much yen for some sandwiches however. That's compleatly inexcusable, when I let you go, your going to tell me your name, apologize for even considering making pay that much for food, and go back to your suck-ass boss and freaking ask him how much you should charge for food! Do you hear me?" Ichigo nodded frantically. "Cause you making someone pay that much for sandwiches is freaking criminal." Tatsuki let the man go and he quickly started bowing to her.
"My name is Ichigo and I apologize greatly for moderately overcharging you for your meal. In compensation, please keep the sandwiches that I have made. Now please excuse me, I think that I need to bring problems valuable customerers were having with their food to management. Good day."
Ichigo quickly folded the stall back up and shove it back into his backpack, not wasting a single second because he needed to get out of there fast. He was a monster in human form who had hunted down and mercilessly slaughtered beasts so he could consume their raw flesh. The thought of having to face this black haired human girl however seemed to scare him even more than fighting a shinigami captain did however. Forget guarding the school, if that girl went there then she seemed more than capable in Ichigo's opinion of taking care of attacking hollows.
With everything put away, Ichigo sped off back torwards Urahara's shop, leaving a slightly curious and very scary human girl behind, wondering how he ha manage to fit the entire food stall into his backpack.
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Whoo! Second chapter done. Next chapter will deal with Ichigo, our arrancar employee, meeting Ishida and friends as they come back home after rescuing Rukia. If you want to know how the invasion went different I won't dedicate a chapter to saying what happened and will instead use flashbacks when I deem them necessary. I may also consider giving a hints of the pairings I have planned, nothing is certain however and the only thing I can tell you for sure is that there isn't going to be any yaoi. Goodnight folks.