outside his vision
8. stake-out

Against both their better judgement, they wind up having a mini stake-out for Ichigo. Though Orihime has the foresight to call for reinforcements, so Ishida Uryuu is there as well, and Rukia.

They're all surprised (except Kazui who's figured out when in time he is and has a sparse understanding as to what's occured) to see Sado go into the club as well.

'Should we follow?' Orihime whispers.

Rukia does something else instead. A spell, and Kazui hasn't learnt that spell (or many spells) from her yet so he can't recognise it. 'Safer than going in ourselves,' the Shinigami explains. 'After all, if Sado's going in there, there must be a reason. And if he can see Shinigami, maybe his new friends can as well.'

'They're Fullbringers,' Kazui offers. 'And they can, if their powers have woken up anyway.'

The others stare at him. Uryuu is frowning; the others are just contemplative, and Orihime is smiling. 'It's certainly useful, learning all this from you.'

'I don't know about that,' Uryuu replied. 'Depends on what theory of time travel's in play here, and most of those say you shouldn't be giving us knowledge about the future… or changing it at all.'

Right, he's forgotten about that. Not that he knows very many time travel theories. It's never been important in the grand scheme of things.

Probably a good thing that the bad guys haven't gotten a hold of the means. But hopefully his parents figure it out soon and pop by and take him before he makes a mess of things (or he has to visit Urahara, or worse the Section 12 Captain).

'What theories do you know?' Rukia asks. 'And any way of figuring out which it is?'

'If that's really what happened…' Uryuu eyes Kazui in a manner which suggests he's not entirely convinced – but at least Kazui's not a suspicious character, or he doesn't think himself as suspicious anyway. 'Then the possibilities are either changing the past affects the future, or changing the past creates a new future deviating from the old. If it's the latter, it's impossible to return back – except for the theoretical possibility of a two-step process with the first travelling back to before the points diverged. However, since the travel itself theoretically changes the past, then it might be an absolute impossibility.'

'In which case it's already too late to do anything about.' Rukia crosses her arms. 'Moving on.'

'If time's a single flowing stream,' Uryuu continued, 'that has two possibilities in itself. Either the original past took into consideration the time-travel of someone in it, and this is all playing out how it's meant to, or it was not taken into account and therefore changing things here will have a ripple effect on the future, and it's never as simple as changing things purposely for the better. Usually, the changes aren't purposeful at all.'

'Though that's all science-fiction, isn't it?' Orihime says, mildly enough to not sound insulting like it would have from most other lips. 'Time travel has never actually been done.'

Uryuu shrugs. 'We're not exactly well-placed to know that. Though it hasn't been done in human history, who's to say the Shinigami or Hallows or something else haven't managed it?'

'I haven't heard of such a thing from the Shinigami,' Rukia replies. 'That doesn't mean it's not possible, of course. I hardly have access to everything. But it would help if we knew more. And Urahara can probably help us.'

Kazui grimaces.

'What is it?' Rukia asks. 'Urahara's a nice man, though he's rather eccentric and often has his own agendas.' Like when he'd outfitted her with human skin that supressed her powers and almost got her executed too.

'He's creepy,' Kazui replies. 'And he's got a cat that's always staring and turns into a woman whenever she feels like it.'

Uryuu laughs at that. 'You've got Ichigo as a father and you think that's creepy?'

Well, Ichigo was his father, so of course he's normalcy compared to Urahara.