Author's Note: I do not own Bleach or its characters. This is AU.
I'll Bring the Veil
Ichigo did not like this at all. There was something very suspicious about the whole matter. He and Rukia were having quite a bit of trouble navigating the university system when it came to her expulsion. It should have been simple enough, but apparently Rukia was an exception to a number of rules. That wouldn't have bothered him so much if her advisor, Professor Ukitake, hadn't been having so much trouble as well. Ukitake was just one of the faculty members supporting Rukia. At this point, they had quite a cadre of supports. Once his friends had found out about what was going on with Rukia, they had insisted on being involved.
So while things had started out with the five of them, everyone had gotten other people involved. Rukia had checked in with her own advisor only to find that he hadn't even heard about the issue yet. Chad and Ishida had tackled figuring out just what the whole process for opposing or appealing Rukia's expulsion was while Orihime had decided to gather public support for Rukia. Dr. Ukitake was working on the faculty side of things. And they all were getting no where. Things like the fact that Rukia was related to a faculty member kept causing exceptions to many of the normal rules.
That was in part why Ichigo was going to see if his dad's friends could help. Both Dr. Urahara and Ms. Shihoin were pretty high up in the food chain at the university, and they might have some clout that a regular professor or department head might not. Normally, Ichigo would hesitate to use the connection; it really wasn't fair to those who didn't have personal connections to the University administration. However, this was hardly a normal situation. He wasn't about to let Rukia get expelled when there was something he could do about it.
He fidgeted nervously as he waited to be admitted to Urahara's office. Ichigo didn't like this situation at all. It seemed completely random to try and expel Rukia for something she didn't do. Didn't Professor Aizen have something better to do? The man was supposed to be extremely intelligent, and it more than a little strange that he didn't seem to realize that he had made an error in judgment somewhere. Unless he knew and either didn't care or was doing it deliberately. Of course, Ichigo couldn't think of why the man would want to do that. It wasn't like Rukia was any sort of threat to him or someone he could get something out of her. She was just a university student, albeit one with a famous family.
"Dr. Urahara's free now," the dark haired girl at the front desk smiled at him. "You can go on in."
Kisuke Urahara was a friend of Ichigo's dad. Ichigo didn't actually know the whole story, but he did know that Urahara had been involved with introducing his dad to his mom somehow. There had been a time when the man was frequent visitor to their house, but after Ichigo's mother had died, those visits had dwindled to perhaps one a year. Still, when he had started school here, Urahara had said that Ichigo could come to him if he was having problems. Ichigo was finally taking him up on the offer.
The man lounged in his chair idling playing with some sort of knick knack on his desk.
"Ichigo, what can I do for you?"
"Professor Aizen's trying to get my roommate expelled for something she didn't do."
The laid back demeanor vanished instantly. "Start at the beginning."
Ichigo sat down and began the tale. Maybe they were finally going to get somewhere.
