"Yes! The howl! It just happened again! Can't you hear-" A loud crash from downstairs interrupts Ichigo, followed by a familiar girlish scream that has dread curling in his gut. It takes him a few seconds to realize- "That was Yuzu!" -right as the sound of hurried footsteps moves across his room. "Hey! Where're you going?!"
"That was the cry of a hollow!" The Shinigami hurriedly explains to him as her footsteps near his bedroom door. "I'm going to kill it, so stay here!" she orders, her voice a touch frantic.
"Hold up!" Ichigo demands as he squirms around on the floor in an attempt to get up, only for the Shinigami's spell to keep him down. "That's my family being attacked, so undo your spell!" he tries to reason, and then he hears the soft rustle of fabric.
"Don't be a fool!" the Shinigami all but bellows at him. "There is nothing you can do! You'll only succeed in adding to the body count! Now be quiet and leave this to me! Understand?!"
Understand? Understand what?! His family is being attacked! He can't just sit on the sidelines and do nothing!
Gritting his teeth together, Ichigo fumes as there comes another soft rustle of fabric followed by the sound of his bedroom doorknob turning. The door gives a faint creak as it opens, followed by a soft gasp from the Shinigami.
"I… Ichigo, are you okay?" Karin's voice, weak and pained, drifts in from the hallway, and that dread curling in his gut becomes an icy knot of fear.
"Karin!" Ichigo calls out, his voice pitching slightly as he tries to twist around to face the doorway. "What's going on?!"
"Something crashed through the wall… then dad's back exploded, and he fell…" Karin wheezes out, her voice starting to grow faint. "Then it went after me and Yuzu… So fast… I thought… had to warn… Ichigo…" And a familiar metallic scent permeates the air. "What is it…? I didn't get a good look… I don't think Dad and Yuzu could see it… Ichigo… Hurry… before it finds you… Run…"
His heart beats frantically in his chest as Karin falls silent and, for a moment, he fears the worst, but the Shinigami says, "It's okay. She just passed out." Something inside of him breaks at those words, and a dull roar sounds in his ears as his anger spikes. Red flickers in and out of the darkness he has long grown accustomed to, shapeless and, for the moment, meaningless to him as he slowly climbs to his feet. He strains against the spell still holding his arms behind his back, forcing them apart until there's a loud and resounding snap.
The instant the spell breaks, the red flickering in and out of his vision solidifies and takes shape. Petite. Slender. It's all he can make out, not that he cares about the Shinigami. What's more important is the muted red and blue shape that looks like it's lying down, just behind the Shinigami, and that it isn't moving.
He darts past the solid red shape of the Shinigami and drops to his knees by the form that he knows is Karin, and the metallic scent is more pungent now that he's beside her. It's easy enough to recognize it for what it is, but he doesn't even know where she is injured to be able to treat her, and there's still Yuzu and their dad to worry about. "I'll take care of this," he murmurs as he reaches out to run his hand over Karin's hair, only for it to come away wet with blood.
His anger spikes again, this time to a dizzying degree, and then he's suddenly on his feet and racing down the stairs. He spots the shape of his father first, a dull red heap laying off to the right as he turns into the living room, and another muted red and blue form dangling in the air on the other side of the room. And holding up that muted red and blue shape is a large black shape, the hollow thing that the Shinigami was talking about.
He doesn't think about the fact that he can even see it with this new sight of his. Nor does he consider that it could very well kill him, as this is something the Shinigami is supposed to be taking care of. All he cares about is that it has attacked his family and currently has his sister, Yuzu, in its grasp. So he rushes towards it with nothing but his fists and his feet and the burning desire to protect his family.
He doesn't see it move, and he's sent flying before he even realizes that it has hit him. He lands on hard concrete, completely winded from the heavy blow to his stomach, and a sense of dread fills him as the large, black shape of the hollow looms over him.
A small, bright red shape, the Shinigami, darts between him and the hollow, and then comes the sound of a blade biting into flesh.
Yuzu drops into his lap as the hollow rears back and howls in pain, and he immediately checks her for a pulse. "Yuzu! You okay?"
"Stay calm, boy," the Shinigami instructs from in front of him. "The hollow has not eaten any of your family's souls yet."
"It hasn't?" he asks as he looks up from Yuzu's form to the Shinigami.
"Not even the soul of your father—who lies there on the floor," the Shinigami answers, her tone curt.
"Why not? You said that hollows attack the living and the dead indiscriminately to eat their souls, so why hasn't it eaten their souls yet?" he asks, and there's a subtle shift in the Shinigami's stance.
"Hollows are drawn to high levels of spirit energy, but they also attack opportunistically," the Shinigami responds, almost matter-of-factly, and he gets the distinct impression that she's looking at him. "I have never known a human who could see a Shinigami or break a binding spell before… and I have never heard of a human with so much spirit energy…"
What is she trying to say? That the hollow only attacked his family because…
"I believe the hollow was looking for you."