Deku reminded Ichigo a lot of Rukia's late captain Ukitake. None of the other guards or humans around them could see Ichigo as they led the green-haired man to a surveillance room, but the green-haired man kept his presence quiet while formulating plans with the guards and the wardens. He orchestrated himself with a degree of control and order reminiscent of when Ichigo finally got to see the room in which Ukitake conducted his substitute badge monitoring work; very serious and attentive, very leaderlike. But when one guard asked for an autograph and a photo with the 'hero' for her daughter, Deku flipped on the dime with a smile and charm the same as when the white-haired captain talked with Rukia, Shunsui or his younger Soul Reapers. It was an oddly comforting air of familiarity.
Being led by the hero to his personal agency and office for a talk reminded him a lot more of Rukia since she was appointed captain; more bittersweet of a comparison, he noticed.
And since apparently the world wasn't done assaulting him with similarities, walking through the man's agency felt just like being in Soul Society. Other heroes in costume, some called pros and others sidekicks, with secretaries and interns strewn about was like any of the squad barracks Ichigo had been to. Deku greeted them all as their superior — their captain — while he returned each gesture and call, leading the orange-haired soul through the building and up several floors to his own personal office.
Deku took to leaning over his own desk while Ichigo hovered by the couch across from him. After some prodding in his head by his zanpakuto, the orange haired man asked, "Is it cool if Zangetsu takes up the couch?"
The green-haired man looked at him oddly, and then at the hilt of the sword Ichigo was pointing at, and then back at the orange-haired man's face. "Sure?"
"Thanks." He whipped his wrapped-up sword off his back, and set it gently across the cushions with a hard stare, whispering, "What do you even need a nap for?"
Focusing on protecting is easier when you aren't awake, the young voice answered. Your inner world is sprinkling with confusion. I'm sure they are fine back home.
Ichigo grunted back at his spirit in response and leaned on the wall beside it. Deku watched him talk with his sword without comment, his eyes analyzing and judging him and his zanpakuto. "Look, man, I'm as lost as you are on most of this. If you want to help me make sense of it, just ask."
The green-haired man nodded slowly before rising off his desk. "Well, we haven't properly introduced ourselves, so" — he stepped forward, offering a hand towards Ichigo — "I'm Deku; at least on the job."
The orange-haired soul took the hand, shaking it with a raised eye. "Ichigo Kurosaki."
"Oh." Deku widened his eyes with surprise. "You still go by your name?"
"You're called a puppet?" Ichigo finally voiced his thoughts.
The man's cheeks flushed slightly. "Fair enough. My apologies but I'm going to be very forward with you, as our country asks of us both. I know you're not dangerous because my quirk tells me so, and I know the man sitting in a cell that belongs to someone else is dangerous. And that someone else is just as dangerous. I don't know who he is, I don't know who you are, and I do not know where he sent Tomura. But you know him, and he knows you, and since he won't talk to the guards in Tartarus, I need you to explain everything you know about him and where he possibly sent Tomura."
Right, Ichigo soured, like that was going to be easy. "What do you know about spirits?"
"Like ghosts?" Ichigo nodded. "A…bit. Not too much."
"Well they're real."
"Yeah, that's most of what I know. You can see them too?"
"I am one." Ichigo looked the other man in the eyes, watching as Deku's intrigue turned to shock, before darting away his own. "I mean I am alive, just separate from my body. Which better be back home. Speaking of which, can I use your phone? I need to call my wife, she's probably wondering where I am."
Deku stepped back slowly, turning to make a path straight to the phone on his desk. "Uh, yeah sure," he stuttered.
"Thanks." Ichigo left the man to come to terms with the information; this was usually someone else's job to explain. He plucked the phone from its console, but hesitated a finger over the buttons. Despite the similar-looking telephones and recognizable text on each number, he was still in another realm of creatures and powers the majority of the living didn't have. Was he in some parallel Earth to his home? Could he even reach anyone through the Garganta on a telephone line? If his badge wasn't even responding, was there any means of communication with the people he knew?
"Of all the worlds in the multiverse, why did Yhwach send us to this one?"
Ichigo punched in the number to Orihime's cell slowly, gripping the phone tightly to his ear, and inhaling as he prepared for the worst. When a clerk for a comic book store was quick to answer the call, he just as quickly hung up. He looked out the window of Deku's office, gazing over the rooftops and the billboards of costumed mutants marketing products to the lone figure flying across the sky.
"The man in the cell," Deku continued, staring at Zangetsu instead of him, "is a spirit too? Are you both from some other universe?"
It's pouring harder, Ichigo.
The orange-haired man huffed the air he'd restricted in his lungs and returned the phone to its console. "Sorry," he muttered to his spirit, before turning back to the man in green and raising his voice. "I'm a Shinigami; a Soul Reaper. I help send spirits to the afterlife and stop Hollows — evil spirit monsters — from eating them or being lost themselves. I have been to every realm I've been told about, so either this is another one that's meant to be some Reverse Japan I didn't know of or" — he rolled his shoulders with another sigh — "this is another universe."
Deku continued to absorb the information quietly, mulling in his head — Zangetsu informed him there were many spirits in there possibly discussing the possibilities with him — while leaving Ichigo to—
The Shinigami furrowed his brows at his zanpakuto. "How do you know that?"
I can sense them, being this close. They're very compacted to his soul, trapped within something that contains all the spiritual pressure. It's quite impressive for a living being.
Deku looked at him perplexed. "Can you hear your sword?"
"Yeah. He's a spirit tied to my soul, like the ones in you." The green-haired man jolted straighter, but Ichigo raised his hands cautiously. "He can sense them, even with how well hidden they are. Never been my strongest suit, sensing or hiding it. They're probably why you can see me, and no one else can. But given how everyone here is in costumes and acting like superheroes, I'm gonna guess it's not your zanpakuto's spirit. Are you one of those Dragon Ball fusions, like the green guys?"
The green-haired man drummed a finger on his thigh rapidly, pursing his lips for a moment before nodding with a resigned sigh. "Alright; let's say I believe you; you can sense ghosts, are a ghost, and you and the other guy come from another universe. How did you get here?"
Ichigo shrugged, and paired it with his verbal confusion. Aizen had stated it was Yhwach who sent them from their own realm to this one, but he wasn't too convinced of that. He knew what became of the Quincy king after the war, and he was assured the man would be all but incapacitated from action. How could he act of his own will? And how would he manage to send him and Aizen to another world? And why here, of all places?
"So you have no idea where Shigaraki could be?" Deku continued prodding, and Ichigo replied with a scoff.
"I don't even know who that is. But if Muppet is in his place, he could have been swapped to the Soul Society and a different cell. Their tools are pretty good at holding people in place. I wouldn't worry about him causing trouble there; I doubt he could put up a fight against them."
The door to Deku's office swung open, and a shirtless, red-haired man leaned in past the frame. "Hey, Deku, is" — the man took one look Ichigo's way, and the orange-haired man met his gaze — "this a bad time?"
"No it's not," Deku answered him, turning to face the man and greeting him with a smile. "What can I help you with, Red Riot?"
The red-haired man plucked folded paper from under his bulky shoulder piece, handing it off to the green-haired hero. "Invoice came through from our friends out at sea. Apparently someone isn't coming home?"
Deku nodded with a resigned sigh, shooting Ichigo a look to get his assured nod that he understood the message. "Yes, I've heard. I met them earlier today to get the full details myself. I'm looking into it. Is everything else okay?"
Red Riot looked behind him, and Ichigo leaned to peek at the costumed teenagers standing out in the hall, looking at the two colored-haired men with stars in their eyes. "I was planning on taking the interns out for an evening patrol — show them the dusk hours of the town. But if it's not safe—"
"It is," Deku interrupted him, widening his smile ever so slightly, patting the other man on the back. "We have it under control, don't worry. Show Speedball and Psychonaut around Tokyo; get them used to the public eye and the crowds. And tell Sugomori I'll see him tomorrow on my shift."
The red-haired man rolled his body with a heavy sigh. "Alright, we're heading out then, team! Have a good night, man." Then he turned to face Ichigo and waved a hand his way. "Nice to meet you." The Soul Reaper raised a hand back silently as the hero took his leave.
Deku stared at the door to his own office before looking to Ichigo with a raised brow. "How can he see you? I know his quirk doesn't have spirits in it."
"Exposure, probably," he answered, vocalizing what Zangetsu had pieced together in his head just as fast. "Spirit Energy rolls off you and the people you're closest to will get the ability to see and sense things too. It happened to my friends once I got my powers."
He's not the only one, Zangetsu commented. I sense many more around and nearby as that man and your mortal friends. No one with signs of spiritual pressure control. This truly is another world.
That was good to know, Ichigo noted, if not still disappointing. Whatever these 'quirks' were — possibly the powers of this world akin to his spiritual powers — it was likely they couldn't help fight if Aizen were to break out of his confines. But Kurotsuchi and Urahara had designed his new chair and upgraded the binds around his body, and since the locks should have been transported with them, there was no way he could break out. Since spiritual pressure still existed in this world, there had to be a way to reach their Soul Society, if it wasn't his own. So long as Aizen was still in a mortal realm, everything would remain in danger.
"You said you're still alive, right?" Deku asked him to clarify, and Ichigo nodded. "I'll reach out to some contacts of mine, for any bodies that get reported with your description. Surprisingly, not the first time I've had to help someone do this. Until then, I'm off the clock for today. And I need to find a place for you to stay in the meantime."
With nothing but the white noise of lowly mortals attempting to question him from the safety of afar, Sosuke focused his attention elsewhere. If he was trapped in a new world still bound by his Reiatsu seals, he would learn the ins and outs of the world when it could be to his advantage. Kurosaki and the soul-holder with him were the only beings this side of the hemisphere with notable spiritual pressure, but there were small sects of spiritually-aware souls about the world.
The theory of another universe made sense; though traversing between them never mattered to him, Sosuke knew others had attempted it in the past. Unnamed spirits looking to harness the distributed power of the previous Soul King to travel beyond the realms of their own reality, worlds missing from recorded history intentionally or not. Never a report of success, which meant either all attempts failed or those who traveled never returned — the leading reasons for his disinterest in the theory. But being a guest to a world of living people with powers alike yet unlike those of the realms he knew had rekindled his intrigue. He thanked the green-haired anomaly for showing him something new.
How did a living human body contain multiple, powerful souls with spiritual pressure to match a lieutenant-class shinigami? Without Kisuke or the Zero Squad around, no one was capable of making such a creature. Did the Soul Society even exist in this world? Had Yhwach sent them to an Earth with a different afterlife?
Through all the questions rummaging in his head, Sosuke took a look at the bindings that sapped the energy of his body. He followed them as they trailed across the floor and disappeared beneath the walls. These were the keys that locked his body from its full potential, but if they were in another world…
He extended his sight of the bands beyond what his eyes could see, following just one strand's corruption of spiritual energy through the walls and out into the ocean where it stretched. It continued across the ocean floor, lapping over stone and coral, until he found its tattered end flapping beneath the sea.
Sosuke looked down at his body, and focused on his right hand. Slowly, he lifted it, turned it, and flexed his fingers for the first time since Yhwach had decimated his last chair.
"It seems we are free, Hogyoku," he relayed with a smile, pressing his other hand into the armrest and pushing himself up, straining his body against the bonds trying to hold him down, his smile widening as they snapped apart one after another. Shouts from the mortals fell on deaf ears, and the ammunition of their mounted weapons evaporated in the air around him. His chest rumbled in response, and the wave of energy that rippled through his body tingled his fingertips. "Yes, that was quite rude of Kurosaki. How shall we repay him?"