Rukia leaves the Seireitei within hours of being granted leave by Captain Ukitake.
As soon as he waves his hand to dismiss her, she darts back to the barracks and starts to throw together a mission kit, torn between her ingrained need to prepare as carefully as possible, and the childish hope that her mission will be a short one, where she can afford to pack lightly. The practical part of her chafes at having to hurry too quickly, though there's a thrumming in her veins that tells her that, now that she's been given permission to go, she needs to go.
She placates her worst anxieties by tossing a few emergency "extras" in her pack, just in case—an extra roll of bandages, a spare battery for her phone. She decides against using a gigai, for now, hoping that the mission will not go long enough to require one, and that she can make a hasty return if it seems one will be required.
It's a bare, paper-thin hope, that her mission to rescue Renji will be shorter than Renji's own mission, and it's one that she's not optimistic enough to embrace fully, like a sword that doesn't quite fit in her grasp. Still, it's a hope in spite of all that, a weapon she can use, and it makes her heart pound in her chest even as she methodically runs through the rest of her packing list.
She'll do whatever is necessary to bring Renji back, and she'll continue searching for however long it'll take her to find him.
After dashing off a detailed note to Kiyone, Rukia tucks her pack under a light cloak and heads for the Senkaimon.
.
.
.
While Renji could've gone far beyond his original assignment at this point, Rukia starts at his last known location: Karakura Town, near Tokyo, and resolves to retrace his steps from there.
The Senkaimon spits her out near the edge of town, a dozen or so feet above a low, one-story convenience store, in an area that's slightly more commercial than it is residential.
It's night time, though with the nearby businesses and other buildings, there's only a shading of darkness, like ink that's been dissipated into a pool of water. Aside from a bored clerk reading magazines at the front counter, the store behind her is empty and quiet, save for the muted, jingle-like tune of whatever pop song is playing.
The surrounding streets are well-lit, though they're largely deserted as well. Rukia walks up towards the skyline, hoping that the additional height will make it easier to spot Renji, or some clues that will help her figure out where he's been.
There is, unfortunately, frustratingly little.
A group of teenagers and a stumbling, disheveled businessman pass under her feet, on their way back to their homes, or wherever it is humans go at such late hours. Their shadows stretch long under the streetlamps, but nothing sinister trails in their wake.
From a quick, initial impression, Rukia gets the sense that there's a slightly higher number of spirits around than usual, about a half-dozen that she counts in that neighborhood alone. They're on the bold side, and several make extended eye contact with her as she passes overhead.
The number of them isn't high enough to be concerning in itself—at least, she would have thought anything of it ordinarily, if this were a regular mission.
Still, it may mean something. Boldness is usually a good sign in spirits, as it speaks to safety and trust, and usually a lack of serious predators. This could mean that Renji has been diligent in his work or, what's more likely, that he was bored while he waited for the specific hollow he was tailing to appear.
It may also have been a reason for Renji to move on to another area.
She can't personally detect any hollows nearby, and her cell phone is annoyingly quiet. Again, while ordinarily that would be a good sign, it doesn't necessarily help her here. There's no sign of Renji—it's a fairly large town, but Rukia can't sense his spiritual pressure anywhere. At the very least, she would be able to do that, if he were anywhere close by.
With a firm hand on her zanpakuto, Rukia takes another step forward and continues her journey over Karakura Town, towards the denser, more residential areas where hollows are more likely to appear, attracted to the greater number of spirits to feed off of. She finds a taller building and spends about an hour observing the quiet town below, committing its layout to memory.
Very little about it stands out to her, just from appearances alone. At least, not in ways that seem to have anything to do with Renji's mission, or his disappearance.
But still, she gets the creeping sense that not everything in Karakura Town is what it seems.
As she watches the town below, her eyes trailing up and down the neat rows of buildings, Rukia can't help but notice several strange flashes of spiritual pressure flickering as she waits—most are smaller, near the level of a low-level conscripted shinigami. They're unexpected, especially in an area where there shouldn't be any shinigami save for Renji, but none of the individual signatures are strong enough for her to feel concerned with them.
At least, the far majority of them aren't. One signature in particular is large enough to make her pause from its sheer size alone. Its strength… from a distance, Rukia would say it's near the equivalent of a seated officer. It isn't Renji's signature, though, and nothing about it feels familiar to her otherwise, meaning it's likely a shinigami she hasn't met.
It isn't a hollow, though, and nothing about it seems malicious, so she lets it be—for now.
Just as she's standing to move to a new post, there's a familiar buzz in her pocket that fills her with mixed feelings of relief and excitement. She flips her phone open to find a report that a hollow has appeared, less than a mile away. Good timing, she thinks, as she follows the path laid out on her phone.
Rukia is quickly able to sense the hollow herself, but there isn't much to it—fairly weak, likely no more than a few months old. A child, in terms of hollows.
Nothing like what Renji was looking for, and nothing that should have given Renji trouble.
But at least it won't give her any trouble either.
Rukia's robes ripple in the wind as she hurries across town after the hollow. The wind sings in her ears, though the tracker on her cell phone tells her there's no need for urgency—the hollow is moving slowly, barely a fraction of her own speed.
She starts to work out a plan in her mind, most of which is oriented towards her quick, and inevitable, dispatching of this hollow. If she goes there and finds no signs of Renji, she'll try the next town over, then circle back if she still can't find him. Her next step will be figuring out what his next step would have been—where he would have gone next, which direction he would have taken.
Rukia grits her teeth. If only he'd talked to her, and told her more about where he was going, instead of trying to play everything off so cool. Idiot.
The hollow's presence becomes clearer as she approaches, and it's increasingly clear that a hollow of this low caliber is nothing that would be a threat to either her nor Renji.
She slides her zanpakuto from her sheath as soon as the hollow comes into view, lumbering down an empty street. It's large, with broad, square shoulders and a gorilla-like back, but it doesn't seem particularly intelligent or coordinated.
The lone ribbon at the hilt from her sword makes a bright, white arc across the night sky as she releases it, like a breath she'd been holding for far too long. Its weight is reliable, a solid assurance in her palm that makes every other anxiety slide off of her, like a cloak falling from her shoulders.
The hollow barely has time to lift its heavy, blocky head before she's sliced right through its mask, and it begins to dissipate.
And she didn't even need her shikai.
"Hm." It was definitely not something that would've given Renji trouble. It doesn't speak well of the supposed hollow Renji was meant to be tracking, either, if such low-level hollows are confident enough to prowl around in the open like that.
Rukia blows one errant strand of hair out of her face and turns around, already reaching for her phone with her other hand to check to see whether there are more updates. As she does, however, she hears two loud sets of footsteps behind her, thundering over the pavement at breakneck speed.
"Hey, try to keep up, I think it just—!" There's a pause. "Oh."
Rukia turns slowly towards the voice with her zanpakuto in hand, only to be confronted with a human man in shinigami robes. He's tall, built, with a shocking head of bright, orange hair, and a ridiculously large zanpakuto slung over one shoulder.
Their eyes meet and the man freezes at the end of the street, clearly not expecting her. His large, brown eyes widen, but before he can say anything, the second set of footsteps round the corner, and—
"Renji," Rukia whispers, as her comrade stumbles into view, panting and out of breath. Her heart jumps in her chest. "Renji?" She feels dizzy, all of a sudden, but—
It's Renji, who fixes her with a stupid, guilty look she'd know anywhere. She lets out a slow breath, her heart hammering in her chest, but it feels wrong, even though she knows it's Renji there, with that ridiculous look plastered across his face.
It's so clearly Renji, down to his bright red hair and obnoxious tattoos, but he—he doesn't feel like Renji at all.
He doesn't feel like anything at all.
Rukia whirls towards the other man, anger rocketing throughout her body.
"Uh, hey there?" the man tries, looking uncomfortable. He's dressed in shinigami robes, with an enormous zanpakuto resting over his shoulders, but he's so obviously human. How? What could that mean?
"What's her deal?" the man asks, leaning in towards Renji.
His was the spiritual pressure she had sensed before, Rukia realized. It's even larger up close, almost comparable to a captain's, and yet he's no one she recognizes.
More importantly, he's a human, and he should have no way of seeing her or Renji, or coming into possession of a zanpakuto. There are only a handful of explanations for that.
"Who are you?" Rukia demands, her voice as cold as the zanpakuto in her hand. She takes another step towards him and lifts her blade, pointing it directly at the man's throat, causing him to yelp and stumble backwards.
"Hey!"
She presses forward, sword held steadily in front of her, until she sees real fear in the man's eyes.
Good.
"What did you do to Renji? Where did you get that?" she asks, as she angles her chin toward the absurdly large zanpakuto the man is carrying.
"Hey! Rukia! Crazy running into you here, haha…" Renji is hovering behind her, fussy, the way he often is. "That's, uh, that's my buddy Ichigo, Rukia. Please, you can just—heh, don't worry about Ichigo, he's a pal. You, uh, can put your blade down now, Rukia." Renji lets out yet another anxious laugh. "Rukia?"
"Yeah, why don't you put that down, huh? You tryna kill somebody with that?" Ichigo asks irritably. He tilts his chin up at her defiantly, as if daring her to cut him.
"Rukia…" Renji says, his voice gentle. "There's a couple things we gotta talk about, and Ichigo isn't one of them."
Slowly, without looking away from the human, Rukia lowers her zanpakuto, though she doesn't sheathe it yet. "Renji…" Her relief quickly burns up with the sudden rush of anger she feels at seeing Renji completely fine and unscathed. She waves her blade in his face. "You idiot! Do you have any idea how worried I was, huh? How scared I was, not knowing where you were? What happened to you! Why didn't you report back, dammit!"
"Ah—" Renji stumbles back gracelessly to avoid being sliced by her sword. "Rukia, I—it's—so it's kind of a complicated situation, I guess you could say." He lets out an even worse laugh and scratches the back of his head. "I, uh, I wanted to reach out to you and all, and update you on everything, but things, uh, got a little more complicated than they needed to be, and I, heh, had to work off the radar for a bit. Ichigo is, uh, helping me out of a tough spot right now, as you can see."
"A tough…" Rukia's temper begins to flare again—after all of the time she's spent worrying about him, to see him act so nonchalant about it now! "Renji, your spiritual pressure—"
"Yeah—yeah, I know. Rukia…" He grimaces and crosses his arms over his chest with a shake of his head. "It's… it's a long story, and most of it doesn't make me look very good."
"You think I care about that!" she snaps. "What happened to you? Why can't I feel your spiritual pressure? Why were you trying to hunt a hollow in a gigai!"
Renji looks away sheepishly and slips his hands into his pockets. His stupid, human jean pockets. "It's… a really long story, really…"
"Assume I've got time," Rukia says wryly. "Captain Ukitake approved this mission himself, so I'll be staying for a while."
"He—dammit. Rukia, you have no idea what kind of mess you're walking into." With another grimace, Renji walks her through the last few weeks of his life—a hollow attack, a desperate attempt to fight it off, and too many vulnerable humans nearby to play it safe. "And I… you know." Renji gestures at Ichigo. "I enlisted some help."
"You—" For a moment, Rukia's vision almost goes white with rage. "You should know better than that, Renji! That's a crime! It's forbidden! Do you have any idea what's going to happen once we get back to the Seireitei? Captain Ukitake is going to have to go to the Captain Commander himself to keep you out of serious trouble, and even then, you'll be lucky if you can keep your lieutenant position!"
Renji groans and smacks his forehead. "Rukia, I know. That's why—it's why I've been waiting," he says, quieter. He crosses his arms over his chest defensively. "I just—it's been several weeks now, and my powers still haven't come back. I was planning to wait a few days, cause I figured they'd… just come back, the way they normally do when I use up a lot of reiatsu. I guess I thought—you know, maybe if my powers came back, I could head back and act like nothing had ever happened. Ichigo has been, uh, pretty fine about everything, so I'm not sure I'm all too worried about him being on his own."
"Oh, is that so?" Rukia glances over at Renji's new friend again, though he barely seems interested in their conversation. He's definitely human, that much is certain, and yet—Rukia presses her lips together. He's got a haughty, arrogant air to him, in the way he looks away from them with that ridiculous zanpakuto hanging off of his shoulder like it's nothing. "Is there—what do you think happened? Was there anything odd you noticed beforehand? After you were attacked?"
Renji shakes his head. "Nothing at all. Everything seemed normal until after I transferred my powers to Ichigo. Since then, they haven't returned. I'd killed at least one hollow after I arrived with no trouble at all."
"I see." Rukia gives Ichigo another suspicious once-over. He's—Rukia is having trouble putting her finger on it, but there's something odd about this guy that makes her think there's more to this story than Renji has realized.
Right now, though, it doesn't seem like they have enough information to totally put together what's happened, which means she's going to have to investigate further.
"Okay," Rukia eventually says, as she sheathes her sword. "Let's find some place for us to stay in the meantime. It's clear we're going to need some time to figure this out, and I can't go back to Captain Ukitake without more information. At the very least, we should try to figure out how to explain this to the Captain in a way that's going to minimize the damage that's already done."
"We—" Renji gives her a pained look. "Rukia, whatever this is, I don't—you shouldn't get yourself involved in it. At the very least, I don't want you also—"
"You don't get to make that call," Rukia tells him sternly, cutting off the worst of Renji's protective instincts. "At this point, you need all the help you can get, which means me."
"I—I mean. You're right, but—" Renji hangs his head in defeat when he sees her determined expression, and he sighs. "Fine. Ichigo, let's bring Rukia back with us, and see if we can maybe get her a gigai to stay in while she's here."
"Yeah?" Ichigo finally turns and grins at her, his smile so confident and cocky that she almost wants to smack it off of him.
She doesn't, though, because she's finally able to place that smile, that face, and it freezes her lungs just as surely as her own zanpakuto would.
Kai—
"Glad to have you on the team, Rukia."