A/N: Oh, hey, look, the rest of this chapter just fell together.
PMMM CANON NOTICE: Characters mentioned from Kazumi Magica only refer to certain parts of their plots. DON'T WORRY IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE SPINOFF MANGA. For now, I'm just using the spinoff characters' disappearances and deaths to make the situation look more serious. When I actually bring them into the plot, I'll explain everything.
§ x § x §
§ x § x §
§ x § x §
VIERZEHN
TIMELINE X + N
"Interesting."
Kisuke Urahara stared at his computer monitor in fascination, idly snacking on candy in its blue glow. Something odd was definitely happening in and around Mitakihara. He could tell that much from the feverish press coverage. Kisuke pored over the existing articles during lunch, memorizing the known facts, the speculation, and taking notes on the strangest angles to look at. At first blush, it looked like something sinister but entirely human was going on up north. However, Kisuke refrained from drawing any conclusions as yet. He set about researching Mitakihara area history and demographics while he waited for the local authorities and press to gather more information. His own network of spiritual sensors didn't extend anywhere near Mitakihara, so he attempted to acquire relevant data via remote access to the Twelfth Division's databases. Evidently they had upgraded since his last foray because his presence was flagged and he ended up engaged in a thoroughly entertaining hacking-battle-slash-chat with Mayuri Kurotsuchi himself for the entire afternoon.
Really, he had no clue human emoticons would infuriate the man so much. Bless the internet.
At some point— dinner time, coincidentally— Kisuke abruptly decided to quit playing with Kurotsuchi and turned to the local news over the past several months looking for anything strange. Spotting Hollow activity among mundane news could be difficult, but you could find some if you knew what to look for. He was currently trawling conspiracy theory and supernatural web sites for mentions of Mitakihara and Kazamino; such sites were often exaggerated and way off base, but sometimes steered one toward information unavailable or dismissed by mainstream media.
—-
username: BakaBakenekoKyo
subject: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Hey you guys you know that thing with all the ppl waking up in a tv station with ammonnia and bleach like they were gonna commit suicide together but they don't remember getting there? Something like that happenned to me up in Asunaro like 5 weeks ago. I posted about it back then. [link] I was wanderring around this abandonned inn in the old part of town with my camera to see if I could catch any orbs or something. A lot of ppl here stay away from the place cuz it feels weird. The place felt really creppy, like someone was watching me. I started to feel dizzy by the stairs. I must have blackked out because next thing I knew I was on the 2nd floor in a dusty room. I was on the floor with my back to a window and a girl was taking a curtain cord off from around my neck and saying stuff like everything would be alright and I was safe. I kinda freakked out all over her. I was weak so the girl helpped me get out. I never saw her again. The next day I noticed the memory card was gone from my camera. The girl didn't look like the pictures of that Madoka girl who saved the tv station ppl but she did kinda the same thing. It just seems weird.
username: deathlyhallowed
subject: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
i live further south in shinchi. earlier this month i was filming with nightvision camera in an old wearhouse on old pier that isnt used anymore. theres lots of stories about it being haunted by sailors ghosts but i never found anything until last time. it felt super creepycrawly and i felt like someone was gonna grab me you know? i remember feeling dizzy and my vision going weird. next thing I know some girl is dragging me onto the beach. when i was done throing up water she said she saw me jump off the peer. i started bawling cos id never do that— i saw my little cousin drown once and even though he lived it was terrible i never wanna die that way— and i was coughing lots still so she said shed help me get to the road and get hewlp and she said she;d say she saw me FALL off if anyone asked her. so she got me to the street and someone called for an ambulence and she disappeared before it came. i still had my camera strapped to my wrist but of course it was wrecked by seawater. so i dunno what happened but all this stuff made me think of it again. is there ghosts that make people try to kill theirselves?
username: ghostlyscholar101
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Perhaps some kind of vengeful ghost, or even a demonic entity? I wonder if possession is involved. I'd suggest going back to these locations with a larger group to investigate, but if the possessing spirit is homicidal, that may not be wise.
username: BakaBakenekoKyo
subject: re: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
OMG You think maybe I was possessed?! Wow. I don't know if that's cool or terrifying. How manny ppl can say they were possessed? Trying to make me hang myself was evil tho.
username: deathlyhallowed
subject: re: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
like hell am i going back to that pier. someone else can go if they want. i can give a map. but srsly, ill stick with ghosts that DONT make me try to die a horrible death thanks
username: yuureiseeker
subject: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
I live in Kazamino City. In March I was in a burned out restaurant that had exploded a year ago but no one ever bought. The owner died in the fire. People say it's haunted because they found out the owner was trying to burn the place down for insurance money to pay a loan or something and he screwed up and killed himself too so his angry spirit haunts the place. I was wandering around trying to catch some EVP when I felt dizzy and faint. My sight went black. When I came to, I was in the empty lot behind the car repair shop next door, sitting on the ground covered in motor oil. A girl had her hands around mine and was shouting at me and shaking me to wake up. When I did she let go and I found out I had my cig lighter out and had been trying to strike it. So I had doused myself in oil and was in the process of lighting myself on fire.
username: BakaBakenekoKyo
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
OH MY GODD
username: deathlyhallowed
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
HOLY SHIT MAN WTF
username: yuureiseeker
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
I still don't know where that girl came from. It was dark but I could tell she was wearing a frilly dress. It seemed out of place. I think I passed out again. When I woke up again, the girl was hosing me off. I don't really remember how I got home or where she went.
username: ghostlyscholar101
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Did you pick up any EVP?
username: yuureiseeker
subject: re: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Negative. Just the sounds of me scuffling around and muttering to myself between the sounds of doors and drawers. I guess when I was nabbing oil from the mechanic shop. I don't remember that. And the girl yelling at me to wake up.
username: paranormalcy
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
I have encountered some messed up stuff in my time but that is just f***ed up man. We got some creepypasta shenanigans all up in here.
username: gravewatcher44
subject: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Whys it always a girl helps the suicidals?
username: BakaBakenekoKyo
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
"suicidals" is rude
username: yuureiseeker
subject: re: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
valid question tho
username: Kitsune-chan9
subject: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Oh hey did you read the news that just came out about that hostess lady who woke up with the three missing girl's and she thought they saved her from suicidding? That she kinda remmembered being on top of the building but doesnt know how she got down by the girl's and her shoe's were gone? That was freakkyyyy.
username: paranormalcy
subject: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Yeah, I just read about it. There's a new update— the cops went there to investigate and found the shoes on the edge of the roof. The building had junk on the floors but the woman's feet weren't injured from walking down barefoot. Sooo...?
username: deathlyhallowed
subject: re: re: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
—-
Kisuke raised an eyebrow, tabbed back to the main news site, and refreshed it.
Oh. There had been quite a few updates since he last looked. Before he logged out— and he did have accounts on many paranormal sites just because— he replied to the thread.
username: SoulCandy
subject: re: Mitakihara Mass Hallucionation
Does anyone know of any other incidents like this? Can you upload any recordings you made? It sounds really interesting.
That done, he opened a new packet of gummy candies and read the news.
—-
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?
AUTHORITIES RELEASE SKETCH OF MYSTERY GIRL IN MIKI CASE
April 22, 20XX 03:15 PM
Mitakihara Municipal Police released surveillance footage and an artist's rendering of the mystery girl known to have been staying in the room where Miki Sayaka (14) was found dead yesterday evening. Hotel Nikko Mitakihara employees worked with forensic sketch artists through the night to produce the image seen at right.
Estimated age: 14-16 years
Build: slender/athletic
Estimated height: 155-160cm
Hair color: dark red
Eye color: dark red
Clothing: Almost always seen wearing cutoff denim shorts, a sea green zippered jacket with white hood and cuffs, a short black undershirt, and brown knee-high boots. Her waist-length hair has only been seen tied up into a ponytail or half-ponytail with a black ribbon.
Hotel employees report that the girl kept to herself and went out for extended periods at all hours. They say she avoided staff and could be brash or rude if drawn into conversation, but she tipped housekeeping and room service well. Housekeeping reports that the girl frequently left a mess of empty food bags and wrappers in her room for cleanup each morning. The housekeeper assigned to her floor for the morning shift noted that usually, the girl would be gone and leave the room to be cleaned up by nine. Unusually, the girl left the "do not disturb" placard on the door on the morning she was last seen leaving the hotel. Sayaka Miki's body would be discovered roughly nine hours later when the room was opened by security as a precaution due to a minor fire which spread smoke throughout that floor. (See: Laptop Battery Fire Leads Hotel Security to Dead Body [link])
Police Spokeswoman Mura once again emphasizes that the mystery girl is considered a person of interest and a potential victim. Though unidentified, the girl is designated as missing, the same as Mami Tomoe and Madoka Kaname. Anyone who knows who she is or has seen her in the past two weeks and especially the past two days are asked to call the tip line at XXX-XXXX.
—-
A TANGLED WEB!
MYSTERY EXPANDS AS ADDITIONAL DISAPPEARANCES DISCOVERED
GIRLS ALSO MISSING/DEAD IN NEARBY JURISDICTIONS
ARE STRANGE SUICIDES RELATED?
April 22, 20XX 05:00 PM
The collaborative investigation between Mitakihara Municipal Police and the Kazamino City Police Department has rapidly turned up disturbing developments on an unexpected scale.
The initial focus of the joint investigation was to obtain surveillance footage of the purchase of the prepaid credit card used to reserve the Hotel Nikko Mitakihara room in which the body of Sayaka Miki (14) was found yesterday evening. The card was purchased with cash at a convenience store in western Kazamino City. Video quality is poor, but appears to show the unidentified red-haired girl from Hotel Nikko Mitakihara's lobby security cameras making the purchase. The card was not found among evidence collected at the hotel room. A transaction history for the card shows purchases of food and toiletries before and during the girl's stay at the hotel, both in Kazamino City and Mitakihara. Police are investigating the sites of each purchase in hope of learning more about this girl.
Another aspect of the joint investigation was the fingerprints tied to the hotel room and two "break-and-bust" ATM robberies in eastern Mitakihara. A long string of identical robberies has been found to have taken place throughout Kazamino City over the last fifteen months. The Kazamino City fingerprints match the Mitakihara fingerprints. In all cases, something rapidly destroyed the embedded security camera from above before the machine was pried open with something large and sharp.
A distressing series of similar disappearances and deaths of girls between the ages of eleven and sixteen has been discovered in Kazamino City. While it is unknown whether all cases are related, there are striking similarities among them.
The body of Bethany Michaels (14), daughter of a United States Marine who relocated to Kazamino City with his family to be an English teacher after discharge from his duties in Okinawa, was discovered collapsed in front of the altar of a Catholic church on the morning of April 14th, hands folded in prayer. Her body had obviously been beaten pre-mortem, but coroners determined that her wounds should not have been fatal. Her cause of death remains undetermined. As with the missing Kaname and dead Miki, her parents reported that Michaels had displayed increasing signs of distress over the week before her death. In another similarity, her Bible study classmate Marina Sakamoto (14) went missing the same night.
On the morning of April 3rd, the remains of Saki Yamaha (16) were found on a carousel at a local theme park. As in the Miki case, no security footage shows how she gained entry to the park. Cameras within the park are largely focused on vending stalls. Similar to the Momoe case the next day, the entire video system suddenly failed for several hours overnight. Yamaha's body was discovered by a park cleanup crew shortly after dawn. Autopsy found no injuries and no apparent cause of death, as in the Miki case. She was thought to have been depressed after an altercation with her boyfriend and had been missing since lunchtime on April 2nd. The boyfriend told authorities that the carousel was a sentimental place for the two of them. This may explain her ultimate location, but her cause of death remains a mystery.
Noriko Chiasa (16) was last seen on March 29th. She is the class representative for her first year high school class. Meticulous and responsible, Chiasa was known to be dedicated to her office to the point of obsession. Investigation found that many of the "late club meetings" she told her parents about seemed to not exist, though. It is unknown what she did instead during that time. Chiasa's parents reported that their daughter seemed to become gradually more agitated and tired. Some prodding of her classmates revealed irritation with Chiasa's micromanaging and an admission of a confrontation in a classroom the afternoon she went missing. No one has seen her since she stormed out of the school, upset. Police initially designated her case as a runaway, but they are reconsidering it in light of similar circumstances in the Miki case.
There are also several cases which don't fit the pattern of the missing and dead girls, but which have some similarities to the Mitakihara television station mass-hallucination near-suicide event.
On April 17th, security footage from a subway station shows a businessman wander in around midnight and walk off the platform onto the tracks. The only two witnesses were a pair of intoxicated men, but video corroborates their story that the man seemed to be distracted by something unseen. The surveillance cameras then malfunctioned. The witnesses say the businessman appeared to not even notice the train approaching him. He was killed on impact. Investigation found no history of mental illness, no drugs or alcohol in his system, and no explanation for his apparent mental state. Coworkers said he had left their late meeting happily satisfied with their work with a cheerful declaration that he'd buy donuts for the team in the morning. Not typical suicidal behavior.
On April 6th, a young couple with no history of mental illness was walking toward the homeless shelter they usually volunteered at. Friends saw them approaching from several blocks away and noted that both looked at an alley to their left as they seemed to hear something, then detoured into it. When they didn't show up before the shelter opened for the evening, the friends went to investigate. The couple was found sitting against a wall under a broken window. Each had apparently slit their own wrists with broken glass and were in a dreamlike state. Their friends acted quickly and saved them. When the couple recovered in the hospital, neither remembered anything after leaving their house.
On March 27th, a group of three high school girls was walking home when they detoured from their usual route. An ice cream vendor they walked past stated that they all seemed to be in a trance, none of them acknowledging his greetings as they usually did and wandering through the park with a swaying gait. Worried, he kept an eye on them. When he saw them trying to scale a fence between the park and a steep drop into a drainage canal, he sprinted over, dragged them down, and called emergency services when they kept trying to climb over. Police found the girls in a dreamlike state which slowly lightened into confusion. Upon examination in a hospital, none of the girls were found to have any mind-altering substances in their systems. All three didn't remember anything after they turned away from their usual route.
All of this is disturbing just among Mitakihara and Kazamino City, but it gets worse. Detective Misako Ishijima of Asunaro, the jurisdiction just north of Mitakihara, contacted Mitakihara Municipal Police to disclose a series of missing and dead girls in Asunaro. Detective Ishijima has been collecting such cases as a side project while on the force. Her files go back years and encompass over fifty cases— twenty-seven in the past year alone— prompting a casefile scramble in Mitakihara and Kazamino City. Detective Ishijima cites a heightened frequency of such mysteries in the last four months. Here are but a handful of the disappearances:
On March 24th, the parents of Sumire Akane (14) discovered that their daughter was missing when she didn't appear for breakfast. Her window was found open, her bed unslept in. Police deemed her a runaway. Akane's parents adamantly denied this conclusion, saying their daughter had been happy and successful: A member of the South Middle School soccer club, Akane had recently been promoted to a starting position and was by all accounts thrilled and eager to compete. Her parents and friends insisted she wouldn't walk away from her dream come true— she had worked too hard for it.
Kaede Hinata (15) disappeared on March 10th. That afternoon, she urgently excused herself from choir practice at North Middle School to "run an important errand" she had forgotten. While she was never seen after her departure, police did find her school bag on a park bench about a kilometer from the school. Her wallet and phone were inside it. Authorities suspected abduction, but could find no evidence.
On February 2nd, Kanna Hijiri (15) disappeared from her bedroom overnight. A popular student at the exclusive Kyōzō Academy, Hijiri was known to be a cheerful girl and indulgent older sister to her younger twin sisters. However, friends and family noted that Hijiri rapidly became distant and erratic during the week before her disappearance. Police later performed forensic data analysis on the girl's computer. They found that the night before she was discovered to be missing, Hijiri searched for and accessed multiple archived articles about an incident that happened when she was four years old. Back then, her family lived in the United States due to her mother's extended business assignment in Los Angeles, California. One day she was playing at a neighbor's house with two of that household's children. The children found the homeowner's unsecured handgun and played cowboys. Tragically, little Kanna didn't understand she wasn't holding a toy and pulled the trigger. Between the original shot and the ricochet off an iron vase, all three children were hit. Hijiri survived, but the neighbor children, ages two and three, did not. Hijiri's parents moved back to Japan and tried to move on, but their daughter remained depressed through much of her childhood. However, she brightened upon moving to Asunaro and entering middle school. Her parents said it seemed as though she had forgotten the incident. They consulted a psychiatrist who hypothesized that Hijiri may have suppressed the memories or simply been able to distract herself better in the new school environment where no one knew her history. In the wake of her disappearance, authorities worried that she may have had a psychological breakdown. In the context of other disappearances, police fear someone may have taken her while she was in a fragile mental state.
Best friends Yūri Asuka (14) and Airi Anri (14) disappeared from the same location on the evening of January 28th. Asuka was a competitor in the annual Asunaro Iron Chef competition at the Asunaro Dome. Anri was in the audience to cheer her on. The first sign that something was wrong came when Asuka failed to appear on stage for the final cook-off. Witnesses later identified a photo of Anri and agreed that they had seen her wander out the door and through main hallways, obviously worried and looking for something. As is becoming a worryingly common theme, the video surveillance system crashed for about forty minutes. Neither girl has been seen since.
While there have been many disappearances in Asunaro and its northern outskirts in the last four months, there has only been one unsolved case of a girl dying mysteriously in that time. On December 21st, Michiru Kazusa (14) was found dead in her home. The girl had returned to Asunaro from her overseas boarding school to be with her grandmother as she died back in November, then decided to take the rest of the semester off to put her grandmother's residence in order. Her mother, out of the country on business, allowed it. Things seemed to go smoothly until that day in December. Neighbors reported hearing a loud sound in the afternoon, but at first thought nothing of it as there was a thunderstorm in the area. Neighbors coming home from work later were the first to notice something amiss— part of the roof had been blown off. Upon investigation, Kazusa's body was found prone on the floor below the center of the hole in the roof. Authorities initially suspected a lightning strike, but the body showed no sign of electrical burns or any other cause of death and expert analysis of the home did not support the theory. The roof had obviously exploded outwards, but no cause for this could be found and there was no explosion trauma to Kazusa's body.
While every metropolitan area has its share of runaways, disappearances, and deaths, the sheer concentration of these occurrences in the last several months is extremely disturbing. What was once thought to be a problem focused in Mitakihara has expanded to the entire metro area. Our press organization has reached out to neighboring population centers such as Soma and Sendai for information. Both show an exponentially smaller incidence of similar disappearances and deaths relative to population and no unexplained cases of attempted suicide followed by amnesia.
Whatever is at the root of this, it seems to be local. We pray this mystery is solved swiftly.
Until then, keep tabs on your daughters, Mitakihara.
—-
MITAKIHARA DISAPPEARANCES: NEW WITNESS EMERGES
ENCOUNTERED MISSING GIRLS TOGETHER ON MARCH 25TH
April 22, 20XX 07:03 PM
A witness whose name has not been released approached the authorities claiming to have seen Sayaka Miki (14), Madoka Kaname (14), and Mami Tomoe (15) together before the three went missing. The witness, a young woman employed as a restaurant hostess, claims to have encountered the girls during a mysterious episode akin to the TV station "mass hallucination" event.
Late on the afternoon of March 25th, the witness recalls taking the train to her usual stop, getting a drink from a vending machine, and becoming distracted on the walk to the restaurant. She remembers feeling like she was supposed to go somewhere important and walking the opposite direction of her place of employment. The woman claims she blacked out, but that she has a vivid memory of standing on top of a building and seeing the sunset. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground in front of the abandoned Yunichiya Textiles office and manufacturing facility in the south of town. She was in her stocking feet, shoes nowhere to be found, and was being cradled by a girl she has identified from recent newscasts as Mami Tomoe. She realized she had nearly jumped off the building and broke down in horror. Tomoe allegedly consoled her. The witness says two schoolgirls who looked like Kaname and Miki stood nearby. The witness claims to not remember how she got to the ground floor, but says she had guessed that the girls must have coaxed her down. However, her shoes remained missing and her stockings were not torn from walking through an abandoned building.
Authorities were dispatched to investigate the scene of the alleged sighting. "Even if it's too late to track the girls from that point, we are very interested in the impulsive attempted suicide with blackouts and amnesia in people with no history of mental illness, as in the television station case," said Spokeswoman Kuroe Mura. "We will survey the scene and have confiscated the vending machine from which this witness obtained a drink before she began to feel strange. Nearly a month has passed since the incident so I wish to caution the public that we may not find anything. However, I also strongly urge the public to come forward if you have had a similar experience in which you found yourself in a dangerous situation with little memory of how you got there. We won't be able to identify a pattern if people are too ashamed or frightened to come forward. Should anyone come forward, the Mitakihara Municipal Police guarantee anonymity for the duration of the investigation."
Police remain uncertain whether the missing girls knew something about these mysterious incidents or were present by coincidence, but for now the two cases are being treated as potentially linked.
Updated April 22, 20XX 7:38 PM
Initial reports from the Yunichiya Textiles investigation confirm that the hostess' red shoes were found near the edge of the rooftop. Apparent sun and rain damage seems to corroborate that they have been up there for a month. The hostess will begin testing like the TV station victims tomorrow.
—-
Kisuke sat back and rolled the last gummy candy around in his mouth as he thought. Curious. Especially when combined with Isshin's claim of the spiritually aware girl bearing residual Hollow reiatsu being aware of disappearances and deaths before they were publicly known. Hmm. Something interesting lay there.
Dead bodies with no apparent cause of death, particularly in the numbers cited, could certainly indicate Hollow activity. Knocking a soul out of a living person to devour it often left no marks on the physical body. He wondered if the two dead girls who had displayed signs of a fight— Bethany Michaels with her obvious injuries and Michiru Kazusa with her badly damaged house— had been spiritually aware enough to defend themselves.
If the culprit was a Hollow— or multiple Hollows— the way the missing Mitakihara girls were tied to disappearances and thwarted suicide attempts added credibility to Isshin's hypothesis about them being spiritually aware. Similar to how once upon a time he had gone back and cross-referenced the filming locations for Don Kanonji's television show and the appearance of new Hollows— he had found the celebrity medium to be a previously unrecognized cause of accelerated Hollow development. Kisuke pondered the girls' known involvement and wondered if something similar was at play. Were they Fullbringers? Did their high reiatsu draw Hollows in and endanger others? There was no way to know without more research, so he set that train of thought aside.
The mysterious suicides and thwarted attempts were strange. The online testimony of similar occurrences at places thought to be haunted was another red flag. Suicide would expose the souls for Hollows to devour, but brainwashing or whatever was being done seemed too complicated for most Hollows to bother with— most would dive in for a meal instead of toying with prey. There were powerful anomalies like Shrieker and Grand Fisher, of course, who delighted in manipulating the living and luring prey to their own deaths. More highly evolved and intelligent Hollows such as Adjuchas and Arrancars could be capable of such a thing. Hollows usually left a trail of bodies, though. More bodies than were being found, anyway. And their predations were usually noticed by Twelfth Division before their body count got this high, even if they could hide their reiatsu. Kisuke himself had designed the algorithm to flag unusually frequent use of small-scale Gargantas. Unless the predator was intelligent enough and knowledgeable enough of shinigami procedures to avoid using Gargantas for travel in a small area, the detection threshold should have been exceeded in mid-March at the latest. Especially if the suicides and the disappearances were caused by two different Hollows.
What an interesting— if thoroughly morbid— puzzle.
If this was the work of, say, a highly intelligent Arrancar with a unique ability and a sadistic stalker or serial killer's mindset... Well. The Mitakihara area was in deep trouble. Assuming evidence of Hollow activity could be found.
Which brought him back to Twelfth Division and Mayuri Kurotsuchi.
Kisuke smirked and cracked his knuckles. "Ahhh, I guess there's nothing for it," he said with false regret.
§ x § x §
Midnight deep in the bowels of the Twelfth Division labs was Mayuri Kurotsuchi's favorite time and place to be. If he could be said to have a favorite anything, that is. It was much quieter with most of his lackeys away in bed, just a skeleton night crew on duty to observe the global reishi and Garganta monitors and the occasional round-the-clock experiment. Mayuri got his best work done when all the noisy morons were asleep. He wrought masterpieces in the night. The lack of interruption was magnificent.
"Captain Kurotsuchi."
Mayuri grit his teeth at the sound of his lieutenant's emotionless voice. "What have I told you about interrupting my experiments, you disobedient simpleton?!"
"To only do so at non-critical moments if and only if the subject is apocalyptic or interesting, Captain Kurotsuchi."
Mayuri sneered down at his project and tweaked a wire. "And what have you deemed so important as to interrupt me?"
Nemu paused. It was the only hint of her trepidation before she tonelessly answered, "Kisuke Urahara has called. He requests an audience."
Mayuri hurled a scalpel at Nemu. She dodged her head expressionlessly as the implement twanged into the wall behind her. "You fool! I have no interest in speaking to that contemptible miscreant!"
The PA system snapped and whined before a voice crackled over the speakers. "Waaaahhhh, Mayuriiiiin, you break my heart."
Mayuri's eye twitched dangerously, veins bulging at his temples. "How dare you hijack my communications system?!"
"How? Aha! Well, I must say, your communications aren't nearly as well-protected as your databases," Urahara's cheerful voice bubbled from above.
Furious, Mayuri made a mental note to rectify that.
"Aaaanywhooo~" warbled Urahara. "I come bearing something interesting and a request for help."
"Denied."
"Aww, but I didn't even get to the good part."
Mayuri always hated his former captain's ability to express a pout in his voice. It forced him to picture the moron's ugly face making its ugliest expression. "There is never a good part with you."
"I'm hurt." Urahara sniffled for a moment, then sobered. "In all seriousness, Captain Kurotsuchi, I think you'll find this interesting. It's possible I've simply stumbled upon a human serial criminal of some sort, but the preponderance of testimony suggests something spiritual. A Hollow or other spiritual being may have figured out how to evade your sensors. Whatever it is seems to have a preference for pubescent girls. That, and I'm looking at a curious set of circumstances which indicate there may be a Hollow which has learned how to cause humans to attempt suicide, sometimes en masse, followed by amnesia if they are unsuccessful."
Mayuri grimaced and reluctantly lifted his head. Okay, that did sound mildly interesting. However... "Are you slighting my sensors?!"
"Not at all, Mayuriiiiin, not at all! I've peeked at them a few times over the years. I find your improvements of excellent quality. Unless you've destroyed them since the last security upgrade, I have the utmost confidence in them~!"
Nemu stared blandly at her captain, who was frothing with rage.
"In fact, I have so much confidence in them that I am very curious to see what sort of data they have on an area near Soma, Japan. My own sensors don't extend that far north, you see. I am but a humble shopkeeper, after all." Urahara's voice downshifted from cheerful to ominously sly. "I don't doubt that your sensors are superb. But if something creative or new is out there that you don't yet know to account for... that would be fascinating, wouldn't it?"
The lab fell into near silence once more, Urahara waiting while Mayuri resentfully tinkered with his experiment as he thought. He drew the silence out as long as he could before snapping, "What sort of evidence do you have to give you reason to bother me with this?"
"I sent a detailed report to your lieutenant, if you'd like to glance at it."
Mayuri snaked his gaze to his lieutenant. Nemu held up a tablet, which Mayuri snatched from her grasp. He ordered her to tidy up his project space and strolled from the lab to his private office, reading rapidly. His lips drew into a sneer when he heard a crackle signifying Urahara had jumped to the PA in his office. The buffoon had sense enough to stay quiet while he read, at least.
At length, Mayuri tossed the tablet onto his desk. "This could mean anything, you dolt."
"I am aware that it could mean a lot of things, some of them mundane. But checking the local data should be simple and something among it could prove interesting, don't you think?"
Mayuri only dignified the question with a grunt. "There isn't a report on the girl Shiba told you about."
"I haven't examined her. Isshin is going to tell Ichigo to get the girls to my shop tomorrow or the next day so I can do a passive scan. We don't want to alarm her if she doesn't know about shinigami."
Mayuri rolled his head and cracked his neck irritably. "You're soft and Shiba is an idiot."
"Perhaps. But correct me if I'm wrong: That metropolitan area has only become densely populated in the last couple decades. It used to be uninhabited swamp. Theoretically speaking, its spiritual density should be mid-level and not conducive to producing many Pluses or Hollows. Newly dead souls should mostly slip right through to Soul Society. Even if this girl is as aware as Isshin claims, it could be possible she's never encountered a Plus or shinigami."
Mayuri grimaced. "Technically speaking, I suppose. Though if there are as many spiritually aware whelps there as you seem to think there are, that would indicate something accelerating... the increase of density of... hmmm. A shift in spiritual density should appear on a sensor array, but if the denser souls are consumed when they reach critical mass, and consolidated... pubescent girls would be an ideal target as they approach spiritual maturity... but the energy..." He stared at a wall, thinking.
"Uwaa, you're brilliant! But don't worry, Mayuriiiiin! If you're too busy, I'll take a vacation up in Mitakihara and figure it out myself~"
Mayuri rolled his eyes at the transparent attempt at reverse psychology. "I'll have Akon look into this tomorrow. Send a report on the girl when you can."
"Okay!" chirped Urahara. "Pleasant dreams, Mayuriiiiiiiin!"
The PA system crackled and went dead. Mayuri stared at it for a moment, then turned to his computer.
He had a communications security system to rewrite.
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A/N: Of course Urahara trawls/trolls paranormal sites. He's Urahara.
This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.