"You guys seem to be doing well."
"RAGHH!"
"How long has it been?"
"Sixty six minutes, and fifty three seconds." Shinji answered as he looked at the fully hollowfied form of Ichigo trying to take a bite out of Love.
The spiked form of Ichigo alone would have been stuff for one's nightmares, but the amount of spiritual pressure he was releasing... if he hadn't been a mindless monster but actually Ichigo in control, he probably would be strong enough to take Byakuya and Toshiro by himself, maybe even put up a good fight against Kyoraku.
"What's the longest record for any of you to deal with this?"
"Well, the longest was Hiyori. She took just a little over sixty nine minutes to deal with it." Shinji said as he sent a teasing grin in the direction of the little gremlin, who just scowled instead of flying into rage as she usually would have.
I on the other hand was doing my best to keep my face straight and not make any jokes at the number. Even if the thought of Hiyori's rage and simply letting Shinji deal with it was hilarious.
Before my mouth could disobey my mind, a huge cracking sound echoed through the air and I looked at the barrier, where inside Ichigo's skin had started to crack, thin fractures spreading across his body and creating black patterns on the white bone skin, before it fell apart. Leaving him in his own Bankai robes and hollow mask.
And then he fell on his face.
"Sixty seven minutes and nine seconds." Shinji said, his cheshire grin slightly strained. "Three more minutes and we actually would have started trying to kill him."
"Then let's be glad that didn't happen." I said with a sigh, not wanting to imagine what might have happened if Ichigo had actually died, no matter how unlikely that was to happen.
Isshin probably would have stormed this place or Urahara's shop and went all Engetsu on the asses of anyone he could find.
And I would have had to deal with Aizen and Yhwach cause Soul Society had no chance against either of those.
I willfully ignored the small voice of reason in my head that told me that my chances were not much higher either.
"Oi Hachi, let me in." I called out as I walked toward the barrier that was slowly dissipating into the air.
"Hey, you alive?" I asked as I nudged Ichigo with my foot, rolling him over so that he was facing upwards and saw his eyes open. "How you feeling?"
"Not too bad." He then smirked up at me. "Until I saw your ugly face again."
I laughed, happy to see that the carrot-top was in such high spirits.
And then I kicked him away.
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"Now then, we can get to the reason why I'm here."
"Because you need something from us?" Shinji asked with a tilt of his head, as if he had problems comprehending the possibility of me visiting without asking something from them.
Should I be offended?
"I am here to inform you all about the current situation in town." I decided to cut to the chase. "There is some sort of enemy that we don't know about the specifics of but they are going around sucking the souls of people out like overgrown spiritual mosquitos."
"What?!" And of course Ichigo is the only one to react.
"Now I know you lot don't want to involve yourselves in, well, anything but please do keep an eye out when you go out of this place for necessities." I said as I looked at the Visoreds. "I know that you don't like to take risks and have Soul Society notice you guys but in the living world we kind of frown upon people being turned into shriveled mummies so at lest interfere in that." I was basically begging them at this point.
"Yeah yeah, we'll keep an eye out for anything suspicious." Shinji said as he picked his ear.
"Why do we have to clean up your messes?" Hiyori on the other hand was less willing.
"Because people are in danger!" And Ichigo was basically the voice of common human decency.
I could already see where this was going so, with a sigh, I raised my hands and clapped them as strong as I could. Creating a huge gust of wind that stopped Hiyori and Ichigo before they could start their quarrel.
"Enough. Ichigo, they are not Shinigami and they are not exactly a part of the community. They don't have to do anything." I said with a glare, making him scowl, before turning to Hiyori, whose smug smile slid off of her face when she saw me looking at her. "And Hiyori, you don't have to do anything but we would appreciate it if you just didn't pretend to see nothing when people are getting attacked." And then she looked away.
My words probably did hit a nerve. Considering her, and the rest of the Visored's, pasts where they had been forcefully Hollow-fied by Aizen and then condemned to execution by the Central 46. While the remaining captains, other than Urahara and Yoruichi, did nothing to help them.
They pretended to see nothing, if you will.
"Whelp, now that I've informed you all, we gotta go." I said as I got up and pulled Ichigo up as well.
"Wait a minute, Ichigo just managed to suppress his Hollow. We need to train him in it's use."
"He'll learn through practical experience." I waved Shinji's objections away as we left the hideout.
"You go see your family, and stay near them till we figure out what's happening." I said and Ichigo nodded, likely he already intended to do that anyway.
I on the other hand was headed towards Urahara's shop. I needed to talk with the shady shopkeeper, and talk to him about the current threat in hopes that I would remember what this was.
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