Archive of Our Own

One. Two. Three. Splash.

Ichigo frowned at the river, and picked up another stone, testing its smooth weight between his fingers. And then he flicked his hand, and watched it skip.

One. Two. Three. Four. Splash.

He’d known it was coming. He’d watched as the spirits around Karakura slowly faded until they were barely outlines on the streets. He listened as Rukia’s voice got harder to place the few times she visited him, until she was barely a whisper on the wind, and he’d have felt a fallen leaf more strongly than her hand on his shoulder.

He’d known it was going to end like this, that those last days were just residual reiatsu that hadn’t made its way out of his system. Almost surprising, after everything, that there was any of that there. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a shock when it finally left and he was thrown back into being alive, even if it felt that half his world had died.

The next rock he tried didn’t skip at all. Ichigo stood up and stretched, concentration gone. The sun was a fair bit lower in the sky than it had been when he’d settled down on the bank, and it was starting to get late enough that he should get home to help Yuzu with preparing dinner. Even though she didn’t usually need his help anymore, she never turned it down, and he needed something to focus on other than the hole in his soul.

It was all too easy to lose track of time as he crossed the familiar paths home. There were too many things to think about, and not enough to distract him. A light drizzle had sprung up, enough to dampen his hair but not to wash the heaviness away.

He was only a block away from the clinic when he heard a shout of alarm coming from a side street. Instinctively, he turned and headed for the origin. He didn’t have to go far—two street lamps into the lane there was an older man was laying on the ground, no one else in sight. Ichigo picked up speed as he ran over, warily checking his surroundings. A few feet away, he saw a glint of metal, but it turned out to be the handle of the man’s cane.

 “Ojii-san, are you okay?” Ichigo asked cautiously, approaching the fallen man.

The man pushed himself up onto one elbow. “Thank you, young man. I just—tripped, and I can’t find my cane. Do you think you could help me stand?”

Ichigo held out his hand, helping the man as he stood. There was a moment, right at the end, when he thought he saw something strange just behind him, but he blinked and it was gone. He supposed his mind was trying to adjust to the lack of ghosts and pushed the image aside. Besides, the man was still waiting for him. Blushing slightly, Ichigo handed him back his cane. “Where are you going?” Ichigo asked. “Do you live around here?”

“A few streets away,” the stranger responded, smiling oddly. “No need to worry about me.”

Ichigo frowned. As the man turned, he saw blood on his face. “Are you hurt? Did you trip on something? My family runs a clinic—you should come and get checked just in case.”

“Ah, but I have no wish to be a bother, young man,” the elder repeated.

Ichigo scowled harder. “It’s not a bother—it’s worse if you’re actually injured and you don’t get treated for it right away. Besides, it’s just around the corner, a lot closer than your home.”

“Then thank you, young man.” The man smiled at him again, eyes glinting an unsettling yellow for a brief moment. It was probably the streetlight—the man couldn’t be a hollow, after all.

They got to the clinic without any further problems, though Ichigo felt vaguely as if he was being watched. He settled the man in one of the examination rooms and closed himself into the bathroom for a moment. The feeling eased, and he shook himself out of his paranoia as he washed his hands.

He’d memorized the basic checkup questions when he was ten, and it was easy for him to run through them on autopilot. Thankfully, by and by large the man was fine. There were a few small scrapes, but even the one on his face didn’t need any stitches. He was much more relaxed by the end of it, when the older man had been patched up and was clear to leave.

Yuzu had checked in on them when they were done, made curious about the light in the clinic after hours. After a quick conversation, the older man had been invited to stay for the meal. Ichigo wasn’t very surprised that it was accepted—the offer seemed to please the man, and Yuzu was always happy to have another guest to cook for. Besides, Ichigo wondered if the elder had anything to go home to, with how easily he accepted.

The meat stew was delicious as always, and Yuzu blushed as the man complimented the dish. Ichigo felt the man’s eyes on him at several points during the meal, and he carefully made sure to include him on the conversation. He wondered what the man was thinking, but kept things carefully polite.

Even though it was late, the man insisted on walking home after the meal, thanking them but claiming that he didn’t need anything more, and that he didn’t want to trouble them any longer. After some muttering about taking care of head wounds, Ichigo found himself walking the old man home.

While he didn’t say much except for directions, Ichigo felt paranoia begin to creep in again. The situation was a bit strange, after all. But just as he’d worked up the courage to start asking the man a question, he stopped short.

“This is where we part ways, young man,” the elder said.

Ichigo looked up at the houses on the street—fairly traditional and slightly out of the way, and back at the man. “Good night, then,” he said gruffly. “If you’re hurting in the morning, please come back to the clinic.”

“Of course,” he said, patting Ichigo on the shoulder, and pushing him slightly in the direction they’d come from. “Travel safely back to your home. And do not worry, young man. Things will be just fine.”

Ichigo nodded, before pursing his lips and striding off. When he looked back from the edge of the street, the old man hadn’t moved, but something was strange about him. He shook himself and walked the rest of the way back to the clinic, wondering all the while if they should have actually kept him overnight. Not that it mattered much now.

The dishes were clean by the time he got back, so Ichigo started to get ready for bed. He still had school the next day, after all. He scratched his suddenly itchy back, rolled himself into his blankets, and went to sleep, dreaming of all the things he missed.

He woke up early the next morning to Yuzu’s yelling. A few moments of listening yielded little result—their idiot father had apparently done something unwise, and Yuzu was irritated with him for it.

He took small steps to the door, still wrapped in his blanket and half-asleep, and listened in as Yuzu yelled about how their father had ruined something with his antics. Ichigo found himself with a scowl on his face as he prepared to join his sister in giving their father a piece of their mind, seeing the only slightly unusual destruction in the downstairs.

By the time he’d gotten downstairs, Isshin was wailing at Masaki’s poster with such sentiments as “Don’t you love Daddy anymore?” and “Oh, strange men were in the house! My daughters are growing uppp~”, and other such stupidities that the younger Kurosakis tuned out by the dint of years of exposure and experience with their father’s antics.

“Do you think the old man from yesterday is okay?” Yuzu asked Ichigo.

Ichigo’s first response was I don’t know, but instead he found himself saying “I think he’ll be fine.”

“If you see him again, invite him over for a meal! He seemed like he was lonely.” Yuzu directed him, before turning back to the sideshow that Karin and Isshin were providing.

Ichigo had a feeling that they wouldn’t be seeing the old man again, but he still nodded an agreement at Yuzu. Suddenly Ichigo’s back itched, and he put the old man out of his mind as he went back to finishing his food. There would be time for asking questions another time, when his stomach didn’t feel like it was cannibalizing itself.

Soon enough he was out of the house and on his way to school. He nodded at the spots that ghosts usually greeted him from on autopilot, not even realizing he was doing it until he walked past a roadside memorial for a man that had only died a few days before he’d lost his sight. He shut his eyes against the wellspring of emotion that seeing it brought, breathed deeply, and continued on.

He scratched his back as he went to his seat, ignoring the way that Ishida and the others clustered around a desk in the corner. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know about hollow things right now—he felt strangely exhausted, for all that he had slept well. He was only slightly surprised to be woken up by the lunch bell, and apologized to his sensei before picking up his bag and leaving after the class.

It didn’t seem like it would be worthwhile to stay in class, so Ichigo decided to skip out of the second half of the school day entirely. It wasn’t like his father would care, and the school could grumble all they liked, he still made top grades. He found himself walking by the river, but decided against staying.

He ended up in the park, settling down behind the tree he chose when he wanted to avoid the local pluses. He tried to do some of his maths work, working through the first two problems of a set with relative ease.

He woke up some hours later, judging by the sun, halfway through the third. At that point, he just decided to go home. Apparently, he wouldn’t be getting anything useful done.

Ichigo slept through his alarm the next morning. To anyone who asked, he mentioned that he hadn’t been getting enough sleep lately. His friends let him off on it once he intimated it could have something to do with his newfound spirit-blindness. His sisters were not so easily convinced, but they could keep a closer eye on him.

He stayed home from school the third day and let Yuzu fuss over him with homemade soup. Ichigo was starting to wonder if he’s gotten sick—he was achy and miserable, even if his head was mostly clear.

By the fourth day, he started to feel like he could keep awake for longer if he needed to. He was still slightly achy, so he pushed himself into taking a warm shower. The warm water soothed a lingering headache he didn’t realize was fairly painful until it was gone. He stood under the water for several heartbeats before forcing himself to lather up his hair, and then his body.

And that’s when he felt it. He shouted in alarm before he processed what was going on.

Before his brain finished processing it, there was a knock at the bathroom door. “Ichi-nii? Are you okay?” Karin called in.

“Fine!” Ichigo called back on auto-pilot. “I just—slipped!”

To his relief, he heard her footsteps recede. He twisted himself around to look at his back. There was definitely a bit of fuzz there. He poked it again, feeling the downy texture with his fingers. He tried pulling it, but that just hurt—it seemed to be stuck to him. In the end he just washed it with his usual soap and made sure that his towel was loose enough around his hips and waist that it wouldn’t be obvious through the towel if his sisters saw him.

He was only thankful that it was the weekend—he could try to catch up with his school subjects, and he had that much longer to try to figure out how to handle changing for gym class when he seemed to be growing an honest-to-god tail.

In some ways, he felt kind of inured to strange happenings by now. He’d seen ghosts all his life and had even been an actual shinigami fighting in a war and keeping the balance of life and death on the side not a week before. And now he was back in school as if it never happened. There was a level of general acceptance that came with those kinds of experiences.

That didn’t mean he didn’t question an actual tail. Nothing from the spiritual world really affected his physical body like this, so it was probably something new. He wondered if it would go away, or how he would hide it. Maybe Urahara, if he wasn’t too busy with cleanup still, would have some idea of what he was dealing with. The man didn’t generally let him down if he could avoid it.

He ran the tips of his fingers over it again. It was slightly coarse and tangled, and sincerely not coming off. At least it didn’t seem to impede his ability to sit, Ichigo thought to himself as he cracked open his first book. That would have been more difficult to hide.

By Monday, the tail had grown to be about half a foot long. He’d discovered that it was mostly fur, which meant that even though it was fluffy it could be compressed, and that it was low enough that he could stuff it into his boxers as long as he was careful about how he sat.

He’d also discovered that there were some things that the internet just couldn’t tell you. Not that that wasn’t a familiar feeling, but at least ‘can see ghosts’ would have eventually led to pages about schizophrenia, and not quite everything was a sign of cancer. In the end he just shrugged and decided to deal with it. It was probably normal in somebody’s book, and he’d hear about it eventually.

He’d be able to manage school like this, at least. He’d attracted too much attention with the random sleepiness; the last thing he needed was people calling him a furry. Or sending him to the hospital. The last thing he needed was to be poked around like some medical curiosity.

Besides, he needed school—if he was worrying about grades, he wasn’t worrying about spirits, in theory. If this new problem became a problem, it was just going to have to work itself out without messing with his education.

That said, Ichigo didn’t know what he would do if he started getting other animal traits. He still found himself glancing at places he knew ghosts frequented on his way in, calling out greetings to people he wasn’t sure were even there anymore, though his usual routine was interrupted when Keigo ran up to him at the gate.

“Yo, Ichigo!” Keigo shouted in his face. Ichigo kicked him away as the lanky student tried to tackle him. Mizuiro, as usual, showed up fifteen seconds after Keigo did, not even blinking he stepped aside to dodge the flying Keigo.

“Yo, Keigo, Mizuiro,” Ichigo finally responded. “What’s up?”

They fell into line with him as they all headed for the classroom. “So, you’re not sick anymore?” Keigo asked.

“I’m fine,” Ichigo replied. He could play fine at least.

“Did you get a cat, Ichigo-san?” Mizuiro narrowed his eyes at him.

“A cat?” Ichigo asked, thrown. “No, why?”

“There’s some orange fur on your pants.”

Ichigo started wiping at his pants. “There’s a stray near the clinic.” The lie fell from his lips before he even realized he was talking. He’d gotten so used to lying about shinigami things that it was so much an instinct at this point that he didn’t realize what he was doing until he’d nearly finished talking. He had a momentary sensation of deja-vu, wondering if he’d turned into Urahara, even as he kept talking. “I just fed it on my way out.”

Mizuiro hummed, and let Ichigo lead them into their classroom. “If you’re going to keep doing that, you might want to get a lint roller.”

“Sure,” Ichigo agreed, relieved, before he was immediately ambushed by the rest of his friends. He noticed that Mizuiro hung back, keeping an eye on him, and pretended he didn’t. He would have to be more careful in the future—if there was one person here that would call him on lying it was Mizuiro.

The tail continued to grow noticeably though the next several days, much to Ichigo’s annoyance. By his best guess, it would reach a foot by the weekend. He did pick up several lint rollers, doing his best to disguise the fur that shed constantly. He had to check underneath his desk at school when he stood and had had to vacuum his room every day.

It was a lot more than he’d expected, but the tail itself still seemed downy so he guessed it was because of its accelerated growth. Or something. He didn’t actually know much about foxes, and he broke down and got a couple of books from the local library. He’d spent most of a night staying up studying everything he could about their tails, if only to not be caught by surprise again. He wasn’t sure any of it would help, but it was probably better to have than not.

By Wednesday, Ichigo’s friends had started acting a little more comfortably, or at least closer to their new normal. They’d gone back to giving him a little more space to come to terms with losing the spirit world, at the very least. Space he didn’t particularly want, but he remembered how people treated him after they learned his mom had died—it was a lot like that.

It would be fine. He’d been fine without them, and they would learn to deal with it. Chad had been his friend since middle school, and he doubted that Chad would stay away much longer without a good reason—Inoue and Ishida knew him mostly as a shinigami, but Chad knew him as a friend and someone who regularly got into fights with yakuza to protect his back. He might not be able to follow them when hollow alerts came out, but Ichigo was far from down.

They just didn’t know how to deal with him, so they stayed away. But knowing that didn’t make it easier to deal with losing everything. Just because he’d let himself become too distracted by his new appendage to grieve didn’t mean that he didn’t have a gaping hole where half his soul used to be.

While he’d love to be able to ask his spirits what they thought about everything, from Aizen to his thrice-damned shedding menace of a tail, he did recognize that that urge was mostly a nostalgia trip. They would have been spectacularly unhelpful, to be sure. His hollow would probably have been a bastard about it, and Ossan wouldn’t have told him anything he would be able to understand until he already had a better understanding. But, at least he could have talked to someone, and not have had to keep the mess that his life had become to himself.

He’d found himself sitting by the river briefly, though he didn’t stay long. It felt wrong. The park felt wrong too, and the clinic, so Ichigo wandered where his feet took him, ignoring the niggling thought that he just needed to settle down somewhere and do his homework.

He did end up briefly at a tiny shrine on the other side of town. It was dedicated to Inari, going by the kitsune statue. He had a brief moment of deja-vu when it seemed like the statues’ eyes were following him, but he brushed it off. He quickly paid his respects, but didn’t stay all that long—although some productivity would be nice, he mused to himself.

He didn’t realize where he was going until he was just over a block away from it. And, Ichigo thought ruefully to himself, likely already within Urahara’s surveillance. Paranoid bastard. The thought was fonder than it had any reason to be.

He decided to actually visit—though it hadn’t originally occurred to him, once he thought about it there were several things he had to ask Urahara about. At the very least, he could probably get someone in the Shoten to send messages to the Seireitei for him, or even convince Urahara to make him some kind of communication device, like the thing he’d given Rukia when she started patrolling Karakura, way back when. He might not be able to see his friends, but with a little creativity he could probably talk to them. Besides, after losing his powers to win their war, they owed him that much consideration.

Maybe he’d even have some answers about the tail. Or Yoruichi would, since she actually could turn into a cat.

The bell on the door chimed softly as Ichigo opened it. He met Urahara’s shadowed eyes as the man stood. “Welcome, Kurosaki-san.”

“Geta-boshi,” Ichigo responded. “You’re in a gigai, then?”

“Ah, I spend most of my time in a gigai these days,” Urahara covered the lower half of his face with his fan, but not before Icihgo caught a glimpse of a smile. “It’s rather difficult to sell candy when your customers can’t see you.”

“You actually sell things to humans?” Ichigo interjected incredulously. “I thought you just worked with shinigami. And, well, people like me.”

“I do have to pay for the building, you know.” Urahara replied mildly. “Now, what brings you to this humble shop today?”

Ichigo took another step inside, glancing around. After everything, the Shoten wasn’t a bad place to be. Urahara could be nearly as cryptic as Ossan sometimes, but he’d helped Ichigo in the end. That was what mattered most.

It was that trust that drove him to talk in the end. Ichigo grit his teeth for a moment, before spinning to face Urahara. “Do you know about the Final Getsuga Tenshō?”

“A bit,” Urahara admitted. “Why?”

“Do you know about what kind of side effects it has?”

Urahara hummed and walked to the door, geta clacking loudly against the Shoten’s floor. “Would you like a cup of tea?” He asked, holding open the door to the back of the shop.

Ichigo followed him back to the room they’d used for planning before. Ururu pushed past them, quietly heading for the front. He waited for several minutes, glancing around as if he’d see some spirit or other before remembering. There could be an entire squad of shinigami in the room and he wouldn’t know it. He didn’t think that Urahara would do that, but the man sometimes found the strangest things amusing.

Ichigo flinched when the door opened and it sent his tail twitching against his leg. He studiously ignored any reaction Urahara could have as the man sat at the table with their tea. He felt suddenly ill at ease, like when he knew he was being followed by yakuza. He suddenly wasn’t sure if he wanted to know if this tail thing had anything to do with losing his powers—he wasn’t sure about telling Urahara about it at all.

Insticts like those had saved Ichigo’s life on more than one occasion, after all, so he listened to them. Besides, he had plenty of other questions for the man, now that he thought about it. Asking about the newest and strangest occurrence in his life could wait.

Urahara took a sip of his steaming tea, though Ichigo left his on the table. The soft clunk of ceramic on wood signaled the true start of the conversation. Ichigo focused on Urahara, willing him to speak.

“I have to admit, I was expecting you to come around at some point, Kurosaki-san.” Urahara said seriously. “I’m sure that losing your powers has been hard on you, but I do not have anything capable of restoring them at this time.”

Ichigo scowled. “I just did what I had to do.”

He scowled even harder when Urahara took off his hat, held it at chest level, and bowed over the table. Before Urahara could begin to speak Ichigo reached over and pushed him back upright.

“We all did what we had to do, Geta-Boshi. Aizen’s gone now, and he can’t threaten my friends anymore. As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine.” Ichigo’s free hand slammed down on the table. “You helped me save my friends from him, and you did what you had to do. Now we’ve just got to worry about what comes next.”

Urahara looked back up at him, eyes shiny for just a moment, before he breathed deliberately and settled back, placing his hat on the table next to his discarded fan. “If that’s what you wish.”

“I do have a few questions though,” Ichigo replied, half-amused at what he recognized as Urahara apologizing in a way he’d accept.

“You were asking about side-effects, yes? Have you talked to Isshin about it?”

That brought back a dark scowl. “Goat-Face hasn’t said anything about shinigami powers, let alone anything about showing up at the last fight. If I was going to wait to hear about it from him, I’ll be waiting until we die.” Ichigo tapped the table in time with his tail tapping against his leg, which felt startlingly natural. At least, until he noticed it. “Speaking of, am I dead?”

“What?”

Urahara was definitely more expressive without the hat and fan to hide behind, Ichigo thought. He wondered if that was why he wore them. It would be sort of strange, even if he didn’t already feel like he had entered the Twilight Zone. “Well, I can’t see spirits anymore, and Rukia could even when she didn’t have her powers. And I’m pretty sure this is my human body. But, in Hueco Mundo...”

Urahara leaned forward. “Inoue-san mentioned that you were injured, but I believe Unohana-taichō healed you on your way back to the Living World?”

“Unohana-san restored my reiatsu,” Ichigo corrected. “Most of my injuries were healed by hollow regeneration.” Ichigo hesitated. Whatever his instincts said about his tail, he still trusted Urahara. “I’m pretty sure that Ulquiorra killed me for a little bit. It’s pretty fuzzy, but I remember him putting a cero through my chest, and then turning into a hollow.”

He touched the center of his chest, where even on his spiritual body there had somehow been no scars. Even high-speed regeneration done by his hollow left marks if the wounds were serious.

“That would be right through your soul chain, then?” Urahara’s eyes followed Ichigo’s hand.

“Didn’t you cut that off?” Ichigo shot back. “Way back when Soul Society was still going to execute Rukia?”

“If you were dead in the way you say, you should have stayed as a hollow, and not turned back into yourself,” Urahara reached out towards, but did not touch, the area that Ichigo was gesturing at. “And your human body seems to have accepted you, despite all of the things your soul has been through. So I’d say that your body is acting as if you’re alive.”

“Is that why I can’t see spirits anymore?” Ichigo pressed. “Rukia could see them from inside a gigai when she didn’t have her powers.”

“Possibly,” Urahara hedged. “It might have to do with the attack itself. I would have to do tests to be certain.”

“Will it come back when I die, then?” Ichigo took a sip of his stone-cold tea to avoid looking at Urahara. He couldn’t disguise the note of hope and longing in his voice.

“Possibly, or possibly not. It’s not as clear where your reiatsu went, when you used that technique,” Urahara replied after a moment. “That’s the only thing that I need to know for sure to find out.”

“Fine, is there any way to get around it?”

“Around it, Kurosaki-san?” Urahara asked. Ichigo wasn’t sure if he was genuinely confused, or playing the fool, but it was probably the latter. Still, he went along with it.

“Yeah,” Ichigo met Urahara’s eyes head on again, this time full of fire. “I’m not the kind of person to abandon my friends just because I can’t see them, or just because I don’t have power right now. So, is there a way around it? I saw the phone thing you gave Rukia—it can sense souls. But do you have anything that can hear them? Or even text them?”

A small smile grew on Urahara’s face. “I can whip something up for you, Kurosaki-san. I have a feeling I’ve got a new best customer~” he sang the last few words with a touch of mischief.

Someone else might have flinched away, as a mischievous Urahara was more than slightly terrifying, but it only made Ichigo smile as well. “Thanks, Geta-Boshi.” And he really was thankful. While there was always some risk to Urahara’s methods, they had never gone beyond what he’d been willing to accept, and with Aizen out of the picture he wasn’t likely to be facing that kind of life-threatening situation anytime soon.

While his concern over growing a tail had distracted him a bit from his troubles with the spiritual world, but it wouldn’t be right if he just ignored that it existed even if he couldn’t see anyone without a gigai. They might have decided to give him some space, but that wouldn’t be a permanent thing if he could help it.

“Of course,” Urahara replied, sounding like he was already a thousand miles away. “Anything for my best student!”

Ichigo pushed back from the table, ready to guide Urahara over to his lab before he left, but then his back itched, right above the tail, and for once he ignored the maddening urge—he was sure to shed if he did. He hesitated for the barest instant before returning to his original task.

He’d seen the man go on inventing binges before, while he was using the basement for training, and it was better to get the man to his lab before he started carving things into the table.

Ichigo was starting to wonder if his tail would ever stop growing. At a little more than two feet long, the tip tickled the backs of his knees when he let it out in his room. It was starting to get even more difficult to hide. He’d taken to changing for gym in a bathroom stall, but if he didn’t do something it was going to start becoming obvious. He could only compress the fur together so much in briefs before it started becoming painful instead of just uncomfortable and inconvenient.

His furry little problem had gotten to the point where he’d had to break down and buy a brush for it. He’d also gotten some air freshener to disguise the scent of wet fur for his room, though he was wondering if cologne wouldn’t be easier. He didn’t really want to—he’d hated the smell for as long as he could remember—but he also couldn’t go around smelling like wet fur, especially when he didn’t have any pets to blame it on.

Though it wasn’t like there were people asking, really. Ishida wasn’t even acknowledging him at all anymore. Inoue looked like she could cry when Ichigo caught her eyes, but she always looked away quickly. Ichigo wondered if that had to do more with everything that happened in Hueco Mundo than with him losing his powers, but they avoided him so much he never really had a chance to ask.

At least Chad sometimes spent time with him anyway, although he was running off just the same when a hollow showed up to terrorize Karakura. Ichigo hadn’t realized just how much of their time went to dealing with hollows until he looked around the classroom and didn’t see any of them and didn’t even remember them leaving. One of those times, Ochi-sensei caught him looking around. Ichigo wasn’t quite sure how to read everything on her face, but he thought she might be pitying him.

So he ate lunch with Keigo and Mizuiro instead, sometimes. Keigo seemed happy to have more attention but Mizuiro got that look he did when two and two weren’t making four. Ichigo usually could laugh it off, but sometimes it got to be too much.

When that happened, he found himself eating with the girls on occasion. He watched Tatsuki play at knocking Chizuru about the head for talking about her boobs, before they all laughed about it. He mostly sat on the edges of that group, though they seemed comfortable with that after he broke the nose of a guy who’d gone to grab Michiru’s chest. He didn’t know the in-jokes, and he wasn’t really in on the weekend plans. Maybe he’d get there, but for right now he was just kind of there.

He wondered if this is what healing was, or if he was just fooling himself. He found himself at the river again, if only because it offered a solitude that he couldn’t find anywhere else, and stared out over the calm waters.

He didn’t even know what he was looking for, going to the river these days. It had been a while since he'd thought he could find his mom there. Peace, maybe. But then hadn't he sacrificed enough for peace?

He left only when it started to get dark, without having skipped a single stone.

The next morning, Ichigo woke up to one of Urahara’s creative messages telling him to drop by the shop when he had a chance. He was infinitely grateful for the distraction, and skipped off to go talk to the shopkeeper as soon as he could without raising undue suspicion.

Though…he eyed the bags under Urahara’s eyes suspiciously. “Go get some sleep, or I’ll knock you out for your own sake,” Ichigo grumbled. Maybe it was a bit hypocritical, but his mentor looked like he hadn’t gotten any for days. And, knowing the man, that was a distinct possibility.

“Ah, is that how my favorite student says hello these days?” Urahara fluttered. “How violent.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I do have something for you though!” Urahara grabbed an object from underneath the counter. Ichigo reached out, but Urahara drew it back. “But only if you ask nicely!”

Ichigo refrained from rolling his eyes. Urahara would always be Urahara, he supposed. “Thanks, Urahara-san.”

 “Of course.” It might have been a trick of the light, but Ichigo could have sworn that Urahara’s face softened for an instant before he handed over the phone. “I took some liberties, nothing too important, so most of your friends in Soul Society should be on there!” Urahara chirped.

“Thanks,” Ichigo repeated, more genuinely this time, as he looked through the phone. It seemed fairly simple—Rukia, Renji, and Hanataro’s names topped the list, followed by a selection of other shinigami. His eyes caught briefly on Byakuya’s before he closed out of the list.

He had no idea how Urahara had known about Hanataro, and it was probably best not to guess how he found all of their phone numbers, which could be a little creepy if he thought about it. But then that was Urahara for you, and it would have been more surprising to find out that there was something he needed later that the man hadn’t accounted for. Ichigo blinked several times to keep his eyes from watering as he grinned over at the shopkeeper. “So, this works just like a normal phone?”

“Yes, and it should reach any number in the Living World and Soul Society!”

“Including you?” Ichigo raised an eyebrow.

“So forward of you, Kurosaki-san,” Urahara replied mischievously.

“What about Shinji and the others then, have you heard from them?” Ichigo asked, looking back down at the phone in his hand. “They haven’t been around either, and I know they have gigai.”

“Ah, well,” Urahara regained his seriousness. “It might be a little longer before they’re around again. Most of them were badly injured in the battle against Aizen, and since Soul Society doesn’t know that much about hybrid reiatsu, it’s taking some time for them to heal.”

Ichigo hummed in response. “Are they going to be okay?”

“They’ll live,” Urahara replied glibly. “They’re under Unohana-taichō’s care, after all. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you once they’ve healed.”

That’d have to do for now, Ichigo thought. That’s better than some people can say. “Okay. Would you be up for a spar sometime? If I don’t keep in shape, Zangetsu might just kill me.”

“The basement is always open to you, of course,” Urahara’s fan flicked out to cover his face.

“Thanks,” Ichigo replied, standing. He’d learned enough about reading Urahara’s moods to know that this wasn’t the time, he wasn’t going to get any farther by asking tonight, and it wasn’t urgent enough to poke at those boundaries. The war was over, after all. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Safe travels, Kurosaki-san!” Ichigo caught one last glimpse of Urahara’s just-a-humble-shopkeeper face before the door closed behind him. He looked back between the shop and the phone in his hand, and smiled. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t heard from any of them, but now he’d be able to get ahold of the rest of his friends.

Ichigo glared down at the phone. Why the hell were his friends not answering their phones? He knew that the calls were connecting—the technology said as much—and he’d been able to leave messages. Rukia or Renji might be on an assignment somewhere, but not all of the people he tried could be out of the Seireitei at the same time.

He pushed the unit back into his backpack with a grumble, leaning heavily against the school wall and looking up at the sun until he saw splotches. He wouldn’t overreact, and maybe they’d call back. They were probably just busy with something. He remembered something about them having a new government to elect now that Aizen was gone. They’d get back to him when they could.

That afternoon, Ichigo helped a pair of kids get their cat out from where it’d fallen into a storm drain, and prevented a thief from stealing two bikes. He hadn’t even intended to go by the grocery store that day since Yuzu hadn’t told him she needed anything. He’d just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

By the time it stopped growing, Ichigo’s tail was brushing his ankles. It was something over three feet long, fluffy as a baby bird, and just as demanding and hard to ignore. Ichigo had taken to wearing pants all the time, since it was just too big to hide in his underwear any longer. He wasn’t sure how well he was doing in hiding it, but no one had asked him about it yet so he figured it was good enough.

He’d kept going to the river when he had the time. It was the only place that didn’t seem to have any expectations of him, even if he still had to keep his tail hidden because it was a public area. That had become less problematic after he’d given up on compressing it as much as he had. He’d still had to bind it to his leg, since he couldn’t seem to control its movements and he didn’t want it to accidentally show against the fabric of his pants, but that wasn’t quite as bad.

It was sunny, so Ichigo had decided to take his homework with him to work by the water. He was humming the tune to a popular song, working through a problem set with relative ease, when he heard a shout of alarm. He immediately shucked his backpack and started running down the riverbank, towards the source of the disturbance.

He didn’t have to go very far. There were tiny arms flailing from the middle of the river. It looked like they were trying to paddle, but they weren’t getting anywhere. Ichigo waded through the water to get to the young child as they fought the tide. When he reached them, he pulled them up against his shoulder, and stood against the current.

He was infinitely relieved to feel the child coughing on his shoulder. Coughing meant they were breathing, though it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to get checked out later…and for him to find out where their parents were. He dragged them out of the river, setting the kid down onto the riverbank.

“Sanae-chan!” A man yelled, running from across the street. “Sanae-chan, where did you go?”

The man had frantically thanked Ichigo once he realized what had happened—Sanae had crossed the street ahead of him and tried to run down to the river, only to slip and tumble to where it was deeper than she could stand. Sanae seemed to be mostly fine—a little shaken, but she had no worse than some bruises and scrapes.

Ichigo went back to where his homework was waiting, hands shaking. He forced himself to breathe deeply, but he still felt like he couldn’t get enough air. He certainly couldn’t bring himself to look back at the river. So he stuffed his books back in his satchel and made his way home as quickly as he could.

At least the girl had been fine, he told himself. Even if his sleep that night was haunted, he could take that if it meant that this time he made the right choice, and it saved a life. Ichigo was a protector, after all, and his dreams were just another battlefield.

Despite a clear forecast, the skies split with an intense rain. So Ichigo, scowling up at the sky, had decided to spend his free day at Urahara’s. The scientist himself was missing-in-action, though Ururu said that he’d been in his lab for less than 12 hours, so Ichigo decided to let him be. Tessai was apparently up in Soul Society for the day, as was Yoruichi, so it was just the three of them.

Ichigo spread out his homework on the wood floor next to Ururu’s and Jinta’s, and helped them through their own while working on his. He did the same with his sisters often enough, including just the night before, so he’d long-mastered the ability to actually get his done while paying attention to two younger kids who wanted to be doing almost anything else. He had to admit that he wondered how Urahara and Tessai had ended up with the pair of them, but going off of their problem sets they were at least where they should be in school, and they seemed happy enough, so he wasn’t worried, merely curious.

When they’d all made enough progress, Jinta ran from the room, claiming that he wanted to practice in the basement. Ururu had smiled and excused herself barely a moment later, pulling up the edges of her skirt and following behind him. That left Ichigo to right the mess left in the room and figure out what he was going to do next.

He didn’t really want to brave either the sheets of rain that were still coming down or the basement training area with both Jinta and Ururu there without his own powers to keep him safe. He could bother Urahara with some food or water, or…his eyes caught on the meditation mat rolled up in the corner.

Ichigo wasn’t exactly the best at meditation. But he’d learned how, a long time ago, when he still attended the dojo regularly. He’d gotten back into practice trying to talk to his hollow. While he didn’t think he was going to end up in his inner world, if it even still existed, there were enough strange things happening that he needed to figure out for it to be useful anyway.

He went to close the door and get the mat. Deciding that he wasn’t likely to be disturbed without any warning, he pulled out his twitching tail and ran his fingers through the fur as it wagged in freedom for a few moments before curling over his lap. He wrapped his fingers around the end and started to breathe deeply.

He felt his breathing slow and deepen, and let it slow further until he could count it in heartbeats. He closed his eyes and stayed like that for a few minutes before starting to unpack his worries to himself.

He still hadn’t heard from his shinigami friends, though the Vizards had left him a jumbled joint message that made him smile. He supposed they were busy, but it wouldn’t have hurt anyone to drop him a message saying so.

He still hadn’t been able to talk to Inoue or Ishida properly—both of them were still avoiding him. Ishida had jumped stopped going to handicrafts club once Ichigo decided to corner him there, and he’d never been able to catch Inoue anywhere, even at her job, when he went looking. Chad wouldn’t talk about them to him, but he didn’t see much of Chad these days either.

His other friendships at school were getting a little stronger with the time he was spending on them, but he missed them anyway. They’d probably have had some better idea of how to handle hiding a tail, or even just having one, than he’d had in just ignoring it until it got to be too much, but they’d disappeared from his life right before he would have asked. Overall, he’d had their backs, and it hurt that they didn’t seem to have his now that he couldn’t fight with them.

He wasn’t useless. He knew how to fight with his body, Chad at least knew that from fighting gang members together. Inoue probably did too-she still did martial arts with Tatsuki sometimes, though according to Tatsuki she’d not been going to competitions for a while. And he’d been helping as many living humans as he’d used to with souls these last few weeks, which had to count for something.

He wondered how many new ghosts he passed by in the streets, that he couldn’t help anymore. He tried not to, but he missed being able to help them. He’d started to accept that he wasn’t going to be able to deal with hollows anymore, even been grateful that his lack of reiatsu meant that fewer were attracted to him. But he’d been involved in the spirit world all his life, and most of it had nothing to do with hollows. He missed the connections he’d made and the ability to help even more.

He also still had no idea about what was going on with this whole tail business. He’d even tried looking for the old man he’d helped that night, to no avail. He felt the soft fur in his hands. He’d gotten a bit used to it, even if it was a perpetual inconvenience. He just wanted to know why.

It was at that point that he had a sudden sense of vertigo, as if the ground wasn’t there and he were falling from a great height. His eyes sprang wide open, arms reaching for something to stabilize him, before he realized that he wasn’t seeing the inside of the Shoten anymore.

Ichigo’s confusion at seeing open sky lasted only until he landed on something solid and unforgiving. “What the fuck,” he muttered, pressing his hand against the nearest window. He looked around him with eyes the size of platters, taking in a place he had thought drowned and lost to him forever.

“Finally,” a feminine voice said. “We were wondering if you’d ever show up.”

“Who are you?” Ichigo twisted to see where it was coming from. Behind him, on a skyscraper just a little lower going by his current gravity, was a kitsune. He blinked several times, taking it in. It had black fur and three tails that curled upwards in the air behind it.

“Patience, youngling,” a second voice came. Ichigo tried to find where it was coming from. It took him only a few moments to see the second kitsune, a bright red against the blue that made up most of his inner world. With seven tails, it was no wonder that they considered the black fox a junior.

“Hmmph, this one’s slow.” the Black said.

“Oi, who are you calling slow, tiny?” Ichigo exclaimed, using the burst of irritation to break through his shock. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“Have peace, and all will be explained, kit,” the Red addressed Ichigo this time. Both of them jumped skyscrapers until they were on the one Ichigo had fell to. In that time, Ichigo righted himself to sit upright.

“Now, are you ready to listen?” asked the Red.

Ichigo jumped as one of the black kitsune’s tails brushed against his. “I think so,” Ichigo muttered.

“Ask your questions after,” Black grumbled in return. “Shinigami always have questions.”

“But I’m not a shinigami!” Ichigo burst out. “I’m just a human who used to be a shinigami substitute. And I’ve got no idea why you’re in my inner world.”

Black scoffed, but Red sent a quelling look at them both. “Settle down, both of you. We still have a story to tell, though it is much too long to tell in full before you will find yourself back in the physical world.”

“Basically, shinigami aren’t the only spirits in the world, and we’re stuck with you.”  Black said.

“That is somewhat oversimplified,” Red chided. “But essentially correct. As you’ve guessed, we are kitsune spirits. We have seen you, and with Inari-sama’s blessing have decided to add our spirits to yours, and pass on—”

“Hold on—are you the reason I’ve got a tail now?” Ichigo scowled down at them.

“Well, you’d have had to have earned it yourself, idiot-shinigami,” Black snarked at him. “We don’t get tails for doing nothing, you know.”

“We don’t have much time left,” Red intervened. “Ichigo. Please go visit the biggest shrine dedicated to Inari-sama in Naruki City. You may find it easier to speak with our brethren there. Then come back, and we can discuss what you need to know.” Red touched their paw to Ichigo’s arm.

And then Ichigo was thrust gasping back into the physical world.

As much as Ichigo would have loved to visit the shrine right away—he dearly wanted some answers—he still had to deal with school. While he knew how to make up for skipping a few lessons, it would attract attention he didn’t want to deal with. Besides, he’d spent a couple of weeks growing a tail of all things, it could wait a few hours more.

But, apparently Mizuiro couldn’t. Right when the rest of the class was trooping in to the locker rooms to change for gym, Mizuiro caught ahold of Ichigo’s sleeve and held him back. Ichigo knew better than to fight him outright—he was a friend, but he also had contacts who could kick Ichigo’s butt for breakfast.

When they were alone, Mizuiro let go of him. “What’s going on, Ichigo?” He asked simply. “And don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Ichigo replied truthfully. “It shouldn’t affect anything here though, no need to worry.” He guessed that Mizuiro was asking for sake of his operations, at which point Ichigo’s problems were irrelevant.

“So there isn’t another spiritual war or something?” Mizuiro questioned.

“No--didn’t you get the whole explanation with the others?” Ichigo scowled. “That’s over, and I’ve got nothing to do with it anymore. You’d be better off asking Inoue or Chad about that.”

Mizuiro tapped his chin. “Would going to that shop tell me anything different?”

Ichigo scowled harder. “They’d tell you the same if you asked. And if you threaten them, you might end up in a body bag. Leave it, Mizuiro. There’s nothing going on there like before.”

“And you’d tell me if there were?”

“It doesn’t matter, because there isn’t.”

“But you’d tell me?” Mizuiro pressed.

“If I know about it and it’s gonna affect Karakura, fine.” Ichigo scowled. He felt his tail tapping with his irritation. “They might try to seal your memories anyway though.”

Mizuiro suddenly went back to projecting his usual aura of almost-friendliness. “They can try. Let’s go to gym, Ichigo-san!”

 “Fine, fine,” Ichigo grumbled, immediately making a beeline for an empty toilet, ignoring Mizuiro’s eyes on his back as he did so.

The train into Naruki City is crowded without being full. There were a few lingering glances, but the other travelers minded their own business for the most part. Ichigo’s fingers drummed against his thigh as if they belonged to someone else, his tail a warm weight wrapped around his left leg.

The shrine was slightly more difficult to find than he’d anticipated. He had been starting to worry that he’d misremembered the directions by the time the torii gate came into sight. He bowed slightly and passed underneath, keeping to the right side of the path.

As Ichigo walked towards the purification basins, he thought that the place was strangely empty. He felt his heart start to beat faster as he bent to replace the ladle. He’d visited shrines more than a few times in the past, but it had never felt like this before.

The priest was over by the other side of the shrine, but Ichigo didn’t pay him much mind. He bowed again upon reaching the altar before twisting to get his offering out of his backpack. Fifty yen into the basin and a package of inari-zushi. He rang the bell and shut his eyes as he went through the proper rituals.

He ignored the first sounds, something that sounded a bit like someone arriving but not quite. But he snapped when he heard the crinkling.

“Thanks for the food.” A young girl smiled down at him, half-eaten package of inari-zushi in hand. Her five tails waved at him as he stared for a moment of incomprehension.

“What are you doing? What if someone sees those?” Ichigo hissed at the girl, scowling. He looked around again, but thankfully no one, not even the priest, was in sight.

Ichigo scowled harder when she laughed. “It’s fine!” She stuffed the last sushi in her mouth whole and discarded the container. “I’ve been waiting for you, kitling.

“Waiting for me? What the hell does that mean?” And then he clammed up, chagrined to remember where he was. “Sorry,” he muttered.

The kitsune laughed, and it sounded like power. “I guess this is what Hoshi-sensei meant when they said they hoped my students were like me.”

“Student?”

“Yep!” The girl stuck out her tongue. “And you don’t get a choice about it either.”

If he had any clue where this was going, Ichigo might have laughed. It wasn’t like he knew any other way to exist. He rolled with the punches and if he had a teacher he could learn that much faster. Besides, his days were pretty empty with the lack of hollow fighting. “So, what are we doing?”

“That’s all?” The girl’s tails drooped. “You’re no fun, kitling.”

“I’ve got a name. Call me Ichigo—please,” he added the last hastily.

“Ichi-go,” she sounded it out. “Is that why you look like a teenager?”

“I am a teenager,” Ichigo glowered back.

“On your own?” She jumped down from her perch, tails fanning briefly. “And they sent you to me?”

“I can leave and figure out whatever this is on my own.” Ichigo replied, turning away from her to grab his backpack. He blinked twice when he realized it had disappeared.

“Oh, I didn’t say that, kitling!” Ichigo’s bag was hanging off her fingers. “Call me Rin-sensei and you’ll get it back. You’re going to be the best-trained kit out there; I’d bet a tail on it!”

“Fine,” Ichigo muttered. “Rin-sensei.”

The first thing Rin had told him to do was to ‘get a good reason to be out and about all the time, or you’ll regret it!’ Something about kitsune needing to go around their own territory. He missed the end of that particular conversation, distracted by a flickering in her tails. She’d seen him, pinched his ears, and moved on. He figured that that was for lessons as well, whatever that’d entail. She’d seemed to understand when he told her that he couldn’t easily disappear to the shrine in Naruki very often.

He would need an actual reason, too, with how Goat-Face had been up in his face any time he didn’t have a good excuse for being home these days. The fact that he kept himself busy with this kitsune business rather than grieving most of the time didn’t seem to matter much.

School clubs were out, since they’d require actually being there. He’d thought about doing sports before, since that’d get Goat-Face off of his back, but one surprise game attendance was all it would take to make that a bad idea. And, knowing Goat-Face, that would absolutely happen at some point.

 That left volunteering or getting a part-time job, since he could always say he was going to something that wasn’t happening if need be, and Goat-Face couldn’t check as easily. He started looking through the classifieds; money wasn’t a bad thing to have, especially when one could go missing for months. Inoue was still untangling the mess from her kidnapping the last he’d heard, and however unlikely it was he’d rather have options.

He found a few that looked like either delivery jobs or similar that would let him go around Karakura. At the very least that would keep him in shape.

In the meanwhile, he thought about the spirits in his inner world. Red and Black didn’t seem like Ossan and his hollow, he wondered if they could be related. Urahara would probably know—though as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he immediately got a stabbing headache. He winced, pressing at his temples. No Urahara, he thought, and the headache abated. Trying to get back in to talk to them completely failed, which left Ichigo frustrated.

That left Ichigo to do his homework while he figured out where to go from there. He wasn’t unfamiliar with juggling the supernatural and being a top student, after all. He had ambitions, and it wasn’t like talking to ghosts paid, unless you were Don Kannoji. He’d more likely end up a patient at the hospital instead of a doctor there.

 He was glaring down at his Japanese homework when the phone Urahara had given him began to rang. Ignoring the spike of headache pain that came along with Urahara’s name, he spent several moments digging it out of his bag.

“Yo,” he said.

“Hey, Ichigo,” Shinji’s voice came through the speakers. “Been awhile.”

 “Yeah. You guys healed yet? It’s pretty quiet around here without you guys.”

“They’re still keepin’ an eye on Hiyori, ya don’t usually come back from being cut in half, ya know? But these hollows have to be good for somethin’.”

Ichigo made a low noise in the back of his throat. There was a beat of silence that lasted just a little bit too long on both ends. “Yeah. So, you guys coming back anytime soon?”

“Not sure yet. The Gotei wants some of us to stay, but we’re not decidin’ anythin’ until Hiyori’s up to kicking that Mayuri creep in the balls.” There was some static at the other end, and Shinji disappeared for a few moments before the phones reconnected. “Speakin’ of the devil,” Shinji muttered. “I’ve gotta go, but we’ll be by at some point. I’ll let ya know.”

“Thanks,” Ichigo replied gruffly, and the phone disconnected.

He went back to staring at his Japanese homework, even more discontent than he was before. He should have been happy to hear that the Vizards were fine, but instead he felt like he was just that much more adrift from his shinigami friends.

He packed up his work. It was time for another walk. Besides, even if the Karakura teachers wouldn’t accept it, it technically was part of what Rin had assigned him. But then they might surprise him—he’d still not really gotten in trouble over all the times he’d left to fight hollows, or just straight up disappeared because of Aizen and Soul Society.

It still struck him how quiet Karakura was without the spirits. No one bothered him at the park, even though he used to be inundated by ghosts; the park had been a popular area to hang out, since everyone was having fun and they could avoid being walked though. He supposed it was just another sign that he was supposed to only help the living now. He still waved at the roadside memorial as he passed it, and fancied that he heard a whisper of a reply.

So he continued to make rounds around Karakura, checking up on everything he could find, until he found the shrine. It was the tiny Inari shrine he’d seen a little while back, when his tail was still growing in. He smiled when he saw that a spattering of offerings had been left since the last time since he’d visited. He added a small coin and continued on his way.

He wandered back to the river and sat down in his usual place. He decided that he was going to try talking to Red and Black again. Rin hadn’t had a clue about what he was talking about when he mentioned having kitsune spirits in his inner world. If he was going to end up invading another world or something over this, hopefully he’d be able to learn a little more about it in advance.

The wind ruffled his hair, and Ichigo focused on the sensation. He was nearly there—there was probably a breeze in his inner world, after this—when suddenly his concentration was interrupted.

 “Ichigo.”

“Chad,” Ichigo acknowledged. “What’s up?”

Chad gestured if it was okay to sit down, and Ichigo gave up on going to his inner world for the moment. This was more immediately important. “This isn’t right.”

“What’s not right?” There was a too-long beat of silence. “Oi, Chad, what is it?”

“When were were in middle school, we made that promise.” Chad gripped his pants tightly. “I said I’d fight for you. And I meant it. I still mean it, but we meant to be fighting together, not like this.”

Ichigo grimaced. What exactly could he say to that? That he missed it? Of course he did. How could he not miss being able to protect people with his fighting skills? That it was okay? It wasn’t, but there wasn’t anything Chad could do about it.

 “If I remember right, I promised to fight for you too, not that I’ve been doing much of that lately,” Ichigo said eventually. “We can still deal with the stupid gangs, but that doesn’t change the rest of it. Hollows still need to get dealt with, after all.”

“Yeah,” Chad said, still looking guilty.

They both stared out at the river for a few long moments before Ichigo stood. His instincts were screaming that something was wrong, but he couldn’t have said what or where, just that he needed to be somewhere. “Want to go do something?”

Chad shrugged, and accepted Ichigo’s hand up. “Sure.”

As soon as Ichigo started walking, his tail made itself known, twitching against the bindings he’d put on it. His blood pounded in his ears as he looked for the threat, whatever it was. He picked up his pace unconsciously, and Chad matched him.

“Is something wrong?” Chad asked, looking around himself.

Ichigo took a deep breath as a group of punks rounded the corner from the next block over. Ichigo didn’t recognize the leader, but then he didn’t usually pay them much mind. The guys seemed to recognize him, however, because the first threw a punch straight at his face. Ichigo dodged it, letting the punk overbalance and fall into a streetlamp.

In just over a minute Chad and Ichigo had laid out all of the group. Several had pulled knives, which Ichigo made sure to collect and dump in the nearest trash bin. Ichigo felt his mind settle down, and found himself with more questions than anything else. He was going to have to actually visit his inner world this time—Red wasn’t going to get off so easily this time. In the meanwhile… “Hey, Chad,” Ichigo smiled slightly.

Chad glanced at the downed bodies. “Yeah, I know,” he replied.

When Ichigo ended up in his inner world at long last, he nearly died. Even though the sky was clear, the window he landed on was soaking wet, and he slipped off of the building immediately, only to land on another that was just as slippery, nearly breaking his neck in the process. He was glad that injuries in his inner world didn’t transfer to his physical body, or his ankles would be sore anyway.

He was pulling his tail free so that he could sit comfortably when Red and Black appeared, soaked to the skin. “Does it always rain in here?” Black complained. “This is your soul, can’t you control it or something?”

Ichigo was struck by a moment of deja-vu when they shook out their fur, splashing him in the process. “You’re the one that chose to come here,” Ichigo shot pack, wiping his face with his shirt. “And speaking of that, I’ve got a few questions, and you’ve got some answers for them.”

Black scoffed and settled a bit further away. “Demanding shinigami.”

Red flicked three of their tails at Black before jumping closer. “Ask, and we will answer as we can.”

“Fine, so you’re both kitsune, right? How did you get into my inner world, and why are there two of you? And where’s Zangetsu?” Ichigo held Red’s eyes.

“We’re here because this is where it is best for the both of us to be,” Red replied. “And Zangetsu is not here, or has not revealed himself to us.”

“So he’s really gone then,” Ichigo thought aloud, before shaking his head. “And you two, are you sticking around, and this whole tail thing?”

“Our presence has affected the shape of your soul,” Red replied. “I’m surprised it hasn’t shown more in here yet, but that is a permanent change. You are kitsune as we are, kit.”

“What does that even mean? I didn’t do anything for any of this? When did you even get here?”

“It means what it means, and fairly recently. But that is less important. We are here now, and there are many things we can teach you.”

“What was the point of going to Rin-sensei then?” Ichigo scowled.

“There are some things that even the best of teachers cannot teach, and there is not the time for you to learn entirely on your own.” Red looked away. “Though there are many lessons that can only be learned through experience, as I believe you well know. But now, we shall start with your instincts.”

When you counter, you don't let them cut you. When you protect someone, you don't let them die. And when you attack, you kill. Seven people laid out in less than sixty seconds without a single injury to himself. “My instincts are fine.” Ichigo responded confidently.

“So you’ve figured out how to hide your tail then?” Red asked, tone declaring that they already knew the answer.

“Of course he hasn’t,” Black raised their head. “And he doesn’t know what do with it. Just look.” Ichigo wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid Black pouncing on his tail, though he instinctively pulled it away as soon as they did. “See?”

“Oi!”

“Now, your instincts as a fighter are indeed impressive, and your motivations for fighting are often pure, but your instincts as a protector are disappointing,” Red said. Their tone was even, stating a fact, but it hit Ichigo as hard as a cero.

“I am a protector! That’s all I’ve ever been, and that’s what I am!” Ichigo clenched his fists.

“You have fought to protect,” Red acknowledged. “But when you raised your blade, you raised your blade to kill your opponent. That may have come from a place of wanting to protect, but that doesn’t change that you have shaped your instincts into a weapon. That may have been what you needed then, but you need a separate set of instincts now. We are not shinigami, to cut down life in favor of balance. You must learn that life is balance, and that there are many things more unfortunate than death that it must be protected from.”

Black looked up from where they had been grooming Ichigo’s tail, and spoke up before he could say anything. “Kitsune aren’t weapons. We’re not tools and we’re not swords so don’t you dare treat us like we are.”

“Then what do you want from me?” Ichigo growled. “I am a protector. I fought hollows to keep people safe, and I fought anyone that wanted to hurt Karakura because they wanted to hurt my friends.”

Red turned so that they were clearly speaking to Black. “Perhaps he needs a push. We’ve seen that he learns best by doing.”

“We’ve already tried that,” Black sniffed disdainfully, stepping away from Ichigo.

“Then we’ll try again. Patience, youngling.”

“What do you mean?” Ichigo exclaimed. “What did you do?”

Both kitsune looked over at Ichigo with matching expressions, stopping Ichigo where he was.

“Come visit us after you’ve figured it out.” Red pronounced.

“And you’d better not take too long,” Black agreed, even as the blue skyscrapers faded around them and Ichigo opened his eyes.

“Hmmm.”

“What does that mean?” Ichigo asked.

“It means that I’m trying to figure out how to say this,” Rin grumbled. Her legs swung against the sides of his desk. Ichigo was sure that he was going to have to go over all his papers with a lint roller, or just flat out rewrite everything, to get her fur off.

Ichigo stared at her for a long moment while Rin kept humming.

“You’ve already felt the need to protect this town, right?”

“Of course,” Ichigo confirmed.

“I mean, like, going out of your way to be in the right place at the right time?” Rin pressed.

“Didn’t I just say so?” Ichigo grumbled. “What’s your point?”

“So, what did it feel like, and what did you do when you felt it?”

“It was like I had to be somewhere, but I didn’t really know where or why. But I had to go and—and do something.” Ichigo’s gripped handfuls of his comforter. “There were a few times when I just ended up somewhere when something was going on and I didn’t mean to go there. I mean, I walk into gang stuff all the time and they don’t like me much, but usually they’re looking for me, not just having me show up wherever they’re going.”

“Hmmmmmm.”

Ichigo kicked gently at the desk chair to get Rin’s attention.

“Fine.” Rin harrumphed. “Are you always fighting people?”

Ichigo rolled his eyes. “I fight a lot of people. Usually because they’re threatening someone else first.”

Rin stopped tapping and caught Ichigo’s eyes. “You realize that kitsune work on Inari-sama’s behalf, right? Because the Transient Worlds aren’t capable of holding kami for long?” She stopped for a long moment, but Ichigo didn’t say anything, so she went on. “Inari-sama isn’t Hachiman-sama or a minor kami like the shinigami. That means that there are more rules. It’d be wrong to say we’re never supposed to fight, but it’s not really our job to most of the time.”

“It doesn’t matter what your job is if someone needs help!”

Rin leaned towards Ichigo. “It sounds like you’ve been meeting every situation with your fists. But that’s not our job. We’re protectors, not warriors. Think about it—regular humans think about Inari-sama as a kami of luck and productivity and rice. Rice is life, humans work to live, and the luck is supposed to be good luck.”

“I’d say that the people those bullies aren’t knocking around are having good luck.”

“That’s not the point!” Rin glared, deadly serious for once.

“Then what is?” Ichigo shouted back.

“Whatever you think you are, you’re a kitsune now!” Rin replied evenly. “It’s time you start acting like one.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this!” Ichigo scowled. “I just ended up with a tail out of nowhere! And so what if I fight people? I don’t fight anyone that hasn’t earned it and my fists work just fine for protecting people who need it.”

“What does that even mean? Did you ask for orange fur, or did that just happen to you? And did everything I say just run out of your ears? By every one of Inari-sama’s tails, talking to you is like talking to clay, kitling. At least the rice listens,” Rin griped. “Fine. This isn’t going to get anywhere. We’re going to do this your way—hands on. Let’s go.”

“Oi, you can’t just decide these things!”

“Watch me.” Rin smiled at him suddenly.

There was a glimmer of blue-purple from one of her tails, and for a heartbeat the entire world was blue. And then Ichigo blinked, and they were back by the river. A quick glance showed that Rin had hidden her tails; Ichigo took a split second to stuff his own into his pants while Rin was looking around.

“Come on,” she directed him, after surveying the area. “Do you sense anything going down around here?”

Ichigo tried to see if he could sense anything at all. It wasn’t really like sensing for reiatsu or reiryoku. He’d gotten pretty good at that by the end, though it had been easier for him to use spirit ribbons than sense people outright, no matter what the shinigami said about what should be natural. But sensing for his friends or even hollows had never brought with it the sense of compulsion that he’d felt with this—whatever it was.

So it didn’t surprise him much when he came up with nothing. It wasn’t like this came with an instruction manual. He might learn by doing, but it still helped to have something to start with, and it just wasn’t clicking for him.

Rin just sighed. “Well, you should be sensing things, because this town’s your territory. I can feel a little because I’m from the next town over and we’ve got a connection now, but that’s really supposed to be on you.”

Ichigo turned back to face Rin.  “Hold on—what do you mean by my territory?”

“What do I mean—you live here, don’t you? This is your place? So you’re its kitsune? Didn’t you know anything before you came and found me? You’re just a kit, didn’t your parents teach you?”

Rin’s eyes were blazing in a way that betrayed her supernatural existence. Ichigo shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away. “I told you—I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know anything about what’s going on except what you’ve told me, and what those two in my inner world decide to tell me. And I’m not a child, I can handle myself!”

“This is still instinct!” Rin responded hotly, before shaking her head. “Fine. There’s something going on that way,” she pointed, “so see if you can sense anything from over there. From here.” She emphasized the last as Ichigo turned to go off in the direction she pointed.

“If something’s happening that I can do something about, then I have to do it!” Ichigo shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “That’s who I am.”

“Sense for it.” And, at the sound of Rin’s steely voice, Ichigo found himself unable to move. He swallowed, and tried to forge on, but she was clearly using some kind of powers to keep him in place; he could no more force his body to move than he could see ghosts.

So he tried to think through it instead. His best sensing technique for reiatsu had been spirit ribbons, but that had been mostly for people. He’d had technology and his own two ears to direct him to hollows, or, failing those, his friends.

He spared a moment to think bitterly of the way that his hollow would laugh to see him trying to access some kind of instinct, and the way it’d laugh at Rin about how Ichigo should be fighting. That put him in the mind of when he’d first found Zangetsu in the Shattered Shaft, when spirit ribbons again had been instinctively there for him.

But this—whatever it was—had nothing to do with spiritual energy. And he had no idea how to tap into that sense without any. He heard a susurrus in his ears, almost like when his hollow tried to talk with him, but it left nearly as quickly as it had come. There was an afterimage of the glow he’d seen on Rin before they’d traveled, an odd color he didn’t think he’d seen before.

“Can’t you give me a hint?” Ichigo groaned, grabbing at his hair in frustration.

“I can’t believe you can’t do this,” Rin muttered just inside Ichigo’s range of hearing, before he took a last step towards him and curled her hands around his wrists. “I’m only showing you this once, so pay attention.”

And then his world burst into blue-purple for a moment, and he could feel life, all around them. There was a ringing, like his sisters’ laughter, like a punk-wannabe’s chains, like shrine bells. He was swept away in the noise for a brief moment before he resurfaced and Rin took her hands away.

“That’s what it should feel like,” Rin grumbled, less testily this time.

Ichigo made a small noise as he shut his eyes and tried one more time to feel things out. He was starting to get frustrated. Rin sounded like Rukia when she was trying to teach him to sense for hollows, with that same disbelief that it didn’t make sense to him. He might know what it felt like now, but that didn’t mean he had any idea of how to tap into whatever energy that was. He tried to see if he could sense anything that felt like it, but it was like hitting some kind of mental wall. It just wasn’t there for him.

He couldn’t quite read Rin’s expression when he opened his eyes again and shrugged. Somewhere between anger and disappointment, with a touch of something he’d seen only rarely in other people’s eyes, most recently Urahara’s. Heartbreak.

All of it melted away when Ichigo blinked at her. “Can we at least fix whatever needs fixing right now?” Ichigo asked impatiently.

Rin shook her head. “I told you, this is your territory. Keeping this place going is your job, not mine. I can’t sense well enough to be responsible for it, because that’s your job. Once you’re not my student anymore, I might not be able to sense so deeply in this area unless something big is happening—we all work together in the end, of course, but we each have our own jobs, and this is yours.”

“Why?” Ichigo threw up his hands. “I already said it. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t even let it happen because if I didn’t things would be worse. I just woke up with a tail one day. I’m just a normal human being now, shouldn’t you be working with someone who can actually sense anything?”

Rin shrugged, looking at a loss for once. “I don’t know—I was just always this, and sensing things is easy stuff, I already knew how to do it before I met Hoshi-sensei. I haven’t heard of anyone not being born a kitsune becoming one—you really must be a kit then. I’m going to have to ask her for help to see if she knows anything. I’m not that old, really, but Hoshi-sensei’s nearly a thousand. If anyone can help us, she can.”

Ichigo exhaled. “But what about whatever’s wrong here?”

Rin looked back at him. “This town hasn’t had a kitsune for a while. It can survive a little bit longer, even with those blasted shinigami messing around. Besides, didn’t you say you’d felt something before? Listen to that, and maybe something will make sense.”

Rin turned and started walking away. Ichigo tried to follow her. “Wait!” He yelled, reaching for her. His hand closed on empty air as she disappeared in a blast of that same energy that had taken them there in the first place, leaving Ichigo sock-footed a good number of blocks away from the clinic. He grimaced before deciding to head for home, trying half-heartedly to sense whatever it was that he was missing on the way.

The entire walk back, he thought about how familiar that energy seemed, especially that last bit when Rin had left. He’d felt it somewhere before; he was sure of it. The only question was where.

About a block away, he stopped suddenly.  His thoughts kept circling to when he was fighting Aizen—but that didn’t make sense. Rin had made it clear that shinigami were different from kitsune. He continued on his way to the clinic—even if it had anything to do with Aizen, that bastard was gone and a dead end as far as figuring out anything useful to him.

Ichigo was sitting on the roof, having breezed through the day’s classes by ignoring everyone and everything except the chalkboard in the front. He felt Chad’s gaze on him like a weight, but he’d been pulled away by a hollow at the right moment to let Ichigo escape. He’d stared out the door after him for a long moment, before snorting and packing up his things much more sedately.        

So he really wasn’t expecting Orihime to sit down next to him right then. He looked sideways at her, a dismissal ready on his tongue, but it melted away like sugar in water at her kind look. She pushed a small bag at him, fresh bread from the smell. A peace offering. Ichigo picked up the bag just as Orihime started sniffling. He looked up at her face as she started to wipe at her eyes.

“I’m sorry!” She burst out. “I’ve been such a bad friend lately, so I’m sorry.”

“Inoue…” Ichigo began softly, before trailing off.

“It’s just—I’ve been trying to get over everything that happened in Hueco Mundo, even before you showed up. And I felt so weak for getting kidnapped that I’ve been training most of the time when we’re dealing with hollows. But I’ve been so wrapped up in all of it that I forgot that you were hurting too!”

Ichigo clapped a hand on Orihime’s shoulder gently, telegraphing the move beforehand. She still flinched a bit, but stopped talking. Ichigo took up the conversational rope, though the words barely felt like they were his. “Getting taken wasn’t your fault. No one thought that the Arrancar could intercept the Dangai. And we both did our best in Hueco Mundo, and we’re all back in Karakura now so it was a success. Don’t beat yourself up about things that you can’t change.”

“But you were dead, and Ishida-kun was pretty close, and Ulquiorra-san and Aizen-san were both so creepy all of the time but I still ended up doing the things they asked me to do.” Orihime fisted her hands into her skirt. “If I hadn’t used my powers on the hogyoku, maybe it wouldn’t have been powerful enough so quickly that you had to lose your powers to fight it.”

Ichigo shrugged. He’d spent a few days trying to follow that line of thought before dismissing it for a bad turn. “Remember the Vizards? Aizen’d been planning the war for a long time. He probably had another plan somewhere. He didn’t plan for us, but he probably planned for everything else”

Orihime sniffled again, and Ichigo took out one of the bread rolls from the bag to hand to Orihime. Orihime smiled weakly, and took half of it after Ichigo broke it. Ichigo ate the second half himself, chewing slowly to make the moment last.

“I miss talking,” Orihime said. “Just because you can’t see hollows anymore doesn’t mean you’re not my friend.”

“Thanks,” Ichigo replied quietly.

After a few minutes of increasingly awkward silence, Orihime forced a laugh and pulled out her English homework. “You’re still a lot better at this than I am. Can you help me read through this scene?”

Ichigo pursed his lips before turning to the assignment. “It’s Shakespeare!” His tone said it all.

Orihime giggled with some residual awkwardness as she opened The Tempest to the proper scene. Things weren’t okay yet, but they were a lot better than they had been just a few minutes before. Well, at least somewhat better. Ichigo caught a flash of light reflected against glass, but ignored Ishida walking away in favor of Orihime. They still had a ways to go before things could become anything like they had been before, but for a few minutes he didn’t have to think like that.

Ichigo’s phone rang. For a moment he hoped that it was Rukia or Hanataro or Renji was finally returning one of his calls. Failing that, maybe Shinji felt like talking—it’d been a while on that score as well, though Ichigo knew that the Vizard had his hands full with cleaning up Aizen’s mess. He checked the caller ID, but he didn’t recognize it. After a moment of annoyance at himself for hoping, he let it go to voicemail. It was probably spam anyway.

A short while later, he picked up the phone to text Orihime about homework, when he noticed that there was a voicemail waiting for him.

“Hi, this should be Kurosaki Ichigo-san?” An adult woman’s voice came through the phone, papers shuffling in the background. “This is Unagiya Ikumi. You applied for a job at my shop not that long ago, do you think you could come in for an interview this week? Just call me back here when you can, thanks.”

Ichigo’s tail hit his cheek as it swung. He wiped at his face, smiling. Things were turning around for him.

Ichigo found himself near the river again, a fair distance away from the areas he usually frequented with a pair of young children he brought to the clinic later that day. The day after, he ended up in front of a homeless man who needed his lunch more than he did. And, half an hour before his interview, he found himself walking an older woman home after she’d fallen in the supermarket. She smiled widely at him when her home came into sight, and disappeared inside after promising to rest.

All told, he considered it a good thing that he was only three minutes late to his interview. Unagiya hadn’t been very impressed, but she’d still given him the job after so as far as he was concerned that was fine.

Although, even though he had an excuse to be out and about and follow whatever inklings he could, he still couldn’t feel anything like what Rin had showed him. He just wound up places sometimes. While that was more his style, he knew full well how big of an advantage being able to sense things was. He had a sudden mental image of running around like Kenpachi, completely missing the fight he was supposed to be having. If there was one tactical thing the shinigami had beat into his head it was that that was not a good idea.

He’d tried using Urahara’s spare room to meditate with fewer distractions under the guise of homework, but he didn’t get any closer. The kitsune who’d taken over his soulscape were apparently quite serious about not letting him back in until he figured it out either.

He wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, but there were some things he really did just need more context for to make them work. And that was why, when his father started sending strange looks his way, Ichigo had decided to investigate. Even if, in this case, investigation was more like cornering Goat-Face and getting him to spill.

 He was sure at this point that the kitsune weren’t Zangetsu, but no one else could tell him about the final getsuga tensho or where his spirits were hiding out, and if they could come back. Let alone the potential for learning more about spiritual things, with a possible side note of being able to grill him about whatever was going on with the kitsune.

The first part of that plan, cornering him, worked even better than planned. He hadn’t had to do anything at all—Goat-Face had just walked up and told him that they were going to have a sit-down discussion one day, right before dinner. And by the expression on his face, Ichigo guessed that he was even taking this seriously.

Across from him at the kitchen table that evening, Goat-Face melted into Isshin, who took a deep breath before beginning to speak. “I know I owe you some explanations, after everything. About myself, about your mother, and even the getsuga tenshō.” Isshin caught Ichigo’s eyes. “These will not be easy explanations, for either me or for you, but I’ve been selfish long enough already.”

Ichigo was starting to see how his father had once been a Captain. They hadn’t had a conversation like this in a long while, where both of them were being serious. In a sense it might even be their first real conversation—he got the sense that Isshin was treating him as an equal. “I understand,” Ichigo replied, a strange sort of fire filling him.

Isshin cracked a sad smile. “You will, I think. Your mom would be proud, you know. We only met because she was standing up for what was right instead of what was easy. I couldn’t always say the same, and even if that bastard Aizen was treating it like I was. She inspired me every day to do better. You’re a lot like her, I think. Don’t ever forget that.”

Ichigo blushed deeply, and coughed. “So what actually happened, then?”

Isshin ran his hands through his hair. “You know I was a shinigami captain. I was Tōshirō-kun’s captain for a while, actually. I don’t know why he didn’t say anything. I know you’ve met Aikawa-taicho and the others that disappeared with them. There were a lot of captains disappearing for a while, which meant a lot of promotions. I wasn’t ready for the responsibility, you know, but there wasn’t anyone who was. They probably sent me to the transient world to kick me down a few pegs, that’s all.”

He stopped when Ichigo stood up. Ichigo poured them each glasses of water, and set one in front of his father. Isshin took a sip, smiling sadly.

He continued after another long beat of silence. “It was the same standard mission everyone was getting, the seated officers and up. There were strange hollows particularly concentrated somewhere, and we had to dispatch the hollows and record what they did. And I decided that, since I was a captain then, I could handle it on my own.”

“More of Aizen’s experiments?” Ichigo guessed.

“Not that we knew about Aizen at the time.” Isshin shook his head. “And he wanted all of the Shiba dead because we’d had a few people poking around since Kaien died—he was the head of the main family, and it was because of another one of those strange hollows. So I went looking, and I found one. And if your mother hadn’t come along it would have killed me.”

“Mom had powers?” Ichigo breathed.

“She did. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to be rescued by a Quincy.” Isshin gestured with his hands, giving Ichigo a second to process his statement. “Though she wasn’t ready for it either, and the hollow had some strange power that nearly killed her. I gave her my powers to bind it. I couldn’t kill it without killing her too, but she would have died anyway if I hadn’t, and I thought I owed her that much for saving me. Urahara-san helped, too.”

“Urahara? Really?”

“He helped Masaki, and then made me a gigai. And got me the documents to start the clinic. I was 4^th division until after I learned my zanpakuto’s name, so I knew what I was doing.” Isshin’s lips quirked. “I wasn’t in a position to look a gift horse in the mouth. And then Masaki decided that we were dating, and the next thing I knew she was having you.”

Ichigo blushed again, and looked down at the table. “So why didn’t you tell me when I became a shinigami?”

“Well, ahh,” Isshin laughed nervously. “In any case, you’ll get your powers back eventually, but it’ll take a while. Even though my reiatsu has been coming back for a little while, I still barely managed anything in that battle. You should take some time off in the meantime. Be a teenager. The shinigami will still be there in a few years, and it’s not like things usually happen as quickly as this thing with Aizen.”

Ichigo didn’t really know how to respond. His mouth was doing something he wasn’t controlling, and he was glaring down at the table. He felt his tail twitch slightly with his heartbeat and knew that he already wasn’t in a position to take what his father was offering, even if he wanted to.

Which he wouldn’t anyway. He’d always worked to help ghosts, even when he was a kid. The idea of just accepting not having that was completely foreign to him.

But then he realized he already had. He’d mostly stopped worrying so much about the ghosts when he’d gotten more involved in this kitsune business. While he’d have liked to have been consulted before being dragged headfirst into it, he had to admit that at least they were teaching him, even if he was being dense about it. He was still thinking about helping spirits, like with how he kept thinking that he’d make spirit ribbons, but he wasn’t working towards it the way he was sort of working through Rin’s training.

His hands threaded through his hair as he tried to think through the rest. He didn’t know how to feel if his mom was a Quincy. Did that make him a Quincy? And the twins? What was he supposed to do with that knowledge? Ishida would probably kill him out of sheer offense when he found out, if he ever started talking to Ichigo again.

Ichigo looked up for his father, but the man was gone. He’d somehow taken Ichigo’s cup while he was out of it as well, and both were lined up on the edge of the kitchen sink, like thieves waiting for the hangman to kick away their box.

Ichigo found himself back at the river, despite the late hour. His mom might never have stuck around there, but he had the memories of endless days of waiting for her to show up like all the other ghosts. He stuck around for a few minutes before pushing himself to leave. If his mom had powers, then why hadn’t she been able to save herself from Grand Fisher that night?

And of course it was rather a moot point for himself at this point. His mom was gone. As far as Ichigo’s own possible powers went, he didn’t think it mattered. Even at his most powerless, after they got back from invading Soul Society, even Ishida had seen the hollows around town; he’d just not been able to save himself. Not like Ichigo was now.

Besides, Ishida wasn’t talking to him, and he wouldn’t even know where to start on his own, if he even could at this point. It wasn’t like he had reiatsu anymore, and this wasn’t his usual kind of fight. Just look at how much he’d managed to screw up this whole kitsune business! And there was Red and Black to consider—they had to have shown up for a reason, even if he still wasn’t buying into their whole mentor business. Yes, they’d sent him to a teacher, but even Zangetsu had been less unclear then the pair of them.

Ichigo was so deeply in his own head that he nearly walked into a gang member. “Oi, ya lost?” the kid asked, grinning a piranha’s grin.

“What?”

“I said, ya lost? Less ya want t’ get beat, carrot-top, better scram.”

Normally Ichigo wouldn’t have cared. He was used to hearing worse at school any day of the week. But then maybe he was looking for a fight, a bit. At least a distraction. He hesitated for the barest instant before snorting loudly, and pushing past the goon. Predictably, the man threw a punch.

Ichigo caught the guy’s hand, looking bored even as the adrenaline started pumping. They had several exchanges of blows in which no one actually got hit before the goon dove to the ground and came back up with a pipe. Surprised, Ichigo barely deflected a probably-lethal blow to his head. The guy feinted and went for it again, managing to break Ichigo’s nose by the sudden gush of blood and pain.

Ichigo stumbled back into reality as the blood dripped off his face and into the street. There was a flash at the end of the street, and Ichigo turned his head to look. It was Rin. And then the thug tried to take advantage of his distraction, punching him in the stomach and sending him flying a few feet backwards.

And then the image of Rin shifted, and suddenly Ichigo was staring at a heavyset teenager that growled when they stepped close enough for the goon to see them. “Scram.” The goon gulped audibly and ran away, leaving Ichigo to Rin’s tender mercies.

And then Rin turned to him. For a moment, Ichigo wondered if Rin was just going to finish what the other guy started, before they sighed and returned to the form he usually saw her in, with an inescapable aura of steely demand. “Get up,” she demanded.

Ichigo pushed himself up. Somehow he still found himself looking up, over Rin’s shoulder to avoid her the moons reflecting in her eyes.

“Come on,” she urged him, and then turned and started walking away. Ichigo stumbled as he half-ran to catch up with her, only to stop short when the world shifted around him to a small apartment.

“That room,” she said, pointing, and he went.

When Ichigo woke up the next morning, Rin wasn’t there. There had been a plate of food left out with a note for him, surprisingly still warm when he got there. He scarfed it down and started trying to figure out how he could leave the apartment. It didn’t take him long to figure out that if there was an exit, it was very well hidden.

He did find a second note, left on the bed he had used when he went looking.

Kurosaki Ichigo,

Since it’s come to my attention that a block of concrete can sense its surroundings better than you can yours, you’re going to learn before you die like a numbskull with both thumbs in your mouth. You aren’t leaving that apartment until you do.

If you’ve been working these last few weeks, this should be easy for you. You should be able to sense it clearly using those techniques, so get to it.

We will speak about yesterday’s display when I return in three days. If you can find me before that time, you may even survive it.

--Rin

Ichigo grimaced, before folding the paper and stuffing it into his pocket. If he disappeared for more than a day or two, someone would call in the authorities, even if his father wouldn’t. And he might just get fired from his shiny new job, which would be just excellent.

The first day began without any fanfare. He wondered what his family was making of his disappearance, since it obviously couldn’t be shinigami stuff this time. But that was a concern for the future—he couldn’t leave the room and its attached bathroom. So he explored it within an inch of its life.

The room was eerie—it was almost as if it had been set up with him in mind. Classics in several languages lined several bookshelves, and Ichigo picked up and skimmed through both Kokoro  and A Midsummer Night’s Dream before deciding that the books really were what they seemed. There was a western-style bed, and several windows to let in light. There was also a desk with pens and several empty journals sitting on top of it, waiting to be used.

Food came regularly, and it was all pretty good—mostly homemade at a guess as well. Not quite like Yuzu’s, but close enough to make Ichigo wonder. Ichigo hadn’t thought that Rin was the type to cook her own food, but maybe she had a partner of some kind? He doubted it was some kind of house share, given his own unwilling presence.

Redoubling on his ideas about escaping, Ichigo had started by trying to either open or break the door, and then the windows. After that failed to produce an escape route, Ichigo tried to replicate Rin’s technique to move through spaces, but the closest he got was a splitting headache that lasted for hours before he gave up and decided to sleep instead.

The second day started much the same, to his disgruntlement. Breakfast was waiting for him when he turned around for only a moment, and the plate disappeared when he wasn’t looking.

He ended up just sitting down, taking stock of the situation. He supposed that he should be angry or something about being kidnapped again, but it wasn’t even the strangest thing that had happened this week, let alone this month. Besides, it was Rin. She wasn’t going to hurt him, no matter how angry her last note was.

That didn’t mean he much wanted to face that anger either, which meant he had to escape before she returned. Sensing a way out had clearly been off the table. If he hadn’t managed so far, another day of intense staring and grunting at inanimate objects was doomed to failure. Teleporting had failed dramatically. But…he eyed the lunch plate. There was the other magic that Rin had done.

Ichigo ended up sitting on the ground, breathing deeply. He didn’t know what he was ‘supposed to’ do for this, but that didn’t mean anything. He did better most of the time when he didn’t know there were rules. Striking a deal with his hollow. Gaining bankai in two days. Going back even further, the first time he’d helped a young child who’d died in an accident say a goodbye to their parents. He was generally good at making up the rules as he went along.

He presumed that there was something about sensing, but he focused on visualization instead. He knew what shaping his power felt like, even if he didn’t know the world around him the same way as Rin did. He growled when the feeling of life slipped through his metaphysical fingers too quickly for him to get more than a taste of the sensation, before going back to it. He was going to get this done.

It took some time, but shapechanging the first time he’d gotten it to stay long enough to actually change him had nearly felt natural. Turning himself into an Ishida-lookalike after felt like the first time he’d done a getsuga tenshō in a fight. While he didn’t think that he could hold it for very long, the fact that he had managed it at all was rather gratifying after failing at all of the things Rin had been showing him for so long.

He lost control of those first attempts in barely seconds, but that was something he could work on. And then, eyeing lunch, he decided to try turning himself into inanimate objects It was a rather strange experience being a spoon for a minute and a half, but the look on Rin’s face when she saw him after she brought the tray back to her was worth the trouble.

Even if she bopped him on the face with several of her tails afterwards. Apparently shapeshifting was a significantly more challenging skill than ‘simple’ sensing, even if he couldn’t hold it properly yet. But that was just the story of his life, apparently.

Two days, and he’d broken free of that room. Not bad at all, according to Rin, even if he sort of cheated. While Ichigo wasn’t happy with that assessment, he knew that he wasn’t up to where Rin would have liked him to be, and he was more than ready to get back to Karakura before someone actually called the police on him.

For one, he still needed to figure out how to know when someone in his vicinity was hurt or about to be hurt, according to Rin. His need to protect and his utter exasperation at the situation and being pushed into being some kind of police again warred at each other until the first won, and Ichigo agreed to go back to the exercises.

Maybe Red would help, if he asked.

He fell asleep that night in his own bed, too grateful to be home to call out his father on checking on him several times during the night, even if it meant he didn’t get much in the way of sleep.

“Kurosaki,” Ishida bit out at him. Ichigo was almost glad that the bastard was talking to him again, even if it was under duress, with the iron grip Orihime had on his arm.

“Ishida,” Ichigo acknowledged. “It’s been a while. Hi, Inoue.”

“Hi!” Orihime chirped. It sounded a little forced, but she’d gotten much better at keeping a straight face: Ichigo couldn’t read anything off of her.

And then she pushed Ishida into Ichigo and bolted to the classroom door. By the time the boys had recovered, the scrabbling sound of the door locking from the outside rang through the room. “Sorry!” Orihime called through to them. “I’ll be back to let you out after you’ve talked, but I promised I’d do this!”

“Wait!” Ishida yelled back, looking surprised for once, but Orihime was gone. Ichigo pounded against the door before sighing and leaning against it, before springing back as that accidentally put too much weight on his tailbone. He eyed Ishida, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“So, what’s this about then?” Ichigo asked, leaning against a nearby desk instead. “Or are you still not talking to me?”

“Kurosaki—” Ishida grimaced. “I don’t see that there’s anything we need to talk about.”

Ichigo scowled at him. “That’s bullshit.”

“Kurosaki!”

“What? It’s all bullshit.” Ichigo closed the distance between the pair of them, glaring straight at Ishida. “Just because I can’t see anything anymore doesn’t mean that I’m not talking to Chad or Inoue. So why the hell have you been avoiding me?”

“If you’ll remember, the last time I tried to talk to you, you put a sword through my chest!” Ishida clipped back. “You hadn’t pushed me back towards Orihime at the same time, I’d be dead.”

“We’ve done worse to each other before. And that wasn’t me, you know that. But my hollow is gone, so it’s not like that’s gonna happen again. What is it, really?”

“Does it matter?” Ishida tipped his head upwards. “Besides, it’s not like we had anything in common aside from the spiritual world, and as you can no longer fight hollows, that is no longer your concern. It’s simple. We have no reason to be in contact any longer, so when Inoue-san comes back to let us go, we will go our separate ways.”

“You’re an asshole, Ishida,” Ichigo growled. “We might have met because of shinigami and hollows, but I thought you were a friend. It’s good to know that you think you’re too good for those.”

They both looked up at the door as it flew open. It wasn’t Orihime—it was the guy who always tried to corner Ichigo on the roof, babbling on about his hair color. “Oi, Ogichi, we’re a bit busy here,” Ichigo turned towards them.

“It’s Ōshima!” The guy yelled back. “If you don’t apologize, I’ll dye your hair for you—red with your own blood!”

“You—!” Ichigo started, only to be interrupted by Ishida.

“That would not be a good idea, Ōshima-san,” Ishida pushed his glasses back on his face.

“He humiliated my brother!” Ōshima blathered on. “He’s gonna die!”

And then he was met by two simultaneous punches to the face. Ichigo and Ishida looked at each other as Ōshima crumpled.

“Don’t think this changes anything,” Ishida grumbled.

“Fine,” Ichigo replied, rolling his eyes. It obviously had had an effect though, as Ishida just huffed. It was almost like when they’d fought together before. Irritating, but also kind of nice.

Orihime reappeared in the open door, smiling. “It’s good to see you two getting along again! Oh! I brought some bread to celebrate, would you two want any?” Orihime kept chattering as she grabbed the boys' hands, pulling them out of the room and leaving Ōshima where he’d fallen.

As nice as it was to have his friends mostly back, Ichigo still wasn’t particularly impressed with that hollow’s timing. Suddenly an afternoon he was going to spend catching up with them turned into him sitting alone on a bench outside the convenience store nearest the school, sipping a drink he’d gotten out of a vending machine.

Not wanting to be idle, Ichigo found himself walking the familiar streets to the Shoten instead. It was one of the only places he felt comfortable enough to try meditating, and the river was still not a good option. He could spend a little while avoiding Urahara if it meant not facing the river again so soon.

He let himself in the back, and, hearing Jinta’s voice echoing through the first floor, decided that the basement was probably safer in the long term. The ladder was okay as long as he didn’t look down, and eventually he found himself a nook in between several rocks that wasn’t particularly visible. He settled down and tried to reach for his inner world. On a whim, he tried to focus on what he remembered of shapechanging, and was rewarded by falling into his inner world in about half the time it usually took him.

“You still don’t understand,” Red rumbled at him. Ichigo blinked up at the kitsune, gathering his wits in a flash.

“What?”

Red reappeared in front of him, all seven tails flashing. “You’re learning how to use our powers, but you still do not understand what it means to be kitsune. You have made that empirically clear now, several times over, and if your teacher will not rebuke you then we will.”

“Oi, what are you talking about?” Ichigo moved into a crouching position. “I thought I was finally catching on to this!”

“You are becoming powerful,” Red allowed. “But the price of power is responsibility. I understand your youth, but it is not an excuse to shirk your responsibilities. If you would accept them, then you could carry them out, but only in that order and that way. If you refuse, then I would rather cease to exist than be responsible for creating the problem you would become.” Red turned away and jumped to another skyscraper.

“Wait!” Ichigo shouted, and Red turned around. “I found Rin-sensei, like you said, and I’ve been doing what she wanted, even if I’m shit at most of it. So what do you want now? I’m doing everything I can already!”

“If you could sense as a kitsune, then you would be a great deal closer to accepting your status,” Red replied.

“Well, that’s not happening anytime soon!” Ichigo hollered back.

The words hung like clothes pinned to a line before Red brushed them away. “Listen as you do to the river to the skies and the grasses and the people who ask for blessings. Scent the perfume of strife and failure and commit yourself to making them succeed. Walk the path ahead and clear it for those behind. Step forward and make it so that humanity step forward with you, to ensure its survival if nothing else. That is our duty, including yours.”

And then his inner world melted away. Ichigo banged his head against one of the rocks as he came back to awareness.

Scent the perfume of strife? Red might be more direct than the Old Man and less violent than the hollow, but that didn’t mean that what he said was clear at all. Even Rin’s explanations, which hasn’t proved all that helpful in the end, had been more understandable. But Red had never acted like that towards him before. Neither had Black, really, for all their bitterness. Ichigo wondered what that meant, that Red was suddenly getting annoyed and aggressive. Maybe they’d just had a bad day, but Ichigo worried that it was a lot more than that.

And then Ichigo noticed the small tray of onigiri next to him. Suddenly realizing that he was ravenous, he bit into one. Salmon filling. He’d have to find some way of thanking Tessai, he realized, before dismissing the thought to work through what Red had said. There had to be something in there that he could use.

And he’d thought that talking to Red would give him some answers. Instead, it only left him with many more questions and concerns.

He wondered where Black had been as well. Prickly as they were, they never missed a chance to needle at him, often giving him helpful little hints in the most backhanded way possible. When did his inner world get this complicated?

In a word, work was interesting. He could spend a whole day mowing the lawns of a block of houses on the edge of town, or be running around town to deliver food for a sick driver for an hour before being sent to repaint someone’s house the next. It was clear that business was booming, and that Unagiya needed the help, but he still wasn’t entirely clear about what his job actually was.

On occasions like this, however, the job was a good time to try to figure out kitsune things. Ichigo was sipping from a water bottle, about to return to Unagiya’s shop, when he tried to sense his surroundings as he had a few thousand times since Rin’s original directive.

Listen to the skies. A family of birds were living in the tree next to the one he was leaning against, and they were certainly singing up a racket.

The moment slipped away from him, and Ichigo grit his teeth, before trying again. Listen to the grasses. There was a slight fluttering noise to go along with the breeze. He listened harder, but that was all he got.

“Damn it,” he shut his eyes before pushing off the tree. He thought he felt a faint resonance, before chalking it up to his imagination. He’d try again later.

Ichigo took the long way back, making sure to walk past the small shrine he’d seen before. This time he stopped there and touched one of the offerings gently. He suddenly had an image of a businesswoman stopping on her way into Naruki, asking for success for her team’s project.

He dropped the offering in shock, brushing against a second one that left him with an electrified feeling and the barest instant of sensation. A more careful brush revealed a factory worker asking for the good luck that there not be any accidents that day. He pulled away, but not before thinking a strong agreement.

He went through the rest of the offerings more carefully, indulging his curiosity and something he couldn’t name. Responsibility, maybe, but not entirely. Some kind of power.

Unagiya grumbled when he got back to the shop, but he didn’t really pay much heed. She wasn’t going to fire him for being a few minutes late. Instead, she just shoved another job request at him, expecting him to go. The work was never done, it seemed.

“Hi, Ichigo,” Mizuiro’s voice came out of nowhere, and Ichigo had to force himself not to take a battle stance. He felt his tail fluff against his skin and blushed slightly as he turned towards Mizuiro.

“Hey, Mizuiro, what’s up?”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on this time?” Mizuiro raised an eyebrow.

Ichigo scowled. “I told you, nothing’s going on. And we both know that you’d be better off asking Chad, or even Ishida, since I wouldn’t know if something was going on two inches in front of my face.” He tried his best not to sound bitter.

“Stop playing dumb, Ichigo.” Mizuiro frowned at him.

Ichigo suddenly sprouted a splitting headache that was only partially caused by Mizuiro. It took him a moment to place the sensation before he realized that it was a lot like what he’d felt that time with Chad. So, snmeone was in trouble, or being trouble, and he had to put a stop to it.

Except Mizuiro wasn’t Chad. He’d ask uncomfortable questions and not be satisfied until he got good answers, and, if Ichigo was particularly unlucky, might try to get those answers by blackmailing him with whatever he’d feel the need to do if he followed the call. Or maybe he’d be satisfied by knowing more than anyone else for now. They were friends, after all, even with everything else they each got up to.

Ichigo opened his mouth to reply when the migraine redoubled upon itself, and he brought his fingers to his temples. He tried to figure out what was going on through the pain. It squeezed the inside of his head several times before he started to get a shaky picture.

It wasn’t so much listening to the skies as listening to the air. There was still too much to process, but it was too close for that. It was like the hollow was laughing in one ear and Kenpachi and his blade were screaming in the other, and he was trying to listen to something happening on the other side.

All of a sudden, he regretted his decision to use his newfound talent in shapeshifting to hide his tail instead of his more tried-and-true methods. That meant that when he lost control of the shapeshifting—and he was going to, it was just a matter of when—Mizuiro was going to have visual evidence of everything he’d been hiding for the last several months.

He wasn’t going to have a choice. Angry tears prickled at the sides of Ichigo’s eyes as he closed them, but he refused to let those fall. “I’m serious when I say that there wasn’t anything I knew about affecting the town as a whole, you know,” Ichigo bit back, looking for a place to hide. He ducked into a side street, the best he could do on short notice, frowning as Mizuiro followed him.

There was a long moment when Mizuiro didn’t say anything, just fixing Ichigo with a heavy stare, before Ichigo cracked, feeling his last tenuous hold on the shapeshift flying away as his instincts started screaming again. “Not a word about any of this to anyone or I’ll kill you and frame your own for doing it.”

Mizuiro smiled tightly at Ichigo, nodding. Just moments later that expression was wiped clean, like rain against paper lanterns, as the illusion melted away. Ichigo blushed, flinching away when Mizuiro’s hand came up to touch.

“So this is why you’ve been changing in the bathroom at school,” Mizuiro’s voice was tinged with wonder. “Amazing. How did it happen?”

Ichigo shrugged. “Dunno. It just sort of showed up one day.” He studiously didn’t think about what he’d figured out about the man he’d brought to the clinic just days before he noticed the tail originally. The tail that was currently a huge ball of fluff, mostly out and obvious in a public space. Ichigo hastily started pushing it down his pants leg to hide it, even as Mizuiro watched hungrily.

And then his headache spiked again, and Ichigo nearly fell, catching himself against a wall at the last moment.

“What’s going on?” Mizuiro asked suspiciously.

“Don’t know,” Ichigo grunted. “Yet, at least.”

“Weirder than finding out that you’re a furry? Or something.” Mizuiro made a gesture with his hands that Ichigo couldn’t read. “I’ll get whatever it is out of you soon enough, I’m sure. With you, it’d never be just a tail, and you know how persistent I can be when there’s something interesting going on. So there’s no reason to hide it, is there, Ichigo?”

“Howsabout I just leave,” Ichigo replied, grabbing Mizuiro’s phone as the other tried to take a picture. “I’ve got places to be, and so do you, probably. Neither of those things means we have to be here. See you later.”

Ichigo didn’t wait for a reply before peeling out of the building. He stopped just a few steps outside, groaning in pain as his headache spiked yet again. It felt like there was something in there that wanted out, but he had no idea what that meant.

That also gave Mizuiro time to catch up with him, since he was standing right in front of Ichigo, arms crossed, when he regained awareness. “What?” Ichigo snapped.

“You were going to tell me what was going on,” Mizuiro replied.

“I thought I just made that clear!”

“You did say that you were going to do things! We’re in public space, how do you know I’m not also heading in this direction?” Mizuiro countered brightly.

Ichigo groaned loudly for Mizuiro’s benefit before forcing himself to focus on the mental shouting that was going on. Ichigo cut across a street, ignoring Mizuiro hurrying beside him as he ended up jogging through a residential neighborhood he didn’t know.

Something. Something. Something was going to happen in this old apartment complex, and Ichigo had no idea of where to start. His headache pulsed, but even the slight sense he got from the building was too muddled and mixed with pain to be useful. He glanced over at Mizuiro. “Does this place mean anything to you?”

Mizuiro studied Ichigo’s face, and then the building. “No.”

Ichigo grimaced. “Stay out here, this could get ugly.”

Mizuiro scoffed. “And you’re in shape to fight?”

And that was the final word on the subject. At least Mizuiro was the kind who’d be able to defend himself, but Ichigo wasn’t pleased to be dragging more of his friends into his mess, especially when he still didn’t really know how he got involved in the first place. The last thing he wanted was his friends conscripted into his fight yet again—and Mizuiro wasn’t giving him any choices.

“Any reason why we don’t just pull the fire alarm?” Mizuiro asked dubiously.

Ichigo just pushed on until he came upon the old man laying on the ground. His head cleared a little and he let the instincts trained by years of living in a clinic come to the forefront as he went to crouch by the guy. Breathing. Good. He was reaching into his pocket with his other hand when he remembered that Mizuiro was there. “Call 119,” he instructed.

By the time the paramedics got there, Ichigo’s migraine had disappeared. He’d been held up answering their questions for a short bit, but he still managed to escape Mizuiro after they cleared him to go. That was a conversation he was not looking forward to, but he was too exhausted to deal with it.

Ichigo didn’t go to school the next day, or the day after. He did a few jobs for Unagiya, but kept away from the parts of town that his friends frequented, and anywhere they’d think to look for him, which also ruled out the Shoten and the river. He even managed to avoid Rin for a little while.

But eventually the work ran out, and Ichigo found himself in a park on the other side of town, not wanting to go home and face his father, or anyone else. He spared a few moments to trying to sense Karakura, but a headache threatened nearly immediately and he backed down and just sat, staring at a streetlight.

He was not expecting to be drawn back into his inner world. At least he was wearing proper rain shoes this time, so he didn’t go falling off the skyscrapers even despite the misty rain.

“Shinigami,” Black greeted him, not hostile for once.

“Hi,” Ichigo replied, looking around. There was a bit of fog, but he didn’t see Red anywhere. “What’s going on?”

Black approached him. “You really are just a kit,” they observed. When Ichigo bristled, they ran a tail over his shoulder in a calming gesture. “We’ve been pushing you hard. It usually takes young kitsune years to learn how to sense properly, and decades to shapeshift for the first time. You’ve been progressing quickly.”

“What?” Ichigo blinked quickly at Black. “What happened to you hating me?”

Black snorted. “I don’t hate you. I’m not fond of shinigami to be true, but this is the closest thing I’ve had to freedom in hundreds of years. It’s not perfect, but it’s going to have to be enough. Now come over here. You’re going to learn how to groom yourself if you want to hear any of the story.”

“Groom myself?” Ichigo repeated, feeling like a broken cd.

“It hurts to look at your tail, and that’s your only fur. And it’s sort of our fur too, and none of my fur is going around looking like that” Black sniffed, patting down next to them with one of their tails.

Ichigo went, feeling his own tail twitch as Black pinned a small bit with a paw and began to work through it.

“Listen closely, because there is not much time left.” Black stopped as Ichigo squeaked.

“Sorry,” Ichigo blushed. “I don’t know what just happened.”

“You really needed a grooming,” Black nudged his face. “Now. I suppose you would recognize this?” Black unfurled one of their tails, and in it was a small stone glowing in some mix of blue and purple. Ichigo narrowed his eyes at it as he tried to place it.

“This is a star ball. It’s the source of a kitsune’s power. It’s important that you never lose it.” Black furled the tail again and the star ball disappeared into the fur. “It’s also why we need to talk.”

Ichigo was still staring after where the ball disappeared. “Wait! Didn’t that bastard Aizen have one of those? Was he a kitsune too?”

Black snarled. “That assface of a shinigami bastard waited for me to be tired out by doing my job and stole my star ball! He wanted kitsune powers to add on to his sword so he spent hundreds of years using my star ball and trying to steal my powers for himself. He stole one of my tails and managed get some illusions working, but like hell I was going to work with him!”

“Hold up just a minute,” Ichigo scowled. “Aizen stole your powers? And your tail? How does that even happen? And then how did you get here?”

“He did,” Black confirmed again. “He tried to make my star ball more powerful for a while before deciding to steal another one instead. That’s why there’s two of us—and where you come in now.”

Ichigo made a noise as Black stopped working on his tail and stared into his eyes. “Is there a way to get you both free again? I’m not going to keep you trapped here if there’s anything I can do about it!”

Black chuckled, and the sound resounded oddly on the glass around them. “It was too late for that when we met you. And I’ve had some time to come to terms with everything since we last talked. It’s funny what dying will do to you. No, there’s nothing to be done except what you’re doing already—protecting this place. I can’t believe that I have a shinigami for a legacy, but if it had to be one then it should be the one who saved my soul from that bastard.”

“Dying!?” Ichigo screeched.

“It’s not as bad as all of that.” Black took a few steps away, before looking back. “I know I’m not the best for living these days. I don’t really know what to do with freedom, but I couldn’t do my old job as things stand, even if my star ball was stable. So I’ve accepted it.”

“Accepted it?” Ichigo repeated dumbly.

Black made a noise of agreement. “I’m not happy about it, but this isn’t a bad ending. And I helped destroy the person who did this to me, which makes me happy. That’s not the sort of thing that should make a kitsune happy, as you should know by now.”

“But what about—“ Ichigo gestured out at the fog.

“The seven-tails?” Black asked. “Oh, their story is different than mine, and that’s for them to tell, if they get over themself in time. And there’s someone who can tell you most of the rest if they don’t, if you can find them. Let’s just say that they weren’t expecting what happened when they got the ball rolling, and they’re still working on accepting what I have. It’s why they’ve pushed you even more recently too—fate is fickle.”

There was a moment of heaviness before Black swatted Ichigo’s nose with a tail tip. “Anyway, you’re not quite a proper kitsune yet. That’s because your powers come from our star balls, mine and that seven-tails’, even when they’re sulking like this. But Inari-sama approved of you, so I have no doubt that you’ll get that bits of us after we’re gone. But you’ll be a baby kitsune, and we won’t be around to push you in the right direction, so you better do it yourself. If you misuse my power, I’ll come back from the other end of the reincarnation cycle to kick your ass!”

Ichigo gaped for a moment before trying to follow Black. “Hey! What’s your name?” He called after them.

 “Shion!” Black called back, just before they disappeared into the fog—mist, something grumbled at him—a moment before he found himself back in the world of the living.

“Shion,” he whispered. It was nearly full dark, but Ichigo didn’t feel much like walking home. He wasn’t really sure how to feel in any case. While he hadn’t gotten particularly close to Black or Red, they were actually dying inside of him and there was nothing he could do. No Soul Society to invade, or Hueco Mundo, or any other place, to save them.

And he was going to keep being stuck with this kitsune thing afterwards—and he still had no idea what he was doing! He had Rin, but it seemed that they were never on the same page about things. He didn’t know if she would be able to answer any of his concerns about the two in his soul either.

Ichigo tapped his fingers against his thighs as he stared up at the sky. He just couldn’t wrap his head against helplessness—he was a protector, he wasn’t supposed to be the helpless one!

He stared up at the sky for a while longer. He felt like he did that day after his mom was killed, when he still didn’t really understand what death meant but did get that he hadn’t done enough.

He forced himself to go back to school after that. Yuzu’s puppy eyes of sadness may have had something to do with that decision, even if he only admitted that in the back of his mind. Instead, he put on a game face and went out to seize the day. Luckily for him, those in the know about the shinigami and the spiritual world didn’t seem to treat him any differently than they had been, presuming that he was just having a bad day. While that wasn’t far from the truth, the reasoning behind it was all wrong. That suited Ichigo just fine in any case.

Things did get a bit strange. There was someone in every class covering for him and his surliness. Both Ishida and Chad ended up speaking up at different times to cover for him. Orihime shared her lunch with him, and tried to cheer him up and lighten him up even as he felt like a personal raincloud.

It wasn’t just them either. Tatsuki had had a pep talk for him that morning, and she and her girl friends fended off the sports teams when they tried their usual recruitment attempts instead of waiting for Ichigo to bite their heads off. Even Keigo actually gave him personal space for once.

Mizuiro gave him a few keen looks, but even he let it stand for the rest of the day. He was the closest to knowing the truth, even if his best guesses would have to be pretty far off. Ichigo was just as happy never having the argument that was brewing there, but for now at least Mizuiro was letting him pretend it wasn’t coming. That was about the best he could hope for with him.

By the bell, Ichigo had looked around and found so many eyes looking back that he wasn’t really sure how to handle it. Write into a newspaper, ‘Dear Kana, help me, I’ve got friends’?

Chad bumped shoulders with him in silent support as he sat down for lunch, and Ichigo found his scowl easing with the support. Ishida kept his nose high enough to see straight up his nostrils, but he still settled down opposite them, keeping a weather eye on some of the class problem kids who made a fuss all too often. The girls clustered around them, finishing the circle. Orihime was talking loudly with Tatsuki, gesticulating widely enough to push over her backpack. Ishida had to return to earth when Mahana questioned him about something about the handicrafts club. Chizuru was telling some story to the rest, and even Chad was listening.

No one was talking to him directly, but it wasn’t like it had been all those months ago, fresh from the final battle and not knowing how to deal with it. He had the feeling that any particular conversation would shift to accommodate him if he decided to join in. And he could join in as an equal, not as some kind of ringleader like he’d been when he’d been a substitute shinigami, or as some kind of subordinate, like Rukia and Urahara often treated him.

He didn’t need to join in. He sat with them on the roof, enjoying the sunny day and the company. He was worrying over Black—Shion—and Red, but that ache wasn’t quite as present. And neither was the physical ache of sitting on his tail, which, even if getting used to it had been a necessary discomfort, the lack of pain was a relief, even if it was slightly strange.

If he hadn’t had work in the afternoon, Ichigo was sure that he’d have been drawn into one or another of their after school activities. He’d even ended up walking most of the way to Unagiya’s with Mahana, who was heading to the shop she was working at as well.

He didn’t realize until he got home for the night that there hadn’t been a single alert in the back of his mind, except a soft laughter that faded to nothing when he tried to listen to it, and a sense of anticipation.

The next morning, Tatsuki showed up near his house just conveniently around when he was going to leave for school. It felt a little stifling with how he hadn’t really expected it, but that feeling passed as they chatted, picking up Orihime when they were halfway there.

There was a hollow in second period, given how Ishida, Orihime, and Chad were acting, so Ichigo made an excuse that let the three of them slip out, sending grateful looks his way. When he came back from lunch, there was a dress sized for either of his sisters on his desk, just obviously Ishida’s enough that Ichigo spent a period staring into the back of the guy’s head.

They talked again after school, and Ichigo excused himself when he couldn’t stand anymore, registering his friends’ concern as he did so.

He still found himself watching his friends closely. Orihime was doing a lot better, but she’d had friends around the whole time and the full force of Ishida’s dad to help her bend the legal system back into shape. (and, so it was said, the man’s money: it no longer surprised Ichigo that Ishida had an apartment his father paid for when they lived in the same area.

Chad was good. Ishida was good enough, though he wasn’t letting go of how Ichigo had apparently stabbed him in the chest. His father was sometimes sane, and his sisters kept him strong in the face of adversity. Even Urahara was looking a little more like a person these days.

Things weren’t perfect, but damn if they weren’t improving.

Ichigo was halfway through a shower when it happened. There was a burst of something, and that feeling of anticipation turned into apprehension. He nearly fell, only to catch himself against the wall. The way he moved had caught the soap shelf and a nearly-unused bar of soap fell directly onto his foot. That shocked him a bit back into the present, even as he still was trying to process what had happened.

He finished his shower in record time before rushing to his room, locking the door. His vague sense of the town was blank. He wondered if Shion and Red were dead. He checked on his tail just to make sure it actually still existed. It definitely did, nearly whacking him in the face during an ill-timed flick.

And then he spent the next several minutes trying to force himself into his inner world. The air around him was hot and oppressive, like he’d stepped into a tropical rainforest on a particularly humid day. He redoubled his efforts, even knowing as he did that that wasn’t going to be useful. He’d never gotten into his inner world with brute force before.

He breathed as he forced himself to calm. Just to make sure, he searched his room for the phone Urahara had given him, sending a short message to Shinji asking if anything had happened, and then another to Chad. By the time he’d finished with that, he was starting to calm down enough from the initial adrenaline to feel how cold and wet he still was. Wrapping himself in his comforter for warmth, he went back to trying to find the door to his glass city of a mindscape.

This time, the world unfolded relatively easily, and Ichigo found himself crouched on a building same as any other. For once, no one came out to join him. He walked over to the edge and looked down, only to rear back a few steps in surprise. He knelt and ran his hands along the small, sideways rooftop garden. At least that’s what he thought it was—the plants were barely germinated, little bits of green breaking the monotony of the steel.

That was absolutely new. He wondered what it meant. Everything in this world happened because something was going on with him. He didn’t think he’d seen this before, which meant it might have something to do with whatever had drawn his attention. And then—there was something pulling him somewhere.

Ichigo jumped down a level of skyscrapers and took off running. It took him several minutes of sprinting to find a gap in the skyscrapers that looked like it was trying to become a field. Something glinted in the middle of it. He stepped onto the loamy soil and made his way to it.

It was a star ball. Something told him that it wasn’t Shion’s, and he doubted it was Red’s either. He picked it up, turning it around to get a better look, before there was a flash of light and Ichigo found himself falling flat onto his backside.

The stone hung in the air for half a moment, and then a small, warm, living thing fell onto him. Ichigo yelled as its claws dug into his belly for a moment, before he automatically moved to pick it up. He pushed himself onto his knees as he held the young fox level with his face.

“Hi there!” the fox chirped at him.

Ichigo nearly dropped them.

“Hey! Let’s get out of the field!” the fox squeaked at him. “Mush!”

This time Ichigo did actually drop the spirit, who landed just fine and went to collect the star ball—kitsune then, not fox. Ichigo turned to make the walk, but in a blink the kitsune transported both of them away to a different skyscraper.

“Oi! Would it hurt to ask first?” Ichigo griped at the kitsune kit as he stumbled.

The kitsune grinned in reply and flashed themself onto Ichigo’s arm, digging in slightly when his initial reaction was to fling them off.

“Careful!” the kitsune insisted. “I didn’t think you liked hurting yourself!”

“Myself?” Ichigo’s eyebrows knitted together. “What the hell is going on here?”

The kitsune looked up at him, licking his face. Ichigo yanked his arm as far away as it could go while still watching the kit. “I don’t really know~” the kit sang. “I just that I sort of was something, and then I was two things and nothing, and finally I’m here and I can think and talk and this is pretty nice!”

If this kitsune is really part of me, Ichigo thought with a groan, then why is it so hyper?

“Did you see two other kitsune anywhere?” Ichigo asked, thinking of Shion and Red.

“Other kitsune? Nope!”

So they were gone. Ichigo closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. Shion and Red had deserved better. Even forced upon him as they were, even as much as Shion had hated him or Red had been frustrated so easily, he’d come to care for them. Hopefully they would be okay in the reincarnation cycle.

“Okay then. Do you have a name?”

They might be gone, but Rin, at least, would probably kill him if he stopped doing what she’d taught him to do because of it, and he didn’t doubt that Shion would make good on their promise to beat him up for the same thing.

He’d spent enough time grieving. Just because he lost again didn’t mean he had the time for another spiral. He knew how it worked—some day, when he wasn’t expecting it, it’d hit him hard, and he’d have to deal with it then. But in this moment, when it was too fresh for him to feel the full effects of that loss, he was going to keep moving on. He couldn’t protect if he refused to see what was right in front of him, and he’d failed to do that too long already. He’d made progress.

Somehow, he thought that the kit in front of him wouldn’t be there if he hadn’t been able to do that. He might not have chosen it, but he remembered that night with the old man, and knew that it might just not have been up to him to choose. It hadn’t been with the shinigami either, but he’d gotten through everything they tossed at him and his friends just the same.

“A name?” The kit bent their head. “Hmm. What would be a good name? Can you think of any?”

Ichigo sighed, lowering his arm. The kit was mostly fluff and not all that heavy, but claws were still claws and he could feel the small cuts they were leaving. The kit jumped off, eliciting a hiss, before turning around to meet Ichigo’s eyes.

All of a sudden, Ichigo was hit with a sense of loss. Zangetsu and his hollow were gone. Shion and Red, whatever their actual name was, were gone. And yet somehow he was here, with yet another chance, and an actual baby to take care of.

Just as the kit opened their mouth to say something, Ichigo had an idea. “Zanshi.”

“What?” The kit wrinkled their nose. “Is that a name?”

“It can be,” Ichigo replied. Zan for Zangetsu. Shi for Shion. And the fact that his soul was very much a cloth made from whatever threads were laying around—Human and Quincy, and Shinigami, and Hollow, and Kitsune. If this kitsune was really him, it’d be just the same.

“Fine then, you can call me Zanshi, Ichi-chan!” Zanshi gushed.

Ichigo felt his budding smile turn into a scowl. “Don’t call me Ichi-chan!”

“Okay, Ichi-kun!”

“Aargh!”

“Ichi-nii-chan!”

It was after several more long nights of wandering and bonding with Zanshi that Ichigo ended up back at that park, staring at the stars like they knew something he couldn’t.

“Is this seat taken?” An old man stood in front of him, gesturing to his right. Ichigo was somewhat surprised to recognize him as the man who he’d helped so long ago, back when this was starting. He finally shook his head no and scooted over to make more space even though the bench had had enough space already.

“Thank you. It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Ichigo stared up at the sky. “I guess.”

They both sat in silence for a time, counting the stars. Ichigo’s mind was quiet for the first time since Zanshi had shown up. He’d suddenly been able to sense Karakura the way that Rin had showed him. He didn’t realize that his problem was using powers that didn’t quite come from him, at least to Rin’s best guess. Zanshi was part of him in a way that Shion and Red had never been, and it was making him nostalgic.

But Zanshi wasn’t much like Zangestu either, or his hollow. The kit’s childish excitement reminded him more of his sisters, when they had been younger. They’d both been a handful, especially since he was only six years older than them.

One thing that neither he nor Zanshi had quite gotten the hang of was actually figuring out what to do when they felt something. The first time he’d figured out that that warm-but-not-imminent feeling wasn’t actually something tangible he had to do right then and there and more of a prayer for productivity or work or anything else anyone prayed to Inari for, he’d spent some time poking at the feeling to try to figure out exactly what they were supposed to do about it.

He was definitely still learning, and even he couldn’t help but to admit that he was actually trying now, and had been for a while. Ichigo glanced sideways at the old man, who was still not looking at him, before returning to the sky.

“Is this what ‘just fine’ looks like?” Ichigo asked suddenly. Shion and Red had just died, and then he showed up again. Ichigo hadn’t felt less fine since he’d first woken up, gasping and disoriented and empty and blind, after the Winter War ended.

“It looks like what we make of it,” the old man advised. “The cycle of souls, even those of beings like you, is not quite my area, but I’m told that both the kitsune you know are safely ensconced in their own cycles.”

Ichigo faced the man full on this time. “You’re who I think you are, then. So why did you let them get put in that shitty situation in the first place?”

The man chuckled lightly. “Direct, as always, young man. That will do for now, though it will not always serve you well. You know at least as well as most how picky some beings can be. It is for the best that neither of us are such.”

Ichigo stood, unsettling his backpack as he did so. “So, what do you want from me? I’m doing everything Rin-sensei showed me, and I’m talking to Zanshi and everything. What more is there?”

“Ah, I see the confusion,” the man replied. “This is just a check-up. You’ve not been doing a terrible job thus far, though you have a great deal of learning ahead of you. It’s for the best that I know where you are in your training when you’re in such a high-risk area with no idea of how to manage it.”

Ichigo stood his ground. What did it mean that Karakura was high-risk? High risk of what? Shinigami showing up again? He hadn’t seen anything truly out of the ordinary since Rin had brought him to a bar in Naruki a few weeks before.

“I’ve been managing just fine, haven’t I? Are you sure that’s what you’re doing?”

“There’s a difference between what can be known and what can be certain.”

“Fine.” Ichigo shook his head to clear it. “So, why me? Whatever happened with those two, they could have ended up with anyone. It’s not like it had to be me.”

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be,” the man quoted.

“Shakespeare.”

“The words of others may speak better than our own. Especially when they’ve had the time to think of it before.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with what I asked.”

“Doesn’t it?” The old man smiled, and in the space of a blink, disappeared.

Ichigo stood up a moment later, suddenly knowing he had other places he needed to be. He scowled at where the man had sat, and hurried off. Whatever else happened, he wasn’t the type to leave someone in danger when he could do something about it. He was Karakura’s protector, after all.