Chapter Text
“Damn it.”
Ichigo glared at the shirts he was holding as if they had personally offended him. He hated shopping for clothes for himself, but even he had to admit with all of the accidents that had been happening lately, it wasn’t something he could avoid.
He walked the two steps it took to cross the changing room, trying to get a feel for the skinny jeans he was trying on. And then a scent reached his nose, and all he could do was sneeze into the corner. Several sparks flew up from the wall, though Ichigo managed to wave it out before it could actually catch on fire. At least it wasn’t his clothing this time. “Damn it,” he repeated, trying to focus on anything that would keep the fire away.
He gave the wall a rueful look, before taking off the jeans. He’d buy them, and hopefully no one would notice until well after he was gone, at least.
And maybe the next time he needed something, he’d go out of town. The last thing he needed was to be sued for property damage on top of the craziness his life had become lately.
Still, his newfound ability to make fire, if not control it, delighted some. Zanshi, when Ichigo made his way into his inner world, was eternally delighted to chase what they could make around the parks that had appeared in his eternal cityscape. On that score, Ichigo was just glad that the grass was apparently fireproofed. Kitproofed, even.
And then there was Rin, who, for her part, had found the entire thing hilarious.
“You—ha—you can deal with a tenth of the frustration—ahaha—that I did when you took months to make any progress on the—oh, Inari-sama—the basics.”
Ichigo sighed. It was true, he’d taken a long time to be able to sense anything in Karakura. While he still wasn’t the best at it, he wasn’t as “utterly hopeless” as he had been once upon a time. Not that he’d had any plan to get stuck with dealing with any of these powers. “Well, I can control those basics now. And getting stronger means I can do things better. But what do I do with fire?”
Rin’s laughter settled down. “Well, it could be a sign that your second tail’s growing in.”
“Isn’t that supposed to take a century? It hasn’t even been a year since I started any of this!”
Rin shrugged, her tails making a similar gesture as she did. “Maybe it’s just because you’re weird. Most of us are born or reincarnated or whatever without half-being older kitsune. Just because you’ve only got your newborn’s star ball doesn’t mean that having the older ones in your soul didn’t do anything. Tails are more manifestations of how powerful you are than how old you are, it’s just that age usually helps. Otherwise I’d have less than I do now. But it still took me longer than this. Even when I asked around, no one had ever heard of something like that happening before, so…”
“So what?” Ichigo’s face untwisted with curiosity.
“So nothing.” Rin shrugged. “You’ve got fire now. Cool beans. Don’t set things on fire where the regular humans can see it.”
“Cool beans!? Are you six or something?” Ichigo immediately began to scowl again.
“Warm beans!” Rin crowed.
Ichigo shook his head. “Whatever. How do I make sure the humans don’t see the fire? I barely hid the tail when it came in, and one of my friends found out anyway.”
Rin grinned, right in his face. “Practice!”
And that was how Ichigo had found himself back at the river. There were parts where the banks dropped off a bit from the path and created some hidden alcoves. He figured that between that and his newfound sensing ability, he’d be able to make sure no one was able to see what he was doing, and that the river would prevent him from accidentally setting a fire that could grow too fast.
He ripped up bits of leftover paper and held it up, focusing on it. Being able to spontaneously set things on fire had to be useful. And maybe if he could set something on fire when he wanted to, he could stop the random ones. There were only so many school uniforms he could buy before someone would wonder why, and it wasn’t like he could wear the ones he’d accidentally burnt holes into.
He stared at the piece of paper, blue lines wavering slightly as he twitched, but it remained utterly unmoved.
“Damn it!” Ichigo growled, pulling the arm back to his side. As if it were an ocean to add salt to his wounds, a small wave hit a rock right next to Ichigo, went up into the air, and soaked that hand, the paper, and a little of his clothing on that side. Ichigo cursed again, glaring at the soggy paper. He crumpled it and stood. He was done with this.
That wasn’t the worst insult to injury he faced that day. Ichigo was halfway to Unagiya’s by the time he realized he was still clutching the ruined paper. He further crumpled it in his fist and turned around, looking for the nearest trash can. Upon seeing that there weren’t any nearby, he ground his teeth together. At that moment, a spark fell from his hands onto the concrete sidewalk.
The paper didn’t last very long after that.
The case for Ichigo’s sanity wasn’t looking all too great either. Unagiya had had more in the way of deliveries than manual labor for him on that particular day, and he hadn’t been quite this level of frustrated since he’d learned enough about kitsune transformation to hide his tail with it.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know anything about what color this chair is supposed to be, I was only hired to deliver it,” Ichigo delivered in the most customer-facing voice he had to offer. “If there are any issues, you should take it up with the company you bought this from, not us.”
Ichigo was only halfway through his list of assignments, but it seemed that every one of them had some problem or defect or other, and for some reason people thought he could do anything about it. Normally, he’d just put on his customer service face, which he’d become quite good at after all of this, and deal. But normally he wasn’t also dealing with the powers of spontaneous accidental fire acquisition.
It was a miracle he’d gotten through the day without burning anyone, richly deserved or otherwise. Even Ishida had been safe from it all, and that had taken effort.
It was also annoying in the sense that he’d started doing so many things on the basis that he was practicing his sensing and, more recently, his transformations. He couldn’t focus on either when he was trying not to be outed as a budding furry pyromaniac and arsonist.
It was that mindset that had him trying to access his inner world. There was an odd dichotomy between where Zanshi was him in a way that Red and Shion had been separate, but Zanshi was also so much younger that the powers he was dealing with now showcased his age. Rin had wondered if that was why the fire was fighting him so much, but Ichigo didn’t much care, except for whether doing something about it would make it so he could fix the entire situation.
In any case, he still had to get through the day without any accidents. That was much easier said than done. Ichigo was beginning to wish for the days when he’d not been able to make the kitsune powers work at all. That was easier than this madness.
Somehow, he still managed to get back to Unagiya’s shop without any incidents. He breathed a sigh of relief when he walked in the door, making a beeline for the water as soon as he could. He could just stay inside here, fixing up the stock, until it was time for him to go. If he was lucky, the door wouldn’t even ring and he wouldn’t have to worry about any customers.
Of course, Ichigo had never been so lucky. Nearly three-quarters of the way through dealing with Unagiya’s stock, Ichigo heard his phone vibrate off the boxes he’d stashed if on just in case Unagiya had a last minute call for him. The noise startled him into letting out a few sparks, which he hastily smothered. The last thing he needed was to set Unagiya’s shop on fire. Not only would he have to go into debt for the property damage, but he’s also lose his job, and thus his convenient excuse to run around town. “I’m working” carried more weight than “because the voices told me to”, even when the voices told him to help someone who’d asked.
By the time Ichigo had a spare second to look at his phone, the message had rung to voicemail. He recognized Shinji’s phone number, so he checked the voicemail. Six seconds of heavy breathing and static was all he got.
Somewhat confused, Ichigo called back. Shinji had never accidentally called before, but if he had he wouldn’t be the last. Cell phones were finicky, after all.
The phone rang until it hit a voicemail box, and Ichigo closed out before it started recording. It was probably nothing, just a pocket dial. It did remind him to call Shinji sometime soon. Maybe he’d have news about when the Vizards could come back to Karakura. Even if it was just a visit, it’d be nice to see them.
Ichigo set his phone down, and went back to dealing with boxes. He had to sing for his dinner.