👊

The Fraud vs. The Real Deal

So ironically just like the best way to understand Aizen is also by comparing him to Ywach. Everything Aizen tries to be, a force of fate, the controlling force in the narrative, the one who has everyone dancing on the palms of his hands Ywach just naturally is. Aizen tries to become divine through schemes and plots, Ywach was literally born divine. He doesn't need to call himself a god, everyone already calls him a god. The quincy gave him the name "Ywach."

Before we get deeper into their comparisons, I'm going to give an example of just how Aizen is a fraud. The reveal of Misaki's backstory in thousand year blood war really did salvage Aizen's character for me after I started to dislike him towards the end of Arrancar Arc.

There's a fine line to walk with mastermind characters. You have to ask yourself is the character genuinely smart, or is the author just moving things around in the plot and letting the villain have plot armor and plot convenience in order to make them appear smarter than they already are.

Aizen claimed that he'd had everything in the palm of his hand since Ichigo was born, and that was what made me officially call bullshit. Then, the Misaki backstory reveals that Aizen was in fact just bullshitting the entire time.

Aizen didn't actually engineer Ichigo's birth as he claimed. One of his experiments just happened to attack Ichigo's mom, and Aizen decided to stay back and observe the situation. Then he kept monitoring Ichigo to see if he would be useful later. Which is what Aizen does in general, he puts his fingers in a lot of people's pies and then is clever enough to push situations into his favor.

He claims to be an omniscient planner, but he's really just clever and good at improvising when random things like White attacking Ichigo's mother happen so he can turn those situations into his advantage. When Aizen claims "I had everything planned from the beginning" it's just another illusion he's using to try to control you, and characters who buy that are easy to manipulate.

Because Aizen is a fraud. That is literally his zanpakuto, making illusions that control the senses. Everything down to his zanpakuto the literal reflection of his soul is fraudulent. Aizen makes claims at godhood but he doesn't even believe what he's saying.

Aizen yells at Ulquiorra that people shouldn't accept the way the world is, that they should try to be gods if they have the ability to while at the same time Ichigo called him out that his true desire was to be just another soul reaper.

However, in the world of Bleach godhood isn't all it's cracked up to be. The closest thing to a god, the Reio, the lynchpin of the unvierse is a limbless being, sealed in a crystal, that was not only betrayed and backstabbed and brutally massacred by the shinigami who supposedly worshipped them he's also like completely helpless.

He's eternal and all powerful and the very being that holds the world together, and also all he can do is passively observe reality. Destroying the soul king is a mercy because it releases him from his eternal suffering.

This is where we finally reach Ywach, who is what everything Aizen pretended to be. Aizen had to rely on the Hogyoku entirely to give other people power, whereas Ywach naturally can gift the quincy with his power. Aizen wanted to become the soul king he was a mortal who tried to ascend to divinity.

Ywach is heavily implied to be the soul king's literal son. Unlike Aizen he can actually claim to be a divine being, and he's worshipped as one taking the name of the christian god.

Aizen claims to be behind Ichigo's every fight in the manga, while Ywach actually is behind Ichigo's every fight because he's been there all along, pretending to be Ichigo's zanpakuto spirit. Ywach as Zangetsu even admits this, he was limiting Ichigo from his true power while also convincing Ichigo he was an ally because he never wanted Ichigo to become a full fledged sorcerer since he's not only a fragment of Ywach but the embodiment of his quincy powers.

Ywach is responsible for ichigo's desire to protect others, because his decision to terminate all impure quincy killed Ichigo's mother. Ywach has been with Ichigo since birth, since all quincies carry a fragment of Ywach's power in them. When Ywach calls Ichigo his son, he's not bullshitting either, because Old Man Zangetsu the fragment of Ywach inside Ichigo was in a sense a mentor and a father figure to him.

Ywach is a force of nature, in this case he's fate. The same fate that Ichigo wanted to shatter with his sword. Unlike Aizen's claims to be in control he can actually back this up. He controls Ichigo to slay the soul king, and his literal ability "The Almighty" is to rewrite the future to bring whatever future he wants into being. He can peer into every possible future and see millions of possible variations fo the future like grains of sand and then just make the one he wants happen. He literally, creates fate.

However, as I said it's not actually a good thing to be god in Bleach. Ywach because he is divine, can't live in the world with everyone else because of his fear of death. He's terrified of death probably for two reasons, one because he existed in a world without death, he watched his own father get butchered in the worst way possible, and he was basically stillborn. He fears returning to the state he was at birth unable to itneract with the world. A state ironically that was much like his father when he was sealed in the soul palace.

He's also experienced the deaths of every quincy he gave his power to over and over again. So Ywach is the force of fate itself, but just like fate which cannot be controlled, Ywach is an entirely stagnant entity.

The exact opposite of Aizen who was someone who wanted to be just like every other soul reaper. It's why even though Aizen's a fraud, between the two of them Aizen is the ideological victor in the end.

Since Aizen was saved by Ichigo in a way. By giving him the worthy opponent that he always craved, Aizen was knocked back down by the pedestal he always stood on. He became just another soul reaper as he always wanted to be. That's why he was able to believe in humans in the end and give up his notions of becoming a god.

Ichigo blinked twice, and then went in.

The office was cluttered, mostly with more cardboard boxes, but books were also stacked precariously on top of boxes on top of books. The walls were plastered with maps and graphs and photographs of hazy blurs in front of staircases. There was a large poster showing a UFO, with the words “I WANT TO BELIEVE” in block caps below it.

A woman with long chestnut hair twisted up into a bun and held in place with three pencils was hunched over a metal box full of diodes and transistors and other things you would buy at Radio Shack. Or rather, that other people would buy at a Radio Shack. Ichigo had never set foot in a Radio Shack in his life.

“Er, good morning,” Ichigo said, as the woman looked up and blinked at him owlishly. “Agent Inoue? I’m Ichigo Kurosaki. I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

“To spy on me, you mean,” Agent Inoue corrected, cheerfully shaking his hand with great vigor.

Ichigo bristled. Yes, he had been directed to ‘provide additional documentation on Agent Inoue’s activities,’ but that hardly counted as spying. She was known to be somewhat scatterbrained, and having an organized person around would probably be a great benefit to her. “If you have any doubts about my qualifications or motivations--”

“Oh, don’t take it personally!” Inoue replied, slotting a lid onto her electronics project, and attacking it vigorously with a jeweler’s screwdriver. “Just because you’re a spy doesn’t mean you aren’t a nice person. Also, I read your file, you have a very interesting background! Degree in literature with a focus on folk legends. Teaching at the academy for the last few years while working on your book.” She took a momentary break from her screwing to fix him with her big, soft brown eyes. “Tell me, Agent Kurosaki, what do you think happens after you die?”

Ichigo froze. “I would be buried? Maybe there would be a funeral first?”

Inoue started laughing so hard that Ichigo was sure he caught a tiny, adorable snort. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t clear!” She sniffed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Do you believe in continued existence after the death of the body? An afterlife, religion-based or otherwise? The existence of ectoplasm, cold spots, spirit photographs, EVP?”

“Are you talking about… ghosts?” Ichigo asked hesitantly.

“Yes!” Orihime replied with a nod. “Ghosts.”

“We-elll…” Ichigo drew out. “I believe that people believe they observe certain phenomena, as part of the cycle of grief and--”

“Just say ‘no’ if you don’t,” Inoue interrupted him.

“Er, no. I don’t.”

“That’s okay. Are you good at carrying heavy things?”

“Am I... I guess?”

“Perfect!” She shoved the box into his arms, and Ichigo’s knees almost buckled under the weight. “Let’s walk and talk, I want to go get a reading over near Franklin Square before 9 am. We’re gonna pass a really good half-smoke cart on the way, do you like half-smokes?”

  👻     👻     👻

“Take a look at this,” Inoue said, her cheek half stuffed with sausage, jabbing a finger at the LED read-out of her mysterious box.

It was rather hard for Ichigo to see, because he was holding the box and the readout was on the other side, but he did his best to crane his neck around. “What am I looking at? The squiggles? I’m sorry, it looks like nothing to me.”

“Exactly right!” Inoue announced, waving her half smoke in the air. “Not a sniff of spiritual residue!”

Ichigo pressed his lips together. “Um… is that good?”

“It is interesting,” Inoue corrected. “Five days ago, a sixty-four year old woman had a heart attack while sitting in that bus shelter.” On every day since, I have been able to record EMF fluctuations, and on Sunday, I was able to get a voice recording that sounded like a woman reciting a grocery list. But this morning, nothing! Nada!”

“Well, uh, ghosts gotta move on eventually, right? Otherwise, just about everywhere would be haunted, right?” It’s not that Ichigo had suddenly started believing ghosts or anything, but there was something about Agent Inoue that just made you want to go along with her and see where all this panned out.

Inoue shot him a finger gun. “Or, they get moved along.” She shoved a folded paper map at him. “You can put that thing down.”

Ichigo eased the Spirit Detect-O 9000, or whatever it was called, to the grass and accepted her map. It was a street map of DC, meant for tourists, emphasizing all the local transit routes and popular attractions. There was also a great loop marked on it in orange highlighter, zig-zagging back and forth through the city. There was a little ‘x’ marked on Franklin Park, with “Tuesday, early morning” written in a bubbly hand.

“What is this?” Ichigo frowned. It didn’t seem to match up with any of the metro or bus lines. It didn’t even match with the sidewalks, it appeared to cut straight through large buildings like the convention center.

“As far as I can tell,” Inoue said, her brown eyes very solemn, “that is the patrol route of our local grim reaper.”

  👻     👻     👻

“So I actually got interested in grim reapers,” Inoue explained, once they were back in the office, “while I was investigating violent ghost phenomena.” She was eating a bag of corn chips that she had gotten from that ancient vending machine by punching it and then shoving her own arm up the chute. (She’d gotten Ichigo a bag, too, but he was too afraid to eat them.)

Ichigo was sitting at a cluttered table that Inoue had told him “could be his desk.” Half of it was taken up by a large aquarium full of rocks and a water bowl, but no life forms that Ichigo could detect. The other half was covered with back issues of “Ghost Hunter Technology” magazine. “You mean like poltergeists?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Poltergeists are noisy, but they aren’t usually able to kill their targets.”

“Kill? Ghosts can’t kill people, aside from, like scaring them to death,” Ichigo scoffed. “I mean, folklorically speaking. As we established earlier, I am not a ghost-believer.”

Inoue tipped her head to the side. “They do, actually, it just tends to get blamed on something else.”

“By ghost-non-believers.”

“By everyone, really, and that’s what’s so strange.” Inoue pulled a fat binder from a stack of seemingly identical ones, and tossed it open in front of Ichigo. “Edison, New Jersey, 2014. An elderly woman dies ‘of a broken heart’ a week after her husband dies of cancer. Coincidentally, a telephone pole falls on her house the same night and rips a hole in her house.” She turned a page. “Norfolk, Virginia, 2017. A young woman dies in what the police rule as a suicide, despite the fact that she made a 911 call 48 hours previous, expressing fear of her ex-boyfriend. Three days later, the boyfriend is dead of mysterious causes. Coincidentally, his apartment complex suffered significant damages from ‘a wild cougar.’”

Ichigo squinted at the pictures. The walls of the building were scored with what did appear to be scratch marks. “Hell of a cougar.”

“Exactly! And I’ve got dozens of these historic cases. But about four months ago, I was able to investigate one myself-- a young man named Joe Wallace. He lives here in the city, over near Dupont Circle. Wallace had cut off his toxic dad years ago, and refused to visit him in the hospital as he was dying. Four days after his father’s death, a truck crashes into his house in the middle of the night and then drives away before the police can arrive.”

“And he died.”

“No!” Inoue held up one finger. “Scratches and bruises, but he doesn’t die!”

“Okay, great. So what does he remember?”

“He remembers a truck crashing into his house.”

Ichigo scratched his chin. “I am confused.”

“Look at this!” Inoue stabbed a finger at the pictures. “These are claw marks, not vehicular wreckage! There’s damage on the second story window! Wallace had scratches and defensive wounds, as if he had been fending off an animal! And look here, at the damage to the walls of the bedroom!”

“What am I looking at?” Ichigo asked, squinting at a photograph that looked like it had been blown up past the point of recognition.

“There were cuts and slashes in the walls and bedding as though someone had been fighting with a sword.”

“Like a Medieval Times sword? Was the guy a Medieval Times enthusiast?”

“More consistent with a katana. Do you like Medieval Times?”

“No one likes Medieval Times.”

“I like Medieval Times. You’ve probably never even been. But back to the ghost! Why would Wallace remember a truck crashing into his house, when nothing about the scene is consistent with that story?”

“He was...lying?”

“His memories were replaced.”

“His memories were replaced,” Ichigo echoed.

“Yes.”

“By… aliens?”

Orihime heaved a deep sigh. “By a grim reaper.”

“A grim reaper with a samurai sword.” Ichigo frowned. “How on earth did you come to this conclusion?”

Inoue raised one eyebrow. “Because when I placed him under hypnosis, Wallace didn’t remember anything about a truck. He did remember a monster with batwings and a mask made of bone and his dead father’s voice who tried to kill him, except that he was saved by a tall man dressed in black. The man had bright red hair and fought the monster with a sword that was also a whip and then he wiped Wallace’s memories.”

Ichigo stared at her. “You can hypnotize people?”

Inoue gave him a long-suffering face. Ichigo had the sudden flash that he was going to be seeing that face a lot in the days to come. “Yes, I am a certified hypnotist.” Inoue’s phone suddenly started playing “Tubular Bells”. “Oops, that’s an alarm. Come on, we have a meeting with some important people. Do you like diners?”

  👻     👻     👻

Agent Inoue apparently did not care for public transit, but she walked very quickly. Ichigo was concentrating so hard on keeping up with her that he nearly collided with her back when she stopped very suddenly.

“You don’t mind if we make a quick stop, do we?” Inoue asked.

“You said the meeting was with important people.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them!” Inoue pursed her lips. “You see that bodega right there?”

They were in a part of downtown that was mostly mid-to-upscale restaurants and government buildings and FedExes. But sure enough, there was a dingy little bodega nestled between a Mexican-Indian fusion place and an Au Bon Pain, the windows stuffed with t-shirts from the last administration and a variety of cell phone chargers. The overhead sign read “Urahara Shop.”

“Y...eah…” Ichigo replied.

“That place is a hotbed of supernatural activity.”

“Is it?” Ichigo asked.

“I am almost positive that it is a supply point and meeting place for grim reapers, monster slayers, cryptids, alien hunters, and lycanthropes, but the owner is on to me.”

“I see,” Ichigo said levelly.

“Can you go in and pretend to be a customer? They have lots of good candy you can look through. Inoue dug in her purse and came up with a fiver. “Here. Buy a scratch ticket or something.”

“I’m not buying a scratch ticket, they’re a scam.”

“If the big guy is working the counter, he’ll glare at you until you buy something, so be prepared.”

As Ichigo pushed open the door, he realized he’d never actually agreed to any of this. Agent Inoue’s secret hypnosis powers, once again. Whatever. It was a bodega, there were a thousand of them in DC. They all had the same Nats t-shirts and coffee mugs with pictures of the Washington Monument on them. Ichigo pretended to be interested in a rack of comics. He tended to prefer indy comics over the big publishers himself, but even so, he didn’t recognize any of the books. Maybe they were by local authors.

Up at the front of the shop, a tiny, dark-haired woman was giving whatfor to the man behind the counter, a tall fellow with pale, straw-colored hair sticking out in tufts from under the saddest hat Ichigo had ever seen, a shapeless, battered bucket, striped green and white.

“Well, I can sell you a new battery for your phone, Miss Kuchiki, maybe that would help.”

“Not if it only lasts as long as the last one you sold me! I really need to get in touch with my partner, except that even if I could get my phone working again, his battery is probably dead because everything you sell is the same crap!”

“Ah, that’s too bad! You know, I think Mr. Abarai was in here a few days ago… I wasn’t in at the time, but Jinta said he came in, asking about…”

The man trailed off, and Ichigo glanced up to see the shopkeeper looking directly at him.

“...metrocards. But as you know, we don’t sell metrocards anymore.”

The woman made an aggravated noise. “You’re so useless! If I write him a damned note, will you give it to him if he comes in?”

“Oh, of course! Anything for you, Miss Kuchiki!”

The conversation trailed off as the woman hunched over the counter to angrily scratch out a note.

Ichigo stuffed the comic he was flipping through back on its rack. He skipped the enormous display of bedazzled flip-flops and started perusing the surprisingly extensive selection of gum.

“Here!” the woman finished and shoved her note at the shopkeeper. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Have a wonderful day!” the shopkeeper tootled, giving her a little finger wave.

Ichigo felt bad for the woman. “Er, excuse me?” he said as she passed.

She turned to scowl at him. For such a tiny person, she seemed to contain a remarkable amount of rage.

“Do you need to call someone? You can use my phone, if you’d like.” He held it out like an offering.

The woman blinked at him for a moment.

“I didn’t mean to be nosy! You were just kind of loud and you sounded worried about your, um, partner.”

“I’m not worried about him, I just need to find him.” Her face softened. “Thanks, Mister, but I can’t reach him on a regular phone. Don’t worry, I’ll track him down eventually.” She turned to leave, then stopped to jab an accusatory finger at Ichigo. “And that’s professional partner, not… you know! Whatever!” She stomped out.

What a strange, tiny person.

Ichigo selected a gum and walked up to the counter.

“Oooh, dragonberry lime, good choice!” the man trilled. “Anything else I can get you? Bottled water? Fanny pack? Spare phone battery?”

“I’ll pass,” Ichigo replied dryly.

“I imagine it’s against FBI policy to let a stranger use your cell phone,” the shopkeeper said sweetly.

Ichigo’s brows furrowed. “This is my personal phone. And how did you…?”

The man gave a chortling laugh that sent shivers down Ichigo’s spine. “Because headquarters is three blocks away and only an FBI agent would wear a suit that square.”

Ichigo took his change and his gum and shoved them both in his pocket. “Yeah, well, your hat sucks.”

The man laughed harder. “Doesn’t it, though?”

Once he was outside again, Ichigo handed Inoue the gum and her change. “The owner of that place is a creep.”

“The guy in the green and white hat?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Urahara. You’re right, he’s the owner. Were there any other customers?”

“Just the short lady. You must have seen her come out. She was ripping Urahara a new one for some dodgy cell phone battery he sold her. I think she must have been NSA or something. She said she was trying to get ahold of her partner, but she needed a special phone.” As he said it, Ichigo realized it would be pretty odd for an NSA agent to be buying cell phone batteries from some shady bodega.

“No one came out,” Inoue replied.

“She definitely did! I heard the bell over the door ring.”

Inoue regarded Ichigo very seriously. “Agent Kurosaki. I was standing here the whole time. You were the only person who went in or out.” She looked at the gum. “Ooh! Dragonfruit lime! Do you want some?”

  👻     👻     👻

They were late to the meeting.

Two men were waiting for them in the back corner booth. One of them had pinched, pointy features and piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. His chin-length haircut was pretty dramatic, but not as dramatic as his pure white trench coat. A cup of black coffee sat on the faded Formica table in front of him, but it didn’t look like it had been touched.

His companion was an enormous, good-looking Latino who was shoveling pancakes into his face.

“Inoue,” the dramatic guy said. “Who’s this?”

“This is my new partner, Kurosaki,” Inoue replied. “Kurosaki, this is Uryuu Ishida,” she indicated the white trenchcoat guy, “and Chad,” Mr. Pancakes.

“Also known as the ‘Lone Archers,’” Ishida specified. “We are apolitical actors who are interested in revealing the truths that are regularly hidden from the general populace by secret forces that conspire within the machinery of the American government.”

“You can just call me Chad,” said Chad.

“Good morning!” the waitress said. “Can I get you folks anything?”

“Oh, yes! I’m getting mozzarella sticks! Do you like mozzarella sticks, Kurosaki? They’re so good here!”

“So’re the pancakes,” added Chad.

“I’ll just have a coffee,” Ichigo announced. He glanced at Ishida’s cup. “Black.”

“Double mozzarella sticks, please!” Inoue chorused. “And a cherry coke!” She leaned over to Ichigo and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’ll give you a mozzarella stick.”

“Do you want some pancake?” Chad offered to Ishida. “I never think to offer.”

Ishida waved him off with a hand. “Agent Inoue. At great personal peril, I was able to obtain a sample of the item we discussed.” He slid a small paper packet across the table. “There are two tablets inside, but one should be sufficient for your purposes.” Ishida leaned forward, his mouth set in a firm line. “I was cautioned very strongly against using this, unless one had a firm plan for handling the… consequences.”

“I understand,” Inoue replied, stuffing the envelope into her purse.

Ichigo wanted to ask more questions, but the conversation shifted very quickly to some USGS floodplain maps that Ishida wanted Inoue to obtain for him that were apparently not available from the public webportals, allegedly because of filesize. Ichigo could practically hear the air quotes around the word “filesize.”

“We’re going to look for Jersey Devils next weekend,” Chad explained, sounding pretty excited about it.

“There’s only one, Chad,” Ishida corrected. “It’s just ‘Jersey Devil.’”

“There could be more than one,” Chad shrugged.

Thirty minutes later, they departed. Inoue had an order of mozzarella sticks in her purse. Ichigo had an armload of backissues of the Lone Archers’ ‘zine, which was, conveniently enough, titled The Lone Archer. There was no doubt in his mind that at least Ishida was completely off his rocker. The jury was still out on Chad… he struck Ichigo as the sort of guy who just went along with Ishida’s nonsense because he was a good friend and also liked taking camping trips and doing layout for ‘zines.

“So what was that thing they gave you?” Ichigo pestered. The idea of that little paper packet had been burning a hole in his brain the entire time.

“You busy tonight?” Inoue asked, raising an eyebrow slyly. “Between 10 and 11?”

“What are we doing?” Ichigo asked cautiously, wondering if he would be able to charge his time.

“We’re going to try and attract an angry ghost.”

  👻     👻     👻

“Are you… sure this is… a good idea?” Ichigo asked for the sixteenth time, as Inoue focused the thermal camera on him.

They were in an old, abandoned lot that had formerly served as a Metro service facility. It was pretty spooky all on its own, filled with train cars too dilapidated for salvage.

It was 10:25pm. Inoue had set up no less than 17 different pieces of ghost detection equipment. Ichigo was questioning his life choices.

“You told me you don’t believe in ghosts. If ghosts don’t exist, then what could possibly go wrong?” Inoue posed.

“Well… that’s true,” Ichigo granted. “And, for the record, I still do not believe in ghosts. But in the Pascal’s wager sense of things, I am considering the ramifications of what happens if there are ghosts that exist, regardless of my belief in them.”

“And?” Inoue asked.

“Well, you said that these ghosts have hurt and killed people before. It seems like trying to attract one without having any method of, um, fighting it, seems kind of… irresponsible?”

“Ah, but you see, I’ve specifically picked this time and location to coincide with the grim reaper patrol routes I’ve been mapping out. Our friendly neighborhood psychopomp ought to show up just on schedule to fight the angry ghost for us. We’re doing them a favor, as I see it.”

“How so?” Ichigo exclaimed.

“It’s not like we’re creating an angry ghost out of nowhere. We’re just attracting an existing one to our location. We’re saving the grim reaper the trouble of having to hunt it down.”

Ichigo pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was it so difficult to argue with Inoue? Possibly because she was so incredibly earnest in all her beliefs, and all her arguments were in completely good faith, it’s just that her logic came from some other dimension. This woman has solved multiple, high-profile murders, including several that were ice cold, Ichigo reminded himself. So she’s quirky. I am sure I can learn a lot from her.

“Okay, everything is in place!” Inoue announced, placing her hand on her hips. “Go hide behind that pile of moldy seats!”

Inoue took Ichigo’s place at the center of her recording equipment. “Agent Orihime Inoue speaking,” she said, for posterity. “It is 10:28pm. I am crushing one tablet of a substance called ‘Hollow Bait.’” She crunched the little white tablet, which looked an awful lot like an Alka-Seltzer, between her fingers, and then made a flying leap for the rotting pile of damp, orange upholstery that Ichigo was crouched behind.

“So, just out of curiosity,” Ichigo started. “How long would we have to wait, theoretically, with nothing happening, before we would declare this a bust?”

Inoue pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Usually, I would give it about two hours, but if you’ve got somewhere to be, I don’t mind if you leave early. It is nice to have company for a change.”

“No, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Ichigo replied. “I mean… sleeping, I guess.”

Inoue gave a charming little laugh. “I don’t sleep very well. And hunting for ghosts is more interesting than most of the stuff on Hulu.”

The way that she said it gave Ichigo the distinct impression that Inoue was, well, lonely. But that didn’t seem correct. She was weird, sure, but she was also friendly and talkative, and, er, well, she was extremely cute. Surely she had tons of friends.

“How’d you get into ghost hunting, anyway?” he tried to be conversational.

“Hmm,” Inoue hummed noncommittally. “Let’s just say there was an incident in my teen years, where my memories don’t match up to the property damage.”

Oh. Ichigo wondered if he should apologize, when suddenly, a cold chill ran down his spine and a sound like a roar echoed in his ears, except he didn’t actually hear anything. “Did you hear that?” he gasped.

“It’s the EMF detector,” Inoue nodded, scrambling for the reader and Ichigo realized he could hear a faint beeping.

“No, not the beeping, it was like a… a… scream…”

“You heard a scream?”

“I didn’t exactly…” Ichigo trailed off as he heard two more, coming from different directions. “There’s more than one. Monster screams. Not human screams.”

Inoue stared at him, eyes wide. “I don’t hear anything. Have you ever been tested for latent psychic ability?”

There was a sudden change in the air pressure, and a fetid, rotting smell, even worse than the Metro seats. Ichigo grabbed Inoue by the shoulders and rolled out of the way, just as the pile of junk they had been crouched behind compacted like it had been through a car crusher. Or smashed by a giant foot.

“Whoa!” Inoue exclaimed, trying to push Ichigo off of her so she could see what was going on.

Ichigo blinked through the night. He couldn’t see anything, but there was an area of space that looked thick and hazy, like it wasn’t refracting the harsh glow of the sodium street lights quite correctly.

“We have to get out of here,” Ichigo gasped.

“Can you see it?” Inoue asked, her eyes wide and excited.

“Not-- not really,” Ichigo replied, pulling at her arm. The air blurred, and Ichigo had the sense the thing was jumping at them. He could tell it was fast, but he couldn’t see it, he didn’t know what to--

“Howl, Zabimaru!”

It was both there and not quite there, a liquid blade made of glass and starlight, that snapped through the air at the invisible thing. The monster bellowed, and whipped around, charging at a dark figure standing atop one of the old Metro cars.

“Pick on someone your own size, ugly!” the man bellowed, and as Ichigo squinted, he realized that their savior was dressed all in black. He was tall, and his hair was pulled back in a spiky ponytail. It was bright red. He was also wearing sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night. They were pushed up on top of his head, to be fair, but Ichigo had a feeling this detail would stick with him.

“You can see that guy, right?” Ichigo asked Inoue desperately. “The guy who’s fighting the ghost? The guy that looks just like the guy in your report?”

“There’s a guy?” Inoue asked. “No. Where is he? Can you usually see ghosts?”

“I don’t even believe in ghosts!”

“Well, maybe you don’t believe in them because you can see them and you don’t want to, did you ever think of that?”

“I don’t think now is the time to interrogate my personal traumas!”

Suddenly, there was another drop in pressure, and Ichigo had the sense of heavy breathing and sharp teeth. “Inoue. I think there’s another one.”

“Well, can you get the guy to come fight this one, too?”

“He seems busy,” Ichigo squeaked.

Something black flashed by his vision, and there was a loud crack and a sound of something screeching in pain. A second dark-clad person had arrived, landing softly on sandaled feet. There was the same unreality to her, a sense that she wasn’t entirely there, as well as a certain familiarity that Ichigo couldn’t place. Her sword was bright in the darkness, like moonlight reflecting on snow.

“Oi, there you are, you big dummy!” she shouted at the first man and Ichigo realized with a jolt that it was the angry woman from the bodega. “I’ve been looking for you for four days!”

“I had a problem with my gigai and maybe you should check your texts once in a while!” the tall guy shouted back. Ichigo refused to think of him as a grim reaper. A grim reaper would not wear sunglasses.

“My phone died!”

“Can we-- ow! -- discuss this later? I’m glad you’re okay, I missed you. Why are there so many Hollows in this train yard?”

“You’re such a sap! And the Hollows are here because some stupid humans got ahold of some Hollow bait.” The woman turned, and glared at Ichigo. Her eyes burned with blue flame, like the burner of a gas stove.

That would have been the last thing Ichigo remembered, if he had actually remembered it, or any of the things that came before it.

  👻     👻     👻

Ichigo was sitting at his desk.

Inoue was sitting at her desk.

The sun was streaming in the window. The clock on Ichigo’s phone read 7:12am.

Inoue frowned. She examined a coffee cup on her desk. She took a hesitant sip, and then made a face. “Why are we here?” she wondered softly.

“I hate to pull an all-nighter,” Ichigo said, stretching, “but it sure does feel good to be caught up on paperwork!”

Inoue regarded him. “Kurosaki,” she said, “how long have you worked here?”

Ichigo frowned. “Well, I guess this is my second day.”

“Right. So… how much paperwork did you have to catch up on?”

Ichigo blinked. He very distinctively recalled working through the night-- his hand cramping, the incredibly spicy Thai food they’d ordered, Inoue’s seemingly infinite Boy Bands of the 90’s playlist. “I… was helping you, I guess?” Come to think of it, why was he filling out paperwork by hand, anyway? His laptop sat next to him, the lid closed. It wasn’t even plugged in.