#blch

It’s curiosity that stays Gin’s hand from performing a quick draw and bisecting the intruder; after all, it’s not often that they get intruders, especially not ones that dress like humans. Gin can’t remember the last time he saw someone in jeans—he hasn’t been to the human world in ages—but the intruder’s got them, along with a black jacket with a hood.

He can’t see the intruder’s face, just a flash of white, but he waves cheerfully when the intruder spots him. 

Immediately, the intruder skids to a stop and snarls, “You!” Like they know each other, and Gin means really, really know each other. Only people that know exactly how much of a sneaky dick Gin is greet him that way. 

There’s a strange echo to the intruder’s voice, a sort of rasp, that doesn't sound healthy. More importantly, the intruder’s voice is young, distinctly so. 

A sick teenager. Delightful!

“Why, hello there!” Gin greets, putting on his best smile: the one that always make poor Hinamori-chan squeak and run for the hills. “Can I help ya wit’ somethin’?” Distantly, he wonders if he killed the kid’s parents or something and this is a revenge thing, but then he remembers that he hasn’t really killed anyone recently. There’s been a disappointing lack of reason to. “Directions? A doctor? Directions to a doctor?”

He can’t see the kid’s face, but he can feel the confusion coming off the hostile invader in waves.

“Need some water? A cough drop?”

“Uhhh…” The kid scuffs the ground with a sneaker. It distinctly sounds like the kid is scowling behind that pesky hood of his, but that’s been a constant so far. Gin decides to classify this particular noise as baffled aggravation. “…No?” 

“Alrighty, well then get on home now.” Gin gives the brat a shooing motion, back towards the gate. “Before yer Mama starts ta wonder where you got off ta.”

“Oh, okay,” the kid takes a dazed step back. Then: “Hey, wait a minute! No!”

Almost got ‘em. 

Gin shrugs a little and tucks his hands back into his sleeves. “What, ya got business here or somethin’?”

“Yes!” The kid even stomps his foot. He’s adorable. Gin wants to mess with him forever.

“What kinda business?”

“None of yours!”

“Come on now, you can tell me.”

“Like hell!” 

For the first time, the kid’s head lifts enough to jostle the hood, and Gin’s eyes fly open wide as the fabric shifts back to reveal what was hidden underneath.

A mask: ebony white, blood red, night black. Two rows of canine-sharp teeth set underneath monstrous eyes, the irises a brilliant gold and the sclera a solid black.

The kid ain’t sick. The kid’s a Hollow.

In Seireitei.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he just threw open the window and left!”

Alright. Okay. That wasn’t so bad.

“It was the third floor!”

Oh, kami, that was so bad.

“I have no idea how Kurosaki-kun didn’t break an ankle or something—he seemed fine, just ran off like it was nothing.” The teacher waves her clipboard, looking more than a little fed up. “But I’m still going to have to write him up for skipping out of class like that—”

“Did he say anything?” Masaki interrupts, almost vibrating with her own impatience. “Did he, ah, seem…off to you?”

What Masaki really wants to ask is did he express a ravenous craving for human souls? But for obvious reasons that sort of questioning is off the table.

“More off than diving out a third story window in the middle of class?”

“Masaki!” Isshin peeks through the window, invisible to the staff and standing on nothing but air. He looks a bit younger in his shinigami form, dressed in a familiar black, but his eyes are the same, wide and worried. “I can’t feel Ichigo!”

And that’s when the haze of a mother’s adrenaline lifts for just a moment, and it hits Masaki that, yes, she should have been able to feel her son the whole time. Ichigo’s unusually massive reiatsu usually lights up a fifth of the town like a festival, ridiculously easy to track. When he was younger, it was worrisome, but now that he's grown into a mildly rebellious teenager, it’s usually a great comfort, and way more convenient than tracking his location on his phone. 

But she’d also gotten used to it, like the sound of waves at the beach or cicadas in the summer. She didn’t notice the constant hum against her senses anymore. So much so that she hadn’t even registered its sudden absence.

She can’t feel him at all.

Like, he’s just gone.

The new wave of adrenaline hits her like a goddamn truck.

Masaki gives up on getting anything else helpful from the school, snaps the teachers’ office window further open, and dives out of it.

“Oh, so it’s a family thing?!” 

Ignoring the teacher yelling after them, Isshin jogs alongside her as she dashes from the school, desperately searching for even just a sliver of her son’s reiatsu. But there’s nothing, like a wide open, yawning chasm where the sea used to be. 

If he’d gone Hollow, they’d still feel him. If he’d died and become a Plus, they’d still feel him. If he’d awoken as a shinigami, they’d still feel him!

What the hell had happened?

“What’d the school say?” Isshin asks.

“Nothing useful! Why can’t we feel him?” She yells. “How are you so calm right now?!”

“I can’t usually feel him anyway.” Isshin tugs her shoulder, dragging them both to a stop, and proceeds to rummage through her purse.

“Isshin!”

“Hold on, hold on…” He pulls out her phone and brings up the location app she never uses. All three of her children’s signals are on the map; Yuzu and Karin’s place them at school, but Ichigo’s is notably out in the town. “See, there he is.” Or at least, his phone is. Isshin zooms in on it as Masaki’s breath becomes a little more even.

They read the location with equally dubious looks. 

“...A laundromat?”

It takes mere moments for the two of them to get to the other side of town, to where the little dot that is their son’s phone signal is blinking on the map. Masaki’s heart is pounding in her chest, and she’s terrified of what they’re about to find. Memories of a rainy evening come unbidden to her mind, the dark silhouette of a monster murky against the gray sky. The feeling of sharp teeth trying to slide into her skin, the solid feel of bone and armor under her hand.

But instead, they find their eldest being tossed out onto the street by an irate granny, broom in hand.

“And stay out!” She snarls as she slams the door of her laundromat shut. 

Ichigo is—well, Ichigo looks exactly the same. Still tall and lanky, both features only emphasized by the grouchy way he held himself. He doesn’t look like a Hollow or a monster, doesn’t even look particularly ravenous. He just scowls at the door he was prodded through and runs a frustrated hand through his bright hair.

“Ichigo?” She calls, a little nervously. Her heartbeat is coming back down, now that it’s clear the worst case scenario hasn’t come to pass, but now she’s just further confused.

He turns to look at her, 

He can’t have lost his powers, because he can still see Isshin just fine.

It just happens so suddenly. It had been a completely ordinary day, up until that point. They’d had breakfast together that morning. Ichigo had shrugged him off as he walked out the door, school bag in hand and his sisters hanging off his arms. 

And then, just like that, he physically felt their peaceful lives shattering in his hands.

What happened? Ichigo was supposed to be at school right now—safe, and fine, and most importantly, human. 

And he was supposed to stay that way for a while yet, at least!

But Isshin knows what the snapping of the strings means, more or less, even if he doesn’t know the cause. Kisuke had said that the strings would break as Ichigo awakened and accessed his powers, gradually breaking one by one as he grew into his power and whatever the hell was going on with his soul finally settled—but that wasn't supposed to happen while Ichigo was still living in his human body. He’d have to die first.

And Isshin is pretty sure his son was still alive when he left for school this morning. 

His wide eyes catch Masaki’s over the gurney they’re guiding. She looks back at him, an odd and questioning look in her eyes; she knows something’s up with just a glance but Isshin can’t find any words. His tongue has dried right up in his mouth.

There are two explanations. One, if the Hollow inside Ichigo is unsealed, free, then something must have very suddenly and very thoroughly triggered the awakening of Ichigo’s abilities as a shinigami. 

Or his son is dead and rapidly hollowfying and how the hell does he tell that to his wife?

“Isshin,” Masaki whispers over the old lady they’re supposed to be depositing in an ambulance so she can be transferred to the hospital, “what the hell is going on?”

She can undoubtedly feel his reiatsu is coming back, and it takes a moment to remember how to tamp it back down again, still recovering as it is. It’s been nearly two decades, after all.

“I think,” Isshin starts slowly, because otherwise he’s going to start wailing, “our son is about to have his classmates for lunch.”

He watches brown eyes go wide, millimeter by millimeter.

Masaki drops everything and vanishes in a flurry of hirenkyaku, practically flying towards the school. Isshin, running mostly on hard-learned human instincts, waves off the ambulance, pulls out his cellphone, and calls the school.

The secretary answers, which is probably a good sign. There aren’t any terrified screams of human children in the background yet, or the sound of the ceiling caving in. It doesn’t sound like Ichigo has taken a bite out of anyone yet, at least.

Who knows how long that’ll last. 

He hangs up on her.

Taking a deep breath, Isshin leaves his Gigai for the first time since entering it, and clutches Engetsu in his still callused hands. He hasn’t swung this blade in what feels like a lifetime, has missed wielding it like missing a limb, and yet now that he’s finally carrying it again, all he wants is to put it back down.