"Kon, you little pest, don't yap or Renji will beat you to death." Ichigo buried his face in his hands and groaned.
"Don't insult Kon like that! This is your fault look at how I'm being treated!" Kon planted his paws on his hips and flared.
"Ishida, this one's yours." Ichigo grabbed the limp plush and hurled it toward Uryū.
"Gross, Kurosaki. That thing's filthy." Uryū glanced with cool disgust.
"What are you looking at? You dare look down on me?" Kon yelled, outrage making his voice squeak.
"Shut it." Uryū shot a single, disdainful look, then kicked Kon aside. "You ugly puppet. Who gave you the right to mock Mr. Shiraha? Zhiba, Tibetan, go teach him a lesson."
The three modified souls Lilin, Zhiba and the Tibetan trooped forward at Lilin's signal and surrounded Kon, who squealed and begged for help.
"Kurosaki, before you chased those Soul Hunters, did you learn anything about them?" Uryū's tone was flat. He'd stopped caring about Kon's fate.
"All I know is that Soul Hunters didn't used to take living souls," Ichigo said, scratching his head. "Something changed Kariya Jin is involved, and it turned them into this."
"If that's the case, we'll learn more the next time we encounter them," Uryū answered calmly. "For now, focus on protecting people."
"By the way, Mr. Shiraha," Ichigo blurted, "why don't you and Miss Yoruichi come to my house for dinner? I wanted to invite you when you first came to school, but you left before I could."
Shiraha's mouth tilted in a faint smile. "All right."
"Where's Miss Yoruichi going?" Ichigo asked.
"She'll come with Shiraha," Yoruichi replied.
"Ishida, I'm going home." Uryū began to turn away, glasses pushed up.
"Wait, Ishida. Come with us." Shiraha stopped him. He needed Quincy assistance to deal with Kariya; sending Kariya to Soul Society would require more than Shiraha's sword.
"If it's Shiraha, then I'll go." Uryū paused, then acquiesced.
"Kurosaki, you're too picky sometimes," Ichigo muttered.
"Shiraha is not like you," Uryū said, dry and precise.
"Lilin, down." Shiraha called, and the three modified souls ceased their assault and trooped over obediently.
Kon lay flattened and dazed. In the confusion Shiraha invoked Cang and vanished, reappearing at the Kurosaki residence with Yoruichi at his side. Kon blinked, abandoned and bewildered.
"Ichigo! You forgot me! Ichigo, where are you?" his small voice echoed into the empty alley.
---
A tall building pierced Karakura's night. Inside a high room, Kariya Jin lounged on a sofa in a red shirt, white hair tousled, red eyes slicing the dark. Ichinose Maki stepped in and bowed. "Kariya-sama."
"Back so soon, Ichinose?" Kariya looked up without surprise.
"Master Kariya, Yoshino and Udagawa are dead." Ichinose dropped the report like a stone.
"Dead?" Kariya snapped upright. "Udagawa dead I can accept, but Yoshino how? Why didn't you stop it?"
Ichinose told him everything he had seen: the encounter, Shiraha's arrival, the swift carnage. He admitted he had been unable to stop Shiraha and barely escaped. He could not explain why Shiraha had spared him. With a captain's strength, catching Shiraha should have been trivial.
"Kuchiki Shiraha of the Seventh Division?" Kariya's face paled. He had heard the name, had a sense of the danger Shiraha represented. A captain in the human world without proper leverage was a threat he had not planned for.
"I don't know," Ichinose said, shaking his head. "When I last slipped into Soul Society three days ago, Shiraha was still in the Seireitei. I did not expect he would leave."
Kariya's mind raced. The plan had relied on certain certainties: that Shiraha would not appear in the world, that the Quincy could be coaxed or captured, that the Bounts' oddities could be contained. Now a captain stood among the living, and worse, Shiraha had torn through Kariya's pawns.
"Have you located the Quincy?" Kariya asked, voice tight. If the Quincy could still be recruited, perhaps the scheme could be salvaged.
"I found him. His name is Ishida Uryū." Ichinose spoke with the measured respect of a subordinate.
"Ishida Uryū?" Kariya repeated, tasting the name. "Bring him here at once."
"I will, Lord Kariya. But Shiraha's presence complicates matters. Even constrained by a gigai, he's no easy opponent." Ichinose lowered his voice.
Most in Seireitei assumed a Shinigami's power diminished drastically when confined to a human vessel. Only Yamamoto, Kyoraku, Jūshirō and Unohana knew that Shiraha had not been engraved with a limiter. Ichinose did not; he only knew Shiraha's reputation.
"Go," Kariya ordered, reclining again. He closed his eyes. The muscles in his jaw twitched. "Soul Society… I will destroy Soul Society."