Kon is sparkling with the latest in Goth-Loli fashion. He has a lacy lion's mane, a flower sewn to each ear, lace around his shoulders, and a flower on the end of his tail.
Ishida examines his work. Pushing his glasses up, he concludes, "...It's perfect...!"
Kon jumps up in rage and smacks Ishida across the face, "What the hell is perfect here!!" he yells. "Do you mean perfectly lousy by that!? Huh!?" Ishida lets out a grunt of pain as the frilly stuffed toy continues ranting, "Who told you to put me in this fantasy get-up!? I told you to put me back to normal!!"
"It... it's my very own arrangement...!" Ishida protests.
"I told you I don't need that!! Look! You made it into a lace mane, so now instead of a lion I've become some sort of lace fairy!!" Kon shouts. He stops attacking when a revelation hits him, "Hey, this could mean I haven't lost a single atom of my special cuteness! FWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
With his chin resting on his palm, Ichigo looks at Kon in mild interest. He notices something odd when the plushie turns around. ...There's a Quincy cross on the back of his head... he thinks. Well, I guess I'll keep quiet about it for now...
A little time passes in Ichigo's room as the sewing continues. Ishida lets out a sigh when all is done and Kon is looking over his beloved original body in a hand mirror. "I suppose if there aren't any further complaints," Ishida says as he picks up his school bag. "I'll be going now."
"Ah!" Ichigo moves to stand. "Wait a minute, Ishida..."
Ishida gives him a slightly impatient look, "What is it?"
He pauses, recalling something. "I was wondering if maybe he didn't want you guys to notice..." Orihime had said to him.
He gives Ishida a weak smile, "Ah, no... sorry, it's nothing."
"...What?" says Ishida before turning away dismissively. "You're a strange one."
Ichigo watches from his bedroom window as Ishida leaves the clinic. ...I tried to locate his spiritual pressure again after Inoue told me, he thinks. That's when I first realized... Ishida... you've lost your freaking Quincy powers...
(Title page: Bowl cut boy with a finger to his lips and a wide, curling smile. There's a foot at either side of his head, it seems. The words say "The situation is quietly drawing closer. So, shhhhhh...")
"The 'hira' (flat) is from 'henpeisoku' (flatfoot), the 'ko' (child) from 'Ono no Imoko', the 'shin' (genuine) from 'shinseihoukei' (genuine phimosis), and the 'ji' (child) from 'karashi mentaiko' to make up the name Hirako Shinji~" the transfer student with the bowl cut takes a deep bow in front of the entire class. "Nice t' meet you all~"
"Whooa," Ochi-sensei stares up at the blackboard in amazement. The kanji, as well as the small katagana above, have been written in a prefect mirror image of how they should be. "Hirako-kun, Hirako-kun, you've got it backwards! It's backwards!"
"I wrote it rather well, didn' I," Shinji says in his thick Osaka accent. "My speciality is with inversion."
"Ohh, so that's it," says Ochi-sensei. "Well, include that in your self-introduction!"
Ichigo sits at his desk but pays no attention to the transfer student's speech. He is lost in thought about other things, ...I heard from Ukitake that Ishida battled Kurotsuchi, the 12th Captain. That's the only time he could have exhausted his spiritual power to the point of losing his Quincy abilities. In other words, he lost those abilities because he went to Soul Society...
Orihime looks over at Ichigo and watches him sadly as he seems to be lost in thought.
"Alright!" Ochi-sensei calls an end to the lively self-introduction. "Well then, your seat's over behind that one!
"Got cha!" Shinji walks over to the desk beside Ichigo. He sets his bag down and gives a friendly greeting, "I guess we're neighbors. I hope we get along well, Kurosaki-kun!"
Yanked out of his line of thought, Ichigo looks up without realizing that the newcomer already seems to know his name. "Hm? Oh... Oh, yeah, nice to..." he is interrupted by the sudden, incessant beeping of his Shinigami badge. He jumps up with a yelp of surprise. "Sorry, Ochi-san!! (1) Toilet break!!" he calls out to his teacher before bolting out of the room.
"Whaat!? You again, Kurasa... hey... Hey wait now!! Kurosakiii!!!" Ochi-sensei yells after him as he disappears down the hallway.
Shinji watches all this, startled by the boy's sudden escape.
Chad speaks up from the desk behind, "...Sorry. What can I say... he's that kind of guy."
Shinji waves his hand dismissively, "Aw, heck, that doesn't bother me at all." He looks away with a rather sadistic smile, "...he's just as I figured he'd be."
Chad watches him silently.
~*~*~
That night, in Ichigo's room...
"SCREW THIS!!! I can't take this lifestyle anymore!!! I wanna go outside!!" Kon flails his arms and legs like a child denied his treats. "I wanna be cuddling with a buxom, bouncy girl!!"
"...Shut up," Ichigo says irritably as he looks up from the comic book he was trying to read. "Quit you bitching. Yuzu and them could overhear, you know."
"You think I'd just put up with this without a fuss!?" Kon screams. "If I continue to be shut in like this I'll file a complaint against you for violating plushie rights! It'll pull the stuffing right out of your rear!!" He lays down facing the wall, revealing the Quincy cross still sewn to the back of his head. He sighs and scratches his plushie rump, "Aww... with the way it is now, it was a lot nicer when I was left stranded in your body... Didn't matter if I went around peeping or turning up skirts, all the bad rep would be on you... I had it so damn good..."
"Bastard..." Ichigo glares at him. "Don't tell me you seriously did that stuff... that's criminal..."
"Back when Sister was around, I didn't suffer at all, even when I'd get confined!!" Kon stands up, bemoaning the heavens with tears streaming down his face. "Sister, come back!!"
"That's freaking rude!" Ichigo puts a hand over an ear to try to ignore the whining. "Enough already. Just shut up and go to sleep!"
The badge hanging from his bed post suddenly starts beeping. "...Oh," he makes a face, as if he would almost rather sit back and finish reading his comic book. "...I'm getting pretty damn used to this."
He grips the badge tightly and pushes his Shinigami form out of his real body. He then takes the badge and smacks Kon's soul out of the plushie, dropping the pill into his own body's mouth as if it were an act of good grace. "See you later!" he says as he leaves. "Take care of things till I make it back! Don't go around messing stuff up! Okay!" He leaps out of the window and into the night.
"Ro~ger that ♪" Kon coos. He flexes Ichigo's fingers as a wickedly playful grin brightens his face. "Take all the time you need ♪"
~*~*~
Defeating the Hollow seems to be an easy task. As the spirit deteriorates, Ichigo takes a look around the neighborhood from the roof of a house. "Alright, is that all?" he wonders aloud.
"AHH!!!" someone screams from the rooftop behind him. "Wha... what the hell are you, man!! You look pretty damn suspicious wearing that Shinigami uniform."
He looks behind and asks, "...What are you?"
"Eh? M... me!?" the man is dressed as a shinigami, with a distinctive afro and thick black eyebrows. He jabs a thumb at himself, trying to hide his nervousness, "My name is Kurumadani Zennosuke!! I'm an elite Shinigami entrusted with this area in place of Ms. Kuchiki Rukia, who got taken away for some sort of crime!! Are you scared!?"
"Kurosaki Ichigo!! Substitute Shinigami!" He shows his badge as if that was all the authority he needed. "Here's my substitution license!"
"...Wha... What's that!?" Zannosuke shouts. "Substitution license!? I've never even seen or heard of anything like that before!!" (2)
"...What is this?" he glares at his badge in embarrassment. "This ain't any use to me at all, then..."
A footstep in thin air. Ichigo freezes up. He senses someone behind him.
Hirako Shinji draws his sword. When his victim turns and looks up at him walking in mid-air, his smile grows wide - revealing something on his tongue.
But Ichigo has no time to notice that - he brings up Zangetsu to block Shinji's strike.
"You're... Hirako...!? Is that a... Zanpaku sword!? What the hell are you!?" he demands.
Shinji puts a finger to his lips, "Shh! Don' be so loud, Kurosaki Ichigo. A guy with spiritual pressure like yours can't go around creatin' disturbances like it ain't nothin'. It'll be felt reverberating across the globe."
"It'll be felt...?" Ichigo asks. Out in other parts of town, Orihime, Chad, and Ishida go about their daily lives. "By who," he asks, most likely thinking about them.
"...'by who', y' say?" Shinji's expression turns incredibly sour as he loses patience. "Do I really need to say that much for you t' understand? Idiot."
Elsewhere in town, Ishida is walking down the street with small shopping bag. A large Hollow creeps out of a fissure in the air behind him, but he doesn't seem to notice until it's too late.
"Whoa!?" Kon looks around from outside Ichigo's window when he hears a loud noise. "Wha... what's that sound... scared the crap out of me...I almost thought Ichigo had found me..." He leaps out of the window and onto the street, "Now then! Speaking of the night, it's been a long time since I've been outside ♪ I'm gonna go enjoy my dwindling youth!!" He giggles, "Getting into mischief!? Oh, no, not me~!!" He takes off running in Ichigo's body.
A long, black cut appears in the sky and a hand reaches through it from out of the darkness. A Hollow larger than a city block stands over the town, with the crescent moon shining through the gaping hole in its chest. There is no mistaking from its appearance that this creature is the Grand Fisher. Raising the white mask, the Hollow looks down at the boy running through the empty city streets. "...Kurosaki... Ichigo...!"
(1) He doesn't even refer to his teacher as "sensei"? Punk. Well, considering that it's Ochi-sensei...
(2) Either no one bothered to tell Zennosuke about the change in policy... or Ukitake is completely messing with Ichigo about the true importance of that badge. Probably both. I'm surprised though. I'd expect this kind of thing from Urahara, or even Shunsui, but not Ukitake.