Ren had made a mistake.
Not the Madarame thing. That had gone mostly fine. Probably. The Palace was gone, Yusuke had the original Sayuri, nobody had died, Madarame's Shadow had returned to something resembling normal, and they had successfully changed the heart of another abusive asshole.
Successful mission!
Except for the part where said abusive asshole had started vomiting white bile, growing bone over his face and turning into something that looked disturbingly close to a Hollow.
Ren's eye twitched.
Right.
That.
He stood on the morning train with Morgana tucked into his bag and one hand wrapped around the overhead strap, glaring at absolutely nothing while his brain replayed yesterday for approximately the eight-hundredth time. White bile. Mask. Claws. Hollow. In the fucking Metaverse. Because apparently reality had heard him smugly tell Yu Narukami that the Hollow problem was finally somebody else's area of expertise and decided that level of confidence needed to be punished immediately.
"Stupid fucking universe," Ren muttered.
"Mrow?"
"I know." Morgana's head poked slightly farther out of the bag, which Ren took as sufficient encouragement to continue. "I finally knew something that asshole didn't know. One thing! One! Yu's been walking around since I got here acting like supernatural Wikipedia, and the first time I actually get one over on him—"
Morgana meowed.
"Exactly! I didn't even brag that much."
A louder meow.
Ren looked down. "Okay. I bragged a little."
Morgana stared.
"Moderately."
His eyes narrowed.
"Fuck you."
A giggle came from beside him, and Ren looked over to find Orihime standing close enough that their shoulders almost touched whenever the train shifted. One hand held the overhead strap while the other covered her smile, and judging by the way her brown eyes were shining, she'd apparently been listening for a while.
Ren suddenly became very aware that he had been holding a one-sided argument with a cat in public.
"You heard that?"
"Most of it!"
"Fantastic."
Orihime giggled again. "You really wanted to know something Yu didn't, huh?"
"You don't understand."
"I think I do."
"You don't."
"He annoys you."
"He does!" That got another laugh out of her, but Ren was committed now. "He does it on purpose! He stands there with that calm fucking face like he's already read the strategy guide for my life, and then I finally get him! Shinigami! Hollows! Ghost cosmology! Something the great Yu Narukami doesn't already know, and what happens?!"
Several passengers looked over.
Ren did not notice.
"I just said we didn't have to worry about it!"
The train went quiet.
...
Ah.
Ren slowly lowered the hand he had apparently started gesturing with. A salaryman was staring. Two middle-school boys were staring. An older woman near the door was staring. Orihime had both hands over her mouth now and was very obviously fighting for her life.
Ren cleared his throat. "...Sorry."
Nobody answered.
He adjusted his glasses. "Unexpected supernatural stress."
That somehow made it worse.
Orihime made a tiny strangled noise beside him, cheeks puffed out as she desperately tried not to laugh, and Ren narrowed his eyes. "Don't."
She shook her head rapidly.
"Don't you fucking dare."
"Pffff—!"
Orihime broke, bending forward laughing and grabbing his sleeve for balance while Ren closed his eyes. Great. Wonderful. His dignity had survived fighting a giant collection of floating facial features but apparently couldn't survive one train ride.
Then one of the middle-school boys behind them whispered, unfortunately not nearly quietly enough, "Dude."
"What?"
"Isn't it kind of a waste?"
Ren's eyebrow twitched.
The second boy glanced toward Orihime, who was still holding Ren's sleeve and looking up at him with watery eyes. "What?"
"She's really pretty."
"Yeah?"
"And she's giving that guy the eyes."
Ren slowly turned his head. The first boy immediately discovered the fascinating world outside the train window, but the second apparently possessed no survival instinct whatsoever.
"You know. The loud weird kid talking to his cat."
Morgana's head emerged another inch.
"MROW?!"
The boy jumped.
Ren stared.
Orihime looked at Morgana, then at Ren, and for reasons known only to whatever higher power had taken personal responsibility for embarrassing him this morning, her amusement softened into something much worse. Wide brown eyes, a tiny smile, pink slowly spreading across her cheeks while she kept holding his sleeve.
Oh, come the fuck on.
Ren looked away first.
Behind him came another whisper.
"See?!"
"Okay, yeah."
"Total waste."
Ren's glasses flashed.
Morgana hissed.
Orihime squeezed his sleeve. "Don't fight children on the train."
"I wasn't going to."
"You looked like you were thinking about it."
"I was thinking about explaining probability."
She tilted her head. "With your fist?"
"No."
Ren considered that.
"...Probably."
Orihime giggled again.
Traitor.
Thankfully, his phone buzzed before his brain could make the situation any worse.
ShadOP.
[Joker]
We need another meeting.
[Skull]
about the almost hollow thing?
[Joker]
Yes.
[Panther]
"almost Hollow thing" remains a terrible phrase btw
[Dove]
Agreed.
[Hime]
It really does!!
[ART]
I remain confused as to how one may become something which Rukia specifically stated requires conditions that were not present.
[Joker]
That's the problem.
[Joker]
Everyone together this time.
[Skull]
death god squad too?
[Joker]
Rukia, Urahara and Yoruichi.
[Panther]
Yu?
[Joker]
Unfortunately.
Another notification appeared almost immediately.
[King Sis-con]
I can read this chat.
Ren stared at it for several seconds.
[Joker]
Good.
[King Sis-con]
:)
His eye twitched.
Motherfucker.
[Dove]
Whole Investigation Team too?
[Joker]
Whoever is actually in Tokyo.
[Joker]
I'm not explaining this six different times to six groups of people who all know different parts of reality.
[King Sis-con]
That's sensible.
[Joker]
Don't agree with me.
[King Sis-con]
:)
Ren locked the phone before Yu could somehow become more irritating through text alone. Orihime peeked toward him with another smile. "Yu?"
"Yu."
She giggled.
She's lucky she is cute.
---
After school, Ren and Shiho went back to the gym for training, where Yoruichi was already waiting cross-legged on the floor in sweatpants and a loose shirt with the relaxed expression of somebody who knew an irritating amount about the supernatural and had no intention of volunteering the interesting parts.
"You're late."
Shiho looked at the clock. "By thirty seconds."
"Late."
Ren stared at Yoruichi. She stared back, completely unrepentant, and he briefly wondered why every competent adult responsible for teaching him anything enjoyed being an asshole.
Whatever.
They stretched, meditated and moved into footwork drills. Yoruichi corrected Ren when his stance widened too far, tapped Shiho's hip when she loaded too much weight onto her front leg, then had them repeat the sequence until both could move through it without thinking. Ren liked this part. Physical rules were nice. Put weight somewhere stupid, fall down. Put weight somewhere useful, don't fall down. No symbolism. No Tarot. No metaphysical argument about whether a cognitive asshole could somehow turn into a dead-person monster despite being neither dead nor technically a person.
Simple.
Mostly.
Yoruichi crossed the room.
Ren's eyes narrowed.
Not disappeared. Not really. His perception caught the beginning of it now—the tiny shift of weight, her foot meeting the floor—and then she was behind Shiho, lightly tapping her shoulder before the other girl could turn.
Ren stared.
Yoruichi caught him doing it as she stepped away. "What?"
"Nothing."
"That look isn't nothing."
Shiho exhaled while resetting her stance. "He's thinking."
"That's rarely good."
"Agreed."
"Fuck both of you."
Yoruichi grinned. "Again."
Shiho came at him, and Ren redirected the controlled strike while shifting around her shoulder. "So what's this actually called?"
"Training."
"The style."
"Several styles."
"Sure."
Yoruichi's eye twitched. Ren smiled, and Shiho immediately recognized that expression.
"Oh no."
Yoruichi looked between them. "What?"
"You said you're pulling techniques from a bunch of different martial arts," Ren said as he reset. "And some of this is the stuff Soul Reapers use."
That got a short stare. There wasn't much point pretending Yoruichi had nothing to do with that side of the supernatural anymore; she knew Soul Society, knew Rukia, knew Hollows and Reiatsu, and had been attached to Urahara from the beginning. Whatever her exact history was, uninvolved gym teacher had left the list of believable possibilities a while ago.
"...Some," Yoruichi eventually admitted.
Shiho immediately brightened. "Really?"
"Really."
Ren pointed at himself. "Which ones?"
"The hand-to-hand system you're learning pieces from is called Hakuda. Before your brain starts doing anything stupid, I said pieces. I'm mixing the physical fundamentals with other styles that suit the two of you."
Ren stopped anyway.
Actual terminology!
"Hakuda."
"Yes."
Shiho looked down at her stance as if it had suddenly become ten times cooler. "So we're learning Soul Reaper martial arts."
"Parts of one," Yoruichi corrected, then pointed between them. "Now move."
They did, although Ren's attention kept wandering back to the word physical. Yoruichi had emphasized it just slightly, and unfortunately for her, Ren had spent most of his life learning to notice when adults made tiny changes in wording and expected him not to ask why.
He waited until Shiho came around with another strike, stepped outside it and said, "Physical fundamentals."
Yoruichi's face flattened. "What about them?"
"You emphasized physical."
"I spoke normally."
"No, you didn't."
Yoruichi pointed at Shiho. "Hit him."
Shiho grinned. "Gladly."
"HEY!"
Ren barely avoided the next strike, caught her wrist just long enough to redirect it and let go as she pivoted into another. He moved outside that too, and Yoruichi chose that moment to appear beside him with another impossible burst of acceleration. Ren caught the initial shift, twisted away from the tap aimed at his forehead—
Flick.
"Ow."
Yoruichi grinned.
Ren rubbed the spot and pointed toward where she'd been standing a moment ago. "That wasn't normal footwork."
"It was very good footwork."
"Bullshit."
"Excellent footwork."
"Still bullshit."
Shiho snorted.
"Rukia does something similar," Ren added.
"Similar," Yoruichi agreed.
Ren's attention immediately sharpened. "Meaning not the same."
"Correct."
"So you know what I'm talking about."
"I have eyes."
"Normal eyes can't follow Rukia."
Yoruichi smiled sweetly. "Sounds like a you problem."
Fine.
Different angle.
"Can you teach me?"
"No."
Ren blinked. "I didn't say what."
"That."
"What is that?"
"The thing you're about to spend the next twenty minutes asking me about."
"I don't know what it's called."
"Good."
Ah.
Ren smiled.
Shiho covered her mouth.
Yoruichi realized what she'd done and groaned. "Don't."
"What's it called?"
"Train."
"That's not a name."
"Amamiya."
"Is it a technique?"
"Train."
"Something Soul Reaper specific?"
"Stop fishing."
"Does it use Reiatsu?"
Yoruichi said nothing.
"So yes?"
"I didn't say that."
"Can humans do it?"
"I'm not teaching you Shunpo!"
Silence.
Yoruichi froze.
Shiho slowly turned toward her.
Ren did absolutely nothing for about two seconds while the word settled neatly into place.
Shunpo.
There it was.
Then his smile changed. Pleasant. Polite. Cheerful.
Absolutely fucking insufferable.
Yoruichi opened one eye. "...No."
Ren lifted an imaginary fan. "My, my."
"STOP SMILING LIKE KISUKE!"
Shiho folded over laughing while Ren maintained the expression. "Shunpo, was it?"
"You manipulated me!"
"I asked questions."
"You deliberately annoyed me until I answered!"
"Effective questioning."
"That is EXACTLY what Kisuke would say!"
Ren considered that for a second, then smiled harder.
Yoruichi recoiled. "Oh, you little bastard."
"So teach me."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because Shunpo isn't just running fast, and—"
She stopped.
Ren's eyebrows rose while Yoruichi glared at him. He simply waited, and Shiho had completely given up pretending she was still training by this point.
Ren tilted his head. "And?"
"No."
"Spiritual technique?"
Nothing.
"Uses Reiatsu?"
Yoruichi crossed her arms. "I'm not giving you a technical manual because you'll absolutely try to reverse-engineer it."
"That's an accusation."
"That's a prediction based on evidence."
"Could a human use it?"
This time she hesitated, and Ren caught it.
"Normally? No."
There it was again.
Ren narrowed his eyes. "Normally."
"Don't."
"That's a qualifier."
"It means that if I ever decide you're capable of attempting anything even remotely close to Shunpo, it'll be after I understand what the hell is going on with you spiritually. You've only recently started seeing souls and your sensitivity keeps changing. I'm not finding out whether you're an exception by letting you destroy your legs."
That was unfortunately difficult to argue with. Ren's Third Eye had recently started showing him strange vein-like lines inside his own body, but all he really knew was that they existed and that asking are meridians real? inside his own head was not equivalent to understanding what they did.
"Okay," Ren admitted. "That's reasonable."
Both women stared at him.
Ren frowned. "What?"
Yoruichi blinked. "I expected more resistance."
"I don't want my legs exploding."
She smiled. "Good."
His eyes narrowed. "Would they actually explode?"
"No."
Ren relaxed.
Yoruichi's smile widened.
"Probably."
His face fell.
Shiho started laughing again.
"You're cruel."
"You're sixteen."
"Unrelated."
"Extremely related."
Ren sighed, although Shunpo had already lodged itself permanently in his head. He was absolutely going to look into it later.
Yoruichi stared at him. "Whatever you're thinking, don't."
"I'm not thinking anything."
"You have Kisuke face again."
Ren immediately raised the imaginary fan. "My, my."
Flick.
"OW!"
"Reaction training."
"YOU FLICKED ME!"
"Too slow."
Shiho was wheezing.
Fine.
He'd gotten Hakuda and Shunpo.
Successful interrogation.
Probably.
---
Yu Narukami cooked when stressed.
Ren hadn't known that.
Apparently he did now.
By the time they reached Yu's apartment, Yu was in the kitchen wearing an apron and moving between several pans with the same calm expression he wore while discussing world-ending supernatural threats, while enough people filled the living room that the building's occupancy limit was probably becoming more of a suggestion. Rise had claimed one end of the couch and was talking animatedly with Ann and Orihime, Chie and Shiho had immediately fallen into a surprisingly serious argument about whether kicking or punching was more satisfying, and Yukiko sat comfortably between the two conversations drinking tea and occasionally contributing something that somehow made whichever discussion she joined worse.
Yusuke occupied one end of the table with his sketchbook, Morgana sat beside him, and Ryuji stared across at Ren with the expression of a man who had discovered fire.
"Dude."
Ren immediately distrusted this. "What?"
"The Metaverse is Kingdom Hearts."
"No."
"You haven't even heard me!"
"I don't need to."
Yu glanced over from the stove. "He's not entirely wrong."
Ren looked betrayed, which only encouraged Ryuji enough to slap both hands on the table. "SEE?! Multiple worlds based on people's hearts, darkness monsters, jumping between dimensions—"
"The Metaverse comes from the collective unconscious," Morgana interrupted.
"Heart stuff."
"THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING!"
Chie leaned over the back of the couch. "And the Metaverse isn't even the same kind of cognitive world as the TV World."
Ren immediately pointed at her. "Thank you."
Ryuji pointed right back. "You said cognitive world! Still counts!"
"It absolutely does not."
Yu stirred something in one of the pans. "There are enough structural similarities for the comparison to function."
Ren stared at the back of his head. "Whose side are you on?"
Yu looked genuinely confused. "There are sides?"
Of course.
Ryuji, now vindicated by the resident veteran Wild Card, pointed at Morgana. "Also, talking animal companion."
"I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!"
"Kingdom Hearts."
"STOP USING THAT AS AN ANSWER!"
Yusuke finally looked up from his sketchbook. "What exactly is Kingdom Hearts?"
Ren opened his mouth, but Ryuji was faster. "Okay, so there's this kid with a giant key and Donald Duck—"
Yusuke stopped drawing.
"...Donald Duck?"
"No," Ren said.
Yu turned down one of the burners. "That's accurate."
Ren's betrayal deepened.
"And he fights manifestations of human darkness?" Yusuke asked, clearly trying to assemble something coherent from this nonsense.
"With magic!"
"Hm."
"No."
"Final Fantasy characters are there too," Ryuji added.
Yusuke's expression became considerably more confused. "Why?"
Ryuji opened his mouth, then stopped.
"...Actually, good question."
Ren rubbed his forehead.
This was the supernatural summit he'd arranged.
Excellent.
At least the girls seemed productive.
He glanced toward the couch and immediately reconsidered that assumption. Rise had somehow acquired both of Orihime's hands and was talking to her with intense enthusiasm. Orihime was red. Ann was also red. Shiho noticed Ren looking and immediately turned back toward Chie with such deliberate speed that his suspicion doubled.
...
No.
Future Ren's problem.
The doorbell rang, and Yu reached for the stove controls. "I'll get it."
"No." Ren stood first.
Yu looked over. "Why?"
"I want to see how annoying Urahara makes his entrance."
Yukiko snorted into her tea while Rise twisted around on the couch. "Ooh! Hat guy?!"
"The suspicious hat guy," Morgana supplied.
"The creepy dude," Ryuji added.
"The merchant," Yusuke offered.
"The asshole," Ren finished.
Yu nodded. "Strong consensus."
Ren opened the door.
Kisuke Urahara stood in the hallway wearing his striped bucket hat and holding his fan across the lower half of his face, with Yoruichi beside him and Rukia standing slightly behind both of them wearing the expression of somebody who already regretted agreeing to come.
Urahara's eyes curved cheerfully. "Good evening! What an impressive gathering of unusually interesting young people, and Narukami, of course. My, I do hope we're not interrupting anything terribly important or delicious—"
Yoruichi punched him in the head.
BONK!
Urahara folded with an offended "OW!" and would have hit the floor if Yoruichi hadn't caught the back of his clothes. "Sorry," she said to the apartment at large. "He gets excited when there's an audience."
"I was being polite!"
"You were performing."
"Can I not do both?"
"No."
Rukia stepped around them, entered the apartment and stopped when she saw exactly how many people were inside. Her eyes moved from Yu to Rise, Chie and Yukiko, across the entire Phantom Thief group, paused briefly on Morgana, then returned to Ren. "...You said a meeting."
"This is a meeting."
"This is a conference."
"More efficient."
Rukia rubbed her forehead while Urahara recovered enough to reopen his fan. "My, my. Perhaps introductions would be wise before—"
Yoruichi raised her fist.
The fan slowly lowered.
"...Later."
Ren smiled.
Urahara saw it and smiled back.
Yoruichi looked between them.
"No."
Neither stopped. Urahara tipped his hat; Ren adjusted his glasses, and the two wore matching obnoxiously pleasant expressions until Yoruichi pointed at Ren.
"I told you not to do that!"
Rise burst out laughing. "HE DOES HAT GUY'S FACE!"
"Do not encourage him!"
Ren raised an imaginary fan. "My, my."
Yoruichi lunged.
Ren slipped behind Yu. "Narukami. Protect me."
Yu continued cooking. "No."
"Betrayal."
"Consequences."
Urahara looked delighted. "What a responsible young man."
Yoruichi's fist twitched.
Rukia finally sighed hard enough to cut through the room. "Can we please discuss what happened yesterday?"
That killed most of the laughter. Yoruichi looked toward her immediately. "Yes. You've been annoyingly vague since this morning."
"Amamiya wanted everyone present."
Urahara's gaze shifted toward Ren, who shrugged. "I'm tired of supernatural telephone."
"How wonderfully organized."
"Don't praise him," Yoruichi said. "It encourages him."
Yu turned off the burner and started moving dishes toward the table. "Sit. Food's ready."
Ryuji blinked. "We're eating during the supernatural crisis meeting?"
"Yes."
"Dude." Ryuji looked genuinely moved. "You're the best."
Chie snorted from the couch. "You've known him for like five minutes."
"Doesn't matter."
Everyone settled wherever they could, which took longer than it should have because chairs were stolen, plates had to be passed around and Rise immediately got up to help Yu distribute food while Orihime made sure everyone had something to drink. Morgana somehow acquired his own place at the table despite nobody remembering setting one for him, and once the apartment finally stopped moving, Yoruichi leaned forward with her attention fixed on Ren.
"Alright. You kids have a habit of disappearing somewhere neither Kisuke nor I can follow. No spiritual trail, no movement we can detect, one second you're there and the next you're just gone. Then you show up again later."
Ren nodded. "Yes."
"And until tonight, you've avoided explaining where."
That was also true.
Ren glanced briefly toward Rukia, who already knew the broad version, then toward Yu. Yu gave a slight nod, so Ren folded his arms on the table and finally said, "We call it the Metaverse."
Urahara's fan stopped moving and Yoruichi's expression sharpened, while Chie leaned forward slightly, not confused by the term but interested in where this was going. Yu picked up the explanation for the newcomers. "It's a cognitive world. Different from the one my group dealt with."
"Apparently," Ren added, "because nothing is allowed to be simple."
Ryuji pointed toward Yu. "Kingdom Hearts."
Ren kicked him under the table.
"OW!"
"Anyway," Ren continued before the room could lose another ten minutes, "the Metaverse is tied to the collective unconscious. Cognition shapes it, and people with extremely distorted desires can create entire locations based on how they perceive reality."
"Palaces," Rukia supplied.
Yoruichi immediately turned toward her. "You knew about this?"
Rukia stiffened. "They explained it to me recently."
"And you didn't tell us?"
"I barely understand it myself!"
Morgana made an offended noise, prompting Rukia to slowly look toward him. "...Was that about my understanding?"
Yusuke nodded. "Yes."
"I hate that cat."
"MROW!"
"He objects."
"Of course he does."
Urahara, meanwhile, had gone from amused to openly interested, tapping his closed fan against one palm. "And these Palaces are where you disappear to?"
"Sometimes. There's more to the Metaverse than Palaces."
His smile started to grow.
Ren pointed at him. "No."
"My, my. I haven't said anything."
"Your face did."
Yoruichi groaned. "There's two of them now."
Ren chose to ignore that horrifying possibility and continued. "The important part is that Shadows aren't ghosts. They're not dead people. A Palace ruler is a cognitive manifestation connected to somebody who is still alive in reality."
That finally stripped the humor out of both adults. Yoruichi set her chopsticks down while Urahara's fan went still, and Rukia already looked unhappy because she knew exactly where this explanation was heading.
"Yesterday," Ren said, glancing toward Yusuke long enough to make sure he was okay with this, "we fought one. We won, and after the fight the Shadow started shaking hard enough that he couldn't stand. Then he started convulsing and vomited this white... bile, I guess. It hit the ground, then crawled back toward him."
Yoruichi's posture changed immediately. "Moved by itself?"
"Yeah."
"Against gravity?"
"Yeah."
Rukia's expression tightened.
Ren continued, tapping one finger against the table while reconstructing the scene. "It crawled up his face and started hardening into something like bone. Then the shape became obvious."
Urahara spoke quietly. "A mask."
Ren nodded.
Nobody on the Soul Reaper side moved for a moment.
Yeah.
Still bad.
"Before it finished, the Shadow's body started changing too. Hands, arms, claws. It got stronger, stopped acting like itself and started attacking everyone around it."
"Like a Hollow," Rukia said.
"Exactly like one."
Yoruichi leaned forward. "But the human whose Shadow this was?"
"Alive."
"You're certain?"
"Yes."
"And you're certain you weren't somehow seeing the person's actual soul inside this Metaverse?"
"Absolutely."
Morgana stood on his chair and declared something emphatically enough that even Rukia didn't need a translation to know he was objecting, although Yusuke provided one anyway. "Morgana confirms it was unquestionably a Shadow."
Yoruichi looked from him to Rukia.
Rukia shrugged. "I've given up."
"You get used to it," Ren said.
"Mrow."
"Fuck you too."
Urahara ignored the exchange entirely. "Did the transformation complete?"
"No. I stopped it."
Three sets of eyes immediately landed on Ren.
Across the table, Rise grinned. "Here it comes."
"Don't."
Yoruichi stared at him. "What did you do?"
"I froze the mask before it finished forming."
Her eyes widened slightly. "And then?"
"Broke it."
A beat passed before Yoruichi leaned closer. "You broke a forming Hollow mask off a Shadow."
"When you say it like that, it sounds irresponsible."
"It was irresponsible!"
"I had approximately four seconds!"
"And your first solution was to freeze its face?!"
"The mask!"
"That distinction is doing a lot of work!"
"It worked!"
Urahara started raising his fan. Ren pointed at him without looking away from Yoruichi. "Don't."
The fan lowered again.
Yukiko covered a smile with her hand.
Yoruichi exhaled through her nose. "After the mask broke?"
"The Shadow collapsed, woke back up terrified and looked normal again. No mask, no chest hole, no visible transformation. Third Eye didn't show anything obviously wrong either."
"What about Reiatsu?"
Ren shrugged. "I don't know what Hollow Reiatsu feels like well enough to compare."
"Good."
He blinked. "Good?"
"Good that you're not pretending you do."
Oh.
Well.
Okay.
"If there was something spiritually wrong afterward, I wouldn't know how to identify it," Ren admitted.
Urahara was looking at him a little too closely now.
Ren noticed. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit."
"My, my."
Yoruichi smacked his shoulder without even looking. "Later."
"How cruel."
Yu, who had stayed mostly quiet while the Bleach side worked through the problem, finally leaned forward. "There was something else."
Right.
That.
Ren's appetite dropped a little. "The Shadow mentioned another intruder."
Yoruichi frowned. "Another person can enter the Metaverse?"
"Apparently."
Rise sat straighter beside Yu, the humor disappearing from her face too.
"Someone had entered that Palace before us," Ren continued. "We don't know who he was, what he wanted or what he did."
Yusuke set his chopsticks down. "Madarame described the intruder as a man wearing a black mask."
Yu went very still.
Rise stopped moving.
Chie noticed immediately and frowned. "Yeah, that sounds bad."
"It sounds very bad," Yu agreed.
Yoruichi looked between them. "You already know something about him?"
"Not enough," Ren said before the conversation could outrun its evidence. "We already had reason to think somebody else might be operating in the Metaverse. This is just the first direct description we've gotten."
Rukia frowned. "And you think that person caused the Hollowification?"
"No." Ren shook his head immediately. "We don't know that. Black Mask was there at some point. Later Madarame's Shadow tried to turn into something that looked like a Hollow. That's it."
"Correlation," Yu said.
"Not causation."
Urahara's eyes curved slightly.
Ren immediately pointed at him. "Do not look proud."
"I'm simply pleased you're separating the two."
"Stop encouraging him," Yoruichi said.
Yu calmly took another bite of dinner.
Urahara leaned back, tapping his fan against his knee. "Then we have several distinct problems rather than one. We don't understand the Metaverse itself, we don't understand how something cognitive can apparently interact with a process that should belong to an actual soul, and we have no evidence yet connecting your mysterious masked visitor to what happened."
Ren sighed. "When you put it like that, we know nothing."
"Not nothing," Yu said.
Ren looked at him.
"We know it happened."
...
Fucking Yu.
"Thank you, supernatural fortune cookie."
"You're welcome."
Rise laughed.
Yoruichi ignored them. "I want the sequence again later, but slower. Positioning, timing, what changed first, what the thing actually did while it was transforming, anything you sensed before or afterward."
"We just explained it."
"You summarized it."
"That was already uncomfortable."
"Too bad."
Urahara nodded pleasantly. "And I'd like a proper explanation of these Palaces afterward."
Ren groaned. "I knew that was coming."
"You just informed us that there's an entire cognitive realm we've been incapable of sensing and that something inside it nearly underwent a transformation that should happen only to an actual soul." Urahara opened his fan. "My curiosity is somewhat piqued."
"Somewhat?"
Yoruichi slowly turned toward him. "Kisuke."
He paused.
"Fine. Extremely."
Of course.
Ren rubbed both hands down his face. He had spent days being happy because the Hollow problem finally belonged to somebody else. People with centuries of experience, an entire supernatural organization behind them, actual knowledge of how souls worked. Experts! He had experts now!
And somehow, in less than twenty-four hours, he'd managed to introduce the experts to an entirely new supernatural problem that they didn't understand either.
Fantastic.
Absolutely fucking fantastic.
Ryuji leaned toward him. "So."
Ren didn't look up. "No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
Ryuji gestured around the table. "Kingdom Hearts."
Ren slowly turned. "Why."
"Different worlds, hearts, darkness, creepy masked guy—"
Ren opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
Fuck.
Yu nodded thoughtfully. "The black mask does improve the comparison."
Ren stared at him in betrayal. "You too?!"
"Objectively."
"THERE IS NOTHING OBJECTIVE ABOUT KINGDOM HEARTS!"
Orihime immediately started giggling while Ryuji slapped the table in triumph. "SEE! EVEN YU GETS IT!"
Morgana jumped onto all fours. "STOP COMPARING MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE TO A VIDEO GAME!"
Rukia looked toward Yusuke.
Yusuke considered the room for a moment. "I believe the discussion has deteriorated."
"Finally, something I understand."
Urahara opened his fan. "My, my. Personally, I find the comparison rather—"
BONK!
"OW!"
Yoruichi lowered her fist.
"No."
Ren looked around the apartment while the argument immediately threatened to restart anyway. Phantom Thieves. Investigation Team. One increasingly irritated Shinigami. Yoruichi and Urahara. A talking not-cat. An impossible Hollow transformation. Some asshole in a black mask.
And dinner.
This was probably going to be a very long night.
At least there was food.
---