Chapter 19. A brave weasel (18)

' Man, that kid shouldn't have gotten himself killed. But I must say, I'm impressed with his quick thinking.' Renji thought to himself as he easily spotted Ichitaro in front of the demons, who were fallen asleep.

The Kamaitachi, Yoshimura and Rangiku were emerging from the deeper side of the bushes and tall grasses. Trying to catch up with them, Renji began assisting Rukia and gave her a piggyback ride on his back, even though he was worried if her wound would reopened pretty soon if she goes any further.

" Let's get this over with and free those guys." Ichitaro said as he instructed his sisters, " Yoshimura, you find the key. Rangiku, you help Shikamaru. While I guard if these guys are up again."

Three of them nodded and immediately went their separate ways. The Kamaitachi sprang from Rangiku's arms and leaped on top of the tree like a skilled cat because he was terrified if one of the demons would wake up and attacked them. Rangiku pulled Shikamaru further away from the steel cage.

He was lightly unconscious after Ichitaro landed an almost `powerful ` kick to a steel cage on to his head, in which didn't damage his head but wasn't bleeding heavily either.

Whilst Ichitaro was guarding the sleepy demons like a hawk, Yoshimura started looking for the key to open the steel cage. Mysteriously, she spotted one of demon's tail swiping from left to right, holding the key ring along with the rest of the keys. It was narrowly slim and red in colour with a pointy arrow-like end. However; it contained an amount of lethal poison in which could kill nearly any being by dawn.

' Jackpot'. she said to herself, but had to be careful not to get hurt or poisoned. As the tail lazily went straight towards her as if it was attacking her, she quickly stood back and does the cartwheel, grabbing the key ring from its rear end using her sneakers.

"Psst. Hey, guys. I got it. " she said softly as she picked up the key holder and Ichitaro, then gave her a thumbs up.

" That's great. Now open the cage and free them." squeeked the Kamaitachi.

" You don't have to tell me that. I know what I'm doing!" she yelled halfway, nearly waking one of them up, but falls asleep anyway.

She breathed a sigh of relief and focused on freeing the kamaitachis. At first she picked up a first key and tried to opened the cage, but it didn't work. Then she tried to opened the cage with a second key. It doesn't work either.

Realising it might take a bit longer, she took the rest of the keys, leaving the two remaining keys a side and thinks a little bit as the keys were nearly similar to each other.

Renji remained concerned about Rukia's health, whilst the Kamaitachi's anxiety took the toll out of him when his `men` are in danger. Some of them squabbled at each other, just to get closer to what's going on.

"Ma'am, you're not going to kill us are you? " one of them squeaked in fear.

" You don't ask her like that, she's a demon. I can sense her spirit energy and she's clearly one of them. " said another one, causing a lot of squeaking arguments and rattling the cage.

Yoshimura glanced at them quarrelling at each other and she broke it out.

" Guys! GUYS!! Keep it down. You'll wake them up and blew our plans on getting everyone out of here." she said softly, trying not to waking up the three demons.

" That's easy for you to say. You're a demon and you're here to kill us!! "

" THAT'S ENOUGH, DIPSHIT! If you don't have anything to say to her, then don't! " the other one with a caramel fur shouted in anger and went to Yoshimura, " Don't mind him. He thinks that you'll eventually kill us."

" Please don't kill us. I've made a promise to give the queen all of our gold and gems we have. Please spare us."

" QUIET, YOU!!" the other ones screeched in annoyance.

Yoshimura and the others were confused and Rangiku said to one of the kamaitachis :

" Kill? You guys? We're not monsters. It's not in our nature. We're actually here to free you all. "

" See! I TOLD YOU SO!! " screamed the Kamaitachi

" Hush, are you trying to get us caught?" Yoshimura asked.

" What do mean trying to....." , it said, yet was distributed as Yoshimura pointed three demons sleeping in which shocked every one of them, " .... Ohhh. But who saved us and why? I thought the queen wants to take us as her slaves. Is she changing her mind?"

" I'm not sure, but you can tell me why she was doing this. "

" Let me guess, Hachi didn't tell you why we ended up in the cave?" it asked.

Yoshimura shook her head and answered:

" I don't know who Hachi is and how the little guy doesn't explain properly. He simply ran towards us and asked for help."

" Alright, I'll tell you how it all happened from the start, then I'll show you which keys to open.

" That'll be great."

" Don't worry erm..."

" It's Mimi, by the way."

"Alright, Mimi. Don't worry, we'll help you get out of here. I promise."

The Kamaitachi nodded and began explaining everything that happened way before Ichitaro's arrival and how they were captured, she even mentioned the queen's name.

Renji then realised something about the queen as he listened to the conversation real closely. ' There's no way she could do something about this, does she? I mean out of all Authorities, she's much stronger than at least 5 soul reapers and an Arranchar. Could she have something to do about with... Aizan and the Soul society?' he said to himself.

Renji's thoughts had turned back on those nostalgic terrible memories on how one of the soul reaper captains, Aizan, had betrayed the Soul society and attempted to destroy it along with his armies. Thankfully, by Kisuke Urahara, he's now sealed for 20 000 years and hope he'll never had a chance to get out.

Meanwhile, Rukia peeped through on Renji's shoulder. She noticed something about Ichitaro's strange `spirit energy` ever since he was at the healing room and when he fought Jupiter after a fatal injury. She kept glancing over him as he looked at his hands for about few minutes.

She remained silent and one day she could confront Ichigo about this matter.

Shikamaru got himself up beneath from Rangiku's legs and saw three demons were already asleep and as he was rubbing his head, he could feel blood running through his head and could feel a sharp pain on his front head.

' Fuck. That kid should have thought of something else instead of kicking my ass so hard.', he thought. Frustrated and surprised by his actions, he took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote something from his bloody fingers. He then placed his glyph and healed himself., ' I'll get your stupid ass someday, kid. No one kicked me like that and get away with it! '

Little do they know, the expression on to Mimi began to change from insecure to anger and grief. As Yoshimura listened to every words Mimi had explained, Ichitaro's patients was slowly running out. He wanted to leave them, but it'll be cruel to him to leave his sisters without their magic or if they could defend themselves. Then he noticed that one of the demons' eyes were opened. He then kicked him unconscious, showing demon blood in his left shoe and headed towards Yoshimura and said:

" We have to leave now. They're finally awakened____"

" Hush, Ichitaro. Can't you see how busy I am?" Yoshimura disturbed Ichitaro with her hand covering his mouth. She turned towards Mimi and said, " Sorry about that. You can continue."

Mimi scratches her head and said : " Well, after the queen took over the Yokai district, they're demons out there who captured our people, we're beatened every single day since we're no match for them and they treated us like slaves. They even took advantage on women and children. "

In a meantime, Renji and Shikamaru were shocked to the core.

'So she's behind all of this? It can't be. If only I could bring evidence to Captain Yamamoto, then it'll be easy right?'

Shikamaru thought as unanswered questions were engulfed by puzzling mysteries. Could the queen be behind all of this? Nobody knows how.

After Mimi had finished her ` confession `, Yoshimura let go of her hand from Ichitaro's mouth. Even though he wiped it because of how cold her hand was, she finally allowed him to speak.

" As I was saying before you interrupted me, the demons are up and we have to hurry." he grunts.

" Don't worry, Mr. I'm on it. But I have one problem -I just couldn't figure out which keys to open this thing. They're all more or less the same." she stroked her chin and looked at the keys that she'd placed. Until Hachi placed his paws on the last forth key.

" That's the one. It's the same key that they've locked us up. "said Hachi in a humbled,yet scared voice . Before her eyes turned icy blue in colour and a key ring in her right hand side, she picked up the key that one of the kamaitachis pointed and opened the cage, setting them free.

The Kamaitachis were jubilantly rejoice when they reunited their leader; However, it didn't go as everyone expected - they were four of them and everyone noticed a cat-like creature slowly crawling from the cage.

It looked around the grasslands as if it was lost, until it spotted Shikamaru. His pinkish red eyes sparkled in amazement and asked:

" Mikatsu? What the fuck are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be dead or captured during the Bonfire night?"

In confusion, Mikatsu looked at Shikamaru and answered in a rage tone:

" I thought you're in the Soul society like you always do. I guess you're in your shenanigans again, but this time you dragged two of the lieutenants into this. I'm going to tell your dad about this."

" Oh yeah, well I'm going to tell your parents about you having a shenanigans by f*ngering on other girls too." Shikamaru scoffed.

"YOU KEEP MY BUSINESS OUT OF THIS, YOU CUNT!! " she yowled.

Seeing them bickering with arguments like preschoolers, Ichitaro have had enough as he knew he was wasting his own time watching them. He simply walked away and was going to disappear from them, until he sensed a certain spirit energy had rose from its slumber. That's when he realised, they're awakened and had to drag his sisters away from them. The Kamaitachis were confused when he whisk their arms around his.

" Ichitaro, somethings wrong?" Rangiku asked.

" We have to get going. They're awakened." he answered.

" Oh right. It's getting dark, let's find an accommodation as soon as possible and find a way to heal Rukia." Yoshimura answered as everyone were headed away from them. Even Shikamaru and Mikatsu decided to catch up with them.

"Hey, guys. Where are you going? Don't leave me here with Miss Know-it-all!" he shouted.

" Speak for yourself, Idiot!" she snapped. Whilst everyone were heading to a place, Excalibur stood still until he spread his wings and flew towards them and landed onto Ichitaro's shoulder without getting spotted.

However, as the demons were awake, they realised they're gone. One of the demon was enraged and all of them got up.

" What in the.... Where are these guys?!" the first one shouted.

" You mean these little Kamaitachis?" the second one asked.

" Yes, you shithead! These four Kamaitachis and a little Nekomada!"

" I don't know, maybe the Soul reapers have taken them." the second one said, letting the third one shrugged in confusion. The first one simply said:

" Kinda think of it, I don't know how he does it and I couldn't remember anything else."

" We'll caught them another day. Otherwise the Queen would've killed us if we don't have them." said the third one.

" Let's go home and maybe our memories will surely come back."

All of them agreed until a masculine figure had stopped them at their tracks leaving them in a complete shock.

" I don't think you gentlemen will leave this instantly. I just wanted some help from each and every one of you." he said with a sweet, mascular voice and when they saw him emerging from the shadows, all were shocked when they realised he's a soul reaper.

~~~~~~~

Meanwhile in Karakuda town.....

Somewhere in Downtown of Karakuda, Chad was standing right next to the bar door. He was waiting for Ichigo as he promised him to be there in the afternoon. However he could see him waving his hands in mid air right across the street. Ichigo jogged a little bit to reach him, despite he hasn't cared about the winds of a cold early winter attacking his jacket.

" Shit, it's cold outside." he said.

" I know. I'll be freezing to death, if I've waited for you longer." said Chad.

Ichigo scoffed and asked :

" Is Ginjo here?"

Chad nodded and were about to head inside a bar club.

" Hey, Ichigo. If it's about Ichitaro in the Soul society, does it almost bumbed you out?"

" Yes, it does. But, if Rukia is there and guarding him for her life then... he's going to be okay. I'm trusting her." Ichigo answered, showing off a faint smile on his face after thinking about her.

Meanwhile inside the bar, they're four people there, minding there own business. One girl with a scarlet pigtails was playing with her doll house, while a blonde haired boy was playing his console games in frustration. A bartender was pouring drinks on a gentleman as he was watching two people having sex on a tiny television. It seems he was enjoying one man thrusting his long ` sword ` inside a naked woman's sacred peach. A loud moans were frustrating almost everyone, but himself. Until a boy threw it to the couch and went to confront him.

" Ginjo, turn that shit off. I'm concentrating here! " he grunted.

" Come on, Yukio. Can't you see I'm busy watching this? It'll help you someday." he said with a smile on his face, irritating Yukio.

" Fuck you, then." he stormed off towards the bathroom, taking his console with him. Ginjo turned to the TV and watched it. He was getting himself comfort, but a dark skinned woman came back from her bathroom break, took the remote from the one eyed butler and turned it back to the news.

" Dang it, Jackie. I'm watching over here !"

" No, we have to. Because of Kisuke, shit has now hit the fan." said Jackie, now trembled in fear and frustration.

" What are you talking about?" he asked. Jackie pointed on the news as the presenter announced:

" NOW IN BREAKING NEWS - KOREAN-HAWAIIAN JOURNALIST GUMIHO YURI IS NOW OUT OF JAIL THIS MORNING . SHE WAS WRONGFULLY ACCUSED OF TREASON AND THE LAW FORCEMENT IN SALT LAKE CITY 17 MONTHS AGO. WE'LL GIVE YOU MORE DETAILS AFTER THAT. "

Ginjo's expression changes drastically as his smile was wiped away from his face.

" This is bad, really bad." he said. Yet, a door open and he could hear Ichigo's voice, in which he asked: " What's bad?"

The pigtailed girl turned and saw him.

" Ichigo kurosaki?!" she stammered in a tiny voice. Ginjo turned his back and saw him.

" Took you a while. I thought you don't want any help."

" Ginjo please. I have to protect my friends and family. I thank you for saving Yuzu and Karin from a Hallow. Now I have to get my powers back to do so."

Ginjo then took a Hallow pass from his pocket and said : " Here. I found this on the river. If you want your powers back, don't you? We'll start tomorrow. A keep it with you this time."

He gave it to Ichigo and head outside to light some cigarette in a cold afternoon. And once he regained his powers, Ichigo will reunite with Rukia and bring Ichitaro home - safe and sound.