Welcome to Gaia! ::

Adrienne hissed softly as she found that she couldn't abide the silence. It annoyed her now for some reason. "What have you been doing sssince we parted waysss?" The serpent woman leaned against the front side of the wagon, just behind Jin, and as she talked, she quietly rifled through the bags in search of more clothing.

((Yusuke, that post has inspired me to do something similar.))



7:33 A.M.

"WAKE UUUUUUUP!!!"

"GYAAH!!!"

Ichigo shot out of bed abruptly, startled by the loud shouting of a stuffed animal in his ear. The ringing left over was so loud he hardly noticed that his alarm was blaring. All he could think of was...

"KNOCK IT OFF!"

HAET.

With one fell swing of his arm, the stuffed animal was knocked off of his bed and into the far wall of the room.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing, Kon!?"

"Don't use that tone with me, you jerk!" replied Kon, skittering back up onto the bed. "I've been trying to wake you up for the past three minutes so that you could shut off that damn alarm you set! I don't know how to work that stupid thing! Why the hell are you setting an alarm to wake you up when it doesn't work!"

"Can it. I'm up now, aren't I?"

Looking down, Ichigo could notice he had fallen asleep a bit awkwardly. His bed was a mess, and his clothes...

"Oh yeah, and you gotta watch how you sleep, Ichigo! Seriously! I woke up and you were there scratching yourself! That's gross! Don't you have any--"

The stuffed animal was abruptly cut off by a foot in his face. Ichigo held his head as if he was suffering from a migrane.

"Just...stop..."

It's been a while since the tournament ended and the events at the stadium took place. Seeing my situation, Urahara decided to help me out by renting me a room in a cheaper hotel in the town of Latent. I haven't heard much from the others, but I bet they're still back in Karakura. I know I could just stay with Urahara in the shop he opened up in Durem, but hat n' clogs said a teenager like me probably needed his privacy. That guy's such a friggin' pain in the a**.

But I guess it makes a lot more sense for me to stick around here. Ever since that encounter in the Stadium, I knew this was something I couldn't ignore. Kon told me about what he saw in the Forest. Now something really bad was about to go down. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll run into those two guys I saw that day...that wolf-man and the guy with green hair. They probably had a better idea about what was going on around here. But for now...

That was when something flew in through Ichigo's window. It was small, black, and fluttered about so gracefully in the air it was as if the air wasn't affecting it at all.

"That's a..."

It was a jigokucho, or hell butterfly. It could only mean one thing...



Ichigo recognized that calm, amiable tone of voice.

"That voice. Hey, you're--"

Ichigo was abruptly cut off. Apparently the voice was a recording.





Oh yeah. A kidnapping, soul-sucking demons and landsharks. It was fun on a bun.



As much as Ichigo hated to be thought of as Soul Society's errand boy, Ukitake had a point. Something was going on in this place, and Ichigo wanted to do something about it.



"If you're still wondering why we're sending you, I should also mention that the Head Captain isn't the only one concerned with this situation. Someone else has personally asked for your assistance, and has also sent one of his own to assist you in your mission. You are to meet him tomorrow in Nepris City. We wish you the best of luck, Ichigo Kurosaki."

"Someone to assist me? Who the heck is he talking about?"



Dressed in his shiakushou, a black hakama with a white belt, Ichigo walked alongside Yusuke as they headed towards Nepris City. He had left Kon in his body back at the hotel to hold the fort while Ichigo was on his mission. It wasn't like Kon could complain anyway, being able to get room service and all. Zangetsu was wrapped in linen upon Ichigo's back, held by a red chain strap. In shinigami form, Ichigo was invisible to normal people who couldn't sense spiritual pressure. But if they were going up against demons, odds were Ichigo wasn't going to be invisible to anyone.

Ichigo didn't expect to be paired up with Yusuke again, but considering their similar strengths with spirit energy it wasn't a bad match up at all.

"So, how long 'till we get to the city?"

Yusuke answers Ichigo with that relaxed tone of his as they arrive to the top of a hill: "We're already there."

Looking down onto the city from their height, Yusuke examined the place. To him, it looked like everything was fine. But he had a feeling this was only a silence before the storm. Something was here, and he was going to find whatever it was and beat it until it cried "Uncle." Stepping forward, he continues to the entrance of the city until one of the men walk up to greet them.

He answers the man: "Hey. My name's Yusuke Urameshi, and this here's Ichigo." Yusuke's right hand removes itself from his pocket to point a thumb in the guy's direction. "We got a notice that you guys have been having some problems with some demons?"

[sorry ichigo, i must've missed that part. though yeah, guards would be able to at least know he was there. not everyone's human, but i don't mean to ignore your abilities.]

"You and your specter are here to fight our demon, then?" He turned to the guard next to him, then whistled out, calling an older guard with more armor and everything else that showed that even if he wasn't a general, he was the one in charge around here.

The grizzled old man walked up with a limp, using his spear to offset his bad leg that had a wrapped cloth around it. He appraised Yusuke with a single eye, the other almost closed because he was staring that hard. Then he leaned back, suddenly looking around... it took him a couple of seconds, but he was able to 'see' Ichigo.

"...Huh. You're our Chroma, then. Not one to call our hired help weak, but... you look weak. Really got what it takes..." The pause was a fish for a name, a name quickly given to him by the first guard. "...Yusuke? Does your ghost have a name, then?"

"You are being paid at all?"

It was hard to tell if the man was joking or not, because the draw of lips across his face produced a smile that was without mirth. The joke-or-not-joke ended when he turned his head to the side, then looked down to his leg. He lifted it just a bit.

"It is a beast just taller than you. A land octopus, in a way..." He shook his head. "...but it's only for its many tentacled limbs upon which it moves. It lacks apparent eyes, having nothing but a giant maw, lined with rows of sharp teeth, where the rest of its body should be. Don't let its simple appearance fool you, though. It crushed my knee with a second's lapse on my part, a single limb catching me off my guard and seeking my weapon.

"It blends in enough with the surroundings, and is only found when it wants to eat. The slimy skin and interesting appearance would give it away, though. And its stentch..."

The others moaned and shook their heads. "You'll smell it and forfeit your latest meal and bowels both. It knows our tounge, making those claims and speaking of another two, but we've only seen the one. But to let it speak means to smell its bad breath... ugh. I'd rather swim in fish entrails baking in the sun, than have that cling to my skin again."

Yusuke puts his right hand to his chin as if he was elegantly thinking like a detective. As much as he tries to pull the act, he was more thinking about how to kick the things' a**, if it even had one, than wondering how to catch it. But, like Ichigo said, knowing where it is would be better knowledge.

Octupus, a bit tall, and smelly. This kind of sucked since Yusuke's nose was many times stronger than a human's, being a demon hybrid and all, but it also gave him a better sense of direction of where the demon would be if they ever get close. He'll just have to find some type of nostril plugger or face smelling the thing throughout the entire fight. Then again, he's been in demon world, where smells may rival the enemy's own. He'll have to wait and see for that.

Yusuke turns his head to the rustling of the trees back down the road. Looking toward it, the notice from the old man was the giveaway that their demon was on his way. The kid stares in the direction of the disturbance for a few seconds before bringing his right fist to the left hand, cracking his knuckles as he gives a smirk.

"Don't worry, old man. We got this. Ready, Ichigo?"

As Ichigo and Yusuke readied themselves, the outer guards were falling back, sprinting to the village to hold the main line-- it'd been already arranged to change the front-village-final line defense formation, so that the two visitors would form their own front line. The guards would combine their numbers to create a larger village and final line, and did just that. Fear were in none of their eyes, most of them long-time fighters of men, animals, and the sea. But look closely, and you could see just a hint of worry, that these two men wouldn't be able to hold their own.


The time to test came soon after the last guard passed the two fighters. Shadows and sounds snaked through the trees before emerging on the open path. The description was rather accurate-- the demon was pretty much a giant mouth on tentacles, with lips currently curled up in a smile. It stopped after it breached the tree line, apparently observing with its upper tentacles moving about slowly. Bulbed, they opened to show that the senior guard had misspoke one thing-- it didn't have eyes over the mouth as a regular human or beast should, but it had a great deal of them at the end surrounding that large maw. As they all stared each other down, -something- shone in the air between them, much closer to the demon.

He also didn't say that it could speak, though it was implied with the bill anyway.

"Eheheh... You two are new. You two will do."