Ichigo Kurosaki was having one of those really weird days.
Really, really weird.
It had honestly started out innocently enough, but at some point everything just went completely topsy-turvy, batshit insane.
Ichigo had been walking down a dark, secluded alleyway in downtown Karakura, curiously handling a strange, gun-like implement. It looked sort of like one of those cheesy sci-fi laser guns you would always see in old movies, with an ass-load of little knobs and switches and dials on the side. It looked more like something you'd see in the hands of Marvin the Martian than any sort of Soul Reaper.
He wasn't sure, exactly, how this thing was supposed to work, either, but he did know what Urahara had told him.
"This is a kind of prototype weapon commissioned by Soul Society," Hat-and-clogs had explained a few hours earlier, when he'd handed the contraption to Ichigo at his store. "After various recent events, it was decided that practical alternatives to zanpakuto should be researched and developed."
Ichigo had given Urahara a curious look at this. "Okay, but why are you giving this to me?"
"Field testing!" said the mad scientist cheerfully. "You're pretty tough, so there shouldn't be any problems if the weapon suddenly backfires~"
Ichigo scowled. "Crazy old bastard," he muttered darkly. He did not appreciate Urahara's eccentricities, no matter how helpful the man himself had proven to be in the past. It was especially annoying because of how often he wound up getting conned by Hat-and-clogs into putting his own ass on the line in the exiled captain's place.
"How's this thing even supposed to work, anyways?" Ichigo wondered irritably, holding the so-called gun up to his eye and smacking the side of it. He'd tried pulling the trigger maybe a hundred times, earlier, while testing the thing out, but no matter how he'd fiddled with the weapon he hadn't gotten so much as a spark out of it.
Nothing. No matter how Ichigo tried it, this gun did absolutely—
At that moment, something happened.
Ichigo bit back a yelp when the outlandish-looking gun he had been examining in his hands suddenly let off a blast of red energy that shot out of the alleyway. It was a visible sphere of concentrated reiryoku, in shape and color reminiscent of a bala. The bolt of spiritual power zoomed out of sight, small and fast, not unlike an actual bullet.
Looking on, dumbfounded, Ichigo saw the bolt impact with someone in a middle school girl's uniform, someone who happened to be walking past the alley at just that moment in time. This someone immediately collapsed to the sidewalk, and Ichigo ran out of the alley to check on them.
"Shit!" he quietly cursed, kneeling down next to the girl who was face-down on the pavement. "Are you okay?" he asked worriedly, grabbing her shoulder with one hand and rolling her over.
He almost blacked out when he realized the girl was none other than his sister, Karin.
(Karin Image)
The petite, black-haired girl moaned softly at the touch of Ichigo's hand on her shoulder. Her dark eyes fluttered open, but there was something different about them. They were glassy, and their color was slightly dull.
"Master..." she whispered, the residual hollow reiatsu left in her from the blast resonating with its source to produce a hypnotic effect latent. "Your wish is my command..."
Ichigo swore, and decided that he had to take Karin somewhere else. And, figuring that, if anyone knew what was going on with Karin, it would be a certain exiled shinigami scientist, Ichigo raced to the Urahara candy store with his nearly senseless sister in his arms.
When Ichigo reached the front of the shop, nearly tripping over a sweeping Ururu in his haste, he kicked the door with all of the considerable force his legs could muster.
"Oy! Hat-and-clogs! Get out here!" he shouted, the shop's astonishingly sturdy shoji door somehow managing to stand up to his assault.
"Yes?" said Urahara, peering over Ichigo's shoulder with the lower half of his face hidden by a paper fan. "What's so urgent that you feel the need to try and kick in my door?"
Ichigo, too concerned about his sister to even be creeped out by Urahara's sudden appearance, spun about face and held Karin up to Urahara.
"Something's wrong with Karin!" he snapped.
"Oh," said Urahara after taking a moment to pull down Karin's lower eyelids and inspected her pupils. "Is that all? It looks like it's nothing more than a simple cognitive override resulting in a passive, highly suggestible state of mind for the subject."
He laughed behind his fan at Ichigo's blank expression.
"It's just hypnosis, is all," he explained. "Though I must admit that I am interested in how it happened, considering our past experiences with hypnotic powers..."
Ichigo shuddered, recalling Aizen and Tsukishima.
Karin, for her part, took that moment to turn around in Ichigo's arms and look up at him.
"Do you want me to service you, master?"
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