Uryuu sat on the edge of the roof and scowled down at the chaos in the park below him. The collection of low level Hollows was insignificant, barely worth his notice except for the fact that he’d had no warning of this operation from any of his usual contacts. Which, fine, there was another would-be conqueror on the rise that he didn’t have an in with yet. That would be solved as soon as he hunted them down.

(If they were insignificant enough, he could even crush them without jeopardizing his position as a free agent.)

(He’d certainly done it before.)

No, the problem was the four suited figures battling the Hollows: red, black, green, and yellow fighters who were struggling their way through combat like the raw beginners they were. Not that most of them were incompetent — Uryuu suspected at least three of the four had experience with normal combat — but there was a difference between fighting as a civilian and fighting as a sentai.

(The problem was that they were part of his set. The wings rather gave it away.)

Footsteps drew his attention away from the chaos below, and he turned his head to scowl up at Urahara as the man approached, wings mantling to make himself look bigger. “When did this happen?”

“Oh, late last night, while you were busy putting down that rebellion for King Kitty.”

Uryuu rolled his eyes. “One of these days you’ll nickname the wrong person and will have so many regrets… and I will be laughing at your fate.”

“Mou, how cruel of you, Bluebird!” Urahara pouted as he dropped to sit at Uryuu’s side. He leaned forward and watched the chaos below them, legs swinging idly over the edge of the roof. “There was another attack like this late last night and those four got caught up in it. Before I knew what was happening, the crystals were glowing and woosh, four newborn sentai!”

“Before you knew what was happening. Right,” Uryuu scoffed and shook his head, flipping his wings closed. He doubted Urahara had ever been caught off guard in his life, no matter how flustered he sometimes acted. “I’m not babysitting them.”

Urahara chuckled and tapped his fan against his thigh. “I didn’t expect you to. Will you at least introduce yourself, though? Knowing that the last member of their set is active might prove beneficial.”

“I don’t need some ridiculous team in order to do my job,” Uryuu shot back, glaring at Urahara. “They’ll just slow me down and get all moralistic about my allies the same way the other sets get.”

“They might surprise you,” Urahara offered with a faint smile. “They’re good kids.”

“Tch.” Uryuu rose from his seat and pulled his helmet on, clicking it in place and scanning the readouts that sparked to life. “I’ll keep an eye on them, but only because they’re inexperienced and this is my territory. You can handle everything else. I’m not interested.”

He took a few steps back and spread his wings, giving them an experimental flap to test the wind before he launched himself into the air. Below him, the battle was… going. The four teens were doing their best, but they were new and inexperienced. Uryuu suspected they would win if given time, but he was tired and had no interest in lingering to make sure they survived.

(He needed to end this.)

It took little time to identify the Hollow leader. To angle himself just so. To fold his wings and strike—

The Hollow went down under his feet. Slammed into the ground with a familiar wail—

Uryuu refused to wait for reinforcements to arrive, just drove his heel into the Hollow’s mask and shattered it with a single blow.

“What—”

He ignored Red as the Hollow leader dissolved under his feet. Arced his wings up-up-up and let his power gather—

The Hollows shrieked in fear and turned to flee, but Uryuu wasn’t feeling forgiving. They wore no mark of allegiance, carried no telltale trace of his various allies, and were in his territory.

(Most Hollows knew better than to invade Karakura these days.)

(His reputation preceded him.)

A single wingbeat sent pale blue darts lancing across the park. One by one, the Hollows shrieked and fell, bodies already dissolving before they hit the ground. The air filled with swirls of light, obscuring his vision and whiting out his senses with the release of power.

By the time it calmed and Uryuu could blink the afterimages from his eyes, the four sentai were standing together in a group facing him. The attention made him bristle, wings mantling and chin tilting slightly up; if they thought they could take him to task for dealing with their enemies—

“Thanks for that,” Red said, interrupting Uryuu’s thoughts. “I’m I—ow!” He flinched as Green kicked his shin and hopped aside, wings flapping awkwardly as the movement unbalanced him. “Why’d you do that?!”

“We don’t introduce ourselves like that when we’re like this!” Green snapped, arms crossed over her chest. “Do it right or I’ll do it again.”

“But he’s part of our set! We should—”

“I don’t care who you are or what set you belong to,” Uryuu interrupted the budding argument, grimacing at the banter. Green might have struck Red, but he’d been around enough sentai and Hollows to know what play-fighting looked like; those two already knew each other and knew each other well. “Karakura is my territory and I’m not about to let raw beginners like you die on my watch. That’s the only thing I care about.”

“I’m Sunbird,” Red said stubbornly, arms crossed over his chest. “Yellow is Wagtail, Green is Lapwing, and Black is Raven. And since someone won’t let me actually introduce ourselves out here, we should go back to Urahara’s place and do it there.”

“I have no interest in knowing what you call yourselves, much less your civilian identities,” Uryuu reminded Red — Sunbird — sharply.

“But it will help you, won’t it?” Sunbird asked. “Knowing who we are, I mean. If we get in trouble as civilians—”

“Then you get in trouble as civilians,” Uryuu snapped, wings rustling briefly before he squashed the instinct to flare them. “You wouldn’t be the first and you won’t be the last.”

His words finally silenced Sunbird, though he doubted the argument was over. Sunbird was — like many red sentai — clearly the leader of the group and, worse, believed in the hype about sentai working together as a ‘true’ team.

(Bah. As if having related powers meant they had to work together.)

(Spare him the idealistic tripe.)

“Alright,” Sunbird said at last, voice soft. He relaxed his posture, confrontational edge dropping away, and continued, “Can we at least know your name?”

Uryuu stared at Sunbird for a moment, wondering why the other was asking when his name had been all over the news for years, then scoffed and glanced away towards the sky. “Kingfisher,” he said as he spread his wings and gave a few small flaps to test the air. A leap, a strong downbeat, and he was airborne before the other four could stop him. “Go home,” he ordered the group. “The fight’s over and there’s nothing left to deal with here.”

Orders he was going to follow himself the moment he gave Urahara a piece of his mind. Years of carrying the Kingfisher crystal and it still took it out of him; those four were going to be dead on their feet the moment they let the armor go and Urahara would have known that.

(He was going to have to keep a close eye on them to keep them alive.)

(Damn that meddling old Shinigami!)