“Urahara Kisuke, what have you done with my children?!” Isshin roared as he charged into the shoten.
Kisuke covered his frown with his fan and dodged Isshin’s lunge, mind scrambling to determine what Isshin was shouting about. Aizen remained undiscovered in Soul Society and there’d been no sign of particularly dangerous Hollows in years; as far as Kisuke knew, nothing of interest had happened overnight.
“Good morning to you as well!” Kisuke tried, ducking away from another of Isshin’s infuriated lunges and putting the table between them again. “If you’ll just calm down—”
“I’ll calm down when you bring them back!”
“I doubt he’s the cause of this,” a cold, harsh voice broke in. Ishida Ryuuken stalked through the open door, a newspaper clutched in his hand and his reiatsu straining against his control. “Unless you know of a worldwide plot that you haven’t informed us of, Shinigami?”
Kisuke blinked and stepped away from Isshin’s reach, accepting the newspaper when Ishida offered. There, splashed across the front page, was a headline that made his mouth turn dry.
Tens of thousands missing worldwide!
“No,” he said faintly, skimming the article for what little information it could provide. “I know of nothing on this scale. Even Aizen wouldn’t… this isn’t like him,” Kisuke admitted with a sigh. There was precious little information in the article beyond the basics: people of all ages, gone missing overnight—
No, not entirely overnight. Kisuke frowned at the newspaper then glanced up at Ishida inquiringly.
“The times are more precise from Europe and the States,” Ishida agreed, handing over a folder of printouts. “We woke up to this mess. They were awake for the event, whatever the event was. Not that being awake was useful for anything other than noticing that people were missing sooner.”
Kisuke set the newspaper down and began to flip through the printouts. The articles covered almost the entire globe. Whatever had happened, only the most remote places appeared safe from the scourge. “Midnight,” Kisuke mused aloud as he skimmed the papers and converted times as he went. “Somewhere between eleven and one at night, our time.”
“Midnight?” Isshin scowled and snatched up some of the papers that Kisuke had already read. “Ichigo and his sisters asked to stay up late last night. Something about that game they play getting a large update and wanting to poke around a bit. It wasn’t a school night, so I agreed. They were supposed to go to bed about one in the morning…”
“Which game?” Ishida asked.
Isshin rolled his eyes and shot Ryuuken an exasperated look. “Maybe leave the hospital more often,” he said tartly. “Elder Tales, of course! They’ve only been advertising the newest expansion for the past three months nonstop.”
Ishida crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “You think a game has something to do with this?”
“At this point, I think anything could have something to do with this,” Isshin muttered, shoving the papers back into the folder and dropping it onto the table. “If you haven’t done anything with them—”
“Which I haven’t!” Kisuke defended himself.
“—then fuck if I know what happened. This is far too widespread to be anyone we know, and the times are too… convenient. One country I’d accept, but the whole world? At nearly the same time?”
“There aren’t enough Shinigami in all of Seireitei to do this,” Kisuke agreed, fidgeting with his fan and trying to make sense of what little information he had. Tens of thousands of living people, vanishing in approximately a two hour window — or perhaps even less — would require so much movement that there were sure to be signs. Signs that were entirely missing from all the reports. “The Quincy have the same problem of numbers—”
“We don’t even have a use for living souls,” Ishida grumbled.
“—and Hollows would have left some sort of evidence behind,” Kisuke finished with a small nod to Ishida. He hadn’t thought the Quincy were a likely cause, but it still needed to be mentioned.
“So that’s it, then? No miraculous ideas from the exiled Shinigami?” Ishida asked with a hard gaze.
Kisuke blinked and looked, really looked, at Ishida for the first time since he’d walked through the door, consciously cataloging everything wrong about the man. His attire was askew, shirt haphazardly tucked into his pants and his tie missing, and his hair was sticking up at odd angles instead of laying flat. One hand was trembling faintly, fingers twitching towards his pocket time and time again, and his other was curled as if to grip a bow.
“Hey, don’t you have work to be at?” Isshin said slowly, frowning in confusion as he looked from Ishida to the stack of papers on the table. “Why are you here?”
“My son,” Ishida said, voice dry and cold and laced with an undirected fury, “is one of the lost as well.”
Isshin’s jaw clenched. “Right. Okay.” He took a deep breath and rubbed at his chin. “Did he play Elder Tales? Think he was playing last night?”
Ishida huffed. “I have no idea. What he does in his spare time is none of my business.”
“You… ugh, fine.” Isshin squared his shoulders and for a moment Kisuke could see the Shinigami he’d once been: Clan Leader and Captain and a man used to ordering people around. His next words only solidified that impression. “Go and check. See if your son’s computer is on and if the game Elder Tales is still running. Should be loaded to the login screen, if what I found in Ichigo’s room holds true. Kisuke, help me check Ichigo’s friends, I remember him saying that they were all planning on meeting up in game last night.”
“Very well,” Kisuke agreed, seeing no reason to deny the request. Odds were the game had nothing to do with the disappearances, but he needed data to be certain of that. Spiritual powers didn’t make sense either; those were rare enough in humans that tens of thousands vanishing didn’t make sense, not when Ishida Ryuuken was standing right in front of him.
Without more information, he couldn’t come up with any theories. Without any theories, he had no hope of reversing whatever it was that had happened.
Without reversing it, without Kurosaki Ichigo to face Aizen, he didn’t know if any of them had a chance to survive Aizen’s ambitions.
The clock was ticking.