NOVEL WEB 26 – Stalking
Hisashi had been watching the Kurosaki family focusing mostly on Masaki and Ichigo. On days where it would rain he followed them closely, but on sunny days he was comfortable just keeping an eye on them from a distance using his spirit senses while he focused on his own progress such as training his skills. After almost two months he had managed to get a pretty good feel for their schedule.
Masaki spent most of her time caring for the kids and helping out as the receptionist of Kurosaki Clinic during the office hours. When she wasn't working as receptionist she would usually either be with her kids, taking care of the home or doing shopping.
Isshin spent most of the day as the doctor of Kurosaki Clinic taking care of patients and spent whatever he could outside of that with his wife and kids. Looking at his face annoyed Hisashi a little though since if Isshin had been just a little faster back then Hisashi might not have died to White. It was irrational as he knew Isshin wasn't really to blame, but you can't will yourself to not be frustrated if that's the way you feel.
Besides school Ichigo liked to go to Karate a local dojo to practice and spend time with Tatsuki Arisawa. He got beat... a lot. He didn't have many other friends to spend time with as most had already judged him to be the weird ghost kid and avoided him like the plague.
Meanwhile Yuzu and Karin spent most of the time either at kindergarten or at home being taken care of by Masaki. At only five years old the twins were still too young to have any real hobbies outside of the home.
The only other familiar character from Bleach that I had come across was Tatsuki Arisawa since she was pretty much Ichigo's only friend at this time. No tiny Chad nor Orihime in his life yet.
He also ended up going on a handful dates with Haruko, getting to know each other better while having a great time. It also helped familiarise him with Karakura Town as they went to a variety of attractions around town. It was a little difficult to maintain enough distance to not reveal that his form was fake.
However getting to experience something akin to a normal life for the first time in four years was extremely enjoyable even if he couldn't be truthful about his situation. It was also his only source of entertainment in Karakura Town. Unless you count people watching as entertainment, which he did not.
He really wished he could get a human form though. Even if Vasto Lorde wasn't completely human it should be close enough to where he could use illusions to just cover up the differences rather than being entirely fake like he was now. He could hide any weird armour/carapace, wings and such as long as he had a humanoid shape and size.
While walking around town he would run in to black cats from time to time and each and every one of them made him nervous. He hoped he would be able to notice some kind of spiritual signature or energy emission from Yoruichi, but he wasn't willing to take a risk on that assumption.
Anytime a black cat showed up, even with it being virtually impossible for Yoruichi to see through his illusions, he gave it a wide berth just to be sure. Why didn't she have any distinctive features in her cat form. Something like a nicely designed collar or a bow.
Had had also managed to locate Urahara's store a few days in and made sure to not get too close to it either just in case that crazy bum did have some crazy way to detect him he couldn't even imagine. Though it was very unlikely, Urahara was one to invent crazy things for no good reason other than that he was interested in trying it after all.
It was the third day in a row where it was raining and he was growing a little tired of watching Masaki and Ichigo so closely for an extended time. However they were walking out in the rain when in the distance he could see the little expressionless girl, that damn Grand Fisher's lure. It was just by the riverbed, the river had already grown well beyond its usual bounds due to the non-stop downpour over the past few days and the water was flowing rapidly and murky obscuring Grand Fisher.
Hisashi ran ahead of the pair and scanned the area with his spiritual senses he noticed Grand Fisher was hiding in the shallows of the river very close to where his lure was. Hisashi crossed to the other side of the river and gently entered the river. Thankfully the heavy rain and river flow covered up just about any little bit of noise he still made which made it even easier to slip in unnoticed along with his invisibility.
He slowly, but steadily swam up behind Grand Fisher stalking it as it was stalking Masaki and Ichigo. He was ready to lure them closer for his final deadly strike, the one that would end up killing Masaki when she tried to save Ichigo. Hisashi was in position to strike the unsuspecting Grand Fisher meanwhile focusing on his spiritual senses to know exactly was going on around him outside of the water. Both to keep an eye on his three targets and any outside forces that might show up.
He had to strike at just the right moment. Then it happened. Ichigo noticed the girl-like lure by the riverbank and when it looked like she was about to fall into the river he dashed away from his mother to try saving it. His mother panicked and ran after him. Just as he was about to get to the girl-like lure and made a grab for her to pull her away from the river Grand Fisher started the final stage of his trap.
He pulled the lure towards him in the water causing Ichigo to lose his balance. Grand Fisher drew back his claws to strike. Masaki had noticed something was off about the girl and that she wasn't human. Masaki jumped towards Ichigo to save him.
