[DISCONTINUED] Strive | Bleach

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Abduction of the Gentle Giant.

“Well, I have.” I glanced over at Ichigo, who still seemed downcast. “I saw it once before, in fact.” I searched through his thoughts, and found exactly what it was he was talking about. It was a large purple gate instead of red, and even though it was similar to the one who stole Orihime last night… it still just didn’t add up.

“That wasn’t it,” I concluded, earning expectant looks from the others. “And besides, there’s no way Hell would just make off with a human.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Ichigo said with a nod. “So, what are you two doing here, anyway?”

“What do you think?” Renji asked, narrowing his dark eyebrows at him. “They gave me responsibility for this town. If anything strange happens here, it’s my job to deal with it.” And then he looked at me.

“The Head Captain’s sending me to Hueco Mundo, so I’m helping out until I have to leave.”

“That’s all well and good, but that isn’t what he asked you,” Uryū said pointedly. “We already know why you’re here in general; he just asked you why you’re here at our school.”

“And we just explained it, dumbass!” Renji snapped, glaring over at him.

“Yeah, and you’re still missing the whole point!”

“You’re not helping!” Ichigo shouted, and since I was right next to him, he was a lot louder than he needed to be. “Both of you just shut up!”

“The thing that worries me is what happened with the girls earlier,” said Chad, stopping him from getting angrier. But he was right.

When we went to their classroom before, Ichigo had asked a few of them if they had seen Orihime around.

“Who? Orihime? Is she a new student or something?”

“It appears as though their memory of her has been completely erased.”

“The same thing happened to Rukia when she disappeared,” said Uryū. Ichigo eyes suddenly widened.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed.

“What’s it?”
“The fact that someone’s gone to all the trouble of using Memory Replacement on these kids. It means that, sooner or later, they knew we’d come looking for her.”

“So then that means her disappearance wasn’t an accident,” I added. “She was kidnapped.” Ichigo nodded.

“Then I think we should go back to Orihime’s apartment and take another look,” said Uryū. “There might be some clues we missed somehow.”

“Good idea.” The four of us stood up and started walking away, leaving Renji squatting in the yard. “Come on, let’s do it.”

“Hey, wait!” he called to us. “You mean right now? I thought you guys were supposed to be in class?”

“Lighten up,” Ichigo said over his shoulder. “This is more important than school.”

***

After three rings of her doorbell and several twists of the door’s handle, it was obvious that we’d have to come up with some other idea if we’d want to get inside Orihime’s apartment.

“I guess it’s locked,” Ichigo concluded, tightening his grip on the knob.

“I’ll take care of it.” Chad stepped forward, cracking his knuckles.