7th Month 4th Day

Toshi was guardian-less at that particular moment. It was because Kanaboshi in particular had a habit of pulling him off his skateboard with her wild, jerky movements. He was going at one hell of a pace, since he was supernaturally strong by now. He was almost worried that his trucks were going to fall off as he kickflipped and landed on the concrete slope that ran along the riverbed. It was in fact Kasei that warned him of the impending danger.

"Look out you damned fool!" came the shrill voice in his mind, snapping him out of his Sweet Trip induced daze. That was a damned ghost in front of him! He swerved, flicky blonde hair plastering itself to his face as the wind changed direction and he shot backwards off of his skateboard which narrowly missed the ghost-kid. He attempted to regain his footing but failed miserably, and tumbled backwards into the water with a monumental splash. "Idiot..." Kasei murmured while Kanboshi giggled. Jeez when did that one get so much more confident? Toshi had almost preferred it when the guardian had been quiet and demure. He surfaced, spitting water out of his mouth and lungs, before swimming to the shore, his old KT-high jacket and black pants sopping wet.

"Hey kid are you okay?" he called to the ghost. He spotted his backpack on the pavement. Clambering out of the water to get it, Toshi became aware of another spiritual being that had been watching from the other side of the river. The child, who seemed to have been running or whatever, wasn't too far away from him now and he beckoned her over as he shook the water off of himself and went to get his bag. Toshi was pretty gruff with the neighbourhood kids usually, but he could be extra tender with the deceased. "Hey you must be hungry. How long ago you die?" he asked, fishing around his bag for the packet of biscuits he knew he had.

"Hey and you!" he shouted over to the person on the other side of the river. "What's the big idea just letting some kid run around like that. She might get eaten or somethin' yanno!" As he looked at her, however, he noticed her headphones and cursed to himself. His MP3 player had been in his pocket, his headphones lost to the depths by the speed of his fall. He pulled it out of his pocket. Totally fucked. What a pisser.

The ghost-kid murmured some response to Toshi and he passed her a biscuit. Upon closer inspection she was maybe eight or nine, her hair in a bouncy ponytail. She took the biscuit and nibbled it. Toshi couldn't really see any visible signs of death on her but then again they weren't necessarily always there. Jeez K-town had a lot of dead kids. He remembered from highschool that almost every other week it felt like some poor brat was popping their cloggs. He ran his fingers through his hair to give it some semblance of order. When wet it was like dark straw. He tossed his jacket onto the concrete embankment to dry. Underneath he wore a plain white tee which showed off his physique but kind of made him look like a greaser or a mechanic or something with the black pants. He turned around to look at the person on the other side of the river, the ghost girl's hand now firmly clutched in his own. She hadn't responded verbally, or else taken her headphones out. She looked pretty cute from over here though, Toshi gulped.

"Easy there lover boy." Kanaboshi said to Toshi within his head and he tried to bat her away like an annoying fly, resulting in a weird gesure that might have been interpreted as a wave. Kasei was notoriously quiet, which Toshi tried not to think too hard about because of the weird implications and the fact that his Hogo-Sha could read all of his surface level thoughts. He turned to the girl.

"Ok sweetheart, I'm going to need you to be brave. Let's wait for a shinigami eh?" he asked her, before hoisting her onto his back. She would, quite frankly, have little choice in the matter. Child or none, all plus souls could become hollows. All hollows could be dangerous. His task now was to find one and distract it long enough that a shinigami would come to deal with it where it would also be able to konso this girl. The girl securely planted on his back still nibbling at a biscuit, Toshi took several steps back from the river's edge. Then he sprinted towards it and made a longjump any olympian would have been proud of. He didn't necessarily need the run up, or the great longjump technique he had developed through years of highschool athletics, but just clearing the six or seven or however many meters across the river with a regular leap would have been a little showy for Toshi. He had no idea what the person on the other side of the bank knew about the spiritual world and he didn't want to freak her out.

"Hi." he said after an imperfect but not ungracious landing. He spoke a little loud so hopefully she would be able to hear. He'd left his bag back on the other side of the embankment with his jacket but if push came to shove he always had his secret weapon in order to get back if needs be.

Up close Toshi was able to fully corroborate the girl's cuteness. She was indeed very attractive but he had realized that she looked... Well like a girl. Despite the secretarial glasses and the ultrathin eyebrows, the big eyes and pert nose just made her seem so young to Toshi. He scowled slightly to himself. He really hated being made to feel old. Just that morning, Kanaboshi had admonished him and plucked several silver hairs from the back of his head and had given him no end of grief to which he had responded with mutterings of his greys coming from having to deal with her and Kasei all the time. The two guardian spirits had not taken that well. He wasn't about to dislike someone just because they made him feel a little old though.

"Ahh jeez, sorry." he said, rubbing the back of his head, a nervous habit of his, with one hand before hoisting the child further up his back. "So hey you can see spirits too right? Do you know how long this little scamp's been here?" he asked her. The child at that moment pulled herself up onto Toshi's shoulders and sat there. He held her leg with one hand to steady her, and looked up dubiously before imitating a shrug with his head and turning his attention back to the woman in front of him.

"I've not seen you before, did you go to K-town high?" he asked. She would have been a freshman when he was taking his second year in K-high prep, by his reckoning though looks could be deceiving.

By her expression Toshi got the sense that she was kind of stuck up. She seemed like the kind of girl that might tell you "I have a boyfriend" when you tried to ask her if you could use her calculator in math class or something like that. She finally took her headphones off which was nice though, at least he didn't feel like he was talking to a wall or had to shout. He had assumed by her quiet voice that she hadn't been listening to any music anyway, which he wasn't sure if it annoyed him any more or not. Regardless; she could see spirits, but didn't know anything about the kid. Great. He tried hard to reassess the notion that the plus soul was essentially a ticking time bomb that he was waiting to turn into a hollow but it was difficult. Toshi was only human, after all. He could sense some form of apprehension which worried him. Hollows the had just turned were quite weak, and he ordinarily didn't have too much of a problem. He just didn't want to cause a scene.

"Right." he responded a little shortly to her question, his mind buzzing. "Yeah. Well no, I was. Look that isn't important now." he said, waving off her small-talk, not really able to tell that she was simply playing nice with him. "Nice to meet you, imouto. I'm Toshi." he said, wondering how best to attract a shinigami or a hollow. "How you feeling, kid?" he asked the kid upon his shoulders and she responded with a non-committal noise. Not exactly reassuring. Judging by Riku's reaction she wasn't exactly an expert here. In fact she was a little bit of a chocolate teapot. "Well you were once the same." Kanaboshi admonished. "Yesyes I know, now hush." he told the hogo-sha; the exchange happened in his head.

He turned to focus on Riku, having been staring into the middle distance for a while. Idiot, stop thinking do damn much. "Well so you don't know how long she's been here. Is she likely to go hollow on me? She doesn't seem too upset. Seen any shinigami around? They're the people in the black robes." he explained. He wasn't the best teacher or anything, but he was quite empathetic. That had been a strength when he studied architecture and archaeology at university. Easy to see what people thought. Easy to see what they would like to surround them.

Now she was bringing out the phony respect stuff. Toshi had recently been getting into American literature and from Salinger and Kerouac, "phony" was his new favourite word. It worked for him, maybe if he needed her to actually do something she might just about listen. Not that he'd exactly send a girl into the jaws of danger or anything like that... She explained that she'd been looking for a shinigami to talk to. Toshi's eyebrows shot into his forehead. Yeah he remembered the first shinigami he really had a good chat with, that bastard Shinobu or Shiro or whatever the hell his name was. Bastard. Alarm bells were ringing in his head but he couldn't quite work out why. He wobbled slightly as the child upon his shoulders looked around a little; he was concerned about her falling off. The girl seemed to be taking notes, she even had more than one damned notebook what the hell. He tried to follow what she was writing but was unable to. Ech whatever, probably just making notes.

"Toshi... You think she was waiting for a shinigami to come and konso this girl?" Kasei asked and he made a kind of internal grunt of agreement as his eyes listlessly followed the scribbling of the pencil. Maybe she just had a really bad memory or something.

"More likely she was waiting for it to turn into a hollow..." Ianto chuckled. Unlike Kasei and Kanaboshi who were sweet girls, Ianto was a large, hideous red-skinned Demon and Toshi did his best not to let the guy see the light of day.

"That's enough from you thank you very much." he said, accidentally speaking out loud. God damn it. The demon had thrown him off. And he had gotten so good at it. "Uuh I mean stop wiggling you little devil or I'll drop you." it might have seemed a little awkward but the latter comment for certain was aimed up at the kid ghost who stopped with the swaying. "Anyway yeah," he began, quick to change the subject, "You're kind of right. Most people when they pop their cloggs they just go gentle into the peaceful night or whatever. But some people, like milady here," he said, shrugging so that he bumped the ghost kid a little, "well they don't pass on. And for those people... The result is always the same. They lose their hearts and become hollow. The shinigami are the ones who "reap" the souls, and send them to the afterlife, some place they call "soul society". And if they don't make it in time... Well then they're the ones who have to stop the hollow. It'd be a fun game if peoples' lives weren't at stake." he said with a dour look upon his face.

Toshi grinned and winked at her apology. He was used to people being distracted mid-conversation by now. Usually it was mobile telephones and things like that which was understandable. If she wanted to take notes, hey who was he to stop her? He felt a little guilty that he had probably come across as some angry dude, that was unfortunate. But whatever, it was less distracting to have her full attention for his explanation. She could write her notes afterwards.

"You are a little angry Toshi..."Kanaboshi chimed in and he had to restrain himself so as not to physically react to such a provocative comment. His two little hogo-sha were such troublemakers. He heard them tittering as Riku explained that she knew hollows. Poor girl. Toshi knew the feeling of having had to deal with them before you were old enough. Her intense stare up at the kid almost made him take a step backwards, regarding her with a kind of "side-eyeing-chloe" face he'd seen on the internet. What the hell!? Even if it was true how could she so heartlessly talk about killing the ghost of a little girl? Jeez.

"Ahh, well it depends. The shinigami, they purify the hollows with their funny sword type things. Actually the bastards all look like samurai. Well, pardon my language." he apologized briefly. "Anyway it's kind of like being a Catholic and doing a confessional, yanno? But they can only forgive sins they make while they're monsters. If they were sinners while they were alive they get sucked into hell, apparently. If not the little ghost inside gets sent off to soul society." he still felt a little uncomfortable by the girl's apparent bloodlust. "But you have to have one of their soul-cutting swords to do it. They wouldn't give me one when I asked. The guy I talked to told me that we just destroy the souls instead, there was a big race war about it a few hundred years ago. I don't know, to be honest that was the bit I was quite interested in yanno; I mean for context I'm an archaeology grad from Tokyo U. Anyways, he wasn't too talkative about that." Toshi shrugged, lightly bumping the ghost-kid who was still not talking very much. "Ach sorry I'm rambling. If any of that's worth writing down go ahead, you'll forget otherwise, probably." he said, not meaning to sound condescending but still concerned that he had, after-the-fact. Why didn't he have some kind of summoning device for shinigami? Bastards.

"What... Angel!?" Toshi grew a little irate at the mention of the word. In fact, he had been experiencing a somewhat angelic presence himself as of late and he couldn't, for the life of him, work out what exactly that was meant to be. His Hogo-Sha seemed to know something, he could tell because of Kanaboshi and Kasei's whispering and giggling. He saw it from the corner of his eye sometimes. So when she asked the question it kind of annoyed him. Not through any fault of her own but just because of how Toshi had been feeling. "No, not angels." he said firmly, as if to discourage further questioning along that particular line. "Actually they look more like goddamn samurai or something. I'd be careful with Shinigami." he cautioned her, his face growing pensive. He seemed to gain many years in that moment, as if the very thought of soul reapers aged him somehow. Most of the regular shinigami he met on patrol were weaker than him by now, it was only the ones who were officers in their army that exceeded him in strength. "Ostensibly, they're the good guys. But they don't always act like it." they seemed to be even more human and fallible than humans. Or else at least he seemed to notice it far more, anyway.

"Ehh whatever. No need to apologise for being wrong." he said gruffly, not especially picking up any hint that there was anything amiss. The child upon his back was wriggling and Toshi shrugged to try and get her to behave. His mind was still playing on the weird shinigami that he remembered. He'd met quite a few by now. The child wouldn't stop wriggling. It was then that that Riku noticed that the plus soul had started to become somewhat less plus. Toshi cursed, and placed her on the ground. Riku was right; chains had began to emerge from her and she was sweating with a tremendous fever. Toshi spied the chain upon her little chest. The hollow hole. He cursed, violently.

"Imouto... Ahh shit what do we do." he said, uncertain. Dammit. He needed a shinigami for chrissake! "I'm going to try and get help... It could be dangerous though. So I'm going to go some distance. Here's my number," he said, scratching it in the ground with a stick, "Call me if she starts to turn really bad." and without another word, he began sprinting away, flaring as reiatsu as hard as he could. Even Riku would be able to sense it, growing fainter as he got more distant. He even released his powers and began to glow with a burning aura, his eyes pure white and body covered in tattoos which pulsated. Wave after wave of crushing reiatsu he sent out.

He would quite possibly attract the attention of hollows but he could deal with those with little consequence... Hopefully a shinigami would notice and come and do something. He didn't spare much thought to the fact that if he attracted hollows and killed them, all in the name of saving this girl, he would effectively just be killing others... Possibly others similar to this girl. Toshi wasn't good at thinking about things like that.

It was no use. No shinigami appeared. Toshi could feel the child's encroachment growing worse. Panic was rising in his chest. This was terrible! He stopped blasting his reiatsu- the last thing he and Riku needed were even more hollows. He cursed colourfully to himself, as his glowing aura receded, and his tattoos disappeared. He walked back towards the riverbank where he and Riku had been, and could feel her building her reiatsu. Curse those shinigami. Some use they were. He looked sadly at the child, writhing on the floor. He could hear concerned murmuring from his guardian Hogo-Sha, but wasn't sure what it was. When he tried to focus they appeared to hide their presence from him within his mind. It was frustrating that the two sprites that comprised his powers were being difficult at a time like this.

"Imouto... It looks like we have no choice." he told Riku, staring sadly down at the child. He felt a sickening wrenching feeling, as Ianto, the demon Hogo-Sha which represented the darkness in his soul began to move through him. If he were to kill the child it would be Ianto's part of his soul taking the action. "Please, allow me. You ought not to sully your hands on such an unsavoury task." He didn't like the idea of girls killing people. Toshi could be a little old fashioned that way.