“‘Course I can. What are you looking for, souvenirs?”

"I'm looking to talk with your boss, Mr. Urahara."

“Eh, what for? I can ring you up.”

"It's about slightly spirit-related weirdness."

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the boy says, lying unconvincingly.

”But I guess I can tell him you’re here.”

There’s the sound of some yelling in the back, followed a few minutes later by a garishly dressed man emerging.

”Ohoh, a new customer is it?”

She looks around, confirms that there's no one else here, then nods. "Hello, Mr. Urahara. My name is Sable, and when I woke up this morning, I was in America. I have no idea how I got here, and my explanation of how I knew to come to you for help will be difficult to believe."

He flutters his fan.

”America? I didn’t know my shop had that kind of a reputation. I’m just a humble shopkeeper, though; if you think you were kidnapped, you should call the police!”

She's amused despite herself and giggles a bit. "Okay. Would you like me to show off knowing a bunch of things I really shouldn't have any way to know? Because as much as I love the routine you're doing — and I really do — I do actually need specifically your help, with you taking the situation at least somewhat seriously."

The fan vanishes up a sleeve, and Urahara is suddenly all business.

"Let's talk then. A warning, though; some kinds of knowledge can be dangerous."

"Yes, it can. Feel free to stop me when you believe I've merited your attention. You are Kisuke Urahara, former head of the science division in Soul Society. You're either the best or only place to get a gigai in the mortal world. You work closely with Yoruichi, former head of the intelligence division who also left Soul Society. She can turn into a cat—"

Urahara claps his hands, cutting her off.

"I think that's enough. You have my attention, and even here the walls sometimes have ears."

He gestures to the back room and walks through the doorway, not bothering to check if they're following. Once they're through, however, he closes it behind them and does... something.

"So what can this retired soul reaper do for you, then? I wasn't kidding about being a candy shop owner these days."

"I know a few things about probable future events that you're going to want to be involved in, and I'd like to trade that knowledge for five gigai — is the plural gigai or gigais? — and assistance transplanting me and the other girls in my head into them. We'd also be glad to help you with the coming events however we can."

"Five gigais! That does explain a few things; you have an unusual amount of spiritual pressure for someone with your accent. Still, though, that's quite the goal you're asking me to help achieve; I hope you're ready for a lot of hard work~"

His voice gets a bit less singsongy.

"Still, now you've got me curious. You're not just claiming to be an unusually informed individual, but someone who knows the details about certain people's plans?"

"Here's the implausible explanation of that: as best I can tell, I'm from another world, one where a work of fiction exists that suspiciously resembles this world. No guarantee how accurate the oddly-similar fiction is, and I don't remember it perfectly, nor did I watch all of it, but your presence here as a retired soul reaper running a candy shop inclines me to suspect that at minimum the broad strokes will hold."

"You're right, that is implausible! So implausible that I in fact don't believe it, but either you do or you're a really good liar. This puts me in a bit of a conundrum, or at least it would if I felt a need to be taken seriously. Since I don't, though, let's hear it; what happens next in this supposed story of yours? I don't suppose I'm lucky enough to rate inclusion in a slice of life work."

"Would that we all had nice, pleasant, slice-of-life storylines. No, we are not that lucky. Ichigo Kurosaki, who has been seeing ghosts his whole life and is the son of a retired soul reaper and a tragically dead one, finds himself forced to choose between letting a hollow kill his family or letting Rukia burn her powers to awaken his, starting a variety of unpleasant events into motion and eventually embroiling him and his friends (who insist on helping and turn out to have some spiritual powers of their own) in existing awful messes like Aizen's conspiracy against Soul Society."

“You’re in luck, that first prediction of yours has already been borne out. But if you know that much? I imagine you understand why that makes me suspicious, and who that makes me suspicious of, when I get information suggesting that my plans won’t work but things will work out anyway. Do you have any suggestions to help me resolve this conundrum?”

"Okay, hold on, we're calling Rukia awakening Ichigo's powers the first prediction? Has Ichigo met Ishida, the Quincy boy, yet? Has Rukia's brother come down here with what's-his-name to take her back to Soul Society and maybe execute her yet? Where in the timeline are we? If I remember correctly, Ichigo loses the fight against Rukia's brother, possibly breaking his zanpakuto, and insists on training to rescue her. Eventually he connects with his true zanpakuto spirit and restores it in time to finish training before mission time."

"Yes, and no, respectively. The additional predictions do help, but they don't solve the issue that from my perspective all your knowledge revealed thus far is either stuff Aizen knows or could arrange to happen. I suppose this is the downside of playing coy, so I'll be a bit clearer than my usual here. Ideally, I'd have you make a prediction that distinguished things; something that was revealed in your show that there's no way for him to have learned, or that him knowing would mean everything was lost, like my one secret weakness that would bring my efforts crashing down no matter what I did. Any secrets of his that I could confirm would help too, of course, but that would still mean I couldn't trust you with anything more valuable to me than the secret in question is to him or else I'm setting up something of a bad incentive here."

She nods at him in understanding. "Ah. Extremely reasonable of you. I probably would've picked that up, but I was worrying about nailing down the timeline first."

Then she starts pacing and brainstorming out loud. "Let's see. Gonna have to iterate through things to refresh my memory, because it's been a few years since I watched the show at all. Read some fanfiction more recently but no way to know whether any of that applies and the show and original manga are what the fanfics all draw from so stick with those. Does Aizen know Ichigo will become a vizored yet? Mm, not really sure but probably he can find out. Does Aizen know Ichigo also has Quincy elements to him? Fullbringer? Those he might not know. I don't know if those count as what they are, though, 'cause I never watched far enough to see if they did anything other than just being part of his zanpakuto spirit. Fuck, I should've watched more of this. If I'd known I was coming here I would've binge-watched before getting isekaied. Have to assume asshole knows damned near everything there is to know abour arrancar, so none of the scraps I remember about them are helpful right now. Hmm. What about the name of Ichigo's zanpakuto? Well, maybe useful for practical things later but not world-shaking. You know how to make mod souls? Zanpakuto are made of soul reapers? Quincy powers are made of the divine asshole, whatever his name is, starts with a Y? No, none of those are what we need here. Cute little girl on Kenpachi's shoulder isn't just a lieutenant but also his zanpakuto spirit? No, why would I think that would help. Ugh, this is what I get for stopping watching after the first Soul Society arc and only learning deep lore from a bestie infodumping at me."

She twists her hands a bit. "C'mon, what am I forgetting. C'mon, idiot girl."

The voice changes abruptly, becoming smoother and almost serene as Maya cuts in. "No, beloved, berating yourself does not help. Be patient with yourself."

Sable switches back and takes a slow breath. "Thanks, Maya."

Pace, pace, pace.

She suddenly pauses and twists to face him. "Does future technology count for anything? Portable computing device bundled in a phone?"

She reaches into her messenger bag and pulls out a 2020s-era smartphone, turning it on and unlocking it where he can see.

"Also have textbooks with copyright dates in the future, but I doubt those count for much."