Rukia reassures Ichigo! ...kind of!

Once they reached the house, Rukia and Chappy jumped in through the window. Ichigo was laying on the floor, having just reentered his body, looking contemplative. "...quit feeling sorry for yourself, ya moron!" Rukia shouted, kicking Ichigo in the head without warning.

"Oof!" Ichigo yelped, before shooting to his feet, and grabbing the front of Rukia's Soul Reaper robes and shaking her. "What the hell was that for!?" he exclaimed.

Without changing her expression, Rukia let Ichigo shake her. "So what if we couldn't defeat Grimmjow outright today?" she asked rhethorically.

"..."so what?" What do you mean, so what? He wasn't even fighting us at full power, and we were barely even surviving against him!" Ichigo grumbled, and Rukia face palmed.

"Look, you're not getting it... we're still alive, and we can get stronger, can't we? We just need to train some more, learn some new tricks. And now, we have a better idea of what we're up against. No one died today except for some of Aizen's soldiers. Our position's improved by a decent margin due to that idiot deciding to get jumpy and attack us without permission," Rukia explained. "Aizen's own forces gave us more information on a silver platter, and now you know how much stronger you need to be if you want to be ready for them! So yeah, I do see today as an absolute win for us!"

"...cold comfort, given just how much of a gap we have to bridge in god only knows how little time we have," Ichigo replied, and Rukia paused, and reconsidered her approach for a second.

"I mean... given what Urahara told us about the Hogyoku, it's not like Aizen can get an army overnight," Rukia replied. "We probably have more time than you're thinking," she assured him.

Ichigo grimaced. "You say that like Aizen isn't a mastermind who probably took that into account somehow. We can't count on him sitting around and waiting for us to prepare..."

Rukia sighed. He had a point. "Well, we're not going to get anything done with you moping, are we?" she finally asked. Then she put on a seductive expression. "Look... how about we work on getting you... destressed, then, once you have your mind cleared, we can come up with a way to get stronger?" she suggested, shrugging off her robes. Almost immediately after she got naked, her legs dissolved back into the genie tail, rejoining the spout, her permission to have legs having expired. She crossed her arms and leaned forward. "How about it, Master?" she purred.