The Throne of Heaven - a (completed) Bleach rewrite (AU)

[Egleris]

As the title say, this is a rewrite of the entire Bleach manga in written form with substantial changes to worldbuilding, characters and plot to fit what (in my personal opinion and taste) would be a more logical and satisfying progression. Due to said changes, previous knowledge of Bleach shouldn't be required to follow the story; at least, that's what I'm hoping to go for. More detailed (somewhat spoilery) AN at the end of the post.

This originally mentioned the update speed, but the story is now complete, so no more updates will be forthcoming; feel free to binge at your leisure. When I was updating, I tried to keep up one update a week, but there were occasionally some delays (more near the ends) which the author notes in various chapters might mention; I won't be editing the author notes, I'm editing this header in their place.

I will ask for some understanding if the grammar is sometimes not up to par, as I'm not a native English speaker, and I did not have a beta reader or any assistance in writing this. I actually looked for both, but circumstances made that attempt fail. If anybody feels like helping me on that front, I will certainly correct any error that is pointed out to me; really, I like correcting my mistakes, so if I've made any, let me know.

Any constructive criticism anybody wants to give me would be extremely helpful as well; nobody ever gets better unless other people help them with it, so if you feel like helping, just speak up. It'll make me happier.

Also, I feel obligated to give a shout out to "A Destiny of Strife", the Hollow quest on this site that reignited my interest for Bleach as a manga after its final arcs soured me on it, and thus is at least partially responsible for the very existence of this thread.

Lastly, I do not own Bleach nor make any claims to it, but you all already knew that.

- Chapter 1: Origins - ​

Ichigo Kurosaki was not, in his own opinion, anything special, and certainly not an hero.

He knew that he was not what most people would classify as "normal", but he never particularly liked that word; everyone, he thought, had their own particularities that set them apart from others, and no such thing as a "normal" person really existed. Ichigo's own most peculiar trait just happened to be a bit rarer that what most other people could say made them unique.

Now, those who didn't knew Ichigo, were he to make this observation to them, would likely assume that he was talking about his hair color, a natural light red that, to most people, might as well be orange; not a hair color frequently seen on Japanese teenagers, outside of bleached delinquents. But that was really not Ichigo's most defining characteristic; even putting aside that he knew a girl with hairs very nearly the same shade as his own, in several western countries the color was, if not commonplace, at the very least quite widespread. No, the one characteristic Ichigo had which, as far as he knew, he only shared with his immediate family (his father and his two younger sisters) was much weirder.

It was the fact that, from as long as he could remember, he'd always been able to see ghosts.

It'd taken him some time to realize that this wasn't something other people could do, or even that he was seeing something unusual, although his idiot father refusing to explain anything to him didn't help on that front. The fact was that, most of the time, it was hard to identify wandering ghosts from random passersby; only when close enough it was possible to see the golden chain that sprouted from their belly (and was as a result often partially hidden by clothing, poking out from under them unobtrusively) and anchored them to the location they'd died at. So, if not paying attention to the fact that the other people on the road completely ignored them, ghosts were surprisingly easy to miss.

They all looked somewhat sad - often mentioning their loved ones or homes they missed - but rarely were around for more than a week; those few that Ichigo met more than once - generally those standing along the roads he walked through daily - tended to just disappear within the span of one or two weeks, probably going to whatever the afterlife was like. He wasn't sure why it took some time for it to happen - the ghosts themselves, when he'd asked, certainly didn't knew either - but he'd long ago stopped to question it.

Still, he sometimes felt bad about the ghosts' loneliness, and would stop by some of them to chat and, when he could, help alleviate their suffering and boredom. Just that morning, he'd scared away a group of hooligans that had been vandalizing a plaque and vase of flowers commemorating the place where a young girl died in a car accident; despite being grateful for the help, she'd clearly looked downcast at it all, which was why he'd decided to stop by the girl's plaque on his way back from the dojo to see if she was feeling better, despite it already being dark outside.

What he hadn't expected was to find a monster standing there, holding the little girl from the neck. It was a creature unlike any Ichigo had ever seen before, at least three meters tall, big and hulking with black fur covering its entire frame and giant, curved red horns sprouting from its head; and in place of a face, it had a mask over it that seemed made of white bone, with red stripes departing from all around the left eye and covering the entire left side of it. The girl was crying and kicking at the creature to let her go, but was clearly not going to succeed, her little feet bouncing off the creature without harming it in the slightest.

Ichigo really did not think of himself as a hero; he didn't like the idea of sacrificing himself for others, and did not consider himself any more worthy or special than anybody else. Which is why he was a bit surprised with himself for charging at the monster, slamming into it with all of his strength in an effort to push the creature away from its prey.

The attack was less effective than he expected; instead of his tackle having him fall down alongside the creature, he bounced back from it, while the monster only stumbled backwards a few steps. Still, it was enough to cause the monster to turn its head toward him; deep in the eye sockets of the white mask, golden eyes glared at him burning with terrifying intensity as they took him. But the scariest thing of all about the monster was the large hole in its abdomen that did not seem to cause the creature any pain, and didn't even look like a wound - just a spot of pure emptiness somehow brought into existence in the middle of the monster's body.

Ichigo could have run, but the sounds of the kid crying stopped him; if he did, what would happen to her? Seeing the creature in front of him, he doubted it would be pleasant. So, he got to his feet and prepared himself as he said to the creature, in the most provocative tone he could muster:

"What, scared of attacking somebody who can fight back?"

Apparently, the monster wasn't, because he moved to attack with incredible speed... until it suddenly looked up, as a giant ball made of glowing light suddenly smashed into it from up and to the side, sending the monster careening away from it.

A moment later, a woman landed in front of Ichigo - a girl, really, he didn't think she could be more than one or two years older than him at most, and she was certainly shorter - wearing a black kimono and with two katana at her belt, which actually sported a somewhat incongruous pouch attached to it. There was a seriousness to her expression that made her look older, however, and when she spoke, her tone was cold and filled with determination.

"You should leave; your soul might be strong enough to interact with it, but if you don't have some sort of special attack or something, you're not going to be able to really hurt an Hollow."

Then she drew her sword, moving it in a circle in front of herself while whispering something Ichigo wasn't able to catch; as she finished the motion, the sword turned white, a silk ribbon growing from the pommel while the tsuba assumed the shape of a snowflake. She finished the motion by placing her second hand on the sword's handle and narrowing her eyes as the monster, who had picked itself up from the ground, let out a terrifying roar and jumped forward.

She jumped backwards - vaulted, really, her movement describing a backward arc into the air as she went - and a bridge of ice formed along the path she'd traveled, causing the monster to smash straight into and then through it, its downward momentum causing the creature to barrel through even as it screamed in pain from the many ice shards embedding themselves into its body.

For a moment, it seemed as if that had been enough to do the monster in, but then it suddenly got back to its feet, letting out a powerful roar, before its golden eyes refocused, starting straight at the closest thing within reach: Ichigo himself. And then, before Ichigo had the time to react, it moved.

Ichigo stared in disbelief as the creature - a Hollow, the girl had called it - charged toward him at speed greater than a car; he was paralyzed by surprise for long enough that he wouldn't have been able to dodge, but then suddenly the girl was there, appearing as if from thin air, and wrapped one hand around his waist before, with a sudden acceleration, both of them were out of the way of the monster. Who suddenly impaled itself, he realized, on a spike of ice that had appeared as if out of nowhere, anchored to the place where they'd been a moment before, practically creating a second hole in the monster's chest above the one it had in its abdomen.

He was dropped to the ground, and his years of martial arts training finally kicked in, allowing him to land on his hands and feet; his eyes moved to the girl, who had turned to the monster and seemed to be preparing to attack it, but before she could, the creature grabbed the spike from the base, breaking it, and then ripping out a great part of it toward the two of them in a hail of deadly projectiles.

The girl didn't hesitate a moment, her feet settling into a guard as she made a wide, sweeping horizontal motion with her katana in front of her; for a moment, Ichigo thought she'd moved too early, but then he realized that a wall of ice had appeared suspended in midair, along the path her sword had moved through, and the enemy attack shattered on it. The girl didn't flinch as ice shattered over ice, instead narrowing her eyes as she said, sounding annoyed:

"It's not working."

"What's not working?"

She glanced toward him at the question, while still keeping the hollow within her sight, and answered:

"Tiring it out. I hoped it would make a mistake if I dragged the fight on, but it seems to be smarter than expected; probably it's older than I thought it was. It would explain why it's recovering so fast."

She seemed about to say something else, but the creature charged at them once more, and she suddenly jumped above the wall, vaulting over it far higher than any human could possibly be able to, before stopping in midair, standing still as if her feet were on some invisible but undeniably solid platform rather than being suspended over nothing.

Still, Ichigo got over his surprise, quickly diving to the side as the monster smashed into the ice barrier; it held for just a handful of seconds, but that was time enough for the girl to make a gesture with her hand, a wide circular motion that sent a dozen of golden beams of light toward the monster's back. The beams pierced through, but now that he was paying attention, Ichigo saw that they were in no way as damaging as the ice. While the big chest wounds from where the ice had impaled the hollow was still bleeding dark smoke, and only slightly smaller than it had been before, and the wounds from barreling through the barrier early on were also still bleeding, the light beams, despite covering much more of the monster's back at the moment of impact, were disappearing much more quickly, already less than half their original size.

Now that he'd removed himself from the battlefield, the hollow seemed to have lost any interest in Ichigo, as it turned its mask to the sky, the golden eyes fixing on the girl, before suddenly coiling on itself and jumping upwards. The girl's eyes glinted with satisfaction at that, and at the last moment, she rolled out of the way in midair, dodging the monster's grasping arm by a hair before slicing with her sword through it; the cut was immediately covered in a film of ice, which stopped the regeneration even as the girl turned on her feet, aiming her sword at the monster and saying, her tone deadly:

"Fighting a Shinigami in the air is a beginner's mistake, hollow. You seemed smarter."

The golden eyes of the hollow glinted with malice as its jumping momentum reached its apex, and just as it began falling, the portion of the mask that was a mouth opened, and the creature spoke.

"I am."

That was when a sudden red glow erupted from the monster's closed fist, which it had been hiding behind its back, and a beam of red energy shot from it and through the wound the ice had left in the monster's chest; the girl was caught completely by surprise by it, eyes widening even as she instinctively moved her sword in front of herself, creating a shield of ice that was smashed to pieces by the beam, but slowed it for the half a second necessary to let her make another circular gesture with her other arm, creating another barrier, this one made of golden light and just millimeters from the girl herself. The impact caused an explosion that sent the girl careening backwards, and Ichigo moved before he could think, jumping to grab her before she could smash into the ground; even so, it only partially slowed her impact, and when they landed, he could see the hit had left her wounded and bleeding in several places.

The girl got back to her feet with a deep breath, then shook her head and glared at him before saying, with a hiss:

"Why are you still here? Run away while you can!"

Ichigo frowned at that, and shot back:

"Is that any way to thank people for helping you?"

"You can't help, you're just going to get in my way if I have to keep you safe!"

"Is that so?"

The girl's eyes widen, as did Ichigo's own, because that hadn't been him speaking. He turned his eyes toward the hollow, and saw that the monster was back up on its feet; it didn't seem to have been hurt by its landing, and it was ripping apart the coat of ice over its wound with its remaining hand, even as its golden gaze focused on the two of them. It chuckled, a dark, gurgling sound that sent shiver rippling down Ichigo's spine, and then commented:

"Well then, let's see if that is true."

Then, with reflex so quick Ichigo only barely managed to follow the movement, the hollow crouched, grabbing its own severed arm from where it fell on the ground, and threw it at Ichigo with strength enough to make it spin; Ichigo dodged to the left, managing to avoid the hit completely, while the girl behind him raised her sword, causing the arm to impale itself on it... and only then did the two of them realized the Hollow had charged after his own attack, smashing the swordswoman guard aside with his remaining arm before impaling her with his horns. The girl's eyes widened in pain, and the Hollow took advantage of her moment of hesitation by grabbing its own severed arm with his remaining one before shaking his head to send her flying. Clearly, he'd hoped doing so would have disarmed the girl of her sword, but she somehow managed to maintain her grip, dislodging the sword from the arm instead as she was flung away and smashed against the wall of a nearby house.

Ichigo rushed to her side, but even as he did, he saw that she seemed to have taken less damage from the impact than he would have expected - what was worrying were the deep wounds in her abdomen caused by her impalement. Still, the hollow didn't seemed intent on following up his own attack, as he finished removing the ice covering his wound, and then placing his arm next to it... and Ichigo felt a cold dread wash over him as the dark smoke bleeding from both wounds - that on the monster's shoulder, and the one on its severed limb - mixed together for a few moments, and eventually, the dark furred flesh did as well, slowly reattaching the limb, although Ichigo could see it had not regained mobility yet.

Next to him, however, the girl hadn't stood still, instead having grabbed the ribbon of her sword on her mouth to allow her to move both hands in a double circle, and when she completed it, a giant sphere of glowing fire shot forward; the hollow tried to jump to avoid it, but due to how focused it had been on healing itself, it was too slow, and was slammed away by it.

The girl in the black kimono dropped the sword from her mouth, catching it in her hand as it fell, and then said, in a dark tone:

"I can't defeat it on my own, not as wounded as I am, and I don't have the time to heal myself. You... what is your name, anyway?"

"Ichigo Kurosaki."

"I'm Rukia Kuchiki, and if you still want to help, I'll take it."

Ichigo nodded, determination entering his eyes, even as he asked:

"How do we beat that thing? It keeps healing."

"You need a Zanpakuto, and to strike at the mask. A dead center hit to the mask will take down any Hollow, no matter how powerful. I can give you the opening you need, and as for the Zanpakuto, here."

She drew the second sword at her side, and Ichigo saw that it was shorter, a daito rather than a katana, had a black blade, and a cross guard with four prongs sprouting from it and bent into the shape of the manji symbol, as well as a small chain dangling from the pommel. She offered the handle to him, and after he grabbed it, she pushed the tip of the blade into one of her open wounds, letting out a grimace as she did. Ichigo's eyes widened at that as he tried to retreat the sword back, hissing:

"What are you doing?"

Rukia grabbed his arm, keeping the sword in place and spoke back:

"Just do as I say. Close your eyes, focus on the sword, and you should feel an absorbing ability within it - try and use it to draw power to you, it should come natural if you just try."

Ichigo followed her commands, and he could feel a connection of some sort with his mind; it was weird, but he did as she'd asked, and he could feel the connections strengthening, anchoring it to him with a sudden burst of power - he felt stronger and more energetic the very moment it happened. He opened his eyes, and found that he could see a faint aura around the sword... and also noticed that Rukia's sword seemed nowhere to be seen; in fact, she was eyeing the hand which had been wielding it with confusion.

Ichigo frowned, but before he could ask, a sudden sound heralded the arrive of the hollow as it jumped down on the road in a crouch, one of its arms still unresponsive but the other one helping its leg in supporting its landing; that was enough to snap Rukia out of her confusion as she said him, in a hiss:

"Go now, and remember, thrust straight for the mask - don't worry about dodging, I'll make sure you can strike true."

Ichigo nodded, and charged at their enemy, who grinned evilly at them as it charged at him; trusting in Rukia's promise, he pulled his sword back for what would normally be a fully telegraphed trust that never would connect. The Hollow seemed to agree, if its mocking laugh was anything to go by, and it raised a fist to smash it down on Ichigo's head... but, at the last moment, a set of restraints of golden light formed around its arm, completed with spikes embedding themselves into it, stopping the hit in its track and allowing Ichigo to thrust forward. He could hear the restraints breaking as the Hollow doubled down on the attack, but the time gained was just enough for Ichigo's sword to break straight through the mask, pushing them both down and causing the swung fist to miss.

As he struck, Ichigo could feel the sword pulsating, and for a moment Ichigo's eyes met those of the Hollow, and he thought he could see fear in the monster's eyes. Then, the monster started to fade, as if being sucked away by a vortex originating at the point where he'd been struck, and soon enough Ichigo found himself standing alone in the middle of the street, the creature having completely faded away.

"Well, that didn't went exactly as I was expecting, but I suppose it will need to suffice."

Ichigo turned toward the voice, to see that Rukia was limping toward him; she was still lacking her sword, but looked better than before - she was moving her hand from wound to wound, and whenever it was on a new one, she'd make a few motion with her free hand, and the one over the wound would glow with golden light that left the targeted wound almost fully recovered. Ichigo frowned at her and her asked:

"What do you mean? What was all that about?"

"I got you your own Zanpakuto, and that let us win. Which makes you an honorary Shinigami, I guess."

She chuckled to herself, as if amused by some private joke, but Ichigo was just more confused by this; she really was making no sense.

"A Shinigami, like the gods of death? I don't feel very godly."

She shook her head.

"Shinigami are those in charge of purifying the souls of the deceased and sending them to the Soul Society. Which is what you just did."

She pointed at the place on the ground where the Hollow had disappeared, and Ichigo frowned - that didn't seem right to him.

"That thing was a ghost? It didn't look like one to me."

Rukia took a lecturing tone as she said:

"It was a Hollow; when a dead spirit remains in the world of the living for long enough, they transform, becoming violent and hunting down other spirits. Zanpakuto are meant to purify them of these urges, returning them to their real personality before sending them to the afterlife."

Ichigo wasn't sure he really got it, and the girl seemed to realize this as she patted him on the shoulder and said, in a reassuring but clearly exhausted tone:

"Don't worry, I'll explain everything - just let me recover first, ok? I promise I'll be in touch soon."

And then, before Ichigo could ask anything more, she disappeared with sudden quickness, leaving Ichigo alone in the middle of the night with a sword and a lot of unanswered questions.

Spoiler: Author Note

So, I am fully aware of the inherent arrogance of rewriting a popular series instead of writing a more traditional "what if" fanfic, and I'm aware that just making the attempt might incur in some wrath. So, let me make clear what kind of thoughts brought me to try my hand at this, and maybe that'll help.

I do think that Bleach is an interesting manga; otherwise, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction of it. That said, I also think that it's somewhat flawed, which also should be obvious since there's no other reason I'd try my hand at "fixing" it, after a fashion.

In greater detail, I think that Bleach is amazingly well drawn, and it introduces a number of cool setting ideas, with its greatest strength being a very wide collection of extremely interesting characters. I also feel, however, that the worldbuilding is quite haphazard, the plot a bit too meandering, and in general that the whole structure is lacking in cohesiveness and coherence. Note that I do not think this is Kubo fault; I'm aware of the executive meddling he was under, and I think it was mostly that, perhaps combined with a preference for creating interesting characters and cool battle scenes over tightly woven plotting (which is not at all a bad call to make when writing a manga, as its success clearly proves), that caused most of what I view as "Bleach's issues".

Anyway, what you can expect from this is for me to try and keep most of the characters true to themselves and try to deliver cool powers and awesome battle scenes as is Bleach's wont, while changing a great deal about the fiddly background and setting details, plot and worldbuilding (in fact, some of the changes should already be evident in this opening chapter). One thing that should not be expected, however, is for me to feel beholden to the manga, for I will not be; in fact, the plans I've made include changing the ranks of various members of the Gotei 13, as well as actually moving characters from a faction to another (with the necessary changes) if I feel that'd fit them better - so, for example, a Quincy might be a Shinigami in this story, a Fullbringer could be made into an Arrancar, and so on. It was a necessary change to keep the story as tight as I could, while including as many of the cool characters as possible.

On the matter of plot, what this means is that I am following the broad stroke of the canon events, while at the same time changing a lot of very important details and situations. This is not a stations of canon story in the traditional sense, but it's also not fully transformative; to make a comparison with HP fanfiction, the story doesn't have a "troll incident" but the first book is still about the Philosopher's Stone, the fourth book doesn't feature Crouch Jr. but does involves the Triwizard Tournament, and so on - the outline is similar but the content is different. I'm aware that's not to everybody's taste, so I'm warning you at the start, because what criticism I've found (sadly, people really don't seem willing to criticize this story very much) is that I'm sticking too close to the original plot. So, I'm explaining my approach to this aspect of the story upfront, so that people can go in with the correct expectations. Hopefully that'll lead to more in depth criticism, so criticize away, and in general let me know what you think of this!

I also worked very very hard to make the internal metaphysics actually consistent; I'll leave it up to others to judge whether that succeeded or not. I wish everybody the best, and hope with all my heart for this to be a good read.

 

[Bluen]

so it's the same with some things changed, boring.

 

[Randomstuff]

Seemes interesting. Look forward to seeing more.

 

[Orisha91]

I like it. Waiting for more.

 

[Xegzy]

Bleach is a giant mess. Especially it's world building. I would sort that out before and keep the amount of races ichigo is to a three maximum.

 

[Egleris]

Bleach is a giant mess. Especially it's world building. I would sort that out before and keep the amount of races ichigo is to a three maximum.

Click to shrink...

I am aware, that's why it took me almost a year to get all of my worldbuilding in order.

And as for race, I rather think what I've planned for Ichigo will make sense when it's explained, but until it is, I'd rather not spoil it... although, some of the changes in this opening chapter should make it clear that some things are already quite more different from the manga than they might at first glance appear to be.

 

[N1ghtFall]

good start, what kind of update schedule were you planning on doing?

 

[Egleris]

I'm not really sure - I'm hoping I can mantain a once-a-week posting, but if that doesn't work, then it'll be once a month. I don't think I can manage any faster than once a week, honestly; my free time is somewhat limited currently.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

Could use a little more show and less tell for the beginning, but I really like where you're going with this.

 

[Egleris]

Could use a little more show and less tell for the beginning, but I really like where you're going with this.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! Any suggestion how I could go about fixing that? One of the big reasons I had for posting this here was to get this kind of constructive criticism, so any ideas on how to fix perceived mistakes I will read with interest.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

Any suggestion how I could go about fixing that?

Click to shrink...

First, let's start with what you want to present about Ichigo's character;

• He doesn't think of himself as special
• Despite his orange hair,
• Or more importantly, that he can see ghosts
• His family can see them too, and his father never explains it
• He has martial arts skill
• He's caring and is willing to stand up to thugs

You could show these things through;

• Ichigo confronts the thugs vandalizing the roadside memorial
• Show his skill by fighting said thugs
• Talks with the ghost afterward and dismisses the importance of his actions
• Says he needs to get going to the dojo and that he will be back
• Ichigo and Rukia fight the Hollow, Rukia leaves
• Ichigo goes back home, talks to his family about the Hollow and Shinigami he'd seen
• Family comment on this, proving that they all can also see ghosts
• Ichigo thinks about his mother and her orange hair, who is dead(?), and what the existence of Shinigamis means for the afterlife

You don't have to present everything so quickly, but this is a rough outline of how you could incorporate those facts about Ichigo into indirect characterization.

I also recommend rewatching/rereading bits of Bleach that you think are relevant to your own writing, and pay attention to how and why you come to conclusions about character traits. Kubo is very talented at character writing, so you'll almost certainly pick up some inspiration.

 

[Egleris]

I originally wanted to include the "vandalizing the tombstone" scene, because it's really so very iconic, but after trying I felt like it broke the flow of the chapter even more than the current expositionary opening does.

And the next chapter does opens with a "family at home" scene, so maybe after that's up I can see if some of the information can be simply moved there, perhaps.

 

[Kyuubi]

This seems like an interesting idea so far. There were minimal spelling errors and things are flowing pretty well, so I don't think you have to worry much about that. I love Bleach, and anything like this, with time and dedication? I will happily support.

 

[Talos]

Going to be honest, here.

I really enjoyed this.

I know that a lot of it is just a rewrite of the first few scenes of Bleach itself, but I feel like you did a really good job with the Hollow fight, making the Hollow actually more of an interesting fight. You gave it aspects that it didn't have originally, such as hinting at it being an older Hollow, and showing it as an intelligent fighter in its own right. You introduced Rukia's powers well, and made good use of them for the scene, showing us visually how she tends to fight, and also how the Hollow adapted and countered.

There is not much to say of Ichigo yet, since you are clearly still establishing a lot about him, but I am glad to see Rukia has a better introduction here, allowing her to show off her abilities properly before losing her powers, if that happens here in the same way. She is presented as a strong and worthy character in her own right, which is needless to say very good. There's not too much else to comment on, I think. Though I am sure I have missed something since my experience, that's how it usually goes when you write something like this. People always miss some aspect of it that you worked hard on, so my apologies for that xD.

Mechanically, the writing style you used was pretty solid. At times, it seemed a bit awkward, and there was a bit of telling rather than showing, however, I would respectfully disagree somewhat with @OrigamiPhoenix in that, in this specific case, a little bit of telling is okay. Since you're not doing a whole new series, we are coming in with certain knowledge already. You don't need to establish what we already know, and including many of the scenes he suggested would have ballooned the chapter, showing us things we already expect, and risking readers growing bored because you're not doing anything new. If you were writing a whole new series from scratch, I would agree with him 100%, however context is a thing that has to be taken into account. This is a Bleach work. Readers coming in can be assumed to know at least a little bit about Bleach, so while I would not advise you to cut such scenes entirely, hinting at the in dialogue or descriptions if perfectly fine. After all, your work is about how things are different, not how they are the same.

 

[Egleris]

Mechanically, the writing style you used was pretty solid. At times, it seemed a bit awkward, and there was a bit of telling rather than showing

Click to shrink...

Do you feel like elaborating a bit on that? I am glad you say that I shouldn't worry too much about it, but I'd still like to know what in particular you think was awkward and where I used too much telling, since half the point of this is to improve my writing skills, and you in particular are really quite a lot better than me at that, so your counsel would matter quite a lot to me.

 

[Egleris]

I'm not 100% satisfied with this chapter - there is no action in it, in fact it's almost entirely exposition, which feels unfulfilling even if it was necessary. In retrospect, I should have perhaps have had this and the previous be a single chapter. What do you people think of that?

- Chapter 2: Motives - ​

As Ichigo got back to his home, he was still so caught in thought over what happened that he only barely managed to avoid his father's attempt to noogie him - and that was only because his father, as usual, shouted loudly as he did.

"Ichigo! You're back late! Is that any way to act, you delinquent son?!"

Before he could think of it, Ichigo reacted as he normally would, shouting back:

"If you didn't set stupid rules like having curfew at seven, I wouldn't have been late! Besides, it's not my fault I was attacked by a monster ghost!"

"And you think that's a valid excuse?! Things like this are exactly why young boys should be home at the time their parents tell them to!"

Before their squabble could continue, however, Yuzu, one of Ichigo's younger sisters, spoke up in a pleading tone:

"Don't you want to eat? It'll get cold otherwise."

That just drew a scoff from Ichigo's other sister, Karin, who added, sounding bored:

"Just let them fight, it's useless to try and stop them. Can I have another bowl instead?"

While the light-haired girl complied with the request of her dark haired twin, Ichigo decided he had had enough fighting for the night, and simply moved to seat at the table, in the process removing the sword from his back and placing it next to his chair. That drew the attention of everyone in the room, although it was Yuzu who asked, with clear curiosity:

"Where did you got that sword, Ichigo?"

He shrugged.

"It's apparently called Zanpakuto, and I got it from a Shinigami to help her fight off a monster ghost."

"A Shinigami?"

"Yeah, they're special ghosts who send people to the afterlife, or so she said, at any rate."

Ichigo was about to explain more, when he noticed his father had moved next to him, looking at the sword with a certain surprise; the attitude was so strange coming from him that Ichigo had to ask about it.

"What's the problem?"

"Never thought I'd see one of these, is all."

"Never see... wait. You knew about all this stuff? About Shinigami, and Hollows?!"

He looked down and offered his typical sheepish grin as he answered:

"Well, I've heard of them before, but never seen one personally."

"And you didn't think to warn us that there are monsters out there who could be coming after us at any time?!"

His father frowned, and answered:

"It's no different than common criminals existing; humans can be just as dangerous, really."

Then he raised a finger and added:

"And young boys who get home before their curfew time don't need to worry about either of those things! See, you should listen to me sometimes."

Once again, Karin deadpanly interrupted the discussion by pointing out that Isshin was too irresponsible for any of his children to listen to him, which resulted in the man going to complain at the poster of Masaki, Ichigo's dead mother, about how badly their children were growing up, but Ichigo filed the antics away for some other time - right now, this latest revelation was the only thing on his mind. With his father confirming the existence of Shinigami and Hollows, it meant that what the girl had said about it was likely true... but what would this mean for him? What should he do, now that he knew?

*****

As he was sent to the mat by a sweeping kick to his legs, Ichigo frowned; he really didn't have the head in the game right now. His sparring partner seemed to agree, as she said, even as she offered an hand to help him back up:

"So, Ichigo, what's on your mind? You're normally nowhere near this sloppy."

Tatsuki Aisawa was a bit shorter than Ichigo, but not by much - certainly not as much as the Shinigami from the night before had been - and sported a very tomboyish look that went very well with the fact that she aimed to be a professional martial athlete - something she was well on her way to achieving, seeing as she had taken second place on the latest national Karate tournament for their age bracket. She was also Ichigo's neighbor and his closest childhood friend, which meant he'd been roped in more sparring matches with her than he could count - and he'd won a good few of them across the years, even - and as a result, could read his moods better than anyone.

Even as he got back to his own feet, he let out a long breath and explained to the dark-haired girl, in a tired tone:

"Just had a weird meeting on the way home from the dojo yesterday night, that's all."

Tatsuki put her hands on her sides at that, clearly curious.

"Really? Weird enough to still have you this confused today?"

"Well, it's not really that easy to explain..."

"Oh! Was it aliens who tried to abduct you?"

Ichigo and Tatsuki both turned to their left, where the spectators seats were, including their common friend, Orihime Inoue. The girl had a very excitable personality and a vivid imagination, so oftentimes she went on random tangents like this; Ichigo wasn't sure how she'd become Tatsuki best friend, exactly, but she was fun enough to be around, and the fact that her long hairs - which she kept tucked behind her ears with a set of hairpins he'd never seen her without - was very nearly the same color as Ichigo's own was also a point in her favor.

Due to how open Orihime was to taking even the weirdest things at face value, Ichigo had often wondered if it'd be better to tell her he could see ghosts, since she would likely believe him immediately, or if it was better to keep her ignorant as she was now to avoid her trying to do something silly - if Orihime ended up hurting herself because of something he'd said, Tatsuki would be quite mad at him. Even if right now she was rolling her eyes at the other girl's comment and answering:

"That's obviously not what happened. I bet he was helping somebody against thugs or something like that."

Ichigo frowned at that.

"I'm not that kind of a person that I'd risk my life for somebody I don't know."

Tatsuki rounded to him and replied, a note of annoyance entering her voice:

"You're exactly the kind of person who'd help somebody if you saw them in danger because you'd feel guilty if you didn't. Why do you need to act though, do you think that makes you cooler somehow?"

"I think Ichigo is really cool, actually!"

Tatsuki let out an exasperated

"Of course you would, Orihime, but that's not the point."

"Then what is?"

"The point is that it's useless for him to deny that he would help somebody who needed it, when we all know he would."

"Indeed; even when I said I didn't need him to, he kept helping anyway. He's very stubborn."

Ichigo had not being paying attention to the back-and-forth between Tatsuki and Orihime, using the respite to stretch and recover after the trashing the former had just given him, but he turned as he recognized the new voice; sure enough, it was the girl from the night before, Rukia, looking even shorter and younger next to the much taller and more well-endowed Orihime. She wasn't wearing a kimono this time, however, but instead a casual black one-piece dress that reached just past her knees. She waved when Ichigo's eyes met hers, then turned back to Tatsuki and went on, in a very sweet and friendly tone:

"But really, he was a great help - you might even say he saved my life! Which is why I came here, to personally thank him now that I'm feeling better. Could I steal him for a few minutes?"

...Ichigo supposed it made sense that she wasn't invisible to the others, if he thought about it for a minute; after all, she'd said he was a Shinigami as well now, and he wasn't a ghost, was he?

Still, somehow, it felt wrong; for some reason, he'd been so sure that, when he'd seen her the other night, she was a spirit, not a physical person. Were his senses playing a trick on him? The whole thing was weird... but in the end, the only way to clarify it was to go to her and ask directly; she was here to answer his questions after all, might as well make sure of as much as he could think of about this whole situation.

Tatsuki seemed curious about Rukia, but nodded and answered:

"Sure, go ahead - I'll let the manager know he's on a break."

That caused Rukia to ask, sounding curious:

"Oh? I thought the two of you were just training?"

Tatsuki smiled.

"We are; Ichigo works here afterschool as an assistant teacher, because he understands fighting very well - I'm better, but that's because he has trouble really putting his whole effort into it."

Ichigo couldn't help but be embarrassed at that, but he thought he hid it well enough as he answered, as nonchalantly as he could:

"Or perhaps I just let you win because I'm a gentleman."

"Yeah, right - like anybody is gonna believe that."

They all laughed at that, then Ichigo waved to Tatsuki and Orihime before following Rukia outside. The two of them moved a bit away from the dojo, just enough to be sure that their conversation couldn't be overhead from people inside it, before Ichigo leaned against the wall and opened with the most recent question on his mind:

"So, you're not a ghost after all, if the others could see you. I thought you were."

"Oh, I am, although the right term is not ghost, it's plus; that's what we call human souls separated from a body who haven't hollowified."

Ichhigo frowned.

"That doesn't make any sense; I've known Tastuki my whole life, and she's never been able to see ghosts the way I do."

"That doesn't surprise me; for those who aren't born with a natural predisposition to it, it takes a really incredible spiritual strength or going through some exceptional experience to be able to sense spiritual particles."

"Spiritual particles - wait, you're changing the subject. Why could they see you, when they can't see other ghosts?"

"Spirits. And that's because I'm wearing a gigai, an artificial body meant to allow spiritual beings to more easily interact with non-spiritual stuff."

That said, to clarify her point, she crossed her arms, and then a copy of her arm emerged from one of them; Ichigo realized that she was using one of the crossed arms to hold the now unresponsive other one, while the third waved at him - and now that he could see it clearly, he noticed that there was just a slight vibrancy to it, something he'd only ever seen on a handful of ghosts before.

"So... you can slip in and out of your body at will?"

She shook her head even as she returned her spiritual arm into the corporeal one, and explained:

"It's just a container, not my body. Spirits can slip inside any non-spiritual item with a bit of effort, a Gigai is just a special type of doll we created that can pass as a human body to a cursory inspections; Shinigami use them when needing to interact with humans undetected. I'm a spirit, and I was never human to begin with, I was born in Soul Society, what you'd call the afterlife."

Ichigo thought that over for a moment, to make sure he'd heard it rightly, then went on:

"So... you were born already dead? I'm not sure that makes much sense."

"That's why we don't call ourselves ghosts and why we speak of Soul Society, not the afterlife like you do. Spiritual Particles, or Reishi, sometimes coalesce together into a spiritual body; here on the physical realm, they also need a physical body to keep them together, as there's very few of them and they'd disperse otherwise, but the spiritual realm is entirely made of Reishi, so there's enough for souls to form without needing a physical body first. What you call death is just your soul leaving the material body; but a soul itself can survive for centuries before finally dispersing into particles. But that only happens in the spiritual realm. The souls that don't reach soul society in time, remaining here in your world too long, eventually all turn into Hollows."

"Hollows."

The name should have sounded silly, yet somehow, it was not. As he spoke it, Ichigo could feel a chill run over his spine, and unbidden memory of his meeting with the masked creature, of the hatred in its golden eyes and the malice in its voice, resurfaced. He didn't let it get to him, however, and asked instead:

"So... they're degenerated souls? Why do they hunt other spirits?"

Rukia expression turned solemn, and she explained:

"It's the emptiness in them. Souls who wait too long without passing on start to resent the world, and grow empty inside from a lack of positive feelings, as the negative ones consume all they have inside. And when there's nothing left, their heart is replaced by a hole, and they start hunting others to fill a void that is bottomless. That's what Hollows are, and why we hunt them."

"And by us, you mean..."

"Shinigami."

"Right. So, what, are you Shinigami like a police force of spirits keeping watch over other spirits and hunting Hollows down? And what does it means for me, since you said that now I am an honorary one?"

He tapped the sword he'd been carrying on his back the whole day - it felt entirely too real, yet it behaved like a ghost in that nobody but his family seemed able to see it; he'd brought it to school without a single person even rising an eyebrow.

Rukia looked at the sword, some weird mix of emotions fleetingly showing in her eyes for a moment - Ichigo wasn't sure if it was regret or satisfaction, envy or longing, or something else entirely he could quite grasp - but then she returned to her previously serious expression and said, waving a hand:

"That was mostly a joke; it just means that now you have a Zanpakuto, you could do the same work as a Shinigami if you wanted to, but you're not a part of the Gotei 13, didn't swear any of the oaths or were assigned any task. I didn't mean anything by it."

Ichigo nodded and said, trying to make it clear how serious he was being by his voice:

"That's good, because I warn you, I'm not going to be going around hunting monsters and risking my life just to make you happy. I would not let somebody get hurt if I'm there and can help, but that's not the same as going around looking for trouble."

Rukia smirked as she said:

"I think there is a Shinigami's duty that you'll probably want to take on."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"It's probably better if I show you."

She motioned for him to follow, and Ichigo did; he only realized where they were headed when they rounded a corner and Ichigo found himself at the place of their fight, where he'd killed the Hollow.

"Why are we here?"

"For her."

Rukia pointed, and Ichigo realized the girl who had been almost eaten by the hollow was still standing next to her vase of flowers; she smiled when they showed up, and immediately bowed, saying with gratitude:

"Thank you both so much for saving me."

Rukia returned the bow, although from her it seemed very formal, as if she'd been drilled into it, and then answered:

"We only did what was right; however, I would like to help you more. Will you trust me?"

When she nodded, Rukia turned toward Ichigo and said, her tone serious:

"Well, this is it. Cut the golden chain."

Ichigo was a bit surprised at this, even as he drew the sword, and asked, just to make sure:

"And this won't hurt her?"

"The opposite. That's the chain of fate, which is made of all the memories a person made in life, each memory a link in the chain, a thousand thousands moments that bind them to the material words. Some people are capable of simply letting it dissolve, but for most, it keeps them trapped here, unable to move on and reach Soul Society, and eventually, they start to hate every link in the chain and all that it represents, the binding that holds them back here. I'm sure you understand where that leads to, right?"

To becoming an Hollow, of course. Or at least, that was what Rukia had told him, and he couldn't see a reason why she would be lying about this.

Ichigo turned his eyes to the small girl, who had followed the conversation and asked, confused:

"If he cuts the chain, I will go to heaven?"

Rukia turned to her and answered:

"Something like that - you will go to Soul Society, where the souls of the departed live."

She seemed to have a sudden thought, and pulled a slip of paper from her pouch, writing something on and handing it to the girl as she added:

"Give this to the first person wearing a black kimono and a sword like this that you meet, they'll help you."

The little girl nodded, even if she clearly had no idea what that might mean; Ichigo resolved to himself to ask about it later, but meanwhile, he just did as Rukia motioned him to, and with a single strike of his sword, severed the golden chain in two.

Immediately, he felt the same drawing sensation forming as when he'd struck the hollow, except this time it was much quicker and less powerful; the vortex formed for barely a fraction of an instant at the point where his sword had struck the chain, and then both chain and girl were gone and the portal was closed.

Ichigo sheathed his sword again, then turned to Rukia and asked, honestly curious about the whole thing:

"So, is this what you do with your time, go around the world and send souls to the afterlife?"

"It's what the Shinigami assigned to the material world do; and like any routine job ever, they work in shifts, nobody does it all day long. But I personally don't really do it - I'm not part of any of the six divisions who are tasked with keeping watch on the material world and monitoring the flow of hollows."

Ichigo frowned; that wasn't what she'd said before.

"Six? Didn't you said earlier Shinigami are organized in thirteen squads?"

She nodded.

"I did, but only half the organization works in the material realm - the other seven divisions mainly have tasks revolving around Soul Society and the spiritual realm. I'm from one of those, and am only here due to a very special assignment - which is the reason I wanted to talk with you, really."

"Oh?"

"See, I am here on a secret mission - I need to retrieve something that was stolen from Soul Society by some very dangerous thieves, people who are working with Hollows in exchange for power. The amount of damage they could do if we don't take back what they've stolen is impossible to guess at, but it would certainly be huge."

Ichigo frowned.

"That sounds suspiciously like you're about to ask me to fight your battles for you. If these people are so dangerous, why didn't your organization send a big squad to catch them, instead of leaving it all up to you alone?"

Rukia shrugged, even as the two of them started to walk back toward the dojo, and answered:

"They are hiding, and we don't know where; I'm here to find them. Since you're a local, I supposed you might help me on that front - you don't need to fight, just be my guide here in mortal realm. Could you do that?"

Ichigo was unsure - this whole thing didn't look like it would be solved quickly, and he doubted it would truly be without any fighting. And besides, this whole things felt... really haphazard. She was hiding something, he was sure of it, but would she tell him?

The only way to know, Ichigo supposed, was to just ask. So he did.

"You really want me to believe that you had this important mission assigned to you, but had to rely on the first person you met as you guide here? That doesn't ring true to me. Is that really all?"

Rukia seemed surprised for a moment - did he really look like that much of a stupid to her - but then quickly shifted to embarrassed and said:

"Well, the thing is... when I gave you the zanpakuto yesterday night, it backfired on me."

She pointed to his sword, and went on:

"That thing is a new prototype item created by the very Captain of our research division, and it's called an Auswahl."

"A selection? What sort of name is that?"

"...I didn't know what it meant. Anyway, it is a tool meant to empower people with a Zanpakuto without having to go through the normal years of training. It takes a lot of time for a Shinigami to build a connection with Zanpakuto; the hope was that this Auswahl would simply copy the connection and make up one of its own. It'd speed up training immensely."

"And I take it that's not what happened?"

"Well, it did work on your end, it gave you a connection with a Zanpakuto in bare moments. But it seems that, in copying my own connection, it also destroyed it, so I'll need to reforge that. I don't know how long that will take - in the worse case scenario, I might have to restart my entire training from the beginning, and that took about thirty years."

"Thirty years? How old are you?"

She slapped him on the head so quickly he wasn't able to avoid it - which was impressive, since the only person he knew who'd actually have a shot at doing so was Tatsuki - as she said, her voice higher:

"That's none of your business! And didn't I already told you that a soul can last for centuries outside of a physical body?"

Ichigo nodded even as he massaged the back of his head, and Rukia went on, returning to her own more practical tone:

"Anyway, the real problem is that I could well end up having to fight Hollows during my mission, and without my Zanpakuto..."

"...you'd be unable to properly kill them."

Finally, the whole long discussion made sense to him as she nodded, and Ichigo said, looking at her with an accusatory glare:

"So I was right - you do want me to fight your battles for you!"

"Well, yes, that's also an element of it - I do still need a guide, but what you'd really be doing would be acting as my bodyguard. I really need the help."

He was just about to refuse, when she raised a finger to stop him and said:

"But! I promise I can make it worth your while."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Think of it: you've been really lucky never to meet an Hollow before - honestly, for its size, there's almost no Hollow activity in this town, it's quite weird - but someday, that luck will run out again. And if not you, somebody else you love might met one of them. Now, think on it again, and tell me this: do you really think you could take another creature like the one you fight yesterday, but on your own this time, without me to wound it first, and tire it out, and offering support?"

A cold shiver ran through Ichigo's back as he remembered the hollow's golden gaze, the dark light it'd shot from its fist that had almost killed Rukia, it's incredible speed and strength. Then he looked again at her and said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice:

"And how does that relates to you?"

"If you accept to work for me, I will train you. I'll teach you how to detect Hollow from afar, how to improve your spiritual abilities to face them on even ground, everything you need to know to keep yourself and others safe. You have this power now - don't you want to know how to use it to its best?"

Ichigo weighted this up in his mind, and finally had to concede that it was probably the best course of action to take. He then returned to look at the girl with more focus, and pointed at her as he said:

"Alright then, but let's me make this very clear right now: if things gets too dangerous, I'm not going to simply risk my life for you - the moment I feel like you're dragging me into something stupid, I'm gonna say no. Is that fine for you?"

She grinned and answered, grabbing his finger and shaking it as if it was his entire hand:

"It's a deal."

Then she let go and waved as she left with a last parting comment:

"I'll see you tomorrow - you might want to go back to your friends now!"

Ichigo did, but even as he walked, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd thrown himself into something too big for him to handle, if this would turn out to perhaps be the greatest mistake in his whole life.

 

[Kyuubi]

Few misuses of word tense, like

"...I didn't knew what it meant

Click to shrink...

where you used "knew" instead of "know", and the colon and/or semicolon uses were weird, but asside from that, not many grammar mistakes that I could see. More pressing are the changes to the story! Is Ichigo going to have both Zangetsu from the start? I can't tell you how amazing that would be. Speaking of spirit swords, is this Auswahl similar to the cannon Asauchi? Will Ichigo get to meet the Old Man and Hollow so much sooner than in cannon?

If Isshin is the same as he is in cannon, his actions so far are really going to make me hate him that much worse. His son has a ZANPAKUTO. Still think he doesn't need to know jack about the Gotei 13 Shiba-san? Huh?! I digress. If you coyldn't tell, sometimes, I really disapprove of that man. Wonder what artifact the Sereitei is looking for. Hm.

 

[Egleris]

Well, I won't comment on what Rukia is looking for, but I will say that the Isshin retcon (and yes, it was one in the Manga, that was pretty much transparent) was one of the most annoying things about it for me, from the character assasination standpoint (and there was a lot of that going around in the manga). So, it is one of the things I've changed; I've plans for it that I hope people will like.

I will, however, say this: this concept of Isshin I'm working with is definitely hiding things from his children, but also, he'd never ever lie to them. So... make of that what you will!

 

[Zawar]

So he isn't a shinigami in the same sense as the original had him immediately become one so rather than it being his race it would be more a chosen proffession that he can leave at anytime on the other hand you have his mother a Quincy and his father a powerful spirit born in the soul society in which when he left he gave ichigo powerful spirit energy and the Quincy abilities of his mother will make him extremely powerful so maybe later on in this arc Rukia or Uryu or even Ichigo himself will find out he's a Quincy and even though isshin will probably talk about that a lot sooner so new actions and reactions will happen and canon will as a result will be destroyed from it. sorry kinda went on a rant and sorry lost track of where I was going with this

 

[Egleris]

Once again, a bit short on action, but I think this time the chapter flows a bit better. The action should ramp up in a few chapters or so, I just need to finish laying all the groundwork first.

- Chapter 3: Bond - ​

"Hello! How are you doing?"

Ichigo watched Rukia, who had ambushed him exactly as he turned the first corner after leaving school, with a certain suspicion. He hadn't considered it the day before, but he had never told her that he worked at the dojo, so how had she known to find him there? And today, she'd found him the very moment he'd said goodbye to his friends from school and was alone. Which naturally prompted a question.

"Are you following me?"

"Of course not, although the cat I live with might be."

He ignored her attempt at distracting him - after the first year of his friendship with Orihime, he'd learned to ignore non-sequitur in conversation - and instead asked again, more forcefully:

"Then how did you know where to find me? And yesterday, as well?"

She motioned for him to follow as she answered:

"That's one of the things I'm going to teach you."

The two reached a nearby park, in a spot from which they could see the road but not be noticed unless by somebody who was checking the area specifically or detouring from the main road for some reason. Once they were there, she turned to look at him and said:

"So, for what I need to teach you, we'll need to remove your soul from your body - my lessons will be completely useless otherwise."

Ichigo frowned at that.

"And wouldn't that kill me?"

"Of course not; surely you've heard of people who had out-of-body experiences, right? This will be the same, you just need to learn how to walk in and out of your body at will."

Ichigo frowned. That sounded reasonable, but even so...

"Didn't you said when we first met that my soul was strong enough I could interact with spirits with my own body? Why do I need to walk out of it then?"

"Oh, that's because I can only teach you how to fight as a spirit; I've never learned either of the two martial arts that humans use, but I did went through several years of training at the Shinigami Academy over the four Shinigami arts. That is what I can teach you. But first, you must learn to walk your soul out of your body, or I won't be able to train you at all."

Ichigo nodded at that, accepting that there was nothing else to do.

"Alright then. How do I do that?"

"With meditation and practice, mostly - but for now, I'll just give you a hand."

And she followed her words by pulling out of her pouch a pair of red gloves with a motif of black flames patterned onto them, wearing one while handing him the other. He looked at it with confusion, but as she urged him to wear it, he did; then, she suddenly struck with a palm strike that pushed him out of his own body.

Ichigo feel to the ground, and could feel his body just slightly going through it as he did - not deeply, but almost like everything was covered in a thin layer of water that he'd gone through. He watched his body, and even as it was laying on the ground, it felt wrong in a way that was hard to explain. To watch it, it seemed almost as if it was asleep or perhaps in a come, the chest moving to indicate breathing, but it seemed to lack vibrancy somehow; the color was the same yet it felt as if it was drab and washed out from clothes and skin alike, the body almost seeming out of place like a bad SFX effect in a movie.

The most worrying thing, however, was the golden chain that connected his belly with that of his body; it was mesmerizing to look at in a way that those of other ghosts had never been, but he couldn't help by feel worried - for what was his only tether to life, it looked extremely fragile. He took it in his hands, running the fingers over it - flashes of memories of his past passing him by as he did so - and then he looked at Rukia, seeing that she was studying him intently.

"So... how am I going to be able to fight if I have to drag my unconscious body along? Do I need to tie it to my back or something?"

That seemed to shook Rukia from her contemplation, as she was quick to deny it even as she moved to rummage into her pouch:

"Of course not. I've something specifically to handle this situation - here, take it."

She offered him a small square box - barely the size of two fingers together - made of some weird golden substance, which he realized with sudden insight looked like a petrified or frozen version of the same energy Rukia had summoned when fighting the Hollow. One of the box six sides was open, and looking inside it was like looking into some endless well whose walls were covered with cracking blue energy. He looked back at the girl, who looked very smug and self-satisfied out of a sudden, and asked:

"So, what is this?"

Her eyes lighted up as she explained:

"It's called a Reishi Henkan-Ki; it uses the base principles of Kaido by enveloping the non-spiritual particles that make up a body, the kishi, with a reiatsu spelled to fold onto itself and compress the kishi inside it, taking advantage of the lack of internal reishi to keep it solid so that it can be sealed inside a cage of reishi; since reishi is stronger than kishi this allows the user to treat kishi inside the container as if it was reishi instead, allowing for a number of different possible use while keeping the kishi internal integrity..."

She trailed off when she realized that Ichigo had not followed a word of her explanation, then let out a long breath and said:

"It's a genial invention that allows you to miniaturize kishi so you can turn it around, and potentially move it to the spiritual realm as well, if necessary. Just try it out, starting from your body's finger, and it'll be clear how it works."

Ichigo followed her direction, and as he did, the small box, despite not enlarging at all, proved capable of quickly consuming the finger, then the hand, and the arm, and so on for the rest of the body, until all that was left was the golden chain entering directly inside the box; by pulling on it, the body popped out in its entirety, exactly as intact and unarmed as it had been before. Once he'd put it back into the box, Rukia directed him to feed a good deal of the chain into it as well, then nodded and had him clip it at his belt. Once he was tone, she resumed her explanation, her tone back to being very serious.

"Now, your spirit body is more durable than your physical one, and most wounds to your soul won't really damage your material body and will recover faster once you're back inside it, which will help. I'm also a somewhat decent healer, which would make you a bit safer, but there are limits to what I can do. If something damages your chain, your heart, or your brain, that'd likely result in your death, and if you lose a limb or take serious damage to your head, those are gonna be permanent as well - your body might not reflect the wound, but you'd no longer be able to move your physical legs if you lost your spiritual ones. Is that clear enough?"

"Yes; I know how to fight, having less weak points to guard is only going to make it easier."

"Good. However, you only know how to fight as a human, fights as a spirit are a different matter. You need to master your spiritual body before you can even start training in Hoho or Hakuda, and I'm not going to bother teaching you Kido, so Zanjutsu is where we'll begin."

He stopped her then, his curiosity getting the better of him as he asked:

"What's so bad about this Kido, that you won't teach it to me? Is it inferior to the others?"

Rukia seemed incensed at the thought as she answered:

"Of course it isn't! You saw me using kido in battle, it saved my life and allowed you to successfully kill an enemy many times stronger than you!"

"Ok, then why would you not teach it to me than? Making items out of light seems like it'd be useful."

She scoffed.

"It is, but you're not going to be able to do that. Kido requires almost as much knowledge of your spiritual body to use as Hoho and Hakuda do, but in addition to that, you need to understand how to apply it externally, and in completely different ways whether you're using Hado, Bakudo or Kaido. Each individual spell, and there are thousands, requires you to first learn the chant and gestures necessary to apply it properly, then how to compress those to something that can be used for battle, and even then, no matter how powerful you might be, the spell effect will remain the same as it would be from a trainee who just finished mastering it. You gain in versatility a lot, and I think that's worth it, but it takes many years to get to that level, and you don't have years. So, we'll simply not go into it - besides, if Kido is needed, I can use it well enough to cover any necessity I expect might come up."

Ichigo shrugged, letting the matter go, and focused on what she'd said earlier.

"So, I'll be learning Zanjutsu, you said? I imagine this has to do with using Zanpakuto?"

Rukia nodded.

"Yes. The first thing you need to understand is that Zanpakuto have souls of their own."

That caught Ichigo by surprise, as he removed the black sword from its scabbard, checking it over.

"They do?"

"Yes. Well, technically, every item has a soul, even stones and the air; we couldn't have clothes or buildings in Soul Society if there weren't spiritual threads and bricks for us to use to build them. But Zanpakuto are special because their souls, like those of humans, are self-aware and sapient. They just lie asleep inside the blade, and by strengthening your connection to them, you can make your ability to use the Zanpakuto in combat much more effective."

"So I need to reach some sort of understanding with the spirit of the sword? How do I do that?"

Rukia smiled.

"Meditation, mostly, but to be able to do effectively, first we need to work on your ability to sense spirits."

Ichigo frowned.

"I've been able to see spirits my entire life. How am I supposed to improve on that?"

"Well, we'll start easy. From what your senses tell you, do you think there is any difference between me and any other spirit you've met, other than the Hollow?"

Ichigo took a moment to try and check the girl over, to see if there was anything strange or different about her; he couldn't find anything, however, so he answered:

"Other than you lacking the chain, I can't think of anything - and I'd not always be able to see the chain from a distance, clothes can hide it easily."

She smiled, and spoke back:

"So, you think I'm the same as any other ghost? Do you think another ghost could do this?"

Ichigo opened his mouth to ask what she was talking about, but he coughed before he could speak as he felt his breath almost getting taken away, and he felt a sudden weight pushing on all of his muscles; every motion felt like straining under heavy weights that had been tied all over his body, and every effort tired him immensely.

After a handful of seconds, he'd gathered himself enough to be able to speak, but Rukia preempted him as she explained:

"You can feel it, right? The pressure your spirit is being put under?"

"Yes."

"It's called reiatsu; the spiritual pressure that any soul releases and can use to affect others. By training your soul and making it stronger, you produce more reiatsu, and until you learn to control it and keep it tightly in check, it will leak out and press down on all the reishi it touches, with more strength and weight the more of it there is."

The pressure suddenly disappeared, allowing Ichigo to breath more easily again, while Rukia moved to sit on a bench as she said:

"Now, look at me again, and try to see if you can tell that I'm holding all of that power back, if you can find a way to perceive that difference between a trained Shinigami and any random freshly died plus."

Ichigo nodded, and focused again - and now that he knew what he was supposed to be looking for, he could perceive it... sort of. It wasn't anything visual, Rukia still looked the same as she had before, but he realized that she seemed to draw more attention than her surroundings, the movements she made sounded just slightly louder than they should, and now that he was paying attention, he could tell that moving closer to her was just minutely harder than moving away, just that slightest bit more tiring.

"Yeah, I think I can see it now - it's like your spirit was leaving a bigger footprint in reality, isn't it?"

She nodded, and answered:

"In a sense, yes. I told you that spiritual bodies are made of reishi, right? The thing is, reishi is made of experiences, knowledge, emotions, feelings - all the things that souls are made of; so, by growing older and stronger and wiser, your soul grows more powerful, gains more weight and influence over the world."

Ichigo couldn't help but be surprised by that - sure, he could agree with the idea, but it seemed weird to have such a literal translation of it - and Rukia clearly noticed his disbelief because she went on, a bit of embarrassment entering her voice:

"Well, that's a bit of embellishment on my part, but it is true that emotions are a crucial part of how Reishi works. You know about kishi and how it works, right? Atoms, radiation, all that?"

Ichigo was among the top five students in all his classes, chemistry included, so he nodded and said:

"I do know about that. I guess you're saying that reishi works similarly, but I don't see how emotions play into this?"

"It's very simple; instead of being charged with magnetic fields, reishi is charged with emotions. Similar emotions attract each other, so reishi charged with joy will attract other reishi charged with joy, and repel reishi charged with sadness. And this constant movements of reishi can cause small shards of it to be released in the air; the waves of this are what your senses perceive - much like the reflected light is what makes you see."

Ichigo nodded in understanding at that.

"So, you're saying that powerful souls are like lamps - they're much easier to see, and if you look too much, or they emit too strong a light, that hurts your eyes, isn't it?"

Rukia smiled even as she confirmed:

"That's a good way to put it. You friend is right, you're really good at taking complex concepts and explaining them simply, aren't you?"

Ichigo shrugged, then focused and said:

"Alright. So, how are we going to train me in perceiving more then?"

"Oh, I have a tool for that."

She rummaged in her pouch, which Ichigo was starting to suspect had some technology similar to the one that had allowed him to store his body inside a cube smaller than his fist from all the stuff she'd been, and passed to him a small tablet, with a flat screen much like one would expect of a radar. He looked at the item, which had a number of small lights scattered throughout it, and looked back at Rukia.

"If you have a detector for spirits, why do I even need to learn to do it myself?"

"Because it's necessary for learning Zanjutsu properly. Also, the detector is a prototype and barely useful besides; it can't catch nuance, is easily fooled, and it has a limited range."

She pressed a button on the side which caused the image to zoom in so that only three lights were on the screen, then one of the lights flared, suddenly doubling in size, and then it almost immediately faded, before returning to its previous size which, Ichigo realized, was generally just a bit smaller than the other two lights which, he suspected, represented himself and the sword. Rukia looked at him pointedly and said:

"You see? It'd be very easy to fool. Also, as I said, it has no nuance."

She pressed the button again, zooming out until she couldn't anymore; then she started to enumerate, pointing each light in what the screen said was a three-hundred meters range:

"That's an old lady, currently eating. That's a boy of nine with his mother, he's all happy while she's tired and stressed. This here is actually a cat, feeling amused yet bored. That's a middle-aged man who is starving and is feeling resigned and lonely. These here are two friends, both girls, eating something spicy. This one here is actually a spirit, dead by about two years, who is longingly and sadly watching over this teenage girl, likely a surviving family member, which is happy but somewhat distracted. This one is another middle aged man, sleeping with contentedness."

She kept pointing out to each light in turn, explaining what kind of person it belonged to and how they were feeling at the moment, all information that the display was not conveying in any manner Ichigo could see, and only when she had gone through all of them did she finally stop and said:

"I can detect more than that, and my range is far wider than this thing. It's a nice tool to help somebody like you who has no experience with using your spiritual sense, but any shinigami is a spirit who's being using their spiritual sense widely for years before entering the academy - even the slowest learner would be able to do more than this little thing after three months of training."

"Ok, you've made your point. If it is so useless for anyone but me, apparently, why even do you have it with you? In fact, why do you have so much stuff you don't need, like the glove and the item for sealing bodies and whatever else is in there?"

Rukia raised her chin and answered, sounding proud:

"Because I'm the preferred field tester of the twelfth division, so I have all sort of experimental items always with me to see how they perform; you can't improve if you don't first find the failings."

She then smirked with incredible self-satisfaction as she added:

"And because of this, I get to keep anything I like for myself. Completely free stuff of all sorts."

Ichigo wasn't sure what to answer to that, but luckily he didn't need to, because then Rukia clapped her hands and said:

"Right, let's get to it; for now, all you need to do is focus on the soul of your Zanpakuto; once you can perceive it clearly, you should be able to get into contact with it, and we can see how to proceed from there."

"You don't know what we'll do after the first step? What sort of teaching plan is that?"

She didn't seemed at all embarrassed at that, merely waving her hands as she explained:

"I really can't do better; I told you the Auswahl is a prototype, it's never been used before. Ordinarily, Zanpakuto collect a little bit of reiatsu from the wielder everyday, and a small amount from any soul that they purify, and the personality of their soul is formed in a time frame of many years from those things slowly adding onto the original spirit, which is just that of an item, not really self aware. But yours manifested with an already formed spirit, actually a very strong one, and it has a lot of similarities with that my own Zanpakuto had, I can feel them; I think it might have copied many details. If it even copied the level of development, it might have a Shikai of its own, and that'd speed things up a lot."

"What's a shikai?"

"A Zanpakuto release, the special power which is unique to every Zanpakuto. You saw mine fighting the hollow, it's how I could hit it with ice."

Ichigo nodded; he could see how having that sort of power at hand would make it much easier to attack hollows, when he eventually ended up facing another one.

Ichigo followed Rukia's instructions - closing his eyes, concentrating on his breath, trying to feel the difference in pressure between the sword an the air, as well as Rukia's own, which she occasionally increased by a bit to help him better get a feeling for it.

Eventually, he was able to get a sense for the spirit; it almost felt like he could feel the emotion - what seemed like a mix of haughtiness, resignation and disdain to him - and once he'd confirmed with Rukia that he was sensing it correctly, she had him reach for the connection.

The connection with the sword had been a presence in the back of Ichigo's mind ever since it'd first snapped into place; it was easy to ignore, but she also undeniable, and he could feel how it increased his strength and stamina a bit just by being there, as if he has a force supporting him throughout the day. Now that he could more precisely perceive what was at the other end, however, he realized that he could perceive the small flow of energy along the connection, a minimal give or take that drew a bit of his energy into the sword and then had him draw something back from it in return. It was extremely easy for him to now follow the thread - indeed, it was as simple as just letting himself be drawn in as well - and then, he felt himself be enveloped by incredible power. He opened his eyes, and he wasn't in Karakura anymore.

Instead, he was now standing atop a large skyscraper, one of many that seemed to emerge from a flooded city; a nearly incessant amount of hail seemed to constantly pepper anything in sight, with block of ice floating along in invisible currents.

The place where he was standing was one of the few where the hail was not hitting as ferociously, due to a rooftop cabin acting as a windshield of sort, but even so, Ichigo covered his head with an arm even as he looked at other person he was sharing the rooftop with.

It was a young woman with pale skin, blue eyes, and long hair of a faint lavender color, partially tied up in the back in a long bun that fell behind her shoulders except for a strand between her eyes, parted on the left side of her head by a blue, star-shaped hair clip. She was wearing a white kimono with large sleeves and a long hem, a pale yellow-green obi wrapped around her waist and a large purple bow on her back; and over all of that, she was wrapped in chains that seemed made of a red energy that let off a eerie, menacing red glow. The chain themselves seemed to originate from under the roof, emerging from and returning to holes all over it, yet they didn't seem to restrict the woman's movements too much, for she was standing at her full height - just a bit more than Ichigo's own - and glaring down at Ichigo.

He wasn't sure what to say to the woman, particularly with how she kept watching him like he was not worth her time, and after a bit, she spoke to him with an imperious tone.

"Well, who are you, thief? Why are you even here?"

Since he didn't knew how to exactly explain his goal, Ichigo decided that starting with introductions was perhaps the best way to go about this.

"I am Ichigo Kurosaki. What is your name?"

The woman scoffed.

"As if I would just part with-"

She suddenly started to scream in pain, interrupting her rebuke as the red chain's glow had suddenly intensified, flashes of energy running throughout the woman's body and causing her clear, visible pain. She tried to keep talking, as if arguing with some invisible enemy only she could hear, but the shocks of energy didn't relent, continuing to make her interrupt herself as pain became unbearable time and again.

"I will not - my pride isn't - let a thief just - how dare he-"

Eventually, however, she lowered her head, having long fallen to her knees from the suffering she'd been put through, and the red flashes of light suddenly stopped as she said:

"Fine. I am Sode no Shirayuki. Is that enough entertainment for you, or do you want more from me, thief?"

Ichigo could make no sense of what was going on; he moved to kneel next to the fallen woman, offering her a hand in an effort to get back to her feet as he answered:

"I don't understand what's going on here. I was just trying to commune with my Zanpakuto spirit."

The woman scoffed, refusing his help as she got back to her feet on her own, and then said, glaring at him:

"I am not your anything; if it wasn't for this chain holding me here, I'd have destroyed you already for daring to stand in my presence like this, like you had the right. My power was never meant for you."

Ichigo frowned; this was looking more difficult by the minute. Rukia had given him no guidance on what to do if he actually did manage to speak with the sword's spirit, but surely they weren't supposed to act like this, was she? He decided to try again, speaking in as conciliatory a tone as he could find.

"Look, I'm not here to bother you or anything, I just came here to check what the spirit... you, I suppose... was like, and if I could, to get the power of a shikai from you, because we thought that might speed things along for us by a lot."

The woman stiffened at the words, and as she did the red light of the chain started to raise up in intensity, but if quickly returned to the normal level of illumination as she said, in a clipped tone:

"You spin the sword in a vertical circle, and command me to dance by calling on my name; that shall give you access to the power of my Shikai. If that is all you wanted from me, leave my sight at once - every moment in which I share your presence is a greater torture than any these chain could ever dream up."

Ichigo frowned, but he wasn't about to continue bothering the woman who clearly wanted nothing to do with him, especially when she'd already given him what he wanted, so he just closed his eyes and focused once more on the connection, except this time he let himself be pushed out by the current of escaping reiatsu, and when he opened his eyes again, he found Rukia standing in front of him with an expectant expression.

"Well? Were you able to speak with the soul spirit? Any hints as to what its name or powers might be?"

Ichigo nodded, even as he knew he couldn't stop frowning at the memory of the interaction.

"She told me her name, and how to call on the power of her shikai. But it wasn't a pleasant meeting."

Rukia didn't seem bothered by that, instead looking quite happy as she said:

"That's perfect! So the sword did copy a fully mature connection than - that's incredibly good. Now-"

She paused, her head whipping to the left even as, in Ichigo's hand, the reiryoku detector let out a blaring alarm as new light, glowing red instead of blue like the others, appeared on it. Rukia nodded to herself as she said:

"A newly arrived hollow, just what we needed right now; I knew flaring my pressure like I did would attract one eventually. And this one feels weak, young. Let's go, it'll be the perfect chance to test how effective your Zanpakuto really is!"

And, without giving him the time to react, the girl dashed out of her material body, leaving it sitting on a bench, grabbed Ichigo by his midsection, and darted forward. Ichigo realized that her steps seemed to grow longer as they moved, impossibly so in fact, covering more ground with each one, and in barely a few seconds, they found themselves standing in front of another hollow.

It was similar to the other creature Ichigo had first faced just two days ago, clearly the same type of being, but just a clearly a very different individual. If stood hunched, using its muscular arms as an additional pair of legs to support itself. It had a mask like the other one had had, but it was different, long and almost conically shaped, very much like a fish head, with flat shell-like growth on the mask's cheeks. Instead of deep socket, the creature's golden eyes where under large, circular portions of the masks that looked see-through, like glass.

The creature was also more heavily armored than the other one; it had big shoulders pads, and even larger bracers around both its legs and hands, plus a long set of spines running down all its back. Yet, despite this more fearsome appearance, Ichigo couldn't help but feel that it was nowhere near as threatening as the other one he'd faced - and when he took a moment to analyze why that was, he realized it was scaring him less, leaving him less afraid. It felt frailer even if it did not look it, and Ichigo couldn't help but smile at that - clearly, this spiritual perception thing had some truth to it.

Before he could check the monster further, Rukia dropped him and said, a glint of determination in her eyes:

"I'll distract it and push it in your direction; you release the sword and be ready, once it's moving your way it'll try to attack. Use whatever power you've given to stop the attack, and that should give you enough of an opening to finish it at that point. Be ready!"

Then she vaulted in the air, once again using it as a platform to keep jumping in midair; the hollow roared and turned toward her, and with it distracted, Ichigo closed his eyes, took a long breath, then reopened them again and focused on what the woman in the sword had told him to do.

"Dance, Sode no Shirayuki."

He spun the sword in front of himself, the movement somehow coming naturally to him, and when he finished, the sword transformed into his hands, the blade growing in length and turning white, as did the rest of the blade, the tsuba shifting itself into a snowflake shape while a white ribbon grew out of the pommel. Even as he moved the sword through the air, testing its balance, he could feel the thrumming within; it seemed to want to draw something from the surrounding air, and when Ichigo allowed it to do so with the slightest effort of will, he found that a thin sliver of ice formed in the air along the path the sword just traveled to. It was pretty clear to him that the sword was draining heat away from what it touched, leaving anything frozen in its wake.

He refocused on the hollow in front of him, who'd just been sent careening back by a giant golden fireball; it was left with its body smoking and an arm almost entirely charred, and while it was recovering from it visibly, the wound healing faster than the naked eye could track, it was still greatly weakened by it.

Seeing this, Ichigo darted forward, ready to take advantage of the opening; the hollow noticed and struck with its stronger arm at him, and Ichigo reacted almost instinctively, as if suggestions were being whispered in his ears, moving his sword into a wide circle even as he dodged to the side. This created an ice ring that the monster's arm slammed and got trapped into; before the Hollow could make any more moves, or get free of the entrapment, Ichigo struck, his sword going through the monster's mask and shattering it, causing the monster to be banished away.

Rukia landed in front of him, a smile on her face, and commented:

"Good work! See, it's not that difficult. Now, what is the power of..."

She trailed off as her eyes focused on the sword, and then she said, voice full of disbelief:

"Sode no Shirayuki?"

Ichigo was a bit surprised by that, as he eyed the sword himself.

"You already knew the name? Was it written somewhere I didn't see?"

She didn't answer that, instead merely shaking her head and then saying, in a whisper:

"I... I must go now."

And with that, as per usual, she left Ichigo alone with even more questions.

 

[Powerofmind]

Now this is some quality drama!

 

[Misdreamer]

That explanation for Rukia pulling random shit as needed is perfect.

 

[Egleris]

Well, I'm happy for the compliments, at least! Everything I'm putting in the story is gonna have a reason for being there, I promise that.

That said, as I am very much looking for criticism, if anybody who read the story but didn't like it felt like telling me why, that'd be great! Every little bit of information helps me get better (and I do know I have a long way to go before I can be considered good).

 

[Egleris]

So, as it turned out, I wasn't wrong when I said that it'd be hard for me to keep up to the "one update a week" posting speed; this could well be considered a very late update for this week, but I'd honestly feel better if it was considered a early update for the next one instead. Hopefully the chapter's quality will be good enough to make readers forgive me for that.

Also, I will again ask, to people who read the story but didn't like it, leave me a comment to tell me why! Writing this is harder than I thought it would be, especially since I have no help, and any sign that it is being read - even negative comments - will help with making it easier for me. Thanks in advance!

- Chapter 4: Quincy - ​

Within the following few days, Ichigo did not see Rukia any further; the girl didn't suddenly appear to continue their training, nor did she let any type of message for him, and he did not have any way to contact her wherever she currently was staying - assuming she hadn't just gone back home to wherever Soul Society was, which was very possible.

Having no other recourse, he continued to try and train himself into learning how to sense the spiritual power of the people around him, using the radar Rukia had given him as a mean to verify the result of his attempts. He found he could even practice while at school, as sensing pressure didn't require him to be a spirit outside of his own body, even if it did became easier when he was. He could just close his eyes and focus at any time to practice with his classmates, which was easier because he could more easily verify how well he was interpreting the information about their feelings... but it also lead out to him learning a number of interesting things.

The first was that his Zanpakuto, Sode no Shirayuki, was apparently the strongest spiritual presence in the school by a very large margin, having twice as much power within itself as the three most powerful human souls he could sense put together. This was not, however, immediately apparent; the sword's power was somehow sealed, with a vastly powerful inner core that he could only perceive through the connection, whereas using normal sensing would instead reveal a soul just a bit smaller in power than his own.

Speaking of which, he was somewhat surprised to discover that his spiritual presence was, apparently, only the third largest in the school. According to Rukia, the strength of his soul was one of the reasons he could interact with ghosts easily; that might mean that the other two people with stronger souls might be aware of ghosts as well. He wasn't sure what to make of that - having the chance to talk about this whole spirit thing with somebody other than his family might be nice, but it might also cause more trouble, especially since Rukia did said that her mission was supposed to be a secret.

The most interesting thing, however, was that what was the strongest soul in the school - not much stronger than his own, just enough so to be noticeable - seemed to react whenever he tried to sense it, disappearing so fast that he'd have thought it a mistake, had he not had the spirit radar to confirm what his senses were telling him.

He had to wonder what this might mean. The only person he'd ever met capable of changing what her soul detected as was Rukia, but he was sure this wasn't her; while he still had trouble discerning many details, he could discern enough to tell this was somebody else, completely lacking the determination that had been so overpowering in her. Also, this soul barely had a third of the power Rukia had shown him, and he wasn't even sure if she'd shown him all of her power.

Still, the fact that the most powerful soul in the school was capable of hiding itself from Ichigo's perception meant that its owner was the best bet he had for finding somebody who could help him with his training; so, he decided to try and find this person, at least to speak with them. However, after two days of trying and failing to locate the owner of that soul, it became clear to Ichigo that he was being avoided on purpose. Which meant that he was left with only one spirit he could turn to ask for help from. With a sigh, he went to meditate to the same spot where Rukia had been training him, reaching for the link with his Zanpakuto again.

When he opened his eyes, he was once again on a rooftop in the city of skyscraper being battered by hail, with Sode no Shirayuki watching him with an imperious glare; apparently she had found a way to better accommodate the chains holding her, for while she was still wrapped in them, they were now arranged so as to mostly appear draped around her figure, clearly restricting her movement far less if her crossed arms were anything to go by.

As he tried to decide how to open the conversation and explain what he wanted to her, the sword spirit once again beat him to it and said, her tone fittingly cold:

"So you're back, thief. Come to make more demands of me? What do you want this time?"

Ichigo was about to answer, then paused, considering the woman in front of himself again. Then he said, wanting to see her reaction:

"You have to do anything I ask of you, isn't it? The chain are in place to ensure that."

She scoffed, annoyed at his words, and shot back:

"Indeed. Are you here to gloat then, that you have to remember me the condition of my imprisonment? Or do you plan to humiliate me by giving me degrading commands? I will not be that easily broken, I warn you; my soul is made of steel as much as my body is."

Ichigo shook his head.

"I'm not here to hurt you. I just... is this how the bonds work for everybody? Are Zanpakuto the slaves of their Shinigami, forced to bend to their every whim and grant them all power they require?"

Sode no Shirayuki suddenly moved, in a burst of speed and the same kind of instantaneous movement the hollow had used, a power so primal and terrifying Ichigo instinctively took two steps back - not that it would have saved him, if she'd been able to reach. Unluckily for her, but very luckily for Ichigo, the chains stopped her, blocking her arms even as she desperately tried to break through to deliver some sort of hit to him; but eventually she relented, and stepped back to her position before saying, voice filled with cold hatred:

"Of course not! How dare you? How can you be so brazen as to compare this prisony you imposed upon me to the true bond between a Zanpakuto and its true wielder? That you even think the two comparable is the greatest insult I have received since the beginning of this torture."

Ichigo was truly surprised by the vehemence in the spirit's voice, but he was quick to rally as he said, his tone measured:

"So, this is not how the bond normally works. You speak of me as a thief, and said that your power is not meant for me. And Rukia said the soul of my sword felt very similar to hers, and knew your name even though, going by how much you fought the chains for it, you would not reveal it to just anyone."

Sode no Shirayuki looked completely unimpressed as Ichigo explained his reasoning out loud, and said in a very annoyed, commanding tone:

"Get to the point."

"You are not my Zanpakuto, you are Rukia's. The Auswhal did not copy a connection, it stole it and forced it to attach itself to me."

That seemed to leave the spirit confused, as she asked:

"What are you speaking about? You kidnapped me."

Ichigo shook his head.

"That might have been the result, but it wasn't the original intention. We just wanted to copy your powers so I could use them against the hollow."

Sode no Shirayuki's eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

"And of course, I'm supposed to just believe you? That this was just an accident, and I'm wrapped in chains that will torture me if I disobey you simply because you didn't know what you were doing?"

Ichigo could tell that she wasn't going to, so he simply shook his head and answered:

"You can believe what you want; I will not force you into anything, but if you could help me with a few questions I have, that would be great. And I promise they're not questions about you, just general stuff that I'm sure a normal Shinigami would already know."

She eyes him suspiciously.

"And then you will leave me alone?"

"If your answers help me with what I'm doing, I will have no other reason to bother you."

Sode no Shirayuki seemed to consider this, then nodded.

"Alright then, ask your questions, so that I can be rid of your presence."

"I've been trying to locate a particular soul, but they keep hiding from my senses. I need to find some ways of tracking them without being noticed. Can you help me with that?"

She scoffed.

"Of course I can. You're probably sensing actively, by either drawing stray reiatsu toward yourself, or sending pulses of your own reiatsu out and sensing the results when it rebounds back to you. Anybody with control of their own reiatsu would notice if it was being tugged or smacked, and react to it by drawing as much of it inside themselves as possible, which would hide them. What you need to do is to sense passively instead. Collect your reiatsu around yourself, without letting it escape or allowing it to draw other in; instead keep it stable and as still as possible, but also, expand it to cover as much of an area as you're capable. When it brushes on other souls, you'll be able to sense them, but to them, it will feel no different than any of the other souls moving around, and thus not cause them to react by hiding."

The Zanpakuto spirit then glared down at him, and added:

"Naturally, the more powerful you are, the more reiatsu you have to use, the easier it is to sense things in this manner, and over a larger area too; and naturally, greater control also helps. Covering any area greater than a few meters would be impossible for one such as you."

Ichigo shrugged and answered, not at all daunted by the spirit's words:

"It's still the best shot I have, so I will try anyway. And thank you for the help, in any case."

"Just be gone from my sight, as you promised."

Ichigo nodded, but before he left he added, trying to convey how truly sorry he was:

"I know you have no reason to believe me, but for what it might matter, I did not intend for any of this to happen at all."

Then he once again focused on the connection and used it to return to the real world.

Before trying out the suggestion Sode no Shirayuki had given him for sensing things passively, out of pure curiosity, Ichigo decided to try out the other mean of active detection she'd mentioned; he was pretty sure that the one he'd been using until now was based upon drawing in external reiatsu, so he tried to focus his own to instead send it out in a pulse. He wondered how he could do this, since he really wasn't sure how exactly reiatsu was controlled, but then he remembered what Rukia had said of the nature of reiatsu: that it was the result of spirit particles with opposite emotions colliding. So, he focused on memories that caused him conflicting emotions, and sure enough, he could feel his own reiatsu reacting, agitating inside him; he continued to focus, and managed to push a lot of reiatsu out at once.

The effort let him somewhat winded, but he could also feel as his reiatsu bounced off of all the souls he was surrounded by, the feedback informing him on them... and he realized, with surprise, that while for the majority the data he received was the same, there were a few subtle details that, if not different, at least stood out differently. Whereas his normal method emphasized the current emotions the soul was feeling more, this method seemed to make the emotional core hidden underneath the whirlpool of ones being felt in the moment much easier to discern.

Resolving to experiment at some later point to see if any use could be made of these differences, Ichigo instead tried to focus on creating the bubble of reiatsu around himself that was supposed to allow him to detect things passively. It took him a couple of days to be able to control his emotions well enough to keep the bubble up for more than a handful of seconds, but once he did, he took advantage of the first free period he got to tour the school until he finally managed to locate the person with the powerful spirit. As it turned out, it was a boy with straight, chin lenght black hairs, sharp features, and square glasses over blue eyes. He decided to speak with him once school was over, but the boy was, apparently, a participant in one of the afterschool clubs - the arts and crafts one, of all things - and thus, Ichigo had to wait until that was over to approach him.

When the boy finally left, however, he wasn't alone either; instead, he was speaking with Orihime, and walked her all the way home, which surprised Ichigo somewhat. He followed them until the boy said goodbye to Orihime on the door of her home, and only then did he went to meet him; the hope was to greet him, but the very moment he showed up, the boy turned toward him with a cold gaze in his eyes, and Ichigo could quite literally feel the boy's disdain as he let if filter to the forefront of his soul.

"I see you finally decided to reveal yourself, Kurosaki Ichigo; I was wondering if you wanted to follow me home."

Ichigo frowned.

"How do you know my name?"

"It wasn't hard to find out. In case you forgot, you are carrying at your side a spiritual power that is equal to your own; anybody with even the slightest bit of sensory ability would notice two paired souls like that. What is hard to believe is that you would take this long to even realize I existed; I was aware of you from the moment you first entered the same school as me, long before you gained your new spiritual bond. But maybe you're just that bad with sensing spirits, are you?"

Ichigo frowned. That wasn't nice at all, but then again, it was true that he wasn't that good at this whole thing yet. Thus he answered, keeping most of his annoyance out of his voice:

"Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to speak you about. My teacher isn't around anymore, and I need to learn how to use this power I have to protect my family, so I wanted to see if you could help me train."

The other boy kept looking at him, and when he took a step forward, he could feel the cold emotions in him - disdain, arrogance, and annoyance - grow stronger as he asked, in a tone that perfectly matched what his soul felt like:

"You are asking me for help, yet you wield a weapon with a powerful spirit within it. Do you see any of that on me, to think the two of us have anything in common?"

"No, but I thought you knew of a way I could fight hollows; you can do that, right?"

"You really have no idea, do you? Do you even know what I am?"

Ichigo was starting to get really annoyed with the guy's attitude, so he took one step forward himself as he asked the question the other boy clearly wanted to hear.

"Why don't you tell me then? What are you?"

"I am Ishida Uryu, a Quincy. And initially I thought you might be one too, but that's not it at all, is it? Somehow, you are a Shinigami."

Ichigo couldn't see any way to deny that, so he answered:

"Of a sort, yeah. I am not a real one, but I do have the power of one. What does it matter? And what is a Quincy, exactly?"

"A Quincy is an enemy of the Shinigami; we hunt hollows as well, but our methods are different, and Shinigami want us to stop. They think us... unnecessary. Nocive, even."

He eyed Ichigo up and down, as if sizing him up as a potential opponent, and then went on:

"And I suppose you're the first step into replacing us, aren't you? A new type of Shinigami, made from the living rather than the dead?"

Ichigo honestly didn't knew how to answer that, although it did seems plausible; Rukia had said that the Auswhal was a prototype project meant to quickly train Shinigami in the human world, after all. It wasn't far-fetched to think the project was meant to replace these Quincy if they really were enemies.

Still, Ichigo wasn't anybody's enemy, he just wanted to learn how to protect himself and his family, so he shrugged and answered:

"Maybe, but I don't care about that; I just want to learn how to fight hollows."

"Oh, but there is no need for you to. I shall prove to you that it is Shinigami, and not Quincy, who are unnecessary in this world. So, unless you want to fight me, I suggest you just go."

It was Ichigo's turn to scoff at Uryu, as he answered:

"Like I would let myself get provoked into a fight like that. You might have a grudge with Shinigami, but I don't have anything to do with it. If you don't want to help me get better, that's fine, I'll find other ways to train myself."

With that, he turned to leave, but before he could, Ishida spoke again.

"It doesn't matter if you run away now, Kurosaki; soon enough, you'll realize that you're in over your head, and that you should leave the hunting of hollows to those who can handle the task. And when you do, I'll have proven the Shinigami wrong, and my people right. I hope you're ready to learn how much of a failure you are."

Ichigo didn't answer - he wasn't really sure he even had any answer to give, at this point - and simply left, but he couldn't help but feel worried. The glint of challenge in Ishida's eyes had been very real, and as he continued to speak, his soul had kept filling with more and more anger, until it was the only emotion left within him. It was too strong for Ichigo to think that this would be the end of it; he needed to prepare for whatever Uryu might be planning, because he was sure he would just not make such a scene if he didn't have a plan ready to turn his threat into fact. Ichigo needed to learn more about him, if he was to be prepared for whatever the other boy had in mind.

And since there was only one person he knew who could help him better understand Ishida, the following day, as classes ended, Ichigo went to speak with Orihime.

"Oh, of course I know about Uryu! He's the best with sewing in the club, and will always help people who ask him for it. But he's also very cold with people; I don't think he likes being friendly."

Ichigo nodded, then frowned and asked:

"Really? He accompanied you home yesterday, didn't he?"

"Oh, yes, he did! He said he was going to check something in that area, and since he was already going in that direction, we went together!"

She then paused, looking thoughtful as she seemed to consider something, and asked:

"How do you know that, though?"

"Ah... I just met him in there, and he mentioned it - that's why I asked about him to you in the first place."

Orihime seemed satisfied with that answer as she clapped her hands together.

"Oh! So you two are on the treasure hunt together? Can I join in?"

"Treasure hunt?"

"Yeah, when he left he said that he was close, but not there yet. What else could he have been talking about, if not a hidden treasure?"

What could a hunter of hollows, who apparently disliked hanging out with people, have gone along with Orihime to check, only to determine that it was close but not yet there? Ichigo suspected he knew the answer to that, and so he said to Orihime, in as reasonable a tone as he could manage:

"I don't know, but maybe it's worth checking out. Would you mind if I accompanied you home today?"

Orihime seemed to blush at that, apparently not knowing what to say; even her emotions, when Ichigo took a moment to try and sense them, where very confused. In the end, however, she settled for allowing Ichigo to walk home with her. He tried to focus on practicing his sensing while accompanying her, paying very limited attention to her high speed speech that seemed to be some tirade about marathons or some such, and sure enough, as he had expected, he found that Ishida was already in the area, apparently waiting patiently somewhere nearby. However, that took a backseat when they reached Inoue's house and he realized that a soul was inside, one that felt strange, wrapped in pain and guilt and hatred, and waiting impatiently for something.

And he knew that Orihime had lived alone for the last two years.

Whatever was inside, Ichigo wanted to see for himself, so he quickly turned to Orihime, which seemed unsure over what to say, and asked her, in the most casual tone he could manage:

"Orihime, could I ask you for a glass of water? With how hot it is, I'm really thirsty right now."

Once again, it took a few moments for Orihime to agree, but once they were inside, Ichigo immediately found who the soul was, as he moved to an altar standing in a corner. He was still looking it all over, when he heard Orihime moving behind him, and he asked her, softly:

"This is to remember your brother by, isn't it?"

As she spoke, the girl's voice was unusually serious, and even if Ichigo hadn't been able to just sense the emotions she was feeling, he would have recognized them in her voice, so full of them it was.

"Yes. I try to speak with him everyday, to tell him of what's going on with my life. It's the only way I have to keep him close; I like to think that he's always watching over me."

Ichigo raised his eyes, looking at the ghost floating above the shrine dedicated to himself, and said in a low tone:

"I guess that's a way to see it."

The ghost floating over the altar had very little in common with the smiling man in the photos Orihime had collected. While he was undeniably the same person, he looked gaunt and tired, and his clothes hung over a body that looked skeletal, like a man that had long been starving. In his eyes burned a fever and a deep hatred that were now focusing all of their intensity on Ichigo himself, as if only some old, nearly forgotten instinct was keeping the ghost from attacking him. But most worrying of all was the chain of fate: instead of the normal golden color Ichigo was used to seeing it be, the chain was almost entirely black, every link deeply corroded and clearly damaged, cracking and screeching stridently with every movement the ghost took.

Then, the ghost spoke, with a voice that only barely resembled what he'd had in life, deep echoes and a rasping breathing entering it.

"Kurosaki Ichigo... I know you... she speaks of you so often... you're one of those... one of those who are taking Orihime away from me... I won't let you... she belongs with me..."

Ichigo frowned as he reached for his sword and said, completely focused on the ghost:

"You've remained here too long. You need to go to the afterlife, meet the rest of your family in the Soul Society and wait for Orihime there. It's time for you to go."

"Ichigo, who are you talking with?"

He turned toward Orihime, not even really sure how to explain to her what was going on, only to see a opening forming in the air behind her, with two powerfully muscled arms slowly tearing it apart; and the moment it did, Ichigo could feel the huge power and limitless hunger as the Hollow entered the room. It was a big creature with dark blue skin, and what looked like wings made of bone sprouting from the back of its forearms; its mask was a large and long snout that sported huge teeth without any lips, its eyes where thin vertical slits of golden light repressed deep into small and circular sockets, and it had curly green fur to both sides of the mask, like large sideburns, as well as two large patches of the same on the chest.

It let out a long chuckle as it finished emerging from the cut it had opened in the sky, letting it close behind himself, and then said, in a mocking tone:

"Come on, why do you want to send the friend here away? He's so close to discovering his true self! It'd be a shame to cut his journey of self-discovery short when it's so close to the end."

"Orihime, move!"

The girl was confused, and the hollow was already reaching for her, so Ichigo didn't wait, drawing his sword and darting forward; he managed to get between Orihime and the monster just in time, blocking the attack... only to be sent crashing into the wall by it. The hit caused him an incredible amount of pain, and a moment later Orihime was at his side, helping him get up on his feet, while the hollow chuckled and said, amused:

"Human bodies are just so fragile, aren't they? Really, if you're gonna fight an Hollow in melee, you need to have more durability than that."

While he struggled to get back to his feet, Ichigo realized that the hollow was right, and also why: he was still within his human body, not in his spiritual one. Which meant that, if he didn't play this carefully, he was gonna get grave, possibly permanent wounds from this.

The hollow, however, didn't seem to care about the advantage, instead moving next to the ghost of Orihime's brother and saying to him, with a dark chuckle that sounded almost like a gurgle:

"Don't worry, comrade, you're gonna love it in Hueco Mundo; just let me finish taking those last memories of yours."

And with that, he closed his fist around the chain of fate; for a moment Ichigo thought he would be ripping it apart, even if he didn't knew what that would do, but then he realized that, as the hollow touched it, the chain was corroding itself at much greater speed, which caused Orihime's brother to scream... and then he started to change. Dark grey scales started to grow all over his body, his legs fusing together into a long, serpentine tail, the finger mutating into scythe-like claws, his entire form growing in size, and finally the chain snapping free of the ground and the hollow's grasp to wrap itself around his face, mutating into a single thing as link after link fused together to form a domino mask over his face, the last piece of chain finally breaking free from his chest to join the rest of it, leaving a hole in the newly formed hollow's chest.

The older hollow let out another chuckle, and then said, sounding gleeful:

"So, what do you want to do first, brethren?"

The new hollow's eyes moved to Orihime, and he hissed out, his voice vibrating with hatred:

"I want... to kill her... for having left me alone... forgotten... I will kill her!"

Ichigo got to his feet as fast as possible, brandishing his sword to stop the attack, when suddenly it was interrupted, the older hollow grabbing the tail of the newer one and dragging him backwards, just in time to avoid a dart of glowing blue energy that had come from outside and would have impaled him otherwise.

Everyone in the room turned to watch outside of the window, where Ichigo was only somewhat surprised to see Ishida standing there, apparently in midair... except no, not really; he was standing on some sort of thin hovering platform also made of the same glowing blue energy the arrow had been. He was also wearing a weird white longcoat that made him look somewhat like a priest, and apparently it was some mark of rank as well, because the older Hollow recognized it as he said, sounding more angered than scared:

"A Quincy! Why are you here?"

Ishida looked down at the hollows with cold disdain, clearly disgusted by their very presence.

"To destroy you, of course."

Then he raised his hand, which was holding a silver pendant, and a bow made of energy formed around it. Uryu took aim, and the hollows had to scurry away as another arrow was shot through the window; it traveled so fast, Ichigo had little doubt that the hollow wouldn't have been able to avoid it if Ishida hadn't had his field of fire limited by having to shot through the window.

Still, it was distraction enough for Ichigo to release Sode no Shirayuki; once the white sword was in his hand, he said to Orihime, in a whisper:

"Hide, Orihime - this is dangerous."

Surprisingly, the girl shook her head and said, more forcefully than he'd ever heard her speak:

"No, I'm not going anywhere! Ichigo, explain to me, what's going on? Where did you get a magic sword? ...is that Uryu?"

He followed her gaze at the last comment, and saw that Ishida had entered the room; as soon as he landed, the two hollows charged at him from different angles, but just as they were about to slam into him, there was a glow of blue light under his feet, and then he was on the opposite side of the room, bow ready as he said, letting an arrow fly:

"You are not fast enough to beat me, monsters."

The arrow slammed straight into the older's hollow upper torso, causing it to fall to the ground; the hollow which was Orihime's brother darted to the side, then turned toward where Ichigo and his sister were and charged at them as he shouted:

"If I can't do anything else, at least I'll get to kill you!"

Ichigo braced for the attack, but then realized it wasn't him the hollow was going for; he swung to the side, draining away all heat from the air to create an ice barrier for the hollow to smash against. The hollow recoiled back, and Ichigo glared at him as he shouted, getting really angry at him:

"What were you trying to do? Do you not know that big brothers are supposed to protect their younger siblings? Is nothing of that left in you?"

"Shut up!"

The hollow struck at him again, and his strength was enough to crack the ice, but not yet to break through it; Ichigo prepared itself for the attack, but then the hollow stopped and threw himself to the side, and just in time to avoid an arrow of blue energy from slamming into him. Uryu looked annoyed.

"Are you ignoring me, Hollow? Very bad idea."

"Indeed, we need a distraction here if we are to kill you all."

Ishida and Ichigo both turned to the wounded hollow, who they had thought defeated; instead, he had gotten up, and suddenly darted for Orihime, who couldn't see the creature, and was instead trying to understand Ichigo's and Ishida's powers. Ichigo moved to push her out of the way at the exact same time the hollow grabbed her; for a moment, Ichigo thought he'd succeeded, but then he saw the golden chain, and realized that the hollow had grabbed Orihime's soul while he pushed away the body, so the two were separated now. The bat-like hollow's grin grew even more scary as he shouted:

"Now, you stand still and let yourself be killed by my friend, or I'll eat the girl!"

Ishida's eyes narrowed as he answered:

"You hurt her, and I'll destroy you. Why even try to take an hostage?"

"Better that than being reduced to nothing by you, Quincy!"

Ichigo frowned, and interjected himself in the conversation.

"What are you speaking about? If we win you won't be reduced to nothing, you'll just be purified and sent to Soul Society."

The hollow glared at him and spat back:

"Do you really not know? That's only true for hollows that are struck by a Zanpakuto; Quincy just tear our bodies apart until there's nothing left for us to regenerate from. Death by their arrows is true destruction, and I won't subject myself to it."

His grin then grew more malicious, as he pointed at where his shoulder wound had now completely closed - which, Ichigo realized, meant that the arrows were only as effective as Rukia's kido, not as much as a Zanpakuto - and added:

"Also, this whole hostage stunt was only a way for me to buy time. My name is Shrieker, and I've killed two shinigami before; a clear beginner like you and a Quincy will be easy prey for me, when I'm using my full strength. Now, catch!"

And with that, he threw Orihime toward the two of them... and Ichigo realized, it was the same trick the first Hollow he'd fought had used; he was gonna charge behind her to strike by surprise.

As such, instead of simply waiting for Orihime, Ichigo jumped forward and upward, catching her in midair and carrying her toward her own body; he landed quickly and glanced back, seeing that the hollow had now engaged Ishida in close combat, keeping him from using his bow or the fast dodging technique he'd used before, while the other one was slithering along the room's wall, maneuvering himself to move around the ice wall suspended in midair and clearly planning to charge at the two of them.

That was when Orihime, grabbing Ichigo's arm, asked, her eyes now moving between the two monsters, fear mixing with confusion in her voice:

"Ichigo? What's happening? What are those things?"

"Evil spirits that wants to eat our souls. Stay here, I'll fight this one while Ishida keeps the other one occupied."

He then moved away from the wall, raising his Zanpakuto in a guard position to be ready to fight the hollow... except that, once it had moved past the ice wall, the hollow did not charge at Ichigo, but instead went straight for Orihime, screaming:

"I will not let you abandon me! I will keep you with me forever!"

Cursing, Ichigo had to jump at the creature instead of waiting for it; his blade slammed into the wall just in front of it, causing the hollow to stop for a moment, and Ichigo used that to push away from the room's wall with all of his strength, draining away all the heat from the path his sword traveled as it dislodged itself from the wall - resulting in a new, thick ice barrier sprouting directly from the wall, boxing the hollow in.

The creature jerked back at that, and Ichigo pointed his sword at him as he shouted:

"What sort of coward are you, to go after the unarmed person that can't hurt you, instead of facing the one who is actually ready for a fight?"

Those words seemed to strike a cord, for the hollow shrieked:

"Can't hurt me? She's done nothing but hurting me since the day I died! Do you not know? Back then, she came to speak with me every day, telling me of how much she missed me, how alone she felt without me there to take care of her, how she felt sad and lonely all the time because I wasn't there. But then! Then she started to speak of her friend Tatsuki, and of you, Kurosaki Ichigo, everyday, smiling more and more and more, always happier that I wasn't there, forgetting me, leaving me behind! She stopped loving me, me, who had done so much for her all my life! I can't forgive that!"

He tried to lunge forward, but Ichigo slashed his sword in an horizontal arc in front of himself, calling on Sode no Shirayuki's power; this time, he tried to control the heat-draining effect to shape it a bit, and as he'd hoped, the result was ice much thinner and sharp on the end the hollow was, practically a blade that, due to its own reckless charge, the creature cut itself into. The pain was enough to make it recoil backwards once again, hissing at them.

That was when Orihime spoke, her voice trembling.

"Brother? Brother, is... is it... really... you?"

The snake-like hollow turned to watch Orihime, who had gotten to her feet and advanced to the ice wall, placing her hand over it. The hollow moved closer to the opposite side of the ice barrier, and answered, his voice more emotional:

"Yes. Can't you even recognize my voice? You've forgotten everything about me, replaced me with these friends, like him!"

He gestured at Ichigo, but Orihime was quick to shock her head and shout back:

"I never forgot you! I just wanted to show you... that I was happy... that you didn't need to worry about me... I thought that's what you would have wanted to hear..."

That seemed to give the hollow pause somewhat; worried it might be a trick, Ichigo used a pulse of reiatsu to read his deepest emotions better. He could sense the maelstrom of dark feelings that the monster's soul was made of seem to placate somewhat, and a sense of something different, hard to identify but closer to guilt than the hatred and rage that had been there before, rising within the creature as it placed its own hand over the ice barrier, at the same height his sister's was, and whisperer:

"Orihime..."

And that was when a glowing arrow of blue energy smashed through the ice wall and the hollow both, pinning him to the wall with a bone-shaking scream of pain.

Ichigo turned to watch Ishida, and saw that he had once more the bow of blue energy within his hand; behind him, Shrieker was nailed to the ground by what looked like four javelins of energy, and the rest of his body had literally been torn into dozens and dozens of small pieces scattered all across the room.

Ishida, however, didn't seem to care, as he glared at Ichigo and said:

"Hollows are irredeemably evil; the person they were before is lost the moment they don their mask. You get tricked much too easily."

Ichigo frowned, then answered:

"I could feel his emotions there; surely if you're as good at sensing as you said, you could too?"

Uryu looked down at him and said, sounding annoyed:

"I can read it just fine, and all that is flowing out of him is hatred and anger."

That wasn't right, Ichigo could tell. Well, not with the reading he's used. He tried the other method of active sensing, dragging the reiatsu flowing away from the Hollow toward himself, and indeed, only his strong negative emotions could be felt... but when he sent another pulse - which caused Ishida to frown in confusion - he still felt those more positive emotions there, buried deep within, but still stirring somewhat as the Hollow was looking at Orihime, one hand reaching toward her... as the girl was moving around the remnants of the ice wall to reach him.

Ichigo's eyes widened at that - why was she being so reckless? - and decided that he could discuss the matter of who was right at another time; removing the hollow was more important. He let out a long breath and addressed Ishida more respectfully this time, saying:

"It doesn't really matter, I suppose; in the end, the point will be moot once I've purified him."

He then turned to walk toward the hollow, preparing his Zanpakuto for a strike - only to feel an enormous buildup of pressure from Ishida, and another arrow flew past him incredibly fast, bare millimeters from his cheek; and Ichigo knew that if it'd been aimed at him, he'd not have been able to dodge. But instead the arrow traveled toward Orihime's brother, slamming straight into his reaching arm and pinning it to the wall, causing it to let out another scream and Orihime to turn at Ishida and shout:

"Stop! What are you doing?!"

The Quincy didn't seem bothered, as he commented, his voice calm and controlled:

"I'm destroying a monster. As I told Kurosaki already, we do not need Shinigami to protect us, we can do that on our own, and much better than they ever could."

Ichigo turned toward Ishida, really annoyed at him and ready to start an argument... only to see in horror that, behind the archer, the many severed portions of Shrieker's body were moving on their own, reshaping themselves into a tidal wave of leeches that were silently sneaking upon Uryu.

"Ishida, behind you! Dodge!"

The Quincy's eyes widened at that, and even as he turned, Ichigo could see that a thin platform of light was forming under his feet, and an even thinner, almost invisible road was forming underneath it; and as soon as they were completed, the platform shot forward at incredible speed, pushing along the path like a snowboard sliding down a slope... but even with the warning, Ishida hadn't been fast enough to avoid every single one of the leeches that had jumped onto him. Still, when they tried to bite down, their little fangs bounced away from his skin - Ichigo could have sworn the skin was giving off just the faintest hue of blue light in that moment - and Ishida settled his glasses properly back on top of his nose before saying, sounding genuinely angry:

"You really think that such an attack would stop me, Hollow? I'm stronger than you by far, and this defiance of your fate will bring you nothing."

Then he raised his hand, once again gripping the amulet that dangled from his wrist into a strong grip and summoning a bow of energy from it... but instead of answering the provocation, the hollow's tongue slitted out of his mouth, and it let out a piercing whistle that properly fit his name of Shrieker.

And that was when all of the leeches attached to Ishida suddenly exploded.

Somehow, the dozen or so of explosions going off all over his body simultaneously did not rip Ishida apart as one would have expected bombs to do, but he did collapse to the ground, smoke rising from his whole body - including his mouth - while his white robes were now ripped and a collection of bruises and burns had formed all over his body. Shrieker let out a long, shrill laugh and shouted:

"And that's how I managed to defeat two Shinigami! You should learn not to underestimate an Hollow, but I suppose it's too late now for that lesson, since I'm going to eat you!"

Then, the hollow sent another wave of leeches forward, this time aiming for Ichigo himself, as well as Orihime. Ichigo rushed to intercept, using Sode no Shirayuki to create two walls of ice, one behind the other; however, they only lasted for a few seconds, as one wave of leeches detonated the first to leave free passage for a second wave to detonate the other, while the rest organized themselves in layers, clearly preparing to destroy as many walls as necessary to get to them.

Ichigo realized then that he needed a new tactic if he wanted to win this. He built another two walls to gain time while he thought of something to do, then his eyes narrowed as he noticed something: whenever the leech were detonated, the Hollow had his tongue slit out of his mouth, sending out another of those piercing shrieks each time. Which meant, Ichigo realized, that he had a chance, if he could just make it to the monster.

He raised Sode no Shirayuki, considering the blade for a moment, then inspiration struck him and he darted forward, spinning the sword in front of himself in the same way he would when releasing its shikai. Sure enough, this generated a set of ice rings in sequence, which acted like a corridor protecting Ichigo's sides as he ran forward; even as leeches slammed into the rings, breaking them, the slight delay was just enough for Ichigo to stay ahead of them, getting closer and closer to the Hollow.

Of course, Shrieker wasn't going to let himself be killed that easily, and a wall of leeches raised at the end of the tunnel, so that Ichigo would be trapped between the two. Exactly as Ichigo had expected, and planned for. The moment the leeches got into range of the sword's spin, he stopped draining in heat only from the tip, instead drawing from the blade's entire length; as he'd expected, that turned all the leeches into ice, which he crashed through while Shrieker's watched in shock. Before the hollow could recover, Ichigo was on it; the wave of leeches that had been following him slammed into his head the moment he landed and thus stopped moving, but before the hollow could react, he'd grabbed his tongue with one hand, and used Sode no Shirayuki to severe it.

He grinned smugly down at the monster, flipping the severed body part in his hand as he commented, idly flicking away one of the leeches that were clinging to him with his sword:

"You can't really do much without this, can you? What will you do now?"

Apparently, what the hollow wanted to do was run away, as it heaved with such strength that he ripped away his limbs to get free from the energy javelins that were impaling him. Before he could move much, however, an energy arrow slammed straight into him, and then another, and one more, and as Ichigo turned to watch, he saw that, even standing only on his knees and horribly bruised, Ishida was still firing arrow after arrow from his bow, and when Ichigo turned, he saw that, even as the Hollow's wounds were indeed regenerating very fast - whereas his tongue, cut by the Zanpakuto, wasn't - the amount of damage the Hollow was sustaining was simply too high, the rate of fire too fast, overtaking the Hollows' defensive abilities and inexorably destroying its body bit by bit.

Ichigo let Ishida to it, and moved back to Orihime and her brother; while he'd been occupied with fighting Shrieker, the girl had finished making her way to him. She hugged his serpentine body, and said:

"I remember that day... you gave me these hairpins, and I said you that I hated them... and I didn't speak to you, didn't say you goodbye when you left for work... that why I always keep them with me now... I was so sad I couldn't say goodbye... but I do love you, brother, I always will."

The hollow touched Orihime's hairs with his remaining free hand, and Ichigo could feel how he was struggling, to keep his anger and hatred and hunger from overcoming the genuine love he felt for her. He could also tell that it was a losing battle, that the negative emotions would win over in a short while, but not yet. So he moved forward and said, in as relaxed tone as he could manage:

"Don't worry, you'll be going to Soul Society now; you'll be able to wait for Orihime there. She won't forget you."

The hollow nodded, and thrust his face forward slightly; Ichigo struck, a single vertical slash that cut the mask in two along the middle, sending both sections of it falling to the ground, and for a moment he - and Orihime too, as she looked up - could see the smile her brother was offering her, before the vortex activated and drew the spirit away within itself, leaving nothing behind.

Ichigo left out a long breath, then put on his red glove and offered an hand to Orihime, as he said:

"Come on - you should go back to your body now."

She took his hands, hesitant, and he pushed her soul back inside herself; she seemed to need a moment to take in her surroundings, and that was when Ishida spoke, drawing Ichigo's attention to himself.

"You really are sentimental. We might have fought together today, Kurosaki, but if you ever get in the way of my task, I won't hesitate to take you down, remember it."

Ichigo could see that the Quincy was somewhat annoyed at that, but with how worse for wear he was looking, Ichigo wasn't in the mood for starting an argument with him.

"Yeah, whatever - I don't care right now. If you want to talk about it, we can do it some other day."

Ishida seemed to consider this, then nodded and raised his hands, collecting all of the blue energy weapons that were still peppering the room by - it looked like - simply drawing all of the energy making them up to himself, before using it to create a path outside from the window, and then using his technique to sprint away. Ichigo observed the path for a bit even as it dissolved - he felt like it could be a useful trick to learn how to create solid stuff out of thin air like Ishida had - but then Orihime grabbed his arm and said, insistently:

"Ichigo, there's so many things I want to ask you! Can you explain to me what exactly was going on there, with my brother and Uryu and the monster and everything?"

Ichigo let out a long breath, then explained everything as best he could, starting from his meeting with Rukia. Orihime listened attentively, and when he was done she asked:

"So, you're sort of like a samurai ghostbuster?"

"Well, yeah, if you want to put it like that..."

"That's so cool!"

It took him a bit more to calm down the girl after that as she started to talk of the number of things that could now happen - her suppositions getting more and more convoluted and unbelievable as she went on - until finally he managed to extricate himself and make his way home.

Except that, when he reached the road leading to his door, he found a short girl with dark hairs waiting for him there, a serious expression on her face.

"We need to talk."

Ichigo nodded to Rukia's declaration and answered, in a similarly serious tone:

"Yes, we do."

 

[Orisha91]

Love it. Stealing Rukias powers should have been more impact ful than canon showed.


And I feel Uryuu most definitely could have used more buildup than what he got in the Karakura arc. His role as a rival was too short.

Plz keep em coming.