(A/N) Hey guys, this is MisSent here. This is one of my first serious attempts at a fanfiction. Please, if you have any constructive criticism, comment or PM me. If you plan to flame me, I really don't care; I'll end up deleting the flame anyways. I hope you guys enjoy it.
Mood Music: Anguish - Shiro Sagisu (Battle)
princess in captivity - Shiro Sagisu (Short conversation after battle)
The teacher's voice was boring a hole in Ichigo's skull. How long had it been since this remedial summer course had begun?
"Dammit…what the hell am I doing here…?" he cursed under his breath for the umpteenth time. He turned to look at Rukia, who was sitting on his right. He mouthed, Does your spirit phone detect any activity?
Her eyes fluttered as they read Ichigo's lips, but she said nothing. Instead, she flipped a piece of paper over on her desk and started writing. Ichigo waited, expecting a short note, but Rukia kept writing and writing, and at some point Ichigo seriously considered sending her a note of his own: You better not be drawing one of those damn pictures of yours.
But before he could realize that thought, Rukia had finished her incredibly long letter to him and had tossed it at his face. He grunted and winced when the teacher glanced at him. When the teacher went back to droning through the textbook, he picked up the crumpled ball of paper from the floor and unraveled it.
I've actually been having a lot of Hollow readings today. Normally that's a problem, but right after I get the Hollow reading, the signal disappears. Like the day when you and Ishida had your competition, but more time in between each reading.
Since this happened before and my spirit phone wasn't malfunctioning then, I think it's safe to say that something is happening that neither of us is aware of. It's not another Shinigami, because I can't detect any traces of reiatsu, and my spirit phone didn't alert me of any Soul Society to Earth transitions.
There's something else, though. I've been sensing bursts of energy right before the Hollow signals disappear. It's not reiatsu. That means someone's destroying the Hollows without spiritual power. The spirit phone calculated the general strength of the energy bursts, and if the calculations are correct, the source of the bursts has a level of power comparable to a captain's, at the very least. I've already requested Renji to be sent to the real world just in case you need a little help against this possible captain-level threat.
The feel of the energy is odd, though, and it worries me. I don't think I've ever felt anything like it. Be on your guard today.
Ichigo looked up at Rukia, worry lines creasing his forehead. Rukia, however, was looking straight ahead at the front of the classroom, with an apparently avid focus on the lesson at hand.
Ichigo re-crumpled the message after writing one of his own and tossed it at Rukia: I'm leaving now. If you're going to follow me, wait for me at my house.
Ichigo tossed it at Rukia while standing up and called, "Sensei! There's been an emergency at my house. I got a message from my father. Please let me go."
"Get out, Kurosaki," the teacher said, without so much as looking up from the textbook. By the time Ichigo had stepped out of the classroom, the pace of the lecture had recovered, as if there were no interruption.
Ichigo leapt around Karakura Town, keeping an eye out for any Hollow appearances, hoping that his immense reiatsu would attract the Hollows to his location, which would help him figure out what exactly was lurking in the town.
He passed over a particularly dark street and ground to a halt. He turned and landed on a rooftop next to the street in a crouch and peered down. It was empty, but Ichigo felt the traces of a very dense power. It wasn't the reiatsu of a Hollow, nor did it feel like Shinigami reiatsu. He felt something incredibly dark about the energy, and thought of his inner hollow. Could it be a person with an inner hollow like him?
No, he thought, remembering his insane parallel spirit. I know what that kind of energy feels like. This isn't it. He furrowed his brows, trying to understand the unknown with little success.
He stood up and looked around, just in time to see a black vortex open in the blue sky. A primitive Garganta.
He whipped Zangetsu out of its cloth sheath and held it at the ready, in case the Hollow came straight for him. It skittered out of the Garganta, and once the hole closed, it let loose a powerful Hollow roar. Ichigo furrowed his brows. How long had it been since he last heard that sound?
No time to think back, Ichigo. Watch carefully. Our culprit may be anywhere.
The Hollow somehow seemed to ignore him, looking off in the opposite direction. And that's when Ichigo felt it. The same energy he had felt from the dark street, but greater in strength. Sweat formed at his temples, and he swallowed hard. The energy was heavy.
The Hollow must have felt the same energy and swiftly loped off to the source. Ichigo made to follow it, careful to keep quiet and hoping that the Hollow would not realize it was being tailed.
Ichigo leapt up higher when the Hollow stopped, keeping himself afloat with his reiatsu, so that he could see into the town's streets and see the source of the foreign energy. While he wouldn't be able to make out any details, perhaps he would be able to—.
Ichigo's train of thought was cut off by electrical crackling. He saw the Hollow spasmodically twitching, and saw that a stream of black electricity was coursing into its mask. He tried to make out the source, but all he saw was a bandaged hand pointing up at the Hollow, and realized that the electricity was emanating from the two extended fingers of the hand.
Ichigo watched as the black lightning consumed the Hollow completely, disintegrating it and causing spirit particles to rush in every which direction. He faintly heard the figure speak, and it said, "How weak. These things can't be what I'm looking for."
Ichigo knew he had to confront this figure and discern whether he was friend or foe. He activated his Bankai on the way down, knowing that the explosion of black reiatsu would alert the mysterious figure to his presence but not caring, as he was planning on making his existence known either way.
He landed with a loud crunch, cracking the street beneath him and sending plumes of dust shooting up into the air. He straightened and swung Tensa Zangetsu, clearing most of the dust clouds away.
The stranger was wearing a thick black coat with a high collar that covered most of his neck, and wore baggy, light-blue jeans. When he turned to face Ichigo, he saw that his hair was of medium length, covering his ears and completely obscuring his right eye. His exposed eye was steel blue and had a hard glint to it, and Ichigo didn't have to think hard to understand what that signified: this guy was going to be a tough nut to crack, ally or not.
"Who are you?" he asked, straight to the point.
The stranger gave him a once-over before replying, "Why don't you answer that question first, spirit?"
Ichigo answered lowly, "I asked first."
"I am Mathis Jericho," he replied. "I've moved here today, and already I've seen a myriad of strange creatures."
Ichigo began to explain, "They're called Hollows, and they eat—."
"Do you know what my policy is, spirit?" the stranger cut him off. "On dealing with spiritual entities that I'm not familiar with, that is."
Ichigo didn't answer, but a part of him seemed to understand the veiled threat and without thinking, he propelled himself into the air with Tensa Zangetsu at the ready.
"Very good; you are capable of deduction. Let's see if your fighting prowess," he said, dropping to the ground in a deep crouch, "matches the level of that mental ability."
At that moment Ichigo knew that this meeting would not be resolved with words, and pulled his sword back behind him. He yelled, "Getsuga Tenshou!" and swung the black blade through the air, hurling the bolt of reiatsu at Mathis.
He gaped for a moment when he saw the boy swat the attack aside with his bandaged hand. "Pathetic." How the hell did he do that? Ichigo wondered frantically.
Ichigo scowled and stored a Getsuga within Tensa Zangetsu. When Mathis had come within range, Ichigo hacked at his side, retaining some of his reiatsu within the blade of his sword.
Mathis raised his hand and easily blocked the blow with his other hand, which was also wrapped in bandages, even knocking the sword back a little bit. His visible eye narrowed, and he growled, "If you don't quit fooling around, you're going to die in the next few seconds."
Ichigo's felt a twinge of fear clutch his chest and swore, "Don't screw with me!" and engaged Mathis in rapid-fire close-quarters combat. But Ichigo felt himself being pushed back again and again. The way Mathis fought was too unique. He somehow managed to dodge all of Ichigo's slashes and stabs, and knocked his blade aside whenever Ichigo thought he had him cornered with Tensa Zangetsu, just with a bandaged hand.
Mathis became more and more irritated by the second. Eventually he decided aloud, "You bore me. I'm going to end this right now."
He blocked another one of Ichigo's strikes and leapt backwards onto the closest rooftop. He straightened on a rooftop and raised his right hand to his face, palm facing down. He murmured, "Corruption, Needle Sharp."
Ichigo didn't understand the words he was saying, assuming that they were part of a chant for some form of spell or kido, and rushed forth to keep him from finishing.
He saw four black orbs crackle to life at the tips of his fingers, which Mathis had kept rigid, forming a makeshift spade with his hand. Mathis then crouched in an attack stance, sweeping his arm behind him and grunting, "Needle Sharp, Paralyze."
The four orbs coalesced into a long, tapered bar of crackling energy aligned with Mathis's middle finger. Ichigo frowned, unable to analyze what kind of damage the bar of energy could do to him. He raised his Zanpakuto as he hurtled towards his target, ready to fire a blast of energy at him before he could react.
"Getsuga—!"
"Too slow, spirit," Mathis hissed in his ear, suddenly alongside him.
When did he get so close to me…? Ichigo wondered. He vaguely felt the energy pass through his arms and legs multiple times, and was surprised to feel all of them intact. He looked at himself and saw no wounds or bruises, but suddenly realized that his arms and legs wouldn't respond to his commands. He hurtled to the ground and came to an abrupt halt with a loud crash.
Mathis, still floating in the air above Ichigo, surveyed the damage below before descending to the grey cement street. He flicked his wrist, and the bar of black energy crackled and sputtered out. He alighted on a patch of undamaged cement and pocketed his hands.
"You're on a different league than those other things from before. Plus you look human and you have the ability of speech. Perhaps you might know who I'm looking for," he intoned, his eye narrowing in suspicion.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ichigo snapped, struggling to move his limbs, which were now nothing more than dead weight.
"I haven't even told you who I'm looking for and already you teeter onto the defensive. Perhaps your reaction is the product of a guilty conscience?"
Mathis strode closer to Ichigo and crouched, hands still in pockets. "Do you know a humanoid demon called Pride?"
Ichigo frowned and shook his head.
Mathis's visible eye seemed to drill a hole into the center of Ichigo's skull, as if he could discern the truth himself by seeing the inner-workings of Ichigo's brain.
Then, without warning, Mathis straightened and stood. He thought for a few moments and then began to walk off.
"Hey! Jericho! Undo this spell!" Ichigo called after him.
"It's not a spell," Mathis called over his shoulder without turning. "Relax."
Ichigo cursed under his breath as he tried to move himself again, but his unresponsive limbs refused to move. He decided to take Jericho's advice and tried to relax his tense muscles.
But then again, it was hard to relax at all after being trounced by someone who'd only used his hands against a razor-sharp sword.
"What the hell happened to you?" Rukia's shocked voice asked. Ichigo opened his eyes.
Rukia was standing over him in her Shinigami attire. A delirious smile spread across his face. "Hey Rukia."
Rukia scowled. "You must've hit your head pretty hard if you're smiling at me like that."
"Where's pineapple-head?" he slurred.
"Scouting the perimeter, making sure we don't get jumped by a Hollow or worse," Rukia's voice dropped to a whisper, "the guy that made you like this."
Ichigo remembered in a flash the boy with the bandaged hands, who had blocked and countered his every attack with little to no effort, the black bar of energy emanating from his right hand's middle finger, the hard glint in his eye that seemed to challenge him. The images snapped him out of his stupor like a splash of cold water. He struggled to sit up and found that he had regained a limited ability to use his limbs again. He flexed them experimentally and found that their movements were sluggish.
"Rukia, could you…?" he asked, nodding at his arms and legs.
She knelt and took his right arm in her hands. She massaged it for a moment, feeling for physical wounds. When she found none, she shook her head in puzzlement. "You should feel fine. I don't see any obvious wounds, and I can't feel any trace of kidou, so I can't do anything. To heal something, I need to know how it came to harm."
Ichigo struggled to his feet, and found that his body felt incredibly heavy on his trembling legs. Rukia leapt to his side and tried to steady him. "Be careful, Ichigo! You shouldn't be moving so soon!" she said worriedly.
"I'll be fine. Call Renji back; I'll be okay now," Ichigo grunted. With that said, he fell smack on his face and groaned, "Ow."
Rukia laughed softly and turned Ichigo over so he was face-up. "I told you, stupid. You shouldn't move just yet."
"How am I gonna get back to my body, then?"
"Well, Renji could carry you," Rukia offered. "Or he could bring you your body," she added hastily when she saw the word 'No' forming on Ichigo's lips.
"Yo, Ichigo. You got beat up pretty good, huh?"
Ichigo tilted his head back and saw Renji walking over, holding Zabimaru over his shoulder. He wore a smirk that said to Ichigo, 'You got your ass kicked, and I mock you for it.'
Ichigo felt in no way irritated by Renji's smugness. All he felt was confusion.
"It wasn't even a fight. It lasted about a minute, and he didn't use any weapons until the very end. Just his hands. They were bandaged, too," Ichigo mumbled.
Renji's smirk turned into a grim slash. "Could you feel how strong his reiatsu was?"
"That's the thing: he didn't have reiatsu. He radiated some weird force, but it was strong."
Rukia and Renji exchanged glances. "How did he fight you?" Rukia asked, frowning. "Was he a long-range fighter, a close-combat specialist, or what?"
Ichigo gulped. "Definitely a close-combat kind of guy. He wasn't even trying."
Rukia's frown grew deeper, and worry lines began to crease her forehead. "This is bad. Should he decide to attack directly at Soul Society..."
Renji snapped at her, "Quit thinkin' like that. There's no way he's gonna try to pick a fight with Soul Society." He turned to Ichigo. "Who started the fight?"
Ichigo said hesitantly, "Technically…he did. But I might have provoked him by landing in front of him with my weapon drawn. He saw me and more or less told me he was going to kill me because I was a spiritual entity that he didn't know."
Renji scratched his head and sighed, "Well, for now we need to regroup and figure out what to do the next time we see him. Urahara-san is waiting for us."
Ichigo struggled to get to his feet again, wobbling dangerously as his legs threatened to give out from beneath him. Rukia rushed to his side and tried to support him with her slight frame.
"I wish you would take better care of yourself…what could he have done to you to make you like this?"
Ichigo didn't answer. He just scowled and looked away.
"Ahhh, Kurosaki-san! You seem to be in terrible condition! I could fix you up for a discount price!" Urahara teased.
"Shut the hell up," Ichigo griped. "I just can't move my limbs properly."
Urahara-san stooped down and examined Ichigo's supine spiritual body, pausing momentarily at the four points that Mathis had struck at. Ichigo found himself surprised. I didn't tell anyone that I got hit in those places. How did he know to look there?
"Kurosaki-san…" Urahara said hesitantly, a smile of intrigue on his face. "Did your opponent hit you in these areas?" He jabbed at his shoulders and hips with his cane. Ichigo nodded.
"Was he using kido?"
Ichigo shook his head. "It wasn't kido. But it had some sort of short incantation. Nothing I've ever heard before. He said Corruption first, and then Needle Sharp. And then after that…I forget." Ichigo scratched his head with his right hand, which had already recovered.
Urahara scratched his chin and wondered aloud, "Corruption, eh? What could that possibly mean?"
Ichigo then remembered. When he'd first seen Mathis, he had dispatched a Hollow with black electricity. After that, when Mathis had used Corruption or whatever his ability was, Ichigo had heard an electrical crackle.
"Could Corruption be an electrical ability?" Ichigo wondered aloud. Urahara jerked his head in his direction and asked, "Now what would make you think that?"
Ichigo explained, "Well, when I first saw him he destroyed a Hollow by using a stream of black electricity, and then when he made the thing on his finger, it sounded like electricity."
Urahara eyes glinted. "Then maybe we can figure out how to counteract it."
He plopped down next to Ichigo's legs in a squat and thought long and hard. Then he called Rukia over.
"Kuchiki-san? Could you do me a favor and lend me your healing kido? I'm afraid in this gigai I am incapable of harnessing my reiatsu for anything aside from releasing my zanpakuto."
Rukia obliged, whispering the incantation for the spell. Soon, a small yellow box formed over Ichigo's legs and gently hummed.
Urahara then said, "Now I want you to use Way of Destruction No. 4 on the healing zone."
"WHAT?" Rukia, Ichigo, and Renji all exclaimed in unision.
Rukia sputtered, "Urahara! Don't take my kido skills lightly!"
"That's not the point…" Renji muttered under his breath. "Why would Urahara want you to attack Ichigo?"
Urahara whipped out a fan and hid his face. "Just do it. I guarantee Kurosaki-san will survive the blast with minimal to no injuries."
"Are you out of your MIND?" Ichigo yelled, trying to hit Urahara with his right arm, to no avail. "It's going to hurt!"
"Yes, it might hurt," Urahara said matter-of-factly, "but we have no other choice. We don't know if your other limbs will recover or not, and this may be our only possible way to help you."
Renji and Rukia looked at each other, then at Ichigo. Urahara continued, "The Way of Destruction No. 4, Byakurai, is a kido based loosely on electricity, hence its name, 'Pale Lightning'. The user's reiatsu is charged into electrical form and released like a bolt of lightning."
"The healing kido Kuchiki-san set up is a very selective healing process; unless the user knows what is affecting the victim, the kido is unable to take effect. And since none of you understand the full nature of Kurosaki-san's injuries aside from a shaky hypothesis that the injury is loosely based on electricity, we need to initiate a blanket-sweep kind of healing."
Urahara snapped his fan shut and pointed it at Ichigo. "Kurosaki-san! Quick quiz for you!"
Ichigo stuttered, "W-what?"
"If you are using a human-world computer and are trying to fix a virus that you don't understand or know the whereabouts of, what do you do?"
"….What?"
'You start a virus sweep, yes?"
Ichigo muttered, "Yeah…but what's that got to with this?"
"It's the same process, really," Urahara said. "Since the kido is connected to Rukia and Rukia doesn't know what to heal, we need to give her something to heal that's similar to what needs to be healed."
He pointed his cane at Rukia. "The kido you're about to use on him is the template for your healing kido; once it takes effect, the healing kido will sweep through Kurosaki-san' body and search for any other traces of electrical damage, hopefully counteracting the damages inflicted in his battle."
Rukia was silent for a moment, trying to absorb the information all at once. Then she looked up at Urahara and said grimly, "Understood."
Renji sat on Ichigo's functional arm, much to Ichigo's dismay. "You're not serious, are you? You're really going to use that kido on me?"
"It'll be over soon, you big baby," Renji quipped, slapping Ichigo's face back and forth. "It's not like you haven't dealt with worse injuries before."
Rukia muttered the chant for the kido under her breath, aggravating Ichigo more. "Hey!" he said, alarmed, "isn't saying the chant supposed to make a kido stronger?"
Rukia finished the chant and looked into Ichigo's eyes for a moment. He saw in there a sliver of pity in the normal, hard determination. "Brace yourself."
Ichigo clamped his teeth together and shut his eyes.
"Way of Destruction, #4. Byakurai!" Rukia jabbed her hand into Ichigo's left thigh and allowed the reiatsu within her to buzz with electricity and bundle together. She released the packed reiatsu into a beam that burned a hole straight through Ichigo's leg and sent electricity coursing through his body.
Ichigo muffled a yell of pain that was on the verge of punching out of his throat. The last time he'd been hit with Byakurai was during his fight with Byakuya in Soul Society, and it had hurt so much that he'd almost gone into shock.
Almost instantly, the healing kido began to mend the wound, accelerating the regeneration rate of Ichigo's leg. Several blue sparks played around the shrinking hole, and then suddenly a cloud of electricity was sucked out through the now-miniscule hole. Some of the sparks weren't blue, but were black, remnants of Mathis's attack. Ichigo grunted once, and relaxed his tense body. Rukia removed the healing kido with a whisper and softly called, "Ichigo?"
"I'm fine, Rukia. Don't worry," he responded.
Ichigo pushed himself into an upright sitting position with both arms and flexed his fingers. He checked his legs, and found that he could move them freely again, though they felt a little sore.
Urahara smirked, the satisfaction plain on his face.
"Well now, Kurosaki-san. I believe we know your opponent's choice of attack. And given proper preparations, we may be able to negate it. The next time you two battle," Urahara said, turning and walking into the shop, "you should have the upper hand."