Chapter 1
When Kaien awoke, it wasn't to the normal stifling sensation of Aaroniero crushing him, or to the usual cacophony of Hollow screeches that shared Aaroniero's mindscape. In fact, it was rather quiet and a bit brighter than he was used to, plus he was breathing easily for the first time in decades. There was a hint of Hollow in the mindscape still, but it was much less… cognizant than Kaien was used to.
His chest itched, and he scratched at it.
Then he realized how impossible that was, in and of itself. Aaroniero had complete control of his body. He hadn't so much as been able to consciously twitch for years. He opened his eyes and reflexively sat up, grasping for his zanpakuto.
Kaien recognized this location; he was in Aaroniero's tower. Just because he hadn't been able to move didn't mean he hadn't been conscious or observing Aaroniero's actions, waiting for a weakness to try to take over. But what…?
Then he noticed Rukia lying face down a fair distance away in a pool of blood, unconscious and, from the looks of how much blood was around her, bleeding out. Her shihakusho, for some reason, was completely white.
"Rukia!" Kaien scrambled to his feet and dizzily swayed before hobbling over to Rukia's side. Her blade was gone. Kaien gently flipped her over and saw three stab deep wounds, matching the pattern of his shikai's form. He felt ill as he held shaking hands over the wounds and tried to engage his healing kido.
What had happened?
The last thing Kaien remembered was still being under Aaroniero's control. The Arrancar had attacked Rukia; he'd been screaming and struggling fruitlessly against Aaroniero's control. Even worse, he remembered Aaroniero taunting both him and Rukia about it – "He's right here, screaming inside me!" Then he sickeningly remembered Aaroniero stabbing Rukia with Nejibana. And then…
"San no Mai: Shirafune." Pain from being stabbed through the heart, Aaroniero screaming, a feeling of flying with an influx of power…
"You little idiot," he whispered in horror.
Rukia had transferred her powers to him.
A Shinigami's power would kill a Hollow, that much was for certain. It would also likely be enough to conquer an Arrancar. But for Rukia to have enough reiryoku to completely overwhelm and destroy Aaroniero and the Hollows he'd eaten for power, leaving Kaien the sole owner of the body…
Kaien almost couldn't believe it.
But that meant that she was powerless and badly injured in an entire palace full of enemies with only a single lieutenant who couldn't even properly control his limbs or direct his reiatsu to protect her.
Instead of panicking, like he wanted to do, Kaien redoubled his efforts to activate his healing kido. Green light sputtered weakly around his hands before becoming more of a solid entity, stronger than he could ever recall it being. Well, he had just received an influx of power strong enough to take out an Espada, so it shouldn't really have come as a surprise.
He was able to work on her for half an hour before he felt a familiar reiatsu signature headed his way. Zommari, the seventh Espada. With Kaien feeling as unsteady as he did, it would be unlikely that he'd be able to beat the Espada. So staying put wasn't an option, but where to go?
Kaien had known that Rukia had come with several others to save the Human girl; going to them for backup would probably be a good idea. But two were losing against Szayel Aporro Granz and wouldn't be of any help and another seemed almost dead.
The last one was holding his own against what felt like Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, plus he could feel the signature of the Human girl – Inoue? – nearby. She was a healer too, wasn't she? Grimacing and unable to think of a better place to go, Kaien gently picked up Rukia (and almost toppled over from her weight but stubbornly remained upright) and hurried off in a staggering shunpo towards the unfamiliar, Hollow-tinged reiatsu signature, hiding his reiatsu as best as he was able. He didn't worry about Rukia broadcasting their location because she currently had no energy to broadcast.
Kaien griped internally about going to someone who had Hollow-like reiatsu for help but it wasn't like he had any better options. It was preferable to getting caught by Zommari, at least, who wouldn't hesitate to cut both him and Rukia down when he realized what had happened to Aaroniero.
It turned out that the unknown Shinigami (kind of) and Grimmjow were still duking it out when Kaien reached them. He saw the Inoue girl and a little tiny Arrancar watching the fight from behind a glowing yellow shield and jumped up to join them.
The unknown Shinigami started moving in his direction, possibly to defend the girl or otherwise ascertain his motives, but Grimmjow interrupted with a sharp, "Don't go running off on me, Shinigami! We're not finished here!"
"Hello," Kaien greeted gravely to the two startled girls. The tiny Arrancar placed herself defensively in front of Inoue and he held up his free hand in a placating gesture. "I'm not here to fight," he said. "You're a healer, aren't you?"
Inoue nodded warily.
"Good," Kaien said sharply, gently setting Rukia on the pillar before the girl. Her wounds had reopened during his journey to get here. Likely, he was bloodstained from carrying her. Kaien glanced down at himself and grimaced to realize that he was still wearing Aaroniero's white uniform.
Inoue hurried forward, frowning. "Rukia!" she said worriedly, two tiny spirits emerging from her hair clips and forming a dome above Rukia. "What happened?"
Kaien grimaced. "Let's just say the ninth Espada got her. Can you heal her?"
"Of course," Inoue said. She glanced down at the fight occurring below them and then looked back up at him in confusion. "…But aren't you the ninth Espada?"
Kaien froze. "How would you know? I'm not, but…"
Inoue tapped her cheek. "You have the number nine tattooed right here."
Kaien grimaced. Of course he'd be marked and changed from when he'd been merged with a bunch of Hollows. "It's complicated. I'm the Shinigami that was left behind when the ninth Espada died. I wouldn't hurt Rukia!" he protested when he caught the green-haired Arrancar eyeing him mistrustfully.
Then he took a closer look at the little girl – more specifically, her mask. There was some old damage on one side, a crack and missing teeth. He wasn't even sure how the girl was functioning with a broken mask.
"Hey," he said to Inoue, jerking his head at the little Arrancar. "When you're done with Rukia, you should heal her. Her mask's broken."
"Aren't Arrancar masks supposed to be broken?" Inoue asked.
"Well, they are, but there's a difference between an Arrancar's broken mask and a damaged mask," Kaien explained. He'd learned to spot the difference during his unwilling stay in Hueco Mundo.
"Okay," Inoue said, nodding. "I'm almost done with Rukia." Kaien watched with fascination as she quickly rejected the damage to Rukia's stomach, the holes closing remarkably quickly. Kaien wasn't sure if even Unohana-taicho could heal someone so effectively.
"Nel'th hurt?" the little Arrancar asked shyly, worriedly. Kaien supposed that Nel was her name.
"Little bit, yeah," Kaien said. "Don't worry. Inoue is a good healer."
Inoue blushed at the praise before her dome faded from around Rukia. Amazingly, Rukia's shihakusho had regained its black color and Sode no Shirayuki lay next to her. Kaien could understand why Aizen had gone after this girl; she'd just rejected damage to the soul – the loss of one's powers – that could take months to recover from. Rukia was absolutely getting an earful for attempting something as risky as transferring her powers to an Arrancar when she woke up.
Healing Nel's mask only took about a minute, tops. The little Arrancar ran her hands over her restored mask, crack gone and missing teeth restored, before lunging at Inoue, shouting some unintelligible but enthusiastic thanks.
It was this noise that awoke Rukia, who grunted and squinted in the sunlight before sitting up, blinking rapidly. She looked around and saw Inoue and Nel, her expression softening when she saw that her friend (who had returned to watching the fight) was alright, before she looked at Kaien, who was wearing his best you're-in-big-shit-now face.
Rukia looked like she'd been hit with a sledgehammer when she saw him in the light, Aaroniero's glass tank that exposed itself in sunlight nowhere to be seen. "It worked?" she whispered, throat sounding suspiciously clogged.
Kaien snapped, "You're damn right, it worked, by some miracle! What do you think would have happened if it hadn't, huh? You would have died!"
He wasn't able to get out anything more, though, as Rukia threw herself at him and buried her face in the dirtied remains of Aaroniero's uniform. "Kaien-dono, I gambled and won, so I can't say I'm sorry for having gambled in the first place," she mumbled.
"Then how did you even know doing something that stupid would even work?!" Kaien ranted. He wasn't quite done chewing Rukia out for transferring her powers to an Arrancar. She could have just powered up Aaroniero by doing such a thing – the Arrancar was a Hollow/Shinigami hybrid, after all – so how did she know that her actions would destroy him instead of helping him?
Rukia looked up at him with watery eyes, completely unaffected by Kaien's admittedly well-founded ire. "There was an incident a couple months ago," she said as she let him go, pausing for a moment to take in the fight occurring below her between the unknown Shinigami and Grimmjow before continuing. "A Hollow possessed me, and Ichigo—" she jerked her head at the unknown Shinigami, "—transferred enough of his power to me to get rid of it. I figured that the same thing would happen if your soul was still in one piece inside the Arrancar, and Aaroniero alluded that it was, so…" She shrugged uncomfortably.
Kaien stared. "You didn't even know if it would work?!" he shrieked. "Where did you learn to be so irresponsible?! I ought to demote you right now for being so reckless!"
Rukia looked unrepentant. "It worked, didn't it? I came here to save a friend. I don't regret being able to save another."
Kaien let out a helpless snarl of rage and desperation. "I had already died decades ago, don't you understand? Why would you risk everything just for the slim possibility that you could save someone like me?!"
"You risked everything trying to destroy Metastacia," she said quietly. "Why can't you understand that others would want to take those same risks to help you?"
Crap, Kaien could feel himself getting teary. "You're an idiot. An incurable moron," he said shakily before drawing her into a hug. Rukia tightly embraced him back.
The moment was ruined when the unknown Shinigami – Ichigo, apparently – appeared right in front of Inoue's shield and took several of Grimmjow's elbow darts to the back. Kaien stared confusedly at the Hollow mask on Ichigo's face and the gold-on-black eyes before he disappeared again to reengage Grimmjow.
"So what's the deal with him?" Kaien asked, staring at the unmistakable shihakusho underneath the overcoat.
"He's something called a Vizard," Rukia explained. "A Shinigami with Hollow powers. As I understand, Aizen created some a century ago, but I'm not sure where Ichigo got his Hollow. I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with Urahara though," she finished darkly.
"A hybrid like an Arrancar, huh?" Kaien said, thinking back to the Urahara exile a century ago. Looking back, it was easy to see that the former twelfth division's captain had been framed by Aizen. "So all those officers are still alive then?"
Rukia nodded, and Kaien grimaced. "I guess we owe them a huge apology."
Ichigo looked like he was losing the fight, at least until Inoue shouted some words of encouragement down to Kurosaki, as she called him. Grimmjow attempted to use his ultimate weapon but Kurosaki had been bolstered or something by Inoue's backing and was now winning. He finally dealt a finishing blow to Grimmjow.
"C'mon, let's go down there," Rukia said, moving to jump down. Inoue rearranged her shield so that they could stand on it and gently lowered them to the ground, where Kurosaki was waiting. The mask had shed off his face, and Kaien was stuck eyeing him confusedly, because Kurosaki Ichigo looked very much like him, meaning he was likely part of the Shiba clan, despite the different last name. Kaien had many questions.
"Rukia, why does he look so much like me?" he whispered.
Rukia shrugged. "I'm not sure. Weirded me out when I first met him, though, that's for sure."
"Kurosaki-kun!" Inoue called, hurrying forward… before she was intercepted by an Arrancar. Kaien recognized him as Nnoitra's Fracción, Tesra or something. Rukia immediately unsheathed Sode no Shirayuki and lunged forward, intent on defending her friend, and Kaien followed, still weak but unwilling to let his old subordinate enter battle alone. He defended Inoue while Rukia attacked with her shikai, which was a lot more powerful than he remembered it being. Meanwhile, Kurosaki was getting tossed around by Nnoitra, who was laughing.
"You weaklings don't stand a chance against me!" he chortled, axe kicking Kurosaki into the ground. Kaien winced. That looked like it had hurt.
"Ichigooooooo!" Nel shouted, hurrying forward. Kaien hissed and prepared to hold the little Arrancar, who looked to be no match for an Espada, back. For some reason, Nnoitra choked and recoiled in surprise when he saw her.
Kaien understood why in the next few moments, when a cloud of pink smoke obscured Nel's form before out popped a very much adult Nel, who turned out to be the former third Espada. Kaien heard some flabbergasted noises from Rukia, who had been given a breather as Tesra had stopped attacking in astonishment. Kaien understood the sentiment; he was pretty surprised himself. He'd known that there had been Espada before the current group, most of them members of the Privaron Espada, but Aaroniero had never run into Nel, so he'd had no idea of Nel's true power. Kaien was suddenly glad he'd asked Inoue to heal Nel's mask. He wondered what had happened to it.
Nel (or Neliel, as her full name turned out to be) made short work of Nnoitra and killed him after both had activated their Resurrección. She seemed a bit downcast by the violence but perked up when she saw that Kurosaki was okay. Tesra went into a rage because of his downed master but Neliel finished him off pretty quickly, too.
Inoue quickly healed Kurosaki of his wounds before they all started to head back to the main compound, where they could sense the rest of the party was. However, they were delayed by the timely arrival of Kuchiki-taicho, Zaraki-taicho, and Kusajishi-fukutaicho.
"Where are all the enemies? I felt you fighting just a minute ago!" Zaraki-taicho demanded.
"Oh, uh, they're all dead," Kurosaki said nervously. He didn't like Zaraki-taicho much, apparently.
"Then who beat them? I came here to fight, so I'll fight them! They must be strong!" Zaraki-taicho complained.
Meanwhile, Kuchiki-taicho was staring at Kaien. On anyone else, his expression would have been labeled perplexed. "Is there an explanation for Shiba Kaien's sudden reappearance?" he asked smoothly, recovering quickly from the shock.
Rukia fidgeted. Her secret mother hen of a brother would definitely not be pleased if he learned what kind of danger Rukia had exposed herself to to bring back Kaien. "He was fused with a Hollow, so I unfused them using the same technique Ichigo used on me," Rukia explained quietly.
Kuchiki-taicho looked displeased by this answer, correctly surmising how reckless Rukia's actions had been, which led to the quietest, most restrained sibling argument/dressing-down Kaien had ever seen.
It took Inoue a few minutes, but eventually she was able to remind everyone that they needed to pick up the rest of the group – Unohana-taicho and someone named Chad, who the former had found and healed, and Kurotsuchi-taicho and the two individuals he had saved, named Renji (Rukia's childhood friend?) and Uryu. They were about halfway to the main building when three Espada appeared in front of them: the first Espada, Starrk, the seventh Espada, Zommari, and the tenth Espada, Yammy.
Before any of them could so much as blink, Starrk appeared in front of Inoue and snatched her away, disappearing back into the main compound. Zommari and Yammy blocked her rescuers from following until the two Shinigami captains were able to pin them down.
"I'll handle this. Go," Kuchiki-taicho said, squaring off with Zommari.
"Heh, I hope you're strong!" Zaraki-taicho announced, leveling his blade at Yammy.
So Kurosaki, Neliel, Rukia, and Kaien all sped off in the direction Starrk had disappeared to. It seemed that the other members of the Inoue rescue team were in good hands, so they needed to focus their firepower on retrieving Inoue.
They reached the central tower mostly uninhibited, where Ulquiorra (who had apparently been trapped in a Caja Negación for a few hours) and a couple of Numeros greeted them with Inoue. Rukia and Kaien each took on a Numero while Neliel and Kurosaki engaged Ulquiorra.
The fight was mostly a blur for Kaien. He remembered releasing his zanpakuto and blasting the Arrancar away with water while Kurosaki, Neliel, Inoue, and Ulquiorra ascended to the top of the dome. Kaien wasn't quite sure what happened then, as he'd been finishing off his Numero at the time, but he felt Neliel's reiatsu weaken drastically as she was apparently defeated and Kurosaki's reiatsu fade away entirely before returning stronger than ever, more Hollow-like than during his fight with Grimmjow. Once Kaien had taken care of his Arrancar, he could only join Rukia in staring up at the dome and wondering what was going on up there.
Finally, it seemed as though Ulquiorra was defeated. Kaien would later learn that Kurosaki had Hollowfied completely at Inoue's prompting after he and Neliel had been defeated and nearly killed by the fourth Espada. Around the same time, Kuchiki-taicho had defeated Zommari, and Zaraki-taicho had defeated the tenth (or the zeroth) Espada (depending on if he'd released or not) after resorting to kendo.
Finally, everyone gathered together on the sands of Las Noches, all trapped by Aizen executing his trap to keep them in Hueco Mundo. Unohana-taicho began treating Zaraki-taicho's wounds while Inoue tended to Kuchiki-taicho, and Kurotsuchi-taicho eyed Kaien as if Christmas had come early.
"My, my, Shiba-fukutaicho," Kurotsuchi-taicho said gleefully, "It seems as though you've been returned to us! Won't you please let me run some experiments to uncover the root of this miraculous resurrection…?"
Kaien blanched and leveled his zanpakuto at Kurotsuchi-taicho. He was mildly gratified when Rukia, Neliel, and even Kurosaki did the same. "No experiments," Kurosaki said with finality. Kurotsuchi-taicho whined but accepted the verdict unhappily. Kaien wondered at what kind of influence Kurosaki wielded, to be able to influence such a hard-to-restrain captain.
They all went to Mayuri's lab, where Kurotsuchi-taicho was able to set up a makeshift Garganta amidst an ambush by the rest of Aizen's army. Kurosaki and Unohana-taicho leapt through the portal, while everyone else remained behind to prevent Aizen from calling on his hoard of Arrancar for backup.
Kaien grimaced and released Nejibana again as he fought alongside his former subordinate and her friends. It wasn't particularly difficult work – none of these Arrancar or pet Hollows were particularly powerful – but it was grueling and exhausting, especially since Kaien was still suffering from physical control issues left behind by his ordeal with Aaroniero. Still, it left him some time to think in the monotony.
First, he thought of his wife, Shiba Miyako, who had been killed by Metastacia. He grieved for her as much as he was able in the middle of battle. While he'd been trapped as a part of Metastacia and later Aaroniero, he hadn't seen any of the other Shinigami both Hollows had devoured, which likely meant they'd been completely absorbed and integrated into the Hollows' powers. Only Kaien had had the strength of will and reiryoku needed to stay a distinct entity in the Hollows' mindscapes, for all that his power had been added to the Hollows'.
He frowned as a disturbing thought occurred to him. Aaroniero was dead, that much was for certain, and all of the individual Hollows he'd devoured had gone with him, leaving behind only residue. But had the Shinigami's power been cleansed from his system at the same time? Did he hold parts of Miyako's – and other's – power and soul within him? He certainly held traces of Hollow in his system; Rukia had been able to destroy Aaroniero's consciousness but not all of his power…
He heard a growl from within his mindscape that sounded wholly unlike Nejibana. Kaien had no time to wonder about it, though, as he faced down a group of particularly troublesome Hollows. Physical weakness or not, there was no way he would allow himself to be beaten and eaten by a Hollow again.
When he was able to breathe again without almost being skewered, he glanced at Rukia and her friends. They seemed to be holding their own just fine. Kaien, while still angry and a bit frantic at the decision Rukia had made to try to save him, could admit with pride that his student and subordinate had improved in leaps and bounds since he'd last seen her. Plus, she'd been a bit of a loner – the Kuchiki clan's reputation had done her no favors there – but now it seemed she had a group of friends to rely upon. Even if some of them seemed to be Human.
Kaien wondered how the Shiba clan was doing, especially his siblings. They must have been devastated when he died. Kukaku was going to kick his ass when he returned. Before he'd died and been transported to Hueco Mundo, the Shiba clan had been thriving under his leadership. Who had become clan head after him? Isshin-ji or Kukaku? But he'd also heard disturbing rumors in Las Noches that Aizen had targeted the Shiba clan in order to weaken the Gotei 13.
If those rumors turned out to be truth, and the Shiba clan really was in trouble, heads were going to roll.
He could probably rope his old captain into helping him out. Ukitake had cared for him, and Kaien had respected him in turn, despite that he was often bed-ridden. Kaien hoped Ukitake had been able to find a helper or helpers that would run the day-to-day of the Thirteenth Division. He wondered how his captain would react to Kaien's reappearance.
Speaking of reappearances, he wondered how all the exiles from the Urahara incident had survived. He'd heard that they'd been turned into Hollows – but maybe they were just turned into Vizards, that type of being Rukia had told him about. He owed them an apology for not defending them when they were almost executed. Plus, he had a sneaking feeling he'd be seeing them in the future for some help, if the Hollow remnants in his system turned out to be a problem.
Damn Aizen for experimenting with Shinigami – his own captain, no less! – and damn him for creating Metastacia. All of the grief in Kaien's life could be connected to that one megalomaniac – his wife's death, his death, his exploitation by Metastacia and Aaroniero, attacking Rukia, leaving his family behind…
He would have to find out if Kurosaki Ichigo really was a Shiba or not. If he was, he would only be a handful of decades old, since he'd been born after Kaien had been unceremoniously removed from Soul Society. How on earth had he gotten so powerful so quickly, if that was the case? His bankai may have been tiny, but there was no mistaking the strength of his reiatsu. Rukia had mentioned something about Urahara…
Well, he'd investigate everything once he returned home. For now, though, he had a bunch of Hollows to slaughter.
I blame cywscross and her lovely Bleach fics completely. I thought my Bleach muse died a horrible death years ago. Turns out it was just sleeping. Ugh.
I'll be updating The Thief and The Phantom before returning to this again. I was just hit by inspiration, and I wanted to see what the reaction would be to an AU like this.
Hope you enjoyed!
-HM
