Aizen Unbound

by debbiechan

Anti-Bleach-686-ending fic that tries to answer questions Kubo left unanswered, incorporates the fandom Dance with Snow White meme and proposes an ending IchiRuki deserved. Many characters. IshiHime, Shunsui/Nanao, UraYoru, HitsuHina, implied AiGin and Ikkaku/Yumichika. Warnings: Some adult situations, foul language, and violence but nothing NSFW

Here, my anti-Bleach-686-ending fic that tries to answer questions Kubo left unanswered, incorporates the fandom Dance with Snow White meme and proposes an ending IchiRuki deserved. I worked hard on this fic, fact-checked, rewrote sections several times, and tried to balance plot elements. That said, the story is a loooooong one-shot. I couldn't include everything, and people are bound to disagree with parts. I welcome feedback from honest, civil readers willing to engage with this story; anyone attempting to poke a fandom dead horse will be ignored. Homey don't play with dead horse pokers. I had a blast writing this; I hope you have fun reading it.

Aizen Unbound

By debbiechan

Blessings to my faithful editor Nehalenia without whom not only my writing but my life would be less complete. Thanks to Alex for the first beta. Post Bleach 686 fic. Quite literally, 686 goes up in smoke. Main pairing is IchiRuki. Many characters. IshiHime, Shunsui/Nanao, UraYoru, HitsuHina, implied AiGin and Ikkaku/Yumichika.

Warnings: Some adult situations, foul language, and violence but nothing NSFW. NO genuine, unequivocal adultery, but pearl-clutchers will be answered by Emma Watson.

Plot and plotting because, naturally, Aizen. Section titles are taken from Kubo's own words in poems, color pages, chapter titles, etc.

"It is better to be unhappy and know the worst than to be happy in a fool's paradise."
―from The Idiot by Dostoevsky

1. May These Moments Never End

Keigo was standing, reaching for a soda, when he fell flat on his face.

"Are you drunk or something?" Karin was tearing open a bag of paper bowls. "Gah, Somebody turn down the commercial. Why do commercials have play so loud?"

This commercial was freakily loud, Keigo noticed as he lay on his stomach in the Kurosaki house. The music was becoming dissonant. Like someone plucking a hipster ukulele at the same time Phantom of the Opera organ was booming. Right before his eyes, there was a hole in the wall, a freaky hole. A liquid darkness that was spinning, a hypnotizing drain into some kind of Hell.

"Sado-kun is doing great," said a female voice. Was that Rukia? Yes. And that other voice was Yuzu-chan fretting about not enough popcorn being popped before the World Championships returned after commercial.

"We're fine!" Ichigo's voice.

The walls were wavering, and things were definitely not fine.

"You guys feel that?" Renji's voice.

"What?" Ichigo asked.

"It's Kazui." That was Orihime's cheery tone. Then her voice changed. It sounded puzzled. "His reiatsu's a little different?"

"I just realized something," Mizuiro said, his mouth full of popcorn—or was his voice was muffled because the world was disappearing? "It's Ichigo's birthday today? Why isn't there a cake or something?"

"That's strange," said Rukia. "It's the first day of Obon. I forgot all about it. July 15th."

Someone was leaning over Keigo. Tiny feet with girlish shoes, white ankle socks with strawberries on them. "You ok, Keigo?"

"Something's really wrong," said Keigo. He didn't want to stand up. He was looking at the spinning black drain in front of him, unable to say more.

"Something's really wrong," Karin echoed. "Look at the television—the commercial isn't ending."

"It is," Orihime murmured. "It's been a long one, and it's about to end." At her words, parts of the room vanished; the television itself, a wall in Keigo's peripheral vision, a chair, and a piece of ceiling went up in smoke. There was a soft roaring nothingness where parts of reality had been.

"No, not this." Orihime's voice was full of tears. "Why is this happening? Why did we forget … Ichigo's birthday?"

Keigo forced himself to rise to his knees, put his palms on his thighs and looked around. Everyone seemed frozen, aware that weirdness was going down and not at all leaping to fix the issue with their super-powers. Ichigo—what about Ichigo? Wouldn't Ichigo be on top of all this?

Ichigo was sitting on the sofa, remote in his hand. "It's not right," he said mournfully. "We should've gone to see Chad fight in person instead of watching him on television."

Renji's arm was around Rukia. "The television just disappeared, man."

"Why didn't I visit for ten whole years?" Rukia's voice was in awe. "It's not right."

"Where's Ishida?" Ichigo asked. "He could've used his Quincy flash-step to be right over in two seconds."

Orihime put her face in her hands and sobbed; Yuzu dropped her bag of popcorn; Mizuiro reached to touch the space where the wall had been, and his hand and arm vanished into the nothingness up to his elbow.

Then Mizuiro was gone, and then the part of the sofa where Renji had been sitting wafted away. Rukia gasped. Orihime did not look up. "I can't… I can't…. stop it," she stammered between sobs. "I don't have any power at all. It's been … I can't … it's gone."

Rukia threw her arms around Orihime. The white roaring noise was louder; everything was disappearing, and for a moment Keigo had a feeling they were all being vacuumed into another space, but then Orihime ruined that hope.

"Kazui," she wept in most pitiful way. "Kazui, you're not real anymore."

2. Heroes Can Save You

The impending annulment of a ten-year reality inspired Aizen Sousuke to nod in farewell. A eulogy? Nothing so elegant was required.

As he felt the last of Yhwach's reiatsu vanish, Aizen spun a lecture: "The world that you desired to create may indeed have been devoid of fear. However, in a world without the fear of death, men could not face that fear and seek out hope."

Yhwach couldn't hear him, of course. The Quincy king had lost to a true and immortal god, for whom fear was inessential.

Yhwach, someone who had dared reach for the status of god of all worlds, had fallen short in understanding How Things Can Be. Even with such foresight, the ability to see (almost) all possible futures, he had lacked Aizen's own forethought and intellect, the ability to sense why things happen.

How Things Will Be, amazing prescience, had proved no match against the hougyoku, kyouka suigetsu, and the apprehension of How Things Can Be.

Aizen shifted in his throne, still bound in the Royal Realm. Ten years ago to the day, he had been caught by the former captain of the kidou corps with a simple rikujoukourou, but the hougyoku had already activated Yhwach's deepest desires through Aizen's power like a prism: a future was dispersed that was part Yhwach's vow to slay his foes in their happiest moment, part a plot by Aizen to fully absorb the not-fully-slain king. Before Ichigo's blade swung down, cut the king in half, and the raging god turned into a black wet stain, Aizen had begun to meld with Yhwach's power.

Aizen's plan? The hougyoku's plan? They were of one soul now, immortal and omnipotent. Aizen had never in his few hundred years of life needed to utter the words "ban kai," for his power to toy with others' perceptions made such an achievement obsolete. His power evolved, naturally, not because he had been divinely gifted in ways like Yhwach. Aizen had earned his power through patience and the manipulation of other's fatal flaws. He had earned the hougyoku; it loved him. It had given him the power to create a temporary timeline.

That timeline was dissolving now; the mission had been accomplished. Ichigo would drop to his knees before two black puddles in the air, the halves of a body that once had been the declared ruler of worlds, Tessai would try to catch Aizen off-guard with a binding spell, Ichigo's friends would soon come staggering onto the scene.

That Aizen would be the new Soul King was the inevitable outcome of his life. Left alone, yet not alone because the hougyoku entertained him with visions of the inept characters in his imperfect reality. They were so bright and counterfeit at times, like people trying to sell you a product in a commercial. Aizen had known the Shinigami to be far a more cunning, less optimistic bunch; through Yhwach's filter, they were outright buffoons.

And Aizen, being possessed of Yhwach ability to see other future timelines in all their richness, saw the jagged flaws of this reality—Ichigo's sister's hair and eyes, for one thing, were all wrong, but did anyone care? Whole buildings in Karakura were gone, not to mention integral parts of peoples' personalities, but did it matter? Ichigo may have been immune to kyouka suigetsu, but he wandered in this reality as if he'd forgotten his own name. A necessary amnesia, perhaps—only idiots believe they are truly happy, and Yhwach was a monster incapable of understanding even the shadow of what struggling beings defined as happiness: this bright projection lured him into Aizen's trap.

The Kazui child had touched the fatal flaw of the Quincy king's vengeance, but really, it would have made no difference who had touched it. There was a special poetry to the child being Ichigo's, but the reality was Aizen's master program and had been in waiting for the remnants of Yhwach's power to appear. Yhwach was absorbed by Aizen, and the reality began to collapse, simple as that.

"Soul King," they had pronounced him after leaving him ten years ago. What would they call him now? He was still fond of the name Aizen, the allusion to esoteric love, a personal history soaked in blood and betrayal. His Holy Majesty, Aizen? Aizen the Divine Unknown?

Annulment. The time was here.

The bindings dropped from Aizen's arms, and he stood up. The throne was gone, and the Soul King was free to walk among his subjects, free to reign over his worlds as he pleased.

He would design a new throne later; a ruler required one.

3. I am Merely Practicing Saying Goodbye to You

Ichigo dropped to his knees. Yhwach had simply vanished. No pieces of him had fallen to the ground; not a trace of black goo remained, nothing.

His zanpakutou staked the earth, and Ichigo held onto it with both hands, not sure if he could stand alone yet awed by his own power, not understanding it.

His next thought was of his mother. He thought he smelled her, her fragrant hair, and sensed her warmth, the way she used to hug him when he was small and needed reassurance that no, he didn't suck at martial arts or was dumb at math. He was weak at the moment, had always been dim at sensing reiatsu but … was she really there?

Others were. He didn't look up to see them, but hundreds of thousands of spirits had been cleansed by his blade and were fleeing the scene in a tremendous spiral like a tornado. Ichigo's hair blew in the ghost winds, the sleeves of his shihakushou fluttered, and his heart felt flung this way and that too.

When the winds stopped, there was a sense of having lost more than just the burden of despair, but the grim purpose that had driven him for so long. There is nothing celebratory about winning a terrible war, and in his exhaustion, Ichigo felt younger, more vulnerable than ever before, even in the wake of what he had accomplished. He felt confused, reset to a kid who needed someone to tell him things were going to be ok.

"Amazing," came a familiar voice out of nowhere. Ichigo looked up and saw Aizen standing a few feet away, his severed arm restored, the eyepatch gone. "You saved the universe, Ichigo."

"You're alive," said Ichigo, still not sure he could rise to his feet.

"Sometimes one needs to state the obvious to sustain a sense of reality." Aizen lifted his arms slightly, his palms showing in the universal gesture of displaying that one held no weapon. "It's me, your ally. Can you believe such a thing?"

Ichigo felt arms around him, helping him to his feet. Ishida. Ichigo clung to Ishida for support, and the sword that had slain Yhwach remained planted in the ground. "It's ok," Ishida said, "Inoue-san is on her way."

"Where's Renji?" asked Ichigo.

"Relatively unharmed." Aizen gestured across the horizon. Ichigo could make out a fallen figure. "He'll require assistance from your extraordinary young woman who rejects wounds," Aizen added in his mild voice.

"Don't—don't worry." Ichigo told Ishida. "Aizen fought against Yhwach. I get the feeling he's not going to do anything bad."

Ishida was staring at their former enemy like he didn't buy that. There was a fierceness in those blue eyes Ichigo had seen before, also the grief the guy could never really hide. It was scary how tired Ishida looked.

"Don't talk, Kurosaki. You're in worse shape than you realize. Just wait for Inoue-san."

There wasn't a drop of sweat or a mark of battle on Ishida's clothes—why? Ichigo had felt his friend's reiatsu fighting in the palace, the terrible conflict he'd blocked out with confidence that Ishida would have to win—but what the hell had happened that the Quincy uniform looked neat and spotless, like it had just been picked up at the dry cleaner's, and yet Ishida's eyes looked like they'd seen the worst of the worst? What had this war taken from all of them?

"Aizen Sousuke." Ishida glared. "What are you doing fighting with the Shinigami?"

"I'm not, young man," Aizen went on calmly. "I'm not fighting for them or against them. I am who I am, and the Shinigami can't defeat me now."

"Is that a threat?" Ishida seemed to understand what Aizen was going on about.

"I won't say nothing to fear because fear me they will, but it will be a mutually beneficial relationship. I had such a relationship with a dear companion once; Gin taught me that love and fear coexist for a reason."

Before Aizen could explain himself further, as both Ichigo and Ishida knew was his way, Rukia came running over the horizon, Inoue behind her.

"Ichigo!" Rukia shouted first, and then in a gasp, "Aizen!" Her hand reached for her zanpakutou.

"Don't worry about Aizen," Ichigo relaxed at the sight of his friends and was more than ready to feel better and get his physical wounds fixed up. Ishida, sensing Ichigo go limp, started to gently lower him back to the ground. "Go get Renji," Ichigo said to him, "and bring him here quickly so Inoue can— "

"I'll go as fast as I can, but I can't use hirenkyaku here." Ishida still held onto Ichigo's upper arm as Ichigo lay down, spent but still alert. "The reiatsu is too dense."

"There's no need," Inoue said. At her words, a gigantic golden orb covered everyone within sight except Rukia.

Aizen walked forward, stepping out of the glowing light to face the young woman who still held her palms forward, rolling them as if adjusting the position of her orb. "Your powers have grown," Aizen observed.

Inoue ignored him. "Ishida-kun, you're all right?" she asked as Ishida was walking towards her. He stepped with no problem out of the golden light. Since when was such a thing possible? Ishida could walk through Inoue's barriers now? Aizen, understandable—he could do amazing things-but who was Ishida now?

"I felt you let me pass," Ishida explained as he spoke to Inoue. "I know you sensed I was injured before, but Yhwach's highest ranked Sternritter … allowed that I would be healed and told me to save my friends before he died. Without his help, we would not have been able to defeat Yhwach."

"Renji is ok?" Rukia was looking at the unconscious body yards away.

"He will be," Inoue nodded.

"Such confidence," observed Aizen. "Do you still believe you are capable of rejecting the hougyoku?"

Inoue shot Aizen a look, similar to the one Ishida had given him earlier. Ichigo still didn't sense that Aizen meant harm—he knew it. Why was Aizen talking shit to his friends?

"Your powers are indeed impressive," Aizen continued to Inoue, "even given their limitations due to your human emotions and how your ability seems to lag within reiatsu-heavy spiritual environments. I understand you better now; as time passes, you will understand your own powers better too."

Rukia and Inoue exchanged suspicious glances.

"Speaking of time," Aizen said, "it will be just about now that the former captain of the kidou corps attempts his feeble spell."

Aizen turned around, lifted his palm and with one tiny shove of his massive reiatsu slid back the figure of Tessai, who had been standing there for who knows long in his Urahara Shouten apron, poised to throw a kidou at the unbound enemy of the Shinigami. The second shove from Aizen turned Tessai upside down and sent his body rolling down a slope.

"He'll be in need of your help next," Aizen told Inoue. "So will many others coming soon. Please let them know that they need not try to capture or restrain me. Not only are they not capable of doing that, I am their new king."

Ishida grasped it right away. "The Soul King. The reason the worlds haven't collapsed. When did that happen?"

Ichigo made a running charge to escape Inoue's orb and ran smack into a golden bumper that knocked him back on his ass.

"You're not fully healed, Ichigo. What were you possibly going to attempt to do?" Aizen asked. "You can't fight me. I told you. No one can. And you understand that it's as I told you, ours is a mutually beneficial relationship. Gin lived happily with me for years while desiring to kill me. I needed the fear of death then to grow, no longer. Although Kisuke will entertain me for some time—I should go meet him. It will be too long before his party washes ashore here to be fully healed, and Kisuke is an old friend."

With that, Aizen walked away.

His back was to everyone as he spoke. "Interesting how this timeline will already be so different for you because I walk away, and it is Kuchiki-san who instead of helping a shopkeeper's assistant restrain a god, will remain to hear to your tales of woe instead of the woman who tirelessly heals all the war's fallen. The river of destiny isn't that at all, Ichigo; Kisuke and I have always known that the one who outsmarts the rest gets to choose which river to set sail across. A safe and pleasant journey!" Did he laugh? "All rivers lead to the ocean of forgetfulness."

His words, growing fainter as he walked quickly away, were mostly lost to Ichigo. All Ichigo knew as he sat in Inoue's bubble was that as he grew physically stronger, his mind felt more exhausted and confused. His eyes pleaded with Inoue to let him out. She shook her head. He looked to Rukia. She was staring at him with the most tender expression, her violet eyes full of pain, and at that moment, Ichigo forgot his own anxieties and wanted right away to relieve hers.

He could be patient to be healed. What was a little time?

4. The Ceased Clock Will Awake and Start to Tick Again

Renji healed first, and he put himself in charge of carrying others who were straggling to the scene inside Orihime's orb. Chad, bleeding from his head, arrived carrying an unconscious Ganju. The Captain Commander, not at all too worse for the wear, walked up, supported by the waist by his lieutenant, and refused help. He sat down, listened to Ishida explain his Quincy uniform and give an overview of what had occurred with Aizen and Yhwach. He wanted to get a person-by-person report, in a moment, after he caught his breath. Then the Captain Commander lay down, right there on the ground, and closed his eyes. Ise Nanao looked around apologetically, but if there was ever a time for the captain of the Gotei to take a deserved nap, this was it.

"Why is Ichigo taking so long to heal?" Rukia had been waiting, arms crossed, growing increasingly impatient.

"Reiatsu interference in his wounds," Inoue tried to explain. 'It's something peculiar I don't understand at all. Must have something to do with Yhwach's setting the traps in the future. The wounds themselves aren't that serious, but they're hard to get to."

"Yeah, it's the ones in my feet," Ichigo said, and he stood up. "You did it, Inoue. They're fine now. Let me out."

He started to take slow determined steps to test his feet. He walked faster. He started a brisk jog. He tore right out the golden orb and ran straight into Rukia's arms.

There's was an audible, sharp intake of breath from Inoue.

The war was all over, and yet it wasn't all over, but there was time to be with Rukia.

"Ichigo," she spoke into his chest, the word so close to his body it entered him, a plea for his well-being, his own name a reminder in his heart of why he fought. She had been so worried. If holding her could only make it better, if he could only hold her until all the world was a better place…

He had been close to her before, when she rode on his back, when he carried her to safety, but this time there was a reciprocal affection made dizzy with other feelings like sadness and relief. Ichigo was bent over far to hold her and her small hands were pressing hard against his back.

"Don't blame yourself," he heard her say. "It was a hard war. We knew it would be a hard war."

He could only hold onto her tighter. Don't cry.

She let go first. Her face seemed calmer, and for that he was glad. She had a small smile on her lips. The distance between them seemed like miles and centuries now, even though they were only standing a foot or so apart.

"Ichigo, you felt the souls released? All of them?"

He nodded.

She looked at him expectantly. It was time. Ichigo felt the gear move, and the moment announce itself in silence.

"I felt my mom."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

They began to walk, in a slow synchronized pace, away from Inoue's orb, in the opposite direction Aizen had walked. Ichigo told Rukia about his heritage as a Quincy. He found out that Rukia had already known he was a Shiba, that Byakuya had informed his sister of the fact.

"I'm not sure who I am now," he said. He thought about his zanpakutou still stuck in the ground in the domain of Inoue's healing orb. "I'm trying to figure it out. When my ban-kai was restored, it was like the weapon itself was brought back but my soul's powers didn't completely match up with it. Yhwach had stolen my Quincy powers and my Hollow powers and Inoue couldn't really restore those completely. So my ban kai cracked. And then Yhwach broke all ban kai in the future, and I only had my original Shinigami powers, which I'd never truly used, not really … because I'd borrowed yours and then … well, the Hollow power had started to take over by the time I learned ban kai. I'm new now, but am I a new Shinigami? It feels like starting over. "Ichigo let out a long breath. "And yet I feel like I've been through too much to start over."

"You are so strong now," Rukia said.

Ichigo didn't feel strong; he felt tired.

"You did it," Rukia went on. "You protected mountains of people."

"With help," Ichigo added.

"Do you realize what a sign of maturity that is? You let people help you. The Ichigo I first met ran into situations like…." She stopped and smiled. "like the one who tried to get out of Inoue's orb a while ago to chase after Aizen." She laughed. "You know what Renji did today? Renji ran after you and Yhwach with no plan. But I guess you two did ok together."

"Actually, I fought pretty good with Inoue," Ichigo said. "Ishida and Aizen showing up was more like an accident."

"We all trained together with the monk," Rukia said. "I know you're capable of teamwork."

Ichigo frowned. "Are the Royal Guard alive? I can't sense their reiatsu from here."

Rukia waved a hand. "It's going to be ok. When Inoue was healing me, she was considering going to them, but she sensed that Ichibe was up and doing some healing work of his own. It was difficult to sense anything past Yhwach's power, but Ichibe has a very strong reiatsu."

"How can you…?" Ichigo didn't know how to put the question exactly. There was something about Rukia that gave him hope. How did she give herself hope? "Why do you think things are going to be ok?"

Her face became serious. "I don't know that they are," she said. "But I believe in you. You want to protect. It's the same with me. I have an obligation as a Shinigami. There have been times I've doubted myself. When I was in held in the Senzaikyu, I had time to think about things I regretted."

It was at this point, after so many years, that Rukia told Ichigo about her own memories in the rain, about killing Kaien, Ichigo's own uncle, and about her battle with the ninth Espada, who had held Kaien's soul and had been able to impersonate him in the same way Grand Fisher had been able to taunt Ichigo with his mother's form.

Ichigo and Rukia were seated on the ground by now. Low clouds hung in the sky, whispers of white against a sullen blue. The heavy reiatsu of the atmosphere oppressed both of them, but not as much as what they had heard one other say. Guilt has its own presence when talked about; it sits like an uneasy guest, wearing outdated clothes, like a prisoner let out of a room after a long sentence.

"Why are we talking about this now?" Ichigo let out a sigh. He could breathe a little easier even though his heart felt heavy with sadness. He could endure that sadness with more strength because Rukia was here.

"It seems like the time," Rukia said. "I don't know why. I know we're past blaming ourselves for what happened, but talking about the deaths of people we cared for—that will always be hard, I think."

"I'm glad we talked," Ichigo said. "It's like finding out about a connection I always knew was there, but…"

"I know," she said.

"We should head back."

5. Even If You Fail to be Born, It's Only Natural to Die

When Aizen came upon Urahara Kisuke and his companions in an open field, they were resting, some of them perhaps near death, under the oblivious sky. Urahara's eyes were two dried clots of blood. "Hello, Aizen," he said, nonetheless. "You escaped Tessai and came looking for us. Perhaps you can do us a little favor for old times' sake?"

"You mean besides destroying Yhwach-a task all of you seemed incapable of accomplishing without my help?"

Yoruichi made a gagging sound. Her brother, lying on the ground, holding his stomach, said in a weak voice: "You did that on purpose, sis. I told you to stop making noises like that or I was going get really, really sick. And ever since the little green girl threw up on us, I've been about to puke myself."

"You know who I am now," Aizen said to Urahara.

"I know who you've been, and what you're capable of," Urahara said. "Time will tell who you really are."

Aizen waved his hand over the war-ravaged party. "Simple healing kidou. It will hold you until we get to where the woman can un-do the worst damage—this nasty poison, and oh Kisuke, you're a mess. In the meantime," Here, Aizen put his put his arms under the shopkeeper's legs and shoulders and lifted him off the ground. "I need to talk to you about a few things."

Yoruichi gagged again. "Get— " She choked. "Get your— " Drool spilled out of the corners of her mouth. "Aizen, don't touch him with your filthy paws!"

"Let's get going!" Aizen walked very fast, so the rest had no choice but to follow.

"I know why you put the hougyoku in Kuchiki Rukia," Aizen said to the man he carried.

"You do?" A feigned innocence. "Why, I thought everyone knew that. It was to hide it from you."

"I mean years ago when she was at the academy and made a training mission to the World of the Living and you wiped her memory."

"Ohhh." There was a long silence. The shopkeeper was still in obvious pain, his slashed fingers held together by the faintest invisible reiatsu and trembling.

"Don't pretend you never had aspirations like mine. You wanted to change the world too. You hated Soul Society as much as I did. You had long term plans to master the hougyoku, and you didn't bother about lying and manipulating other people towards serving your needs; you're a creator of your own so-called destiny, Kisuke. I know who you are now. I suspected as much before but now I know."

"How?"

"Let's just say that being Soul King, especially a Soul King who now has the powers of the previous Soul King, the hougyoku and the Quincy King combined, my omniscience is more than special. Did you think Yhwach's foresight was something to behold? I have clear and vivid hindsight of past timelines when in proximity of an individual. For example, I see you giving candy to a girl in your shop and then putting a foreign object right into her very soul. How could you do such a thing, Urahara Kisuke?"

"Caught me. I guess I'm quite the pervert."

Ever the wary scientist, even in this condition, still not sure if Aizen could sense motive even though he could watch the past as if it were on television. Aizen had to commend the half-dead man in his arms.

Kisuke would prove to be marvelous entertainment. As Gin had been. Never a true threat. And this time there was no fear of death for Aizen was immortal, but would Kisuke ever reveal his true motives? Would any of his plans ever come into play? Ichigo had proved to be a powerful distraction; Rukia would be the same? Or in combination with Ichigo, would the two attempt a coup? It was so unnecessary. Aizen searched the future for such a mutiny and saw the two training in the Royal Realm, the ribbons of time frayed and intangible beyond that. Amusing that anyone might challenge the Soul King. They were all his friends now—friends who feared their ruler, as all lesser beings should fear what is most powerful and supreme.

"You are still quite a mastermind, Kisuke," Aizen said, aware that the remark was out of character for his previous self but befitting a generous and observant king of kings.

"Ah well, I'm not always right," the shopkeeper said. "I was certain that today I was a goner."

Everyone was amazed when Sousuke Aizen came over the horizon, carrying the shopkeeper, followed by Neliel who held a half-conscious, coughing Yoruichi under one arm and a tinier version of Yoruichi in the other. This tinier Yoruichi said he was her brother named Youshiro. Also accompanying the crew was a limping panther who transformed into Grimmjow. Neliel told the tale of how she had gone into Resurrección and with her double-sided lance had slashed at the Grimmjow-punch opening in Askin's sphere of Death, making the hole large enough so her centaur form could pass through. The poison had weakened her right away, but she had somehow managed to lift Urahara, Yoruichi, Youshiro and Grimmjow onto her back and escape. Then she had reverted to child form and thrown up her healing vomit over everyone, but the worst effects of the poison didn't diminish. She said Aizen had saved them.

Grimmjow, lying on the ground, tried to shout but his voice was too raspy; the gist of his rambling was that he going to kick Neliel's ass someday because he was conscious when she was gathering up everyone in the sphere and he had been the last one she lifted onto her back—a fellow Espada, damn Nel.

Ichigo and Rukia arrived on the scene to see the Captain Commander wake up. "Good morning, Sousuke, I'm feeling better, passed on the healing," and "oh my, Captain Urahara, it seems you are totally blind. I'm only blind in one eye."

"I'd like my eyes back, please," the shopkeeper said, and Aizen tossed him into Orihime's golden orb, which now contained a variety of war casualties.

As Urahara's wounds took longer and longer to get better, Yoruichi, fully recovered, circled Aizen like prey. "What did you to do to him?" Her hair was starting to rise at the bangs and flare outwards. Yoruichi wasn't in any threatening transformation, but the snap and crackle of her reiatsu was audible. Orihime said that there was none of Aizen's reiatsu inside the shopkeeper's wounds, only Urahara's own reiatsu was making the process difficult. Rukia and Ichigo arrived on the scene in time to witness Aizen shrugging and insisting on his own benevolence. "Kisuke is my friend."

Neliel tackled Ichigo to the ground she was so happy to see him, and Grimmjow walked far from the scene in utter disgust.

Tskukishima (who had returned when Ginjou sensed Ichigo having extreme technical ban kai difficulties) offered to repair everyone's broken ban kai in the future but found that the first one he tried to fix—Renji's—was fine. Aizen, arms folded, merely smiled. "Less tedious work for you," he said.

Then Urahara's eyes grew back, but not so the slashes on his arms and fingers. "Ah well, you see, I did those myself with my ban-kai," he explained with a smile. He had lost his hat along the way, and his eyes were exposed and yet still unreadable. My ban-kai has consequences. I'd imagine that the results of its power are difficult to reverse."

Perhaps no one who was alive who had ever witnessed Urahara's ban kai—Yoruichi's expression was solemn-and only Aizen was capable of reviewing what had happened, so there was a reverent silence following those words.

The silence made an appropriate prelude to Captain Kurotsuchi's entrance. Kurotsuchi was wearing a simple kimono; he was barefoot and wearing none of his usual make-up, headdress and accessories, and few recognized him right away. In his arms he carried what appeared to be an infant in a white blanket.

Then the blue-haired, rather handsome man whose face was still wet as if he'd recently stepped out of a steam-bath, spoke, and there was no mistaking the eerie voice. "I have more healing chambers available now. You will find them as effective as this young woman's powers if not faster-acting."

His gaze turned to Inoue Orihime who was kneeling, her palms up, her expression tired, a Quincy jacket over her shoulders. She was next to Ishida Uryuu. "That jacket you're wearing," said Kurotsuchi to Inoue. "It's a curious uniform. It's too large to belong to the boy next to you. It's— "

Before Kurotsuchi could finish his sentence a beam of light shot in his direction and split him in half. When the blinding light was gone and the smoke cleared, Kurosaki Isshin was kneeling between the two bloody parts of the 12th division captain, holding the infant in his large hands. "Heh," he said. "So at least I came here for something."

The two parts of Kurotsuchi Mayuri were turning to green slime.

Ishida Uryuu stood up. "This is how he escapes."

Ishida Ryuuken walked forward, still holding his crossbow. "This is how he dies."

The green slime fizzled, made squeaky noises as it bubbled and evaporated into a green gas that was blown away with the wind.

The Captain Commander looked over his shoulder. "Quincy, that is a war crime."

"I'm not part of your world, Shinigami," said Ryuuken, and his weapon vanished. "My son shot the arrow into your enemy's heart that allowed Ichigo to kill Yhwach. The man I killed was a war criminal by every law in your world, and yet you allowed him to live. "

"He's right," Isshin added. He was cradling the baby close now, reflexively rocking his torso back and forth. "Today is a day of justice. Quincy and Shinigami worked together. You know the things Kurotsuchi did."

"I know the things you did," the Captain Commander said. "You're supposed to be dead and exiled… and also disappeared? But…. "He heaved a sigh. "You're Ichigo's father. The Quincy—I take it that ill-tempered man is Ishida Uryuu's father. I'm tired. Let's call it even, ne?"

"Not a difficult job, this governing business, is it?" remarked Aizen.

"And who is this little one?" Isshin was playing with the baby now, making faces, rocking with a deliberate bounce, high and low. "Pretty little thing, such black eyes."

"That would be the newest incarnation of Kurotsuchi Nemu," Aizen said. "The eighth, I believe. The seventh perished in battle disobeying her father's orders and giving her life to protect him."

Ishida Uryuu gasped. Inoue Orihime shot him a troubled look.

"Kurotsuchi grew back the new version from her brain, which survived the battle. He was a magnificent scientist." Aizen turned to Ishida Ryuuken who had snapped his silver lighter and was standing under a small cloud of cigarette smoke, a half-smile on his lips. "You look smug, Quincy, but anyone can catch even the most prepared man off-guard. Call it luck if you must … or extremely good timing."

6. The Future, Pitch Black and Completely Backwards

That night and day came to the Royal Realm was not a surprise. Duality existed in all worlds, a time for action, and an opportunity for subterfuge. By the time most of the war casualties were healed, either by Inoue's orb, or zombies reversed, with the aid of Kurotshuchi's chambers and Urahara's specific instructions, dusk had fallen and the temperature had dropped. By the time Captain Ukitake, carried to the site by his faithful third seat Sentarou, was drawing regular breaths and pronounced recovered by Inoue, a transport back to the Seireitei was sent for. Aizen stood watching the resurrections with folded arms. By the time Urahara was fully well, scampering about like his old self and bickering with Yoruichi, night had fallen. The other cities and palaces of the realm shone like stars in the dark sky, and behind those constructions, there were strange bright spirals of other realms—what glowed beyond the sky of the highest heaven?

Ichibe had flown to the scene of Inoue's healing before the darkness, drawn a peculiar circle with thick calligraphy in the air, and attempted to restrain Aizen with a binding spell but no use—Aizen, to everyone's amazement, had flown around Ichibe in circles. "The rules of the game have turned around," the new Soul King taunted. "I don't need you to protect me, but I see no problem in allowing you to carry on as before … for now."

"So Mayuri is really dead," Shutara had intoned with unexpected sadness. "I thought the bastard would live forever. History loves his type of madman."

Hiyori was preparing to board Yukio's transport back to Soul Society and then back to the Living World, when she caught a glimpse of Hikifune, and ran, sandals slapping, into the beautiful purple-haired Royal Guard's arms. "Look at you, you adorable brat," Hikifune squealed as she lifted Hiyori up into the air and down again like a small child. "Civilian clothes!"

"Not a Shinigami anymore! Kisuke either!"

"Ah, don't blame you one bit!" Hikifune blew a raspberry against Hiyori's neck. "The Gotei are a bunch of tedious administrators. Was never so glad to leave them. Were you at now?"

"Living World. Big fancy aluminum place. It's good there. Shinji was there for a while but he's a captain again. You know how much he likes to control things."

"Yes, he's bossy, not at all like you, haha. Saw him too earlier—nice haircut."

"Transport about to leave." Hiyori had tears in her eyes. "I have to go."

"This was surely a gift of timing. Be well, my honeybunch." Another raspberry, and Hiyori ran to the transport.

The transport was loaded with the Fullbringers, most of the Shinigami, and all the humans. Ishida Uryuu, his arm around a very cold Inoue Orihime who was hugging Ishida Ryuuken's jacket close to her body, was among the last to board. She was exhausted and doleful, and he looked drained as well. Isshin asked if the pair didn't want to go with him and Ryuuken through the secret Quincy keyhole to the shadow realm, and the pair looked at one another as if wondering if they were up for another adventure … or any more time spent with these two peculiar men. "We'll take the transport, thank you," Uryuu said and hurried Orihime forward.

Shutara had been on the verge of adopting the eighth Mayuri child "because she looks like me," but Isshin wouldn't hear of it and said that the girl needed to be brought up by a proper family. He was going to claim her, but then Urahara informed him that the child was a mod-soul and a dangerous experiment with which he had expertise and best left in his own care.

"Trust him on this one," Ryuuken said. "The man is untrustworthy in general, but give him the child. It's not human."

"Love her," Isshin cooed, passing the sleeping child to Urahara who looked delighted to be the apparent prizewinner.

"Do you think we have room for just one more," the shopkeeper asked Yoruichi.

The Shihouin princess rolled her eyes. "You're a natural-born father, Kisuke. You don't have to ask me."

"Here, Tessai, you hold her," the shopkeeper passed the baby along to his family friend. "Put a binding spell on her if she does anything suspicious."

"A baby?" exclaimed Isshin.

Urahara shrugged, boarding the transport. "Mayuri's baby girl. So who knows how strong she is. I think she needs another name other than what he always gave his mod-souls. I'm sure her memories will be gone, and so her future will be her own."

Then Captain Commander Kyouraku Shunsui insisted on staying behind along with those Shinigami whose presence had again been requested in the Royal Realm: Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Byakuya, Kuchiki Rukia, and Kurosaki Ichigo.

"So sad to be separated from my Nanao-chan at a time like this, but this is Gotei business and I'm in charge."

He asked Ichibe why the war potentials as identified by Yhwach were not to be bestowed with special training by the Royal Guard … and was answered by Aizen.

"Zaraki doesn't train. He is his own power. He learns by instinct. Kisuke, ha, he would not take a position in the Gotei if you offered, Kyouraku. That's why you didn't offer, even though Kurotsuchi's position is now vacant. That man makes his own rules. As for the other war potential, that was me, and I am your god now."

Ichibe looked at Aizen as one might look at a child who had spoken out of turn. "Aizen speaks the truth," he conceded. "The Shinigami we've summoned are invested with our training already and are committed soldiers. They may replace us someday here; they will eventually return to serve Kyouraku better in Soul Society— "

"I'm not going back home?" Ichigo asked.

"Your decision," Ichibe said. "Who you are and what you want to do, always your decision."

"Ichigo," said the Captain Commander, and here he lay down, right on the ground again. He did not look very disheveled from war and his hairpins were in place. His presence was striking, even as he posed in a lazy way, one elbow propping himself up. "Do you want to be stronger, Ichigo?"

"Yes."

"What do you want to protect, Ichigo?"

Ichigo looked to Rukia. "Everyone."

Rukia beamed. Ichigo held her gaze, as if he were looking for answers to other questions there.

Aizen knew it then. The future that Yhwach had invaded had been as easy to melt as vanilla ice cream. That world had been devoid of the essential stubborn consciousness of people, their own dark awareness of lies they told all the time. Aizen understood that Ichigo wanted to protect everyone, but that this truth left out a more essential truth; the stronger truth was that Ichigo wanted to be where Kuchiki Rukia was, that she was the single person he wanted to protect the most right now. Ichigo, knowing this, had lied to the Captain Commander. Lied like a fool with tunnel vision. That's just how Aizen liked his adversaries. A little less than honorable. Because Aizen could not see motives the way he could see events of the future or the past, a liar was easier to read than a perfectly honest man.

"Then let's begin training tomorrow, after a good night's rest," said Kyouraku Shunsui. "You'll see, Ichigo. Your destiny will fall into place."

7. What is Your Fear?

Nudity wasn't an issue among the Royal Guard; when Rukia asked that her healing time after arduous training be delayed until Ichigo, Renji, and her brother were done soaking in the waters, Kirinji pulled off her yukata and pushed her right into the pool. The men offered right away to wait their turn and began to step out of the steaming spring before Rukia could even cover her eyes, but Kirinji shot them all back with a reiatsu whip-snap that sent water splashing everywhere. "Grow up and face the truth," he said. "We are all naked under our clothes."

When the men refused to face Rukia and turned around, Kirinji told her to uncover her eyes and behold how much these fools respected her. Blushing, she put down her hands. "So, which one has the best physique?" Kirinji asked. "We have three distinct types here—the elegant slim backside, the tall brawny backside, and the one in-between—Ichigo, wouldn't you say, isn't he the most bruised up but most your type? Ah no, he's turned red as a traffic light now so he's disqualified. Too sensitive." Kirinji kicked hot water in Ichigo's direction. "Grow up, boy!"

Then there was the time Shutara came to dinner not wearing a stitch of clothing. None of the Royal Guard batted an eye. Nii-sama looked, batted his long lashes once, twice, then returned to perusing his food. The Captain Commander grinned in worldly appreciation of a beautiful woman and sipped his drink. Ichigo and Renji were staring, red-faced, at Shutara, at one another, at others around the table, back at Shutara again. "Why are you naked?" They asked in unison.

"I didn't have a thing to wear?" answered the Great Weaver. "Seriously, if you must know, I was testing Aizen."

"Aizen?" The name caught Rukia's attention, and she could overlook a nude goddess so gracefully eating transparent noodles from a white china bowl. Shutara seemed at ease in her body; Rukia wondered if at some level of divine power, unabashed nudity was required. Why fear one's own true self in the presence of men?

"He's the Soul King yes," Shutara went on. "He has some of Yhwach's powers and omniscience, but just like Yhwach, he needs to be within a certain proximity of people in order to see their timelines. And no matter how … exposed a person is around him, one thing is for certain." She set down her chopsticks and nodded. "He can't read minds."

"As we suspected," Ichibe said. "Souls are not glass vessels. How can the gods see the true heart of a person when there is nothing cloudier and more full of conflicted motives that a person's soul?"

"Just what did you think you were going to accomplish walking around Aizen with your ass hanging out?" Kirinji was drinking wine—or was it really wine? It looked like blood. "We can't see the dude's soul or his heart or whatever, and Aizen-sama wasn't going to give himself away just because you had your nips at attention." A gulp of red liquid. "He liked big-hipped Arrancar girls in Hueco Mundo, not skinny asses like yours. And you know, his real weakness is a clever man-like Ichimaru Gin."

"He'll expose his true self to someone he considers a worthy rival," Ichibe added. "Like young Ichigo here."

"Me?" Ichigo choked on his food.

Renji reached towards a plate of bread. "I don't like where this is going. You guys sound like a bunch of perverts."

Rukia elbowed Renji so hard the bread fell out of his hand. "They're not talking about perverted stuff with Ichigo, you idiot," she hissed in a loud whisper. "Be quiet."

"In your Mugetsu state," said Ichibe, "you sensed Aizen's true heart, didn't you, Ichigo?"

Ichigo looked worried. "I told Urahara-san something about that. I guess word got around?"

"Oh no, we didn't get that information from Urahara. This is true about every transcendent fighter; you can read your opponent's heart. What did you learn about Aizen's, Ichigo?"

Rukia listened for Ichigo's answer with rapt attention. Was this true? She had never been able to read an opponent's heart, had never been able to see past her own doubts and then only to celebrate in her own courage. She had sensed an opponent's weaknesses, gauged what a next strategy might be, pitied an opponent, even felt compassion at times for a rival sinking to humiliation, but reading a heart? This was new. Kaien had said hearts were formed between friends—but rivals?

"Aizen was lonely," Ichigo said. "From the time he was a child, he was lonely. He wanted more than anything else to have people understand and accept him."

His intelligence? His power? What? It made no sense that a lonely man would want to rule all the worlds—that seemed the loneliest of all jobs.

"Do you believe Aizen poses a current threat, Ichigo?" Ichibe asked.

Even Nii-sama raised his eyes from his plate to look at Ichigo. All eyes were on the youngest Shinigami shifting in his seat. As Ichigo pondered the question, he looked a little uncomfortable but not burdened by the gravity of it. He scratched his head. He looked to one side. Finally, he said, "A current threat? No."

"You know this?" Ichibe asked.

"That's what I felt on the battlefield with Yhwach, and that's what I feel now," Ichigo said, "but…"

Again, no one ate a mouthful and everyone stared.

"I think he's waiting for something, but I don't know what that something is," Ichigo said.

"Ah well, neither do we," said Ichibe. "Hikifune, darling, please pass the pickles."

Rukia's gaze could not help itself, even though she wanted to return to casually eating her food like everyone else; she was drawn to Ichigo's face, and he was looking right back at her. There was a mutual uneasiness and tension between them. What Aizen was waiting for was maybe in a far, far future. Whatever Rukia and Ichigo were waiting for required a more immediate answer, but their own true hearts were too blurred with a dim fear to even understand the question.

Rukia tried a half-smile to reassure herself that she and Ichigo would know what to do when the time was right; the gesture allowed them to break their locked gaze. They both started stuffing their faces with noodles.

"I really wish," Ichigo said to Renji with his mouth full, "that there was a whole lot less nakedness around here. Why is it someone always has to get naked?"

8. The Heart Burns Even Though the Rain Falls

Over a year passed in the Living World without word of Kurosaki Ichigo, and whenever Inoue Orihime came by the Kurosaki Clinic with her basket of breads to ask after him, Ichigo's father would say, "Soon enough, he'll come to visit. He probably has a big job up there now, but you know Ichigo. He'll come back for his sister's chocolate cake for his birthday. He's fine, pretty girl, don't you worry."

Isshin would take the whole basket without inviting Orihime inside, and Orihime was despondent. She had felt for a long time that a grief in her heart would never stop begging for relief, that the distance between sky and earth was farther than ever, and that her loneliness was without measure. Ishida-kun was in medical school in Tokyo all day and so busy; Tatsuki was in university across the country studying to be a physical education teacher. Sado-kun slept in the day and played in a band all night. Orihime had won a partial scholarship to a nearby university but turned it down, unsure of what career to pursue, too sad to consider studying, amazed at how her sense of loss kept deepening—How can this be? I want Kurosaki-kun to be happy. Isn't he happy? Why am I sad?

Then the dreams began, the dreams that felt like authentic memories of a large-eyed child she had taught to hold a cup, of sitting with Kurosaki-kun at a table and his saying, clear as day, "Porridge turned out good, Orihime." Orihime was convinced that this time she wasn't fantasizing; the dreams interrupted other dreams without the fuzzy delight of something wished for. They were cold and frightening memories. There was only one man who might know something about this—Urahara-san.

Before Orihime could walk through the door, a little girl she had never met ran out, a beautiful child with black braids and a pink dress. "Hello, my name is Eri! Welcome to the Urahara Shouten! How may I be of assistance to you today?"

"I've come to see Urahara-san?" Was this the baby the shopkeeper had adopted? She'd grown up so fast! She looked at least three or four years old.

"It's peculiar," the shopkeeper said later, as Tessai poured tea and served Orihime her favorite bean paste on toast. "By my calculations all existing remnants of Yhwach's previous state have vanished and this was not something Kurosaki-san could do alone. Aizen managed to absorb Yhwach somehow, but …"

Orihime felt that she didn't want to face the truth, whatever it might be.

"Aizen didn't do that in this timeline. I've detected disturbances in the time-space responses of some of my experiments on a molecular level, nothing extraordinary but enough to make me suspect that an unnatural event occurred around the time Yhwach was defeated. Your own sensitivity to barriers between worlds must be perceiving the peculiarity, I imagine."

"Are you saying that Aizen made up another timeline in order to defeat Yhwach?"

"Perhaps." Urahara-san bowed his head so that most of his face, not only his eyes, were shaded by his hat. How many hats like that did he own? "Perhaps only someone like you can remember parts of that timeline."

Orihime felt tears bloom in her eyes. "But it's gone."

"Yes." The shopkeeper sipped his tea. "It's very likely that Aizen's timeline was a warped projection. Imagine the way a hologram imitates reality but doesn't embody it—not quite like that but as imperfect."

"Are you saying the timeline wasn't real?"

"Oh no, I'm saying it was very real. Only the reality was not up to snuff with what we recognize as reality. It was imperfect. Otherwise, there would be no traces of the timeline having been erased. The fact that you can remember something means there's a stubborn stain of something unreal sticking to our present reality … ah, like something that dripped off a pan onto the grill and didn't burn away. Messy, messy."

Tears had begun to run down Orihime's face.

"Don't mourn it. When one set of possibilities is gone, there are oceans more to explore. Kurosaki-san is fine. And I expect that Aizen will be no problem for him. With Kuchiki-san at Kurosaki-san's side, there will be less of a struggle against any unforeseen danger than if she were not there. Now that I think of it, Aizen may have had some reason to keep those two apart in some timeline. Or not—I may be wrong. Aizen's powers are still a mystery to me."

Orihime had to excuse herself.

"Yoruichi-san has chided me many times for not taking you seriously," the shopkeeper said as Orihime was half-way out the door. "I should apologize— "

Orihime was already running home.

She came home to letters, the weekly ones from Tatsuki and Ishida-kun. Tatsuki's were always short, covered with heart doodles and asked if Orihime would take at least an evening class while continuing to work at the bakery. Art? Robotics? "You always liked school!" Tatsuki wrote. Ishida-kun's letters were always long, written on fine paper in small print, asked after her well-being and expressed concern for her sadness. He said that he would return for this holiday or that one and would like her to join him at his father's house for dinner and to please be patient for news of Kurosaki-kun because training in the Royal Realm was a unique honor, like university. Ishida-kun added that he knew Orihime didn't have to go to uni because she was already smarter than people who had graduated and more talented, but it was a good place to meet friends, so he recommended it. Included with his letter was a picture cut out of a magazine of a giant cake frosted with every imaginable color and topped with pears, raspberries, candies, figs, at least a dozen more treats. The scribbled note on the advertisement read "This cake made me think of you."

It was November, Orihime noticed from the letter dates. She hadn't been much aware of the months changing, only time passing so slowly. Outside her window, the rain was turning into sleet. She slapped her forehead. "Oh no, I'm an idiot! I forgot Ishida-kun's birthday!"

9. It is Still Too Early to Believe

Kyouraku Shunsui and Ise Nanao were married in the winter-time. It was not unheard of for members of the same squad to be married, but never in the history of the Gotei had a Captain Commander assumed family obligations. Kyouraku seemed to be ushering in a new era of traditions, though, and no one objected. Those who might have known anything of the complicated family history of the married pair were dead and gone; Shunsui and Nanao took their vows in an orchard in full view of all the remaining Shinigami, as decimated as the army had been by the war, and walked through the snow back to their barracks as soldiers threw rosy camellia petals or pink sparkly confetti. Ukitake, never fully recovered, in a wheelchair but alive and cheerful as ever, threw candies. The 11th division, with the exception of Yumichika who threw iridescent green peacock feathers as the couple passed, refrained from the tossing of things pretty and celebratory.

"Too much pink," Yumichika observed when the couple had left and there was a trail of petals and confetti on the snow. "I should have brought more green feathers."

Byakuya, who had restrained himself from any display of senbonzakura, passed by Yumichika's shoulder without comment.

Ichigo and Rukia were dwelling temporarily at Byakuya's mansion while the Seireitei was under reconstruction. The mansion, located far from where most of the fighting had taken place, had received little damage. Ichigo's role in the Gotei had yet to be determined as most positions were being re-assigned. The current captain positions of the seventh and eighth divisions were currently vacant, with Iba Tetsuzaemon and Yadoumaru Lisa filling in as temporary heads. Ukitake's failing health was on the line, and he was considering resigning his post to serve as advisor to his division; he no longer had reiatsu to activate ban kai and claimed that disqualified him from a leadership role. With the Gotei in such disarray, Aizen himself decided to pay Soul Society a visit, and at that very time, Ichigo requested leave to visit the Living World.

Surprisingly, Ichigo's request was granted. Aizen and the Captain Commander were both sitting in Byakuya's drawing room with tea and wagashi (Ichigo didn't like tea or too-sweet sweets) when the decision was made.

"It's been a long time since you've seen your human friends," Aizen remarked.

"I see no reason why we can't call upon you if we need you." The Captain Commander lifted his teacup high. "Aizen, I don't see why you like this stuff so much. Ichigo is of age to be a Gotei captain now, and he certainly of age to drink sake with us."

"Your god decides the menu," said Aizen.

"Very well," conceded the Commander. "The captains have much to discuss about you, Ichigo. You may leave when you wish."

After a polite bite and a couple sips of that terrible preferred beverage of middle-aged men, Ichigo excused himself and found himself at Rukia's door, knocking gently.

She was in a silk robe, her hair pulled out of her face with a ribbon. She was the most beautiful woman in all the worlds.

"What did they say?"

"I can go home."

"For how long?"

"They didn't say. For as long as I need to, I imagine. They're deciding my position in the Gotei."

Rukia's expression betrayed her anxiety. "You are sure this is what you want?"

How could he tell her? He put his hand on her cheek. "There are so many things I'm not sure of, but I'm going to find out what I'm worthy of and what I need to do." Her eyes were searching his. "This past year, I've only been sure of one thing."

Surely, thought Ichigo, she had to know what that was. His face drew closer to hers. He had grown accustomed over the years to saying goodbye to her under many circumstances, as a boy who didn't know what he wanted, who had no clue who he was. This time he wanted to let her know that their bond crossed worlds and was irrevocable.

"I am sure," he whispered, "that I want to be with you." He kissed her on the lips. It was a kiss like fingers brushing the surface of a pond to see if the moon reflected on the surface was real. He had never kissed a woman before, but this was Rukia. She erased his timidity when she kissed back. Her hand at the small of his back was firm; it pressed into his body at the same time her lips did. Ichigo was aware of the warmth of her breath, the coolness of her silk robe, her reiatsu spilling into his where her breasts grazed against his clothes. She opened her lips the slightest bit, and he tasted the sweetest longing he had ever known.

He pulled his face away and hugged her for a long time. He wanted to be near her always, to protect her, but he understood her own strength and that he needed to leave for a while. He kissed her bowed head.

When they looked at one another again, it was with new eyes.

"Did you ever think we'd do that?" Ichigo heard himself say.

"Yes." She was smiling, not a trace of pink on her cheeks. She looked happy, and there was something about the way she held her shoulders—so erect and brave—that reminded Ichigo of a warrior about to undertake a mighty challenge. That was fine. He was up for anything.

He had seen the way she had watched the Captain Commander's wedding to Ise Nanao and wondered if Rukia wanted to be married on a snowy day. If he could only look into the future and reassure himself of the happiness that had been lost to him ever since his mother died. Men like Yhwach and Aizen warned against such happiness; maybe it didn't matter if he was happy or not, as long as he was bound forever to Rukia.

10. That's Right, Nothing Else Can Change My World

It had been a tradition for Ichigo to visit Soul Society for the New Year holiday for some years now, to get pouches of money from Byakuya and bags of sweets from Ukitake, so everyone was surprised when the missing son showed up at the shrine at midnight as the bells were ringing.

Ichigo was in spirit form and shihakushou. Karin, Yuzu, and Isshin made no dramatic exclamations when they noticed him standing there, but Yuzu dropped her bag of roasted chestnuts. Isshin's smile was wider that the upturned temple roof. "Beer?" he asked, holding out a paper cup.

"No thanks." Ichigo said. "How's everyone been?"

"Waiting to hear about your secret missions!" whispered Yuzu. She picked up her bag of chestnuts and looked around to see if anyone noticed that she was talking to herself.

Ichigo dawdled at the shrine with his family for a while and when he returned home, Kon in plushie form leapt into his arms.

"Tell me you haven't been wreaking havoc in my body." Ichigo plucked the plushie off his chest and threw him to the floor. Kon took cover behind Yuzu's yukata.

"Not for months and months," confessed Kon.

"Months?"

"Urahara has your body in a special gigai right now—it looks totally dead," Kon said. "I was a far more handsome you, but…."

"What did you do?" Ichigo didn't really want to know, but he had to ask. His reputation in Karakura seemed to matter less now than it did when he was a schoolboy.

"You flunked out of high school and were sent abroad to get over your juvenile delinquent tendencies?" Kon backed into the folds of Yuzu's clothes. "Rumor has it that you've joined some skinheads in America… or the police force there."

"Whatever." Ichigo couldn't be bothered with rumors. He marched upstairs to his old room which was as he left it, but his whole world had been changed. Every man has to grow up and leave his childhood behind him; Ichigo felt like he had lived and died and been reborn so many times already and yet he could never truly leave his family. Like his mother, they would always be with him. He lay on the quilt covering his bed and stared at the ceiling. What is my purpose here?

Ichigo spent the most of the next day eating and catching up with his sisters because his father was in bed with a hangover, and in the late afternoon he arranged to meet his old friends at the Urahara Shouten where Yoruichi-san's birthday was always celebrated with the reading of haiku. Ichigo considered for a moment bringing one.

A special black cat

Who will leap to your rescue.

Blessings and thank you.

He crumpled up the paper but then imagined that the poems read at the event wouldn't be much better.

They weren't. Urahara-san began, and his haiku were borderline naughty but also genuinely reverent. He was a tough act to follow, but Tessai presented his poem wrapped in a red ribbon on a plate with a quart of milk and a bowl of sardines. It was a bad poem, but Yoruichi went crazy for the sardines. Chad's poem was the best.

Do not be deceived

By small, hungry, pitch-black cats.

Gods hide their true forms.

Everyone was truly happy to see Ichigo, and even the little girl named Eri climbed into his lap. "I'm not good at poetry yet," she said. "Do you want to box? I can beat up Jinta and Ururu already."

Ishida and Inoue showed up late. It surprised Ichigo the way they came in together without noticing him right away, and the way Ishida took Inoue's coat struck Ichigo as the way a couple who were dating might act—then again, Ishida was always gentlemanly. Tessai showed them to their places and brought out Inoue's favorite toast.

"Any news about those clowns from the Gotei for my birthday?" asked Yoruichi. "Something to make me laugh?"

"Not anything particularly funny." Ichigo thought for a while. "There was a big wedding, and the 11th division caused a lot of drunken ruckus and broke stuff. No one really minded, though. The Captain Commander got married to his lieutenant."

"How lovely," exclaimed Inoue, clasping her hands. "I'm so happy for Nanao." In the next moment she looked as if she were about to weep from sadness, though. Ichigo could never understand that girl.

"Marriage is so boring," Yoruichi said. "No idea why people ever invented the custom."

"Oh, Urahara-san," Ichigo said, "Renji mentioned that he keeps forgetting to ask you something."

The shopkeeper put down his glass of champagne. "Of course he keeps forgetting. Are you about to ask in his place?"

"Renji said," Ichigo continued, "that Rukia can't remember a trip she made to the Living World a long time ago. Aizen mentioned this trip when I was in the Royal Realm. I honestly don't have any idea what he was talking about. What I'd like to know, what Renji would like to know …. "Ichigo leaned forward and pushed his plate away. "Is what do you know about this? Did something happen to Rukia when she was here?"

Inoue was looking at Ishida. It did not escape Ichigo that Ishida covered her hand with his as if to comfort her. At the very least, that was one heart he didn't have to feel guilty over or sad about anymore; Inoue was with the right person.

"The Soul King seems to be a little concerned about what happened with Rukia too," Urahara-san said.

"He was interrogating me about the whole incident when bringing me to be healed."

"The world makes no sense with Aizen walking around unbound," Yoruichi said. She put down her carton of milk and picked up her champagne glass. "Kisuke always had a few different plans for the hougyoku. He was never able to get the damn thing to conform to his will." She looked at the shopkeeper fondly, downed her champagne and took another glass off the tray. "The hougyoku didn't take to him? He's not … administrative enough for it, probably. Aizen is the ruler type. Kisuke is lazy."

"What happened with Rukia?" Ichigo asked again.

"She's doing well now, isn't she?" the shopkeeper took a tiny sip of champagne. "She's mastered her ban kai, looks lovelier than ever I presume?"

"What do you know?" Ichigo smashed his fist on the table, and Inoue let out a little squeak.

"You're not going to hit me, are you?" asked Urahara.

"Just tell us."

"Maybe it's a matter of global security," Urahara took off his hat to reveal the sincerity in his face that everyone around him knew wouldn't work with Ichigo.

"Talk," said Ichigo.

"Kuchiki-san was said to be a girl from the Rukongai, no one of any particular importance, and in those days… well, let's say I was less likely to consider side-effects on the subjects of my experiments because of my youthful confidence."

Ichigo's eyes were narrowing.

"I didn't harm her," Urahara was quick to add. "I needed to infuse the hougyoku with genuine Shinigami reiatsu that had not been exposed to external elements in the process of being extracted. I was also curious as to what the hougyoku was capable of … evoking from a soul. Kuchiki-san has a very beautiful soul—this is now well-known."

Ichigo had unclenched the muscles in his body somewhat. "I don't understand what you're getting at. What happened to Rukia?"

"Aizen," Ishida piped up, "previously stated that when the hougyoku was in Rukia—which means that when it was in her in Karakura town, that it was somehow responsible for the powers of your friends manifesting. Yet Orihime's fairies told her that they were born because of your own powers."

Urahara was looking at Ishida with a slight smile. Everyone else seemed to be wondering why Ishida was speaking. "I've always suspected," Ishida went on, "that it was a combination of the two forces—the hougyoku's ability to bring peoples' true desires into reality and whatever crazy power it is you have, Kurosaki, that causes crazy things around you to happen."

"I still don't understand," Ichigo went on. "Rukia. What happened to Rukia?"

"I wiped her memories and she went back to serve in her capacity in Soul Society," Urahara said. "It would be years before I would further my understanding of the hougyoku. Yoruichi-san here," he nodded to the woman at his side who was on her third plate of sardines and who knows how many glasses of champagne. "She gathered information that Aizen had been attempting similar experiments with his version of the hougyoku on Rukongai citizens in Soul Society itself. Eventually, as you know, Aizen combined his version of the hougyoku with mine, and now it's sealed in his body. I don't believe Aizen's chest is the hougyoku's final resting place."

Inoue looked bewildered; Ishida seemed to know exactly what was going on; Tessai was stone-faced; Yoruichi and Chad were eating; Eri, Jinta and Ururu had wandered outside already.

"In regards to Kuchiki-san herself? Having been a vessel for such a powerful object for long periods-who knows what powers Kuchiki-san may have acquired? I imagine that the Royal Guard may have glimpsed a clue. Her ban kai is literally impossible; it violates the simplest laws of thermodynamics and creates an alternate dimension for her body heat to disperse. It's as if she requires a dance partner to recreate reality, and this possibility itself may be what Aizen is aware of."

"A new reality?" The question came in a shy voice from Inoue.

"Yes, yes," Urahara said. "What your powers do is reject reality or transverse the borders between existing current realities. Kuchiki-san, when in ban-kai, not unlike many super-powered fighters, invents her own destructive power, but she does something that is quite particular—she creates a time pocket into which her own body heat must be displaced in order for absolute zero to be achieved. It's a dangerous ban kai, much like my own; I don't see how it can be trained regularly without severe consequences to the soul."

"But we have been training," Ichigo said.

"I figured as much," Urahara said. "Let me guess. You're her dance partner?"

Ichigo hadn't thought of the training as a dance, but now that Urahara-san put it that way ….

"Aizen said he wasn't afraid," Ichigo murmured. "But he is, isn't he?"

"No idea." Urahara raised his glass. "A toast to the birthday kitty! She is the magnificent lady of the Urahara Shouten and allows wayward children to play with empty milk cartons under the kotatsu and never complains if my hat falls in her bathwater— "

"I do too complain. Shut up, Kisuke. You're drunk."

Rukia. A new reality. What Urahara-san had said didn't make that much sense to Ichigo, and yet when he was with Rukia, he understood. Rukia changed his world.

11. All Gods Are Imitations of Humans

On the third day of the New Year, Ichigo went in the ugly gigai Urahara had made for him to a folk concert with Keigo, Tatsuki and Mizuiro and ate a lot of trash food, and mentioned that he wanted his body cremated as soon as possible. Tatsuki started to cry, and Keigo and Mizuiro couldn't finish their beers.

"What?" Ichigo didn't understand. "You have to know that I'm going to be spending most of my time in the spirit realms. It's like that's my career. You can still come see me. It's not like I want Kon messing around with my body anymore and getting me locked into a mental institution."

"Damn it, Ichigo," Keigo began to get dramatic. "I'm not ready to buy a suit and weep at your funeral."

"You've always been leaving," Tatsuki wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her over-sized sweater. "Fuck, this is sad music. Whose fucking idea was it to attend this depressing concert?"

"Free beer for the price of admission," said Mizuiro, "and look around, lots of attractive young people."

"Something about this new gigai," Ichigo said. "It might preserve my real body longer when I'm not in it, but it's ugly. I think it makes my face look saggy."

He had no sooner spoken those words than a handsome man in a long white coat wearing a long white scarf and immaculate white shoes walked in front of them. The brown lock of hair blowing in the winter breeze identified him as Aizen Sousuke.

"Holy shit," Keigo said in a low voice. "What do we do? Run? Ichigo, are you going to clear the city? What?"

"It's fine," said Ichigo, crushing his paper cup. He didn't like beer or any beverage sold at these festivals. He wanted to get home to Yuzu and her fresh-squeezed mandarin juice. He loved his friends, but Tatsuki was right—the traditional zithers and flutes were melancholy at the moment. "Aizen seems to be in a good mood since he helped defeat Yhwach. Don't ask me how I know, but he's fine. He's not going to hurt anyone."

Within eyesight, Inoue and Ishida were buying cotton candy.

"Maybe it's my imagination, but they're starting to act like a couple," Keigo said.

"I think they did it," Mizuiro said. "Used special Quincy condoms or something."

Tatsuki pushed Mizuiro so hard he fell down. "Orihime's not that kind of a girl. They're friends. He is kind to her. She needs him right now."

"Good," said Ichigo. "They always seemed like they understood one another."

Inoue caught sight of the gang first and waved. Then she and Ishida were blocked by the tall man in white. He was standing, hands in pockets, speaking to them. Ichigo didn't like the looks of that at all, walked on over, and his friends followed.

"Show me how your powers have grown," Aizen was saying. "You're such a kind woman. I have no Living world money, you see. Perhaps you can make another cotton candy materialize for me?"

"Maybe she chooses not to do you the favor?" Ishida said. "Is a god such as yourself really in need of human food right now?"

"Indulge me," Aizen said.

"I-I-can't do that," Orihime admitted.

The blue and white confection in Ishida's hand flew of its own accord to Aizen's hand, and Aizen ate the whole fluffy cloud in four or five bites. "Too sweet," he said. "Like the both of you." He smiled. "But I would like the gentleman to have back what he paid for. Bring back his cotton candy, Inoue Orihime."

"Don't listen to him," Ishida commanded.

Ichigo was there now. "He's just messing with you. You don't have to do what he says."

"Do it or the next thing I take a bite out of…" Aizen licked the last bit of the cotton candy from a corner of his mouth. "Will be the head of one of your friends."

Tatsuki gasped. "Ichigo—you said!"

"He's bluffing, Inoue," Ichigo said.

Inoue produced another blue and white cloudy concoction, no different from the first, in a millisecond.

"Give it to your boyfriend," Aizen said, and Inoue, without a blush but fear rising in her wide eyes, handed the treat to Ishida.

"I wonder," said Aizen, "if you could fully understand your powers and if you could only grasp the bare essentials of mine… what a lovely addition you would make to my royal entourage. Perhaps in due time. You did fail to resurrect the previous Soul King. His reiatsu overwhelmed you, so I can only imagine what mine would do to you. Still, I wonder if after this lifetime or maybe the next, you will be of use to me."

Ishida's expression was one of blatant fear.

"Ah, no worries. For the time-being. The Royal Realm has no interest in you, and neither do I." Aizen turned around to face Ichigo. "It was you I followed to earth. You still have sentimental attachments here? Any … special memories? I don't mean the usual recollections of school days and friendships—I mean peculiar dreams of things you may not be sure really happened."

"What are you talking about, Aizen?" Ichigo had little patience for the slanted way Aizen had at getting to a point.

"Never mind. It's no matter. Happy New Year, Ichigo. It's a very new year indeed." And at that, Aizen disappeared.

12. Back from Blind

Nothing had escaped Aizen as he followed Ichigo around in the Living World, not Ichigo's conversation with Kisuke, not the tedious questions Ichigo asked his father at breakfast after his sisters scampered off to school (about how did a man know it was the right time to get married—poor Ichigo), not the drowsy concert the friends attended where Sado-kun played acoustic guitar and took one turn at the microphone, singing a song about a gentle parakeet and the wild world it can never fly all the way across.

Children.

Urahara's little slip about how maybe Aizen wanted Ichigo and Kuchiki-san apart—that had to be on purpose. Aizen had wanted no such thing; he was curious about the opposite in fact now. The only other reveal had been that Isshin's gigai was not turning him human; Isshin felt confident enough to protect not only Ichigo's sisters and Karakura town, but the whole Living World, thanks to new upgrades from the shopkeeper.

Shinigami, arrogant as always.

Why had Aizen even come to this world? Isshin had told Ichigo that he had knocked up Masaki a few months before the wedding, that "hoochie-koochie" was the strongest test of fate, that a man knew he was with the right one when he didn't want to share a bed with anyone else. Ichigo had covered his ears.

The one who had cleaved in two the Quincy king. A child.

Aizen had tried to skim over Inoue Orihime's weeping, but the sounds of her sobs had been difficult to ignore—the woman was so loud. She told Ishida Uryuu of her memories where she'd had a son with Ichigo. The Quincy had no recollection of this timeline. "I remember seconds, mere seconds," the young woman had sobbed, "but I feel a love for this child. Is that possible? A person who never was?"

"Sousuke Aizen is a cruel man," Ishida Uryuu had said. "I don't know what the former Soul King was like, but there had to be a reason he was bound. It can't be safe—Aizen free to do what he wants."

The comprehension of gnats, whatever their superpowers.

Aizen sped back to Soul Society with the knowledge that Ukitake would soon relinquish his position to Kuchiki Rukia and that Ichigo would be appointed captain of another squad. That would keep the two apart for most of the working hours of a day.

Captain Ukitake Juushirou was in his wheelchair by the lake throwing food to the carp. Kuchiki-san, holding the bag of bread crumbs, was by his side. When Aizen materialized, both seemed unsurprised and returned their attention to the gaping mouths of the bright orange fish.

"How are you feeling, Captain?" Aizen asked.

"Fine, but my death is approaching," Ukitake said simply. "Orihime-chan restored my lungs, but my reiatsu will soon be completely gone. It was inevitable."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Aizen intoned in his godliest voice. "You don't appear to be in pain."

"No," said Ukitake, tossing bread across the sun-speckled water with some vigor. "I have a month left, maybe a little more than that."

"The Minihagi is part of me now," Aizen said. "I absorbed all of the Soul King and Yhwach's powers."

Ukitake turned to look at Aizen with smiling green eyes. "All rivers lead to the same ocean of forgetfulness. Even a god can die."

"Some platitudes don't apply to me," Aizen said, "but I wanted to let you know that Minihagi remembers a vow." He put his hand on the top of Ukitake's white head. Kuchiki-san flinched, but Ukitake himself made no gesture of moving away.

"You don't want to die, do you?" Aizen whispered. "You, who are so beloved by all. Did you think I would allow such a thing? For your spirit particles to blow across the lake when you could continue to serve for a thousand more years?"

Ukitake expression jolted; his eyes widened and his mouth parted.

"Get up and walk," Aizen said, removing his hand and raising it in a dramatic gesture of divine authority. "You learned to walk when you were a year old, and two years later your illness struck you. Do you remember how it feels to walk without fear of pain?"

Ukitake rose. "Aizen," he said with a grin. "I have always walked without fear." He walked closer to the lake, crouched down and beckoned to Kuchiki-san. "Bring me the bag." He continued to feed the fish. "You fellows are going to be stuck with me for a bit longer." His back was to Aizen. "Thank you, Aizen Sousuke."

Kuchiki-san had tears in her eyes. She turned to look at Aizen with her hand at her chest. "Thank you.' She bowed slightly at the waist as if she couldn't help herself. "Thank you, thank you."

The next time Aizen saw Kuchiki-san with tears in her eyes was when Ichigo returned, sooner than anyone expected, but around the end of the New Year holiday. Ichigo's Senkaimon opened outside the Kuchiki mansion where Renji was wading, waist-deep, in a lake for some reason, and Kuchiki-san was calling "Not that one! The white one! The white one!" With his bare hands, Renji caught a giant silvery koi with whiskers like an ancient old man and right away dropped it when Ichigo materialized.

"Ichigo!" cried Renji and Kuchiki in unison.

"Why the hell are you all wet, Renji?" Ichigo asked.

"Rukia was making me get new fish for her captain's home. He only has orange carp, she says." Renji was waving his hands as if he really didn't want to explain any of this. "She wanted a white koi that looked like Captain Ukitake. He's all healed now. Aizen healed him."

Kuchiki-san looked so full of emotion, and her eyes moistened when they met Ichigo's smiling ones. Ichigo's chest heaved. Aizen was certain they were going to kiss right there in front of the dripping wet koi-catcher, but they didn't.

Hours later, in one of Byakuya's many drawing rooms, while Kuchiki and Ichigo shared mandarins and nuts, Aizen made himself invisible and listened. Ichigo told Kuchiki all about Urahara's so-called experiment, recounted what friends had said and done and eaten.

"I can't remember a single thing about being on that trip to the Living World with Isane," Kuchiki-san said. "But you know what strange memories I get sometimes?"

"What?"

"It only happens when we're training together. When my ban kai is almost at its limit and even though I know you're about to replenish the time, there's … this …." Her eyes looked distant. "A break, I don't know what else to call it, but for a second I can remember being so mad with you that I never wanted to see you again."

"Why would something like that feel like a memory?" Ichigo wanted to know.

She shrugged. "Another life maybe. I come back wanting to make it up to you."

"There's nothing to make up!" His arms were around her, fruit peels falling on the fancy carpet, and Aizen was about to walk away, not in the mood for voyeurism, when he heard Kuchiki-san mention that the Captain Commander didn't know what to do with Ichigo, that he was considering giving him the 7th division captain-hood but had reservations. "What do I have to prove?" Ichigo was kissing the 13th division lieutenant's neck, and Aizen was sure the conversation was going to venture from work talk to all play before the next mandarin orange hit the floor.

Take it to a bedroom. This is why neither of you are captain material yet. Anyone could walk in.

In the next moment Aizen was kneeling by a sleeping gray wolf, a being that had once been Captain Komamura and whose form Inoue Orihime had been unable to reject. The young woman herself had vaguely understood that the reason was because there was nothing to reject: Komamura's reiatsu was intact, only re-arranged into a more holy, indestructible being. The wolf slept at the foot of his previous lieutenant's bed, dreamed a Shinigami captain's dreams at night and in his waking hours had no deeper sentience than that of a dog, albeit that the spirit of any canine is profound. Aizen changed the wolf into a man with one touch. Not a man with a wolf's head, but Komamura in his human soul form.

"A beast fears no future," whispered Aizen. "Welcome back to the world of regrets and futile plans."

The captain of the 7th division continued to sleep curled on the floor until the next morning.

13. This Entire World Exists for the Purpose of Cornering You

The Captain Commander was too attached to the idea of giving his old position to his beloved Lisa, so Ichigo wasn't made a captain. Soon enough there were several inductions. Yadoumaru Lisa was installed was the 8th division captain. Aikawa Rabu, the Visored better known as Love, was made her lieutenant. He had been reluctant to rejoin the Gotei, even though he had served as a Captain before the Visored were exiled, and Captain Hirako Shinji assured him that a lieutenant's duties would be less stressful in the new and improved Soul Society. "Eh," said Love and accepted to serve Lisa; they both liked to read Living World comix, and as long as there was a steady supply from the Urahara Shouten to their division in exchange for intel, all was hunky dory.

Akon was the natural choice, having displayed leadership abilities of outstanding merit during the last war, to replace Kurotsuchi as the head of the Shinigami Research and Development Institute. He was without ban kai, but an exception was granted to make him 12th division captain for his exceptional scientific knowledge. A direct plea was made by Captain Hirako Shinji to his friend Hiyori to resume her previous position as lieutenant in the 12th division, and after many shouting matches over the phone that could be heard halfway across the entire Seireitei, Hiyori agreed "because that gold-toothed bastard is gone so maybe things will be different."

No one was surprised when Isane Kotetsu assumed the 4th division leadership, but all were stunned when she requested that her sister, Kiyone, a well-known healer, be transferred from the 13th division to become her lieutenant. Kiyone's devotion to Ukitake was legendary, but when her sister called, she came. The plans had been discussed with the Captain Commander himself. The 13th division had long held a tradition of a vacant lieutenant spot in honor of Kaien until Rukia's induction not long ago, but now the Captain Commander thought that the lieutenant position should be filled by two people whose powers he had observed in the Royal Realm as being exceptionally well-matched.

Kurosaki Ichigo was inducted a vice-captain of the 13th division on the same day as many other ceremonies, without much glamour, presented a lieutenant's badge, and told by Ukitake that he was a shining symbol of honor and righteousness in the division, the Gotei and all the worlds and that his career had only begun.

Hiyori scratched herself under her arm. She wasn't used to being in uniform again. "He's stronger than all of us," she said to Shinji. "Why wasn't he made a captain?"

"Politics," replied Shinji.

"I hate this place," said Hiyori.

The rebuilding of Soul Society went more quickly than anyone expected. Aizen's constant presence allowed for the sudden appearance of new buildings, constructed in a sleek modern design that complimented the Edo style of the remaining structures. Roads were reported appearing in the Rukongai were none had been before, and that spring, orchards full of fruit and creeks full of fish came into existence one after the other in valleys of desolation and poverty, like blossoms opening on a rotting tree. "He can will things into being like that little Sternritter child Gremmy," the Captain Commander observed. "He could sneeze and the planets would fly out of orbit and crash into one another—why do you suppose he doesn't do that?"

"Not his aesthetic?" Shinji was chewing a piece of straw in his long teeth. "I think he's having fun."

The other captains and lieutenants assembled at the meeting wore worried expressions. No one at the table had not suffered a betrayal from Aizen when he was a Shinigami Captain, and Hinamori Momo had the most reason to mistrust the new Soul King. "Maybe," she offered meekly, "he's changed."

"Oh he's changed all right," Shinji said. "He's capable of screwing everyone over in bigger and more dramatic ways."

"He seems to be instituting radical changes in the outer districts," Komamura said. "None of which he discussed with the Captain Commander. Do you suppose he wants less division and stratification among the existing worlds eventually?"

"The Shiba mansion was restored," said Byakuya. He didn't seem to mind. His family's feud with the Shiba clan had been forgiven with Ichigo. "Aizen doesn't appear to be interested in redistributing the wealth or lifting the Rukongai poor to the same class as those in the Seireitei; he seems to be going around adjusting random inconsistencies to his … unfathomable sense of justice."

"There's been a surge of applicants to the academy," Hitsugaya announced. "I can barely keep up with the paperwork. "The talent appears to be unprecedented. Whether or not these people were gifted with reiatsu from Aizen remains to be seen, but my guess…." Everyone was staring at the captain because even after all this time it was peculiar to see him his adult form; they had been accustomed to a boy captain for so long. Hitsugaya's demeanor was different too; he was less grumpy, more patient. "Aizen is invested," he went on, "in the growth and prosperity of Soul Society."

By mid-summer, there was another Gotei wedding. Captain Hitsugaya of the 10th division and Vice-Captain Hinamori of the 5th division took their vows at the 13th division barracks and were pronounced married by a beaming Ukitake who presented bride and groom with bouquets of flowers and candies.

"If this keeps up, I'm going to have to marry you myself," Zaraki said to his lieutenant Ikkaku.

"No one better rub my head for luck today," Ikkaku looked around warily. "It's not even a custom to rub a bald head for luck at weddings. I don't know why people were doing that at Kyouraku's wedding."

"Ikkaku is spoken for, Captain," Yumichika informed Zaraki. "Doesn't Momo make the most fetching bride? She has a look of eternal radiant youth about her. Of course, we always expected that of Shiro-chan, but look what happened to him."

Hitsugaya's vice captain kissed Momo on both cheeks. "Your sweetness is the perfect match for his bossiness," Matsumoto said. She looked at her captain in the eye. "Since you've grown up, I can't coddle your head between my loving breasts anymore. I guess you'll have to settle for my smooshing them against your tall, mature chest!" And she hugged him tightly while he made a grumpy face.

Renji walked from his captain's side after the processional to talk to Rukia. "There's nothing but candy here," he noted. "Does your division serve anything else?"

"Who doesn't like candy?" Rukia responded.

Renji grabbed a handful of konpeito from a bowl. "I like candy." He looked around the room. "I guess you and Ichigo will be next."

Rukia fingers began to have sudden difficulty unwrapping a piece of taffy. "Renji… we haven't… the subject hasn't even come up."

"My captain has mentioned it," Renji said. "It's ok. You don't have to be so embarrassed. Your brother is proud of Ichigo. He's from a good family, he's proved himself to be the strongest among us all, it's plain he cares for you." Rukia thought she was imagining that Renji's eyes were moist, and then he cleared his throat. "This stuff is so sweet," he said. "What's there to wash down the candy with?"

"Watermelon slushies." Rukia smiled. "White peach slushies too. All non-alcoholic, I'm afraid. My captain doesn't like guests getting rowdy."

In a far corner, Hitsugaya sat with a drink and observed the guests getting a sugar-high. "We train and train, and there's no conflict. I'm grateful for the peace-time, but it still makes me a little nervous. It seems all we are doing is eating and drinking and celebrating these days."

"You're prone to worrying," Momo told him. "It's in your nature." But she too was looking around the room, grateful that Aizen hadn't shown himself, wondering if he was there somehow, allowing her this happiness. She wanted to feel in control of her own destiny, but how could she when that man roamed the worlds?

"When's the last time anything bad happened?" Shinji asked Hiyori.

"When's the last time I kicked you in the nuts?" Hiyori said. "Last week."

"Nah," Shinji said. "This ain't peace-time. With you and Aizen running around, it's like the olden days. You can be sitting around enjoying the sunshine, but you know that your balls are going to get slammed sooner or later. That's just the way it goes."

14. Trifle

Ishida Uryuu had placed out of so many liberal arts, science and foreign language courses required in medical school that by the end of his second year instead of his fourth, he was back at Karakura Hospital for required clinical clerkship. He worked every day except Saturday which was Inoue Orihime's day off at the bakery where she was now assistant chef, and the two often met for lunch outdoors if weather permitted.

One late July, not long after a visit from Ichigo, Uryuu asked Orihime: "What are your feelings for him now?"

"Fond," she said. "Grateful. There's so much to love, you understand, and there's still sadness." She waved her pink cotton candy. "I'm petty, still. I can make a chocolate cake that's as good as Yuzu-chan's, and I felt a little sorry that I wasn't able to show my skills off at his birthday party. I'm not sure if that was more about the cake or wanting attention from Kurosaki-kun. I'm sorry—does this make you think less of me?"

"You know it doesn't."

"I cherish you with all my heart," she said. "I don't understand why you listen to all my ramblings. Tell me, what else have you been doing besides working and studying? If there are other young women around you, I will try not to be… jealous."

He smiled an uncharacteristic broad smile at her last remark. "No other young women," he said. "I have been experimenting with my antithesis power. Kurosaki told us of all the improvements Aizen has been making to Soul Society so I was wondering why the Soul King was leaving the earth alone, not bothering to fix pollution or cure diseases, so…."

"So?"

"There was a drought this summer in the Kanto region."

"You're the one who made it rain there?" Orihime gasped.

"Reversed the record drops in reservoirs around the Watarase River with torrential rains elsewhere. It wasn't difficult. Now I have to see what else I can do without upsetting ecosystems."

"Oh that reminds me." Orihime giggled. "You know what I can do now?" She put her pink cotton candy behind her back along with her other hand. Then she pulled out two sticks of cotton candy—the old one, pink and chewed in damp spots—and a new one, fluffy and blue. She handed the blue one to Uryuu. "I can make objects appear out of thin air now."

Uryuu sat there a moment, stunned, not saying a word.

"Not a big deal, not like fixing a drought, just a trifle," she said.

"This is what Aizen was afraid of," Ishida murmured. "I don't understand how you can do this with your powers."

A few hours later, while Orihime was polishing off the last of her complimentary snacks at the Urahara Shouten, the shopkeeper explained that her new trick had to do with rejecting the material presence of an object and bringing it back in a re-arranged form so that the original object appeared to be cloned but was of a slightly shifted and replicated molecular structure. "The one cotton candy came back as two," Urahara said. "There was no creation of a new cotton candy."

"I couldn't do this when I tried to bring back the captain doggie," Orihime said.

"Ah, the reiatsu of a Shinigami may be too difficult for you to rearrange yet." Urahara was still examining the cotton candy sticks Uryuu had given him for evidence. He took a bite of the blue one. "12 atoms of carbon, 22 atoms of hydrogen and 11 atoms of oxygen—this is just sugar. Oh, paper cone and some dye too."

Uryuu looked worried.

Urahara gave him his most serious expression in return. "He has no need for her. When he does, IF he does, we'll have to be prepared, won't we? Inoue-san, don't tell anyone about your new ability. Not in a letter, not over the phone. Don't speak of it with Ishida-san anymore, do you understand?"

Orihime nodded.

15. Dance with Snow White

In the Royal Realm the Soul King had constructed a large throne for himself, similar to the one he'd ordered the Arrancar to build for him in Hueco Mundo, white and imposing but not angular and severe; the back and arms of this throne were rounded, and the marbled color was less white; the throne appeared fluid, as if pouring into itself like milk into honey.

Aizen chose to wear white robes most of the time now, the neckline open to the center of his chest where the hougyoku dwelled. He padded around in unornate white slippers, and if the mood struck him, he would tuck a flower behind his ear. Shutara didn't care for his taste in clothes, especially the bold white suits and scarves he wore for his infrequent visits to the Living World, but Aizen brushed her off, saying he had no need for her secret-power hoodies, nor her penchant for busy patterns.

Aizen's throne existed within an open-air garden of fountains and abstract statues. Why would a being who needs neither food or sleep and who can make himself invisible pretend that he required a private home? He had no need for Royal Guards either but he tolerated them, and not far from his throne, there was a wide field where Ichigo and Rukia came to train every three months as Ichibe's most honored guests and favorite pupils.

Aizen sat with steaming tea at a garden table to watch the training. Trainer and trainees ignored him for the most part.

One morning, Aizen realized that the two Shinigami had achieved a flawless balance of their combined strengths and liabilities over a ridiculously short practice period.

Ichigo's final form was the one in which the Shinigami became his Getsuga itself, his hair flowing black to his waist, his torso sheathed in cloth wrappings like his original blade, his reiatsu emanating like dark fire. It was in this deadly transformation that Ichigo used Mugetsu, a power Aizen now understood that Quincy nor Hollow had no reign over, even when used to defeat Aizen years ago. A pure Shinigami power. Yet back then, using Mugetsu had drained Ichigo of all his powers, all of them.

Mugetsu, moonless sky. Aizen watched in fascination as another Shinigami, a tiny one, stood in perfect stillness as her ban kai formed a lethal area that was absolutely round; the giant sphere bounced like a balloon within Ichigo's black flames. Here is your full moon. Both powers were enough to destroy the entire Royal Realm. Both powers were enough to engulf their wielders and kill them.

And yet, at some point, before the cold could break Kuchiki-san's body into a million pieces or escape beyond the limited circumference she had assigned it, before Ichigo's black reiatsu could take flight across the atmosphere and scorch a spot beyond the training area or leave his own soul depleted, Ichigo stepped forward, lifted the tiny Shinigami by the waist and held her high over his shoulders.

The white queen put her tiny palms on the broad shoulders of the king of black fire, and Aizen understood he was witnessing the universe's most elemental spiral: her reiatsu fed his as it dissipated, and his filled a space she had created in time. She dropped into his arms, and he swung her by the waist to his left; in the one moment the two Shinigami spun clockwise, Aizen heard a reverberation from the birth of All There Is. Then Ichigo and Kuchiki-san dropped to their feet, black-garbed lieutenants again, eyes excited from the rush of they'd done—did they know they were playing at being royal gods?

"Next time, two spirals," Ichibe said as the pair walked off the training field. "I'll need to find something for you to blow up." He passed by Aizen's garden table. "Maybe you, Soul King."

"I'm immortal," Aizen reminded him.

"Still," Ichibe said. "It might be a nice explosion. Like fireworks."

"Ichigo," Aizen called back the Shinigami who was walking away, rubbing sweat out of his mussed-up orange hair with a towel. "I know it's become somewhat of a joke how many have stepped up and claimed to be your parent now. That pretender of a king, Yhwach, did go on and on about how you were his dark son, but it's clear now that he only hid his power inside you and never shaped who you are."

"My mother was a Quincy," Ichigo said.

"There's that," Aizen said, "and I have to confess that my attempts to make you a Hollow-Quincy-Shinigami hybrid superstar failed the ultimate test."

Ichigo blinked. "What did you say?" He tilted his head. "You don't sound that sorry, though."

"Kuchiki-san," Aizen turned his attention to the smaller Shinigami who was wearing her longer hair in single braid down her left shoulder these days. "I thought it was I who sent you to Kurosaki Ichigo's side, but I understand that Urahara Kisuke arranged for you and the hougyoku to meet much earlier. It all looks like the blessings of serendipity, but trust me, you two have always had scheming scientists as matchmakers and not destiny behind you."

"You really like to hear yourself talk," the tiny Shinigami said. She never liked him. "Must get lonely up here with just your trees and your statues and your… tea."

"No need for such impoliteness," Aizen called as the pair walked away. "You may live here with me one day. You're certainly worthy of being Royal Guards."

Ichibe and the pair walked on, no respect at all. "Beautiful couple," Aizen continued, even as everyone was out of ear-shot. "Amazing to watch. Their timelines are starting to change every time they dance, creating new realities."

He bent over. The creeping white cup flowers were growing in-between tiles of garden path. He plucked the tiniest bloom and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm going to have to kill those two sooner than I thought I would. Too bad. They were so entertaining."

16. No World Exists Without Sacrifice

Uryuu's climate manipulations had not gone global; he had adverted the path of a terrible typhoon long before it could make landfall and had saved thousands of lives; he brought rain where needed to impoverished communities. Mostly, he slaved at the hospital, trying to help as many individuals there as he could, while learning the ropes about practical medical management. Orihime, meanwhile, was using her powers to speed up catering orders by doubling and tripling cupcakes in the blink of an eye. Uryuu was so busy with exams come Spring, and she became lonely; she called Isane on her special phone to Soul Society and asked if she could get a special visit, please oh please, to see Ichigo and Kuchiki-san, for it had been so long since she'd seen Kuchiki-san, years. And everyone else too.

And before she knew it, Orihime was walking through a Seireitei gate. She didn't really have to ask for permission; she had the power to cross the border into the Living World at any time. She was beloved in Soul Society and greeted right away by Shinigami from the 2nd division who agreed to flash-step her to Captain Ukitake's barracks where the people she wanted to see most were stationed.

It was dawn, not even time for morning exercises or breakfast, and Rukia and Ichigo were lying in the bed they shared, Rukia's long hair spread across Ichigo's chest and her small hand resting on his heart. He lay with both hands under his neck on the pillow; he looked thoughtful, more awake than his partner. For some time now, their intimacy had felt as natural as the sun rising and setting, as inevitable as the moon drifting through its phases.

"I don't like the idea of being a Royal Guard," Ichigo said. "Ichibe is cool, but the other guys creep me out a little."

"The other ones?" Rukia yawned. "How about Aizen?"

Ichigo sat up, sliding Rukia off his body. His eyes looked wild. "Holy shit," he whispered. "Feel that?"

"What?"

"Inoue! She's right outside the door!"

Rukia reached for her robe. "She'll knock first, idiot. She has to get by the night guards. You have plenty time to get dressed."

When Orihime met with her friends, it was agreed that they would share breakfast by Captain Ukitake's lake. Ukitake served wrapped taiyaki of all different fillings—chocolate, red bean, sweet potato. And wrapped candy of course. "Look at my new fish," he said. "Ancient koi, a gift from the Kuchiki clan. Very noble and precious fish. Each one is priceless." He laughed. "One white koi would keep Abarai Renji in sunglasses for a thousand years."

It was then that Orihime decided to try something. Fish in Soul Society had a peculiar immaterial reiatsu, did they not? Maybe not unlike a Shinigami's reiatsu. They were ghost fish, after all. She multiplied the three white koi in Ukitake's lake to six. Done. Not hard at all.

"That's a lovely ring you're wearing," Ukitake observed while Orihime's left hand was waving in the direction of the koi. "Suits you. A little pink stone in a silver setting. Delightful."

Orihime blushed. "It's a promise ring."

"What's that?" Ukitake asked.

"A new custom among young people." Orihime held up her hand to display the ring. "Uryuu made the ring himself. It's pink topaz and Quincy silver. He has promised…." She blushed so hard the fingers she was holding up blotched pink as the ring stone. "The ring is his promise to marry me when he is finished with medical school and takes the exam to be a doctor."

"Wow," said Ichigo in a low voice. He turned to look at Rukia. "I didn't know about these promise ring things."

Aizen materialized by the lake. The early morning light reflected a soft white aura off his robes.

"What I'd really like to know," said the Soul King in a grand tone. He continued sotto voce: "although of course I already know, given that I can see the future right now, but I wonder which timeline will be chosen and how the announcement will be made…."

Rukia was rolling her eyes.

"What I'd like to know is when the union between the House of Byakuya and the House of Shiba will take place. That's the next big Seireitei event, if I'm not mistaken." Aizen padded forward and unwrapped a candy. "I'm never mistaken."

Ukitake turned to Ichigo and Rukia. "Ohhhh? Another wedding?"

Ichigo looked nervous. Rukia spoke up, "Please, we haven't planned anything. We don't want people to talk."

"Of course!" Ukitake smiled. "I won't say a thing."

Orihime got up, threw her arms around Rukia and said she was so happy for her. She was smiling when she stood to face Ichigo, tears in her eyes. "I'm so happy for you too, Kurosaki-kun. I don't know why, but here, today, this beautiful morning, it feels like one of the happiest days of my life."

"You are certainly growing into such a fine lady," Aizen observed. "If you had to choose a Shinigami division to serve in, which would it be?"

No one thought it a peculiar question, and Orihime after much deliberation decided on the 11th because they had the fewest rules and the most parties. Aizen left before breakfast was over; Orihime stayed for a few more hours, and it was not until later that evening when it was time to feed the fish that Ukitake noticed he had three new friends in the water.

Aizen, strolling in his invisible form across the sparkling lake, had seen the fish multiply under his feet.

That evening was Saturday in the Living World, Orihime's day off, but Uryuu was in the library studying, and she was alone in her apartment with a jar of peanut butter, nothing of particular interest on television, and only the memories of her day in Soul Society to entertain her. She felt full of hope. She would hold her spoon full of peanut butter in her mouth ever once in a while and take off her promise ring, inspect it, and put it back on. Uryuu was a prodigy. He would be done with exams in a few months.

"Hello, Inoue-san," said Aizen.

The spoon fell out of Orihime's mouth. Luckily, the ring was back on her finger or she would have dropped it too.

"Your powers have evolved faster than I expected," said Aizen. "Don't be afraid. I saw what you did with the captain's koi. This is a good thing. My concern is that other aspects of the universe are moving faster than your own powers can grow, so I want to help you. It really is in your best interests to move permanently to the Spirit World."

Orihime put her jar of peanut butter on the floor where she sat, the television in front of her jangling a commercial about tasty, tasty spinach flakes. "What?"

"I mean I need you to die."

At those words, Orihime fell to the floor, the television remote in her limp hand.

Aizen looked at her for a moment, not to reassure himself that she was truly dead but because she was lovely lying there, and padded away, disappearing through the apartment walls.

Because he had absorbed Yhwach's powers, he had also assumed Yhwach's blind spot and that was the inability to sense one particular Quincy, in this timeline or any other. Aizen did not sense Ishida Uryuu, who on the stairs with boxes of take-out to surprise Orihime, had felt her reiatsu plunge and had dropped the food and flashed to her door, knocking it down.

Ishida Uryuu discovered his betrothed lying dead on the ground.

He made the decision in a millisecond, before he even knew what was within the realm of his power.

Yesterday at the hospital, he had sat at the bedside of a terminal patient, an eighty-three-year old woman in horrible pain despite all analgesics. He reversed the woman's pain with Orihime's death. Haschwalth had taught him this ethical lesson, but even if Haschwalth had not made him weigh the issue, Uryuu would still have done it; he would have done anything for Orihime.

"Orihime, Orihime." He didn't hear the sob in his own voice, but he did realize that it was difficult for him to speak because his throat was full of something. He swallowed his tears. "Can you hear me?"

She moaned, and Uryuu's world came back to life.

"You have cancer in your pancreas, liver and possibly other areas. I don't have any pain medication on me, I'm so sorry. Heal yourself right now. Right now."

She didn't open her eyes, but she and Uryuu were encased in her golden orb right away. Uryuu lay his head on her chest and felt her breaths; at first they were unsteady from suffering and in less than half a minute they were even.

The gold light vanished, and Orihime sat up. "I was dead," she said in awe. "Aizen made me dead."

"We have to figure something out," Uryuu said, "because he's going to come back and do it again."

At that moment, a broad stream of light crossed the floor as if someone had opened a door, but no door had opened. Uryuu had broken down the only door to the apartment. The light wavered then grew taller then turned into Aizen. "Hello, I'm back. I was half-way to Soul Society when I caught a glimpse of Orihime's future and your amazing rescue, Quincy."

Orihime and Uryuu both rose to their feet. Both looked terrified but stood firm, their eyes intent on showing Aizen that they would fight him.

"How brave," Aizen remarked. "There's no need for theatrics now. I'm not in the mood for a tedious back and forth with this Quincy's reversal power. It seems to have slipped my mind how useful Yhwach claimed Ishida Uryuu was. There was more to him than that silver arrowhead trick of course."

"Leave Inoue-san alone," Uryuu said. "I'm the one you're looking for."

"No," Aizen said. "I think I need you both. Although killing you to make you permanent spirits is … overkill, shall we say? I'll take you both to the Royal Realm as my guests now. I do hate to make a noticeable fuss among the living though."

And in a flash, Inoue Orihime's apartment was empty. Police later found no money or items missing, saw the ticket in the take-out bag on the stairs had been paid with Ishida Uryuu's credit card, and both he and Orihime were reported as missing persons. The mystery case made national headlines.

17. The True Will

It was never made clear to either Uryuu or Orihime why Aizen wanted them to train to advance their powers, but since Aizen was the one insisting, both knew his motive had to be nefarious. They refused at first, hoping someone, anyone in the Royal Guard would step up to take their side.

"He has a huge exam in just a few months," Orihime said. "He has to go back home."

"You simply can't take people away from their lives and force them to do your bidding," Uryuu attempted an ethical stance, knowing he stood no chance. "Do you want to be known as a despot? Everyone's heard about how you've been restructuring Soul Society so that life for the poor in the Rukongai is better. Why are you killing and kidnapping humans now?"

"My ways are unknowable to lesser beings such yourselves." Aizen sat at his table and poured steaming tea. "Inoue-san, would you make another orchard of young white dogwoods like the one here? Fully pruned, please. Put it past the largest statue. Make them rooted deep in the ground without any soil tossed around as if they've been recently planted. I dislike mess."

Orihime set her jaw. "No."

Uryuu fell sideways to the ground as if pushed.

"He'll suffer If you don't," Aizen said. Blood rose in wet blotches on Uryuu's white shirt; the red circle on his chest grew bigger and darker, and blood seeped through the fabric on his upper arms. One visible wound, a thin scratch, showed on his forehead; it bled a thin river past his brow and dripped on the ground.

"Don't do anything he says." Uryuu shook his head, scattering blood drops from his face. "We're the ones who are immortal. He can't win. We die; we go to Soul Society; we die there, and we go back to the Living World. That is how the cycle of reincarnation works, and he can't disrupt that. Whatever he wants you to do is wrong. Don't do it."

Orihime looked horrified. "It's just an orchard of trees, Uryuu."

"She wants to do it," Aizen said.

"She doesn't," Uryuu insisted.

"Oh yes she does." Aizen steepled his fingers. "When she was in Soul Society, we had a little conversation about her wanting to be in one of the Gotei divisions—isn't that right, Inoue-san? Near her beloved Kurosaki-kun. Why did you save her? She has no problem with dying and serving my greater purpose."

"You're a liar!" Uryuu yelled the words.

"Leave him alone," said Orihime. "I'll move the trees." She raised her palms and did just that. The new orchard appeared, no fresh soil around the roots, grass growing there as if the trees had stood in the garden for years.

Orihime then directed her rikka to heal Uryuu, but her orb was stopped in mid-formation. It was a frozen hemisphere a few feet from where Uryuu lay.

"I could, if I wanted to torment you," Aizen went on, "cut off the young man's head." A small knife appeared in Aizen's hand. "Watching you heal a decapitated person would be boring; I know you can fix him easily."

Orihime was holding herself by the shoulders now, shaking.

Aizen sliced off his own thumb. "Here, that is my own godly reiatsu. Make another thumb just like it. Do it or I will cut the Quincy up part by part, and I won't allow you to heal him."

Orihime looked at the thumb—it wasn't bleeding. It looked like an ordinary man's thumb with a slender shape, a pronounced knuckle and a long pale fingernail. She thought of it as just that, the thumb of a man, and right away, an identical thumb appeared next to it.

When she looked up, Aizen had already healed his own hand. "Excellent," he said. "Persuading your Quincy to train his abilities may not be difficult at all. He may tear up my garden a bit with his reversal powers, but after I burn you alive a few times, he'll behave, I'm quite sure."

Orihime and Uryuu looked at one another with desperate eyes. There was only one option: go along with Aizen, buy time. Or at the very least, imagine that time was something that could work to their advantage, even against a god who sought perfect control of it.

18. Take One Step in and Never Return

In the secret Quincy training room in the basement of Karakura Hospital, Ryuuken was unlocking ancient boxes with silver keys, taking out artifacts, putting them back, pacing the floor, filling the crystal ashtray with cigarette butts to overflowing.

"My friend," said Isshin, appearing in full Shinigami garb. "Should we follow them? They may have eloped, you know, and want some privacy."

"You don't understand." Ryuuken lit another cigarette. "Uryuu is meticulous about routine. He was going to finish his studies. And he would not involve the girl in some madcap adventure right now. Everything points to their having gone with Aizen."

"They're smart kids. They'll handle him."

Ryuuken sat down. "Aizen hasn't done anything since becoming Soul King to indicate he means any harm to humans, but …."

"So Uryuu takes the doctor test a little later—no big deal, hmm? Look at me, fake diploma, private clinic, and your own hospital is considering me for a managerial position at the pediatric ward. It will all work out."

Ryuuken formed a o with his lips, exhaled three circles of smoke and watched them dissolve into one another. "I don't trust Aizen, and I don't trust the Shinigami to do anything about him."

"To be honest," Isshin said, "neither do I."

Soon after Inoue Orihime and Ishida Uryuu were brought to the Royal Realm, Ichibe relayed a message to the Captain Commander via a scroll that fell from the heavens through a bright tunnel of violet light. The beam shot through the 1st division headquarters, making a small hole in the ceiling, and retracted as quickly as it had come. Nanao picked up the scroll left on the ground.

The calligraphy was unequivocally Ichibe's and disappeared from the paper as her husband read silently over her shoulder: Aizen is training the humans Inoue Orihime and Ishida Uryuu in the art of time manipulation. The humans are there against their will. They are bait for Ichigo and Rukia, both of whom Aizen is plotting to destroy. It is only a matter of time before Ichigo and Rukia face Aizen; they may be capable of destroying him, but it is in the best interests of all the worlds if Aizen is kept alive. If Rukia and Ichigo aren't sent here, Aizen will likely come with the young humans to Soul Society.

"What do I do, Nanao? It looks like our little time of peace is over."

"Don't call a meeting. That will delay everything," Nanao said. "Talk to the lieutenants personally. Make a unilateral decision."

"Ah, but Nanao, that sounds so unofficial." He tipped his broad-brimmed hat at his wife. "You're right, of course."

Within the hour, Ichigo and Rukia were at the 1st division standing before the Captain Commander.

"The only option is for the two of you to go to the Royal Realm as soon as possible," their commander told them. "The fighting here would vanquish the Seireitei and if that is what Aizen plans to do eventually, there is no stopping him unless the two of you stop him first."

"Are Ishida and Inoue hurt?" Rukia asked.

"That I don't know."

Ichigo clenched his fists. "I'm still not sure he wants us to die. I think he wants to fight us. The way Kenpachi always wants to fight me. For entertainment."

"You know him best," the Captain Commander said, "but I don't think he'd have any problem whatsoever killing your friends towards that purpose—or killing you in the end for his own entertainment as you call it."

Ichigo looked at the ground, his face full of battle. "You want us to kill Aizen? He's the Soul King."

"Ichibe said it was best for the worlds if he could be taken alive," the commander continued, "but I'll see what I can arrange in the event of the worlds collapsing. Soul Society has temporary plans for this sort of thing. You two are the strongest fighters we have among us when you fight in unison, stronger than Captain Kenpachi, stronger than me. You will go together, no one else. I'll arrange the transport to the Royal Realm right away."

When the commander walked out of the room with Nanao, Ichigo turned to Rukia and said, "We didn't plan for this—to take down Aizen. Ichibe didn't train us for this."

"I think," Rukia said softly, "he was training us for this all along while Aizen watched. We'll know what to do when we get there. Trust me, Ichigo."

And how could he not?

19. Hide Away from the Sun

Uryuu was still Aizen's blind spot. There was more delight than frustration in that because Aizen had become bored with omniscience, a little tired with waiting for the young woman's powers to develop, but the Quincy's? Unknown. Unknown to the Quincy as well, and Ishida-san's past and future timelines were ribbons of clear tape; Aizen could not even see others interacting in these realities.

He punched Inoue-san in the face, would not allow her to heal herself and told Ishida-san to step into a future and reverse the damage. He refused to do it. He beat the young woman with his reiatsu until she was unconscious; a dogwood tree plummeted to the ground in the garden, its limbs snapping, and Inoue-san arose, unharmed, but there was no evidence that the Quincy could time-travel at all. The event could well have been a reversal in current time.

Humans had been time-travelling for millennia. The untalented human Fullbringer could do it, with minor effects on current events. Aizen saw no reason why these talented children couldn't do it. Their resistance was idiotic, but he thought he might adopt them as his royal family. Yhwach had appointed the young man as a prince, and the young woman even looked the part of beautiful princess.

He would make white robes for them. He would make them help in the killing of Ichigo and his dancing bride.

The timeline in which that was possible opened before his eyes: Inoue-san and Ishida-san standing by Aizen's side, all the Royal Guard slain, and the offspring of the new royal family indoctrinated into the ways of the Soul King—little ones, use whatever means necessary to justice, show no mercy, and have fun, do have fun, the only enemy is existential loneliness, be creative and build your dreams around you. Aizen smiled at the sight: a small boy with Inoue-san's bright hair, a smaller girl with Ishida-san's dark straight locks, sitting side by side in the royal throne. They would carry out missions with lethal intelligence near Aizen's own—when he had been human.

At that vision, the two Shinigami he'd been waiting for appeared before him.

"Ishida!" yelled Ichigo.

Orihime was sitting up on the ground, none the worse for the wear, but Uryuu, because Aizen hadn't allowed the rejection of his wounds, sat next to her with his shirt bright red, his brow dripping with sweat and blood.

"He's fine," Aizen said. "I've been training them both. They're going to be my royal allies."

"We've been sent to destroy you," Rukia said.

Aizen tossed back his head and laughed, a gentle laugh. "You will kill your friends in the process and do no damage to me."

"Inoue, throw up your shield," said Ichigo.

Orihime gave Ichigo the most pitiful look, threw up her shield and it split down the middle.

"Oh never mind that," Aizen said. "I'll protect them. They're mine."

"What?" Rukia had her hand on her zanpakutou.

"Everyone does my bidding," Aizen said. "I am the Soul King. Or haven't you noticed? You may transform now. What are you waiting for?"

And they did, as they had hundreds of times, Ichigo roared into the living embodiment of a black catastrophe, and Rukia became the stillness of cold death. Their powers spun around one another within a small area, like a warning torch.

Uryuu and Orihime were encased in a crystal bubble. "What are they doing?" Uryuu said. "Kisuke didn't tell us anything about this."

Aizen watched the transformation with a vague smile. "It's old school to even need to change form. I am my own ultimate form. Try to destroy the immortal god and there is nothing but failure before you. I see it because I have Yhwach's gift of foresight. This display before me expanding and putting on an elaborate show and dissipating into the sky like a firework—mere entertainment."

"He's lying," Uryuu said. "The future can be rewritten."

"It's a barrier I can't cross," Orihime said. "I can't even see it. But I know Kurosaki-kun and Kuchiki-san won't lose. I believe in them."

Rukia's energy was leaving her body into another dimension. At the threshold, Sode no Shirayuki stood, her long violet hair streaming in the furious wind. "I need to go there this time," she told Rukia. "You will remember things; you will see things. Ichigo may not be able to help you balance your ban kai at times. I will return."

Ichigo's flames soared and the blast of black reiatsu hit Aizen in the face. Rukia's power froze Aizen's torso and spread to his lower body. Ichigo picked up Rukia and spun her around, her reiatsu replenishing his. When they both dropped to their feet, still in ultimate form, they saw that Aizen was fully restored to his former self.

"Again," Rukia said. "I'm running on empty. Sode no Shirayuki isn't completely here. Trust me."

When Ichigo's black reiatsu started to flame into the atmosphere this time, the fire lapped with more hunger, the area was wider, but Rukia's death moon was smaller. The pocket of time that took her energy was reversing and memories were rushing into her, the pain of it all was simultaneous: Kaien's death, her brother's long silence, forty years of Renji rejecting her. The lethal circle grew slightly, and Rukia gasped. Ichigo, she said to him with her mind. In a timeline Aizen created I had a daughter with Renji. She was a bright, funny girl and a proud Shinigami. Aizen destroyed the timeline in order to absorb the last part of Yhwach's power. The memories burned like lava even as her body temperature continued to drop. I remember why I was so mad with you. You wouldn't join the Gotei. You said… you said it was corrupt. Korutsuchi was there, there was no justice for Ishida you said, and we argued. You said everything about Soul Society, everything I fought for, was a pretend world. I didn't visit you for ten years. I didn't visit you for ten years. I missed you in my heart … for ten years.

Because Rukia was in his soul, her own memories were hitting Ichigo too. They were igniting his own. He remembered his mother lying dead over his own body. He remembered Inoue sobbing next to him in their bed and not understanding why she was unhappy, never understanding her. How he felt his marriage was a pretense, but there was Kazui. The child he loved, the tiny zanpakutou the boy held that was identical to his own. How often he told himself life was fine, just fine, just fiiiiiine. The world when it started to go up in smoke and he realized that he was on the sofa, watching television, a remote in his hand, protecting no-one, least of all his own beautiful child, who had ceased to exist.

Rukiaaaaaaa!

Ichigo's reiatsu shot past the sky of heaven, the black combustion setting him off balance. He didn't quite reach Rukia's waist in time. He managed to lift her but when she put her palms on his shoulders, her arms were slit with small, ice-encrusted breaks from her bare shoulders to her elbows.

No. She wasn't going to crack. He spun her around once, twice, and felt his power fading.

Then silence. He and Rukia were caught like statues, frozen mid-spin.

"Jikantenishi," Aizen explained. "A forbidden kidou technique that halts time within a specific area. Very useful, so I don't understand why Soul Society demanded a death sentence of anyone caught using it. Of course I'm God so I do what I please."

Uryuu and Orihime's crystal prison disappeared.

"It appears that the Shinigami were never going be a reiatsu threat at all," Aizen said. "Ishida-san, you see this troublesome pair before you. Behold their attempt at some yin-yang phenomenon to shatter the Soul King who truly knows what is best for all the universe. If I disappear, so does the universe. They did not succeed, but it is treason of the highest order that the Gotei sent them to try. Perhaps I should punish the Gotei."

"They're alive," Orihime whispered to Uryuu. "Do you feel their reiatsu?"

"Of course they're alive," Aizen continued. "Ishida-san, what I need for you to do is take out your little bow and arrow and destroy them while they are this vulnerable. Do this and you will be my royal right hand. Fail to do this, and I will kill Inoue-san."

Orihime put her hand on Uryuu's upper arm, her hand reddening with his blood. "Do what's right. You said it yourself. He can't defeat us. Even if… "Her voice was steady. "Even if we die."

Uryuu turned to her and searched her eyes. He kissed her mouth lightly, and turning back without another word to Orihime, faced Aizen.

"I refuse," he told Aizen. "I refuse to shoot my arrow at my friends."

"Very well," sighed Aizen. "Your principles are interesting and I would like to see if— "

"Hahahaha," came a booming voice. "You really are a motherfucking sonofabitch, and look at Soul Society not sending anyone to help. Cheap bastards."

"Ichigo's father." Aizen folded his arms. "You realize I saw you coming in all your ineptitude."

Isshin pulled out his zanpakutou. "Ban-kai."

Isshin put his finger in his ear and wiggled it, as if something itched there. Then he stuck it in his nose, as if about to tug a booger out. In the next second, blood was flowing from his ears and nostrils and not pouring in a natural direction but flying of its own accord to cover the blade of his sword. In the next moment, blood was running down his face like tears. "Flare, Wave of the Sun."

The motion from his zanpakutou was in the form of a Getsuga and it cut a canyon in Aizen's direction that was narrow but seemed to go deeper than the eye could measure, black and smoldering for miles. Sparks of red shone in blackness like rubies. Then the canyon filled with bubbling blood; steam rose from the dark redness.

"No one go near it," warned Isshin. "It's a million degrees."

Aizen had been shot back miles by the bloody attack. There was no sign of Aizen.

Until there was.

Aizen walked over the gaping hole in the earth as if he were stepping on an invisible bridge of glass that covered the canyon. "I knew that your ban kai depleted your body somehow. Too bad that it's the last time you'll use it. It's a decent ban kai." Aizen held up his fingers and wiggled them. "This is too easy."

Isshin dropped dead where he stood.

"And as for you, my principled Quincy, your principles have consequences."

Orihime fell, first against Uryuu's shoulder then onto his lap. He looked at her then up at Aizen; Uryuu's expression was one of blank shock, and his chest was heaving.

"Two dead, and then there will be three." Uryuu's bow materialized in Aizen's right hand. "I've never shot one of these," he said, "but I contain the Quincy king, and unlike you, Ishida-san, I will know how to fire these with the proper arm. How will it feel like to be slain by your own weapon? Is that justice enough for your insubordination?"

"You think you can rule with fear," Ishida Uryuu said. His voice did not waver. "You are not a true ruler. I'm not afraid of you."

"Is that so?" Aizen drew back the bow.

Uryuu stared at Aizen with steely blue eyes.

The arrow flew, in real time, taking the arc of its natural course over the garden and towards Ishida Uryuu's heart.

20. Tug Your God Out

The arrow shot by Aizen didn't finish its path. It was splintered into glitter by a beam of white light that came from nowhere. When Aizen looked to see the source of the beam, there was a white haired Quincy standing there in a white suit, his crossbow smoking.

"Ishida Ryuuken," said the Quincy. "Uryuu is not your only blind spot. How do you guess Yhwach did not know of my existence either?"

Aizen looked the man over. "I've seen you before. I've heard stories. I'm surprised, to be honest, by this display of sentiment towards your son." Aizen rubbed his chin. "I rather like you."

"I don't care," said Ishida Ryuuken.

"I'd prefer you as my Royal companion in this world over your son. You're more mature and sensible and not burdened with such nonsense as Quincy principles."

Isshin sat up and stretched his arms. Orihime sat up and put her arms around Uryuu.

"I killed them in all future timelines," Aizen was staring at Uryuu. "What did you do?"

"My timelines." Uryuu responded. "You can't see them so you target them imperfectly. You left a space for my shrift to reach two others in in one timeline who moments ago were ravaged with fatal disease and on the brink of death. Two people I know from my hospital. They're dead now. Orihime and Kurosaki's father revived there."

"I admit I was testing you." Aizen shrugged. "You have a curious ability, but it would have been of no consequence to me if you failed. And it's been mere entertainment to me that you've prolonged the lives of your friends."

There was a sudden roaring sound from the statue of Ichigo and Rukia, two shapes in black and white, arrested in mid-spin.

Aizen looked at Uryuu who was holding Orihime close to his chest. "You?" he asked with doubt in his voice.

Uryuu shook his head.

Sode no Shirayuki went to a future where the hougyoku was displeased with Aizen, Rukia told Ichigo with her mind. The hougyoku remembers her. They went skipping across rivers, one after another, so fast I couldn't see them but I know what we have to do.

All Ichigo knew was that his reiatsu was replenishing and the kidou was broken; the spell on time had fractured, and the present was active again. He and Rukia completed a spin and landed on their feet.

"You can create as many futures as you want," Aizen said. "You can't defeat me."

Everyone—Isshin still on the floor and rubbing his head in bewilderment, Uryuu and Orihime clinging to one another as the reiatsu from Ichigo's flames started to rise and fan gusts of wind, Ryuuken holding his crossbow by his side and on guard for any moment he could take advantage of, and Aizen, his expression a little less bemused and more confused now—stared at Ichigo and Rukia as they began their dance again. It was a dance older than Time, now infused with the future.

Rukia's deadly ice sphere rolled like a planet in the waves of Ichigo's hellish reiatsu. It looked like no more than a display of power for the moment, but the immense beauty of the contrasting shapes, the vibrant dark and light hypnotized those who witnessed it. Even Aizen, familiar with all the tricks of mesmerism, could not look away, fascinated with the spinning forms. He sensed the timelines that were being created because of the evolving power of this dance, but he could not hear the consciousness inside.

You can't stop the future, Rukia said, but here, outside this window, fling an arm of your reiatsu around a few of these timelines and lasso them, catch them and tie them up as if they were ribbons. They are not really living rivers. They're possibilities. Catch them, Ichigo. Hold them so Aizen can't access them, if only for now.

Ichigo's black flames shot heavenward with a great exploding noise. His soul ached. It's done, Rukia.

Now, catch me! Rukia leapt into Ichigo's arms, and he twirled her around, while in her wake the one ball of white power at absolute zero became separate and distinct from her body; it doubled itself, then tripled, then became twelve spheres of brightness that orbited the two Shinigami as they spun.

Aizen put up his palm and pushed the pair a mile away.

The silence was terrible; the roaring of Ichigo's reiatsu had been that loud; everyone waited for the inevitable

In the next moment, the pair was back again, at what appeared to be a cautious distance from non-combatants, no longer spinning, but the moons still circling within their candle of power and Ichigo's black reiatsu now a single flame, higher than ever, its single point barely flickering. Ichigo and Rukia stood there, a monument of life and death, all forces and all anti-forces, and cast no weapon against Aizen.

Aizen's chest split apart with a splat.

There was no blood, but the flesh continued to rip like a straight seam unraveling from the top of his thorax to his bellybutton. The hougyoku, larger now, the size of a kid's volleyball but as iridescent and lovely as ever, flew out of Aizen and hovered in front of him, spinning slowing, as if taking in its surroundings, as if hesitant to fly further.

"Reject it now!" Aizen ordered Orihime. He took a step back, not defeated, clutching his chest, his eyes insistent that the future he saw held victory. "Reject it now, Inoue-san, and I will give you back your lost child, Kazui, the boy you loved so dearly. I will give you back a future with the only man you ever loved, your Kurosaki-kun."

Orihime's mouth was open in horror.

"Look, I'll show you the future," Aizen waved his hand.

Orihime gasped and covered her eyes. She doubled over in sobs.

The right hand Aizen had raised to initiate his theatrics was missing. It had detached from his body in a split second and was nowhere to be seen. When he looked again he saw the rest of his arm travelling in the direction of Ichigo and Rukia. The arm was wafting in the breeze like a lost handkerchief on a spring day. It was caught in the spiral of Ichigo's black reiatsu and gone.

"Your future, Inoue-san," Aizen said in a panicky voice. "Your child."

"Aizen is being absorbed by the Shinigami," Ryuuken observed. "It's only a matter of time." He shot his son a look of concern, though, as if he expected Uryuu to do something reckless.

"Woman!" Aizen shouted. "You can replace me. You can have your heart's desire because you …"

Aizen's only answer was Orihime's crying in Uryuu's lap while Uryuu stroked her hair.

Aizen's voice became calm again. "Look how the hougyoku wants to see you happy. See, I've made the bad movie stop. Now, if your insane friends want to topple the worlds and get everyone killed, all you have to do is summon all your power and will me back. The way you did with my thumb. You can do it, my sweet, innocent princess. The reward for such an act would be heaven itself."

Isshin was getting to his feet. "Will you listen to this bullshit, Ryuuken? You think that's why Soul Society didn't send reinforcements? Because everyone knew about this guy's— "

"Nooo!" Aizen reached with the one arm he had left as the hougyoku flew away from him and directly into one of the white moons of death riding Ichigo's undulating blackness.

"Is it destroyed?" asked Orihime in a voice that was shaky with tears.

"I think it became part of them," Uryuu said.

Aizen dropped to his knees. "I am the chosen one, not them. They are children."

"Bakudou 61," came a low voice. "Rikujoukourou." Tessai was standing next to Ryuuken, and Aizen was caught at the chest by six broad silver rods. The pressure of the rods squished shut the gaping hole in Aizen's torso. There was no expression of pain or defeat on the Soul King's face, not even resignation.

"Soul Society did send someone." Ryuuken withdrew his bow. It disappeared with a whoosh into his sleeve.

"Not legally," said Tessai. "The Captain Commander contacted my boss."

"It's really a whole new world," said Ryuuken. "At least Kisuke didn't come himself. His antics would have only prolonged this spectacle."

Tessai pulled out what looked like a simple roll of masking tape from his shop apron and snapped it like a whip to unwind it. The long black tape spun of its own accord around Aizen's remaining limbs and carried the man backwards, a few dozen feet, to his royal throne. There, still held by rikujoukourou, Aizen was easily bound. The black strips wrapped around his body, securing him from his neck to the ankles to the royal throne.

"The orders were to take you alive," Tessai said. "To bring you back to Muken. There is no reason, so I was told, that the Soul King cannot serve his purpose from the Central Great Underground Prison instead of the Royal Realm, but it's up to the administrative people to decide your sentence."

"I've done nothing wrong," Aizen said.

Orihime's orb had healed Uryuu while Aizen was being captured. The monument of power that was Ichigo and Rukia had not moved and neither had the others who were standing around, but Uryuu walked to the throne and stood close enough to the bound figure to look Aizen directly in the eye.

"It doesn't matter if you're found guilty or innocent," Uryuu said, blue eyes ablaze. "It doesn't matter if you are guilty or innocent. Like the Soul King before you, you're not immortal. You no longer possess the hougyoku."

Aizen looked at the young man and his own brown eyes softened, his expression approaching tenderness. "Yes, I know," he said. "You would have made a good prince in the Royal Realm. I see a future for you in which you advance health and prosperity in the Living World."

"And you see your own death? In Muken?"

"Interesting. Did you see it, Ishida-san?"

"No, I don't have the gift of foresight or the ability to travel into the future—my shrift can extend to a future event if I deduce it from a current one but my own consciousness can't go there. I was merely presuming that dying in prison would be your fate."

"It is." Aizen still did not look defeated. "Tell your friends, Ichigo and Kuchiki-san, to finish absorbing me. I won't spend the rest of my days in this chair."

Uryuu understood. There was no pity in him for the man for made the request, but he would honor the request nonetheless.

Uryuu walked to Orihime and took her hand. It was long walk back to where Ichigo and Rukia stood, their own bodies barely perceptible as he held her high by the waist, their energy still fueling their spectacular candle of black and white, the atmosphere around them crackling with danger. Uryuu walked with Orihime, not wanting to be far from her, but at some point he realized they were walking towards divine devastation; the power became suffocating, and he felt they might faint from the reiatsu if they got too close. He stood in front of Orihime, told her to stay where she was, and stepped only a few yards closer, the reiatsu from the black flames lifting his hair over his ears and filling his shirtsleeves as if he stood in typhoon winds. He heard his father shouting at him "Uryuu, what the hell are you doing? Get away from there. It's over!"

Uryuu cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Kurosaki! Kuchiki-san! Can you hear me? Aizen told me to tell you he wants you to absorb the rest of him. He says…." The black flames from Ichigo's reiatsu were throwing sparks in the wind and Uryuu dodged them. "He doesn't want to die in prison."

Ichigo, can we do this?

Rukia, I don't see another way. He's a terrible Soul King. We have to take over the job.

Will we still be ourselves?

I think yes and no. Aizen will be gone but look at us now; we already have some of his powers. Rukia, it will be ok.

You said he doesn't want to be lonely, and the hougyoku knows he doesn't want to be lonely.

If he dies now, it's the end of loneliness.

The roaring noise started again, and Uryuu and Orihime started to run away. They didn't need to do that—no attack from the giant candle, no specific threat emanated, but back at Aizen's throne, parts of the Soul King's body were breaking off and blowing away again—a piece of shoulder, a foot, an ear.

"It's better like this," Isshin said to Tessai. "Less work for everyone. He could've escaped again."

"None of you understand," Aizen whispered to no one. "I'm escaping right now." His legs flew away and were spun into the reiatsu of the new king and queen. "I am becoming immortal again." The bonds on his torso loosened and his upper body rose out of the throne.

Aizen, unbound once more.

He floated in the air, still speaking as he flew to his end. "I don't mind. It was a good show after all. All rivers lead to the same ocean of forgetfulness."

His body entered the very top of the high flame sideways and caused it to bend for a moment; as Aizen burned, a compression of blackness caused a thin line of smoke to escape, and then the flame stood erect again, unwavering, as if nothing had happened.

Then the roar from the black flames stopped, and the silence throughout the Royal Realm was profound. The blackness and whiteness, the lapping flames and spinning moons slowed, disappearing without any drama, and before anyone could say anything, Ichigo and Rukia were standing side by side in their Shinigami clothes looking like two ordinary people. As if nothing had happened.

From the distance, the expressions of the new Soul King and Queen were unreadable. They were merely standing there.

"Time to head back soon," Isshin said to Ryuuken. "We might get our names in a Soul Society report and have to go testify in some stupid— "

"No rush," came the reply, and Ryuuken pulled out a cigarette. "The Royal Guard know we're here. But I don't think your son the Soul King will bother involving you in unnecessary judicial nonsense." The flame from his lighter was floundering wildly in the wind. It took him two tries to get a proper light. He inhaled deeply, and noticed that his own fingers were trembling slightly. "I'm getting too old for this shit, Uryuu," he muttered, knowing his son was out of earshot. "Two years, tops, you take over the hospital. Two years."

21. King and Queen

The missing young people who had become a such a newsworthy case in Japan returned, and Orihime gave a long, rambling statement to the press that involved a kidnapping attempt intended to get tons of yen from the wealthy father of her betrothed, and no, they had never seen their captors' faces but after reviving from some super anesthesia, the two had karate-chopped their way to freedom and wandered the streets with amnesia until they finally remembered themselves. Ishida Uryuu refused comment, saying he had to return to his studies.

Soul Society was at a loss on how to deal with their new Soul King and Queen at first; examinations at the 12th division showed that the hougyoku had split into two separate spheres, one lodged in Rukia's chest and the other lodged in Ichigo's. "I have all of my former captain's data on the hougyoku," Akon said, "but I may have to consult with the captain before him, Urahara Kisuke, in the Living World, on this matter."

"There's no need for that," Rukia had said. "We understand what's inside us better than anyone else. There's no seal on our power. The hougyoku allows for us to do what we need to do, and it understands that gradual change in the external worlds makes for the best kind of change."

Meetings were called, one after another. Despite all their omniscience and strength, the new Soul King and Queen were, in the words of Captain Ukitake, very young spirits and uneducated in the ways of all worlds. He suggested that they not only needed to review history but learn about current events and cultures of the worlds they ruled. Their ability to watch the past through close proximity with individuals required interaction with as many beings as possible in order to gain information. In fact, Ukitake insisted, Ichigo and Rukia needed to interact with as many Soul Society inhabitants, Living World humans and other world beings as possible. "I would like to keep them as serving lieutenants," Ukitake said, "and add that they act as ambassadors to all worlds—to Hueco Mundo and beyond when necessary, because unlike previous Soul Kings, they appear to have the will and capacity to initiate substantial reforms."

Ichibe wanted to continue their training in the Royal Realm every three months.

Every July 15th Ichigo said he and Rukia would visit the Living World for his birthday and the Obon and explore other parts of the earth. Certain months could be designated for travel to other realms.

And so it was decreed.

Ichigo and Rukia's barracks in the 13th division remained modest for rulers of the universe, and the two were expected to join in routine military exercises and take turns cleaning the floors or cutting up bread for Ukitake's lake friends.

For their first nights back at their usual home, Ichigo and Rukia desired (as any young couple who had been through an exceptional experience that had bonded their souls together for eternity and granted them new super-powers) to have non-stop sex.

Their previous times had been overwhelmingly romantic, as if they were wooing one another's inexperience and bestowing respect for their broken pasts. Now, their kisses were fervent, and Ichigo was unafraid of tossing Rukia around the way he did when they were in their ultimate forms because he sensed her strength and desire. He loved the way her body bucked against his. He would moan; she would grab his hair and cry out.

Ukitake always slept deeply, but other 13th division soldiers were frightened, not aroused, by the sounds of the love-making of the Gods Most High.

After a year had passed, the wedding was held in the wintertime, in the very courtyard of the Royal Realm where Aizen had been destroyed. The memories of that event added a solemnity that balanced the joy. Duality in all things, everyone understood. The brightness of the early morning light fell over the snow and the empty, sleeping garden.

Ichigo's human friends had been invited and fitted with special wardrobes by Shutara to withstand the overwhelming reiatsu that might have crushed them had they stood in the atmosphere for more than ten minutes. Shutara, in fact, designed outfits for everyone. Urahara Kisuke looked impossibly handsome in a modern black suit with a simple green tie and green handkerchief in his breast-pocket. Yoruichi at his side wore a sleeveless golden dress that, with a shining train behind her, looked like jewels pouring wherever she walked. Tessai was dressed in modern attire, a deep maroon suit with a green tie, and the Urahara Shouten children, Eri now an adolescent with shiny black hair past her waist and Ururu and Jinta only slightly taller, wore simple but dazzling formal wear.

"Do you like your dress?" Orihime asked Tatsuki.

"For a dress," Tatsuki said. She was wearing a red, floor-length gown. "For Ichigo, I'll wear a dress. For good eats after this thing, I'll wear a dress. This gigai is a little itchy, though."

Orihime and Uryuu's wedding was a little delayed. Uryuu had passed the Licensing Board Examination, but had yet to choose a specialty because he excelled at everything. He was leaning towards cardiac surgery and would have to take a licensing exam for that. Meanwhile, Orihime had decided to go to chef's school for a patisserie certificate. She was dressed in pink, and her betrothed was dressed in Quincy blue. "I want a small wedding," she whispered to him. "We can fit a lot of people in your father's house, and I can make a lot of cupcakes, but I think too many people would take away from … what's just about me and you, do you know what I mean?"

Of course he did. "This wedding, on the other hand," Uryuu said, "has to be gigantic. It's a formal initiation of the new Soul King and Queen as well as a wedding."

There were hundreds of people standing in rows, Shinigami in uniform, representatives from Hueco Mundo that included Grimmjow in a sleek white bodysuit with gold accents (that kept getting compared by humans to what someone named "Elvis" would wear but when told "Elvis" was a king, Grimmjow was no longer annoyed), Neliel in a skin-tight green dress that like Yoruichi's had a train, and the Queen of Hueco Mundo herself, Harribel, wearing a long white cloak that covered her entire body except for a cut-out around her tawny breasts and an oval around her eyes through which some yellow hair showed. Her entourage, also in white, stood behind her.

The Royal Guard stood facing the hundreds as Rukia and Ichigo made their way towards them.

There was no processional music, only the whistling wind of winter, no falling snow. The trees of the garden were bare, and the plants all dormant.

Ichigo wore a groom's traditional black kimono with pleated hakama and Rukia stepped forward in a white embroidered kimono without the traditional headdress which was said to symbolize submission. Her waist-length black hair was braided into five thin strands entwined with white ribbons. As she passed the row of participants, she saw Renji up ahead, standing next to Kotetsu Isane, Captain of the 4th Division. She caught a vision of their future and past. When she strode by Renji's shoulder, she couldn't help but whisper, "What, Renji? You found a woman who's as tall as you are? That works out nicely."

She could hear both Isane and Renji sputtering behind her. She passed Inoue and Ishida, saw them both working with their powers to make the Living World a safer place, Inoue a little too eagerly and causing murmurs in the news about space aliens interfering in major cities, and Ishida using the hospital as their secret base of operations. Rukia saw a future of cupcakes, two children who ate cupcakes daily, and oh there was still Tsubaki nestled in Inoue's cinnamon-colored hair and Grandpa Ryuuken warned the kids never to piss their mother off, that she had the power to slice bad little children in half. Rukia and Ichigo continued to make their way to the Royal Guard.

There, Ichibe pronounced words and handed Ichigo and Rukia a single glass of sake from which to drink. Isshin's sentimental sobs broke the ethereal quiet of the surroundings, and Shutara stepped forward and asked the couple to bow. She held two wreaths, the only live greenery in sight, with flowers that bloomed in this season and were often used in ritual ceremonies to represent divinity and beauty. She placed the wreaths, first on the bowed orange head and then on the smaller black head, and right away the camellias glowed brighter with a florescent brightness, lit like lawn ornaments. There were audible oohs and ahhs from the crowd.

"What happened?" Ichigo whispered to Rukia, head still bowed.

"I think our crowns just turned on," Rukia said.

Ichibe explained that the flowers, their stems, and their leaves would never die; they were royal head-dresses designed by Shutara. And after the cake, the joking around with friends, after putting up their eternal white camellia wreaths on top of closet shelves in their barracks. Rukia and Ichigo realized that they too were immortal and talked about what that really meant. They would watch generations come and go, see their friends die and be reborn, learn to understand that they themselves were at the center of the cycle of reincarnation.

"I don't know if I can get to that understanding," Ichigo sighed. "How long will that take? I might be all divine and everything, but I'm not that smart. It feels like being trapped inside a poem sometimes; I can feel it, I can almost get it, but it doesn't quite make sense. At least not yet."

"Can't you see the future?" Rukia whispered. "There's so much time. There's forever."

"That's what I mean," Ichigo said. "I don't understand forever."

"You understand our love, and that is forever," Rukia assured him, and she nestled into his arms. "Our bond will never be broken, so it will be fine."

"Fine?" He wanted to argue. "There's just so much— "

She closed her eyes. "Go to sleep."

"Fine," He conceded. The sun was going down. The moon was rising. Forever didn't have to make sense yet. Her small head fit into a place between his upper arm and chest the way old worlds must rest with perfect wisdom before they are reborn. Maybe she knew something he didn't. Maybe he knew something he wasn't aware he knew yet. It had been an exciting ceremonial dress-up day. Tomorrow would be another day, not as fancy, but just as fine.

End

Note—I address other 686 issues, like Chad's boxing, in my "Ishida Family in 28 Tales" fic which will be posted after Nov. 1, 2016.