Note: everyone is a shapeshifter. This means that instead of shikai and bankai they have two different animal forms and a combined form.

Ferals= hollows

Any other questions just ask! :D

Kensei spat out blood, staining his white fur a dark crimson. He snarled viciously at the wildcat, Tousen. How dare he! The tiger prowled about the black fur shimmering with stripes of orange fire.

Kensei's mind was a fog of pain. All he could see was red and all he could feel was a mindless desire to destroy.

Tousen, damn him! And Aizen too! They circled Kensei and his fallen comrades, smiling through their teeth as the former shapeshifters were reduced to slavering animals, uncontrollable in their bloodlust. It overcame the mind like a strange heat haze, blurring the line between right and wrong, sane and insane.

Aizen gestured to the pathetic battlefield and drawled in his cold calculating voice, "Enough. They are finished. Soon they will turn on one another and our dilema of witnesses null and void. Let's go." He turned and stalked out of the grove of pines, the stench of blood thick and cloying in the air.

Gin snickered once, his snake tongue flickering between his lion's teeth. He padded after his master, his tail flickering his other tongue, savoring the sickly sweet scent, as he too, left.

Tousen was last. He slunk to where Kensei had fallen and raised his lips, exposing the long fangs of his tiger form. He snarled low and menacing with sadistic pleasure, "Thank you for trusting me so implicitly. That pack instinct of yours was the death of you." He smiled revealing more teeth than Shinji could on a good day and stalked off into the forest. Even after he was gone the heavy musky scent lingered behind him like a poison.

Kensei howled in frustration and grief. He had trusted that bastard and he had killed his squad and lieutenant! All of them! He dropped his head, hoping to see one of them from where he lay. Surely one of them was alive? Just one? ANYONE? He screamed in his despair and fury. He let his head thump to the ground. He was so very close to complete madness or complete unconciousness, he couldn't tell which. Faintly he felt another shapeshifter respond to his call. He whined in disapointment when he realized it was not of his pack. Wait. Yes he did know that prescence. It was the pup! As his eyes began to slip shut he tried to say something, ANYTHING to the young wolf so far away. But he was too weak and the connection too faint.

As he slipped into unconciousness he heard Urahara above his head. "My, my, what a mess we have here."

6 years later…

Gasping for breath, Hisagi Shuuhei raced around another corner just a few steps ahead of the maddened wildcat. Something had caused the beast to turn feral and now it was on the warpath. Aoga and Kanisawa were dead, mauled by its claws and serrated canines. He dodged again as it snarled, the sound loud enough to shake the branches of the trees around them and echo off the mountain rocks. It snarled and slashed at his unprotected back, going for a maiming wound. Yelping, he managed to trip and slide underneath the enraged animal ending up on the other side.

Unfortunately for him it was much faster than he had reckoned. It turned on a dime and slashed at his head.

Shuuhei cried out, an unnatural mix of his human scream and the howl of a wolf. The eerie call echoed around the training woods as he desperately tried to dodge another blow. His wolf form could take the pain much better than his weak human body could, but the haze of red over his right eye distracted him and made him half blind.

Funny, he thought, the things that pop into your head at times like this. People always think blood is red…its not…he dodged another slash of the maddened cat's claws and tasted the blood from his face pooling in his jaws…its black. The dark coppery scent filled his nostrils and sent him into a panic. He snarled and launched himself at the creature; jaws fully extended to rip and tear at the soft skin of its throat. He bit at the exposed fur but couldn't get a firm grip. It swatted him away like a bug and he landed on his side a few yards away, gasping for breath.

He felt like he'd been stepped on by an elephant and then run over by a train. His side was on fire and every breath was agony.

Just as the feral cat was about to pounce on him and stop his breath for good, three other shapeshifters came to his rescue, a brown dog, a red python, and a golden eagle. The halfgrown shapeshifters stood over the fallen wolf as best they could, snarling and snapping at the wildcat.

Shuuhei struggled to his feet, the white fur of his chest stained pink and red from the blood dripping down his muzzle. He snarled at the crazed shifter and tried to wipe the blood off with a paw. It hurt like a bitch and only made his paw as bloody as his face. He gave up, growling deep in his throat with frustration and fear.

The young eagle fluttered its feathers nervously, a sign of early takeoff. The python whipped around and hissed venomously at it.

"What are you doing, Izuru? We can take it!" The ruby eyes glittered angrily at the bird.

It flapped its wings and screeched in agitation, "You don't know that! We're going to die! I don't want to die!"

The young female dog stepped up beside Shuuhei, her small shoulders brushing against his fur. On closer inspection she wasn't a dog, more of a coyote or a dingo; certainly not as tame as she had first appeared.

She snarled, her small muzzle wrinkling with ferocity. "Don't think that way, Izuru! None of that matters!"

"But—!"

"She's right!" Shuuhei flattened his ears and growled; a low vibration deep in his chest. They were a team, a hunting pack, they could take it down. "We got this!"

With a cacophony of shrieks, howls, barks, and vicious hissing, they lunged on the attack only to be stopped before they reached their target.

From out of the darkness came two more shapeshifters; older and infinitely more powerful. The first was a silver chimera. Its lion's head locked around the beast's throat and its long snake tail striking again and again until the enraged beast shivered and collapsed.

The chimera began licking the blood off of its face and grooming itself, the snake head on the end of its tail flickering its tongue in and out contentedly, as if nothing worth mentioning had happened. Not far behind him came another shifter, still in his form as a man.

A tall man, with a kind face and deep brown eyes. All the warmth in the world was in his smile and just like that they fell into his shadow.