For most Bleach-fans, the first pairing of the series they would think was Ichigo and Rukia. Heck, Tite Kubo said he was going to make Rukia the main character at first! But what if the only reason Ichigo and Rukia would like each other is because they shared a Soul? What if it wasn't Rukia... or anyone from the Soul Society for that matter? Slow going Starrk-Ichigo... Idiot!Seireitei, Hybrid!Vizard!Arrancar!Ichigo
...
Ichigo Kurosaki, age 15, was able to see spirits. He knew that, and his sisters knew that, and his father knew that. Heck, one of his sisters, Karin, could see them fully well too. But, it seems as if 15 was Ichigo's cursed number.
It was only a few days into the school year, and he was going home from the grocery store on a sunday. As he was nearing one of the hotspots of a young spirit girl he had known, he heard laughing and shouting.
Not again... Ichigo thought. It was once again the bullies and gangs he had had to deal with in middle school. He saw one of them with a skate board, in front of the pole where the spirit girl's parents had left some flowers. Except, the glass from which the flowers were placed, were strewn across the ground, broken, water flowing lackadaisically around it. Ichigo felt hot fury rush through him. Bullying him was one thing, but to ruin a memorial-...!
He walked over cooly and steady a glare at the goons that finally took notice of him.
"Hey, it's that orange-haired freak again! Mr. Bleach-his-hair!" One guy with long hair with purple streaks in his hair teased. Hypocrite... you have to bleach your hair to turn it purple idiot...
"Ignoring the foul words, he came right up to Mr. Purple head, and smashed his skull into the ground with his foot, stomping him twice for satisfaction, effectively getting the attention of the other cronies.
"Do you know what that is?" Ichigo asked, pointing at a broken flower vase. One of them came forwards, an arrogant look on his face.
"Uh... isn't that just a dumb flower for a girl who died in an accident?" He was bleach-white blonde, almost blindingly so.
"Exactly." Ichigo said, hefting the guy up with one arm and throwing him over his shoulder into the nearby river. He turned to the last 3.
"Can you explain why the vase is broken?" Ichigo said, his voice getting more menacing and rasping. One of them shivered and stepped back.
"It was Darusai! He knocked it over with his skateboard!" He shouted, pointing to the equally nervous guy beside him accusingly. He looked taken aback.
"M-me! It was Yuketa's fault!" He exclaimed pointing at the last boy.
"He pushed me into the pole!" He said, making an excuse. 'Yuketa' turned a deep purple.
"Well-" He began, before Ichigo brought his foot up, and kicked all three of them across the face.
"Next time, you five won't be so lucky," Ichigo said to the 4 heavily bruised and broken boys, and sopping wet one.
They all ran off as fast as their injured bodies could,when he turned back to the pole, and the little girl materialized.
"Thank you, onii-chan for getting rid of those meanies." She said smiling. He scowled lightly.
"I'll get you some new flowers. I promise." He said, patting the spirit on the head, going back into town to buy a new vase and flowers.
...
Starrk sighed. Aizen wasn't in Hueco Mundo a whole lot anymore, a Lillinette had gotten busy with a few small hollows, hanging with Nel, as well, leaving him in his room. Things were quiet. As the number one espada- naturally to boot, there were very few orders to be given. Lillinette then burst into the room.
"Starrk-kun! Get up! One of the high security hollows, the adhuchas that looks like a normal hollow that Aizen was expiermented on has escaped to the World of the Living, we have to go get it!" She screamed.
"I know, I know!" He groaned, flinging the girl off of his stomach. He grumbled. And then he glared at her. When he was still just an insanely strong vasto lordes who killed anything that came near him, he had wanted to become weak, so he broken his mask, inadvertantly becoming an arrancar. He couldn't remember exactly what he and Lillinette had looked like together, as if a mist had covered that part of his memory, but the one thing he could remember is that he and Lillinette did not have an equal amount of spirit energy. In fact, Lillinette had only slightly more strength than a gillian. Maybe she was the original and she had become weaker, and he was the part that was supposed to have dispelled? But that didn't matter now. They were most definitely different entities, and he had become the dominant one. She was his ressurreccion. But she was a pain to bring around.
"Fine, I'll go! But your staying here, brat." He sighed getting off the bed. She gaped at him.
"You're actually letting me stay, here?" She asked gleefully. He could almost imagine her and Nel painting his room pink. He would regret this.
"Yeah..." He yawned. Lillinette grinned, her eyes sparkling.
"As much as I hate your laziness, Starrk-kun, this time, I want you take all the time in the world to get back! Just don't die!" She waved him off, forcing him to open a garganta, and pushed him through. Sighing, he sonido'd directly to the other side of the portal, and stepped out. He tried to detect Fishbone's spiritual pressence, and it was off in the city somewhere, instead of in that weird subdimensional space he could create.
Easy pickings... he thought silently. He sonido'd into the area, looking around. It seemed to be a market of some sort, many humans walking up and down the streets. They all had plain faces, looking pretty much the same, brown or black hair, brown eyes... The only person who caught his eyes was an orange haired boy with a spiritual pressure nearly 20x the people around him. While not enough to even be close to his level, it was interesting to see a living human with such a permeating spiritual energy.
He was so interested, he didn't notice Fishbone come up close to him.
The mildly strong adjuchas slammed one of its large fists into his back, crashing him into the ground below. A large crater appeared from where he landed. He pulled himself of the sidewalk, and stared mildly annoyed at the hollow.
Did he HAVE to bring it back alive? He sighed running his fingers through his hair.
"Fishbone-san, come on, you have to go back to Hueco Mundo, I don't want to have to use-... force..." He trailed off as he saw Fishbone open his pocket dimension. How bothersome... He sonido'ing out of sight.
...
Ichigo was walking through town, holding the vase and new flowers that he bought, before a loud crashing noise exploded from the street in front of him. In the sky was a large grotesque monster, with a large fish-like mask, with two red lines going through the eye holes. It had two abnormally large fists in comparison to its very slender (but large) body. And on the sidewalk, a figure was pulling out of the concrete. It had shoulder length brown hair, a sword at its belt, and wearing a white... dress? No not a dress...
To his utter amazement though, it looked as if a portal opened up in the sky, and the masked monster stepped through, disappearing. The white figure, ruffled his hair, shaking out some stones, before he took disappeared with a static noise. And the amazing part- it seemed no one noticed the encounter besides the broken, collapsed concrete.
Were they spirits? He wondered. He had never seen a monster like that before, and he hadn't seen a spirit like that man before, with a sword, and no chain... maybe it was a really old spirit from a long time ago that still didn't pass on? Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he went back to the little girl's makeshift memorial. He placed down the flowers with care at the telephone pole looking up at the girl.
"Do you know what this flower means?" He asked, pointing at the flowers. She cocked her head to the side.
"Um... no?" She asked, wringing her wrists.
"Their white lilacs, and white lilies. It means innocence, youth, and purity. Like you." He explained to the girl, his scowl non-existent. She smiled, and grinned bright.
"Now, how about you pass on now, so you can wait for your parents in heaven where you'll be safe from bullies like the ones from earlier." He urged her. She smiled.
"Okay!" She smiled, as she dispersed into little blue particles. He sighed. His father was so going to kill him for being late...
He got home with Yuzu's groceries (which were SUPPOSED to be meant for dinner), but since he had finally come home at 8:30, it was too late for Yuzu to cook any longer, so they had all eaten out when he was gone. So, he was sent to bed with a half-sandwich from Yuzu, and a rather ridiculous scolding to him, and an embaressing display of idiocy with a poster of his mom that made him wince every time he saw it.
He sat in bed, counting the minutes that went by on his clock. Suddenly, his door was thrown open, a bruised Yuzu leaning on the frame.
"Karin-... Dad... help... Ichi-nee..." She gasped out, collapsing.
"Yuzu!" He yelled. He shook her softly, and noticed she was breathing. Dropping her in his bed, he flew down the stairs, and saw that the entirety of the living room was destroyed, his father bloodied against the wall. He, although, went unnoticed, when Ichigo saw that the monster from earlier was holding his sister, Karin in his hand.
"Karin!" He yelled. He at first wanted to grab a chair, until he saw a large kitchen knife on the counter Yuzu was going to use. Picking it up, he ran towards the monster outside, and saw that the white-clad man from earlier had appeared. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, as if to draw.
Ignoring the man, he rushed forwards, and threw the knife at the monster. It twisted, and landed in the monster's shoulder, causing it to scream in pain, throwing Karin through the air. Ichigo sprinted as fast as he could to catch her. He did, but didn't notice that the monster had disappeared again. Setting Karin down softly, he looked around, and saw the man from earlier holding a beam of blue energy on the tip of his finger. It was pointed somewhere behind him. Turning around, he saw the monster appear out of a distortion in the sky, and launched a red beam at him from his meaty, monster finger. Not having enough time to dodge, he could only wish his sisters could live on without him. As the red beam connected to his chest, he felt disembodied... before a wave of hit him.
He could barely keep his eyes open as he watched his own body fall to the ground, a jagged, bleeding hole in his own chest.
Looking at himself, he saw that he was wearing the exact same thing his body was, but unlike all the other spirits he had seen before, he didn't have a chain. That beam, had blasted through his spirit body's chain too. He had a hole, just like the monster. He watched, as a blue beam from behind him shot at the monster, and it disintegrated.
"So much for capturing it alive..." A deep, baritone voice said from behind him. The brown haired man from before came into his blurrying vision, who stopped and kneeled by him. His hand reached out and touched the wound on the chest, Ichigo winced. His heart should've blown through... could spirits not die?
"You're going to become a hollow..." The man muttered under his breath. I saw as by body began to glow blue, and grow heavy... was his soul dying too?
The man's hand delved inside the wound, causing Ichigo's breath to caught. He couldn't move. His entire body was pulsing.
A flash of blue energy filled the vision, before he felt himself fall unconscious, the pain falling away from his body.
...
Starrk stared around the city as he searched for any sign of where Fishbone had gone. That hollow was really annoying him... he thought he would just kill it for being stubborn. Suddenly, he felt it material in the suburbs somewhere. Sonido'ing to the location, he saw that the adjuchas was holding a young human girl with slightly higher than normal spiritual energy, with two others inside of the house. Suddenly, the orange haired boy from the city came out of the house, with a large kitchen knife, throwing it at the hollow's shoulder. He expected it to pass through the hollow like most normal, non-spiritual objects would, but as it would seem, the boy unconsciously placed a bit of his energy into it, so when it connected, the hollow screamed in pain, dropping the girl.
He watched as the young man caught the girl and set her down. Before Stark could get the chance to try and capture Fishbone, it disappeared again. But it's spiritual pressure was close, right behind the boy. He steadied the beginnings of a cero on his finger, when the hollow came back out, but it already had its own fully charged cero, pointed straight for the boy. Even as he let his go onto Fishbone, it was too late, Fishbone had released his cero, and the boy had been expelled from his body.
While Starrk didn't care much for humans, that one had been interesting. Going up to the boy's soul, he stared wide eyed at the fact the cero had actually gone through his soul as well. The Chain of fate was completely obliterated. But that gave Starrk an idea. He had just accidently killed one of Aizen's creations, but, he could make it up by bringing a new hollow back...
"You're gonna become a hollow..." He muttered at the groggy boy. While he would rather just head back home now, he had his reasons. He placed his hand inside of the hole, and slowly, in pulses, injected his reiatsu.
At first, the boy went unconscious, which Starrk wasn't too surprised on, but what he was, was that his clothes shifted into those of a standard Shinigami's. What? How was that even possible! He was putting arrancar reiatsu into a demi-hollow!
Then, the spark of blue energy pouring off of Starrk transformed into a black, swirling mass, tinged with red. The soul reaper uniform that the boy was wearing turned completely white, with a black obi, and the orange hair turned gained white streaks. The jagged hole where his heart was slightly deteriorated, and rounded, the particles forming a small mask fragment on his right cheek, that was like two red lines coming together on a white canvas. But just when Starrk thought it was over, the boy's hand shot up and grabbed his wrist, and the white hakamas he were wearing turned grey, as well as his shihakusho. His obi turned blue and red, which then morphed into purple, and the boys tanned complexion became pale.
Two identical zanpakuto materialized, one pure black, with red ribbons and one pure white with blue ribbons. The boy's hand then released his own, and he pulled it out of the new odd soul he had created. What had he done?
...
And that was the first enstallment of 'Of Strawberries and Wolves'!