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PART I

CHAPTER 1: WHEN IT HAPPENED

Everything was black at first.

You'll only have a week before it starts.

He wasn't sure what he had expected— pain, noise, light— but it wasn't this. Nothingness.

Act fast. You'll only have one chance.

No sensation. No feeling. All he had were those lingering words of Urahara's, curt and rushed. It had all happened so fast, the screaming, Ywhach, all those crushed buildings and crushed bodies, and suddenly he was being dragged away. Taken down, further and further. Shoved into that jagged metal contraption. And now this, whatever this was.

He just wanted them to be alright. All of them. It didn't matter what it would take. This time, they were going to live.

And… be discreet. You don't know what they can hear.

He had barely expected it to work— whatever it really was— but he was here now, under a little thicket of trees, the grass dewy beneath him, First Division in his distant line of sight. He felt everyone he'd left behind, or at least almost everyone, in a reiatsu cluster in that building. A captains meeting.

Arriving had been so strange, like being shoved out the door of an airless room, it had barely happened a minute ago and already it seemed fake. He wished he'd had the chance to talk to Urahara, because what now? Here he was and Soul Society was unscathed and there wasn't a Quincy in sight, but what the hell was he supposed to do? "You don't know what they can hear," Urahara had said but what the hell did that even mean? Ichigo knew that the Quincy had been living in the shadows— were currently coiled up and ready, maybe even watching him think under the shade of the trees— but could they really hear everything? Was it even possible to get to them?

How the hell was he supposed to stop an enemy when he didn't know where exactly they were, how to get to them, or who to tell? As of now, no one had heard about the Quincy for around a thousand years, and even then only Yama-jii and Unohana had been captains. But Yama-jii hadn't believed Mayuri when he'd brought up the Quincy, and something told Ichigo if he were to barge into a captains meeting insisting an evil army was lurking in the shadows the reaction would probably be the same. He didn't even know if there'd been any signs yet, if anyone suspected anything wrong. Apparently a few days before the invasion almost an entire district in Rukongai had gone missing, but not yet. Nothing yet. Urahara said not to waste any time, but there didn't seem to be much more option. He needed to talk to someone, and even though his first choice was currently in the very-near future a close second was in reach. Rukia.

He took off to the First Division in a flash of shunpo and anxiousness. She would believe him, even if she didn't understand.

Two guards stood poised by the stairs to the meeting hall. Ichigo strode up, about to start up the steps when one of the solders grabbed him by the shoulder. "What do you think you're doing?" The man sneered, so tall he had to crane his neck to make eye contact, "There's a meeting in progress!"

Ichigo tried to stay polite, but he felt like a rubber band stretched a taut second away from snapping. "I know, I just want to wait fo—"

"What's your name?" The other, smaller sentry asked.

"Ichigo. Kurosaki Ichigo."

The larger kept his frown, no click of recognition, no sudden embarrassment at his brashness, "You're not a captain, you're not a lieutenant, you can wait down here."

Ichigo balled his fists and turned away. He didn't want to do anything stupid, but had a feeling he just might if he stayed. He was faster than them anyway. In a blur he disappeared before the men, around the stairs and up onto the roof. He jumped, roof to roof of the vast first division until he was vaguely close to the meeting hall and then reeled in his reiatsu. If he got too close they'd be able to sense him, and he didn't want to deal with anyone until he knew what he was going to do. If Rukia didn't have any ideas the he'd go back to the human world and see Urahara and have the strangest conversation in the history of ever. Maybe he shouldn't even been waiting for Rukia, who's to say she'd have a solution?

But before he had the chance to leave the Captains meeting was out, figures filling out the doors. He was going to say something to Rukia— may as well. Maybe it would even be a good idea to ask her to come. He could only make out a select few at first— Ukitake with his long white hair and Kyoraku's pink kimono and Komamura as huge as ever and back in his armor— as he scanned the crows. He would need to get closer though, she wasn't the only lieutenant with short dark hair and from this distance he'd never be able to tell them apart. From so far away Toshiro— oddly enough lacking his captains robe— looked moderately tall.

Ichigo skipped roofs until he was on the building beside the platform they were beginning to exit across, so close he could hear their conversation. His eyes skimmed across Hisagi's spiky hair and Mayuri's general ridiculousness, looking for that tiny figure with the short hair and white sword. He didn't see her. He was about to squint, focus and really try concentrating on every face, try slowing his frantic glancing, but a voice cut through,

"What do you mean another meeting tomorrow?!" it demanded, gruff and worn. "That's the third this week!"

Now, Ichigo did not know every captain and lieutenant very well on a personal level but he was entirely certain that he could at lease recognize any of their voices, and that was not one of them. He rattled his brain, trying to match a tone to a face but came up dry. He had not heard this man before. He looked down to the source, at the spiky hair he'd thought belonged to Hisagi but upon closer inspection sat atop the head of someone tatoo-less and most certainly not Hisagi. And even though Ichigo couldn't recognize the voice that didn't mean the face wasn't familiar because it was. Very, very, very familiar. Not to anyone he'd seen in Soul Society though. He did a double take, and a triple, convinced he was looking at his own skewed reflection, but no. The man continued to move and speak while Ichigo's mouth remained shut and his body statue-stiff.

Kaien.

He had never seen a picture, but Ichigo knew that face— it was the one he saw whenever he caught his own reflection. This was Kaien. Before he'd never been able to imagine them looking as alike as everyone said, had assumed they shared a feature or two, but now he was shocked that they hadn't made a bigger deal out or it. This guy Ichigo had never met before, who had been long dead by the time he was even been born, was more recognizable than the people he'd known and fought with for years. It should've been impossible, but here he was. Rukia would be thrilled, wherever she was. He'd meant so much to her, and now, somehow, he was back. That was probably what the captains meeting had been about, welcoming back a long-lost lieutenant, explaining how any of this was even possible. Rukia needed to be here. He would've imagined her flanking around Kaien, the rest of her world on mute, but she was no where. Instead Kaien was now talking to Toshiro, too hushed for Ichigo to make out their words. He tried reading their expressions, but when his eyes drifted to Toshiro his blood went cold.

Everything was all wrong. Too tall. No haori. Silver hair.

A foxes face.

It wasn't Toshiro he was staring at.

It was Gin. His bone-chilling smile and shut eyes, nodding at Kaien's words. Two dead men… Ichigo began to wonder if they had come back unscathed to Soul Society or if he himself had made an awful mistake getting into that machine if Urahara's and was now in a strange underworld with them. He blinked some more, looked away and looked back because this couldn't have been real. He wasn't seeing this right. But then Gin said a goodbye to Kaien and strode over to a figure who was paused talking to Unohana. A figure in a captains rope, only the dark, shaggy back of his head visible.

Even though this man was not facing him, even though Ichigo had no way of seeing his face, he damn well knew who it was. He could feel it. Standing within earshot, standing so close Ichigo could slice his head clean off before anyone could detect a sliver of reiatsu, was Aizen.

Fucking Aizen. Ichigo grabbed the hilt of his sword, the moment taking over, and nearly sprung. He would've, but at that moment Gin's head pivoted just a bit to face Ichigo. His eyes were nearly shut, there was no way to tell where he was looking, but then his smile crooked just a bit and Ichigo's heart stalled in his chest and he hurtled himself off that roof. He needed to leave. He needed to be anywhere but where he was. He sprang from roof to roof to roof until he was out of the First Division barracks and far, far away from all those reiatsu signatures.

How the hell had he not noticed? How had he not felt them?

Eventually he was in a wooded area he didn't recognize, probably near the gates to Rukangai by now. He didn't stop by free will though— no, he ran and he ran like a chicken with its head chopped off until his foot snagged a tree root and sent him hurtling into the hard ground. His cheek, chest and right shoulder connected first, with such force his body skidded a few meters, leaving a scar of dirt among the green grass. His jaw slammed together, a chuck of tooth wriggling loose in his mouth followed by the metallic tang of blood. Everything throbbed. Motivating himself to get up seemed like a lost cause.

Of course Kaien hadn't come back to life, that was idiotic. Somehow Urahara, or the universe, or whatever other forces had come into play to send him back had fucked up somewhere along the line. He should've known, nothing to do with Soul Society ever went as plan so why did he think this would be any different? He wondered how far back he was. Obviously after the whole Holowification incident if Aizen was a captain, but before he had arrived in Soul Society to rescue Rukia that first time. So anywhere between 3 to 100 years ago. Fantastic.

Now he sure as hell couldn't go the the Shinigami. Had he gone back to the correct time they would've been skeptical at best, with his tales of time travel and a thousand-year-old enemy lurking in the shadows, and ready to lock him up on the grounds of absolute insanity at worst. Now there was no chance. What could he do, wander into a captains meeting, insist he knew all them, that he'd saved the world on more than one occasion, that one of their own was a traitor, and then tell them about the Quincy? They'd been trigger happy back then, back now, and he didn't think storming in with accusations would fare well for him. Before he'd won their trust by charging in with a rag-tag army and attacking some of them and then bringing down an entire conspiracy but somehow he didn't think that opportunity would present itself again for a very long time. He needed an in, a way to get them on his side again.

So far as he knew there were only two ways to become a shinigami: either by putting in six whole years at the academy and then slowly climbing the ranks, or shooting straight for a captains position and dueling to the death with whoever was currently in charge of the Eleventh Division. The second was tempting, he could march right up, demand a fight and be wearing a captains haori by nightfall. But if he were to do that he'd either have to duel the Kenpachi he knew or would have to in a few years, and even though all of the badgering and demands for a rematch were a piss off, Ichigo didn't want to kill Kenpachi. At all.

So, Academy it was. An absolute waste of his time but he didn't see any other way. Maybe I'll even run into someone I know, he thought before realizing how absolutely useless that would be, since no one anywhere would have any idea who he was. Unless Urahara found a way to pull him back to the broken present, which he didn't want, than the next few years would be lonely. And confusing.

A complete fucking headache, actually.

Urahara, he thought while finally pulling himself off the ground, what the hell did you do?