Chapter 2

By: OriSODEhime & Raine Shiba

The moment the bright white portal opened up into the World of the Living, Hisana was racing like a bullet through the streets, aiming to pin the reiatsu of the man who had worked so hard to fight alongside them. Although she came to a stop moments later, glancing around to make sure Raine was behind her. Noting her speed, she'd left him in the dust by mistake-

"Hold it." She snapped her head up to find him standing in front of her. "Do you even have the slightest idea as to where his apartment is?" She scratched the back of her head, taking a glance at the surrounding buildings and complexes that towered over themselves.

"Well... No."

"Good lord. Follow me." And they were off once again, sprinting at the speed of sound through the streets, across rooftops, and over houses to the location Raine had pinpointed exactly.

It wasn't too long before the two came to a stop in front of a neatly-framed apartment door, standing alone on the top level of a massive complex, just a few blocks down from a newly built mall that hadn't been there ten years ago. Hisana leaned against the window sill, as Raine motioned for her to move, silently lifting up the frame. She stepped inside quietly without even stirring the slightest bit of wind, rubbing her arms to build up just a bit of friction.

"Why is it so cold in here?" she asked aloud, followed behind instantaneously by Raine.

"He just likes it that way." He glanced around himself, taking in the home the man he'd described lived in. The apartment seemed rather large with a small hint of previous-modern taste, nothing too special about it. It was comfortable, comfortable enough for the human being on the couch to have fallen asleep. Raine tapped her shoulder, gesturing to who sat against the armrest. She tried to take it all in, having a hard time processing every little detail of him.

The television still remained on, though the figure watching it had appeared to fallen asleep hours ago. His red hair seemed to get a slight shade darker, as well as bloodier. The eyepatch they remembered him wearing was removed and on the side table with his headband. Crimson red bangs fell over the bridge of his nose onto his right eye. The man seemed to have grown slightly more muscular than his late-teens, and managed to retain some of his youth at the age of twenty-nine. But there was a tired, aged look beneath the single closed eye.

"This," Raine whispered, "Hisana...is Ringo Maruyama."

Hisana's eyes went blank with shock, pain, and slight disgust at what she was witnessing. The poor man who had given nearly everything for her, had let himself fall apart, crash and burn in such a way that he could barely stand on two feet anymore. She'd witnessed his dark side once or twice before, but she couldn't imagine that he'd be living with it. She felt her eyes stinging with a strange wetness that she hadn't experienced too long ago, day after day again. And as that wetness began to flood down hr face in long streams of tears, she reached into an inside pocket of her haori, whipping out a little device from a decade or so ago, pressing the alignment of buttons in a texting fashion.

"What are you doing?" Raine whispered in a curious fashion, poking his head over her shoulder. Hisana rolled her eyes, handing him a small, finger-length blade as well.

"Just take this and shave off the tiny stubs on his face."

"As much as I'd love to mess up his face, I can't. It would wake him up. I suggest waiting until morning when he chooses to groom himself properly-"

"You really haven't changed a bit, Shiba." Hisana hit the send button, as she snapped her phone shut, glancing to the other one upon the side table...sitting next to a pistol. "Oh, great. He carries guns now." While the phone silently buzzed, her friend let out a mental sigh before explaining:

"I tried to tell you beforehand in the Dangai-"

"Shit! I'm late for work!" Both their faces went blank with expression as Ringo darted up from the couch and through one of the doors in the wall, slamming it shut with a solid thud! They shared an awkward glance, before a nerve popped up on the female's head. Without another second to think it through, she hollered at the top of her lungs.

"HEY JACKASS! GET BACK HERE AND ANSWER THE PHONE!" Once again, she was cut off by, this time, the sound of a squeaking faucet, as water began to run behind the door. "Damn it all..."

"By the way," Raine butted in, tapping her shoulder with a mischievous smile, "he's grown." The images only reached Hisana's mind half-way before he found a fist promptly whacking him on the head.

"Pervert."

"Hey, you can't blame me. I'm already getting married."

"Care to explain the pistol anytime soon?"

"Of course." She flopped down on the couch, balancing the weapon on two fingers. He took a deep breath and sat down next to her, examining the oddly crafted gun she held.

"As far as street business goes, he's been going about handling beat-up jobs for the innocent. And occasionally, those who offer the most money." He reached to take the pistol out of her hand, flipping and turning it around various times. "There's something more different about this gun than the rest I've ever seen."

Hisana raised a quirky eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"

"It fires too quietly and much too rapidly for it to be a pistol." Without another word, his explanation had come to a close, and it was on the side table once more. The faucet screeched to a halt, as the water stopped running. They waited for just a few moments of utter silence, glancing about the apartment, twiddling their thumbs, anything that would let time pass by for a few minutes. When the clock finally struck six about four minutes after the silence came, the door to the bedroom flew open, as Ringo came rushing out, snatching up his briefcase from the kitchen counter and his cell phone from the side table, hurrying out the door. The shinigami could only blink once or twice, before Hisana stood up, reaching to put his supposedly-illegal weapon in her haori.

She found Raine's hand placed on the one that held such a weapon. "Leave it here," he commanded.

"Why should I? I could take this to the Twelfth Division, and they'll examine it-"

"You just left your fingerprints on it."

"But we're ghosts!"

"And we can still leave proof that we were here!"

A glum look crossed her eyes and the way the corner of her lip bent down, before she put it back down. "Fine. I guess we'll never know why it's such a weird tool then-"

They were interjected once more by the sudden exclamation of an animal-like roar from not too far outside the apartment. The windows seemed to crack under the pressure, finally blowing apart as the shards flew about, skidding onto the floor in tiny pieces. Raine rushed over to the door without a sound, creaking it open to identify the source of the trouble.

"Not another Hollow," he breathed. "This one's huge. The pressure is more immense than I've felt in a long time. Wait, I'm spotting at least four of them."

"What? Well what are they after?" A horrified expression crossed Raine's face as he swung the door open all the way, hand on the green fabric of his zanpakuto's hilt. "Raine, what's wrong?"

He glanced back for only a second before she knew she had to follow behind. "They've hit Ringo." Her eyes contracted, before her own zanpakuto was now visible, taking a single step before they were both gone and out of the apartment."

"Agh!" Ringo skidded back onto the concrete ground as a demonic, skull-bearing figure began to loom over him, invisible to his own eyes. In fact, such a demon was invisible to the ordinary human eye at this rate. And while they boy not might have seen it, there was another figure, two even, both standing in front of him in defensive positions.

"Hisana!" Raine ordered. "The Menos!" The moment he barked the words, the sky above them tore open with a massive black portal, pouring out a horde of enormous, black cloak-wearing Hollows with pointy white shoes, no arms, and skull-faces with pointy noses that stuck out further than the rest of themselves. Each one gave a terrifying roar, before spotting the shinigami on the ground, raising their feet to stomp on them.

"I'm on it!" She was off, blasting like a bottle rocket up into the air above her, coming face-to-face with that of the Menos Grande. She gave a tentative glare, before unraveling her sword from its pitch black chains, swinging it around in her hands as sharp edge met bone. Down she went, tearing her weapon all the way through the thing that had aimed for her friends.

But it wasn't enough. As they worked harder and harder to fend them off, several other figures of the same shape and form replaced the one that had just been destroyed.

"Crap!" Raine shouted in angst, holding up his blade to the sky. "Why are there so many here?"

Hisana took note of his action and mimicked it, placing a hand on the forearm that held her blade. "We're outnumbered at this rate! They won't stop coming! Shiba, you know what to do!" A simultaneous nod let the area shine in both a bright, emerald green glow, as well as a blood red illumination.

"S-Shiba?" Raine only glanced back for a second to see Ringo staring in awe at the lights before him. He turned to Hisana with a concerned expression.

"So he knows I'm here at least. Hisana, we can't let them get after Ringo. He has the highest reiatsu amount out of every human in Karakura. Though it isn't enough to get his powers back. He'll be constantly targeted by-"

Hisana's mouth stretched open as she didn't even look at him, collecting as much of her reiatsu as she possibly could. "You just now figured that out?" When the blade was charged enough, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the source of the Hollows' powers. "Getsuga-"

It only took a second for one of them to raise a foot and knock her back several-hundred meters, crash-landing into the wall of the apartment complex behind her. At the same time, Raine's eyes widened as another Menos raised one of its feet to knock him back. His blade swung down in a partial arc, releasing a tidal wave of plasma energy that tore through a long line of the Hollows, watching as they dissipated into black dust. He felt himself previously knocked back not as far, but with almost as much damage when a long slit was carved into his dark skin, bleeding out red fluid that stained his shihakusho's white sash the same color.

Ringo staggered back, fists clenched tight as he jerked his head around aimlessly to look for Raine, invisible to his eyes. "Wherever you are Shiba, I can handle this myself!"

Hisana was semi-rushing over to Raine's aid in a slow instant, folding her hands over his wound. He barely groaned, feeling his skin begin to slowly seal shut. "I doubt we have any other choice," he huffed, "than to carry out the authorization. We have to give him his powers back." He began to raise his blade with much difficulty, before she placed a hand on his wrist.

"Wait." Her eyes half-closed in just the slightest hint of regret, before she took a breath and spoke before him, standing up straight. The sky above them began to tear with yet another black hole. Something was coming, probably as strong as all the others beforehand. "Let me do it."

"W-What?" he shouted, still gripping at the gash on his side. "Are you sure? I mean, you'll be temporarily disabled and powerless!"

"Like I give a damn, Shiba!" Above their heads, what came to look like a Vasto Lorde was tumbling through the sky, landing upon the ground with a massive wham! of shattering concrete. Its skeletal mouth opened, forming a glowing sphere of mass energy in-between its jaws.

Raine let out a defeated sigh. "That's a massive Cero." He stood up, moving in front of its path. "You're right, Kurosaki. I just don't want to see you go through the pain of losing your powers. Again."

He was retorted to with a grim smile. "Thank you. But I've learned that pain the hard way much too many times." Without any other words to come out of her mouth, she was shuffling her feet, standing behind Ringo's defenseless, clueless figure as she raised her blade to the center of his back. And, just before the Cero came crashing down to the little trio, the blood-haired boy could've sworn he started to feel the familiar reiatsu coming back, with a sharp object plunged through him and out his heart, completely clean of blood. Everything suddenly became clear in his eyes, including the mangled Raine in front of him, building up a shield of plasma against a plummeting beam of compressed spiritual energy.

That same energy was fended off by a bright white light that emerged from Hisana's zanpakuto. In that blindness of light, she fell to her knees, feeling her willpower fall apart into nothingness, as the weapon vanished into white sparkles all around them. She lay face-down on the ground, motionless, not even twitching a few fingers.

The light faded, and so did the Cero. Ringo stood where he was, staring in awe at what he appeared as, unveiling himself to the others who stood or laid around him. The standard blackened shinigami uniform wrapped around his torso, with new forearm-long sleeves, tucked into the wide hakama that bound by a new obsidian obi to his lower waist. Tattered black bandages wrapped around his right shoulder all the way down to the edge of his palm, gripping tight around the enlarged zanpakuto hoisted up onto his back. It wasn't heavy, but certainly tons more powerful. His hair seemed just a tad bit noticeably longer, barely shrouding a black strip of cloth that covered his right eye. His left eye, a sparkling emerald green, filled with life once more, contracted into a single point as he stared at the individual man in front of him.

"What just happened?" he whispered in undeniable shock. Hollows were beginning to crowd in from a distance aways around them, standing motionless as they watched with blank expressions.

Raine gave a mocking pokerface. "Maruyama... You've returned."

"S-Shiba? Is that really you?" For a second, a single look of doubt washed over both their faces. But a simple nod of Raine's head indicated it wasn't the time for arguments.

"I wouldn't be here," he spoke in a low voice, "if it weren't for her." Ringo raised in eyebrow, before glancing back over his shoulder at just the tiniest glimmer of bright orange hair scattered about on the ground. All though left his mind, as he stared in pure horror, rushing up to Hisana's unconscious figure.

"HISANA!" he shouted, falling to his knees as he reached to hold her head in his hands, hunching over to the point where his face was the only thing she might've seen. His eyes began to tremble within, clenched shut. In his mind, he was reliving the events of the last day they had ever seen each other again ten years ago. She was fading before him, eyes red and swollen shut from crying, hugging him tight. And before long, he felt nothing. He was hanging onto thin air.

The unbelievable cries of Hollows surrounded them, as he looked up, his face grim with rage, vengeance swirling in the depths of his very black pupils. "I've had enough of this." He laid her gently back onto the ground. The enlarged blade placed on his back was yanked off, held out in front of him as he made to lunge forward, slashing it through several of the Hollows at once, leaving behind a rippling black substance on where he marked them. He stood motionless as they all came to close in further and further, charging new Ceros to vaporize the shinigami at their feet. But he seemed to have a tentative smile on his face, before swinging his blade around them one more time when they were close enough, allowing the black reiatsu to reach up, expanding over each one of them until they were completely hopeless, disintegrating into nothingness as they vanished without a trace.

"So, uhm..." Raine spoke up from behind him, standing with his arms crossed acting like he was never hit in the first place. Ringo turned to face him, sheathing his zanpakuto.

"You're late for work." The blood-haired boy raised a curious eyebrow.

"You haven't seen me in ten years, and that's all you have to say?"

"What do you want me to say then? That you're completely ignoring Hi-" Ringo seemed to vanish from his gaze faster than he could blink, carrying her back up to the door of his apartment and vanishing inside, leaving him standing all alone. "-sana. Thank you for your hospitality!" he shouted with a sarcastic edge, following him up the stairs and inside.