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Chapter 2

Soul Society – a few days after the war with Aizen ends

Ichigo yawned as Yamamoto-soutaicho thumped his cane on the floor for what would undoubtedly be yet another "congratulations on defeating Aizen, but the work is not yet finished" speech.

He cast a sideways glance at the line of people beside him on the right. Ishida was facing forward and looked appropriately solemn for the occasion, yet Ichigo thought his eyes behind his glasses looked a little glazed over. Chad, to Ishida's right, also sat stock still but with that mop of hair covering his eyes it was hard to tell what was going on beneath. To Chad's right Orihime appeared to be nodding off until Rukia jabbed her in the side with an elbow. On the opposite side, to his far left, sat Kuchiki Byakuya and his father, Kurosaki Isshin. Ichigo's eyebrow twitched. The old man certainly had a lot of explaining to do….

"Face front, idiot," muttered Renji immediately to Ichigo's left.

"You first, moron." Ichigo scowled but turned his attention toward the speaker.

"I was paying attention," Renji shot out of the corner of his mouth.

"No you weren't!" Ichigo countered sotto-voice, in a provoked tone.

Both redheads were distracted by a hissing to their right. They craned their necks to see Rukia leaning forward out of the ranks to shoot them a piercing gaze of disapproval. Ichigo slouched a little and resolutely faced front. Renji, on the other hand, seemed to be communicating to Rukia, via slapdash sign language, that her intrusion was not appreciated. Rukia responded in kind, and Orihime had to dodge a fling of Rukia's little hand.

Ichigo glanced away from the brewing tiff, hoping to disassociate himself with the growing disturbance to his right. Unfortunately, in looking away, he caught a warning eye from his father. Actually, the eye didn't seem to be warning so much as goading, which was typical. Byakuya was not looking around, but he sat more stiffly than ever. As Ichigo was furiously gesticulating that he had nothing to do with whatever was going on to his right, he managed to clip Renji's shoulder with his forearm, which earned him an elbow in the armpit. It was on now.

Ichigo was getting ready to lodge Renji's head in his offended armpit when he sensed that something had shifted in the attitude of the audience around him. For one, Old Yamamoto had stopped talking. For another, a number of the shinigami around them were standing up. The delinquents froze as they were and peered around nervously.

It took Ichigo a moment to realize that they weren't the ones that had brought a halt to the meeting. Far from it, even Kurosaki Isshin was no longer getting ready to launch himself into the fray; his attention was off to the west of the ceremony. A dim rumble and a clammy stench seemed to be coming from that direction. Yamamoto had actually stepped off of the podium and was muttering commands to a few captains in the front row.

A sudden rift tore through the sky and a host of white masks poured out. Every soul reaper present leapt to attention. Hollows. In Soul Society. What the hell?

Ichigo followed Renji and a stream of other black-robed shinigami as they raced to the exit of the hall they had been convened in.

"Kurosaki-kun!"

Ichigo turned, one hand on Zangetsu's wrapped hilt, as shinigami raced past him or stopped and stared with jaws agape at the hollows pouring through the rift. Orihime was pushing her way through the mass of soul reapers to get to him. She too wore black—an honorary shinigami costume bestowed for services rendered during the war with Aizen.

"What, Inoue?" Ichigo already heard the screams of Hollows and the sounds of battle met. Zangetsu throbbed in his palm, ready for battle.

"Haven't you learned yet? Wait for us." Orihime smiled and over her head he saw Chad's broad shoulders breaking a path through the crowd. Rukia and Ishida followed in his wake.

Ichigo nodded at them. "All right, let's go!"

The group raced through the various labyrinth turns of Seiretei, dispatching any hollows as they encountered them. But the number didn't seem to be decreasing. It seemed almost impossible that there were this many hollows left in Hueco Mundo in the aftermath of the most recent war. Ichigo didn't spare much time for these musings, though. He let his body and sword get into the familiar groove of killing; slicing masks and limbs in half in a fluid dance of cleansing. He sensed, rather than saw his companions at his sides, responding in kind with their own brands of beautiful violence. The crashes of Chad's fists and the bolts of energy that sprang from Ishida's bow seemed to punctuate every skirmish, or season the battles like salt and pepper. Even Orihime, though she did not attack, made a point of throwing up force fields at opportune times. Ichigo allowed himself a grin. They were getting better at this.

They slowly made their way through the invasion force. Ichigo was shocked at how quickly the hollows had infiltrated and scattered. It was difficult to keep them from slipping out and away into Sereitei. After a particularly fierce battle in a pale-stoned courtyard they paused to regroup, breathing hard, then they all heard a high, maniacal laugh that seemed to reverberate off the limestone walls.

Ichigo whirled, Zangetsu sliding into readiness once more, and looked around. "Grimmjaw?" he muttered. It was impossible; that Espada had been slain and the countless souls that made up his existence finally cleansed. But who…?

A speck in the sky, different from the beastly shapes of the hollows still pouring through the rift, flew toward Seiretei. White hakama flapping in the breeze, snakes of dark hair hanging to his waist, the humanoid figure launched itself at a group of members from a squad—Ichigo couldn't tell which at this distance. They all raised their zanpakutous, but the newcomer blasted them with a cero that blew apart part of the courtyard.

When the smoke cleared, the shinigami who had stood up to the newcomer were little more than smears on the wall. Ichigo ran forward, jaw clenched in fury.

"Hey, who the hell are you?"

The Arrancar turned to meet him, a wide, unsettling grin splitting his sharp features, and he looked Ichigo up and down. "You're that half-hollow kid I heard so much about in Hueco Mundo, yes? I'd been hoping to meet you."

"Oh yeah?" Ichigo sneered. "Here I am, then. And you still didn't answer my question: who are you?"

"Hasdrubal Calixto, formerly of the Espada," he added, still grinning. "Let's do this."

Ichigo gripped his zanpakutou. "Bankai!"

Instead of coming to the ready, Hasdrubal raised his own sword and propped it casually against his shoulder, still that annoying grin in place. He jerked his head at Ichigo's friends gathered to watch, all looking tense and ready to leap in at a moment's notice.

"That red-haired girl… friend of yours?"

Ichigo narrowed his eyes. In his hands, Zangetsu's black blade quivered with the desire to fight. "What's it to you?"

Hasdrubal shrugged. "Nothing, really. Just heard from various quarters in Las Noches that she was particularly… tasty: if you know what I mean. Just wanted to know if the rumors were true."

Ichigo suddenly appeared at Hasdrubal's back, his sword tip at the base of his neck, shoved through a forest of heavy dreadlocks.

"Say something about Inoue again," he hissed, eyes flashing, going from brown to yellow as his anger increased.

"You are fast, aren't you?" Quicker than Ichigo suspected, Hasdrubal flicked his sword up and over, neatly parrying Ichigo's blade at the back of his neck.

Ichigo fell back, surprised, and narrowed his eyes. Before he could try another attack, however, Hasdrubal suddenly stiffened and looked around wildly.

"No!" he shouted. "Not here! Not now!" In a blink, he vanished.

Ichigo shouted in surprise. "Where'd he go?" he yelled over at Renji.

Renji hopped up on top of a wall, shielding his eyes to look over at something beyond their line of sight. "Don't know," he shouted back. "But the hollows are doing something weird."

Ichigo, Rukia, and the rest of the gang jumped to the top of the wall. The hollows, which were previously milling about fighting shinigami, were all headed in one direction.

"What are you all standing around for?" Ichigo said. "Let's get them! That Hasdrubal character must be up to something."

"Wait, Ichigo," Rukia latched on to his sleeve. "Where did this guy come from? All the Espada are gone…"

"I don't remember seeing him… Maybe he was a last minute batch from the Hogyokou?" Orihime offered, brow crinkling in thought.

"Could be he was too new to do much good fighting so Aizen had him hidden away in case his defeat should happen." Ishida pushed his glasses up his nose and tilted his head up in an expression that could only be described as intellectual pondering.

"I don't care where he came from," Ichigo snarled. "We gotta find out what he's up to. Now."

"What is it, Renji?" Rukia suddenly said. Everyone turned to Renji whose tattooed brow was furrowed in something like worry.

"Nothin'," he said quickly. "It's just that all those hollows look like they're headed toward the Old Quarter."

"What's in this 'Old Quarter'?" Ichigo said blankly.

"Nothing much," Rukia said, clambering to the top of Renji's shoulders so she too could look out over the orange-shingled roofs. "There's an old senkai gate there that the 12th Division used for experiments, but it was closed off before I became a shinigami. No one's allowed to go there now."

"A senkai gate? Why was it closed?" Chad rumbled.

Rukia shrugged. "Maybe it broke down. It happens occasionally with older gates, though usually they're just rebuilt…"

"This is all fascinating," Ichigo said in a flat voice, "but can we skip the history lesson and get to tracking down that Espada? It can't be good to have him wandering around Soul Society."

"As much as I hate to admit it, Berry-Head's right," Renji said, poking Rukia so she hopped down from his shoulders.

They practically flew through the streets of Soul Society. Ichigo was at least three strides ahead of the rest, but everyone kept up tolerably well. Many of the shinigami they passed were in pursuit of the herd of hollows as well, but some were regrouping. A few were injured, but the hollows hadn't been around for long enough to inflict enormous damage, and very few people seemed to have caught sight of the Espada, much less tried to come up against him.

Ishida pulled up parallel with Ichigo, "Do you feel the reiatsu diminishing? They're leaving Soul Society!"

Ichigo didn't feel much of anything, but he figured Ishida knew what he was talking about. "That just means we need to get there before that asshole gets away!"

"Shinigami of the 13 Gotei," Yamamoto-soutaicho's voice, amplified by kidou, rumbled across the landscape of Soul Society. Most of the pursuing shinigami paused or glanced at the sky at the voice of their commander. "The hollows are exiting Soul Society via a senkai gate. Please return to your squad headquarters for regrouping and deployment. Do not pursue the hollows as they will now be barred from reentering the Seiretei."

"Like hell!"

"Ichigo – that means stop!" Rukia called forward to Ichigo as she slowed down and skidded to a stop.

"You can stop if you want, I'm not in anyone's gotei," Ichigo shouted over his shoulder, boosting his speed. The others followed, though Renji lagged a little and glanced back at Rukia with a "well, what are we supposed to do?" look.

Muttering a handful of choice curses she had picked up from her time on Earth, Rukia began to run again. They were entering the Old Quarter, where the buildings were low to the ground and seemed to lean into the street like tired old men on canes. Every few paces they would turn a corner, chasing the heels of the closest hollows, generally swerving to the north and the west of sector.

One more corner, and the friends faced a ugly, slumping warehouse. The doors of the place had been savaged off their hinges by hollows cramming themselves in to the building. It seemed that most of the hollows had already gone inside. They cut down a couple of stragglers as they leapt into the building. The inside of the warehouse seemed to be mostly empty but for a single archway, freestanding at the end of the room. It didn't look like the senkai gates that Ichigo knew about and this one had clearly seen better days: a rotted-looking black gauze of fabric seemed to swing from the pitted, battered frame. A little knock-kneed insect of a hollow skittered across the warehouse floor ahead of them and whooped a little as it slid through the veil and out of sight.

Ichigo, Rukia, Ishida, Chad, Renji, and Orihime stood and stared at the arch, a sense of cold foreboding making them pause.

"Well, let's go on then." Ichigo was the first to make a move toward the veil.

"We don't know where that leads, maybe we should regroup as…" Rukia paused as a fluttering shriek seemed to pierce the air.

"Aw shit." Renji looked up at the ceiling. "They're destroying the senkai gate?"

The others glanced up and noticed an evil purple glow seeping in the cracks of the warehouse.

"Through the gate, everybody!"

There was no time to get out of the warehouse by conventional methods. Ichigo just hoped that the gate wasn't too long – they had to get through it before…,

A white-purple haze of heat seemed to be growing in the room. They all clamored toward the gate at a sprint. Ichigo saw the veil catch fire just as he tumbled into darkness.


A/N: Many apologies for the delay in this chapter. Singeivoire's computer is ailing so we've unable to collab or edit the chapters we have finished. She snuck a little bit of time today at her husband's office, but until their laptop is fixed, her time online will be limited. Stay with us though! We'll still write; it just may be slower in coming than we'd like. Thanks for reading!