His sandals scratched roughly against the stone, foot sliding back out of instinct instead of active intent as the former two-manned opposition added one more to their number. The girl's bright eyes flashed mischievously at him as she outstretched her hand, the half-sized staff glinting gold in the torchlight. She was dressed like that other one—weird plating on the shoulders and knees and forearms, the same odd-shaped and overlarge hat and the same kind of costume but in pink and blue instead of purple.

His eyes lingered on the staff in her hand, shorter than the one the other had but still capable of the same kind of power if that energy burst at the back of his head earlier had been any indication. He growled deep in his throat, discontent broiling to a breaking point inside of him and his impatience already tipped off the edge as his fingers slowly, forcefully tightened around the hilt of his zanpakutou.

It was one thing to devote time and energy to a fight with a formidable opponent—an opponent who could lead him to Orihime or to top-ranking arrancar who had been placed in guard of her, for example. But it was quite another thing to devote a stupid amount of time and energy to a fight with no end in sight, and with an opponent who didn't even have a shred of freaking reiatsu to begin with.

He gritted his teeth, all the muscles in his face tightening with restraint as he tried to force himself to calm down, to not let his impatience overtake everything and just end this fight before it got way too annoying to deal with. He forced himself to think straight, to think with a level and unemotional mind as he stared across at the three-manned defense now standing their ground in front of him.

When this fight had started, even despite the fact that he couldn't feel the guy's reiatsu he had thought he might be dealing with a high-level hollow. The guy had the right kind of vibe around him: that stupid, self-righteous smugness to his voice, his so-called ability to read into his mind—either one or both together seemed to him to be a common, self-established kind of superiority that all his enemies shared.

But this guy had no reiatsu; not even now, not even halfway into the fight when he had been cleaved in the shoulder with a sword almost bigger than he was had he released any spirit power at all.

And Ichigo couldn't understand that. He had seen the guy use some kind of power already; the guy had split Getsuga Tenshou in half with his bare hands for fuck's sake, but he hadn't used reiatsu. His brow tightened, eyes narrowing as his temper started smoldering through his face anew, his own reiatsu flickering just above the surface of his skin in light blue, almost translucent waves.

A person couldn't fight without reiatsu; it was the capacity of a person's spirit power that could be used to attack, and this guy had been fighting on par with him pretty damned equally so far. And since Ichigo was in his shinigami form, since he was a technical spirit right now, that meant that the guy who was fighting him had to be a spirit too—either that, or he had to have freaking spirit power if his hits were actually landing and doing any damage.

But then again, the guy wasn't the one fighting him—the costumed man in front of the guy was. Did that mean the costumed guy was the spiky-haired guy's reiatsu? Or … … or something? But then why call the girl to his side—unless she was his reiatsu, too? And why wasn't the guy doing his own fighting?

"Where's your zanpakutou?" His question was short and icy—he was holding on to the last dregs of patience he had, and the blank look the man gave him the next second did not help his temperament at all. He stamped his foot angrily on the ground, frustration overtaking his common sense not to act like a kid as he wrenched one hand from his sword to point accusingly at the purple-clad man. "That thing—that freakin, costumed wizard thing—is your zanpakutou? Are you released already or something, huh?"

The guy looked almost confused for a second—at least, that's what Ichigo assumed made his expression falter for just that second from its previous state of hostility and pain. "My … magician?" came the very slow and somewhat hesitant reply, the guy looking more flabbergasted than pained as he stared at the taller of his two defenders, then back at Ichigo again.

Ichigo himself felt a similar confusion flash briefly through his own face, though his was far more short-lived and angrily retaliated against as he swung his outstretched hand in a hot-tempered swipe to his side a second later. "Your sword!" he snapped back, his voice louder than he'd intended and far harsher than he'd wanted; at the sound of it both the purple-costumed man and the girl at his side stiffened, raising their staffs higher in the pretense of fending off the threatened attack in his raised tone. "The powers you damned hollow seal inside those swords! I know your swords aren't real zanpakutou, I know you guys transform when you release them—I KNOW you hollow and I know how you work, so quit pretending like you don't know what I'm talking about!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" The guy sounded just as agitated as he was. He heard the blood spatter hit the floor as the spiky-haired boy dragged himself upwards off the wall, stumbling forward a step or two with a pained grunt and falling against the waiting and concerned arm of the female blonde in front of him. Those vivid green eyes of hers shot a rather dirty look at Ichigo across the passageway as she held the guy in that arm, the other still very ready and holding out the staff in front of her in defense. "I don't—"he continued in a growl, his voice hoarse rasped with strain "—have a sword and I don't have hollow powers. I'm not one of these hollow you think I am!"

"Bullshit!" Ichigo snarled in defense, practically feeling the hairs on the back of his neck bristle in rage. "Fine; should I call you 'arrancar,' then? Or Espada? They're just names to tack onto the same old game—though I doubt you're actually either," he added in a dry and disgusted tone, "because I haven't felt even a trace of your reiatsu since this fight started, and if my sword cut you that friggin' easily back there then there's no chance in hell you're one of Aizen's elite."

The guy jerked his head back in affront, more emotion than Ichigo had seen there yet flashing itself angrily through the purple irises. "Well, what do you expect from an attack on someone who hasn't even armed himself?" he hissed back with that same hoarse tone, something like insult lining the words. He lifted his arm with what looked like a lot of effort and slowly started to push himself away from that girl, expression twisted with the strain of his motion.

Ichigo watched him in hostile silence, his hand again moving to its place on his zanpakutou. The reason for his momentary quietude wasn't only in the slight flash of doubt that had struck him with the other's words, but also some unwanted memory—something he had found out about high-level hollow like the ones in Hueco Mundo, high-level hollow that had become strong enough to tear off their own masks and take on human form and condense their strength into that form and acquire other attributes while doing so: toughened skin, a zanpakutou to house their dormant powers, and the leftovers of the mask they had worn before becoming arrancar.

Toughened skin, huh? He glowered at the deep gash his sword had gouged into the other male's body, grimacing at the way the guy struggled to regulate his breathing, the way his face had already started to sweat in the pain, the way his body almost trembled from the aftershock and continued persistence of the blood loss from that wound. Apparently that guy didn't get the memo.

… … Fuck.

"And you?" The rasped tone cut through his thoughts, the pain hidden behind it appealing to his natural sympathies even as he hastily covered up his mental revelation by throwing a scowl at the guy, his teeth gritting behind that scowl more out of a growing sense of bewildered annoyance than any real anger.

"What about me?"

The spiky-haired guy glared at him—or at least, did the closest thing to glaring that he could manage under that much physical strain. "You're pretty good at throwing around accusations," he growled back, still clutching the shoulder attached to his bleeding collarbone as Ichigo's face clouded over at his words. He looked up at him, face strained tight with his contained anguish as he leveled the teenager with a stare just as dark, but just as inwardly perplexed as Ichigo's own. "But those are rich words … coming from a stranger who attacks me in my own soul chamber."

Ichigo's face stiffened.

"What the hell is a 'soul chamber'?" he growled back, more reluctance than he would ever admit to behind the anger in the words. The inconsistency in the color of the sand, the fact that he couldn't feel any reiatsu—the fact that these three opponents, out of all that he had expected to meet once he'd broke into Las Noches, had no masks and no zanpakutou—were starting to draw patterns for him that he didn't like.

And the fact that this guy had just referred to the place as a 'soul chamber' and not Hueco Mundo was not helping—like, seriously not helping.

The guy's eyes visibly narrowed—though from anger or surprise at the question it was impossible to tell. His eyes locked with Ichigo's for a long moment, sharp and calculative as his shortened breaths rang harshly through the passageway. "It's … … where I live."

Ichigo ground his teeth together, impatience and confusion working their way through a valiant battle on his face; he could feel the muscles of his mouth straining, unable to decide whether to just frown and scowl and shout and yell in his frustration, or to try a weak 'please-be-screwing-with-me' smile to warn the guy away from continuing where Ichigo didn't want him going.

"You're an arrancar," he growled back, pacing his voice slower now, steadier; pacing himself in a way that very pointedly, and very unwaveringly outlined what he wanted to hear. He found himself throwing inconspicuous glances to the side despite himself, gauging again the color of the stone and the sand, gauging the feel of the place and again trying to convince himself that he wasn't coming to the conclusion his observations and these circumstances were wanting him to. "And you live in Hueco Mundo. Because that's where all you freaking hollow live. And you … you serve Sousuke Aizen …"

The half-strangled, half-grunted sound of laughter followed the guy's slowly shaking head, his mouth turning upwards with a weak smirk as Ichigo trailed off into reluctant and very pissed off silence at plea in the movement. The vibrancy in those purple eyes had lessened now, clouded over; Ichigo could see in the gradual relaxation slowly loosening through the guy's muscles that he was losing a lot of blood.

His eyes flicked to the sight of the wound he had cut into that collarbone, brow knitting with some twisted semblance of guilt.

"… I— …" at that the guy's vocal chords twisted up violently and he erupted into a fit of coughing; Ichigo saw the flecks of blood spray the floor as the guy slumped to his knees, dark spots hitting the richly tanned stone beneath his free hand as he braced himself through his coughs. Ichigo almost made to take a step forward, his other instinct breaking itself away from the battle mentality he had driven into himself before coming here as his humanity took over.

That staff stopped him in his tracks, cutting through the air with its violent slicing motion and stopping short just millimeters from piercing the front of his throat. He stilled completely, the only part of him moving then being the automatic tightening of his fingers around his sword hilt as that purple-clad man rose slowly up in front of him, the staff held unwaveringly in his hand as both he and it hummed with the pressure now coiling through the air.

His foot slid back almost despite him, face rigid and eyes narrowed with his anger as the steely blue of the man's—no, corrected his memory, 'magician's'—eyes locked coldly with his own.

"I don't know—" the guy's voice, despite its harsh and breathless edge, was almost bordering on the amused "—who Sousuke Aizen is …"

Like HELL he doesn't.

The retaliatory growl ground its way up out of Ichigo's throat, voice and face storming over in his quiet fury. "… You're lying," he whispered back, everything in his voice daring—no, begging—the other to continue his refute. Aizen was the entire reason for the venture into Hueco Mundo; he was the one who had commanded the capture of Orihime Inoue, Ichigo's own classmate and close friend, and was also the one responsible for the creation of all arrancar.

He was the cause of everything wrong—everything that went out of order and everything this present situation plagued him with that was leading his path to Orihime astray. And he knew that freaking man was behind this bullshit, too; there was no source strong enough anywhere else to create this intricate of an illusion around him, to create this lie where the masks and spirit power of the monsters he fought didn't exist and where the weapons they fought with were costumed magicians and not swords.

His hand tightened in anger around his zanpakutou, his own spirit power dancing above his skin. The guy was forcing himself to his feet behind the protection of that magician, hand no longer clenched around his shoulder but now digging into the gash where he had been cut, his eyes shut tight and his face twisted and grimaced with pain.

"I'm … … I'm not lying," he slowly whispered, his voice audibly over-strained even with the minimal effort of such a soft statement. The hands of that blonde girl steadied his shoulders as he continued in the weak, noticeably pain-staking process of lifting himself from the ground, his chest shuddering with each hoarsened pant of air.

Ichigo glowered at him, hating more and more with each second how much his heart was wresting itself away from his resolve, how the longer he looked at the guy the more he wanted to help him. He heard the guy cough again and half slump to his knees, the weak display of balance rectified only by the protective arms of that blonde girl as she hastened to his aid, her arms catching around his stomach and steadying him as worry flashed through her face.

Why the hell do I care? This is a freakin' arrancar, damnit—one of Aizen's monsters! Why the hell do I give a damn about how he—IT—feels??

"Is this the strength of your lord's power, huh?" he hissed back, little more than just pissed off and confused at this point. "Using his freaking illusions to make me start doubting myself before I even get anywhere in this goddamned castle?" He glowered at the gash in the guy's collarbone, feeling more pissed off now at the fact that the wound was tugging on his guilt complex instead of reassuring him at the weakness in the guy it was obviously causing.

"This … is not a castle," the guy ground out between clenched teeth, "and I … I have no lord." His face was twisted through with pain, but he still managed to wrench his head upright, to level Ichigo with one of the hardest, most unwavering glares the teen had ever seen. And when he spoke next, his hoarse words held absolute conviction: "You are … … not … where you think you are."

Ichigo spat to the side in annoyance, his anger and his confusion twisting together and mutating into something that was making him start to doubt his own sanity. How the hell am I not where I think I am? I can't just enter a place and then be transported somewhere different without at least feeling it, damnit! This is a freaking illusion, and I KNOW it!

"Oh yeah?" he snapped back. "Then where the hell am I if this isn't where I think it is?"

"This is MY mind!"

TBC.