Bleach isn't mine…still.

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The Third Spirit

A grey misty drizzle fell soon after the sky faded to black, smothering the landscape in darkness. Toushirou could barely see the outline of a large shadow until a quick flash of lightning blazed a trail from behind the towering mountain. From the summit he watched the storm's winds cascade down the mountainside, pressing against the trees in a wide wave, and when it crashed into the valley the chill sent a shiver up his spine. Rain poured in earnest now, soaking him instantly to the bone. Dumbfounded, Hitsugaya stared lamely up at the turbulent skies, wondering if he'd finally returned home when angry energy lit the heavens in scorn and a dark clothed figure silhouetted against the fray.

In that moment, it beckoned him forward.

Mud sucked hungrily at his sandaled feet. Untouched by the elements, his third host waited atop the mountain Toushirou did not recognize. Towering a good head and a half taller than the Ukitake, this ghost was giant and willowed under the tattered black cloak. Nothing of its face could Toushirou see. It always turned or tilted its head to remain hidden.

Toushirou recounted to himself before proclaiming, "You're here to show the future."

It didn't respond but with a slight incline of its hollow-seeming hood.

"Then show me. It'll be good to have some of these fears put to rest. Come on, show me what you've got," the captain demanded impatiently. Out of the three, this was the one with the most important of gifts, the one he knew whatever knowledge gathered from this ghost Hitsugaya could turn right around on Aizen Sousuke when the time came in the new year.

With the outstretching of a long, three-jointed finger, the spirit pointed the way. Toushirou obeyed, arms folded, eyes acute and prepared to soak everything up. "How far up the mountain?" he asked when the climb became steep and crooked, the way hidden beneath crumbling rock and dust. The spirit, having no trouble flowing up the hillside, merely extended the finger again.

Once, when Toushirou was just a shinigami student, he traveled all about the Seireitei and surrounding countryside outside the concrete street, beyond the wall and gates, to become familiar with it. This medium mountain he did not recognize. Not a speck of green grew on it, but here and there a splinter of rotting wood was scattered about. Perhaps then they were in Rukongai, somewhere in the outer districts that he'd never been. At the crest he stopped, finding safe footing for the drop before him was sheer and far. The clouds and sheets of rain made it impossible to see.

"What am I looking for?" Toushirou hollered over the thunderclap when the mute spirit motioned across the dark valley below. He stared incredulously at the hooded figure and it quickly became angry, thrashing the air with its cold-ridden bones of a hand, screeching harshly something close to an irritated chuckle. Toushirou faced the black, frowning, ready to move on to something informative when the lightning struck once, twice, three times, and by each flash the blood drained from his face.

Paler than sickness, Toushirou stumbled backwards, nearly toppling down the hill but a solid wood caught his shoulders and he slid to a seat. Amusement poured like honey from the spirit as he watched either Toushirou or the landscape, the young captain wasn't sure.

The sight of a destroyed Seireitei swallowed his thoughts, and he drowned in horror of the leveled buildings, the smoke-covered fires, the black piles dotting silver streets of stone.

He closed his eyes, opening them as the rain suddenly stopped. Under a single tree left untouched by the violence Toushirou spied a large form across the way sitting beneath an outcrop jutting from the upturned Soukyoku Hill, the mistaken mountain. Slowly he approached, hoping to find a living comrade, a shinigami, but he only found an Arrancar with bright unseeing green eyes fixed on a second person, the corpse of Inoue Orihime. The Espada—Toushirou saw the four tattooed to his bared chest—appeared quite distraught, tangling his fingers in bloody, golden-brown locks beside her ashen face.

A howl of agony rose in the distance.

Long fingers passed over Hitsugaya's transfixed stare, and showed him away from the silent Espada to where the scream had originated. Ichimaru bowed, broken, over Rangiku's body.

Not far away a pink fire glowed dimly, sputtering out. Toushirou stumbled, bleary-eyed, to stand over a slowly dying Momo. Her hand trembled as it reached above her, blackened fingers curling, grasping at emptiness. At, when Toushirou ripped his gaze from her, his own body, dead on the ground, a shattered Hyourinmaru sprinkled about his blood-red face and chest.

Hitsugaya dropped to his knees, stirring the ashes.

"Ichimaru escaped," Tousen's voice echoed through his mind as the traitor slowly appeared, bowing to Aizen. The man's arm was bandaged, but other than that, Sousuke was unharmed and smiling with such glee it made Toushirou sick.

"That doesn't matter. He'll die soon enough with the rest of them. We need to turn our attention to the King and his dimension. The way will have to be opened soon, and we'll be waiting."

"Of course."

They faded away.

Toushirou looked to the hooded spirit, choked by the words he wanted to speak for a long time.

"Can…can this be changed?" he asked softly, repeating himself strongly, willing the hot tears from his eyes. "Isn't there something I can do to change this?"

The spirit knelt and began to write slowly in the layers of dust and dirt. The character 'three' he finished first.

"Well? If I couldn't change it, why show it to me?"

Two.

Standing, he still didn't reach past the ghost's head. "Answer me!"

The spirit pointed to his writing. Three, two, one. Toushirou glanced up into dark, bloody eyes. "What?"

Three, two one.

"That doesn't make sense!" the captain snapped as it rose. "Three, two, one? What is that? What is so important about this holiday? What does it have to do with anything?"

"Why," the spirit said, halting Toushirou's raving as he stared in shock. "Are you asking so many things?"

"Because I don't understand. If I'm supposed to do something about this, why tell me in riddles?"

"You have the answer to this riddle," the spirit's eyes glanced at the numbers. Three, two, one. It looked up, and light wiped over its mouth, showing a wide, frighteningly familiar smirk.

"Three, two, one." Toushirou shook his head. "What's the order? Hours we have left? Days? Days…" he paused. "No. The second spirit. It showed me the Hougyoku waking in the future. Christmas future. Christmas day. The day after tomorrow."

The ghost was silent.

"But how? How are we supposed to plan and attack within one day?"

"Three. Two. One."

"I know! Three, two, one! What does it mean!" Pacing like a caged animal, the captain missed the hood fall back, the red eyes brighten with ill-placed humor, and the smirk spread into a malicious grin.

"I won't spell it for you," the ghost mocked. "But the order of things falls in reverse. Three, two, one."

Hitsugaya, finally paying attention, dropping his jaw as the black-haired form of Ichimaru Gin grinned down at him, peering with those laughing red gems, darker than rubies, brighter than blood.

"You!" Toushirou lunged. "Tell me what he planning!"

"Fool, you've already seen what he has in store for you. I've nothing to do with it. The form of that man I've taken for a purpose, as have my kinsman with their own."

Wildly, Toushirou pressed the spirit for anything to help him with this task. What was to be done? How was it to be done? Each time the spirit answered three, two, one or called him foolish, showing him more corpses of people he knew.

At last, the spirit said, "My time is up." He held up a hand, splaying three fingers, and counting down by one. "Three for the ways. Two for the powers. One for the reverse. Remember that, if you can."

And Toushirou woke. He stared his dragon in the eye as Hyourinmaru rose from his slumber.

"Did you pay attention?" the dragon asked.

"Did you?" the boy retorted.

Hyourinmaru chuckled, and light snow fell from his trembling sides. "I saw as you saw, heard as you heard. What do you make of it?"

"I don't like it," Toushirou growled, getting to his restless feet. "Not an explanation from any one of them."

"What about all three?" the dragon placed his head down curling his long neck around Hitsugaya's desk. He watched his wielder's anxiety rise. "Did each one tell you something important?"

The pacing stopped. Toushirou frowned deeply. "The Orihime showed me glimpses, the Ukitake showed me things, and the Ichimaru…" he trailed, bowing his wildly-haired head. "How does this celebration tie in with Aizen winning, with the 'three, two, one' reversed order. They way, the power, and the reverse. Three, two, one… Way, power, reverse…"

Hyourinmaru opened an eye. "Do you have something?"

"In Las Noches…I know where Ichimaru's being held. The Hougyoku. That was kept inside a rotating machine, wasn't it?" The dragon nodded, recalling from the reports something like that. "The only way to get rid of it would be to…to erase it from existence, but Urahara already tried."

"He failed to destroy it, yes. But maybe there's another way."

Toushirou's eyes lit up, and he all but leapt into the air, a sudden swell in his chest of hope. Wide-eyed, he stared open-mouthed at the dragon until Hyourinmaru shifted. "What?" But the dragon was not upset. Toushirou's thoughts flashed through the dragon's vision, and the overwhelming sensation of joyous realization caused the room to become cold. "Hold you excitement; you're not sure if this'll work." Ever the one to keep his head on straight, Hyourinmaru did however enjoy the childlike emotion exploding from his wielder. "Will you speak with them?"

"Yes!" Toushirou scooped his zanpaktou up, dashing for the First Division through the slowly abating snow. He pounded on the doors, hollering enough that a light in the nearby Second Division lit. When the gate-doors opened, Toushirou rushed inside, dropping to his fours as the Head Captain rounded a far corner, slightly disheveled. "Forgive me, but we don't have much time! Please call an emergency captain's meeting!"

"At this hour?" the old man lifted his brow.

Toushirou looked him in the eye. "It involves Aizen, the Hougyoku. I have a plan. I know what to do!"

Skeptically, the Head Captain peered at the trembling Tenth, wondering if the hard-working boy had suddenly gone mad. But the determination in his eyes, well, that said another thing. Yamamoto nodded, turning from the gathering division members. "Very well. Call an emergency meeting. We'll hear what you have to say."

Touching his forehead to the ground, Hitsugaya thanked him, rose, and went to wait for his colleagues. Hopefully what he had to say, though a limb in itself, would be well worth the captains'' rising in the dead of night.

"It's just now four AM," Hyourinmaru rumbled in the back of Hitsugaya's mind as the first of the captains arrived.

"Well," Toushirou muttered back, "I'm glad they did it all in time. I'll need plenty of it to convince everyone."

"Mention things carefully," the dragon deadpanned as Byakuya, fully dressed and appearing none the worse for his early rise, and Ukitake both greeted the young captain. "I'd rather they believe you even more a prodigy than a madman."

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Have an awesomely wonderful Christmas!