"Yare yare. What do we have here?" A voice asked in mild interest, tearing a certain carrot-topped teenager from his unintended nap with a vengeance. Caramel eyes snapped open and whipped around to look at the source of the voice...To see what looked all the world like a clown standing there in a Captain's haori and the quite literally stupidest hat that Ichigo had ever seen in his life, all wearing an expression of scientific glee and a boundless level of interest. 'Oh no…' 'Shit.'
"What is this ability just now? Absorbing all of my test chemicals? How intriguing. You must be the Ryoka boy I've been hearing so much about." Ichigo narrowed his eyes as the man just put his hands together and rubbed them emphatically in intellectual excitement.
Ichigo risked breaking his eyes away from his opponent just for a moment to glance around the storehouse to try and figure out exactly what the hell the Captain was talking about. What he found was...nothing. The last vestiges of the final crates that had filled this storehouse before he'd arrived finishing their disintegration and floating over to him. 'What the…' 'You absorbed them, Ichigo.' Zangetsu offered helpfully. Deigning to try and give the boy the information he needed to make sense of the situation and return his attention to the maniac in front of him and the quiet, demure woman standing behind him that seemed to try and make herself as small and quiet as possible.
"Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi, I presume?" Ichigo asked, trying to force his voice into a depiction of calm and narrowing his eyes while Mayuri took the chance to step forward.
"Yare yare...well informed, are we? Did you figure that out on your own, or did someone - or, perhaps...something - tell you that? Perhaps that Zanpakuto you're reaching for right now?" Ichigo's hand froze, bare millimeters away from the grip of Sode no Shirayuki - having indeed, been reaching for it. Then he scowled, and curled his fingers around the hilt, ready to draw her in an instant.
'I really don't like this guy…'
'I would also prefer if he didn't dissect you…'
"I would very much like to know how you were able to use another's Zanpakuto. What would you say about coming to work for me as an experimental test subject?" Mayuri questioned, golden eyes lighting up in apparent excitement at the mere thought. "I already have so many experimental drugs and surgeries in mind for you!"
'...As I was saying. I would prefer he didn't.'
Ichigo shivered in a mix of disgust and heightened awareness, goosebumps prickling to life all up and down the nape of his neck. "Fuck that." He declared, drawing Shirayuki and spinning her in his hand to immediately begin stabbing her tip into the ground in front of him. "Tsugi no Mai-"
"Nah ah ah - I think not." Mayuri grinned, reaching for the hilt of the Zanpakuto nestled between his legs in the center of his waist, and drawing it one motion. "Rip, Ashisogi Jizo."
The clown leapt at Ichigo, forcing the carrot-top to abandon the Hakuren and lift Shirayuki to try and block the strike...when suddenly the woman appeared out of nowhere on his left. 'Shit!' Ichigo cursed, taking a step back with his left leg and pulling his left hand from Shirayuki's hilt, instantly materializing his spirit tanto in his left hand to try and block any strike from the woman.
"Oooh...is that a Quincy weapon? Yare yare. You will be quite the interesting test subject! So many experiments, so little time." Mayuri taunted as the edge of his trident-like Shikai clanged against Shirayuki, and Ichigo quickly leapt up and backwards into a flip to put some distance between himself and this maniac. "I can't wait to turn you into mush!"
Ichigo ducked under a kick from the girl - 'Nemu.' Shirayuki provided, so as to give him a name - and lashed out with his tanto at her support leg, spinning behind her and trying to use her as a shield to keep between Mayuri and himself.
"I don't think so!" Ichigo scowled, and angled Shirayuki downwards - "Some no Mai-" digging the sharpened tip into the ground and slicing a circle into the floor around them as he spun around, breaking the contact with the ground just in time to lift the blade up to catch Mayuri's trident on the sharpened edge once more. "-Tsukishiro!"
Mayuri's eyes widened, more from interested glee than from shock or fear, and he shunpo'd backwards to escape from the circle. His lieutenant hadn't been nearly as fast, and Nemu was caught in the pillar of Ice that erupted out of the ground around Ichigo.
Ichigo took a breath and stepped back to try and keep the distance, but as quickly as the clown had flashed out of the danger zone, he was back in it, clashing his blade viciously against Shirayuki.
The carrot-top scrambled to defend, but Mayuri charged with reckless abandon, and soon enough the teenager ran out of room, his back heel brushed against the wall of the storehouse, and with widened eyes, he quickly tried to leap over the mad scientist.
A flash of gold and sharp, searing pain was the first indication that Mayuri's upward slice caught a piece of Ichigo's leg. The flash of red spraying across the walls being the second. Ichigo cried out and thudded to the floor painfully, flailing around as he slid across the tile next to the cracking ice sculpture that contained one Nemu Kurotsuchi until he was stopped by another wall.
He tried to turn to face the Captain fully, finding it extraordinarily difficult to do so. 'Damn it, Damn it, DAMN IT!' he screamed mentally, realizing that there had to have been more to the ability of Mayuri's shikai to make it this difficult for him to move after a mere glancing blow to his left shin.
The pillar of ice finally crumbled, and Nemu collapsed to her and hands and knees out of it, coughing and shivering in what likely amounted to pneumonia. She forced herself up to her feet, looking to her Captain with a small grin to congratulate him on his apparent victory...only to receive a punch to the face that knocked her right back on her ass.
"Baka! You couldn't even catch him. I thought I told you to grab him and hold on, even if your arms were ripped out and your legs were cut off!" Mayuri scoffed, standing there and glaring at her, seemingly having lost all concern for the Ryoka that sat slumped against the wall a few feet away. He ignored her apologies. "I don't even expect that much from you in the first place. I had hoped you would at least provide a distraction."
"Oi, jackass. I'm still over here." Ichigo grunted, struggling to move his arms to support him. Fighting whatever it was that was trying to keep him immobile. 'Dammit, body. MOVE!' He urged.
Mayuri whirled to glare at him. "I'll deal with you in a minute, Ryoka-boy. We'll have plenty of time to play once I'm finished here...what's this? You're actually able to move? Most impressive." He praised, then turned again and levelled a kick on Nemu.
'That's his daughter! What is wrong with this creep?!' Shirayuki cried out, and Ichigo felt his body run distinctly cold as her anger took over her. He welcomed the chill, embraced it. Still fighting to get his arms and legs to move so he could stand up. 'God. Fucking. Dammit. MOVE!'
'There is a way, Ichigo.' Zangetsu piped up, offering a solution. 'Use reishi to force your limbs to move. Like strings to a puppet. You may not have the fine control required to move like you would if you weren't paralyzed...But you'll be able to move.'
'Good enough. Thanks, Zangetsu.' Ichigo offered, scowling as he watched Mayuri begin to stomp on Nemu like she was a bug she was trying to snuff out. Berating her for her failure and for her sluggishness to get up after being frozen solid for almost a minute.
Trying to form the puppet strings was the hardest part. To date, his only way to control his spiritual pressure was to just imagine a container he wanted to fill...be that a disc like platform or a long strip-lane of reishi, or the shape of a tanto in his left hand...and just point his pressure at it like a firehose and let loose until that container was full. It was quite inefficient and wasteful, if you really looked at it, but until now, he'd had the reiatsu to spare.
It didn't really help that his focus was interrupted with a wince of sympathy for each blow Mayuri landed on his daughter. "Hey, cut it out!" He roared.
Mayuri turned to him with a bored expression. "Why? Why do you even care what I do with her, Ryoka-boy?" He asked, tilting his head curiously. "She's just another woman to you. An enemy at that. But she's not even real. This masterpiece is the result of all my Gigai and Gikon techniques melded together into one. I created her. I can dispose of her as I see fit. And she's obviously defective if she can't even do so much as tackle you to the ground."
Ichigo winced at the explanation, although his conscience rose to the challenge and demanded action to save the girl, part of him was recognizing something else; a distinct, and sickening similarity that he led to this monster.
Kon.
He'd saved Kon because he was a 'real soul', despite his artificial creation and shouldn't just be destroyed.
And then proceeded to stuff him into a stuffed animal body and kick him around like the world's lightest punching bag.
Mayuri, seemingly disinterested in him once again in favor of taking his irritation out on Nemu, had already turned to slam the girl into the wall, leading to a cry of pain and a spray of blood escaping from her mouth.
'Kon, when I get back to the living world...when...I am going to get hat'n'clogs to make you a gigai. You deserve to have a real life. Annoying as you are.' Ichigo vowed, and then he opened his eyes, feeling the spiritual puppet strings solidify with his rage and determination to live to keep that promise to Kon.
"Oh? What is this?" Mayuri wondered, dropping Nemu like a sack of potatoes on the ground as reiatsu roared off of Ichigo in waves. He turned, golden eyes looking quite interested. "You managed to stand up?"
He turned and smiled, his scientific interest in Ichigo renewed with an expression of sick joy. "I know why...Ransotengai. Elderly Quincy used to use this technique to continue fighting hollows, even if their bones were crushed or their tendons torn. It exists so that one can fight until one's body falls to pieces. The ultimate Quincy battle technique...I thought it was a lost art. Tell me...where did you learn this?"
Ichigo snarled at him, and gripped Shirayuki tightly once more, as well as his Spirit Tanto...the physical manifestation of Zangetsu. "I didn't."
"Oh?"
"You were just pissing me off and I wanted to kick your ass so much I decided to force my body to move."
SCENE BREAK
The floor shuddered with power, an earthquake that sent everything not bolted to the floor sliding across said floor anywhere from inches to feet, depending on the weight of the object. In particular, one humanoid figure was thrown from his bed and his slumber, slamming into the rumbling floor beneath.
Golden rings, surrounded both insides and out by pools of darkness, snapped open. Bleach-white lips splitting into a manic grin once he realized what was happening. "Awake...I'm finally awake." The figure cackled. "Soon, The throne will be mine, King. But for now..."
SCENE BREAK
"Yare yare...That's right. I still need to study you…" Mayuri mused, reaching up to his left ear, and - with a motion that made the sushi Ichigo had had for lunch before traveling to Soul Society lurch upwards in his stomach - detached a sharpened part of it, shaped like a scythe and connected to the side of his head by a length of tendon, began to spin it around like a kunai on a chain and flung it in Ichigo's direction.
'That has to be the most disgusting thing I've ever seen…' Shirayuki sounded as sickened by the movement as Ichigo felt, but he flashed out of the way of the oncoming body part.
'I wholeheartedly agree.' He grumbled, ducking under the next swing by Mayuri, before the madman yanked on the tendon to retract it for a new toss, Ichigo scowled and sliced at the tendon that held the scythe on with Shirayuki's blade, holding Zangetsu's behind him and pouring reiatsu and drawing reishi both into it to form a Hellig Pfeil...shaped nothing like an arrow, to be honest. But the title remained.
'This thing is worse than Renji's shikai!' The carrot top grumbled, throwing his left arm forward in a wide arc, unleashing the ranged attack at Mayuri while ducking under the flying ear-scythe and spinning under it, bringing Shirayuki up behind him to block the return trip of the scythe, which was sure to be aimed at some point of his body.
As soon as he heard the clang of ear meeting blade, he struck, slicing Zangetsu with lightning speed at the tendon that served as the leash for the ear, and slicing through it like a knife through hot butter.
As soon as it was free, Ichigo set his jaw, and flashed forward. His spiritual pressure exploding outwards; remembering why he was here.
He was here to save Rukia.
And he couldn't do that with this bastard getting in his way.
Mayuri's eyes widened and he lifted Ashisogi Jizo. "Ban-"
"San no Mai: Shirafune!" The building exploded into blue spirit particles, drawn to the tip of Sode no Shirayuki's blade, solidifying into ice...and then shooting forth like a beam of pure winter. An icy mockery of Gin Ichimaru's shikai. The blade pierced through Mayuri's lower left side, and Ichigo roared as he ripped Shirayuki up and towards his right, extending out to his right side, held up at a forty-five degree angle.
Mayuri Kurotsuchi fell to the ground, bisected into two diagonal halves. Left hip to just under his right arm. His grip on Ashisogi Jizo somehow maintained. "Damn...you…" The maniac gasped out, and with the last of his strength, brought his sword up...now returned to it's sealed state...and slashed it across his own throat. His upper half instantly dissolved into a puddle of green goo.
Ichigo stood for a moment, breathing heavily, and then used Hirenkyaku to flash away from the area, not even bothering to stay to hear the rest of Mayuri's escape from certain death.
SCENE BREAK
'Just hold on, Ichigo...we're on our way.' Yoruichi vowed as the cannonball that contained her neko-form, along with Uryu, Chad, Orihime, and one Ganju Shiba. 'Please be alright and don't do anything stupid…'
None of the others noticed, too occupied with holding the shape of the cannonball and worried about what would happen when they hit the barrier that surrounded the Seireitei.
She was the only one who noticed an entire building, though still small and looking merely the size of a bottlecap from their present height and distance...dissolve into pure light and implode in on itself.
She dug her claws into the sphere beneath her that powered the cannonball barrier they were encased in. Ready to abandon her four charges and race after Ichigo the moment her feet landed on solid ground.
'At least you're still alive.'