"Karin?" Yuzu tugs at her sister's sleeve. "What's wrong?"
Karin unfreezes and scrambles in her pockets for her can of hollow repellant. "Get away, Yuzu!" she shouts.
It takes her several tries to tug the can out of her pocket, and she fumbles it in her hand and nearly drops it. She backs away, her arms held stiffly out in front of her, brandishing the small can at the hollow.
"Strange gimmick," the girl standing by the hollow says—and what's wrong with her voice? "But that's not going to work!"
The hollow raises a hand. Its arm shoots out at Karin before she can blink. The can is knocked out of her hands, rolling across the floor with a clatter. Karin goes sprawling, her head cracking against hard ground with a jolt of pain. Gritting her teeth, she struggles against the ground, blood streaming from her forehead. The can is a good foot away from her outstretched fingertips.
"Karin!" Yuzu cries, running up. Karin groans and raises her head.
"No, stay back!" she shouts. The hollow's huge hand crashes down on her, crushing her to the ground, forcing a cry out of her lips. She claws against the ground.
"Karin, you're bleeding," Yuzu says, coming to her side. She reaches out to her. "What's…"
"Stop!" Karin chokes out. "Get away… hollow—"
A tentacle lashes around Yuzu's neck and lifts her high in the air. She gasps, clutching at it. Her legs kick through the air as she struggles.
The girl sneers, a cruel look that doesn't belong on her face. "How noisy. Stay out of the way! It's the dark-haired brat I want to eat!"
Yuzu chokes, trying to pry the tentacle off from around her neck. Her movements grow weaker by the second.
A rush of red light slams into the hollow and engulfs it. It howls, sent crashing to the ground a good distance away. Yuzu falls, the tentacle severed, and a blur intercepts her before she can hit the ground.
"Looking to die, hollow?" says a cold voice.
Karin looks up, her breath catching in her throat. Ichigo is standing before her, Yuzu clutched to his chest with one hand, the other raised with black reiatsu swirling around his arm. His eyes gleam with a hint of gold in them.
"You should've come to me from the start. Your death might've even been quick."
Karin coughs, pushing herself up from the ground. "Ichigo," she groans.
Ichigo's eyes soften as he glances down at her. "Karin. You okay?"
Karin nods, then collapses in another coughing fit. Ichigo leans down next to her, resting a hand on her shoulder. His eyes are sharper than the Ichigo she knows, something hard and deadly in them, but she would never feel threatened by her brother.
"Can you stand?" Ichigo says. "If you can, get Yuzu away from here, okay?" He lays an unconscious Yuzu on the floor, and turns to face the hollow.
Its claws scrabble against the floor, pulling it to its feet. Its fur is singed in patches across its body. It growls, turning with pained movements to face him.
"What are you?" says the little girl. "How can you fire a cero?"
Ichigo tenses, looking like he'd been punched in the gut. His fingers curl into fists at his sides. "No way. It was you, six years ago! You were at the river that day!"
He takes a step forward. "What are you doing here? Why are you with a hollow?"
"Oh?" the girl tilts her head, her lips pursed in a slight smile. "So you've seen me before."
Her lips split open in a grin filled with teeth. "How about this, boy? I'll reveal my true nature to you, if you do the same."
Her face goes slack. The skin peels away from her head, sloughing off to reveal a roughly humanoid dummy underneath. Ichigo stumbles back. "What the—"
The dummy connects with a tendril to the hollow's head. Its mask sneers at Ichigo. "What's wrong, boy? You look surprised!"
Ichigo looks pale. "You— who are—"
"Grand Fisher," says a voice behind him. He turns around to see Rukia, leaning against a tree and clutching at a stitch in her side. She straightens up, gasping for breath. "He's well known by the Soul Society."
"What do you mean?" Ichigo says.
She taps some buttons on her pager. "He uses the lure on his head to find the spiritually aware, then eats them and absorbs their power. He's been a menace to shinigami as well. He's managed to evade us for 54 years, and racked up quite a rap sheet during that time."
Her pager prints out a slip of paper. She tears it off and hands it to Ichigo. He stares down at a list of names and dates—casualties—printed neatly across it.
The paper crumples in his hand. "Rukia," Ichigo says, quiet in a tightly controlled voice. "Get me out of my body."
Rukia pulls on her glove and slams the heel of her palm into his chest. He stumbles back, and his body collapses beside him, Rukia intercepting it before it hits the ground. She grunts under its dead weight.
Ichigo draws his sword and swings it around to point at Grand Fisher. His eyes flash a harsh yellow. "I've been looking for you for a long time. Your luck's run out, hollow."
"Oh?" the hollow says, tilting its head. "You're a shinigami."
"Not quite," Ichigo says. "Rukia!" he calls out without turning around. "Take my sisters and get out of here."
She looks up from struggling with his body. "Ichigo! Don't be reckless! I told you—this is a very dangerous hollow! You need my help!"
"Just go!" Ichigo shouts. "I'll be fine!"
His hand tightens around his sword's hilt. "This is my battle."
Rukia is silent then. He hears her wrestle Kon out of her backpack, stuff the pill into his body, and drag the mod soul off protesting. They're soon gone into the forest that surrounds the cemetery.
"Well?" says Grand Fisher. "Your friends are gone. Are you going to fight now, boy?"
"Oh, you're going to get your fight," Ichigo says. His mouth draws into a slow smile. "It won't be a long one."
He closes his eyes and when he opens them they glow yellow against solid black. Grand Fisher barely has a chance to be shocked before Ichigo blurs and disappears, and his sword lashes out straight for the hollow's mask.
The hollow ducks to one side, the tip of the blade just grazing against its mask. Ichigo swings his sword down and the blade shatters the ground as Grand Fisher leaps back.
"What are you?" the hollow growls. The look in its eyes is starting to become apprehensive.
Ichigo lifts his head. A crazed smile pulls at his lips and the corner of a white mask is forming over his left eye. He chuckles humorlessly. "I don't know. Maybe you can figure out. 'Cause I sure haven't in all this time."
He grabs his sword's hilt with his other hand, flips the blade, and slashes it up with a yell. An arc of black energy tears across the ground, a solid wall extending to the sky.
The wave of black dissipates, leaving a deep fissure across the earth. The hollow drags itself away, gasping and wheezing, two of its limbs disintegrated and blood marking a trail across the ground.
Ichigo stands watching it with slight amusement in his eyes. "First time I tried that. Turned out more powerful than I expected."
'Of course, you idiot,' his hollow says, but Ichigo senses a wave of fierce pride from him. 'That's the true form of that attack.'
"That so?" Ichigo says. "I'll keep it in mind—"
A tendril of fur lashes out at Ichigo. He leaps back, raising his sword to block, but the fur surges around his blade and wraps around his limbs. He snarls, tearing at it with fingers tipped with claws.
"Ichigo!" Rukia's voice shouts from the sidelines. He glances over in shock.
She raises one hand, palm pointed at the hollow. "Disintegrate, you black dog of Rondanini!"
"Rukia, no!" Ichigo shouts. "Get out of here!"
A tendril of fur curls around his neck. He tears his sword free and slashes at the mass of fur, severing most of it and feeling its grip fall limp around him. He hacks away at it, chunks of brown hair flying into the air, until the tendril retreats.
Ichigo lowers his sword, breathing hard. "Rukia, you shouldn't be here. I don't want you to get hurt."
"I won't," Rukia says. "Have you no faith?"
"I meant," Ichigo says slowly, "I don't want to hurt you, accidentally."
"Ichigo," Rukia says in a quieter voice. "That mask— what is…"
Ichigo glances away. "Don't worry about it."
He leaps forward. Grand Fisher regenerates an arm and a leg from his fur and stands up. He sneers at Ichigo. "Do you think you've won?"
His fur surges at Ichigo again. Ichigo leaps into the air, flashing to one side as it follows him, and slices it apart. He vanishes in a blur.
"You're gonna have to be more creative than that."
Grand Fisher turns to find Ichigo behind him. He throws himself back from Ichigo's swing, taking a deep gash across his side. Ichigo's sword smashes into the ground, shattering it, as the hollow leaps into the air.
He lands behind Ichigo. Ichigo whirls around, bringing up his sword. Grand Fisher's arm elongates, his hand flying at him. Ichigo braces himself as its palm slams into the blade.
Ichigo grits his teeth, forced a step back. Grand Fisher's mask twists into a grotesque smile. The skin on the tip of his fingers splits open and claws shoot out straight at Ichigo. Ichigo's eyes widen. He knocks the hollow's hand away with his sword and leaps aside, as the tip of one claw catches him across the chest and draws a line of blood.
Ichigo's mouth draws into a vicious smile. He grabs Grand Fisher's arm with his free hand, sinks claws into flesh, twists and tears. There's the sound of snapping tendons and bones as the hollow screeches. Ichigo tosses the arm to one side. Blood splatters over the ground, drips from Ichigo's claws, droplets splashing across his face and hair.
"Regenerate all you want, Grand Fisher," Ichigo hisses. "I'll just tear you apart until you can't."
The hollow chuckles. It leers at him gloatingly. "I got you, boy!"
Ichigo frowns. "What's that?"
"Why do you think I fought you with those claws?" Grand Fisher crows. "You're strong, boy, but you're much too reckless! You discarded your defense just to get close to me!"
Ichigo levels his sword at the hollow. "You think you can pull tricks to beat me?"
"Oh, yes." The hollow flexes its claw. "I've got a good one." He swings the lure down from his head, the skin covering it and turning back into the facsimile of a human girl. He closes his claw over her head.
"Don't you wonder how I've managed to best the shinigami for so many years?"
"Not really," Ichigo says stiffly, hand clenched on his sword.
Grand Fisher's fur grows out and regenerates his left hand. He raises it, extending claws. "With these claws, I can find your weakness. Every shinigami, no matter how heartless, has that one person he can't cut. And I already know who that one is for you!"
He moves his hand aside from his dummy, revealing a familiar face and a flash of auburn hair. Ichigo's breath catches in his throat. A hand of ice closes over his heart.
He stumbles back. "No. No, it can't be."
'Ichigo,' his hollow says warningly. Ichigo hardly hears. He can't tear his eyes away from the face that haunts his dreams and nightmares, his mother who now stands before him.
"Ichigo?" Masaki says. Ichigo flinches. It's her voice, her voice he remembers so well and thought he'd never hear again. The sound strikes him down to his very core.
'Ichigo, pay attention!'
Ichigo starts. He raises his sword as Grand Fisher's clawed hand slams into it, sending him skidding back a step.
He knocks the hand aside. "Damn you!" He lunges forth with his sword. And he stops dead, its point at Masaki's face.
"No," his mother pleads. "Put the sword down. You wouldn't hurt your mommy, would you?"
Ichigo's hands grip around the hilt of his sword so tight the knuckles turn white. They're shaking. He feels like hands are choking him, like he can't breathe.
'No!' his inner hollow is howling in his head. 'It's a trick! A trick! Cut him down, now!'
"Ichigo!" Rukia cries from the sidelines, and oh yeah, he's fighting. He's fighting to avenge his mother. His mother is dead.
He raises his sword with a hoarse cry and tries to charge for Grand Fisher, but Masaki's in the way. She smiles softly at him. "Oh, come on now. Drop the sword."
A growl rattles in Ichigo's throat. "No. Don't… don't pretend to be my mother!"
He swings his sword and it catches her in a slash across her body. Blood spills across his sword, the ground. She screams.
It's the very sound that haunts his worst nightmares.
She stares at him in shock, horror. "Why, Ichigo? Why would you hurt your own mother?"
Ichigo takes a step back. His sword falls from his hands. It clatters loud on the ground.
"You really are a monster, aren't you?" She sounds crueler than any Masaki he's ever known. Her words tear into his heart like jagged knives, no matter how he tries to ignore them. "You aren't human after all."
'Don't listen to her!' his hollow roars, and all of a sudden he's upon him and trying to shove him out of control.
He doubles over, clutching at his head with a hoarse scream.
Claws slam into him out of nowhere, tearing into flesh, muscle, tossing him across the graveyard. He lands and doesn't get up, his own blood splashing the ground.
Rukia runs to Ichigo with a scream. Panic is choking at her throat, overwhelming all her years of training. Her fault, her thoughts run over and over, her fault she let him fight alone, her fault if he dies, her fault, her fault, her fault.
She crouches near him, her hands trembling. What can she even do? His left arm is broken, a fragment of jagged bone piercing through his skin. Blood oozes from deep gashes across his side and ribs, forming an ever-growing pool around him.
And the rain won't stop pouring down.
"Ichigo!" The wild scream, filled with so much despair, is her own.
Rain in a dark night and blood on her hands and Kaien's hand on her back, Kaien's smile—
Is she doomed to fail everyone around her?
It takes her two tries to activate her healing kidou. She reaches her hand, shrouded in a green glow, to Ichigo.
A hand closes around hers, grip tight and reassuring, warmth seeping into her fingers. Ichigo's eyes are open. A smile curls at his lips.
"What's wrong, girl?" His voice is not his own. "This ain't like you. You really care so much about us dying?"
He pushes himself up gingerly with one arm. "Don't worry. This bastard won't take us down."
Rukia blinks away tears that are lost in the rain. "You idiot," she says in a tight voice. "Stay still. Your arm is broken."
"Ah." He grimaces. "It'll heal."
He stands up, staggering and clutching his left arm. "Yo! Grand Fisher!"
A cruel smile stretches across his face. "It's my turn now."
(Zan still hasn't told Ichigo the name of his Getsuga)
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