A blow that never came.
Instead, two dull thuds reached Hitsugaya's ears, accompanied by the wet sound of spraying blood. He peeked an eye open just long enough to see the heads of the two guards, bereft of their bodies, rolling to a halt at either side of him, followed by the louder thuds of their lifeless bodies collapsing bonelessly. A sharp clattering broke his shock as the scimtar was dropped from nerveless fingers and an avalanche of silks and jewels and tears descended on him.
"Oh, gods above and below - TOSHI!!!"
If Hitsugaya was in any way worried that he was dead already, the notion was instantly dispelled by a bone-crushing hug.
"It's you, oh gods in heaven, it's really you!!" Matsumoto was really trying to crush him this time, sobbing in some combination of relief and fear and joy. Her hair was tickling his face, enveloping him in her lush scent, and she was babbling nearly incoherently, which was fine because he was having trouble processing the fact that he was alive, much less the idea that the hideous Queen had suddenly morphed into his warm, bubbly Rangiku. "I couldn't tell at first, and I had to be sure, you can't imagine all the crazy things that have been happening, I woke up in this strange place with everyone kowtowing to me and even familiar people were acting like they didn't even know me and I went looking but I couldn't find you and then that horrid little Kiku said she'd found someone I'd like and then you were right there in front of me but then I wasn't sure if you were addle-brained like the rest of them and what did you do to your hair-!?!"
Impossibly, Hitsugaya found a rough chuckle wrenching out of him as hot tears stung his eyes. "Untie me," he managed, and with a swift gasp Rangiku pulled away, reaching around him to scrabble at his bonds. The moment his hands were loose, he wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to him, choking back a sob of relief as she responded in kind. He never wanted to move from that spot, would have been happy spending the rest of his afterlife breathing her in, but his hindbrain reminded him that they were far from safe.
"Are you okay?" was the first thing he needed to know as he extricated himself just enough to look into her eyes. Warm, blue eyes, the eyes he loved so much, no longer the cold, hard orbs of a stranger.
She nodded, wiping tears from both their faces. "I'm fine, just confused. And freaked out - Toshi, I don't know what the hell is going on but something is terribly wrong here..."
"Tell me about it," he grated. He couldn't seem to keep his hands off her, couldn't stop touching her to make sure she was real. "Rangiku?" he asked softly, almost hesitant, but the emotion that flooded her face left no room for doubt.
"Toshi," she wept, kissing him thoroughly.
When he finally came up for air, his aqua eyes were dancing. "Gods above, Rangi, I had no idea you were such a damned good actress - you scared the shit out of me."
She laughed then, shakily. "Well, you scared me too, baka. I was trying to find you, I had no idea you'd be a brunette!"
He ran a hand through his tousled hair and its foreign color. "It's supposed to be a disguise," he said lamely. "I'm wanted here, you know."
She shuddered. "You don't want to know what I've been finding out. That Kiku babbles up a storm, and the stuff she's been telling me...you're never going to believe who the freaking King is..."
"I heard," he cut her off abruptly. Then a horrible thought struck him. "You haven't run into him, have you?" Hitsguaya asked quickly, his tone rough with worry, but she shook her head, jewels dancing.
"No, thank the gods. Kiku said he's away on some camapign or something right now. I don't know what I'll do if I have to see that face again..." she shuddered, her face losing color.
Hitsugaya bared his teeth at the very idea. "It gets worse; I can't get to Hyourinmarou."
Her eyes flew open in total shock. "What the hell...are you serious?!"
"Of course I am." As if I'd joke about that. "Everyone's power has been sealed, how the hell didn't you know that...?" His own eyes widened in shock as she spoke a few words and a sharp breeze suddenly swept the room. The taste of kido and ash filled his mouth. "You...you've got Heineko!?!"
"Well, no, I don't know where she is. But I've got reiatsu just fine. You don't!?" she shrieked, but before he could answer she swiftly glowered. "No wonder I couldn't find you by feel. I just assumed all my servants were ordinary souls, and that's why I couldn't sense anyone else...but how..?!?"
Hitsugaya swallowed hard, still trying to digest this huge chunk of fortune, and briefly filled her in on Hanataro's story.
Her face was sheet white by the end of his summary. "So, that...blaze to the east is Gin!?!" The hands on his forearms trembled. "My gods, Toshi..." she breathed, her eyes glazing over as she sensed out his power. "He's stronger than you can possibly imagine..."
He really didn't want to explore that path, Hanataro's voice echoing in his ears. "None of that matters, 'cause we're getting out of here. Tell me everything you remember..."
"Oh, gods...well," she screwed her face up in thought. "After you passed out," she winced, throwing him an apologetic look, "I fell alseep right next to you, after I got you to bed. Then I woke up when we Shifted..."
"Shifted?" Hitsugaya pounced on the word. "What are you talking about?"
"Shifted," she repeated. "You know, that horrible feeling like an earthquake in your gut..." At his confusion her expression instantly switched to consternation. "Damn, I keep forgetting how much later than me you started your training. They used to use this...dimensional thing at the Academy decades ago," she continued patiently. "It seemed that some of the more prominent students were exacting quite a bit of property damage during drills, so the Twelfth developed a way to take students into different, like, versions of Sereitei, in order to train." She shrugged miserably. "I don't know any of the science of it or how it worked exactly, but after Shifting we could pretty much run rampant without any permanent damage. Well," she grimaced. "Not to the location, anyway. Damage to students was all too real."
Hitsugaya was flabbergasted. "I've never even heard of anything like that."
"Well, they discontinued program after a while. Something about instability..." Her brow furrowed as she searched her memory, but then she shook her head. "I don't really remember, it was all technical stuff. I just remember the gut-wrenching Shift. " She shuddered. "Once you feel it, you never forget. Nothing like a tranfer to the Real World."
He remembered all too well the nauseating lurch that had woken him that morning. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then. "So you know where we are!?"
"Well, no. I mean, based on the Shifting, we're in some version of Sereitei, but I've never seen anything like this. Back then, it was only ever a mirror of the real Sereitei. This is...twisted." Rangiku shuddered. "It's like some horrible 'What If' scenario..."
That sure as hell was an understatement, but Hitsugaya only cared about one thing. "So how the hell do we get out of here?"
She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. There was always a member of Twelfth to initiate and oversee the dimensional training sessions; I don't know how they operated it."
Well, you didn't really expect it to be that easy did you? No, but he'd hoped...Fine. He still had options. Hanataro was waiting to take him to Ukitake...he glanced at the small window, mouth tightening at the dim light waning through. "Come on, we've got hurry up. Hanataro is waiting, and if we're late..."
"I'm not leaving with you." Hitsugaya gaped at her, but Matsumoto stared back resolutely. "Toshi, I'm a queen here. I can't go anywhere without everyone knowing where I am and what I'm doing. Did you even see my retinue?" He started to protest but she just continued speaking, getting to her feet and twitching her skirts away from the pooling blood of the dead guards. "It's a wonder Kiku hasn't come back yet, actually, she sticks on me like a barnacle. I'd hoped to put the fear of the gods into her with that tantrum, to cover your damning words and to give us some time alone, but she'll come back eventually and if I'm not here all hell will break loose."
He felt like he was floating out of his body. "You're not serious."
"Deadly," Rangiku replied grimly. "The servants are huge gossips, I can learn a lot - how on earth do you think I gleaned enough information to play the wretched Queen? Don't worry, Kiku bombarded me with so many sordid details - you wouldn't believe what this Queen version of me is like, Toshi - that it won't be any trouble to play Her convincingly for a while longer." Before his eyes, Matsumoto regained the coolly regal and thoroughly ugly hauteur she'd so cleverly worn earlier, staring down her nose at him imperiously behind harsh eyes. He shuddered.
"Forget it." He put every ounce of captain's prerogative into his voice that he could. "There's no way I'm letting you out of my sight."
"You don't have a choice, love," she returned firmly. "The only way we can move freely is for you to get the hell out of here and for me to cover for you. If I'm Queen, they won't question me." Hitsugaya shook his head vehemently, but she only glared at him. "Toshi, be serious. As long as I'm royalty I have power that we can use; it's an advantage we cannot give up."
"I can't just let you waltz back to the castle, to the...King," Toushirou spat.
"You can and you will." She used a voice he'd only ever heard at training drills; it didn't have the same effect on him as it did on unseasoned trainees, but it did break through his belligerance long enough for him to hear her words. "This will work, Toshi. You search for the way out, and posing as this damned Queen, I'll help and protect you in every way that I can. It's the only thing that makes sense." Her tone descended into naked pleading as her eyes drilled deeply into his.
"If we split up, I might not find you again."
"Toshi, I'm a goddamn queen! You'll always know where I am!" Ragniku's eyes fairly begged him to see reason.
Hitsugaya blew out hard. He didn't like it one tiny bit. In fact, he downright hated it. And the part he hated the most was that she was right.
He hesitated as long as he could, then with a surge of reluctant resignation, Toushirou pulled her tight against him again. After a long embrace, he spoke into her hair. "Be careful. Stay safe. And if Gin comes back..." he pulled back to look earnestly into her eyes. "Run like hell. Just get the flying hell away from him - I'll find you." Her eyes started to well up, but shining brightly from their depths was the iron determination he adored. She nearly broke his heart with her courage. "Ukitake may be somewhere in the castle," he said roughly around the emotions tightening his throat. "See if you can find him, get him to help you. I'll come to you as soon as I find the way out of here."
She nodded, blinking back her tears. "Head east. I had them stop the procession the minute Kiku spoke up, we shouldn't be too far from where they captured you." And then her lips were on his in bittersweet farewell. Hitsugaya broke off long before he wanted to, before he lost all resolve, and with one last, agonized look he nimbly hauled himself through the window and dropped into the growing darkness beyond.
Matsumoto trembled for a moment as his figure disappeared into the gloom. For one instant she had to bite her tongue to keep from calling him back, halt her feet from following him. Stiffening her back, she wrestled herself back into control. Get a grip, Rankigu, she told herself harshly. You're a captain too now, remember? Act like one. Brushing away the last of her tears, she squared her shoulders and turned on her heel, striding purposefully for the door and settling the Queen's persona around her again.
"Showtime," she murmered as she threw the door open and stepped into the light beyond.