Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
"I don't profess to know the difference between a human and an overwrought lump of clay, but I could imagine that humans are capable of very mysterious things."
~Hikifune Muertara, cousin of Kirio and Miyako, and current Acting Head of the Hikifune Family
"HACHI!" Shinji yelled.
"Fuck it!" Kensei screamed. "We're all gonna die unless we get out of here! Mashiro, move it!"
Mashiro pushed the pedal so hard it could have gone straight through the bottom of the van floor. The van shot off down the highway.
"Goddamn it, Kensei," Shinji swore, trying to squash down his emotions.
"You think I'm happy about it?" Kensei pissed from the back of the converted cargo van. Besides the driver and passenger-side driver seat, the rest of it had been emptied out with a wheelchair lock and an electric-powered retractable ramp - so Kensei was clutching side rails. "I don't got time to think about it - we're being tailed."
Hiyori was overwhelmed. What the hell is going on? She clutched the sides of her portable wheelchair to brace herself as Mashiro pulled the van into a hard right. Shinji looked back from the front passenger seat.
"Mashiro, they're gaining on us!" Kensei called from the back.
"Alright, hold on!"
Mashiro did a hard right through a red light, swerving off onto a main route, weaving into traffic amidst a course of honks.
That's when bullets shattered the back windows of the van. "FUCK!" Kensei screamed, showered in glass. Hiyori ducked as low as she could as bits of glass dust got into her hair.
Mashiro swore and did a hard left this time, and Shinji began to sweat. "Hey, wait a minute, where the hell are you going? !"
"Hold on tight, everybody!"
"MASHIRO, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
Mashiro slammed hard on the breaks as she jammed the steering wheel to the side. "Brace yourself, Kensei!"
Shinji winced as though his life was moving in slow motion. The van rotated 180 degrees before it slammed into a guard rail with enough momentum to rattle Shinji's rib cage. With an ear-splitting crunch, the van went straight through the guard rail in reverse, over the edge of the overpass and right into oncoming traffic.
Kensei was slammed into the back doors of the van as it landed hard with a thunderous crack; the remaining windows shattering from the impact. Just as he regained his balance, Mashiro gunned the engine, shooting them forward head-first into a sea of oncoming cars before Mashiro could pull over onto the right side of the highway. "Ugh... I'm gonna fucking kill you," Kensei grunted.
"Enough with the swearing, and start shooting, goddamnit!" Mashiro retorted. Although they had lost the two black sedans, they could see a black SUV, coming from a different route, that was turning onto their trail.
Mashiro dodged in and out of cars as she sped faster and faster down the highway. Kensei opened up one of the duffel bags and pulled out a dual-barrel shotgun.
"Holy shit, where did you get that?" Hiyori asked. Japan's gun control laws were so tight that Hiyori couldn't even legally buy a handgun. The possession of a shotgun without a license was a serious crime.
"Just a little insurance I bought from Urahara a while back," he answered, loading the rounds and opening fire. The shotgun had terrible accuracy, but it didn't matter. At this range, the heavy shots chipped the windshield on the SUV, putting holes into the hood and front grille. "Damnit, they got some kind of bulletproof glass."
"Whatever - don't stop!" Mashiro shouted, swerving.
"You don't need to tell me!" Kensei shouted back, reloading. He fired again, this time aiming for the man trying to shoot out the side window. The shooter dived back into the safety of the car, but started firing again when Kensei reloaded.
Bullets flew in, and Hiyori began to panic when three of them hit the ceiling above her. Her blood was pumping too hard, too fast; she wasn't used to this kind of adrenaline anymore and her hyper-stimulated cardiac system gave her a wave of intense dizzyness. It was so bad that Hiyori's vision blurred. Shinji was shouting something at her, but the words were turning into mush in her ears. The only thing she could make out was a spray of bullets colliding into the van's cargo doors. But all the horror in the world was incomparable to when Shinji unbuckled his seatbelt. "Shinji! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Hiyori yelled from her crouched position as Mashiro did a hard-right off the main highway onto a smaller one.
"EVERYBODY DOWN!" Kensei shouted.
A man in a dark suit had opened up the sunroof of the SUV, and was now able to fire a shoulder-launched rocket at the back of the van. Mashiro swerved into another lane, and the rocket barely clipped the back right side of the van, exploding but not enough to cause serious damage.
Shinji shouted to Mashiro. "Get to the sidewinder road!"
"Are you out of your fucking mind? !" Hiyori yelled at him. "We'll go off a cliff!"
Shinji ignored her as he dug around in the duffel bags, eventually grabbing his zanpakutou and jumping back into the front seat.
Kensei fired off two more rounds, causing the SUV to fall back a little bit. "Hurry up, Shinji! I don't have a lot of ammo- FUCK! INCOMING!"
A rocket pounded into the back of the van, exploding the doors inward. Glass and metal shards flew everywhere; shrapnel ricocheting off the inside walls and embedding into the back of Shinji's seat. Kensei took the brunt of the impact and was bleeding badly from his eyebrow. They were sitting ducks with the back of the cargo van blown wide open, and Hiyori didn't know if Kensei would be able to provide any further pressure on their pursuers.
"Any time now, Shinji!" Kensei swore angrily, wiping blood from his eyes.
"Almost there!" Mashiro shouted.
Shinji pulled out his zanpakutou as Mashiro turned onto the winding road by the mountains, speeding down it probably faster than was warranted.
Kensei fired the shotgun again, trying to keep the man with the rocket launcher from sticking out of the SUV. "GODDAMNIT, SHINJI, HURRY THE FUCK UP!"
Shinji grimaced. They weren't quite at the turn yet.
"Almost..." Mashiro said, easing on the break as she pulled into the hairpin turn at a dangerous speed. "NOW!"
"Collapse, Sakanade!" Shinji shouted.
The SUV had no idea what hit them. The driver turned right, thinking that he would cling to the wall of the mountain-side road and follow them in the hairpin turn -
But it was an inverted world; and without realizing it, he steered the SUV right off the cliff; sending it tumbling down two hundred meters down the moutain face and into the Pacific ocean.
-:-
Ichigo was eating lunch in the hospital. He had exactly seven-and-a-half minutes for his lunch break. His residency was demanding, but it was an excellent program; so he put up with it. Meeting Rukia every five hours made it even more crazy than it already was, but he had no choice.
The television in the break room was blaring. Just the news. More crisis in the economy. The war in Europe was still raging. It was all the same. Ichigo had enough depressing things to focus on in the hospital - kids who were stuck with cancer, trauma victims - so he tended to tune out the news.
Despite the hectic insanity that his life was right now, it was actually not so bad. Since he got married ten years ago, things had been quiet. The fall of Aizen, and the crushing of Hueco Mundo's most savage leaders, had left an era of uneventful peace. Whereas the first two years of Ichigo's high-school career were filled with war, his junior and senior year had been uneventful. There were still the routine hollow kills, but beyond that, life moved on.
He graduated along with Ishida and Orhihime at the top of his class, with Tatsuki not far behind. Chad also did pretty well, although he opted not to go to university. His band had signed with a small record label, and Chad toured the country for a while. Chad ultimately gave it up, though. Chizuru and her girlfriend of several years had been brutally murdered in a hate crime incident, and when Chad came back to Karakura to pay his respects, he found himself unable to go back to the carefree rocker lifestyle. The whole incident really affected him, and he gave it up. Instead, he got involved in a nonprofit organization that specialized in tolerance education programs, and was now using his musical talents to design and organize special programs for schools all over the country. As a victim himself of racism in a country that still had a subtle distaste for foreigners, Chad found a way to help others in a way that was unique to his own talents.
Keigo skipped out on college and had opened up a comic book store, and Mizuro had decided to go to university in Singapore. Ichigo, Tatsuki, Ishida and Orihime all went to Tokyo University. Tatsuki majored in nursing and earned her R.N., Ichigo and Ishida went pre-med. Because of their long-standing rivalry, they both ended up pushing each other until they graduated with high honors. Orihime had unfortunately been unable to finish college, but she was going to go back as soon as she could.
Medical school had gone well. Ichigo wasn't really surprised he had become a doctor like his old man. Rukia always knew he would follow in the family business; after all, if he would protect people with a zanpakutou, it would only make sense he would want to protect them with medicine, too. His wife would tease him, though, that despite the fact that he was actually a very good physician, he still couldn't use medical kido. He had to admit that it was remarkably ironic. On the other hand, he was an excellent surgeon - Rukia was forced to jokingly admit that he was decent with a blade, no matter the size.
Ishida had deferred his residency in order to help take care of Orihime. He had proposed to her already, although neither of them knew when (or if) they would get married. Ichigo took his residency in Tokyo, both because it was an excellent place to do his residency and also so he could be close to home. Although Ichigo and Rukia had a small studio apartment close to the hospital, Ichigo often still stayed in his father's house when Rukia wasn't in town. He couldn't really find it in his heart to leave his dad there all alone. Rukia thought it was a bit weird that Ichigo voluntarily wanted to live with his dad, but she did think that it was good for Isshin.
Yuzu had gone to culinary school, and of course graduated at the top of her class. Despite being straight out of school, she was immediately hired as a sous chef in a very prestigious restaraunt in downtown Tokyo. Considering that she had been in a nurse in the family clinic for nearly all her life, Yuzu still wanted to go back to school for nursing some day - but for the time being, she was happy where life had taken her.
Jinta was still hitting on her, but he failed to catch the hint that she was more interested in Ururu. Yuzu's confession had been a complete surprise, but everyone in the family had been very supportive when she came out of the closet. Ururu herself was completely oblivious, so Yuzu didn't really pursue it. Jinta was not as easily dissuaded, though. On more than one occasion, Karin wanted to punch him and tell him to get lost; but Yuzu didn't seem to mind too much.
Karin had gone to university in Osaka, where she studied neurobiology. She played for the university's soccer team, and had been noticed. She had just graduated, and within the past few weeks had been recruited for both the World Cup and even the Olympics, both remarkable requests given her relatively young age. Karin was still trying to sort it all out and determine what she wanted to do. Toshiro was annoyed - he saw her rarely enough as it was - but was helping her sort out how she felt about all the attention and what she would do for the future. Ichigo was happy for Karin, but wasn't sure how he was going to explain to the Soutaicho that the Division Black vice captain couldn't come to the lieutenant's meetings because she was kicking a ball around.
Ichigo was taking a big bite out of his sandwich - pastrami on a ciabatta roll with mustard & mayo that Yuzu had given him when she came to visit the night before - when the news caught his attention.
"The National Anti-Terrorism Agency firebombed a terrorist cell this afternoon in downtown Karakura. Two terrorists have already been killed, and the NATA is in hot pursuit. We have live footage of a helicopter chasing after a white sedan. The terrorist group has already taken two hostages, identified as twenty-five-year old Ishida Uryu, and his fiance, twenty-six-year-old Inoue Orihime. The terrorists are speeding down Route 36, and NATA is closing the roads as we speak..."
Ichigo whipped out his cell and got Karin on the phone as he rushed to find a place to get Kon in his body. Karin picked up the phone and he could hear American jet planes in the background. "Did you see the news?"
"I'm opening a senkai gate right now. I'll inform the Soutaicho about the attack," Karin confirmed.
"I don't know what's going on, but -"
"Ichi-nii, I got this - go!"
"On it," he confirmed, hanging up the phone and dialing Rukia.
-:-
"Hado #31: Shot of Red Fire!" Lisa cast, leaning out of the back window of Orihime's ancient white Nissan Maxima. The helicopter easily evaded it. "Damnit, this isn't working!" she shouted over the roar of the open windows on the highway.
Ishida was worried about Orhihime. She was driving, but she wasn't used to this kind of excitement. Still, she seemed to be holding her resolve together pretty well. Her face was stern and serious and focused, though. For a moment, she even looked like the Inoue who had once infiltrated Soul Society with impugnity, before the kidnapping into Hueco Mundo broke her spirit and before the cancer had killed her Shun-Shun Rikka.
Love fired off a Hado #33: Blue Fire, Crash Down; and Lisa added a Hado #32: Yellow Fire Flash. The helicopter evaded, but apparently the pilot had enough, and started to open fire. Lisa put up a Bakudo #39: Arc Shield to defend them, but the reiatsu-based shield had trouble blocking physical matter, and the bullets sank into the trunk.
"Orihime, keep it steady!" Ishida shouted.
"Uryu, what the... no! Are you nuts?"
Ishida climbed out the sunroof, and in a flash of hirenkyaku, flickered over the underside of the helicopter. Coasting on a surface of reishi, he whipped out a Seele Schneider and sliced off the machine guns mounted to the side of the copter. He was worried about revealing his Quincy powers to the pursuers - it was clear that they were coming after the vaizard, and he didn't want them to think he was a threat - but he had no choice.
Cutting a hole in the bottom of the helicopter, he let the metal floor fall away and started firing arrows of energy into the cockpit. The pilot was completely taken by surprise, but started weaving and bobbing the helicopter in an attempt to smash him in mid-air. Ishida was going to fall back, but that was when he noticed the news helicopter that had been tailing them.
If a news helicopter caught video of him hovering in mid-air, there were going to be a lot of problems.
Thinking quickly, he grabbed onto the landing rail of the helicopter, holding on for dear life as it spiraled, corkscrewed, twisted, careened, and otherwise throttled in an attempt to shake him off. Ishida's eyes were burning from the smoke and exhaust of the helicopter, and sparks were flying from severed wires in the floor he had cut. Fluids were also leaking, and it was clear that the pilot was having trouble.
"GETSUGA TENSHOU!"
Uryu dived out of the way to see Kurosaki's massive energy wave attack slice off the helicopter tail and a part of the blades. The helicopter began to lose control, and the pilot did an emergency ejection. After that, the copter dropped like a stone. Too close for comfort, Kurosaki flashed by and nabbed Ishida just before the helicopter hit the highway road, erupting into a giant ball of fire. The explosion made a deafening sound that instinctively made them throw their arms in front of their faces.
"You idiot!" Ishida yelled at him. "There's a news helicopter behind us!"
"You moron!" Ichigo yelled back. "I just saved your life and all you can think about is the cameras! ?"
"You dimwit! I was going to break my fall after I was out of their range of vision!"
"You dumbass! At that rate, you were going to break your fall with the pavement!"
Ishida pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Nevermind. We have to move - there's another copter coming this way!"
Ichigo swore, and the two of them flashed off down the grassy area on the side of the highway and into a wooded area. It didn't matter, though - they had been spotted, and now several larger Osprey helicopters were converging over the field. Streams and streams of soldiers in black military uniforms came diving out on ropes, and the unit began to follow them off into the forest.
"Goddamnit," Ichigo swore. "If you were like me, you could get out of your body and they wouldn't be able to see you."
"If I was like you, I would still be living with my parents," Ishida retorted.
"Ha ha, very funny," Ichigo countered sarcastically. "Move it!"
The two of them flashed through the trees, getting deeper and deeper into the wooded area at the base of the mountainous ranges south of Tokyo and Karakura.
From behind them, they could hear an uproar as fighting erupted. A huge blast of energy exploded behind them, and both of them could easily identify the familiar reiatsu. "Karin!" Ichigo exclaimed.
"She must have come with reinforcements - c'mon, let's go!"
As they retraced their steps back, the battle scene was intense. It was like the God of War had descended on a clearing inside a thick copse of trees. Karin was there, leading a squad of Onmitsukido, who occasionally served as backup reinforcements for Division Black. Normally, it was the 13th division's responsibility to handle hollow hunting and skirmishes on Earth, but the 13th had been spread thin, with the raging war in Europe leaving a larger number of souls than usual requiring shinigami services. Ichigo recognized the 2nd Division 3rd Seat, Hana Tsubaki, engaged in hand-to-hand with a group of heavily geared soldiers. The entire forest clearing was was littered with ninja-uniformed Shinigami Covert Ops and the SWAT-like soldiers, who wore no kind of identification.
Karin had obtained the high ground, and was raining bakudo and hado spells down like mad. She hadn't drawn either her kodachi or tachi yet, preferring to circle the clearing and fire off Hado #31s.
Unlike Ichigo, who was heavily focused in swordsmanship and shunpo, Karin was a well-balanced shinigami with equal skill in shunpo, kido, zanjutsu, and hakuda. Her claim-to-fame, though, was that she was one of the very rare shinigami who had learned to use shunko. Besides its intial practitioners, Shihoin Yoruichi and Soifon, the only other shinigami known to have achieved this very precise art was Soifon's protege, Hana Tsubaki - and Karin didn't have the benefit of Soifon's training like Tsubaki did. Karin had figured it out all on her own.
Tsubaki planted her palm in the bridge of a soldier's nose, smashed him in the groin with her knee, and then spun around with her kodachi-sized zanpakutou behind her to cut a soldier across the throat. She dodged a punch from behind, seizing the attacker's hand as it passed her shoulder and flipped him over into one of Karin's oncoming fireballs.
Ishida got to work, spraying the area with a volley of arrows in an attempt to break down the swarm of reinforcements that were arriving. Ichigo went bankai, although his captain's seal limited the reiatsu blast too much for the transformation sequence to affect the battle. With sizzling speed, he sent an array of turbo-charged moon fangs into the surrounding copse of trees. The copse collapsed, hindering access to the clearing and creating greater confusion amidst the chaos. It left a narrow escape route and forced the incoming SWAT members to funnel in through a central location, allowing the shinigami to get into a better formation.
"Spamming GTs again, Ichi-nii?" Karin teased as she flashed past him for a moment.
"Meh, you're just pissed off that you still can't do it yet," he teased back.
Tsubaki stabbed another soldier in the throat, kicked another in the face, and punched another in the gut before hurling him out of the way. She was actually a surprisingly sweet and caring individual, but fighting was fighting, and she took it seriously. "Guys, we gotta get out of here! We're outnumbered, and I don't know that we can take those soldiers if they break through our front line!"
Karin nodded, looking to Ishida. "The rest of us can escape through a normal senkai gate, but you have to get out of here."
Ichigo agreed. "Let's get moving - retreat!"
As the small squadron (now led by Ichigo) sped out the southern edge of the woods, Karin pondered out loud. "I don't know how or why these guys can see us - I mean, they're definitely human. They should be passing right through us - but for some reason they can fight our spirit-based bodies."
Ichigo had no chance to dwell on it, for the moment that they emerged from the clearing onto another stretch of highway, Orhime's sedan was parked there waiting for them.
"We traced your reiatsu," Orhihime explained.
"No time for talking now," Karin ordered. Ishida and Inoue may be older, but she was officially the lieutenant. She would order them around if she needed to. "Quick, Ishida, get in!"
"Where's Love?" Ichigo asked as Ishida climbed in to the old Nissan.
"Dead," Lisa explained, slamming the door. "Shot in the head during a car chase. I detonated their vehicle with kido after that."
"But-" Tsubaki interjected.
"-that shouldn't kill him, right? Injure his gigai but leave his soul intact, right? Yeah, that's what we thought, too - but the same thing happened to Hachi. We don't know what's going on, but whoever's behind this knows what they're doing. Rose is dead, too; and someone almost got Hiyori earlier today."
Ichigo interrupted the chatter. "Hurry up, get outta here! It's probably too dangerous to go back to Karakura, and Tokyo is too close to there. Head to Norigaka. We'll get the 12th to open a spiritron-converter gate there, and you guys can hide out in Soul Society for a while." Orihime nodded and fired off faster than he could blink, tires squealing against the pavement.
He then called his wife while Karin and Hana prepared senkai gates for the shinigami forces. "Rukia?"
"Ichigo - is everything okay?"
"No," he answered. "Rose, Hachi and Love are dead, and we don't know where Shinji, Hiyori, Kensei or Mashiro are."
"They're safe - I'm setting up a rendevouz point for them now off an exit from Route 36. Hirako-san radioed Urahara-san."
"Good - we're sending Lisa-san, Ishida, and Inoue to Soul Society."
"We'll gate a gate ready," Rukia answered. "Ichigo, the Soutaicho called for an emergency captain's meeting, so you should come in to give a report. Let Karin-chan help Sado-kun on hollow duty - the 10th is going to investigate, and Hitsugaya Taicho wants to see her. Matsumoto-san is coming and I'll send Kotsubaki San Seki for support."
"Okay, see you soon," he answered hastily and hung up. He relayed the status to Karin, who nodded somberly; and then he and Hana headed to Soul Society. Hopefully, he could get some explanations.
Reviews, please! What did you think of the car chase? Let me know! Next chapter: Banzo Ichihime. Yadomaru Lisa. Ise Nanao. Shiba Kuukaku. Soifon. C'mon, you know - it's all about Da Ladies.