Ichigo couldn't see anything around him. It was as if someone had popped his eyeballs out of his socket. Perhaps that was the case, but he doubted it; he felt no pain in his eyeballs.
Slowly, he forced his eyes to open and became horrified at what he saw.
Before him stood a once magnificent city, bristling with people and towered with skyscrapers, now reduced to rubbles. Smokes filled the sky and survivors of this mystery attack screamed.
Ichigo didn't see any of the 'fullbringers' as they called themselves. They had disappeared. But he was still here.
And just then, a Senkaimon opened.
Then he remembered that he had been holding Rukia. He looked down at his arms... and he found her there, dead and cold. But she was smiling. Why was she smiling?
"W-What did you do, Ichigo?"
Ichigo turned around and saw Renji and Uryu with many other Quincies and shinigamis.
"I didn't do anything! I just woke up and saw all this!"
"Just woke up?" Renji growled. "You baka, we feel your reiatsu all over the place!" Abruptly, he stopped, for he saw his wife in Ichigo's arms. "R-Rukia!"
Ichigo's eyes narrowed into sadness.
"You bastard..."
Ichigo looked up at Uryu.
"Huh?"
"I knnow you're an arrancar and might have more bloodlust than normal humans but you went too far, Kurosaki," Uryu hissed.
"Wait-"
Uryu pulled his bow up and fired multiple arrows at Ichigo.
"Wait, damn it!"
"There's nothing to be said anymore! Let go of my wife!" Renji shouted. "Bankai!"
Several people sat on top of a mountain far away from Karakura City, about a mile or so away. And from here Kenji felt the reiatsu of three beings clash, and he chuckled at the thought of friends fighting each other. "That was a nice one, eh, Shiza-chan!" he said to another Fullbringer wearing the same black trench coat that Kenji and Bihumada wore.
"I believe it is."
Shiza was a petite and lean woman with wavy red hair that would've made men drool just with a glimpse of it. Her face was no exception. Her beauty was only matched by Rangiku. Sadly for the men who want her, her curves were just average.
"Shiza-chan, cheer up! We're closer to our goal!" he said with a smile. "We got Kurosaki scapegoated, no?"
She merely nodded. "I understand." Then she turned around and slowly walked away. "Do not forget what Bihumada said."
Kenji's face darkened. "I got it."
Ichigo, while fighting his two friends, realized that the old release commands he knew for Zangetsu didn't work. To be more exact on that, the zanpakuto in his hand didn't feel like zanpakuto. And he was right. Truth be told, when he died a century ago, Zangetsu was forced to become part of Ichigo's soul again and was broken down into many pieces to fill up the hole that he had created by being ... well, him. Now a new zanpakuto had been formed from different fragments of Ichigo's soul.
Problem be specified, Ichigo did not know his zanpakuto's release command.
Ichigo growled as Uryu's arrow hit his left shoulder. He looked at it and saw that a bomb was attached at the end of the arrow. Before Ichigo could curse himself for not seeing that, the bomb exploded.
Renji took this chance to use shunpo, grab Rukia, and shunpo away.
Ichigo remained in the cloud of gas and dust that the bomb had created by exploding on his hierro.
"I can't believe this."
Uryu and Renji narrowed their eyes. Anger had shrouded both of their eyes; they no longer cared if Ichigo was their friend, he was a hollow, nothing more, nothing less.
But no, Ichigo was too strong to die by the likes of them.
The dust cloud blew away by the winds and Ichigo stood there with blood on his forehead.
"Why?"
"What do you expect, Kurosaki," Uryu said, he sounded hurt. "You're becoming a danger to everyone."
"I didn't hurt Rukia ... or do this," he said as he swayed a little to his right. He coughed up some blood. Over the last century, his two friends had really progressed with their powers. "But I won't be going easy because you were my friends," he said as he unintentionally unleashed a wave of reiatsu that began to distort the air just by being there.
They saw it and soon realized the power difference between them.
'Clean your heart out,' a voice within him said. 'Unleash it. Let it out on ... them.'
"Unleash my hidden anger," he said. The air around him swirled as energy built up. Everyone present knew this to be his release command. And it didn't sound ... benevolent, to say the least.
"Loco Ocultos."
A large around him became engulfed in dark reiatsu that blinded everyone's sight.
But they were easily blown away by the slightest pressure given off by the wind; they were remnants of a reiatsu.
But that in itself did not make sense to Uryu. If there was remnants of reiatsu, then that meant that-
"He ran away!" he growled.
"Guada a Dios."
Everyone turned to where Ichigo had been standing previously. By now, all of the remnant reiatsu had vanished and in place stood ... a different Ichigo.
It was a bit different from how Uryu remembered but it was like the first version of arrancar that Uryu saw of Ichigo. A skull-like helmet with two blade-like horns and a hole in the middle of the chest. Fur around his wrists, ankles, and neck, and a very unfamiliar looking weapon on his hand.
It was a scythe. But it was nearly invisible, only perceptible by the microscopic distorts it caused.
But there was something else.
No one present felt his reiatsu.
"Do you remember, friends?" Ichigo began. "When I was a shinigami, I only had Getsuga Tenshou to fight with. But not anymore."
"What do you mean?" Renji asked, a bit scared and confused by Ichigo's hollow voice and his sudden change in attitude.
"I still retain that technique," he replied as he raised his middle finger. "But what if I could explode it with a snap," he continued as he put his thumb to it. "Of my fingers?"
Snap.
-
