I'm thinking about putting up a companion story to this one, something about the years that are missing. There are a lot of Ichihime moments that happen in this story's universe and timeline that I wont be able to work into this particular plot, so I was thinking about putting up another to show them to you, along with other things, like what happened to everyone else in the series, the various relationships between my original characters, and so on. Any thoughts?

To "The Snow Lady," your review was by far my favorite, thank you very much. I suppose I'll just have to stop whining and get back to writing now, won't I?

I like this chapter, I've been waiting to write it since around when I started this story. I think you'll see why. One warning, though: My Japanese is based on my little knowledge of their grammar and an online translator, so the words that I use may or may not be accurate. It's not intentional, I just don't know Japanese.

Emmy

Sato, of course, was Tatsuki.

She should have known. All of the signs were there—black hair, her fighting style, even the Zanpakuto release made it obvious. She'd never found out what had happened to Tatsuki, had never been able to bring herself to ask. She hadn't wanted to know. But now she did know, at least some of what had happened. She knew what Tatsuki had become, and that could well have been enough.

Sato stood there, recovered from her turn, rubbing at the back of her neck, apparently annoyed by the lack of hair to cover yet another scar on her back.

Tatsuki wasn't Tatsuki anymore, and that one thought, that concept, nearly drove Orihime to her knees. But she didn't let herself fall. She couldn't allow herself to be weak. She couldn't.

Never again. Not in front of him.

She knew she had to top herself before she became weak. She would be strong, as she had been strong for centuries now. She would not relax, would not let her emotions show. Well, not except for one.

Anger was a wonderful tool. Extremely dangerous, especially in capable hands, but to Orihime, it was nothing but a tool. A tool that she needed, one that she never put to use. It was a last resort, a trump card in her arsenal. She had it, but never let it flow, never exposed it to the light. She knew the horrors of anger, but she also knew when she had no choice. Now, she had to stay standing, and nothing else would allow her to do that but the release.

"Do you know, Tatsuki," she began, "who I am?"

"If you're talking to me, my name isn't Tatsuki, it's Kenpchi. I know your name is Inoue Orihime, but nothing beyond that. I don't really care, I just want to kill the redhead."

"You may not do that," Orihime said, rather sharply for her. "Rather, I find myself forced to a place where I will have to destroy you."

No. no, surely she wasn't going to...

"INOUE!" he took off running. She couldn't do that, not to Tatsuki, not to her old friend. He could not, would not allow her to do that. He refused the possibility. There was no way, not in his defense. She would not fight his battles for him, he thought as he jumped between the two of them. "Inoue sama, I'm begging you, allow me to do this. I don't want you do have to go through that, not now, not for..." he didn't know what to call her. "This woman."

She barely glanced at him. "Kurosaki," she stated, "the are two things you can do right now. One, you can back away from this fight. I will not allow her to do this, not to anyone." not to you. "Or two, you could refuse, and I would be forced to cofine you. Don't think that I couldn't, Kurosaki, you know better than that. Choose, and quickly."

"Please, Inoue, please," he was practically begging her. "Please, think this over. You're angry, so you cant see it, but you'll regret this. You need to be rationable. Please, Inoue, you'll regret it."

She looked at him this time, and straight in the eye for the first time since she had fallen asleep on his shoulder. Had that really been less than twelve hours ago? It felt like months, and he was an old man. Time did not pass him idily.

"Kurosaki," she said, "Have no fear, I am not so weak as I used to be. I will not fall or waver, don't worry." And she smiled.

She hadn't heard him at all. He had seen that when she looked at him, how here eyes were blazing already. She was too far gone.

He was right, of course. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knew that he was right, and that sometime in the not-too-distant future she would regret destroying her friend. But he was more important. Everyone else had left her. Anyone else would have been terrified of her. Anyone else would have given up on her. They all had; even Tatsuki had forgotten her, forgotten her best friend. There was nothing left but him. Nothing left for her but to protect him, which meant that she had to do it.

And so she did not fall. She did not waver. She did not relax, not even a single muscle. She stood in complete stillness, her sword still raised, and released the monster.

Her bankai was truly magnificent. Horrible, terrible, for sure, but magnificent, beautiful in a way that only those who understand both true power and excruciating agony can appreciate.

Her stabilizer had been designed for her Bankai. It was made out of metal that wrapped around her back and over her breasts, keeping them restrained in comfort, while keeping her stomach and lower back completely bare. The stabilized was designed to keep her bosom still and allow her Bankai to function as it must, with rest of her body. The metal was necessary because there couldn't be any cloth on her shoulders or in the area between her breasts, and Orihime, no matter how much she had changed, still practiced as much modesty as possible. She hated how the anger took her, but it was necessary.

The anger appeared long before she moved. A reddish aura surrounded her, radiating out, seeping into the world around her. The aura hurt to those who felt it. Not because it was anger, because it wasn't. No, it was pain. Desperate, agonizing, never-ending torment.

The aura was what she felt.

But her powers didn't stop there, that was nothing but preparation. She finally moved, letting go of her sword and allowing it to all but vanish into thin air. He stood straight, her arms lifted as though she was being nailed to a cross. She was floating, surrounded by red, her clothing, the parts that remained, were shredded. She seemed calm, though, and besides her change in position, she hadn't moved a muscle. The aura got stronger, and brighter, and somehow tangible, the air thick as though it could be cut with a knife. And then it stopped growing, and everything seemed to become silent.

She opened her eyes and looked everywhere and nowhere. And her mouth opened, and she spoke in a cold, brutal voice that was nothing like what Ichigo knew her to be:

"Bankai."

Ichigo fought to keep himself upright against the onslaught of her spirit. The emotional anguish of the aura alone weakened him significantly, and the force that came after was like a hurricane, driving him and anyone else away from its center. But Ichigo knew what was happening, knew that this would end soon enough. And he was right, as, after a few moments, the force dies down, and aura seemed to fade some, the torment alleviate. When he could keep himself steady again, he ran forward to see what was happening, though he knew what it was.

She was there, surrounded by her Bankai, still in the air, as if she hadn't noticed the destruction, But Ichigo knew better. He had seen this before, he had felt the touch of her power. He knew the agony she was in, what this costed her.

Chains surrounded her now. They had appeared one at a time, starting around her stomach, connecting together in a slowly growing clinking mass that crawled around her body, slowly encompassing her stomach and back, crawling in an X shape between her breasts to wrap around her shoulders, neck, and arms. The links were orange, glowing, molten, like the chains than usually flowed from her fist as she fought with a sword. And like the chains that were usually coming out of her sword, they burned and burned badly, though they were touching only one person.

Orihime was burning, surrounded by a never ending blanket of scalding metal, hundreds of links, different sizes. Each link was a soul, one that she had taken. Each soul she destroyed came back to hurt her, and that pain was her power. She could weild it, strike her enemies down with the pain that she felt, the pain that all her victims had felt combined.

"Enman no Hakaisha," Orihime stated. Destroyer of Peace.

For a moment, everyone and everything was still. And then...

she started rotating. Not spinning, as if she was trying to twirl, her body itself carried no momentum. Rather it was as if she was on a platforn that was moving her as she stood still, despite the fact that she was still hovering in midair. Her eyes were open now, but somehow unseeing, and as her speed picked up, they became blurred along with the rest of her. She was a tornado now, her hakama smearing to white on the bottom, her hair flying out, blending with the burning color of the chains around her, her arms outstretched, her eyes and mouth open, though her gaping expression couldn't really be seen through the speed of her movements.

Ichigo could see it. Perhaps it was because he knew what to look for, perhaps it was because of how atuned to her he was, but he could see everything. He could feel everything. He knew what was happening, what would go down.

He knew that Tatsuki was going to be destroyed, and there was nothing he could really do to stop it.

Orihime's Bankai was designed to hurt her. The chains that wrapped around her were symbolic, a link for every soul she had ever destroyed, no matter how weak or strong. Each soul was stuck in her world, and each soul caused her pain. But in that way, each soul was also her weapon. Each soul, each bit of pain, gave her strength. After all, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. With Orihime, each soul was a little bit of strain, and every strain became her weapon, like a string of sinew, building her up more and more, making her faster, stronger, tougher.

She was, in essence, a time bomb. She had a limit to how much she would take. One day there would be a soul, one that weighed on her too much, one that she simply wouldn't be able to take, and she would buckle, maybe die. She knew that she would die one day, for having taken too many souls, for not being able to bear the pain of it. She understood. She accepted.

Bankai was painful for Orihime, both physically and emotionally. She didn't use it if she could avoid it, for two reasons: One, she was plenty good in shikai, and without any release, for that matter. And two, her Bankai was painful enough to kill her if she couldn't protect herself somehow. She could not use it if she had no form of protection.

If she used her Bankai while she was calm, she would die.

She had to be angry, very, very angry for her Bankai to work. She had to have protection, something to sheild her mind from the anguish of the souls she had destroyed. Physical pain, after all, can be ignored. The body can be forced past limits. The mind is the problem, the weak link, so to speak, and therefore the thing that needed to be protected the most. The mind, though, is a hard thing to protect. Thoughts change to frequently, as the mind is always racing to think of new things, especially in the midsts of a battle. But in battle, emotion is constant, and strong emotions are what allow for nonstop strength. Therefor, to protect the mind, emotion is necessary. Sadness, though, a common emotion for her while in battle, was weak, and led to weakness. What she needed was an emotion that she didn't often feel strongly that she could use in battle.

The first time she used Bankai, she had been fighting Atara. She had beaten him to within an inch of his life, destroyed him. She'd only had four links then, so she hadn't needed a sheild, but the sight of what she had done to him was enough to make her collapse. She had taken three months to recover, a full two of them just to wake up. It had been awful. The pain was designed to kill her for destroying. It was a hypocritical thing, to tell her that she had to do worse than destroy, and then to be punished for it.

But in the end, it couldn't be helped. She'd needed to be able to utilized bankai, so she'd learned. Now she knew.

And it was at that very moment, when Orihime was reflecting on what she was doing and why that the other woman chose to attack.