Rangiku watched in pure awe as Yumichika's sword scattered, looking much like a green-blue version of Kuchiki-Tachiou's, but without quite as many petals, and could probably cause slightly more damage. There was a few seconds pause, definitely a small weakness in his power, an enemy could strike in that time and Yumichika would have nothing to defend himself with. Then, after a few terrifying moments as the pair watched the room fill with hollows, the ground shook violently, almost sending the blonde to the ground and shocking even the hollows.

More out of alarm and worry than anything, Rangiku grabbed Yumichika's free hand. There was a deafening silence in the few short seconds before hundreds of azure vines shot out of the ground, some beyond the walls and therefore beyond sight, but both Yumichika and Rangiku could sense them there. Calming slightly, Rangiku moved to let go, but Yumichika tightened his grip on her hand, his face serious and anxious.

"We're right in the centre, you might get caught up, I just need to be sure," he murmured, barely audible over the screams of hollows, but Rangiku heard anyway, and squeezed his hand reassuringly.

Expression still furious, but with hints of worry and tiredness creeping though, Yumichika kept a tight grip on his sword hilt, closing his eyes and trying to block out the haunting screams of the hollows. He didn't know what it was, but they sounded more...human than the others.

That's because they are more human than the others.

Yumichika almost jumped at the voice of his own Zanpaktou in his mind. Kujaku sounded almost exhilarated, probably because of the Bankai, but trace of sadness flitted in and out.

'What? Human?'

Made from the souls of humans from the surrounding towns.

Yumichika couldn't believe what he was hearing, his eyes shot open, and he almost stopped his Bankai. Innocent people? What kind of sick person would experiment on live humans? Kujaku's voice stopped him.

No, it sounds harsh, but death is the best option for them. They can never go back to being human. It's better to die than live like...like...that.

Yumichika nodded, closing his eyes once more and gripping hold of his sword and Rangiku's hand in a vice-like grip, waiting for the last scream to die away.

Once it did, an almost eerie silence covered the room and Yumichika dared to crack open one eye, seeing the almost empty room, same as before only one or two holes in the ceiling. Cowering by the door, on the floor and pressed up as close to the wall as he could, looking like he actually wanted to go through the wall itself was Osamu. The pair could actually hear whimpering coming from his direction.

"Pathetic," Yumichika couldn't help but mutter, watching him as his sword began to reform itself, glowing softly with the unused power. "Is it true though? Did you use humans as experiments, forcibly turning them into hollows?" There was a very obvious pause, silence enveloping the room, before the scientist nodded, lifting his head to look at them with scared and watery eyes.

"Then that settles it," Yumichika said, holding out his sword, ready to let loose the immense power within.

But then he hesitated. Not for some soppy reason, like he couldn't bear to kill someone who looked so pathetic, or 'he looked in his eyes and saw that maybe, just maybe he could change.' No. The man grinned. A crazy, homicidal grin, like he was suddenly pleased about something.

"See all these machines?" He gestured, pushing himself up into a shaky stance, hair falling in front of his eyes, "you kill me, they detonate. They've all got hidden bombs linked up to a sensor in my mind. My brain stops working flips the switch, so to speak, and they go off, blowing this place sky high," his grin grew even wider, "if I can't have you as my weapon, no one can." Maniacal laughter echoed around the room, and Yumichika took a defensive position.

"Rangiku, get out of here," he hissed, letting her hand go.

"What? No I-"

"Run! Please, I...I need to do this," Yumichika took a shaky breath, his brow furrowed, "you've got to leave."

"No!" Rangiku said, standing her ground. "Do you have any idea what Ikkaku would do to me if I let you get hurt again?" She put one hand on his shoulder, he was still almost a head shorter than her, and smiled in support. "If you do this I'm staying right here with you." She smiled.

Yumichika couldn't help but smile right back. He took his stance once more, holding out his sword with renewed determination.

"Fainaru-kō"

"Yes!" Mizaki cheered, finally blasting away the final hollow. Their small group, consisting of Herself, Hitsugaya, and a few higher seats of the tenth had been pushed back considerably, and were now a fair distance from the building. But with the hollows now gone, they could move forward. She had been watching the net of vines dissipate, watching the flowers falling, being pulled into one spot. While fighting, it was rather difficult to work out the exact spot they were being pulled to.

"Let's go!" She heard Hitsugaya yell.

But before she could take more than two steps forward, the sky lit up, and milliseconds later, a sound like hundreds of fireworks going off simultaneously filled the air, deafening them.

The group froze, Particularly Mizaki, who couldn't move an inch, even though she knew she had to protect herself somehow.

Yumichika.

Rangiku.

They were both in there. That building. Destroyed.

Luckily Hitsugaya had the good sense to do something to protect them and seconds later a vast ice dragon surrounded them, protecting them from the flames and debris that flew their direction.

Mizaki still couldn't move, couldn't get her head around the fact that she had lost her little brother and her best friend once again, even though she had only just got them back.

...No...

Ikkaku growled in frustration as he sliced a hollow clean in half, and still managed to do next to no damage when it simply regenerated. Despite the frustrations from the battle, he couldn't help but grin, the sight of the web of glowing vines giving him hope that Yumichika was still alive. At least for now.

He sliced at another hollow that was just about to jump at an unsuspecting fifth divisioner, who whirled around at the sound, wide eyed, but quickly catching on and aiming a kidou spell at the creature.

They were winning against the hollows, their numbers becoming fewer and fewer with every passing minute. But even so, Ikkaku was becoming a bit annoyed at how long it was taking, the vines had long disappeared, flowers falling, being pulled into the building, to Yumichika, meaning he must have won, and yet still no sign of him or Rangiku. Did that mean they were injured and couldn't get out? Or maybe Hitsugaya's Team had gotten there and they were doing an investigation or something? The worst case scenario flashed through his mind, and he quickly clamped his eyes shut, pushing the mental image from fifteen years ago out of his mind.

It could not have happened again. He refused to believe that he could have possibly lost his best friend again.

Thankfully, at just that moment, a bright green-blue lit up the sky for a second, and a shining beam shot up to the sky, raising his hopes once more and dashing the image from his mind.

But that hope was very quickly shattered as a very different type of light lit up the sky, and he could do nothing but watch, standing there frozen in absolute horror as the building exploded, the sounds deafening him and the others around him.

Then reality hit him, along with the force of the explosion, and before he could run forward, he was blown of his feet in a blast that knocked over even Zaraki. He didn't stand a chance. In a second he had hit the floor again, a sharp pain registered dimly in his brain, overpowered by the absolute despair in his heart, before everything went black.

He woke what felt like hours later, his vision filled not with the sky as expected, but a blur that looked a lot like someone's face, though his hazy mind couldn't quite work out who it was. A long curtain of matted dark hair fell down one side and a pair of large worried violet eyes stood out in his mind.

Groaning, Ikkaku lifted a hand to his head, closing his eyes once more, feeling the face move away and desperately trying to work out what the hell happened and why he had been unconscious.

He had been fighting hollows, those annoying ones, but what happened next?

Oh yeah.

Crap!

He sat up, a little too quickly as he felt the blood rush to his head, dizziness overwhelming him for a moment. Dropping his head into his heads he tried to speak, though at first it came out sounding more like a frog. He tried again.

"What happened?"

"The building's been destroyed," came a familiar grim voice from next to him. He looked up, seeing Mizaki sitting on her knees, staring at something on the other side of him. Her face was tear stained and miserable, and hints of tiredness were finally beginning to show through. "They're still searching for Yumichika and Rangiku, but so far they've found nothing," she told him, answering his silent question.

Ikkaku was shocked into silence, and felt like fainting when he turned to see the wreckage a couple hundred metres away. There was nothing left standing, it was all rubble, a few pipes sticking out of the ground here and there, though they were all mangled and misshapen.

"And," he almost stopped there, not wanting to know the answer, "how long have they been looking?"

"You probably don't want to know," Mizaki said, her eyes still searching the wreckage, looking for something, anything, even from this distance, for some inkling that her brother and best friend had survived.

"Mizaki," Ikkaku said, his voice threatening. Or as threatening as it could be when he was that tired.

"Six hours, they've been at it as soon as it was safe to go in." Ikkaku gaped at herm suddenly noticing the light around him, it was nearing sunset.

"And how long have I been out?"

"About seven hours or so," Mizaki told him, cringing slightly, "I've been out to look too, and I can't find their reiatsu anywhere."

"We've gotta go help!" Ikkaku exclaimed, not listening to a word she was saying, and attempting to get up. But he was pushed down by a grim looking Aimi.

"Not until we've checked you over," she said, her mouth a thin line and her brows furrowed as far as they would go. Her eyes showed a deep sadness and a loss of hope. She thought they weren't going to be found. Ikkaku knew better than to argue, as much as he wanted to, and so he sat there impatiently, tapping his foot, as Aimi did the routine checks.

Once she had deemed him okay, he was up like a shot, already striding over to the wreckage, Mizaki jogging after him.

A couple of shinigami still searching, namely Hisagi and Renji, shot him a sympathetic look as they pulled up rocks and scrambled over large piles of rubble that had been built up.

Ikkaku stalked through, looking this way and that. He was not going to stop until every rock and pebble had been turned over.

"Ikkaku!" Mizaki's voice sounded behind him, sounding desperate. "Please, Ikkaku," she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him to a stop. "Please, if they were still alive, don't you think they would have been found by now?"

Her logic registered somewhere in the back of his mind, though he really, really didn't want to believe it. He slumped onto a rock, face in his hands, leaning his elbows on his knees. Mizaki sat down next to him, looking around her with sadness.

"Tell me something," she said after a while, "When he died, fifteen years ago, how did you feel?"

"What kind of a question is that? And why the hell are you asking it now?" Ikkaku asked, looking up with an expression of confusion.

Mizaki gave him a dry look, "Humour me."

Sighing, Ikkaku looked out towards the horizon. "It felt like..." he sighed again, "I'm not good at this type of crap."

"I'm sure you can think of something."

"It felt like, like my world was being torn apart. He was always there, ever since I met him for the first time, always kept me sane, always gave a good partner to spar with, though I can never really beat him, he always did some trick at the last second to make sure he won," he gave a weak chuckle, "the thought of him just not being there any more scared the hell out of me. And when he died, right there in my arms, my world died with him, it simply wasn't the same without him making snide comments and going on and on and on about beauty the whole time. Everyone thought I would be the first to die, and I'm almost glad it happened the way it did, I would never wish that kind of pain on anyone. Though the ideal would be we die together, so neither of us would have to go through it." He finished with yet another sigh, dropping his head.

"I see," Mizaki muttered, a small smile appearing on her face.

"Why'd you ask?" Ikkaku asked, looking up at her, confusion mounting when he saw the growing smile on her face.

"Just giving him a little bit of motivation," she grinned, spinning on the rock to look behind her, "How're you doing?" she yelled out, and Ikkaku's jaw dropped when he saw the rocks moving behind him, like someone was pushing up from below. It couldn't be...

"A little help would be nice!" came the all too familiar voice, slightly muffled. The bald darted up, Mizaki lazily following, the small grin still plastered on her face. They both started pulling at the rocks, moving the large boulders away with a slight difficulty, though the renewed hope gave them both the strength to get the rocks out of the way to reveal a small hole leading into a small chamber of sorts.

Relief flooded Ikkaku's mind and heart when he saw Yumichika smiling up at him, hair brutally sliced, bruises and scratched littering his skin, and one hand gripping his shoulder, but a large smile filling his face nonetheless. Rangiku was kneeling behind him, a smile of equal size filling her face.

"Help?" Yumichika said, holding out the hand that had been holding his shoulder. Ikkaku looked shocked at the injury and the fact that his hand was blood-stained and shaking, but took it anyway and pulled, Yumichika helping by pushing himself up with his legs.

The moment he was out Ikkaku pulled him into a tight hug, wrapping his arms around the lithe body and burying his face in the smaller's neck, shaking a little from adrenaline and shock. Yumichika was more than a little surprised at this rather out of character action, and froze for a moment his eyes, all you could see over the bald man's shoulder, wide as saucers, before relaxing, hugging the larger man back, a small smile gracing his features.

"Don't you ever do that to me again," Ikkaku murmured, unconsciously tightening his hold.

"I won't," Yumichika muttered back, feeling tiredness suddenly cloud his mind, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. He was just so...so...tired. Without another word, he drifted off, not caring about where he was or the fact that he was actually standing up, he just needed to sleep. The last thing he remembered hearing before sleep clouded his thoughts was Mizaki making a small comment.

"Everything's alright with the world once again."

A/N: I'm thinking one more chapter to wrap things up and an epilogue, how's that sound? Well, college has been crazy recently so I'm amazed I was even able to get this done. It was basically a big chapter of emotion :P Never let it be said that Tanaka Mizaki doesn't have her own sly side XD Well, I'm on the point of so tired I'm hyper so I'll leave now before I babble on and you get bored. So hope you enjoyed, and if you did, review and tell me. And if you didn't like it, review and tell me why :) It'll certainly help me get through the rest of the week before work is due in :P x