A/N: This is the teaser for the continuation of Cache called Echoup de grâce: Endure. Some of this will be part of the official chapter one of Endure, but is extended and changed. And with this...Cache is now completely done. Ended. Completed.

Please, do stay around for more stories in the Echo Series coming soon! Thank you for your support, and shout-out to eminadaisuki for asking questions and being greatly invested! Thanks, everyone!

Hidden Track: Cross my heart and you will die

With a gasp, black and silver eyes opened, their owner popping upright in the bed. He breathed heavily, looking around the dark room. Nothing was there.

It was just a dream.

Exhaling loudly, Ichigo flopped back down, crossing an arm over his face. It was a dream, but he couldn't even remember what he dreamt. Quite frankly, he didn't want to remember, either. If it was enough to scare him like that...it was nothing good.

His soul itched. He winced, knowing what that meant. It wasn't just his soul, but his mind, too. It was a strange itching, something that needed to be scratched or he was going to go crazy. Possibly quite literally.

If he wasn't crazy already...

Sighing, he moved his sheets aside and stood out of bed. His bare feet touched the floor, and he gave a slight stretch, flexing his muscles. He mentally debated between acting like he was going out for the rest of the day, or just pull on a shirt and go about it then go back to sleep.

Ugh.

In the end, he decided to take a shower. He was probably going to stay up, anyway; he wasn't particularly keen on going back to bed. That irritated a part of him, but he shrugged it off. As he washed up, the itch steadily worsened. He rolled his eyes, making sure his choker was on correctly...

Wait...

Why was he washing up when he was just going to get dirty?

Ugh.

He dressed into his typical clothes for these events, a more Arrancar-esque outfit complete with hakama and a long coat and left using sonído. Moving fast, he passed the kitchen, placing Zangetsu on his back. There was no use in getting something to eat. Not for what he was going to be doing.

Yawning widely, his eyes were half-mast, but he made it outside quickly enough. He moved too fast to catch their reactions from the guardians of the entrance.

Traveling far from the Las Noches, the whisking air eventually woke him up. A little bit more, anyway. Judging by the position of the moon, he hadn't slept for every long. Halfway to the usual place he went to, a different proposition popped up in his mind. Blinking, he sighed audibly.

Fine, then. A trip to the living world, it was.

Damn his genetics.

Ugh.

He stopped and tapped the air, opening a garganta. It was a nifty little thing he learned how to do with Nel's help. Entering, he used sonído to pass quickly through the rich reishi space. His pathway was impeccable, a great overhaul from what it once was so many years ago...

Exiting the void, he appeared in the sky of a richly populated city. He could see the nightly activity even from his height. Yawning again, he closed his eyes. It was the itch that kept him awake, and by this time, it was really beginning to make him tic.

Finally, he sensed something.

His eyes fully Hollowfied, and with a wide grin that was entirely abnormal on his face nowadays, he disappeared from immediate sight. He reappeared a few miles away, his knee rammed into the side of a Hollow that was going after a group of people who couldn't see it.

Knocking the Hollow into the sky, he chuckled darkly upon hearing its roars of confusion and anger and pain.

Pain...

He flew after it, bounding into the sky to smack it around some more. With the lights dancing below him, it made for a much more interesting sight and atmosphere than the dismal scape of Hueco Mundo.

Not that he didn't like the overabundance of Hollows at nearly every turn of his head. That was the one thing the Hollow world had over the living world.

But this...

He ripped off the Hollow's claw-like hands, relishing the screams it made, the blood gushing from its body. Using his legs, he pummeled it into a deserted park. It skidded along, missing two limbs and several of its others twisted. He landed atop its body, making it shriek.

Making sure it could see, he ripped one of its severed limbs in half before taking a savory bite. The Hollow's eyes widened in what he could sense was fear.

Good...

Licking his lips, he allowed his claws to form before ripping into its body.

~:Edth:C:~

Some while later, he rested in the park, slumped against a tree. One of his legs was raised, the other stretched out, and his hands rested on his stomach. His clothes were slightly blood stained, his hair splayed out beneath him, and Zangetsu rested at his side. He was relaxing, nearly asleep, but kept his senses alert.

He could sense the animals in the park. Most had disappeared once he brought the Hollow over, but some were returning to do whatever it was they had been doing prior. Insects chirped around him. People walked, so far away, living their lives...unaware of the monsters nearby...

He took out four Hollows. He devoured all of them. That was too many for his otherwise fairly human—and very much alive—body. But even Kisuke hadn't been able to "humanely dissect him" enough to figure out how his body worked.

Oh, and all of this—eating Hollows, his enhanced five senses, the whole deal with wanting a mate, so on and so forth—was apparently because his body went through a "second puberty". Something about how, since he was part Hollow, a Hollow that was not an Arrancar, he was closer to the feral Hollows than he was to Arrancar. He was closer to a Vasto Lorde, more appropriately.

Ugh...

Slanting his eyes open, he stared at nothing.

He ought to go back home.

But there was something on the edges of his senses...and it was nearing him. He let it. It was different, unlike anything he ever sensed before. Or maybe, he had sensed something like it before. It was dark, sinister.

Like...like...

"Kurosaki Ichigo."

He glanced up to see four figures draped in black clothes with masks vaguely resembling skulls standing on reishi particles. They were covered from head to toe, not a single bit of them visible despite showing their arms, legs, hands, and feet. They were merely covered. There were two tall, slender figures, a shorter, rounder one, and a large, hulking one.

Slowly, he moved to his feet, grasping Zangetsu in his hand. He didn't move his eyes from them and remained quiet.

"Come," said the same one that spoke before. It had an interesting, masculine voice. It was commanding, in a way. "We need you to do something for us."

Ichigo merely blinked at them, then looked away, intending to leave. He really needed to do something about that target symbol on his soul.

Realizing this, the round one said, "Can we show it to him now?"

There was a sigh from the first one. "Kurosaki Ichigo. Come with us...and you can have what you desire most."

Narrowing his eyes, Ichigo softly scoffed, continuing to look away from them. As if they would know what it was he desired most, above all else. He wanted a lot of things. He wanted to see his family. He wanted to see his friends in Karakura-chō—if they still lived there. He wanted his companions—his family—to have normal lives, again. He wanted the person who killed his mate dead. He wanted...

His grasp on Zangetsu tightened.

There was just...too much he wanted.

They wouldn't know where to start.

Then something white appeared in the hand of the one that seemed to be the leader of them. It looked like a bundle of cloth. Stepping a bit closer and lowering somewhat, the figure let the cloth fall.

It looked and felt harmless, so Ichigo took it from out of the air. Placing Zangetsu on his back, he unraveled the cloth and gazed upon it.

It was a white yukata.

A white...bloodstained yukata...

With the largest stain...where the heart would be...

His own heart gave a painful throb. His throat clenched shut. He broke out into a sweat. His soul began to scream.

The memories hit him like a freight train. Slowly, black began to overtake his vision.

"How...did you..."

"We know where he is, Kurosaki Ichigo." The leader of the quartet lowered to the ground. "Your most precious possession."

He could barely see. "He's...not—"

"You claimed him. He's yours, is he not?"

A low, reaffirming growl was the response, and even the human side of his mind was inclined to agree.

Gin was his.

Not in his right mind, Ichigo breathed heavily. His vision was tinted black, and he felt as if he was only in partial control of his body. His eyes had turned pure ebony, and his nails changed into claws. His choker began to chirp, a soft sound that he completely ignored.

In an ominous, echoic voice imbued with warbles, he demanded, "Where...is my mate?" He bore his teeth, grasping tightly onto the cloth as if it was a lifeline. "Where...is Gin?"

The figure placed its hands behind its back before stepping backwards to a blue, almond-shaped portal that appeared. Within, a vortex of bloodred was visible.

He could hear the smirk in its voice.

"In Hell, Kurosaki Ichigo. In Hell."