No, the first thought shouts loudly in his head, even before he looks at who it is. Warning signs ring even louder as he smells the blood, and then the wind dies down.

His heart rises-

Rukia

A younger her with shorter hair and the signature bang clipped aside in tight, fitting black clothing. She stands in a stance between his mother and the headless Yhwach with a white sword still pointed at his body as if it were still dangerous; its hilt's ribbon wrapped around her black finger-glove and arm.

His mother is protected, but- his eyes shift to the table.

-drops.

Her- Rukia's other hand is cut slightly disheveled; the fingers are all cut off in a side-cut, leaving half of her main palm attached; blood pooling on the table from the now-laying carcasses and the palm. He clamps a hand over his mouth and gasps for breath.

Usually smelling this would be ok, having been at his dad's clinic, but that extreme grotesqueness, the blood, and that it's simply her- it's impossible for him to desensitize. Even so, he looks up again and stares at the scene ahead of him.

He refuses to look away.

"Kuchiki-san," Masaki stares at her with surprise and shock. She remembers the quiet girl she'd seen when she first visited the Kuchiki Clan, an unsettling feeling that she was looking at a younger self under Yhwach- blood, galore, submission, power.

Then Kaien came to play and reassured her ("of course she's fine now since I'm with her"), she'd relaxed and entrusted her to him. Once, she saw her and indeed saw the profound effect: calmer, rational, and friendlier.

(but then he'd unexpectedly died, and since then she hasn't gone to see Rukia again.

she just couldn't)

Now, she sees nothing. Masaki sighs sadly, she's like my son.

Masaki moves her stare to Yhwach's carcass and his head lying on the ground with obvious horror and unexpected slight pain; she grins bitterly, in the end, I still have those feelings for Yhwach as a daughter.

"Masaki-san, please stay back." Her hand stops from reaching out to that sliced palm of hers that hasn't stopped bleeding and pooling to the floor; her tone of voice is empty too, but, she narrows her eyes in confusion, there's something behind-

"It's not over yet." As she speaks, the headless man reattaches itself together, veins, bones, and skin. He stands before her nonchalantly as if nothing had happened, then he looks to her still-bleeding hand and can't hold back a smirk.

"Kirayuki Mai." Yhwach says the name with venom, watching the blade hover near him. "So you're here as well. To think you'd go as far as hiding your reiatsu because of me, how delightful." Ichigo manages to steady himself from the crushing pressure released by him; Masaki falls on her knees, gasping for air.

"Well at any rate," he grins widely with controlled insanity in his eyes, "I can kill the both of you here."

Kirayuki Mai says nothing and stares at him with an empty gaze as her reiryoku stops the profuse bleeding and hardens it; then slowly but surely, hatred seeps into her eyes.

"Masaki-san," she says quietly without turning; her reiatsu wraps around Masaki, soothing her and letting her breathe easier, "please remain by your son. I will deal with you later. As for you," she says lowly with venom, "leader of morphers, or should I say leader of the yakuza group, Quincy," she snickers; he grips his sword harder as she grins wildly. "I will send you to hell."

Without another word, she kicks the table at him. He slices the table in half and quickly swirls around to collide with her blade only to touch air. Eyes wide with realization, Yhwach coughs as a white blade pierces through his chest. Quickly, she pulls it out with ease and collides with his blade, his eyes widening as the wound doesn't close. Yhwach glares at her.

She smiles innocently-

"You shouldn't expect the expected when it comes to me, Yhwach."

Ichigo watches in simultaneous anxiety and confusion as a battle ensues before him that his eyes cannot catch up at all. His heart beats quickly as he notes the fresh blood sprayed across the floor (please please please, let that not be Rukia's). Even in the high speed of apprehension, there's something else, like deja vu. Ah, he realizes, Karanza.

The look on her face- when the blank gaze moved away, and replaced with hatred and-

-insane exhilaration.

Kenpachi's excitement and the Rukia he knows now, is controlled, he knows then and now, so then this -added with the unsettling amount of reiatsu she released- is definitely beyond control.

(but it's not a bad thing, just...very strange, to see her like this.)

He hears a shift and instinctively looks to the noise.

His mother sits beside the other lying Ichigo now, a worried look on her face as she wipes away the blood from his temple and then looks onward at the fight with tight fists on her skirt.

Ichigo returns his gaze back to the fight and finds his own hands in fists, despite knowing: it's already happened, it's already happened, it's not real, it's-

(yet it doesn't hurt any less)

Five minutes in and they settle down enough for Ichigo to see that Rukia has Yhwach on the ground in his own pool of blood before her as she stands rigorously tall before him, and grazing her sword into his neck, not enough to kill him but enough to threaten him.

"I'm meant to bring you back for re-education, or so they call it," she says heatedly and stomps on his face to the floor. "If it weren't for them, I'd kill you and knock you out of the so-called cycle of life somehow, immortal or not."

"How disappointing. You've already figured out how to prevent me from opening my wounds, and yet you refuse to kill me?" He looks at her critically. "I never thought you'd be the dog of the Seireitei. What a waste of potential." Yhwach says grimly; she digs her heel in further, causing half of his face to shatter. He looks up at her nonchalantly with pity. "Well, go ahead."

"I don't need you to tell me that." She says angrily, then mutters a kido spell that wraps him in blinds and transports him away from her sight to the location where the prideful, arrogant, unsightly judges would punish him. Rukia despises them, but she despises Yhwach a thousand times more than ever.

No, much more than that, her eyes harden and she clenches a fist, a million- a billion times more.

She watches him vanish from her sight with disgust and when he's completely gone, her raging emotions disappear along with him.

She finally turns to face her.

"Masaki-san." She turns with a blank face. "It's your turn."