Note: For those that read this chapter, please keep an open mind. And you should realize this was coming when I opened the senkaimon in the last chapter... for where else could I go?

WHEN THE SNOW FALLS
by Yih

Chapter Thirty-seven
The Falsehood

"Hado yon byakurai!" Rukia shouted, sending powerful lightening coursing through the Hollow. It succumbed to hado #4 and she leapt to it, slicing it ceremoniously before sending it back to be reborn as something hopefully better than what it had become. She wiped her forehead with her hand.

She was a little tired. There were a lot more Hollows than she had expected, but the entire town resonated with flickerings of strong reiatsu. It was likely why Ukitake-taichou had decided to send a highly ranked seated officer on this assignment to kill some minor Hollows. This was more than most of the officers could handle, Rukia thought. It wouldn't be challenging for her, but she didn't want to push herself hard.

Rukia remembered what the Elders had once told her in private – the difficulties her sister had getting pregnant and then when she had finally conceived… the trials to not abort the baby prematurely. Hisana had failed three times to carry the baby to term. The first two had been aborted before they could have possibly lived. The last one, a son, had been stillborn.

Rukia pressed a comforting hand against her stomach. "I will protect you," she said. "No matter what, I will keep you safe."

"And it gets even better, a tasty little shinigami!" exclaimed the menacing voice of a powerful Hollow. "And so powerful…"

Rukia whirled around, caught completely unaware which was totally unlike her. Her eyes widened when she saw the Hollow and the orange-haired boy that was running from him. How was it possible that a human could see a Hollow?

She was even more stunned when he looked directly at her and said, "Get out of the way! It's dangerous here!"

A part of her was annoyed at his presumption, but how did he know what powers she had? She was a shinigami, the 3rd seat of Squad 13, and he was a mere human boy – with strong latent reiatsu. He stopped when he reached her and tried to grab her, but she was already moving away toward the Grand Fisher with light, quick steps that were impossible for a human.

"Are you a ghost?" he asked, following her.

"Get out of here," she said, waving him off. "I can handle myself."

She would need her full concentration if she did not want to release Sode no Shirayuki. It was what she preferred to do as a shikai release took a lot of reiatsu to maintain and she didn't want to do anything that might harm her baby. While this Hollow might not be a Menos Grande, it was not a Hollow to take lightly.

Rukia recognized him, the shinigami called him Grand Fisher. He had eluded them for 54 years and he was even more bigger and more striking in appearance than the rumors she had heard. He was brown with a huge oval mask on his face with fur that covered his body and his hands and feets were bird-like.

"You don't understand," the boy said in frustration, "he's already eaten other ghosts!"

Rukia was impatient, but she understood his underlying good intentions – most other mortals would have fled the scene immediately, not caring to stick around to make sure she got away safely.

"I'll be okay," she said, withdrawing her zanpakuto. "I'm here to protect you."

"What—" he began, but she didn't give him time to say anything more.

She leapt over to the Hollow, prepared to strike it with her zanpakuto, but the Grand Fisher easily moved out of harm's way. Rukia landed lightly on her feet, aware now that the the Hollow was capable of moving quite quickly when it wanted to. She would need to rely on shunpo if she wanted to outmaneuver it. She quickly flashstepped to the Grand Fisher, managing to swipe a sidelong cut on its side before it got out of her way.

Rukia pursued the Grand Fisher, noticing that it was moving closer to the boy, and she tried to divert its route but to no avail. She would just have to finish this quickly. She soared up into the sky and brandished her zanpakuto over her head in a wide arc when she noticed the angler drop out of the Hollow's mouth. She had heard of this. She tensed immediately.

The angler was a decoy that would resemble someone that the victim knew well and it would allow the Grand Fisher to get close and to seize its prey without much of a struggle at all. But she knew she hadn't been injured and there was no way the Grand Fisher could have stolen her memories… however, Rukia glanced over at the boy, seeing his wound on his arm and noticing how his eyes were filling with tears.

"Okaa-san," he said, "is that really you?"

Sure enough the angler began to resemble a beautiful woman with hair as orange as her son's. "Yes, it's me, Ichigo," his mother said. "I need your help."

Rukia pushed forward with her zanpakuto, closing in on the Grand Fisher. If she just injured it enough, maybe she could break its hold over the boy and once she did that, she would move in for the final attack that would erase its existence forever.

Then – the boy – Ichigo was suddenly standing in front of her and her target and Rukia only managed to avert her zanpakuto at the last minute from running it through him by forcing herself off balance. She found herself falling, landing hard on the pavement. She broke out into a nervous sweat as she placed her hand on her stomach. It was okay, it was a hard fall, but it should be okay.

Rukia quickly got to her feet and avoided a blow from the Grand Fisher. Why had Ichigo stopped her?

"Why are you trying to hurt my mother?" he asked her. "She's done nothing to you!"

"That isn't your mother!" Rukia shouted, avoiding the Grand Fisher's attempt to attack her by darting out of the way.

She had to get Ichigo to follow her, to pursue her, so she could get out him of the Grand Fisher's grasp. Rukia didn't doubt that the Hollow would use the boy against her and when he was done, he would kill him and absorb his reiatsu.

"You need to help me kill the girl," his mother said.

The boy looked torn, looking at the angler – resembling his mother close enough to be her twin – then glancing at her before returning his gaze to his mother. "Okaa-san," he said, "why do you want me to hurt her? It's not like you."

"Because she'll hurt us both if we don't."

Rukia didn't know what to say, it was obvious the boy was struggling – wanting to listen to his mother and knowing that something was off about her. She could only imagine how hard it would be. What if that was Byakuya?

"You must do this for me," the angler said. "You must kill her for me."

Rukia saw the clarity in the boy's eyes when he turned to her. He closed his eyes and a tear rolled down his face. "My mother is dead," he stated. "You are not my mother. She would never want me to hurt anyone."

"Stupid boy," the angler said furiously, twisting the lovely face it had into one of ugliness. "You will die!"

The angler, still in the shape of a woman, launched herself at Ichigo, trying to strangle him with her hands. And of course, the boy did nothing to protect himself, letting this false version of his mother have her way with him. Rukia sighed and glanced briefly down at her zanpakuto before her eyes focused back on the matter at hand.

"Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!"

A/N: I decided to combine a lot of chapters/episodes together b/c it's pretty obvious I won't be writing the current Bleach story as we know it the same because that would be boring. I am undecided at this point what I will be doing with the dynamics of Ichigo/Rukia and et cetera. If you have any opinions, please let me know. I was pretty much done with this chapter, but unsure if I was going to scrape it and start over or not. I think, in general, this satisifed me.

Thank you for reviewing. You guys have been great and it definitely helps my muse!

P.S. I have read some of the reviews already and most of them do not seem to trust my judgment as an author. You all seem to think I'm going somewhere where I am not, which I don't understand at all. I already said I would be changing the storyline in the above A/N, there are a lot of things that will not remain the same. I would think after 37 chapters, you would trust that I know how to weave a story and make it work. Also, my "uncertainty" had nothing to do with not doing Ichigo in the story. It was planned from BEFORE I started it, I was just unsure about their interaction, if it made "sense" how they responded to each other and if it was "realistic" for having never met. I'm pretty upset right now and I probably won't be working on this until I am in the right mood again.

And lastly, you don't need to "worry" about a love triangle, if there is anything it will be from Ichigo's side (as it was with Renji as well) because I don't like prolong love triangles and indeed, I rarely ever write them unless I have a good reason. If I didn't put Renji/Byakuya/Rukia into a love triangle (I simply dealt with his love for Rukia, which you can easily see in Bleach), why do you think I would put Ichigo into one? Anyway, I hope you will stop seeing something that isn't there in this chapter and think about what is there: Rukia being the hero and saving Ichigo, a human with strong latent reiatsu on her final mission as a shinigami.

Released: 4/3/2009