A/N: Alright people! This is the third to last chapter before the epilogue! HELL YEAH!
So, bit of a plot twist at the end of this chapter. Maybe. I know at least one of you has already guessed it, and I sent you a nice, misleading PM to try and throw you off track. Hopefully you don't hate me too much.
But anyhow...ENJOY!
And please vote on my poll. I'm sorta drowning in story ideas here, and now I'm also writing an original story, and I've finished all of Soul Eater and story ideas are starting to spin around in my head for that anime/manga as well...God, I'm a mess.
A stunned silence settled thickly over the arena. Spectators watched in awe and reverence, a few even falling to their knees in the presence of such a powerful creature. For standing benevolently in the center of a thick plain of ice was a white dragon with eyes like winter emeralds and scales like shining snowy diamond. The atmosphere around the dragon was heavy with ancient power and effortlessly cold wisdom, the yawning knowledge in the beautiful stare both enchanting and terrifying. The current Crown Prince of Soul Society stood helpless beneath that inescapable glance, the tattooed Deep-Magic spilling across his skin in inky black fading slowly to pale, ineffectual grey.
The scaled, barbed tail hissed as it skimmed lightly across the frosted ground, a gust of wintry wind like a blade slicing through the still air as the overflowing magical energy bleeding through the magnificent creature's skin took form. The blade of wind shone white and fierce until it collided with the far wall of the arena, promptly demolishing the sturdy barrier as if it were made of rice paper.
The great jade eyes rolled, the slitted pupils thinning to mere lines of black in the haunting stare.
"Do I have your answer, Oshiro-san?" the dragon asked calmly, the lilting music of its voice a spell in itself. The prince took a desperate step backward, the black box on his back starting to fluctuate in shape. The fear on his face was clearly visible now, and fat droplets of sweat tickled down his cheeks, sizzling on the sub-zero plain of ice.
Byakuya gaped, floored by this final stage of Toushiko's power. Little wonder that the royal and noble houses of Seireitei coveted this power. Dragons - and phoenixes - were creatures of legend, immensely powerful and incredibly deadly to offend or upset. They were gods in their own right, benevolent unless provoked and wise beyond human comprehension, their understanding granted through some profound connection between their existence and the very world they ruled over.
And Hitsugaya Toushiko, the transgender Captain of the Tenth Division and the strongest ice-wielder in history, had just turned into one.
On the field, Oshiro looked panicked. The box on his back was violently shaking now, its shape distorting and reforming like living elastic. It almost seemed as if something - or someone - was fighting to get out of that box. Then the Queen spoke, her voice slow, her cold blue eyes wide with fear.
"Katsuo. Unleash it." She said, her voice trembling. Then her gaze turned dark, and she stood up, glaring at the white dragon before her. "I refuse to lose my crown to this beast!"
The king looked at his wife in no little surprise, then sighed heavily and nodded at his son. His face was cold.
"I agree with the Queen." he said shortly, watching emotionlessly as Katsuo's dark stare filled with pure shock. "Unleash it. It pains me to admit that this lowly shinigami captain is worthy of our power, but it seems that this form is too much even for you alone."
The prince lowered his head, hands shaking, then glanced up at the dragon towering over him once more. His eyes hardened into coal.
"As you wish, your Majesty." he replied. Then he reached back and placed both hands on the black box. The tattooed patterns on his skin evaporated, and the box on his back stilled abruptly. His reiatsu flared.
"Seal of the Phoenix Dragon: The Black Death's Awakening."
And with a sound like a baby's cry, the box simply evaporated.
Toushiko watched with no little curiosity as the prince drew his empty sword again, a deep, dark sort of hatred curdling his face. The silver blade in his hand hummed softly, as if suddenly alive with power, and the hilt turned an inky black. Katsuo glared up at her, glutinous hate in his black stare.
"You asked if I would surrender, did you not, dragon?" the prince hissed suddenly, and Toushiko was startled to find that the sound of his voice was hypnotizing. She cocked her head to the side, forcing her mind clear of the sleepy fog that threatened her. The luminescent pearl beneath her chin glowed softly, the frills of white on her neck caught in the chilly breeze. What had happened? Katsuo's reiatsu had spiked to levels she'd never seen in anyone besides herself before he'd hidden his power from her senses, and to be honest, that power-spike concerned her.
When she did not answer, the prince laughed, his voice high and cruel. In the stands, a few people keeled over, clutching at their heads and heart, and several more sank to the ground, gasping for breath.
"Death cannot surrender." He lisped, the words obviously amusing for him somehow. "Death cannot be defeated. Death cannot be avoided. You will die, and I will win."
Toushiko snorted at that, icy smoke puffing from between the massive ivory fangs lining her jaw, and she lowered her head with a predatory snarl. The white wings on her scaled back stretched magnificently.
"I highly doubt it." she purred drolly, the musical lilt of her voice turning cold with fury.
Then Katsuo leapt, his sword in hand, and Toushiko opened her mouth. Pressure coiled in her stomach and lungs, searing cold energy illuminating the edges of the scales on her neck and chest in pale blue light. And then she roared, pale bluesilver fire erupting from her gaping jaws in a plume of frozen flame. Katsuo Shunpoed to the side, the sword in his hand slowly blackening, and Hitsugaya whipped her head around to follow him, the torrent of raging dragonfire withering everything it touched. Ice bloomed in the wake of her icefire's passage, white ice so pale and translucent that it seemed that starlight hung frozen in the frosty depths.
Her breath ran out, and the scarred earth lay black, permafrost staining the once grassy field. Katsuo took the opportunity to lunge for her again, a strange shadow coiling around his blade now, the markings of Deep-magic once again spreading over his skin. Toushiko snapped at him as he dove by, then lashed out with her razor-sharp tail, the crescent-shaped barb on the end catching the prince's blade before he could pierce the membrane of her wing. The force of her blow threw him back to the ground, his sword ringing, but an insane smile split his face and he charged again.
Her deadly claws cracked the iced ground, and she roared a second time. The wind picked up, swirling around her in a vortex of spinning blades, the lightning-laced thunderclouds overhead beginning to follow her will. The audience watched in horror as the clouds began to funnel down towards the earth, the howling wind shrieking its roar alongside the white dragon's snarl, and Katsuo cried out in shock as the tornado touched down, sending ice slivers thousands of feet into the air, a dancing frenzy of small knives.
Toushiko could feel the Deep-magic's inaudible melody crescendo as she called upon the wintry power, and with a powerful beat of her wings she took to the skies. Wind and storm danced wildly around her, the building blizzard a symphony in her soul, and with an echoing, wordless bellow, she commanded the whirling, shrieking tornado of ice to pursue the prince. Bolts of lightning thundered down onto the plain, scorching the ice beneath them with electrical heat, and loosening more sharp, icy debris for the storm to carry high into the atmosphere.
Safely behind the wall of calm wind that protected them, the denizens of Seireitei watched in silence. The glowing dragon before them was not calm in the slightest, and her fury bled into the deafening noise of the storm around them. On the ground, pursued by wind, storm, ice, and lightning, Katsuo ran easily, the black creeping up the silvery shaft of his weapon an ominous threat. At the very least, Toushiko's perfected Tenso Jurin had disrupted whatever evil ability that Katsuo had used to afflict the members of the audience, but it seemed as if the massive scale of her attacks weren't effective against the zigzagging prince.
Ichigo felt his heart freeze for a moment as Katsuo's sword turned completely black, and in his head, he felt Zangetsu freeze as well. The Hollowfied Zanpakutou swallowed hard.
"Queenie's in trouble." the Hollow hissed suddenly, his distorted voice abnormally clear. "That sword ain't normal - smells too much like Hell and Hueco Mundo."
Ichigo concentrated on the sword's reiatsu, shivering when the sense of shrieking nothingness and decay washed over him in waves. Fear struck him without warning, and before he knew what he was doing he'd moved a hand to Zangetsu's hilt, his knuckles white on the blade. He fought with himself for a long moment, struggling not to draw his Zanpakutou. And then Katsuo leapt, Hitsugaya howled, and both Aizen and Renji had to jump on him to stop him from interfering.
The thin membrance stretched tautly over Toushiko's left wing was in tatters, the delicate film crumbling at the slightest touch of wind. Shrieking roars of pain reverberated, Toushiko's movements becoming slightly jerky as she crumpled the injured wing to her side and landed heavily on the frozen earth. The prince's cruel laughter echoed hauntingly in the midst of the gale.
"Nobody can dodge Death!" he cackled, the dissolution of the black box clearly affecting his mind. "Nobody can block Death! No matter where you run, where you hide, Death will come for you! Nothing can stand against Death, the most powerful of the Elements!"
The prince appeared to ignore the slashes in his skin where the sharp shards of ice flung wildly about by the tornado's winds as he charged again, the sickly blackness of his sword piercing easily through the thick scales on Toushiko's tail, pinning the dragon to the ground. She thrashed, an earsplitting roar of fury escaping her throat, but Katsuo seemed possessed by unnatural strength. He held on like a madman, laughing all the while, then yanked his blade from her tail and raised it to the sky.
"Die, Shinigami!"
For a split second, everyone panicked, thinking that the war cry meant that the prince was about to deal a blow so devastating that death would be inevitable for the Tenth Division Captain, but then the black sword shivered and began to grow until an eight-foot scythe was quaking in his hands, black reiatsu leaking from the weapon.
And in that one moment, Hitsugaya felt everything crystallize and fall into place. She gazed at the vainglorious prince, melancholy so profoundly visible in the jade depths of her eyes that the storm calmed, revealing a pale, sad sky. Katsuo blinked in surprise. And Hitsugaya sighed deeply.
"My poor beta." she murmured, fixated on the Zanpakutou in Katsuo's hand. "Oh, Shinigami, what have they done to you? You were never meant to be locked in a blade like that."
The blade in Katsuo's hand shuddered again, drawing everyone's attention, and without warning the injured dragon lumbered around, gingerly lifting her tail, until she fully faced the prince before her. Anger once again began to spark in her eyes.
"Do you know what you have done?" she spat, icefire flaring from her mouth and freezing solid on the already glacial earth. "You've taken an unbound Kenmeinarei spirit and erased his very being to provide your power! This is unforgivable!"
Katsuo drew himself up, black power seeping up his skin and staining half of his body entirely black. His coal eyes flashed as he sneered.
"The stupid phoenix laced the blood of the Royal family with his power." he hissed back. "As long as we're alive, his Aspect endures and doesn't have to do anything about his own job. He needed to pay his due."
Hitsugaya's eyes narrowed to slits.
"I'm done playing with you then." she said coldly. "I was not going to kill you or your parents, but now I want vengeance."
Katsuo laughed again and slammed his scythe down into Hitsugaya's left wing, breaking bone.
"How?" he mocked. "Your power means nothing against me - your attacks have no focus!"
A grinning mouth of dragon teeth was bared in the man's face, and he flinched away for the first time since turning the black power of Shinigami into a Zanpakutou.
"Then I will narrow my focus." Hitsugaya hissed. And her dragon body began to glow. "Bankai: Fukyuukai Daiguren Hyourinmaru."
There was a hissing rush of air as the vast arena was suddenly embroiled in cloud cover, obscuring Toushiko's massive scaled body from sight for a moment, and then the world exploded in ice. Katsuo shrieked as a wave of frozen rime threatened to crash over him, backpedaling away in a flicker of Shunpo, and the King and Queen slowly stood from their chairs, incomprehension on their faces.
The fog cleared, crystallizing into icy dust that sparkled beautifully as if fell to the ground, and the pair of strong, feathered wings spread high into the sky, unharmed. The pale sun glinted off the white and pale grey feathers and bounced to the platinum tiara, choker, and bracelets, where the chips of icelike diamond caught fire in the winter sun. White hair swung around exposed hips, long and loose, caught in places by half-braids studded with diamond ice and platinum wire.
Hitsugaya Toushiko stretched like a cat and grinned, baring her sharp fangs. She swept a strand of misplaced hair behind a long, pointed ear, then crouched low to the ground, running her palms across the smoothly frozen earth. A soft sigh escaped her.
Katsuo, like everyone else, stared speechlessly.
"You're…"
Green eyes glowed with concentrated power, the intense might of a dragon now compressed into a petite package with a short temper and a wickedly-sharp tail.
"I am Tamashino Kenmeinarei." Hitsugaya said simply, once again standing back up. "And I am a dragon in a human skin."
She raised her palms, the filigree patterns of icy bluewhite and palest stormsilver shifting sinuously over her golden skin, and she took a deep breath. The Deep-magic began to swirl around her softly, mussing her wild white hair and the loose loincloth which was belted around her hips with platinum. Katsuo watched in shock, baffled, and his mother cried out.
"Impossible!" she shouted, her ornate crown crashing to the ground. She didn't seem to care. "No human soul can manipulate the Deep-magic of the world with their bare hands!"
Toushiko rolled her eyes and bared her sharp white fangs. The pupils of her eyes narrowed abruptly to thin slits, giving her a ferocious, furious appearance more suited to a devil than a white-winged angel.
"I suppose it's good that I'm a dragon then." she hissed.
Her hair swirled as she threw her head back, gazing up into the pale winter sky, and began to shine. For a moment she didn't move, frozen by the cold purity of her power, and then she slammed her palms together over her head, her bare feet starting to tap out a quiet rhythm on the iced ground below, and commanded.
"Hokkyokusei!"
Far to the north, a ray of strong, cold light burst into brilliant existence, the stars beginning to twinkle powerfully overhead despite the fact that the sun had not yet sunk behind the horizon. Polaris gleamed brightly, the world's unerring compass hanging high in the atmosphere, and below, its conscious incarnation radiated cold power. Light flashed off her skin, the creeping ice on the vast plain around them beginning to thicken, the temperature of the air dropping steadily. Katsuo raised the Kenmeinarei-Zanpakutou in his hand in a panic, the massive scythe glinting darkly in the weak sunlight and the glowing radiance of the star in the heavens.
"Shisha!" he shouted, and suddenly a whirl of dark, quiet energy blazed from his form. Grass, already frozen, began to crumble under the spell as the whirling black magic spun outward, everything with even a shred of life withering and disintegrating under the decaying touch. But Hitsugaya made no move to dodge the magic, instead allowing it to wash over her and stain her golden skin with a deathly pallor. Katsuo cackled wildly as she was engulfed by his power, his head thrown back, a sly gaze wandering over the horrified stands.
"Here ends your former captain's treason." he announced with a smarmy sneer. Then a haughty cough came from within the black cloud, and the death-bringing magic spiraled apart, revealing an utterly unharmed Hitsugaya who was illuminated by pale wintry light.
"I assume by the ignorance of your attack that you know nothing of the power of the Four Cardinals, nor of the Alpha spirits who rule this world." she sniffed, crossing her arms over her chest. The pale bluewhite and silver sash about her breasts shimmered, and her long hair danced in the growing breeze behind her. Katsuo gaped, openmouthed.
"How are you alive?" he asked after a moment, his hands shaking on his weapon. "The Kenmeinarei spirit in this sword is the Spirit of Death, from which nothing can escape."
Hitsugaya tossed her head, then glanced up at Ichigo with an aggravated scowl. In the stands, her boyfriend paused, then started laughing, realizing that she was annoyed by the prince's blatant rudeness in asking a direct question. She went a bit pink in the face at the sight of his mirth.
"I am the North Star, the ruler of the heavens, the compass of the world, and the empress of Winter." she snapped. "I am wind, I am ice, I am snow, I am storm. I'm a freaking star for crying out loud, but more importantly, I am one of the Four Cardinal Kenmeinarei spirits. Which, in turn, means that I, as the Empress of the North, have ultimate dominion over every element I can relate to."
Katsuo began to pale, and Hitsugaya took a threatening step forward, snarling.
"Living things, for the most part, need air to keep breathing." she growled. "And living things die if they freeze. If my Aspect has the ability to cause death, I can most certainly control the Aspect of Death. Perhaps not as well as Shinigami, but I can control Death nonetheless. This is the pinnacle of a Kenmeinarei spirit's power, when by their very nature they possess dominion over everything the human mind can connect with their existence. You were never a match for me."
Katsuo dropped the Zanpakutou on the ground at this revelation, his black eyes wide in shock. The King and Queen sank slowly to the white stone beneath their feet, the color draining from their faces. Hitsugaya took a soft step forward, the crown upon her white head gleaming. Her face was cold, no pity present in her icy gaze.
She stretched her hands out to the sides, and two icy-blue katana materialized in her palms, the keen edges glinting with arctic fury. With a swift, sharp movement, she had both of the swords lightly resting against Katsuo's throat, the razor-like blades drawing beads of blood to the surface of her opponent's skin.
There was a breath of silence as the prince stared at her in horror, finally contemplating defeat, but then something in his eyes changed, and he reached for the brown cylinder at his belt, ripping the paper off and hurling the fragile glass tube at Hitsugaya with unexpected force. The girl flinched in surprise, raising a blade. The glass flask shattered at the touch of the winter sword, a golden liquid splattering everywhere. Toushiko recoiled as the fluid splashed all over her skin, hissing in distaste at the acidic feeling. Then Katsuo began to laugh again, backflipping away from Toushiko's twin blades.
"We'll see about that, Hitsugaya Toushiro." he sneered.
Toushiko glared at the sound of her old name, hot fury rising in her chest, and took a deep breath, trying to calm her anger before she did something reckless.
But the heat didn't vanish. Instead it grew more powerful, more intense. Her hands began trembling, and her reiatsu started to fluctuate wildly, her control slipping. Pain lanced through her like white lightning, and she felt her Bankai splutter and fade, her Fukyuukai appearance disappearing in a puff of smoke. She collapsed backward, her entire body shaking, a penetrating, burning itch beginning to creep through her cells.
Green eyes widened in shock. She recognized this. She'd felt this itching burn before, all those months ago in the Twelfth Division when she'd been thrown headfirst into confronting her gender crisis.
Which meant that…
"NO!" she howled, writhing on the frozen earth as she felt her cells shifting, felt her bones shifting, hips narrowing, shoulders broadening. Her voice cracked, the chilly soprano shattering into a low baritone, and she crumpled in on herself, the sheer wrongness of her changing body unravelling her self-confidence.
It took five minutes, but when the acidic awfulness of whatever that yellow liquid had done finally ceased to burn, she stayed on the ground, tears pricking in the corner of her eyes. Her reiatsu boiled, her ability to sense the Deep-magic fading no matter how hard she tried to fight it, the vast power of her Kenmeinarei soul leaking like a flood as she lost her balance. She could hear Hyourinmaru screaming at her, his presence seeping back into the confines of her mind as his power left her body.
"Remember! Remember who you saw in Kyouka Suigetsu's mirror!" he cried, the rumbling of his voice a glacier, but she could feel their harmonic powers sliding out of balance.
Katsuo sneered down at her.
"And you call yourself a balanced Tamashino Kenmeinarei." he spat, black eyes glowing. "When you're not even truly female."
Ichigo ran to the edge of the stands, eyes widening as Toushiko staggered back to her feet. Around him, he could cries of shock as the transgender Captain of the Tenth stood, revealing what had been done to her. Her jawline was strong and sharp, her face chiseled and framed by wild white hair. Corded muscle rippled along her neck and shoulders, her body tall and lean, her limbs hard and muscular. Tears stood in those green eyes.
"What did you do to me?!" she screamed, and the voice was a low roar, a snarling baritone. Ichigo stared in a mixture of horror and sorrow. For standing in the arena below him was a tall, handsome young man with wild white hair and piercing emerald glare, Hyourinmaru strapped to his back, his reiatsu strong and cold but lacking the special unearthly wisdom of the Kenmeinarei.
Somehow, Katsuo had splashed Toushiko with the genderbending medicine's antidote.
A/N: HAHAHAHA! (alright, how many of you saw that coming?)
Reviews are well-cherished!