Hell Butterfly

Noblesse Oblige

~51~

o)0(o

"You are still alive, of course that is all! Do you think it normal for a death god to be alive?!"

"I've never known what's normal! Have you met my dad? Normal is a holy grail I'll never find!" Ichigo yelled back, and didn't the truth hurt. "Normal doesn't exist in my stupid life!"

"That 'stupid life' makes you a threat worse than Aizen!"

"…Great?" Ichigo hedged, crouching in a snowdrift defensively. He had never seen Zangetsu flare up like that, and the guy attacked him nine meetings out of ten. "We want that. I'm pretty sure we want that. …Do we want that?"

"It is never wanted. It is a catastrophic mistake of nature. It negates the entire history of shinigami for you to be alive." Zangetsu watched him closely. "You are also dead, Ichigo."

"Obviously," huffed the boy in annoyance, holding out his arms to model this season's latest shihakusho, in bang-on-trend black. "Am I meant to panic now? You're a year late."

"Yes. The last time a dead thing lived in a human body it created a worldwide reign of terror and when old age defeated its flesh, its soul became a demon. You may be a shinigami, but that atrocity was called Death itself;" Zangetsu stated implacably, still wreathed in blue fire.

"Nevertheless, Aizen's downfall may require your deformity, your aberration. We have been callously using you and averting our eyes as you break more each day, and against all odds you have survived to ask for more. So with a heavy heart I seek new ways to turn the one I wished to protect into my weapon." His mouth twisted unhappily amid the brown stubble.

"Now, remember this feeling;" Zangetsu laid a palm on his proxy's chest and closed his eyes.

It felt like falling down a well, tumbling into darkness with a host of bats chasing, fluttering all around and cramming the air so thick they became packed solid. There was one point of light ahead he could not reach. The bats pressed hard against his skin, biting and clawing. A moment passed, he realised they were sinking into him, melting into a black mass.

They were reishi. Forcibly compressed, crushed inside him. The pressure was unbearable, lungs too full of tar to scream, limbs becoming lead. It went on and on and on. He felt hard as diamond, immobile. He felt dead.

The point of light swelled and his eyelids crawled open, so heavy. Zangetsu's long cloak surrounded him, battening the spirit energy tight down in his flesh.

The zanpakuto spirit watched his partner choke, a scarlet nosebleed dribbled down his face as the forces inside swelled painfully. The brown irises barely registered him before rolling back, only whites showing. Even Zangetsu was hoarse for breath; he could only maintain this state for a scant few minutes.

"This pressure should kill you. I have seen people spontaneously combust from less than this. This is all the power you have. How are you surviving? Where is the link to your body, to your life? You must find what keeps you alive and grasp onto it. Hear me, Ichigo!" The sword was shouting now, as the vaizard battled for consciousness. "Find your instinct to live and master it!"

With a heave of muscles Zangetsu lifted the boy over his head, took three flash-steps west to reach the grand canyon he called home, and flung him over the edge of the cliff.

o)0(o

Rukia and Sode no Shirayuki faced each other across a wide, glittering glade of white. In her natural habitat the yuki-onna almost melted into the background, whereas the shinigami was thrown into stark relief, a clear target.

"How times have changed," uttered Shirayuki, her voice the chime of falling icicles. "A Great Clan represented by a barefoot street urchin, and the spring blossoms of Senbonzakura withered to autumn rust. A perfect allegory of the Kuchiki name."

Rukia was taken aback. She had always respected, even been in awe of her zanpakuto; but only in the King's Realm could she come close enough to see the flaws in that pedestal.

"It makes no sense to me. Did his sudden weakness make you more worthy of the rank? After stunting your progress and commandeering your life, now they lower their standards to your level and say, 'it will have to do'?"

The petite woman folded her arms deliberately and glared. "I'm here because I volunteered." Suddenly she adopted a dramatic swoon, crying out in falsetto. "O brave knights, tell me what fate didst befall us in yonder realm whilst I preferred to stayeth at home polishing my airs and graces? - Hush but my lady is a lieutenant! Does she not yearn to greet the Soul King? - O no, forsooth, one is faint blue-blooded enough for that!"

Dropping back into her natural alto, the shinigami continued to merrily mock such an idea. "A yankee like Ichigo didn't even have to gatecrash this time. Are they going to say 'Sorry! No kenseikan: No service'?" Spying the kami's narrowed eyes, she quickly tried a more diplomatic tangent. "Hohh, I mean of course, the Soutaicho said that our allies were the biggest factor, and Onee-sama is more than noble enough for the both of us. Or something like that."

Her mentor smoothed down her kimono and sniffed. "This saves time. As long as you understand the Kuchiki clan is not good enough for you."

Shirayuki-san, boggled Rukia; it sounded more like you meant the opposite of that.

"Do not allow them to compromise you again." It was a terse instruction.

The fukutaicho's eyes budded with stars. "O-Onee-sama does this mean you were rooting for me and Renji all along?"

"Zabimaru's pet doesn't concern me," the idea was shooed away with a flick of pale fingers. "A mutt begging for crumbs of acknowledgement from the one who betrayed him will never be able to surpass him."

"Betrayed?" There was only one person Renji wanted acknowledgement from. Rukia charged forwards. "Sode no Shirayuki, stop speaking in riddles! What have you got against my brother?"

A gust of wind rushed between them, driving flurries of snow.

"Didn't you once say the tongue was the root of all misfortune?" replied the spirit, coy.

"I'll take my chances," growled the human.

She whispered past a gracefully raised hand. "Even if no one in the world believes me?"

"Then scream the truth in defiance! Why would I doubt you? Why do you hate Nii-sama so much?!"

"Because, dear one," murmured Shirayuki with unexpected melancholy; "they plucked you from your friends and placed you in a glass case. They looked at the ore from which I will mine diamonds, and saw only the mud. Because he was quicker to execute you than tell the truth about Hisana." A thumb brushed over her cheek and snowflakes blossomed on her skin, frozen teardrops. "Byakuya pruned you and restrained you, because he mistook you for a weed. You don't even know how much it has cost you to become a false noble, yet without him I could have taught you true elegance. You didn't need their poisoned charity."

Rukia swallowed hard. There was something much bigger lurking behind the katana's words. "I don't know how much you see through my eyes, but that's only one side of Nii-sama. You should have more faith that I wouldn't trust him without good reason. When he first took me out of the Academy, I wasn't exactly ready to graduate. I certainly wasn't top of the class. On my first stint in Karakura I lost my powers and broke taboo! Is it any wonder he asked Ukitake-taicho to hold me back from duty? He supported my execution, and I still managed to forgive him! What do you think is worse than that?"

Sky blue eyes stared deep into violet for a long moment.

"The memories he stole from you," declared Shirayuki with painstaking clarity; "he could not pluck from me."

The adoptive Kuchiki tried to wrap her mind around such a concept. It simply didn't fit. "Memories that you never tried to mention before now?"

"Ever since his meddling, your Jinzen was not sufficient for conversation. Lately you've only heard me clearly when fearing for your life. Less than appropriate times to raise the subject."

Pushing the zanpakuto away - respectfully - Rukia hung her head and turned back to her side of the clearing in the glass forest. "I am fearing for my life. If I die tomorrow because we spent our precious time arguing about the pomposity of nobles… a-and knowledge that I've evidently been able to survive without - instead of doing my best to learn bankai from you - what will it matter that Nii-sama lied to me?"

Hugging herself loosely, and rubbing the throat a red choke collar once encircled, she looked out into the distance the way she had once stared out of a marble tower's window slits.

"When I was waiting in the Shrine of Penitence because I had been weak and hasty and ruined the life of an innocent human boy…I found peace and acceptance. Never mind that he turned out to be a monster like Ichigo," she added, a wry aside. "I didn't have to know the full story to find that peace. I didn't need to know that Aizen rigged the execution, that the Central 46 were dead, that Nii-sama had ever married a stranger named Hisana. I didn't need to know Urahara had buried something inside my soul, because that peace was with myself, just the way I was, and I wasn't shy to die for the horrible things I had done. Mostly to Shibas, come to think of it." How ironic, for Kaien and Ichigo to be cousins. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and farewell.

She blinked back the tear that always came for Kaien and straightened her shoulders, glaring up at the fading twilight. "But if I die tomorrow knowing that I did not fight to the utmost; that I allowed my destiny to pass me by and fall into the hands of a madman, I will know no peace and acceptance. I will be furious, and ashamed, because whoever fights without resolve only endangers those they swore to protect. It would be a hilarious game to Aizen to send illusions and mess with our heads now. I might be imagining you! He might have concocted whatever Nii-sama did to displease you! Whatever the truth is, I want to know I did my best."

Rukia stood arms akimbo, her reiatsu gleaming white with determination. "If it really is as momentous a betrayal as it sounds, I can't afford to deal with it half-heartedly. But right now I am a shinigami, and I have a duty! I fear failing that duty more than anything my brother-in-law could do to me."

Silence poured into the glade for several moments until Shirayuki released her ire and calmed, flashing a rare and crystalline smile. For the second time the snow maiden said; "This is what I like about you, Fukutaicho Rukia. You so easily feel the cold avalanche of fear in your soul…"

But always for the right reasons.

o)0(o

Yoruichi was still trapped in Hinoiri's chosen moment, slowly working herself into a frenzy. She'd shunpoed all over half the kingdom, she'd located dozens of familiar zanpakuto, the Spirit Palace, Aizen and Tousen picking flowers in a field- you name it, it was useless unless the damn cat let her out the bag.

Her body bristled with shunkou, flash cry, every hair on her head prickled with the static, her raised fist burned. She had Aizen Sousuke by the throat.

"It won't work," stated her jailer, curling up on top of the unbending steel flowers, accustomed to the discomfort of a timeless, motionless world. "Aren't you tired yet?"

Even if smashing the bastard's face in was an exercise in futility, Yoruichi still took great pleasure in it.

The cat watched with the amusement innate to the species. "We are disconnected from time, and therefore space, and cause and effect."

"I've been moving normally." And quite acrobatically at that.

"That's a case of being everywhere at once. I have blocked your perception of the shadow images we create to save you the headache of being a solid unbroken line of infinite Yoruichis."

"Lying, mind controlling and getting in my way, and you still want me to acknowledge you?"

"Saving you a headache," repeated the cat wearily. "You really are the first Shihouin to reject me so completely."

"Why does it bother you?" She roundhouse kicked her enemy in the face, it should have ripped his head off. Not a single strand of hair rippled. She shook her leg out, wincing from the recoil.

"I am concerned. The lord who did not wish to skewer his own progeny, the lady who did not receive the sword from her ancient, senile old matriarch until she stole it, the twins that tried to snap me in half... they all saw reason or all least defeat in the end. And now I meet the spoilt princess who doesn't want a hand me down? Admit it, you treat me less like an heirloom and more like used toilet paper." Yoruichi twitched an eyebrow at the odd choice of words.

"I was never taught that a zanpakuto would abandon its shinigami at the end of their useful life."

"That does sound more like a human's treatment of a rusted sword. Why, it reminds me of someone who tossed theirs into the back of the wardrobe and fled Soul Society for a hundred years."

"How many of my ancestors died too soon after they abdicated!"

"How many of them died on the battlefield?"

She faltered. "Um."

"None. Not a single one in two thousand years! Realise, it hurts me to interfere when you oppose it. I still ache from slowing Benihime's bankai. I fear for this girl running a tightrope without my safety net. What if she dies without passing me on? What if her children all suffer without me? This selfish woman has spat in the face of the noblest Clan and broken every vow of her coronation. She means to destroy the oldest legacy in the afterlife."

"I know that no human soul can bear two zanpakuto. You cripple everyone born into my family. One chance at being a shinigami - one!- and then never again for eternity. And you have the nerve to do it to the one clan that fully understands reincarnation and its consequences! Even if I deny you now, I've already paid the forfeit. I wasn't given the choice!"

Hinoiri slashed at her face, reishi leaping from his hooked claws. "You left your throne to rot! You have no right to question me! You are lower than dirt! You may beg for my aid on your back with throat bared for my judgement! It is not so easily forgiven!"

"Lower than dirt?! I am the Goddess of Flash, and I was captain without your cheating! I don't need a kami holding my hand to be a shinigami!" Above the seeping scratch marks, their matching yellow eyes shot lightning bolts at each other.

"Murderer of a dynasty..." hissed Hinoiri, spine arching and fur fluffing in rage. "How dare you call yourself a death god without a real god's sanction!"

"…I never wanted any zanpakuto!" admitted Yoruichi finally, fists in the air, yowling defiance. "Using a magic sword is as unsatisfying as letting Soi Fon do all my assassinations for me. Who'd invent shunkou without wanting to be closer to the action? I want my own strength. I want to know how far a human soul can go alone!"

"So does he," sneered the tomcat, pointing its clock-face tail at the statuesque Aizen. "Why not challenge each other?"

The princess sighed and pinched her temples between thumb and forefinger. "I would if you'd let me, mangy cat."

It purred at the small victory. By hook or by crook, she would learn to wield his powers. "The trick to manipulating things in space is to almost stop time: the slower it crawls the faster you move. Make little Byakuya look like a sleepy tortoise- but don't freeze him, or he'll be immune to your touch."

Yoruichi grinned. Finally they had a common goal. "Do it," she commanded with vicious delight. "I'll end his ascension in a nano second. He won't even know who struck him down."

"Listen," warned the starved black stray; "when time isn't actually waiting, these powers are nothing more than a race against the opponent..."

"I've never lost a race," smirked the Goddess of Flash.

There was an unsettling low rumble, a single tick of a clock drawn out into a thunderstorm. Yoruichi slashed out with the zanpakuto that had finally gained permission to rest in her hand.

Sousuke's eyes twitched towards her ever so slightly. She flinched back, falling instinctively back into timelessness, safety. The sword never even brushed him.

She was shaking. Hinoiri was growling with the singsong snarl unique to cats.

"He would've killed me," she shuddered, then shook her head furiously. "No! What am I saying? He barely moved, this is ridiculous. Killing intent alone can't finish me off!"

She pressed the thin, assassins blade against his stone hard throat. It rattled, her hands were trembling so hard.

"Abnormal reflexes," she snapped, daring Hinoiri to breathe a word about her hesitance. "You're making me soft. Again! And don't interfere!" A tick crept by, she was more than fast enough to make it seem like an hour.

It was a wafer of a millisecond. And his fist, simmering with colourless reiatsu just beneath the skin, nearly ripped out her stomach.

She stopped breathing in shock, blood dripped from her cheek and a shallow gash on her abdomen. The red drop became a ruby hanging in midair.

"Your limit." Without changing outwardly, the scrawny mongrel gave off an aura more intimidating than the volcanic tigress Haineko. "As requested."

"He's not human," choked Yoruichi. He'd used something like flash cry, her own skills against her and elevated.

"Take your time and look. He has not altered himself with the Hougyoku in any way. The only difference between you is he is not too moralistic to exploit a zanpakuto he loathes."

The stalker had saved her life three times in less than a day. "I'm sorry," confessed Yoruichi. "Being helped makes me feel helpless. I can't entrust my life to a zanpakuto spirit who'll abandon me for my children. Father…changed a great deal, after he abdicated. He missed your voice."

The feline regarded her aloofly, until it finally dawned that her obsession with living under her own power was born from seeking strength that could not be arbitrarily removed. That her loyalty to the shinigami duty was so devout she defied anything to interrupt it. "This is my own flaw," admitted Hinoiri, shamefaced. "I cannot find the souls again after they fall into the path of konsou. I have no choice but to transfer by ritual. And how it burns to imagine yourself a normal human! Is that why you hate me, you who cared so little you abandoned your post to chase an outlaw into the real world?"

Yoruichi shifted uncomfortably. She had visited her retired father since then and the old man had gone ballistic. Then begged her on hand and knee to stay. This must have been why he swallowed his wounded pride.

The emaciated cat shrugged, shoulder blades spiking up. "Perhaps you were curious about it. After all, the Shihouin family ruled by gang law long before Soul Society was built. Their empire was built on incarnating directly into the afterlife! All the nobles high and low are those capable of bearing a bloodline in a dead dimension. Some have never even been alive. A cat can forgive a little curiosity.

"So have a little faith, I chose your House of Heavenly Gears because they would always return to me. You really thought I'd abandon you?! I would never insult you so deeply as you have betrayed me!"

Yoruichi transformed and slinked closer, tail waving suspiciously. "Cat to cat," she said, faking nonchalance. "Are you saying I'm my own father reborn? Are you sort of implying we're the most inbred royalty in existence?"

"No," snorted the tom. "There's a dozen or so of you. Personally I think you're the bitchy old matriarch back to haunt me. But how could I ever have explained myself when you wouldn't listen? I thank that detestable man for his war. It led you straight into my claws."

The two felines studied each other for an endless moment.

"But if your powers don't let me hit people - " continued the stubborn princess relentlessly.

"They will," scowled the feline; "when it is anyone but him. Remember why your leader laid this issue before your forgotten king. It is beyond even Yamamoto and Ryuujin Jakka to defeat and you are just a kitten still."

Yoruichi glared at the traitor captain. 'Only difference' ? Oh yes, to Hinoiri she was also a traitor who had defected from her high rank and joined the enemy, those half hollow vaizards. She had also attempted to stand alone and above her peers with their pitiful zanpakuto crutches. Shaking her head, she shifted back into human form and stepped out of the trailing smoke.

"Hi no Iri. How do I earn your hard won forgiveness?" She begged like her father had; accepted his reasons and performed the same humiliating kowtow, face down on the unyielding grass blades. One hand staunched her belly wound. Her cat scratches stung vindictively.

"I am also fickle," commented the spirit airily. "Let us go find your loyal friends and speed his demise, shall we? Shihouin Yoruichi."

She glared at Aizen, frozen in his reflex retaliation. His expression was cold and deadly, faintly furious at her daring to out manoeuvre him.

"Can we at least draw on his face?" she sighed in defeat.

"I don't have a pen," Hinoiri denied her sadly. "Now put your clothes back on, and let's go."

She glanced down at an expanse of chocolate skin, her long fall of purple hair the only claim to modesty, and smirked. "…If only Ichigo were here to see this."

"I thought you were with Kisuke?"

"Yeah, but watching that kid panic is way funnier."

o)0(o

Ichigo hit the ground with no way to brace, piledriving into the dirt, bursting like a melon, thrashing out with broken arms, hitting…

…pillows?

Air forced its way into his lungs uninvited, something beeped. His eyes rolled, straining to see where he was, figure out what had happened. He was lying on his back in pitch darkness. He felt so heavy, as if he'd been sleeping for a month.

Oxygen barged in again, another beep. A green glow on the ceiling finally clued him in. It was the clinic's emergency lighting. Had Zangetsu's expert training left him comatose? A cripple? He was exhausted. He could barely move.

Sight adjusting, he scanned the room again and fell off the bed in terror.

What was THAT? No, seriously, what WAS that?!

One adrenalin-rush later he knew he wasn't a cripple and he definitely didn't feel tired anymore.

It had been some kind of monster? A sentry?

Wait, did that mean Aizen had already won?

Stealthily, Ichigo peered over the edge of the trolley bed. The guard was black down one side and white down the other, body veined with grey stripes. Grey hair rose in twisting spikes above its unsettling mask. The lurking strawberry screwed his face up in discomfort - that was the most humanoid mask he'd ever seen on a Hollow. You could almost read the expression on it.

Just before he ducked back down, the green light glinted of a chain around its neck.

A chain that led to a familiar gold coin.

"…Chad?" questioned Ichigo, all disbelief, tugging the respirator mask off his face. He fumbled towards the door frame and flipped the lights on. The black and white remained the same, the grey had been a trick of the shadows and now was a lurid magenta-red. "Chado? What's going on? …Have you seen yourself, buddy?" The creature was still wearing the coin that he called more important than his life, so the boy assumed Sado Yasutora was still lucid and chose to tread gently.

"…I've been thinking…"

"Don't do that!" chided Ichigo, rolling his eyes. Nothing's wrong, everything's fine, stay cool, Chad… "You know it's bad for us."

"Starrk…Ishida's arrow…" The habitual gap resurfaced, as Chad mulled too deeply on his words to say them out loud. "…I was afraid."

Ichigo filled in the gaps mentally. He hadn't been there either time, but he'd been told the details. Orihime had rejected Chad's discovery of his powers, but obviously not their presence. Chad was afraid of who the Primera Espada, and his encroaching hierro skin, said he had once been.

"The more afraid you are, the more it can latch on to you…" Embarrassed for having no better advice to give, the Vaizard rubbed his head. "It's pretty dumb to say 'just bullheadedly ignore it', but it works. Hollows move by instinct, and go for weakness like a shark goes for blood."

"…After Inoue reversed me…" Words crept out of Sado at a glacial pace. "I was much, much more afraid… After you all left to fight Aizen the city went mad. I was very in danger, and very powerless. I missed this skin, these hands. I feared the weakness more than I feared the darkness where my hope dwelt. It's better to be this than have no choice what happens to you…"

Wondering how much had happened in their brief absence, Ichigo sat on the edge of the hospital bed and stared. The black, white and red skin had crawled over most of his friend's body, and what had loomed before now towered imposingly. That strange, patterned face was no true Hollow mask, more like a skull tattooed across his eyes and mouth and nose. Years ago, Sado had shown him photos of a festival back in Mexico, the Day of the Dead, and the whole crowd had painted their faces like this. For a fleeting instant, the Kurosaki wondered whether different cultures had different monsters, different deaths. There was no hole through Chad. Perhaps it was yet to show.

He racked his brains for something that would reassure or change his friend's mind. But who was he, an undead Vaizard of all things, to say someone wasn't allowed to keep a Hollow's tainted powers in self-defence? Maybe he was the only person who could empathise. A silent minute passed by.

But it wasn't about brute force, was it? He was still wearing his coin, his promise. That memento meant more to him than his own safety. Ichigo pushed his mind through unfamiliar territory. He wasn't much of a philosopher, but he had an instinct for finding opponents' flaws. It'd have to do.

"…Remember the parakeet kid? You couldn't see ghosts back then, right?"

"Un."

"After I killed that asshole Hollow hunting him, the Gates of Hell opened and he got," Ichigo gestured with a stabbing motion; "spitted on the biggest sword I've seen since Komamura and dragged away for punishment. Rukia said it was because his sins in life were pretty much as nasty as his sins as a Hollow. So why didn't it take him sooner? Because the Hollow wasn't accountable, or some crap. You won't protect yourself, or strengthen yourself by becoming something that has no reason or self-control. Listen, I…"

His voice guttered out. It was so hard to say. It was so hard to face up to. It would haunt him, but he never got a moment's peace from waking horrors to meet his new nightmares.

"When I…when he…when I…"

His hands were shaking. He felt sick and exhausted again.

"When I k…killed Orihime…I had no choice in that. No one chose it. It happened by accident because that kind of power can't hold back. And yeah, it might keep some fake you sort of alive if you're lucky, but that doesn't preserve anything that's precious about Sado Yasutora." Ichigo quirked an eyebrow as if to say, see that? I can get your name right!

"Nothing precious…" Only fear and helplessness. Nameless pain carved so deep into my soul I still see its shadow now. "I only know how it felt to be so jealous of a Hollow who had nothing, because they were free. They had…hope…"

Yasutora couldn't hear his own words, lost in the faceless past, but his inhuman hands clutched possessively at the Right Arm of the Giant, the Left Arm of the Devil. Ichigo couldn't stomach imagining how Sado's poor, pitiful past life must have died.

"…That's insanely rough, man. But Chad, you've got to let it go or you'll never escape it. I understand crazy, and I know all sorts of pain, but they exist for a purpose. We've survived already. It's worthless to feel it now after the cause has stopped."

"Has it?" murmured La Muerte in a dark, stark voice. "She ripped my strength from me. It is beginning again. There will be no way out, no control for me. No power to end it, only hopeless endurance. I couldn't embrace death with no hands to grasp it…Más remedio tiene un muerto…"

The Japanese teenager agreed. "Whatever that means."

"'Even a dead man has more hope.'"

"…I take it back." Ichigo sighed, at least Chad was still sane. Ish. Just sitting on a visitor's chair, in a cream-painted room, totally oblivious to the jarring setting. A siren wailed past, filtering faintly through the walls. Emergency services working all night long to respond to the sourceless disaster zones. Humans at the mercy of Hollows, both their attackers and defenders invisible.

The obvious finally registered with the Substitute's brain. Humans. How had they missed it? They'd been missing it since the start! Because Ichigo had never been taught what was normal and what was wrong. Previously he'd forgotten why he woke up here in the shock, but now Zangetsu's warnings were pealing through his mind like alarm bells.

Ichigo licked his lips nervously, throat drying up. "Ch…Chado…you're not in a spirit body…" A dead thing in a human body, a demon, called Death itself. Those who fall are stained forever. It's you. Shit, shit! It's you!

La Muerte looked at him wordlessly, eyes still human and brown, face still stoic. His formidable reiryoku did not radiate out like Ichigo's, it was meticulously controlled, covetously guarded within his second skin. The reaper had not sensed it, had not gauged it until he realised this. The power was immense. The hypocrisy of telling him to be weak was even bigger.

"Oi. Vasto Chad. I uh…Show me your tattoo again?" The designs on the zombie's face mirrored it, now that he looked in the right way. An inverted heart, a snake winding around jealously, abstract wings stamped across his temples and feeding back into his twists of red hair, as bright as an open wound.

Yasutora blinked, distracted from his reverie, and held out his left, white, devil's arm. The armour began to flake away, revealing the picture beneath. How had a human known to choose that tattoo? Or had he changed to incorporate it? Hichigo had evolved…

Ichigo's hopes grew as the powers were shed without a second thought. He tapped it, pulling Chad's focus towards the words.

"That says something important, right?" He'd forgotten what exactly.

"Amore e Morte," rumbled the Hollow human.

"That's it," recalled the reaper at last. "Because you loved your Abuelo more than punching the stuffing out of people, you said. Because of your promise to him not to fight for your own sake." With his new knowledge, Kurosaki glared and added; "Not fighting just to feel in control."

"…Do you know how hard it was not to defend myself?" asked Yasutora eventually. His deep voice conveyed more emotion than Ichigo had thought possible. "Lots of them didn't hold back after they realised I was an easy target. I thought I was crazy, that the price to be worthy of my Abuelo was too high. But I paid it. Now I'm stalked by Hollows and I wonder who it benefits if they eat me."

"You were defending something else. You were protecting your promise to the person with the most pride in you. Rukia says there are fights for survival and fights for pride. That nightmare you were in before, I can't really tell if La Muerte counts as survival. No matter how strong you were, it sounds like you broke to me. But it's over, Chado. You shrugged off those beatings from the delinquents and the wannabe gangsters, I was there. You lived to walk away from fights with the strongest captains and Espada."

He had Sado's full attention, the strange mask fixated on his words.

"That's who you are now. You're the strong who can pick on the weak. You're the same as the people who made you into La Muerte. It's your choice to keep that oath and it's still your fault if you break it by willingly becoming a monster. If you want to pretend that your fear is still stronger than your self, throw your integrity away. Take your grandfather's medallion off and do it right."

He leaned in closer to the fearful devil, chilling in his sudden resolve.

"If you do, you'd better hide that coin somewhere I won't damage it, because I'm keeping my promise and fighting your fights for you."

He didn't use reiatsu. He didn't call out his Hollow. He didn't raise his fists or his voice.

He only showed his will.

La Muerte wrestled with new emotions, an ambivalent mix of intimidation and being protected. He looked away, because he was able to. The old fears tainting his overwhelming powers had made him forget who he was now. But there was no Hollow in there fighting his new self, only its empty skin, left behind.

He whispered to himself, reassuring himself, reminding himself. Sado Yasutora, the peaceful tiger, fought for his friends and not himself because he was fearless. It was safe to be fearless now, because there were people in the world who would defend him. He was not alone as La Muerte had been.

"Para dejar el pellejo, lo mismo es hoy que mañana."

The onyx and ivory and jasper red skin evaporated. The gypsy-patterned skull faded and dark brown hair fell back into its natural parting. A tanned hand clasped the gold coin: twenty pesos, a Mayan sun carving on the front and a golden eagle flying on the reverse with a snake twisting in its beak. Oscar Joaquim de la Rosa would never know just how incredibly important he had been in his grandson's life.

Ichigo released the breath he didn't know he'd been holding, and flopped back onto the mattress. "Shit, Chado, don't scare me like that." He felt so stressed out. He spent a minute with his eyes shut, blocking out the world and just quitting.

Chad gazed past his hanging brown fringe at his best friend. "…Do you need me to return the favour?" offered Yasutora when it seemed his friend had fallen asleep.

The reply took a while to appear as he mulled it over. "…Sure." He threw an arm over his face. "Go and tell Zangetsu-jii for me that it's crippling when my reiatsu can't escape. He thinks I'm incapable, or just scared to grasp all my power at once; and he's got no patience. Likes flinging people off cliffs. Guy's never heard of pressure valves."

Instinctively, he blocked a blow from Chad. The crackling punch of el Brazo Izquierdo del Diablo pulled short an inch from his braced hands. He got a close-up view of the business end of La Muerte he'd never wanted.

"You said, I'm not in a spirit body. My real body is not strong enough for a Vasto Lorde's reiatsu. So I don't wear my armour beneath my skin, Ichigo." His voice was low thunder, his red-tipped fingers danced with seed lightning. All of his breath-taking strength was in a single layer, millimetres thick.

The Vaizard felt a pang of intense jealousy as Sado dismissed his Hollow powers as easily as shrugging off a coat.

"How'd you do that?"

Chad shrugged.

Ichigo looked down at his body, himself. He spent so much time out of it, it barely felt like him anymore. It was a weaker, slower, more vulnerable form. Just a disguise for the fact that he had both feet in the grave already. He'd started to take it for granted, a particularly sophisticated gigai he could leave in his cupboard when fighting. When living the afterlife that eclipsed his real life.

But it was this neglected body that had anchored him all along. The instinct to be king and not horse, the tenacity that pulled him through battle after battle; the chaos of Soul Awakening brushed aside because there was no doubt who was alive right now, how could there be? When his spirit should have been torn apart long ago, the body had always argued and said - no, this is my shape. I am me. I am still here.

He knew, he had always known his Hollow was stronger than him. Yet it had never defeated this link to life, even when he begged it to in despair.

Chad had just shrugged, because instincts didn't waste time explaining themselves.

Kurosaki Ichigo tasted the air in his lungs and fully relaxed for the first time since he could remember.

"D'you think I'll have to walk back to the King's Realm?"

The other looked embarrassed for not noticing sooner and mumbled, "I don't know why or how you got back here in the first place."

"I just came back to keep an eye on this dumbass friend of mine," he jibed, dodging the question. "He gets into trouble every time I'm not around."

"Ichigo, when you're around all the trouble is magnetically drawn to you."

"Tell it like it is, why don't you…" grumbled the Substitute, and abruptly fell into a dead faint.

Chad gazed past his hanging brown fringe at his best friend. "…But if you ever need me to, I will raise el Gigante and el Diablo for your sake. I will fight your troubles for you."

There was no hint of a reply.

"…You must have been tired."

o)0(o

"Won't I need the sword for this, Onee-sama?" asked Rukia. She had forced her misgivings to the back of her mind and was now fidgeting in anticipation. She was going to see her bankai for the first time. She was going to beat Ichigo at his own record-breaking game.

Her hour had finally come.

Shirayuki flicked her cloud-like hair over a shoulder. "What I need from you is far more than swordplay." She turned curious. "You must have wondered about it?"

"So ka?" breathed the woman, riveted. "A-actually I have been imagining!" She pulled her emergency sketchbook from a secret pocket and raised it as evidence, page upon page of cartoons and scrawl blowing around the ice meadow. Scrabbling to reclaim them, she gabbled some of the ideas she'd had. "My current favourite is one I came up with while doodling in Ichigo's Physics class and wait, it gets better - I've been thinking about what Nii-sama said about the ultimate secret Kuchiki zanjutsu when they retrieved the Ouken? And this," she hoisted the felt-tip masterpiece into the snow-woman's surprised face. "A sword made of frozen air! A blade from an empty hand! I think it's perfect!"

"I offer you the freedom of an elemental power," frowned Shirayuki; "and you ask me to make it into a stick to hit things with?"

Rukia wilted.

A sharp smile spread across the yuki-onna's perfect features. "It can be done, but you would perish trying."

She held a hand out to her side, cloud-wreaths condensing in violently boiling, shrinking spirals, liquid hydrogen spattering the snowy ground and smoking. The temperature dropped, and dropped, and dropped, until Rukia's teeth chattered despite her inborn immunity to cold. Gradually a splinter of silvery substance formed at the zanpakuto's fingertips, hard to see past the billowing fog funnelling high into the night sky. Without the intense moonlight, training in the dark would have been near impossible.

"This is solid hydrogen. Brittle, unstable, inefficient. Was that your meaning?" Flicking the deadly needle aside, a cold detonation sent the glass canopies of the frozen forest into frantic chiming. "A blade wielded at the cost of the wielder's life will never be able to protect anything."

Still shivering, Rukia wobbled out a "H-h-h-h-haiii iii…N-n-n-nee-sss…"

"Don't hurt yourself," remarked the kami with amusement. She sorted through several more bad drawings, looking slightly pained. "A giant snow-Chappy?" A stamp of her bare foot caused an ice sculpture of a large, super-deformed bunny to swell up from the ground. Rukia forgot the cold and fell in love.

"Chappy-chan! It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, pyon!"

"Sometimes I have serious doubts about you," muttered the sculptor darkly under her breath. Chappy melted. Rukia's heart crumbled.

"My nature is cold, and my element water. Water is the matrix of life, and the cold will remain even after the sun goes out and the worlds crumble." As the zanpakuto spirit spoke, the weather came to life around her in a dizzying whirl of skill and power. She raised lily white arms to the stars, twirled effortlessly into the sky. "You know how to call my name, reaper. You should already know the form of my bankai."

"Mai…a dance?" Rukia's face fell. "You want me to pirouette over to Hollows and arabesque them in the head? A… a… Some kind of dance-off against Aizen? Onee-sama, I don't know how to dance!"

"Hush," soothed the yuki-onna, pressing a finger to her blue lips. "When snow falls, the world goes quiet." Her free hand snaked up above her head and fluttered down, snowflakes chasing. A wrist flicked sideways, suddenly holding a fan wrought from curlicues of frost that snapped open and slashed diagonally, whipping a blizzard into motion. Spinning into the air, flinging her arms high - moonlight glowed between them and a tower of ice heaved skywards: Some no Mai, Tsukishiro. Larger, faster and colder than in shikai.

She twirled the fan in a hypnotic figure of eight, flipped it, caught it and released. Whistling towards the earth it expanded into a razor-sharp arc, a vast guillotine that bit deep into its target. Crescent moon whispered Rukia's mind. Neither she nor Shirayuki would speak until the dance had said everything words could not express, and the bankai had been mastered. Mikazuki.

The goddess drifted back down, weightless, weaving long sleeves of hoarfrost silk in her wake, her bare feet leaving no indent in the snow. She bunched the white banners in her hands, knees dipped, waist bending like a willow in the wind; and flung them outwards. The scarves whipped around with furious speed, spiralling and switching and sailing high overhead. They crumpled back into her palms, she threw them again and crackling glaciers streaked along their shadows, shearing through the trees, racing like wildfire. Tsugi no Mai, Hakuren, White Ripple. Surging into White Tide, Hakushio.

Rukia, mesmerised, had been unconsciously mimicking the movements. Tiny trails of ice danced around her, and a realisation seeped into her skin. If she couldn't use this power skillfully, she would trap herself in walls of ice as surely as if Hyourinmaru had imprisoned her in Sennen Hyourou. She might be pierced by falling icicles, slip on frozen ground, catch her allies in the centre of attacks aimed at enemies. A sword was small, focused, easily directed. Although the dance was enthralling, it required the dancer to have almost unnatural spatial awareness and balance. Almost ghostly premonition to use it at the speeds the dead fought at.

Sode no Shirayuki, named for her sleeves of white snow, continued to leap and twist. The moon was obscured by heavy clouds, a dense blizzard sleeting down. In seconds it blinded them both. But Rukia could still feel her zanpakuto's movements as if she performed them herself. So she knew to hit the ground when a hundred ice javelins hissed out of the haze. Giant intricate snowflakes bloomed where the spears struck, quickly branching out, sending out spires of crystal until a new thicket of glass trees hemmed the dancers in.

White sword becomes white spear. White tree becomes white forest. Shirayari. Morihaku.

Fists clenching compulsively, Rukia crouched low, arms close as if cradling something to her chest. Above the snowstorm was condensing into a hailstorm. Through gaps in the stinging curtains, she spotted her mentor standing up with paper umbrella resting on her shoulder. She swayed smiling from side to side then opened it with a jaunty swoop. The barrage faded out, now a gentle shower of rain.

The shinigami had a very bad feeling about the rain. Dragging herself out of the trance induced by Shirayuki's tuition, Rukia pressed her palms together with fingers pointing in opposite directions and rotated her hands. A large, heavy fan unfolded with slats as long as her arm, and she immediately hid behind it. Forget grace, her instincts were yelling at her to take cover. Only after did she realise she'd manipulated the ice entirely on her own.

Casually, ever so casually, the pale geisha spun the shaft of the umbrella, spokes blurring with the speed. A violent gale snatched up the rain, froze it and drove it away from her - vicious needles peppering out in all directions. Rukia grimaced as they rattled against her thin shield. This was no longer a passive demonstration: you had to survive training if you hoped to benefit from it. Rubbing a hand over one of the panels, she formed a translucent window through her defences and peered apprehensively at her dance master. The yuki-onna - which Rukia belatedly remembered was a ghoul that trapped and waylaid travellers in the mountains, who could kill them with a breath - was grinning, fox-like. Her sense of foreboding only increased.

Fuyuzakura, explained the silent voice. Winter cherry blossom. A small homage to Senbonzakura.

She guessed Shirayuki's hatred of Nii-sama didn't extend to his zanpakuto spirit.

That sensation of being possessed returned, Shirayuki puppeteering her to show how she should defend, calming the tempest, coaxing the patient ice to move. A shinigami wielded by a zanpakuto. Even before her snow fort was completed her teacher was countering. She raised one dainty foot after another, heavy clog sandals building up to reach them. Now her light steps sank into the snow, cutting through it. Rukia felt the thick geta scrape against the ground, felt the reiatsu sinking deep underneath into the permafrost layer to aggressively expand it. The earth shook, deep fractures scrawling between the snowdrifts. The fukutaicho was knocked off her feet as the icequake demolished her protective igloo. The wind rose, howling.

Snow is a killer, a preservative, a beautiful force of nature, a thing of play. A timeless dance. The cruelest, most unforgiving of environments.

She was buried beneath a small avalanche, summoned especially for her. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe under the weight, couldn't see. She lay there panicking, trying to blast her way out with sheer spirit pressure yet nothing was happening. Her dangerous sword was showing its true nature. Her powers had been forcibly blocked, like a sheathed zanpakuto - perhaps Shirayuki thought turnabout was fair play.

Your enemies will also be able to turn your tide against you, if you falter or fail. Never train just to win. Train to fall and rise again.

Gritting her teeth, Rukia tried to escape her tutor's muting grip. As if she needed to be taught how to screw up! She managed that remarkably well on her own all the time!

Just like that heart-wrenching battle against Aaroniero in Kaien's body, she was encased in her own ice.

Just like then she became a ghost, hid her presence so thoroughly her own zanpakuto could not find her. She drifted up like a swimmer with natural buoyancy. Cresting the surface she breathed deep, drank in the sights so briefly denied. Colour seeped out of her, she was a zephyr, dragon's breath in winter. Imitating Shirayuki, her feet did not dent the snow, the moonlight laced into her kimono.

The kami was hanging in midair, silks floating, motionless in a blank haze. The temperature was plummeting as before, even faster, even a ghost felt the lack.

Pull the heat from the world into your centre. Steal it with all your strength. As you burn and the world freezes, you'll wish it were cooler.

Rukia could not move. A volcano in the heart of an iceberg, she answered.

No breeze, no leaf, no stray raindrop moved. The cold crept inside, caressing her slowing heartbeat.

The final dance is Absolute Zero. You must not let the dance end, or you end with it. Your every move must become grace, your life art, your soul elegance, for now the dance is begun you must dance to your dying breath.

Rukia felt it, believed it, and furiously denied it entry.

DANCE! She bellowed soundlessly, into the roaring quiet of the white haze. Dance! Mai, Sode no Shirayuki!

The spell shattered into smithereens, the yuki-onna vanished, the sword fell into her waiting grip. The ribbon unravelled around her, a banner.

Kuchiki Rukia, Lieutenant of the Thirteenth Division, was alone in the cold.

Raising her katana sideways, she rose on her toes and glided in a tight circle, moving weightlessly. This was only the first step. There was endless amounts to learn, every glance a story, every snowflake unique. The shinigami steeled her nerves and began to train again.

"…Bankai! HAKKA NO MAI!"

o)0(o

He had developed the bankai mannequin for himself, because Benihime never responded no matter what he told her.

"I have no need of your partnership." She turned her back immediately. All he could see was the autumn glory of her layered kimonos and obis, ancient styles, copper-embroidered, the sweet ornaments tangled in her burgundy hair. Perhaps her face was as striking, though he had the suspicion it was more a vampiric scarlet oni. One of those hairclips might be her horn.

"Benihime," smiled Kisuke with false confidence. "I'm glad you accepted my invitation."

Invitation? Her rigid back seemed to say.

"Though you clearly prefer to call it kidnap," he hazarded a guess, trying to adjust his way of thinking around from how a sword feels to how a person feels. Bankai was about becoming well-acquainted, was it not? "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"I don't think she does," commented Yoruichi, relaxing in the healing springs. Since her instatement as clan leader a few days ago, there'd been a slow-to-heal bandage round her chest, and a zanpakuto at her waist that would never have been allowed in the Nest of Maggots, and a flat refusal to talk about it.

"Ach, Yoruichi-san. You should be more hospitable. Benihime is-"

A flash of red energy sizzled past him before he could put words in his zanpakuto's mouth. He wiped a different species of red from his cheek, looking crestfallen. "Benihime is not nice ," he finished, disappointed.

"You are weak," declared the manifestation of his soul, her voice shimmering with harmonious notes. "And when you are weak enough to destroy a world, you will be the first to die."

"Ah," lamented Kisuke. "So this part of my soul is not a harp, but a harpy. I did wonder whether Nake meant singing or screaming."

The crimson one remained silent, her face turned away, as it would forever be. For the next three days she remained so, unmoving, until the sunrise of the fourth day brought with it the boy's fever. Humans were not designed to channel such powers for such lengths of time, even the ones who called themselves reapers.

He did not know why the scarlet tears ran down from his burning eyes, did not know why he was suffused with heart break and anguish, did not know why she approached him only when his vision was too hazy to see her face.

"This is my least favourite colour," the ruby beads were swept carefully from his face; "and my least favourite command. I care nothing for one who says death god the way you do."

And she left.

···

"This is not the manner of exam I would expect a man to cheat in."

Urahara, nervous, uncertain, the captaincy something Yoruichi had pushed him into like an unwanted sweater at Christmas, turned to the Soutaicho with an awkward smile.

"It was too flashy?"

"It was not a bankai."

Now, he didn't really wish to leave the comforting shadow cast by the queen of the House of Heavenly Gears, the footprints he had stepped in all the way through the gardens of the Shihouin estate, the Nest of Maggots, the Onmitsukido, and the 2nd Division, but in the same breath, he did not wish to fall behind until her shadow walked too fast for him to catch up. She was, after all, the swiftest person in the world. And he'd gain the authority to found a Technology Research Institute. He'd stayed up all night agonising over what to build first.

"If the technical, purest form of a captain's prerequisites is to be able to produce, at whim, their native abilities to a power of ten; then I cannot in all honesty be considered a cheater."

"Why would a Shihouin personally recommend to me a man who is both inherently lazy and incapable of bankai? It takes nepotism to extremes." Yamamoto had clearly read Soi Fon's damning report on him.

"Not lazy, easily distracted." Calling anyone who survived the training compulsory to all Onmitsukido members lazy was no small slight.

"If you are as intelligent as she claims, you'll give me a satisfactory answer." He did not need to voice the alternative.

"Benihime's bankai is no more suitable for display purposes than Ryuujin Jakka's," said Kisuke with great care, a dry throat, and astronomical amounts of presumption. He did not know Ryuujin Jakka's final form. Simply because it was never necessary did not guarantee it was never ethical.

The weathered man nodded slowly, and raised himself on old bones to make his way from the clearing.

And as easily as that, they believed he had subdued the crimson empress.

···

Wooden sandals crunching on the seashell pathway, Kisuke trailed the rich music to its source. Complex and lilting it filled his mind with images and ideas, sometimes slow and tranquil, sometimes rapid and energising. It sounded like a koto, but the melodies plucked from it were faster and more detailed than usual - as if many were playing. She probably had abnormal numbers of limbs. Or moved in packs of insultingly beautiful, cackling sirens.

"Awaken, Benihime," he murmured to himself, pulling a small black square of fabric from his pocket. Somehow it unfolded, doubling in size many times until it was a reiatsu-hiding cloak he could wrap around himself. Okiro was her command, but she didn't trust him enough to sleep in his presence so he doubted saying it would work. "Good morning, Benihime, rise and shine! Upsy daisy. On with hat and off to work. My bad, you can't wear a hat without a head. Will you decapitate me with harp wires, or drink my blood to replace yours lost?"

He moved away from the seashells and melted into the shadows of the autumn woods. Pink fireflies lent a warm glow to the night, dancing around the distant pagoda where an enigma plied her trade. In the confusing world of the kami rivers of wine flowed past shores of baked and patterned clay, meadows of grass looked more like shed feathers from some mass migration of birds of paradise, and the air was addictively sweet. The moon blazed and he shuddered. He would never feel safe under an open sky again.

Winding a path around to the rear of the tiered bandstand, Urahara's mouth moved silently in a stealth casting of high level binding kido. Nine pits dug in a void, nine antlions sleeping in nine funnels, nine prey filling their jaws, of amethyst obsidian quartz and agate, of jade labradorite chalcedony and moonstone, of onyx. The rays of the sun are pinned to their throats. The struggles of the joyous are swallowed by their hubris. Nine sins drawn in a sky that knows no colour, Bakudo #79 Nine Sunlight Traps! Kuyou Shibari!

As eight black gaps in reality flared around her, the musician lifted an elegant red-skinned hand and traced a circle around each. The air tightened, two huge forces fighting for dominance. When the ninth trap appeared the others had already faded and it collapsed under its own weight.

Urahara broke into a cold sweat. He couldn't tell if it was fear of his zanpakuto's wrath or excitement that kido could be dispelled with hanki, opposing demon, alone. It was usually for cancelling out much smaller, blunt reiatsu attacks. He itched to research it.

He'd probably already done irreparable damage to his relationship with Benihime, but there wasn't much Kisuke wouldn't do in the name of knowledge. Clearing his throat and unpeeling his cloak, a wobbly-voiced request floated between them. He felt as shy as a faun. It was humiliating.

"Ah, um, B-Benihime-sama! I have a small handful of -" many, many, many, endless " - questions for you, if you would honour a humble shopkeeper with some answers, ne?"

A gloating reply sneered back in his direction. "When the man who knows everything begs so humbly for my expertise, how can I refuse?"

"Yare yare," sighed the exile. And suddenly, unexpectedly, longed-after, abandoned wish; she was before him. Acknowledging him. He'd forced her hand somehow, or said something right at last?

"Well your head grew back prettier after I lopped it off." He dripped sarcasm, politeness drying up. Her face was exactly as demonic as he'd always feared. A feast for sore eyes from the back, from the front she was altogether savage. Some wasteland cannibal luring wanderers in with alluring silks.

"Are you so shallow?" crooned the onibaba, fixing him with an accusing glare from cat-pupil eyes. Two thin black horns curved back from her forehead. Her features were old yet well-preserved, with an overbearing handsomeness only other demons would call attractive. But her voice, oh her voice was honey and spice. Kisuke wanted to close his eyes and swim in that sound. It must be some kind of glamour, mesmer, trap. "Why did you drag me there, 'death god'?"

He pointed up as if the Hollow Emperor still lurked on high, stricken, all his language scared into hiding.

"Leave it to its sleep. It has no other solace." Her voice was sultry, desultory.

"How can you ignore it?!"

"What, Kisuke? Adamastor either sleeps or hunts. Take your pick. Whisper Okiro in his ear. Free me."

Wincing, Urahara wrapped his green haori tighter in childish comfort and folded his arms. He pouted at her and began the interrogation. "Benihime-chan, what in the name of Shihouin is 'the way I say death god'?"

"Death is my servant, and I shall play god."

"And why should I pay respects to Adamastor?"

"He carved Hueco Mundo out of his own insatiable stomach. Do you know what the world was like before he dragged them all into his realm? Do you know how dire life was when the Hollows roamed unchecked?" She pursed her lips, a mocking little kiss. "No you don't, you live safe in defences built by your elders and betters. You are a mayfly boasting it will level the mountain that holds back the sea." She patted his cheek, patronising. "Your noblest intentions hatch the ugliest regrets."

"Any in particular?" he asked, ready to defend his choices with the Hougyoku.

The crimson princess closed one pale yellow eye, pinned him with the other. Answering without ambiguity. "Shiba Isshin."

"Isshin?!"

"Kisuke," the oni cradled his head in her hands, long black nails scraping the sides of his neck, forcing him to look at her wicked, twisted face. "How could you grow up in the House of Heavenly Gears and never know of noblesse oblige? The Great Clans are dead, and it is their duty to stay dead. Reaper, it is your oath to keep the distance between the mortals and the ghosts wide and impassable." She shook him like a doll, a small pet that had displeased her. "Not play with it. The gigai grown from human flesh were gross enough, but the children they spawned? You let a dead soul clamp itself onto the physical realm, and now it doesn't know how to let go!"

"I assume you mean Kurosaki-kun? I cut his Chain of Fate myself! I just…haven't told him his body will rot without Mod Soul Candy, yet. Kon -"

She cut across him, insulting his ignorance with leisurely enjoyment. "That is also Masaki's child, the Heavenly Chains rusted and weak. Just to survive birth he had to overcompensate until his Chain of Fate was irrelevant. You gave life to the dead, Frankenstein, and you didn't even notice. No wonder Aizen is jealous enough to steal your playthings."

Urahara gave a dark and chilling smirk. "You worry too much, Hime-sama. If he scares you so, then call out your companion Naraku to kill him again."

"Naraku is beyond my reach and my ken," lamented Benihime, plucking a few mournful off-key notes on her koto. "It is the final arbiter, yet he has already escaped its judgement. Dearest scientist, after Aizen is dealt with, the Spirit King will be targeting your godson."

Taicho! Taicho! You're going to be a godfather! You never told me these gigai could get pregnant, you sly genius bastard!

Hwa? Masaki-chan, they can't - Did you say genius? AHAHAHA only the best for my Third Seat, ne? I'm a little surprised you're so pleased, but congratulations! I wish you and your stalker all the best!

"…I forgot about that. No wonder Ichigo-kun is so creepy." He gets it from me. "Well, it's been charming, my dear, but I really must go. It's not like I actually want your horrific bankai anymore, so I'm going to retire from this whole zanpakuto business and stick to my Onmitsukido training." He sighed woefully, fanning himself in the absence of hat and cane. "I don't see what the harm is in Kurosaki-kun being a brain-munching little zombie, either, but I'll try not to do it again. Sticking to the boring science, that's me. Poor little Kisuke-chan. It's the nuclear bomb calling the scientist black, is what it is. As if you're more ethical than me!"

"This bomb can voice its protests, Kisuke."

"Before I go let me ask, why did you hate me before I made any of these 'mistakes'?"

Her answer resounded through his brain.

I saw your nature.

I walk as far as I wish to go, not as far as there is to go. You are blinded by ambition, never sated. You go as far as you can, into the valley of the shadow of death, into the desert of frozen glass, into the mirages of paradise, and your feet are stumps, and you do not know that you are crawling.

You are Aizen in all but name. A thorn by any other name still pricks as deep.

You are a scientist, who does not say 'this is murder' but 'this is progress'.

You are a god of death willing to drown the sky in my blood. And you never once asked me, only dictated the way things must by impeccable logic be.

Well? Do you want me to sing, scream or bleed? It seems you do not care which.

"I only wanted you to talk to me, Benihime. Do you know how much of my life and my actions I regret? Because I was chasing questions without answers, and now you say you had them all."

·

I suppose there's a reason bankai should take ten years to attain. Ah! But I didn't die, so technically it must have worked - so desu ne~? I must have the bankai power of-

Total rejection?

You're too noisy, Yoruichi-san.

·

Taicho, what is this Hougyoku for, and why does it need my reiryoku to make it?

Masaki-chan, if I ever get the damn thing to work I'll show you. You'll be surprised.

·

Those violations, those Vaizards will be executed to the last man. Yesterday they were our treasured comrades, tonight we cannot bear to look upon them. Yoruichi-san, I may have been framed but this Hougyoku is all my own doing. They are fighting the curse. They deserve better than this. I have to flee with them, and pray I find a way to undo my own wretched genius.

·

Taicho! Taicho! You're going to be a godfather!

Kisuke, she…I didn't even sense it, how could I in this gigai? The spirit locks you put on the kids so Hollows wouldn't sense us…the girls are holding out, but little Ichigo's keeps breaking. …Masaki is dead, Kisuke. I keep trying to tell him it's not his fault. He had to lie there under her dead body until someone came by and called the police. I can't make him believe me, and maybe he's right… I don't think he's ever going to smile again.

·

Kuchiki-san. I want you to know I am bowing flat on my face in abject apology. My hat is clasped to my heart as tears stream down my handsome cheeks. I am racked with guilt for using you in such a despicable way to seal the Hougyoku away. I wish to assure you I only meant to avert the disaster that is now upon us regardless.

Hohh. So you couldn't apologise in person?

Alas, sweet Kuchiki-san, I am still banned from Soul Society and will vaporise if I enter the Dangai. So I called. I did promise Kurosaki-kun I'd apologise to you directly.

You're not really crying, are you?

No, but you have permission to imagine me doing so!

I think I'll imagine you dangling over a pit of fire while Tessai beats you with your own cane… In fact, I'll draw it and stick it on my wall. Would you like to be a bear or a bunny, Urahara-san?

Sa…I'll take the bunny.

·

Aizen is using your Hougyoku to build an army of broken-masked Hollows. With ten Vasto Lordes, he could destroy Soul Society.

·

He turned his back on her, the same way she had always refused to look at him. "Why didn't you warn me, Benihime, if you already knew?" He didn't want her to see him cry.

She said nothing in her own defence, withholding the truth.

He began to walk away, the fan limp in his hand. To face Aizen with fists and kido alone. Well that had always been the plan, hadn't it? Tessai had the steel to face Aizen with just kido. He couldn't let his assistant manager outdo him. Urahara Kisuke had no intention of seeing that suicidal Blood Sun bankai again, so what had changed?

The oni called out to his retreating shape. "When we weep, we weep together. Tears of blood are how I measure your remorse. How you know when your actions grieve me."

He wiped the water away, smearing scarlet across his hand, squinting as his vision washed over with pink. Evidently he was so devious she needed a warning mechanism to prove when his shame and contrition were real. She had cried as he cut off her head in Hueco Mundo. She hadn't wanted him to harm Adamastor.

"Well thank you, Benihime, for teaching me how tiny and worthless I really am. Thank you for protecting Seireitei and Karakura from the result of my weakness until now. Thank you for telling me the name of the devil in the sky who is a worthier shinigami than I. Thank you for correcting me after all this wasted, painful time. I am Death's servant, and I shall not play God."

Blood mist bubbled out of the ground at his feet where the crimson tears had spattered a trail like a walking wounded. Hissing, rising, coiling and unfurling, it materialised into a tall and opulent oni woman. She tilted back her long neck, ornaments rattling, opened her fanged mouth wide and drew a red tassel from her throat. Her arm bones popped as they lengthened, skin stretching; achieving the necessary height to unsheathe the sword she had swallowed in one smooth motion.

The blade's slanted tip cut a groove across her tongue as it cleared the arch of her teeth. Lapping up the blood and relishing it, the onibaba grinned past bristling red tusks. The long arm slinked out, presenting the beautiful zanpakuto in a six-fingered hand.

"The instrument of death who sings the music of war."

She drew a shape in the air between them, cutting a stickman out with red reiatsu. It shimmered into a flawless copy of Urahara - a blood mist clone. Kisuke gaped at it. He'd wanted that technique for decades! He'd invented ridiculous blow-up gigai, and she'd been keeping it from him!

"My avatar must be wise, honest and humble;" She stabbed it through the ribs. It suffered realistically, throwing out weak counterattacks and sardonic threats, a convincing decoy. "Or he'll receive nothing of his royal mistress."

His twin folded forwards onto the lush grass, bleeding out. The hilt tilted at the perfect angle for Kisuke to wrap his stained hand around. It slid effortlessly from the corpse's back, shearing false meat.

"Nake means Sing," spoke the humble shopkeeper with a genuine smile.

o)0(o

Zangetsu leaned over the edge of the crater and peered down at Kurosaki's tragic remains. It was a strange, translucent creature. Light passed straight through it, moonbeams threatening to outshine its fragile form.

It was a ghost.

"That wasn't supposed to happen."

Jumping down into the shadows, he stood over the limp outline of Ichigo and wondered what to do. In the do-or-die situation he'd created, he'd expected the former to happen. But the strange boy had chosen the latter.

"Is it that you don't know how to die, or that your instinct to live took you far away?"

He tried to connect through their link as sword and knight, an ineffable bond that transcended place, time and lives; but it was slow and laborious. Winkling the soul back out of its body was like taking candy off of Yachiru (she'd been just as much a marauder when living in the Spirit Realm). Like a shinigami materialising their zanpakuto's soul, he commanded the human to appear.

The thin reishi shell left in the living dead boy's absence suddenly flashed, blinding. Zangetsu squinted behind his shades, and felt enormous relief as the afterimages faded and the real Ichigo was revealed.

The teenager stared at the sky, utterly deadpan. "Zangetsu-jii," he croaked. "Come closer."

The sword bent down.

"…Closer…" wheezed the battered boy. He'd been wrung out by the forced passage through dimensions.

A weak hand gripped the kami's flowing cloak, drawing him close. "Tell Karin…I…"

Suddenly Ichigo was exploding upwards and Zangetsu found himself upside down in midair.

"I KICKED YOUR ASS! SHORRYAAHH!"

The zanpakuto spirit crashed headfirst into the churned earth, stunned more by surprise than by lethal damage. The shinigami stomped a foot onto his sternum and pinned the man flat on the ground, wild-eyed with rage. "You psychotic bastard. Don't ever do that to me again!"

He tried to sit up. "Don't," repeated Ichigo in an ugly voice.

He started to speak. The mere boy leaned down harder, squashing the air out of him. He was starting to believe master your zanpakuto's skills should be changed to be your zanpakuto's master, because that maniac doesn't know when to quit. "First words outta your mouth are gonna be 'Sorry, Ichigo'. You know, I'm not stupid. I don't ask a lot of questions but I usually don't need a lot of answers to get on with my life, either. And I can tell when your bat-shit crazy training regimes are not going to work."

Ichigo, and more than a little Hichigo echo, moved in real close. "Paralysing me and throwing me off a cliff is not kosher, are we clear?"

"We've been eliminating all trace of the undead for two thousand years, Ichigo. I find it very difficult to read you and guide you in the right directions, since you frequently fall off the map of known behaviour and resurface through no discernible logic."

The ginger gangster growled, and the immortal grudgingly added, "I apologise for my inexperience with zombies. The last one was born from someone achingly weak. The soul shattered and died while the man still lived, and the Hollow he embraced lashed out where he couldn't. It was bedlam."

Ichigo thought about those arms, those punches that ripped holes in mountains at a fraction of their former strength. That wild face Chad had left carved into the hillside by the Shrine of Penitence. Power and identity. Strength enough to be anyone at all. He closed his eyes tightly.

"I know, Zangetsu-jii. That guy didn't have anyone to protect him."

The sword frowned at the uncharacteristic insight, empathy towards an abomination. Ichigo dragged his mentor up by the hand, looking fierce yet directing the rage elsewhere.

"But that's what zanpakuto are for. So that I can."

To the kami, unaware of Sado Yasutora's past, that vow didn't make immediate sense. "You can what? You are not weak. Your madness would bring many worlds to their knees, and I have no way to halt your growth. If I cannot temper you with fire it is my creed to destroy you by any means. When I say I want to protect you, Ichigo, this is the only way I can. Bringing you to the edge of death and letting your instincts either save you or end your threat. What else can I do?"

The strawberry calmed, showing a bittersweet half-smile. Zangetsu couldn't disguise his shock at the tender expression.

"I need you to do for me what Ichioku Gyokusai did for my mother. You have to yield."

o)0(o

Shinigami Cup: Golden!

o)0(o

"…So Ichigo…why are you here again?"

"Zangetsu is psychotic, I nearly died, woke up here, bam! Vasto Chad. Another normal Kurosaki day. Tomorrow I think Yuzu will become the Soutaicho. Next week I think Isshin will become sane, but I'm not holding my breath. I can call you Vasto Chad, right?"

"Un, Hichigo."

"Well played," scowled Ichigo. "You know this means we'll have to attend Orihime's Arrancars Anonymous meetings?"

"…You want one of Ishida's T-shirts?"

"Uh, no. I wanna see Inoue being Ulquiorra's therapist." He tapped the side of his head. "He's gonna think puppies puke rainbows and wasabi is toothpaste. She's gonna mess him up. And it will be glorious."

o)0(o

Rukia: ICHIGO! ICHIGO LOOK! I MADE A MILLION CHAPPY SNOW FIGURINES!
Ichigo: Aren't you meant to be training to save the world, dumbass?
Rukia: If I died tomorrow knowing I could have made a Chappy army and didn't… I would become the worst Hollow the world has ever seen!
Ichigo: Oh really? Have you met Vasto Chad?
Rukia: …What is this I don't even… But he's Chad! Chad!
Ichigo: That was my first reaction too.
Rukia: …BUT HE'S CHAD! Is he even in this series anymore?
Ichigo: I know, right? !

o)0(o

"Because you never once asked, you only spouted self-spun facts and declared yourself entitled to play at being god and to steal my powers without permission."

Urahara's mouth bent down at the ends. "I asked if you wanted tea?" he protested pathetically. "It was the first thing I asked." Then my dear mistress interrupted. This is hopeless. I should just go.

Benihime's smile evolved from a sneer to a deep smirk on one side, that swelled across the entire face until every tusk was visible in that loaded grin. She ducked her head, two black horns on her forehead brushing scarily close to his eyes.

"Pluck me the white buds of the most expensive tea in the real world from the highest plateau it grows upon, steep it in water filtered from your own tears brewed on salamander fire, bring it to me in the King's Realm and serve it in a Hollow's mask. Then, perhaps, our conversation can begin."

Blinking rapidly, the mad scientist compiled a quick mental list. I need a senkai gate to China, one of Mayuri's fire-breather experiments, and onions. Lots of onions. Hollows disintegrate when they die so I might need to bring a live one and hold it still. Wait, Hollows dissipate in the atmosphere of the Spirit Realm. Perhaps one of that hobo taicho Ashido Kano's masks. They're teaching him to do tricks and say words, right? He'll lend me one. I'll sheathe it in my reiatsu to protect it. And I'll need a King's Key should the Gate close…Benihime you scoundrel! This challenge is rigged!

"Oh, and Kisuke dearest? I take honey in my tea. You'll need to harvest it from Suzumebachi's hive."

Urahara wilted and sobbed. This is never going to happen.

o)0(o

Yoruichi: So how did it go with Benihime?
Urahara: (waving his fan) It was a triumph! I'm making a note here – Huge Success. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Yoruichi: That bad huh?
Urahara: Urahara Sciences. We do what we must, because we can.
Yoruichi: Don't worry, there's going to be a big party for you at the King's Palace. There will be cake. I invited all your friends…of course your Companion Zanpakuto couldn't come because you decapitated her. And your file says you have no other friends – see here? "Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner, whose passing shall not be mourned. Shall NOT be mourned." That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official.
Urahara: Soi Fon wrote that!
Yoruichi: By the way, we'd like to remind you that the Weighted Companion Zanpakuto will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak.
Urahara: Fwa? But she-!
Yoruichi: There will be cake and grief counselling at the end of the war.

o)0(o

Chapter Notes: Noblesse Oblige means, if you call yourself noble then you have an obligation to act nobly. Byakuya acts extremely proud and noble. Rukia…tries.

I've given Chad a Mexican Day of the Dead themed Hollow because the skull designs they have are awesome, and he's not a straight-up Hollow so creative license? His current life has influenced it – Mexico didn't exist back when La Muerte first appeared. Ye Olde La Muerte looks a little different.

"Para dejar el pellejo, lo mismo es hoy que mañana." To abandon your skin, today is as good a day as any other. Be brave because you'll die anyway.

Hakka no Mai is White Haze Dance. Rukia's canon manga bankai is called Hakka no Togame Censure/Punishment/Sentence of the White Haze. Look up 'water sleeve' and Chinese ribbon dancing on YouTube for an idea of how Hakka no Mai looks, but imagine it much bigger, bankai style. Oh, and it can be summoned multiple times in the King's Realm because Shirayuki is doing most of the work.

Onibaba is an old woman with an oni mask who eats people in the mountains. Targets pregnant women. Benihime is not nice!

Bakudo #79 doesn't have an official incantation, I made that up. But it is one of Urahara's moves against Aizen. Hanki is something Urahara and Yoruichi both use to nullify an attack, using equal and opposite force.

Last thing is; the idea of Nobles being dead souls that circulate only in Soul Society is not canon (afaik). So how did Ichigo meet Orihime if he never lived in the real world before? You'd think Hichigo would notice if all the lives he ate were from the same city. I guess it's based on Buddhist reincarnation, a soul with certain qualities will stop incarnating on the physical realm and 'ascend' to only incarnating in Soul Society. Plot holes, I fill 'em.

As for Noble bloodlines, Great Clans are all Super-Dead Souls, lesser clans are a mixture, and any non-noble having kids in the afterlife would be showing extremely strong 'vitality' of spirit. In HB children born directly into Soul Society, and the ability to have them, are extremely rare.

13,500 words this time!

Author Notes: I am still sad that Gin and Rangiku are dead and not around in this story, so I've just started writing a fic about them that you can find on my profile called Double Argent. Dark secrets crawl out of the woodwork after Toushiro finds Gin hiding in Matsumoto's booze cupboard.

I am looking for beta readers if anyone has time? This arc is evil complicated. (cough- Child of the Ashes, Nefarious, are you well? – cough)

Alliriyan~*