Hello hello, back again so soon!

Now this chapter was amazingly fun and I wish the whole story could flow so easily!

I hope you guys enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Bleach or any of its characters, the story however is mine

Lets hop in!-


Ichigo:

The moon was high in the sky, casting a pale light over the copplestones of the lower rim. The streets empty apart from stray cats and their prey. In the quiet of the night, the city felt small, nearly like a ghost of a once great capitol.

I was careful as I trudged over the sloped rooftops, keeping an eye on my feet as they stepped over clay tiles, the grooves wide and deep enough to snap my ankle right out from under me if I so much as slipped. It hadn't been long at all since Orihime's leave north, but her absence was palpable. Trailing her had become a steady routine, like a dance, and without it my steps felt sloppy- without direction. Searching and searching for their partner; deadly as she might be. Much like those cats down below, playing and toying with the mice, letting them scurry away while knowing they could never truly escape their iron claws.

I grinned to myself as I jumped from one building to the next.

Orihime was just like one of those hissing tabbies; and I was simply a mouse she let believe had a shrivel of power to use against her. She would let me watch her, let me get just close enough, and then swipe me away with a flash of fangs.

I missed the adrenaline of it.

Not to say trailing Bonnie Carter through a darkening alley was not fun in its own way. Her steps were quiet as well, her movements quicker than a burst of lightning, difficult to track and harder to predict. But while Orihime had been a walking ghost, leaving no indication behind that she had ever been there, Bonnie was a wildfire of scent, of footprints and shadows.

And she was afraid. Of being watched, or ambushed, I couldn't be sure but I could nearly smell it on her. It was what made me follow her, what had me keeping my distance as I did.

A push from within told me to slow, to remember my foot placements and stay low.

Under the hood of her cloak, Bonnie's red hair was stark in the night as she looked around herself, before tucking between two merchant boxes. I waited a few moments before slipping easily from rooftop to rooftop, but when I passed the crates she'd shuffled through, there was nothing but empty alley to meet me.

Every trace of her on the wind- vanished.

I clenched a fist over the parchment in my pocket, as a hiss echoed through my mind,

Given the slip again

Now, now, Rukia. I purred back, Have you learned nothing over these weeks?

I jumped to the top of the crate closest to me, not bothering to be discrete. I slid from there, back to the stable ground, and felt a hand over the back of the wooden box.

My hand continued its searching. Probing, splinters breaking into the sensitive skin at my fingertips, I traced each corner.

There.

The latch swung open, and I pushed the wall of the box inward, revealing only a pothole inside. I crouched to lift the cover and nearly fell back at the stench.

The other was never so easy to find

I slumped out of my jacket and folded it neatly over the top of the makeshift door, then folded up the sleeves of my shirt. Bonnie better be going somewhere worth all this. I guided my hand into my pocket and pulled the paper from within, tucking it securely into my breast pocket. It was that sliver of paper that made me asked down that thread in my subconscious,

Is she safe?

Rukia hesitated a moment, her presence fluttering for only the slightest of seconds before taking hold again.

Alive

I began my descent, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.

But, is she adjusting well?

The other is cold

I huffed a chuckle, regretting it the moment the smell hit my tongue. Luckily, I hadn't eaten much today.

What is she doing now?

A ripple in that invisible bond once again,

She is naked

My foot slipped off the ladder and Rukia quickly took hold of my hands, keeping them locked on the bars to keep us from tumbling down into the murky water below. I sent her a feeling of gratitude as I steadied myself with a clearing shake of the head.

You'd think I was back in that flower shop, back when I'd never seen a naked-

Is she alone? I demanded.

The other is always alone

Relief that I had no right to feel swooped in, as I jumped the last few feet into the sewer. For my mind to be on such things right now. Here. I shook my head once more. Determined to shake the thought of her right out of it. Orihime could be with whomever she wishes. She is engaged to the boy, eventually that would be consummated. And it was no business of mine.

Would you like me to find the answer you seek?

Like any other bastard would, I considered it. I had asked for such a thing once, hadn't I? To look inside Orihime's mind, and pull the truth of how she feels from her inner most ramblings… to steal it like so much else had been stolen from her.

No.

Rukia turned quiet as we walked through the winding sewers; not pushing it. She had offered and I had declined and that was that. I wish everything could be so easy.

Then, she swelled inside my head. Pushing and pushing like she might burst right through my skull and out into the world. I dropped to a knee with a groan as the throbbing intensified, as she reached out and took my body as her own.

She tipped our head back, and inhaled deeply. She rose us from the ground, and spoke in a voice that was mine and yet other, "I feel you,"

Swifter than I ever could be and yet slower than she was undoubtedly use to, Rukia stalked forward, head tilted just slightly sideways. She sometimes stumbled slightly, not use to her feet being so heavy or her arms so long. We could both feel the burn that had begun in my fingers, the numbness that would soon spread to my wrists, and then my arms and up and up and up until it reached my sputtering heart.

She would need to yield control before it reached that point.

Rukia was always careful when she skinwalked, always kept a phantom hand over my heart, to be sure it kept beating. For while Whisperers had evolved over the past few hundred years, had began to value the lives of humans, it did not make their powers any less lethal. If she held me for too long, if she stood for too long in my mortal body with her immortal soul…. She had shown me what happened to the hosts of those witches who had not heeded the warning signs. Not just dead, but decimated. Spine curled back, ribs cracked open and apart, as if the body had tried to exhume the creature inside, to break itself apart to give the witch a way out.

'Do not worry,' she had consoled me, 'I will ensure that never happens. Without you, I will again be ordinary.'

It had not been as large a comfort as she'd intended.

We reached a fork in the tunnels, and Rukia did not even pause before veering right. Our feet, my feet, made no sound as they swooshed through the thinning wastewater. She slowed before the next turn, hearing with advanced ears, something I couldn't detect.

It was still something I wasn't used to. To be a third party inside my body, to be only a guest in my very own mind.

Yet I could still feel the soaking fabric shift against my ankles, could feel the scratch of the brick as Rukia pressure a hand to the stone. And I felt her breath fill my lungs, felt her hand that creeped back up to my heart; still thundering but weakened.

What is it Rukia? I asked into her- my mind.

I sense something wicked

Bonnie-

The rebel is near, I smell her

Rukia rounded the corner quickly, and stalked farther into the dark.

'The other', 'The rebel', I wonder what I was when she spoke of me.

I didn't have time to ponder it.

Rukia hissed, snapping back as she connected with what appeared to be empty air- but the skin of my cheeks and down my neck, I could feel what felt like blisters forming.

Rukia stared blankly ahead a moment, then reach out a hesitant, observing hand, and when it passed that invisible threshold, the flesh over my fingers and wrists sizzled and smoked before she quickly snapped it back.

She waited a mere few seconds, just enough for her body to heal back the blisters. Then, she ran a hand down my mental barrier, it opened up for her as she slipped more of herself inside, retreating.

You must continue from here

I rolled my neck as I returned, and a tension my body had unknowingly been holding, slipped away. The feeling in my hands slowly returned, then the heaviness of my legs.

I looked before us, remembering the blisters, and stepped carefully forward. Nothing. Another step, not a blister in sight.

Warded, Rukia explained, to keep all witches out

How a magic could be so powerful as to feel the presence of a witch, even when muddled by the body of a mortal… I did not want to think what toll it had taken.

I could hardly see a few feet before my face, the dark of the sewers growing thicker and thicker the more steps I took. As if the wards had not just been to keep witches out, but to keep all things light away. Fear, thick and purely human took hold of my throat.

Why had Bonnie ventured deep into the sewers? Why had she waited for Orihime to be gone from the city, why had she not told me what she sought deep in the dark?

I could see barely a flicker of light far ahead, muddled, but solid. I rushed toward it.

I took two left turns, then a right. The blackness dulling as I grew closer and closer to that unknown light.

What is it you sense down here?

Rukia's pause was long enough that I almost asked her not to tell me, almost wished I hadn't asked at all. But Rukia's answer came as I rounded the last corner. As I found the source of that beacon of light. We I saw Bonnie Carter standing in the heart of an empty chamber. Her back to us, her hands holding a glass orb, the size of a vulture's egg, with gentle attention. And in that orb, flickering inside, was a blue flame that needed no air.

Witchfire

As if in answer, Bonnie turned, somehow finding me in the dark. That blue flame fluttered, flaring. Revealing to me the face of my friend, my commander.

Staring at me, with eyes of pure black.

.

.

.

Ichigo's point of view was fun to write, I'm hoping it was just as fun to read!

Let me know what you guys think, and maybe I'll make it a more common occurrence!

Till next time-