The Protector's Temptation
Hey again guys and gals, lords and ladies and any other title I can think of for you all. Thanks to everyone that reviewed the last chapter and I hope you enjoy this one. The normal insight corner is at the end, but one point's beginning to annoy me slightly.
Kyoka Suigetsu's illusions and how they make a fight damn near impossible to lose:
Yes I completely agree with you that Ichigo should have no problem going up against anyone if they're trapped within his illusions, but here lies the problem…he only has them trapped in an illusion. While he can influence their senses, they still retain their control over their powers. Let's go through a practical example.
Ichigo is battling several enemies and is fooling them all into attacking an illusion, but any ranged attack that strikes that illusion will either pass through it and go on to destroy part of the surrounding area, or will force Ichigo to enter its path to deflect it away safely.
This is, I believe, the major difference between Ichigo's use of Kyoka Suigetsu and Aizen's use of her. Fighting in tight quarters in Karakura Town where a stray attack can cause horrific damage, Ichigo is limited in how he can use his illusions. Yes he could fool them and try to dispatch them as quickly as possible, but the more opponents he faces, the greater the likelihood that he cannot stop such an attack.
I know I've ranted a bit and some of you will find holes in my logic, but there's so much more to speak of on this subject alone. Anyway get on with the story guys, because the action is finally picking up.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
"Normal speech"
'Thoughts/Inner Speech'
"Kido/Zanpakuto release"
"Zanpakuto speech"
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Chapter 18:
Ducking under her clone's blade, both Rukia and her clone stiffened as they felt Ichigo's reiatsu fluctuate from pure unadulterated rage and fury, before rapidly switching to cold indifference almost a second later. Taking advantage of their momentary lapse in concentration, she lashed out and watched her doppelganger roll away from her. 'Now's not the time to worry about him,' she thought grimly, sending a Hakuren at her opponent. 'Beat her now, worry about him later.' As she tried to follow her advice though, a small piece of her heart and mind kept thinking back to what had caused his distress and the consequences of the instigators actions.
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"I told you I could handle this!" Reigai-Ichigo shouted up at Kageroza, brushing the rubble off with ease as he stood to his full height. "There was no reason for you to bring her here!"
"I beg to differ, my dear creation," Kageroza replied with a condescending smirk. "You have failed to eliminate him each and every time you have met him and even now he is making a fool of you. No, now it's time I step in and deal with him."
As Kageroza spoke, Ichigo watched through narrowed eyes as his 'mother' let go of Kageroza's arm and descended towards his clone. When she finally reached him, she held a glowing green palm to his chest and he watched as the minor bruises and cuts he inflicted were healed in seconds.
"That settles it then Ichigo, she is not your mother," Kyoka muttered from within his inner world with vicious scorn. "How would the woman you remember even possess these powers? If this was truly her, she would have been found by the Gotei 13 already."
'That may be Kyoka, but how can we truly be sure?' he asked her, not allowing his body to relax in the midst of the people around him.
"Then just take her out of the fight without killing her. You and I both know you can do it."
'I know and I will, but part of me feels…torn. Real or not, it will hurt to raise my hand to her,' he replied sombrely, steeling his resolve and staring at the pair of them with cold dead eyes and raising his blade out in front of him. Seeing her shudder slightly and turn away from him, he couldn't mistake the fear that seemed to wrap itself around her. Feeling his clone release his Bankai, he turned his attention to the more pressing matter at hand. Sidestepping the straight charge with ease, he tried to bring his blade down on his clone's now unprotected back; only to meet nothing as his clone disappeared at the last second.
Vanishing from his spot, Ichigo looked down at his clone with a grim expression on his face. Seeing Kageroza heading for Nozomi and Nova out of the corner of his eye, he flash stepped towards the man, his blade whistling through the air as he halted the mad scientist.
"And just where do you think you're going?" Ichigo growled at him as he appeared on the roof between them, the tip of Kyoka Suigetsu cutting through the floor as he viciously slashed at him, connecting with Kageroza's own blade. Kicking the man straight in his chest, he sent him flying backwards through the walls of the neighbouring building, grimacing as part of it crumbled down on top of him. Spinning on the spot, he brought his blade up to block his clone's attack as it tried to take advantage of the opening, their eyes locking as they glared coldly at one another.
Unlike their previous battles though, his clone's eyes weren't filled with arrogance, anger or false bravado, but were now filled with fear and apprehension. Catching him sending worried glances at the woman who resembled their mother, he allowed his clone to slide past him, slamming his heel into his lower back and sending him crashing into the ground below. Diving towards the staggered fighter, he raised his blade for the deathblow, only to find that the unknown Masaki had finally made her move and blocked his attack with a slender nodachi, clutched tightly in her hands.
"I don't want to fight you," she whispered out in a timid tone, looking up at him with shaken eyes. "But I can't stand to see the two of you fight!" she shouted at him, gaining some steel in her eyes and surprising him as she forced him back. "Please just listen to us and hear our side of the story," she implored him.
"What do you mean your side?" he asked through narrowed eyes, lowering his blade a tiny fraction.
Unknown to the three of them, Kageroza had worked his way out of the pile of rubble Ichigo had buried him under. Growling as he listened to their conversation, he reached into his coat and pulled out a nondescript remote from within it. Smirking at them, he calmly pressed the lone button on the remote.
When it looked like his mother's look alike was about to speak again, Ichigo's eyes widened in surprise as the woman suddenly dropped her blade and clutched her head, screaming in agony.
"Kaa-san? Kaa-san what's wrong?! Speak to me please!" Reigai-Ichigo implored her as he flash stepped next to her, clutching her shoulders as he tried to get through to her. Minutes later when her screaming finally stopped and her arms dropped limp to her side, Ichigo and his clone flinched as they stared into her brown lifeless eyes. "Kaa-san?" Reigai-Ichigo asked hesitantly, falling back on his ass in shock as his mother shook of his grip and grabbed her blade again.
Only years of his father's sneak attacks and fighting inhuman beings from another dimension saved Ichigo from the thrust at his head, his eyes almost popping out of his skull as several orange strands of hair fell away from him. Cursing his inattention, he quickly looked forward again, panicking when he failed to see her in front of him. Dropping to the ground, he paled as he narrowly avoided another fatal slash aimed at his head, his mother's eyes still utterly lifeless as she attacked him with single-minded determination. Bringing Kyoka up to block her as she tried to cut him while he was down, he grimaced and tapped even deeper into his reiatsu, the force of it destroying the ground below him as he forced her into the air.
Despite his increased power and speed though, she calmly evaded his blows and sped back at him even faster than before, driving him back into the ground.
"Dammit, Shatter Kyo…" he tried to say, only to find her hand clutched tightly around his throat, silencing him. 'I can't…speak,' he thought as his mind began to panic as he felt her hand begin to crush his trachea. As his eyes began to droop though, he found himself thrown back, gasping and coughing for breath as he flew through the air.
"Shatter…" he tried to say again, only for her to appear above him, her fist drawn back and connecting with his jaw with a thunderous crack, sending him crashing into the ground and creating an immense crater within it.
'She almost broke my jaw with that blow,' he thought grimly as he massaged his jaw, already seeing the massive bruise he would have. 'What's worse is that she's fast enough to stop me from even releasing my zanpakuto.' Shaken from his thoughts at the bright blue glow above him, he cursed and leapt from his position on the ground, just as a Soren Sokatsui struck, digging the hole even deeper and exposing the sewers than ran below the city. Feeling her appear behind him, he brought his blade up to block her own, deflecting it to his side and launching his knee at her and catching her on her chin. Dazed and staggered, she was unable to block the fist to her gut, doubling her over and leaving her vulnerable to a heel kick to her skull.
"Kaa-san!" a suddenly fearful clone shouted as he broke out of his stupor and charged at Ichigo, slamming the original into the side of a building as he dived after his mother.
"That's not our mother!" Ichigo growled at him, head-butting him away and slashing at his torso. "With the way she is now…it would be better to put her down than see her memory tarnished like this!"
"You're wrong!" his clone shouted back at him, locking their blades together, while Ichigo grit his teeth in frustration. "I can bring her back; you just need to stay out of my way!" Charging his reiatsu into his blade, Reigai-Ichigo unleashed a silent Getsuga Tensho, sending Ichigo flying back as he was forced to contend with the energy wave.
Shattering it with his blade, he found his mother's clone in front of him with her blade raised. 'I won't make it,' he thought in horror as he tried in vain to raise his blade, while hers screamed through the air towards him and leaving a long shallow cut from his forehead, down between his nose and eye and ending at the edge of his mouth. Glaring up at her as the wound bled profusely, he could see her freeze in her follow up attack, a hint of life returning to her eyes.
"What…what did I… no. NO!" she screamed in horror, clutching her head in her hands as she fell to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. When she was about halfway to the ground, Ichigo's clone caught her and began to slowly descend, crouching down as his feet finally hit the ground.
"It's okay now Kaa-san, you don't need to fight anymore," he whispered in her ear, her face buried in his shoulder as she continued to cry. Staring at the scene below him in unease, Ichigo landed near them.
'This…isn't right,' he thought grimly. 'Even if she's a clone, she didn't deserve to have her free-will taken away from her.'
"Then blame it on the one responsible for this whole mess," Kyoka said soothingly. "Kageroza is responsible for all this and who knows what he's done to the others to force them to follow him. We kill him…we end all this and maybe, just maybe they can have peace."
'Peace…' he repeated to himself, staring at the scene again and feeling a tinge of jealousy towards his clone.
Gritting his teeth in frustration again, Kageroza growled from where he stood overlooking the fight. "Why can't creations simply follow their master's orders the first time," he spat out, hitting the button yet again.
Screaming in pain as her mind received yet another control shock, Reigai-Masaki thrashed about within her cloned son's grip, her mind flashing between images of him and the original Ichigo.
"Kaa-san just hold on please," the clone pleaded with her, frantically thinking of any way in which he could help her, while Ichigo looked on with pity. To Masaki though, images of the two of them flashed across her mind, the clone looking at her with love and kindness, while the original glared at her with cold emotionless eyes, blood pouring down his face. Under the strain of this mental indecision and the control chip forcing her to stand and fight, her mind suddenly blanked and she stopped moving completely.
'Oh here we go again,' Ichigo thought with a sigh as he felt a sense of déjà vu from the scene. To his surprise though, his clone was sent flying backwards by a blue fireball, crashing against the wall of a building and gasping in pain. Staring back at the clone of his mother, he was shocked to see her on her feet, her arms outstretched and her palms aimed at his clone. Watching as bluish-white energy began to gather at her palms, he stiffened as he recognised her chanting the incantation to Hado 88 under her breath. Debating whether he should intervene on his clone's behalf, he felt a shiver of fear run down his spine as he felt several faint presences in the firing line behind the building.
"What are you doing just standing there?!" Kyoka shouted at him. "Enemy or not, if she fires that at him, it's your town that pays the price!"
'Dammit I know that,' he growled, charging straight at his mother's clone from behind, the incantation drawing even closer to an end.
"Hado no. 88, Hiryu…" was as far as she got, before she and Ichigo's clone looked on in shock as Kyoka's blood stained blade burst from her chest in a crimson spray. As her head turned jerkily around to look over her shoulder, she could see Ichigo's saddened expression as he stared back at her.
"Sorry," he murmured under his breath, ripping his blade free of her chest and spinning it around to decapitate her, causing the energy she had gathered into her hands into dissipate.
"No. No! Nooooo!" Reigai-Ichigo screamed out loud as he watched his mother's head roll towards him, while her body dropped to her knees, before crashing to the ground and crumbling to dust. Slightly disturbed at how his actions must have looked, Ichigo turned away from his clone with a saddened expression on his face.
"Do you even know how she was created?" Ichigo heard his clone say, raising his head slightly to turn and look at him. "Do you even know how pained her existence was? She may have looked like our mother, since she was given her appearance by memories we possessed. She kept her kind and loving personality, but Kageroza ripped that away from her when he implanted someone else's combat abilities into her. She was torn between being the loving mother we knew and the weapon Kageroza wanted…all because I couldn't beat you. All because you wouldn't just give up that girl," he sobbed in a pained tone, tears pouring from his eyes.
"I tried. I tried so hard to beat you, so that he wouldn't need to use her, so that she wouldn't have to fight. I even subjected myself to listening to that voice and thinking about giving up my soul just so that we could beat you. But you were always too strong, too willing to protect them." At this point he looked up at Ichigo, his tear-filled eyes containing a swirling mass of grief, anger, rage. Reaching for his blade, his fists clenched tightly around the pitch black blade and he struggled to his feet. "I was too weak to protect her again and there are so many of us to blame for making her suffer, but for now…for now I JUST WANT TO KILL YOU!" he roared, charging at Ichigo.
As their blades connected, a shockwave of force rippled across the area, shattering window panes and crumbling the ground around them. "It's my fault for being too weak to beat you!" his clone shouted as he slashed at him again as Ichigo calmly blocked the fury driven attack. "It's Kageroza's fault for forcing that power on her!" Leaping back to dodge the blow that levelled the ground below him, Ichigo grimaced as a bone-white mask began to slowly form around his opponent's face. "But most of all…it's your fault for being so stubborn! It's your fault for forcing Kageroza's hand, time and time again! It's your fault for being too weak in the past!" As he spoke that last comment, Reigai-Ichigo found his blade stopped inches from Ichigo's face, his wrist in Ichigo's unyielding grip.
"My fault?" he asked in a low tone, his eyes shadowed by his hair as he stared down at the ground. "I can sympathise with your situation, but each time you and I have fought, you were laying waste to this town or were about to hurt someone precious to me. Do I regret stopping you each and every time? No. Do I regret killing her like that? A bit, but if I didn't, how many more lives would be lost?" Grunting as his double kicked him in his gut; he growled and looked up at him. "You decided to go along with Kageroza and his plan; it's your own fault for everything that happened to her and you!"
"Shut up!" Reigai-Ichigo shouted back at him, bringing his blade around to cleave Ichigo at his waist. "You don't know what it was like to have to wear that mask and pretend to agree with everything he did," he continued, their blades clashing time and time again in a shower of sparks. "To pretend that everything was fine on the surface, while trying in vain to find some way to escape." Feinting to his left, he slashed at Ichigo's sword arm, failing to hinder him as Kyoka Suigetsu blocked him at the last second.
"You think I haven't worn a mask these last few months? You think I haven't felt like screaming in frustration as I was left powerless around everyone around me?" Ichigo retorted in a venomous tone, nicking his clone on his cheek. "I still wear a goddamn mask even now, purely because I don't know how they will react to my new power! But you know what…I still fight with everything I have to change my fate, to make sure that they and everyone I care about is safe and sound!" Ducking under a wild swing, he slashed at his opponent's exposed back, cutting open his skin from left hip to right shoulder. Hearing his clone's anguished cry, he ruthlessly crushed any remorse he felt for his actions and held his hand out in front of him. "Bakudo no. 63, Sajo Sabaku," he whispered, sending several golden chains to wrap around his clone and watching as he feebly fell to the ground, crashing into it in a cloud of dust.
Struggling against the chains that held him and fighting to stay awake despite the searing pain that numbed his mind, Reigai-Ichigo's thrashing soon lost its former energy and he merely twitched slightly on the ground, his breathing ragged and shallow.
Stumbling slightly as he watched the scene, Ichigo shook his head to try and clear the light-headedness he was feeling. 'Head wounds always did bleed like crazy and right now I feel like my face is on fire,' he thought as he reached out with his senses to see how everyone else's fight was going. 'So they finally pulled their heads out their asses and won,' he chuckled as he clearly felt that the signatures from the Gotei 13 were stronger than their counterparts. 'About damn time too. Now I just have to deal with Kageroza.'
Turning away from his fallen opponent, Ichigo stumbled a few steps and was about to leap into the air, until he was frozen in place as a colossal wave of reiatsu crashed down on him. Turning his head fearfully over his shoulder, he could see his clone covered in a black and red reiatsu, standing upright as the chains around him eroded into dust. Before his shocked eyes a white liquid poured out from a hole in his chest, completely enveloping his skin. His once short spiky orange hair rapidly grew down to his waist, while red tufts of hair grew around his wrist and ankles with a larger red mane around his collarbone. When his hollowfied clone turned to face him though, his mask warped and twisted from the simple human skull to a demonic visage with two horns, similar to a bull's, attached to it.
Staring back at him now was a form he had only heard Tensa Zangetsu mention to him, his complete hollowfication that he had always been too afraid to achieve. Watching it hold its hand out and literally call Tensa Zangetsu to it, he raised his Kyoka just in time to block the blow, cursing as he was thrown back with ease. 'You know what…just fuck my life right now.'
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I must say, I think I did okay with the opening act and now we get to see the main attraction in the next chapter. Now then couple of things before you PM, or leave a review.
1 – Reigai-Masaki is based off Masaki's appearance and the traits Ichigo remembers about her. Her powers though are completely artificial and it is easy to see who Kageroza took them from.
2 – Ichigo tried to release Kyoka several times to place Reigai-Masaki under hypnosis, but she prevented him from doing it at each turn. In order to silently release your zanpakuto, you need to have achieved its Bankai, something Ichigo has not done yet.
3 – The brutal way Ichigo killed Reigai-Masaki, simply to prevent any lingering chance she had off firing her attack.
4 – A bleeding wound if left untreated does lead to dizziness and loss of consciousness, so a large cut to his face like that would push even the toughest fighter in my opinion.
5 – I know that in the anime when Ichigo hollowfied it was only to that lizard form, but I decided to go with the one that kicked Ulquiorra's ass, simply because I feel that one is too weak to give Ichigo a challenge.
Right think that settles most of what I was thinking, now onto our little insight corner.
Using Ichigo's mother: Yes I know the way I portrayed him means that he should win this easy, but nothing is ever as easy as it seems is it? And I'm not that evil for choosing to do this am I? Then again being evil is so much more fun than being good.
Kageroza's fate: Let's just say that I have something…special planned for him.
Ichigo's hatred for the Gotei 13? I did mention that he's not hating them per se, but more infuriated with them. He's willing to talk to them about matters relating to them, but now his private life is off-limits as it were.
A larger AN than usual, but I hope this settles some concerns and answers some questions. Anyway I hope you enjoyed it guys and girls.