Ichigo was going to kiss Yoruichi for teaching him how to move so damn fast.
Or maybe just buy her a bunch of over priced cat food.
Yeah, that sounded better.
Something to show her that he appreciated what she'd done when she had drilled him between bouts with Zangetsu when he was learning his new skills and techniques. It was more or less like a second ascension, this Bankai he'd learned to use.
(One day, all in all, and he had shattered so many swords even EMIYA would have been hard pressed to keep pace with him, before he finally found the right ones. He had to. After the show they'd put on Rukia was scheduled to die in just one day, barely enough time to prepare a scaffold.)
If she hadn't shown him how to use reitsu to launch himself off the ground and really move faster, he would have never gotten there in time. He would have never arrived in time to see Gin, the man who had attacked him at the Shiba house, half covered in ice and a man next to him completely coated while Rukia stood over a bleeding Renji.
Ichigo had barely noticed she'd been pulling on his powers again. Yet there she stood, a perfect white blade held in steady hands, and determination pinching her brows.
He came just in time to see Kyo shatter her zanpakuto into snow flakes with his bare hands and hit her with the roughest kido Ichigo had seen yet before grabbing her by the horrible red collar that was still stuck around her throat.
"Hey!" Ichigo shouted, levelling his sword point at him. "Drop her."
Frantically, he searched Kyo's eyes for that flash of recognition from before. There was nothing. Just calm, flat brown eyes. It was just like when they'd first met, only this time Kyo is a much better liar. He looks docile, even though he's holding Rukia by the neck. Mild and kind.
Ichigo isn't fooled. He hasn't been fooled by Kyo for a long, long time.
"Ichigo Kurosaki. You're quite the interesting one. Sad to say you'll have to tell Kisuke that your mission ended in failure." Kyo waves his hand and chants a spell and light smashes into Ichigo from all sides. It's the same spell Byakuya had used in the human world, just a billion times stronger. Kyo rips the ribbon off of Rukia's wrist and Ichigo's power fades from her, leaving her in the simple white kimono.
Ichigo paused, frowning. He is loath to attack Kyo without knowing more about what he's doing here, or where he's been. Is he the captain that had 'died'? It sounds like something he would do. He's smart enough to fake his own death.
"What does he have to do with this?" Just because he opened a gate for them?
Kyo smiles, a smug phantom, and Ichigo realizes suddenly that he's been chasing on thread on a tapestry the entire time.
He's completely missed a bigger picture.
"Did you not wonder why Gin came to visit you? Or knew where you were? It was because I knew you would arrive in western rukongai. I even had him waiting at the gate for you, in case you charged in. You see, I knew you would have to use the Shiba canon. With such a dramatic entrance-"
"It left you free to move around without anyone noticing," Ichigo cut in. He narrowed his eyes. "You used us as a distraction. Was it you who brought Rukia back, to lure us in? Why the west?"
"In part," Kyo tilted his head, the smile still in place. "And the west was simple. That is where Urahara Kisuke's referencial residence is, you know… oh."
Ichigo grit his teeth. His temper was starting to flare, and with it so was his reitsu. Urahara had been using them for something. Kyo was using them for something. He wasn't a damn puppet!
"I was under the impression that you were his subordinate. That you came here on his orders. I see now. So he told you nothing at all about what was happening here, or who I am or what I might be doing. I bet he didn't even tell you about what he needed Rukia here for."
Ichigo listened with half an ear as Kyo explained about the limits of shinigami powers, and the only way to break through them. The only way that Kisuke had ever found to break through them.
Hollow hybrids. White masks. Holes in the chest. Still shinigami. Rukia was just a container, and a hiding place.
Ichigo grips Zangetsu tighter. He stands somewhere between the present and the past. America and seireitei blur together and he struggles to piece apart the Kyo he knows and the man who stands before him, cold smiles and distant dreams. He is insubstantial and untouchable.
The bindings on his arms tighten.
Without warning the world explodes under a massive sword stroke from-
A werewolf?
A day before the execution, after they have been freed by a wanna be porcupine,Uryu wonders if he's ever admired so or been so afraid of a girl that chases butterflies before.
Orhihime had changed somehow during the fight they'd had with Mayuri Kurotsuchi. Before that she had skittered around fights, even when they'd first been attacked. Uryu had vowed to protect her, but somewhere between the explosion at the start and the wall of gold that signalled the end of the fight she had changed.
Oh, she was still kind. Still gentle. She treated their former enemies with care and healed them back up to their fullest potential. She greeted their strange, rambunctious new allies with smiles and delight.
But when it came time to fight she didn't hesitate anymore. She picked her target and put them on the ground, missing limbs most of the time. She hadn't killed anyone since Mayuri, no one else had deserved he guessed. At least not in her mind.
But she was vicious and determined when she had to be.
She was also, apparently, a frightening hand to hand fighter.
Uryu watched with muted horror as she and the little pink terror cleared the way for the rest of them to march up the hill, where Ichigo was.
"Geez," Ganju scrubbed his hand over his head. "Why are women so damn scary all the time?"
"I wish I could tell you," Uryu winced in pity when Orihime slammed someone into a wall with enough force to crack it.
She turned to them with a bubbling smile. "Let's go! We need to hurry everyone!"
"Yeah," Yachiru bounced at her side, blood on her tiny knuckles. "Let's go lets go! Maki Maki let's gooooo~"
Aramaki gave a long suffering sigh. "It's not the worst nickname she's given me… Okay, it's a le-"
"To the right!" Yachiru declared.
"...we're gonna be late."
The werewolf lasts a total of twelve seconds before Kyo goes right back to monologuing. Ichigo almost pities him.
"Of course, once you were here," he said with only a small under current of smugness, "I assassinated the entire Central 46."
Ichigo stares at him, and starts laughing.
He can't help it.
After everything Kyo had told him before about the way this place was run, he'd finally offed them.
Maybe I shouldn't have told him to ask Robin how to commit a coup?
He can't help feeling it's partially his own fault, and entirely justified. If no one even questioned the orders sent out they were clearly just as power hungry and arbitrary as Kyo had described, all those years ago.
"Sorry, sorry," he waves his hand as best as he can, feeling hysterical and worn out in all the worst ways. Somewhere under the betrayal is the twisting need to understand everything. This hogyoku, trapped inside of Rukia, was some kind of super powerful object. He's getting sick of those.
"Sorry," he says a third time and finally manages to get himself under control. "Okay, so your grand plan failed. Give me Rukia and we'll all go our separate ways. Or, no," he holds up a hand to stop Kyo from speaking. His mind turns. He still knows Kyo. He still knows how he thinks, even if Kyo doesn't know him anymore. "You'll have a back up plan."
Kyo looked mildly miffed at being interrupted.
"You're impertinent."
"You know that old man said something like that when I told him to grow a brain, too."
"...My point stands. All the same, you're right. There's another way. Another method developed by Kisuke Urahara. " Kyo held up a small cylinder and tapped it on Rukia's chest. A hole opened up.
Ichigo twisted and thrashed. A burst of energy shattered the bindings at last, but by the time Kyo had already pulled out something from Rukia's chest. Small, faintly glowing and blue.
The energy hit him suddenly. Unshielded, unfettered energy.
The curl of fog. Electricity along his skin. Children lost in the river. Sorrow. A desperate wish for change.
Kyo pulled his fist back to strike Rukia. Ichigo lifted his left hand, pouring power into it. He'd done it a million times before. He'd never done it alone. He'd never done it as a ghost.
"Gandr!"
Kyo freezes. Ichigo darts forwards, his hands outstretched. He gets knocked off course at the last second by Gin's zanpakuto. He ends up stumbling, and wasting precious few seconds while the spell holds. He doesn't have time to think of the how or the why, only that it works, but now he only has time for one.
Rukia or the Hogyoku.
Rukia or the _
It's not even a question. He snatches her off the ground and rolls to protect her body.
He comes to a stop hovering above her, Zangetsu raised in defense.
Kyo twitches back to life a heartbeat after and looks at him with new eyes.
"An interesting kido, I've never seen it before," he says idly. "You really should have taken the Hogyoku. It's much more valuable than one girls life. Even a noble one."
"I don't give a shit about any of that. Kings or rebels, gods or demons, the only part I care about is if they're my friends. You should know that!"
"Should I?"
The words bite harder than anything else. Ichigo actually flinches.
He opens his mouth to say something before a blur shoots out of nowhere. Yoruichi lands with a knife to Kyo's throat.
No, he's not Kyo anymore, is he?
Kisuke hated having to make the call. He really, really did.
He wanted to have faith in Ichigo, but he was no fool. He knew he needed to be prepared for the worst case scenario. He knew that Ichigo, as bewildering of a child as he was, could still fail against Aizen.
Probably would fail.
But he needed Ichigo for other reasons. He needed him stronger. He needed him more motivated. He needed him to see first hand just what he was up against, and how desperately they needed to put a stop to it.
Ichigo wouldn't forgive him for his trickery. Another sin Kisuke could live with.
He did have to wonder what was going to happen to Ichigo now. He's already lost faith with his father. If he hadn't already he soon will lose faith in Kisuke, and Yoruichi too.
What will happen to an already isolated boy when he's further pushed away?
"It's heavy," Ichigo says, his brown eyes dark and distant. The brilliance he'd displayed during their spars is gone. The vicious gleam and the near recklessness on him is gone, tempered and stamped down.
"Heavy?" Kisuke repeats, eying this boy. Perhaps not as much of a boy as Kisuke had thought. He's seen eyes like these before.
"The weight of their lives.
So he makes the call and he gathers the army, scant as it is.
Kon likes this guy, and the lady too.
She's terrifying, and she nearly killed him the first (and only) time he tried to cop a feel, but the second she met the girls she basically adopted them. Kon would have left them in the spare house, but neither of them was letting him go anywhere without at least one of them.
They have a trick where they go invisible, it makes it easier for every day life.
The guy is fun. He's agreeable and gentle, and he doesn't mind people watching with Kon. Even if he would rather go fishing most days. He's kinda weird, too, and he insists that Kon practice fighting regularly. Ichigo's body knows what he's doing, if nothing else.
They wile away the summer days while waiting for Ichigo to return.
They're surrounded by people. Enemies and allies, all of them focused the man Ichigo had once called friend. A man he would have trusted with his life. Had , trusted with his life.
Blades gleam in the sunlight and fury weighs heavy across the battlefield. Rukia lies beneath him, her strength vanished, and one man comes to stand between them. His hands are red and raw and his hair is faintly damp but Byakuya puts himself between the pair of them and the traitor.
"He's surrounded. It's over now," Byakuya says surely.
"Don't be an idiot," Ichigo cuts in. He raises to his knees, then his feet. "He wouldn't come this far without a back up plan."
The sky splits open. Ichigo hates it when he's right.
Beams of light encompass the three traitors and throw everyone else aside. They're untouchable inside of them, and menos grande hover at the mouth of the tear, floating through it. Dragging them up and out of reach.
There's a buzzing in his ears. Fury roaring under his skin.
"No one starts at the top."
"I was born in the-"
"From the very start, no one has stood upon the heavens. Not you, not I, nor even gods. However, that intolerable vacuum has come to an end. Henceforth...I shall stand upon the heavens."
All Ichigo can think as he watches (Kyo) Sousuke get swallowed by a hoard of menos and darkness is just what the fuck happened in the last two hundred years?
"Farewell shinigami, and Ryoka. You were… interesting."
Brown eyes watch Ichigo, and Ichigo alone as the darkness closes in around him.