Chapter 8 Facing the Intruders

Byakuya's POV

Hmm, master? Do you feel that? Do you feel that spiritual pressure? It feels faint, but . . . familiar.

"Indeed, I do Senbonzakura . . ." I say as I turn to the direction of the Senzaikyū, the Soul Society's resident prison complex. "I believe it's best to go investigate that presence ourselves. If the ryokas are looking to save Rukia, then that is the place where we will most likely find them."

Leaving Abarai in the care of Captain Ichimaru and his men, I move toward the prison, moving with little effort as I jumped from rooftop to rooftop. When I was halfway there, a sudden presence appears on my left. The familiarity of it made it obvious that it was no enemy who meant to do me harm.

Rather, it was the familiarity of a close friend, someone who knows me better than I know myself sometimes.

"Hn, I see you have sensed the spiritual pressure as well, Third Seat Fukudome."

"Indeed, I have, Captain Kuchiki," Minata tells me, her tone low, but at ease, despite the current situation that was ongoing within the Soul Society. ". . . I probably sensed it before you did."

"You probably did, and yet, you had to catch up to me," The ease is gone, replaced with a look of annoyance she always reserved for me when we were younger. I haven't seen it in a long time, so it was bound to reappear one of these days.

Today was apparently that day. ". . . Do you know the identities of the assailants heading for the prison?"

"More or less . . . There are at least two people heading for the Senzaikyū. One has been identified as an ally to the ryokas, while the other is the hostage; a member of the 4th Division," She explains as we make a sharp right turn. ". . . When you think about it, it makes sense. If you want to sneak around and avoid all the shinigami walking about, you head underground, traverse the sewers."

"The 4th Division is in charge of maintaining the sewers, among other things, which means its members would have a great understanding of the sewer system," I add, piecing the details together. "The hostage must have been forced to show them the quickest route to the prison . . . Do you have any more information on the ryokas' ally?"

"Only that he is a member of one of the exiled clans. We haven't identified which one yet," It was Mizukiri who answered, appearing at her master's side just as Senbonzakura was appearing by mine. ". . . It's going to take a while before that info comes to light."

"Now why would a member of an exiled clan help the ryokas?" I hear my spirit ask as we neared the palace. "Helping known intruders will only worsen their situation, damaging their reputation even further."

"It's probably someone with nothing left to lose. There are plenty of souls like that after all," Minata mumbled as we neared the palace. ". . . Rukia is being held in one of the towers of the Shishinrō. That's likely where they're heading."

"Can you get a better read on the two intruders now?" I ask as we arrive on the property, bypassing the two spooked shinigami guarding the gate.

"I can sense them better, but thanks to the high amount of sekkiseki used to build this place, it's hard for me to get a perfect reading on them." She grumbled, almost pouting.

I could not blame her for feeling this way though. Many areas were created with sekkiseki stone, but not in such high concentrations like the Senzaikyū and the walls that surrounded the Seireitei. The Fukdomes were famous for being much more sensitive to reiatsu than others, but that ability wasn't hindered by the sekkiseki's continuous presence throughout the landscape.

Unless they were close to a high concentration of it that is. Physically, the Fukudomes weren't bothered by sekkiseki stone, but if they were near a large concentration of the material, they were quick to make their dislike known.

As Minata liked to put it, standing near a place with such high sekkiseki amounts equated to having her vision suddenly get clouded by fog. You are not totally blind, but it is harder to see.

"You may not be able to get a perfect reading on the intruders, but it may not matter now," I advise as we reached one of the bridges that connected the main building to one of the towers, the one that held my sister in confinement. "We're here."

"Only a few steps away now . . ." she whispered as I stepped onto the expanse, her voice sounding somber. We were halfway along when her steps suddenly stop. ". . . You have got to be kidding me."

I hear her zanpakuto ask what's wrong, and a quick turn of my head allows me to see the undisputed disbelief on her face.

"I still don't recognize the ally's spiritual pressure, but I do recognize the hostage's." says Minata, shaking her head. "It's actually much fainter than the ally's, but it's still familiar."

"If the shinigami's spiritual pressure is that faint, then he must be a low-ranking member of Captain Unohana's division."

"Yeah, not exactly," she mumbled as she stared down the tower. "The reiatsu belongs to Hanataro Yamada."

"The seventh seat?" Senbonzakura asks, as if he momentarily lost his hearing. "He's the one taken hostage?!"

"I believe that's what she just said Senbonzakura." Mizukiri grumbles, coming to her master's defense. "Yamada may not have impressive spiritual pressure or overall combat ability, but he deserves his seat. Trust me!"

"I'll take your word for it," he tells her, his dismissive tone earning him a slightly murderous look from the blonde.

Something tells me he's going to rue that decision, eventually. Mizukiri was never one for being so brazenly dismissed.

"You two can talk later," Minata orders as she points forward. ". . . We have incoming company."

I turn around to see my sister, Yamada, and a bulky looking man emerging from the tower. Thanks to her prolonged stay, I can barely even sense a fleck of Rukia's reiatsu. It was almost nonexistent, to a point it would have been easy to mistake her as a human. Physically, she didn't look much better either, her already skinny form looking even thinner, but her face was the one that told the fully story.

She looked worn and weary, the stress of everything that has happened to her now starting to take root.

Imprisonment has not suited Rukia in the slightest.

It was the seventh seat who was the first to see us, his already wide eyes widening even further when he caught sight of us.

"CAPTAIN KUCHIKI! THIRD SEAT FUKUDOME!" he exclaims, his voice alerting Rukia and the hulking man to our presence.

"Brother!"

I held off the wince that threatened to show on my face when I heard the familial term. Even after everything, including my role in her captivity, she's still so willing to call me 'brother', even though I do not deserve to be called that, especially not now.

"Brother. You're a Kuchiki?! You're Byakuya Kuchiki's sister?!" the unidentified man cries out, his shock turning into disbelief as he stared Rukia down. I couldn't help but notice how quickly his hands clenched into fists when she nodded yes.

Hmm, whoever this exile is, he must have some problem with my clan, or at least with me.

". . . And here I thought it was just an enemy expertly hiding their reiatsu, but it was actually just a plain old bug." I say, knowing my words would aggravate the unknown man.

"What the hell did you say?!" The man asks, his anger front and center as he foolishly moves to attack me. I made sure to show him why it was a grave mistake on his part, damaging his arm before he could move another step.

"You are better off just going home right now. If you stay, you will die," I say bluntly from a few feet behind him. "At least if you leave now, the worst you may get is a long stay in a holding cell."

"HAH! Do you really think I'm going to be scared of a guy like you?!" the man dares to cackle, his fierce gaze burning with a familiar intensity, one I haven't seen in years. "Besides I can't run away! As a member of the Shiba family, I won't be scared away by a guy like you!"

"Shiba? So, he's a member of that clan hm?"

The Shibas used to be the reason why there was Five Great Noble Families instead of the current four. Specializing in fireworks, the Shibas used to be on the same level of prestige as my family and Mina's, but ever since the death of Kaien Shiba, the former lieutenant of the 13th, that prestige fell, and the family never recovered. Eventually, they couldn't be considered a Great Noble Family anymore, and have not made any headway in the Seireitei since.

Last time I checked, they were living quietly in the Rukongai, but it seems they have started to make some noise now, and not in a good way.

"A member of the Shiba Clan you say?"

"That's right dammit! What's it to you?!" he asks me, still daring to be brash despite his circumstances.

"My apologies; I was planning on just stopping you, but after hearing that you are a member of the Shiba Clan, it will be my pleasure to finish you, permanently."

Senbonzakura takes that as his cue to act, transforming back into his sword form before I lifted him up to my starting position.

"No . . . DON'T DO THIS BROTHER!"

The strength of Rukia's voice almost took me by surprise, mostly because I never realized she could shout so loudly. It would have been easy to shift my gaze to her, to see her watch me with a look that pleaded with me to stop my attack.

But I don't shift my gaze.

Her pleas fall on deaf ears.

"Scatter, Senbonzakura!"


Minata's POV

"Senbonzakura really does personify the phrase 'Beautiful, but deadly', doesn't he?"

I couldn't deny how right Mizukiri was as we watched her fellow spirit transform into his shikai, her tone holding a slight edge of awe to it.

It should be impossible for one single blade to split into a thousand pieces, but that impossibility became reality once Byakuya discovered what his zanpakuto could actually do. The sunlight reflects off the surface of each piece of metal, giving the impression that Senbonzakura was a harmless mass of cherry blossom petals floating in the wind, and not the dangerously lethal cloud of cutting destruction that he truly is.

In truth, Senbonzakura is a very misleading sword, luring you in with his beauty before ending your life in a swarm of pink whimsy.

He's pretty much the living - or spiritual - personification of the phrase 'death by a thousand cuts', but he cuts you all at once instead of one at a time.

Now that I think about it, he likely can cut someone one at a time if he wanted to, or if Byakuya willed it, but that likely will never happen.

Thankfully, neither are fans of torture.

If they were, we would have been stuck witnessing the slow, painful process of watching the Shiba bleed with each individual cut he made, continuing with it until he was at least unconscious, and I would be stuck wondering why I was friends with him to begin with.

Instead, we are saved from that kind of imagery. Byakuya chooses to end things with one move, leaving his opponent - if you could call him that - laying in a pool of his own blood as Senbonzakura is quick to move away, giving everyone a chance to see what he has managed to accomplish with just one command, but he may have fallen back too soon.

The Shiba still breathes.

Byakuya eventually notices this as well.

"Hm, I see you are still alive. . . Not many can say that they survived my blade's first attack. I commend you for your resilience," Byakuya admits, his voice cold as he raises Senbonzakura's hilt above his head.

I knew the high amount of sekkiseki stone was interfering with my ability to sense reiatsu, but despite that hinderance, I could still feel a steady presence approaching our position.

It took a pale hand stopping Byakuya from dealing the final blow to make me realize that the steady presence belonged to a captain.

One of the eldest and most wizened of the group, to be exact.

"Captain Ukitake!" I say in surprise as the white-haired man appears behind the Kuchiki head. His twin zanpakuto, Sogyo no Kotowari, is right at his side with twin looks of concern on their faces, ready to leap into action if needed.

"What do you think you are doing Captain Ukitake?" Byakuya stoically asks as he moves his gaze to the leader of the 13th Division.

"I should be asking you that Captain Kuchiki," Ukitake kindly bites back, never flinching from Byakuya's hard gaze. "We both know that releasing one's zanpakuto in the Konnatokoru is a first-class offense, and you're not one for breaking these rules so easily."

"The special war time orders have been enacted. It is perfectly fine for me to use my shikai here." says Byakuya in his usual stoic voice, which I was half listening to once a new presence suddenly comes across my radar.

It felt obnoxious, unmistakable in its potential power as it neared. What made it worrisome was that I did not recognize it at all. It doesn't feel like anything I've sensed previously from the other captains and lieutenants. It was a complete unknown, which makes it very dangerous to go against, regardless of how skilled the presence is.

"This spiritual pressure . . ." I say, not bothering to continue my sentence as I look toward the direction that it may be coming from.

"What is it Minata?" I hear Ukitake ask. Hearing this, I turn my head to see that everyone was now looking at me, except for the Shiba, who was still unconscious, and Yamada, who was looking like he was still trying to get his bearings together. "Is something coming?"

"More like someone," I clarify, looking back in the direction that the presence was approaching from. "Whoever it is, their reiatsu is on the level of a captain, but I don't recognize it at all. It's a total unknown to me."

". . . It is not an unknown to me," Byakuya admits, his tone cold. "I recognize this presence, but it does feel different from the last time I encountered it."

A sudden thud near where Rukia and the intruders were standing - or lying, in some cases - bring our attention down the pathway to see that a new figure has decided to make his presence known. It didn't take me long to realize that the figure was the one who's reiatsu I've been tracking for the past few minutes now.

He was obviously male, tall and lean with noticeably bright orange hair that seemed so farfetched that I almost thought that he was a zanpakuto spirit himself. He turns his head, and I couldn't help but be shocked, not just by how young the boy was - he's obviously a teenager - but how much he reminded me of a certain Shiba that used to be Ukitake's second in command.

Judging from the shocked look on the white-haired man's face, he must be thinking the same thing too.

Or he's possibly shocked at the sheer size of the boy's zanpakuto. Instead of it being a standard katana, wakizashi, or a nodaichi, it's a cleaver, one that's almost as tall as him.

If that wasn't as good a symbol of the great spiritual pressure I could feel rolling off him, I don't know what is then.

"Long time; no see Byakuya Kuchiki." the boy cockily says, greeting said Kuchiki by pointing his sword at him in challenge.

"Ichigo?" We could hear Rukia whisper, but she says nothing else as she looks up at the boy in wide-eyed disbelief.

So this is the so called Ichigo Kurosaki, the one who risked the wrath of the Soul Society by invading the landscape, causing pandemonium in his wake, daring to point his blade at the man who previously cut him down, all for the sake of rescuing a person he barely knows.

He's either the most unflinchingly bravest person I've ever witnessed, or the most brazenly foolish.

He certainly knows how to make an entrance though.

"Friend of yours?" Ukitake dares to ask, turning his eyes on Byakuya.

"This boy is no friend of mine," Byakuya flatly states, his tone cold. "He's just a flea that doesn't know when to stay down."

A/N: Leave a comment if you like!