A/N: Sorry in advance for such a short chapter - I got a tablet just last week and been busy spamming my dA gallery with Bleach fanarts instead of writing ;w ;
Anyhow, please do go on!
Zangetsu, being a huge, heavy-ass zanpakuto it is, assaulted Ichigo's ears with a resonating clang as it bounced onto the wooden floor. It cluttered to a halt some ten feet away, reflecting the florescent light of the bulbs above. The harshness of the glint had an air of snarky leer about it, as if mocking its fuming wielder.
Ichigo gnashed his teeth. He had just thrown the sword down in frustration; slashing away at the wall - previously a door - to the Vizard's meeting didn't even seem to have an effect. And as far as he could tell, the protective kido didn't even have a nick on it.
"Damn it!" he yelled out again, hands raised, wanting to tear his hair out. He opted for raking fingers through his locks instead.
As if being excluded from the meeting was bad enough. The idiots had left him with nowhere to go. He had a grasp of an idea that the kido-pocketwatch would offer a way out of the place, but it was stark obvious to him it wasn't a technique he could easily replicate from just looking at it a few times. There always was the option to Getsuga-Tensho his way either into the meeting room or out of here, but to his horror, he couldn't get the zanpakuto to unleash its signature attack. Not even a tiniest spurt of power. It was as if Zangetsu was giving him a silent treatment over... what exactly?
"Do something, Zangetsu!" Ichigo snarled at the sword, wondering if he could provoke a reaction, "You miserable bastard - do a backflip! Jump up like you did at the field!"
Nothing.
He had the urge to be ridiculous, "Twist yourself into a pretzel! Morph yourself into a freaking dandelion! Anything!"
It was worse than dealing with a sulking 4-year-old. At least with the kid, he could speculate what the problem was. Or just leave the entire mess to the parents and flee into the sunset.
Coming to a resignation that Zangetsu wasn't going to be communicative anytime soon, Ichigo groaned and sighed. Then he trotted up to the sword, heaved it off the ground and onto his back. He'd deal with it later. For now he had to find a way out. From what Shinji had told him, opinions of the Central 46 was still negatively biased when it came down to part-hollow shinigamis, and they could easily chuck Kladias back in the asylum - Maggot's Nest, if he remembered correctly? He wanted to be there to stand up for her.
...
Or did he?
A part of him wasn't so sure. Would it be right to stand up for her, after what she'd done? Would they declare her psychologically unstable, if it was impulse for blood that drove her to her actions?
Was she a threat to Soul Society after all? Would it actually be better for her to be locked up, getting rid of the possibilities of her harming anyone else?
Then-
Whispering sounds of shunpo from afar shook the questions off of Ichigo's mind. He snapped his head up, body tensing as he sensed the reiatsu approaching closer. The essence of the presence felt purely shinigami, not least a bit hollow. Still, familiar. But the reiatsu had been cloaked with some sort of a kido that prevented him from recognizing the specifics...
Ichigo flung his zanpakuto back out in front of him and positioned himself to a defensive stance as the owner of the reiatsu got closer at an alarming rate.
Whoever the shinigami was, had excellent shunpo.
He poised himself onto the balls of his feet, ready to leap as soon as the presence was in sight-
A blur of black skidded around the corner - or rather, attempted to. The figure failed to slow down enough for a turn, momentum causing it to crash into the wall with an almighty WHACK that shuddered the entire structure. Small pieces of plaster crackled down, puffs of dust clouds filled the air as the said black shape flung back from the wall. It landed onto the wooden floor with a heavy thud that couldn't have felt the least bit good.
Ichigo blinked, both from the dust and the vision-cloaking kido used to fuzz out the details of the shinigami, but he thought - whoever the shinigami was, was sure to be in pain now.
As soon as the kido lifted, wielder's concentration obviously breached by the crash, the identity of the shinigami became clear-
"Hisagi-san - What're you doing here?" Ichigo rushed forward to help the vice-captain to his feet.
Hisagi winced only slightly as he accepted the assistance, muttered out words of thanks as he attempted to shake off the white dust off of him as soaked puppy would shake off water.
"Are they in?" Hisagi asked, skipping over the previous question.
Ichigo supposed 'they' were the vizards, "Yeah, but they probably won't let you in-"
The vice-captain didn't wait to hear the end of the response; he strided to the place on the wall where the door used be and slammed a fist down, "Captain Mugurama, let me in! The Central 46 just-"
The wall vertically slitted open, a hand shot out - Kensei's? - to grab Hisagi by the scruff of the shihakusho and forcefully jerked the vice-captain into the room. Before Ichigo could even twitch, the slit closed back up with a quiet thump.
"What the HELL, guys?" Ichigo shouted, "A non-Vizard's allowed in, but I'm not? What kind of screwed up logic is tha-"
He lost his words as the wall slitted back open, Hisagi's figure shot forward as if hurled out and crashed into the wall opposite once again. Before the slit closed itself back up, Ichigo caught sounds of a heated argument.
Hisagi stumbled away from the wall, reaching up to rub himself in the face with a groan that might have been a complaint.
"What happened? Just spit it out. Now." Ichigo demanded, too out of patience to bother to be polite.
Steel-gray irises bore into dark brown ones, and the latter pair narrowed as it struggle to determine the mix of carefully concealed emotions in the former.
Hisagi flatly spoke, "The Central 46 have already decided on a sentence for Kladias. Normal procedure in a situation like this would have been to wait full three days after sending out a summon to all of the high-ranking authorities around the city-"
"I don't give two shit about the procedure!" -Ichigo really didn't- "What happened? Plain words!"
"Well, supported by an officer of undeniable influence and motivated by fear of unknown factors with Kladias, they seemed to have hurried themselves to a decision-"
Ichigo threw his hands up in the air, "COME ON! Skip the legal bullshit, what happened in the end? The decision?" Screw it - Shinji's riddles were bad enough, but not this too!
Hisagi scrunched his face up to a grimace, "Sorry, sorry Ichigo-san," he ran a hand through his pitch black spikes and huffed in a breath before he continued,
"Civilian - her title of Colonel and even Shinigami Officer has been revoked already - Kladias Kurozachs has been sentenced to capital punishment by the Central 46, by which circumstances of law, they haven't made clear. The decision has been announced as irreversible, which means exactly what it sounds like - it is final. As for the specific time the event will commence-"
"Hold on a sec!" Ichigo called out, "Capital punishment? Wait, wait wait-"
Last time he'd heard of that term used in Seireitei, it had been about Rukia. Which meant-
"They're executing Kladias?" Ichigo blurted out in horror.
Tell me I'm wrong, Hisagi-san.
Come on. Just say no.
One word.
A moments hesitation, and the vice-captain answered with a nod,
"Yes."
...
One word, but not the one he was hoping for.
Ichigo didn't know what to think after that.
No, our hot-headed strawberry of a character's is NOT going to bolt out to beat the oppositions to pulps, nearly die few times, acquire unbelievable power and put a stop to the execution by smashing whatever the equipments they were about to use seconds before the end.
Nope, I'd like to think what I have in store is completely different from the plot of that arc ;3
Also, could I get some feedback? I'm curious as to whether you're DYING for the next chapter each time, tearing your hair out in frustration at whatever I'm doing that ticks you off, just nodding along throughout the whole thing, or...?
Uh, that wasn't supposed to sound demanding -_-;
