A/N: I'm sorry for spazzing out on you guys last week.
For what it's worth, I felt embarrassed five minutes after, considered taking it down but decided not to in the end... Thanks to you who have stuck with the story in spite of the author(me)'s spazziness.
*provides a new chapter as a distraction from all the awkwardness*
Three knocks issued from the door, followed by an unfamiliar female voice,
"Lieutenant-Colonel Kurosaki?"
With a soft grunt, Ichigo straightened himself up from a thick leather-bound tome he had been slouched over. His shoulders popped and crackled in complaint as he shrugged and rotated them. He had been in the same position, poring over documents of all sorts, for hours now, attempting a research that was turning out to be fruitless. Arms thudding onto either sides of the book, he said in the best professional tone he could muster,
"Come in."
The door in front of him slid open to reveal a blank-faced, rather unremarkable female shinigami with sleek, chin-length black hair,
"Kuchiki-sama is waiting for you."
Ichigo flinched and shot up from his chair, rattling the whole desk to send documents flying in all directions, upsetting an ink bottle(unopened, luckily) as the professional facade was completely thrown off,
"She's awake? Since when? Holy shi-"
"Captain Kuchiki, dimwit. You do know there's another one?" a familiar voice interrupted.
Ichigo felt his heart deflate, but outwardly he bristled, "How was I supposed to know? Get lost if you're here just to call me names, freaking pineapple-head."
The female shinigami hurriedly stepped aside and tilted down to a slight bow as Renji stomped into view. His head of vivid red hair was in his usual ponytail, except it was looking more frazzled and unkempt than ever.
Upon further inspection, Ichigo noticed that the entire person was at the similar disheveled state, if not worse.
He felt a twinge of concern, however brash the redhead was acting at the moment. He jerked a thumb towards one of the office's unoccupied sofa,
"Or shut up and crash - a tickle and you look about ready to sleepwalk and commit a mass-murder."
Renji's lips twitched to what could've been a smile fraction of second before he scoffed and spat out at the female shinigami, "Dismissed, officer. Head back to the manor to notify Captain Kuchiki that we'll be there as soon as possible."
The woman shunpo-ed off after a quick "Yes, sir!"
"Yo - speak for yourself!" Ichigo scowled, "Since when Byakuya's free to summon me up whenever he feels like it? He can't be that stupid to expect me to hop to his side at a second's notice."
Renji's bandana shifted as he raised an eyebrow, "Second's notice my ass, he sent you a note at around 9, which is-" he ducked in to glance up at the clock on the wall right beside the door, "-five hours ago."
Ichigo warily redirected his eyes from the clock to the haphazard piles of paperwork on the coffee table and a smaller version of it on the desk in front of him - throughout the course of his morning, he had called for so many different documents and books for that he lost track of other paperworks.
The vice-captain, having looked around on his own, yelped. "The hell have you been up to, Ichigo? Never thought of you as the type to drown boredom in books and papers, much less-" he quickly walked up to the desk and flipped the thick, leather-bound book shut, much to Ichigo's distaste seeing as he lost the page number...
Renji's read the title out loud, "History of Seireitei: Crime, Law and Punishment?" he lifted his head up to bore Ichigo with a disbelieving stare, "Correction - who the hell are you?"
"Shut up!" Ichigo fumed, telling himself that he had NOT been caught doing something wrong, "Let's get going before the other Kuchiki explodes in impatience." He hurried around the desk, grabbing a handful from the shoulder of Renji's shihakusho and forcefully tugging him back.
The redhead sputtered through his sudden loss of balance, "Hold on a sec - gotta undo your seal, Ichigo."
Ichigo grimaced and looked down to his hand at the end of his outstretched arm, to the small black rectangle right above his wrist at the base of his hand's tattoos.
He had gotten to the conference - who knew one can take the stairs out of the supposed super-secret time-warped underground facility? - just in time to hear himself get sentenced to a house arrest.
Under no circumstance would he have obeyed without putting up a fight - he did, quite vocally, and to his surprise, there were others backing him up. But the Central 46 had made it clear over and over again the only other option they were willing to offer was time in jail, decorated with mind-blowing amount of complicated legal terms he had no intention of asking for the definitions.
Half an hour later he settled for the original sentence(confined to training division's grounds), for the moment more interested in getting their yapping faces off his back than anything else. To his horror, he had been escorted to the 12th Division for 'standard' testing procedures that required him to sit alone in a bare room for three hours - hours he spent grinding his teeth blunt. After that, back to the training grounds, right hand stamped with a kido-seal that would notify the entire of Seireitei's armed forces and the Commander General himself the moment he stepped over the boundary.
Himself from one and a half years ago might have bolted out at any given moment, zanpakuto brandishing with no plans for the future - other than battling off whoever - as to where to go or even what to do after.
The current him might have done exactly that too even if he had known, even with an extremely disoriented state of mind he was in, that plunging into such trouble head-first was one of the stupidest thing he could do.
It didn't help his Zangetsu wasn't done moping.
Anyhow, he had other thoughts.
As Renji led him to the Kuchiki manor, Ichigo rubbed the spot where the black kido-seal used to be - the vice-captain had taken it off by applying a small square sheet of translucent paper to the mark, followed by muttering out a rather long incantation. Then the square burst to flames, immediately followed by a small explosion.
Ichigo hadn't been sure if the explosion had been absolutely necessary, considering Renji's kido skills...
Now the reddened skin felt and looked tender and weak, as if it had been scrubbed with sandpaper.
"So you have finally come, Kurosaki Ichigo."
Still figure of Kuchiki Byakuya stood at the front entrance of the manor's garden, ever-present aura of authority hanging about him.
Renji came to a halt in front of his captain, "My apologies, captain, the message got lost in delivery."
Brief eye contact and small nod at the captain, Ichigo gave a nonchalant "Yo, Byakuya." then strutted past the two, through the entrance and into the garden.
"Where do you think you are going?" Byakuya, ever so slightly demanding, spoke,
"Ehh?" Ichigo came to a stop, turned himself around to face the speaker, "Renji said your manor, so... there?" he raised an eyebrow to stare at the Kuchiki with an isn't-it-obvious look.
"No, Kurosaki Ichigo," almost unnoticeably, the captain's jaw tightened, "I have been asked to escort you to the 4th Division."
Renji perked up and sputtered, "Wha- but Captain, he-"
Byakuya silenced the redhead with a stern look.
Ichigo's eyes darted between the two of them, "What now?" he threw his hands up in the air,
"If they think I'm gonna go through some medical testing procedure for them, they're wrong! You know what - I'm going back-"
"You are mistaken, Kurosaki Ichigo," Byakuya cut him off, eyeing him somewhat disapprovingly before speaking again,
"I am taking you to see Rukia."
"It is not as bad as you seem to think it is, Kurosaki-san."
Ichigo knew Unohana-san was the best in Seireitei's medicinal field, but she might as well have told him that in a minute, Rukia was going to sprout wings, take flight and dance a can-can, all the while sprinkling sparkly fairy dust.
He was standing at the doorstep of a classroom-sized, windowless and bare white room. So even though sunlight was blazing to its full outside, not a single ray of warmth filtered in - entire of the ceiling was lit up with clean, cold artificial florescent light that screaming HOSPITAL. It also reminded Ichigo of the 12th Division's underground facility he had been to yesterday, but more to his unease, a morgue.
Rukia lied suspended three feet above ground at dead-center of the room, unmoving and skin frighteningly pale, almost blending into her pristine white kimono. By contrast, her head of black hair looked darker than ever and strangely, it was also slightly longer than it had been yesterday. Whether it was by twisted humor of true fate or paranoia, Ichigo thought she looked the exact same as she did at her execution.
Except she had been awake.
A transparent coffin-like box of faint glowing white light enveloped her tiny figure, kido-strings of various thickness and color encased the box in a loose cocoon. The colored light of the strings pulsed to brightness at different intervals, giving Ichigo a sense of being a spectator at an exotic light show.
He had only caught a gist of Unohana-san's explanation; Rukia had practically been brought back from the dead only to be plunged into a self-induced coma. No one knew the exact state her shinigami reiatsu was in, nor when she would wake up. A voice at the back of his mind prodded him to ask about the relapse he witnessed at the field, but more prominent part of him couldn't seem to think past staring wide-eyed at the whirls of colors, much less form words.
"If it would be of any comfort to you, Kurosaki-san, she is under excellent care. Vice-Captain Kotetsu and I had finished tending to her only late last night, remaining kidos have been carefully designed to best fit her. All we can do now is to wait with patience."
Ichigo stood frozen still, barely felt it as the motherly captain laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Rapid beats of his heart thudded in sync with the pulse of the lights...
"I..." He felt like he should say something, even few words, to prove to her that he was going to be fine.
Instead he tore his eyes away from Rukia, brushed the hand on his shoulder off and spun away from the doorway,
"I'd better get going." He took a few steps forward before remembering - he spared a glance over his shoulder, to the still-standing Captain's soft, apologetic eyes,
"Thank you, Unohana-san."
By the time Ichigo sprinted back to the large koi pond of the 4th Division's garden where his two companions waved him off, he saw that only Byakuya remained. Sensing his return, the captain slowly turned to face him.
"Where'd Renji go?"
Ichigo firmly rooted a topic, though he doubted the ever-composed captain was about to ask his well-being after the visit. Frankly, he wasn't sure if image of Rukia like that, an usually vibrant, vying spirit muted to motionless helplessness, would ever completely fade from his mind...
Byakuya replied, "I have relieved Vice-Captain Abarai of his duties for the time being. He had been working tirelessly since evening yesterday."
"Figures. But isn't it a little too nice of you to give him a break, just like that?"
Ichigo got only a silent, slate-gray glare out of that remark.
The look in Byakuya's eyes toned down to its usual blankness, same careful, controlled tone in his voice as he spoke, "I have been meaning to ask, Kurosaki Ichigo."
During a grandiose pause that followed, Ichigo stared wryly at the asker.
"Did you, by any means, take part in the crime committed yesterday afternoon?"
"No." Ichigo spat out without a second's delay.
Byakuya had heard his testimony at yesterday's conference... Why ask again? It was starting to get on his nerves.
"Would you swear it on your own very life - or rather, lives of your family? Your dear father, your beloved sisters?"
Ichigo frowned and opened his mouth to do so, but -
...
"Shinji! You know something we don't?"
The blond captain's head whipped back to reveal surprised eyes of black sclera, grey irises - hollowification mid-progress.
A sickening crunch rang out.
...
Had Shinji been about to interfere, to put a stop to the fight?
Had his shout distracted him from doing so?
Then...
If he hadn't called out, could the disaster have been avoided?
"Answer, Kurosaki Ichigo," Byakuya's stern voice reminded him back to the present.
Ichigo ground his teeth, suddenly unsure of his position in the matter. Even if unintentionally, one could say he had provided one of the factors for the catastrophe to commence...
He stared back into the cold, slate-gray eyes, struggling to decide on an answer when a presence punched into his mind-
Walls, walls. Aaand two more walls. Two plus two equals four. Four to the power of eight equals sixty-five thousand seven-hundred - no wait five-hundred - fuck that. Roses are blue, violets are red. Tiny blue sky on the wall's taunting me.
Vision blurring, Ichigo blanched and put a hand to his forehead - that hadn't been his own thoughts.
Why the fuck did the walls have to be all white?
And clean? Don't people usually get bored and scratch failure of soul-awakening poems onto the walls? Or draw crap? Actually, that's a fun idea - bah, there's nothing to write with. And hell if I'm even gonna try writing with my own blood.
They could at least've put a lower ceiling to this god damned place. Whole ratio's screwed up.
Through his distorted vision, Ichigo saw Byakuya's lips moving but nothing came to his ears-
Just lying here's tiring. I can't be getting old already - maybe the walls are sapping my energy out? Yeah, that makes sense - what'd the old geezers back at the courses say? Something about special stone blocking the fuck out of reiatsu... And then some other nonsense, like no matter what it's not gonna break. Nothing helpful. Maybe I shouldn't've slept through those lectures. But monotone blabs over half a minute's highway to dreamland, period.
Ichigo's head ached - he scrunched his eyes shut and gave a harsh rub to his forehead - what the hell? He heard Byakuya's voice now, perhaps something similar to concern in the tone, barely audible-
HOW the hell did I get here? WHY did I get locked up in this place - fine, full-out screaming match with the asshole wasn't the smartest thing I could've done. But a lock-up? Really? What century's right now, even? Why isn't anyone coming along - would it set fire to a basket of newborn puppies to let me know? Or FEED me - I'm starving.
This sucks.
What's this weird place built for, anyway? I can't think of any-
With great effort, almost physically painful concentration, Ichigo managed to rip the uninvited consciousness out of him. He reopened his eyes and was relieved when the world spun back to focus, surface of the koi pond glittering in the blinding sunlight. A large leaf fluttered by momentarily blocking out a small part of the reflected light from his eyes.
"Kurosaki Ichigo?"
He shifted his focus to the speaker - Byakuya looked as alarmed as his cold demeanor would allow him to, hands raised halfway up as if unsure of what to do.
Ichigo didn't believe even for a second he could pass whatever expression he had on his face and head-clutching off as nothing.
The 6th division's captain wasn't a moron.
But he had to try,
"Damn it, Byakuya, would it kill you to not call me by full name for once?"
He caught disbelief turning to annoyance cross the captain's face before the presence jabbed back into his mind, this time with a flash of pain-
HO-LYfuckin'motherof-
AHHH!
Is - DAMMIT - my hand - FUCK! - broken?
Shit, shit shit shit shitshitshitshit- ow.
Nnngh. Wasn't that just freakishly useless.
Ichigo shoved it away again - with less difficulty than last time, thankfully. Throbbing in his right hand ebbed until it was only a ghostly pulse.
He was pretty sure that hadn't been Zangetsu nor Tensa Zangetsu - as omniscient, cryptic and more recently, paraoid the spirit's been, he had never been whiny. Or maybe his hollow self decided to butt in and adopt a new persona - nope, it wasn't him either.
Reaching a dead-end with the thought, Ichigo decided to turn his attention back to more immediate concern in his current world-
"Bye, Byakuya!"
Ichigo fled, shunpo-ing over the wall of the garden and into the deserted streets.
Need time to think. Alone.
Holy crap - 20 chapters? Over 50k words now...!
Weird chapter is weird, I know ;w ;
