Zangetsu. A piece of his soul. Getsuuga Tensho. Moon-fang piercer of the heavens. A glorious name. His most powerful attack, one he used over and over after learning it, not even thinking about it after it had been accomplished the first time. Zangetsu. His partner, his friend and priceless assistant. Zangetsu knew him better than Ichigo himself did. He didn't even think about Zangetsu most of the time, too busy running blindly after captured friends and pounding his enemies into the dirt. Sure he was concerned when Zangetsu broke, but mostly he was too busy fearing for his life with the loss of his only means to defend himself. And Zangetsu really was his only way to defend himself—to attack, to destroy and protect, he needed his sword for all of those.
When Zangetsu was gone, he had no idea what to do. When the ninth espada had touched his blade, the solid metal had broken to pieces and been sucked into the hollows gaping maw. Instantly, all of Ichigo's courage fled. He trembled, sweated, gasped with fear and the horror of the terrible hole he felt in his soul. A place he hadn't known existed much less was full was now suddenly empty. Ichigo heard his hollow scream within him, calling out for his only companion in the pouring rain of Ichigo's inner world. Ichigo's body wracked with spasms as his white clone tore apart his inner world, frantically searching for the old man that was Ichigo's sword. The ninth espada had knocked him down and bloody with a single hit, turning its attention to the bigger threat: Uryuu.
Ichigo had watched in horror as his best friend faced the hollow that had just taken him down like he was no more than a fly. He felt the horrible pull on his soul as Uryuu gathered energy for what would be the most splendid move in living history. He watched as the last Quincy fell, the end of his kind. He trembled from his hollow's frantic searching and the shock of Zangetsu's loss, as well as Uryuu's surreal demise. Ichigo lifted his head with the last of his strength and screamed his grief to the empty heavens.
He was not found for hours. He heard battles continue to rage on in the distance while he simply lay on the sand. He made sporadic attempts to get to Uryuu, to just to reach him. He succeeded, not long before he was found. He managed to pull himself to Uryuu's side, but all he could do at that point as just lie beside him. He stared at the dead face of his friend, telling himself over and over that he was dead no matter how much the Quincy looked like he was just sleeping. Sleeping peacefully…but no, his peace was found in death. Uryuu's glasses were gone, blown off his face at some point during the creation or firing of his magnificent arrow. Ichigo stared at the familiar but strange face, not wanting to think about his death but trying to avoid thinking about Zangetsu even more. Uryuu was his friend, but Zangetsu was a piece of his soul. And he had just lost them both. The fragile balance between him and his hollow was crumbling, too, with every second his look-alike tore the rain-drenched skyscrapers apart. And so, he did the only thing he could think of.
He remembered his mother.
He couldn't bear to think about Rukia, or Uryuu or Zangetsu. They were all too painful, the wounds too fresh and somehow that much more real because of they were so recent. So, he remembered the woman he had spent the past six years trying to put out of his mind. He didn't think about the missing part of his soul, or his best friend, or the girl that had given him the power to protect. He thought of none of them, picturing his mother's smiling face in his mind. When her smile wavered, he resorted to her bloody, rain-drenched corpse. That was an image that could not be forgotten, much less simply dismissed.
He dwelled on his mother's death, until he was suddenly caught up in a strong pair of black clad arms. He gasped, and looked around frantically. When he spotted the masked face of one of the shinigami retrieval squad members, he relaxed slightly. He looked to his left, and saw Uryuu's limp body next to him, both of them having been gripped around their middles and pressed against the side of the retrieval squad member. He felt his left side being pressed against Uryuu's right, and whenever their bare hands brushed together he felt his friend's deathly cold skin. The contact made him feel vaguely sick, knowing it was his best friend's corpse, but Ichigo had nothing in his stomach to throw up. This was the end of a five day assault on Los Noches, and Soul Society's forces had been spread all over the desert. It had been days since Ichigo last ate, so his belly was rather empty. He also very much doubted that the retrieval officer had food on him, either. Or her. They wore masks and this person didn't have any discernable breasts, so Ichigo couldn't tell if his rescuer was male or female. They were a weird lot, but this one was saving his life.
Retrieval squad officers were sent out routinely, to collect corpses of the fallen and those too injured to fight. The squad had been founded by Yoruichi, returned from her century of exile to fight in the Winter War. She had, in a stroke of brilliance, come up with the idea of a squad entirely dedicated to retrieving the gravely injured from battle so they could be healed, and not have scores of good warriors idiotically killed by blood loss. Ukitake had suggested that they retrieve the bodies of the dead as well, so that their corpses could not be desecrated or used against Soul Society in some twisted way. The Flash Goddess had built on that idea, saying that these special officers would just collect every shinigami they saw that was unable to fight, without checking if they were alive or dead. It would just slow them down and give the enemy a chance to kill the retrieval officers, or it could delay medical treatment for the injured. However, then came a rather annoying problem. How would regular shinigami outrun arrancar? The innate talent for shunpo wasn't widely spread, and even the slowest of the arrancar could probably outpace a good proportion of shinigami. Such a predicament.
The solution?
Urahara Kisuke has always been good at coming up with out-there ideas, and sometimes this worked in Soul Society's favor. Kisuke had created a device that redirected all of a soul's energy into shunpo, making every retrieval squad member able to outrun all but the fastest of warriors but unable to attack worth anything. The device could be clipped onto the arm like an archer's armguard, and involved a lot of complicated processes that no one but the twelfth division nerds could figure out when Kisuke tried to explain them. The members of the retrieval squad were handpicked by Yoruichi for being the worst suited for fighting and the best for retrieving the bloody bodies of the fallen. She personally trained them, too, and as a result they were quite the strange bunch. They insisted on wearing all black and covering their faces and hair, for no discernable reason.
But Ichigo was getting off track. Maybe that was a good thing, but his dazed, wandering thought processes were starting to scare him a little. However, it was infinitely better than thinking about the gaping hole in his spirit and the turmoil in his heart. Anything was better than that. Anything would have been better than losing Zangetsu.
-knock the black moon down-