CHAPTER 2: REUNION

It struck Rukia, as she watched Renji unpacking their gear on an empty tract of sand, that she was very lucky in many ways. She had managed to hold on to friends she didn't deserve. She had a family, of sorts, even if she spent most of her time running scared of Byakuya. Her work gave her a purpose and there were some things that, even in her long, long life, she had never expected to see. One of them was the arctic desert of Hueco Mundo.

It was cold. Byakuya had been right about that. It didn't bother her, but it made Renji crabby:

"Two weeks, comfortably," he said, examining their supplies with his thumbs hooked into his belt: "You planning on helping out at all or just sitting there looking at the view?"

"Just sitting here. Hey, Renji," she said: "You know, the air here; it's not so different from Soul Society."

"I guess not." He started to repack.

"If hollow need to consume human souls to survive, how do the smaller ones travel between worlds? I'd not have thought they'd have the power" –

"Well, those of us who did finish school recall that hollows can also consume one another. For example, a menos grande has to consume thousands of hollows, an adjuchas has to eat thousands of menos grande and a vasto lorde, thousands of adjuchas – you see how that works?" He gave her a smug smile, and threw a small bag of supplies into her arms. She tested the weight, then slipped it over one shoulder and started to follow him:

"Then why bother with the humans at all?"

"How should I know? Maybe they're tastier." He grinned: "Hey, you're the human expert, aren't you?"

"Have you noticed that the moon hasn't moved in nearly half a day. It's been at that exact same point in the sky."

"So?"

"No dawn. It's just going to stay dark."

"Who cares? The moonlight's bright enough to see by."

"I know, but that's not the point."

"Do you have a point?" he asked, slowing down. When she met his eyes, they were sparkling with something like amusement.

"That it's strange. No daylight. No seasons. The stars are different too." He looked up: "You see, on earth and in Soul Society, you can see the same constellations. I know they're probably not the same stars exactly, but – what?" she asked. He was grinning again:

"Nothing. It's fine. You just notice weird shit." She fell quiet. All around them, the sand was white, like new snow. It seemed to go on forever, from one empty horizon to another, undulating between dunes that looked like creases in a silk ribbon. Now and again, they crossed the tracks of other living things, usually small, but, for the most part, only their footsteps disturbed the empty perfection. At her side, Renji chuckled: "I'm just trying to recall if you were always this curious or if Byakuya doesn't let you out enough. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"What has?"

"Since it was just you and me."

Rukia didn't answer and the smile slowly faded from his face. She let her feet drag in the sand, sending up wavelets of fine white spray. There was a kind of uneasy truce between them at the moment. A lot of things had been said that perhaps should not have been, or might have been said differently. Either way, things might change in the future, when they'd both had time to consider everything. Right now, they didn't have that luxury. They just had each other. "Hey, hey, look! That's got to be Las Noches," said Renji suddenly. When she looked up, he was pointing towards the horizon. In the far distance, she could see something that appeared to be a vast metallic dome, marring the otherwise unbroken line of white sand. They both stopped. A strong wind snatched at their hair and cloaks as they stared out across the wastes, trying to ascertain distances and scale.

Then Rukia gasped and her hand went to her chest. For an instant, her world had lurched. Renji glanced towards her:

"What was that?"

"I don't know." It felt as if someone had grabbed at her spiritual pressure and tugged it. That was, of course, impossible; impossible, but not imagined: Renji had felt it too. She wondered how it had seemed to him. He was staring at her warily:

"I know this is a big thing for you," he said, starting down the face of the sand dune they had just climbed. She followed. "I mean, you've only been to the world of the living – what – twice? And now we're in a place that few shinigami have ever visited."

"So?"

"So it's okay to be scared."

"I'm not scared," she objected.

"All I'm saying is that, if you were, that'd be cool."

"Shut up, Idiot."

"It's a good job you've got a big, strong guy like me to" –

The earth ruptured. Suddenly, it felt as if someone had taken a hold of the landscape and shaken it out like a rumpled cloth. The resultant ripple that chased through the dunes knocked them both off their feet and Rukia landed hard on her backside. When she had presence of mind to glance around, Renji was already up on his knees, one hand on his sword: "What was that?" he cried. Rukia sat up:

"I don't know!"

"I'm beginning to have second thoughts about this place. Damn, where the hell are our supplies?"

"I have mine. You were carrying the rest!" They both glanced around the barren sand-field and she gave an exaggerated sigh. "You must have put them down. We'll have to go back."

"No, I had them! I just dropped them a moment ago!"

"Are you asking me to believe that the sand just ate our supplies?" she asked laconically, as she brushed herself followed a silence in which they both gave this serious consideration.

"I think we should proceed," said Renji, in solemn tones: "With caution."

"Thank goodness you're here to guide me. I'd be lost without you."

"Oh sure! As if you have any clue what that was!"

If she did though, she never got the chance to tell him because a tide of spiritual pressure ripped across the landscape and, over to their right, a series of explosions rent the horizon. Renji had dropped into a low stance as if believing they were under attack. Rukia ran past him:

"That's Ichigo!"

"Yeah, but Rukia, something's wrong!" He might have said more had she not broken into flash-step, forcing him to follow her.

They emerged from shunpo perhaps a hundred yards from the centre of the energy storm and were, at once, caught in the furore of Ichigo's reiatsu. It rolled out across the landscape like a hurricane, carrying waves of sand and debris, so that even the ground on which they stood felt like an ever-changing tide Still jogging, Rukia tugged the cloak she wore up over her nose and mouth. She would have liked to have been able to cover her eyes too, as they were already stinging with grit and sand and it becoming harder to see. Still, Byakuya's gift did have a use, it seemed. Renji put one hand on her shoulder and leant in close as they ran, so that he could be heard above the white noise of spirit energy: "He's different here. You feel that?"

"He's stronger," she muttered, trusting that he would hear her. His eyes flicked towards her and they both knew what he was thinking. Stronger was one way of putting it. The energy was so much darker than anything she had ever sensed before from the human boy.

They crested the next dune and gazed down at a scene that inspired both awe and dread because the desert itself had come to life; it had grown a torso, arms and a gnarled head that towered some hundred feet above the sands. Like a wood-cut of an ancient sea-god, it strode waist-deep through the landscape, its monstrous arms grasping at the ant-like figures who fled before it. She could see Ichigo, his black shihakusho a ripple on the white sand. As she watched, he whirled, faced the monster and slashed his sword downwards. His reiatsu surged outwards in a crisp line of black lightning that exploded as it struck the demon, carving it into a thousand pieces. Had his reiatsu always been black, she wondered. No, it had once been blue, pale blue, like the light that streamed out of a senkaimon. When had it changed?

There was no time to think on such things though because, as she watched, the demon began to reform: its body unfolding from the sand, bearing up the weight of a grotesque hollow mask: a grinning human skull with curling horns and a beard formed by streams of sand pouring endlessly down its front. "It is a hollow, isn't it?" asked Renji.

"Must be." But it was formed of the sand itself, which meant that no amount of force or energy could destroy it. It would simply regenerate from the landscape, and there was no shortage of sand here. She drew her sword:

"Sode no Shirayuki." And she touched the tip to the ground in front of her, feeling the power spreading through her body like cold light; the blade, changing and lengthening in her hands. A ribbon unfurled from the hilt and spiralled around her as if it could form a ward against the barrage of static pummelling the landscape. "Tsugi no mai. Hakuren." Yet, even as she gave the incantation, the ribbon rode upwards on the draught of her own spiritual energy and a wave of churning ice surged out over the dunes.

It engulfed the hollow where it stood, freezing it, arms raised in a gesture of eternal wrath. But Rukia was only partially aware that her assault had been effective. She was staring down at the blade she held. For an instant, she had felt terror. Indescribable terror. But it had not been her own. "Sode no Shirayuki," she whispered, but, even as she watched, the beautiful white sword dulled and reformed of its own accord into a plain katana with a red-bound hilt. Renji was watching her, but it was obvious from his puzzled expression that he thought she'd returned her sword to its original form on purpose. She glanced down into the valley before them where Ichigo and his companions had ceased their flight and were staring up at the giant ice statue. Renji returned his zanpakuto to his sheath and relaxed a little:

"Nicely done. Looks like that got their attention."

As she watched, Ichigo broke off from the little party and ran to meet them. Having discarded his powers for now, his bankai blade had assumed its usual form, bound to his back by white cloth and a red chain. His progress up the slope towards them was as delightfully awkward as that of any city-dwelling teenager who had just been challenged to sprint up a sand-dune. Behind the cloak that covered her mouth, Rukia smiled. He was grinning and panting when he reached her:

"Renji! Rukia! You came!"

It was both endearing and irritating that he made it sound as if they'd turned up unexpectedly for a tea party rather than the truth, which was that they had risked charges of insubordination, while crossing worlds into hostile territories where there was every possibility that they would both get killed. But endearing and irritating was fine. She'd expected nothing less.

"Of course we came!" she said, snatching the cloak down from her face, and she punctuated the statement with a sucker punch to his jaw.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Why didn't you wait for us? You knew we'd come, didn't you? We're your friends, Ichigo!"

He looked slightly baffled by the statement, but now she did smile, and his face lit up at that. He stumbled slightly as he turned back to the strange scene behind him:

"I guess you are. You'd better come down and meet the others then."