AN: Finals are nearly done, so expect the chapters out quicker. The first real hints of what happened is mentioned. Once again the warnings are on the first chapter.

...

Urahara looked at the half group of kinds before him. Ichigo, Ishida, and Inoue were all distant from each other but he could not deal with their relationship troubles at this point. There were far more serious matters at hand. The four humans were laying in various states of pain and physical fatigue on the floor of the shoten.

"Kisuke, it's time." His partner in crime had been helping with keeping their fevers down but it was time for discuss.

"Quite. Urahara-san, what is exactly going on here?" Ishida perked up from his spot between Honsho and Arisawa. They were all barely conscience. He looked down at the from behind the fan. They had all helped him at some point or another keep the hollow population down but he never saw the potential for more in them. The lack of spirit particles around was wearing him down as well.

"There is a barrier around the Karakura prefecture; not unlike the one that was around the Seireitei. It controls the excess of spiritual energy in the air and makes it...incredibly difficult to move through. However, this one is a bit different. Instead of simply holding the energy in, it's sapping it up and making the barrier stronger." He tried using the simplest words he could without giving anything away but it seemed that he would have to give up the crucial detail. Not yet.

"There haven't been any hollow attacks." Ishida, first to point out the obvious help but missing the prolonging details. Tessai took up the explanation this time.

"The spirits are getting a second death. Nothing can cross over and the spirits in the area can not be sustained. Eventually the decay will build up and emerge to the human side of things. There may not be any hollows but everyone's souls will decay before passing on."

The light were held low and the children were sent to the Kurosaki house for the night. It was simply them huddled on a wooden floor. Yoruichi felt the closeness and paced back and forth as a cat. She needed more space. The barrier could still be ripped apart but only by her. They had not lifted the punishment for Kisuke yet and it seemed like only her blood allowed her a connection to the Soul Society.

"We can not even contact the Seireitei. I've tried- So have the vizards, almost desperately." They were lost. So many barriers holding themselves together. It was like everything is being fractured. Kisuke watched his friend move, unused to being trapped at all. Even the vizards were beyond them at this point.

"Urahara, is this something the Soul Society could have set up for Aizen?" Ichigo spoke up, but Urahara almost wished that he hadn't.

"Yes. I'm keeping your friends here for now. All of you go home and do not do anything. If the barrier gets stronger I am unsure how to break it down." They were trapped.

"What about us?" The Arisawa girl's entire body was trembling as she tried to sit up. The other three had fallen into unconscious with Tessai trying to sooth their pain using kido. Inoue looked out of the door, and frowned.

"Curiously that has nothing to do with the barrier." Inoue wasn't pleased, nor was Yoruichi. He still didn't want to say what he'd found it. It was purely...based on science.

"Urahara- what is going on?" Ichigo was furious.

"Your friends are in a conflict of their bodies. The lack of spiritual pressure around is stopping them from gaining powers like Yasutora and Inoue. However, there are still growing and it's causing them this pain. Once the barrier is resolved they should be healthier again- but...it is uncertain how their powers will manifest." One detail was missing. He just couldn't say it.

"Kisuke, I think that is enough for tonight. The children will have to stay in the room downstairs." Tessai, always concerned for the moment. The training grounds were still vaguely okay atmospherically. It wasn't perfect, but the children should be able to stay down there without complications.

"Good night. We'll discuss more when the others return." He ducked his hat low to avoid their eyes. The quickly started whispering about what their friends might have disappeared to...but he couldn't hear it.

Soft paws followed him into his workspace. Yoruichi would certainly be having words with him.

...

He'd been here for two days. After he returned from giving Gin his new order, he intended to lurk about Karakura in hopes of something. But the plan wasn't wrong- he just didn't except this trap to happen.

The best word he could come up with Karakura town's problem was atmosphere. Not the atmosphere someone would find at a theater or anything constructed by the implications and personalities of people, but the atmosphere of weather and worldly presences. Sousuke would have been gone a day ago had he been able to leave at all.

That barrier that erected itself around Karakura- and only the city block of it, not the spiritual world's idea of the city- we impenetrable. The Hyougyoku, as useful as it was, did not interact at all with the sheen of pressure around it. It was like the moon and stars; a part of the same picture but neither would have a true influence on the other.

The damage and neglect could be seen and he was glad that he'd pulled all the hollows out of this area. They would not have survived otherwise in this atmosphere. It was rather like being on top of a mountain with each breath becoming more labored than the next just trying to grasp at something to clear the vision away. And he did not feel the effects.

On third street there had been a traffic accident. The man's body was towed away hours ago but his spirit was laying there; prone, unresponsive, and for all account deader than dead. And, from what he could see, it was like that throughout the entire trap.

An afternoon in the blinding winter sun was enough to make him feel sleepy and lethargic. Being a super human in body did not always reflect so in mind and sleep was a necessity. To go without it would only mean early onset insanity, paranoia, and death of the brain. His initial transformations had scared him enough with that.

The sleep was but a brief interlude of things. Fragments of memories flashed through his mind's scape and pasted occurrences together as they should not have been. Momo Hinamori had never tied a pinata to Hiyori's pigtails, nor had Jushiro Ukitake woven baskets with his former Septima espada. They all meant nothing. It was the garish yellow and black that Sousuke would remember from his little nap. Every so often a censor would appear in yellow and black cautions tape: Police Lines Do Not Cross. Sousuke was no stranger to blood and murder but his dreams were never a crime scene.

He wasn't allowed into his own mind anymore.

The sun was down when he woke up gasping for air, Komamaru's gummy bear tea time slipping away from his conscience. In their place was bright lights made worse by his asphyxiation and his ears popping and loudly muting at the same time. The Hyougyoku was trying to restore him to homeostasis but he still couldn't breathe.

Red faced and swallowing air like water, he realized that all of Karakura was an atmosphere now. A near barren wasteland that couldn't support life, living or spiritual.

It was not of his doing.

...

Headstrong and dizzy, Sousuke found the proverbial oasis in the desert for air. Radiating around a bridge was air that didn't seem to heavy and stagnant.

Sadly the bridge was of duel occupation.

"You're here again?" Kurosaki didn't look over to him. Sousuke frowned. Anger, hatred, amusement, anything would be preferable to apathy especially from what came to be his greatest help of them all.

"Stuck would be the operative word. You are aware that whatever efforts the Gotei Thirteen have done by erecting this barrier has all but destroyed this city." And the people in it, but that went unspoken. Aizen had seen the spirits and could imagine what the people caught between both worlds were feeling like. The boy tensed up but still didn't look away from the river.

When scenes went wrong the show didn't stop. Either a comedy or horror it keeps getting played off. He was suffering- but so were the ones Kurosaki cares about.

"Of course I could be presumptuous. This could all simply be a plan to divert my attention away from this city. Even if the vacuum were to be dropped immediately it would still take time, close to years, for it to regain its spiritual fertility. It seems you haven't cared enough to pass on my sincerest apologies." Still not a word was said again by the boy but his body language was changing over and over again. He would fidget, then tense, then look exhausted. Repeat performance.

"They don't need anything from you. Ever since you went after them my friends haven't been able to spend a day without pain." Ichigo felt like crap, but not like the others from the barrier.

He kept seeing Inoue's faced not-looking at him in the rain. He just wanted to be a little okay with her now- even if it meant throwing away the peace. Ishida- now there was something he didn't want to think about.

It had been seven days since the visit to Urahara's when things exploded. Ishida hated his name, and his feelings weren't returned, and that he was being used for sex.

Maybe the better idea would have been to not tell him that the sex wasn't even the good part. He was as backstabbing as Urahara and was more heartless than Ulquiorra. He was homeless and not in school watching the world die around him.

"Then it is a bit cruel of you not to help at all considering your passion for this place." Sousuke was a firm believer in the power of manipulation. It had yet to fail him. Giving Ichigo the answer to some of his problems would be enough. Some more doubt and one bad

"I can't help them."

"Ah, you might want to check some of this oversight with your teachers. Reiatsu is like a muscle and the more you work with it, the better the control gets. Imagine hefting a sledge hammer to a single nail. The destructive force would take down and entire building, for example." Here he leveled a look to the boy, egged on by the defiance. Regardless of what side he might be on Kurosaki had a ...talent for collateral damage. "Temper off the weight, the size, and you get a more manageable tool. If your friends are suffering from how little power is in the air...why not give it to them?"

"I can't take the chance that you're not going to do anything. I can't hurt them again." Something was obviously disturbing the boy. He wasn't reacting as if he were actually here.

"Something happened in Las Noches. I can assure you that I did not ask for your half thought out party to get injured." He hadn't. Didn't care much either way but it was something he no longer had to account for.

"No, you didn't hurt them. I did." Sousuke saw into Kurosaki's eyes for the first time and his stomach dropped in reaction. The expression he was seeing was a depressed human, but inside those eyes was a clear rage. He'd done something by his own merit enough to scare him.

"Your powers helped Inoue and Sado grow into theirs. I can not imagine that the monster in your has done but the destruction of your precious nakama would fuel it." Sousuke didn't know why he was comforting Kurosaki but the words spilled out his mouth with meaning. The last time he'd gave real critique and not flowered praises was to Hinamori just to make the truth seem better. He was cold and he was cruel. Kurosaki stared before running off the bridge, taking the living air with him.

It was all for his gain. Sousuke clutched at his heart and clasped against the skin. He would not get caught up in his own illusion. It was simply impossible.