Babylon's Guardian
Chapter 1: Deathberry, Take Two
Recap: Ichigo Kurosaki, through unknown means, has gone into the future to the Earth Alliance Station Babylon 5, and his timing couldn't be worse: a Soul Hunter, a seemingly immortal being that steals the souls of the dying, has come to Babylon 5. His target is unknown, but Rukia Kuchiki plans to stop him and retrieve his soul collection for konso. Little do they know that Kosh Naranek, Ambassador of the Vorlon Empire, plans to see Ichigo.
Jeffery David Sinclair looked at Ichigo and noted that he looked a lot like his old flight instructor, Kaien Kurosaki.
His mind returned to the Battle of The Line once again, and to his comrades dying.
January 6th, 2248, Sol System, Lunar-Earth Orbit
Sinclair spun his fighter around a Minbari formation and dodged as much fire as he could.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Fury with a black sun motif on it shoot down a Nial-Class fighter.
It was his ace combat instructor, Kaien Kurosaki.
"Sinclair, watch your ass!"
He didn't see the Minbari on his tail, but Kaien did, and he used his superior reflexes and training to shoot down the Nial.
"That's, what, 12 now?"
"14, Lieutenant!"
Kaien's Fury fired a burst at one more fighter, then another one tore off his port upper stabilizer and engine pod.
"Kaien!"
"Relax! I'm still in control!"
He proved it by shooting down one more Nial and damaging another.
Another burst from another Nial disabled the Aurora-Class Starfury, forcing Kaien to eject into a hail of fire.
He was killed instantly.
"Lieutenant!"
"Sir, you've got a Minbari on your tail!"
Another black sun Aurora dove in to save him.
It was Kaien's little sister, Sayuri.
"Sayuri, get out of there!"
While she was just as skilled as her now-dead brother, she was surrounded and outgunned.
Her Aurora was burnt stem to stern.
It was the last one of its' kind, and so was its' pilot.
And with her, the entire Kurosaki family was gone.
They survived everything. Until now.
End flashback
"Commander Sinclair?"
He was shaken out of his nightmare by the Kaien lookalike.
"Sorry. I...I just saw what happened to your family. I saw them all die on the Line."
Ichigo shuttered.
"The Line. Why's it called the Line?"
"The final battle of the Earth-Minbari War, to draw the line against the night, so said President Ley. I fought on the Line, along with the survivors of your family. Three brave men and women."
"Three?"
Sinclair nodded.
"Used to be 20 or so. Everyone served in Earthforce. Five were fighter pilots and flight instructors. Five were ship captains. The rest of them were ground-pounders. The GROPOS were killed in ground engagements, but they took a lot of Minbari with them. The last Captain died a month before the Line. My instructor, Kaien Kurosaki, was the leading ace pilot of the war: survived six engagements with 20 kills, although he was modest and said he only got ten. Your family was great at anything they decided to do."
Ichigo shrugged.
"I wouldn't know. I just remember being in Karakura Town, then I'm suddenly on Babylon 5."
"You're lucky. After the first few engagements where your relatives fought in, the Minbari practically made it their goal to wipe your family out."
Ichigo scoffed.
"Looks like they failed."
"And that's why we have to keep you a secret. If the Minbari find out you're alive, their Warrior Caste might try to kill you."
Ichigo shrugged.
"I've fended off worse."
"You don't get it, Ichigo. If the Minbari learn that you're alive, they'll try to kill you, and they won't care if the Gray Council says no. Your family broke their pride."
"They can live with it. They surrendered."
"And we still don't know why. We've been trying to figure it out for 10 years now."
Babylon 5: Medlab 1
Delenn, Ambassador of the Minbari Federation to Babylon 5 and secretly a member of the Gray Council, walked into the Medlab to speak with the Soul Hunter.
He was sealed inside the Isolab, and was laying down on the medical bed.
"What do you want, Minbari?"
"Soul Hunters never travel without their collection. Where is yours?"
"Safe. My children are safe. We talk together of many things. They are many and wise and rare: the finest souls."
"Are any of them Minbari?"
That touched a nerve.
"Understand this: before you leave, I will search your ship, rip out every panel, tear out every floor! I will gut it from end to end until I find the souls you have stolen from us!"
"And what will you do then?"
"Free them. Release them-"
"You mean KILL them."
"They will join with the souls of all our people. Melt one into another until they are born into the next generation of Minbari."
Delenn took in a breath.
"Remove those souls and the whole suffers. We are diminished. The next generation becomes less then the one before."
"A quint lie! Pretty fantasy, like the shinigami's claims of their Soul Society. The soul ends with death."
He got up and put on his tattered jacket.
"Unless we act to preserve it! We will help you, in spite of yourselves!"
He took a good look at Delenn.
"I know you. You were there, at the death of your leader, Dukhat!"
"We stopped you from taking that which you had no right to take!"
"You stopped me from saving him. That is where it began to go wrong. The lost souls: one after another after another. Voices stilled! I failed...because you stopped me."
He looked slightly insane now.
"Failed. The pattern began. I remember."
He figured out who she was.
"They called you Satai Delenn of the Gray Council!"
She turned and left.
"Curious. Curious. What is one of the great leaders of the Minbari doing here playing ambassador?!"
She practically ran from the Medlab and didn't bother looking back.
Babylon 5: Green 1, Level 5
Ichigo busied himself by looking at an abridged history of Earthforce. His sister, Karin, was the first Chief of Staff, and that surprised him. It seemed a family tradition, too: there were 6 Kurosaki Chiefs of Staff, and the last one was killed on the front lines during the Earth-Minbari War. "Ichigo!" He looked up to see Rukia getting back into her gigai. "How was your talk with Sinclair?" "Not great, but not bad, either. He was trained by a member of my family: a grandnephew named Kaien. Looked like me, too." Rukia flinched. "Something the matter?" "You don't want to know. I couldn't find the Hunter's collection. While each ship has the same basic layout, I couldn't find where it was." "You could always ask for help." "You were busy." Her pager rang again. It was a voice message. "Kuchiki." "Lieutenant, we're having issues with our detection systems. According to the sensors, Ichigo Kurosaki is barely three meters away from you." "You aren't having problems. Ichigo is in the room with me." The aforementioned Kurosaki gulped. 'Uh-oh.' "That's not possible." "If you want, I can bring him in." She didn't notice Ichigo get up and to the door. "Bakudo 1: Sai!" She bound Ichigo using the most basic bakudo spell. "I'll bring him in." She hung up. "You are going nowhere." "Fuck that! I broke out before, I can break out again!" "Not before I drag you to the Seireitei. There's more then a few people who want to see you, Ichigo." She knocked him out of his body and dragged him through a Senkaimon.
Soul Society: 13th Division Barracks
Jūshirō Ukitake was putting the finishing touches on his newest creation: a 1700:1 scale model of the Omega-Class EAS Agamemnon, down to the five SA-26E Aurora-Class Starfuries that appeared to be launching from the ship's hanger bay.
He noticed the Senkaimon opening in his office only because of the light.
"Rukia, what are you doing here? Your mission's a five year one."
"Well, I brought someone back."
He looked up and saw the Hero of the Winter War standing beside Rukia.
"How-When?"
"I found him on Babylon 5. I thought it was best to bring him here for the time being."
Ichigo looked at Rukia.
"I am NOT staying here. My body's still on B5!"
"Just until I deal with the Soul Hunter. Those bastards show a LOT of interest in those with high reiatsu levels. Yours are higher then anyone on record."
"What about the old man?"
"Well, during your fight with Aizen, your reiatsu levels were off the scale. No one, not even Captain-General Yamamoto, could sense you."
Ichigo dumbly nodded.
"Speaking of which, what happened to the bastard?"
"You killed him. There was barely enough of his body to identify it."
The words 'blood stain' came to mind.
"Oh. Bastard got what was coming to him."
Babylon 5: Brown Sector
"Be at peace, my children."
Part of the Hunter's collection-an opaque, red ball-hovered in the air.
"I now know what brought us to this place."
The ball stayed in midair, hovering near the Hunter's head.
"At last I know who we have come for."
His target was the hidden Satai of the Gray Council, Delenn.
Soul Society: 1st Division Barracks
Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto, Captain-General of the 1st Division and the Gotai 13, blinked.
'This is NOT possible.'
He blinked four more times before deciding that this was not an illusion.
Ichigo Kurosaki did, indeed, stand before him and the rest of the Gotai captains.
Ichigo clearly did not want to be there.
"This is intriguing, to say the least."
"No shit."
Same disrespect for authority, but then again, that was just a universal Kurosaki trait.
"How did you survive your encounter with Aizen? Urahara confirmed your use of the Final Getsuga Tensho, which should, by all counts, left you powerless."
Ichigo stayed quiet.
"Answer me, boy."
"If I had any idea, I'd tell you. I've got better things to do then be questioned by a bunch of old people with white coats!"
Yamamoto wanted to level the brat with his reiatsu, but Ichigo was simply too powerful for that.
That, and Rukia Kuchiki was still in the room.
A member of the 2nd Division entered the hall.
"Captain-General! We have a problem!"
"What is it?"
"Another Soul Hunter has been found on Babylon 5!"
Ichigo looked at Yamamoto.
"Looks like we have better things to do then talk about how the hell I ended up on Babylon 5."
"Clearly. Go, then."
Babylon 5: Brown Sector
The Hunter was only a step away from his goal: capturing Delenn's soul.
He didn't notice the Senkaimon gate open behind him until it was almost too late.
"Hadō 31: Shakkahō!"
The Hunter was encased in fire from the spirit attack.
He saw the one thing that stopped him each time: a female shinigami.
"YOU WILL NOT STOP ME!"
He was hit in the face with a wrapped metal weapon: a sheathed zanpakutō.
The Hunter then saw its' wielder: an orange-haired shinigami. He knew this one from the shinigami in his collection: Ichigo Kurosaki, Hero of the Winter War and the most noble soul of his age.
He was the ultimate prize for any Soul Hunter.
"I don't like people like you. You want a soul? Try me."
The device designed to take the soul from a body activated, and he pointed it at Ichigo, who was a must better prize then Delenn could ever be.
He did not notice Commander Sinclair enter the room, who shot him in the shoulder with his PPG.
Ichigo then turned the machine toward the Hunter.
"Let's see how YOU like it, you bastard!"
The Hunter glared at the device for a moment before his soul was ripped from his body and placed in the globe. Sinclair looked at the two shinigami.
"What the hell?"
Rukia sighed.
"He saw everything. And memory replacement won't work on him. We'll need to tell him the truth."
Ichigo helped him up.
"Satai...Satai..."
They looked at the globe that now contained the soul of the Soul Hunter.
Ichigo unsheathed Zangetsu and hit the globe with the pommel of the zanpakutō.
"Shut up."
The soul was released, and he took on his physical body, with the addition of the Chain of Fate sticking out of his chest.
"What the hell is it go-"
Then a pair of very familiar gates appeared behind the Hunter.
"Oh, crap."
The Gates of Hell had arrived on Babylon 5.
Sucks to be the Soul Hunter, ne?
"No. NO!"
The Gates opened and a VERY big hand grabbed the Hunter, then dragged him in screaming.
The Gates shut seconds later, then disappeared.
"I've seen those things 4 times, and they get no less scarier every time."
Sinclair looked at Ichigo.
"What just happened here?"
Babylon 5: Green 1, Level 5
Sinclair had listened to Ichigo's tale: from the time he got his shinigami powers to rescuing Rukia to the battle over Karakura to him finally killing Sosuke Aizen and ending up on Babylon 5.
"So you ended up here from the past?"
"That's right. It was 2008 when I fought Aizen. That damned rock-"
Sinclair was told that the 'damned rock' was something called the Hōgyoku, which bent the laws of time and space to its' user's will.
"Must've sent my ass here."
The doorbell rang.
"Who is it?"
The door opened, and Sinclair was treated to the sight of the Vorlon Ambassador, Kosh Naranek.
"I came for Kurosaki."
Ichigo stood up and faced the Vorlon.
"Who the hell are you and what do you want with me?"
The headpiece turned to look at Ichigo.
"The final hour, the home of mysteries."
He turned to leave.
"What the hell are you talking about?!"
The Vorlon simply left.
Sinclair chuckled.
"I think you just got invited down to his quarters."
"Great."
Rukia looked at him.
"Ichigo, we need to inform the Captain-General about-"
Ichigo looked at Rukia and scoffed.
"The Captain-General, the Gotai 13, the Soul Society-Hell, even YOU, Rukia, can kiss my ass! I've only got one goal right now: getting back to my time! I'm getting tired of cleaning up the messes you people seem to make when all I want to do is protect my family! And guess what?! My sisters died 200 years ago and their grandchildren are dead thanks to the Minbari! I'm sorry if I seem a little ungrateful, but I am not interested in fighting your battles for you anymore!"
Rukia clearly understood, as she didn't say a word.
He was right and she knew it.
"Once I get back to my time, you won't remember a damned thing, and I'll make sure that any children my sisters have stay on Earth."
He left, clearly angry at everything. Sinclair looked at Rukia.
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because he was right. I was getting tired of him getting involved in what were our problems, too. He's a normal human being, Commander: he's not supposed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders all the time. For God's sake, he's 16 years old. He's supposed to be in school, not saving the world!"
"I doubt he sees it that way."
Rukia looked him in the eye.
"He's torn. He doesn't want to fight your battles for you, but he doesn't want to lose you by letting go."
"Me?"
Sinclair smiled.
"I could tell from his voice. He likes you. A lot. And you like him back."
Rukia blushed and nodded.
"Give him some time. He'll calm down."
Rukia sighed. Sinclair was extremely wise beyond his years and he was right.
"Tell no one what we told you, Commander. The Soul Society MUST remain a secret."
He chuckled.
"Who would believe me?"
"Religious groups, for one, but you've got a point."
Babylon 5: Kosh's quarters, 11:57 EST
Ichigo simply walked in in his shinigami form: he didn't need to breathe, so it seemed best.
Kosh was still in that damned encounter suit, but he knew he was there.
"Alright, what do you want?"
"Do not ask that!"
Ichigo finally lost his temper.
"Answer the damned question! I'm getting tired of running around in circles on everyone's whim! I'm not doing it for the Soul Society, and I'm not doing it for you! ANSWER ME!"
The Vorlon backed off slightly.
Clearly, Kosh was scared of Ichigo.
"You are needed against the coming darkness."
Ichigo turned to leave.
"Either give me straight answers or I walk. Your choice."
Kosh would have sighed if he could've.
"The Shadows come for war."
"Didn't I say you give me straight answers or I walk away?"
"We have no other name for them that you can understand."
Ichigo walked toward Kosh.
"You've got my attention. Keep talking."
Kosh's eye slot glowed green and opened all the way.
"Learn."
Images flew through Ichigo's mind. Spider-like ships attacking other vessels, a space station exploding, an entire world dying at the hands of the Shadows thanks to a planetkiller: all of these were just a few of the images that went through his mind.
"Enough, damn it!" Kosh stopped.
"You can help us stop this." Ichigo looked at Kosh.
"How? I don't have a ship! All I've got are my powers-"
Then he realized what Kosh wanted.
"No. I nearly opened the way for Hell to enter this realm the last time someone wanted my help! I won't do that again!"
"That is not what we desire."
"When what DO you desire?!"
"Order."
Kosh turned away.
"Guess that's all I'm getting from you."
Ichigo left Kosh's quarters as fast as he could.
The Vorlon mentally sighed.
The Vorlons didn't want him to blow up Z'ha'dum or something like that.
All they wanted was his power, no more.
Before you bitch at me for Ichigo being out of character (or anyone else, for that matter) allow me to state the painfully obvious:
IT'S BEEN 250 YEARS FOR THE GOTAI 13! They HAD to change in personality somewhat!
As for Ichigo, well, his family was extremely high on his priority list. Kill them off, and you have an angry, moody Ichigo. (Pictures Vasto Lorde Ichigo and shutters)
I will be skipping a few episodes (the rest of them go as normal) and handpicking what I thought were the cream of the crop.
First on the list is 'Infection', which gave an inkling of what was to come for Babylon 5's later seasons.
That, and I can pull a Metroid reference.
What? YOU play Metroid Prime for 2 hours, then watch that episode and NOT make a connection!
Seriously, it scared the SHIT out of me.
Next Time on Babylon's Guardian: Ichigo learns that Interplanetary Expeditions and Babylon 5 do NOT mix as one of their screw ups threatens B5's very survival.
Ja Ne!