Author's note: Quirky chapter titles now included in this story. Because we needed it to be a little more pretentious around here, didn't we?

The atmosphere of the scene was absolutely dismal, but Shuuhei was feeling good.

His tabi were soaked brown with mud, his ankles wet with the damp bottoms of the legs of his hakama slapping heavily against his legs. Shin deep, the river was just as mucky and gross-looking as it had been the day before, and the only upside to the situation was that at least this time it wasn't raining. But still, Shuuhei was feeling pretty good.

For hours, he had been walking along the bank of the river. All day he had been looking, hoping that maybe for once his luck would turn up. Logically, his brain told him it was a fruitless effort, but Shuuhei had to at least try.

At first, Shuuhei had thought it was a log. Coated in mud and algae, one could hardly make out its original shape outside of being a thin, long object washed up along the riverbank and providing a new home for gods know what kind of infectious germs from the water. Shuuhei had only noticed after nearly stepping on it, and noticing the ridges in the mulch that were congruent with the object of his search.

Immediately he fell to the ground to pick it up, ignoring the fresh mud staining his knees of the uniform he had only just gotten back clean. His hand picked it up where he knew the hilt was, rubbing away the grime until the solid mass of the hilt came clean.

The sealed form of Zabimaru felt awkward in his grasp. The hilt had been held, gripped by and molded to the individual shape of Renji's hand from decades of use. Years of battle and partnership was evident in that press in the hilt, the press that Shuuhei's own fingers didn't quite fit. Rarely did Shinigami hold the zanpakuto of another. It was an unspoken rule, a term of etiquette more than anything. A zankaputo was a reflection of another shinigami's soul, and to take handling another's weapon lightly was a grave injustice to that particular soul reaper.

For a second, Shuuhei marveled at the fact that he was almost literally holding Renji's heart in his hands. Hopefully, Renji wouldn't mind too much.

Shuuhei raised Zabimaru in his hand, looking over the sword before turning it in his wrist as to wipe the flat of the blade on the dew-soaked grass. A long strip of filth was smeared clean from the sword, but Zabimaru still looked dirty. Shuuhei's reflection in the blade was muddled and distorted, stretching his face disproportionally as if he was looking in a funhouse mirror. The effect could very well have been the courtesy of human pollution in the river, warping the exterior of the blade. Renji's zanpakuto would need a good polish and some TLC before it was fit for battle again, but at least he would have it.

Pride and relief came like a wave to crush the doubt that had settled on Shuuhei's mind ever since he had pried the blade out of Renji's hand in the river. It had been long worth it, even with the wet uniform and the sudden chill running up and down Shuuhei's spine.

Wait. No. The temperature was the same, not even a faint breeze to bring a chill. Something else had made Shuuhei shiver.

Shuuhei stood up, opening his mind to the area's spiritual pressure, tentatively feeling and nudging for an oddity. A spike of white-hot spiritual energy flickered menacingly distantly, the upset spiritual particles echoing and blaring much like the unhappy sound that Shuuhei knew to recognize from the arrival of the portals.

On instinct Shuuhei almost put Zabimaru in Kazeshini's sheath. Something made him hesitate, however. He had lost Renji's zanpakuto once before- Shuuhei didn't want to keep taking Zabimaru lightly. Still there was hardly any time to run back to Urahara's, so Shuuhei slid the blade into the sheath, the material squealing against Zabimaru's form in slight protest of his new and unfamiliar shape.

As second in command of the Gotei's security force, Shuuhei was used to knowing his battle ground of Soul Society. Now in the real world the odds were turned a little more against his favor, the territory here a little stranger and a little more dangerous for that. It would not be a pre-thought battle plan that would win the fight, but Shuuhei's skills and quick thinking against the uncanny instincts of the hollow or hollows.

The portal was opening above the small city by the river, but Shuuhei knew better than to get too close now. Suspending himself gracefully on a telephone pole, he mentally prepared himself to perform a quick kidou- he would get this done, and he would get it done fast. Shuuhei was handicapped, tactically crippled without Kazeshini. There was no reason to give the enemy a chance to take advantage of the fact.

But as the portal opened, an influx of air being whipped around Shuuhei's head as it struggled with the sudden displacement caused by the appearance of a huge mysterious something, it didn't immediately spit out a hollow. The portal hung in the air, looking frozen suspended in the sky and yawning a great fantastic nothing but darkness.

Shuuhei furrowed his brow in confusion. A voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to take the opportunity to flee, but the thought was crushed by bigger questions.

Shuuhei stepped off the pole, holding himself in the sky against gravity; he quickly edged himself closer to the portal. He flinched back once as he came closer, preparing to duck out of danger at the next sign to an approaching attack. But still, there was nothing, and Shuuhei received the chance to peer inside the maw of the portal.

Shuuhei himself hadn't seen much of Huenco Mundo, but he had an idea of what it was like. The captain of the Twelfth Division had harbored affection for the place and all the scientific anomalies it was home to, so the squad had taken many pictures. To Shuuhei, the dimension of hollows didn't look terribly interesting, home only to monsters and rolling valleys of desert and death with the ruins of Los Noches tucked away somewhere into the far corner being the only standing structures as well as the only thing even remotely invigorating about the shadowy realm. Perhaps Shuuhei would have found it more exciting if he had a burning desire to die in the middle of nowhere surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of miles of nothing but white sand.

Then again, in Shuuhei's observation Huenco Mundo had always been empty. Not like now, when the desert floors were teeming with creatures.

Shapes of black, white and gray teemed and writhed from miles below the opening of the portal, as if Shuuhei was looking down on a colony of ants. Like ants, massive holes in the sand had been tirelessly, neurotically dug and the hollows disappeared and reappeared outside of them like rabbits in a warren.

Shuuhei watched, struck frozen by the absurdity of it, as another hollow with massive burrowing claws dug up bone-white sand in a flurry. It took hardly any time at all for the displaced sand to reveal a flickering blue light.

'More portals' Shuuhei realized with dread. The portals were appearing underground, the hollows happily digging them up and using them as their own personal transit.

A flash of blue light down one of the tunnels signaled the opening of another portal, and another hollow crawled out of the network of holes, stumbling and crawling over and around its mass of fellow beasts. Only this hollow Shuuhei could recognize. He recalled the gloomy mask and wriggling vines just as he recalled the scythe lodged in its back.

Kazeshini was still in shikai form, perhaps sensing that it was still in attack mode and that it's would-be prey was struck by it. The zanpakuto was still stuck in the hollow's back, the blade remaining intertwined with the vines and now caked with the creature's dried blood. The chain drifted behind melancholy on the ground, the second scythe dumbly sliding and making flat tracks in the sand. The injured hollow moaned pitifully and scratched at its back with one hind leg, seemingly only recently aware that it had been wounded. Its brothers paid it no mind, though, busy with their own search for automatic, effortless escape routes into gods knew where.

Shuuhei sucked in a breath. He was so close. Against all odds he had found Zabimaru and now he had found Kazeshini except Shuuhei's zanpakuto was all the way down there.

Mind reeling, Shuuhei struggled to come up with a plan. Maybe he could lure the hollow through the portal, but how to do that without alerting the other hollows of his presence? The hollow with Kazeshini was drifting further and further away along with Shuuhei's chances of getting back his weapon!

Shuuhei looked at Zabimaru's hilt, still filthy and dirty from the river water. If Shuuhei jumped through the portal into Huenco Mundo now, not only would it be suicide but he'd be taking away Renji's chance of ever getting his sword back for good. Renji could put on a good front, but the man had been despondent without Zabimaru and the feelings weren't entirely reasonable but Shuuhei really wanted to be the one to give Renji back his zanpakuto.

To prove to him that yes, Shuuhei was as reliable as his reputation had built him up to be and yes, he was someone that Renji could trust and yes, he was damn worthy of being someone Renji was close enough to call by his given name after knowing each other for years!

Torn, Shuuhei almost didn't notice the shock of red energy until it nearly blinded him. Shuuhei looked up with alarm at the cero and summoned a binding kidou, creating a shield between himself and the oncoming blast.

The kidou held up, but the projected energy was strong and the barrier cracked around the edges. A hollow, one with a grinning, ghoulish face and four insect-like wings, the one who fired the cero, hovered above its brethren. The other hollows all looked up, their attention now caught on the soul reaper in the open portal above them, practically oozing spiritual pressure.

Madness ensued, the hollows that could fly or that could jump high enough swarming towards the open doorway of the portal, while the others below gathered in a throng and roared in rage and anguish. Shuuhei jumped down from his perch in front of the portal to avoid the winged-insect hollow soaring straight for him.

The hollow angled it's dragonfly-like body to sail back around at him, and Shuuhei opened fire. Red fire flew from Shuuhei's palm, his shakkaho's aim proving true as it hit the hollow with an explosion of scarlet. The hollow howled and dripped blood as it dissipated, leaving Shuuhei with just enough time to dodge the outstretched, pincher-like arms of one of the other several hollows spilling from the portal.

Thinking on pure instinct, Shuuhei pulled Zabimaru from his sheath and swung at the arm. The limb fell clean off, but not as clean as Shuuhei wished it was. Zabimaru just wasn't his sword. It felt too uncomfortable in his hand, the weight being terribly off. Shuuhei didn't know if it was the weight or the length but he was sure it would only prove a fatal disadvantage in battle.

Holding Zabimaru in one hand, Shuuhei aimed his palm at the other hollow. Heat reverberated down his arm to his hand where the blue ray of a sōkatsui incinerated a good half of the hollow's body. Shuuhei prepared himself to fire a kidou that would be the finishing blow, but something hit his back with a rough force and nearly knocked him off his feet.

Another hollow from behind struck him with its long tail, a similarly shaped one flicking its own with a gruesome grin. The limb met with Shuuhei's shoulder, and Shuuhei heard the familiar sickening sound of bones giving way from their joints, a skeleton partially dissembled within one's own body. An aching, flaring pain rushed up Shuuhei's left shoulder as his arm hung weakly at his side. The hollow that Shuuhei had injured with his kidou was bleeding freely from its damaged side, but still standing on shaky limbs. Shuuhei was being surrounded, circled like cornered prey by a pack of wolves.

A tail snapped out again and Shuuhei braced the blow with Zabimaru, the hand of his injured arm struggling to hold the flat of the blade. Shuuhei grit his teeth against the pain but the assault could have been much worse. He had staved off the attack, but his back was wide open, a flaw that would certainly mean death.

"Hado Number 31: Shakkaho!"

That voice.

Red fire decimated the hollow behind Shuuhei, saving him from what would have surely been a death-blow. The hado itself hadn't been the neatest, but it was surely destructive.

"Renji!" Shuuhei cried in realization, looking up at the redhead. Renji grinned, his palm still smoking from the release of energy.

"What are the rest of us? Back-up dancers?" Another voice sniped, "Getsuga Tenshō!"

A wave of black spiritual pressure annihilated the hollow in front of Shuuhei, who turned in time to see Ichigo attracting the attention of the majority of the hollows.

The orange-haired teen stood his ground, drawing them closer in. A pale circle began to glow underneath him, enveloping the pack of hollows. Ichigo vanished, flash-stepping out of the way as Rukia's zanpakuto created a towering pillar of ice, capturing the monsters in a frozen prison before shattering into a thousand glittering fragments.

Rukia herself stood a little ways away, concentrating on her shikai. Intensly focused, she was unaware of the shadow of a massive hollow approaching her until it tried to attack from behind, but was quickly dispatched by a combined hit from Ichigo's Zangestu and Renji's hado blast.

With the hollows dispatched, Renji relaxed slightly. It was common knowledge that kidou was not the redhead's specialty at all, and his palm was slightly blackened on the skin where he had difficulty controlling and focusing the power of the blasts of his demon arts. He dropped his other hand from his wrist and ran to Shuuhei's side.

"Shuuhei! Hey, you alright?" Renji called to the other vice-captain, "What the hell was the big idea vanishing all day like that? Are you hurt?"

But Shuuhei's attention was no longer on the trio who had come to help him. He whipped his head around, looking back up at the portal through which his enemies had come from only to see that the blue vortex was shrinking. He had been so close!

Renji caught up to him, standing at Shuuhei's side. He glanced down at the object in Shuuhei's hand, eyes widening at what he saw. It was dirty, sure, but Renji knew that blade by heart.

"Shuuhei, you found Zabimaru?" He said, his look of worry melting to a sincere grin, "That's great! Thank y-"

"That's my zanpakuto, Renji!" Shuuhei announced with a hitch in his voice, panic and alarm displaying clearly. All thoughts of gratification from Renji were dashed and erased from his mind.

At the outburst Renji frowned, lines of confusion evident on his face. "Uh, no…" he said cautiously, "Shuuhei, that's my zanpakuto. Zabimaru, remember? It does the big baboon-snake thing? Are you okay?"

"What?" anxious, Shuuhei looked down to where Renji was looking at the katana in his hand, "Oh. Oh, No, I mean in there!" Shuuhei pointed towards the portal with the sword-wielding hand, emphasizing the vortex that was rapidly shrinking until it was little more than a speck of light. It contracted and shriveled in on itself like a fire deprived of oxygen until finally it fizzled away altogether, swallowing itself out of existence. "I saw Kazeshini in there!"

Renji looked up to where the portal was, eyes trained intensely as if he was trying to feel for the spiritual pressure of the portal. "Up there, in the portal? Are you sure?"

"Yes, Renji! I'm positive I saw it!" Shuuhei protested, beginning to feel frustrated, "The portal was open and I looked inside it! It led to Huenco Mundo!"

"Huenco Mundo?" Another voice echoed behind them. Ichigo hefted his sword onto his shoulders while Rukia sheathed Sode no Shirayuki. "Are you sure? Is that where the portals are coming from?"

"Yes… no… maybe." Shuuhei's shoulders slumped in defeat, frustration rolling off his body like waves, "All I know is that there were portals all over Huenco Mundo, and a lot of them. And the hollow with my Kazeshini was there!"

Renji's eyes widened at his friend's distress. He put a reassuring hand on Shuuhei's shoulder, squeezing gently. He gave Shuuhei the bravest, boldest smile it seemed he could manage. "Don't worry, we're gonna get it back."

"The portal…" Shuuhei groaned, earning the hand on his arm jostling him.

"They'll be more where those came from. You got Zabimaru back, so we can't just forget about Kazeshini."

"We won't." Agreed Rukia, giving Shuuhei a reassuring nod of her own. "But we do have to go back to Karakura so you can tell Urahara about Huenco Mundo."

Shuuhei stifled a sigh, not wanting to appear even more uncollected in front of Rukia and Ichigo then he had already proven to be. "Alright. And at this point it would just be asking for trouble not to report this situation in with the Court Guards. A threat from Huenco Mundo could be detrimental to Soul Society if we continue to keep it to ourselves."

"Then what are we waiting around here for? Let's go-" Ichigo began to offer, but stopped halfway through. He looked at the scarred soul reaper, looking him up and down observationally, "You're hurt."

"Am I?" Shuuhei looked at his left arm, the one not holding Zabimaru and held by Renji. The shoulder was obviously misaligned, the bones of his arm rotated at an odd, painful looking way and starting to swell. Shuuhei had been cradling his arm to his chest unconsciously on instinct.

Renji ducked around to Shuuhei's other side, eyes widening at the sight of the injuring. "Shit, you are hurt! Oh man, we should have gotten here sooner! Oh, Shuuhei I'm so sorry-"

"Calm down." Shuuhei sighed, shifting his injured side to hold his arm more comfortably, "It's only dislocated, you big baby. Do me a favor and take this thing off my hands already will ya?"

Shuuhei held Zabimaru out to Renji, who took it and sheathed it without really looking at the sword. "Shuuhei?"

Shuuhei put his right hand around his left bicep, firming his grip tightly. Rukia looked at him suspiciously, "Lieutenant Hisagi, you're injured. Are you sure you should be doing that?"

"It's fine." Shuuhei assured her, "I've had plenty worse than a dislocated shoulder joint. Just gotta pop it back into place and-"

"NO!" Three people shouted in unison and three hands grabbed his wrist.

"Are you crazy? You shouldn't do that by yourself!" Ichigo, one of the owners of the three hands demanded.

Shuuhei balked at Renji, Rukia and Ichigo all restraining him, "Why not? I've done it plenty of times before!"

At that statement Renji paled, and Rukia fixed him with a kind of maternal scowl that Shuuhei guessed was usually reserved for Renji and Ichigo. Ichigo looked paticularily disturbed, "Hisagi, my dad's a doctor and it there's one thing I've learned to never do it's to relocate your own shoulder! You might just make it worse!"

Shuuhei snickered, honestly amused by the three's over-exaggerated behavior. "Fine, fine. You guys do it then."

"We will!" Ichigo assured him, ignoring the small "we will?" from Renji. "Get down on the roof- carefully!"

Shuuhei chuckled as the four of them descended slowly to the nearest rooftop. "You're all making a big deal of this. Did I ever tell anyone about the time I stepped in glass and had to take all the fragments out of my food with nothing but a rusty pair of pliers and a rubber band?"

"Shuuhei!"