It took me a little while of having to back-track over the place we'd just run away from and pick up the trail but eventually I found our way back on track and we continued on. The mountains and those northern lights were beautiful and all, but this place was fucking cold and I wasn't all that wild about sticking around. Besides, I didn't want this woman catching her death. From what Kuchiki had told me about her previous life, she'd been the frail and sickly sort.

:That's funny,: I thought idly as I listened with half an ear out for trouble.

She didn't seem at all the frail sort. What I'd seen of her had been a woman who had a tremendous will to find and protect her son, a woman with drive and detirmination, not the sort of frail little milk-sop that Kuchiki had described.

:Might be that hispanic upbringing of hers,: I chuckled to myself.

It seemed her life in the mortal realm had cured her of any tendency toward being weak and dependent.

:Well, then, good for her. The system works.:

I followed the stench of temple incense easily through the ridges and narrow ways of the mountaintops, ass-deep in snow and freezing. I just wanted ta get the hell out of that place already. Let Rukia handle non-sense like this, she was the one with the ice-zanpakutou and I'd noticed that it gave her some immunity against cold, as for me... I hated the cold. I always had and I probably always would. In the tinterests of getting out of there faster, I kept sprinting along with the draconic not-horse trailing along after me carrying a clearly unhappy Isana perched precariously on its back. I felt the energy of the recently activated gate platform before I saw it... and at that same time I felt a different kind of energy. A Guardian Spirit.

I stopped, crouched in a defensive form in front of Isana. The collar on my neck throbbed a bit, she was worried. In front of us the snow began to glow silver white, small motes of light fell from the clear starry sky like snow, drifting down peacefully, it reminded me a lot of Rukia's Zanpaktou, Sode No Shiraiyuki, the sleeve of the white snow.

::Sode No Shiraiyuki was once a member of the Court of Seiryuu,:: Baboon King Zabimaru volunteered unexpectedly.

I was taken aback. Were all the Zanpaktou elemental spirits attached to the four Great Elemental Courts in the dangai?

::Jus' like yer attached ta th' Court O' Pure Souls, distantly,:: Snaketail Zabimaru replied in answer to my silent guess.

I tucked that information away for later.

The glowing snow in front of me swirled around in a vortex of white light that slowly spun into a crystalline cocoon of ice, like glass. It shattered open to reveal a beautiful woman, she looked like a sculpture made of glass that was lit from within by silvery light. Her hair had beads of crystal in it that sparkled like water drops. Her clothes were white and they sparkled like moonlight shining on snow, she wore a beautiful silk kimono with a light shawl of mist floating up behind her, reminding me of paintings of the old legends of hagaromo tennyo. She looked over at me with eyes that were like two chips of ice.

I wondered if I should pull out Zabimaru. I kinda had this thing against hittin' girls. You'd think my time in eleventh squad would've cured me of it, since, once a person was facing him across the battlefield, all genders were one to Zaraki, but I'd never quite gotten over that protecting instinct where a woman was concerned. It probably came from always wanting to look out for Rukia (whether she wanted me to or not).

"I am Shivna-vatu, the Guardian Spirit for this Realm. You shall not pass," she informed me.

"Why not?" I asked her.

I really wanted to know, I mean it's not like we were hurting anything... except the yeti, and I didn't think he should count since he struck first. All we wanted was to just use the Gate, we weren't taking anything from this place.

"I am tasked with the protection of this Realm," the Guardian Spirit replied.

"Okay.. we're not harming anything. We just wanna use the Gate to the next Realm. We're trying to track down a Shadow that passed through this place the other day," Isana said. "We'd really just prefer to be on our way without fighting."

"I cannot allow that, none shall pass, that is the rule I was left with."

"Well if you can't help it," I said shrugging, crouching down and pulling out Zabimaru.

I felt her icy power gather in around her and so I dodged to the right while I called upon Zabimaru. His howl form unsealed and manifested and I automatically gathered energy from my lowest chakra and pushed power into the blade. A slim, shimmering halo of diamond-fire glittered along the edges of the curvy blade witht he occasional frission of lightning power crawling up its length and sparking off like mores from a fire. The air temperature around me dropped even more than it already was and i could see what little moisture there was in the air bead up and freeze into tiny flecks of icy-snow that whiled in the air. The tiny snow flecks gathered in as Shivna-Vatu gestured. Thousands of tiny, dancing shards of ice, needle sharp materialized and swirled in a cloud around me.

:Wrong attack to make with me missy,: I thought with a small surging feeling of triumph as i blurred into flash-step.

My Captain Was Byakuya kuchiki, a man with over a century of experience on the battelefeild, and his zanpakutou was Senbonzakura, a blase that scattered into reiatsu-controlled shards of steel so thin that they were peceptable only as delicate-looking cherry blossoms. Those seeming-delicate little petals could shred an enemy into confetti-sized peices and lay waste to an army with but a single gesture of my Captain's hand. I myself had managed to stand against Senbonzakura Kageyoshi, which was about a thousand times a thousand cherry blossoms. And this Guardian Spirit thought she was going to best me with a mere hundred shards of ice, she was standing before me a century too late. I flash-stepped to one side as the ice-shards converged on the spot that I had been mere moments before.

:Wait for it,: I thought, holding back my counter until all the shards had centered in mostly one concentrated location. I opened up my lowest chakra all the way, gathered in my power and shot it down the blade, concentrating it in a halo at the tip.

"Denkou Hou!"

The lightning burst hit the cloud of ice-shards directly where they were thickest and shattered them, vaporizing the ice shards.

:My captain's zanpakutou would never have been so easily defeated,: I thought.

Ah, but that was merely the opening volley. The snow all around me suddenly raised up, but instead of swirling about in a flurry, like I had halfway expected, it raised into a great wall then converged, melting and merging into a wall of ice, which promptly tilted and curled like a wave, moving to crush me. i quickly flash-leaped over it and hit the backside with another denkou-hou. The icy wall morphed forms from a wave, suddenly becoming long and serpentine. It snaked it way up after me in a long, sinuous, flowing form, freezing the air about it in a cloud.

:This woman keeps picking all the wrong forms with me,: I thought in amusement.

First she picks a weak form of what resembled my captain's Zanpaktou, then she picks a sadly inferior copy of my own. I knew the twisting ways of the snake-tail (which was what her little ice-serpent resembled) in and out, forwards, backwards and sideways, having mastered it all the way to bankai. I charged in as it sprang at me, head first, and landed on the flats of my feet, just behind its head and pushed more power into the diamond edge of my blade. I deftly inserted it all the way through where the "neck" would begin and slid down the ice-wyrm, dragging my blade along behind me. The lightning-heat of howl-form Zabimaru melted through it body (though the lightning tended to ground once the ice melted into water) disintegrating it into vapor behind me.

More snow gathered in again and pounded down in a pillar the place where I stood.

:Tsukishiro. Really?:

I snorted, and promptly flashed out of the way. With the pillars of ice trying to pound down upon me, hoping to freeze me in thier depths like a fly in amber, the best place to be was out of thier way. After several failed attempts to entrap me that way, the Guardian Spirit got clever and turned her pillars into great spheres of pure ice, like beautiful crystal balls reflecting the misty fire of the colored lights ahead of us. They were pretty to look at, but I couldn't really take the time to appreciate them, seeing as they were rolling around trying to flatten me.

One of them got me, rolled right over top of me and flattened me into the snow. Quick to take advantage of an opening, Shivna-Vatu solidified the snow around me into ice, freezing me immobile. Then above my head, I heard the tinkling sound of ice clinking together like glass. Long cone-like spars, that looked like a wickedly evil version of hat hung off the eaves of a house in winter, materialized in the air above me pointed right at me. isana yelled out an unnecessary warning as I was already raising the flat edge of zabimaru before me like a shield. The ice spears shattered against his length and a flare of power along the edges of his blades got rid of most of the ice that held me fast. The rest was taken care of with the next swing. Just in time too, because those other ice spheres she had rolling around were coming at me. The one nearest I shattered with a well-placed swing of Zabimaru, the one farther away I vaporized with a Denkou Hou.

I fired off more Denkou Hou's to try to take care of the others she had running around. She was creating them just as fast as I could destroy them and I was firing off one Denkou Hou with every swing of my sword. Then she added in more of those ice pillars and ramps of ice to launch the things airborne and I was abruptly reminded of those machines I had seen in the mortal world where one tried to score points using a small metal ball and flippers. I flashed this way and that, carefully dodging the enormous Indiana-Jones-sized ice spheres rolling this way and that, or flipping up into the air and crashing down suddenly, banking of pillars at odd trajectories. That when she threw another wild card at me. The floor, which had been until then hard-packed snow suddenly solidified and smoothed out to a glassy surface. I promptly fell on my ass of course. I heard tinkling laughter from the Guardian Spirit as the speed of those giant ice-balls increased, rolling this way and that.

:That bitch,: I muttered to myself, rolling into a dodge that sent me sliding too far one way.

I couldn't get my feet under me, but I could at least manage to keep those ice-globes from crushing me flat. I kept firing off Denkou Hou's in rapid succession, the orbs disintegrating into shards and powder, but there were always two more to take its place.

:Where's Rukia or Captain Hitsugaia when they'd actually be useful?:

I tried to climb up from my knees, but slid again. This was not covered in my usual all-terrain fighting training regimen. I'd have to fix that when I got back.

This was fun and all, but it was ultimately getting me no-where. My real target was that Guardian Spirit. I kept destroying what she threw at me but she remained unscathed. That was going to have to change.

:I wonder if I can fire off two Raikou Enjin's in a row,: I thought musingly to myself.

Only one way to find out. I slid open my second chakra carefully and wasted no time in wrestling my reiatsu into submission. After I had it flowing into my channels I pulled out what I needed and the orbs of contained lightning materialized around me, orbiting me in a glowing ring. I sent it spinning her way to converge in on her in a six-hit strike that kept her staggered for a long minute. I fired off another denkou hou right after it, just to keep her bells ringing, then pulled power in and pushed it out again, materializing another Raikou Enjin. This one brought her down from her feet to her kneet, body spent with exhaustion from trying to ward of two multi-attacks in a row.

"I yeild me mortal warrior," the woman said, slumping to one knee in exhaustion.

Isana pulled out the chalice from her charm-bracelet and it expanded to the size of a small cauldron. Water laced with light began to swirl in a vortex in the bowl of it and expand outward. Lines and sigils of light began to write themselves in patterns of concentric rings inside the vortex.

"I agree to it," Shivna-vatu said bowing her head in submission.

The glass woman began to fill with bright white light like water with a light shining through it and dissolved into stars which promptly joined the swirling water inside Isana's chalice there wasa final flash of blue-white light and then the chalice held between Isana's hands became a charm on her wrist again.

I was panting with exhaustion and parts of me were still stining from that Guardian Spirits viscious attacks. It had taken much of my strength to defeat it though I could tell already that I was much stronger than I had been when I started on this journey.

Isana cupped her hands that the gentle green light of her healing sigils wrote themselves into the air between them. A beam of green healing light shot out from the center of the spell and swept over me, I felt a tingling wave of wellness envelop me and all of my wounds, major and minor, faded. I doubted that Captain Unohana could have done better herself.

"Thanks," I said with a crooked smile over my shoulder over at her as I gathered up the reigns of the beast she was riding and started toward the Gateway before us. I wondered at the sudden strange fluctuations in the reiatsu coming from the woman behind me but decided against asking, I probably didn't want to know anyway.

You want to know what amuses me? The summer beach episode of Bleach. You want to know why? Because, if you lined up the men in the episode in a row shirtless you could easily go down the line picking out "Eleventh Squad, Eleventh Squad, not Eleventh Squad..." And how can we tell?

...They're the ones rocking the six packs.

Just watch it and look, if you don't believe me, you'll see what I mean. It's hilarious. There was one disappointment in it for me though; that watermelon-tentacle-monster (which doesn't make my mind go to dark scary places at all) shows up, and Renji's the only one with a sword and I'm thinking "finally! He gets to save the day instead of Ichigo!" But sadly it was not to be... well, at least it was Yoruichi and SoiFong instead of Ichigo, that's some small consolation from having to watch poor Renji get drownded.