Bloody hell! This update is so late, and short. I'm so sorry but school started to pick up and there was nothing that I could do and I really tried to make time, so this is the update. I am trying to finish the next few chapters but no promises. As the new HoO book came out and there are several other books that I want to read, not to mention my lit assignment. Sorry, life is a bitch, but I am trying, so feel free to nag at me. I don't mind. Now enough chit chat and I'll let you get to the update. Thanks to my reviewers Kage Kurai, Guest, AngryHitsu, Phantom Claire, AbsoluteReader1995, KageNekoReborn, Liiiiiiii, Sugarcadet. Now for the long awaited chapter.

DISCLAIMER I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING. ONLY SOME OF THE CHARACTERS AND THE PLOT.

Like Urahara had said within the hour the five shinigami were released to go home and rest with permission to return in the morning. The five gratefully stood up, and once they reached the gates of the hospital went their individual ways. Each worried about what tomorrow would bring and looking forward to resting.

Rukia made her way to the Kuchiki residence. The situation that they were in was becoming dire, especially if they lost more of their ranks in mysterious ways. The Gotei 13 wasn't that large that they had expendable troops and every loss hurt. They had no idea how strong the Neo-Gotei was. The younger Kuchiki sighed, they hadn't found anything out while they were there, nothing had been blatantly obvious, and those few members that they did interrogate said nothing or didn't know a thing.

Their foes were proving to be more formidable than they had originally thought. Rukia sighed, or was it because Soul Society was lacking in something that the Neo-Gotei had? The Kuchiki mansion loomed in the distance, the petite shinigami really didn't want her brother to think that she had failed, so she attempted to erase her face of all worries. It was harder than she thought.

She had a lot going on inside of her head. The main concern was about Ichigo, and if he would be able to pull through, because at the moment Rukia wanted to see his amber eyes glint in determination, ready to take down anyone who threatens his friends. The Vice-Captain knew that she always felt safer when Ichigo was around, because at the moment he had never once failed to live up to his promises.

She just wanted her friend to be alright.

Apparently that was easier said than done.

Walking up the steps, she looked around for her brother, he wasn't hard to find, after all the sixth division captain had a reputation for being a workaholic.

"I'm home." Rukia called into the office.

She got a grunt signaling that her brother acknowledged that she was home but had nothing to say to her.

Rukia sighed yet again, knowing that her brother wouldn't stop everything to welcome her home or grill her for information, instead the elder Kuchiki would wait for the official report. At least one thing hasn't changed. Rukia thought sadly.

She walked slowly to her room, the moon was glowing bright, almost as if it was encouraging her to continue on and the situation wasn't as dire as it seemed.

Rukia smiled weakly and turned into her room, there was no way of knowing what was going to happen in the future and as a shinigami you work with what you know, that's how she had gotten by in all of her years.

Not everyone could have the power to change things they don't like.

If only though. Rukia said to herself before closing her eyes and drifting off.

Toshiro returned to the quiet of the tenth division. While not physically fatigued he was mentally exhausted. He saved Ichigo, who was in critical condition. Also his Vice-Captain was gravely injured and not to mention Soul Society had been attacked by someone that remains unidentified and that resulted in casualties. There were a few people out to welcome him back, which he was thankful for.

The white-haired captain headed to his room. His footsteps sounding thunderous in the empty hallway. It reminded him, in a way, about the hallway he had to walk down when he was heading to Ichigo's cell. He was sure that he wouldn't be able to forget finding Ichigo like that for a long time, if ever.

Returning to his room it felt cold, colder than usual that is. Nothing had change since he left, everything was in place. But the feeling that Toshiro originally mistook as coldness turned out to be emptiness. Now that Toshiro had found his bond mate, he wasn't sure how to describe Ichigo, there was just a sense of missing something.

If one good thing had become apparent since he returned, was that the buzzing in the back of his head had vanished. Something told him that the buzzing was just telling him that Ichigo was in danger. Toshiro sat down on his sleeping mat, preferring the eastern sleeping style to the western, thinking deeply about something.

It was time he evaluated his emotions.

Normally he would never do anything something like this. He was fully capable of keeping his emotions in check most of the time. But right now Toshiro just felt like this was needed. He had been running around for a month with little time to himself to allow him to look at everything with a critical eye and determine what was happening. The only thing wrong was now his judgment would be biased because of Ichigo, so he needed to recognize what he was feeling so he could keep it out of the equation.

When he had first heard that Ichigo went missing, he had felt worry and anger. As time progressed Toshiro had felt worry overpower his anger and fear start to set in. Then he started to feel anxious when they got closer to Ichigo. Then finally when Ichigo was found Toshiro felt relief, sadness, anger, fear, and something he couldn't describe.

The young captain realized that having a soul mate meant that he and Ichigo were destined to be lovers. But Toshiro wasn't sure that he had those types of feeling towards the orange-haired teenager. He felt something, Toshiro knew that he had emotions stirring under the surface, but it couldn't have been called love could it?

He hardly knew the kid. Sure Toshiro had read the repots and worked with Ichigo on a personal level but never to the point where he willingly got Ichigo to sit down and talk about something other than superficial topics and work related issues. According to Rukia however, getting Ichigo to talk was like getting a hollow to not eat a soul.

Not that Toshiro was claiming to be the best at his emotions.

How would they even work as a couple? Toshiro mentally screamed. They wouldn't be able to discuss what normal couples do and more often than not they wouldn't be speaking to each other because of some stupid reason.

The last thing that the tenth division captain wanted to do was hurt Ichigo. Right now didn't seem like the correct time to even worry about romantic partners Soul Society was about to go to war!

Despite what his brain was telling him, Toshiro couldn't help but imagine what it would like to actually have a romantic partner, especially what it would be like if he started something with Ichigo.

Toshiro made a noise of frustration before tugging on his hair. He really was starting to get annoyed on how the substitute shinigami had to turn everything upside down.

Why were feelings so complicated?

Toshiro flung himself back against his mat. Hoping that sleep would come easy to him.

He merely wished that this nightmare would end.

Ichigo blinked. He had been staring out into the blizzard, his concentration had lulled, his mind wandering off on a little tangent and then when he focused himself again all of the sudden the blizzard was a gentle snowfall. The world which had been drenched in white was now alluring in a strange way. Almost as if something had happened that he didn't know about.

He still wasn't sure how his Soul Mate fit into this at all. He was just glad for a change of weather. Though there were times where the wind would pick up and the snow would be similar to that of the blizzard, but with the good hour of watching Ichigo had done there had been no signs of the blizzard starting again.

At least something good was happening.

Ichigo still wasn't sure what awaited him when he returned to the physical world, if that was even possible now. He wasn't aware of how much times passed or if his physical body, which had been badly damaged was even "alive". If his physical body had died then normally he would become a full-fledged shinigami, and just be a Soul. But since he would've "died" in his soul form he wasn't sure what happened.

Or was this because he had died while in soul form and this was what awaited shinigami on the other side. Since no one knew this could very well be possible.

What a joy that would be, spending eternity alone in a snow covered world.

Ichigo grit his teeth, he didn't have the right to complain. It was his fault that he was in this mess because he was the one that failed to defend himself properly, if had had gone into that fight with Yuna more prepared and not have underestimated them then he would be back at home relaxing while he waited for his senior year to be over with.

Now that the storm wasn't blocking everything but what was directly in front of him Ichigo could see that this place he was in was actually huge, and like he had thought earlier, it was in a cave, looking up he could see the top of the cave and he was close enough that he could see something solid off to his side. For some reason it was also brighter, previously he could see only himself and the snow, everything else had been murky and dark. But now he could see that the cave he had been in for what he was considering a mental week, was actually made out of ice.

The band was still spanning the sky, it seemed tamer and wasn't as wild as it had been before with the random sparking.

Whatever had happened had calmed things down.

If only he knew what.

Ichigo sighed and leaned back against the ice starring out towards the now calm snow. Blinking his eyes he shifted them the roof of his makeshift shelter, making out the patterns in the ice. He could also tell the temperature was getting cooler.

He could only pray that it meant that he was getting out of this frozen hell.

Unohana was used to many different situations, medical wise at least. She knew how to treat almost any alignment enough to keep the person alive, but this was just baffling. She had no idea on how to handle this. It wasn't every day twenty or so shinigami die the same way after being in the hospital for completely different reasons and most of them in different squads. It was baffling.

It didn't help that she had three new patients. All of them in need of quick medical attention. She was thankful that two of them had easy, severe, wounds to treat, gashes and fatal shredding of the organs were common injuries among shinigami and therefore the fourth division healers could actually stabilize the patients while waiting for one of the higher ups to come and finish the triage.

The third one however was a completely different matter.

Unohana knew that the shinigami substitute would arrive injured with a good possibility of being dead, but she hadn't had in her wildest dreams it would be something like this. She wiped at her brow while she continued purging the infection from the teen's body. The captain had to be careful in fear of acting too quickly and sending the body into shock and actually killing him.

She had seen it happen before and she didn't want it happening to his boy especially. A lot of people but faith into her that she would be able to heal Ichigo and that he would be causing headaches for Soul Society once more. Though with how badly the infection had spread, and it seemed that it was rapidly, not to mention more than one infection had cropped up, Unohana wasn't sure she could save him.

But she was going to try her hardest. The teen had for them so she was going to return the favor. But she chewed on her bottom lip, still she had never seen anyone who had suffered this much and live. Not to mention while Ichigo's reiatsu was normally strong and wild, she could barely feel it. When she healed him it seemed like it had retreated far into the core of his body. She wasn't sure how to coax it back out either.

It was almost if he retreated so far back into his mind that he actually took the essence of him back into the core as well. Unohana had never seen anything like it, and frankly it was baffling her. She had some of her low ranked squad members fetching her certain books so she could look up the phenomenon, but so far they hadn't returned.

She had half her of her squad working on the recently deceased patients to see what went wrong with them, and the rest of her squad was providing treatment for shinigami as usual. The fourth division was in chaos, there wasn't a single one that wasn't pulling double shifts before they left.

Whoever had planned this was incredibly intelligent or very lucky. Unohana didn't know what was more frightening.

Three figures stood outside of the fourth division looking at the building. One was sitting on top of the wall, laying casually on it as if she owned the place.

"Your brother performed wonderfully." Kasumi chuckled playing with her hair.

"Of course he did." Jiro laughed. He was leaning against the wall. "If it involves that Zanpakuto of his."

Kasumi giggled girlishly. "Of course, him being the elder he would be more capable than his baby brother."

"Silence." Jiro snapped.

"Now, now." Nao waved his hands in a calming manner. "Let's not squabble like these pitiful runts."

Jiro crossed his arm and blew some of his hair out of his face. "I think we've got what the King wanted. How annoying that we lost the boy."

Kasumi leapt down from the wall. "I somehow don't think that the king's going to be too displeased. I have a feeling that something happened that we don't know about."

"Wouldn't put it past the king." Nao grumbled. "I have to get back before I'm missed."

Jiro snorted. "Same here."

Kasumi laughed yet again. "My squad is so lenient about those things it's not even funny."

The two male shot her scathing looks and then turned to go their separate ways. The king would want to hear their report anyway and if they were to make this infiltration successful they couldn't fall out of grace with any of their superiors.

Nao was walking at a slow pace to the gates of his division.

"Nao! Where were you?" Cried the seventh seat.

"Out. I was on my break." Nao replied calmly.

"You're late."

"By two minutes."

"You get extra duties for back talking me and being late!" The man bellowed.

Nao shrugged and went off to where the seventh seat had sent him. The white haired man knew that this squads seated members would be his first target when the Neo-Gotei finally attacks. He smirked to himself he would have pleasure in burning this entire thing to the ground. He knew exactly how he would do it as well.

God would have him smite the false ones, for their king is the true God.

Ashido looked to the sky suddenly, a feeling of foreboding creeping up on him. He had a second nature when it came to things like that. He could tell when something was approaching he didn't like it was a feeling that he got when a hollow was approaching. Living among natural enemies like that for so long, it tended to make him paranoid.

Ashido looked around the area he was in, he could sense no feeling of evil lurking around him. No strange reiatsus were flaring up, and the sky looked untroubled.

So what had been that feeling?

The shinigami shook his head attempting to ignore the feeling, thinking that a shinigami or someone with less than pure intentions had passed by in the other walkway. So he had no reason to worry, it wasn't his job to stop people on a hunch anyway. As much as he liked to be the one that stood for what was good, he could no longer run around willy-nilly attacking people without good reason, that was the detention corps job and he had no intention of stepping on anyone's toes.

But the feeling was like someone was trying to become righteous in their own way and exact revenge. Ashido ran a hand through his hair, a rare loss of composure on his part. "I must be getting old. Hardly anyone any more talks about exacting their own righteous judgment on this world any more. Beside what would be the point?"

Knowing that no one heard him, he didn't expect an answer, and he continued on back towards where he was staying. The feeling, he knew, would vanish soon enough and more than likely nothing would come of it. So with that thought in mind he had no problems and leaving the spot behind. He was so out of tune with this world he didn't even think twice about it.

Renji was sitting on the floor of his apartment, rubbing at his eyes. It had been a long few days and an even longer month so with his bed calling his name he began to head back in to his bedroom. Passing by the very large window in his front room, being a lieutenant did actually have perks to go along with the copious amounts of paperwork.

Glancing out of his window he saw two figures walking side by side. He hadn't ever seen the two females before, and he knew he would've remembered them, because they weren't exactly… normal looking.

One of them had dark red hair and was rather short compared to her companion who was a decent height for a woman. The small red-head girl looked deep in thought as the woman walking with her kept one gesturing wildly. The red head spoke something and the elder became quiet.

Renji arched an eyebrow. The elder of the two had long teal-blue hair and when she turned towards the window for the briefest second, Renji saw markings down the side of her face. Ones that looked familiar, but he couldn't place where he saw them. He knew it was of great importance, but why it was important also eluded him.

The two girls stopped and the teal-haired one started to walk off towards the direction of the eighth and the other one took off towards the seventh.

"That was odd." Renji said to himself.

The red head girl looked up to his window and saw him staring. She looked startled, almost afraid, before it was masked over by a friendly smile and wave. Renji waved back just as the girl bolted down one of the many sidewalks.

"Now why would that strike me as peculiar?" Renji mumbled.

He would check it out in the morning after he went to the hospital to check on his friends.

But even as he went to get some rest, the two girls would not leave his head.

Here we are at the bottom. Sorry for the tardiness and the shortness I'll try to fix it! I swear! So leave your thoughts or nags in the reviews below, and I'll see you all next time! Later! ~IF