4.
The last thing Ichigo remembered was passing out after being made a Shinigami. She woke to her mother shaking her gently. "Ichigo. Ichigo."
Ichigo opened her eyes - and the memories came flooding back to her. She sat up straight and gasped. She was in her body, in bed. "Are you okay?!" she asked her Mom urgently.
"I'm fine," said Masaki soothingly, sitting down beside her daughter. "It was just a bad dream."
Ichigo let out a deep breath. The horrible monster, the strange supernatural samurai from another world who ferried souls to the land of the dead, putting everyone she knew in danger just by existing near them - it had all simply been a bad dream.
Then she walked out into the kitchen for breakfast and froze. There was still a huge hole in the side of their apartment wall.
"One of the pipes exploded in the middle of the night," said Masaki casually, seeing her stare. "Isn't it weird that we didn't wake up? At least we're not injured."
Ichigo forced down breakfast, her eyes still fixed on the hole in the wall. Had it really been a dream at all?
Toshiro and Byakuya, in school uniforms, stalked toward Karakura High. With each step, their anger increased. Anger at Kurosaki Ichigo. At their emotional idiocy. At their wounded pride.
"I gave up my powers for a Hollow I could normally have defeated with my eyes closed," Toshiro muttered grimly. "What the hell happened to me?"
"I was just wondering the same thing," said Byakuya icily. "That girl we saved is a fool, putting herself in the path of a Shinigami's work."
"And now she has our powers."
It was like the fevered dream of last night had faded, leaving an ordinary reality in its wake. Normally they would have to be wearing heavy limiters to curb their killing intent during anger enough to exist around ordinary humans. Now? People passed by casually in the unfamiliar streets. Nobody noticed them, no second glance was given.
Decades, even centuries of training, wasted.
It would not have been so bad for an ordinary foot soldier. For a Captain it was so much different. It was like the difference between falling off the roof of a house and falling off the top of a skyscraper. The higher you'd soared, the harder the fall.
If they didn't play their cards very carefully and regain powers fast, they could be in serious trouble for this, they knew. For now, they had to content themselves with making sure that girl carried the duties of a Shinigami. A human - Byakuya had almost refused to help her pretend at being a Shinigami on principle.
Toshiro didn't know about Kuchiki-taicho, but he himself would be seeking counseling after this was all over with Unohana-taicho. This kind of dangerous slip couldn't afford to happen again.
They found the correct classroom and found the girl there, surrounded by her friends. Two, a boy and a girl, had just cried out and flown at her in relief, shouting that she was alive - rumors of a strange explosion in the Kurosaki quarters must have spread. Those two then tried feel up their friend - "Keigo" and "Chizuru" they were called - while hugging her, and a third girl ("Tatsuki") punched them away.
Ichigo was standing there, smiling in uneasy amusement, seemingly without a care in the world. She was very pretty when she smiled, which mostly just made her more irritating.
"Kurosaki." Ichigo looked around, and her amber brown eyes widened. Byakuya was standing there in utter contempt. Toshiro was bored, his arms crossed. "We're new students," Toshiro forced out. "We need to borrow your books until we have our own."
It was code. He wasn't sure how much of it she understood, but she turned to her friends with a bright smile. "I'll be right back!" she said. "I'm just going to show the new kids around the place!"
And that was how a human teenage girl dragged Hitsugaya Toshiro and Kuchiki Byakuya out of her school classroom by the arm. "Let go of me!" Outside the classroom, they yanked themselves from her grip.
Ichigo smiled - it was hard to tell who looked more ruffled and offended, Hitsugaya Toshiro or Kuchiki Byakuya - but she was troubled. Her friends had come by to walk to school with her and seen the wall. She'd arrived at school later on that day and found everyone worried for her safety. It had been emphasized to her over and over again - the hole in the wall. Danger. Danger.
So she was not terribly surprised to find Toshiro and Byakuya standing in front of her in physical bodies, in school uniforms, looking less than enthusiastic to say the least.
"Follow me," she said seriously, and led them to an empty courtyard away from the main school building. She turned around to them. "What's going on?" She crossed her arms.
They blinked. "You don't... know?" said Toshiro disbelievingly.
"I don't understand the question." Byakuya frowned.
"I know that you're in those gigai Toshiro told me about, and that you're infiltrating a human place, and that Byakuya looks desperately unhappy about it." They almost reminded her to use their titles, and then remembered surreally they didn't have those anymore. "But I don't know anything else. I don't... I don't still have your powers, do I?" She winced.
They glared at her flatly in answer.
"And you're powerless."
The glares intensified.
"Well, shit," Ichigo said matter of factly.
"Indeed," said Byakuya dryly, while Toshiro rolled his eyes. "And now, with our help, you must do the job of a Shinigami in our place until our powers return." Ichigo looked horrified. "That is an inappropriate expression. It should be a great honor to do a Shinigami's job with the power of two Captains," he added severely.
"Also this is mostly your fault," said Toshiro flatly. "If we have to infiltrate among your human friends, the least you can is give us the courtesy of pretending to be a Shinigami -"
"I refuse."
If they'd still had killing intent, it would be flooding everything within a fifty-mile radius right now. They stared at her in utter disbelief - and then Toshiro exploded.
"We are of one of the highest ranks there is, and we threw our powers away over someone who won't even do the job of a Shinigami?!" he snarled.
"Tough shit, pipsqueak, you should've let me die!" Ichigo snapped. "That was my point all along!"
Toshiro moved to physically attack her in his human body and this time Byakuya was the one to stop him, mostly because he didn't want to see a former respected Shinigami Captain brought that low.
He turned to Ichigo coldly. "Why won't you do it?" His expression was oddly shuttered.
Ichigo took a deep breath. "Because I'm not a hero," she said. "And I'm not up to facing any more of those monsters. Amazing people do that. Brave people. Strong people. And I'm -" She looked away. "I'm just some fifteen year old human girl," she muttered. "I'm just... me. I don't think I'm good enough.
"You... you should have let me die," she repeated softly. "I wanted to make up for what I'd done to my father. I wanted to die for somebody. I'm good at that."
"You would die for someone," said Byakuya, "but you would not fight for them? We have studied your life. Are you not an expert in both hand to hand and sword fighting? Are you not already a fighter?"
Ichigo looked up in surprise. Toshiro and Byakuya gave each other a glance and nodded once; Toshiro was calmer now.
"Look," said Toshiro, "you seem to care about the people around you. Won't they die if you don't do this job?"
This physically affected Ichigo; it was obvious. But she still looked torn. They could see it in her.
"Fear and insecurity are not flattering, Kurosaki Ichigo," said Byakuya smoothly. "I propose a test. Hitsugaya-san, does that not sound like a good idea?"
Toshiro smirked, putting on a fingerless glove decorated with the skull symbol. "I think it's an excellent idea, Kuchiki-san," he said.
Then he ran his hand into Ichigo's body and pushed.
Ichigo woke up in her Shinigami form, sitting and looking at her body.
"... What are we going to do with my body?" is the first thing she asked, staring at it.
Byakuya picked it up and propped it behind a series of trash cans. "Satisfied?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"... Yeah," said Ichigo quietly, standing. "You said you had a test for me? I'll warn you now, I'm not going to pass."
A strange smile came over their faces.
"It's this way."
They ended up standing in front of a children's park, staring at it for... a long time.
"... What are we waiting for?" said Ichigo at last, frowning in puzzlement.
"Let me put it to you this way," Toshiro sighed. "Kurosaki-san, all the souls in this park are strangers to you, yes? Outside your usual boundaries?"
"Wait." Ichigo's eyes narrowed. Just then, a Hollow burst out from behind the trees, chasing down the crying, screaming soul of a little boy. "Shit!" Ichigo hissed, acting on instinct; she leaped out in front of the boy and cut down through the Hollow's head and through its body in one stroke.
She whirled around to Toshiro and Byakuya, angry. "What the hell was that supposed to prove?!"
"Kurosaki Ichigo, you just did the hardest part of a Shinigami's job already," said Byakuya.
Ichigo paused, her eyes widening.
"And you did it because you wanted to," said Toshiro searchingly, "yes?"
"Well... yeah. I'm not the kind of asshole who can watch someone in pain and not do anything about it," said Ichigo, frowning. She thought about it for a while. "Only I can do it, huh?" she asked rhetorically. "And all the people around me will just keep getting eaten if I don't?"
"... That is correct," said Toshiro, cautiously.
Ichigo sighed. Walked forward and put out her hand. "Fine," she said bluntly. "I'll be a Shinigami until you get your powers back. But I'm doing it because I want to, and because I owe you my life - not because I'm supposed to. Understand the difference?"
She shook hands with each of them.
"I would never dream," said Byakuya gently, only somewhat humorous, "of trying to make you do something you didn't want to, Kurosaki Ichigo."
The fever dream was back. The sense of security. It existed, they realized, only around Kurosaki Ichigo.
She smiled confidently. "I have one caveat." Eyebrows were raised in surprise. "We really have to call each other on a first-name basis," said Ichigo in amusement. "We're about to get to know each other really well." She smirked.
Byakuya sighed.
"Oh," said Toshiro flatly, "great."