Author's Note: Website errors seem to be fixed now, so I'll definitely be staying here. CH8 typos edited.
During history classes at Karakura High, Ichigo had slogged through dozens of black and white documentaries about past wars from medieval times to recent history. Monotone narration on top of omissions of graphic violence was far from what was unfolding in front of Ichigo's eyes. It was the howling sirens that reminded him of wartime footage he had seen in class, and the terrified faces of the innocent, all the same. What had come next hadn't been shown, not to school kids.
An elderly woman was ushering three children up the main road, the youngest of them barely old enough to walk, but even he knew what was happening, trying to hold back tears while his teenage sister was tugging him by the fingers. A middle-aged man ran to them, offered wooden bucklers and helmets that resembled up-turned bowls. As if that would help. Slim chance it would.
All these souls had experienced this before. Every last one of them. Many of them had died at the hands of Hollows. Many were ready to fight, taking up arms, mostly crude longbows with matching arrows tipped with sharpened stones. Very few wore cloth armor. Fewer held real weaponry; several fit young men held bronze spears.
A well-built man with a healthy dark beard approached Ichigo. His helmet was bronze. His longbow's varnished wood gleamed maroon in the red sunlight. "You there!"
Ichigo lifted his chin at the man. "What is it?"
"If you're not going to use those swords, then give them to someone who will!"
Ichigo was still in gray robes. Bathrobes, as he called them. "These are my Zanpakutos," he said calmly, pushing the man with firm spiritual pressure, enough to get the point across.
Shock wrinkled the man's face for a second. Muscles contracted, and he incredibly managed to hold footing, though he had no spiritual power of his own to push back with. "Forgive me, you have my utmost apologies, sir." He backed away.
Stupid. Wasting time.
Haruka appeared next to him with a Flash Step. She said, "A unit from the Stealth Force will be here in time. I've also called for all nearby Shinigami. Relax."
"I'm not panicking." He placed a steady hand on his Katana's hilt. This time, there weren't going to be any stupid mistakes.
"You're pale."
"How can I not be? Look at all these people." There were several thousand in this town. Thousands to protect.
"Is that really what's on your mind?" Haruka lightly said. "Or are you having regrets over not taking me when you had the chance. You could die here. It'd be a tragedy, to die without knowing what a hot wet pussy feels like."
Ichigo looked at her in amusement. "Thanks for reminding me." But her perverted words did help loosen up his stance, warm his fingers. "I'm not going to die. I trust my life with Tensa Zangetsu."
"Tensa Zangetsu?" Haruka's eyes flicked down to his hip. "Is that your Zanpakuto's name?"
"It is."
"Since you know it, you should be able to forcibly release your Shikai, but in your case…"
Ichigo's inner spirits hadn't mentioned this crucial tidbit—for good reason. "I'm not worthy yet. The release could kill me."
"That's what I was thinking." As sirens grew louder and shriller, Haruka touched his arm. "You're a lot like Captain Hitsugaya. He told me when he first released his Zanpakuto, he nearly lost all his fingers to frostbite. Be careful, Ichigo. A soul like yours is one in millions. These people need you to stay alive for them."
"You don't have to tell me."
"Then try to hold back, Okay? Stay close to me. We should be able to handle this." We, as in without him.
Against all urge to argue, he nodded. "I'll stay close, but if anyone dies, it's on my hands. I was the one who—"
"That's not true. I exaggerated earlier for Hanataro's sake. Your spiritual pressure wasn't anywhere near getting through the Sekkiseki."
Speaking of Hanataro, he wasn't to be seen. Safe away from the battlefield.
"So it's all coincidence?" Ichigo asked.
"Yes."
"Damn."
Ichigo clamped his jaw shut as all the sirens began rapidly alternating between two dissonant notes, this high-pitch high-tech assault grating his skull and ribs. And looking around, he saw only fit young men and a few women with longbows held at the ready. That man who had approached stood at the center of the town square in front of the fountain. The sheer resolve in his expression said it all—he was ready to die.
"Brace yourselves," Haruka announced as her breezy spiritual pressure stormed, picking up dust and fallen leaves in a whirlwind. She didn't draw her Zanpakuto. She instead held the Hollow detector. Hundreds of red dots on the topographical map changed position, converged on her. She was offering herself as bait.
A dozen figures in black attire appeared on rooftops. Flash Steps. The Stealth Force Shihakusho was much more tight-fitting and covered the face. For the girls, their outfits left their backs and sides exposed, and their V-necklines dipped to their slim bellies, above short pleated skirts and knee-high socks. Sexy assassins.
A few members of their unit glanced down at Ichigo. A tall girl's beautiful green eyes lingered on him for longer than necessary. Sizing him up him? Checking him out? Probably both.
Wooden siren speakers began giving off slow, loud beeps. A countdown.
Haruka pocketed the Hollow detector, swapping it for her Zanpakuto.
Ichigo drew both his blades, Katana in his right hand, Wakizashi in his left.
The sky itself cracked, then shattered where cracks bridged over each other. Gut-wrenching spiritual pressure stamped down on the town square. From jagged holes of pure darkness, dozens of Hollows flew out, shrieking like approaching fighter jets, and their sleek insect forms were uncannily similar to jets. Giant mosquitoes and dragonflies and moths. All sorts of hybrid monstrosities that violated nature's designs.
One by one, in silence, Hollows were cut down within streaky black fuzzes, Stealth Force members fighting midair. They were able to fly—even stand on thin air. For them, the impossible was reality. As a team, they cut through Hollows six at a time, disintegrating bug corpses falling to the ground, blackish-red blood momentarily mixing with fountain water.
It wasn't enough.
The Hollow swarm began surrounding them, and they were pushed back down onto rooftops, and then onto the ground. A couple of the larger dragonflies were firing bolts of visible red spirit energy, easy to dodge one at time, but a few stray bolts, in seconds, became a hail.
Ichigo flared his spiritual pressure upward, along with Haruka. Bolts lost velocity, many smothered out of existence.
The powerless men and women were launching arrows. Nine out of ten shots missed. But the stone arrowheads that did meet their targets exploded with clouds of spirit energy, Hollow shrieking in pain.
A fatter dragonfly thought to diverge from the swarm. It swept down in a wide arc around the clock tower. At the same time, throughout the square, humanoid and four-legged animal Hollows punched through into this dimension. Shrieks were earsplitting. Their combined spiritual pressure grew to a heavy weight—for Ichigo.
The powerless men and women were on their knees and elbows. They should not have come.
A bulbous-headed Hollow with a clownish mask jumped toward a downed man.
A Stealth Force girl Flash Stepped to him, pressed out two palms, shouting something. A ball of red energy shot forth from her hands and exploded against the Hollow's mask. Black blood and gelatinous chunks of Hollow brains splattered onto dirt.
Haruka muttered half a dozen syllables. From her fingertip, a beam of white electricity, which Ichigo recognized as Hado 4, decapitated every last standing Hollow in a single broad sweep of her arm. She then flicked her wrist upward, bifurcating the fat dragonfly that had swooped down.
Disintegrating Hollow corpses were now piling up. The stench made Ichigo's head swim, and as he looked up, he saw the swarm was now down to twenty or less Hollows. No more bugs were flying through the dimensional holes.
No one had died. Not yet.
Ten Hollows left.
Five.
Three.
It had all happened so fast. One moment the Hollows had been overwhelming the Shinigami. Now the battle was nearing victory.
Ichigo let out a breath he had been holding. At any instant, he had been ready to leap into battle, but his help had turned out to be unnecessary. These were trained, experienced fighters. Soldiers. They slaughtered these nightmarish freaks with deadly efficiency. They didn't need an untrained teenager holding them back. They barely even needed Officer Haruka Matsumoto to step in.
The very last Hollow, a small butterfly-beetle, fell to the ground. A Stealth Force guy stabbed it through the mask.
Ichigo knew it wasn't over. Abrasive spiritual pressure was still pressing down on him, growing heavier and more melancholy in feeling, a foul oil seeping through his skin and collecting into a ball of pure hatred in the center of his heart. It was the Menos Grande. It was there, hiding within the broken, cracked, blood-red sky.
Cracks lengthened. Vast pieces shattered. Within the void tumbled masses of gray and black Reishi. Ichigo's eyes darted left and right, then focused onto a colossal towering silhouette. A gargantuan monstrosity. A cylindrical body, over a hundred feet tall. Its spiritual pressure was mountainous. Ichigo felt his knees bend, and he was already pushing back with everything he had.
"Everyone, get away!" Haruka ordered.
Stealth Force members helped those who couldn't walk, those who had passed out, and those few who had sustained injuries.
"Ichigo, us too, we can't stop its cero," Haruka said.
Whether it was foolishness, whether it was pride, or thirst for battle, Ichigo chose to stand his ground. An irresistible grasp on his body would not let him run away. His grip on his swords tightened. His heart was a beating war drum. Staring into the abyss, he had never felt so alive. This was his god-given fate. He knew what to do—two words. Two words were at the tip of his tongue.
Hot spirit energy pumped through his blood. His skin shone golden-white.
Faster than he could react, a tsunami of red energy rushed down onto the square.
He couldn't move. He couldn't speak, the pressure squeezing air from his lungs. He only stared into this all-consuming red death.
Haruka's hand clamped around his wrist. She yanked him, and the world elongated sideways into red and gray streaks.
The ground shook. A shockwave slammed into the back of Ichigo's head. Stars filled his vision. Every bone in him rattled as he tucked and rolled within gale force winds. And as he rolled, he beheld an expanding dust cloud rising into the sky. Debris rained down on him. A shallow crater was now the central feature of the town square, the fountain statue nowhere to be seen, only small pieces of white stone here and there.
So this was the power of a Menos Grande. Total destruction.
"That was a close one," Haruka said. "What were you thinking?"
"I thought I could take it."
"Apparently not. You were barely able to stand straight when it fired its cero." Haruka chuckled two breaths. "Just wait for backup; it can only fire once every five minutes. They're strong, but they're dumb and move slower than turtles. We're lucky it's a Gillian and not an Ahjucha."
Ichigo squinted through the dust cloud. Giant white fingers pulled the dimensional hole wider like pulling a curtain of stiff fabric. Glowing red eyes emerged, followed by a white mask with a long straight nose piece tapered to a point. The Menos did not look as frightening and grotesque as Ichigo had imagined. Indeed, its appearance was ridiculous, mocking even. Some evil deity had to think this was a funny way to inflict terror on helpless souls.
One sick, twisted joke.
"Can't you kill it?" Ichigo asked. "Don't you have a Shikai?"
"I'm an eighteenth-seat officer."
He picked up his Zanpakutos. "And what does that mean?"
"It means," she said sardonically, "I'm barely qualified for the position. Being able to release Shikai is one thing. Being at a level where you can use it in battle is another. Most sixth-seats can't kill a Gillian without losing an arm and a leg."
He almost didn't want to ask: "How much stronger are Captains compared to Gillians?"
"Well, I would bet that my Captain can easily slay a few dozen of them with just his Shikai. With his Bankai, hundreds if not multiple hundreds, but I've never seen his Bankai before. And our Lieutenant? I doubt he could handle ten or even five at the same time."
The difference in power between Gotei ranks couldn't be so massive, but Haruka didn't seem to be boasting for her Captain's sake, quite the opposite. She was trying to downplay the strength of Captains compared to everyone else, as though regular non-seated Shinigami had a chance to ever catch up. She hoped that one day she could attain such strength.
Ichigo once more laid eyes on the Gillian-class Menos. It was loafing about, a big dumb puppet with an equally dumb face. Its fingers tore through a building with a effortless swipe of its stick-man arm. And a Captain's Bankai could slay multiple hundreds of these. Maybe even thousands in Yamamoto's case. Unimaginable power.
"Yet you said I'm like Captain Hitsu… whatever his name is." Ichigo shook his head.
"I'll be honest, Ichigo," Haruka said sweetly, "in terms of raw spirit energy, you've already surpassed me, but I could easily best you with Kido and Hoho. So don't try anything naughty on me." She winked.
"I hope you don't mean what I think you mean," he said snidely. "I'm not that kind of guy."
"Of course you aren't." Another wink. "And if you really aren't, then… Oh, here she is now." Her eyes shifted rightward.
To a dome of flowing bandages. Under the dome stood a lone short figure donned in a body-length hooded white cloak. Buttons on the cloak were oversized. Bandages broke apart into tiny Reishi pieces as the figure drew a Katana.
Frigid spiritual pressure, heavier than the Gillian's, descended on the battlefield. As well as snow and mist. The air temperature dropped below water's freezing point.
The figure had disappeared.
And the Gillian was now encased in solid ice.
"Hado 63, Raikoho!" a familiar regal voice shouted, and a barrage of yellow lightning tore into the Gillian.
Booming thunder vibrated in Ichigo's teeth. The destructive power was equal or greater to the Gillian's cero, and a shockwave of spiritual pressure slapped Ichigo off balance. He slipped on ice, fell onto his behind.
The newcomer Flash Stepped to him. Gem-like indigo-violet eyes gazed down. Standing in front of the sun, Rukia Kuchiki had a brilliant reddish-white halo framing her cute face. She loosely held a pure-white Zanpakuto shrouded in a misty aura. A white ribbon, as long as the blade, gradually fluttered in no breeze. The more she stared at him, the more he was mesmerized by her beauty and soothing spiritual pressure, and the redder her cheeks became until she could look at him no longer. Why was she embarrassed?
Oh, because he had personally requested for her to come. To be his first sexual partner.
Not only that, but they, the Gotei 13, had granted his request, this unimportant matter. Had they recalled her from the living world just for this? Evidently, it seemed that way. The sheer insanity of this situation was sinking into Ichigo's gut. His face also reddened. This couldn't be happening, but to his heart's delight, it was.
"Ichigo Kurosaki," Rukia snarled, "someone like you should have no problem dealing with a lowly Gillian." She grabbed his collar, hauled him straight. A back-hand slap stung his cheek, a little spiritual pressure behind the hit. "So I'm here, as you asked! Yet you have nothing to say to me, eh?!" She went for a second slap.
He snatched her cold fingers. "I do have something to ask." His voice was ten notes higher than usual. He felt awfully like a mouse trapped in the paws of an agitated lioness. Feisty type indeed.
"What is it?!"
"Why are you so angry at me?"
She hissed, "Why do you think I am?"
An automatic shrug lifted his shoulders. He had no clue, so he tried teasing her: "I thought you would enjoy having the honor of taking my virginity, since I look like Kaien Shiba. I heard you were obsessed with him, now is that right, Rukia Kuchiki? Feel lucky that I saved myself just for you." Maybe that was too much.
Haruka choked on a cough.
Rukia was taken aback, wide-eyed, just for a second, before her fury once again erupted. "You idiot! How fucking dare you!" This time, the violence was real. Her icy spiritual pressure cut him with real deadly intent. She kneed him in the chest. Bones crunched.
The pain was worth the look on her face. If only this moment lasted longer, for he started blacking out. The last thing he saw was a snowflake somersaulting mid air, drifting down onto his frozen Katana.
Author's Note: Ichigo's power gap with Rukia will likely close pretty quickly, so no worries in that regard.
Review Responses:
- This is mainly an IchiRuki story. Hopefully it's clear by now.
- Orihime will have a minor role in this story.
- Like in canon, Zanpakuto spirits only know everything their master knows as well as the names and nature of abilities that the master hasn't yet learned, like when Ichigo had to ask Tensa Zangetsu about the Final Getsuga. For this story, imprinting on an Asauchi can be seen as 'giving birth' to the spirit, though the spirit has always been part of the master's soul, if that makes sense.
- For Yhwach's name pronunciation, I'm going with the four syllable interpretation as spoken by the voice actor in Bleach Brave Souls. Yuha-Bahha. It may or may not be the right pronunciation, but it's what I'm going with.