Author's Note: Ch18 was edited over the last couple days. It now feels less disjointed, and the ending is overall smoother.
"Ye lord, mask of flesh and blood, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man, inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south. Hado 31: Shakkaho," Ichigo recited, his palms crossed together, with spirit energy woven into a spherical lattice of alternating spirals and sickles.
Flaming red spirit energy spun in a vortex, then shot forth at sonic speed. A wave of heated air ruffled his hair. Sparks and flames exploded against Sekkiseki rock, and left not a single scorch mark. Not bad. Extremely effective, in fact. The range and accuracy of this destructive spell was better than any rifle, and he didn't have to carry ammo or a bulky weapon. The only issue was that ridiculous incantation.
"You're a natural," Rukia said. Her hooded cloak was billowing, her cloak that negated her spirit energy's lust-inducing effects. She had put it back on—something about him being too distracted by sexual urges. She wasn't wrong. Every minute that passed delayed his training, and every minute there may be powerless souls in trouble out there in the Rukongai.
"Thanks, you're a good teacher." He meant it. She was far more patient and skilled than any teacher he had dealt with at Karakura High.
"It comes with experience."
He looked at her curiously. "Experience? How long have you mentored for? Can you remember?" Another question hit him, though he wasn't sure if he should ask: "How old are you, Rukia?" It was impossible to estimate given the slower aging of souls.
"Why does it matter?"
"Just curious. You know I'm fifteen."
She shrugged. "What if I told you I'm a thousand years old?"
A thousand. He couldn't imagine being a thousand years old let alone holding a thousand years in his head. Almost nauseating to think of.
Tacitly he maintained a dismissive face. Inside, earthquakes were rocking his bones. "Then you're the prettiest thousand-year-old girl I've met."
"Hmmm." She picked up the spirit energy lantern, fed it a couple globules. Her violet eyes shone. "But what if I said I'm only thirteen?" She could pass for a thirteen-year-old Human, just barely.
"So two years younger than me. What's your point?"
A sudden glare wrinkled her brow. She slapped his elbow, hard. "The point is it doesn't matter how old I am, and you should stop asking. You've already chosen me!"
His chuckles were peevish. "Whoah there, I'm just curious, that's all."
"Hmph." Arms crossed under her chest, she looked across the pit. "I'm one-hundred and fifty-two. Now, again, Shakkaho. Stronger. You're not even at officer level."
A hundred. And fifty. Plus two.
So what. It didn't matter.
An arrogant grin lifted his chin. "I wasn't even trying just then."
"Then start trying."
Ichigo started reciting, but his mind wouldn't unstick from her age. A hundred years old. Older than any Human in history. Older than his parents. Older than any of the girls at Karakura High. That virginity pill must have erased multiple years worth of life experiences. She was fine with it. Such a crazy, sexy girl she was.
As the finals words of the incantation jumbled off his lips, the flaming red bomb prematurely detonated. Time slowed. His heart jumped into his throat, and his eyes clipped to Rukia, who, to his relief, had already Flash Stepped away. He was about to tuck-and-roll when thick jagged lines on his hands lit up in blue, cancelling out the heat of the blast. His skin was left unscorched. His Shihakusho and white cloak weren't even singed.
Rukia was then back at his side. "You fool. I said Kido is about finesse and concentration."
He examined his palms. The lines were gone. His Zanpakuto spirits had saved him again. "I know, I just got distracted."
"What did?"
"Was still thinking about your age." He huffed a large breath. "That pill cost you a lot of memories. All for me."
Her eyelids dipped halfway. "Yes, maybe months, maybe years. I've lost count of all the blanks." Abruptly she jabbed his side, not too hard, just forceful enough to deliver a warning. "So if you keep making a fool of yourself like that, I might just go back and fill in the blanks before I ever let you touch me again!"
Muscles in his crotch constricted as pictures he didn't want to see entered his imagination. He slapped her ass. "Touch you like this?" He massaged her right peach, which easily fit into his grasp. Petite and soft like the rest of her.
A smirk slowly lit her face with manic energy. "So you finally want to play?"
"Yeah, take off your—"
The way she drew her katana and swung it was grandiose and choreographed like a twirling ballerina. Her freezing spiritual pressure stabbed him—real violent intent. She slashed, a sweeping uppercut.
He jumped back, drew both swords.
She was already on him. Downward cut, two-handed.
He parried with the Wakizashi. And the advantage of having two swords proved itself. He stabbed with the Katana.
She had already sidestepped. She caught his blade with her bare left hand, the edge sliding against her fingers.
And his fingers let go in a moment of panic.
But she wasn't bleeding. She wasn't cut at all. "First lesson of Zanjutsu: your Zanpakuto can only be dull when your heart fears to injure your opponent."
He exhaled. "Why the hell would I want to cut you?"
"You said you wanted to play."
"By fighting with swords? That's crazy."
She passed back his Katana. Her fingertips lightly fleeced his chest. "I told you what arouses me the most—to be forced into submission. The virginity pill can't change that, and if you don't like it, it's your mistake for requesting a girl who you barely knew at all."
"Rukia." He felt his lips wobble. "How can I want to cut a girl I'm starting to fall in love with? I'd rather cut myself."
For a second she looked up at him, wide-eyed, as though bewitched. Then she looked down. All emotion froze. Her grip tightened around her Katana's handle. Her spiritual pressure was growing heavier, physically manifesting as mist, with spots of ice expanding on the Sekisekki stone floor. Her voice was deathly quiet: "Release your Shikai."
He slowly stepped back thrice. His heel slipped an inch. "What?"
"So far you've been nothing but a burden to the Shinigami and me, and now you're professing your weak love for me. Although you're talented, all I've seen from you is weakness. Release your Shikai, now!" She pointed with her Katana. The metal was glowing white.
On his tongue, drops of saliva froze. He swallowed. "You said not to forcibly release before I learn the command."
"Then you will die with your love. Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!" Her spiritual pressure was an avalanche, a wall of mist crashing down on him.
He tried to jump back. Ice had encased his legs, and was creeping up his body. Both her ice and spiritual pressure were locking him in place.
A sweep of her blade cleared the mist. Her pure-white Zanpakuto was as beautiful and elegant as he remembered. A long ribbon attached to the hilt was flowing like waves of the ocean. "You've disappointed me, Ichigo Kurosaki. Any last words?"
"Wait," he gasped. "You aren't serious. Rukia?"
"San no mai, Shirafune." Ice elongated her blade with the extended tip curving into an oversized hook. Her Shikai ability was a scythe. Tufts of mist along with her cloak's hood veiled her eyes. The Grim Reaper of childhood bedtime stories was standing before him in all her glory.
The Reaper swung.
He was about to die—forever. There was no afterlife to the afterlife. Self preservation was flaring his spiritual pressure. Her ice cracked. His spirit energy poured into his Zanpakutos. A growl became a roar: "Tensa Zangetsu!"
That icy scythe stopped midair, as if colliding against a stone wall. For a moment nothing happened. Then the misty air vibrated before Rukia was punched backward in a hurricane of black and white. His inner pool of spirit energy deepened and widened until it was an ocean. Sealed, his spiritual pressure was a high-power hose, or even ten hoses; released, it was the weight of ten-thousand mountain ranges. More than simply weight. Like the moon weightlessly flying among stars, this new spiritual pressure was also weightlessly among the heavens.
He glanced at his Zanpakutos. Tensa Zangetsu. The blades were black, but other than that, they were no different than the sealed Katana and Wakizashi pair. The black coloring was reflective in the dimming lantern light. His orange hair was on the Katana. His eyes were on the Wakizashi. What he saw was… abnormal, to say the least.
Each eye had four pupils at the corners.
A headache struck him deep in the eye sockets.
A kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, his vision was flashing. Pain shot down his spine, into his arms and legs. All the colorful shapes were geometrical patterns, infinitely repeating. Curves and polyhedrons. Spirals and blobs. Sections of the Mandelbrot set he had learned in mathematics class. The shapes were becoming more and more complex, and the headache was so painful that he dropped his swords, fell onto his knees.
Everyday objects, rocks, trees, ponds, valleys, mountains, canyons, were appearing and vanishing in his sight. He saw animals, birds and dogs. He saw people, souls garbed in Rukongai robes. It was the town that he had been placed in. One second they were at peace, children playing ball, adults chatting and laughing. The next second it was death and fire: ditches full of corpses, pools of blood, plumes of black smoke filling the sky. The image was endlessly shifting, and he began seeing multiple images at the same time, infinite variations, infinite misery. One commonality was the crater in the ruined town square.
Sweat dripped off his nose. Not sweat—blood. His eyes were bleeding.
"Ichigo!" Rukia shouted from afar.
"Stay back." Red-Eyes Tensa Zangetsu was suddenly there, and all the images faded away. "What did I tell you?"
"What's happening to me? What did I just see?" Ichigo wheezed and stood up, holding his Katana to his face. His pupils were still split into four. Blood flow had stopped. There wasn't any injury.
"I told you that you should forget about Shikai until you've had ten years of training." The Zanpakuto spirit sighed. "Let me ask you, Ichigo, do you believe in fate, and whether one may change their future destination?"
His automatic answer was, "Of course you can, you never know what the future holds."
"You are correct. The future can be changed, this is true. The future is uncertain, this is also true. There is only one future, this, however, is not true. Do you understand?"
The power to see the future. Every single possible future. The more the concept cemented, the more useless it seemed. Anyone could say a flipped coin will land either head or tails. Anyone could say that town's future was either good or bad or anywhere in between. "I saw so much… so much death and misery."
"Yes, I know."
"How likely? On average, I saw much more peace than destruction. Is that it?"
"As I said, it is uncertain." And with any uncertainty, there was a related probability.
"Can the odds change?"
Red-Eyes Tensa Zangetsu nodded. "At any moment."
"How long do we have?" How far into the future had his eyes seen?
"One week. Any further would have killed you. That is your current limit—one week."
From the side, Rukia was inching forward with tiny steps. Her blade was snapped in half. "You lost your spirit energy."
"What?" Ichigo blurted, turning to face her.
"I can't sense your spiritual pre—" She stopped moving when her eyes met his, her broken Zanpakuto clunking onto the floor and reverting back into its sealed state, white color evaporating into mist. For the longest seconds she stared without blinking. There was trembling fear, but also a peculiar calmness, as if she had seen or knew of these fourway-split pupils.
Ichigo asked, "Do you recognize these eyes?"
Rukia was slow to answer: "The Kuchiki clan is responsible for keeping records of history." She'd mentioned that before. "I'm not sure, I may've read of it in passing one time."
Not so helpful.
Ichigo scratched his chin, smirking and saying, "To be honest, this ability is kind of useless. It's distracting, if anything. It might get me killed in a fight. I wish I had your scythe instead."
"And you lost your spirit energy," she reminded. "You have no spiritual pressure."
Logic spoke: "I think you're just too weak to sense my spiritual pressure. It's going through you right now."
Her face contorted under the hood. "What do you mean too weak? I'd be crushed if that were true. Do you even know what spiritual pressure is?"
He walked to her and patted her shoulder. "I can send you hurtling across the cavern right now with one finger. That's how much weaker you are."
"Do it."
Sheathing his swords, he had a better idea. One index finger, he pointed at the opposite wall, shaped a minuscule trickle of spirit energy into a zig-zagging weave, and muttered, "Hado 4: Byakurai." And a beam of deafening lightning, as wide as his arm, drilled into Sekkiseki stone, all the way through to regular granite and limestone. He looked back at her. "Like I said. Now, am I still a burden to you?"
She was transfixed on the hole in the wall. Gradually her expression relaxed from petulant denial to acceptance. A graceful smile lifted her face. She whispered, "They were right about you."
"Of course they were. You said the Royal Family or whatever analyzed my soul."
A gentle sigh rasped. "They're not always right."
"But this time they are." Good thing too, they had sent him his dream girl. "So are we going to continue with the training?"
"Why wouldn't we? You have a lot to learn. Don't let your newfound power get to your head. You could still be bested by someone weaker."
"How?" Ichigo glanced right, wanting confirmation from his Zanpakuto spirit. But his spirit had retreated into his inner world… and he hadn't explained how to reactivate this future-sight ability, not that he wanted another eye-bleeding headache.
Rukia was thinking. "Zanpakuto effects, seals, your own missteps. Pure spirit energy won't win you every fight."
Arrogance was telling Ichigo to shrug it off; however, he decided to listen. Because in his experience as a Human, someone physically weaker could always find ways to take down someone much stronger. With dirty fighting. Surprise attacks. Weapons. Ganging up with buddies. He couldn't assume the same wasn't true here; he'd already gotten Saiki Kirinji killed by assuming.
"Also," Rukia said in a small voice, "I could be held against you, the girl you claim to be falling in love with." Her tongue was coated with a smear of sarcasm. She chuckled two breaths in tandem with him. "Not just me, anyone innocent could be used against you. You've forgotten your primary duty. Those with power must protect those without."
"And I'll use my power to do exactly that."
Another sigh, louder. "You don't understand. Look at what you've done to the Sekkiseki. There is a reason why in the Seireitei it is forbidden to release the Zanpakuto except during crisis." Her fingers wrapped around his. "I'm relieved that your potential is true. But you must learn to fight while you're in your weakened state. I didn't mention you can also be killed in your sleep, when you can't maintain your Zanpakuto release."
Damn. No one had dropped that crucial little detail.
"Fine," he grumbled, "how do I seal my Shikai?"
"Close your eyes and relax. You'll feel your power start to slip away. I like to picture myself strolling through the Kuchiki compound gardens. We have beautiful cherry blossom trees and koi ponds and pavilions."
He did precisely that, imagining himself meditating under falling cherry blossom leaves while red and yellow fish were swimming by his feet. His ocean of spirit energy shrank, sluggishly. And during the implosion, he heard Rukia sharply inhale, and he also saw visions of the future, just for an instant, of a garden similar to the one which he had visualized. Noblewomen were in silk kimono dresses. Shinigami were among them, including a handsome dark-haired man with a white cloak similar to Ichigo's. Hundreds of moving images flashed by, Ichigo unable to keep up.
Yuzu's face was in them. Eleven-year-old Yuzu, wearing a Shihakusho. In many timelines she was topless, only in panties, sitting and giggling among other girls and boys, happy. In others she was garbed in neck-to-ankle white robes, and executed by blades. She was present in the vast majority of timelines. He had to specifically seek out a time where she wasn't in.
He needed to know more.
His ability responded. The visions blurred and warped, more vivid and detailed than before. These timelines were mostly identical bar minor variations. The room was a laboratory. On metallic walls were computer screens. Floating mid air, eyes closed and unmoving, Karin was held in a high-tech cage. A brown-haired Shinigami man in a white coat typed on a keyboard. In some timelines, he was accompanied by one or two others: a dark-skinned man and a white-haired man.
More.
More identical visions. A old bearded bald man was in yet another similar white coat. Dozens of criss-crossing scars decorated his skin. He stood in a near-black room with a spotlight on him, and all around him, above him in terraced layers, sat people behind marked screens. Not one person moved or fidgeted. Many of those in the dark were slouching, or asleep. Eventually, the old man's head bowed slightly and stayed bowed, as though in shame and defeat. He turned and walked out, heavily leaning on his old wooden staff.
Nothing made sense. Ichigo demanded more, grasping on to the last vestiges of his Shikai.
Another blackened room. In the middle, a man was chained to posts by his wrists and ankles. Some timelines, he was meditating. Few times he was sobbing; a similar number of times he was screaming. Often was he trying to break his shackles. Several timelines he was successful in freeing his left wrist. The man was Ichigo's father, Isshin Kurosaki.
The visions faded to black, his Shikai sealed.
Ichigo's eyes warmed. A tear rolled down his cheek.
His whole family was going to be taken to the Seireitei. Within one week. Or were they already here?
Why would they execute Yuzu and imprison Goat-Chin?
What were they doing to Karin?
"Ichigo?" Rukia breathed.
A minute passed. He sniffed. "You were right. They've taken my sisters and father." All to keep him in his place. All to control his power—because they feared him.
Rukia's brilliant indigo eyes widened, worry and anger. "Who have?"
"The Shinigami."
Author's Note: So the story summary at the top says eventual overpowered Ichigo. The time has arrived. It's taken me a long while to write a plot with him having all of Yhwach's powers and more, but I think what I've come up with should be a fun ride... As shown in this chapter, he's going to have some limitations while he learns to use the Almighty. Interestingly, I wonder if the anime is going to do the same thing! However, I don't think it'll significantly diverge from the manga.
Review Responses:
- Lisa will show up at some point, but she's not a major supporting character like Hiyori or Yoruichi. I may continue Strawberry and the Exile soon, as I've had many requests to do so, and I do really like the pairing.
- The pacing is definitely very slow, and the plot is a little watery, but I'm happy with it. It's not for everyone.