It's disconcerting at times, to see Ichigo as he slowly becomes... more.
Kisuke isn't sure anyone else has really noticed, and sometimes he feels like maybe he is confused, maybe what he is thinking is just a weird creation of his overactive imagination.
But then he remembers Ichigo as he was after he had defeated Aizen. His eyes had held an unconceivable strength in them and the gold and purple flecks dancing in the brown orbs had only made him warier. The orange head stood tall and fierce like an unmovable mountain -then again that comparison might be off since Ichigo could rearrange the landscape with a swing of his sword. His reiatsu was incomprehensible, and while that should have put Kisuke at ease, it still made him vaguely feel like an ant under a person's shoe.
That feeling had gone away when Ichigo had turned to him with a smile on his face and victory dancing in his brown eyes but Kisuke had not forgotten and he also didn't ask.
Kisuke had put the notion aside after that. There were many other things that needed to be done in the wake of Aizen's defeat, and while the consequences and impact of the Final Getsuga Tenshou was something Kisuke would end up investigating -to find a way to restore his little pupil at the very least- he put it aside for three months until things finally settled down and he could sit in his lab to actually think.
Three weeks later as he was on his way to setting up some reiatsu sensors in the Kurosaki house to get data on Ichigo's non-existent power, he had stumbled upon Ichigo brawling with some delinquent looking students with an enviable ease. He had laughed at the scene, happy to see Ichigo was doing somewhat well and not completely defenseless when he felt a shiver go down his spine and his hand instinctively moved to grasp his cane tighter.
He looked around, his reiatsu spreading to find the threat and found nothing until his eyes caught on the sight of Ichigo standing on the street and looking right at him. Or -as Kisuke noted with an absent thought- not at him, but towards him.
Kisuke was standing on the roof of a nearby house so he couldn't exactly tell what had Ichigo so enthralled, but soon enough it seemed like he lost interest with a tilt of his head and moved in the direction of his house as if nothing had happened.
Kisuke shadowed him from afar since he was going in the same direction but the notion of something never stopped the entire time. Once they made it to the Kurosaki household, Ichigo opened the front gate to go inside but as he turned to close it, he stopped and stared once more in Kisuke's direction where he stood in the street not even five feet away.
The gold and purple specks in his eyes stood out eerily in his orbs, and Kisuke found his breath catching in his throat before Ichigo blinked and they were gone as if never there and he turned to enter his home.
It was only later, while Kisuke sat in his lab with a warm mug of tea that he realized that the pin pick feeling of threat had gone away after Ichigo waltzed into his house.
Is this a consequence of the Final Getsuga Tenshou? What if it's not? What does this mean?
He didn't know, and it was mildly terrifying.
His studies didn't yield any kind of information on what was happening, but he was able to get Ichigo's powers back with the help of the Gotei 13 so at least that was reassuring.
Kisuke doesn't see that oddness in Ichigo after he gains his power. He looks for it because he was expecting it, but as Ichigo sits across from him while they are enjoying tea in the shop, Kisuke sees nothing of the sort and it's a bit disappointing but also relieving.
This time he does forget about it because it doesn't seem to be important anyways.
The Quincy invade and the next mess -next war- plants them all right in the middle of the chaos again. Kisuke is busy in Hueco Mundo and then trying to find ways for the Quincy to stop stealing bankai and hardly has time to do anything but believe Ichigo will be fine even with all the horrible hurdles he's had to overcome as of late. Ichigo's busy in the Soul King's Palace recuperating and trying to get his blade fixed but Kisuke knows without a doubt he will be back.
"So basically… it'll still take me some time to get there." Ichigo tells him via the spirit phone he had given him. He's actually impressed the signal reaches the top of the Palace – as expected of his genius. "It might sound cheeky, but… the fight, even if it gets tough, please resist until I get there."
Kisuke's mind had flashed back to that moment after Ichigo had defeated Aizen and believed. "That's fine. We're waiting for you Kurosaki-san."
When he sees the orange head next time in the 12th division basement trying to send them all up to the Soul King's Palace, Kisuke fumbles quietly with the device in his hand and finds his chest tight when he notices the sparks of gold and purple even more prominent in Ichigo's eyes.
As he's about to send them up into the Palace with the canon, he stops Ichigo and takes a couple steps back to look at him without an audience.
"Kurosaki-san… have you noticed anything different in yourself?" Kisuke is being straightforward this time because he doesn't have time to analyze and observe from afar and this seems so important.
Ichigo doesn't look surprised when he asks, and his eyes only narrow slightly into a gaze that makes Kisuke feel like his soul is being observed in this very moment. The orange head knows what he's talking about, and he doesn't seem surprised at all that Kisuke is asking.
"The last war didn't kill me Kisuke." Ichigo tells him as if it needed to be stated when he was here -breathing, moving and speaking. "I survived and came out the other end and this war will be no different." The orange head closes his eyes and seems to take a fortifying breath before he opens them again to look at Kisuke with half lidded eyes. "But you should never forget what I became in the battlefield. What I am still becoming."
Kisuke doesn't understand why this unnerves him, why it makes him feel like a lesser being under a magnifying glass. Ichigo merely gives him another heavy stare before he straightens and eases what doesn't feel like reiatsu, but might as well had been with how it was pressuring his lungs.
"Don't worry Kisuke, we won't lose this war." The orange head sounds so certain, like if this outcome were already written in stone by the Gods themselves. Kisuke doesn't understand why even in the face of this destruction and Ywach about to reach the Palace he still finds himself nodding -believing.
"Of course, Kurosaki-san." He says out loud before he even realizes it. That's fine -it's fine.
Ichigo smiles, content with his acquiescence, and turns to join the others in the canon.
He tries to put it outside of his mind, the unsettling sensation that he's only watching the prelude unfold amidst this godforsaken war, but it's hard to do so when the Soul King is killed and he expects the worlds to start crumbling and they don't. It's hard to forget while he battles his enemies and finds himself confused that the Quincy seem nervous and are getting more suicidal as the seconds tick by.
He's concerned, and the more people he sees in this battlefield, he notes that he's not the only one that feels wary and wrongfooted. The upper echelon of Shinigami show that unease but don't look worried, the arrancar are jittery but somehow hopeful while the Quincy look paler.
It happens so suddenly and like an atomic bomb. The overbearing pressure of Ywachs reiatsu disappears, the Quincy stumble and their abilities flicker off and then back on rapidly, the thing -not reiatsu, this is not reiatsu- presses on them like a mountain is on top of them and everyone falls to at the very least their knees.
A figure exits the King's building, and while usually it would have been to far away to discern who it is, Kisuke -everyone- knows that this is Ichigo and that he has won.
The pressure suddenly disappears and Kisuke is left stumbling and almost face planting but his eyes don't leave Ichigo's figure, and it only takes a couple heart wrenching beats for his eyes to widen as the knowledge that this being before them is Ichigo, but not, and that he is -was always meant to be- the God and linchpin of the Worlds.
The puzzle pieces slot into place, and Kisuke finds it horrifying that his student, Ichigo, the boy who grew to fast, the teenager who fought in a war at 15, their martyr and hero had started assimilating a God by the time his power reached it's unmovable peak before Aizen's fight.
To become a God, Kisuke thinks with no little amount of anger at the universe because he would never -could never- curse the God that Ichigo was, is the loneliest achievements of them all.
Not to be continued…
A/N: I thought about mixing it up a bit today. I'm a bit uncertain about this chapter, but I have rewritten the "Ichigo is a God" ideas so many times and discarded every plot point that I just got tired of it and this is the best I can do.
Hope you like it.