10 – Karakura Protectors 2

After several minutes of fierce fighting, the three of them had found a rhythm that was working well.

Uryu was skillfully shooting a large number of arrows, while Ichigo and Rukia were able to quickly flash around to purify the weakened Hollows with their swords.

However, the Hollows continued to come relentlessly. The spirit pressures the combatants were releasing had seemingly attracted even more Hollows to come, and soon they were surrounded yet again.

'Shit, we can't keep up with this, there's too many! At this rate, Ishida and I will have to start obliterating them with Quincy powers!' Ichigo thought while he was limiting himself to using Shinigami powers.

Just as Ichigo was thinking that, he heard Rukia start an unfamiliar incantation.

"Scattered Beast Bones! Spire, Crimson Crystal, Steel Wheels! The wind if it moves, the sky if it stops, the tone of the spear striking fills the lone castle! Hado #63: Raikoukou!"

He watched with awe as a massive beam of yellow energy was unleashed from Rukia's fingertips, and it tore through dozens of Hollows all at once, clearing half the field.

She had never used this level of Kido in their spars before, and he didn't really remember seeing her using the higher level Kido in his dreams either. If she could do that much in a human body, how powerful would it be if she was in Shinigami form? It made him feel like he needed to work even harder to catch up, or else it would be Rukia protecting him all over again.

Even Uryu looked impressed by the attack.

"Nice one Rukia!" Ichigo shouted before running his off hand over his Asauchi to launch his own Okasen. He decided to start using more Hado instead of going into melee, as they provided a good area attack, and he actually had an easier time using them in a human body than in spirit form because the living body naturally suppressed most of his Shinigami spirit pressure, and what he lacked was control, not power.

"What the hell is going on here? Why are there so many Hollows?" The voice of Saido Eikichiro reached their ears.

"Saido-san! We don't know! Can you help?!" Rukia shouted back.

"Of course!"

They saw Saido joining the fight.

Uryu got a dark look on his face. "Shinigami…" he muttered under his breath, seemingly shifting his bow in the direction of Saido.

Ichigo noticed and quickly shouted. "Not now, Ishida, he's helping us and we need to focus on protecting the town!"

"Tch!" Uryu continued to fire at the Hollows, agreeing that it was more important to protect their town.

"Woah! A Quincy!" Saido remarked as he saw the arrows of light. "I didn't know there were any left! Fabulous!"

Ishida's face twitched, but he ignored Saido.

With the addition of their fourth combatant, the battle was proceeding more comfortably again.

Then Ichigo saw a sight that made his heart stop.

Orihime and Chad had both made their way to the edge of the park from two separate directions, and were watching with wide eyes at the massive battle happening in front of them.

Chad looked like he wanted to contribute. He made a fist, glancing at it, before looking at the Hollows, the large flashes of light, the rain of arrows, and swords, and seemingly realized his fists wouldn't be able to accomplish anything here.

Ichigo cursed. 'Damn, why did they come here?! Did they follow the Hollows over?'

Some Hollows also noticed and started to move in their direction. Because there were still more Hollows coming from farther away, they were soon surrounded as well.

Ichigo was alarmed and tried to get closer, but there were too many Hollows in the way. Then Rukia fired another Raikohou, clearing the path for him, and he got to Orihime just in time to protect her from a Hollow's bite.

With a quick motion, he grabbed her and Flash Stepped over to Chad's position. Chad was admirably fighting off a Hollow with his bare hands, but he was noticeably out of his league when the Hollow swiped at him and sent him crashing to the ground.

Ichigo grabbed him next and then rushed to Uryu's position, where the other Quincy could more effectively protect them as Uryu didn't need to move to fire his arrows.

"Damn it guys, you shouldn't have come here. Chad, this battle is way beyond you, and Inoue, you can't even fight right now!" Ichigo said with frustration. "Stay here with Ishida!"

"I-I'm sorry Kurosaki-kun," Orihime wilted under Ichigo's glare.

"I will follow your instructions, Ichigo," said Chad.

However, without Ichigo's presence, Rukia and Saido found themselves under a lot more pressure, and they were slowly being forced back towards Uryu as well.

"The Hollows are getting stronger!" Rukia shouted in warning when Ichigo rejoined the fight. Some of the later Hollows were noticeably more powerful than the earlier ones.

"Hold on for a moment! I'm going into spirit form!" Rukia announced and flashed over to Uryu. Then she swallowed a Gikon they'd bought from Urahara after visiting his shop to get Ichigo's Asauchi, and let the Chappy artificial soul take over her body.

"Damn!" Saido cursed when a Hollow wounded him in his leg, and he fell to his knee. Just before another Hollow landed a potentially fatal blow on him, Rukia released a tremendous wave of spirit pressure.

Saido's eyes widened as he sensed the power the Kuchiki princess was radiating, and the Hollow backed away in fear.

'This is like a tenth or higher ranking seat's level! I thought she was supposed to be unseated?' Saido thought. He himself wasn't strong enough to be seated, and if he had tried to take her back by force last month, wouldn't he have been defeated easily if she stopped pretending to be a human and actually fought him? But how was that even possible? He had thought she had transferred her power to the human boy, but now it turned out she was just hiding it, and both of them had Shinigami powers! If Rukia had simply gotten her powers back, then the human boy should have lost them.

He was even more surprised when Rukia was matched by a similar spike in spirit pressure from the human and he was still in his living body. What's more, Saido saw that the boy's sword was still thin like a regular sealed Zanpaktou instead of that huge thing he had before, which without knowing the truth, implied to him that the boy was suppressing even more power!

Many Hollows seemed to be unnerved by the spirit pressure, and started to stay back. There was a moment of respite as the battle seemed to pause.

After a while, there was a clear separation between the stronger and weaker Hollows, as the weaker ones stayed behind the stronger ones.

"Saido-san, thank you for your help so far. You are wounded, so please stay back now," said Rukia.

Saido nodded and limped over to Uryu, only to be shocked again as he realized the Quincy's spirit pressure was similar to the other two's. It had been unnoticeable from a distance, but now that he was right next to the boy, it was very obvious. Never having met a Quincy before, he didn't realize that all Quincy spirit pressures were like this, naturally difficult to sense and easily masked by spirit particles.

Uryu gave him a hateful glare, and Saido returned a weak smile. "Ah, the war's been over for two hundred years, right? We're not enemies anymore."

The Quincy pointedly ignored his statement, and Saido decided to back away just a little, in case he was wrong about the war being over. He only knew about the Quincy eradication war from the history books, and didn't know any of them were alive, if they were planning revenge, or if Soul Society had any standing orders to ensure they stayed eradicated.

'Oh shit…what if the war really isn't over, just continuing in secret? If I'm seen with this guy, will I be labeled a traitor? That would be worse than Kuchiki-san's crime of transferring powers to a human…shit! Could this be the real reason the higher ups didn't accept my report? If they knew there were Quincies hiding in Karakura town...and they suspected Kuchiki-san had defected…' Saido's thoughts raced as he contemplated finding an opportunity to escape.

In the end, his honor won out and he decided that as a Shinigami, he simply couldn't run off before they dealt with the Hollows.

Suddenly, the Hollows all looked up towards the sky. Many of them started to make noises and clasp their forelimbs together as if they were praying.

"Ichigo…this is…" Rukia said uneasily as she looked up at the sky where the Hollows were gazing.

"Shit!" Ichigo cursed as he realized what was happening. 'Was this Aizen's doing after all?'

The sky cracked and humongous fingers seemed to rip it apart from the other side.

A white mask emerged, revealing a titanic Hollow.

"What is that thing!" Uryu shouted. "That's a Hollow too?"

Saido's eyes were nearly popping out of their sockets as started to shake in fear. "M-m-menos G-grande!"

Chad and Orihime were similarly frozen in shock.

Overwhelming spirit pressure pressed down on all of them.

As if encouraged by the arrival of a famous general, the other Hollows all let out howls and looked like they were ready for action again.

From a distance, Urahara was watching the scene, together with his assistants.

"Should we help now?" the big bulky apron-wearing Tessai asked.

"Hmm…maybe we should wait a little longer. They don't seem to be in as much trouble as I'd thought," said Urahara.

"Aww, come on, I want to fight already!" said the boy assistant, Jinta, holding his big bat. His partner Ururu obediently stayed quiet, holding her cannon that was covered in seal paper.

Back with Ichigo and Rukia, the two of them shared a look.

"How do you want to handle this?" Ichigo asked.

"You and Uryu can take care of these small fry. I'll deal with the Menos," said Rukia after a short moment of contemplation. She had never actually fought a Menos before, as they were the jurisdiction of the elite among Shinigami. But she felt reasonably confident that she could win, after all the training she'd done with Ichigo over the past month, and his repeated claims about how strong she was in his dreams. In truth, the only reason she hadn't fought a Menos was because her rank wasn't high enough to be assigned to that kind of mission, but they both knew she was much stronger than her rank would suggest.

"But if you use that much spirit pressure, Soul Society—"

"It's fine Ichigo. Like Saido-san said, they already know where I am. They're coming for me no matter what. You, on the other hand, shouldn't use too much power here. Soul Society knows what I can do, but they don't know what you can do," said Rukia, referring to the true strength of Ichigo's Quincy powers, which they'd agreed should be best kept hidden from Soul Society and especially Aizen for as long as possible. While his Quincy nature would be impossible to hide for long, just as Shinigami didn't release their Shikai and Bankai without a clear need, it was better to keep trump cards hidden until they were needed.

"Alright," Ichigo said, then turned to shout towards Uryu. "Hey, Uryu! We need to deal with these other Hollows while Rukia fights the big-ass Menos!"

Orihime noticed that Ichigo called Rukia by her first name while the other girl was in earshot. They were so close! Were they really not dating as Rukia denied before?

Uryu nodded his agreement, then adjusted his glasses. His spirit bow elongated, as if he was preparing to take this even more seriously than before.

Then his face twitched. "When did I give you permission to use my first name, Kurosaki!"

"Thanks, Uryu! Make sure Orihime and Chad are safe!" Rukia also shouted using his first name, ignoring Uryu's complaint.

"You too, Kuchiki?! I thought you were the polite one!"

Orihime watched the exchange with a sweatdrop. It seemed Rukia was a lot less polite when not around their other school friends.

Soon the battle resumed in earnest.

Rukia flash stepped into the air towards the Menos, while Ichigo started chanting another Okasen.

Uryu concentrated and a large amount of spirit particles gathered towards his bow.

The prior battle made the area very rich in spirit particles and energy that he could use.

Then he unleashed a massive wave of arrows. Hundreds of arrows flew across the sky, each one dealing a severe wound to a Hollow.

Unfortunately a few of them were obliterated as he wasn't quite accurate enough to land non-fatal blows on this many targets, but Ichigo didn't fault him for that. The Shinigami-Quincy hybrid simply followed up and purified all the wounded Hollows quickly with Hado and strikes from his Asauchi.

Rukia herself arrived in front of the Menos just as it fully stepped out of the tear between dimensions.

She slashed into the mask of the Menos, but it barely scratched it. The mask was too thick.

'It's tough! I won't be able to cut it like this,' she thought.

The Menos' tongue shot out and tried to grab Rukia but she flashed away.

A quick incantation later, she fired a fully powered Raikouhou at the Menos.

The beam this time, now that she was in her Shinigami form, was a pillar of light larger than a building, and it smashed into the black mass of the Menos with great force.

The whole Menos was knocked back, and fell down, a large gorge of white revealed where the Raikoukou burned the black outer cloth of the Menos away.

When the Menos hit the ground, the whole area shook like a small earthquake.

The Menos roared in rage, then from its position lying on the ground, it's head lifted and it gathered a huge amount of spirit energy.

At this mouth, a ball of red light began to form.

Ichigo turned to see it and a sliver of fear ran through him.

It was even larger than Rukia's Raikouhou and she couldn't avoid it in time.

"Rukia!" Ichigo shouted in worry as the Cero engulfed her.

When it was over, Rukia landed back on the ground near Ichigo with slightly singed clothes, kneeling on one knee, casting healing Kido on herself.

"Ugh…I underestimated its power. My Enkosen wasn't enough to fully block the Cero," she said.

Ichigo ran over to inspect her.

"Don't worry, Ichigo, I'm fine. I'll finish healing in a few seconds, then I'll finish off this Menos."

"Are you sure? We got most of the small fry already, so we can help," said Ichigo.

"I can handle it," said Rukia, standing back up.

The Menos also got up and towered over them again. Then its tongue went out and it sucked with its mouth. All of the wounded Hollows that Ichigo hadn't managed to purify yet was sucked into its mouth and crunched into pieces.

"It's eating other Hollows?! No, it's healing itself with their spirit pressure too!" Uryu shouted with careful observation.

"It doesn't matter. I'll defeat it with my next move," said Rukia.

'Her spirit pressure is still rising! Is this Lieutenant Captain level?' Saido watched these people fight with a disbelieving expression, and realized that he was far out of his league here. He was so glad he got out of taking the second mission to apprehend the Kuchiki princess.

With a flourish, Rukia turned her Zanpaktou, and a white ribbon emerged from the hilt, tracing a circle.

"Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!"

A flash of light and wind burst from Rukia's position, as her spirit pressure rose dramatically.

When it was over, her Zanpaktou had become a beautiful pure white, and a cold air emanated from her.

The Menos began to power up another Cero when it was done eating all the other Hollows, but Rukia disappeared in a flash step, and reappeared just underneath it where its legs were, crouching with her sword held to the side.

"First Dance, White Moon," she intoned. A large circle had been traced on the ground around the Menos Grande.

Sheer cold began to freeze the ground, and the Menos roared in outrage. It turned its mask down and prepared to fire the Cero, but then it was flash frozen by a pillar of ice that reached the heavens.

Within seconds, the pillar of ice shattered into pieces that shattered again into yet smaller pieces, and the body of the Menos Grande shattered along with it.

Far away, Urahara observed the proceedings with a sharp eye. "It seems we weren't needed after all," he said, before turning to leave. His assistants followed, Tessai smacking Jinta when he complained.

When Rukia and Ichigo went back to check on Uryu and their friends, Saido was already long gone.

O O O

"What were you thinking, Kisuke? A Menos is too much, too soon!" Yoruichi said while standing on Urahara's desk.

The former Division 12 captain held up his hands in a gesture of innocence while sitting on his chair behind the desk, looking over data collected that day. "That wasn't me, Yoruichi. The bait wasn't supposed to attract a Menos. Although, it was arguably not enough. After all, a soul's spirit pressure grows the fastest when they're facing death, and Rukia took care it without much trouble."

"Oh really? And you didn't predict that the Menos Grande would be attracted by their spirit pressures released during the battle?"

"I really didn't. You know it's very rare to see Menos Grande in the Human World. Rather, if I had to guess, I would suspect Aizen having a hand in it."

"I still think it would have been better to approach them directly about training. We were going to do that anyway, why not just start a little earlier instead of waiting until they need us?"

"It's not that simple Yoruichi. Ichigo has been training well with Rukia and the Quincy boy, and Rukia's hiding the return of her powers. Until they are clearly threatened by Soul Society and unable to survive on their own, what reason do they have to accept training from suspicious characters like us?" Urahara shook his head. Then he continued.

"More importantly, by using Hollows, we were able to see that Rukia is indeed growing quickly as I suspected…but I also wanted to find out what's going on with Ichigo's powers. When a soul releases spirit pressure, some of it returns and brings traces of surrounding spirit pressure with it. Those traces can stimulate the soul's own spirit pressure. Given that Ichigo inherited the Hollow that infected Masaki-chan, the Hollow spirit pressures should have stimulated the Hollow inside him, which should have interfered with his Quincy powers. Masaki-chan's Quincy powers were crippled back when Isshin was suppressing the Hollow for her, and she was still weakened even when only residual Hollow spirit pressure was left after she gave birth to Ichigo. As you reported from observing his recent training, Ichigo has been struggling much more with his Quincy powers than a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to understand if the Hollow was acting up and causing problems for him."

Yoruichi listened while Urahara seemed to ramble on, lost in his thoughts and no longer paying attention to her.

"…by stimulating him with Hollow spirit pressure, I wanted to see the direct evidence of his Hollow interfering with his Quincy powers. However, it was unfortunately inconclusive. While the fact that he only used Shinigami powers further supports the hypothesis, it's also possible that he deliberately chose not to use Quincy techniques as the threat wasn't large enough. When Ichigo suddenly started using Quincy techniques a few weeks ago, I hoped he might be different from Masaki-chan, having been born with the Hollow inside him, and also having Shinigami spirit pressure of his own. In the ideal case, if he was unaffected by the Hollow, then we could consider removing Isshin's seal. But now that he is struggling with his Quincy powers too, his future development will be very tricky. Is it better for him to continue developing Quincy powers in the hopes that he can keep the Hollow suppressed, and keep Isshin's powers tied down? Or let him develop his Shinigami powers, which will inevitably draw out the Hollow inside due to the Hollowfication process? Is it even possible to suppress his Quincy side instead?"

Urahara then grabbed a piece of paper and started drawing diagrams and notes.

"I once thought that Quincies were opposite to Shinigami, while Hollows were opposite to Humans. That was the theory behind Isshin's gigai, using his Shinigami powers cancel out suppress Masaki's Quincy nature, while using the human part to suppress the Hollow, bringing them both to a neutral, powerless state. But this is wrong. Masaki didn't lose all of her powers—she simply had trouble using them without harming herself because of the Hollow spirit pressure—and Isshin's Shinigami spirit pressure instead helped her suppress the Hollow. Now Ichigo is able to use Shinigami powers even as a Quincy, while the Hollow is suppressed by Isshin. The equation doesn't add up."

On the paper he drew a horizontal line, and added three labels: 死, 人, 虚, representing Shinigami, Human, and Hollow.

Below the Shinigami he wrote a Plus symbol, below the Human was Zero, and below the Hollow was a Minus symbol.

"It seems that Shinigami and Hollow are the true opposites, cancelling each other out, with Human being neutral as the origin point. Indeed, my mistake was lumping Humans together with Plus souls. In fact, Humans don't become Plus souls until after they die, and Shinigami cannot use much of their powers while in a Gigai. Rather than Plus and Human belonging to the same group, it's that Shinigami are just more Plus than standard Pluses, while humans are neutral. But just how do Quincies fit into this? Why do Quincy and Hollow spirit pressures destroy each other?"

He wrote the 滅 character far above the other characters. "Destroy…" He murmured, tapping his pen on the desk.

"The opposite of destruction is creation. But Plus is not creation, and neither is Minus. The Minus is trying to fill a void by consuming Plus, but neither create anything new. But if the Minus is trying to consume Plus, why does it destroy Quincy?"

Then his eyes widened as he repeated himself.

"…destroy Quincy? Quincies destroy?"

He stared at the paper, then drew an oval around the Shinigami, Human, and Hollow characters. Beside the oval, he wrote another 滅 symbol, then drew a bigger encapsulation over both it and the other oval which contained the three symbols for Shinigami, Human, and Hollow.

Finally, he drew an arrow pointed line between the two 滅 characters.

"Destruction and creation…the opposite of a Quincy is itself! The Spirit King creates, and his descendants destroy…When a Minus tries to consume a Quincy, it's not the Minus Hollow that destroys it, it's Quincy destroying Quincy, the Hollow is only a catalyst! This is a different kind of Soul Suicide. For Shinigami souls, the Hollowfication process disrupts the boundary between the soul and the outside world when the soul shifts too suddenly back and forth between Plus and Minus, causing the soul to lose cohesion as an independent entity. That Plus or Minus represents a state of being for the soul itself, the fullness of its 'heart'. But for a Quincy, Plus or Minus represents the degree which the soul accepts or rejects the Spirit King's 'creation'. The neutral Quincy can live as a human on the material world as part of creation, yet using its power of Destruction on 'creation' on a small scale. The Plus Quincy can additionally gain Shinigami powers, fully accepting the world's cycle of life and death for what it is. The Minus Quincy outright rejects the whole world, instinctively struggling against the Spirit King's domain of 'creation' with its own 'creation', which causes the Spirit King's power of Destruction to erase the weaker Quincy from their domain. Creation and Destruction are relative, it all depends on whose 'domain' is being created or destroyed!"

Yoruichi tried and failed to follow what he was talking about, then looked at the half-crazed, ecstatic expression on Kisuke's face.

She meowed like a real cat, which Kisuke ignored, still writing more and more notes until the paper was filled with arcane symbols and complicated equations.

When he pulled out more papers and started writing on those while cross-referencing various data points on his computer, she sighed and walked away.

O O O

A/N: The "struggle" that Ichigo has been having which Yoruichi saw while stalking him is because of the spirit particle scattering exercise. But Urahara doesn't know about that, so to them it just looks like he's suddenly relying more on Shinigami powers and having trouble with Quincy techniques he should have already mastered.

Antex-The Legendary Zoroark: Thanks. It's been fun getting back into this. You were the only one actually right on the mark about the bait, it being a combination of Urahara and Aizen.

Murderleo38: It is not possible to release the seal. As explained in this chapter, the seal comes from Urahara and Isshin. To break it, Ichigo would need to be strong enough to defeat Isshin's spirit pressure, or kill himself and allow himself to Hollowfy. I don't know why people keep assuming that Gesshokuro lied, when he never lied in canon, only hid or gave partial explanations.

XXX Chaos Breaker XXX: Fullbringers are canon, so they have a place. How big of a role, I'm not sure yet. Most likely it'll have to do with the first substitute Shinigami's story and the Tsunayashiro clan, but I've not actually read that part, only summaries.

ZALAMBSAUCE: He already has Shinigami power. A Zanpaktou isn't a requirement to be a Shinigami.

LazyNekogami: First of all...it's impossible for Auswahlen to work that way. Masaki was an Echt Quincy, so she wouldn't have been chosen. Furthermore, if she could have been chosen, then all her kids would have died as well. They didn't die, therefore Isshin's statement is false. Even if he believes it, it's just propaganda or a baseless assumption.

Yhwach specifically said that Uryu was the only survivor of his Auswahlen, which means that Ichigo, Karin, and Yuzu weren't targeted in the first place. All of them were in fact Echt Quincies, despite Masaki's marriage to a non-Quincy. Why is this? The answer lies in Katagiri's comment about retaining the purity of the Ishida's line, which would have been lost if Masaki had not been cured using the original Quincy procedure. There are 3 key points to note about her comment. Point A is that Urahara lied or didn't know that an alternate procedure existed for curing Masaki, which was only inaccessible because Souken couldn't be found at the time, and Ryuken's mom didn't know how to perform it. Urahara said specifically that Masaki could never go back to the way she was as a pure Quincy and would have to live as a human forever, which was false based on Katagiri's comment. Point B is that purity isn't only about breeding with non-Quincies, as the hollowfication process itself does something to affect the purity of Quincies. However, if that was all, then both Ichigo and Masaki would have been taken by Auswahlen, not Masaki alone. Therefore, the "taint" must not have applied by the time Auswahlen was activated. Most likely because some time after Ichigo's birth and before Souken's death, Masaki had the Quincy procedure done to her to cure her, and Ichigo had never undergone serious Hollowfication because White was being suppressed the whole time, unlike Masaki who had temporarily formed a Hollow hole. This also means that breeding with Isshin did not cause the Kurosaki line to become impure, which is also supported by the fact that Ichigo could use Blut Vene instinctively with no training, something only Echt Quincies could do.

Secondly, there is no evidence whatsoever that Masaki had access to her powers until after Ichigo was born and White was transferred. For the purposes of this story though, Masaki was simply weakened.

As for fake Shikai and Bankai, being "weakened" is exactly what I'm describing, and Gesshokuro explained it the same way. Yumichika had a fake shikai that was produced by using a false name. Arguing about whether fully hollowfied Ichigo is "pure" or not requires a definition of what you consider "pure". It seems that I have a different definition from you. The Hollow is the zanpaktou, same with its Bankai. You cannot prove anything about Ichigo's Shinigami powers by observing the Hollow using its own Hollow techniques. Simply by being a Zanpaktou technique doesn't make it a Shinigami power. Gesshokuro is part of Zangetsu, and he uses Quincy powers. The same principle applies to White Zangetsu. A Zanpaktou is just an imprint of its wielder's spirit pressure. It is not intrinsically Shinigami. There weren't any Zanpaktous until they were invented, and they don't even need Shinigami souls to manufacture, seeing as White is made of many Hollow souls rather than Shinigami souls.

I actually wrote a 3000 word essay discussing the physics of Bleach and the above plus the nature of hybrids and spirit pressure in excruciating detail, and realized that this is pointless. Lol. I have an internally consistent theory which I am using for this story, which will be revealed in bits and pieces as they become relevant to the story, until the contents of that essay are no longer spoilers and I can publish it directly as a supplementary content. So I won't be arguing about this anymore.

Death Lantern: About Masaki, I disagree. See above for why. Yhwach never stole her powers, that was nothing more than propaganda or incorrect assumption by Urahara and Isshin. For FGT, yes that's a popular theory which is very relevant to this story.

777torn777: Haha, only if she gets a chance to explain herself.

Kaiya Azure: That's right. There are definitely hidden forces conspiring to make sure everything follows the script.

Pikanet128: Well, in the regular timeline, Ichigo didn't actually need an Asauchi until Zangetsu broke.

zeynel: Oh yeah. As Toshiro deduced in the chamber, Aizen killed the C46 even before the Ryoka invasion. His faked death came after. and his corpse was Kyoka Suigetsu itself. So there's no way he could use Kyoka Suigetsu's Shikai after he faked his death. How early exactly did he start giving out the orders? Who knows...

deathshade37: Thanks. Bleach has a lot of interesting stuff hidden beneath the surface, and this story is a way to explore all that. More will come soon.

Thanks to everyone else who reviewed!