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Fanfiction || Treading Icy Waters 22
Title: Treading Icy Waters
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Action/Suspense
Warnings: Occasional language, violence, gore.
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It begins directly before the Hueco Mundo arc and diverges from there.
Summary: The board has been laid out. The pieces have been set and moved. The pawns are scattered across the floor, and Ichimaru’s fingers are wrapped around a stark white bishop. “That’s another check, little taichou.” The game has only begun.
~*~
“No, I guess Rosebud is just a ... piece in a jigsaw puzzle ... a missing piece.”
-Orson Welles, Citizen Kane
~*~
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rosebud
~*~
Heavy breathing. In and out; in and out. It was all that met Hitsugaya’s ears as he landed soundlessly by the cement sign where this whole mess had started. It was his own breathing, and it only reminded him of the fact that he couldn’t hear Kurosaki Karin’s.
Gently setting her limp body on the ground behind the sign, he took a spare second to make sure the ice glazed over her stomach was still intact. She’d live, for the moment. How long that moment would be, even he couldn’t know.
A distinct cracking sound pulled him back to the situation at hand, and he shakily pulled himself back to his feet. Now able to look over the sign, his handiwork was more than obvious. Had he overdone it? The entire park was now a mass of giant, jagged icicles, whether they were hanging from trees or roofs or bursting upward from the ground. The whirlwind had been replaced by an unstable cylinder shooting upward into the air. It was this that the noise was emanating from, and Hitsugaya knew without a doubt that Buitre would soon free himself.
No backup had arrived, and Hitsugaya hadn’t expected it to. Even as the icy cylinder shattered, he calmly lifted Hyourinmaru and called upon his bankai.
~*~
“What are you doing, Gin?”
Ichimaru didn’t answer at first, cocking his head as he got a better look at the most prominent woman in his afterlife. “I’m jus’ doin’ what ya did, ne? Ya chose the little taichou ova me, so I chose the little taichou ova ya. I wasn’ done playin’ with ‘im anyway.”
“That’s a load of bull,” the Tenth Division fukutaichou countered in frustration. “Why would you of all people want to do this to Taichou?”
“The real question, Ran-chan, is why ya have ta ask. Ya know, yo’ right; that really was bull. Ya never chose anyone at all, did ya? If ya had, ya would’a suspected me first. Ta assume ya know me so well, that’s jus’ wishful thinkin’.”
Matsumoto couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t believe Ichimaru would say such things; he’d always spoken like that, beating endlessly around the bush. What was so hard to believe was that, after all this time she’d spent idolizing him, Ichimaru Gin had finally been wrong. Maybe he was right that she shouldn’t have to ask why, and maybe he was right that she didn’t know him as well as she’d thought.
But to accuse her of being indecisive? After everything she’d done, she thought he’d know her better.
And there it was. She really didn’t know him, did she? She was beginning to wonder if she ever had. Ichimaru hadn’t changed. The man standing before her was the same that had saved her in Rukongai, that she had worked so hard to live up to in Seireitei, and that she had watched disappear into Hueco Mundo. They were all the same man, but they were not the man she thought they were. And that was the reason he was here now, to tell her so. To give her closure.
Ha ha. Now that was weird. Gin giving someone closure…? She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Is it so wrong to wish for something?” she very nearly whispered, not willing to let this stranger know how close she was to tears.
“People only wish fer stuff they can’ have, an’ the only wishes that ever come true are the ones in fairy tales.”
“…Really,” Rangiku sighed, her tone defeated. “Then I guess … my only wish right now is that I could defeat you.”
“Ain’ no shootin’ stars out tonight,” he smiled the same old smile with a strange new glint to it. “Still wishin’, Ran-chan?”
“It’s the only thing you ever taught me to do.”
In one fell swoop, Haineko was aimed at Ichimaru’s chest, and without hesitation, Matsumoto called forth her bankai.
~*~
“It’s not my fault, dammit!”
Kurosaki Ichigo was not pleased with the situation at hand. He was bruised; he was battered; and now Rukia was making him deaf too. Really. Yelling in someone’s ear was the last thing a person should do when both people in question were hiding behind a building. It probably didn’t help that he’d yelled back, but sometimes a guy’s gotta stick up for himself, even against the angry shinigami lady mentor who was ten times older than him.
“Who’s to blame doesn’t matter. We need to find out how to get past that defense of his,” Rukia scolded in return. Ichigo opened his mouth to protest when she whirled around to face him, violet eyes narrow and dangerous. “No, we are not going to charge in again. If it didn’t work the first time, it’s not going to work the second time!”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” the substitute shinigami valiantly defended himself.
“Do you have an idea then?” she cut him off.
“Uh … no.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Even the two of us together couldn’t do anything!” Ichigo hissed in frustration. “It’s like there’s a sphere all around him and it’s impossible to get through!”
“It’s the scythe blades. The moment anyone enters that bubble, he can immediately stop them. Sode no Shirayuki doesn’t freeze the target inside and out like Hyourinmaru; I can’t stop his movements long enough for you to get in a fatal blow. Unless you can get in close enough without being detected, we don’t stand a chance.”
A loud crashing sound erupted down the block, and Ichigo cringed. The arrancar was getting closer. “What do you mean ‘get in close enough?’”
“Don’t you pay any attention?” the smaller shinigami huffed, smacking her taller ward upside the head. “That sphere you were talking about is how he senses attacks, even if he can’t see them! If you’d been watching him while you were hacking away, you would have realized he knew every move you made and the width of the sphere allowed him time to block it easily!”
Ichigo mulled this over for all of two seconds. He was just about ready to ignore every word of warning that had come out of her mouth when an idea hit him. That seemed to be how it usually ended up, didn’t it? Just when he was ready to push her aside, she always managed to scrounge up the exact kind of inspiration he needed.
“Oi, Rukia! If he can sense attacks does that mean … if I hid my reiatsu I could sneak into that sphere and get close enough for a surprise attack?”
“Hide your…? Don’t be ridiculous, Ichigo! The day you can hide your reiatsu-”
“I can,” Ichigo finally got his own chance to cut off his companion. At the sight of Rukia’s stunned expression, he almost laughed. “Between you, Renji, Toushirou, and Getaboshi, did you really think I could spend all this time looking through your dumb romance novels? All of you have been bugging me about that crap, so … I fixed it.”
“You fixed it,” she repeated in disbelief. “Just like that?”
“…With a little help,” he conceded, mind travelling back to a certain, less-than-pleasant conversation he’d had with a certain, less-than-pleasant shinigami taichou not so long ago.
For just one, perfect moment, Rukia’s stunned expression molded itself into a prideful grin. And then she punched him in the nose.
“How dare you call my romance novels dumb! Jane Eyre was a literary masterpiece! It said so on the cover!”
The hell? An arrancar was on its way over at that very moment, and she was punching him over some cheesy classic literature? “What the hell does it matter?!”
“I knew it! You just don’t understand! Running off half-cocked with your big, ol’ sword all the time! You wouldn’t know how important it is to me! So just go ahead and do it again, why don’t you?! Run off and be the big hero, and I’ll beat this guy by myself!”
She’d officially lost her marbles. Shouting at the top of her lungs about things that didn’t make a lick of sense. The random smashing of nearby street signs and fences had stopped, and Ichigo knew the arrancar had heard them arguing. It didn’t make any sense! “But we just decided to-!”
“No! You just decided! And I’m sick and tired of it! Don’t hold yourself back because of me! Just go already!”
She glared him down, and those violet eyes held the promise of a zanpakutou in his gut if he didn’t comply. And then those same eyes flitted for just a fraction of a second in the direction of the arrancar, and suddenly it all made sense.
“You think so?! Well, then maybe I will!”
With an angry huff, Ichigo whirled around, hands gripped tight around Zangetsu’s hilt, and took off. Rukia watched until he was out of sight, and soon she couldn’t even feel his reiatsu.
“Had a little lover’s spat, did you?” The amused voice fluttered down from above, and Rukia jerked her head upward. “You shinigami sure are dumb.”
Long, braided hair now a fan of feathers worthy of the regal peacock and red eyes peering playfully from behind a bony, white masque, the arrancar seemed more feminine than ever, looking for all the world like a costumed circus performer. This illusion was broken, however, by the deadly blades he held in each hand, fanned out like one would hold a hand of cards.
“Oh well. You win some, you lose some, right?” He shot the shinigami a warm smile. “After I kill you, I’ll find him, and you guys can kiss and make up in your next lives, okay?”
Unwilling to give in to his taunting, Rukia only strengthened her stance. She had to wait for exactly the right moment. Grinning like a maniac, the arrancar charged forward, fanned out blades moving a mile a minute. It took everything she had just to block the curved, scythe-like blades, and she only managed to attempt one offensive swipe. As expected, he blocked it less than a second after it pierced that damn sensory bubble of his, but even though the attack didn’t meet its mark, it still fulfilled its purpose. With the arrancar’s full attention on her, she decided the right moment had come.
“Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!” she shouted, the zanpakutou undergoing its beautiful transformation. “Next Dance, Hakuren!”
The wave of ice shot forward from her zanpakutou’s blade. From that close range, there was no chance the arrancar could dodge, even if he knew it was coming. The ice overwhelmed him, completely coating him, an ice sculpture in midair. But even as the ice covered him, it was already breaking apart. There’d only be at the most a two second time interval to work with. Two seconds. So where the hell was-?
“Getsuga Tenshou!”
Oh. There he was.
The violet eyed shinigami didn’t flinch as two enormous, crescent-shaped reiatsu blades burst past on either side of her head. The following surge of air blinded her for only a moment, but when the force calmed and she heard the unmistakable screaming, she knew the job had been done. The sight that met her first was blood. A fountain of it. The next was the image of the arrancar writhing in agony, minus two arms.
“Check it out, Rukia! I disarmed him!”
The teenaged redhead received no reply as Rukia calmly, elegantly, severed the arrancar’s head from its shoulders, and all four pieces dropped toward the ground, disintegrating as they fell. She resealed and sheathed Sode no Shirayuki, and by the time she’d finished, Ichigo was by her side again.
“That was even cheesier than Renji.”
“Someone had to say it.”
“Let’s get going. I can still feel Hitsugaya-taichou’s released reiatsu.”
Ichigo’s eyes widened, and he nodded. Unwilling to waste another second, the two of them took off.
~*~
“So the kiddies are gone, huh?”
Urahara casually stretched out his shoulders before casting a glance down at the woman arrancar bleeding on the pavement. After Tat-chan had gotten a little payback, he had sent them running along. Orihime’s talents would no doubt be needed. Besides, there was hardly any reason for them to stick around. Lovely Miss Cuervo would be dead shortly.
“The little princess and her knight in shining armor have other duties to attend to. You might want to save your breath for some less obvious observations. You don’t have much left, after all.”
“Au contraire, Kisuke-san,” the arrancar replied, voice bordering on seductive. “I have all the breath I need. I’m glad I was the one who found you; I get to see your face when I give you Aizen-sama’s message.”
Oh. Well, that was rather unexpected. “…Aizen? Really now. What could he possibly have to say to little, old me?”
“He’s curious about how you’re taking all of this, you know. The little, dying taichou being forced out of Seireitei… Everyone’s putting all of their faith in you … again.”
“Do get to the point,” the blond man suggested, emphasizing his feelings toward her chosen subject with a gentle tap of his sandal against her shredded ribs. She gasped in pain, but hastily recovered, locking eyes with the professed salesman.
“You felt him just now. Seireitei’s going to be all over him by tomorrow. They know he’s here, and they’re going to come to collect. You’re not going to give him up until he’s a catatonic lump on the pavement, understand? The little brat may be Gin’s toy, but you’re Aizen-sama’s.”
Urahara frowned, jaw set tight. “I don’t follow Aizen’s orders.”
“That’s rich! You’re closer to Aizen-sama than I am!” the dying arrancar gurgled between ecstatic laughing fits. “You were the scapegoat; you gave him his tools! You’ll do what he wants, just as you always do! Because you want to see it too, and you know it! You’re just like him! And when you realize just how right I am, I’ll be laughing at you from he-!”
She never finished. She couldn’t, considering the fact that Benihime had been shoved between her teeth and right through the back of her throat. Kisuke pulled his zanpakutou lose, wiping off the blood on his jacket.
“Silly girl. No one laughs in hell.”
~*~
Ichimaru Gin was no longer smiling.
Before him stood none other than Matsumoto Rangiku. Matsumoto Rangiku … with a bankai.
Haineko’s blade had not dissolved into ash as it usually did, instead growing in length and gaining nine conspicuous notches lined up along its right side. The wind around them had begun to pick up, and, Ichimaru noted, the temperature was slowly rising. A trickle of sweat touching upon her brow told him how much effort it took her just to summon it. She couldn’t have had it for longer than a few days.
It was clear to both of them that, no matter what abilities Rangiku had gained, she could not win against him.
“Now why’d ya go an’ do somethin’ like that? An’ after everythin’ the little taichou did ta keep ya safe too.”
“I may not know you as well as I thought, Gin, but clearly you don’t know me very well either,” she countered, her tone unwavering and her eyes narrowed dangerously before all of her built up tension melted to make way for a sad smile. “I was never a very good listener.”
Without another word, Matsumoto charged forward to swing Haineko vertically through Ichimaru’s center. A flash, and Shinsou blocked the attack without any effort. But before he could push her away, the tip of Haineko’s blade all the way to the first notch blew up in his face.
“One!” Rangiku shouted as she pulled away on her own. There was no dust or debris because they were too high for the secluded explosion to reach the ground, but what did obscure her vision was a great deal of ash and smoke. She hesitated for just a second, just long enough for the cloud of ash to thin enough to see through. Gin’s silhouette darkened the particles before him, and she hastily shouted again. “Two! Three!” More segments of her zanpakutou separated from the rest as she slashed and slashed, all exploding upon impact with their designated target, erupting into more ashes. “Four! Five! Six!”
Damn! She didn’t have the luxury of strategizing. She knew she could hold back until the last minute, charge the segments for larger explosions like she had while training with Taichou, but she just couldn’t charge them long enough for a battle like this. Nothing was enough against Ichimaru Gin. Separate explosions wouldn’t be good enough. Now that the element of surprise was gone, her only hope was to overwhelm him before he could react, igniting each segment of the blade with so little time in between that the explosions molded into one.
“Seven! Eight! Nine!”
This time she didn’t wait for the sign of a silhouette. As soon as the last segment vanished, she raised the hilt into the air, and the giant visage of a tiger head appeared in the massive ash storm. “Umarekawari!”
The tiger opened its jaw wide and slammed it shut around its target before every individual ash in the cloud exploded.
Matsumoto’s arms fell limp at her sides as she bent forward slightly, heaving long, heavy breaths. Please, oh please, let him be gone. Please. She watched the debris settle in exhausted anxiety. It was taking far too long.
Finally, the smoke began to thin, and she could once again make out a silhouette. She squinted, trying to see more detail, leaning further forward.
Then came the pain.
A familiar squelching sound met her ears, and, gray eyes wide in understanding, she slowly lowered her head to see the long, perfectly aimed zanpakutou spearing her right through the gold ringlet and down between her breasts.
“Ran-chan, Ran-chan. Yare, yare.” Misted eyes flickered slightly before moving back up to meet her opponent as he sauntered forward, the tears in his uniform and a cut over his eye being the only signs he’d been attacked at all. “Those pretty boobs o’ yours were meant fer better things than this. Why’d ya think I left ya behind in the first place?”
Before Rangiku could contemplate the meaning behind those words, he retracted Shinsou, snapping the golden ringlet from her neck. The pain burst anew, and it took everything she had not to double over. She didn’t even notice that Haineko had reverted back to its sealed form. But if she had expected another blow, she was even more thrown off when Gin sheathed his blade at his side and walked past her.
She whirled around, confusion and frustration clear on her face even as her hand desperately clutched her wound. “What are you-?!”
He didn’t turn around. “Are ya goin’ ta help yo’ little taichou, or are ya jus’ goin’ ta wish he could beat me too?”
A gasp, shuffling, a blade returning to its sheath.
When Ichimaru finally turned around, she was gone.
~*~
This was not what he’d expected.
Sure, his reiatsu was running rampant, completely out of control, but that shouldn’t have meant anything. His shikai and bankai should have just been the same as when he had no limiter. That was all there was to it. And yet, here he stood, only a few minutes into his bankai, and the lotus petals behind him were shattering at least three times the speed they should have been.
His reiatsu wasn’t only beyond his control; it was slipping away before he could use it.
He didn’t have enough time to defeat this arrancar. If he could just encase him with sennen hyourou the victory would be fairly easy, but as it was, only two petals remained. He didn’t have the time nor could he hold onto his reiatsu long enough. Even the damn ryuusenka he’d attacked Buitre with hadn’t worked to its full capacity, freezing only the arrancar’s upper left abdomen. Shattering the frozen portion alone would rid him of his last two remaining lotus petals. At the very least, the bastard could only use one arm now, but that really wasn’t a bright enough silver lining to boost Hitsugaya’s morale. After all, he only needed one arm to swing that monstrosity around.
Forced from his analysis by the battle at hand, he folded a wing to block the oncoming ring and its deadly blades and opened it wide to set the weapon completely off course. Another petal shattered. That left only one.
Damn it! At this rate, he was done for. But he couldn’t lose; he couldn’t. Not with Kurosaki’s sister in the condition she was in. The moment his bankai ceased functioning the ice holding her together would begin to melt. If he lost … and that damn arrancar was still around when it happened… No. He couldn’t let it happen, and he wouldn’t. He didn’t have any choice. He’d have to use his final option.
His bankai was done for either way. Better to go out with a bang.
With that thought in mind, he returned his full attention to the battle. The vulture arrancar was pissed, and that last block seemed to have finally driven him over the edge. He ran blindly forward, and his unfrozen arm, talons and all, was ready to shred through Hitsugaya’s face in an instant.
Before he had the chance, Hitsugaya finally twisted Hyourinmaru so that the flat side of the blade was facing up, and the frozen half of the arrancar’s torso blasted apart. At the same time, the last petal broke apart as well, and the former taichou dredged up every ounce of surrounding water he could to fuel his unstable reiatsu.
A bright ball of reiatsu surrounded him in a brilliant, blinding cocoon, and as soon as it had condensed as far as it was able, it shot outward in a merciless wave, obliterating everything in its path.
The arrancar didn’t stand a chance.
~*~
“Whoa! I didn’t know he could do that!”
Ichigo and Rukia arrived just before the unexpected reiatsu explosion, and the substitute shinigami was pretty damn impressed. It didn’t last long.
“That’s because he can’t.”
He turned around just in time to see Matsumoto Rangiku step into shunpo and reappear next to Hitsugaya only a second before he fell into her outstretched arms.
“Taichou…?” Hyourinmaru had resealed itself, landing on the ground between them. The ice that had held his wounds at bay was gone, and he was bleeding freely into her shihakushou, a nasty shoulder wound from the looks of it. “Taichou!”
He coughed. “Kuro-” But as soon as he opened his mouth, the coughing got worse, and he quickly halted before deciding on a way to get his point across in fewer syllables. “Karin.”
“Karin? Who’s-?”
“Karin! What is she-?! Get Orihime over here now!”
“She’s on her way! I’ll bring her over!”
Rangiku still didn’t a clue who they were talking about, but if Orihime was here, she was sure the situation would be resolved. “It’s fine, Taichou. Inoue’s helping right now. She’s safe. But I can’t say the same for you.”
“It’s … gone. Reiatsu,” he hiccupped. If he hadn’t been so obviously dazed, she might have thought the sound was funny. But when she thought about it, he was right. She couldn’t feel his reiatsu. At all. It was just like when he’d been wearing Kisuke-jii’s stupid dog collar.
She was already opening her mouth to tell him to shut up and conserve his energy, when he suddenly jerked, and she very nearly dropped him. “Hey! What’re you-?!”
“Idiot.”
It was then that she remembered his blood wasn’t the only blood draining out all over her shihakushou right now. “It’ll be fine,” she stated curtly, as if the act of saying it made it so. “I’m more worried about you, Mr. I-Can’t-Even-Stand-On-My-Own-Two-Feet.”
“Told you. I’d choose … for you. Won’t leave you behind … so … don’t have to choose.”
Their conversation earlier that day… When he’d asked her who she’d choose…
That sneaky, little brat! He asked an awful question like that, and she’d gotten so mad, she actually threatened him! And then now, when she was most worried about him, he just nonchalantly turned it around like this!? From “If you could only save one of us, which one would it be?” to “I refuse to die so that way you’ll never have to make that choice.” And he didn’t say anything about it before he left! He just accepted her threat like he deserved it! She didn’t know he had it in him to be so … so … cheeky!
“Hmph. You really are just a brat. Don’t you remember? You already left me behind!” she scolded, but her rough tone didn’t last long. “But I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? Even though I said that, I already chose. After all … you were the only one I followed.”
But when she looked down, he had already passed out, and she could only sigh, grateful for every shallow breath she felt against her bosom.
~*~
Umarekawari - Rebirth, reincarnation.
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Action/Suspense
Warnings: Occasional language, violence, gore.
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It begins directly before the Hueco Mundo arc and diverges from there.
Summary: The board has been laid out. The pieces have been set and moved. The pawns are scattered across the floor, and Ichimaru’s fingers are wrapped around a stark white bishop. “That’s another check, little taichou.” The game has only begun.
“No, I guess Rosebud is just a ... piece in a jigsaw puzzle ... a missing piece.”
-Orson Welles, Citizen Kane
~*~
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rosebud
~*~
Heavy breathing. In and out; in and out. It was all that met Hitsugaya’s ears as he landed soundlessly by the cement sign where this whole mess had started. It was his own breathing, and it only reminded him of the fact that he couldn’t hear Kurosaki Karin’s.
Gently setting her limp body on the ground behind the sign, he took a spare second to make sure the ice glazed over her stomach was still intact. She’d live, for the moment. How long that moment would be, even he couldn’t know.
A distinct cracking sound pulled him back to the situation at hand, and he shakily pulled himself back to his feet. Now able to look over the sign, his handiwork was more than obvious. Had he overdone it? The entire park was now a mass of giant, jagged icicles, whether they were hanging from trees or roofs or bursting upward from the ground. The whirlwind had been replaced by an unstable cylinder shooting upward into the air. It was this that the noise was emanating from, and Hitsugaya knew without a doubt that Buitre would soon free himself.
No backup had arrived, and Hitsugaya hadn’t expected it to. Even as the icy cylinder shattered, he calmly lifted Hyourinmaru and called upon his bankai.
“What are you doing, Gin?”
Ichimaru didn’t answer at first, cocking his head as he got a better look at the most prominent woman in his afterlife. “I’m jus’ doin’ what ya did, ne? Ya chose the little taichou ova me, so I chose the little taichou ova ya. I wasn’ done playin’ with ‘im anyway.”
“That’s a load of bull,” the Tenth Division fukutaichou countered in frustration. “Why would you of all people want to do this to Taichou?”
“The real question, Ran-chan, is why ya have ta ask. Ya know, yo’ right; that really was bull. Ya never chose anyone at all, did ya? If ya had, ya would’a suspected me first. Ta assume ya know me so well, that’s jus’ wishful thinkin’.”
Matsumoto couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t believe Ichimaru would say such things; he’d always spoken like that, beating endlessly around the bush. What was so hard to believe was that, after all this time she’d spent idolizing him, Ichimaru Gin had finally been wrong. Maybe he was right that she shouldn’t have to ask why, and maybe he was right that she didn’t know him as well as she’d thought.
But to accuse her of being indecisive? After everything she’d done, she thought he’d know her better.
And there it was. She really didn’t know him, did she? She was beginning to wonder if she ever had. Ichimaru hadn’t changed. The man standing before her was the same that had saved her in Rukongai, that she had worked so hard to live up to in Seireitei, and that she had watched disappear into Hueco Mundo. They were all the same man, but they were not the man she thought they were. And that was the reason he was here now, to tell her so. To give her closure.
Ha ha. Now that was weird. Gin giving someone closure…? She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Is it so wrong to wish for something?” she very nearly whispered, not willing to let this stranger know how close she was to tears.
“People only wish fer stuff they can’ have, an’ the only wishes that ever come true are the ones in fairy tales.”
“…Really,” Rangiku sighed, her tone defeated. “Then I guess … my only wish right now is that I could defeat you.”
“Ain’ no shootin’ stars out tonight,” he smiled the same old smile with a strange new glint to it. “Still wishin’, Ran-chan?”
“It’s the only thing you ever taught me to do.”
In one fell swoop, Haineko was aimed at Ichimaru’s chest, and without hesitation, Matsumoto called forth her bankai.
“It’s not my fault, dammit!”
Kurosaki Ichigo was not pleased with the situation at hand. He was bruised; he was battered; and now Rukia was making him deaf too. Really. Yelling in someone’s ear was the last thing a person should do when both people in question were hiding behind a building. It probably didn’t help that he’d yelled back, but sometimes a guy’s gotta stick up for himself, even against the angry shinigami lady mentor who was ten times older than him.
“Who’s to blame doesn’t matter. We need to find out how to get past that defense of his,” Rukia scolded in return. Ichigo opened his mouth to protest when she whirled around to face him, violet eyes narrow and dangerous. “No, we are not going to charge in again. If it didn’t work the first time, it’s not going to work the second time!”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” the substitute shinigami valiantly defended himself.
“Do you have an idea then?” she cut him off.
“Uh … no.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Even the two of us together couldn’t do anything!” Ichigo hissed in frustration. “It’s like there’s a sphere all around him and it’s impossible to get through!”
“It’s the scythe blades. The moment anyone enters that bubble, he can immediately stop them. Sode no Shirayuki doesn’t freeze the target inside and out like Hyourinmaru; I can’t stop his movements long enough for you to get in a fatal blow. Unless you can get in close enough without being detected, we don’t stand a chance.”
A loud crashing sound erupted down the block, and Ichigo cringed. The arrancar was getting closer. “What do you mean ‘get in close enough?’”
“Don’t you pay any attention?” the smaller shinigami huffed, smacking her taller ward upside the head. “That sphere you were talking about is how he senses attacks, even if he can’t see them! If you’d been watching him while you were hacking away, you would have realized he knew every move you made and the width of the sphere allowed him time to block it easily!”
Ichigo mulled this over for all of two seconds. He was just about ready to ignore every word of warning that had come out of her mouth when an idea hit him. That seemed to be how it usually ended up, didn’t it? Just when he was ready to push her aside, she always managed to scrounge up the exact kind of inspiration he needed.
“Oi, Rukia! If he can sense attacks does that mean … if I hid my reiatsu I could sneak into that sphere and get close enough for a surprise attack?”
“Hide your…? Don’t be ridiculous, Ichigo! The day you can hide your reiatsu-”
“I can,” Ichigo finally got his own chance to cut off his companion. At the sight of Rukia’s stunned expression, he almost laughed. “Between you, Renji, Toushirou, and Getaboshi, did you really think I could spend all this time looking through your dumb romance novels? All of you have been bugging me about that crap, so … I fixed it.”
“You fixed it,” she repeated in disbelief. “Just like that?”
“…With a little help,” he conceded, mind travelling back to a certain, less-than-pleasant conversation he’d had with a certain, less-than-pleasant shinigami taichou not so long ago.
For just one, perfect moment, Rukia’s stunned expression molded itself into a prideful grin. And then she punched him in the nose.
“How dare you call my romance novels dumb! Jane Eyre was a literary masterpiece! It said so on the cover!”
The hell? An arrancar was on its way over at that very moment, and she was punching him over some cheesy classic literature? “What the hell does it matter?!”
“I knew it! You just don’t understand! Running off half-cocked with your big, ol’ sword all the time! You wouldn’t know how important it is to me! So just go ahead and do it again, why don’t you?! Run off and be the big hero, and I’ll beat this guy by myself!”
She’d officially lost her marbles. Shouting at the top of her lungs about things that didn’t make a lick of sense. The random smashing of nearby street signs and fences had stopped, and Ichigo knew the arrancar had heard them arguing. It didn’t make any sense! “But we just decided to-!”
“No! You just decided! And I’m sick and tired of it! Don’t hold yourself back because of me! Just go already!”
She glared him down, and those violet eyes held the promise of a zanpakutou in his gut if he didn’t comply. And then those same eyes flitted for just a fraction of a second in the direction of the arrancar, and suddenly it all made sense.
“You think so?! Well, then maybe I will!”
With an angry huff, Ichigo whirled around, hands gripped tight around Zangetsu’s hilt, and took off. Rukia watched until he was out of sight, and soon she couldn’t even feel his reiatsu.
“Had a little lover’s spat, did you?” The amused voice fluttered down from above, and Rukia jerked her head upward. “You shinigami sure are dumb.”
Long, braided hair now a fan of feathers worthy of the regal peacock and red eyes peering playfully from behind a bony, white masque, the arrancar seemed more feminine than ever, looking for all the world like a costumed circus performer. This illusion was broken, however, by the deadly blades he held in each hand, fanned out like one would hold a hand of cards.
“Oh well. You win some, you lose some, right?” He shot the shinigami a warm smile. “After I kill you, I’ll find him, and you guys can kiss and make up in your next lives, okay?”
Unwilling to give in to his taunting, Rukia only strengthened her stance. She had to wait for exactly the right moment. Grinning like a maniac, the arrancar charged forward, fanned out blades moving a mile a minute. It took everything she had just to block the curved, scythe-like blades, and she only managed to attempt one offensive swipe. As expected, he blocked it less than a second after it pierced that damn sensory bubble of his, but even though the attack didn’t meet its mark, it still fulfilled its purpose. With the arrancar’s full attention on her, she decided the right moment had come.
“Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!” she shouted, the zanpakutou undergoing its beautiful transformation. “Next Dance, Hakuren!”
The wave of ice shot forward from her zanpakutou’s blade. From that close range, there was no chance the arrancar could dodge, even if he knew it was coming. The ice overwhelmed him, completely coating him, an ice sculpture in midair. But even as the ice covered him, it was already breaking apart. There’d only be at the most a two second time interval to work with. Two seconds. So where the hell was-?
“Getsuga Tenshou!”
Oh. There he was.
The violet eyed shinigami didn’t flinch as two enormous, crescent-shaped reiatsu blades burst past on either side of her head. The following surge of air blinded her for only a moment, but when the force calmed and she heard the unmistakable screaming, she knew the job had been done. The sight that met her first was blood. A fountain of it. The next was the image of the arrancar writhing in agony, minus two arms.
“Check it out, Rukia! I disarmed him!”
The teenaged redhead received no reply as Rukia calmly, elegantly, severed the arrancar’s head from its shoulders, and all four pieces dropped toward the ground, disintegrating as they fell. She resealed and sheathed Sode no Shirayuki, and by the time she’d finished, Ichigo was by her side again.
“That was even cheesier than Renji.”
“Someone had to say it.”
“Let’s get going. I can still feel Hitsugaya-taichou’s released reiatsu.”
Ichigo’s eyes widened, and he nodded. Unwilling to waste another second, the two of them took off.
“So the kiddies are gone, huh?”
Urahara casually stretched out his shoulders before casting a glance down at the woman arrancar bleeding on the pavement. After Tat-chan had gotten a little payback, he had sent them running along. Orihime’s talents would no doubt be needed. Besides, there was hardly any reason for them to stick around. Lovely Miss Cuervo would be dead shortly.
“The little princess and her knight in shining armor have other duties to attend to. You might want to save your breath for some less obvious observations. You don’t have much left, after all.”
“Au contraire, Kisuke-san,” the arrancar replied, voice bordering on seductive. “I have all the breath I need. I’m glad I was the one who found you; I get to see your face when I give you Aizen-sama’s message.”
Oh. Well, that was rather unexpected. “…Aizen? Really now. What could he possibly have to say to little, old me?”
“He’s curious about how you’re taking all of this, you know. The little, dying taichou being forced out of Seireitei… Everyone’s putting all of their faith in you … again.”
“Do get to the point,” the blond man suggested, emphasizing his feelings toward her chosen subject with a gentle tap of his sandal against her shredded ribs. She gasped in pain, but hastily recovered, locking eyes with the professed salesman.
“You felt him just now. Seireitei’s going to be all over him by tomorrow. They know he’s here, and they’re going to come to collect. You’re not going to give him up until he’s a catatonic lump on the pavement, understand? The little brat may be Gin’s toy, but you’re Aizen-sama’s.”
Urahara frowned, jaw set tight. “I don’t follow Aizen’s orders.”
“That’s rich! You’re closer to Aizen-sama than I am!” the dying arrancar gurgled between ecstatic laughing fits. “You were the scapegoat; you gave him his tools! You’ll do what he wants, just as you always do! Because you want to see it too, and you know it! You’re just like him! And when you realize just how right I am, I’ll be laughing at you from he-!”
She never finished. She couldn’t, considering the fact that Benihime had been shoved between her teeth and right through the back of her throat. Kisuke pulled his zanpakutou lose, wiping off the blood on his jacket.
“Silly girl. No one laughs in hell.”
Ichimaru Gin was no longer smiling.
Before him stood none other than Matsumoto Rangiku. Matsumoto Rangiku … with a bankai.
Haineko’s blade had not dissolved into ash as it usually did, instead growing in length and gaining nine conspicuous notches lined up along its right side. The wind around them had begun to pick up, and, Ichimaru noted, the temperature was slowly rising. A trickle of sweat touching upon her brow told him how much effort it took her just to summon it. She couldn’t have had it for longer than a few days.
It was clear to both of them that, no matter what abilities Rangiku had gained, she could not win against him.
“Now why’d ya go an’ do somethin’ like that? An’ after everythin’ the little taichou did ta keep ya safe too.”
“I may not know you as well as I thought, Gin, but clearly you don’t know me very well either,” she countered, her tone unwavering and her eyes narrowed dangerously before all of her built up tension melted to make way for a sad smile. “I was never a very good listener.”
Without another word, Matsumoto charged forward to swing Haineko vertically through Ichimaru’s center. A flash, and Shinsou blocked the attack without any effort. But before he could push her away, the tip of Haineko’s blade all the way to the first notch blew up in his face.
“One!” Rangiku shouted as she pulled away on her own. There was no dust or debris because they were too high for the secluded explosion to reach the ground, but what did obscure her vision was a great deal of ash and smoke. She hesitated for just a second, just long enough for the cloud of ash to thin enough to see through. Gin’s silhouette darkened the particles before him, and she hastily shouted again. “Two! Three!” More segments of her zanpakutou separated from the rest as she slashed and slashed, all exploding upon impact with their designated target, erupting into more ashes. “Four! Five! Six!”
Damn! She didn’t have the luxury of strategizing. She knew she could hold back until the last minute, charge the segments for larger explosions like she had while training with Taichou, but she just couldn’t charge them long enough for a battle like this. Nothing was enough against Ichimaru Gin. Separate explosions wouldn’t be good enough. Now that the element of surprise was gone, her only hope was to overwhelm him before he could react, igniting each segment of the blade with so little time in between that the explosions molded into one.
“Seven! Eight! Nine!”
This time she didn’t wait for the sign of a silhouette. As soon as the last segment vanished, she raised the hilt into the air, and the giant visage of a tiger head appeared in the massive ash storm. “Umarekawari!”
The tiger opened its jaw wide and slammed it shut around its target before every individual ash in the cloud exploded.
Matsumoto’s arms fell limp at her sides as she bent forward slightly, heaving long, heavy breaths. Please, oh please, let him be gone. Please. She watched the debris settle in exhausted anxiety. It was taking far too long.
Finally, the smoke began to thin, and she could once again make out a silhouette. She squinted, trying to see more detail, leaning further forward.
Then came the pain.
A familiar squelching sound met her ears, and, gray eyes wide in understanding, she slowly lowered her head to see the long, perfectly aimed zanpakutou spearing her right through the gold ringlet and down between her breasts.
“Ran-chan, Ran-chan. Yare, yare.” Misted eyes flickered slightly before moving back up to meet her opponent as he sauntered forward, the tears in his uniform and a cut over his eye being the only signs he’d been attacked at all. “Those pretty boobs o’ yours were meant fer better things than this. Why’d ya think I left ya behind in the first place?”
Before Rangiku could contemplate the meaning behind those words, he retracted Shinsou, snapping the golden ringlet from her neck. The pain burst anew, and it took everything she had not to double over. She didn’t even notice that Haineko had reverted back to its sealed form. But if she had expected another blow, she was even more thrown off when Gin sheathed his blade at his side and walked past her.
She whirled around, confusion and frustration clear on her face even as her hand desperately clutched her wound. “What are you-?!”
He didn’t turn around. “Are ya goin’ ta help yo’ little taichou, or are ya jus’ goin’ ta wish he could beat me too?”
A gasp, shuffling, a blade returning to its sheath.
When Ichimaru finally turned around, she was gone.
This was not what he’d expected.
Sure, his reiatsu was running rampant, completely out of control, but that shouldn’t have meant anything. His shikai and bankai should have just been the same as when he had no limiter. That was all there was to it. And yet, here he stood, only a few minutes into his bankai, and the lotus petals behind him were shattering at least three times the speed they should have been.
His reiatsu wasn’t only beyond his control; it was slipping away before he could use it.
He didn’t have enough time to defeat this arrancar. If he could just encase him with sennen hyourou the victory would be fairly easy, but as it was, only two petals remained. He didn’t have the time nor could he hold onto his reiatsu long enough. Even the damn ryuusenka he’d attacked Buitre with hadn’t worked to its full capacity, freezing only the arrancar’s upper left abdomen. Shattering the frozen portion alone would rid him of his last two remaining lotus petals. At the very least, the bastard could only use one arm now, but that really wasn’t a bright enough silver lining to boost Hitsugaya’s morale. After all, he only needed one arm to swing that monstrosity around.
Forced from his analysis by the battle at hand, he folded a wing to block the oncoming ring and its deadly blades and opened it wide to set the weapon completely off course. Another petal shattered. That left only one.
Damn it! At this rate, he was done for. But he couldn’t lose; he couldn’t. Not with Kurosaki’s sister in the condition she was in. The moment his bankai ceased functioning the ice holding her together would begin to melt. If he lost … and that damn arrancar was still around when it happened… No. He couldn’t let it happen, and he wouldn’t. He didn’t have any choice. He’d have to use his final option.
His bankai was done for either way. Better to go out with a bang.
With that thought in mind, he returned his full attention to the battle. The vulture arrancar was pissed, and that last block seemed to have finally driven him over the edge. He ran blindly forward, and his unfrozen arm, talons and all, was ready to shred through Hitsugaya’s face in an instant.
Before he had the chance, Hitsugaya finally twisted Hyourinmaru so that the flat side of the blade was facing up, and the frozen half of the arrancar’s torso blasted apart. At the same time, the last petal broke apart as well, and the former taichou dredged up every ounce of surrounding water he could to fuel his unstable reiatsu.
A bright ball of reiatsu surrounded him in a brilliant, blinding cocoon, and as soon as it had condensed as far as it was able, it shot outward in a merciless wave, obliterating everything in its path.
The arrancar didn’t stand a chance.
“Whoa! I didn’t know he could do that!”
Ichigo and Rukia arrived just before the unexpected reiatsu explosion, and the substitute shinigami was pretty damn impressed. It didn’t last long.
“That’s because he can’t.”
He turned around just in time to see Matsumoto Rangiku step into shunpo and reappear next to Hitsugaya only a second before he fell into her outstretched arms.
“Taichou…?” Hyourinmaru had resealed itself, landing on the ground between them. The ice that had held his wounds at bay was gone, and he was bleeding freely into her shihakushou, a nasty shoulder wound from the looks of it. “Taichou!”
He coughed. “Kuro-” But as soon as he opened his mouth, the coughing got worse, and he quickly halted before deciding on a way to get his point across in fewer syllables. “Karin.”
“Karin? Who’s-?”
“Karin! What is she-?! Get Orihime over here now!”
“She’s on her way! I’ll bring her over!”
Rangiku still didn’t a clue who they were talking about, but if Orihime was here, she was sure the situation would be resolved. “It’s fine, Taichou. Inoue’s helping right now. She’s safe. But I can’t say the same for you.”
“It’s … gone. Reiatsu,” he hiccupped. If he hadn’t been so obviously dazed, she might have thought the sound was funny. But when she thought about it, he was right. She couldn’t feel his reiatsu. At all. It was just like when he’d been wearing Kisuke-jii’s stupid dog collar.
She was already opening her mouth to tell him to shut up and conserve his energy, when he suddenly jerked, and she very nearly dropped him. “Hey! What’re you-?!”
“Idiot.”
It was then that she remembered his blood wasn’t the only blood draining out all over her shihakushou right now. “It’ll be fine,” she stated curtly, as if the act of saying it made it so. “I’m more worried about you, Mr. I-Can’t-Even-Stand-On-My-Own-Two-Feet.”
“Told you. I’d choose … for you. Won’t leave you behind … so … don’t have to choose.”
Their conversation earlier that day… When he’d asked her who she’d choose…
That sneaky, little brat! He asked an awful question like that, and she’d gotten so mad, she actually threatened him! And then now, when she was most worried about him, he just nonchalantly turned it around like this!? From “If you could only save one of us, which one would it be?” to “I refuse to die so that way you’ll never have to make that choice.” And he didn’t say anything about it before he left! He just accepted her threat like he deserved it! She didn’t know he had it in him to be so … so … cheeky!
“Hmph. You really are just a brat. Don’t you remember? You already left me behind!” she scolded, but her rough tone didn’t last long. “But I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? Even though I said that, I already chose. After all … you were the only one I followed.”
But when she looked down, he had already passed out, and she could only sigh, grateful for every shallow breath she felt against her bosom.
Umarekawari - Rebirth, reincarnation.