One Stupid Question (Patreon)

“That’s what a Soul Reaper does, idiot!”

“Then just take the powers back!”  Ichigo replied, yelling back into Rukia’s face.  “I bet I can stab you through the heart just as well as you stabbed me!”

All was silent for a moment as the two seeming teenagers stared each other down.  Thankfully, no pedestrians had chosen that specific park for recreation that day as the scene was decidedly odd.  An orange-haired boy with an intense frown on his face wearing period clothing with a giant sword strapped to his back was glaring down at a much smaller girl wearing a high school uniform whose countenance could only be described as ‘pissed off.’

Rukia’s arm cocked back to deliver a violent smack to Ichigo’s head before all movement stopped abruptly.  Why couldn’t he just give the powers back?  They were hers, after all, and it would take barely any effort to consolidate a considerable amount of his spiritual energy into his Zanpakuto…

That was what they were for, obviously.

Sure, she was in a gigai, but it was the newest model, patterned exactly after the human body, so thrusting a soul slayer through it should have the same result of shifting the spiritual power…  Rukia frowned as she observed the beginnings of a smug satisfaction crawling over Ichigo’s face.  If he knew she hadn’t thought of the extremely obvious solution to their problem, she’d never hear the end of it.

Smack!

“Ow, Damnit!  What was that for?”

“You didn’t have to sound so thoughtless about it!  I thought you were grateful for me loaning my powers to you so you could save your family.”  Giving the outward expression of an upset and emotionally injured girl, Rukia turned and gave the substitute Shinigami the cold shoulder.

Ichigo scowled and looked away, a half-regretful, half-thankful expression on his face.  “Whatever.  Do you want your powers back or not?  I was just saying that I’m not a Shinigami, it’s not my job to do this crap.”

Rukia sighed and turned back around, grabbing Ichigo and dragging him slightly further into the woods of the park.  She was thankful they’d been called out to the edge of town to deal with that Hollow, now.  It wouldn’t do to give off as much spiritual energy as this would in such a populated area as the center of Karakura town.

“You put that Konpaku in your body, right?”  Rukia asked, getting a nod in return.  “Good.  When you give me my powers back, you should be pretty weak so I’ll have to escort you back to your house.”

Ichigo’s perpetual frown deepened at the thought of the crippling weakness he’d felt when facing down that first hollow, but he grunted his ascent anyway.  He was a student and he didn’t have the time, effort, or requisite lack of sanity to run around fighting monsters.  It wasn’t his jobto worry about anyone beyond his friends and family, and definitely not everyone in the freaking world!

Still, it’d been…well, not fun, but exciting at least.

Frightening, disturbing, and at times, horrifying beyond rational thought, but exciting.  He looked at Rukia as she took off her school jacket, readying herself for the transfer of her powers back to their owner.

“Hey, chibi-gami,” The orange-haired teen called, snapping Rukia’s head up with the beginnings of an indignant response on her lips.  The retort died when she saw Ichigo’s solemn expression and relaxed grin.  “Thanks.”

“No problem, idiot,” Rukia snorted as she positioned herself in front of the massive block of metal that was Ichigo’s zanpakuto.  “Now, concentrate all of your reiatsu and force it into your blade, just like you were about to strike a hollow.  My soul should take care of the rest of it.”

Ichigo nodded, his face a mask of concentration and focus.  Rukia stiffened as she heard a distant roaring in her ears, completely unlike that of a hollow.  It reminded her of a rampant flood, drawing closer and closer as-

The shinigami’s eyes widened in shock as reiatsu erupted around the orange-haired teen, flowing down his sword with hundreds of thousands of pounds seemingly crushing her into both silence and stillness.  Distantly, her mind registered the shock and awe that the torrent of surging energy brought on.  His power levels were absolutely insane.  It was completely unbelievable that a relative child in with not even a month’s experience could have this extreme-

The power was his!

Her power was only serving as a catalyst, bringing his own to the forefront, which meant if he stabbed her with that sword…  Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to object, yell, shake her head, anything.

Then, the massive soul slayer’s tip pierced her heart and her world went white.

The situation Rukia and Ichigo suddenly found themselves in was utterly unique.

Under any normal circumstances, the borrowing or loaning of powers was expressly forbidden due to the complications that could arise when doing so.  Loaning powers to a human was absolutely unheard of, for similar reasons.  Rukia’s gigai was another complication, though neither knew at that point in time as Urahara had modified it without informing them

The third, and strangest of conditions, was another of Urahara Kisuke’s ‘little surprises.’  The Hogyoku, the ‘Breakdown Sphere,’ had been lodged in a dormant state inside Kuchiki Rukia’s soul without her knowledge or permission.  As Ichigo’s power pierced Rukia’s gigai and into the core of her being, that same power woke the gem from it’s long sleep.

Blocks away, a certain shop owner, black cat, hospital manager, and single father looked up in abject alarm.  In another direction, a group of outcast soul reapers shot up from their resting positions as a black dread spread over them from the disturbingly familiar feel of the waves of energy that slapped against their senses.

The specially designed gigai, which had slowly been absorbing Rukia’s reiatsu over the past weeks, now surged with a flood of power and began draw Ichigo’s energy in reflexively.  The bond that Rukia had forged in loaning her powers to Ichigo days earlier was awash with power, widening as the energy Ichigo poured into Rukia was poured back into him.

All the while, the Hogyoku was rocked and fluxed by the sudden explosion of chaotic reiatsu.  Then, the orb did something that Urahara had denounced as impossible:

It woke up.

By the time the unlikely collection of former Shinigami, Quincy, Vizards, and a few curious Hollows that had been in the area, there was nothing left but a massive crater, reiatsu energy burns, and a disintegrating portal to the realm of Hueco Mundo.

Kisuke gulped as he looked upon the angry countenance of the Kurosaki patriarch.  Yoruichi sighed as her senses scanned the area for anything that could possibly be left of the two kids…and came up with absolutely nothing.  The vizards looked on in confusion as a great, wrathful pummeling commenced.  One of the last remaining Quincy stared in exasperation, thankful that at least his son had been intelligent enough to stay away from this disaster waiting to happen.

Still, Kisuke’s screams of agony made his day.

Six Months Later

Outskirts of Sereitei, The Court of Pure Souls:

Jidanbo stared.

It was all he could do as an enormous black hole was torn in the sky, allowing a massive figure cloaked in darkness with a white mask entrance to the edge of the city proper.  Something warm trickled down his legs as the Menos Grande’s attention was drawn, inexorably, to his comparatively tiny person with all of the attention an ant eater would give a particularly tasty-looking ant.

“No you don’t!”

The voice cut through the mountainous reiatsu like a shaft of light through impenetrable darkness.  Similarly, the shaft of tightly controlled reiatsu that emerged from behind the monstrous Hollow, cut through its arm with disturbing ease.  Unbelievably, Jidanbo thought he saw a flash of fear in the beast’s eyes as it’s arm disintegrated into a cloud of swirling red particles.

The wound, which bore a deep blue and reflective icy scab, turned out to be the least of it’s worries when an absolutely miniscule figure suddenly appeared from a flash step right before it’s eyes with a cocked fist.  Even from the distance he was at, the gate-keeper could perceive a faint glow of white energy, but couldn’t hear the whispered cry of-

Shiroyuki no Cero!

The destruction wrought by that searing beam of reishi was jaw-dropping in its scope and scale.  The lack of any substantial bleed-off of energy was noted in some back portion of Jidanbo’s brain that hadn’t stalled in shock.  The little amount of stray bolts that there was struck directly below the massive hollow, only adding to his internal estimation of the white figure’s control of her power.  Of course, his estimation of that power’s potency shot off the scale as the air around him froze like an arctic breeze.  And that wasn’t even counting what happened to the Hollow.

Jidanbo shuddered.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” A voice said suddenly causing the gate-guard to jump a foot into the air and spin on the speaker abruptly.  Who could have snuck up on him-?!

“Rukia can be a real terror when she lets loose like this,” The figure commiserated as Jidanbo spun to see…eyes widened as the gatekeeper’s heart almost stopped.  Compared to him, the man leaning against the wall was slight and lanky, but the size of the stranger wasn’t anything to judge his strength by…even Jidanbo could feel the reiatsu bleeding off the odd individual.

But that wasn’t the horrifying part.

No, the fear and disgust Jidanbo felt came from the ceramic-like mask the stranger wore over his untamed bizarre, bleached mane of hair.  Unlike any hollow he’d seen before, though, this beast seemed completely human in form and thought…other than the slight paleness of its skin.  The hollow reiatsu that swirled around him brought a certain darkness even to the stainless white of his uniform.

Then he noticed it, the beast, had brought friends.

The other two weren’t anything as impressive as the first, but Jidanbo felt power flowing from them all the same.  A…scruffy individual wearing at least a dozen hollow masks over a coat of wiry fur, but his reiatsu glowed as clean and pure as any Shinigami.