Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of its characters. They belong to Tite Kubo and whoever else actually owns it and I make no money from writing this. This story however is mine and is not to be replicated, reposted, or copied in any way without my consent. Thank you.
...
How It Begins…Or How It Ends?
.
For nearly two minutes nothing but silence reigned over the teens. "
WHAAAAAAAAT!"
...
Yoruichi picked herself up from where she had been blasted away from her cushion by the force of the two teens' shrill exclamation, laughing all the way. Their faces were priceless. Of course, the purple-haired woman hadn't missed the way Ichigo's reiatsu had fluctuated the moment she had given them her explanation. If she didn't know any better, she would have sworn that it actually felt…excited.
And not just excited in the giddy sense of the word either. More like excited in the sense
she was when Urahara had her in a seemingly cat-nip induced state of euphoria. Thoughts of cat-nip
with her lover came to mind unexpectedly and had her off in a near-drooling dreamland for a few seconds before her old student's reiatsu flared again, and this time it was more annoyed than anything else.
The Shihouin princess smiled. She would always be able to tell what her hot-headed Bankai pupil was thinking even if she had her eyes closed. His reiatsu gave away his emotions more than any other thing did; though it took someone with exceptional sense—like herself and Urahara—to be able to understand the emotion it was trying to convey. She continued smiling as she brushed herself off and sat back down in front of the teens, one of which was looking at her with so much hope it reminded her exactly of her old encounters with Soi-Fong.
"Wha…what did you say?" Tatsuki asked. Her voice cracked in her excitement and she coughed embarrassedly.
Once again, Yoruichi couldn't help but give the young woman a fanged grin. "I said: 'you've been training your soul to be able to become a Soul Reaper.' Or did I stutter?" She put her index finger to her chin with a pout, like she was rethinking what she had said just to make sure.
Tatsuki almost had a heart attack. "No, you didn't stutter! Are you serious! Can I really become a Soul Reaper!"
This time it was Urahara to smile. "Oh boy oh boy, I'm sorry Arisawa-san. It appears I left that out of my answer. You have my deepest condolences!"
He was soon twitching on the floor from Ichigo's sudden punch. "Dammit Hat-and-Clogs, don't you think that's critical information!" He fumed while standing over his old sensei's form as he got up.
"Yeesh, a punch to the face this time? Unexpected," Kisuke murmured as he righted himself. With a quick wave of his fan towards himself he was back to his old self again. "Of course! I was just waiting for the right time to tell you!"
BAM! Yoruichi looked over at her once again floor-laden lover with more than a smidgen of pity.
Sometimes Kisuke… your honesty is a bad thing. "And you didn't think when she was crying was the right time! What the hell were you thinking!"
Tatsuki was getting redder with each passing word, but it wasn't out of anger.
I can't believe I let Ichigo see me cry! Desperate to get back on topic, she quickly rerouted any other anger Ichigo may have against his teacher of ten days. "How do I become a Soul Reaper?"
The room went quiet.
The vein in Tatsuki's forehead throbbed violently. "How. Do. I. Become. A. Soul. Reaper?" She reiterated, her anger quickly finding its way back to the surface. Ichigo scrambled to his seat but the two powerful beings across from them merely looked back at her calmly.
"I believe Kurosaki-san knows how," Urahara stated, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
She looked over at him sharply but from the look on his face, he didn't know what the shopkeeper was talking about. Then she could
see the realization hit him... because the blood drained from his face.
"You don't mean…"
Urahara regarded him evenly from above his fan. "She has no Shinigami powers inside her, so the Shattered Shaft method is not an option. Therefore, there is but one other way for her to obtain the power her soul needs to stabilize itself."
That had Tatsuki confused. "Stabilize…itself…?"
"You have been training your soul for a good deal of time now Arisawa-san," the ex-captain started, "and the amount of power you have gained is unhealthy to a regular human soul. As you have experienced earlier, your reiatsu sought out both mine and Kurosaki-san's power and did indeed try to attach itself to them. Your soul is seeking stability, and as such it was even trying to release itself from your body prematurely. Since it has no powers of its own, and also no ability to control reishi, or spiritrons as you know them, it is seeking a zanpakutou's spirit in order to balance its growing power.
"Put simply, what you lack is a balanced inner world. When Kurosaki-san was in danger of becoming a Hollow, his zanpakutou's spirit guided him in the correct path to save himself. You however, have no such spirit to give your soul guidance. It's blindly reaching out into the world to anything that it senses has the thing it needs. That is why you nearly died when it gripped onto Kurosaki-san's."
They both looked up in surprise at that.
How does he know about that? "A soul that attempts such a thing would instantly destroy its chain of fate to complete its mission and latch on to whichever Soul Reaper's reiatsu it found. However, it would not succeed. You would have instantly become a Hollow, and even in a best-case scenario you would have become an Obsessed Spirit."
Tatsuki paled, as did Ichigo.
"What you need, Arisawa-san," Urahara explained seriously, "is to have a zanpakutou driven into the center of your being, and for the Soul Reaper using it to insert some of their power into you. Kurosaki-san is familiar with this method, as it is what Kuchiki-san used to give him his powers originally," he finished.
"But if that hadn't have worked I would have died! The same thing could happen to Tatsuki!" Ichigo yelled as he jumped up from his seat.
Urahara sighed patiently. "Unfortunately, that would be a scenario even if she
did have Shinigami powers within her. You know this as well, Ichigo."
The orange-haired Soul Reaper stopped whatever rebuttal he had been formulating in mid-thought. Urahara had never called him by his first name before. Never.
He was dead serious about this.
Ichigo fell back onto his cushion heavily and put a hand to his forehead to stable his unsteady head. "So you're saying…if we
do do this, and try to let her obtain the power of a Soul Reaper, then there's a chance she'll die. But if we
don't do it, and let her continue on like this, eventually her soul will kill itself trying to get that power anyway?"
Yoruichi's cat-like eyes softened towards the undoubtedly scared young man. She could see the struggle he was going through right then, and it brought a pang of guilt to her heart. He had become as close as a son to her, no matter how strange that may sound, and seeing him in such obvious discomfort over something that directly affected
his life this time, and not the lives of things like Soul Society, his friends, or justice, hurt her in a way she hadn't felt since Soi-Fong fell to her feet at the end of their battle.
She knew what had happened. He had just discovered something that was worth pursuing in his life. Something
other than fighting. And just when, even for those few fleeting moments, he thought he could make something out of it, that something was put on the pedestal between life and death.
A pedestal where both possibilities were simply a gamble… and death was the wager.
Tatsuki noticed Ichigo's tightly clenched hands in his lap with a growing sense of unease.
I'll…die…? All of a sudden Ichigo's gaze hardened with determination and he looked up sharply, nearly making her jump right off her seat from both his look and the sudden movement. When those steely amber eyes were then fixed on her she felt a knot form in her stomach, something else started forming too, and that one was much more pleasant.
"Tatsuki, do you trust me?"
His serious tone washed into her and she was left wide-eyed at his question. "O-Of course Ichigo! Why wouldn't I trust you!"
His dark gaze deepened further, both arousing and disconcerting her further at the same time. In one fluid movement he pulled the skull medallion from his pocket and slammed it against his chest. She saw his body fall to the ground lifelessly as his soul disconnected from it and his powerful Soul Reaper form stood above her, the same serious expression still etched into his face as he held an unfurled Zangetsu over his shoulder.
"Well then, let's get this started…"
...
They stood in the underground training area that resided below Urahara's precious candy store in pregnant silence. While Tatsuki was still awed by the large expanse of land
under the ground even though she had seen it before, Ichigo and the others were wearing much darker expressions.
This could be the beginning of something wonderful, or quite simply…the end.
Ichigo looked down at Zangetsu in his white-knuckled grip with a wordless plea.
Please Old Man, I know my Hollow may still have you through a loop, but please, if you can hear me…lend me your power one more time. Please give me the strength I need to do this…and the control I need to finish it. I can't afford to mess this up Old Man, I can't…. He looked over on a whim to see Tatsuki still enraptured by the size and sophistication of the training area, and sighed softly.
She still has no idea what this could do to her. "Are you all ready?" Urahara asked gently, yet forcefully at the same time. Only Kisuke Urahara would ever be able to pull off such a combination and still be considered convincing. His voice snapped Tatsuki to attention and she looked over at them for the first time since they had climbed down, and just then did she realize how serious they all were taking this.
"H-Hey, relax guys! You're all looking at me like I could die at any time!" She joked nervously, and tried not to break into a cold sweat when Ichigo's stormy brown eyes locked on to hers and drove the point home.
Just to be sure, he voiced it aloud. "Tatsuki, this is a hit or miss thing. If this doesn't work, you really
will die."
And I can't stand the thought of you gone, not after we finally found something to work with. He didn't dare voice his thoughts though. As stupid as it may sound, he didn't want to jinx anything, mainly this procedure, but also the future.
For
both of them.
"Like I said before Ichigo, I trust you!" She chirped confidently and punched him in the shoulder playfully.
He could tell she was nervous, her reiatsu said that much, but her words were not lies, he could also tell that much. From beneath the scowl that was once again on his face, he felt a small light of happiness shine through. This person in front of him really
did trust him, and she wasn't trusting him with just any odd thing.
She was trusting him with her
life.
"Okay then. Arisawa-san, what you need to do is try to relax, concentrate on your meditation until you are in a state between your non-existent inner world and reality. This needs to be a conscious decision on both of your parts, so it would be best if you held his zanpakutou as well when he prepares to stab you. Your inner world should react instinctively to his power as it flows into you, so what I need you to do is make sure that you keep your world stable. As you know Kurosaki-san doesn't have the best control over his reiatsu so if you don't have a good connection then he could unintentionally cause damage to your soul before it's completed. That, and you only want the minimal amount of power possible for your transformation."
Tatsuki raised an eyebrow at the shopkeeper's explanation. "Why only the minimum?"
Ichigo may be dense sometimes, but he was in no way stupid. "Because Tatsuki, if I give you too much of my power, or if you
take too much of my power, then like Rukia was, I'll be severely weakened for a time. I know you hate being reminded of this…but if I get too weak…
he will try to take over." His grip tightened on his sword. "He promised me that…"
The young woman had to physically keep herself from losing all the blood in her head. It wasn't just herself she was putting at risk by doing this. If something went wrong… she could be unleashing the strongest Hollow in the world…
And thus killing her friend in the process.
Finally, the gravity of the situation seemed to dawn on her, and her expression hardened into her fighting scowl.
There was no way. No way in
hell was she going to allow that to happen.
"So if this works, I'll be fine right? When I get Ichigo's Soul Reaper power I'll be out of the woods?" She asked, just for clarification.
Urahara did another joyous fan wave with a way-too-perky smile. "Correct! Since you have been training your soul for so long, not to mention the fact that it's been absorbing Kurosaki-san's reiatsu without anything to show for it, it's gotten so desperate for it it's even to the point of trying to absorb it forcefully. That considered, instead of just gaining borrowed powers, your soul
should directly assimilate it immediately and change itself accordingly. What that means, of course, is that your soul will permanently change itself in accordance with the power you should have given to you!"
"And nothing permanent will happen to
me?" Ichigo asked skeptically.
"Correct again! If not for the gigai I loaned Kuchiki-san when she was in her weakened state, she would have regained her powers in no time! And even if she
had when you were still using those powers, you wouldn't have been affected. You see, what many Soul Reapers fail to realize is that their power can't be defined as strictly 'theirs.'
"Their power is a result of training their spiritual energy, pure and simple. By offering that to someone else through their zanpakutou, that's simply a way of reducing the time needed to obtain the Soul Reaper's form. All a Soul Reaper is, is a being of intense spiritual energy and all she did when she stabbed you was insert some spiritual energy already supercharged with the correct training into you. She didn't lose any of that herself, she just gave some to someone else. In this case: you. When her reiatsu would have recharged nothing would be different about her because she still had the training, thus when Abarai-san said you stole Kuchiki-san's powers, he was gravely mistaken!"
Ichigo looked like he was ready to stab his oversized sword into the shopkeeper's head. "So basically, if you hadn't screwed Rukia up with that gigai of yours…none of that other crap would have happened…?"
Urahara grinned. "In a word: yes. But thanks to that an even greater crisis was averted!"
BAM! Ichigo gaped in surprise at Urahara's fallen form…and in even greater surprise at the person who had done it to him.
Tatsuki.
"Just where…where do you get off playing puppeteer like that!" She screamed at the eccentric man.
Urahara sighed as he adjusted his hat from where it had been knocked away by Tatsuki's punch. "When people experience of tragedies, I have often heard them say, 'If only I had known sooner, I could have done something…' but when people are given that chance, barely any rise to the occasion. Manipulation is something that is hard to understand, but…certain manipulation isn't manipulation at all.
"All I have ever done is help people along on a mission they have wanted to accomplish anyway, but along the way their sense of justice, the thing that sent them on that quest in the first place, had a chance to be called to an even greater battle for even greater injustices. I am sincerely sorry for what I did, and I have told Kurosaki-san that before." He smiled. "I got an elbow to the face then too," he added lightly.
A reluctant laugh was forced from Tatsuki at that. "I can imagine."
There was silence again, but this time it was far less foreboding. It was companionable.
"Well, I think it's time you began," Yoruichi interjected, for the first time since they went underground.
Ichigo nodded. "Yeah."
Without even needing to be told, Tatsuki shut her eyes and began the exercise that had become as familiar to her as breathing. She felt herself get lighter and lighter, but this time, instead of falling into that void within herself, she kept herself on the edge. With great difficulty she opened her eyes to the real world, and was able to keep both within her vision. Ichigo held out his sword and took a deep breath to steady himself for what was to come, but during that Tatsuki suddenly rushed forward and pressed her lips against his. His eyes shot open in shock but closed just as quickly as he deepened the kiss and reveled in the calm fury that was all Tatsuki.
He felt just as lightheaded as she was, but whether that was from lack of air or joy he couldn't say. It was almost as if he could touch her inner world right then, like for that one moment they were sharing something that both their souls recognized and wanted. In that moment Tatsuki had never been closer to him than she was right then, and he found he liked it that way. He wanted to be with her.
He would
not let her die.
When she pulled away from him, just as reluctantly as he was to let her go, she gave him a warm smile. Against all the laws of the universe, Ichigo couldn't help but give her a smile back.
"Just wanted to give you a taste of what's to come," she whispered to him huskily, "after this is done."
Not nearly satisfied with that statement, Ichigo rushed forward and before she had any time to recover, had meshed himself to her body and lips with more force and passion than she had thought possible. Fire exploded throughout her body from the sensation of her smaller body being completely molded to his, and the liquid lightning flowing from her tingling lips to her thighs had her knees buckling. She could sense her lungs starving for air but right then, she just couldn't care.
If she had died right then, she would have thought her life well worth it.
Ichigo was the one to instigate the end this time, and pulled himself away from her, leaving her unsteady body only a few seconds to recover. Somehow, she managed to right herself before she completely swooned. Leaning forward until he was mere centimeters away from her ear, he whispered, "There.
That was a taste of what's to come."
She shivered in delight unintentionally.
No more words were said, instead they retook their previous positions and Tatsuki gently grabbed the inhumanly sharp edge of Zangetsu. Her balance was easily attained between her worlds and as they looked into each other's eyes, a quick nod was all the warning they gave themselves.
In one smooth thrust, Ichigo had embedded Zangetsu into Tatsuki's chest just as she pulled on his blade to help it along.
Yoruichi and Urahara were thrown across the training area from the massive explosion of light and reiatsu that took place next. Dust was thrown everywhere as the enormous wind brought forth from the transfer enveloped the concealed room and threw the artificial environment into chaos.
Tatsuki was floating. She was wading in an ocean of emotion. Her inner world instantly realized the power being offered and did exactly as Urahara had said it would. It tried to assimilate it immediately. Now, Tatsuki was swimming in a seemingly endless river of power that she had recognized somewhere along the line as Ichigo's inner reserves.
This power made Urahara look like a feeble old man.
She also realized that if what she was in was indeed Ichigo's power, than this was what it took to hold off the beast he had within him. If this power was drained too completely, the Hollow within would swallow him whole. The thought sent shivers through her. If Ichigo was this powerful and could still summon more thanks to his Hollow, then she trembled to think of what his Hollow was capable of.
Still, in this place his emotions were like the words of a book to her, and she could read them as well as she could hear her own thoughts. The kiss they had shared just seconds before they had begun was still foremost on his mind, and thus, in his reiatsu. His care for her astounded her, for she had read when these feelings had blossomed, and was extremely surprised by the jump they had taken in such a short time. But when she thought about it, it really wasn't that hard to figure out why.
She had been his friend for the longest time. She had been there when his mother had died, when he was growing up, when he gained his Soul Reaper powers…when he saved Orihime. In some way, shape, or form, she had been with him through the steps of his life, even if sometimes it was as an object in the background. She was confusing to him, which made her chuckle when she saw that, but at the same time she saw that it was that confusion that made him want her more. He had known her for so long and yet he didn't know everything about her, and that was what he wanted to do.
He wanted to spend the time to know her. To know every indecent thought, every selfish word, and far more physically: every sensual bump and curve she had hiding on the toned body that was distinctively hers.
The shivers those emotions evoked were far more desirable.
She would not die here. She had promised herself that. She was about to cut off the flow when she found that even though she wanted to, her soul wanted more. She was about to panic when the flow of power coming from Ichigo stopped abruptly with complete and utter control, but before it did, she felt these words waft into her mind.
Thanks to you…the rain has stopped. Then she felt darkness overtake her vision.
...
The explosion reached a frightening crescendo, then just like a bolt of lightning, disappeared in an instant. All sound from the storm faded, and the dust from the outburst hung in the air like a dark curtain trying to add tension to what would either be the happy ending, or the Shakespearean tragedy.
The two outside the focal point held their breath as they waited for the answer to reveal itself.
Finally, the dust settled, and only Ichigo was standing in the center.
"Tatsuki?" He asked quietly, "Tatsuki! Where are you!" His head shot back in forth as it scanned the area in front of him trying to find the missing object of his affections. Panic was starting to overcome the young man but before he could get any further along a light tap on his shoulder caused him to jump nearly twenty feet into the air. "Gah! Don't
do that! Who's there!" He turned around quickly and was startled by what he saw.
Tatsuki stood in front of him, her dark shihakushou identical to his as she rested a hand on the hilt extending from behind her obi as the other hand swiftly reached up and pulled him down into a fierce kiss that rivaled his earlier one.
"There, now we're even," she said with a grin as she pulled away. "This party is only beginning…"
No more sidelines, now, she was going to be on the frontlines.
...
Author's Notes: Same as before. Thanks for reading everyone!
