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lo-55 · 2 years

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Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 22

Ichigo may have had a bit of a weird relationship with his father, but at least he had one.

Sure, Isshin Kurosaki could be a pain, and he attacked Ichigo out of the blue, and he was obnoxious. Who the hell kept life sized posters of their dead wives plastered on the walls and talked to them?

But again. Ichigo had a relationship with him. Isshin tried. He made sure his kids had food on the table, a roof over their heads, and he patched up their scrapes and bruises, even if he did tell Ichigo to tough it out when he was banged up after karate class or a fight after school.

Ichigo would never have a normal relationship with him. It was partially his own fault. Ichigo was standoffish and independent, he didn’t let people take care of him. It was his job to take care of his family, and Isshin agreed with that much. Ichigo had to guard and guide his sisters.

Despite all of Isshin’s faults, he acknowledged his son.

Ichigo knew the servant who appeared out of the demonic fog without even needing to be told. She and Mordred looked almost identical.

Mash, naturally, started freaking the fuck out.

“That is- King Arthur! Like the one we met in Fuyuki, only different. This time she has a spear, not a sword. I can feel her animosity. A blind rage, she is more berserker than king. Is she under the the control of a summoning spell?”

Mash didn’t step back. She didn’t panic. But her teeth were gritted and her eyes were wide.

Mordred’s mouth thinned into a line.

“Even if she wasn't, this is King Arthur, ready to slay her foes,” he said grimly. “No reason will reach her now.”

Mordreds grip on his sword tightened to the point that Ichigo could hear the leather of his gauntlet creak.

“Why... Why are you appearing now? If you're here to save, Londinum, why did you not appear before?! No. Maybe its something else. Are you here to kill me? Would it make you angry, if I were the one to save your beloved country? Do you hate me that much? Is that why you wield the spear that killed me?!”

Ichigo sucked in through his teeth. He knew the story. Of course he did. But to hear the raw grief in Mordred’s voice? Was another thing.

“...Fine then, if it's a fight you want I'll give it to you. I'll rebel as many times as I have to! Ichigo, Mash! If you want to run now, so be it.”

Ichigo scoffed and stepped up to lay his hand on Mordred’s shoulder. They had already fought one incredibly powerful servant. They were all exhausted.

But they couldn't rest yet. They had to defeat the King of Knights. They had to retrieve the Holy Grail.

How many times were they going to have to fight Arthur?

“Don’t say stupid things,” Ichigo chided. “We aren’t going anywhere. Mash, get ready. You’ll have to defend us, understand?”

Mash nodded, once.

“Understood! Let’s go, Mordred, Master!”

“Ichigo.”

Ichigo opened his eyes slowly. He expected to find the meadow at the edge of the world. He expected to be struck with the familiar scent of blooming flowers.

Instead he found himself sideways on a building, the one that existed within his soul.

He sat up closely to looked around.

He found Nieve and Tensa standing not far from them. Neither of them were looking at him. They were staring off in the distance, their brows furrowed.

“Can't you hear, Ichigo?” Tensa asked, his voice far away. Ichigo stood up and went to stand between them. He touched both of their shoulders and strained to hear whatever it was that had their attention. His hair stood on end.

“Don’t you hear it, King?”

“Can't you hear, Ichigo?” Tensa asked again.

“I hear your voice,” he offered. “And his.”

“No, not my voice. Not his.”

“I don't hear anything. What are you talking about?” Something very, very weird was happening here. Ichigo didn’t like it.

Tensa and Nieve finally looked at him. Nieve was scowling and Tensa looked troubled.

“Then forget it.”

Ichigo bristled. “No, I won't.”

Tensa tilted his head to him. His eyes were wide and still far away. Something very, very bad was happening here. Ichigo grabbed his arm.

“Tensa! Hey... We said no more secrets.”

Tensa shook his head. He was starting to come out of whatever had been holding onto him.

“It's not a secret. It's only something that I can't place. Nieve, perhaps you should go deeper?”

“Huh?” Nieve blinked at him and shook metaphorical cobwebs off of himself. “No way. King needs me where he can use me.”

“Tensa,” Ichigo said with a frown. “What’s wrong? Can’t you be more specific?”

“...It’s something on the wind. I can’t place it. Something dangerous is approaching us.”

“I’m the instincts around here,” Nieve grumbled. “And if something dangerous is coming for King we’ll just fight it.”

“No. Not for Ichigo. For us, you and I.”

Nieve stiffened. Ichigo pressed his lips into a thin line.

“You wanna use Nieve as a trump card?”

“Yes. I think that would be best.”

“Why shoudln’t you be the one who goes in deeper? You’re the one who’s not a real Zanpakutou!”

Tensa look irritated. “Yes, but as much as it pains me to admit it you have more direct power than I do.”

Nieve paused.

“Did you just say I’m stronger?”

Tensa glowered at him.

“No. Our abilities are just useful in different situa-”

“You admitted I’m stronger!” Nieve laughed aloud, grinning. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine. I’ll go deeper and wait for a while. But ya owe me, Tensa.”

Tensa rolled his eyes at Nieve, who laughed and slowly sunk through the windows of one of the buildings.

Ichigo shook his head at the pair. He wasn’t quite as worried as he should have been. Whatever came, they would deal with it. After all, it wasn’t like they were alone.

* *

Ichigo was starting to feel hollow in his bones. He’s used too much Mana fighting Tesla and then Artoria, yet another distorted version of her. How many different ‘King Arthur’s were there?

He was leaning on a shattered stone when cold washed over him. His head snapped upwards. A ghost, a blond man dressed in black, had been watching their fight and he’d followed them back into the bowels of Babages’ engine. Now he watched the conglomeration of fighters skulk through the remnants.

Romani’s voice came through Ichigo’s watch suddenly. Loud and worried. Something was coming. Again. Something big.

Mash broke into shivers next to Ichigo, her violet eyes huge. She looked terrified.

“The space is opening! Something is coming through!”

Ichigo squinted at the shadow that formed. The power that rolled off of him in waves threatened to crush Ichigo to the ground.

“Demon Marshal Gilles de Rais. Imperial Founder Romulus. Hero Spy Jason. And Divine Scholar Nikola Tesla. I thought they would be somewhat useful,” he said slowly. “But they spoiled my fun as they couldn't even clean house. Stupidity. Such stupidity. Humans really do degrade with the passage of time.”

Romani was still yelling. SHEBA was destabalizing, he was losing communications. Ichigo barely heard him over the low thrum of this monsters voice and his own heart beating a drum in his ears.

He walked towards them, one step at a time. The servants around Ichigo drew closer. From young casters to near-goddesses, from heroes to villains, they closed ranks.

“What is this insane magical energy?” Mordred bared his teeth. “It's a hell of a lot bigger than a dragon. It's like-”

“One of the demons or angels in the ancient stories. No, perhaps even greater. I was not born a mage, but as a petty Caster I can understand,” even Shakespeare wasn’t making light of it. “This magical energy is infinite. This domination crushes its surroundings merely by existing. Truly, truly a created being worthy of being called God! No, perhaps it is even God itself! Am I wrong, my friend Andersen? I think it's time for us to be going!”

Maybe they should have run. But Ichigo’s legs wouldn’t let him. If they ran now what would happen? This was-

The ‘god’ looked over them. His gaze stopped on Ichigo’s wrist, where Romani’s voice was still coming through frantically.

“I see. Like me, only your voice reaches them. Chaldea is isolated from the temporal axis, and so it's become a base that no one can find. My eyes see everything—and all possible futures, but even they have trouble perceiving Chaldea. That's why you survive. Pathetically, shamelessly, and uselessly. Intolerant of a history of destruction already decided, a pitiful boat still adrift in the sea of void. That is what you are, Chaldea, and what you are, Ichigo. A stain upon the scorched ashes of human history. The name of the only fools left who would defy my deeds.”

“So you’re him. The ‘King’ that Lev talked about.” Ichigo met Solomons gaze head on.

“I am the final destination you seek. The one who commands the 72 Demon Gods. The one who will destroy humanity from his throne. My name is Solomon. Among the Heroic Spirits, I stand above them all as one of the Grand Seven.”

Grand ?

“No… Is it really Solomon? But… But that's impossible.”

Ichigo couldn't look at his watch while Romani freaked out.

“I am a Heroic Spirit, and also a living being. Thus, no Master commands me. I started this matter of my own will. In order to eliminate all you humans- Trash who's continuing along its foolish history. You are the sole and greatest waste of this universe.”

Ichigo bristled furiously. His anger beat back his fear. “Fuck off! You can't destroy the world!”

Solomon smiled patronizingly at him. “I can. I have the means, the will, and the reality. Your eras have been swept away already, by my 72 Demon Gods that cross over time, and through them and my third nobel phantasm I will burn away humanity with the strength of a million holy swords. If you could barely hold yourself up against King Arthur, what chance do you have again me?”

He spread his hand grandly and four demon gods formed behind him.

It was only bitterness and stubborness that kept Ichigo standing. He lifted his hand. He was down to just one command seal, and his mystic codes were still recharging. Fuck. They were all exhausted, and Ichigo barely had the capacity to sustain them. How much Mana could he draw from the dying world before his body broke down?

They fell one by one, and Ichigo was helpless to do more than watch. Kintoki, Tamamo, and Shakespeare. Anderson.

They barely remained at the end. Mordred spit fury at him.

“Is this it? You must be scared, since Ichigo already took four grails from you!”

Solomon scoffed at him.

“Are you the greatest fool in history? I've lost four Grails? No. It will only matter if I lose them all. One Grail, or six, it makes no difference to me. Ichigo is no threat. It's time for me to go. I wasted more time than I thought.”

“Huh!? You're leaving? Why did you even come here!?”

“It was nothing more than a whim. Why? Sometimes after finishing a book, you go to the bathroom before picking up the next, right? That's all this was.”

“What? You're saying you came to piss on us!?”

Solomon threw his head back and laughed.

“That's right! That's exactly right! But you're worth less than piss! I don't care about you. I could kill you here, or not, and not care at all. Do you understand? I'm not letting you go. You weren't worth looking at in the first place. But, I suppose if you can remove all seven Singularities then I will consider you a matter I must deal with.”

Ichigo stormed towards him, ignoring everyone around him. Mash had to grab him around his middle to keep him from grabbing Solomon by his stupid fucking poldrons.

“Fuck you! You think this fun? I’m not letting you kill everyone!”

Solomon’s face twisted into a demonic mask and he laughed even harder.

“Of course! It's the greatest fun in the world! If it wasn't fun, would I take my time killing each one of you? I'm having fun. Your deaths make me happy. Your end pleases me. Your final gasps bring me more joy than anything! And this is the greatest salvation you could find. Because only I alone can make good use of every single human being!”

“And you!” He motioned towards Ichigo. The force of just his waving hand nearly knocked Ichigo to the ground.

“What have you done for the last 2,000 years? You've continuously died, and continuously done nothing. You are sentient creatures who failed to conquer death. And yet you retain your fear of it? If you cannot conquer death, you should have abandoned your fear of it. If you understand death to be a shameful, terrifying thing, then you should throw away your sentience! It's pathetic. Simply pathetic. You're no different either, Master of Chaldea.”

Ichigo startled. Solomon had been talking to Mash? Why would she be afraid? Death, sure, but-

“Why do you fight? Knowing your life will end. Knowing it has ended.Why do you cling to life, when you know that your future holds no salvation? You are so young, human. Ichigo. Humanity's Final Master. This is my one warning to you. Know that giving up on everything here is the easiest way for you to live. Burn, and leave not even ash. That is your future.”

He vanished in a flash of white light while Ichigo roared after him in fury.

Mash had to drag him back to the street. The blond ghost trailed after them. He was gripping a sword like his after-life depended on it. Ichigo had never seen a dead man look shell shocked.

Even Mordred was pale and withdrawn.

“I haven't been this down since my Father's spear-”Mordred grimaced. “No, never mind. Never mind.”

“ Honestly, I wanted to go with you guys… But I'm at my limit, as you can see,” he motioned to himself. He was steadily dissolving into golden light. “With the Singularity gone, there's no place for me. I was summoned here by the Grail's fog. Without a Master, I have to disappear. “

“I hate to say it, but he's right. We can't fight unless we're summoned. That's the limit of a Heroic Spirit, and a Servant. In every era, the ones who build things...are always people living on the cutting edge of the future.”

“Mordred,” Ichigo reached out and grabbed his hand. “Wait.”

Mordred shot him a crooked smile. “You're going to get there, Ichigo. You'll reach the place we can't go. You'll cross over the seven Grails and reach the end of time. And then you'll corner that bastard Grand Caster. It's something only you can do. I’ll help you if I can.”

Mordred vanished in a shower of sparks. Ichigo’s hand closed on air.

The familiar pull of a rayshift tugged at Ichigo’s spine. He hissed. He’d wanted to say goodbye to Jekkyl, at least.

Ichigo opened his eyes in his own body. The fourth singularity was over. It still felt like they’d lost.

* * *

Somehow, things always came back to the river.

Ichigo shot across the rooftops. He could feel the shift in the air that signalled an opening between worlds, and more he could feel a familiar person coming through it.

He skidded into the grass just in time to catch Rukia when she fell through the light.

“Rukia!” He held her carefully. Blood was seeping out of a wound on her shoulder. “Shit.”

He had barely laid her in the grass when the familiar light of a senkaimon flashed. Frost crawled across the grass and stretched towards him. It steamed into the warm night air.

A familiar woman came through. She was pale, dressed in a formal kimono with her silver blue hair pulled partially away. Ichigo knew her.

“This reitsu. She's no hollow”. She was familiar, too.

“Who are you?!”

She waved her hand and ice shot at him in a sudden wave. Ichigo understood suddenly. He snatched Rukia back into his arms and lunged out of the way.

The woman drew a pale white sword.

“Hand her over.” The voice was smooth and soft. Ichigo had heard it before.

“What?” Rukia groaned softly. The blood from her shoulder wound spread out. “I don't know what's going on, but that's not happening.”

“I see. So you're the substitute. Some no mai. Tsukishiro!”

Ichigo barely dodged the pillar of ice, and the wave that followed after. IT felt wrong, but he wasn’t about to roll over and let her stab him. He attacked swiftly, swinging zangetsu at her. It cut through and shattered an ice sculpture of her.

Could Rukia do that?

This was her zanpakutou, after all.

If that was the case, why didn’t she recognize Ichigo?

Just as quickly as she’d come, as abruptly as their fight began, she vanished back through the senkaimon.

Ichigo stood still, watching her go.

“Rider,” he said. Lightning flashed and Achilles appeared before him with his chariot. “Let’s get her to Urahara. He can patch her up, and we’ll see what’s happening. Are Medusa and Cu still with the Visord?”

The three had slowly started to hang out with people other than Ichigo. Mostly his friends and family. Medusa in particular had been stalking his sisters.

“Yep. They’ll meet us there, I’m sure.”

Achilles helped him load Rukia into the chariot, and the three of them took off into the sky. Ichigo held Rukia carefully to his chest. He fed his reitsu into her, hoping to at least keep her stable. He’d barely started his lessons with Unohana when he’d had to return to Karakura.

He was reluctant to hand her over, but when they landed he let Urahara and Tessai take her inside to be treated.

Orihime was still in the seireitei.

Ichigo sat in one of the small rooms in the shop back room. The two kids were sleeping this late, so he’d helped himself to green tea. Achilles, and later Medusa, Cu and Shinji of all people, joined him before Urahara did the same. He left the sliding door open so they could see Rukia sleeping from where they sat.

“Since when can Zanpakutou manifest themselves outside of a shinigami?” Ichigo asked. Urahara seemed to know everything. Yet, now he shook his head. Shiniji looked troubled.

“I don’t know. Yoruichi is checking things out in the seireitei. The rest of us can't enter, and even if we could it would be dangerous with our zanpakutou. All of us were captains at one point or another…”

Shifting cloth made Ichigo looked to where Rukia had tilted her head towards them. She was exhausted, but awake.

“It was a nightmare.”

She recounted the tale of Muramasa, a zanpakutou who sought to free Zanpaktou from their shinigami. He turned their own power against them. Only Orihime could really fight back. everyone else had lost their abiltiies outside of kido.

“Is everyone alright?” Ichigo asked the doorway. Yoruichi appeared half a second later. She huffed at him. He’d discovered she hated it when he caught her trying to sneak up on him.

“Everyone was okay. There were low casualties at least. It was mostly property destruction, and smaller injuries. The worst of it was squad one. But the medic center made it through. Soi Fon and the rest of the stealth force went after them. The Head Captain is also missing. Kyoraku has taken the reigns for now,” she tilted her head towards Ichigo. “Has anything changed with your zanpakutou?”

Ichigo frowned. “Sort of. They were acting strangely the other day, but nothing like this.:”

“ So the enemies power can't reach us here,” Urahara surmised. “At least not for the time being.”

“When dawn breaks, I'll go back,” Yoruichi decided. “Little Byakuya is the only captain still missing. But he's a strong person. I wouldn't worry too much,” she added when Rukia looked panicked.

“Byakuya won't die,” Ichigo added. He shot Rukia a smile. “He's too damn stubborn. He's like you that way.”

Rukia was apparently strong enough to hit Ichigo in the face with a pillow.

* * * *

Yuzu peered through the window into the training room inside the hospital. It was too big to fit inside the building, but she was getting used to weird things these days.

Laying the middle of it was Uryu, one of Ichigo’s friends and Ryuken’s son.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked, peering up at Ryuken.

“He’ll be fine,” he said with certainty. “It’s important to his training. He’s determined to put himself in danger. I can’t let him do that without being able to defend himself. Your brother is an awful influence.”

Yuzu smiled sweets up at him. “Yeah, he definitely is.”

“You should really leave these things to them,” Ryuken said for the millionth time.

Yuzu ignored him, and took out her glasses.

Ryuken had made them for her. They had the faintest blue tinge to them, and when she put them on she could finally see things clearly. Before if she saw anything it would be blurry, like heat on cement in the summer, but with the glasses on it was clear as day.

They entered the training room and Ryuken took her past the passed out Uryu to a shooting range on the opposite end. The cross hanging from Yuzu’s wrist pulsed faintly. The room felt like it was full of energy.

It was that same energy that Yuzu pulled into her hand. It took her long minutes, and it had taken her weeks to get this far. She pulled strand by strand of power into her palm and let it stretch slowly into the shape of small, compact crossbow.

She couldn’t place the expression on Ryuken’s face.

“You don’t need to aim,” he told her quietly. “It’s just like pointing. Your body will know what to do. Just focus on where you want to hit and shoot.”

Yuzu nodded. The pale blue light of her crossbow flickered brighter, nearly white, and she stared hard at the ring hung on a wall.

She shot and clipped the outside edge.

Ryuken nodded beside her. His arms crossed over his chest.

“Again.”

She obeyed.

* * * * *

Ichigo stood beside Yoruichi in the wide field in the seireitei. Behind them the senkaimon clicked shut.

“We should go sou- what are you doing?” Yoruichi looked down at Ichigo, who was crouched on the ground and drawing intently. The array was both familiar and foreign. He’d had to make a lot of adjustments to it to get it work like this.

From inside his sleeve he pulled out a serpents eye pendant. The feeling of running water came across his palm and he lay the pendant in the middle of the array. It flickered faintly with violet light.

“I had to promise the others I’d bring them along this time. If we don’t do it this way as soon as they enter the afterlife they’ll get dragged back to the Throne of Heroes. So we’re kind of improvising now,” he admitted. “We set up an anchor point back in Karakura that would link them to me with the pendant. A serpents eye. It’s a sort of mystic material.”

Ichigo pulled Zangetsu off his back and planted the blade in the ground. He pressed his palm to the blade and let it cut through his skin. Red ran across the blade and flowed to the ground. The array lit up, blue and red.

“Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Fill, fill, fill, fill, fill. Repeat five times and after each is filled, destroy it,” The blue light turned red and lashed upwards. Yoruichi watched him with wide, golden eyes.

“I shall become all the goodness of the heaven’s. I shall embody all evils of hell. My will creates your body, and your sword cleaves my destiny. If you obey this will and reason, heed my call! Let shut the four cardinal gates and open the three-forked road winding to the Root. Appear now, thou Guardian of the Scales.”

The light crawled higher and higher until it made the silhouette of three people. It flashed once, brilliant enough Ichigo had to close his eyes.

When he opened them again, Achilles, Medusa, and Cu stood in front of him.

Ichigo grinned slowly.

It worked.

The three peered around them curiously.

“So this is it?” Medusa asked, turning around in a slow circle.

“I was expecting more river's,” Achilles admitted. Cu snorted at him.

“This is it,” Ichigo cracked his neck from side to side. “It’s time to get to work.”

* * * * * *

Some of you may notice that I’ve used both feminine and masculine pronouns for Mordred at this point. I also know. My personal headcanon is that Mordred is gender fluid

#ichigo kurosaki #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Bleach #bleach fanfiction #Fate Grand Order #achilles fate #medusa fate grand order #Cu Chulainn #Mash Kyrielight #fate mordred #yuzu kurosaki #Rukia Kuchiki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru

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shokoraa · 3 years

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Shattered Chains of Fate

By: Lore55

Summary: Through a misunderstanding and a poorly read application, Ichigo Kurosaki gets a chance internship at the Chaldeas Security Organization. It changes everything.

Status: Incomplete Updated: Sep. 14, 2021

Words: 105,618 Chapters: 23/?? Language: English

Fandom: Bleach, Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category: Gen

Characters: Kurosaki Ichigo, Mash Kyrielight | Shielder, Olga Marie Animusphere, Romani Archaman, Kuchiki Rukia, Kon (Bleach), Cú Chulainn | Caster, Lots of character appear but I'm only tagging the main ones, Merlin | Caster, Aizen Sousuke

Relationship: None

Additional Tag: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Ichigo-centric, Protective Kurosaki Ichigo, world building, I'm gonna go kinda fast through the first bits so i can get to the good stuff, Time Travel, Time Skips, Ichigo Kurosaki replaces Ritsuka Fujimaru, Implied Sexual Content, but late on, Fate Grand Order takes place before the Bleach Timeline, spoilers for fate grand order, Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Fix-It, Minor Angst, Mentions of Violence, Inaccurate Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Merlin - Freeform, no beta we die like men, isshin kurosaki's bad parenting

#ao3 #Bleach #CrossOver #fgo fanfic #ichigo kurosaki

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eruditomuses · 4 years

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Updated Muse List as of 10/21/20

Updated Muse List as of 8/2/2020

BIO LINKS

Tales of Symphonia

-Kratos Aurion

-Yuan Ka-Fai

-Kvar the Fury Tempest

Fate grand Order/Fate Series

-Male Ritsuka Fujimaru (Fate Grand Order)

Xenoblade Chronicles

-Rex (Xenoblade Chronicles 2)

Final fantasy 7

-Sephiroth

-Cloud Strife

-Genesis Rhapsodos (FF7 Crisis Core)

The Legend of Zelda

-Link (Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, & Breath of the Wild)

Ratchet & Clank

-Dr. Nefarious

-Courtney Gears

-Grimroth Razz

-Percival Tachyon

Bleach [BRAND NEW]

-Ichigo Kurosaki

-Isshin Kurosaki

-Rukia Kuchiki

-Shiro Kurosaki (Ichigo’s Inner Hollow)

#OUT OF TEST MUSES [OOC]#TAKE A LOOK AT THIS [PSA]

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isolaradiale · 5 years

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Lost in Space 08

Hello, Isolans! We have conducted an activity check for the month of April!

If your character isn’t on this list, make sure to check this page to see how many stars that character has earned this month! Stars can be used for purchases at the marketplace.

The blogs that were removed from the Isola Radiale masterlist are under the cut. Note that both blogs with broken links and deactivated accounts will be included both at the top of this list and in their proper categories.

If you were removed in error, please simply send a re-application message. Several different people work on the activity checks, so it’s possible there are mistakes! If this happens to you, you will be able to keep everything you previously had, you just may be placed in a different residence.

Our general activity rules regarding checks are as follows:

Make at least three in-character posts during a calendar month.

Only one drabble and/or meme response of 300+ words counts as activity.

One-liners or minis not tagged #isola mini also do not count.

Please Note: If you are removed during two consecutive activity checks, you will not be allowed to re-apply as that character for two calendar months.

Additionally, anyone removed during the activity check will have a 12-hour window from the time of posting to re-claim their character. Any character not reclaimed during that period will be open to the community at large.

BROKEN URLs:

Assassin (Kama) (Fate, APARTMENT 362)

M4 SOPMOD II (Girls Frontline, HOUSE 139)

Apollo (No Man’s Sky, HOUSE 139) *DASH ONLY

General Grievous (Star Wars, TOWNHOUSE 257) *DASH ONLY

Nikki Saint (Original Characters, HOUSE 143)

ACE ATTORNEY

Miles Edgeworth (CONDO 421)

APEX LEGENDS

Wraith (TOWNHOUSE 226)

THE ARCANA

Asra (APARTMENT 325)

Julian Devorak (APARTMENT 338)

ARSLAN SENKI

Daryun (TOWNHOUSE 226)

BANG DREAM

Kokoro Tsurumaki (CONDO 452)

BEASTARS

Legosi (TOWNHOUSE 212)

BLAZBLUE

Jubei (APARTMENT 340)

Tsubaki Yayoi (CONDO 442)

BLEACH

Ichigo Kurosaki (APARTMENT 347)

BLUE EXORCIST (AO NO EXORCIST)

Rin Okumura (HOUSE 154)

BUNGOU STRAY DOGS

Atsushi Nakajima (CONDO 428)

Fyodor Dostoevsky (TOWNHOUSE 252)

CASTLEVANIA

Trevor Belmont (HOUSE 146)

THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA

Sabrina Spellman (HOUSE 127)

DANGANRONPA

Kiibo (APARTMENT 333)

DARKSTALKERS

Morrigan Aensland (HOUSE 117)

DC COMICS

John Constantine (HOUSE 155)

DEVILMAN CRYBABY

Miki Makimura (HOUSE 136)

DISNEY

Elsa (HOUSE 113)

Honey Lemon (HOUSE 134)

Varian (TOWNHOUSE 227)

DOLCE

Fuumo Shirayuki (CONDO 445)

DRAGON AGE

Morrigan (HOUSE 128)

DRAGON BALL

Broly (APARTMENT 317)

Cheelai (HOUSE 109)

THE DRAGON PRINCE

Callum (HOUSE 137)

DRAKENGARD

Mikhail (APARTMENT 359)

DRIFTING DRAGONS

Mika (APARTMENT 372)

EDENS ZERO

Sister Ivry (APARTMENT 352)

FATE

Assassin (Kama) (APARTMENT 362) *BROKEN URL

Berserker (Cu Chulainn Alter) (TOWNHOUSE 236)

Berserker of Black (Frankenstein's Monster) (APARTMENT 321)

Caster (Nursery Rhyme) (CONDO 447)

Fujimaru Ritsuka (TOWNHOUSE 203)

Kariya Matou (TOWNHOUSE 229)

Lancer (Fionn mac Cumhail) (APARTMENT 305)

Saber (Bedivere) (CONDO 467)

FINAL FANTASY

Basch fon Ronsenberg (TOWNHOUSE 245)

Fran (HOUSE 111)

Hien Rijin (APARTMENT 316)

Hope Estheim (HOUSE 149)

Reno (HOUSE 129)

FIRE EMBLEM

Hinata (Takumi's House (Cotes))

Kagero (Takumi's House (Cotes))

Tiki (HOUSE 120)

FOOD FANTASY

B-52 (APARTMENT 327)

GINTAMA

Gintoki Sakata (HOUSE 115)

GIRLS FRONTLINE

M4 SOPMOD II (APARTMENT 321) *BROKEN URL

GRANBLUE FANTASY

Dark Angel Olivia (CONDO 456)

Lucilius (HOUSE 102)

Lyria (CONDO 427)

THE GRAY GARDEN

Ivlis (APARTMENT 314)

Rieta (APARTMENT 336)

HEART NO KUNI NO ALICE

Vivaldi (APARTMENT 313)

HUNTER X HUNTER

Chrollo Lucilfer (HOUSE 140)

Isaac Netero (CONDO 449)

HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER

Drifter (APARTMENT 323)

HYPONOSIS MIC

Gentaro Yumeno (CONDO 409)

IDOLISH7

Banri Oogami (HOUSE 130)

JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE

Crazy Diamond (CONDO 418)

Leone Abbacchio (TOWNHOUSE 230)

JOURNEY

Traveler (HOUSE 125)

KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN

Daemon Spade (HOUSE 168)

Enma Kozato (CONDO 406)

KILLER IS DEAD

Mondo Zappa (APARTMENT 355)

KINGDOM HEARTS

Aqua (APARTMENT 353)

Axel (HOUSE 151)

Larxene (HOUSE 126)

Namine (HOUSE 116)

KIRBY

Kirby (HOUSE 122)

KUROKO'S BASKETBALL

Kuroko Tetsuya (APARTMENT 364)

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

Xayah (APARTMENT 312)

MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH

Hikari Shidou (APARTMENT 362)

MOTHER SERIES

Ultimate Chimera (OUTSIDE)

NARUTO

Boruto Uzumaki (APARTMENT 350)

NO GUNS LIFE

Jyuzo Inui (HOUSE 159)

NO MAN’S SKY

Apollo (HOUSE 139) *DASH ONLY

NORAGAMI

Kofuku (HOUSE 119)

OFF

Batter (APARTMENT 321)

ONMYOJI

Shuten Doji (APARTMENT 345)

ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

Alydia Skye (APARTMENT 371)

Gwendolyn (TOWNHOUSE 232)

Liu Canglong (APARTMENT 324)

Mary Sue (CONDO 457)

Masaharu Sugase (CONDO 428)

Nikki Saint (HOUSE 143) *BROKEN URL

Varisella Stilou (APARTMENT 371)

Vino Morales (APARTMENT 351)

Vivian Durand (HOUSE 145)

OVERWATCH

Jack Morrison (Soldier 76) (APARTMENT 335)

OYASUMI PUNPUN

Aiko Tanaka (APARTMENT 328)

PANDORA HEARTS

Echo and Noise (Echo's House (Golden))

PERSONA

Marie (APARTMENT 322)

Yu Narukami (APARTMENT 310)

PORTAL

Anger Core (APARTMENT 331)

Logic Core (HOUSE 133)

RUINER

HER (HOUSE 145)

Puppy (APARTMENT 315)

RWBY

Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck (HOUSE 172)

Oscar Pine (CONDO 421)

Qrow Branwen (APARTMENT 331)

SHINGEKI NO BAHAMUT

Lucifer (Azazel's House (Archimedes))

SHIRO TO KURO NO ALICE

Luna (TOWNHOUSE 231)

Minette (HOUSE 119)

SHOW BY ROCK!!

ShuZo (HOUSE 135)

SKULLGIRLS

Squigly (APARTMENT 337)

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

Sonic (APARTMENT 305)

STAR OCEAN

Dias Flac (HOUSE 157)

STAR WARS

General Grievous (TOWNHOUSE 257) *DASH ONLY

TOUKEN RANBU

Yagen Toushirou (TOWNHOUSE 273)

TRINITY BLOOD

Virgil Walsh (TOWNHOUSE 270)

TWILIGHT

Alice Cullen (CONDO 444)

UNDER NIGHT IN BIRTH

Seth (HOUSE 152)

VA-11 HALL-A

Julianne Stingray (TOWNHOUSE 202)

VIOLET EVERGARDEN

Violet Evergarden (TOWNHOUSE 219)

VOCALOID

Miku Hatsune (CONDO 441)

WAKFU

Joris Jurgen (HOUSE 127)

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

Anduin Wrynn (APARTMENT 347)

#modnote #activity check #lost in space 08

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madmanwonder · 1 year

Text

Au(S): Free for all

General Moods: Funny, Platonic to Romance Relationship, Friendly, Typical Anime Madness, Crossover Ship

Muses: One Piece, Bleach, Total Drama Series, Super Mario Bros Series, Danganronpa, Fate Series

Male: Fergus mac Róich, Ritsuka Fujimaru, Monkey D. Luffy, Hajime Hinata, Luigi, Trent, Shiro Emiya, Ichigo Kurosaki, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez

Female: Free for all for One Piece, Bleach, Total Drama Series, Super Mario Bros Series, Danganronpa, Fate Series

Meme: Free for all

#my moods #my mood right now

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melodiaemfrp · 2 years

Text

IN RESONANCE, WE GREET THE FOLLOWING ATTUNED.

CROWN

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova (Caster)

Donquixote Doflamingo

Tsukasa Tenma

FANGS

Copy X

Vergilius

WINGS

Aoka Aozaki

Fujimaru Ritsuka

HEART

Ichigo Kurosaki

Ryu

Saki Tenma

#melodiae apps

0 notes

lo-55 · 3 years

Text

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 1

Through a misunderstanding and a poorly read application, Ichigo Kurosaki gets a chance internship at the Chaldeas Security Organization. It changes everything.

It felt good to stand in the sunlight.

Ichigo had spent so long in Chaldea it felt good to have the sun on his skin, warming him from the outside in.

He had gotten so used to having the solid presence of his Shielder at his side that standing alone on the platform from the train felt more like standing naked in the streets of his hometown. Not a pleasant feeling. His family wouldn’t be there to see him, and they weren’t. He wasn’t supposed to be home for a few more days at least. How could it be that everything that happened to him, all of the fighting and all of the bloodshed and all of the war would have happened in the span of just a few days? How could his years have been spent and yet nothing but him had changed?

It was enough to make his head spin.

He needed to get home.He didn’t think he could ever really finish explaining everything that had happened to him, but he would tell his family the truth. There had been an accident at the facility, and he was home early.

Even though it had never been an accident.

There was smoke. Smoke and the scent of blood and spilling gas lines and raw metal twisted beyond recognition.

He barely heard Dr. Roman yelling at his back, telling him to come back. Ichigo had never shied from danger and he wasn’t going to start now. He dove into the smoke, choking him and clinging to his clothes. Pods of people were disarrayed around him, their bodies still and blood leaking out like creusom caskets. He couldn’t get their doors open, no matter that he tried, but there was one person who was not there. One person who wasn’t him, blocked from the first mission for his bad attitude towards the Director. Nevermind that the director was just a kid herself.

“Bulkhead closing in 180 seconds. All Devision 2 personal, evacuate immidiately-”

Ichigo didn’t understand what that meant. He didn’t know what most of what had happened today meant, just that his little summer internship wasn’t even remotely what was on the flyer. But he didn’t pause as he scrambled over and massive chunk of rock, stuck through with wires that cut his hands like an oversized porcupine.

A flash of white out of the corner of his eyes gives her away.

There, lying under the debris, her small body crushed an broken and leaking blood, was Mash.

It was Mash but all he could see was Yuzu, her wide eyes huge and terrified and filled with tears. Not a girl he’d met an hour before, after passing out on the floor. Not the best meeting.

The ground was slick with blood and water, turning Ichigo’s white shirt a pale pink where it splashed on it when he dropped to his knees next to her. She was trapped, and the rock was too big for him to even be able to budge it.

That didn’t stop Ichigo from trying.

The overhead voice was still talking, and Mash was muttering at him, her voice too weak to make much sound. She was dying. Dying, her tiny body crushed until she coughed and more than just blood came out.

Ichigo howled with rage and denial and shoved harder, harder. It was hot and smouldering and his hands blistered and blackened with burns. The light above them changed from blue to red and it burned into his retina until he couldn’t see anything else. Just red. Red blood, red light, and his body gave out. Too much smoke, he couldn't breath, he couldn’t see. He was helpless. He couldn’t do a single thing and its burned more than fire.

Mash’s small hand found his. Her grip was weak, but she was alive. She was still alive and he couldn't just let her die-

He grabbed her hand with both of his. Holding tight.

The overhead was still talking, her voice robotically calm and detached. Small paws from the ferret, or whatever it was that had brought him to Mash landed on top of their joined hands.

“Sen-pai,” her voice was a whisper, and wet with blood. The smell was making him sick. “Please… r-run.”

“No way,” he denied firmly, gripping her hands tighter. “Not without you.”

“Senpai…”

Someone else is yelling at him. A ripple in the air. White hair and panicked eyes. The director, the one Ichigo had pissed off. He reaches for her without thinking, and his hand grasps hers.

And then he didn’t see red. He saw blue, light that poured across his skin and came from beneath it, rushing like water across the burning room. A circle in the sky, a hollow moon of blue and Mash’s hand in his.

* *

He knocks on the door, feeling more stranger than family. His key is long gone, he’d dropped it somewhere in Rome, he thinks, but its hard to keep track of trivial things like that when emperors are trying to gut you like a fish.

It’s Yuzu that answers and he can’t help it.

The second she’d within his sights he drags her into the fiercest hug he can manage. He’s gotten taller, he realizes. It’s not a surprise. He spent three years in less than a week, and even if he hadn’t…

“Ichigo?” Yuzu doesn’t fight him, and he’s grateful for it. She must be confused, because as much as Ichigo loves his sisters he’s not the most physically affectionate person in the world.

“Hey,” Ichigo doesn’t let go for a long time. “Sorry I was gone so long.”

“Huh? But you’re home early…”

Ichigo doesn’t say anything. He’s loath to let her go, but eventually he has to. Karin is at soccer practice, of course she is.

Ichigo feels his dad coming at him from a mile away, trying to sneak up on him from the clinic next door. He’d seen Isshin through the window, a glance in the corner of his eye and the flying kick thrown at him isn’t stopped with violence for the first time in ten (thirteen) years.

Ichigo catching him around his middle, holding him off the ground, and Isshin has little choice but to hand there, his arms around Ichigo’s head.

“Son?” there’s a question or two or a thousand, but Ichigo doesn’t know how to answer all of them. He doesn’t put Isshin down until they’re in the living room and even then he sits right next to him. Knee to knee. Yuzu brings in a can of tea for him.

“There was an accident,” he tells them. “Chaldea, there was an explosion. So everyones been sent home.” Everyone who survived. Everyone who made it through the initial explosion and wars that followed.

“Huh? I thought it was supposed to be a security organization, and there was an explosion?” Isshin scowled.

It was sabotage. It was death. It was the world turning red and the future being stripped away from human hands.

“It’s fine,” he says, even though it wasn’t even remotely. There were a million things wrong with what has happened. “I’m not hurt.” Which is true enough. He can see his dad sizing him up, trying to read between the lines. He had to look older. He’s taller, his cheeks are sharper and he’s lost baby fat. He’s always been fit, but now he's stronger, built for endurance and running for weeks on end. Tempered by wars and helplessness and a desperate bid to save the world.

“I’m fine,” he said again, and Isshin let it go. Ichigo didn’t exactly know how to feel about that.

He spends the rest of the day flitting from family member to family member. School starts again in four days and he heavily considers skipping it to hang around his dad of all people.

He can’t help thinking about Mash. She didn’t have anything like this.

* * *

They move from one fire to another.

Ichigo knows if he stays among all this smoke he’s going to end up with permanent damage. Because you know. Fuck him. He has no idea what happening, just that he thinks he’s teleported and apparently magic is as real as ghosts are. And he’s not dead, Fou sits on his shoulder.

He doesn’t know where Mash went but he doesn’t have time to worry about it. Some kind of skeleton gang, at least five of them are approaching. Skeletons, living, breath - well, moving in any case, skeletons. Half of them have swords. One has a spear.

Ichigo thinks he’s broken his hand when he throws the first punch, but the skeleton crumble into a strange yellow powder that tastes like what Ichigo assumes a graveyard would. Death an d decay and strangely damp.

He can’t stop with one but by the time he’s kicked the absolute shit out of the last of them the sky lights up with another shade of red. Like a handful stars falling from the sky, and he realizes belatedly that there’s no way for him to block whatever the fuck is flying at him.

So he tries to run, but there’s a flash of purple and pink and Mash is in front of him. Only she’s taller now, older, and she’s holding a shield bigger than her body is. She’s not alone. White hair, snake-yellow eyes. Olga Marie, the director that had been pissed at a ‘commoner’ like Ichigo was with her too. Only, she wasn’t really there.

It had been years since Ichigo hadn’t been able to tell the dead from the living, but this time it takes him a few minutes to realize that Mash is very much alive, if not apparently a magical girl, and Olga Marie is anything but alive.

They don’t have time to worry about it, because they’re under seige and Ichigo is apparently a wizard .

He should seriously be more surprised.

But he’s not. It explains a few things. Like how he can see ghosts on the regular, and why his punching skeletons actually works.

They pick up another stray on their way, a wizard named Cu Chulainn. He and Mash swear themselves to Ichigo as his ‘servents’, familiars who he supplies with energy and they fight on his behalf. It almost reminds him of Chad, except here he’s entirely outclassed.

The helplessness tastes bitter and vile.

A third servent appears, a woman this time who likes to turn people to stone.

“You’ll all join my garden,” she tells them, hanging off a petrified man. Ichigo can vaguely remember reading something about a person like this. The eyes, he thinks. It’s her eyes.

He meets them squarely and bonks her harmlessly on the head. He’d have more luck punching the statues than her.

“Hey,” his voice is gruff. “Stop being a lunatic. We’re all getting out of here. So either come with us or let us go.”

“You- what?” Everyone is staring at him. Bewildered, but Ichigo had never done what he was supposed to. He does what he wants, and even though she’s threatened them somehow he can feel her. Like the rush of scales across his skin, cool and potentially threatening but if she really wanted to kill them-

Well, they’d just been hanging out by the river. If nothing else should have taken his head off with her curved spear.

“Am I gonna have to repeat myself? Damn, I said we’ve got bigger things to do than fight you, lady. So just come with us, or let us go!”

“Master!” Mash takes a startled step towards him. “Please step away from her! She could kill you!”

“Why would she do that?” Ichigo demanded, turning towards them, “We haven’t even done anything!” It’s not like he’s against fighting. He fights all the time. But they need to get out of here. He needs to get back to his family, to his own damn time .

Besides that, he can see her power. He isn’t sure how, but he can see her strength and that of the two other Servants. Not see, maybe, but he can feel it. Like he can feel ghosts even with his eyes closed. Either way, she’s not strong enough to beat both of the others at once, even if Mash is a novice.

“This is a war…”

“Look,” he spun to face her, staring fearlessly into her eyes. “Just say yes or no already!”

She blinks. Once, twice, thrice.

“Yes?”

So with three servants in toe, he sets out to fight the ones who holds the holy grail. All of this destruction, a city of fire devoid of the living and ghosts both... Only servants and masters remained, all because of a cup.

All for the sake of a wish.

Was it really worth it?

* * * *

Ichigo’s bed is equal points familiar and foreign.

He ends up going to sleep on the floor, the bed too soft and too warm and he feels like he’s going to suffocate.

All he can think of are late nights spent in Chaldea with Mash, with Roman, and Di Vinci, and countless others. He misses the solid presence of Mash and her near encyclopedic knowledge of history. Everywhere , everywhen they went. He misses the sharp bite of Mordreds tongue betrayed by her sea-dark eyes. He missed the quiet, hulking form of Asterios, always well within reach. He missed the sharp bite of his guard dogs tongue and the quiet prayers of the saints at sunset. Even Kiyohime, her claws digging into his arm, afraid she’ll be abandoned again-

He’s up before dawn.

Ichigo puts together enough breakfast for twenty people. Rolled omelette and rice and foreign things. Shakshuka and fried green tomatoes.

His family stares when they come down for breakfast.

Ichigo stands, in his dads ‘kiss the cook’ apron, with a bowl of matcha stirring swiftly in his hands.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Karin asks, looking him up and down, trying to find something. Isshin’s stare is particularly disconcerting. Like a scientist trying to understand something new, he’s never seen his father look that way, especially not at his own son.

Ichigo has to turn away from their staring.

“The time is different there,” is the understatement of the century. “I wanted to make breakfast.”

“There’s enough here for an army!” Yuzu cries, gesturing to the spread out in front of them.

Or enough for two Berserkers.

“We can have leftovers for lunch?” is about the only explanation he has. How does he explain that he used to cooking with EMIYA enough for an actual army?

“Yeah… I guess so,” Karin is still staring.

Isshin pitches himself at the portrait of their mother, sobbing grossly.

“Masaki! Our son is growing up so fast!”

* * * * *

Lev Lainur has an ugly smile. Everything about him is slimy and distrustful and Ichigo has seen enough ghosts to know, just by looking at him, that he is not human.

So when Olga Marie tries to go running to him, Ichigo wraps a firm arm around her middle and holds her back.

“Let go!” she shrieked, clawing towards the slimy man, “It’s Lev! Lev will fix everything he’ll-”

“He’ll kill you.”

Olga Marie freezes in his arms, looking towards Medusa. Rider. Her eyes are narrowed and her hair writhes with snakes, hissing a spitting venom.

“Kill her?” Lev laughs, a sound like metal grating and children screaming. There’s nothing pleasant about it. “I already have! I planted that bomb directly under her feet, I have no idea how she’s even here!”

Ichigo knows.

It’s because of him. Because of his interference in the explosion. The other hand he’d grabbed, it must have been Marie’s. And they’re all here together.

“W-wait, no. I’m not dead! I can’t be!” But the fight goes out of her. She lets Ichigo hold her, and when Lev beacons gravity shifts and the world tries to pull Olga Marie from his arms. He tightens his hold and barks at Medusa. Chain snake out, lashing them together and to the ground and holding them there, even as Lev pulls until it feels like his skin will come off. Ichigo can feel it again, the drain on his energy. Mana, magic energy, pulled when the servants fought. He has no idea how much he has but it must be just enough for Lev to scoff.

He shows them the red earth again. The world, the future. Humanity, all gone. Destroyed in an instant, and they the only survivors. All of the past, all of the future.

There is nothing left of it, save him, Mash, and the ghost in his arms.

Something inside him writhes and snarls, thirsting for vengeance and at the same time is keens a wailing cry of anguish.

It’s his mother all over again. Laying on the riverbank, bleeding out and Ichigo helpless in her arms.

It’s Mash in the command room, crushed under burning stone and Ichigo only able to hold her hand.

No, no, no, no!

He won’t allow it. He will not let himself be so useless .

There’s a flare of energy and Medusa gasps. Mash and Cu straighten up like dogs that heard a whistle and their fight turn on a dime. The archer falls, and his king a second later until all five of them stand before Lev. United.

* * * * * *

School starts.

The world turns on.

Everything is the same, and nothing is at all.

* * * * * * * *

#shattered chains of fate #ao3 cross post #lore55 #bleach #bleach fanfiction #bleach/fate grand order #Ichigo Kurosaki #mash kyrielight #olga marie animusphere #cu chulainn #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru #sorta

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lo-55 · 3 years

Text

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 20

Deal or No Deal?

Achilles appears beside Chad and Orhihime, dressed in his black under armour and holding only his shield. He looks unassuming, for one of the most famous heroes in history. A whisper in the trees and he knows that Medusa and Cu have taken up their posts, but none of them move to interfere. Cu and Achilles have too much respect for a deal made by warriors to come between the two of them, and Medusa will stay where she is unless he looks like he’s going to die.

Which he won’t.

He can’t let himself die yet.

He has far too much to do.

Zangetsu sings when he blocks a tiny cero aimed at him. It cuts easily to both sides of him and blows up a tree violently. Ichigo blocks each one that’s lobbed at him, until Yammy yanks out his zanpakutou and swings it viciously at Ichigo.

Ichigo blocks, narrowly, and swings Tensa out of his sleeve in an uppercut that nearly spills Yammy’s guts from his body. If Hollows have guts.

He doesn’t actually know.

Yammy howls and keeps taking wild, viciou swings at him. He’s strong, and powerful and angry.

But that makes him stupid, too.

Ichigo bolts between his legs when he lifts his sword above his head and avoids a blow that leaves a chasm in the park ground. Ichigo spins on his knees and brings his shorter blade around to slice through Yammy’s tendons on his legs, then up his back with Neive.

On the chance that their Zanpakutou work like his he lops off Yammy’s other hand when he tries to flail behind him and kicks the sword into the trees.

Ichigo levels Neive to Yammy’s throat and stands still.

He’d learned a long time ago not to let people ‘level up’ if he could help it.

“Yield,” he ordered coldly. He didn’t feel much like Ichigo Kurosaki, Substitute Shinigami right now. He felt like Ichigo Kurosaki, Master of of Chaldeas.

“Fuck you!” Yammy snarls at him. “You can’t do this!”

“Funny,” Ichigo says, “I just did.”

He turns his eyes to Ulquiorra, who’s impassiveness is broken only by a slight widening of his eyes.

“Well?” Ichigo asks, not taking his blade away from Yammy’s throat.

Ulquiorra tilts his head. “I will have to confer with our Lord.”

Ichigo bristles. “You made a deal,” he snaps. He sees Achilles start to rise and Cu step out of the trees. The whisper of chains and serpents to his right reminds him that they aren’t alone. All it will take is one word for him and they’ll tear through both of them brutally.

“I didn’t think you would win.”

Ichigo will give it too him. He’s honest.

“We shall return, when Lord Aizen sees fit.”

Before Ichigo can move to stab him or give the order Ulquiorra turns and tears the air apart.

It splits like a mouth, gaping into a void. Unceremoniously Ulquiorra appears in front of Ichigo in a burst of insane speed and thrown Yammy straight through the gap.

Ichigo barely reacts in time to block a blow aimed at his head.

In a second the hollows vanish, Urahara appears with Yoruichi, and Ichigo starts cussing a blue streak.

Jekyll is red faced at breakfast the next morning, his shoulders hunched and his gaze guilty whenever it lands on Ichigo.

The girls notice, of course they do. Mash looks between the two curiously, and Mordred seems to come to her own conclusions because she mock gags and drags Fran away as soon as they’re done eating.

Alice and Jack as corralled by Mash, who shoots Ichigo a look as she escorts them out of the room and into another. The authors haven’t even emerged from their room. Admittedly, as servants they don’t need to eat, but its still nice to have everyone around the table, and Jack and Alice act like they’ve never eaten before in their lives.

(Ichigo very intentionally doesn’t look into the implications of that)

That leaves Ichigo alone with Jekyll, who takes one look at him, glances at his lap, and bolts for the door.

Ichigo is left watching him go. What the fuck is he supposed to do about this?

It’s easier dealing with children. It really, really is.

Ichigo taps his bracelet until Romani comes up on the coms.

“Ichigo! What’s going on?” Roman asks cheerfully. Ichigo can hear him take a sip of his coffee and hum.

“Nothing terrible just. Annoying. What do you do when someone’s convinced that their other personality has done something terrible to you, but you can’t explain that they didn’t and even if they did its not their fault for what the other them did because they won’t let you talk to them because they’re guilty and freaking out about what the them that they aren’t didn’t actually do?”

“... what ?”

“Uh. You know what. Never mind.”

“Wait, no, Ichigo I wanna know more what the fuck is happening down the-”

Ichigo hung up on him swiftly and stared down at his watch. God this was a stupid situation.

Jekyll acted like they’d just woken up in vegas or something.

And Ichigo has no idea how to fix it.

* *

Ichigo sits in the room in Urahara’s. Cu and Achilles are in the front of the store with the kids, and Medusa had gone to see to the girls, and make sure that they were safe. If someone had been sent to find him, there was always a chance that Aizen would send someone after the others too. He hated it, but he had to keep reminding himself that Aizen isn’t Kyo.

He isn’t the same person as the one he’d met in america. They haven’t fought and almost died together. Ichigo hasn’t shoved his very soul into Aizen’s. He hasn’t stayed night vigils on the restless river with him. He hasn’t held him while he begged for his memory.

Still.

Ichigo has promises to keep.

“What were you thinking?” Urahara asks, “Making a deal like that?”

He doesn’t even sound like he’s scolding Ichigo, for which he’s grateful. He might punch him if that was the case.

It’s strange sometimes. Urahara doesn’t patronize him nearly as much as other people have. People who’d known much more about what he was capable of and what he’d done in the past. He has a startling amount of faith in Ichigo. Even if he is a liar.

“I was thinking I need to have a … discussion, with Aizen,” he says at length.

Urahara’s brows shoot upwards. “A discussion.” He repeats.

Ichigo shrugs, and offers no other explanation. He said what he said, and he meant what he’d said too. He needs to talk to Aizen, if only to tell him the truth.

He may be a traitor to these people, and there’s a history between him and the exiles that Ichigo doesn’t know the details behind, but Ichigo has been to Seireitei. He’s talked with Kyo for hours, lamenting the state of the world and encouraging him to light the spark of revolution. He has no ill will towards him for betraying such a bad place. He barely begrudges him Rukia’s near execution.

Ichigo plays favorites. Sue him.

“Ichigo. He’s a very dangerous man. If you had gone what was your plan?”

“Are you trying to say you’re not dangerous?” Ichigo reasons, looking dead at him. Urahara has the decency to tilt his hat down.

“Certainly not. I would never lie to you like that, Kurosaki. We have a deal, don’t we?”

Ichigo shoots him a half a grin. “So we do.”

“And,” he adds, “My plan is the same as it always is. Charge in with a motley crew and make allies when I get there. It worked before.”

“These aren’t shinigami. They’re hollows.”

“It seems to me that at this point I’m as much a hollow as I am a shinigami. And, they were my enemies too. Does it really make that much of a difference? They clearly have personality and opinion. Not all of them can be on Aizen’s pay roll.”

Urahara considers this.

“It was still reckless.”

Ichigo leans across the table at him. “ I am reckless. It’s always served me well. Besides, I have people watching my back.”

“Yes, your friends. Who you’ve never explained.” Urahara shoots him a pointed look.

“I wasn’t just referring to them,” he nods to Urahara, who actually looks startled before he snaps his fan out to hide his mouth.

“That still doesn’t explain your friends.”

“No. You’re a smart man, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Ichigo did not grin when he said it, even if he wanted to. The truth is impossible, even for ghosts in most cases, but Urahara had had a hogyoku. He’d held the impossible and possible in his own hands and nourished its power for centuries. He can come to his own conclusions about Ichigo’s life.

Ichigo kind of wants to know just what they’ll be.

“Anyhow. What are we gonna do about the Drosiv?”

“Dro- what now?” Urahara genuinely looks befuddled.

“Well they’re hollows with shinigami power right? The opposite of Visord. So Drosiv. Do you have a better word for them?”

“... I do not.”

* * *

Gin watched the show Ulquiorra put on for the gathered arrancar.

On Aizen’s order, without even blinking, he ripped his own eyeball out and crushed it into dust.

First was the sight of the bloodied teenagers. A young girl with brilliant hair that looked far too much like Rangiku for Gin’s own personal comfort, a bulky boy who Yammy swatted like he was little more than a fly. The girl held up better. She was strong, and a fighter, but it was pretty clear she took no joy in fighting.

Then came Ichigo.

The first thing Gin noticed, besides his hair, was his sword.

When last they’d met it had been a massive, body length kyber knife. Now it was the same length but the ribbon had turned black and there was a hollowed out portion in the blade.

Even more surprising is the white knife, pattered in geometric blue that appears from inside his sleeve.

“Looks like yer boy is gettin’ new tricks, huh?” he tilts his head towards Aizen, who wears a smile that would make lesser men grow cold. It’s not even a cruel smile. It’s just far too interested for someone like Aizen. Gin almost pities little Ichigo Kurosaki. Almost.

As it looks now the kid knows how to hold his own, and how to be vicious. Which was not the vibe Gin got from him during their brief encounters in the Seireitei.

Determined yes. Stubborn yes. But not cruel.

“Let’s make a deal,” Ulquiorra met his gaze squarely. Brown burned at his, and now Gin’s too, with a jaw set hard.

“And just what would that be? ” he asked, his voice smooth and flat. Through the memory Gin can feel the most muted tick of interest. Funny, the last few times they’d done this he hadn’t felt anything besides mild annoyance.

“You work for Aizen, right?” A redundant question. Ichigo adjusted his grip on his blade. “If I win I want you to take me to him.”

Ulquiorra looked briefly between the pair of them before he closed his eyes. It was dark for a long moment.

“So be it.”

Gin kept looking at Aizen, watching him reactions even when Grimmjowstarted berating Yammy for his state and Ulquiorra for not simply killing the other two. Grimmjow was always picking fights.

When they finally got the end, Aizen hummed.

“Interesting,” he said at last. “He wants to come here, then we’ll let him.” Aizen’s smile grew steadily.

Gin had a bad feeling about this.

* * * *

Yuzu was getting frustrated.

She wasn’t unused to being the weakest in the family. It wasn’t a surprise. Ichigo and Karin had taken all of the ghost power when they were born, and only left a little bit for her. Just enough for her to know when ghosts were around.

Not like the other two.

They could see them, interact with them, and even fight them. They were truly their mothers children.

For all Yuzu took over as a housewife once she was tall enough to touch the stove she had always felt the least connected to their parents.

Masaki had always been Ichigo’s world. She was a light for all of them but it was Ichigo that she doted on the most, and Ichigo that had clung so hard to her. Even after she died, Yuzu remembered the grieving more than her mother herself. Masaki was a distant memory, a warm and soft one that was corrupted by the rain of sorrow and the hole in the family that she’d left behind.

Yuzu remembered dark days, days when her dad wouldn’t talk to anyone, and when he brother paced the river bank looking for something that not a one of them could ever see.

Then, in those months, it had just been her and Karin.

It had been the two of them that had pushed their dad out of the house to find Ichigo when he stayed out in the rain. It was them that held each other in the dark of the night. It was them that cried for someone that they would barely remember in the years to come.

Then Karin had grown. She had taken the route of the tom boy, and despite his doting on her it was Karin who had more in common with their dad. Even their hair was the same.

And now it turns out that all of them had been able to see spirits the entire time.

Yuzu had always been the odd one out. Always.

So sometimes, when they go to visit the Ishida household she spends more time with Ryuken than practicing shooting like she’s supposed to. She can barely see what she’s doing, let alone form a proper weapon.

It’s frustrating, and it’s easier to find Ryuken and sit with him and do her homework while Karin tried to learn to fight from Uryu.

It’s during one of these sessions that Ryuken looks up from something he’s doing, hospital administration she assumed, and speaks.

“You should give this up. It will serve you better to focus on the living instead of the dead.”

Yuzu looks up at him. She feels older than 11. Sometimes she thinks she is.

“It would probably be easier,” she admits, “But… But this is something for us to remember our mom with. Did you know I only have three memories of her?”

Ryuken’s brows furrow minutely.

“I… did not.”

“Mhmm. I remember her in the kitchen. She had me sitting on the counter, and I was her taste tester for her curry recipe. It was way too spicy, but I liked it anyway. I liked the color it was. That was a long time ago…”

“I remember when me and Karin were first going to pre school. Dad was crying and making a fuss, and mom had to pry us out of his arms so we could go to class. She told him that he should be pushing us to explore, not trying to hide us away at home.”

She fell silent. Ryuken slowly leaned closer across his desk.

“And the third?”

Yuzu looks up at him. “I remember her funeral. I was the only one who could stand to look in the casket. She looked like she was sleeping. I kept waiting for her to open her eyes and tell us it was all a mistake, she was fine. But she never did.”

“No. I suppose she wouldn’t have. I remember that funeral.”

Yuzu startles. She hadn’t even realized he had been at it. “You do?”

“Mhmm. I always thought they’d picked the worst lipstick for her. She hated red with a passion. My mother always wanted to wear more make up, and look more lady like.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuzu said quietly. “You must miss her.”

Ryuken hummed. “She was my best friend.”

He stood at last. “If you’re really so serious about this, I may be able to help.”

Yuzu scrambled to her feet, her homework discarded, and rushed to follow him.

* * * * *

Ichigo was gonna kill someone.

He really, really was.

All he wanted to do was duel a hollow, jump through an interdimensional tear, and talk to his time travelled/mind wiped best friend so he could ask him about overthrowing the government but no!

No!

Now an entire band of dead people were standing in his homeroom, making a massive spectacle, and how do they think they’re actually blending in right now?

Ichigo looks at Hirako, who looks back at him with what might be his more honest expression to date. A frown.

“Don’t look at me fer help. I’m just a normal human person.”

“Oh yeah. A regular fellow human, you human fellow,” he drawls.

Rukia appears on the WINDOW of all things, her arms crossed and her chin lifted regalling.

“Ichigo! It’s time to talk.”

“Later,” Ichigo waved dismissively at her. “We’re about to start history. Sit down or take a step back, would ya?”

He ducks when Rukia flings herself at him with a vicious punch.

“And the rest of you! Sit down, what’s wrong with you?” Ichigo demands irritably. “Why does everyone insist on putting school on the back burner?”

“Why Ichigo, I had no idea you were such an academic!” Rangiku leaned right into his personal space, her blue eyes bright and teasing.

“I’m not,” he says flatly. “But the better I do the sooner I graduate. So. Sit.”

One by one the shinigami sit around the room, stirring up ripples of conflict.

Ichigo can feel a headache building behind his eyes and the bell hasn’t even wrung yet.

Couldn't they find him after school? Or just leave well enough alone?

Stupid question. Of course they can’t. They’re my friends, after all.

* * * * * *

#Ichigo Kurosaki #bleach fanfiction #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru #gin ichimaru #ulquiorra cifer #jeckyll and hyde

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lo-55 · 3 years

Text

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 3

The Rift

Ichigo wonders, more often than not, why it is that even though he can see ghosts, he never sees the ones he wants to. His mother, and now his friends from Chaldea. He can’t see them anymore. The singularities are gone, and humanity has returned to the way it always was. But it’s missing so many people, from his own point of view. Olga Marie isn’t bound to him anymore. She’s moved on. And the rest…

Ichigo sits in front of his mother's grave with his dad at his side. Karin and Yuzu have gone for drinks, leaving them alone for the time being. Rukia, and Kon too, sit on a hill, watching over them and waiting for trouble. He doesn’t want to admit it. He’s carried the guilt in his heart for so long, but now… it’s possible that Rukia is right. That the reason his mother is dead is because…

“Hey, old man,” Ichigo looks towards his dad, who’s been acting weird since he’s come back. More than once he’s caught him just staring. Like he’s trying to figure out what changed his kid so much. As if they were ever that close in the first place. Ichigo let’s him. There’s no way for him to understand what’s changed Ichigo into the person he is now. It’s not something that can be easily explained, and in any case the Mage's Association was pretty clear. No one is supposed to know that magic exists. Including his own family. Anyone who finds out must be killed.

“Yeah?” Isshin looks his way, away from the grave that reads his mother's name.

“About mom. Could she ever see ghosts, do you know?” he looked right at him. Testing Isshin, watching his eyes. He’d never noticed before…

That his dad was hiding behind a dozen walls. And they all started to come up when Ichigo asked his question. Ichigo has spent years with master assassins and traitorous knights. He can see clearly now, for the first time ever. His dad isn’t such a colossal goof off after all.

“Why are you asking this all of a sudden?” he asks and it hurts . It hurts more than Ichigo thought, to know that he was keeping this secret for so long. To know that he could have told him, that both of them could have told him when he was young and he couldn't tell who was alive and who was dead, that he wasn’t alone in it. Karin had always had him, and they’d learned together after their mom had died, who was real and who was not.

Why? Why had they hid these things from him? And could he trust their dad to tell them the truth now?

“... No reason. I was just thinking about her.”

No, he decides, looking back at the headstone. He can’t trust his old man to tell him the truth. So, he’ll have to learn it some other way.

Sometimes, Isshin looks as his son and he sees a complete stranger.

He’s still brash and angry, and he would die for Yuzu and Karin, might have while Isshin wasn’t looking, but he’s not himself. He isn’t the same son that had climbed onto a plane for what should have been a simple job months ago. He’d only been gone for a week. How could he have changed so much?

He was taller, for one thing, and yeah teenagers have growth spurts but they don’t grow three inches in seven days. Their hair doesn’t grow out in a week either, and they don’t get so strong or so self assured that fast.

More than that, his son has this look in his eyes…

A terrible age, even though he’s only fifteen. He looks at them like he’s afraid they’ll disappear. He looks like he’s always waiting for something. For something to go wrong, for the other shoe to drop.

Even before Rukia had shown up and given her powers over to him, and then started living in his son’s closet of all places, he’d been the same. On edge. And the way he’d greeted them…

Ichigo did a lot of things when Isshin attacked him. Hugging him wasn’t one of them.

On top of all that, he’d gone to see Kisuke, to ask what was going on in the spirit world, where he could no longer see, and it turns out that Kisuke agrees. There’s something strange about Ichigo. He’s stronger than he should be, and stronger than he ever was, even without Rukia. And he doesn’t know what exactly happened between Kisuke and Ichigo, but it’s enough that now the old captain is interested in him.

It’s not nearly as comforting as Isshin wishes it was. When Kisuke got involved, things rarely went well. No matter how good his intentions were.

Then he asked about Masaki, and Isshin had faltered.

It was time, it was the perfect time for him to tell him the truth. To sit him down and explain what had happened all those years ago, and tell him about the kind of heritage he had, and what it might mean. He’s wondered, whose power did he get? Isshin, or Masaki. Shinigami, or Quincy? Or both? Or hollow? It’s hard to tell.

But he chickened out. The words got stuck and the world closed off and Ichigo turned away from him. The moment was lost, and now Isshin doesn’t know what to do. It’s so much easier raising daughters than sons.

* *

By the time his ridiculous duel with Uryu is over, Ichigo is willing to bet money that his mother was a Quincy.

Ichigo ends up sitting on a bench, breathing fast but he’s not so exhausted nor so beat up as Ishida, who sits patiently while Ichigo carefully stitches up his arm. It’s easy enough to pass this particular skill off as one he learned from his father and not knee deep in a war, trying to help Roman with the dozens of injured Chaldea staff.

“Isn’t your dad a doctor? Wouldn’t it be better to have him do than let me?” Ichigo finds himself asking They’re lucky Uryu had a needle and thread on his person, even if they did have to bend the needle in an awkward, sloppy approximation of the ones used for real stitches.

It’ll do for now.

“It’s best if my father doesn’t know about this,” he says simply.

“Oh yeah?” Ichigo grins at him. “I take it that means he doesn’t want you doing this kind of stuff then.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Uryu sniffed at him stubbornly. Ichigo glowers at him, and pulls the next stitch harder until Uryu yelps. “Hey! Watch it!”

“Of course it’s my business. This whole stunt that you pulled was insanely dangerous.”

“Are you admitting that you’re weaker than I am,” Uryu lifts his chin, his nose in the air, and Ichigo has to stop himself from karate chopping him in his throat.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m weaker or not! What matters is that we’re not the only people in town that you could have gotten killed with this stunt! Didn’t you notice? There’s hollows that disappeared that neither one of us took out.”

He snaps the thread and grabs Uryu by the front of his shirt, watching his blue eyes go wide and realization dawn for what is apparently the first time. “That means other people are fighting. Other people might be dying. My sister has high spirit levels too you know?! When you pull shit like this you’re putting the lives of everyone around you into the same danger, without even telling them about it! How can someone with top grades be so damn stupid?!”

Ichigo forces himself to lean back, anger still bubbling under his skin. All this trouble because Uryu hates shinigami, and Ichigo isn’t even a real one.

“ Listen ,” he leans in , forcing Uryu to bend backwards over the back of the bench, “I’ll fight you one on one any time you want. But this hollow fighting isn’t a game. And if you ever put other people in danger unnecessarily again, I’ll beat your goddamn face in.”

“Y-you!” Uryu pushes against his chest but Ichigo is immobile, stone and still.

“Do you understand, Uryu Ishida?”

“I. Yes,” he says at last, looking down and away. Only then does Ichigo let him go, leaning back and letting out a grunt when it pulls at his shoulders. He’d over strained himself, just a little bit.

“Hey, Kon!” Ichigo waves his body snatcher over to the pair. “Gimme my body back already, huh?”

“Ah, you’re no fun,” Kon whines, but he sits on the bench and lets Ichigo slide back in without a fuss. Ichigo pulls Uryu up off of the bench and gives him a shove.

“C’mon. I’ll walk you home.”

“I don’t need you to do that!”

“Well I’m doing it anyways. You’re injured, what if there’s still a few more hollows lingering around, huh? Just shut up and start walking.”

Uryu scowls, but starts walking forwards anyhow, with Ichigo in his shadow. During his whole trauma speech and background story Ichigo’s mind had been turning over and over. His dad was a quincy too, even if he didn’t want to admit it, and if Uryu was to be believed, they were the last of them.

Goat-face isn’t going to answer his questions, so Ichigo follows Uryu home, to a house that far too big for just two men alone. He feels old, walking into it. It’s fanciful, but he’s seen the theatres of Rome and the courts of King Arthur.

Ichigo will never be a sensor, but he’s gotten used to trusting the sense inside him that says when someone else is around, and even though it took him a while he’s good enough to be able to follow it if he has to. He didn’t know about the spirit ribbons. Ichigo is used to being clueless, but he’s not stupid. He files the information away for later, and quietly memorizes that feeling of Uryu. It’s more like a taste, clean and sharp, and vaguely like citrus.

His father is much the same. And he is utterly unimpressed by Ichigo arriving on his doorstep with his son in tow.

His eyes are colder than ice, not exactly something Ichigo would want in any doctor he has.

“Hey, old man,” Ichigo raised a hand and, with his usual level of tact, asked ever-so-discreetly, “Did you know my mom?”

* * *

“Do you know where you are?”

The scent of roses and daffodils and the feeling of soft worn wool brushing against his cheek. A ribbon made of magic brushing his nose.

Ichigo opens his eyes and looks into a pale blue sky, wisps of cotton candy clouds stretching across from one horizon to the next.

“I am in a dream,” he says dutifully.

“Very good Dolores.”

Ichigo punches him in the stomach, sending the mage doubled over in a fit of coughing and laughing together. A smile that’s far too mischevious to be soft is aimed at him.

“You have an amazon prime subscription out here?” Ichigo asked, sitting up slowly. The tower still floats, through the sky at the end of the world.

“Well yes. I do run a blog, you know?” though it’s said with a straight face he can see a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, where even eternal youth hasn’t been able to curb laugh lines. He’s good humor, and a good company.

“Seriously?!”

That gets a laugh out of the mage of all mages. He lays back in the flowers that climb and bloom, thriving in his very presence. He is life and light and mischief, a watcher and a strange sort of guardian.

“Well yes. I can’t spend all of my time merely watching people. The internet made things much more fun! Humans are such innovative creatures, even without magic to help them along.”

Ichigo nodded along with him. “Does that mean that you can email me instead of hijacking my beauty sleep?”

“Oh, you mean you don’t enjoy my company, oh great Master of Humanity?”

Ichigo scowls at him, but there’s a smile trying to pull at his mouth. He struggles to squash it, and he can tell from the glint in his companions eyes that he fails.

“Stop calling me that,” he says for a millionth time.

A firm hand pushes him back into the flowers, under the warmth of the sun in the soft crush of fragrant petals. There’s no perfume that could ever compare. This is a strange place, a beautiful cage, and Ichigo doesn’t fully understand how he can be here and home at the same time. Not that that’s new. He’s been in two places at once more times than he cares to count, and he still only vaguely understands how it’s possible.

“I understand that your life is interesting once more.” The mage stretches out beside him, taller than he and cloaked elegantly in his same old robes. He’s showy and modest at once and it hurts Ichigo’s eyes to look at him for long.

Ichigo groans. “If you mean my entire existence is one giant clusterfuck then yeah. It’s real ‘interesting’ again. But I’m not time travelling again yet so…”

“Poor little master. Your life is so very hard…”

“I’ll hit you,” Ichigo threatened. “Master mage, but a shit fighter. I can take you.”

The laugh that he is granted is bells on the wind.

“True, true. But I believe that things will get worse before they get better. Perhaps you should begin your mage craft training once more.”

“You know I always sucked at that. I could only use real magic if I had a mystic code. Every other time, it exploded in my face. I’m a secondrate mage, that’s how it’s always been,” he says it all simply.

“That is true… Isn’t it funny how that works out? A boy who cannot cast a single spell without assistance ends up defeating the most powerful mage in history. You really are a remarkable human, Ichigo.”

“And you’re trying to get me to do something for you, aren’t you?”

“Aha! You do know me! Yes, I need you to mail something very important to me…”

“You get mail here?!”

* * * *

It’s the tenth time he’s been thrown into the dirt today.

A normal person would have given up and packed it in. A normal person would have humbly accepted that the strength of these titans was beyond their abilities to keep up with.

Instead, Ichigo stands again.

He picks up his borrowed practice sword, dulled so no one can get hurt, and faces his opponent once more.

Mash, Cu, and Medusa, his constant companions, watch him narrow his eyes and plant his feet again.

“One more time, Nero!”

“He’s stubborn, if nothing else,” Medusa mused, not quite out of his earshot. Cu nods his agreement, his eyes never wavering.

“Tha’ll help him,” he said simply. Ichigo didn’t know why but his accent seemed to change just a little each time he opened his mouth. Sometimes he was barely understandable. Sometimes it is perfect english. Or whatever language the magic was auto-translating it to. Japanese for Ichigo, english for Mash, and probably latin for Nero and the surrounding soldiers.

“ ‘He’ can still hear you!” He glared halfheartedly at the pair of Servants, who looked perfectly innocent. The longer he was around them, the more familiar he was with the small changes in disposition and expression, their likes and dislikes. And, to his eternal surprise, the feeling of them.

Cu Cullain felt like trees. Like thick moss on a stone, and early morning mist rolling through thick, ageless trees. His presence was as familiar as an old, trusted hound. They’d only been together for a few months, but his spellwork and the steady draw of his mana felt as natural as breathing to him.

Medusa was the deep ocean, power beneath every surface but beautiful to behold. A crash of waves against the stony shore, her every touch fleeting and feather light while her chains lashed with horror and the chthonic strength born in the age of gods. She was the smooth brush of scales against his wrist, the flash of teeth behind a sweet smile, and gold eyes in the darkness that Ichigo alone did not flinch from.

Theirs was a tenuous relationship. She kept looking for him to stab her back, to cut her head and use it as his weapon. Ichigo was still half expecting to wake up as a statue one day. They only had the barest trust between them but…

She hasn’t let him down yet, and Ichigo endeavours to repay that much if he can.

He raises his sword and barely blocks a vicious strike from Nero. She was shorter than him by far, but he had no chance matching her for raw strength. Or speed. Or her damn near perfect swordplay.

“Focus on the performance at hand,” she orders, her mouth curved in a strange smile. Ichigo didn’t totally understand her. They’d been travelling with her for over a month now, on the way to reach what would one day be london.

“Right,” Ichigo lunges for her, his strikes quick and hard. He’s not worried about hurting her since he can’t even hit her.

It’s graceful, elegant, and nearly effortless for her to knock him flat on his ass again, smacking the flat of her blade against his chest so hard he sees spots. He’s left sucking desperately. His nails bite into the dirt and his grip on his sword tightens until the leather wrapped around the hilt creaks.

“That’s enough for today, I think,” Nero decides. Ichigo wants to argue, but he doesn’t have any breath for it. So he groans like a dying whale and lays in the dirt, his hands shaking, his body refusing to move at all.

Nero lowers herself to the ground, on her knees beside him and how strange is that? A goddamn emperor kneeling with him in the dirt. A demi-goddess, and a druid, and a demi-servant. And Ichigo, just human. But Nero is human too. She’s as alive as he is and she is wiping the fucking floor with him.

“You’re a - fuck,” he wheezes and finally gets his elbows under him so he can sit up.

“Now that’s very rude to say, considering that I’ve been training you out of the goodness of my own heart,” Nero sniffs at him, tilting her chin to the sky.

Why did Ichigo always get stuck with these kinds of bewildering people? Everyone he knew was so weird…

“Yeah, I guess. Thanks, Nero.” A perfectionist and slave driver, but Ichigo was getting better every day. By the time they reached their destination, maybe he’d even be able to land a single blow per bout. Ichigo had never expected to get along with a roman emperor of all people, but even outside of fighting Ichigo has always been, if only mildly, interested in the arts, and Nero only stokes those embers.

Nero smiles beatifically at him. “You have the makings of a fine performer. Even without an Imperial Privilege. I enjoy teaching you.”

Her smile is interrupted by a pinch of her brows and purse of her lips.

Ah, another headache.

It’s very strange, trying to reconcile the young woman in front of Ichigo with the tyrant from history. She’s put her people ahead of her at every turn, and helped Ichigo and his friends. She’s under no obligation to teach Ichigo swordplay but she does, even after long days on the march.

At the same time, there’s a reason Boudica is only her reluctant ally. Nero cared for her people but she was, in another word, a merciless bitch when she put her mind to it. But she was on their side, for now, and Ichigo is learning not to look gift horses in the mouth. So he gets up and goes to her side, and shows her how to press her fingers into pressure points on the back of her neck, and hold it for a few seconds until the headache goes away.

He’s made an archduke for that one.

* * * * *

A rift forms in the Kurosaki household.

It’s always been there, a cut stitches tenuously together by blood and loyalty, and reinforced by love, but now it’s split.

A gaping chasm, and Ichigo doesn’t know what to do with it.

It feels like it’s not something he can bridge. Like this is one obstacle that even he cannot conquer. Master of Chaldea, Final Beacon for Humanity. Commander of Heroes, Beloved, the First Guardian.

He is a hundred things but at the end of the day he is still.

A teenager.

Fifteen and eighteen and four thousand at once.

His dad had lied to him. If not directly, then by omission. For years, for so very long he’d let Ichigo hold the responsibility of Masaki’s life in his hands, had kept quiet when he grew frightened and dark and closed off from the living, so preoccupied was he with the dead.

Never once did he offer reason. Never once did he show his care or cradle his son, or tell him that the monsters were real and it wasn’t his fault .

Not once, in six, seven, eight, nine years did he tell Ichigo that he was not alone. That he and Karin were merely Masaki’s children. That they were born of quincy blood, even if that never put a bow in their hands.

Half the blood means half the power,” That was what Ryuuken had said. And how sad is it that Ichigo had had to hunt down a veritable stranger, once who’s son had spent the entire day bickering and competing and hating his guts, to get answers from?

“ Does my old man know all of this?” Ichigo had asked.

Ryuuken was honest, even if he didn’t want to get into the tangled web of family drama. “Yes,” He’d said, “ But it’s more complicated than that. Isshin has the entire story.”

And he wouldn’t tell Ichigo.

He didn’t tell him on the bloody banks of the river, when a child wandered in desperate hope of finding a phantom of his mother.

He did not tell a ten year old at the foot of a grave marker. He kept silent at eleven, at twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

Fifteen. Under the watching grave of his mother Ichigo had asked. And Isshin had not told.

The house is tense like it hasn’t been since Ichigo got back. It’s tense like a storm, cracking along the edges of the walls and windows. Tense like there’s no coming back from this and Ichigo cannot take the building static in his veins or the hissing of betrayal in his ears, like snakes.

He misses Medusa, suddenly. She would take his pound of flesh for him and then some.

Ichigo go knows, for certain, that if he stays in this house he’ll go mad. Yuzu and Karin, they know something is up. Ichigo’s pretty sure Karin saw the hollow, Grand Fisher, at the grave site. Dead now by his blade, but the vengeance tastes like ash on his tongue. His mother is still dead. His father is still a liar.

His sisters still love them both.

Ichigo loves them, too. More than anything in the world, he fought gods and demons for their sake. For them to be born for them to have a future.

But he can’t spend all of his time at home, and Chad is starting to ask questions that Ichigo has a difficult time answering.

Not ‘was that a demon ghost you just punched in the face’ hard. That answer is ease. ‘Yes’.

But ‘is everything alright at home’ hard. Chad had asked the first time he saw Isshin launch himself at his son in a surprise attack and he’s about to ask it again, Ichigo can feel it in his bones.

So he makes a phone call.

The rest of the world will never know what they did.

The world will not know about him or Mash or Roman or Olga Marie, or the countless others that built Chealdea and kept her running. They’ll never know how much they fought, how much they bled, how much they sacrificed for the sake of the future.

It’s fine with him.

But there are some who know. The Mage's Association, and the United Nations. And a select few people from the Clock Tower in London, where Ichigo has already been offered schooling and job. They know that he stopped the incineration of humanity.

And they owe him.

Three years of pay for working in Chaldeas, and even more for everything else he’d done.

He finds a backpack while he waits for a familiar voice to answer.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” There's a shuffle of sheets and a groan in the background and Ichigo barely pays it any mind as he stuffs a hoodie into his bag and goes looking for his running shoes.

“Not a clue,” he said blandly. “But listen, Waver. I need a favor.”

* * * * * *

#Ichigo Kurosaki #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru #well sorta #bleach #bleach fanfiction #bleach/fate grand order #olga marie animusphere

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lo-55 · 3 years

Text

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 19

Do Dead People Have Therapists?

By the time Ichigo was standing over Hiyori, her throat caught between two blades, there’s a thin sheet of sweat across his brow and his sleeves are long ripped off by her weapon. It’s a serrated butcher's blade, which fits Hiyori perfectly.

She was stronger than Ichigo expected, and he can feel blood drying along his arms from where it's been stopped from flowing out of him, now white instead of black. He mentally thanks Tensa.

Ichigo’s knee is on her stomach, keeping her pinned in place as if his blades weren’t enough for it. Her sword sticks out of the ground a few yards away. The rest of the Visord are watching from the sidelines, tense and ready to intervene save Shinji. Ichigo’s servants are much the same on the other side. They’re too protective of him.

Not that they don’t have their reasons.

The first time they’d seen the mask that is slowly dissolving from his face he’d wrought destruction and nearly died right after. He knows they don’t like it, but it’s his power and he won’t give Nieve up for anything.

It’s still disconcerting when he pulls it on. The shift of the world snapping into intense focus and the feeling of perfect balance and power coursing through him. There’s a pressure in his head that’s not painful but present, when Nieve is at the forefront.

As the last flicker of bone falls from his face Ichigo falls against the ground away from Hiyori, his energy drained away. This was going to take some getting used to. But this time he’d lasted a full two minutes by his own estimate. It’s better than it was before.

Even if it was only by thirty seconds.

“Now can we be done with this bullshit?” Ichigo asks, casting an irritated scowl out at the other Visored.

None of them seem inclined to challenge him further. There’s a man he hadn’t seen before, with pale pink hair, who is staring at his entourage with a little too much attention.

A throat clears in front of him and Ichigo looks up to see Hirako standing over him. His smile is half quirked, not the strange, toothy grin he’d had before. He looks more genuine like this, and less like he’s trying to involve Ichigo in something seriously shady.

His hand is extended down towards him while the other girl, Lisa, helps up Hiyori.

Ichigo huffs and slides Tensa back into his sleeve before he takes Hirakos hand and uses him to pull himself up. His body protests and he’d like nothing more than a nap, but by the way everyone is starting to gather around him it’s looking like that’s going to be out of the question this time.

Great.

Ichigo doesn’t know when it happened but at some point he became the king of ‘making doctors sleep’.

It’s a crown he’d rath chuck in the ocean, but it’s one he wears all the same.

In Chaldeas he’s the one who always bullies Romani into sleeping even when it means dragging him into Ichigo’s own bedroom. He’s made other medical staff leave their stations, and forced Da Vinci to take breaks when they were together, heroic spirit or not. (nevermind that she’s not a doctor. Close enough)

Now, it seems, his luck runs true because he finds Jeckyll passed out over a stack of papers that look like chemistry formulas and equations.

Ichigo hadn’t gotten that far into school when he’d gone to Chaldeas, and he’s learning more mage craft than science now, so he couldn’t tell you what anything meant if you pointed a gun to his head.

Still, he knows a sleeping scientist when he sees one.

He shakes him gently by the shoulder. “Hey. C’mon, you can’t sleep here,” he chides.

There’s not response besides and grumble and Jeckyll reaching to turn his gas lamp down and almost knocking it off the desk entirely.

Ichigo manages to save them from a fiery death just barely, but it’s clean that Jeckyll doesn’t want to get up and move.

Damn it.

The things I do for my friends.

Ichigo pulled the chair out and picked Jekyll up easily. He barely weighed a thing already, compared to Ichigo who had been fighting for well over a year now on top of most of his life.

Ichigo takes him to his room, out of the study and up the hall before he deposits him in the sheets.

It’s when he’s pulling back to stand that he feels cool steel against his upper thigh, right over an artery.

He looks down to see bright red eyes. Hyde.

* *

Medusa and Achilles did not want to let Ichigo be alone with these people. Not even remotely. Ichigo insisted, after Hiyori finally calmed down and got something for the inevitable bruises that would form from Medusa’s attack.

Ichigo was, naturally, completely ignored.

Cu might have let him alone and trusted him enough to mind himself now that he could fight, but when the other two ganged up on Ichigo he threw his lot in with them.

The filthy traitor.

Ichigo sits on the couch in their living room area with Achilles to his left, medusa to his right, and Cu sits at his knee. It’s a wonderful show of force, except now no one is talking about anything, even though there’s clearly a lot to talk about.

“So,” Ichigo says at last, “Why did you want me here so badly again?”

It’s not the best ice breaker, but he can’t think of anything else. Shinji looks off put from where he’s sat beside Hiyori on the opposite couch from Ichigo. Two of the other Vizord took up residence in chair to left, a pretty boy with blond hair and the long fingers of a pianist and a gruff looking man with his hair shaped vaguely like a star.

The pair on the couch was joined by a serious woman reading porn. A love seat on the other side of it had been moved to hold a gruff man who reminded Ichigo far to much of EMIYA and a green haired girl who looked ready to bounce away into the sky.

“Your mask,” Hiyori snapped at him, “You told Shinji something stupid about your mask.”

“I told him the truth about my mask,” Ichigo corrected instantly. “What’s so weird about it? Didn’t you guys have to do the same thing?”

“No,” Kensei said bluntly. “We didn’t just ‘talk’. We fought.”

“...I mean, I did that too, but we were just playing.”

“Playing?!” Hiyori sputters at him. “Playing! A hollow inside your brain and you played with it!”

“Well shit, what did you do?” Ichigo finally demands, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at her. “He’s just me, right? A part of me. Like an arm or a leg or something more profound I don’t wanna think about right now.”

“They are a part of ya,” Hirako admits reluctantly. “But inner hollows chew away at yer sanity piece by piece, just waitin ta devour you. They want out, they wanna kill, they wanna fight they want to take possession of everything ya have. They’re the darkest parts of ourselves, and if ya don’t beat them down and lock them away-”

“Huh?!” Ichigo stares at him. Beat them down and lock them away?!

“-They’ll come back and keep tryin’ shred your psyche. Ya make one wrong more, one slip up, let that box open even a crack and it’s over.”

Ichigo and Hirako stared at each other for a long time. Ichigo leans forwards, steepling his fingers together.

“Okay,” he says slowly, picking apart what the fuck was just said to him. “You are telling me that you have taken the darkest parts of you, the parts that you don’t like -anger, pain, desperation, every vicious killer instinct inside your body- You’ve taken the personification of them, and you’ve stuffed them into a box where you don’t have to deal with them anymore.”

Ichigo looked straight at him.

“Do dead people have therapists? Because you should really see one.”

Hirako gaped at him. Ichigo had to duck one of Hiyori’s sandals.

“Would you stop that! Damn, violent women,” Ichigo grumbled. “That’s like the worst coping mechanism ever. You don’t take all you trash, shove it in a closet, and think it’s just magically gone. Eventually it’s all gonna come back out, and now it’s hella rotten. What the hell.”

‘Did you just call me trash?!’

‘I will say it again. Watch me.’

‘I’m still you, idiot!’

‘This is very strange,’ medusa cuts in.

“There’s not other way to do it,” Rose, the pretty boy, says mournfully.

Ichigo shoots him a look. “There clearly is. Since I didn’t lock Nieve anywhere and we’re just fine where we are… Ya ever read that book, Jekyll and Hyde?”

Rose, Hirako, Lisa, and Hachi nod at him.

“Yeah. Trying to rid yourself of parts you don’t like doesn’t usually end well.”

He had the scar on the leg to prove it.

“How did you do it then?” Kensei finally demands, looming over Ichigo. “You can’t really expect us to believe that you just talked.”

“It’s not my problem if you believe me or not,” Ichigo is seriously starting to lose his temper here. “I told you what happened. He’s me, he’s always been me. He’s my fear, he’s my desperation, he’s my deepest instincts.”

“I’ve always trusted my instincts, even if I don’t listen to them all the time. It’s the same concept.”

They’re staring at Ichigo like he’s just disproved gravity or something.

Ichigo sighs heavily.

“Can I leave now? I have other things to do, you know.”

Before he gets the chance though the world tilts with a brand new pressure. A void and a violent rage slam into Ichigo’s senses.

“...Are you fucking with me?” Ichigo demands, his temper coming closer and closer to snapping.

* * *

Ichigo can feel blood slowly leaking out of the shallow cut on his thigh. It’s barely an inch away from killing him and Hyde is staring up at him, his red eyes wild.

Ichigo slowly pulls his hands away from him.

“Sorry,” he says blandly, “Did I scare you?”

“No!” Hyde snaps, digging the knife a little further. For a berserker he is remarkably accurate. Is it Jekyll’s knowledge seeping in? Ichigo’s not sure how they work entirely. How much does Jekyll remember? How much down Hyde?

“Good,” Ichigo goes with it. He doesn’t show fear. Hyde might get off on that. Or be more temped to stab him. Ichigo’s not sure which one. “Wanna put the knife away?”

“Fuck you,” Hyde snaps. Ichigo throws him off balance. Others flinch in warranted fear. Ichigo treats him like he does Medusa.

Something else catches Ichigo’s attention.

He reaches out, and Hyde doesn’t stab him deeper when he runs his fingers through his wild hair.

“How does that work?” Ichigo asks abruptly. “I get that you change. You’re broader than Jekyll and stronger too. Your eyes are different. But how does your hair change that much without even touching it? What all changes?”

The knife slowly eases out of his leg and a new light enters Hyde’s bright red eyes.

He starts to grin, predatory. “Do you really want to find out? I love breaking in Jekyll’s things before he gets the chance to.” Ichigo can’t tell if he’s being flirted with or threatened. Maybe both. Probably both.

Ichigo’s fingers twist in Hydes hair and he yanks his head back until Hyde hisses. “Don’t call me a thing,” he chides.

Hyde grabs him by his shoulders and throws him sideways onto the bed.

Ichigo realizes he’s going to have to get a little rougher if he wants Hyde to behave himself.

Fine then. He can do rough.

* * * *

By the time Ichigo reaches the clearing in the park Chad is unconscious on the ground and Orihime is standing defensively in front of him, her fairies floating around her in four points. Chad is laid out, his arm slowly piecing itself together again under Orihime’s healing dome while her three pronged shield barely holds to another attack.

Ichigo doesn’t waste time. He’s come in from behind and he uses it to his advantage. The big one doesn’t notice him, but the smaller of the pair glances over his shoulder in time to watch Ichigo vault himself up and over the big ones head so he can use gravity when he swings down and drops with every intention of cleaving him in two.

Zangetsu sings in his hands, Neive shrieking his delight inside his soul. The blade cuts deep, but it’s like cutting through stone instead of flesh.

Ichigo bounced back, his eyes locked on the pair, and lands next to Orihime.

“Hey,” he nods to her, “Good job.”

Orihime flushes pink at the praise and looks away from him, but not away from their opponents. She’s too smart for that.

“Not really. I tried to attack before, but he’s really strong. Tsubaki got hurt…”

“Sometimes that’s how it goes,” Ichigo says solemnly. “Watch my back?”

She nods.

The giant is screaming at Ichigo, curses that spit with no harm. What does he care what these people think of him? Ichigo eyes him speculatively. He’s not that worried about this one though. The smaller one is stronger, power packed into his body. Ichigo eyes them. Broken hollow masks and a zanpakutou. They’re some kind of hollow. A hybrid, too. The opposite of a Visord? Drosiv?

“Ulquiorra,” the giant finally stops screaming to look at his companion. “Is this the one? The one with the orange hair and the sword as long as he is?”

The smaller one, Ulquiorra, eyes Ichigo with disinterest. “Yes. That’s the one.”

“Who sent you?” Ichigo asks, ignoring Neive snarling for release. He wants blood, and Ichigo is inclined to give it to him. Orihime is strong, she’s stood her ground but her hands are still shaking and Chad-

His arm is in bad shape. If it were anyone other than Orihime treating him Ichigo might think he’s going to lose it.

“I’ll kill you!” the giant snarled instead of answering.

Ichigo swings upwards. A sharply concentrated Getsuga Tenshou tears through his arm entirely, finishing what Orihime had started. Vengeance for his fallen friend. Barely a minute into the fight and his opponent is down an arm, cut nearly in two, and bleeding profusely.

“Damn you!” he snarled.

Ulquiorra eyed his companion coldly. “You’re struggling. Shall I step in, Yammy?”

“Shut up!” Yammy snapped at him. He grabbed his sword and clicked it out of its sheath.

‘Cu, is the Bounded Field in place?’

‘It’s all ready for you. No one outside the park will notice anything amiss, even if you blow something up. A couple of yer friends are comin, though.”

“That’s fine. Thanks.”

“I wish you’d let us fight with you,” Medusa grumbled.

“I know. But I want to do this on my own for now. If it looks like I’ll die,save me okay?”

She huffed, but he knew he’d already won that fight.

Ichigo tilted the point of Zangetsu up and shifted his footing.

“Now that I’ve taken your arm,” he said suddenly. “Let’s make a deal.” Before his friends showed up.

“Fuck you.” But Ichigo wasn’t talking to Yammy.

He was looking at Ulquiorra. While Yammy felt like fury, all rage stuffed into a body that was still somehow too small to hold it all in, Ulquiorra felt like a night itself. Cool and vast, he was several dozen times stronger than Yammy. Ichigo could stand toe to toe with him, but a victory would be hard fought if it came.

Ulquiorra met his gaze squarely. “And just what would that be?” he asked, his voice smooth and flat.

“You work for Aizen, right?” He didn’t wait for confirmation. It was obvious. Someone had sent them to find him, and Aizen had disappeared into a mob of hollows, the drama queen. “If I win I want you to take me to him.”

Ulquiorra looked briefly between the pair of them before he closed his eyes.

“So be it.”

Ichigo lunged.

* * * * *

Deep in a desert of snow white sand sat a legend amongst the hollow.

It was a myth that sunk into their bones, a knowledge that was granted to them when their hearts tore themselves asunder and they were consumed by their own loss.

The legend was powerful when it first began. The eldest hollow will tell it as fact while the youngest remember it as a bedtime story and little else.

Decades and centuries ate away and the truth sunk deep in the depths of darkness.

It was in that darkness that she waited. The immortal are patient creatures, and her wait was finally coming to an end.

* * * * * *

#Ichigo Kurosaki #bleach fanfiction #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru #ulquiorra cifer #hirako shinji #bleach/fate grand order #jeckyll and hyde

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lo-55 · 3 years

Text

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch.11

Silver and Steel

Ichigo holds his sword firmly, his eyes narrowed at the man in front of him. They’d separated. Ukitake stays behind, but Ichigo has no doubt that he’s just as powerful as the man in front of him.

Ichigo knows good and well that he can’t beat the both of them, but that won’t stop him from trying. Rukia still stands behind him, uncertain.

“I can see you’re determined,” hatman says. He changes his stance. “It’s unfortunate, but today my zanpakuto is feeling playful. She’s a bit picky, you understand, but you’ve gotten her interest.”

“Lucky me,” Ichigo says dryly.

That get’s the man to laugh.

“I’m Shunsui Kyoraku, the captain of squad eight, and you won’t find me so easy to pin as these young bucks here.”

“...are you aware that that sounds suspiciously like an innuendo,” Ichigo narrows his eyes at the man, Kyoraku, who looks startled but laughs a moment later.

“We’re going to have fun with you,” he predicts. There’s an undercurrent in his easy voice, something that is not quite malice but still not nice. Ichigo cocks his head.

“We’ll see.”

Kyoraku crosses his swords at the blade and changes his stance. The world seems to shift, just enough to set Ichigo’s teeth on edge. It’s a familiar sensation, one he’s missed in the past few months. He knows, as soon as this Katen Kyokotsu is released, what has been done.

They’re in a reality marble, or something akin to it.

Ichigo narrows his eyes. This is a man strong enough to warp reality itself to his whims.

“You have to know you can’t win,” Ukitake actually sounds gentle. “If you give up now, you and your friends won’t be hurt.”

“Until you execute us, you mean,” Ichigo shoots him a dark glare. He has the decency to wince.

Ichigo looks to the other man. Kyoraku, captain of the eighth. He’s a whole different kind of monster to Kenpachi. Not a claw in the throat but the shadows that lurked just out of reach.

“So. Shall we begin?”

“I suppose. However, I should explain now what it means for my Zanpakutou to want to play with you,” Kyoraku’s smile turns just a little bit sharper. “Katen Kyokotsu makes childrens games real.”

“... you’ve got to be fucking with me,” Ichigo can feel a twitch develop over his eye brow.

“Excuse me?” Kyoraku asks, cocking his head just so.

“No, no. See, I met a little girl who makes nursery rhymes real, and now you’re going to make a kids game real. That just. Yeah. That’s my life. Why the fuck not.” Ichigo shakes his head. “What game are we playing?”

Kyoraku looks intrigued by his admittance, but tells him all the same.

“Have you ever played Kagome Kagome?”

Ichigo was exasperated. “Which of us is the demon?”

Kyoraku started walking, clock wise, leaving a trail of copies behind him while shadows slithered up and locked around Ichigo’s eyes. He stiffened, but he knew how powers like these worked. Kyoraku was just as bound by the rules as he was.

The question was, now, what happened if he guess wrong? What damage would it do?

Kyoraku’s voice echoed around him. It circled him on all sides, front and back, left and right.

Kagome kagome

Kago no naka no tori wa

Itsu itsu deyaru

Yoake no ban ni

Tsuru to kame ga subetta.

Ushiro no shoumen daare

Kagome kagome, The bird is in the cage,

Ichigo tilts his head. The voice will be no help. This game is hardly fair.

When, oh when will it come out

In the night of dawn

On top of that, all of the space around them now feels distinctly like Kyoraku. The laugh on the wind, the shadow at his back, the scent of sake and, now, some type of bun. He can’t feel where Kyoraku is, and the song is coming to a close.

The crane and turtle slipped

Who is behind you now?

Ichigo swallows thickly. His instincts hum under his skin. He’s always trusted them. They’ve guided and protected him well for years.

And, according to the prickling along his arms, the greatest source of danger is to his right.

“A shadow,” Ichigo says with sudden certainty. “It’s one of the copies of you.”

He swings to the right, fast and hard, and feels flesh cave to the bite of Zangetsu.

It’s the last good blow he makes in the fight.

“So. What do you think is wrong with him?”

“Karin!” Yuzu frowns minutely at her sister from where she stands before the stove, a ladle in one hand. Sauce bubbles cheerfully in the pot in front of her,

“What? We both know there’s something weird about Ichigo. There’s been something weird about him since he got home. And now he’s even weirder. Does he really think we believe he’s our brother?”

“Karin!”

“What?” Karin is unrepentant. They both know. Ever since Ichigo came back he’s been weird. He’s up at all hours, he barely sleeps and he’s skittish as all hell. Karin has started walking louder to make sure he jumps less when she shows up in the room. Even their dad has started acting different and distant from Ichigo. On top of all that, Ichigo is more physically affectionate that she’s ever seen him in their lives.

“I’m pretty sure that the guy upstairs now isn’t even Ichigo. He’s a clone or something.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say!”

“But’s it’s true!” Karin insists. Yuzu falters, the irritated furrow in her brow easing. The spatula in her hand is brandished like a weapon until she sets it on the spoon holder beside the stove.

“But he looks just like Ichigo…”

“The one that came back from his trip is definitely Ichigo.” Traumatized, and Karin isn't’ an expert but is he supposed to be so traumatized from an explosion? Did he hit his head? Was it worse than he said? That sounds like Ichigo. “But the one we have now is definitely not our brother.”

“Karin… How is that possible?”

“Ghosts are possible,” Karin reminds her, ignoring the fact that Yuzu can’t see them. Still, Yuzu believes in them, more than Karin herself does. If she doesn’t acknowledge that they’re there they won’t bother her like they do her brother.

Yuzu bites her lip.

“Still… What do we say?”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything yet,” Karin admits. It’s too soon, and there’s too much weird stuff going on right now. She doesn’t trust that they’ll get the truth if they go after it without more facts to shuffle through whatever crap the adults try to feed them. They’re young, but they aren’t stupid, and Karin knows that they’re going to have to pull answers out like they pull teeth.

“Good,” Yuzu says with finality. Quieter, with a glance at the ceiling, she adds, “That Ichigo, even if he isn’t our Ichigo, he seems… lonely, Karin.”

Karin knows the look in her sisters eye. The one she gets with stray cats and the cast off friends that Ichigo brings home sometimes. It’s the look that lead to the entire year they’d spent devoted to guarding a single caterpillar in a jar until it was a butterfly. Yuzu is not the temperamental one, she isn’t the scraper, but there’s not doubt in Karin’s mind that she’s the real power in the household. When Yuzu puts her foot down that’s all there is to it.

“Then we just make him our,” she says with a roll of her shoulders. Simple as that.”

“Yeah!” Yuzu grins. “Oh! Did I tell you my doll is haunted?”

“... huh?”

* *

Shunsui Kyoraku is a dutiful man.

He does what is required of him, to serve his home and protect his friends. He always has, since he’d first felt the weight of the heavy black kosado on his shoulders. He is the second son of nobility, he was born to know duty . Even if he prefers to be lackadaisy, even if he bends the rules until they’re twisted knots, and lets events take their course, he will follow the orders Yamamoto gives directly.

He and Juushiro were some of his first students, and they are the only ones left from their class for a reason. He is perhaps one of only five who remain to remember the wolf that Yamamoto truly is, for all he falls to heel at the call of the Central 46 now under the guise of a loyal dog.

He has seen the fight it had been for Yamamoto to establish the shinigami in the first days of their existence, when the foundations of the world had been shaky and the throne had been empty. He had been there for the first quincy war, one thousand years ago, and then again for the second only two hundred prior.

That one had hardly been a war. It had been a slaughter, and he had raised his sword to it just as he had been told.

Now a child stands before him, desperate to save a girl who he can’t have known longer than a summer. She is one of Juushiro’s, one of his favorites in fact. He knows he’s been grooming her to be his next lieutenant for the last forty years, since even before Kaien’s death.

(Privately he thinks it should be the two of them trying to protect her, but they have seen Yamamoto incinerate men, they have witnessed his bankai first hand. If he presses the issue, what chance do they have? They have gone to the Central 46 as captains and nobles and been turned away both times, in spite of the ancient laws.)

This child, Shunsui thinks while he bleeds from his shoulder down to his sternum, is frightening.

He is young. He is human, he cannot be more than two decades old. But it is his eyes that are the most unnerving.

They are not the eyes of someone who knows defeat. They are the eyes of someone who knows that defeat means death. The eyes of someone who has not been beaten by the merits of his simple being alive right now. The fact that he stands before him, with Shunsui’s blood on his sword, is a testament to that fact.

It’s been a long time since someone had done so well in one of his games. They’re never in anyone else's favor, but now Kyokotsu laughs somewhere in the back of his mind, his swords thrum in his hands.

Truthfully, Shunsui would rather not kill this child. He would rather not kill any of the children in front of him.

He knows Juushiro feels the same way. Killing Rukia would be like killing a part of him, too.

They’ve both sent petitions to the Central 46. Both as captains and as noblemen, but none have been answered. It’s a violation of their own laws, but then the Ryoka had come and their investigation had been cut short.

According to Nanao, little Hitsugaya has taken over for them.

Kyokotsu switches games, and Shunsui sinks into the shadows.

The boy is good, for all he is young. He’s been well trained, he thinks on his feet. He fights like there’s something missing.

And that red ribbon on Rukia’s wrist. Her new clothes. It’s interesting.

Shunsui has never seen anything like it. It’s almost like a pseudo bankai, forcibly unlocked by the child in front of him.

Yes, frightening is really the right word for it.

The games change. Ichigo catches on quickly to each one, to the rules and the ways they are both bound by them.

He’s also accumulating more injuries. Cuts on his arms, his back, his chest. Kyokotsu is fond of the boy. It’s rather unfortunate, really.

Shunsui feels bad when he goes in for a hard attack, an emotion he ruthlessly crushes down. He can’t afford to be worried about an opponent in a battle.

Ichigo barely moves back. He’s not fast enough to completely dodge the blade the cuts into his shoulder, just shy of his throat.

Rukia screams, so does the boy from the forth and kid that looks like a shinigami but probably isn’t.

Blood erupts from the split in his skin, a deadly strike if a slow one. It won’t be a quick death. It might not be a death at all if he can, say, get seen by the fourth division member that’s not twenty feet away in the next ten minutes.

Shunsui is broken out of that idea when white overtakes red and it is no long blood that splatters out of the child's body, but a paste that looks awfully familiar.

What in the hell?

A half an answer comes a minute later, when a hand grasps Katen by the blade and yanks Shunsui forwards so Ichigo can try to cleave him in half.

Shunsui blocks with Kyokotsu. The boys reitsu has changed. It was once light and brilliant, a small sun in his young chest. Now it lashes out darkly, black and tinged with red. The eye that turns upon him doesn’t match the other.

One brown. One yellow, rimmed first in black and then in white.

A hollow eye.

It’s only the fact that rules of their current game mean that Shunsui can’t be cut anywhere where his clothes aren’t white, and the fact that his haori and kimono are already off to the side that save him from the brutal counter slash. The boy is fast, his movements vicious and harsh.

Shunsui separates from the attack. He can feel the wind and the faint crackle of lightning that gives away the presence of the oncoming storm that is Shihoin Yoruichi.

She crashes into the platform and knocks Ichigo unconscious with something that looks suspiciously like a very large baseball bat.

She stands before them, two of the old guard, surrounded by children. She cannot take them all, and Ichigo’s reiatsu is still dark and dank, an ocean of shadows that even Shunsui is weary to tread into.

Kyokotsu laughs softly. She wants to play with this boy. Katen inches forwards, her true nature flickering at the edge of his soul. Pure and holy, she wants to split the boy’s darkness with light.

Shunsui cannot allow it. He smothers her in the darkness of Kyokotsu and bids her sink further into his soul, a burden he still bears with grace and secrecy.

“The lost lady of the Shihoin,” Shunsui greets with a smile. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your return?”

Yoruichi doesn’t answer immediately, and her playful smile is tight around the edges. Shunsui remembers when she and her brother were still just children at their fathers knee. Yukihira hadn’t even been going grey in the temples when he’d died. It seems all Shihoin lived short, fast lives. They are quick shadows that burn away in the light. Disowned or not Yoruichi is now one of the oldest Shihoin on record.

“You certainly did a number on the boy,” she says instead of answering. Kisuke is involved with this, somehow, the mask is proof enough. Just what do they want with Rukia?

This changes things.

The banishment of half the upper echelons of the gotei 13 had never sat right with Shunsui. It was too much too fast, and Kisuke had never struck him as the type. Not to say Kisuke was a good man, but he certainly was not a good enough liar to fool someone like Shunsui for so long, or Shinji for that matter.

If there weren’t strict orders against it, he might have hunted them down in the living world and demanded answers himself. But Yamamoto had made it clear. No one was to launch any further investigations into the hollowfication incident.

(Now he wonders again ; why?)

“He did trounce little Bakuya over there pretty badly,” Shunsui points out.

“So he did. I’ll be taking him now,” she warns. Her body tenses, ready to flee. Shunsui steps forwards and swings lazily at her head.

He slices through open air and a few stray purple strands of hair.

She’s slower now than she was before, he notes, but still fast enough to flee his field of influence before he can cut her down.

Now all that’s left to do is see to the wounded, figure out what to do with their little turncoats, figure out what’s possessed their central government, find out why a child has been hollowfied, unlock the strange mysteries of Rukia’s new powers, and possibly get drunk.

Easy breezy.

An explosion sounds from where Yoruichi has run off to, and Shunsui figures his plans may have to change.

* * *

Kon paces the basement of Ichigo’s strange house in his borrowed body, wearing a trail in the cement floor.

He’s surrounded on all sides by the strange things that Ichigo keeps in here, the magical artifacts and tools that he’s accumulated.

Amongst all of them is the plain brown box that Kon had found on a table upstairs.

The weirdo from the dreams, Merlin , swears he gave it to Ichigo. Kon would normally call Bullshit but honestly? It’s Ichigo.

There’s just something about that kid that makes him feel like anything is possible. Even gifts from dream men who smell like too many flowers and don’t give straight answers.

Kon arranges the thick crystals on the markings carved carefully into the floor. He’d tried to make it look exactly like the picture in the book, but he wasn’t an artist. It didn’t matter. Ichigo’s body seemed to know what they were doing without him having to tell it. He could feel a strange power thrumming through his borrowed skin.

It sunk in from the world around him, filling up the empty spaces in the bone marrow, in the muscles, in the very pores of his body.

This vessel knows what to do, even if Kon doesn’t.

He sets one of the other items in the middle of the circle. There’s six crystals that shine incandescently on each corner of the design.

“Use the stones first,” Merlin had said, his lilac eyes curved with some hidden joke, “ You’ll need Ichigo to use the last bit.”

The last bit being a scrap of cloth that he’d left in the box. It was same shade as his hair, and tattered at the ends. Kon left it where it was and set in the center of the circle two more stones. One was a red crystal. The other was dull grey, and shaped like the head of a small serpent.

Everytime he touches them Kon feels his fingertips tingle with something .

Kon picks up a paring knife.

On Ichigo’s palm is a long scar, one that’s been opened over and over again. Now, Kon presses the blade to the same thin white line until it splits neatly under the sharp edge.

Red wells up. He barely feels it. Ichigo’s pain tolerance is insane.

He holds his fist out over the circle and let’s Ichigo’s body do as it apparently knows to. Blood drips into the careful lines he’s made and it spreads with a vermillion glow that crackles faintly.

“Let Silver and Steel be the Essence…”

* * * *

“Again,” Ichigo touches his forehead. It throbs horribly. “Why the hell does this keep happening to me?”

His groan of pain is met with silence. He can touch his forehead so he’s not tied up. And he can feel pain so presumably he’s not dead. That’s good. If he dies he can’t keep his promises.

On the other hand, if he was dead he probably wouldn’t feel like he was chewed up and spit out again.

When he finally peels his eyes open, he finds himself in the ‘inside’ again. Vertical buildings, and pieces of himself in the form of places he’s gone. The water at the street is a bit deeper.

Ichigo rubs his head and squints around him.

“Zangetsu?” he calls, looking around. The old man is nowhere to be seen. There’s something familiar about this entire situation. He can taste chalk and blood. His chest aches. What the hell is going on here?

“Zangetsu!” he yells louder. No response.

Fine then. Maybe if he focused on his zanpakuto? Zangetsu was the manifestation of it right? Or something.

Ichigo closed his eyes and reached out, taking a deep breath.

He focused on the feeling of his sword in his hand. The cool metal until sturdy wrappings. The wicked blade. The weight of the weapon. The comfort of Zangetsu against his back.

He closed his hands around something and opened his eyes.

And nearly had a heart attack.

“What the fuck!?”

Standing in front of him, no holding his hand, was him . If he’d been sent through a bottle of bleach. His eyes, the other him’s eyes (fuck this was confusing) were bright, luminescent gold. Where there should be white was instead black. When the other him grinned his teeth weren’t as sharp as Ichigo felt they should be.

“Hey there, Partner.”

Ichigo extracted his hand warily. “Who the fuck are you?” He asked bluntly.

A flicker in the corner of his eyes came from the side. His head snapped to the side to see Zangetsu, the old man.

“Zangetsu.”

Ichigo looked back at the other him. The one who spoke. His head throbbed. His chest ached.

“Huh?”

“Ichigo.”

“Yes, yes. Ichigo, Zangetsu, whatever,” he waved his hands impatiently. “What the ever loving fuck is going on here? Why am I here? I was just fighting and- Did I get stabbed?” Ichigo patted down his chest. There was no blood, and it didn’t hurt.

The other him scoffed. “Damn you’re dumb. Yeah ya got stabbed!”

“Don’t be rude,” Ichigo said absently. He lifted his shirt. There wasn’t even a scar on his chest. Just the same red circle that had rested on his chest since he’d been speared through. It felt like an eternity ago. The longer the wars went on the harder it was to keep track of everything and everyone. Sometimes he felt like he mixed up the order of operations. Did he go to London first? Or Oceanus? Fuck.

“ I’m rude!”

Ichigo has to jump to avoid being stabbed by the sword Zangetsu. Now wielded by the other him, and also reversed in color.

“You’re the one that made us wait that long before you heard us, asshole!”

“Huh?!” Ichigo ducked and dodged each slash. Finally, Zangetsu (the man) blocked Zangetsu (the sword (except they were technically both swords (and this was making Ichigo’s head ache))) to stop the fight.

“Ichigo,” Zangetsu intoned. “You were being beaten. Badly. We cannot allow this to continue.”

“Okay,” Ichigo says slowly. “So you suck me out of consciousness and throw me here while everyone else is back there? What about Rukia and Hanataro and Ganju!”

“What about them?” the Other Him. White Ichigo maybe? Shirogo? Espejo? Nieve? Speaks up. He leans on his sword, looping his arm casually over the bite under the curve of the blade. “Why do you think we give a shit about your friends?”

Ichigo scowls. “If I go down we all do.”

“Exactly,” says Zangetsu. “We all die if you do. If you lose. We cannot lose, it cannot be an option. So you must become stronger. You can hear my voice now. You can wield my blade. But there is power inside of you that you do not know. Prepare yourself, Ichigo. We will make you stronger now.”

“To gain that strength, you must fight. Take your sword back from yourself.”

“Huh?!”

He only has a second to duck a sword strike at his head. Neive (he’s going with that for now. Snow) comes at him with a wild grin and vicious intent. A berserker who swings Zangetsu by the ribbon like a demented yo yo.

There’s something weird going on here. Ichigo knows it. He knows there’s something not right about this. The whole thing feels too familiar.

He doesn’t have time to contemplate it before he comes back at Neive with the best counters he can manage whilst unarmed.

Zangetsu is calm and methodical. Ichigo can see in him the commander, the strategist and the pragmatist that he has had to be when war clawed at his throat and shadowed his footsteps.

Neive is wild and vicious. Ichigo sees in him the desperate strength he’s drawn out at the last seconds, the hail mary victories that he's ripped from the claws of defeat time and time again.

The careful planning of Zangetsu, the intricate steps of a dance of strategy, falls away in the face of Neive’s brute forced, deadly strikes. He aims to win, even if he has to cut himself-who-is-Ichigo down to do it. Ichigo’s blood sings with it.

Even though he steps away from death, even though if he’s just a hair too slow he’ll lose his head, Ichigo has to stop himself from tipping his head back and laughing. Fighting like this, he feels almost free.

Almost.

He steps in close, suddenly, regardless of the fact that Zangetsu-the-sword cuts into his shoulder from the sharp curved heel. Blood dots the blue beneath their feet and Ichigo catch’s Neive’s arm between his hands. With a vicious twist that threatens to break his arm he’s forced to let lose the sword. The ribbon keeps it stuck to his wrist, and Ichigo twists his body until he’s back to front to Neive. He grabs the swords hand and swings it around until it’s a hair breadth away from both of their throats.

“What the fuck?” Neive asks, too loud in his ear.

Ichigo shoots him a crooked smile. “You only said I had to take it back.”

Neive stares at him, the angle awkward and painful to his neck. Finally, his doppleganger relaxes and legs the ribbon slip free. He steps back, letting Ichigo hold the sword on his own.

“Well I’ll be damned. Not bad, boss.”

“Why are you so surprised,” Ichigo hoists the blade onto his bleeding shoulder. “Aren’t we all part of the same person? Me?”

“So we are,” something in Zangetsu’s voice doesn’t sound entirely pleased about that. “You’ve done well.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Ichigo scowls at him. “There’s something wrong with the both of you, I want you to know.”

“By your own logic, there’s something wrong with you too,” Neive pointed out, far too cheerfully.

“Uh huh.” Ichigo rolls his eyes. “How was that supposed to make me stronger? It was a fight, I’ve been a million of them. “

Maybe more than that.

Zangetsu doesn’t answer right away.

Ichigo sits on the sideways building and motions the other him to do the same. Neive drops to his side, both of them criss cross and the blade long enough it covered both of their laps.

“Well?” he presses.

Zangetsu is not quite stoic enough for Ichigo to miss the way his mouth turns down and his shoulders draw together. He’s bracing himself for something.

“We are both… facets, of your power Ichigo. I needed to introduce you to him as well.”

“A simple hand shake wouldn’t do?” Ichigo scowled at him.

“We did shake hands,” Neive points out cheerfully.

“Not the point. Why the song and dance? Or are you all the drama in my soul too?”

Neive crows with laughter and slaps Ichigo hard on the back. Ichigo rocks with the force, hissing. His shoulder burns.

Zangetsu comes to crouch before him. He lays his hand on top of Ichigo’s shoulder and the pain eases minutely. The blood stops staining his shirt.

“What…?”

“I can stop your bleeding,” Zangetsu explains.

Ichigo nods, slowly. He remembers, faintly, injuries that weren’t as bad as they should have been, blood stains that were too small. Roman had commented on it once or twice.

“You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

Ichigo looks between the two of them. Their words ring through his head.

“How long have you been with me?”

Neive grins. Zangetsu looks at him solemnly.

“ Always , Ichigo.”

* * * * *

It’s over.

It’s over and they’ve won. The price was high (it’s higher every time and Ichigo dreads the day that one of them does not return to Chaldeas) but they snatched victory away with bloody hands and desperation.

They’ve won. Nero is not there to celebrate their victory. Karna has faded away. Arjuna had never really been one of them but Ichigo knows they owe him. Billy the Kid. Geronimo. Scathach herself. All gone.

And how many yet to go, before this bloody conflict is ended? This is one war won, and three yet to go. They’ve come more than halfway, but done so by the skin of their teeth.

What else can they do?

Run?

Hide?

Chaldeas is the only safe place and even that can’t last forever. Even if it could, Ichigo would never stand by, safe within the walls.

Ichigo looks down at the cracked tile of the Whitehouse and finds the tips of his shoes glittering. The war is over. It’s time to go.

“Ichigo?”

He looks to Kyo. His impassiveness is finally gone. His expression is open and horrified.

“It’s time for us to leave,” Ichigo says solemnly. It’s time for you to forget .

“No!” Kyo lunges for him, grabbing his hand, and for the first time Ichigo can see it clearly. His brown eyes, wide and open, his hand grasping desperately at Ichigo’s sleeve. One feeling sings through the touch.

Loneliness.

The lion that stalks in Kyo(in Sousuke) ’s shadow. The yawning the maw of solitude.

He’d broken past it, Ichigo realizes. Had dragged him off of that isolated pillar that Sousuke stood so precariously upon and brought him to stand on solid ground surrounded by heroes and rebels, emperors and goddesses. And Ichigo, just a human.

His throat tightens. What kind of place is seireitei that someone like Sousuke is so utterly alone?

“I don’t have a choice,” he says. He’s gone up to his knees and the light is rushing swiftly to his midsection. Eating him up. He can feel the familiar pull of ray shifting.

“Find me!” Sousuke grips his hand all the tighter. “Promise me. Find me in the future! Make me remember!”

Ichigo feels his hand start to dissolve in his grasp and does his best to hold on for a few seconds longer

“I’ll find you.” He vows

Light glitters, air rushes, and the last thing he sees is the crushing sorrow on Kyos face.

(Ichigo will not break his promise)

* * * * * *

#Ichigo Kurosaki #bleach fanfiction #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru #gin ichimaru #bleach #bleach/fate grand order #Merlin Fate/Grand Order #kyo (SCoF)#sosuke aizen #shunsui kyoraku #juushiro ukitake #rukia kuchiki

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