#and then when i turned around hed somehow gotten off the chain and has his teeth around OUR dogs throat

[milf-harrington]

me @ my brain after having a hyperreslistic nightmrarish dream that felt like several hours but was in fact 5 minutes: "you think youre so funny"

[lo-55]

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 2

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

 May. It’s May already, and Ichigo has made it approximately a month and a half without getting himself into some batshit insane situation where he almost dies.

 Then Rukia Kuchiki comes along and all of a sudden he’s not a wizard he’d a fucking Shinigami. Which is cool, and a lot easier if he’s being honest, and the world itself isn’t at stake this time so.

 Cool. Cool cool cool.    

 It does mean that Rukia, stubborn and snappish and almost as brash as he was, will be sleeping in his closet for the foreseeable future.

 At fifteen Ichigo would have flipped out about it. At eighteen he’s spent months at a time bunking down with Mash and whatever other servants there were. Everyone from Asterios to Medusa to Shirou Amakusa Tokisada, crammed together in a tent or settled around campfires.

 So he snatches his sisters pajamas and lends them to her and their life begins.

 And it would be fine, really, he doesn’t mind fighting. He likes fighting by himself than having to rely on the others to do it for him. It eases the bitterness of weakness that’s been festering in his heart for years. So it would be      fine, really    , if it weren’t for the fact that all of these hollows that he’s fighting have started to target his friends, too. They’re not even safe at school.

 Orihime was attacked by her own brother and it makes him sick. How could someone attack their own sister? Even warped and twisted?

 It was worse than Mordred and Artoria. At least they had always had a strained relationship, but Orihime’s brother had      loved    her.

 He sat with her after the fact, his hand on her shoulder while he slept against his leg. Rukia had erased her memory, and his families too. He didn’t like it.

 “Everyone has the right to choose their life. And to remember themselves,” he told her solemnly. “It’s how humans grow and change. It’s how we get stronger. These bonds that we make with other people, and even the ones that we break…”

 Rukie eyed him speculatively. “I never would have pegged you for a philosopher, Ichigo.”

 “I’m not.” But he’s got his ideals, and Ichigo is unbending. War has tempered his spine from bone to steel. Idly, he braids a long strand of Orihime’s hair while Rukia is busy changing Tatsuki’s memories. Maybe it will be easier for them not to remember this, but Ichigo will not take back what he said.

 So many friends have forgotten him, so many have never met him to begin with and only his memories live on of their time together. He really hates this…

 But Rukia is his guide in this case, and there’s nothing he can do for now. “This is how it has to be, Ichigo. There is no other choice,” she says firmly, like it’s an absolute truth.  “This is the life of a shinigami.”

 Ichigo lets Orihime’s hair fall into place and lays her on the floor before he stands and turns to Rukia.

 “      Chacun voit midi à sa porte,”    he says it mostly to himself, but it bewilders Rukia.

 “What?”

 “It’s nothing,” he shakes his head. “Let’s go.

 *

 Ichigo has never been out of the country before he’d signed up for an internship at Chaldea. It was supposed to be two weeks studying with the security organization, and the poster at the bus station by his house hadn’t said anything about mages, or time travel, or masters or servents. Di Vinci tells him later that its spelled so only mages or people with potential to be mages can even see it.

 He shouldn’t have seen it to begin with, totally untrained as he was, but somehow he did. Because he did have magic circuits, even if they weren’t used often or much. So hed loaded onto a plane with a half a dozen other master candidates from all around japan. His dad had agreed, all to easily. And now he stood in a breakroom with Romani and Mash, and Medusa and Cu and Olga Marie all standing around him.

 “I don’t get it,” Medusa says, eying the phantom speculatively. “If she’s dead, how is she here?”

 Ichigo shrugs. “ I have no clue. I’ve always been able to see ghosts but I don’t know anything about them.”

 “H-hey what do you mean by that?” Roman asks, turning towards him. “You can see dead people?!”

 “Well, yeah,” Ichigo sort of shrugs. “That’s not the weirdest thing happening here, ya know.”

 Roman can’t really argue with that.

 “Isn’t it obvious?” Olga Marie crosses her arms over her chest, looking down at the two gingers in front of her. Ichigo, sat on a couch, and Roman next to him. They both look at her, clueless until she rolls her eyes in aggravation.

 “It’s just like what happened with Mash. When the bomb exploded and I-” she falters, her yellow eyes darting around before she gets herself under control. “After the explosion, I found the two of them. At the same time Mash formed her contract with him, I must have done something similar. There’s two types of energy,” she goes on. “The energy of the physical world, Mana, and the energy of the soul. Reitsu. Just as Caster, Rider, and Mash are drawing on his Mana as servants, I am now bound to his Reitsu as a soul-based familiar.”

 “Such a thing is unprecedented,” Roman argued, looking somewhere between stunned and frightened. They were all standing on that blade right now. The world had ended and they, a group nowhere near qualified to save it, were now in charge of stopping it.

 “Ah, nae as much as you’d think,” Cu said, his voice lilting and accented. “My teacher, Scáthach, she ‘ad shades an’ such.”

 “The queen of the shadow lands?” Mash clarified, which meant nothing at all to Ichigo. Cu nodded. “It would make sense for her to have such things…”

 “Ah, does that make the director Ichigo’s servant now too?” Roman asked.

 Olga Marie bristled. “I’m no ones servant! I’m still the director here so you better show me proper respect!”

 Ichigo couldn’t help snickering at her. “Man, you’re so full of yourself.”

 “What did you just say?!”

 “Are you dead and deaf? I said you’re full of yourself,” he grabbed her cheek and pulled it until she shrieked and lashed out at him, beating her fists against his chest. Mash did her best to cover her laughter in the background, hands over her mouth.

 “Even still,” Roman stepped between them, carefully extracting Ichigo from Olga Marie’s fury, “This doesn’t explain everything. When someone ray shifts, it’s their spirit that manifests in the location, while their physical body stays in chaldea. So how can two different energies both manifest like that? I don’t understand…”

 Olga Marie puffed her cheeks out. “The answer to that is much more technical. Even though it’s the spirit that is sent back it's still a physical body that a mage has when they interact with the time period around them. It is… a reversal of the third magic, so to speak. The opposite and the twin of Heaven’s Feel, it is your spirit and your soul and your life, but your body is left behind while Ray Shifting.”

 This must have made sense to Roman, but Ichigo was, to put it mildly, completely lost.

 “What’s the third magic, what’s ‘heavens feel’, and what’s ray shifting?” Ichigo asked. Olga Marie face planted, and started cursing his very existence.

 * *

 “I must say, I didn’t expect you to be this good with a sword already,” Rukia admits, watching Ichigo snap the practice sword around, knocking aside each tennis ball she sends shooting at him through the pitching machine.

 Ichigo stands, light on his feet with a sword roughly the size of a claymore. It was heavy and the reach was long but awkward. He’s used to holding broad swords, mimicries of clarent and excalibur while his Saber’s try to beat their lessons between his ears. It feels strange to hold something so long and so heavy. More than that, it feels like something is missing. Like the sword is a couple inches too short, like it doesn’t fit his hands quite right.

 He has to remind himself that it isn’t his sword at all. This power is Rukia’s, not his own. Was this how Mash felt, their whole time together? Borrowing another person’s power to boost your own. It made his skin crawl minutely.

 “I've been in a few fights,” Ichigo says, looking towards her with a shrug of his shoulder. “I’ve got friends who are in the kendo club.” He works mostly off of instinct. He always has, and it hasn’t failed him yet. He blocks each tennis ball, and those he can’t block he dodges swiftly, until Rukia finally calls it a day.

 “You should get some rest while you can,” she advises. “We’ll be out tonight hunting hollows, no doubt, and you still have school work to do, don’t you?”

 “Well yeah, but school feels so unimportant now…” It has since he’d gotten back. What was a test in the face of someone trying to blow up the whole of human history?

 Rukia smacks him hard over the head, until he yelps in offense.

 “Hey!” He rubbed the bump on his head, glaring balefully at the short shinigami. Rukia is, of course, utterly unaffected by it.

 “School is important! You have a life to get back to after I get my powers back, and you need your grades to do it!”

 “Geez, you’re so rough… And fine,  but you’re gonna help me study for friday. You have to take tests too.”

 Rukia looks startled, but she nods all the same, and they walk home together. Ichigo considers telling his dad what’s happening. There’s a strange girl in the house, and Ichigo is putting himself in pretty serious danger lately, but it barely makes a difference if he does. What will Isshin even do? He can not stop them from fighting, and he cannot help them in this fight. He can’t even see spirits.

 These kind of things, he understood, were hereditary. Being a medium, and being a mage both were things that were handed down from parent to child, though they were kept largely separate. Mages dealt in living energy, and usually had little to no spirit energy, and vice versa. He could see spirits, and so could Karin, and even Yuzu could sense their presence from time to time. Yet despite all three children being sensitive to the supernatural, Isshin had no idea.

 Which meant, more likely than not, his mom had been able to see them too.

 She’d never said anything about it, but Ichigo had been so young, where would she even start?

 And now, there was no way for them to find out. Ichigo has questions, but no one has answers.

 “What are you thinking of?”

 He startles, looking down at Rukia. He’d been so caught up in his own thoughts, he’d almost missed the house entirely.

 “I was thinking about my mom,” he admitted. “I was wondering if she could see ghosts like me and Karin can.”

 “Your mother?” Rukia repeated. She touched her chin in thought. “I suppose it’s not unheard of. There used to be quite a few humans who could see spirits. Some could even utilize enough reiryoku to actually combat hollows. But those died out some time ago.”

 “Oh yeah?” Ichigo leads her inside. His sisters were out somewhere, and his dad was upstairs in his room, down the hall from Ichigo’s. They jog up the stairs together, Ichigo’s back thumping hard against his back.

 “Yes. They were called Quincy. They could manifest reitsu into weapons to battle hollows with. But unlike shinigami, they didn’t purify the souls. They destroyed them.”

 “Thats kind of fucked up.”

   * * *  

 Ichigo still can’t tell if he’s here as a spirit or as a physical body, but it’s his living energy, his mana, that Mash is feeding off of when they start their first fight with the locals in domremy. They’re only human, so Ichigo fights too, and runs at Mash’s side when they chase the French soldiers back to their fort.

 It’s there that the monsters attack and Ichigo gets his very first look at a saint.

 She’s barely older than he is, fierce and terrible and humble all at once. She leads with utmost confidence and does not falter, even in the face of terrible odds. She’s… weak, for a servant. Far too weak.

 There is something very wrong with france.

 Ichigo is broken from his thoughts by Roman coming over his wrist communicator.

 “All right, fine job everyone! I was watching with sweaty palms and sweets in my hand! The director is tending to other matters right now, so I’m in the command chair again!”

 “Doctor,” Mash began, looking towards his hologram. “Those were the sweets that I got, right?”

 “Huh? What? ls that right? I found them in the Command Room next to the tea, so I thought…”

 “...I got them as a token of gratitude, for when we return from this Order,” Mash was actually starting to look irritated for the first time since they’d met.  “  Needless to say, they weren't for you, but for Senpai, who no doubt fought bravely on the frontlines!”

 “Mash... you've become such a thoughtful person!” Roman smiled proudly at her and, shamelessly, shoved the rest of the candy into his mouth. “I must say, these are some really tasty sweets. I'm sure Ichigo will be thrilled, too!”

Mash turns towards Ichigo, her mouth drawn in a line. “...Master. When we return to Chaldea, please reserve enough combat resources for one attack. I've registered one more enemy that I'd like to hit with the "back of my blade.".” Which was apparently something a shield had.

 “You’re more violent than I thought you were…”

 Then someone was screaming a ‘dragon witch’, and they retreated again, to the forests outside of vaucouleurs. It takes a while to get their bearings, but Ichigo understands. There’s two Jeanne d’arc’s. The saint that stands before them and a witch that is trying to destroy france. That’s what’s causing the world to fall apart here. So that’s who they have to stop. Only…

 She’s about a hundred times stronger than they are, and she has an army of dragons, and dragon themed servants with her. By the end of the second day Ichigo finds himself with a saint, a queen, a musician, a pop star, and a dragon all following him around like puppies.

 At night he finds himself sitting by the fire, with Jeanne, Ruler, sitting across from him. Kiyohime, a princess out of a story he’d read ages ago is curled up on his lap like a cat instead of a dragon. Her horn pokes at his hip irritatingly, and on his other side Mash has fallen asleep as well.

 He should be more worried about the fact that she’s somehow convinced herself that he’d Anchin, considering the fact that she burned him alive in a bell tower, but thus far all she’s really done is hold onto him a little too tight.

 Jeanne is looking at him too. There’s something about her, a charisma that makes Ichigo want to follow her off a cliff. And he probably would, if he wasn’t so damn stubborn himself.

 “Yeah?” he asks, breaking the silence. “What, is there something on my face?”

 “Oh!” Jeanne turns away, shaking her head. Her strange headpiece glints read in the firelight. “No, it’s only that you seem very close to her.”

 “Who, Kiyo? We just met. She’s the one that latched onto me.”

 “No, not her. Mash.”

 Ichigo looks again at the girl sleeping on his other side. She looks older as a demi-servant, someone halfway possessed by a heroic spirit, but her face is the same. She’s still filled with wonder and innocence.

 “Oh yeah. Well, I’ve got two little sisters at home. Mash reminds me of the youngest one. Yuzu. They even have the same hairstyle…”

 “That explains it, then,” Jeanne’s smile is soft. “I’m the youngest. I had three brothes, and my sister as well. I imagine they’re still in Domremy. Although my two oldest brothers came to fight under my flag, so they might be travelling still.”

 Ichigo tried to think of that. Tried to think of letting anyone in his family get even close to a battlefield and found himself shaking his head. “I couldn't do that. I want to protect my sisters. I wouldn’t be able to put them in danger.”

 Jeanne peered at him over the fire, her smile still somehow serene. It must have to do with being a saint.

 “I wished to protect them too, of course. They are my brothers, and war is a bloody, gruesome hell to walk into. But sometimes we must have faith. In the Lord to guide us, and in the people around us to stand at our sides and watch over us.”

 “Didn’t your people, ya know, burn you alive?”

 “Yes,” she allows, tilting her head towards the sky. “But still… I hold them no ill will.”

 Ichigo decides, then and there, that Saints must be insane.

 The first person they lose, the first person he loses in these wars, is Marie Antoinette. She dies to protect him, and the stinging, bitter taste almost makes him claw out his tongue.

   * * * *  

 “Do you know where you are?”

 Soft fingers run through his hair. Something tickles his nose and he’s assaulted by the smell of roses and daffodils.

 “I’m in a dream,” Ichigo says, huffing irritably. His eyes open slowly, and he finds a deceptively soft smile hovering above him. Ichigo would believe it, if he didn’t know him better. As it is, he tugs at a long strand of off-white hair that falls across the man’s shoulder.

 “Ouch. You’re right, this is a dream. However did you guess? I thought it was a rather good one…”

 Ichigo rolls his eyes at the Caster. He can see his staff, wrapped in ribbons, stuck into the earth beside them. This man was always dramatic.

 “There’s nowhere else I would see you, now is there?” He sits up slowly. His companion doesn’t move back, and in a minute they’re hip to hip, facing eachother.

 “Ah, That is true. You never know, I am a rather famous mage. Mayhaps I teleported you here for my own amusement.”

 “That does sound like you,” Ichigo allows. He paused, squinting. “Did you just say ‘mayhaps’?”

 “You don’t like it? I thought it was eloquent.”

 “Stop acting so weird,” Ichigo scolded, knocking their heads together lightly. “It hasn’t been that long since I’ve seen you.”

 “On the contrary, it's been over 4,500 years.”

 “You never change,” Ichigo rolls his eyes, and his visitor smiles, soft and fake.

 “Perhaps I don’t. One of the aspects of immortality is that people tend to stay the same, you know,” he teases.

 “I don’t, but I guess I’ll take your word for it,” Ichigo figures it’s easier than trying to fully puzzle out the man. He’s always been bewildering, ‘beyond human comprehension’ or something. Ichigo isn’t totally human anymore now. He sits, dressed in black next to his companion cloaked in white.

 “I thought you were supposed to disappear from my memory,” Ichigo says abruptly. He’s not sure what kind of explanation he’s looking for.

 A shrug is what he gets. “I told you once. That’s one thing I can never get used to. Perhaps it just didn’t work this time.”

 “Right,” Ichigo says dubiously, “it’s got nothing to do with us being friends. “

 The mage says nothing, but his smile thins at the edges. He’s still on about it then. ‘I can never truly close the gap, and be friends with a human’. It’s bullshit, because they’re friends and ichigo knows it, and so does he. He’s just stubborn and stuck on the idea of being the mysterious wise man figure in Ichigo’s ever evolving life story.

 “Where are we?” Ichigo asks, letting the tension drop for now. The sky is the palest blue and there’s flowers as far as the eye can see, pink and blue and yellow. There’s no horizon any way he looks, and he realizes belatedly that they’re sitting on top of a tower.

 “Isn’t it obvious? We are on the reverse side of the world. Where there is no beginning and no end, this is the very edge of paradise.”

 The air tasted like sunlight and hope, but Ichigo isn’t fooled by the prettiness of it all. He knows this man. Better than he wants to be known, certainly.

 “Maybe someday I’ll save you from this tower,      princess    .”

 “That is quite impossible,” still a  warm hand lands on his, a strange kind of thanks.

 “I’ve done impossible things before.”

 And he would do them again.

 * * * *

 Ichigo was starting to think that everyone here was made of tragedy.

 France was bad enough. Between executions, and curses, and people just doing their best for others, Ichigo is starting to wonder how any fairy tale ever had a happy ending, for the figures of myth certainly had none. Not Jeanne, the Saint of Orleans. Not Elizabeth Batharoy, the wannabe pop star and future vampire. Not Kiyohime, who had followed him all the way back to Chaldea and now was stuck waiting for them to return.

 And now, Euryale, and Asterios were the same. They were hardly the monsters out of legend. They were just people. Just people clinging to each other, like wreckage in a storm.

 Ichigo leans forwards against the railing of the      Golden Hind    , watching the moon dance across the water. They’re pretty screwed, he realizes. Heracles has to be killed twelve times for them to succeed, and they’d almost all been killed on just the first try.   They’d only escaped because a labyrinth had sprung up out of nowhere, glowing green and winding their way to the center of safety.

 The heafy thump of footsteps on ship wood brings his attention to his newest servant. Asterios. He towers over all of them, almost ten feet tall if you counted his horns. He should have been terrifying, all hard muscles and hulking power. His long hair is matted like it’s never been brushed out properly, and his eyes are a red that seemed to glow in the starlight.

 “Hey there,” Ichigo waves at him, and he comes to a halt at his side. He looks at him, and shifts from one foot to the other. There’s manacles on his arms, and his ankles as well. “Why don’t you sit?”

 Asterios did as he was bid. When he was sitting, he still came up to Ichigo’s shoulder.

 “It’s a nice night, huh?” It was peaceful, sailing on the endless sea. They have a lot of fights ahead of them but for now… He breaths in the sea salt air, and the cool darkness.

 “Yes… It is…      free    ,” Asterios speaks slowly, like making words is a chore. Has he ever really spoken to humans, before now?

 “Yeah. I guess it is,” that’s what Francis had said. The seas were freedom for her and her men. The King of Storms, the endless oceans bowed to her and the       Golden Hind    .  “Have you been here long, Asterios?”

 He perks up when he hears his name, looking up at Ichigo with the strangest expression. Ichigo has no idea how to place it. Hope? Happiness? Either way he’s smiling now.

 “No… Want to … stay… with euryale and… everyone.”

 “I get it,” Ichigo nods to him. “It’s nice to hang out with friends.”

 “Friends…”

 “That’s what we are, right?”

 Asterios smiles at him, and nods. “Yes… friends.”

 * * * * *

 “Honestly… I thought you were supposed to be helpful,” Ichigo knocks on his own bodies skull, watching his dopple ganger wince away from him. “But all you’ve done is get my body torn up and cause a mess. You’re screwing up my ‘cool guy’ reputation!”

 “Hey! It’s not my fault, I wouldn’t have jumped in if you weren’t so slow! Those kids would have died if I hadn’t jumped in!”

 “Oh yeah, and you kicking that hollow again, to protect ants, what are you a saint?!” Ichigo yanks him into a headlock, roughly shoving his fist into his hair. It was weird to be fighting with himself, but honestly? Not even remotely the weirdest thing to happen.

 “Get off!” The mod soul tries to kick him in the face, but Ichigo takes him to the ground in a rough grappling hold. He’s not too worried about his shoulder. His body is strong enough to handle being roughed up, and he’s taken worse hits than that.

 “Let me go! I’m not gonna let you kill me but-” His voice wavers before growing vicious with conviction.

 “I’ll never sit by and let another creature die!”

 Ichigo is so surprised he lets go, sitting above the trouble maker. He won’t make eye contact, his voice dropping low and rough. His hands are shaking, Ichigo realizes.

 “Right after I was born, the soul society they- they decided that the mod-souls had to go. The day after I was born I was chosen to die! Everyday I watched them kill off my brethren. And even after I escaped I still lived in fear, everyday that I would be discovered and killed… And I decided. That I was born, so I have the right to live and die freely, and so does everything else! So I won’t kill and I won’t let even ants die!”

 This mod soul. A creature made to fight, made to die, made to kill all without a single choice. Ichigo’s hands tighten into fists. Just like Mash. Just like Fran. Just like Mordred. A living weapon. Ichigo lets him sit up, and sits back on his heels. The mod soul grips his shoulder, grimacing. It must hurt. This is the first time he’s ever felt human sensations. He was fast, fast as the wind.

 “So that’s it…”

 Abruptly, the tip of a cane shoves straight through his skull, and the pill that had started this whole debacle comes popping out the other side. Ichigo reacts, snatching it out of the air before anyone else can. They’re not alone anymore.

 Ichigo finds himself looking up at a pair of grey eyes half hidden under the brim of a striped hat. They’re looking right at him, even though he’s no longer in his body. He knows, with great certainty, that this man is not human.

 “I’ll be taking that back now,” he says, holding his hand out expectantly. He looks almost harmless. Almost. But Ichigo can see the calluses on his hands and the hardness in the back of his eyes. Whoever this is, he’s a fighter. Even with the geta sandals, he hadn’t made a sound when he was approaching.

 “Hell no!” Ichigo clutches the pill tighter and straightens up. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

 “He’s just a greedy salesmen,” Rukia comes to stand at his shoulder, her eyes narrowed at the stranger with the unsettling eyes. She'd watched the whole exchange between them, between Ichigo and yet another tragedy.

 “I get it. He’s the one who sells you your supplies here, isn’t he?” Ichigo stands, slowly, keeping his hold on the pill tight. This guy had made a mix up, and if he thought Ichigo was gonna let him take this mod soul away, he had another thing coming.

 “My, my, you’re a perceptive one,” the man pulled a fan out of his sleeve and snapped it open over his mouth. “I’m Kisuke Urahara. And these are my associates.”

 “It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” Ichigo said blandly. “She said you're a salesmen, and she has to get her gadgets from somewhere.”

 “Either way, I should take that product back. If it’s compensation you’re after-”

 “I already said no!” Ichigo snapped, anger rolling under his skin like a fire. “People aren’t products and I’m not giving this one back to you!”

 “Ichigo,” Rukia cut in, her voice cool and firm. It's ice on a bruise and Ichigo let's her step before him, her dark eyes on the salesman. “It’s fine. I’m satisfied with this purchase, and you don’t exactly work legally. So whatever happens, it’s not your responsibility anymore.”

 Even though he remains largely impassive, this Kisuke guy still stares at them, trying to read between lines that don’t exist. Ichigo is honest, and Rukia has his back in this case.

 So he and his associates leave, and Ichigo pops the soul back into his body once their gone. He finds brown eyes staring up at him, his mouth open in confusion.

 “You didn’t… send me back?”

 Ichigo knocks his head again. “Don’t be stupid. If you give me a dumb speech like that, how can I sit by while you get smashed up?”

 “I - you’re kinda crazy.”

 “I know,” he had to be. “So, do you have a name?”

 “A name? No, no ones ever given me one of those…”

 “Alright then,” Ichigo tilts his head, thinking. A mod soul, a kaizo konpaku… He could go with Kai. But that sounded too cool. He was wind fast, and if he remembered right the inca wind was called… “Kon. You’re in charge of my body while I fight hollows. You can explore, and try new things, but don’t go destroying property or getting peoples attention. Or hurting my body! Deal?”

 He held out his hand, and Kon reaches up and grasps it.

 “Deal.”