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I managed to block, but the edge of his spear caught the side of my wrist. Before I could react he had jabbed at me again, toward my head. I ducked. Strands of my hair drifted down to the ground and I realized how close he'd come to my face.
Catching my bearings, I took one good step closer to him and kicked the inside of his knee, thrusting toward his chest as he fell. I was absolutely sure I'd hit my mark; I'd seen the tip of my sword tear through the front layer of his robe. Until he disappeared beneath me.
I stumbled forward and nearly fell, knocking into a vegetable stall. I struggled to catch my balance. I could hear his feet behind me and I readied to round on him, but his hand snagged my hair, yanking me down forcefully.
"That was a dirty move, kicking my knee out like that. You almost had me," he growled. I twisted out of his hold and swung, expecting the block. I could feel blood seeping down my scalp where he'd pulled hair out.
For a moment, it was hard to keep track of my own motions. We jabbed and slashed furiously, moving back across the plaza until his back was against the opposite stall. Then it occurred to me-- he was looking for Renji, and I had called him here. Even though I wasn't sure why he wanted him, I had stupidly called for Renji's help, and he would be here any minute. I had put him in harm's way.
He shoved me, lunging for me again, but I didn't react fast enough. His spear dug into my ribs, deeply this time. I could feel the tip hit my ribs and slide past them. Something was bound to be bleeding internally. Not to mention the blood pouring down my side. I managed a slash, though, when he paused to assess what he'd done. My blade caught his right shoulder, but it was only a shallow wound. He avoided me again.
There was only one thing I could think to do to keep Ichimaru from going after Renji, and that was to try and prove that I had whatever he wanted. Was it power? Maybe some piece of weaponry. Maybe I could distract him.
I lept back to the center of the plaza, wondering if it was wise to try my unperfected bankai. If power was what Ichimaru was looking for, I could give him the slightest bit. Just the slightest. I knew I was nowhere near as strong as Ikkaku or Renji, but I could try.
"Don't think that showing me your little shikai is going to keep me from finding them. I already know what it looks like," he said, twirling his spear around in a bored fashion. "I used to watch over your class. I saw it the first time you managed it. And I've overseen Abarai and Hinamori and all others in their class. Even Rukia. I know you all."
But there was one thing he didn't know about me.

*RENJI*

The sight in front of me was beyond disturbing. I had expected something like a ranking Espada that Michiru was struggling with, but this... This was nothing that I was prepared to handle. Her garbled Kakushitsuijaku hadn't made any sense to me, and I wondered what had disrupted it.
Yumichika lay half-dead in the corner of the plaza, blood pooling around him quickly. "Kurosaki. Take Yumichika and get to Inoue," I ordered. "And hurry."
Without question, Ichigo lept from the roof and scooped up Yumichika carefully, bounding off without a sound. Hisagi and Iba peered down on the scene with me, questioning our position. "Do you think we should interfere? She's holding out well," Iba asked.
"We have to do something," Hisagi said lowly. "Ichimaru is just playing with her. If he was actually trying to hurt her, she'd be dead."
"He's right. Iba, get behind him, and Hisagi, get to his left. I'll stay on his right. At the first sign of Michiru getting in trouble, take him out. This is too dangerous," I said. "And if it seems like he's going to run, don't let him get the chance to escape. And don't let him know you're here."
They nodded, and with a quick flash step they were gone. I began to creep down on the plaza, smothering my spiritual pressure. He couldn't find us, or it would ruin the attack. I hoped that Iba and Hisagi knew what they were doing.
Something caught me off guard. I watched Michiru skip back to the center of the plaza, but her pressure increased dramatically. She was about to do something drastic. Ichimaru stopped, lowering his spear to say something snide to her. But he had something behind his back.
He had some sort of button, maybe a switch, and he pressed it. Nothing noticeable happened. Was it a signal?
But then, he looked up directly at me. His gaze leveled with mine and his grin widened. He knew we were here. He'd probably known we were coming in the first place. Michiru followed his gaze to me, and her eyes widened in fear.
Her head snapped back to Ichimaru. "Hey! You don't need him. I've got what you want," she snapped, but the bravado in her voice was faltering.
He laughed, but she pointed her zanpakuto defiantly. "What exactly do you think you're going to do?" he asked. "I've got 3 assistant captains to pick from now. You're nothing to me."
She shook her head. "Remember, you haven't seen me in a year. You don't know what I've done or what I can accomplish."
"And what is that?"
I readied myself for the worst, but what happened totally surprised me. She took a wide stance and shouted the one word I knew Ichimaru wasn't expecting.
"BANKAI!"
It all happened in an instant, but I was amazed by every millisecond.
"Bloom, Kinjiri Egonoki!" she shouted again, and her entire being seemed to change. What was white on her zanpakutou was now an amazing shade of gold, luminescent, and glittering brightly like nothing I'd ever seen. The shape was something like a scimitar. All around her feet, the ground glittered with golden snowbell tree blossoms, and they drifted on pools of what looked like glass. Maybe ice. I wasn't entirely sure--I had never witnessed anything like it.
Her long hair fluttered wildly around her, catching gold blossoms and ice as it rose around her. She dropped the tip of her blade quickly, dipping it into the pool beneath her feet. I noticed Gin's expression as he watched the pool dance around her ankles, and he didn't seem too happy. In fact, I caught fear. He wasn't sure how to react to this. And neither was I.
"You have a new toy," he said quietly. His spear dropped. Since when did he carry a spear? "Amusing. But really, I don't think you'll last much longer. I see the blood around your ankles."
She whipped her blade up suddenly, and the tip drew a perfect line in ice. "That doesn't matter," she said, but her voice was weak. "Just leave them alone and take whatever you need from me."
She thrust her zanpakutou through the halo of ice, and the magnitude of her bankai began to sink in. It was an explosion of liquid gold and ice, twisting into vines and limbs and blossoms in front of her, stretching out to wrap Ichimaru in what resembled Hitsugaya's Hiyorinmaru. He struggled, but only for a moment as the branches totally enveloped him. The sound, though, contrasted. His frustrated scream was muffled by the serene sound of glass chimes. It was almost deafening.
I was beyond amazed. There was something so beautiful, yet so frightening about it that I wasn't sure how to feel. And I wasn't paying attention. The sudden change in spiritual pressure wasn't only Michiru's.
Iba's shout was a terrified one. "ABARAI! Behind her!" he yelled, but Hisagi was closest. In all of the commotion I hadn't seen the real danger.
He wasn't a ranking Espada, and he was barely considered and Arrancar, but the thing behind her had already jabbed his own twisted weapon into Michiru's left shoulder before Hisagi could stop him.
Furious, I dove for the creature as Michiru faltered, her bankai breaking into small pieces. Gin fell to the ground, bloody, but not for long. Three of the Arrancars, none of them that I recognized, were at his side immediately. That button had been a distress signal.
He knew he was in over his head.
Michiru struggled to her feet as more of the Arrancars flooded the market place. Iba and Hisagi were already occupied with them, fighting them back. My mind whirled; I was angry. Angry that this nasty little thing had hurt her, angry that Ichimaru had gotten away, and angry that HE'D hurt her. I was beyond angry.
With one swipe, I left the creature motionless, and went on to deal with the others. There had to be at least 20 of them, maybe more, but they weren't much more powerful than a regular Hollow. I didn't have time to question if they were Arrancars or not. Michiru was hurt. Terribly. And that was all that mattered.
There was a new person in the commotion, though. Ikkaku had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, fighting fiercly in front of Michiru. Where had he come from? And why wasn't he here earlier?
"Madarame! You're late!" I yelled, fending off a wild attack.
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I noticed! Her whole 'Let me whip out my bankai' thing woke me up!"
"You were asleep?!"
"I had something to take care of last night, ok?!"
He was obviously just as rage-fueled as I was, though I wasn't sure what his deal was. He wasn't one to miss out on something like this. And surely, he wasn't tired, was he?
I managed to kill maybe three of them before I heard her voice cry out over the fray, telling me to stop. I turned to find her back on her feet, drawing a halo of shimmering ice in the air around her.
"Stop! Get out of the way, and quickly!" she yelled. "I can fix this!"
"No!" I shouted. "You need to get somewhere safe!"
Her glare told me she wasn't going to argue. "Just go. Now. You'll get killed, Renji."
For a moment, I was scared. Absolutely terrified. Surely it wasn't that bad, was it? What was she going to do?
"Run!" she screamed.
I couldn't object. I called for Iba and Hisagi, who hadn't heard her, and ordered them to follow me. Ikkaku snagged my collar. "What are you doing?" he shouted, but I dragged him along. I bounded onto the rooftop with him in tow, Hisagi following closely. "Are you just going to leave her?! You bastard! We can handle them!"
"SHE can handle it, Madarame! Let her do this, whatever it is!" I retorted.
"And what if she can't?!"
"Then we'll be close by!"
I slid to a halt a few rooftops over, perched on the edge of a 3 story apartment complex. I could clearly see her and the creature-filled plaza should anything go wrong. She had drawn two more halos around herself, the blossoms drifting around her feet once more. But the pool was spreading. Laced with gold this time, the crystaline pool began to drift across the plaza and beneath the feet of the creatures, snowbell blossoms fluttering on the wind around them. I could hear the chime-like noise they made from where we were standing.
"What is she doing? She's taking too long, Abarai," Hisagi warned.
"Just wait."
The branches and vines from earlier curled around her feet, shimmering brightly in the sunlight like pure ice. They wound up and around her legs protectively, probably supporting her, as the creatures began to turn on her.
At the last second, she shouted something, and the creatures froze. I didn't catch her command, but the reaction was instant. The creatures were stuck. Still alive, but stuck. And they weren't going anywhere. But her second command was loud and clear.
"Ring, Egonoki!" she cried, and dropped her blade again.
As her blade dropped through each ring, an ear-splitting tone rang out. Each tone was in tune with the other, though, and the vibrations were unholy. The building beneath us shook with the sound, but anything that was touched by her icy bankai immediately shattered into millions of tiny pieces. It, in all honesty, was like listening to a giant array of tuning forks.
The tones faded slowly and the ice receded back to her feet. The ice shards floated like golden dust around her, drifting to the floor of the plaza slowly. I was passed amazed at this point. I was speechless, and so were Iba and Hisagi. Never in our time in the Gotei had we seen anything like it, except for maybe my own captain's bankai. But even his seemed a little pale in comparison.
Michiru was the most powerful student to ever have gone through the Academy, and possibly the most powerful captain to come.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, her zanpakutou returning to its snow white form. But her eyes were dull. She was exhausted.
Ikkaku gasped. "Michiru!" he breathed, and dove for her.
I ran after him, struggling to keep pace as he ran to catch her. She collapsed before he reached her. Blood began to mingle in the left over icy gold pool, her hair drenched in crimson on one side. Ikkaku made a strangled noise that I'd never heard from him--was it concern?
"Michiru, Michiru look at me," he said frantically, scooping her up gently. "Look at me. Don't you do this."
Her eyes fluttered for a moment, but they didn't go to his face. They searched aimlessly for a moment, scanning Hisagi's face, then Iba's, until they lit on mine. He shook her gently. "Michiru, hang on. We'll take you home. Just hang on," he said to her. His eyebrows knit together furiously and he bit his lip in frustration.
Hisagi tugged his shoulder. "Yumichika is at Inoue's. Kurosaki took him there," he said quietly. "We'll take Michiru back to Unohana."
He rounded on Hisagi. "No! This is my fault, let me fix it!" he shouted, jumping to his feet. "I should have been there! I should have come with them, and look what happened!"
I wasn't sure what came over me. I gripped the front of his robe tightly, jerking him to me so that he was eye to eye with me. "Look. I don't know what happened earlier, but get over it and let's go or she's going to DIE, Ikkaku. You can worry about this later," I growled. He sobered quickly, a scowl settling on his face as I gathered up Michiru carefully. "Somebody get hold of Kidou. We've got to get her to Unohana."