The only Bleach I own is the bleach in my head. Obviously, that doesn't extend to Kubo's characters or universe.
Not my best work here, I admit, but I felt speculative and typed it out anyway.
Consumir
He ran his fingers through the short black hair, relieved to see the slight, shuddering breath. She wasn't dead, like he'd feared.
But she was close. Karin was dying, and if he didn't get her medical help soon…
She heaved, spitting up blood and bile.
"Yet more trash," Ulquiorra remarked. "Apparently, you, despite your negligible skill, are the only one in your family with power."
Ichigo's fist clenched. Karin… "What is this even about, Ulquiorra? Aizen has no reason to send you after a human, of all things."
"This has nothing to do with Aizen-sama," the Espada replied smoothly, showing no emotion except perhaps contempt. "There is a factor in your evolution not present in Hollows or arrancar. I believe you refer to it as resolve."
What does that have to do with anything? "What about it?" Ichigo demanded.
Ulquiorra closed his eyes as though sighing. "Given a reason for that resolve," he continued softly, "your rate of evolution should be increased, exponentially."
Your spiritual pressure resembles that of an arrancar rather than that of a vizard, Ichigo's mind filled in bitterly. You interest me, she does not.
And that was it. Interest.
Like a piece of steel in the melting pot, a fury like he had only known twice before boiled up in his stomach.
"It's all evolution with you," Ichigo ground out. "Either you evolve and you're interesting or you're trash."
Ulquiorra didn't reply, merely looked somber as he always did - but Ichigo was sure the look in his eyes was vaguely amused.
Predatorily amused.
Bastard.
Then his breath caught in his throat. Karin's breaths were growing shallower and shallower still.
Slowly, slowly, he looked up from her limp body, meeting the Espada's green eyes dead on.
And disappeared.
A second later, Ulquiorra noticed he felt oddly unbalanced and gaped openly at the empty socket where his right arm should have been.
Ichigo twirled it lazily in a circle, anger pulsing so powerfully he wasn't surprised to find himself shaking, and smirked nastily. "How's this for evolution then, bastard?"
Disappearing a second time, he stopped immediately in front of Ulquiorra, pointer finger extended slightly toward the Espada's chest.
"I'll have to think Grimmjow for this one."
Ulquiorra never had a chance to reply, before an enormous amount of loosely controlled reiatsu obliterated his body from the chest up.
Glaring down on the half a corpse that was left, Ichigo shook his head at the condition of his hand, burnt from the power of his own attack, an attempt at mimicking Gran Rey Cero.
As he turned around to pick up Karin - if he hurried, he should able to get her to a healer in time - he found himself looking over his shoulder at Ulquiorra's unreleased zanpakuto, still somehow intact at his side. Scowling, he adjusted his sister's body in his arms, and slipped the sheathed blade out from the burnt black obi and into his own white one.
It wasn't like Ulquiorra needed it anymore anyway.
At least, that was what he told himself, not desiring to examine why he even felt compelled to take it.
"Ya too, huh?"
He blinked.
"Can' say I blame him. Though, I can' say I thought the King was up to expandin' his little empire."
Ulquiorra blinked again, dragging himself out of visions of blinding red light and overwhelming pain and into another world; a world where he stood upright on the window pane in the side of a skyscraper, looking out at clouds that drifted along vertically. A world on its side.
"Ya look a bit dazed. Makes sense, considerin' the drop he got over ya. I made the same mistake, ya know. Got too cocky."
He followed the voice to its origin, only to be taken aback. Kurosaki's visage, whited out with Hollow eyes, sat languidly across from him, dressed all in black to match the shinigami.
"Yeah, yeah. Don' even ask." The other looked rather bored. "Call me Shiro, if ya have to have a name. It's what the King uses."
"The… king?" Aizen-sama desired the throne of heaven, and that was the only true kingship Ulquiorra knew. But this was not the kingdom of heaven. "Where is this?"
'Shiro' rolled his eyes. "Ya know, for all your brains, you're kinda slow." He gestured around. "This is the bastard's inner world. Ya know, the 'center'? It's his, so he's king." Abruptly, Kurosaki's hollow broke into a grin that would have put Grimmjow Jaggerjack to shame. "An' ya know, after that ass-kickin' you just got, since you're here, that makes Ichigo your king too."
Shunpo
Ichigo was not entirely clear on how Karin had managed to wander quite so far from the Kurosaki Clinic. It was, after all, a day off from school, so there was no real reason to be out and about, especially when Karin knew the potential danger.
Shunpo
Karin moaned faintly in pain; he could not prevent himself from jarring her at the speeds he was going.
Shunpo
But thankfully, he could spot the roof of the Urahara Shoten coming into view, and Inoue would be there. Inoue, with her healing power, strong enough to bring back lost limbs.
Strong enough to bring back the dead, not that it was common knowledge.
Shunpo
He skidded to an ungraceful stop outside the shop's door, kicked it in. "Inoue!"
There was a startled yelp, before Inoue's head poked out from behind a candy stand, set in a cheerful smile. "Kurosaki-kun! What's -"
"Inoue," Ichigo repeated, lifting Karin's limp body for emphasis, and before he could say anything further, two of her fairies had appeared from their hairpin, spreading a golden shield over the worst of Karin's injuries.
Thank god, he thought in relief as he laid her out on the floor, allowing Inoue a better vantage point to work with.
He heard a swift intake of breath as he dropped to his knees to watch, and looked up to see Inoue's eyes fixed on the decorative green hilt at his side.
"Kurosaki-kun… that's…"
Of course.Ulquiorra had been the one to take her to Hueco Mundo.
Ichigo merely nodded.
Inoue was smart enough to realize the only thing that would part an arrancar from its zanpakuto was death.
Emotions drifted across her face in a chaotic mess out of which he could only identify relief, before she refocused her attention on her healing.
"So you say the fourth Espada is dead."
Ichigo was far from surprised at how dubious Yamamoto sounded. The Captain-General was far from fond of himself, had been after since he and his friends had returned from Hueco Mundo alive after a successful retrieval.
It was fine by him. Yamamoto's narrow-mindedness had nearly resulted in Rukia's death, and Orihime's fate wouldn't have been much better.
"It's not just something I'm saying, Captain-General," he retorted. "It's something I can prove.''
"Prove?" Yamamoto repeated, tone not changing for an instant. "If you have proof, then present it, Representative."
Damn. Ichigo grabbed the zanpakuto from where he had lain it down, just out of sight of the view screen. Yamamoto could see it all he liked, but he was not going to give it up. When he allowed himself to think about it, he found it disturbing how attached he'd gotten to the blade so quickly.
His blade.
Despite its origin, he found himself unable to think of it as Ulquiorra's.
He displayed its length in front of him, oddly proud of the stunned expression the zanpakuto evoked from even the most powerful shinigami in Soul Society. Granted, it probably wasn't the sword itself, but the implication.
"You killed him before he could release?"
Ichigo nodded, slipping the zanpakuto into his obi, where it looked slightly out of place in contrast to the massive cleaver sword on his back. "Seemed like the thing to do."
"How?" Yamamoto demanded quietly. "Your strength is not great enough to kill an arrancar in one blow, as that would require."
That was true. Usually.
He recalled a statement from Nel, who had remained in Hueco Mundo with her former Fraccion, and his mouth quirked upward into an ironic smirk.
"There's a difference in fighting me like a rational being," he replied, "and pissing me off."
TIMESKIP
The second Espada.
Ichigo knew he was out of his league. Ulquiorra was toast, and he was confident he would be able to match the third's unreleased form. Released would be more difficult, and going up another number….
There was no point in fighting a hopeless battle. If he could get away…
I might have to…
Halibel noticed his hand reaching toward the green hilt, and her eyes darkened with something like contempt. "How arrogant," she remarked. "Not even reaching for your own zanpakuto, but a borrowed one."
"Borrowed?" Snorting, Ichigo quelled the familiar irritation with the ease of long practice. It wasn't borrowed, it was his. "Shows what you know." Despite Halibel's comment, the Espada grew alert and wary when the blade cleared its cover. "But I have no intention of fighting you."
"Cowardice."
"Common sense," Ichigo corrected. I would say… this is the only way to get away.
Not only that, but maybe it'll finally get through the arrancar's collective skull that it's not Ulquiorra's anymore.
He tightened his grip on the hilt, using his other hand to steady the blade itself; with the awkward position of the blade being down instead of up, he didn't want to take chances.
Halibel's brow furrowed in confusion as he maneuvered the point to rest over the xiphoid process. "What are you doing, Kurosaki?"
Ichigo smirked slightly. "It's not borrowed, Halibel.
"Infiltrate… Asesino."
He plunged the blade through.
Feeling strangely as though an unseen enemy had just taken a bite out of him, Ulquiorra shivered, despite the air in the inner world having risen to a point where it was uncomfortably warm.
If this was anything like a soul felt after being consumed, he could sympathize with the shinigami's duty to prevent them being eaten.
It was boring beyond measure.
Kurosaki's hollow complained from time to time that "If he's gonna keep usin' our power, can' he at least let us watch?"
It worried Ulquiorra that he agreed with the other's sentiment.
"Aizen-sama, Aizen-sama!"
As second Espada Halibel was usually quite punctual and reserved, the sight of her rushing into an Espada meeting several minutes late and shaken was enough to cause unrest at the table.
She stopped on a dime at the end of the table, panting slightly. It was unnerving to see the second so agitated, and she seemed to realize what affect it was having on the table, because she closed her eyes, took a breath, and pulled on her usual reserve.
Everyone looking, however, could tell it was only skin-deep.
"I bring news from my assignment, Aizen-sama," she began. "I believe I have discovered the vizard hideout."
Aizen nodded, pleased, but did not speak.
"But Aizen-sama," Halibel continued, dead serious, "I ran into interference before I could finish my reconnaissance. Kurosaki Ichigo."
A loud laugh broke the silence. "That loser? We thought it was something serious, with you barging in like that. But borrowed-blade bastard?"
"That is not borrowed power," Halibel all but snapped, her sheer tone enough to force the replacement ninth to be quiet before she arranged his death. "Aizen-sama. That boy can not be vizard. That zanpakuto is not a trophy. It may have been Ulquiorra's to begin with, but now it is Kurosaki's. Asesino- he released it against me."
The ninth didn't laugh again.
Aizen looked at Halibel for a moment in silence.
And then: "Does it truly surprise you?"
Taken off-guard, Halibel couldn't reply.
"You yourself noted more than once that Kurosaki's spiritual pressure resembled that of an arrancar much more closely than it did the model of a vizard. So, shown he is capable of resurrección… does it truly surprise you?"
It did.
P.S Just as a side note, I don't believe Halibel is the second, or even the third. I think she's the seventh. Given how Noitora was with Nel, he'd probably annoy Halibel just as much, was she higher rank.