"So tell me, what's the name of that monstrosity?"

"MONSTROSITY?!"

Ichigo Kurosaki couldn't help but chuckle. Equal parts at the arrogance of the crimson pineapple head that stood before him, and at the utter fury that filled his mind. "My sword doesn't like being called a monstrosity. As for the name...Why don't I just show you?" He asked with a wide smirk. "Eh?" he enjoyed the instant narrowing of Renji Abarai's eyes, and the faint "Nani?" He heard from the girl behind him. As well as the sudden shock he felt from inside his own being.

"You...you can hear me?"

From the day that Rukia Kuchiki gave him her powers to help him save his family, Ichigo had begun to feel nudges and hear whispers in his mind. Little tidbits of information. Tips and tricks.

His stubborn and headstrong nature as it was, he didn't always listen to the whispers that he heard, even as they steadily increased in clarity and volume. But they had always turned out to be right. Steadily he'd grown to trust the voice, more and more. And most recently, when he drove the Menos Grande back to Hueco Mundo, he'd realized something.

He knew who that voice was.

He didn't know how, and he didn't know why.

But he knew the name.

And he knew how to call on it.

"I will warn you, I don't think she's too happy you're trying to take away a friend of hers either."

He hefted the large blade off of his shoulder, extending out to his right hand side, blade pointed at the ground. His calm demeanor a stark contrast to the whirlwind of excitement inside of him while he eagerly prepared to meet the true form of his sword.

"Dance, Sode no Shirayuki."

The redhead widened his eyes in disbelief.

The raven-haired midget gasped, stepping backwards in shock.

Even the unflappable noble observing seemed to freeze, even in his stoic pose, at the words.

The carrot-topped substitute exploded in a blazing inferno of pure energy.

Renji and Rukia both had to cover their eyes against the blinding light and force themselves to stay upright against the sudden onslaught of reiatsu. The midget failed, rather spectacularly. Driven to her knees by the waves of power, the disbelief over the fact that her Zanpakuto...HER Zanpakuto...had just been called by someone else. An emptiness settled into her heart, a pain and despair joining the guilt that had taken root there ever since she'd met this boy.

Ichigo, on the other hand, simply found the world around him fading away as he was pulled into another...

-Scene Break-

When he opened his eyes, he found himself feeling rather calm, if a little confused. He glanced around him to get his bearings, and quickly realized a few things;

For one, He was standing on a window.

Two, he was standing on a window on the side of a skyscraper.

For three, the ground was off to his right hand side. And yet he wasn't falling towards it.

Surprisingly, these observations did little to shake the calm that had fallen over him, for a cool breeze and a light dusting of snow seemed to just wash all of the worries away. It seemed...peaceful.

When he returned his attention in front of him, he found a woman standing across from him, looking at him cautiously. As if she were daring herself to hope that he could see her and hear her.

He found his attention wandering again, observing the woman...she was, quite simply, beautiful. Off-white, lavender tinged hair fell around her face, framing ice blue-gray eyes, and a slender form wrapped in a white kimono. "How do you know my name?" The woman asked softly, taking a cautious step towards him.

Ichigo blinked to regain his mental faculties and gave a one armed shrug, using the motion to bring his hand behind his head to rub at the back of his neck sheepishly. "Honestly? I don't know. I just...do."

The woman blinked again, seemingly in awe of that simple ignorance towards how he knew the earth-shattering knowledge he held. "You know who...what...I am?" She pressed.

The carrot-top nodded again, somehow feeling the familiarity of the being in front of him. "You're Sode no Shirayuki. You're...well. Right now you're my Zanpakuto, but I think you were Rukia's. Or you still are. I don't know. Maybe I...for lack of a better term...I stole you, maybe I borrowed you, or maybe we're sharing you."

More awe and disbelief covered the spirit's features, and Ichigo found himself rubbing the back of his head, giving off a grimace at the slightly awkward situation. "I've been hearing you for a while now. You always tried to scream warnings and lessons to me. Sometimes I listened. But I think we both know I'm really stubborn and sometimes I didn't. Look. I'm not sure how I know all of this...Really, I'm not. But right now, we have to save Rukia. Can you help me do that?"

He wasn't expecting the spirit to rush at him and envelop him in a hug. Her body was cool to the touch, but it wasn't at all unnerving, and he wrapped his own arms around her.

The mental world began to fade away, much as the world outside had, and he caught sight of a dark figure standing on a pole on the next building over, cape billowing in the frosty wind. A dark figure that had shifted to look at him over it's shoulder, sunglasses glinting in the light of the sun that shone off to his left, long dark hair and stubble shrouding much of the other visible features.

He saw the figure give him a single nod...perhaps of approval? Before the world faded away completely.

-Scene Break-

'Even Sode no Shirayuki left me…' Rukia thought to herself as she stared at the sidewalk, the pressure exuding from her carrot-topped companion of the last two months preventing her from so much as lifting her head to look directly into the storm that he'd become. A veritable tornado of reiatsu, swirling around him and threatening...okay, well, not threatening, ACTUALLY ripping pebbles from the concrete of the sidewalk that began to swirl around him as well.

Something in her must have broke, because she could swear she heard faint, girlish giggles of glee at the events.

And then the storm broke, pure blue reiatsu exploding outwards with a swipe of the sword from Ichigo. A beautiful pure-white katana, with a white ribbon extending from the grip and coiling around the substitute's arm. A familiar sword...her sword.

Or at least it had been, at one time.

He stood there, eyes closed, still exuding reiatsu from every pore of his body, looking much like he was on fire, but he was completely calm.

"You...you son of a bitch. It wasn't enough for you to steal Rukia's powers, you stole her goddamn Zanpakuto too?!" Renji shouted as soon as the spiritual pressure had settled down to manageable levels. "That's it! Howl, Zabimaru!"

Eyes opened, the warm caramel gone, replaced by an electric blue that matched the reiatsu he was exuding. 'Segmented blade...Shirayuki, if you can hear me, does that thing extend into a whip?'

'It does.'

'Wonderful.' Ichigo thought, leaping up into a backflip when Renji swung at him. 'I think I know what to do. Shirayuki, May I have this dance?'

'You know it?'

This whole time, Ichigo had kept the blade of Sode no Shirayuki extended out to his right, he twisted the blade to face towards Renji now.

'I believe I do.'

"Some no mai...Tsukishiro." With that, still suspended in mid-air, he slashed at the redhead.