"'If God made everything, did He make the Devil?'

"This is the kind of embarrassing question which any child can ask before breakfast, and for which no neat and handy formula is provided in the Parents' Manual…Later in life, however, the problem of time and the problem of evil become desperately urgent, and it is useless to tell us to run away and play and that we shall understand when we are older. The world has grown hoary, and the questions are still unanswered."

Ichigo Kurosaki was quick in arriving in the waking world, rapidly dragging himself through the sleep-sands of ashen tired shores into the sharp and cold ocean of reality - a welcome distraction from long-off nightmares. He immediately pulled himself out of bed, wiping away the cold sweat upon his brow and checking the clock for the time to make sure that he had waken up on time.

He had, thankfully.

His bedroom wasn't a bad room, not by any account. His computer was currently turned off and gathering dust, as opposed to the bookshelves which lined the walls, each shelf two layers deep and thick with books of a thousand types. Nonfiction and fiction alike - and each shelf bearing at least one book which was too dog-eared to be read even more one time.

The dog-eared books were as much a sign of frequent power outages as the wind-up clock on the bedside. A sign of the times when he would have been stranded and empty, without the creature comforts of the things that did not plug into the walls, because he was too confused about his place in things to eke out meaning without escapism.

He sighed, rubbing the sandman's sleep-dust away from his eyes. Some part of him thankfully noted that his father had yet to approach, and wake him up in his typical bombastic manner...

But that was when Ichigo heard a horrible noise. The sound of a fully-grown man charging up the stairs and towards Ichigo's room. With a slam, Ichigo's door flew open and Isshin Kurosaki, his father, charged in and aimed a kick for Ichigo's face. Ichigo - sighing and feeling quite put upon - retaliated with a quick and harsh punch to his father's face, knocking the man back and into the floor with the sound of flesh against flesh and then a dull thump.

"What have I told you about waking me up like that!?" Ichigo growled out as he slammed a foot of his own into Isshin's face. Such gratuitous violence would have been anathema to another family, but Ichigo had long ago figured out that Isshin never actually got hurt by anything that Ichigo could do.

Why that was, Ichigo had no clue, but it was an unspoken secret between him and his father. The old man was probably a Fullbringer, or something.

Isshin groaned before leaping to the balls of his feet in a single jump.

"Not to do it?" He said, almost meekly, before flashing Ichigo a beaming smile. The voice which should have been nasally and shattered was full and healthy as always.

"That's right," Ichigo began. "I told you not to do it. So don't do it."

Isshin frowned, looking absolutely heartbroken. Then he started screaming again, over the top and over the edge. "BUT ICHIGO, IF I DON'T BEAT YOU UP, HOW WILL YOU EVER BUILD CHARACTER!?"

"Can it, old man, Karin and Yuzu are still sleeping."

Isshin scowled almost as deeply as Ichigo was.

"Using my darling daughters against me? That's low, Ichigo."

"Yeah, well, if you play dirty then so will I."

Isshin stared into Ichigo's eyes for several moments before bursting out into laughter, smiling and clapping Ichigo on the shoulder, so hard that Ichigo nearly buckled to the floor.

"Fair enough, Ichigo! I'll go get started on breakfast."

Slowly, Ichigo peeled himself out of his room, and made his way to the bathroom where he began preparing for the day.

The television was already glaring and blaring in the living room by the time Ichigo had donned his school clothes. Yuzu and Karin were both watching it uneasily, and Ichigo's eyes hardened unconsciously at the sight of their distress.

"The incident occurred just outside of Karakura station, just after 7:30, as the morning commute was getting into full swing. The Hollow incursion was one of the bloodiest in months, claiming twenty-six victims before the Sentai were able to arrive and put the marauders down…"

On the television screen, a number of humans were grappling with invisible, distorted, bloodstained shapes in the air. One of them - a regal looking man in suspenders and wielding a katana - slashed through the air so violently that the shapes were thrown back, collapsing into the buildings behind them.

Several bloody bodies on the ground in the field of vision of the camera were obscured completely by grainy mosaics.

"Property damage was minimal, and mitigated by Fullbring, but the district will be recovering for months. The entire area has been cordoned off, and is under investigation as a possible weakness in the Barriers…"

Ichigo felt his heart sinking at the thought - perish the thought - of all of that misery and destruction. All too easily - because why should it have been hard? - he walked over and shut the television off with a click and a frown.

"Come on, girls, let's think about something more cheerful, shall we?"

Yuzu was almost in tears. She clung to Ichigo like he was her lifeline, like she wanted a hug but she was too scared and vulnerable to accept one.

"It's not right." She whispered as Ichigo coaxed her over to the table in the kitchen.

"I know." Ichigo said gently.

"We should be helping." She maintained.

"Just because we can see spirits, doesn't mean we have any powers." Karin said bitterly. "We're no help at all."

That wasn't Ichigo's primary concern, of course. He couldn't bear to think of his sisters going out and fighting Hollows. He couldn't even imagine himself going out and fighting Hollows, because that was just too dangerous. He would fight monsters to protect his family, but no-one else.

Ichigo had always sort of been the one who picked up the slack to help his sisters out. Their father was always gone, working or otherwise, and even when he was present he could always be a tiny bit emotionally distant. None of them missed how quick he was to put on a beaming, cheesy and fake grin even when he wanted nothing more than to cry over the neglected photo albums of Masaki Kurosaki. So it fell down to Ichigo - he was the one who went to all of Karin's soccer matches, and walked his sisters home from school at the end of the day. He was the one who tucked them in most nights. And yeah, he couldn't give them a mother figure or anything, because he was their older brother, but he filled in everywhere else, and filled in where he could.

"Do you know where Dad went?" Ichigo wondered, surveying the pile of pancakes on the table. Karin shrugged.

"Said he had an early meeting for his clinic." She said, still in her categorical funk. "With another doctor. Said he would be late coming back tonight, too."

Ichigo sighed. "Figures."

The breakfast swept by in a flurry of too much syrup and butter, before Karin leaned back and hiccuped loudly, then burped. The perfect storm of uncomfortable noises.

"Karin!" Yuzu screamed, scandalized.

"Sorry, not sorry." Karin said grouchily, staring out the window. Ichigo allowed himself to raise an eyebrow, getting up to wash off his plate and put it in the dishwasher.

"Are you okay, Karin?" He asked carefully, picking up his backpack and getting ready for school. Some part of him noted that he still had to brush his teeth,

"I'm fine, bro." She said dully. "Go and get to school. We'll head out and catch our bus on time."

"Pinkie promise?" Ichigo asked with a smile.

"Pinkie promise." Karin agreed, finally grinning for the first time all morning.

Ichigo couldn't even see his sisters as he left the house, running down the sidewalk at a steady clip, but he could almost feel them nonetheless, the same way one magnet might feel two others.

"Ichigo!" Someone crowed from behind him, catching up at their own breakneck pace. He turned around, coming to face someone quite familiar.

"Heeey, Tats." He said, eying the toast that his old friend, Tatsuki Arisawa, held in her mouth. "I thought that only happened in manga and anime."

She took the toast out of her mouth, and then slugged him with her free hand. "Shut up! It's not my fault I woke up late."

"Oh, did your alarm clock break down?" Ichigo asked teasingly.

"I deny everything." Tatsuki replied. "Come on, we need to get going. We're going to be late for our mandatory homeroom class, and you know how Miss Ochi gets about that."

"Don't remind me!" Ichigo replied, picking up his pace nonetheless.

These days, there were more important things than going to school - so much so that many classes had become completely voluntary, just because so many students had other things to attend to. But some classes couldn't be skipped - like the classes where you had information on engineering shoved down your throat. The state wanted as many people who could put infrastructure back together as possible.

"Ichigo, you're slowing down again." Tatsuki said, outpacing him easily.

"Sorry." He shot back. "I'm just too busy thinking. Head in the clouds, and all of that."

All around them, the multichromatic crackle of Fullbring rung out like bells and thunder and lightning, as Fullbringers went to work in construction - coaxing matter into new shapes and forms, building more housing. Elites, paid to work by more elites, each Fullbringer equal to squads of mundane laborers.

"You're such a nerd." Tatsuki snubbed him. "Nerd."

"Shut up, Tats."

Sometimes Ichigo wished that he was a Fullbringer, but that obviously could never happen. He hadn't been born with the potential. And that was probably for the best - because it was the rare Fullbringer who was able to scrape by without being recruited into the war effort.

Ah, but maybe you are a Fullbringer, a sneaky voice in his mind whispered. You can see spirits, after all. That means something, doesn't it?

It meant nothing, though.

"No, seriously, you know I don't mean anything by it?" Tatsuki said, throwing her arm around Ichigo's shoulders.

"I know, Tats-" Ichigo began, only to be interrupted by a sickening crunch from behind them. Ichigo turned around, taking in the horrible sight without even a gasp, and he all but grabbed Tatsuki in his arms, taking off at the fastest clip he could take.

"What the hell!?" Tatsuki sputtered. But her shock and horror at Ichigo was short-lived, because she saw it. The invisible, roaring shape crushing through the air behind them, shattering bodies underfoot. It roared, it's claws (or extremities at any rate) kicking up a truck and hurling it down the street.

"Holy shit." She screamed in horror. "Ichigo, put me down! I can run on my own, you idiot!"

"S-sorry!" He replied. For a moment, he was about to do so, but then a line of destructive flashing red light burst through the air right next to them.

"Oh fuck."

Ichigo set Tatsuki down as quickly as he could, dragging her away from what could only have been a Hollow, ducking around a corner and hiding.

"What the hell is going on?" He whispered in terror. "A second Hollow attack in as many days!?"

Ichigo was already pulling out his phone, calling emergency services, but there was no guarantee that the signal would escape from the Hollow's spiritual pressure. If they were lucky, they were already far enough away.

"Come on, Ichigo!" Tatsuki cried. "We have to keep moving!"

The spiritual pressure was nearly overpowering, but he staggered after her, making like he had been taught in drills from childhood, and found that in the haze of his own adrenaline he was quickly recovering against the oppressive sensation of the Hollow. His lungs gasping for air faster than should have been possible, his legs hitting the pavement with equal celerity.

A second before it would have been too late, he dragged Tatsuki to the ground, and then another lance of hellish and otherworldly red light punched through the air where they had just been. Ichigo would have felt his skin burn if he could have.

"Come on!" Ichigo managed to say through the shock. "We need to get to shelter! The subway system - the corridors are smaller than the Hollow seems to be-"

Another flash.

Together, Ichigo and Tatsuki stumbled into each other, running as fast as their feet could take them, hurrying into the underground. Yet as soon as they got there, there was another distortion in the air before them, as if a door was opening in space, as if space itself was being pulled away like wallpaper.

Ichigo, unlike Tatsuki, was fully able to see the thing before them, neither human nor angel nor crawling thing, but some Hollow composite of black flesh in a form not unlike any of those things.

And Ichigo felt despair.

(the sight of rain, and shattering skyscrapers amongst the blue of skies and oceans-)

(rain rain rain)

(unacceptable)

It was if the world was falling into slow motion, and Ichigo was acting faster than he was even capable of acting. In the end, it was more like he was remembering himself act then even consciously acting.

Ichigo drew a massive cleaver from his own body, as if it had been planted in his gut. And even though it should have been heavier than God and the Devil, he swung it through the air as if it was no burden at all. The roaring red baleful light which the Hollow was creating was literally bisected out of the air by Ichigo's swings, and then the Hollow itself was split down too, severed in two from head to toe. Shattered.

Ichigo looked dumbly at the blade, feeling mind-boggled, shocked.

"Ichigo!?" Tatsuki said, almost breathing out instead of speaking. "You…"

Suddenly, the pain from where the Cero had grazed him seemed almost unbearable, even though moments ago it had been nonexistent. He suppressed the urge to vomit, just barely.

And then he failed, leaning over and puking up his pancake breakfast. Just in time for the Sentai to arrive, in flashes of green and blue-white and red and all the colors that Fullbring could call up.

"What the hell happened here?" Shukuro Tsukishima asked, rushing forward and being carried forth by the air and the concrete flooring. Ichigo just barfed again.

"I don't know." Tatsuki murmured. And then the shock hit her, too and she keeled over and barfed.

The man quickly leapt towards them in a jade crackle of light, grabbing the two of them in hands which glowed a hale green.

"Ginjo! Take watch for the Hollows!" He barked, even as Ichigo felt his wounds begin to heal under the light. "Hey, boy, did you kill this one?"

The Hollow was already fast fading away, but still visible to Ichigo's eyes.

"I don't know." Ichigo said. The man snapped his fingers.

"Hey, you're fading in and out. Hey!"

Ichigo blinked groggily.

"Yeah, that's it. Stay with me. Come on, here-"

The ground seemed to lift up underneath him, taking the form of a chair in which Ichigo was lowered softly.

"I don't know what I did." Ichigo muttered. "I just… just… acted…"

"Hey, it's okay." The man said, prying the cleaver from Ichigo's hands and examining it curiously before putting it aside. "You did good."

Another Fullbringer - a woman - was attending to Tatsuki.

And Ginjo Kugo flickered back in. "Nothing more, Tsukishima! The Hollows are gone!"

Tsukishima gritted his teeth visibly. "Damn it all. Call Ozpin, this is way above our pay grade."

"Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak."