Chapter 3

Urahara touched down into the clearing where the fight was well underway. He held his hat on his head as he took in the scene. Chad had been bound in the same type of chain that Ishida had at some point and appeared to have at least managed to roll to the edge of the fight. Ichigo was standing between his incapacitated friend and three men that were advancing on him.

The former substitute Shinigami had blood dripping from a slice down the right side of his face and he seemed to be favoring his left leg, but the look in his eyes reminded Urahara of old Ichigo before he had lost his powers and his self confidence. Urahara could feel a charge in the air around him that was fueled almost purely by his force of will.

Rukia was a short ways across from Ichigo and Chad, facing off to three other men. Two of them were swinging more of the magical chains around as if they were planning on lassoing her as well. The third was a larger man with darker features. He squared off in front of the Shinigami, brandishing a katana of his own. It was longer than normal and had wicked looking serrated edge.

Urahara watched as Rukia took a step back and prepared to use one of her Shikai form moves. When he saw this, Urahara put two fingers to his lips and wolf whistled shrilly, drawing everyone's attention and bring the fighting to a brief pause.

"You!" the man with the serrated katana said as he caught sight of Urahara. "What are you doing here, shopkeeper?"

"It seems that you tried to deceive me when you came to call," Urahara said as he lowered his hand from his lips and took a hold his cane. He began to walk over towards where Chad was lying.

"It seems you may have been hiding information from us as well," another man said as he eyed Urahara.

They all watched as the shopkeeper calmly walked over to Chad and knelt beside him. He reached out and touched the chain and it snapped in half just like the one that had bound Ishida.

"YOU!" the man with the blade screamed. "You said that it would only part for the one that put it on!"

Urahara turned around and smiled at the man as Chad began to get up. Ichigo went to him and held a hand out to his friend and helped him up off the ground. "You didn't expect me to make something that could be used against me, did you?" Urahara asked with a smile. "Besides, you said you wanted to capture hollows. These kids don't look much like hollows to me."

The man glared at him as he turned and squared off to Urahara. As he did so, the rest of the men followed suit. They all turned their attention from the others and focused completely on Urahara.

Rukia stepped over and tried to place herself between the lead man and the shopkeeper but Urahara called out to her. "Kuchiki-san, please step aside and keep the other two back as well."

The three gasped and looked at him. "Please do this," Urahara said, never taking his eyes from the leader as he reached down and slipped his sword out of his cane and tossed the casing to the side. "It was my mistake that got all of you in trouble. I will take care of this now."

Rukia exchanged a worried glance with Ichigo and Chad, but none of them made a move.

Ichigo ground his teeth and he watched Urahara facing off to these six strange men by himself. Ichigo had no idea who or what they were, but they certainly had been fast and quite powerful.

Ichigo had arrived on the scene just as the leader had managed to trap Chad in one of the chains. He launched himself at the leader's back, taking the man by surprise. "Ichigo!" Chad yelled as he saw his friend go flying past. But even before the man seemed to be able to react to the attack, the hands of the other men were already snatching Ichigo up and tossed him across the clearing into a tree.

He had landed awkwardly on his left leg when he hit the ground. As he struggled back to his feet, he realized that these men were all moving in tandem. It was almost as if they knew what the others were thinking and planned their moves accordingly. That was the strange kind of movement that he had noticed before at the river that he couldn't figure out.

He watched as the man he had knocked over got up off of the ground and glared back at him. He then reached behind his back and seemed to draw a long, serrated katana from no where. "I've had enough of this interference," he said as he slowly walked back to where Chad was lying on the ground.

Chad looked up and saw that he was the current target. He rolled back, just managing to avoid getting sliced from a downward thrust from the man.

"Chad!" Ichigo yelled as he got up and ran over towards the man and his friend.

Suddenly the other men swarmed around him. Ichigo eyed all of them, taking in each of their positions. "I don't have time to deal with you," he told them as he noticed that the dark man was once again advancing on Chad.

One of the men pulled out a chain and whipped it out at Ichigo. He ducked under it and came up on the other side of the man, throwing a punch into his face and knocking him to the ground. Another chain suddenly swung in towards Ichigo's legs, but this one he leapt over and at the same time, spun around with a kick taking out anther man.

By this point, he had broken from their cluster and took off running for the leader that was about to try another strike at Chad. Ichigo rushed at the man, hoping to knock him over again, but this time the man was ready. Faster than Ichigo was able to follow, he had spun around and slashed out with his blade.

"Ichigo, don't!" Chad had tried to warn when he had seen that Ichigo was about to rush right into danger. But his warning came just a bit too late.

The ex-Shinigami fell back from the slash as a spurt of blood erupted into the air. The leader began to laugh, thinking that he had just thoroughly sliced through Ichigo's head and began to turn his back to the wounded young man.

Ichigo, however, quickly jumped up and placed himself between Chad and the man. The man stared down at him with a little bit of wonder. "You dodged pretty well kid," he said with a level of surprise and compliment.

Ichigo stood there, glaring at the man as he breathed heavily. Blood dripped down into his right eye from the slash that he had taken just above it. He wasn't sure how he had done it, but he had managed to pull up short just in time. It was as if instinct had completely taken over for him because he hadn't even been able to see the movement of the blade.

Suddenly Rukia appeared across the clearing from them.

"Ichigo! Are you all right?" she asked.

The leader spun around and made a snarling sound towards her, "Shinigami…" he hissed. Suddenly he launched himself across the clearing at her. The two men with chains that Ichigo had knocked down earlier quickly followed him over towards her.

"Rukia!" Ichigo called out a warning and had taken a step towards her. But the other three men had suddenly moved to block his path.

That was when Urahara appeared…

Now the shopkeeper was facing off to all six of these powerful men by himself. He didn't understand what Urahara had meant about it all being his fault or how it was that he was able to so easily remove Chad's restraint, but it didn't matter. Even if Urahara had been involved with these villains somehow, it wasn't right that they would leave him to deal with all six by himself.

After several tense moments of the leader and Urahara facing off, rest of the men suddenly surged towards their leader as if on cue.

"Kuchiki-san! Move!" Urahara called as the men grouped right beside where she was standing. There was a sudden flash as all six of the men came together, blinding all of them. A second later, Rukia found herself trapped in the coils of a giant snake like creature.

It appeared black at first, but when it moved and caught the light, they could see that it was actually iridescent, casting slightly different hues depending on how the light hit it. "Rukia!" Ichigo cried and took a step towards the creature.

"No," Urahara said as he stepped in front of him, preventing him from getting any closer. "You two stay back," he said to Chad and Ichigo. He slashed his right hand out while holding his Zanpakuto. As he did so, it transformed slightly into its Shikai form without him even uttering a word. Ichigo looked down at the blade and memories of his training against Urahara came back to him. He knew how dangerous this man could be with that sword. He had seen even more impressive feats done by Urahara even more recently when he had fought against Aizen. He knew that if anyone was going to save Rukia, it would be Urahara. Still, Ichigo wanted to be able to help.

Suddenly Inoue and Ishida appeared in the clearing. Ishida released his hold on the girl and quickly took in what was happening. In the time it took for him to touch down, let go of Inoue, and sight the danger, he had his bow out and a Seele Schneider brought out and aimed at the beast.

"Ishida!" Ichigo cried.

Ishida slipped his eyes to glance at Ichigo for a moment before quickly returning his steady gaze on the creature. "I will thank you later, Kurosaki," he said. "Right now we need to concentrate on this creature."

"Kuchiki-san?" Inoue said, standing just slightly behind Ishida.

Rukia struggled against the tight grip of the snake and said, "Kill this thing!"

"I intend to," Urahara said darkly as he stepped out and stood directly in front of it. "So," he said to the thing. "A Soul Serpent. .. I thought that all of your kind had died out years ago."

The creature laughed a high hissing laugh as the head lowered to look Urahara directly in the eye. "Sssso, Shopkeeper. You've heard of ussss. You are an interessssting human." It then turned its gaze on Urahara's Zanpakuto. "Perhapsss not ssso human after all…" it said.

"No, no more human than you are," he said and then stepped forward with a slash of his blade. "Sing Benihime!" he called, sending a slice of red energy screaming from the tip of the katana, directed at the snake.

It swerved out of the way, but as it did so, it missed Urahara suddenly vanishing and reappearing on top of it. He stood right next to Rukia and he reached down and grabbed her. The dodge that he had forced the snake to make had loosened its grip on the Shinigami and Urahara easily pulled her free.

The snake turned and looked at him and tried to strike at the two with its massive fangs, but the teeth only clamped down on air as Urahara disappeared again with Rukia before the head had reached them.

He reappeared just behind Chad and Ichigo where he gently sat Rukia down. She appeared to be quite faint and slumped to the ground, unable to remain standing. "Rukia!" Ichigo cried as he turned around and went to her.

"The serpent steals soul energy," Urahara explain. "Any contact with it will probably kill you, Ichigo." He raised his voice slightly so that Inoue and Ishida could hear him too and said, "Don't let it touch you. It won't kill the rest of you with a touch, but it can with too much exposure and you will be weakened by it."

The Serpent hissed loudly at them and then suddenly struck out at Ishida who was now the closest to it. The Quincy shot off his prepared Seele Schneider and then disappeared, grabbing Inoue and taking her with him. The blade struck the snake in the nose, but deflected off of it and struck into the ground to the left. Ishida reappeared with Inoue behind the creature and stared in shock at what had happened to his most powerful weapon.

"The hide is nearly impenetrable," Urahara announced.

"Then what are we going to do?" Ichigo cried.

The snake didn't give them any more time for conversation as it dove for the gathered group in front of it while simultaneously striking out at Ishida and Inoue behind it with the end of its body. Ishida pulled Inoue with him again and dodged out of the way.

Ichigo grabbed Rukia and jumped to the right while Chad dove to the left. They all turned and looked and were shocked to see Urahara still standing where he had been but with his sword wedged in the snake's jaw, preventing it from snapping shut on him.

"El Directo!" Chad called and shot a blast at the thing. It hit it in the side of the face, but it didn't as much as budge from the strike.

Suddenly Urahara dropped to one knee as his arms began to shake from holding the snake off. Ichigo, being the nearest now, noticed then that the way Benihime was wedged Urahara's right arm was in contact with one of the fangs.

"Ichigo," Urahara gasped. "Just behind the head… a soft spot…" He took a deep breath then and let go of his blade with his left hand and faced it, palm out, down the throat of the snake. A blast of Kido erupted from his palm and shot down the gullet of the beast.

It hissed in pain and wrench back from Urahara. As soon as his blade was free, he fell back and laid there a moment, gasping, before rolling over and using his sword to pull himself back up to his feet. While Urahara found his feet again Ishida launched into an attack of his own.

The Quincy hadn't heard what Urahara had said and didn't know to aim for this soft spot. Even so, the beast was thrashing around so violently now that it was almost impossible to take an accurate shot anyway.

It began to get irritated with the Quincy and started to focus its attention on him, lashing out with its teeth and tail, trying to snatch or knock him out of the air.

Chad also began throwing his powerful punches at the creature, but nothing seemed to be able to phase it. It suddenly lashed out at a still recovering Urahara. The shopkeeper had his back to the beast and didn't see it coming. But Urahara was saved by Inoue and her shield.

The snake's jaws were foiled again as they tried to close on the ex-Shinigami when they met the edges of Inoue's rejection shield. It hissed and tried to bite through the shield again. It caused the golden triangle to crack, but it held.

By now, Urahara had managed to get out of the way before the third strike came and shattered the shield, sending the snake shooting forward through the place where Urahara had been. But it surprised them all as it suddenly swung around a tree and used its own momentum to launch at Urahara's new location.

"Sing…" was all that Urahara was able to say before he was now wrapped tightly in the snake's coils with the beast's head hovering above his own, ready to swallow the shopkeeper whole.

Ichigo looked around and saw Ishida, Chad, and Inoue trying their best to distract the beast, but none of their attacks were able to affect it enough to draw its attention from its current prey. The snake struck downward, trying to swallow Urahara. The ex-Shinigami had his arms pinned and was unable to use any of his vast amounts of Kido and Zanpakuto abilities to defend himself. He was also clearly suffering from the soul draining that being in contact with the snake created.

Inoue's shield blocked the first strike, but shattered immediately. Ichigo saw that Urahara was about to get eaten if someone didn't do something immediately. He glanced down at Rukia who was trying to stand but couldn't find the strength to. Making an immediate decision, he bent down and snatched Rukia's katana from her hand.

"Ichigo!" she cried as Ichigo turned and ran at the beast. He leapt into the air and stepped onto the snake's back. As soon as his foot touched the scales, he could feel his own energy flowing out of him but he kept running. He ran all the way up the back to the base behind the head just as it was coming down for the final strike on Urahara.

With the last of Ichigo's energy, he drove Rukia's sword down into the soft spot right when it came into reach from its downward path. The sword sunk in all the way to the hilt.

The serpent hissed and screamed as it flailed upward again, tossing Ichigo off of its back and sent him crashing into the ground. The creature released its hold on Urahara who weakly crawled out of the way of the trashing beast before collapsing on the ground.

It trashed and flailed wildly for a few moments before its cries silenced and it finally flopped flat to the ground, unmoving. Everyone slowly looked around, taking stock of what had just happened. It was Rukia that spotted Ichigo's prone body first.

"Ichigo!" she cried as she stumbled to her feet and made her way over to her friend. She knelt beside him and placed a hand over his chest. By now the others had gathered around them. Urahara was leaning heavily on his sword that he had somehow already gotten back into his cane.

"Kurosaki-kun?" Inoue said quietly before kneeling on the other side of him.

Rukia suddenly snatched her hand back with a gasp. A blue glow began to radiate from Ichigo's body. "I hoped that he would be the one to slay it…" Urahara said.

They all looked at the shopkeeper and saw that he was smiling down at Ichigo. Inoue then gasped as she turned around and looked at the body of the serpent. It too was glowing with blue energy. The energy began to slowly break down the body and drifted up and towards Ichigo.

"What…?" Rukia said as she got up and stepped back. The energy was now flowing directly from the disintegrating creature into Ichigo.

"The Soul Serpents…" Urahara spoke. "…Used to be fairly numerous in Soul Society. They were dangerous things because they would steal the spirit energy from anyone they encountered. Their slaughter began with people defending themselves. But it was soon discovered that the one that was able to slay a Soul Serpent would then gain all of the power that the creature had ingested, making them quite powerful. But the hunts for Soul Serpents nearly drove them to extinction. A few learned new tricks to hide themselves such as the splitting and human disguise that we witnessed, and fled to the human world and Hueco Mundo and switched to hollows for their source of soul energy. But that would be why it was so angered with Kuchiki-san and myself. Shinigami had been the main ones to slaughter their kind in the past."

"So Kurosaki is absorbing this thing's power now?" Ishida said.

Urahara nodded. "And if I'm right, a dose of this much power just might jump start Ichigo's Shinigami powers again."

Rukia gasped and looked back down at Ichigo. The young man was glowing almost too brilliantly now for any of them to look at. Still, Rukia squinted through the glare to try and see what was happening to him. She thought she saw some movement in the center of the glow and heard a startled gasp.

As the last of the snake disappeared and flowed into Ichigo, sending Rukia's Zanpakuto clattering to the ground, there was one last violent flash that caused all of them to cry out and block their eyes. When they could see again, the turned and saw Ichigo sitting up in the center of their group, staring dazedly up at them.

"What…?" he said as he slowly began to stand. "What happened? I thought I was dead."

Urahara quickly turned his cane around and tapped Ichigo's chest with the end. Ichigo's body crumpled to the ground, leaving Ichigo, in Shinigami form, standing there. He looked down at himself in complete bewilderment. "How…?"

"You slew the Soul Serpent, Ichigo. You conquered your own fear of inadequacy and killed it," Urahara said as he stepped up to look down at Ichigo. "Your determination to protect your friends has once again restored your powers. You took in all of the power that the creature had acquired over its very long life and it was enough to return your own powers to you."

Ichigo reached behind his back and wrapped his hand around the tang of his Zanpakuto. "Zangetsu…" he spoke in wonder as he slowly pulled the blade from his back. The wrapping fell away from the blade and Ichigo stared down at it. "I've missed you, old man," Ichigo said.

"I never left you, Ichigo," he thought he heard the voice of his Zanpakuto echo in his head.

He looked back up at Urahara who said to him, "Welcome back substitute Shinigami, Kurosaki Ichigo."

With that all of his friends swarmed him and began patting his back and offering him congratulations.

XXX

It was much later that night when the impromptu celebration back at the camp site had died down that Ishida approached Urahara. He sat down beside the ex-Shinigami and began to speak. "You were never deceived by those men, were you?" he asked softly.

Urahara ignored the question and took a sip of tea. Ishida went on anyway. "You knew that it was a Soul Serpent and you were hoping that Kurosaki would be the one to find it. You suggested these woods to the snake when you sold it those items."

Urahara sighed and sat his cup down. "You weren't the one that was supposed to find it, Ishida-san," he said quietly without looking at the Quincy. "We were all lucky that it had switched its taste to hollows or it would have killed you right away instead of trying to drown you."

"Che," he voiced as he turned his head to look at the smiling and laughing Ichigo across the camp. He nudged his glasses up his nose and then said, "You manipulate all of us for your own purposes. That is what I despise about the Shinigami."

They sat in silence for a while then before Ishida sighed and looked down at the ground. "But you, unlike the others, also try to do something for us as well. It is not only for your own benefit that Kurosaki had his powers returned, but for his as well. He has not been the same since that day and I have not seen him enjoy the company of his friends like this since then either."

With that, Ishida stood up and started to walk away. "I am a selfish man," Urahara said, causing Ishida to pause again. "But I hate to see those that I cherish to suffer. I might not always go about things in the proper way, but I don't wish to hurt any of you."

Ishida nodded once without looking back at Urahara and then joined the others around the fire pit. Urahara sat for a while in the shadows of the flickering firelight and watched the comrades enjoy each others company and celebrate with Ichigo. He gave a sigh and then sat his cup down and got up silently and disappeared into the night.

A/n: so, what did you think? Reviews are always appreciated. I still don't have a beta so if you caught any mistakes, please let me know so I can correct them. Thanks for reading!