21.

"Karin! Yuzu!" I called in panic, flailing trapped on the floor, as the Shinigami ran with her sword into my bedroom doorway. "Wait! Let me free! That's my family being attacked, I have to help!" I called, desperate and angry.

But the Shinigami had paused in the doorway, staring at something down the hall.

"Onee-chan…" Yuzu's voice. She crawled into the doorway, covered in blood. "Onee-chan…"

"Yuzu!" My face twisted in helpless pain.

"Onee-chan… Please… I don't know what it is… It got Karin-chan… Please… Onee-chan… you have to save… Karin-chan…" She passed out.

I cried out as the Shinigami scampered away down the stairs.

"Wai -!" I began to call after her, but she was already gone. "Damnit…" I forced myself to my feet against the pressure, arms and legs still bound, and bunny hopped rather ungracefully down the stairs and into the room below. I shoved into the Shinigami, who had paused with her sword out.

"See? This is what happens when you don't free me from your stupid kido spell," I sniped.

"I thought I told you to stay upstairs -" she began in irritation, but I looked forward and felt my blood run cold, then red hot.

I could see them through a hole in the far wall. This Hollow was hulking and humanoid, Karin being dangled above the street in one of its massive hands. It was slowly squeezing her, suffocating her; she cried out.

"Karin!" Even I'm not sure what happened next. All I knew was that I had to protect my sister - at any cost. I could not let her die as my mother had died. I fought against the pressure, fought against the pressure - and in a great burst of light, my limbs were freed, I could move again.

The Shinigami had paused, stunned. "Wait!" she called belatedly, but I had grabbed my wooden kendo sword and run out into the street.

"Ichi-nee! Run!" Karin cried, seeing me, but I began fighting the Hollow with the wooden sword as it took swipes at me. The wooden sword was a pathetic substitute for the real thing, and in very little time the Hollow broke through the sword in a crash of wood slivers and shoved me away, ruining the blade I'd had since childhood. I skidded along the ground.

"Karin!" I called desperately, sitting upright.

"I found you," the Hollow whispered in an echoing, hoarse voice, and it made a grab for me with its free hand. I leaped out of the way in time, but the Shinigami had appeared, cutting at the Hollow's arm holding Karin. The Hollow roared and let go of Karin, who was dropped from a great distance, the Hollow disappearing momentarily as if heading to another spiritual plane.

I caught Karin as she fell, but she was unconscious, pale and unmoving. "Karin!" I called, shaking her, in tears, nearly losing it. "Karin! Please!"

"Get a hold of yourself! Even your sister upstairs isn't seriously injured, and neither of your sisters' souls have been eaten yet," said the Shinigami, standing before me with her sword poised, her back to me.

"Are you sure?" I said urgently, shaken.

"Positive. I see. The Hollow this afternoon wasn't after the ghost of that girl either." She sounded thoughtful, speaking almost to herself. "It was after a source of greater reiatsu."

"What do you mean?" I asked, frowning.

"Until now, your power has been almost completely sealed. That's why no Hollows came after you, and you never saw a Shinigami, and no Shinigami ever sensed you. It takes someone with enormous reiatsu to see a Shinigami or a Hollow, more reiatsu than any living human is supposed to have. And to break a top notch kido binding spell as a human, or confuse a Shinigami to the point where they can no longer sense Hollows when near you… that is unthinkable."

"So you're saying… suddenly my reiatsu is flooding when it wasn't before. Why?" I asked.

"This is just conjecture - but perhaps it's because of the ghost of that girl you had befriended. Her, and others like her. In other words, if you hadn't decided to help ghosts, to embrace your powers and interact with them instead of shutting them away, your enormous power would never have been unlocked. And now it has been. You've come into contact with so many dead people recently, it has unlocked your abilities.

"Hollows will eat all souls, but they prefer those with high levels of reiatsu. These Hollows weren't looking for just any soul… They were looking for a human soul with enormous reiatsu. They went after the ghost of that little girl, but it wasn't her. They looked in the city block close to where you live, but the spirit wasn't there. They attacked your house and searched for your sisters, but though they have some presence, even when around the ghosts you interact with the source of the energy wasn't them either.

"These two Hollows… they were after you."

I stood slowly. "... Me?" I whispered. "They sensed me from all the way outside Karakura?"

"That is correct," said the Shinigami softly.

"... My fault," I whispered in realization. "This is my fault. This thing is just going to keep attacking the people I care about."

I had long ago stopped trusting anyone to do any kind of saving for me. I certainly didn't trust the Shinigami themselves to do it. And my life… in comparison to the lives of those I loved, my life was insignificant.

I put Karin down and pushed the Shinigami aside, catching her by surprise. She cried out and fell to the ground. I sprinted forward just as the Hollow reappeared. "Wait till I'm gone, then kill it!" I called back desperately over my shoulder, running straight toward the Hollow's opening mouth -

"NO!" I heard her scream distinctly, and then the Shinigami was in front of me, taking the attack instead.

I paused, stunned, as she struggled in a shower of blood, crunching between its teeth. At last, it spat her back out, retreating and disappearing once more, and she lay there dying in a pool of her own blood.

"Shinigami," I whispered. Why would she do that for me?

"You idiot…" she hissed from the ground, irritable to the last. "Thinking it is over if you give it your soul… That is not how this works..."

"I - I'm sorry," I said blankly, standing above her. "I just - I just wanted to help -"

"I know what you wanted to do," she said simply. She sighed in frustration. "At this rate we will all die."

She shoved herself upright with effort, in a sitting position, leaning against an electric pole. She took up her sword, and I didn't know at first what she wanted to do. She seemed to be steeling herself for some sort of action.

"Do you want to save your family?" she asked steadily, looking me challengingly in the eye.

"Of course! Is there a way?" I said immediately, hooking onto the words like a lifeline.

"There is just one way. You become a Shinigami." I paused, surprised. She lifted her sword to me. "This is known as a zanpakuto," she said, deceptively calm, even as the Hollow reappeared nearby. "If I run it through the center of your being, through your heart, I can let my powers flow into you. I don't know if it will work - but it's the only plan we've got," she finished grimly.

I smiled. "Give me the sword, Shinigami," I said warmly. "If it's all we've got, it'll have to do. I'll make it work."

At last, the Shinigami smiled. "You may be an irritating human, but you are a brave one. And my name is not Shinigami. It is Kuchiki Rukia. Call me Rukia," she said softly.

"Kurosaki Ichigo. Call me Ichigo." I took the sword; she pointed it toward my heart. I was terrified, but I smirked, attempting to be cheerful. "See you on the other side," I joked. Or, well, I meant it as a joke.

I tried to focus on the sword as she moved. On the sword, and the ghosts I helped, and my reasons for fighting - my family and friends.

She plunged the sword through my chest, my hands open around the blade and my body moving forward, ready to meet her. Everything inside my body fizzed and pulsed once, and then nothing.

I still don't know what happened directly afterward. Mostly, I think, because it wasn't me doing the acting anymore. It was something inside of me, something deeper and far more instinctual.

What I remember next is that I was standing in front of the Hollow, in full Shinigami regalia, holding a sword as wide and as long as my body. The sword had to be at least three times the size of Rukia's. I didn't know what that signified. Behind the Hollow, I could see Rukia kneeling in bloody white under robes, staring at me with wide eyes, and my physical body lying prone beside her. Behind that, the unconscious Karin.

I don't remember feeling different, but I do remember that I was a lot faster and took hits a lot easier. In a few quick kendo moves - the giant ass sword moved somehow as a natural extension of me - I had cut through the Hollow's head and it dissolved in a flood of blue.

I had done it, I realized distantly. I had saved my sisters.

My memories of that night are very confused. I think the world started spinning, and then nothing. I think I must have passed out.

But when I woke up, everything was different.