Alphas and Betas: Purification - Chapter 3

A/N: x.x No chapter pic this time because I am WORN OUT by work plus One Piece Big Bang, which is what I had been working on this last month. Thanks SO MUCH, guys, for being patient with me and sticking it out until I had those finished. I'm hoping to get back into updating a little more regularly now that the big projects are out of the way, but we'll see. Work hasn't left me with much time to write lately.

EDIT: NOW WITH CHAPTER ART!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Description: Reboot of my fic Alphas and Betas. "Ichigo has matured as a Human, he's obtained the pinnacle of Shinigami powers, but growing up as a Hollow brings new surprises. And a new threat on the horizon does not bode well for the Visored and his mate."

Warnings: Alpha/Beta Dynamics, Mpreg, Pregnancy, Polyamory, Bigotry, Prejudice, more to be added later

Pairings: GrimmIchi, RenBya, UlquiHime, KarinToshi, and others in the background

3 – Awake

A voice! Someone was... talking? That wasn't Zangetsu or... who was that?! And what were they...

"...only natural that it would take a while with a reiatsu depletion that low. Even after multiple infusions, his reserves were simply drained to the bone..."

Were they talking about him? How long had he been asleep? He let his thoughts drift over what the person had said about reiatsu depletion, and a niggling feeling sprung up from somewhere deep in his memory. There had been a Thing. He felt the space where it should have been, but the memories of exactly what the Thing had been wouldn't appear on the glass.

He felt empty. Drifting between buildings without really touching anything. He'd have thought his mindscape was drowned again, but for the lack of water. Glancing up, he didn't think he'd ever seen the sky so blue and clear. That meant he was happy, didn't it? Snippets of conversations with his sword spirit—well, with whom he'd thought was his sword spirit—about the intricacies of how the weather within his mindscape was directly connected to his moods. If he had to label the emotion connected to the quiet city though… he supposed it would be called 'peace' or 'contentment' rather than 'happy'. It didn't feel full enough to be happy.

Where was Zangetsu anyway?

A rumble of sound near where he always found his childhood home reassured him that all was well. They were still asleep; needing quite a bit more reiatsu to build up before they could actually rouse themselves again.

The voice drew him away again, "…shouldn't be long now. At most a couple of days. The level has been rising rapidly since I called you. I assumed you would want time to get here before he actually woke up."

Woke up…

Woke…

"AH!" Ichigo gasped, chest heaving and blinking rapidly to bring the room around him into focus.

There was movement to his left, a breeze to his right, a beeping in the background, and the taste of reishi on his tongue. His eyes darted around, taking in the window, the supposedly calming paintings on the walls, the medical equipment, and the color scheme before he tried to turn his head. Someone's hands took his shoulders as he pushed himself upright, feeling stiff and uncoordinated. The warmth against his body was welcome through the thin shitagi—patient white, he noticed looking down—and unconsciously he leaned into the touch. Then sound began to filter into his awareness better, the mishmash of voices around his bed clarifying a little.

"ICHIGO!" Rukia looked like she'd been crying, clinging to Orihime, who actually was crying.

The hands belonged to his father. Isshin laughed at his expression, "What? Did you think you'd get to die and be rid of me!? Daddy hasn't finished teaching you his Love Style yet!"

The former captain let go to pose, and was immediately assaulted by a screaming Karin as new hands grabbed Ichigo to keep him from falling over. Those belonged to Chad and Uryuu, one on each arm. The Mexican Fullbringer smiled as warm as his grip, but the Quincy sniffed and pushed up his glasses with his his free hand.

"You know, Kurosaki, this means we're enemies again."

"Did we ever stop?" The redhead's voice cracked with disuse, but he smirked at his long-time rival nonetheless.

"It's good to see you awake." Ishida dropped the pretense enough to squeeze Ichigo's hand.

Yuzu jumped into his lap then, wrapping her arms about his waist and burying her face in his chest, wailing incomprehensibly.

"Yu! Yuzu!" Ichigo shifted, surprisingly feeling better already, so he could tilt her chin up to look at him. "What's wrong?"

"YOU DIED!" She cried, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Her whole forehead and nose were puffy and red, salt crusted in her eyelashes, and chapping about her nostrils and lips. Ignoring the way some nameless Shinigami with blue hair fussed about people making him upset, Ichigo pulled her in tighter, one arm around her back, the other with his fingers buried in her hair, holding her in arms that somehow had lost no definition or strength for the length of his coma. She sobbed into his embrace, shoulders heaving and a great flood of tears soaked his front, but after a time, where everyone around them tried not to watch her too closely, the grief eased. Her crying drained to whimpers, and she tucked herself into his chest like she always had as a child.

He rubbed his cheek in her hair and made an unconscious shushing sound, just loud enough that the ones closest to him could hear it. Then he tilted her chin up again and smiled, "Yeah. I died, but! You can see me. You're here, in Soul Society, with Goat Face and Karin. So it's not like I'm really dead, you know."

"But you are! Your body's gone! Urahara-san said it was burned up in the… what'd he called, Otousan?" She blinked at their father.

The older Shinigami cleared his throat, holding his other daughter to his side even if she wasn't as outwardly distressed as her twin, "Burnout, honey."

"Yeah, that."

"Burnout?" Ichigo blinked at him. "What's Burnout?"

"I believe I can be of some assistance there, Kurosaki-san." Unohana smiled, only slightly less terrifying than usual, and crossed to his bedside.

She shooed Chad and Uryuu away by pressing a button on the bed that raised it somewhat, and patted Yuzu's head before running a hand over Ichigo's forehead. Watching the monitor off to the side, she gave a nod. Then she turned it off and began unplugging the cords. She took her sweet time disconnecting him from the equipment, fully aware that the entire room was watching her, and didn't for even one heartbeat look at any of them. It didn't stop Ichigo's eyebrow from beginning to twitch before she was finished though.

Then she stood and smiled again, folding her hands in her sleeves. "Burnout, or Reiatsu Burnout, is the condition in which a Shinigami uses their reiatsu to its absolute limit. Down beyond even farther than you have ever drained yourself before. Paralysis and unconsciousness are the warning signs, which you should well know given your proclivity for overuse, and should be treated with the severity they deserve. Pushing beyond such limits, for instance," her eyes slid over to Isshin with a quirk of her lips, "holding the Dangai immobile for a significant length of time, triggers seizures and organ shut-down. At that point a Shinigami's reiatsu has been exhausted to the point that they are quite literally using their own life force to power the spell or attack they're using. If they cannot be separated from the source of the drain at that point, death is an almost certainty."

A small gasp echoed around the room. The only one not surprised by the information was Isshin, but he did hold Karin tighter, taking advantage of her shock to abate his own worries.

"So… if I Burned Out like that…?" Ichigo frowned.

"Why are you still alive?" Unohana supplied with yet another smile, "You have your human mother to thank for that. You did, in fact, die, Kurosaki-san, but only Urahara-san's quick thinking saved your soul form. Whatever drain you had on your reiatsu was immediately forced to drain your body's life, not yours."

"Well…" He looked around the room and gave a rueful smile, "we always knew I'd be here eventually, right? And probably by doing something stupid."

Rukia punched him, "IDIOT! What were you even thinking?!"

"AH! I WASN'T, MIDGET! I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!"

"Rukia-nee-san, please don't hurt him!" Yuzu pleaded.

"Midget can't hurt me, Zuzu. I'm indestructible." He grinned at his sister.

Above him, Chad rumbled, "Except for the thing that drained you."

"Do you have any memory of what that could have been? Unohana-san sounded as though this whatever-it-was had to be your conscious choice to fuel."

"Not precisely, Ishida-san," The captain of the Fourth commented. "Casting the initial kido, or beginning the initial attack would have been a conscious decision, but often Shinigami who experience true Burnout as Kurosaki-san has end up in a parasitical relationship with the cause. It has developed enough reiatsu to feed on its own. A sort of stable entity outside of the Shinigami's control."

Orihime gasped, her eyes lighting up, "Oh! Like a pp-chain reaction with reiatsu as a catalyst instead of some chemical isotope like Hydrogen."

Even Unohana blinked at the ginger-haired Fullbringer.

She blushed a little and took a breath, "Like the sun in the Living World. For stars of that size and smaller, the Hydrogen nuclei fuse to become a deuterium releasing a positron and neutrino, but that only happens if the beta-plus decay actually changes the diproton into a deuterium in first place. If that doesn't happen then the whole chain breaks down, wasting the Hydrogen, and it takes so long for new Hydrogen to fuse that if it wasn't for how fast the rest of the reaction was, the Sun would never give off any light or heat or anything. It might even dissolve completely and then where would we be!? How can a solar system be if there's no solar to system! Rukia! THIS IS SERIOUS!"

"Uhh… but it does?" The violet-eyed Shinigami glanced at the others for support, only to find them just as lost as she was.

"And thank the Soul King for that! I'm telling you, if we didn't get light isotopes and gamma rays from the sun we'd all be in a lot of trouble! Why it'd only be a few hours before all of the heat on Earth would just evaporate away. Except that it doesn't actually evaporate because it's not a liquid, it's actually it's own separate kind of energy that—"

"Yes, thank you, Inoue-san." Unohana interrupted causing everyone else in the room to sigh a little.

Orihime blushed and glanced around, "What I only meant was that like the Hydrogen once the reaction gets started it's just gonna continue until all of the Hydrogen is burned up. Or, in this case, the reiatsu."

Rukia hugged her close with a supportive smile, and Unohana nodded, "Yes. I believe that is an excellent analogy, Inoue-san. Thank you."

At that moment the door to the room burst open and a collection of Renji, Rangiku, and Ikkaku fell through it before anyone could actually break out of their stunned silence. The noise was loud enough to chase away their confusion, especially as both Karin and Rukia rounded on them in the same tone of voice.

"JUST WHAT DO YOU OAFS THINK YOU'RE DOING, YOU'RE GOING TO UPSET ICHI—!" The end of his name was garbled by the two voices on top of each other.

"Watch it, brat!" Ikkaku was the first to his feet, and the last four years had brought both Kurosaki twins up to eye-level with the bald Shinigami.

As such, they met forehead to forehead when Karin leaned in to threaten, "Why I oughta…"

In the corner closest to the door Rukia was dressing down Renji and Rangiku was pouting at Isshin, who looked helpless to defend them as he'd been given the same sort of dressing down when he arrived, Ichigo was sure. Ishida chimed in with his egotistical tones, and that prompted a response from Yumichika, not far behind his partner as always. Kenpachi's reiatsu made itself known then, and from the noise level Ichigo could tell at least Shinji—possibly Shinji and Hiyori—were standing guard between him and the captain of the Eleventh. Kisuke was sure to be around somewhere as well; it wasn't like him to just disappear when something as serious as this affected his student. Ichigo was willing to bet he was out with Shinji and Kenpachi, and that meant it was likely that they were going to be joining the mob in his room at any time now.

The din grew louder and louder, pressing in on his ears with a physical force that rocked the buildings of his inner world. He wasn't conscious of the movements, but he shifted closer to Chad, glaring out at the rest of them, a crawling feeling of being trapped growing on his skin like grains of sand under the edges of scales. His upper lip lifted, curling away from his teeth, and a low hiss rumbled up his throat…

—ENOUGH!—

Reiatsu pulsed through the building, heavy and black.

All eyes turned toward the man on the bed, and his signature glare told them all they needed to know. Renji and the Usual Crowd made their apologies, leaving as quickly as they came. Kenpachi and the Visoreds—all of them, it seemed—stuck their heads in to encourage him to get better in their own special, violent, way. Orihime dared a quick hug, then scurried off with Uryuu and Rukia in tow. Unohana gave him a bow and a reminder to call if he needed anything. And his father pulled both girls to him, pretending not to wail so that Yuzu wouldn't be set off again and Karin would have something to focus on instead of saying goodbye to her brother.

Then he was alone with just Chad.

The Fullbringer gently took a seat in Unohana's chair, between Ichigo and the door. The redhead relaxed, a small smile on one corner of his mouth. They sat like that a while, enjoying the silence between them; the crackle of Ichigo's reiatsu like the glow of a campfire, licking at the edges of Chad's senses, just like it always had. It was different now though. The blaze was warm and bright, but controlled, tempered in a way it hadn't been, even just before he'd died.

"How was Mexico?"

"Good."

"Good."

"You have a marking on your face now."

Ichigo nodded. "Yeah. I saw it before I woke up. Somehow I knew it would happen? I dunno. I've got a blank spot in my memory, but I know the mark is tied to it."

"And?"

"And Shiro."

Chad raised an eyebrow, barely visible under his bangs.

"Yeah, figured he deserved a name since he got me through everything." The redhead leaned back into his pillows, resting his hands on his stomach. "It came to me, almost like Zangetsu did when I was training. His name's Shirosaki. I know, I know, I told him it was kinda dumb too, but eh, I can shorten it and he doesn't care."

"So…"

"No. And I'm not going to tell them either. It feels all kinds of bad."

"Alright."

They lapsed into comfortable silence until the big Fullbringer had to leave. They shook hands, gave each other a nod, and that was that. Ichigo Kurosaki was dead, and officially passed over into Soul Society like every other Plus soul in the Living World eventually did.

Over the coming months, he was discharged from the Fourth, given a bungalow apartment suitable to his status as Hero of the Winter War, and enrolled in the Shino Academy to re-awaken Zangetsu. No one was surprised when he powered through the program in a fraction of the time. He refused to let them count his success as record-breaking though; he respected Toshiro too much to take that honor away from him, and truthfully, he wasn't really starting from the same place anyway. So, any record he made wasn't fair when held up against someone who had never known their Zanpakuto before entering the academy.

Graduation earned him an assignment, mostly menial jobs to help keep the balance among the Four Worlds, and patrols through Karakura that let him visit with his friends and family one week a month. During that time he caught up on news from the Visoreds as well. Things Shinji and the others couldn't talk about where those who didn't understand could hear. Of Kon, however, there was no word. Due to his status as an illegal Mod Soul there would never be a formal investigation into his disappearance, but even among the Fullbringers and the folk at the Shoten, they heard nothing. Kisuke only ever shook his head. The plushie had burned up in the singularity, he claimed, so any chance the Mod Soul's pill survived was slim to none. Ichigo mourned him, of course, but the transition from substitute Shinigami to actual Shinigami took more of his attention than he liked to admit, for all that it was surprisingly more painless and faster than he'd anticipated.

And not once did anyone else comment on how death had changed him.

Oh, he noticed some things. The marking around his left eye was impossible to miss, even for him, in its bright, fresh blood, red stripes—two following the curve of his nose and cheek, and three over his brow that disappeared into his hairline from forehead to temple. If he was honest, it reminded him of his first Visored mask. The one he'd had up until their evolution during the Winter War.

During that first year, Ichigo learned that it actually wasn't all that uncommon for Zanpakuto to paint a symbol on their Shinigami. In fact, that was how the Thirteen Court Guard Squads had first earned their flower silhouettes. Each had been copied from the founding captain's sword marks. Theirs just tended not to be so blatant, as Unohana was happy to demonstrate—hers covered the diamond of skin just over her breast bone.

Coincidentally, that was also how Ichigo discovered that the supposedly gentle captain of the Fourth was in actuality the First Kenpachi. He paid her a great deal more respect after that.

So generally Ichigo's stripes were treated the same as Renji's, and the Usual Crowd joked around that it was Zangetsu getting back at Ichigo for the slights against him, including the mysterious white tanto knife that had shown up on his hip the first time he'd called the sword into existence after waking.

As far as the others knew it had never spoken to him. There were no new spirits in his mindscape. And there was no doubt that it belonged to him. Several attempts at removing it had irritated Kurotsuchi to the point that Ichigo and his 'damned infernal trick blade' were banned from ever asking the Science Division for help. EVER! With audible exclamation points that Hisagi and Rangiku continued to try and duplicate anytime the subject was brought up again.

Not everyone was jovial about it though. Momo eyed it every time she saw him, some shadow of her past that whispered unfounded worry into her mind, and her captain, Shinji, was often caught staring at it like he was trying to make it disappear with only his mind. But of the wary, the loudest was Rukia.

She caught him outside their favorite bar the night before what would have been his twenty-second birthday. One hand spun him so that his back was against the wall, and the other jabbed at his hip, where the tanto was safely tucked into its matching sheath.

His own hand flew to it unconsciously, as though it would fly away from him if he didn't.

"See! That's exactly what I meant!" She scowled. "It's been a year since you died."

"And he hasn't shown up in all that time. Midget, you worry too much. He died with Kon and my body." The argument was both tired and old.

"Then where did it come from? How come it doesn't have a name?"

Ichigo rolled his eyes, "I don't know and neither does anybody else. If there was something wrong with it, I'm sure my captain would have said something."

"And that's another thing! Twelve months you've been here and not a damn one of us knows what squad you ARE in, only that you HAVE to be in either the Second, the Fourth, or the Eleventh!" Rukia put her hands on her hips. "Who is your captain!?"

"Technically it could be the First too."

"You really think I'm that stupid!?"

"Only when you act like it!"

They were growling in each other's faces at that point and so completely missed Renji and the others come up to them until Renji had a hand on each of their heads and was pushing them apart.

"C'mon, Ru, you know he ain't allowed to talk about it."

"Neither are we, but we all still know anyway! What's so special about it that it's all hush-hush!"

Rangiku leaned on Hisagi and pouted, "Yeah! We got it when you were still on probation, Ichi, but that was like four months ago or something. What gives?"

"I—"

Renji cut him off, "Tonight it's cuz it's his damn birthday and we been waitin' a week and a half fer it."

The subject was mostly dropped as the crew filed into the bar, but for Yumichika, who hung back to prod the younger redhead one last time. "Abarai seems quick to your defense, Berry-kun. Something we don't know about inter-division relations there?"

Ichigo looked at him liked he'd grown a second head, "Yeah, right."

"Quick to sarcasm. What's that quote you said again? From that playwright you like?"

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks. And I am not. Renji's great, but he's got his eye on somebody else. Trust me." Ichigo shook his head, "Besides, that's not what it means anyway. Originally the word meant promises and in the play, they're talking about making more than she can keep."

Yumichika looked skeptical and flipped his hair in defense, "Whatever. My point still stands. He jumps to your defense and you to his awfully quickly for 'just friends'."

"I defend all of you guys the same. Renji just seems to get it more because he's always in trouble." The redhead laughed, "Now come one or they'll get started without us, my birthday or not."

He held the curtain aside for the slender brunet to go first for two reasons. One, he admitted in the privacy of his all-too-hot mindscape, was the pinch of cramping from his core. It wasn't as bad as it had been last year… yet, at least… but he recognized it. And the other reason he didn't even notice because it was instinct. Some drive to ensure all of his Nakama was inside the bar before he entered combined with a need to be closest to the door once he was inside, and the only way to ensure both was for him to enter the establishment last.

Turning to glance up at the sky, something drew him to scan the shadows of the roofs and trees nearby. Eyes. He was looking for eyes; it dawned on him after a second sweep. But even though he knew it, he still couldn't make himself stop. Not before he'd searched the whole area and was sure the person he was looking for wasn't there.

He gave himself a shake, trying to dislodge the sensation of expected disappointment. He'd done it last year at this stage in the game with the same results. The person was never there. Why he expected that to change just because he was in Soul Society didn't make much sense. So he forced himself to enter the bar for his party.