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“Kurosaki!”

The shout is urgent and I flinch, my concentration cut to ribbons within an instant. The knife in my hand rips a larger-than-intended hole in the rubber tubing in front of me, and I stifle a groan. Urahara’s going to give me one of those looks, the ones that criticize without him actually needing to lecture me. Resources are kind of slim, and the last thing any of us need is me ruining more things.

Not that I do it often just… you know… sometimes.

I flick the knife shut and stow it in one of the pockets on the inside of my trench coat, straightening up and turning towards the voice. Speak of the devil, Urahara. The older man is striding across the yard towards me, a quickness to his stride that only ever shows up in one event. Fuck.

I start towards him, leaving the project – an attempt to recreate the automatic sprinkler system for the garden – where it is and meeting the older man halfway across the yard. He turns, falls in beside me without a pause, and my jaw clenches for a second at the implication. Urahara almost always has time for at least one joke or snide comment, and the lack of the expected joke only cements in my mind the seriousness of the moment.

“Who is it?” I demand, reaching into another of the pockets in my black coat and retrieving a pair of black gloves and a thick domino mask.

Urahara steps forward to pull open the sliding door to the interior of his shop, and I step in. Any other time I would have paused for a moment in satisfaction at the rush of cool air and the break from the absurdly hot summer sun, but Urahara still hasn’t answered me and his reluctance is telling. I tug the gloves on and raise the mask to my face, wrapping the black cloth attached to it around my head and tying it in a firm knot.

“Mirror,” Urahara nearly hisses as he shuts the door and immediately turns to lead the way further into his shop. Not that I need the guide, at this point I know the shop as well as my own home. “There are six different raids, all in different places, the Society is already mobilized. They’ve left us to deal with Mirror and Silver Snake.”

“How nice of them,” I grind out, eyes narrowing. The Society doesn’t like Urahara’s – my – group of defenders, probably because we’ve gone head to head a couple of times and kicked their asses. That equals out to them leaving us the nastiest of the bunch to deal with.

Mirror is the leader of the biggest gang still left in our new world – the Hollows – and Silver Snake is his lieutenant. I don’t know their identities, just like they don’t know mine, and I’ll take mutual ignorance over mutual knowledge any day. Mirror’s gang holds too much influence for me to hide from in the confines of the new world, let alone still protect the friends and family he’d undoubtedly go after. It’s hard to hide from someone when most of the world isn’t safe to live in or even travel through.

Urahara steps through an open door and I follow, the rest of the team is waiting there for me. They’re all dressed and there’s a nervous glint in most of their eyes which is completely understandable. Last time we went up against Mirror he nearly killed all of us, would have if some of the defenders from Society hadn’t intervened. Mirror’s power isn’t nearly as openly brutal as his lieutenant’s – Silver Snake can manipulate steel and is faster than any regular human to boot – but it’s just as nasty and much more dangerous.

“Ready, Kurosaki?” Ishida – or ‘Ace Arrow’, as the region knows him – asks me, voice tight and one white gloved hand wrapped tight around the pendant hanging from his wrist. His entirely white outfit – how he manages to keep it clean I have no idea – is comprised of slacks, sturdy shoes, a knee-length tunic split up the sides to his waist with a single dark blue line up the center, and the domino mask tied around his head.

“Yeah. Where are they?”

The group – Chad aka ‘Sentinel’, Orihime aka ‘Miss Destiny’, Ishida aka ‘Ace Arrow’, Renji aka ‘Red’, and Rukia aka ‘Ice Princess’ – gathers closer as Urahara steps back. Chad wraps a hand around my left arm at the same time as Orihime grabs my right, Renji lays a hand on one of my shoulders – as does Rukia, and Ishida gets a firm grip on Chad’s other arm.

“Kuchiki offices, twenty-third and top floor, according to Ururu.”

Great, I hate jumping to locations that are so specific. I’ve never been to the fucking twenty-third floor of the Kuchiki offices, Byakuya would never let me, so we’re going to have to do some running to actually get up there.

“Hold on,” I mutter, eyes closing as I reach inwards for the center of my powers. At this point – after ten years of practice – getting hold of that power comes as easily as breathing.

I focus in on my memories of the Kuchiki building – I’ve only ever been allowed as high as the twentieth floor so that will have to do – and pull myself and the group around me into the mist of the between-world. Gasps and groans echo in my ears as the peculiar sensation of being wrapped in something almost oily that always accompanies my powers strikes. I hold onto the image and force myself forwards against the pressure, breaking through and back into the real world.

The drain is ridiculous. I stagger and Chad holds me up as my legs fold beneath me, the rest of the group releasing their grips on me. Teleporting myself isn’t difficult, I could do it all day as long as I’m not going far, but each person I take with me makes it harder. The tiny bit of effort it takes to pull myself into the other world and then break my way back to reality is almost unnoticeable, but it’s much more draining to take others.

“You good, Ghost?”

I nod and straighten up, flicking my eyes open. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Not entirely true, but as long as I don’t have to teleport anyone else for at least a good hour or so I shouldn’t have any problems.

Rukia is looking around, purple eyes narrowed behind her black domino mask. “This is the twentieth floor, right?” Rukia is technically part of the Society as is Renji, even though they work with us most of the time, so she’s got the standard all-black Society uniform. Combat boots, loose pants, a long sleeved and moderately tight shirt, small gloves, and a small black jacket over the top with white a white ‘13’ on each shoulder to mark her division. The only difference in Renji’s uniform is that the thirteen’s are replaced with dark red sixes.

The Society is essentially the police force of our world, organized into thirteen different divisions that are each assigned to separate portions of our limited area. Renji is the lieutenant of the sixth division and Rukia is an unseated member of the thirteenth, they’re ‘on loan’ to us to ‘improve relations’, or some other bullshit reason to explain their presence.

“Far up as I’ve ever been, we’ll have to take the stairs.”

"Let's go!"

Rukia leads the way in a dead run, leaping for the stairs, and Renji follows her after a second of bewildered hesitation. For a second I wonder why they're not headed for the elevator before it clicks in my head. Right. Taking the box of suspended steel that clearly announces our arrival up to the top floor of an office building where a guy who controls steel is waiting is probably not the best of ideas. The stairs aren't remarkably safe either, but they're better than the elevator. Besides, it's only three levels, it's not that much of a climb.

Orihime, Chad, and Ishida are already moving and I hurry to bring up the rear, stepping into the stairwell and letting the door shut behind me. I step forward and lean backwards over the rail, looking up to find Rukia and Renji. They're waiting at the top, looking down, and I let a small grin curve my lips. It's near impossible to outpace a teleporter, head start or not. A thought pulls me between worlds and I barely have time for the oily sensation to touch me before I'm back in reality at the top of the stairs, standing beside the two of them. Renji jumps a little, a quiet curse spilling from the older man's mouth.

"Are you still not used to that, Red? Really?" Rukia asks, clearly exasperated. To be fair even people that are around me all the time – my family and Urahara, mostly – still flinch a little when I jump without warning them. It's not something you get used to very easily.

"I can't help it," Renji hisses as the others join us, turning towards the door leading into the twenty-third floor. He pauses, glancing around at us before reaching forward and quickly throwing the door open, charging in to the room beyond.

I let the others precede me, knowing Renji and Chad will handle the initial rush of attacks if there are any. Renji has moderately increased strength and highly increased endurance, along with a faster healing rate than normal, so he'll be just fine, whereas Chad has the same strength and endurance increase along with his trademark right arm. He can morph it into a slightly thicker than normal arm that's black with a red streak up the side and a protrusion that branches off his shoulder, and from that arm he can throw out blue energy blasts that are – even when he doesn't really try – stronger than any energy blasts I can do. It rounds out our group very nicely. Orihime is a reality changer, though she doesn't really have much control over it. She can heal, form energy shields, and occasionally – if she's really pissed – wipe things out of existence, but that's the extent of it. Rukia can control ice – and freeze small areas of water, luckily – and Ishida finishes our group with his plethora of magical gadgets that he inherited from his dad. The Quincies are pretty damn scary, and Ishida is getting to the point of being able to live up to being one.

Our greeting comes as I step across the threshold and into the main office area of the top floor, the deep voice that still occasionally features in my dreams carrying easily across the mostly open space. It is, after all, Byakuya's floor and that means it's only comprised of his personal office and a lot of unused area between the glass wall that separates the office and the entrance to the stairs and elevator.

"Ah, there's the competition. Welcome, all of you."

The owner of the voice, Mirror, is watching us from across the room, mouth curved in a satisfied smirk and brown hair slicked back. The criminal, as always, looks perfectly put together and sounds eternally amused. He's wearing his standard costume of a white dress shirt and white slacks, black dress shoes, a white overcoat that falls to his ankles and has a high collar, a black domino mask, and white gloves. He's standing over Byakuya's desk having obviously just straightened up, brown eyes flicking over us all where we're standing in a loosely clumped group. Silver Snake is leaning in the open doorway to the office, spinning a small knife in his right hand and fixing his eternal grin on us. Mirror's lieutenant is wearing his all white costume – a loose hakama, a short sleeved and skin tight shirt covered by a long overcoat that falls to his knees, boots that go halfway up his calves, small gloves, and the standard domino mask – punctuated only by a pale blue sash tied around his waist, as usual.

"Mirror, step away from the desk and surrender peacefully!"

Renji's words, as familiar as they are by now, still almost manage to pull a snort out of me. Yeah right Mirror is going to just put his hands up and surrender, I wouldn't trust it even if he did. Silver Snake might be dangerous as all hell with his ability to control steel – since way too many things are made out of steel – but Mirror is twice as deadly. Mirror is an illusionist, and his particular illusions are all but indecipherable from reality. They look, smell, sound, and feel real right up until he cancels them and leaves you grasping at thin air or reeling from a blow that didn't actually happen.

It's not pleasant in the slightest.

Predictably Mirror smirks, watching us through the glass wall that will undoubtedly be in a thousand pieces within twenty minutes. "I think not, Red Tank. Lieutenant, if you would?"

The next few moments happen in a blur. Silver Snake leaps forward nearly instantaneously, faster than any of us can hope to be, and Renji moves to intercept as Ishida's trademark blue bow forms out of the air and Chad steps in front of Rukia and Orihime, black flowing over his arm and solidifying. I step forward and focus on the area behind Mirror, yanking myself through the fabric of space and coming out behind the older man. He's already turning to meet me, brown eyes narrowed behind his mask and the metal of a knife glinting in his right hand. I gather dark red energy to my hands and throw a blast at him, angled high so it won't endanger my teammates. He ducks under it and slices at me with the knife, ignoring the crash as my blast impacts with the ceiling.

I jerk back and slide into the in-between world, stepping to one side of Mirror and pulling back through into reality. I throw another blast at him and he flickers as the energy passes straight through him before the image vanishes into thin air. Fuck! I swing my head around, straining my senses for any hint of the criminal, any tiny screw-up that might let me locate him. It doesn't happen, and the next thing I know I get kicked hard in the back of the knees and collapse to the ground, hands shooting forward to catch myself. I don't have time to even attempt to stand before another kick slams into my ribs on my right side, forcing the breath from my lungs in a pained rush. I clutch at the bruised – and hopefully not cracked – ribs with one hand and look up.

"Enjoying yourself, Ghost?" Mirror asks in a condescending tone and I snarl, struggling to catch my breath.

"Fuck you, Mirror!"

The downside to my particular set of powers is that even though my energy blasts are deadly and my teleportation is useful as all hell, beneath that I'm just a regular human. I don't have the enhanced speed, endurance, strength, or resistance to pain that many others do, and it shows when I go up against someone who can land hits on me. I can do a lot of damage, but put me in a position where I take any and I go down pretty fast under it, I'm not the shield that Renji is.

"Does it really matter if you fight me here, Ghost? There are five other raids going on at this exact moment, you can't possibly believe that your precious Society friends can stop all of them. Besides, we've had this fight before and I came out on top last time too, remember? If not for your precious Miss Destiny you'd be dead right now."

True enough. Last time we fought Mirror sliced me open pretty seriously, and without Orihime there to heal me I would have died, no question about it. As it is, I don't even have a scar, but I can still remember how it felt to be gutted like that. The cold metal of the old style katana and the bite of it against my skin, his deep chuckle as I laid on the ground and fought back screams. Yeah, that memory will stay with me forever.

"So what?" I grind out, glancing behind Mirror and through the still intact glass wall to check on the rest of my team, "Just because you beat me last time means I shouldn't try again? Bullshit!"

Mirror laughs and starts moving in a slow circle around me, I very carefully keep my eyes on him. Not that it will help if he doesn't want me to know where he is, but it makes me feel better on some level and on the off chance that is actually him I don't want to get blindsided with that knife in his hand. Assuming the knife even exists, assuming he's holding it, assuming that it's not just another of his illusions. God I hate fighting Mirror.

I've mostly recovered, only a lingering ache in my side leaving proof he'd kicked me at all, but given that he's not being overtly threatening and my team seems to be handling themselves decently well against Silver Snake I mine as well see if I can pry any information out of him. And no, it isn't motivated even a little by the fact that I don't want to go toe to toe with him again. Mirror loves to talk, whether he's monologuing at someone or even just taunting them in the middle of a fight, and we still have absolutely no idea what exactly he's doing here. Rukia might just kill me if I let Mirror get away with whatever he's planning in the Kuchiki building, especially since it's centered in her adopted brother's office.

"The fuck're you doing here, Mirror?" He raises an eyebrow, pausing in his circling to stand in front of me.

"What, the chance to beat some of the great defenders isn't a good enough reason for you, Ghost?"

I slowly lever one foot under myself, watching Mirror – or maybe Mirror's illusion, goddamnit I hate this – carefully for any sign that he might suddenly jump me. "That's Beast's reasoning, not yours. You were doing something before we got here."

A tiny smirk curls the criminal's mouth and he steps backwards and over to the desk, though his eyes don't leave me. "True enough, Ghost. It happens that the dear senior Kuchiki has some information that could be useful to me, so I took it. It's too late now, Ghost, I've already seen all I need to. I'm only still here to give my lieutenant a chance to play, and for the pleasure of fighting you."

Well, fuck. Death by Rukia it is.

I snarl and launch myself upwards, energy building in my hands, diving at Mirror. The older man quirks an eyebrow, doesn't move, and I only have enough time for one of my energy laced hands to slide through the illusion like paper before a hand grips the back of my neck and uses the last of my momentum to slam me down over the edge of the desk. I cancel the energy – god knows Byakuya might just rip me to tiny shreds if I hurt any of the many papers on the desk – and then cry out in sharp pain as I feel what I can only assume is the knife slam deep into my right side. I jerk against the hold Mirror has on the back of my neck and swing wildly backwards with my right arm, energy flying from my fingertips. I hear the shattering of glass and a sudden rush of wind sweeps over me, my blast must have destroyed the window.

"Easy now, Ghost," Mirror purrs down at me and his free hand wraps around my wrist and pulls my arm back, pinning it against my back with my palm facing downwards, "You might be more or less immune to falling, but your teammates are not and I won't hesitate to throw them out that window. Could you save them with a wound like that, plus having to pull me with you? I imagine that would be very difficult, wouldn't it?"

I breathe shallowly against the wood of the desk, giving a tiny jerk against the pin and resisting the urge to blast more energy at Mirror. The only place that energy is going is into my own back, and getting hit with my own blasts is, not, fun. Besides, Mirror has it right. Even ignoring the hole in my side – yes, I am trying to ignore that – it would be very, very difficult to not only teleport to the right place to catch someone that was falling, but then have to pull both that person and Mirror along with me and back to safety. Doing it more than one time would be…Well let's just say I wouldn't be in any condition to do anything afterwards.

“What do you want from me, Mirror?!” I snap, bracing my left hand against the desk and squeezing my eyes shut to try and block out the pain of the knife still firmly entrenched in my side. I can feel blood soaking into the clothes around my wound, dampening the fabric so it clings wetly to my skin.

“Do I have to want something from you? At least for the moment I am perfectly content to hold you here and continue our oh so witty banter while I watch my lieutenant beat down the rest of your team.”

I flick my eyes open and pull against Mirror’s hold, turning my gaze up to look through the glass wall towards the other fight. Rukia is crumpled against the far wall and Orihime is crouched over her, both her shield and her healing aura firmly in place. Renji is bleeding from a slice along the side of his neck but he’s still fighting along with Chad and Ishida, not that they’re doing much good. We don’t have anyone faster than a normal human on our team except me, and Silver Snake has a ruthlessly dangerous close combat style of fighting that’s hard to counter without that added boost of speed. Ishida is doing the best out of all of them, but it’s still painfully obvious that they’re outmatched.

I grit my teeth and prepare myself – damn the consequences – to jump into the middle of it before Mirror quite suddenly releases my neck and that hand falls to the knife in my side and twists it with an easy motion. I scream and arch against the desk at the shock of fresh pain, fighting not to instinctively gather energy to my hands because that will not turn out well.

“Kuro-!” Orihime’s aborted cry brings a wave of panic that cancels the pain out for a moment. The last person I want knowing who I am is Mirror. “Ghost!”

Mirror releases the knife and rests his hand higher up on my ribs, I collapse against the desk with a shudder. “Easy… you’re not going anywhere. Relax, he probably won’t kill them. My lieutenant prefers to play more than he does to actually kill."

Oh yeah, that really calms me down. I've seen Silver Snake's version of 'playing' before, that fight ended up with Renji nearly dying. I'd honestly prefer Mirror take us all down than Silver Snake doing it, at least Mirror is efficient and doesn't seem to have any real desire to kill us. This is probably the worst way this could happen, it's fucking maddening being stuck here while Mirror's lieutenant tears my team apart. But there's no way for me to do anything.

If I jump over there then Mirror comes with me and it'd be difficult to take someone with me with this hole in my side. Especially if Mirror twists the knife again, that could have some pretty terrible consequences. Teleporters have this literally fatal flaw where if we get injured badly enough then our powers work automatically and we jump to wherever we consider 'safe'. I figured this out when Mirror gutted me in our first encounter and I quite suddenly found myself on the floor of my home with Karin yelling into my face and Yuzu watching with wide eyes from the other side of the room. Thank god my dad was – and still is – a professional doctor and managed to stabilize me enough for me to get back to the fight and, more importantly, to Orihime.

I'm not entirely sure that it won't kick in if Mirror keeps doing that, and there's not many things I can think of that would be worse than Mirror knowing who I am and where I live. There's a reason that the criminal gangs and the defenders all wear costumes and masks and use their fake names. If we knew who each other were outside of our extra-curricular activities then there'd be outright war and no one would be safe. Thankfully Mirror seems to recognize this and keeps his gang in line, I've heard that the Vandenreich gang in the Germany safe area – comprised entirely of quincy – don't bother to hide their faces and it's more or less just a giant battlefield between them and the first and eighth divisions of the Society.

Here in the Japan safe area it's just Mirror's gang – the Hollows – vs the sixth division, the thirteenth, the tenth, and us. We've only been fighting for about four years out of the ten since the disaster, ever since Rukia stumbled across me in one of her fights with the lower ranks of Mirror's gang and got me involved. But now is really not the time to be thinking about this.

Mirror's grip tightens on my arm as I look back up at the fight just in time to see Chad bodily throw Snake through the glass wall separating us. It shatters with a loud crash and Snake smoothly rolls backwards to a low crouch, red starting to stain his white uniform from a myriad of small scratches mostly across his back and arms. He spins the knife still in his right hand and pauses, kneeling to our right and maybe twenty feet away from the remnants of the window I'd shattered and the gaping hole into thin air.

"Having fun, lieutenant?" Mirror asks with a clearly amused tone and a small chuckle.

Snake straightens up and gives a small shrug, not taking his slitted eyes off of my teammates. "Eh, 's kinda borin' fightin' brats like this. Ya coulda le' me 'ave Ghost, least 'e's fast."

Mirror makes a reprimanding sound and gives another chuckle. "Greedy. Besides, Ghost chose to fight me, I was only obliging him."

Ishida and Renji slowly advance into the room and I glance back past them to where Rukia is stirring, Orihime's shield fading into air, with Chad standing over both of them. Good, she'll be alright. Not that I don't have faith in Orihime's abilities but I still can't help worrying every time one of us is injured. Just the chance that something could go wrong...

Snake darts forward over the carpet of glass and Ishida reacts instantaneously with a blue arrow from his bow. Snake neatly spins with a whirl of white cloth to avoid it and I see the glint of metal in his left hand, nearly hidden by his long sleeves, of a second knife as he slides between my teammates. I jump without thinking about it, motivated by panic and the knowledge that Renji is about to get a probably fatal wound, and the lack of weight against me as I slide into the between world shocks me for a second. It's just me, I'm not pulling anything with me, and I slip easily back into reality next to Renji, throwing out a blast of energy from my right hand right into Snake’s chest.

It’s not powerful, nothing I fire off that quickly will be, but it’s enough to throw him backwards and stop him from spearing Renji through the chest with that second knife.

More importantly, where the hell is Mirror?

The Mirror pinning me to the desk must have been an illusion at least part of the time because he didn’t come with me when I jumped, and if someone is touching me they come with, that’s just how it works. But I hadn’t noticed anything at all, and obviously no one else did either, so where the hell is he? How much of it was real, how much was fake, and what’s he been wandering around doing while we thought he was stationary?

Fuck!

Snake gets to his feet from where I’d thrown him and gives a little tilt of his head. “Lookin’ fer somethin’, Ghost?” he asks mockingly, a laugh on the edge of his voice.

“Princess!” Renji’s desperate call distracts me, turning my head to glance at the older man and see what he’s talking about. His gaze is trained past Snake, towards the open area where there was once a window, and I follow it back to a suddenly visible Mirror standing at the edge of the building, Rukia held aloft and over the edge by her throat.

I give a little jerk, eyes widening, and my side takes that moment to remind me that there’s a hole in it. I gasp in pain and clutch at it with my right hand. The knife is gone but it looks like Mirror did actually stab me and that wasn’t just part of the illusion, damn.

Mirror smirks at me, ignoring the way Rukia is writhing in his grip and clutching at his arm. “I did warn you, didn’t I, Ghost?”

Oh fuck.

“Catch.”

He lets go and I jump instantaneously. The wound in my side feels like it’s being torn wider by the oily presence of the in-between world and I have to pause there for a second to catch my breath at the pain before I can press forward and back into reality. I come out beside Mirror, Rukia shrieking at the top of her lungs as she starts to fall. I reach out to catch her and miss her fingers by inches, falling to my knees in the effort.

Mirror turns in a whirl of fabric that I mostly ignore as I stare over the side and try to figure out where exactly I’ll need to jump to catch Rukia. Fuck it, I can always reposition if I overshoot her. I slide between worlds and this time I’m prepared enough for the shock of pain that it doesn’t slow me down. I step back in right below her and spread out to slow my falling. She slams into me and I wrap arms around her, struggling to fight back the exclamation of pain as her shoulder connects with my side. The wind rushing past us and the pain disorient me for a second but a glance down helps me focus enough to reach for my powers and pull Rukia with me into the other world.

The pain that hits me is worse this time, like someone has shoved fingers in the wound and is trying to pry it wider, and I can’t help the cry that escapes me even as I force us through the world. I can stay in this world for hours if I have to before it starts to become dangerous, but if someone else comes with me the time drops to minutes. I don’t know where exactly the world I use to travel is, or what it is, but it doesn’t like others being there. I can’t afford to be distracted by the pain, I have to get Rukia back to safety.

I come crashing back into my world and slam to the ground, once more back in the relatively safe area of Byakuya’s office. My eyes flicker shut and my head falls sideways against the glass-littered carpet, the strain of jumping taking its toll in exhaustion. Normally I could do that at least five or six more times, but with the wound already sapping me and the added shock of the increased pain in the in between world I’m more or less wiped out. My earlier trip across town with the other five members of my team didn’t help either since I hadn’t fully recovered from that yet.

With any luck Mirror and Snake have left, and if not, well… we’re all fucked.

Next time. Next time I'll beat him.