Kaito stepped from the portal and looked around, tucking away the reality-hopping device in his satchel and taking a moment to just marvel at where he’d ended up.

He stood before a dais where a giant stone dragon perched, wings flared and neck proudly arched, a ‘simple’ throne carved into the plinth at its base. Sunlight streamed in through the glass dome ceiling, shining off the tendrils of mist that rose into the air and coiled about the statue, giving the dragon-throne an almost otherworldly look.

Mist blanketed the entire room in a low, heavy bank, roiling about his legs as he took a step towards the throne; he couldn’t even see his feet it was so thick, and the room itself was hazy around the edges, like a picture out of focus.

“Where in the world am I?” Kaito asked aloud as he slowly turned to take it all in. His voice bounced and echoed and died, reflected by bare stone and muffled by thick mist, and a chill crawled up his spine.

Something had happened to leave a grand, opulent throne room empty and mist-laden but otherwise intact.

(It looked like it had just been abandoned. Like the owners had just stepped out.)

(How many toes was he stepping on by being in this place?)

(*I think we might have tripped even further out of our way than usual,*) Ichigo murmured as he slid forward, taking it all in first-hand. (*It does feel very… fairy-tale-esque, with the throne and all the mist.*)

“But why here?” Kaito wondered as he stepped closer to the dais, looking up at the massive statue in wonder. It was gigantic, three times the height of its plinth and with wings easily as large as the statue itself. How the wings had not yet fallen away was a mystery, but maybe…

He reached out with his senses, past the heavy background hum of power, and brushed against the statue. Power wended through every fragment of the statue, binding it all together with something almost like a kido but not quite. In fact, now that he was paying attention to the feel of it, nothing was entirely familiar to his senses.

The mist was not laden with reiatsu and the statue was not supported with kido. It was something else, something familiar enough that he could draw upon it but different enough that he could not easily use it. The mist felt like trapped wind, looping swirls of motion that changed moment by moment, a dizzying non-pattern that threatened to draw him in.

Kaito shook his head and tore his gaze away, staring up at the domed ceiling and the light streaming in.

(A fairy-tale castle trapped in mist indeed.)

First thing first, he needed to adapt to this world’s power. Whatever had drawn him here, he’d need the boost that external power could grant him—

Familiar-unfamiliar power tore a jagged line across his senses and he spun to face the source, one hand going to the hilt of Ichigo’s blade. A garganta slowly ripped open, reality straining against the force in an attempt to resist but crimson power clawed at the edges, forcing it open, forcing it wider—

The breath caught in Kaito’s throat as a familiar youth shouldered through the crack, his right arm tucked against his side and his white outfit in tatters. Golden eyes with black sclera landed on him and widened, exhaustion-resignation-terror gleaming bright before stubbornness drowned it all out.

“Shit,” Kaito breathed as he lunged forward, slipping beneath Other-him’s left arm and carefully pulling his past self from the jagged wound in reality.

The moment Uryuu was free, the garganta snapped closed like the jaws of a predator, tearing off a dangling scrap of fabric and leaving no sign of its existence behind. Ishida’s Shiro stared up at him and bared his teeth, the fingers of his left hand digging into Kaito’s arm like he was trying to wound, to protect himself and all the others still asleep inside of him.

“You’re safe,” Kaito said, mentally tugging at his own Shiro’s arm to pull him closer to the surface. Shiro grumbled in half-hearted protest but went, settling into shared front and staring down at his younger, terrified self.

Kaito knew the minute that Ishida’s Shiro caught the change in his eyes, the way his iris’ shaded towards gold and how his sclera turned ashen grey, because the young Hollow let out a shuddering breath and slumped into Kaito’s grasp.

“Ya ain’t Hat’n’Clogs,” Ishida’s Shiro muttered into the leaden silence. “An’ this ain’t Karakura…”

“I’m his son, and it isn’t, no. I don’t actually know where we are,” Kaito admitted candidly, helping his past self across the floor to the steps of the dais where he could sit without being entirely engulfed in mist. “I only arrived a short time before you.”

“How th’fuck ya ain’t know where we are?”

Kaito chuckled at the question and knelt at the other’s side, carefully peeling away tattered clothing from the kido burns to get a better look. Already Shiro’s healing had set to work, but it wasn’t nearly as far along as his had been when he arrived at Karakura. “A while back I poked at one of father’s abandoned experiments. He thought it was harmless, but I ended up hopping realities. Usually I land somewhere near Karakura or my father, but sometimes…”

Shiro hissed and flinched away from Kaito’s hands before forcing himself still again. “Sometimes ya land in creepy abandoned throne rooms.”

“This is a first, actually,” he said, flashing a grin at Shiro. “Though I think I understand why I ended up here, at least. I show up where I’m needed.”

“Tch, iffen ya say so.”

“I do.” Kaito lifted Shiro’s right arm and carefully turned it, peering at the burns. “I’m going to wash the sand off. This is probably going to hurt,” he warned Shiro, knowing exactly how much it had hurt when Urahara and Tsukabishi had cleaned his kido burns.

“Jes’ get on with it,” Shiro said through clenched teeth, golden eyes narrowed and body tense.

Kaito lifted a hand over Shiro’s shoulder and concentrated, trying to craft the simple kido to pull water from air but… it slipped through his mental fingers, fizzling out before it even began to form. He struggled to grasp something, anything, that he could use, only to feel the gathered power eel away like wind—

Like wind?

He paused and tilted his head, casting a glance at the mist that covered the floor. It still felt like trapped wind, not like water, and it was that power he was starting to gather.

(Did this world operate under some sort of elemental power?)

Maybe if he tried to focus on water instead…

Something clicked in his mind and suddenly the twisting, mesmerizing sense of trapped wind faded and he could feel the mist itself. It flowed around him in tiny eddies and slid easily into his grasp, unbound by whatever working kept the mist in place. The result wasn’t so much a proper kido as simply directed power, but the steady stream of cool, clean water across Shiro’s skin was more than enough.

It answered easily to his will, sweeping away encrusted dust and dirt and sand, sluicing everything from Shiro’s body that Kaito directed it towards. He ran some down the other’s arm and more over his chest, cleaning everywhere he knew the burn had stretched across his body and keeping an eye out for any differences in the process.

(*Ain’t kido so much as instinct,*) his Shiro mused, pressing closer in interest. (*Doin’ somethin’ more complex prob’ly needs whatever version a’kido they use ‘ere, but… things like this’re jes instinct.*)

Ishida’s Shiro hissed, muscles jumping under Kaito’s hand, and dug the fingers of his good hand deep-deep-deep into Kaito’s arm. “Ya weren’t fuckin’ shitting. F-fuck. Why ain’t I… shit, I should be healin’ an’ I ain’t…”

“Your reserves are low and this world’s power is… strange,” Kaito said as he let the stream of water dwindle away and then used the last of his control to scatter the remaining water from Shiro’s arm. The kido burn looked even worse once he’d cleaned it off, red and raw and painful to even look at, with only the thinnest branches healed. “Might want to brace yourself, I need to pull the lingering reiatsu out of this before it causes any more damage to your body.”

Tsukabishi had done it through another kido, one complex enough that Kaito had given up attempting to memorize it.

He didn’t need it anyway.

(Being a Quincy was good for something.)

Kaito mentally reached out and teased free the first threads of Aizen’s power, then began to follow the thread deeper. He peeled free the clinging traces bit by bit and straightened out the flow of Shiro’s reiryoku as he went. It was easy to separate the two, easy to absorb and purify and return the power to his past self’s body; Shiro needed all the strength he could gather at this point, and what better use of Aizen’s power than to heal some of the damage it had caused?

“Yer a Quincy!” Shiro burst out, his eyes wide with surprise. “But… Quincy an’ Hollows…”

Kaito looked up at him and arched an eyebrow. “I am. Is there a problem with that?”

“Wait a sec, Hat’n’Clogs an’ a Quincy?!”

“In more worlds than you can ever imagine,” Kaito agreed with a wry grin, remembering all the times he’d run across a world where his story was true. And the first world where he’d met one of his father’s Quincy lovers. Rerugen was an… interesting man, and something of a strange constant in Urahara’s life. If Rerugen existed, the two of them would eventually gravitate together.

Shiro’s nose wrinkled, face twisting up as he tried to process Kaito’s words, and Kaito had to bite his lip to resist laughing.

His Shiro was currently cackling like a loon and barely clinging to front, and Ichigo was doing his best — and failing horribly — to project disappointment in order to mask his own laughter.

(*You should tell him about the world where Urahara was in a relationship with two Quincy and ended up with an entire gaggle of children,*) Zangetsu suggested with quiet mischief.

(*I don’t want to completely break him,*) Kaito protested with a smile, turning his attention back to the kido burn across his past self’s body. (*We’ll tell him later, when he can fully appreciate it.*)

Kaito tugged free the last traces of the kido and sat back to look it over once more. Already Shiro’s regeneration had begun to kick in, healing more of the wound now that nothing was in the way and he had a bit more strength. But a glance was enough to tell him that events had begun to catch up with Shiro; his eyes were drooping and his body was beginning to list, on the verge of falling asleep sitting upright.

“C’mon, we can talk about all this later. Let’s find somewhere for you to sleep,” Kaito said softly as he slid under Shiro’s good arm again and carefully stood up, pulling the other up with him. “Anything will be better than the throne room.”

Shiro grumbled but didn’t fight, leaning into Kaito’s support as they crossed the vast throne room together.

Now… where would the bed-chambers be in a castle like this…