Kisuke blinks down at the unknown man at his feet, then slowly lifts his gaze to the empty air in the middle of his lab: the white rip the man fell out of is gone, with only a handful of fading green sparks left to show that anything was there at all.

He didn’t sense a thing when the rip opened up. Didn’t sense a thing when the man tumbled out. Doesn’t sense a thing despite the man being unconscious and only feet away from him.

(That’s unusual.)

Kisuke takes a step closer, eyeing the young man’s strange clothing and the positively ridiculous sword slung across the man’s back; he’s never seen anything quite like either, not in real life at least. Some Shinigami modify their uniforms with bits and bobs, but never… never like this.

The young man’s clothing is an odd mix of cloth and leather, with significant amounts of embroidery across the padded arm pieces and more scattered elsewhere. There are fur fringes, and some weird chains around his thighs, attached to his belt, and holding pieces of his top together, and metal sabatons and greaves, and the whole thing is consistent in appearance but it’s… it’s weird.

And the sword is worse: it’s taller than the young man if Kisuke counts the hilt — and he absolutely does, because it’s ridiculous enough to be a weapon in and of itself — and the black metal blade has glowing red-orange cracks all through it. The pommel is some unknown creature’s head, its mouth open and vicious teeth on display, and the grip itself has to be the most uncomfortable looking thing Kisuke has ever seen. He can’t even tell where the hilt is supposed to end and the blade begin: after a point the grip just flares out and transitions into the blade, with no guard to speak of.

It’s certainly not a blade he’d ever want to be on the wrong side of. It looks like it has heft.

Kisuke nudges the young man with a foot and frowns when he doesn’t get a reaction. He still can’t feel a thing from the young man, but he can see the gentle rise and fall of the man’s chest. The young man is alive and looks unwounded, but he’s not waking, not reacting to Kisuke in the slightest, and that’s… concerning.

He grimaces and kneels at the young man’s side, his hand alight with a healing kido. He doesn’t know what he’s searching for, but there are many ways to render a human unconscious without outward sign and none of them are precisely healthy. Whoever this is, whatever he’s done, the least Kisuke can do is help him recover—

Something latches onto his spell. Yanks it from his grasp. Devours his strength and hauls him in with it, pulling him down-down-down, into a void, an abyss where the young man’s soul should be—!

Kisuke rips himself away with a cry, scrambling back-back-back from the— the thing in front of him, the shell of a man with no soul, no presence, just determination-yearning-fury coiled around a core of nothingness.

Tessai appears in a burst of shunpo, eyes hard and kido poised—

“Don’t!” Kisuke snaps before Tessai can step any closer. “Don’t… don’t use kido on him,” he adds when Tessai slants a narrow, confused look his way. “Whatever he is, he isn’t… he doesn’t have a soul.”

Tessai’s lips thin, disbelief rising, but he lets his kido fade away without complaint. “Everyone has a soul,” he says as he walks a wide arc around the unconscious man and kneels at Kisuke’s side. “Even animals have souls.”

“That’s great, but mysterious guy who tumbled out of a strange white rip in the air doesn’t have a soul,” Kisuke grumbles as he lets Tessai press a hand to his chest. “Trust me on this. Saw the abyss. Don’t want to see it again.”

Tessai coughs, trying to disguise his laughter, then pauses and frowns at whatever he senses from Kisuke. “You’re almost drained…”

“Yeah, the abyss was hungry,” Kisuke says with a touch of breathless laughter, then yelps and ducks away from Tessai’s playful swat. “Mean!”

“Sorry boss,” Tessai says, not at all apologetic.

Kisuke snorts and shakes his head, then turns his gaze back to the young man: he has no idea what he wants to do about the stranger, though he knows what he probably should do. Bodies can’t survive long without a soul, and while the man is breathing right now, that’s… unlikely to remain the case; a day, a week, a month… eventually the body will give in, will give up, and then Kisuke will have a dead body on his hands.

(Not that his other option is any different.)

He grimaces and rubs at his temple. “How angry at me will you be if I suggest dragging him to the guest room and waiting to see if he wakes up?”

“You know he won’t,” Tessai says with a scowl. “He can’t, not without a soul.”

Kisuke glances up at the spot where the strange white tear — so different from any dimensional gate he’s ever seen — appeared, his mind whirling with thoughts, and then slowly says, “I’m… not so certain about that.”

Tessai sighs and rocks back on his heels as he lets his healing kido fade. “Very well,” he bites out, then tips his head towards the unconscious young man and adds, “See if you can touch him without almost dying, then.”

“You wouldn’t just let me die, would you?” Kisuke mock-whines as he stands up and moves over to the young man, ignoring Tessai’s exasperated eye-roll as he does. He pauses there, standing over the stranger, and lets the fear-uncertainty-worry coil through his chest for a moment; jokes aside, there’s always the chance that he’ll be caught in the devouring abyss inside the young man again, and this time he might not be able to get free.

Tessai might not be able to free him either, and that… that terrifies him.

There are so many things he’ll leave undone if he dies here, including seeing Aizen dead, that risking his life to help a dangerous stranger is unwise.

(And abyss aside, the man is certainly dangerous.)

(No one carries a sword like that around without knowing how to use.)

(But if he can move this man, if he can learn something from him, if he can figure out how that deadly abyss works…)

(Maybe he can use it on Aizen.)

(Maybe he won’t need to manipulate Shiba Isshin’s eldest into becoming a weapon—)

Kisuke breathes out. Crouches at the young man’s side. Reaches out with a cautious hand.

His fingertips brush against the young man’s face. Trail along a sharp jaw and up into soft, snow white hair. Trace the curve of one ear—

The young man twitches and Kisuke freezes, eyes widening as he watches the stranger’s nose wrinkle. As the man tips his head aside. As one hand curls into a fist, black gloves scraping across the wooden floor. As the soulless man does the impossible.

“I take it back,” Tessai rumbles from just over his shoulder. “I’m absolutely letting you die to the anomaly from beyond the Three Worlds.”

“Maa, where’s your sense of adventure?” Kisuke jokes weakly, tucking his hands against his chest and eyeing the young man more warily than before. The abyss might not have reached out to grab him, but movement without a soul should be impossible.

(A soulless body is just a shell, just an empty vessel, and should be incapable of anything but pure instinctual actions like breathing.)

(Not… not reaction to stimuli, not wrinkling a nose or clenching a hand!)

The look Tessai gives him for that is dust dry and tired. “It decided to take a vacation,” he says flatly, then sighs and steps around Kisuke to crouch at the man’s other side. “Right then. I’ll lift him up, you figure out how to get that sword off of him, and then we’ll bring him to the guest room.”

Kisuke makes a noise of agreement and readies himself, not exactly liking the idea of touching the stranger’s blade when they know nothing about the man, the world he came from, or his abilities. Tessai has a point, though: the man will never be comfortable laying atop his sword like that, and Kisuke won’t be entirely comfortable with an armed stranger in his guest room. So they might as well just get it over with.

Tessai hauls the young man up, eyebrows lifting in surprise at something, and Kisuke darts in, one hand going around the sword’s weird grip — it is exactly as uncomfortable to hold as he suspected — and the other slipping into the gap between blade and body, and—

There’s no strap that he can find, no manner of attachment that he can find by touch or sight, but it’s definitely connected somehow. He tugs once, twice, then frowns and shifts his grip, gives it a lift-and-twist to mimic the motion he suspects is needed to draw it—

It comes free with a flicker of golden-white sparks. Drags at his hand and pulls at his wrist and sends him toppling forward with a yelp of surprise.

“Alright?” Tessai asks in concern as he reaches out and catches Kisuke’s shoulder, preventing him from falling on top of the unconscious young man.

Kisuke huffs and straightens up, glowering down at the sword as he does. “Sorry, didn’t expect that to actually work,” he grumbles as he heaves himself to his feet and tries to figure out what the hell to do with the sword. It’s huge, and heavy, and awkward as hell to try and carry inside, but even like this he can tell how well balanced it is. He bets he could fight with it — bets he could completely destroy things with it — with barely any effort exerted.

(He’s almost afraid to see what sort of damage the young man can do with this blade in his hands.)

(He’s almost excited to see it, too.)

(The sight must be impressive.)

Now that he’s holding it, he’s even more wary than before: the grip is unnaturally warm in his hands and something about it screams of blood-fire-death. He’s pretty sure it’s not sentient, is not like a Shinigami’s zanpakutou, but it’s the next closest thing and he doesn’t like it.

Benihime doesn’t like it, even though she tolerates his use of other weapons with barely a ripple. She’s closer than usual, attention fixed on the massive blade, and she’s practically bristling with offense.

::This weapon is not for you,:: she tells him darkly. ::It’s tolerating your touch, but it’s not for you. Get rid of it before it decides to get rid of you.::

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Kisuke mutters under his breath, then shakes his head at Tessai’s concerned look and fumbles the blade into a better, if still awkward, position. “Nothing, never mind me,” he says as he turns away. “Let’s just get this man situated.”

(They can worry about an unhappy blade later.)

(Or never.)

(Never sounds good.)