Sunset in Heaven

Chapter 14

"We will now pass judgment! Former Squad 5 Taichou, Sousuke Aizen. We sentence you to the lowest level of the Underground Prison 8: Muken, where you will remain for 18, 800 years!"

Aizen, with all the seal that he had, still managed to smirk at his executors. "How ironic. You lowly scums will be the ones to give such punishment to me? You can't even protect yourselves from my sword."

"How insolent!!"

"You bastard!!"

"Make his sentence 20, 000 years!!!"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

He groaned and squinted his eyes when a light coming from somewhere stung them. He lay on his back and he knew he was in a very comfortable and soft bed if he felt like he had slept so much.

"Good morning, Kurosaki-san. How do you feel?" A voice said and Ichigo groaned again before he fully opened his eyes to scan his surroundings.

He was in a room painted in full white. There was a window on his right side where the light was coming from. The sun was already high up in the sky. He looked to his left side and saw Unohana-taichou by the doorway smiling kindly at him, still waiting for his answer. "I feel like I've slept a lot." He said after a while.

She chuckled. "Of course. You've been out for two weeks now."

His eyes widened at that before he blinked. "Two weeks?" He slowly sat up and shoved the cover off his body. He had no injuries left, not even a single bandage.

Unohana looked at the teen with barely concealed concern. "Kurosaki-san, I will be honest with you." Ichigo looked up at her. "You were barely alive in the first week, and although we had managed to suck out most of the poison from your system... we cannot undo the damage that it had done."

Ichigo scratched his head. Truth to be told, he expected that the next time he woke up, it would be Juushirou and Kaien's faces that would greet him. That's what Aizen said after all, not that he believed in the guy's words thoroughly. "Can you tell me more about it?"

Unohana sighed. "The damage to your organs was quite severe. Your heart has stopped beating thrice and we were afraid you couldn't make it. Right now, your heart remained weak and you will experience chest pains. The damage to your organs couldn't be thoroughly healed by kidou and it made your immune system so much weaker than ordinary Shinigami. Anything that can build up fatigue may cause you to cough up blood from time to time. Don't worry though, it is not life-threatening if you will not let yourself be fatigued too much. When that happens, you only need to fully rest, and your body will recuperate."

Ichigo looked thoughtful for a while. "Will I be like that forever?"

"Probably, at least until we find, or invent, an antidote for that poison." Unohana said calmly. "The poison is made from Aizen-taichou's evolved form with the help of the hogyouku. Kurotsuchi-taichou is having a problem in trying to look at the poison's potential content because it has some remnants of Aizen-taichou and the hogyouku's reiatsu which prevents us from even touching it. Right now, the sample of the poison is stored in the Shinigami Research Institute's lab. Until the reiatsu that protects it dissipates, we cannot do any form of study to make an antidote."

Ichigo looked outside for a while, obviously absorbing the facts that were laid down to him. "Have you told anyone about this?"

Unohana nodded. "Don't worry, aside from the Soutaichou, I only told those who are truly close to you, namely Kuchiki-san, Abarai-fukutaichou, Zaraki-taichou, Madarame-san and Ayasegawa-san, Kyouraku-taichou, Hitsugaya-taichou, and of course, I planned on telling Kuchiki-taichou but I wasn't able to find a chance."