Ribbon (Bleach AU, Original Character)

Chapter 53: Villain

If this were a cop versus terrorist movie, it would be the scene where the terrorist had planted a bomb somewhere, or one someone, and the main cop character had to somehow defuse it while someone actually qualified told him which wires to cut.

The sweat wasn’t pouring off of me like I was standing under a shower, I actually wasn’t all that sure that I couldn’t even sweat at all in this Life Bringer state. Not during something like this, evidently.

The Hollow shifted its weight back and forth, trying to loosen the ribbon of silver that confined it so thoroughly. Fortunately for us, the Hollow was basically a walking sack of flesh and random parts, nowhere near as physically powerful as the Adjuchas has been, especially with its desecrated Zanpakutō.

The blade only dug deeper into its flesh as it moved, binding it further as I slowly worked through the complex rat’s nest of connections that the Hollow was riddled with. It was, by far, the most poorly created being I’ve ever seen. The edited Hollows and even the edited Adjuchas, looked stable in comparison to this thing.

It was clearly done intentionally; it was made to be extremely complex and overly confusing. It was created, with purpose, to be unable to sustain its own existence. It was almost torturous to look at it, let alone work with what was there.

“Top staple at the back of its head.” I called out calmly, like a surgeon would as they extracted a tumour from a patient’s brain. Kisuke, having fallen into the groove of assisting me, quickly moved to identify the staple I was talking about. Which was easy, seeing as it was the last one on the Hollow’s body.

Practicing excessive caution, Kisuke tapped the large, metal staple with the tip of his Zanpakutō gently, making it flare brilliantly in my advanced spiritual vision.

“That one.” I announced before the man could ask. He nodded, and a moment later the Hollow let out a terrible scream with an audible spray of fetid blood. The stench was terrible, but my focus overpowered the slight instinct to gag.

“Alright.” Kisuke said calmly, though there was an underlying tone to his voice that tweaked my mind slightly, “Do we do the mask now?”

I looked up to the Hollow, across its body and up to its massive, jumbled mask which still had stapled in it, holding it together.

“No, not yet.” I said solidly, trying to understand the internal workings of this Rube Goldberg machine of a being. “Even if I fix it, we still can’t kill it. The staples create instability, and the Hollow would have broken down after a while, but if we kill it, it still serves its main function. Nothing changes.” Kisuke turned back towards me from looking at the mask.

“So we need a way to banish it? I have a way to open a gate to the Garganta, but nothing that would accommodate something of this size.” I shook my head.

“Its created to want to stay here, and it will stay here even if we try and push it out. It’ll just find a way back, its not a permanent solution.” I said lowly, desperately trying to think of an option, a possibility.

“Then we could throw it out into the ocean? Or into the sky?” Kisuke continued, but I shook my head again.

“This isn’t a direct one to one of a bomb in spiritual form, Kisuke.” I said, trying to explain the inner workings of a soul and a body to such a degree was almost impossible, though Kisuke was a quick study, “If this Hollow’s soul explodes, they’ve made sure that it’ll cause as much trouble as it possibly could. It’ll pollute hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of land with Hollow energy, killing everything and replacing it with the counter opposite of what should be living here. Do you want to see the world turn into a zombie movie, Kisuke?”

The comment was a bit tongue in cheek, though it was just as serious as the rest of it. Even a little spiritual energy from a Hollow within a mother was enough to irreparably change their human child into someone capable of wielding powers, but a soul exploding? The amount of energy that would release is gargantuan. Actual death of a soul is extremely rare, and the effects of it is immense.

“Wait.” Kisuke said after a moment of contemplation over the struggling Hollow. “We can’t kill it. Why?”

“If we kill it, the soul still remains for a while, we’d have to purify it by sending it to hell, right?” I asked, though I knew I was correct, “Immediately after it dies, it’ll detonate its soul. Its designed that way, there is no counteraction for it.”

In my extremely detailed spiritual vision, I saw the oddest thing happen. Instead of the look of neutral consternation that Kisuke had been sporting for the past half hour, there was a wide grin, manic and gleeful like a child who’d just created a terrible, terrible plan to annoy the neighbour’s kids.

“But we don’t have to kill it.”

I pondered for a moment while Kisuke bathed in the expectation of stunned silence, but instead of the reluctant question that he’d been expecting, I nodded sharply.

“Then you’ll need to bind it again, if we want this to work, I need to start looking.” With a quick flick of my hand, the ribbon blade retracted gracefully, pulling through the abomination’s flesh before becoming the long, beautiful blade it was at rest.

“Wait, I–” Kisuke began, but I’d already begun to move my feet, pushing against the concrete surface of a building, and zipping through the cluttered economic districts of Karakura, in search.

In search for something very, very important.

---

​

Kisuke Urahara watched as Grayson Carter disappeared into the distance with speed that could probably rival most Soul Reapers that sat below learning flash step. It was, however, a far more precise movement pattern than Soul Reapers used, something that Grayson was showing himself to be uniquely gifted in. Precision and senses.

It took ungodly precision to work on a soul the way that he had over the past half hour, his mind constantly moving with the organic moulding of a soul into a more stable thing. Kisuke had the easy job, the equivalent of taking the last hit on a Hollow that another Soul Reaper had set up for you.

He didn’t bother to call on Benihime’s name, though, which was something his Zanpakutō spirit didn’t like, but allowed for the purpose of the moment. She was a jealous mistress, that one. Forever paranoid and extremely wrathful. Something that he had found reflected within himself more often than he liked.

He let the crimson net restraint he Hollow, who had been noticeably bereft of almost all attacking capability. If it had wanted to, it could have attacked physically, and it’d certainly do a fair amount of damage, but it wasn’t capable of a Cero.

It was a mindless Gillian-class Hollow, even more mindless than a regular Hollow, according to a study he’d done far too long ago. They were the conglomeration of far too many Hollow souls to ever truly be distinct from one another, to show and real personality, even if this specific Menos had interesting parts of its body. It wasn’t nearly as homogenous as the regular, but it was created out of regular Hollows and supped up to be a Gillian-class.

The Hollow before him was his main worry at current, and if it were to have some counter measure for the plan that he and Grayson had somehow managed to wordlessly share, then his last-ditch effort would be his Bankai.

And Kisuke really didn’t want to call his Bankai.

Though the other worry Kisuke had still stayed at the back of his mind, and he could only hope beyond hope that Grayson would continue to be preoccupied enough to not notice it.

Suzumi was gone. Kisuke had noticed her missing spiritual pressure almost instantly, only for the thought to be interrupted by a voice communication from Tessai telling him what he had needed to know.

Suzumi wasn’t just gone, she’d been taken. But the Onmitsukidō of all groups.

‘Why? For what reason?’ It was baffling to Kisuke, there was no good reason, no obvious reason at least. He hated not knowing, it was something that Kisuke hated more than anything else. He didn’t understand what was going on in Soul Society for this to happen. For someone to be taken to Soul Society, someone human, Central 46 had to sign off on the order.

For Central 46 to order something so… brash was totally unlike them. Central 46 was intensely conservative, and Kisuke had been on the receiving end of far too many judgements to believe that they would change to being so quick to move on something.

Central 46 wasn’t something that changed so quickly, and while they claimed to work on the orders of the Soul King himself, but everyone knew that they hadn’t received a proper order from the Soul King since Yhwach, and maybe never would again.

Suzumi was a blip on their radar, an insignificant being from the Human World. Kisuke had no reason to believe that they’d treat her any different than they had the Fullbringers for centuries, leaving them to simply exist within the Human World until they tried to encroach on Soul Society once or twice.

It was the main reason that Kisuke had escaped to the Human World specifically, rather than Hueco Mundo or some other place that would be closer to the epicentre of the grand plans that Aizen had been cooking up. But Kisuke wanted to be where the Soul Society had decided not to meddle in, and he’d succeeded in that.

Even as Kyōraku had taken power over the Thirteen Court Guards, nothing much had really changed in the Human World, not after the first decade or two of increased patrols that they’d managed to sway the patrolling Soul Reapers away from their home.

But with Central 46 holding him back, Shunsui was unable to truly change that much, other than what the Court Guards held jurisdiction over. So, why were they moving now? What would have motivated them to do so?

Who sent the order?

Kisuke felt a pang of fear run through him, the first real taste of the emotion since he realised that he’d been just as duped by Aizen oh so long ago, even if he’d been more aware than the others had been.

The terror of having to think about Aizen all over again, so soon after he’d been locked away, was palpable. Kisuke couldn’t believe that it was Aizen behind this. He wasn’t so droll as to try the same tactic twice, something else was going on all together.

And now, it was going to come down to them to figure out what the hell was going on and, once again, he wouldn’t even be able to go into Soul Society to do it himself.

the Hollow screamed its terrible wail, even the normally bone chilling voice of a Hollow was further distorted by its horrific physiology.

“Oh, shut up you.” Kisuke said darkly and, surprisingly, the Hollow followed the order, returning to its regular squeals of pain as his net burned against its skin. Kisuke sighed deeply, morose in his contemplation.

“Grayson…” He said, eliciting another sigh from himself, “He’s going to want to kill me for not telling him.” Kisuke looked out to where the man had disappeared to, almost allowing himself a look of sadness.

“Congratulations, Kisuke Urahara,” he said to himself with sarcastic joy, “you get to play the villain once again.”

---

​

It was easy to forget how ridiculously powerful my ribbon sense was until the very moment that I could use it and make it shine. It took a footnote in practicality to the overwhelmingly useful spiritual senses that I’d developed.

However, the ribbon sense I had was always powerful. It took no developing, nor any conscious effort on my part to improve it. Because it’s a visual representation of my understanding of the soul. It was something that I’d slowly understood more and more as time went on, starting on my own, then Suzumi’s, then Hollows, and before long I was capable of restructuring them.

Now, I had access to more understanding than ever, with Grayhom inserting himself within the very stones of my soul to complete it. Now, I was truly a Life Bringer, and so my ribbon sense was far more powerful to accommodate.

I didn’t bother to use my eyes, the inefficient tools that they were. All they were really good for was colour and watching Suzumi’s face as she slept right next to me. Other than that, I found them useless things that took up space on my face.

Sometimes I would wonder if I’d even miss them that much if I were to lose them again.

And now, I could confidently say that I wouldn’t.

I could sense every ribbon that came even remotely close to Karakura Town. At first, I could see the ribbons of those I knew, coming to the forefront of my mind, but I pushed them away, even as I passed by Ururu as she took care of a group of Hollows alone, perfectly capable of fending off a small wave of them after knowing her family was safe, it seemed.

Though there was a niggling loss that brushed gently across my brain, like something in the landscape of your city was missing, a skyscraper suddenly vanished from its rightful place, but I disregarded it for now. Now was not the time.

I focused completely on my spiritual senses, quickly brushing away any ribbons that didn’t fit what I was looking for. Again and again, I cut swathes of ribbons down, narrowing it to be precisely what I wanted.

Hollow ribbons.

The moment I found one of them, I found all of them, cutting the human ribbons and… Soul Reaper ribbons? Way too many Soul Reaper ribbons. What’s going on over there–

I felt it first, before I saw it, cutting me from any thought I could have been having.

It was a slight feeling at first, quiet and almost unassuming. But then it turned on me, and I felt it in its true power, the power that had once sent my unconscious just by comprehending it for afar.

This was the soul that made ever other I’ve met seem inconsequential, at least barring the scant few who were clearly more powerful. But this soul was different, and now I knew why.

I shot towards the ribbon, finding myself only so far from where we’d been living for so long now. I approached; two hundred metres, one hundred, fifty…

And there it was. Standing atop a roof, standing beneath the clear daytime sky, looking off into the distance with a calm that seemed so intrinsically dichotomous to a Hollow, but yet it did.

It was looking off into the distance where the Hollow we’d been working on stood, taller than any of the buildings that surrounded it by far. The Hollow was tiny in comparison, not even as tall as the other’s ankle, but it was so much more than its contemporary.

I jumped, swiftly rising up to place myself on the other side of the roof from the Hollow, observing its reaction to my presence. Or, in this case, a complete lack of a reaction. As I looked deeper into its waif thin ribbon, in the blood that seeped from the hole at its end, I could understand why it didn’t react. I could understand why it was so absorbed with that sight of the Hollow standing amongst the concrete forests of the Human World.

I took one step closer, then two. It continued to not react, its emaciated form poorly hidden beneath the shawl of white that was wrapped around its body, its teardrop shaped mask slightly ajar at its mouth, showing the black depths contrasting against the powerfully stark white teeth lining each side of its jaw.

Without even thinking, I had come to be standing right next to it, quietly observing it as it stood, enraptured by its desire.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

At a speed so unthinkably fast, Phantom stood right behind me, its mask only centimetres from the back of my neck, ready to bite and eat my whole.


A/N: Hope you all enjoy this chapter, and are having great days!

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Chapter 54: Dreaming

I felt the slight exhalation of breath on my neck, the Hollow’s mouth almost shaking with the exertion it took for it to not close around my flesh and bone.

“Easy now.” I said calmly, even as I pointed my silver blade right at its chest, the horizontal edge of it almost pressing against the shawl-like armour it was wrapped in. “Eating me would be a very difficult meal.”

The Hollow didn’t respond, or even react in any way. It stood there, its mask split open as it bared its horrifying maw to the world, a war waging within itself.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, almost curious, “Abstaining from human souls for so long? It must.” There was a twitch of movement, but the Hollow remained still otherwise.

Phantom was strong, extremely so. He would be a much more difficult and dangerous fight than the Frankenstein’s Adjuchas I fought before. Phantom was qualitatively, and quantitatively superior, without a doubt. Why that is could be for almost any reason, at least to the average eye.

But to mine, Phantom was like an art piece, degrading after ages of being left in a humid cellar. It was edited, yes, but with more curiosity and genuine interest than the others. It was older, almost ancient in comparison, being at least a few decades old.

But it didn’t quite make sense. Phantom’s existence broke the mould instead of enforcing it.

Being that old likely rivalled my own age, at least. I’m sure that Kisuke or someone had mentioned how long Phantom had been around, but I can’t remember how long exactly. But if Phantom had been around that long, and it was edited since then, that could only mean that Phantom pre-dated the current skirmish.

Why was it here? Who edited it? What did they edit? All questions I needed to find an answer to, and fast.

“Were you human once, Phantom?” I asked gently, feeling the Hollow twitch again slightly, “Do you remember those times, or are they just blurs to you now? A mirage of memory, lost in the storming of your soul.”

I let the words hang for a moment before I began to turn myself towards it, my sword staying faithfully in place, prepared to lash out and try to bisect the powerful Adjuchas level Hollow. It flinched multiple times, each time only just managing to restrain itself from trying to take a chunk out of my body, and the soul that laid beneath.

“I’ve heard some stories of you.” I continued, recalling snippets that Jinta had once recounted to me, “You’ve only been seen a handful of times, but it was always eating a Hollow. One even swore that you had done it to save them.” The Hollow was absolutely still, almost completely dead in its movements, but the slight quivering of its jaw was enough to give away its internal struggle.

“Did you?” I took a moment of thoughtful pause, “Did you do it to save them? Or were you just hungry and it was convenient?”

There was a light whistle of air as the Hollow moved. Without spiritual senses, my eyes wouldn’t even be able to perceive the movements at all. In fact, I just closed them altogether, my mind occupied with the Hollow that blurred with brutal speed.

Sonido, Kisuke had called it. Extremely powerful Sonido, with its only rivals being Kisuke or Tessai themselves.

The Hollow’s arm zipped out, its black hand reaching for my face with the elongated, white nails at the ends of its fingers.

It was fast, far faster than me for sure. I didn’t even come as contest to its raw speed, but I didn’t need raw speed, not when my blade only rested centimetres from its chest. I let the silver blade stab through the white shawl, breaking it and plunging into the dark flesh below.

And then the scenery took a drastic shift, you could say.

---

​

“Bro?” A little voice called out from his side, jolting him away from his thoughts.

“Yeah?” He replied, though he grimaced with just how droll his voice sounded, something he’d struggled with from childhood. It was easy to pick on a kid that sounded permanently depressed, apparently.

“What was Mum like?” The little voice asked, and he looked down at the little boy he was holding hands with as they walked. This was a common question, something that the boy asked almost every time they spent a silent moment together. He felt a spear of pain slice through his body with the question, like every time it was asked, but only a smile came to his face. One as warm as he could manage.

“She would sometimes help out at the vet down the road, you know?” He said, as if the little boy hadn’t heard it a million times. “She would help with cleaning and taking care of the animals as they got better.”

“Like a nurse?” The boy asked, a new question, one he hadn’t asked before.

“Yeah, like a nurse, just for dogs and cats instead of people.” He looked down at his little brother as his chubby face scrunched in thought. Their mother had always told him that he had looked much the same as his brother when he himself was a child. He couldn’t possibly disagree more, though. Maybe in general face structure, but his little brother was so much more expressive than he was.

You could just about see every distinct emotion on his little brother’s face, each pulling on his facial muscles in a way that he’d never quite been able to reproduce. At rest, his own face just looked… dead, for a lack of a better word. It was an unemotional mask for someone who’d always been told that he was full of emotions, yet again by his mother.

He hadn’t agreed with her back then either.

“Was Mum always a nurse?” The high-pitched voice chimed again, drawing a grimace out of his older brother.

“No, not always.” He said, but the answer wasn’t enough to placate the voraciously curious mind of his younger brother.

“What did she do?”

Nothing. It was an answer that wouldn’t satisfy his little brother, but it was true. She had enough money that she had the privilege to just simply do nothing at all. Now, it was all that let them live, away from the family around them that would be all too happy to ‘take them under their wings’, though they too only wanted the money.

“Well…” The older brother said painfully, trying to fight back the bitter pain of the memories from when she’d once taught him how investment worked, just because he’d asked her how it worked. He swallowed deeply and sighed, finally finding the words.

“Do you remember when I said that Mum left Dad?” The child nodded seriously, more seriously than he should be at his age, but a necessity for how they lived. “Well, when Mum did that, she made sure that she got some money that was hers. Because Dad is rich, she got a lot of money.”

The situation was so much more complicated than that, but his little brother seemed to follow along with the idea of it.

“So, Mum took Dad’s money?” He grimaced at the little boy, trying not to let his lip quiver with the emotions that bubbled to the surface, even some particularly horrible ones that he had desperately pushed down into the depths of his mind.

“No, kiddo.” He said gently, trying not to snap at his brother, “She was allowed to have that money, even if Dad didn’t want her to have it.”

The little boy at his side stopped, pulling back on his arm as he tried to continue walking. With a sigh, he turned his dead neutral face towards his younger brother, trying to don a smile for him but failing horribly. The little boy looked into his eyes with his one, piercingly bright ones, as if they could see right through his mind and into his soul.

“Sora?” The little boy asked gently, “Hug?”

The older brother, Sora, looked down and sighed ruefully, a tiny but genuine smile coming to his face. He sat in a low crouch, pulling the small boy’s form into his own warmly, letting the memories slowly seep back below the surface of his mind and returning to the deepest recesses, biding their time till the next time they decide to show themselves.

Sora pulled away from his little brother with that same small smile, an expression so slight that only his mother and his brother had ever been able to recognise it when he wore it. He looked up at his brother, and jolted backwards, almost falling over in the panic.

“Sora?” The little boy said, though his voice was horribly distorted, disfigured almost beyond recognition, “I’m hungry.”

A bone white mask covered his brother’s face, a blank visage that was almost featureless aside from its teardrop design, the mask coming to a point at the chin, and two narrow slits for eyes with large, squared teeth perfectly closed.

“Sora?” The boy said again, though the boy who’s form he’d been hugging only moments earlier was melting away with a spindly, black being slowly escaping its restraints. Sora stood up, moving back more and more as he fled from the horrifying creature, then turning as he burst into a sprint down the street they’d been walking on.

Wait. What street? There was no street, there was nothing outside him and his little brother. His little brother… whose name he can’t remember. Where did he live? Who was his brother?

Sora continued to run across a surface he couldn’t see or comprehend, desperately running from a threat that he found himself more and more unsure of. Before long, he looked back from where he’d been running to find…

Nothing.

There was nothing. It was all just a bur of black and white, the surroundings forming and unforming in front of his eyes, any distinctive feature melting before his eyes and becoming something entirely different.

Then, with an abrupt suddenness, he was elsewhere.

A hospital, his body laid down in an uncomfortable bed as he tried not to move his arm, an IV sitting in forearm, pumping in a clear liquid. He looked around the room, trying to find any other occupants, but after a moment Sora found himself relaxing slightly.

No, there weren’t any occupants. It was the middle of the day; his little brother was at school and the nurses were dealing with the patients who were really paying attention to the seriously sick patients.

The seriously sick patients…

Sora broke through it again, finding himself outside of the memory itself, throwing it into disarray, even as the major set pieces remained unchanged. The bed, the IV, the door. There was a momentary pang of dread that just as the door opened, revealing a doctor, the same one that had done some testing on him a few hours prior to the memory.

Sora didn’t need to see the man’s mouth move to know what he’d said, and even back then he didn’t even need to hear the man speak to know that it was bad.

That was how Sora had died. To an inherited illness from his father that he’d never known about and had caught too late to do anything to fix.

Death hadn’t been so bad, he remembered. It wasn’t painful, or all that unpleasant, just…

Slow.

It’d slowed him down to being nothing more than an old man in a young body, his mind no longer moving fast enough to have a conversation, not fast enough to even count the days as they slowly killed him. Maybe it hadn’t even been too long, or maybe his death had taken years.

Even when he’d died, it was still slow, frustratingly, horrifically slow.

He didn’t want to die, or to waste away into nothing, his being reformatted to become someone else’s basis for existence. He wanted to stay, even in his addled state, with his mind moving so slowly that it had become painful to even comprehend existing at all.

But he would. For his brother.

For Kouki.

He stayed, despite the greatest pain he’d ever experienced, the horror of it as he felt himself change, unable to understand what was happening to him. But he did, he chained himself here and suffered despite it.

Only to awaken with a sharp mind, one hellbent on consuming it all.

He had become the monster, he realised. He’d stayed alive at the cost of himself.

So, he stood stalwart. Using everything to stop the urges, even as more voices were added, all of them raving and ranting, desiring more and more. But he resisted them, he stood above them, using every modicum of his willpower to stop their desires from becoming reality.

There was no concrete understanding, no memories formed, just an eternal nightmare he was trapped in.

Until a silver blade had cut through the darkness, and pulled him to the front, establishing Sora as the being itself.

He had more control, but minutely. Power, he had in droves, but control was something he continued to battle with unerringly, his every mental faculty forcing itself to focus on stopping the horrors he knew that he was capable of.

He was failing.

He was hungry.

He needed to eat.

He desperately needed to eat.

And, just as he contemplated finally giving in, finally succumbing to the ever-screaming voices—of which there were thousands—a silver blade broke through into his mind.

Its silver radiance was different than the last one which had been so much duller. This was a different being altogether.

Sora looked up towards the silver blade as light burned from it, penetrating deeper into himself.

Whether it was here to end him, or to liberate him… Sora was content with either. He did what he felt he was right, finally accepting the fate he should have, so long ago. He closed his eyes to his fate, dreaming wearily of better times.


A/N: Here’s another chapter! Hope you’re all doing well, especially with highschool wrapping up for all the Americans.

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Chapter 55: Layers

I was swimming in… memories. I think.

It was odd, like walking through a disjointed gallery of hundreds of different people’s memories, collated haphazardly in a confusing mess of crossed wires as a hundred souls interact on the border of what was effectively a dangerous chemical reaction.

The description I could give was already insane enough, let alone the real thing around me. But for me it was strangely calming.

I don’t know what it was about my newfound powers that seemed to be synonymous with calmness, but it was especially evident when I waded through the waters that burst with excitement, fury, hate, loss, and any other of an uncountable list of emotions that seemed to make up the essence of human existence.

Though, it was obvious that there was a distinct lack of positive emotion, either so few and far between and dulled to the point of it being like looking through a shattered kaleidoscope as you tried to interpret when emotion it even it was.

This was the deepest I’d delved into a soul that wasn’t Suzumi’s, and on that particular occasion I barely remembered exactly what it felt like while I was inside her soul. Being here gave me invaluable insight into how a Hollow works internally, and also a strange understanding of just what my capabilities were within someone else’s soul.

It was complicated, and even more abstract. I was both ultimately capable, and ultimately restricted.

I could easily unmake the Hollow’s soul, pulling at the loosest strings and watching it unravel. It wasn’t something that I would be able to do to every being I come across, but for something that was so strong, letting its hungering soul starve to the degree that it has, the process for doing so was almost easy.

But the same could not be said for changing it. A soul was not as inviolable as some would like to believe, and even Tessai had proven that ‘fact’ to be a total lie. He had carved the Chains of Fate from my girlfriend’s soul, and I had healed it from the traumatized state it’d been in afterwards.

Yet, I couldn’t just bring the Hollow’s dominant identity into an unassailable position. For some reason, that broke the conventions of how a Hollow’s soul worked. Sure, I could promote it, just like I had with Suzumi’s own soul. I could set up neutral ground between two parts of the soul, to structure it more clearly and succinctly, but I couldn’t have locked away that Hollow within Suzumi any more than I could have entirely destroyed her own personality, her own identity.

So that was what lead me to wander through the dark waters, inky black and staining my skin the more I pushed forwards, the hungry soul desperate enough to chew on the projected energy of my soul that I was inside of here.

Nothing stopped me from walking forwards through the Soul that was in disarray, nothing could stop me. My own soul was far more stable than it was, like a massive metal ball at the bottom of a pool of water, almost serene in comparison to the shifting blackness.

It didn’t take long for me to find what I was looking for, the edit that had been so prominent within my mind as I looked at the being with the eyes of a Life Bringer.

Elevated just above the surface level of the waters was an almost fully realised man, sickly and pale to a degree that he looked dead. He was risen out of the water, but not untouched by it. The water had congealed around his legs, around his lower torso and up his back, also pulling his arms apart and holding him in bondage. It was as if he’d been crucified, his skin weeping with wounds large and old, black blood seeping from him in tiny dribbles, the very last of the blood he could offer to the ever-hungry waters that surrounded him.

His head was slumped over, long black hair drawing a curtain around his face, matted with his own blood and the sticky black of the waters. I walked up to him, he who lived in torture within the soul of a Hollow, still powerful enough to live despite his atrophied muscles and pallid skin.

I came within a metre of him, feeling the black waters below pull at my legs with a fervent desire for me to leave, to not come near to its most reviled part. The one that still holds power over the waters, even now as he dies.

I didn’t speak, because he wouldn’t be able to hear me. But I waited, for just one sign, just a little sign that he still lived, that he still wanted to live on enough for me to reach out.

There was silence within the waters for a long moment, the darkness overwhelming enough to make even me feel claustrophobic while my spiritual senses observed my surroundings, forgoing the use of my eyes completely like I had been since the moment that my powers truly awakened.

Then it happened, something so ordinary and mundane that you’d be forgiven if you missed it’s importance.

A breath. There was no sound to it, for it was too weak to make a sound loud enough to hear. In fact, the only reason that you’d be able to notice would be the slight filling of the man’s chest and the pull that the breath had on his own dangling hair.

I looked the man’s emaciated body over one last time, looking at his borderline skeletal form, the arms that had lost any and all muscle, remaining as only bone beneath ashen skin. Yet this being, this man, still took breath, defiant against the crushing will of the soul that surrounded it.

I see now. With such a strong will, how could he be anything but the dominant identity?

The next action was predetermined, as if it were always meant to be that way, as I pulled the ribbon sword from my side, the mere image of the true sword itself, just as I was an image of my true soul within this realm.

The silver sword pierced into the man, and the body gasped with pain, the breath that he’d only just taken leaking from his lips as the world around both of us faded, leading us somewhere else entirely.

Inside the man’s own mind, separate from all the others.

I could feel the soul struggling to permit the world that the man still held within him, only ever so slightly grey in comparison to the darkest black that a Hollow’s soul seemed to desperately promote as it lived without a true ‘heart’. The world, however, was built under both my and the dominant identity’s demand. With our words combined the weaker components had no choice but to acquiesce.

And then, unceremoniously, I was there.

Standing in front of me in a room of eclectically shifting whites and blacks, stood a man lost within a world of memories that he had sacrificed to stay alive, offerings to the soul that vies so desperately for his absolution. He stood within a world of his mind’s making, created in desperation to remind him of the moments that his soul no longer allowed him to keep.

His eyes were looking upwards, his form no longer restrained like it had been in the reality of his soul, even his hair was only shoulder length instead of the absurd length of oily, matted hair he’d possessed. I looked up to where he was looking, his eyes clouded over as he painfully tried to remember where he had seen the silver blade that was thrust through the defences of his mind, sprouting with radiance from the sky of his constructed world.

“You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?” I asked quietly, and that was all it took for the man’s eyes to snap to mine, and for the world to shift from the black and white disarray into a foggy grey mirage of a road.

“Who are you?” He asked, his voice dull and exceedingly flat, to the point where I would have though he couldn’t feel at all, thought his eyes told a different story.

“Am I not a usual part of the fever dreams your existence has become?” I smiled, the half joke coming out more as a sad prognosis than anything, “I am a man who requires something of you. A man who knows you’ve been touched by… something like me in the past.”

His look was almost hateful, though his expression stayed so neatly placid.

“You did this to me.” He stated, “You made me into this.” He widened his arms to show the surroundings, or total lack thereof. IT was all a grey mist, a nostalgic sight for me, though now I could see right through it, into the gears that worked to create the half-baked rendition of a memory the man had once held.

“I didn’t, but someone like me did.” I didn’t let the man continue, dropping my voice to a warning whisper, letting my power bloom, “And the only reason you still exist, with even the torturous autonomy that you have now, is because of what they once did to you.” My voice boomed against the fog, battering it away to reveal the world that he really lived in.

A small box, the only spot of realised space within his entire soul, the rest being pure chaos.

“I am not here to apologise. I’m here to offer you absolution, either in death, or in a life to do with as you please.” The voice of certainty vibrated out from my chest, the silver energy from my sword glowed brightly from the roof of the small box, assailing the man’s eyes but entrancing him ever deeper.

I couldn’t possibly understand what he was thinking in that moment. I’d only exchanged a efw words with him, but I could feel the power of his pure will, and I couldn’t even begin to measure against it with my own. I was talking to a being that had survived decades of torture, being turned into a Hollow, and a severe restructuring of his soul. There were likely very few that could match that.

The man, who actually looked like a late teenager, turned back to me, his shoulder length hair swaying as it covered over one of his dark eyes, his face displaying none of the emotions that I was sure he was feeling. He closed his eyes for a moment, before sighing.

“I took a deal the last time I met one of you.” He said quietly, his eyes searching my form, squinting as if he were looking into the sun. “I don’t remember what it was anymore, I just remember that I needed to do it to protect…” he looked down to the ground, jaw clenched slightly as he struggled to remember, “my brother.”

I pulled my lips into a smile, the expression more one of sadness than any joy. “And now I’m here to ask you to protect everyone else too. After that?” I paused, looking for the right words, words for a man that I’d only know for moments but felt like I needed to help, as if it were my duty. My responsibility.

“After that, you can wish upon a star, and I’ll grant it. I’ll do whatever I can.”

---

​

That man had appeared, like… well, Sora couldn’t remember exactly who they were, but someone else had appeared just like they had in the past.

And now, he was somewhere else than his little box. No time had passed from his perspective, after agreeing to the man’s request. He’d deliberated on it for as long as he could before he started to find it difficult to remember what he was thinking about, then forgetting what was going on around him.

So, in the end, he didn’t have much choice. The man cloaked in silver, so bright and defined against the misty grey that had surrounded him for… however long he’d been like this, was almost deific. Of course, Sora wasn’t going to believe that the man was a god, that was just too much, but he had offered a deal that he quite literally couldn’t refuse.

And then the sword stuck in the ceiling had filled the room with its glow, and he was here instead, a perfectly white room, unblemished and indestructible. Well, it was more complicated than that of course. Even Sora could feel the timer on it, his soul so destroyed by the lack of his energy intake that it couldn’t possibly maintain itself for long.

His soul had been squeezed like a fruit for all of the energy that it could produce, for only a day’s worth of peace, just enough for him to do what the man wanted and receive his wish.

“Can you hear me?” A soft voice questioned, radiating out of the walls of white, almost surprising Sora. He blinked, realising that he could think clearly, his thoughts from only a few moments ago not fading into oblivion anymore.

“I can?” He said warily, though the other voice only laughed. The voice of the man that he had made a devils deal with.

“You can.” He agreed, “You can actually talk too, it seems. Though you still sound like a Hollow.”

“A Hollow?” Sora asked, confused by the strange terminology, making the man’s voice halt for a moment.

“I will explain later, if you want me to.” He said finally, “Until then we have work to do, and you are on a timer. I’m Grayson, by the way.” Sora reeled from the sentence of three different topics all melded into one.

“I, uh,” Sora paused, coming to a small realisation of just how long it’d been since he’d talked to someone, “I’m Sora, I guess?”

“Sora, huh?” The man’s voice—Grayson’s voice, rather—chimed back through the walls of the white space. “Well, Sora, I suppose I should tell you exactly what I’m expecting you to do.” Sora felt his eyebrows twitch a little, warily waiting for the rest of the man’s sentence.

“I’m going to have you eat a bomb.”


A/N: Hope you’re havin’ a good one!

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Chapter 56: Shattered

I rushed over the rooftops, the somewhat perturbing form of Phantom following behind me.

It was hard to take my senses off of the being, even if I knew the identity that controls the Hollow’s power was almost terrifyingly human for someone that had been bathed in a Hollow’s corruption for as long as he had.

Whispers of memory came to mind from being within his section of Phantom’s soul, an undying will for the sake of a brother he wanted to protect so badly, badly enough that he’d forced himself into becoming a Hollow, and then a starving Adjuchas with the help of a Life Bringer.

I didn’t know the man that stood as Phantom’s originating soul, the one that had consumed hundreds and thousands of Hollows who had lived within Karakura, though restricting himself severely enough that every part of his soul was fraying and wearing down.

I knew that I was gambling. Originally, I had almost hoped that I would find Phantom and delve into its soul, only to find that the reason for its starvation was some strange remnant of a being that’d once been the dominant identity. I had wanted that so that it was easy to sacrifice Phantom without the barest thought, not even a flicker of remorse.

Of course, the reality is that I would sacrifice him even now, if it meant that I could save all of Karakura, and much of Japan, from the terrible result of that Hollow’s soul exploding. But now, an idea was planted in my brain, an idea that I could swear had actually been planted there.

I knew that I was playing into someone’s hand, as my mind flicked between possibilities like the pages of a book. It was the past Life Bringer that had worked on Phantom, the only reason that Phantom’s dominant identity had been able to persist with the dominance he’d sacrificed for.

Sora needed more than an indomitable will to hold that degree of power. He’d been forcibly pulled above the surface of his soul’s darkest waters, allowed to command from on high as the waters creep up and attach to him, trying to assimilate him back into the soul at large.

“What are you doing?” I asked as we ran, not bothering to turn my shut eyes towards Phantom’s body. I could see the strangeness just fine without my eyes.

Phantom’s mask was tilted upwards, looking towards the sky even while its clawed, black feet placed themselves solidly with each step.

“I can’t see it.” The Hollowfied voice of Sora rang out, reminding me that I had given him as much freedom within Phantom’s body as I could.

“The sky?” I asked as I had my sights set on the towering Hollow in the distance, its massive ribbon spilling forth from its body and showing me just how unstable it was, even after all the clean-up work I had done. I turned my attention towards Phantom’s own ribbon for a moment, examining the painfully thin ribbon with its Hollow hole sliced into its end, though it now leaked less blood than before—the black liquid only a thin line trailing down the ribbon to where Phantom ran beside me.

“Yes.” Sora responded, his voice moving Phantom’s mask subtly, “I can’t see, but I can move. I can’t feel, but I know. It’s… horrible.”

The deadpan voice almost made the Hollowfied affectations more disturbing, but for some reason it put me at ease. It was the simple humanity in those words, the same words that I might’ve said myself while I delved into the depths of my own soul, exploring desperately for something, anything.

I didn’t respond, but the idea in my mind, the one that played into the very hands of the Life Bringer that came before me, blossomed further, and pushed aside any thought of abandoning it.

I stopped, only a few hundred metres away from the Hollow that stood taller than the buildings around it. Now Phantom’s mask was no longer trained on the sky, but instead on the meal that it could be enjoying instead. I heard a slight grunt of effort from the Hollowfied voice of Sora, Phantom’s body trembling as the rest of its soul screamed for the taste of the Hollow’s flesh.

“Wh–” He groaned loudly as Phantom’s body forced itself forward a step, “What do you want me to do with that… thing?”

Sora’s voice was layered with pain, restricting himself so terribly despite everything.

“Simple,” I said clearly, “you’re going to eat it.”

Phantom’s body stopped quaking, letting a long hiss of air release from between its teeth. I observed with my spiritual senses as its feel pushed against the concrete rooftop, shattering it, and then obliterating it as a massive boom rang out over Karakura Town.

It was hard to track, but within my spiritual senses, the small and dilapidated form of Phantom screamed through the air with speed that nobody short of Tessai would be able to match.

The towering, Frankenstein’s Hollow didn’t even have time to react. Not even a moment of realisation, its senses not even close to powerful enough to even glimpse upon Phantom’s spiritual pressure.

I watched as Phantom’s body stopped in the air, dead over top of the spiritually bloated Menos, and opened its mouth wide.

In one single close of its jaw, Phantom bit its head off in a macabre spray of blood. The bite cleanly separating its head and mask from the rest of its ginormous body. Phantom’s body, while incredibly small, easily consumed much of the Hollow’s soul into itself. The soul and its energy would nourish Phantom beyond even its capacity, with how ludicrously full of energy the Hollow had been.

As I watched the ghoulish display of Phantom slowly savouring the rest of the Hollow’s body with glee, pulling the flesh from the Hollow’s bones, I noticed a very gentle displacement of air against my skin. Though, not before I noticed that Kisuke was suddenly only metres away from me, standing and watching the show.

“It’s more horrifying than I thought it would be.” I said calmly, “Even worse when I know that a man is somehow still living on in Phantom.” I could only imagine how Sora would feel right now. I’m almost glad that I couldn’t give him total control over Phantom’s senses and body, otherwise he’d have to do it all himself.

I waited for a moment. Then a second. I was waiting for a response, a witty reply, a smarmy joke. Anything.

Kisuke would normally be totally incapable of holding himself back from doing so, his dry sarcasm a tool to release the pressure that constantly sat within his mind. He’d changed from the intensely hostile person that I’d first had to deal with into a less hostile, wittier version of himself. It was a return to form for him, I think, pushing away the fear and dread of the future and instead embracing it with sceptical eye and harsh mind at the ready.

But he would never have given up this moment to say something witty.

I swallowed gently as I looked out towards Phantom’s feast, realising that I hadn’t even had the chance to feel relieved that I’d managed to quash the threat to Karakura Town. Not even a moment of relief.

The dread rolled in with each moment of Kisuke’s silence and every one of Phantom’s bites.

I felt my shoulders slacken as I reached out with my senses.

No, I’d noticed this before. Somewhere, deep inside, I’d realised what’d happened before Kisuke had even appeared at my side in silence.

She was gone.

Rage, terror, sadness… none of them were right. None of them fit the description of how I felt in that moment of terrible realisation. Not even close. It was the realisation that a part of me was gone.

No, not even that was true.

It was the realisation that the gauze I had used to fill my wound had disappeared, leaving me with a great hole in my chest, right where my heart was. I stared down at my chest, feeling the massive, gaping hole in it widen terrifyingly, eating me as it did.

Oh, I get it now. I’ve lost my heart and now I’m so incredibly hollow.

I laughed mirthlessly, not even capable of pulling a smile onto my face. The laugh set Kisuke on edge, I could even see his hackles raise and his eyes widen where he stood, shifting his stance beneath his flowing clothing in an instinctive gesture of defensiveness.

“Suzumi is gone.” I stated, my voice dry and brittle, an ugly, grating sound that came from deep down a black pit in my stomach. How else would I characterize the sound of the loss I felt so completely?

“Grayson I–” Kisuke started, before I tsked my tongue loudly, the sharp sound stopping the ex-Captain from going any further.

“No.” I said, opening up a well of emotion that I had only just begun to seal over with Suzumi’s presence. “Where is she?”

“Grayson! The Onmitsukidō took her–” Kisuke tried again, but I just sighed. The air released from my chest was heavy, far heavier than any that I’d produced before, and apparently that was enough to quiet the man as I released the condensed pressure from within me.

“I don’t care who took her.” I said quietly, “I want to know where.”

The single word radiated with a broken resolve, the voice like shattered glass against even my own ears. I could feel any solidity I’d built over weeks and months of training and soul-searching crumble with just one brick removed from the wall.

It was a weak wall, build only around the existence of one person. One person to solve my loneliness, my isolation, my sadness, my overwhelming grief. But she was no longer here, no longer a being I could rely upon.

She had been a given, in my mind. A person that would never leave, would never be taken from me, and now that she was, it showed my just how weak I really was; how weak we were.

“They took her to Soul Society.” Kisuke’s voice said gently, consoling in a way that only someone who understood could, “You can’t go there yet. They’ll kill you.”

I laughed quietly, almost under my breath, but Kisuke could hear the shattered sound of it.

I had truly loved her, and I still do. But why was it only now that I realised just how broken I was? Why was it when I looked down to my chest and saw a gaping hole, I was reminded of the depths of the sadness I’d left unresolved, having found a heart to fill it with, from someone willing to give me their own.

How horrible I’d been.

“They’ll kill me, will they?” I asked almost pleasantly, a small smile on my face as I turned to face the man while the Hollow feasted at my back. “They’re welcome to try, Kisuke.” I could see his face pale even without use of my eyes.

My actions made sense, in that moment. When I raised my hand to my eyes and passed my fingers over each of my eyes and sealed them closed, I almost felt liberated. I could no longer be tricked into believing what was outside would heal me. No amount of training, or power would be able to deceive me anymore.

Not when I forced my eyes to see the black pit where my heart once was, instead of the vibrant, deceptive world around me.

“I’m going to Soul Society, Kisuke.” My voice warned as my spiritual pressure rumbled in agreement, “Either help me, or go away.”

---

​

There really wasn’t all that much you could do inside of a cell.

Well, no. That was a total out and out lie, there was a tonne you could do in a cell. But when you were permanently restrained upside down, with both feet clamped in a pair of massively oversized shackles that are pumped full of spiritual energy at every moment of every day? It severely restricts your possible activities.

Not to mention the restrictive vest made out of a hyper-dense spiritual material that the 12^th Division cooked up when that man really wanted to dull down his abilities for a good fight. Though, Central 46 were basically jumping over the moon when they realised that it could be used to restrain most Captain-level combatants.

Of course, that wasn’t something that really restricted her all that much. It was the addition of the feet shackles, the arm shackles that were constantly being pulled upon, the crazy seals on the cell that blocked her own spiritual energy, and the vest—which was also covered in seals—that restricted her.

She’d say it was overkill, but it was only barely able to hold her in place. Anything less than these measures would allow her to slip away, almost totally unseen, and unheard by anyone. Soifon seems to have gotten over her cocky, self-deluded attitude since their last meeting and finally managed to get the drop on her.

Well, could it really be called ‘getting the drop on her’ when she’d been reduced to a comatose state after… well, everything? Though, she deliberated, she wouldn’t be much of a Captain of the Onmitsukidō if she didn’t take advantage of someone’s moment of weakness.

A small oversight that they had made, was leaving her mouth open and operational. Of course, there was no chance of using Kidō in here, not with the new Captain of the Kidō Corps having laid the foundation for this very cell. Hard to wriggle of the seals designed by someone who was rumoured to be competitive with Tessai back in the day, at least in the Academy.

It was total bullshit, of course. She knew better than anyone just how good Tessai Tsukabishi was with Kidō, good enough to restrain her multiple times, and probably good enough to have ended her in those moments. He didn’t even need to draw his Zanpakutō to do so, which only made it more impressive when you include the fact that she hadn’t either.

Soul Society always found it so easy to forget about the Kidō Corps and the Onmitsukidō. Even the 12^th Division would be forgotten about if their Captain didn’t have a… reputation. But the Kidō Corps and the Onmitsukidō are extremely powerful forces within Soul Society, and it always amused her how easy it was for the regular soul, or even other Soul Reapers, to forget that they exist entirely.

It wasn’t until they realised that they weren’t going to cut it as a Soul Reaper in the actual Court Guard, and they decided that maybe they should see what the Onmitsukidō were doing instead. The Kidō Corps had even less people care about them, because of the overwhelming technical knowledge you’re required to have to even think about joining up, even if the pay is good and the hours are relatively low.

Well, she was a bit of a hypocrite for extolling the values of joining the Kidō Corps over the Onmitsukidō. After all, she did work awfully hard for it to be the first name on the lips of any disenfranchised, low born Soul Reaper.

She began to whistle, the boredom finally reaching a point where she had to do something, otherwise she really would go insane. How long had she even been in here? She’d asked a few times, when someone deigned to come down here, but of course they never talked. She’d be a little disappointed if they did—it’d ruin the fun of the intrigue.

Her whistling, even while she was wrapped in every possible restriction, was loud. Piercingly so, she was told. She’d trained it to be so, a good distraction tactic or, if your opponents were weak and many, you could imbue it with a little spiritual energy and voila! You have yourself a lot of Soul Reapers screaming and bleeding from their ears. Good times.

She whistled, almost tunelessly, just enough to entertain her, and annoy anyone that might be listening in. Or, seeing as her voice can project for miles, annoying someone that found themselves in the range of her whistling.

Which was very few to none, unfortunately. The Onmitsukidō’s secret prison wasn’t used very often, only really when they are taking in a massive influx of people from a secret war they were waging, seeing as the prison was virtually inescapable and doubled perfectly as torture chambers. Especially so with the channels in the floors that let the blood trickle away down the halls and into whatever dark pit.

Oh well, she could only hope that there was one other unfortunate soul locked in here with her who could hear the annoying–

There was a sound.

It wasn’t even hearable to her, just the mere vibration of it from an insane distance was enough to tell her that there was indeed a sound, able to determine that even without any use of her spiritual energy.

It’d been a while since she last heard a sound, and there was nothing that lived down here. aside from theoretically the other prisoners. She let the collection of footsteps make their small clamour of sound as they passed through the corridors of cells within the complete black.

Maybe they thought they were safer because the prisoner couldn’t see, but they were clearly wrong. In fact, there was unlikely to be many in Soul Society that could actually see in the lightless depths, something that she’d found extremely helpful during her long days above ground.

She waited patiently as the steps drew nearer and nearer, her mind quickly calculating the heights, weights, and relative physical abilities from their footsteps alone. There were six people, more than she had seen in total for what had to be at least a few decades. And seen was a strong word.

Four of them were basically flunkies when it came to physicality, and they even had the gall to be nervous. Clearly Kidō Corps Wardens. The two others… One led the pack, veritably glowing with power as their steps guided them straight and true, and the other was the new prisoner. Steps were heavy and solid, though weighed down by some version of moroseness.

Interesting.

They turned the corner, coming even closer to her as they walked the prisoner to their cell. She waited, searching for the perfect moment when they stopped dead, right in front of her cell, and the one opposite her.

The leader, a short woman with ruthlessly short cut black hair and a face marred by vicious wounds, reached out with a simple talisman that unlocked the cell in front of her. As simple as that talisman might be, it was entirely foolproof. It couldn’t be spoofed or messed with, and the only way to open the cage was to have that key, or someone strong enough to break it open, of which there were few.

She watched in the darkness as the four Kidō Corps members brought the prisoner into their cell, her face covered by a black veil and her throat entirely restrained by a black, metal version of the more commonly used red spiritual restraint.

They were worried about her strength. Or, at least, what she could be capable of. Enough to use the skill of high level Kidō Corps members, powerful enough to maintain the mantras for restraints that are usually set aside for at least 3^rd seat Soul Reapers, usually weaker Lieutenants.

They released the girl, the black shackles retracting from around her throat and the veil lifting, allowing her to gasp in a breath of the horrifyingly stagnant air down here, the high-level restraints having supplied her oxygen through a pipe straight into her lungs. A brutal restraint for those who could use a voice command of any sort.

The Onmitsukidō woman flicked a finger to release some sort of bind with what seemed to be her Shikai released into a beaded bracelet and cursed nails, skin slowly going a purple colour that surely hurt the woman deeply. Just as she raised the small talisman to lock the gasping prisoner behind bars…

“Boo!”

The shockwave of sound that she forced from her throat battered against the fragile ears of the Kidō Corps members, their ears bleeding underneath the white garb of their Warden headdress. The Onmitsukidō Soul Reaper fared better, with her ears only just surviving the sound blast.

She couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh my!” She said in her sultry tones, “Did you seriously not know that I was around when you put that one down here? Is that how long I’ve been in this little hole?” She cackled manically as the Onmitsukidō woman scowled as the cowering Kidō Corps Soul Reapers, waving the talisman, and locking away the other prisoner across from her.

“Don’t speak to her! Mistress Soifon has forbidden for her to be talked to.”

“Aww, don’t be like that! I’m right here, if you stay and chat, I’ll even be nice?” The Onmitsukidō girl snorted and commanded the blubbering Kidō Corps Wardens away, leaving her and the other prisoner totally alone.

So very alone.

“Well, well,” she began with a grin, “what’re you in here for? Must’ve pissed them off like no tomorrow to be thrown in here, just by yourself and all.”

The other girl didn’t react, but she could study her face as her new companion struggled to recover from whatever had been done to her. Being in those restraints, even as a person capable of resisting them, is exhausting to say the least. They stimulate your spiritual energy into responding and constantly exhausting your reserves while it tricks you into feeding it your own spiritual energy. If you knew the trick, or you had enough spiritual energy yourself, you could just break the cycle and run away.

“Hey!” She called out against the other prisoner’s breath began to slow down, “I can’t tell if you’re dying or falling asleep, but I’m not having either of them! I’ve waited ages to talk to someone, so we’re having a slumber party kiddo.” The prisoner girl groaned with a distinct effort, making her sigh deeply.

“Oh, come on! You seriously can’t talk right now?” She waited for a moment, but no reply came. “Fine! If you can give me your name, I’ll consider us good until you can talk more. I’ll even give you mine!”

She waited, keeping her eyes trained on the prisoner who was currently lying face down on the cell floor, her black hair splayed around her dramatically. She’d almost given up on receiving a reply, all too ready to shoot back a petulant response, but a rough and beaten voice sounded out in the darkness, the first non-hostile words she’d heard in years.

“Suzumi.” The prisoner said, her voice filled with a deep sadness and a terrible rage underneath the horribly broken voice. She waited for a moment, seeing if another name would follow, but it didn’t. She hummed for a while, wondering whether she should give a false name or her genuine one, though she shrugged in the end, making an effort to pull against her restrained arms for the frivolous action.

“I see. Nice to meet you, Suzumi.” She grinned, wondering what kind of response she’d get from this, “My name is Yoruichi Shihōin.”

…No response, huh? Seems that people really did forget about the Onmitsukidō Captains.


A/N: Tada! Things are heating up, boys and girls! Strap yourself into your shihakushō, we’re getting a party started~

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Chapter 57: Kuchiki

The morning air within the Kuchiki estate was, as always, exceptionally refreshing. A product of a lot of kan paid for far too many Kidō Corp labour hours. Though it was one of the only things that the Kuchiki family, with all its extreme conservatives, were actually willing to dish out money on aside from training facilities and enough complex Bakudō barriers and seals to sink a battleship.

In actual fact, the Kuchiki estate wasn’t all that visually impressive. It was beautiful in its own minimalistic way, but it was hardly a gaudy palace that some of the other Noble Families resided in. The Kuchiki was almost miniscule in size, possessing only a few main family members rather than the bloated families where you couldn’t accurately count their numbers the first time around even if you tried.

The Kuchiki family was different, in that way. Conservative in the most innocuous of ways; diet, training, mentality, money, politics. Everything was influenced by the trademarked Kuchiki pride, or at least the handful of elders would love for that to be the case.

The elders could hold power over the lesser parts of the family, those that lived just outside of the Kuchiki’s main estate, though still within Kuchiki owned land. They lived extremely strict and regimented lives, even if they didn’t necessarily wear the Kuchiki name; however, they lived lives of relative comfort and ease, never needing to so much as work, for the Kuchiki clan would provide with its immense wealth and political power.

Something that the elders loved to harp on about was the astoundingly high level of education amongst the branch families and even the twigs that grow from those branches. All told, the Kuchiki family have relatives in almost every administrative and scholarly field that Soul Society has to offer.

Of course, this is impressive. Extremely impressive in fact, but it was all done on the order of one man. There was no goodness in the action, even in the man who had ordered it to be done had every good intention. He had merely said to do so, and the elders were forced to go along with his plan.

The elders, while at least half of them were pleasant—if old and stodgy—the other half were almost malicious, having sat atop their high peak for so long that they couldn’t possibly relate to the struggles of anyone but themselves and their nearest peers. Hundreds of years, in some cases.

Honestly, if you were to look back in the history of the Kuchiki family and the rise of its power, there was an almost unmistakable turning point. It was long ago enough now that only some of Soul Society’s oldest members would actually remember it from their own past, rather than from a book on the Noble Houses and their respective histories.

Though, many would remember the reign of Ginrei Kuchiki within their lifetimes. The stoic 27^th Head of the Kuchiki Family and the Captain of the 6^th Division. Before Ginrei the Kuchiki family was merely one that held an absurd amount of political and economic power, only a middling clan when it came to the introduction of military might to their repertoire.

Ginrei’s father was a Lieutenant, pushing Ginrei to become more, and using every inkling of his own power to aid Ginrei in growing his power beyond mere talent. And, of course, his bet paid off.

Ginrei was the man that grew the Kuchiki family into, potentially, the most powerful and influential house in Soul Society, and even after the death of his children and his grandson, Byakuya’s, instatement as the 28^th head of the Kuchiki family the man still held an astronomical amount of power.

Though Ginrei, ever the minimalist, rarely exercises that power in recent years. He has been more than happy with leaving it to his grandson rather than undertake an issue himself. However, he’d never once admitted to anyone that his power had been waning even before Byakuya had been born, and that he’d hardly been powerful enough to fix many of Soul Society’s most recent issues.

The last time that Ginrei had ever truly fought with someone, was during Byakuya’s instatement into his position as the next 6^th Division Captain, and Ginrei had lost horrifically, though none—not even the spectacularly loudmouthed Kyōraku, at least at the time—had recounted quite how badly.

There was possibly only one person outside of the Court Guard that knew of that, and it was Rukia Kuchiki, the only other Captain-class Soul Reaper within the Kuchiki family. And she only came to know that from a much older Ginrei himself. Ginrei had, thankfully, loosened up in his twilight years, even finding a small amount of child-like mischief once his great, great granddaughter was born to Rukia and Renji Abarai.

Even if his great, great granddaughter didn’t hold the Kuchiki name, he had declared her as legitimate for all intents and purposes—though it didn’t quite stop the elders from squabbling over whether the adopted Rukia’s child was much more than a bastard, even if she retained her last name after marriage to an exceptionally powerful Soul Reaper who serves underneath the family’s head himself.

That very child was… a bit of a wildfire, with traits of mother and father interweaving into a truly terrifying existence. She’d even gone so far as to antagonise the son of the Kurosaki family for a good thirty years before she realised that she was being ridiculous and finally got together with the boy and had a child not ten years later after she’d claimed they were, ‘Taking it slow’, which was just about an antonym with the girl.

Well, anything she could do to irritate her mother, Rukia Kuchiki could only assume. There was nothing to make Rukia feel old like realising that she was a grandmother. She almost hated that her daughter had decided to follow the human timeline of events rather than Soul Society’s generally accepted timeline.

Especially when you were talking about Captain or Lieutenant level beings, with lifespans that could reach into the many hundreds of years, maybe thousands if you were good enough at not dying. Rukia hadn’t even thought about having a child until she was a hundred and fifty-five years old, at least. Ichika had a child when she wasn’t even forty!

Of course, with the nebulous way that souls aged in appearance, it wasn’t quite as horrifying as the rough equivalent of a five-year-old becoming a mother, but there was certainly an air of mortification around it. Especially now that her daughter looked as old, if not older than herself.

Rukia took in a deep breath, silently praying that the stupid Bakudō wards that created the air’s freshness would prove their money’s worth and actually calm her at all. Of course, it didn’t. With a sharp exhale, Rukia stood from her seat within the Courtyard, trying desperately to ignore the deluge of Kuchiki guards that hid themselves out of sight of the house’s residents. A fallacy when it came to the senses of a Captain, mostly anyways.

She lifted a long, thin pipe to her lips, gently pulling on the contents of it and letting the warm, velvety smoke leak into her mouth and down her throat, soothing her airways and sharpening her mind. It wasn’t quite a drug, proving almost no benefit at all other than its pleasant taste and feel—though the 12^th Division stated that it gave a minor increase to focus amongst those that found concentrating a difficulty.

She exhaled into the open air; the thick smoke almost instantly being dissipated by the very same Bakudō wards that proved so good at stripping the air of any pollution. She stood, overlooking the courtyard that was little more than a tasteful stone path through shaped patches of strictly cut grass. Some would call it ugly, Rukia included, but damned if it didn’t fit the place.

With an elegant step, she disappeared from her spot and reappearing on the wall that stands just tall enough to see outside the oppressive, blank walls that the Kuchiki Family had installed almost more than half a millennium ago now.

She could see the massive buildings off in the distance, most of them being administrative or scientific in nature and little of which were residential aside from the household of another Noble Household.

Standing a far stretch from there was a sprawling maze of walls that she lovingly remembers as where she once spent most of her time, traversing those streets on Court Guard business underneath Captain Ukitake, who she has since taken the place of as the Captain of the 13^th Division.

Now, as a Captain, she barely had to move, if she really didn’t want to. The average Soul Reaper doesn’t quite understand the levels to which you could simply shirk duties and forgo politics. The 11^th Division was almost a testament to that, at least in the past.

Captain Zaraki, a truly terrifying man to be in the presence of, was historically flippant about any and all duties he might have, only really following orders when things got really serious—and even then, he’d only follow them the way he wanted to.

Though, things seemed to have changed since then… Zaraki Kenpachi was almost more unnerving to be around now, since the Blood War. He was still just as terrible with directions, seemed to show almost no interest at Captain meetings, could care less about the politics that were slowly undermining the power that the Court Guard had; but despite so many parts of him remaining just the same…

A wave of spiritual pressure touched against Rukia’s own, if only for a moment. It wasn’t anything special, power wise, in fact it was almost underwhelming—but Rukia’s eyes were pulled towards the origin of it regardless. She tried to pinpoint it, preying on the residual energy that remained after the origin was hidden away from her senses.

Her eyes met a direction, that lead to an estate, that made the short woman frown apprehensively. She ran a hand through her long, black hair—exceptionally thick in a way that seemed to remind certain people of past Captain Unohana. She’d even dressed as her once, parting her hair down the middle and weaving it into the Captain’s signature front facing braid. It was thoroughly unappreciated by those who had been mortally terrified of the Captain, though the current Kenpachi seemed to find it disturbingly hilarious.

She looked closer at the estate, trying to find any inkling of the spiritual pressure that she’d sensed so clearly despite its weak overall power. It was hard to stand out in such a spiritually polluted environment—testament to the way that the Court Guard barracks and offices were laid out, to keep the thousands of extremely powerful Soul Reapers from literally making sections of the district inhospitable to the average soul.

But this pressure was so clear. It almost felt as if it were unimpeded in such a way that she’d only experienced a few times, as if it were the clear water of a pond, rather than a river through an industrial district. It was hard to place where she might have felt it before, but Rukia realised that she wasn’t going to be able to get information on its source so easily.

Not with the origin point being dead within the Shihōin Estate, or the Onmitsukidō base of operations, or the 2^nd Division’s barracks. All of which were extremely close together, for reasons that were blithely obvious.

“Michiru!” She called clearly, her voice resonating with a slight pulse of spiritual pressure. In the very next moment, a woman dressed in a Soul Reaper’s shihakushō appeared, the only thing slightly unique about her clothing was the symbol of the 13^th Division and the way that she wore her bronze-coloured hair, weaved into a bun held together tightly by a net of braided hair.

The speed at which the girl moved may have surprised someone, especially with the sizable weight that the young Soul Reaper carried on her body. But every person within the 13^th Division was personally trained, either by herself or her Lieutenant. It also didn’t hurt that the young woman had somewhat of a talent for Shunpo and the art of movement in general.

“Yes, Captain Kuchiki!” The girl greeted loudly, with an overly serious edge.

“Just Rukia, or Captain Rukia if you must.” Rukia demanded with a sigh, knowing that the girl wouldn’t adhere to her order, or she would try, and it would be so painful to watch the girl stammer out her name that she’d be forced to renege on her own order. “Regardless, did you feel that spiritual energy from only a moment ago?”

The weighty girl looked up at her, her rounded face scrunching up in concern, “I–I must apologise Captain R–” she swallowed heavily, “R–Ru—Captain Kuchiki!” She stammered out, eventually reverting to her formal addressing of the woman despite her orders to the contrary. Her wide cheeks were red with embarrassment, though Rukia just sighed and waver her hand dismissively, prompting the now 5^th seat Soul Reaper to continue.

“I did not feel the spiritual energy you speak of. May I ask that you describe it?”

Rukia spent a few minutes trying to describe the sensation to the not that much younger woman kneeling before her, before pulling out paper and drawing examples involving bunnies. Bunnies always helped in explaining things.

Unfortunately, despite her 5^th seat’s focused expression, Michiru was unable to recall such a spiritual pressure—an oddity with her relative level of spiritual sensitivity.

Rukia sent her away, staring off into the distance, looking at the estate that the spiritual pressure had originated from searchingly. She’d both never felt anything like it before, and also found it eerily similar to something she’d felt in the past—however, her mind couldn’t quite put together what it was.

But just as she was about to move off of the wall, beginning her day and the duties that came with it, there was a flash of movement to her left, forcing her to take a quick step back and draw her Zanpakutō to clash with a blade that had been swung at her with all the causal ease she could muster.

“Good.” The clear, regal voice of her older brother, Byakuya Kuchiki rang out across the estate, “You are far better at this than you were when you first became a Captain, Rukia.” She snorted at the man, rolling her eyes at the man’s perfectly maintained hair, separated with the Kuchiki clan’s ornamental hair piece and neck covered with the white, silk wrapping.

“I was much worse at Shunpo back then, Byakuya.” She said adversarially, though he was already looking out towards the Shihōin estate, away from her own sword wielding form. “You felt it too?”

“Indeed.” He said slowly, though his eyes narrowed slightly, a large expression for the classically stoic man.

“Do you know what it was? I swear I’ve felt that spiritual pressure before, I just can’t tell exactly where I–” Rukia lifted her eyes to look at the man, finding his expression even harsher still—intense in a way that she hadn’t seen on him in decades, not since he was concerned that Ichika had somehow found herself within Hueco Mundo.

Which she had, as a matter of fact. Watching Byakuya give her the dressing down of a lifetime, as her Captain no less, was possibly the most gratifying moment in Rukia’s existence, shortly following behind the massive relief after finding her resting upon the corpse of a Menos Grande she’d slaughtered because, ‘It looked comfortable!’

“I believe…” Byakuya began icily, “that it may be the spiritual pressure of a Blank.” Rukia stopped, scrunching her brows together and looking to the estate once more in confusion.

“A Blank?” She repeated, dumbfounded, “but why?”


Been rough for a while, hoping I can get back into it better, but we’ll have to see. Hope you’re all feeling well.

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Chapter 58: Dread

The one thing that Rukia had found was a constant irritation when actually working with her adoptive brother, was that he continued to be protective of her regardless of her own wishes.

Something that made getting sensitive information out of him exceedingly difficult. In regular cases where her brother wouldn’t tell her something, she’d simply take a trip down to Soifon’s quarters and demand an explanation. For a master of stealth, counterintelligence, and secretiveness, Soifon was usually more than happy to subvert her Captain comrade.

This time, however, the scrutiny was placed on Soifon and her 2^nd Division, so that possibility was ruled out. So unless Rukia wanted to run around and start asking questions far too loudly, Byakuya was her only option.

She walked behind the tall and refined man, having aged significantly in appearance since she’d once been running around with Ichigo and the gang. Where he had once look roughly early to mid-twenties, he now looked mid thirties with the presence of someone ten years his superior.

He had changed so extremely from the cold and precise person he’d once been, someone who’d tied himself far too tightly to a sinking ship, closing his eyes to the rising waters. Now, he was formidable in every sense of the word. It was more than just his power, which had increased along with the average Soul Reaper’s had—a decree from the Captain Commander himself to train as many Soul Reapers to be capable of at least releasing their Shikai.

It had been a massive undertaking, something that Shunsui had sacrificed a great deal of political power for in recompense to the whims of Central 46, but he’d done it. The dream of having each and every Soul Reaper reach Shikai had been farfetched, and they’d had to quickly change course to include teaching those who seemed incapable of reaching Shikai to be able to specialise in Kidō or learn the trade of the Onmitsukidō.

Rukia can remember how ludicrously proud she’d been when she’d managed to get every single one of her own Division to learn Shikai. The 13^th Division was one of the most exclusive of the Court Guard, with the Captain themselves choosing each and every one of its members by hand instead of accepting in bulk like the 11^th did, or the glorified contract work that the 12^th called it’s ‘work-force’.

At current, the 13^th only has 10 members, but each of them was a powerful force in and of themselves. Especially with how the power of the Court Guard had increased in general, and how the requirements for becoming a Lieutenant and a Captain had changed significantly. With the advent of the Blood War, far more Lieutenants found themselves capable of Bankai, and it wasn’t long before being a Lieutenant almost required Bankai.

The golden age of Soul Reapers had come. While they may have lost some of their most powerful combatants, and Soul Society still bled profusely from the death of the late Captain Commander and his Lieutenant, there had never been a point in Soul Society’s history where more powerful Soul Reapers had existed.

And Byakuya had changed to reflect that. He was the Captain of the 6^th Division, he was the Noble Captain—instated within the Court Guards to remind them of the duties that they bore to the people, to use their inordinate power to aid those in desperate need. He was a clear bell in the raging storm that the other Captains represented, his sound piercing and ever-true.

“You need to tell me, Brother.” Rukia said again, her voice never leaving it’s conversational tone despite the insistence of her words, “I’m sure that the other Captains and Lieutenants felt it, and they are going to ask questions. I want to know just why the Onmitsukidō would bring a Blank into Soul Society.”

They walked through the brightly lit and extremely minimally designed corridors of the Kuchiki estate, their sandals making no noise as they crossed the light-coloured floorboards. Her brother didn’t respond, but he changed course ever so slightly towards a very particular part of the estate that they were both intimately familiar with.

After only a minute or so of walking at a mundane pace, they arrived at the sliding paper door of a room, which Byakuya easily opened and walked inside, sitting at the low table which already had two cups of tea sitting atop it’s surface. Rukia walked inside, sliding the flimsy door shut behind her and feeling the slight thrum of spiritual energy as the wards that secretly plastered the walls of this room activated.

She sat, easily drinking from the tea in her usual, hyper formal demeanour that she tended to share with her brother. Byakuya eyed her mutely, sipping from his own tea with such elegance that you’d swear that the tea simply disappeared as soon as it passed his lips.

“The Onmitsukidō have been acting strangely, as of late.” He began as he always did, with a short snippet of information to draw the mind before he began to speak more, “They have been acting on orders that were placed decades ago, those which Soifon herself had dismissed. Requests from the Court Guard are being fulfilled with seemingly no rhyme or reason.”

“Soifon had been denying at least half of the orders from the Court Guard for years, labelling them unnecessary or superfluous use of Onmitsukidō resources.” Rukia added, nodding, her brow gently furrowed, “How would she be fulfilling those orders now, after she’s already denied them?” Byakuya quirked an unimpressed eyebrow at her, making her feel distinctly like a child who had asked a silly question.

“I would have thought you would understand the workings of Soul Society’s systems by now, Rukia.” Byakuya stated with a lightly unimpressed tone, casting his gaze down on his much shorter sister, his long hair framing his already impressively intimidating face.

‘You’re the only one that would bother to do that!’ She didn’t quite have the stones to say it, knowing that logically he was correct, but few Captains had to understand the function of Soul Society like the Head of the Kuchiki family and the 6^th Division Captain was required to.

“Regardless,” he said, releasing her from his gaze, “the Onmitsukidō never officially deny any request, thus every request stays open barring an extremely minimal few. There seems to be no defined process for what they are completing, which has sent administration into trying to find the numerous requests that have been denied and try to pin down a reasoning.”

“But why?” Rukia reiterated, “I can see that it’s throwing admin into disarray, but what are they doing? Soifon isn’t someone to start pulling missions out of a hat and send her people off on them. The Onmitsukidō might be cold-hearted, but they are anything but illogical.”

“Precisely.” Byakuya said in a rare moment of absolute agreement, “Central 46 has told us that the Onmitsukidō are currently reopening decades old missions due to the relative peace since the Blood War ended.” Rukia scoffed, and her brother didn’t even bother to give her an admonishing look, simply closing his eyes as he took a long sip of his tea.

“Why hasn’t Soifon spoken? Why is Central 46 speaking for her?” Rukia said, listing just the beginning of her questions about the baffling situation.

“We do not know. Soifon has not appeared at a Captain’s meeting since at least the start of the year, which you would not know as you have not either.” Now Byakuya did give her an admonishing gaze, his grey eyes looking down at her with expectation. She rolled her eyes, the small act of rebellion against her brother’s strict minded standards.

“I was training my Division, as I have been doing for at least a decade now.”

“And I have been doing so as well.” He countered neutrally, “However, you are capable of excusing yourself to attend an important meeting amongst your peers. Your Lieutenant can, at minimum, take command of training for the time you are away.” She raised an eyebrow at this, immediately halting the flow of Byakuya’s admonishment.

“Have you met my Lieutenant?” She asked, almost amused by her brother’s blunder. He turned his head to the side slightly, apprehension in his eyes.

“I have not. I do have my own Division to command, Rukia. However, I would have expected that you would choose your Lieutenant wisely, with responsibility and honour at the forefront of your decision.” She nodded, though the amusement didn’t leave her face.

“And it certainly was. He was one of two that have attained Bankai within my Division,” Byakuya nodded deeply, with his own Division hosting only three others than himself, “and he definitely meets the required level of responsibility, despite his clumsiness. However… his Shikai and Bankai made us question whether or not he should be transferred to the 11^th Division.”

Byakuya sharpened his gaze, seemingly remembering just what she was talking about, and the incident that surrounded it. He gave a light nod, absolving her of her sins within his eyes, and continuing forwards.

“I have approached Soifon personally, and she has denied any ulterior motives, though she did speak quite carefully. She is not as trained in wordplay as Yoruichi was. Her obfuscation was too obvious to ignore, but it is hardly an admission to any other motive.”

Rukia contemplated the strange situation, pairing it with her brother’s insight. Byakuya Kuchiki’s social insight was something that you would be an absolute fool to ignore. Throughout his life he has dealt with more stone-faced merchants, officials, and family partners than Rukia could even count. He might be young, in comparison to the extremely long lives that some in the Soul Society have lived, but that was hardly a barrier for him. He had become the Head of the Kuchiki family at an age where she had been still only just coming into her own.

Soifon was not as easy to read as Byakuya made her out to be, only the extremely politically minded like her brother could ever possibly say that.

“They’re hiding a largescale operation.” Rukia surmised, and Byakuya nodded, having come to the same conclusion, “I don’t understand what they would even be looking for. The Onmitsukidō hold a nigh monopoly over Soul Society’s information, they hold all the power, what ploy could they possibly want to pull? Is the Blank just to throw us off balance?”

“They hold a monopoly on information, not power. The Shihōin hold some more power, but they have politically distanced themselves from the Onmitsukidō since Yoruichi left her Captain position, though they still train their new generations as they once did with Yoruichi. I have even heard that one of their youngest has surpassed Yoruichi’s progress when she was the same age.”

Rukia felt herself swallow involuntarily with the mere idea that there was going to be another Yoruichi walking around the place, but she decided to pass over the talking point. It wasn’t important right now, not yet at least.

“So you think they are making a political gambit?” Rukia posed, making the stern man sigh slightly, placing his cup back onto the table elegantly, exactly where he’d picked it up from.

“I cannot say. Regardless of my suspicion, it still doesn’t equate correctly. Soifon has been supremely uninterested in the shifting sands of political power since her instatement, and she still holds unquestionable power over the Onmitsukidō, so there hasn’t been a quiet change in leadership.”

“The Shihōin family then? Maybe they are pulling strings on Soifon, or Soifon is acting to defend her position from them.” Byakuya thought on the notion for a moment, which is a moment more than he would give any regular supposition. But he shook his head in dismissal of the idea, causing the curtains of his long black hair to shake elegantly as they flowed down the front of his immaculate Captain’s haori. The man had grown his hair out to an exceptional length, easily rivalling Rukia’s own, though likely longer due to the height he had over her.

“No, the Shihōin family has continued to allow for Soifon’s leadership over the Onmitsukidō and even some of the best that their family has to offer. They value practicality supremely. I have no doubt that they have had at least one member of their family that would be capable of rivalling Soifon in Shunpo, they have instead stated that they wish to produce a true heir to the Shihōin that can lead the Onmitsukidō without question of their ability. As of now, they still consider Yoruichi to be their greatest creation, and until they can produce someone definably greater, they will not return.”

“Student defeats the master?” Rukia questioned, “I guess it does make sense for a family built on the legacy of assassins and Shunpo masters. But…”

Rukia struggled to think for a moment, finding no real certain possibility besides some strange form of outside involvement, something that Soul Society and the Court Guard had been on high alert for since Aizen’s betrayal.

“No, I don’t think that they are going to be able to have one of their own match Yoruichi any time soon.” Rukia declared solemnly. She had seen some of what the woman had to offer, and even when she’d heard the stories of her extreme power, Rukia had known that Yoruichi hadn’t even scratched the surface of her potential. Not yet. “Are they, or someone inside the Shihōin family squirming under the thumb of their tradition?”

Her brother looked at her neutrally for a good while, longer than he had after her last proposition.

“I cannot say.” He intoned heavily after contemplating for at least a few more seconds, “We are working with too few of the pieces to understand the magnitude of this just yet. It is quite possible that you are correct, however.”

The slight praise he gave to her deduction gave a warmth to her cheeks that almost made her feel embarrassed. She was a Captain now, even having done an extremely impressive job of training her own Division, only just pulling in under her own brother’s results despite the difference in the sizes of their Divisions. But somehow, that vague praise was something that the overly taciturn man could use to bring her back to feeling like a fledgeling Soul Reaper that had only just learned to use Shikai.

But in that very next moment, she could almost feel her blood run cold within her veins, watching as her older brother looked to the side, out of the room’s window to view the various towers and eclectic buildings that existed within the walls of the Soul Society, even being able to peek over the walls that obscured the view of the Rukongai that laid beyond, perpetually in a state of disarray.

His face had changed from that brutally stony guise, one that was almost legendary even within the Captains, to one of visible consternation. His brow crinkling elegantly and his jaw clenching enough that she could see the slight definition of the muscles beneath his sharp features.

“You must be careful, Rukia.” He said, his voice so soft that it almost made her wonder if her sister had taken the same tone when she’d expressed concern for him. “I can try my best to keep you and this family safe, along with Soul Society itself but… I believe that not even Captain Commander Kyōraku quite sees the magnitude of the storm that is surely coming our way.”

He turned back towards her, his grey eyes showing the most genuine display of care that she’d ever experienced from the man, along with a small smile that only served to worry her further. He gently stood, leaving the room with barely a wake of air as he moved out of her sight, closing the door behind her before disappearing from her side, flash stepping hundreds of metres away within moments.

She sat in shock, nervously thumbing the hilt of her Zanpakutō as she slowly tried to comprehend what had caused her brother to act in such a way. Despite minutes of contemplation, she was left with nothing but a horrible, terrible dread that ate away at her stomach, mocking her as if it had the answer that she felt was right on the tip of her tongue.


A/N: Here’s some more! Still working on being consistent again, but there’s only so much time until my university starts up, and life will change then. We’ll have to see, hey?

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