The Death and the Raspberry

Storyteller

Storyteller

The scent of blood and ash and rotted meat filled the air.

Choked words gargled through a throat that filled with blood. A single hand reached out despite blurred vision, towards the glowing and golden Bakudō barrier mere meters from him. His white-and-blue Academy uniform slowly stained deep red with each passing moment as he stared through the translucent dome.

Around it, two Hollows, entirely uninterested in him. One jumped up and down on top of the barrier with enlarged legs. Another, with thick arms and bigger fists, beat away against it.

Cracks formed. Spiritual energy reduced to dust, as if it were breaking stone, glittered down and onto the floor before it vanished entirely. Yet, the barrier held.

Within, more than half a dozen peers, men and women that made it to their guest instructor—some man from the Third, he didn’t remember his name through the pain and the haze of approaching unconsciousness—gave all he could to protect them. He reinforced the barrier with, to the dying young man’s eyes, seemed to be a limitless well of spiritual power.

Cracks mended, but others formed—but they formed more slowly. It appeared he could keep it up. But he needed help.

So did the man whose arm kept reaching for the barrier.

Until, suddenly, he felt his head hang and his body lift. Large hands wrapped around his torso and he groaned.

Blood sprayed the broken and burning room. One wall had collapsed, the door had been torn from its hinges, the stone walls cracked and broken. Red painted everything, including part of the Bakudō barrier that held Fourth Seat Nakajima and all the students he had managed to save.

Even now, they pleaded with him.

“Please, Fifth Seat Nakajima, you can hold out! Help is coming!” One young woman begged.
“I’ve never seen Kidō like yours! If anyone can keep this up, it’s you!” An older man student all the same, encouraged—the desperate lie clear. He had no idea and it was obvious he wished to convince himself as much as Souta.
“Please, Sensei, I just want to see my parents again…” A younger man bordered on sobbing as the third Hollow in the room, winged, bit the dying man clean in half and swallowed.

It pinched bulbous fingertips together, _delicately_ pulled the Asauchi from the man’s sash, and tossed it into its gaping mouth beneath the beak-like mask as well.
The entire room suddenly shook. Dust rained down from the ceiling and one of the richly-finished wooden beams that framed the room, cracked. Behind Souta, the students shrieked and two more burst into tears, spirits broken.

The winged Hollow simply stared from behind its blood-stained mask with unnaturally steady, wide, yellowed irises.

Flesh shifted, dry but flexible by its sound, as talons extended from its three-digit hand.

Through the broken wall came into view, however barely, another sight entirely in the far distance: a Hollow that dwarfed the ones in the room, nearly as tall as some of the tallest structures in all the Seireitei, green, with a Hollow hole that could swallow a home. Each step thundered across the Academy as it walked towards an inscrutable destination.
 
A casual stroll to the academy was not, on a normal day, expected to be exciting. This is why Saeki made the trip so frequently, "I'll just check on the students". It's always an easy excuse when the 5th division's role is so nebulous, and its membership so closely tied to promising fresh blood from these halls of learning. Today, Saeki had promised to bring freshly made tea to Hanako, one of the teachers whom he frequently fraternized with. With his silver tongue and attractive features, Saeki was no stranger to interest from the women of the 10th division, but with Hanako the interest was mutual. Saeki waited outside her classroom as the cup in each hand betrayed tepid fluid within. In his excitement, he had apparently arrived far earlier than intended. He mulled over the possibility of making it again and returning. Was it not better to be late with good tea than to arrive early with an inferior product?

The smell of sulfur followed by the roar of an inferno from the room behind him tore Saeki to reality. Searing heat washed over his back even as he instinctively steeled himself, covered the back of his head, and dove out of the way of the flame jetting from the doorway. Time seemed to freeze in the air for a moment before suddenly resuming as splintered wood and sparse chunks of masonry rained down. In an instant, Saeki was back on his feet with his hand instinctively placed on the pommel of his Zanpakuto. He peered into the room to survey the damage. Smoke and debris obscured most of the room, and even with Reiatsu Perception he was unable to determine the source of the blast, and he couldn't detect anything aside from Shinigami in the immediate vicinity. Those who survived the blast began recovering from the initial shock leaving a chorus of groans, cries, and piercing screams to grow. What bodies Saeki could make out among the rubble were, as far as he could tell, utterly charred and disfigured.

"There's nothing I can do here, I need to find someone from the 4th." Saeki said with hesitation, as if to convince himself. It was true that there was no immediate additional threat he could find beyond the disaster itself, and that he didn't have any skill to speak of in the healing arts. Still, he knew the real reason he hesitated to enter the room was fear of what he might find behind the teacher's podium. It was better to leave the responsibility of finding out the extent of the casualties to the medical division rather than confirm what he feared may have happened to a person whose face he may no longer even recognize. Saeki stood frozen in the doorway with indecision before sprinting down the hallway toward where he knew someone proficient in kaido should be. His progress was brought to a screeching halt when he detected three reiatsu signatures consistent with those of hollows.

“Please, Sensei, I just want to see my parents again…” Saeki heard the sobbing student and his eyes darted toward Souta’s barrier as it fractured and mended itself. Saeki scanned each threat before homing in on the winged hollow between him and the living Shinigami protected only by that fragile golden mosaic. He sized up the winged hollow, taking brief note of the asauchi it had so tenderly torn from its owner. “At least this one is fairly weak,” he thought before lunging at the winged hollow.

Saeki planted, putting most of his weight on his front foot to increase the power available to his striking hand, and aimed a precise left-hand punch at the creature’s exposed throat. As penance, it would choke on the blade it had stolen. The mechanics of the strike were near perfect, each muscle group rippled with tranquil fury, but the beast surprised Saeki as its eyes locked onto him. With no time to spare, the hollow’s form subtly shifted with a surge of power, seeming as if the hollow itself had ceased to exist for a moment before reappearing centimeters from where it should have been. With speed and force that shouldn’t have been possible, its malformed hand came down in a chopping motion toward Saeki’s head. Saeki shifted his weight to the back foot, twisted his torso left, and used his right elbow to deflect the force of the strike. Even still, the hollow’s unexpected power allowed the force of the blow to scallop off a shallow piece of skin from Saeki’s arm.

“How did it do that?” Saeki thought to himself before realizing the hollow seemed to be concealing some part of its Reiatsu, an ability he thought unavailable to the mindless beasts. In the same breath where he worked this out, he reconfigured his expectations and took advantage of the hollow’s off-balance attack. Saeki used his right hand to grab behind the hollows head and pull its face down into a brutal right knee. It’s teeth and jaw made a satisfying crunch before it staggered backwards. It attempted to strike back but flailed uselessly at the air when Saeki dodged away slightly and then skipped back towards the hollow: delivering a fatal side kick to the creature’s exposed throat. The winged hollow gasped uselessly for air that the crushed windpipe couldn’t pull as it fell over in gurgling silence.
 
The children were whining.

Nakajima Souta stared at the trio of Hollows before him without blinking, their forms obscured by the sheen of golden energy connected to his palm. Behind him, more than a half dozen students wailed and cringed, their distracting cries filling his ears as he focused on holding the wall of Reiryoku before him together against the relentless pounding of the two brute-like beasts closest to him. Some might have taken encouragement from their pleas, finding a hidden well of strength within in some desperate gambit to defend the innocent- but to him, their words were little more than the bleating of helpless lambs awaiting the slaughter, a mere distraction from the truly important work of saving his own skin.

Idiots. He thought, taking in a deep breath as he felt the barrier begin to crack -it wouldn’t hold much longer, no matter how much energy he pushed into the thing- his mind shifting through the cold calculus of what it would take for him to actually defeat the trio versus what it might do to his reputation if he simply left the entitled Asauchi brats to die. There was something odd about that as well, something that tickled the back of his mind, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but it would have to wait until after the battle.

He had done the math, and there was no world where he died to a pack of scrub Hollows in the middle of the fucking Academy.

“I suggest you pay attention, class.” The Fourth Seat said, his voice a sigh as he took in a deep breath, the cracks in his barrier spreading further and further until…Snap! It broke, the two Hollows closest to him roaring in glee at the feast before them. Both were misshapen things, out of proportion creatures whose bodies were as grotesque as they were powerful, with one sporting a pair of oversized fists while the other a matching set of legs. “This should help you see that even the simplest of Kido spells can be effective on the battlefield.”

Of the two beasts, the large-fisted one moved first, swinging a massive hand down at Souta with a roar, its comrade following up the attack with a sweeping kick meant to cut off all avenues of escape. A vicious combination, one that would have felled any of the Students behind him- but he had not been a student for decades.

“Bakudo Number One: Sai.” The white-haired man intoned, left hand flicking out in a dismissive wave as he slipped between the two beasts with a single Shunpo, the quick casted Bakudo hindering their attacks just enough that they missed him entirely. The legged one was swifter on the uptake than its brother, twisting about to follow him as he moved through the blasted hallway, creating space… just so he could aim a single, precise blast at the slower of the two Hollows.

“Hado Number 4: Byakurai.” Electricity arced from his fingers in a white line of Reiryoku, blasting a solid hole in the Hollow’s shoulder as it roared in pain, turning to follow after him as well. Good. It would bode quite well for him if he could keep the brats safe through… whatever this mess was. Souta didn’t stop moving, his body a blur of Shunpo as evaded their blows over and over again, utilizing Sai to redirect their limbs when they got too close for comfort, a lazy smile spread across his face, as if he was simply teaching a class rather than in a fight for his life.

It wasn’t until the heavy-handed one spewed a stream of some vile, foul smelling liquid at him that his demeanor shifted, his smile fading as he Shunpo’d over the mutilated body of a pretty looking blonde, her golden hair spread out in a bloody fan that melted into greyish-brown sludge the instant after it touched her. He didn’t think, just moved, the words spilling from his mouth as he brought both hands up, drawing the symbol for Bakudo Number Nine in midair with his left while he spoke the name of a stronger, more potent Hado, one the Students would know by name if not by sight- they were just beginners, after all, and it was one of the spells they would need to master in order to graduate.

"Bakudo Number Nine: Geki! Hado Number Thirty-Three: Shakkahō!" The twin-casted spells came to life simultaneously, a red glow surrounding the leggy Hollow as it froze in place, furious but impotent to escape the binding. Its brother, slower and weakened by his previous attacks, was unable to avoid the torrent of crimson Reiryoku that engulfed the entirety of its upper torso, the sheer force of the spell blasting the monster off its feet… which soon proved to be all of it that remained, its charred corpse collapsing in a heap of rapidly fading flesh as he turned his attention to the bound Hollow.

About time you showed up. Souta thought, his lips spreading in a wide, almost manic grin as that familiar outfit sped down the ravaged hallway to deliver a single, furious kick to the back of the sole remaining beast’s right leg, forcing it to collapse to one knee with a satisfying crack of bone. Golden Reiryoku crackled through the Fourth Seat’s fingers as he brought his hands together, blue eyes wide with an obvious mania that cast his entire being in a far more sinister light than he knew, his voice echoing with power behind every syllable of the spell he was about to unleash.

“Hado Number Sixty-Three: Raikōhō!”
 
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After the winged hollow collapsed, Saeki turned his attention to the other two hollows. One of them, a creature with arms that would be comical if not for the Shinigami blood coating them, was seared and flagging after taking the brunt of a Byakurai. Saeki used shunpo to rapidly engage the other hollow who had managed to get on top of the Kido Corps’ 4th seat. A kick was delivered to the hollows leg to try to prevent it from chasing Souta as he tried to keep at range. The hollow with oversized legs was caught by surprise with a kick that found purchase enough to crack the beast’s femur.

At the same time, Saeki caught sight of the red wash of fire as it evaporated the upper half of the hollow with oversized arms. A tinge of rage crept into Saeki’s façade as the shakkaho brought his mind back to the classroom inferno, a momentary lapse that could have seen him badly wounded had the Geki not restricted its movement just in time to prevent it from dealing a more serious blow. When he saw the beast, now bound and vulnerable, he felt his inner spirit prod at his rage. He didn’t need much of a push and delivered a second kick fueled by fury to the same leg he had already cracked. This time the leg gave out completely, the massive bone splintering and snapping in on itself like an oak tree hit by a bullet train, forcing the hollow to collapse onto its remaining knee. Saeki had only a moment to admire the jagged calf bone jutting from the back-side of the beasts knee, and acknowledge his creeping shame, before Hado number sixty-three erased it in a flash of raw power.

With the battle finished, Saeki could feel the deepening pain to his twice damaged right arm. Blood trickled down where the winged hollow had taken a shallow slice of skin, and the bone ached where the big leg hollow had landed the second strike. Even if he would need to take care for this: he was not out of action yet.
 
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"We should leave." Souta said quietly as he dusted himself off. The students had, predictably, done little more than cry and cheer since he had defeated the Hollows, and they did so now, showering the two Shinigami with praise interspersed with terrified sobs. Tch. Pathetic. "Sooner rather than later."

The other Shinigami, Saeki, nodded once, agreeing with his assessment. He had been aware of the man in a tangential manner before this -they shared a number of social circles but had never properly interacted beyond basic pleasantries- but now he was firmly on the Nakajima’s radar, even if he had been injured by that winged Hollow when he had rushed in to help.

“Agreed, we are adrift in a hostile ocean and need to find land for these." The taller man said, turning towards the seven remaining students before he spoke again, his voice full of the kind of comforting drivel that made Souta want to sick up even more than the smell of burnt flesh and melted bone. “We are not out of danger yet, I am afraid, but we are fortunate to have 4th Seat Souta-san to guide us to safety.”

Now that is interesting… Souta thought as he began to move, his own voice firmer and more commanding than it had been earlier. He had no desire to portray a false sense of care for the lambs they were leading away from the slaughter, but projecting a sense of authority would do the job near as well, and speak more to his sense of duty than any kind words ever could.

“Of course. Follow me, class.” He said, taking the lead position while he set a brisk, though not brutal, pace, his eyes and senses scanning ahead for any potential threats that might come their way. “Sixth Seat Shoyu will guard our rear flank.”
 
Saeki noted the willingness to take command and even the lack of an honorific from Souta. He opted not to comment further, it was better to be seen as following the leader, so he bowed respectfully and fell to the rear of the formation as ordered. "Perfect," Saeki thought to himself as the group marched on, the seriousness of his wounds now setting in as the adrenaline of the life and death struggle died down.

The pace Souta set was brisk, allowing the group to make good progress despite frequent stops as the students cowered from every fight, sound, and shadow along the way. Actual combat was infrequent with Souta's mastery at range providing a welcome reprieve while Saeki nursed his damaged arm. What few hollows made it past the firestorm of Hado, or came up behind the group, were dispatched mostly with precise kicks to vitals. After a while, even Saeki found it difficult to keep the frustration from his voice as he reassured the mewling youths and ushered them forward, but the unplanned stops did have the benefit of allowing the two more experienced Shinigami to take notice of various things along the way.

They saw the massive green hollow from earlier through a collapsed section of roof: this time locked in combat with a Shinigami who darted around it like a wasp defending the nest. Saeki didn’t recognize the Shinigami from this distance, but they at least appeared to be keeping pace with the creature. They also both noticed the lack of teachers among the dead that littered the academy grounds. Some of this could be explained by the ratio of students to teachers, another portion by the teachers being more skilled, but the number of bodies was still too low to be accounted for. Saeki was so absorbed in the math he hadn't really noticed the dead student’s missing Asauchi until their group had nearly made their way to the main entrance.

"They are eating the bodies of fully fledged Shinigami, but with those who haven't manifested...", Saeki thought aloud as they made it a short way from the main gate. He considered calling the 4th seat over to discuss this revelation, but he decided to wait when he heard Souta say, "Keep moving. We're nearly at the exit."

The gate was now in sight, the group had made it: safety was within their grasp...
 
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“Fifth Seat Nakajima!” A feminine voice called out, unseen at first, before the rushing wind of Shunpō brought a figure right up next to the two men and the students behind them as they, as quickly as the students could manage through the broken halls and over the torn-asunder grounds of the Academy, made their way towards the main northern gate.

Beyond it: the flickering sensation of over a hundred responding Shinigami, some gathered at the base of the hill and others—presumably—fighting the Hollows that still lingered across it.

Next to them: blood-stained, with a Shihakushō burn in places, torn in others. Clearly wounded, yet still able to fight, and clearly still fast. Her red hair, less saturated in the dim light caused by the smoke that blackened the sky, had patches of blood already half-dried in certain places. Flatter, too, with less volume and fewer waves than usual.

“Third Seat!” One student exclaimed.
“Sensei!” A young woman’s voice warbled and cracked with audible relief.

Nobuko Tachibana of the Tenth.

Her red eyes, wide at first with caution, quickly softened with relief of her own as she saw seven still-living students behind the two men. Her eyes, then, turned to Saeki.

“Sixth Seat Shoyu, I saw you on the manifest,” she breathed the words, another wave of relief loosening the tension in her tight shoulders.

She looked between the students and the two men, as she realized what they had done. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes and turned the whites faintly pink.

“Thank you, both,” she allowed herself those words, that one show of heart, before her expression and voice steeled. “I’ve just come from the hillside, I led away a handful of students and carved a path for them through the Hollows. I’ve never even heard of so many gathering like this, or working together.”

Each question was followed by a long step, the group bounding forward, over broken white bricks from the walkways, or around pieces of other buildings torn apart and crashed down onto the grounds.

“The other Divisions have secured places around the hill to receive survivors, while the Ninth is leading the counterattack to retake the Shin’ō,” she explained, hurriedly. “I’ll accompany you three through, to help fend off Hollows and keep our students safe.”

Hope, when it spread, compared to sunlight. Fear and apprehension—the way students had jumped at every unexpected sound or turned dour at ever tragic sight as they accompanied the other two officers this far—melted away, replaced by wide-eyes of disbelief, and even smiles.

They cheered their Third Seat and Zanjutsu instructor.

“Thank these two, all of you,” Nobuko insisted, then turned back to Souta and Saeki. “Quickly, while we move: Do you two know of any other groups of survivors? I can go back for them.”
 
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Souta heard the woman coming exactly half a second before she arrived, the familiar voice and face of Nobuko Tachibana appearing in a blur of furious Shunpo that had him taking a single half-step back at its sheer speed. Everyone, himself included, knew the third seat of the Tenth Division- she was, in many ways, the true Lieutenant of her division, if not in name than certainly in action, as her daily efforts were the only thing that seemed to keep the Academy running as smoothly as it did.

“It was nothing, Tachibana-san.” He replied, biting back the ire he felt at her mistake in identifying his seat, though the smile he presented to her strained from the effort it took. “Truly, we barely ran into any trouble at all.”

Of course, the students behind him, awash in their salvation, immediately protested, half a dozen voices echoing over the hillside as they clamored to give their own version of events, each one more outlandish than the last.

“That’s not true! There were SO MANY of them!”
“Your barrier held for ages!”
“I’ve never seen anyone cast a Hado that big!”

On and on the group went- a notable difference from their earlier wailing, but one he was happy to indulge in, if only for a little while. He had appearances to keep up, after all.

“We found no other survivors on our way out, but I sensed at least two other pockets of resistance still in the Academy- one very close to the center, and one headed south, in the opposite direction we came. Both had at least one Officer among them.” That there were no Students amongst those groups was, he felt, something that needed no explanation- it was unlikely too many had survived beyond the seven he and Saeki had managed to escort to safety.

“Also…” Souta began, his words unusually hesitant as he moved off with the group, his gaze lingering on the injured Nobuko’s drawn Zanpakuto, the thoughts he had filed away for later coming together like pieces of a puzzle, incomplete yet able to show him something of the whole picture, even if it was a patchwork image. “I don’t think this was random. The Hollows… I saw one eat a Student’s Asauchi right in front of me. They were targeting the blades, I am certain of it.”

The why of it eluded him, but he had seen too many missing blades on otherwise hale corpses to come to any other conclusion.
 
Relief washed over Saeki as they finally encountered an ally, and a capable one at that. He waited as Souta related both the locations of possible groups of survivors as well as his observations around the hollow’s behavior. “So he noticed as well,” Saeki thought before speaking aloud,

“Tachibana-Sensei, I can confirm this observation. The hollows appeared to specifically target their empty blades. Not just that…” He hesitated, going over the math again in his head before continuing, “This is just a theory, but I couldn’t help noticing the lack of teachers among both the living and the dead. In fact, you are the first teacher I’ve seen since this attack began.”

A pang of guilt made him wince as he said the words. He hadn’t bothered to scan for Hanako in that original classroom. He hadn’t even really tried to find a healer to come back and help.

“Hanako-chan,” more fresh guilt washed over him as he used the familiar with her name, “you didn’t see her when you made your way here, did you? Her classroom was engulfed in flames. I couldn’t find the source of the blast and I-I…” He stuttered out the last word and paused before continuing, “I went to find a someone from the 4th before I ran into these students.”

He knew the likelihood of her having found anything was bordering on impossible, the path she would have taken to get here was all wrong, but he asked nonetheless.
 
That relief in her eyes spread like a golden, morning dawn as the students spoke of what Souta achieved. Holding Hollows at bay with a barrier longer than any of them imagined possible. Presumably, fending them off with his own, powerful Hadō, from how another one of them spoke.

Another, leaping bound carried the entire group further forward across the grounds.

Then, her attention returned to Shoyu. He wasted no time, as a good officer should, in sharing the pertinent details he noticed: Asauchi being eaten, the lack of living teachers, and she bit into her lower lip as he explained her. She cast her eyes away—forward to the gate still in the distance—and gave a sharp nod.

But more importantly: Hanako.

She smiled more fully.

“I know her well. I can feel her presence, she’s already halfway down the hill with two of her students,” she confirmed for Saeki. “She was injured, yes, but well enough. They’ll be just fine. I promise you that, Sixth Seat.”

Then, with a nod, she answered his observations:

“I’ve seen what you described, too,” she explained, her voice wavering once again—the ironclad steadiness of it weakened once more. “And more. I saw, whether I even believe it or not, what appeared to be some gate with what looked like teeth. Something inside it, taking captured Shinigami in, and I couldn’t…”

She blinked away her weakness, what she was about to say. It all vanished and those fiorm, read eyes returned.

“The look of it almost reminded me of a Hollow’s mask. The jaw of it.”

Another series of leaps and the group sailed forward, closer. The gates of the Academy itself were broken down and trampled. The frame destroyed entirely, trunks of wood carved into perfect pillars and now shattered and splintered across the broken, white-stone walkway. The walls on either side, broken, or burnt, away.

“Shoyu, Nakajima!” The Third Seat suddenly shouted, leaped in front of them, the entire group, and held her arms out to either side, her back to them. She skidded to a stop on the white stone path, throwing loose bricks and chunks of broken earth out of the way, as she forced the entire group to a stop.

Before them, it happened: in front of them to the north, off to the east, to the west as well, the air shifted. A black stitch of right-angles appeared in her, angular and sharp. It began to open, just as she had described the sight earlier, in the shape of squared-off teeth.

Wider.

Wider.

Until all-white, as if gloved, hands emerged and pried the jaw open. Within, the identical faces of the black, towering, Menos Grande. A class of Hollows oft discussed, never seen, and their typical whereabouts, presumably, a mystery not yet solved.

With masks of simple circles for eye sockets, leading to red eyes, and long, pointed, vented noses.

The jaw opened wider, as if thrown apart by the first Gillian that grabbed it, only for its arms to fall to its sides and vanish into its cloak-like body. Gillian spread out at the front of the Academy grounds, just inside the gates.

Three turned their attention down the hill. One, however, did not: it stared forward.

A trio of sea blue, golden, and crimson blasts echoed their alien hum across the Academy grounds, vibrating the pebbles and rocks strewn about from the devastation. A moment later, impacts, explosions, and a wave of heat rushed back up the Academy hill and nearly flattened the canopies of the trees it rushed back in.

They were attacking the reinforcements attempting to retake the hill. To the east and west, other groups of Gillian appeared and, similarly, most turned their attention to the all-sides counterassault that the Shinigami launched.

Steam began to flow from under the mask of the sole Gillian that stared down Saeki, Souta, and Nobuko.

“Run,” Nobuko ordered as she drew her sword—whose blade wordlessly turned pink, her tsuba took the form of a petal, and the silk of her tsuka turned as red as the Gillian’s beady eyes.

She strode forward, wrapped her hands around the hilt, and gripped it tight enough that her knuckles whited. She took Jōdan before her students, just as she always taught them.

“Go down the hill if you think you can make it past these monsters,” she ordered, voice raised as she spoke back to the men and women behind her, yet did not turn away from the Hollow. “Or hide until we’ve killed them.”

A pause. The Gillian continued to excrete steam from beneath its mask.

“And no matter what,” the rise of her voice said that she spoke more to the students, now, than the officers.

“As long as I am here, the Academy will never abandon you.”
 
Relief had come like a flash of lightning, and it left just as quickly when the Gillian rumbled across the academy grounds to cut the survivors from their lifeline. When he heard Nobuko order the group to, “run”, he almost convinced himself he could. “I’ve saved seven souls this day, and that was already more than was required of me. Besides, who will protect them if we stay and fight?” But Saeki knew that leaving Nobuko to fight this thing alone was an error. In this moment, Saeki, Souta, and Nobuko had the advantage of numbers. If cowardice threw away this advantage, they would risk Nobuko’s defeat, and then their subsequent destruction as the hollow rampaged unimpeded with the strongest among them out of the way,

“As long as I am here, the Academy will never abandon you.” Nobuko said.

The words from the 3rd seat rang true for Saeki: he had already abandoned one person who survived in-spite of him. He could not abandon another after fate had forgiven him his prior trespass,

“And I will not abandon you. This is a fight we can win together, but even you may not be able to defeat this thing alone.” Saeki replied.

The hollow let out a deafening roar, but Saeki’s will was not hampered. He drew his blade and ran its rusty blade along his hand,

“Thirst, Xue Long”

Blood from his wound rushed to transform his Zanpakuto from a degraded antique hardly recognizable as a weapon into an elegant dao sword.

“Let’s stop this, Tachibana-sensei.”

Saeki charged and slashed at the creatures’ legs where his blade found purchase, carving a gash into the inside of its left thigh that revealed bone beneath a spray of blood. At the same time, Nobuko leapt at the hollow and landed a glancing strike with her blade, the impact softened by its hierro, but still leaving a deep cut. The hollow reared its head for an attack and Saeki could feel the energy building up, but it didn’t seem to be aimed at the two melee fighters.

“Shit, it’s attacking, Souta!” Saeki yelled as the beast unleashed powerful cero.
 
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Souta looked up at a crimson sky and in it, saw death.

The swirling vortex of burning Reiryoku that the Gillian -he was having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that there even was such a creature, let alone that one was standing right in front of him- had launched at him filled his sight, the beam wider than he was tall by nearly four or five times, its raw power so potent he could see his life flash before his eyes.

He had unleashed his Shikai and bound the massive Hollow’s head in a sphere of pure darkness almost immediately, but it hadn’t been enough. The blast’s buildup had shattered Tatemae’s creation with impunity, filling his vision with the impossible power he now saw and felt, its building energy promising his end. He tried to move but his feet were heavy, his arms moving in slow motion as the Menos’ blast slammed down on his frame, the heat palpable as he took in one last breath…

And blinked, his vision filling with a stream of sakura petals that consumed the blast before it even had a chance to harm him.

“Wha… Fuck!” Souta muttered, his body at last catching up with his mind as he called up Tatemae’s power once again, attempting to encase the Menos’ head in an orb of darkness once more- only, the beast moved, far faster than anything that large had any right to, its body swaying out of the way of the sphere he conjured, all while charging yet another one of those impossible blasts of energy…

And this time, when it fired, there was no storm of sakura petals from 3rd Seat Tachibana to save him.

“Hado Number Fifty-four: Haien!” He spat, gritting his teeth as his body sagged with the effort it took to produce the high level Hado without an incantation, the purple orb barrelling into the Hollow’s attack at the absolute last second, diverting some, but no all, of the burning energy away from his body. The entire right half of his frame was still engulfed in the blast, skin peeling away as he roared, the pain nearly overwhelming him then and there.

But he lived.

Souta opened his eyes, bleary and unfocused, to watch as Nobuko and Shoyu battered their blades against the Menos’ skin, doing far more to it than he had, even with his most focused Hado. And now, here he was, already half dead from a single blow, utterly drained, the weakest and least helpful member of their impromptu group.

Useless.
 
White flaked from the Gillian’s mask as it slowly collapsed, its wounds, and the final blows inflicted by all three of the Shinigami that stood before it, overcoming its strength. With steam from Kidō blasts still pouring off it, it listed it to the side, groaned, and started to collapse. The red in its indented sockets flickered, dimmed—then flared to the life.

The eyes seemed to vibrate, then locked onto Souta even mid-collapse. Its jaw opened, the body of its mask cracking off to form a jaw, and a red of swirling red condensed in front of it.

And then the hum, the sound of death to Shinigami ears, boomed over all of them and echoed across the Academy as a final death toll. It soared straight at Souta.

He felt it before anyone else: the presence of a soul that had not been there a moment before, but suddenly was. A powerful one.

Almost the same as a Captain.

A figure darted from the other side of the Academy date, past Nobuko—who was on her knees as sweat dripped from her chin, her blade lodged into the ground to provide support—and past Saeki. His feet, sandal-wrapped tabi, skidded to a stop right in front of Souta.

And the sea of red crashed down in front of Souta, but went no farther. Instead, the black Shihakushō flapped in the storm of wind. Souta saw only his back. In front of him, the red condensed as the back end of the blast merged with the front, all in to a ball—only to get thrown into the air with a great groan of effort.

There, it exploded above the academy in a ball of orange-glowing black smoke.

As the ground beneath everyone’s very feet shook, and the new figured lowered its hands to its sides, the head turned: and the face of Lieutenant Yasuo Kikuchi of the Tenth smiled back at Souta behind him. His hands steamed with fresh burns.

Beyond him, the body of the Gillian laid already half disintegrated.

“Fourth Seat Nakajima,” he nodded to him with a grin. “Seems I was just in time, wasn’t I?”

“Lieutenant!” Nobuko called out as he pulled herself up, shaking, onto her feet and ran over, albeit slowly.

“Tachibana,” he greeted her. “I was worried—”

Then, he saw the wounds, the exhaustion. That easy going air around him suddenly sharpened.

“—wait, do you need treatment?” he corrected his thought.

Nobuko shook her head. “No, I’m well enough, I’m more worried for…”

Her voice trailed off as she looked around, but quickly, by eyes or her sixth sense, found the various students that scattered when the fight started.

“…the students are well,” she said mostly for her own benefit as she finally breathed. “These two officers saved over half a dozen, I can’t…”

“We can’t thank them enough,” Kikuchi corrected her before she even finished, and then looked to Saeki and Souta. “Officers: I’m sure my junior has already said, but you two have the undying gratitude of the Tenth. But I must impose further: Protect those you’ve saved. I can still sense some small number of Hollows here in the Academy, hunting and prowling about like the beasts they are.

“I need to aid the others in cutting down the Gillian that are firing on our men attempting to retake the hill,” he told them.

“I can—” Nobuko cut in.

“You can accompany the officers and the students. That’s where you’re best, Tachibana,” he told her with a smile. “Leave this to the rest of the Gotei. That you’ve all taken down a Gillian…”

He shook his head almost in disbelief.

“You have all done far more than your part.”
 
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