WHY DO YOU EAT IT? 2

[Storyteller]

It all began as a simple assignment, for one: A multi-week assignment in the Shin’ō Academy. Observe their operations and issue a report on their effectiveness. In particular, issue an opinion on the state of Academy operations following the influx of students made possible by the inclusion of the Asauchi.

Hardly what the assignee, Fifth Seat Tsukimiya of the First, envisioned as a Shinigami.

It all happened on one of those very days: Going through records related to student schedules, housing, food, and other incidental supplies. Replacement uniforms after field missions together in the World of the Living. Repairs to areas of the Academy damaged by Kidō gone out of control.

None of that interested Hazuki. In truth, likely nothing would.

Except something had caught her eye. Despite the disinterest, despite how mundane and rote it was, her effort did not suffer for it. And as she went through the records of the Academy’s supply of Asauchi and compared them to the delivery records from the Twelfth, and then factored in what had been given to students, it didn’t add up.

Days were spent with an assistant unseated Shinigami at her beck and call. Together, the young man—easily five times her age, but who looked no older—and she pulled the previous storage audits. In them, the Asauchi count matched the delivery numbers and the numbers for what had been given to new students.

Only a week later were nearly a fifth missing without record of where they had gone.

Hazuki sat before a pile of parchment as she went through the records. Carrying a small, wooden crate, the young man with dark hair brought in another delivery of even more records to go over. An attempt to search deeper through the history, to find out when this began, if they were any gaps in the disappearance of Asauchi, too—

The young man, and half the tatami-floored office vanished in a wave of gold that swallowed it whole. Fire spread in slow motion through the floors, the walls, and only gradually ignited the papers before the exceptionally young Fifth Seat. Hazuki’s head turned to see what appeared to be a slowly-flowing mass of gold that illuminated the entire space, herself, her raven-black hair, and saturated the whites of her eyes. Sweat beaded on her brow.

It hummed in a way she had never heard before: not loud, yet somehow enough in those few split-second moments to deafen her to all else.

Until it exploded, threw her from her place, through the walls of the office she had all but lived in since this discovery, and back out into another region of the Academy grounds altogether. Flames licked at her Shihakushō, golden and red, as her body left a trail of black smoke through the air.

And in that brief arc through the sky, Hazuki saw it: smoldering embers and ash in the air, blotting out the blue sky.

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

Whatever the golden light had been, the ensuing explosion lifted her off her feet and hurled her violently into the far wall, only fractionally slowing her down. The next room passed in a blur before she pierced the wall after that, and she became vaguely aware that her uniform was on fire at just about the same moment she got her bearings and began to twist her body to course correct. Another two walls in much the same fashion as before, but this time feet first until at last she hit the ground, touched down with one foot, slid on some debris, and went tumbling, the flames on her clothing sputtering in the turbulence as she dragged what was left of the final room’s furniture along with her.

Finally, Hazuki came to a halt, miraculously unhurt but smoldering, and she picked herself up the floor, swatting at the flames. Wherever she now found herself, it was far from where she had started, and whatever that golden light had been, it hadn’t felt like misfired kidō. Almost as if in reflex, she wondered if her assistant had made it out as unscathed as she had, but she had seen him fully engulfed by the light in the moments before the explosion and seriously doubted it. Instinct told Hazuki to arm herself, and the feeling of the sword in her grip soothed her, but the feeling was short-lived.

At first, she was unsure if maybe she had hit her head harder than she thought, because it felt like her mind was playing tricks on her. She could have sworn she could sense—

The roof caved in with a screeching groan of tortured wood, and shards of the terracotta roof tiles showered through like shrapnel, bouncing off what Hazuki could only describe as a bone-white tree trunk that ended in thick fingers. Her gaze followed it upwards, not quite believing what she was seeing until at last she reached the top and her eyes widened in shock at the dagger-like teeth and hungry stare that greeted her. Now, the sound it was making managed at long last to make itself heard over the din of distant crashes, explosions, and screaming filtering through the hole in the roof,

swordswordswordsword—

it seemed to gurgle, the words coming from deep in its belly, and it lashed out with a speed that caught Hazuki completely off-guard. Her mind, still reeling from the utter disbelief at seeing a Hollow in the middle of Seireitei, was sluggish, and her body even more so. The tip of her blade came up just in time for her to misjudge the creature’s intent entirely, and instead of a deft, last-instant parry, she found her zanpakutō wrenched from her grip. Her own surprise mingled with the receding feeling of well-being that her sword typically imparted, and then, as she helplessly looked on, the gigantic Hollow promptly swallowed it whole.

A moment passed. Hazuki, her mouth slightly agape, was having trouble processing what had just transpired. The Hollow, it seemed, was unaffected, until the guttural murmuring—which had paused briefly in the instant it had swallowed the zanpakutō—resumed with a heightened intensity and a wave of menacing energy washed over Hazuki, almost forcing her to her knees. Invigorated, the Hollow lumbered forwards, bursting through what remained of the roof and wall, showering Hazuki with white plaster and timber as it swung one ponderous fist at her. This time, she was prepared, and while the lack of a sword was regrettable, for the time being she would make it work. Her fingers flexed. The objective was up.

She sidestepped the Hollow’s arm and spun along it, the sheer force of it winding her and probably cracking some ribs, but she gritted her teeth and pushed past, found purchase with one outstretched arm, heaved herself upwards behind the swing and pulled, trying to find leverage against the Hollow’s own body. A trick she had learned from her father, and as she heaved, she felt something give way with a sickening snap. The arm fell limp as the bone could no longer support it, and she kicked off hard, propelling herself further upwards still, leaping for something, anything, that would get her closer to the vacuous cavern it called a mouth. If it was in pain, it didn’t show it; still the same gurgling of swordswordsword filled the air. Her fingers latched onto what she could only call fur the color of rotting seaweed, and with a grim satisfaction pulled herself up atop the creature’s shoulder. Her heartbeat was like a war drum pounding in her ears, the adrenaline coursing through her system like molten silver, and she almost danced across the gap to the helmet-like Hollow Mask before bearing down on it like a woman possessed.

‘Give,’ one hand on each of its jaws, ‘me,’ she tore open the Hollow’s mouth, ‘that,’ stuffed her hand down its gullet, ‘back,’ and rummaged around violently, hoping to pull her weapon free. It struck her as comical, the way she was hoping to produce her zanpakutō as a magician might produce a rabbit from a hat, but the thought was caught short by a growing presence from within, the tell-tale cold-sweat feeling of negative pressure building just beyond the reach of her grasping fingers.

‘Oh.’

The cero cut loose from deep within, arcing a wide black beam across the pale blue sky as the thick sound of heavy bass static drowned out everything else. It torched the very air, sliced clouds in half and would have left Hazuki with a charred hole where her face had once been had she not tumbled headlong through the air in a split-second flash step to the opposite shoulder, just far enough out of harm’s way for her to still feel the searing heat through the fabric of her uniform. She didn’t hesitate, took the opening with a snarl; her left fist clenched and she punched straight down, aiming right for the little protrusion at the shoulder joint. Half pragmatism and half rage-fueled sadism, she wanted to cause damage just as much as she wanted to disable this thing, and this was the perfect outlet for her anger. Her knuckles dug deep and at first she thought she had done something wrong—far too little resistance for bone, surely?—and then the shock shot back at her through her arm and she could feel the Hollow’s bone shattering with an ear-splitting crack that seemed to travel just as much through her as it did through the monster. A tingling feeling in her knuckles told her she had split skin at the very least, but she didn’t care, with both its arms out of commission Hazuki was going to take great pleasure in ending this Hollow’s life. It shook her off violently, both arms dangling limply at its sides, and she took the prudent course of action and rode with it. Her hakama rustled in the air as she sailed to the ground, and she touched down gently in front of her opponent, wincing inwardly at the pain in her ribs. She refused to show it.

The Hollow, it seemed, had sensed the danger it was in and something eerily similar to the cero was building inside it, but this time it appeared to turn the energy loose inwardly, and at once the odd angles and limpness in its arms straightened out and grew taut as Hazuki could only stand by and watch it regenerate its wounds. Revenge didn’t seem to weigh heavily on its mind, however, because it promptly turned—no doubt satisfied with its meal and no longer interested in trading blows with this quarrelsome prey, and winked out of sight.

By then, Hazuki had already broken into a determined run, each step agony, but stubborn refusal to let this thing get away with her sword in its belly buried the pain deep, and when the Hollow winked out of sight, the Shinigami set her jaw and followed suit, keeping up, if only barely. When the beast reappeared, Hazuki reappeared right behind it half a moment later, kicking up dust as she slid to a halt, stance low and ready. Not even a moment’s pause—just enough to get her bearings—then an audible grunt of exertion as she let loose like a coiled spring and barreled straight at the Hollow’s back. It realized she was there far too late, the warding swipe sluggish. It bruised her arm as she deflected it, then she deftly grabbed hold, coiled again, and propelled herself once more at the creature’s head. This time, she threw her whole weight behind an outstretched and braced elbow, and the satisfying crunch left a crack that spread across the side of its head from forehead to the base of its neck. This time, she garnered the response she had hoped for. The resultant flailing seemed panicked, and her momentary triumph was cut short by a stray arm catching her at an awkward angle. A gasp was all she let out, but she wanted to scream: her left arm was definitely broken, but she was far too close now to let that stop her.

Face grim, flinty eyes mere slits, she raised the fist that still worked, aimed at the dent she had already made, and punched. Raised it again, and punched. Again. Punch. She lost count, but by the time she was finished, her hand was bleeding and the Hollow was on the ground, motionless. What remained of the mask was in pieces, and she reached, fingers trembling from exertion, for some large part still stuck to the creature, and tore it off violently. A final indignity for something that dared to take what was hers. She got to her feet, swayed just once, then steadied herself.

A breath.

Two.

Eyes closed, she let the rage and pain pass through her. A third breath, then a fourth. Back straight. Her hands went to her hair, straightened it out of her face, only a single smudge of blood on one cheek. Her eyes flicked open.

Better.

Spoiler: Combat Log, Green Huge Hollow vs Hazuki Tsukimiya

Round 1: Hazuki's sword is wrested from her grasp and promptly eaten. The Hollow becomes more powerful as a result.
Hazuki inflicts major wound on Hollow
Hollow inflicts moderate wound on Hazuki

Round 2: Hazuki attempts to get her sword back. Violently.
Hazuki inflicts minor wound on Hollow
Hollow inflicts major wound on Hazuki, which Hazuki gracefully evades using shunpo.

Round 3: Hazuki seemingly gains the upper hand.
Hazuki inflicts major wound on Hollow, resulting in a severe wound

Round 4: The Hollow regenerates and attempts to make good its escape. Hazuki firmly denies it.
Hollow regenerates severe wound
Hazuki inflicts major wound on Hollow
Hollow inflicts minor wound on Hazuki

Round 5: A final pair of blows are exchanged and Hazuki, bloodied but very much alive, emerges victorious.
Hazuki kills Hollow
Hollow inflicts major wound on Hazuki

Aftermath: Hazuki is left with 4 reiryoku and has suffered a major, a moderate, and a minor wound.

 

[Imato Inoue]

Quiet, had been the order of the day. This was beyond need-to-know. Even Imato had been told precious little. What he had been told was vague. Reports had reached the Sixth: there were inventory discrepancies at the Shin’o Academy. More likely than not, these were simply mistakes by sloppy personnel at the Tenth. But as an exercise in extreme caution, he had been told, Imato was to go to the Academy and perform a thorough accounting of all relevant documents; with a specific focus on sensitive materials and weapon stores, and the status of their security.

Accounting was not one of the charges of the Sixth - that was a duty, in its proper form, left to the First. It was a lot more common in the Office of Investigation, though. Imato thought back some forty years ago when he had been asked to review one thousand years’ worth of commerce notices from the North 27th. It had taken him a month, and by the end of it his office was, quite literally, pasted wall to wall with zoning permits.

But that’s not quite what he was being asked to do. Not at all, actually, and it wasn’t hard to put things together. Something was off with the Asauchi numbers, and they were *actually* off. The Sixth would not waste time investigating a few stolen shruriken. Not these days, at least.

So who in the name of everything that is good and gracious in this world would steal an Asauchi? Disgruntled Academy rejects? Those store-rooms are under lock and key. Maybe a completely uninformed gang leader with a connection inside, who might think that some Shinigami branding on his swords would imbue them with some kind of extra power? Politically-minded sorts of people who opposed the Asauchi program, maybe. That sounded a lot more plausible. Imato felt something in his chest tighten as he worked the case in his head.

But — it was okay. More than okay! It was great. It was a hard job, but a good one. Like any question, the flow of events and characters, of reality, would guide the answer. He was going to figure it all out.

Imato took a deep breath, gave himself a pat on the back, and stood up straight. He had nothing but the utmost trust in his leadership. They had confidence in him, and he had confidence in himself. Imato was here because he could solve problems, in one way or another.

He hadn’t asked to be Third Seat, but here he was now, anyway. Life, he most certainly and sincerely would have to claim, would flow through the cracks and find a way.

As he made his way to the Academy, he took in the glorious day, made to shine with the bright white light of early spring. It was always good to come back to the Academy, even on business. As he walked through the gates and through the main thoroughfare, tender moments flashed through his head — evoked by the little things, like a certain nook of a tree, or the way the light hung over a certain student locked in a readied pose with her sword.

Imato walked into the administrative section of the campus, and asked for directions to their records office. He was taken to a room, where he greeted a young woman stationed there with a warm smile. “Hello. I’ve been sent to do a routine audit of your records.”

Before he said anything further, the young woman gave him a nod of complete recognition and understanding. “You’re here with Fifth Seat Tsukimiya, right? I can show you where she’s been working from.”

Imato was caught off guard, his mouth wide open for a beat. He smiled again. “That would be so wonderful! Thank you. But — would you mind showing me to the storerooms, first? I’m sure she’s very busy, and I wouldn’t want to make her give me the grand tour.”

He hadn’t been told about this. Was the First in on this, as well? Did Tsukimiya know that he was coming? It was possible, if his superiors had really wanted to keep things quiet, that they would try to keep intradivisional communication to a minimum. Imato had responded with the first thing that had come to his head. It’d be good to get a lay of the land before confronting her.

Imato and his guide made small talk for a few minutes before she led him to the stairwell which lead to a basement level. She bowed and left him before a guard. That seemed new - certainly there had always been security, but not on the ground floor. Imato remembered being routinely “volunteered” to bring up all of the practice mats with Jinbe whenever he’d get caught slacking off.

Imato smiled as he handed over some identification. “Have you been stationed here long?” he asked, cheerily. The guard said nothing, looking him up and down with an icy stare. He said nothing before returning Imato’s papers. “Thank you, sir. Check in at the security desk downstairs, please.”

Imato stepped down into the stone, spiral staircase lit by orbs of grey light. It smelled of mildew, just like he had remembered. He touched the walls - cool, smooth as marble. It was calm in here. Coming back to the Academy was like being welcomed back into the womb. He started to remember, once, with Amaya -

A loud whine came from above that grew in pitch, muted into a bassy hum. A concussive thump shook the entire stairwell. The world started to shake.

“Oh, wow.”

Imato broke into a dash, scrambling back up the steps. Something was wrong. He could have scrambled down the stairs, but something in Imato’s body knew it was a bad idea to get trapped down there. Jumping flights of stairs at a time, almost breaking into shunpo.

Not fast enough. The ceiling took one final bestial rumble, and came in over him. Imato lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he began to move around. He was in the dark. At first, he aimlessly groped, moving without thinking, clearing space for himself. Imato was locked into a gap between a set of rocks, with no more than a foot of clearance above him. He could barely breathe.

He let his senses pour in information to him without rendering judgement or acknowledging his reaction it. He felt that his hands were cold, somewhat trembling. That was alright. In the dark, he groped at stones, feeling for up, back towards. The screams finally started to register. He could hear the pounding feet, the wheezing animal breath of the Hollows above them. In his mind's eye he could see the central ceremonial road of the Academy from above oozing blood from the cracks, slowly forming a face that he did not want to come to completion.

Some amount of time passed, Imato had no sense of it. Finally he had freed himself enough space to move, and not be crushed by the next step of his barely conscious plan. Just like before, just like before. He put his two index fingers together in a well-practiced, tight cross.

“Sho.”

The great boulders in front of him blew away. A plume of dust followed. Slowly, Imato emerged out of a dusty tomb, coughing, waving his arm to clear the air. He stepped over the body of the guard which had no head or lower extremity. He kept moving. Charred husks. No swords, none of them. Thought was beginning to return, alongside dread. He allowed himself half a breath as he tightened the muscles of his body. You will make it through.

He heard a great screech, and the pained grunts of something, someone. Through a hallway he could see unimaginably large hooves jump in and out of frame. Imato ran towards them.

He saw a great, green Hollow, as big - no, bigger than a building. It was felled. In the dust, he saw Hazuki Tsukimiya, Fifth Seat of the First Division, standing over it with bloody fists.

She looked poised. She looked badly wounded.

They had met maybe once before; it didn’t matter right now.

“Tsukimiya." Imato coughed up dust and spit. "What do you need?”

 

[Ichiro Watanabe]

A wadded-up piece of washi struck Ayano's head: she turned to frown at the young man with straw-colored hair who was, as always, pretending not to notice her. "Idiot," she muttered, and ignored the second missile, and the third. The fourth hit harder, and when she unfolded the paper she found a knuckle-sized piece of charcoal in it. "Stop," she hissed, and again he pretended she hadn't made a sound. "He likes you," Rei whispered to her one desk over. "Fat chance," Ayano whispered back, but she was testy enough the sound carried. "Ladies," the teacher snapped. "Something more important than the lesson?" Rei wilted but Ayano ground her teeth. "It's Kenichi, sir, he--" an angry sputtering came from behind her. "What?? She's making stuff up, sir, that's--"

They stood in the hallway, glaring daggers at each other. Asshole, Ayano thought to herself. Never, in a million years--

A long, pink tongue dragged across the floor, leaving a slimy trail past two cadavers. A young man, his fat boiled away by an ineffable heat, lay rigid as a skeleton partially over another crumpled form. In death her hand had been frozen in the act of clutching something--something fragile enough to be burnt away, perhaps.

"Please," the insistent whisper caressed his ears. "I just--I had to tell you." Takashi studied the window like there was something deeply moving past it. He'd had nightmares about situations like this, but at least he'd been able to wake from those. His brow furrowed, then, as he caught something like a flicker of motion. "Sensei. Are you listening, Sensei?" With difficulty he wrested his attention free. A bird, perhaps, or a Shinigami flitting through space as quickly and delicately as a dragonfly. "I hear you, Rinko," he sighed. "I just... you must understand what kind of position this puts me in, don't you?" He watched the color drain from her face, then blossom into a furious red. She dipped her chin and stared at the ground. Maybe now she felt how he felt. "Let's just forget about all this, go back to class--"

That tongue dragged on, tasting the ground as if its owner was beset by an endless, indefatigable hunger. It passed by a pockmarked crater in the wall: a figure was broken and bent into it, like a child had pushed a fragile doll into a box's aperture and dispassionately listened to the limbs fracture then split. The tongue slid over a supine form sprawled under that crater, unrecognizable whether man or woman. A broken Zanpakutō hung limply from the buried figure's hand: though the other sported a charred saya at its belt, the weapon it held was missing. The tongue went on: perhaps the corpse was too blackened even for its bestial tastes.

"You had damn well be studying harder," the harsh words cut at Okaru but he steeled himself and met them. "I've got the top marks," he shot back, "in both Kendo and Kido. The only one doing better than me in class is Akari, and she's got personal instruction from the Lieutenant of the First!" "Excuses." "I'm not making goddamn excuses--" "How dare you swear at me, child! I should tell your father--" Fierce tears started in Okaru's eyes: his body trembled as he spat out the words that had been building in him for years. "How is it any of your business?! You've never acted like my aunt once in your life!"

Silence stood between the two. The woman's icy eyes regarded her pupil; for once, he didn't shy from under them. "I will have you moved to a different class," she said simply. "There's no excuse--"

The room was empty but for a single arm and a single weapon. The slender arm almost seemed out of place: if one kept their eyes to the wrist and stopped before the elbow, the specks of blood could be easily forgotten. The hand reached out for something that must have stood in that empty space, fingers unfurled as if to brush the very edge of some falling possession soon lost to gravity's pull. Feet away a Zanpakutō sat, badly corroded, acidic residue splattered around it. Harsh footfalls broke the rigid fingers as they stepped callously on the outstretched hand: then came the tongue, swiping through the bloodstain behind the elbow and smearing that same acid along the dusty floor.

A young man and a young woman stood, bloody and battered, decorated with the dust of the building they'd come from and the turf of the archery range they stood in now. Five solemn targets stood, round quarter-bales on four-legged tables, painted with white and black concentric rings. A sixth, laying aside, had been caught by a stray blast of something that had carved it wholly asunder. Trees waved in the edges of the enclosed space as if wholly unaware of the ruin that had been wrought on the building it stood nearest: an austere school building in white stucco and beige tile slumped precariously to the left, and chunks of the supporting material were coming loose even now.

Movement brought the eye to one of the second-floor windows, still mostly intact but now scarcely off the floor: a man in black robes bent to step through it and onto the grass. He had the same fixed, calm stare Imato was becoming quite familiar with, but there was a glint in his eyes the younger man had rarely seen before. The wounds on his Lieutenant's body were a startling sight as well: blood ran down his left leg and something had badly burned the side of his face from chin to ear. His ponytail had been singed: the acrid smell was shockingly unpleasant. More startling still was the reality of his appearance--he hadn't been involved in Imato's assignment, and this fact would not have been hidden from the Third Seat. Had he truly arrived so quickly? Had so much time passed?

"Tell me there are more," Ichiro spoke in his soft, tight voice. He squeezed the three-feet-long pink tongue in his grip so hard the two could hear it strain with the force of it.

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

The Hollow’s body was beginning to disintegrate at her feet, and the voice at her side made her turn. A sharp intake of breath; she wished she hadn’t.

My sword, she thought, ashy flakes of Hollow mingling with the dust of the Academy ruins before being carried off by an unseen current in the air, that’s what I need.

‘First aid. Arm’s broken.’ She moved her head vaguely to her left. Somewhere beneath her, something clattered to the ground, a keening whistle like raw flesh on hot metal. She glanced down, and there was her sword—at long last—angrily burning off what remained of the Hollow clinging to it. She bent, picked it up, and an involuntary close-lipped groan rattled at the back of her throat, half pain and half at the feeling of reproach she felt emanating from it. Reproach for losing it, but under all that, joy to be back in the hands of its wielder.

‘It ate it,’ she offered by way of explanation, but it could just as well have been a question. What had the muttering meant? Just the word sword endlessly repeating? Her eyes narrowed, taking in the newcomer properly for the first time. ‘Sixth Division?’ she hazarded, vaguely recognizing him from somewhere.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she said, touching her temple meaningfully, leaving a smudge of her own blood there. ‘You alright?’

 

[Imato Inoue]

"It ate it." There was no question in Imato's voice, nor hint of sardonicism spurred by the gallows it was clear they were in. It was barely a confirmation of the words that had been said.

Then, the sword clattered to the ground, and Hazuki picked it up. He searched his heart for some feeling of shock or disbelief, but nothing came. He nodded. "It ate it." His hand grasped for his own dagger, unthinkingly. It was still snug on his belt.

Yes, she did need first aid. Imato saw how much it hurt just for her to pick up her sword. For another moment he stood wordlessly. Smoke billowed in steep towers. Behind the two of them, a piece of the facade of one of the administration buildings fell. Above it was the same spring day.

Thoughts started to spring forth, again. He wasn't hurt at all. "It hasn't been more than a few minutes, right? I was out. They have to get here soon. We should try to regroup, find the students. Blast a hole, maybe." Imato watched as the last remnants of the great Hollow dissipated into the air. He furrowed his brow.

A brief search of the surroundings revealed nothing new. It was quieter than it had been than he was in the rock. Some kids, somewhere, were trying to hide. It might be impossible to find any of them. As Imato reached out past the Academy walls, he felt the hills dive down and roll into shadow. The Academy was still encircled. The fight was either on, or had barely even started.

A few yards away, the grass shuffled. It was so quiet in the courtyard. A dark figure emerged from a window. Had he been wrong? Imato instincitively looked for the cadre of officers following in the wake of his Lieutenant, just like he had at so many crime scenes before. They didn't come. Imato didn't dare ask himself the question right now, nor save any of the relief of Watanabe's presence for himself.

He was bloodied, too, but Imato said nothing of it. He nodded at the Lieutenant and spoke for the both of them.

"We're Sixth, right." He turned to the Lieutenant, face cast in the same stone gaze as ever. Perhaps the man expected a far too lengthy report of their status, a confused look about his presence, perhaps some expression of fear at the way he carried himself at this moment - one which some might, insensitively, call crazed. Imato dusted off his uniform and nodded at the man, his worthy superior and colleague, who in this moment did not need the burden of more words.

"It's very good to see you, sir. Let's go find them."

 

[Ichiro Watanabe]

For a few moments, it didn't matter who belonged to what Division: each cadre of Shinigami adhered to some of the same emergency rituals. After calamity, observe the three "Rs:" Reconvene. Report. Reconnoiter. In a few terse sentences each of the three shared their experiences--Hazuki's desperate fight, Imato's entombment, and Ichiro's failure to keep a few straggling Hollows from escaping. At last he discarded the tongue.

They carefully began to pick their way through the rubble. Ichiro's lip curled as he heard the Seireitei's klaxon begin to ring: fifteen minutes too late. With her wounds Hazuki could have dodged her responsibility as a first responder, but something inside her must have been stronger than the stucco the Hollows had scattered like playpen blocks. Ichiro, of course, would have been investigated had he failed to react--and he wouldn't have looked kindly on his subordinate if he'd shirked his duties, either. Solemnly they picked through the wreckage as best they could, though they could hear the structure creaking and crumbling all around them. The entrance to the school was one of the few remaining pieces of the building that was mostly intact: one of its two pillars looked almost undamaged. Inside, a tall cube storage structure was listing slightly, helping to hold up the sagging ceiling. Many of the cubes still contained geta and other outside shoes.

Ichiro didn't get his wish: the school was absolutely empty of Hollows. Whatever they'd come for, they must have found it. It wasn't only corpses they encountered, though--plaintive gasping brought them to the entrance to a classroom. Chest-sized rubble had collapsed on a young man before he could make his escape. He had short black hair muddied with blood: his face was pale, his eyes unfocused. Ichiro tsked. "M-my legs..." the student gasped. An Asauchi hung from his limp right hand. Ichiro stared at it, brows furrowed. A solution to this mystery had been itching at the back of his brain, supported by his existing disdain for these creations, but this seemed to fly in the face of it.

"Imato," Ichiro's cold voice echoed through the hallway. "What can you learn from him?"
The younger man's skills were well-known to his betters. Ichiro thought them often unnecessary, but in a situation like this, they might be just what they needed. Always alert, the Lieutenant turned to keep watch.

 

[Imato Inoue]

Imato pushed the piece of stucco off his legs with a heaving effort. The student let out a low, rolling moan.

He kneeled down at eye level with the young man, who was a pale as a ghost. He smiled at him. “Well done.” Imato put the back of his hand on the boy’s face for a moment. It was cold, but not yet alarmingly so. He was no medic, but Imato had seen what the approach of death looked like. It wasn’t on this student’s face.

He dusted off the boy’s shoulders. “You hid yourself extremely well. Your teachers would be proud. A man of the Second, clearly.”

“Now,” Imato said, placing his hand on the student’s temple and closing his own eyes, “just relax.”

He felt the pressure at the palm of the end of the mind go slack. Without warning, pain in the abdomen and groin, crying a dull wail throughout the body. Mika, Imato felt himself scream. He had known this girl with the flaxen hair since he was five years old. Mika’s upper body dissappeared into the maw of a great frog. Her legs landed on the ground, perfectly, arriving with a sickening moment of stability, before twisting and falling in some strange dance. Imato then made a noise that he did not know people could make.

He couldn’t look anymore, he just couldn’t look. If he turned away, the scene would change. What he saw was wrong; he would blink and it would be the same, spring day. No. Instead, he saw a small red beast with a horse’s mane and the cheeks of a lizard devouring uncountably many swords. Something crashed above him.

Imato opened his eyes flinching for impact. The boy pushed himself away from him, wide-eyed, hyperventilating: afraid of the vision, afraid of Imato. As he dragged himself away, his uniform caught and revealed a huge, blue-black bruise on his upper thigh. Some part in Imato's body shifted - it was a part that was disappointed.

“I’m so sorry,” Imato said to the student. “Stay here and hide. You’ll be alright.”

He turned to his colleagues. “He saw them eating the Asauchi. By the dozens, maybe, but I can't be sure. Nothing else.”

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

As Imato knelt to attend the student, Hazuki sheathed her zanpakutō and cast a quick glance around for something suitable to use as a splint. She settled for the remains of a banner that had been hung, she surmised from the kanji boldly emblazoned on it, as a form of motivation to apply oneself to one’s studies, managed with some difficulty to tear it into strips after shaking the dust out of it as best she could, then gathered her handiwork together with two pieces of what had once been a broom handle. A fallen beam served as a makeshift bench, and she took a seat with a wince. A firm grip, gritted teeth, and she pulled, setting the bone in her left arm with a creak. Pain.

She busied herself with awkwardly tying the pieces of broom to her arm, but her cold grey eyes rained fixed on the survivor. She tightened one knot with her teeth, then another, finally the third, then heaved a small breath of relief when it was done, only momentarily glancing at her handiwork before—apparently satisfied—she continued to study whatever it was the junior of her newfound companions was doing with the survivor. Imato, Lieutenant Watanabe had called him, and vaguely she recalled Captain Inoue had a son in the Sixth by that name. By Hazuki’s calculation, that put two Sixth Division members at the Academy before this entire ordeal had even started—independently at that, given Inoue’s apparent relief to encounter his lieutenant. Her eyes narrowed, flicked towards Watanabe as he watched over his new charges, then settled back on the injured student as something indecipherable passed in the small space between him and Inoue.

Whatever thread had held them together in silence snapped noiselessly, and the student gasped, scrabbled backwards. Hazuki simply watched, ill-equipped to offer any words of comfort or consolation, but Inoue’s tone was soft, understanding. No blame, only perhaps the slightest tinge of regret that he had not been able to be of more help. Well-practiced, it seemed, and earnest. A valuable skill.

When he at last rose and announced his findings, Hazuki’s eye caught on the student’s asauchi. ‘But not his,’ she said, pointedly. ‘They’ve been going missing, somewhere along the supply line. They asauchi leave the Twelfth, they reach the Academy, and are subsequently distributed or stored, but someone—or something—is skimming off the top. The numbers aren’t adding up. And this is going by documentation from well before all of—’ she motioned vaguely at their surroundings, ‘—this.’

She rose to her feet gingerly, steadying herself against the beam with her sword arm. Something had been bothering her this entire time, and the pieces of the puzzle were still vague, but beginning to take shape. ‘Lieutenant, how did the Hollows get into Seireitei? We had no warning whatsoever, and the Shakonmaku is supposed to prevent any unauthorized entry.’

 

[Ichiro Watanabe]

Ichiro watched Hazuki from the corner of his eye: she sat herself on a piece of broken stucco and splinted her own arm. Though her face was contorted in a rictus of pain she never cried out. He nodded slightly, like he was impressed or at least he approved--then refocused his attention on the corridor. It wasn't necessary. The only things that were moving in this newly-decrepit building were the very things that should have remained steadfast for centuries to come.

If he noticed the gears turning in Hazuki's head, and the sudden, calculating glance she shot him, he didn't say a word.

Ichiro grew suddenly interested in the student when Imato parted from him. "Eating them," he mused, and the Lieutenant thought back on the scenes he'd traipsed through in his emergence from the building. There had been almost no Asauchi in evidence, true, though many of the students must have carried them. And yet, he'd seen one or two lying discarded on the floor or clutched by cadaver's grip... why? Why was this one intact as well? Had the student fought off the Hollow who'd hungered for the sword? Had the retreat sounded before it could be eaten? Had Ichiro's rampage scared it off?

None of these solutions seemed to answer all the questions Ichiro was faced with. He frowned: his preferred crime (besides one that didn't have a chance to occur) was a neat and tidy one that could be swiftly punished with overwhelming force. All he could do here was try and pick up the scent of a fading trail.

Ichiro jerked, more stiff-backed than usual, and turned with narrowed eyes to Hazuki. Missing Asauchi, poor records keeping--these were the very same things he had warned his Captain of months ago. And yet with every inquiry he'd been met by platitudes and reassurances. Where did you get your information from? he wanted to ask, but just then raised voices began to dimly filter through the wreckage from the outside. They didn't have much time alone with this crime scene.

In short, clipped tones, he answered: "Air Gates." The sardonic tone added to his voice made it clear how ridiculous an answer that was: the inborn ability of the Hollow to scurry to and from their holes was well-known, well-documented, and absolutely trivial to detect. Not to mention, the beasts never acted in groups of more than three or four, not without being led by some stronger foe that had cowed them into submission. "They left the same way too." Another impossibility. But he'd seen it with his own eyes.

"Do you know where they're stored?" he asked Hazuki, his eyes feverish. He had to see for himself.

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

‘Stored?’ she asked, sharing the lieutenant’s obvious distaste for the explanation he had perfunctorily offered. ‘No, sir. I was sent here to report back to the First on Academy efficacy after the introduction of the asauchi. Mostly logistical concerns, in truth, but the tallies weren’t adding up so I decided to pursue it. I was still working on the paper trail when everything went sideways.’

She had wanted to be thorough, and that had meant chasing the leads in the Office of Records as far as they would take her before she went searching for answers elsewhere. ‘If I had to take a guess, though, I’d say underground. The waybills seem to indicate they were being treated as hazardous, or maybe just particularly valuable. Caches on ground level would have been kept under lock and key.’

A week ago, all of this had felt like meaningless busywork, clerical tasks thrust upon Hazuki to fill her time and keep her occupied. Now, normalcy had been left irreparably shattered, just like the Academy grounds themselves, and the questions kept piling up. The swords were the key.

‘Inoue, any ideas?’

 

[Imato Inoue]

Imato stepped back and looked at Hazuki’s makeshift splint. He was impressed by her grit. Imato might have carelessly though that, raised in what many considered to believe the lap of privilege, Hazuki might have considered fashioning a field dressing beneath her. But, of course, most would have thought the very same thing about him. Imato held his arm for a moment: his body felt fine.

Hazuki pointed out the sword still attached to the student’s hip. Imato’s eyebrows rose. He felt the motions of his mind start to become familiar again. Thinking felt more urgent. Every word had a different color, a different sort of tug in a new direction. He felt something like hunger, a strange stimulating feeling that he was very used to, well up in his chest.

Yes, the student’s Asauchi was still on his belt. That was strange. Did that mean they weren’t indiscriminately eating swords? Tsukimiya’s had been devoured, but not the kid’s. Maybe not. Maybe it was a random process. Perhaps something had naturally changed about these Hollows, something had clicked in their impenetrable monstrous instinct. Even before today, it had been a very, very strange time to be a Soul Reaper.

But that flew in the face of Hazuki’s analysis. If there was something taking Asauchi from the storehouses. Why would that same force — Imato shuddered at the unfeeling logic of the thought, but did nothing to deny it — limit the supply of weapons flowing into the Seireitei? Less kids, less weapons to take off the top. This was certainly a terrible way to keep what had been an effective operation quiet.

Unless somebody had caught wind of their investigation: Hazuki's, Imato's, maybe both. He quieted that thought for now. It certainly wasn’t a question he could answer yet. Too many moving parts, and it tasted wrong, anyway. Imato was not that important.

More urgently: apparently all of those Hollow had simply walked in. Imato shook his head. “Okay, so something shut the Shakonmaku down, then. That doesn’t seem impossible. We must be able to check that.”

He nodded at Hazuki’s question. “I was heading down to the basement when the attack happened — I was planning to come talk to you after I did, although I didn't know you were here before I arrived on campus. I didn’t get far: I was in that stairwell when it collapsed.”

“I’m confident that there were stores there, otherwise I wouldn't have been led to them. I’m not sure if there’s another entrance.”

He heard the same voices Ichiro did, rising over the din of now distant combat. Finding reinforcements, and doing so quickly, had seemed the ideal option just a few moments ago. His military training had won over perfectly. But he felt a cold shiver thinking about others arriving now; he could see the worry, in its own unique form, spreading on his Lieutenant's face. And Ichiro was right to worry. A new thought: who, precisely, would be taking command of what would certainly be the most infamous crime scene ever cordoned in the history of the Seireitei? A small bead of nausea, deep in Imato's chest, spinning and spinning.

“No real ideas, no. I can't make sense of any of this yet. I haven't seen enough. But I am deeply concerned that this situation may become more unstable very soon. We may need to find a way down there, and we may need to do so quickly. Lieutenant?”

 

[Ichiro Watanabe]

"Quickly," Ichiro agreed, and set off on his own down the corridor. He walked quickly without looking back, like he expected them to follow. But his swishing robes soon came to a halt as he rounded the corner. Each of the three classrooms he'd passed had been partially caved in, and he found a true dead end waiting for him down the corridor. Past the crumbling corner an explosion had collapsed the ceiling and created a cave-in too complicated to quickly excavate. A single hand poked out of the debris, cold and lifeless: Ichiro nudged it with his shoe and it flopped in a way that an arm shouldn't have. He tsked and turned around.

The other way was no better. Time and again their attempts to delve deeper into the school building were foiled by the devastation the Hollows had wrought; worse, their exploration was becoming more dangerous by the second. Pebble-sized chunks of the ceiling clattered down around them as they jogged through the corridors, and under the growing sound of voices they could hear the creaking and groaning of a building nearly ready to die. Soon, all the rubble around them would be returned to spiritual energy; not long after, a new facility would be erected in its place of the selfsame stuff. Ichiro had never learned how it was done--he'd never seen a point to it.

At last their attempts to find a passageway into the bowels of the school were ultimately foiled by another pile of dusty rubble. Ichiro was beginning to feel the aerosolized Reiatsu in the back of his throat like a cloying layer of clay. The Lieutenant balled his fists and stared like his glare could open a hole in the floor. And if his eyes couldn't, his hands might.

But before he could--

 

[Storyteller]

It all happened at the same time.

At all four cardinal directions around the walled Academy: black stitches appeared in thin air. They thickened, grew, the outlines of teeth became more apparent, until bone-white hands pried open the gates. Behind them, a swirling maelstrom of spiritual energy, grey and formless, the endless chaos of the void between the worlds.

The northern one opened just within the main Academy gate. One Gillian emerged the challenge the Shinigami who approached, while the rest faced down the main path leading up the hill and opened fire with a barrage of multicolor Cero. Scores of Shinigami vanished from that first barrage, while others, wounded, were beset by the Hollows that still swarmed the hillside.

As if preparing for this exact eventuality.

Hazuki, Imato, and Ichiro faced their own: on the eastern side of the Academy, one such gateway opened. With it, the smell of dry bones and death—as if they stepped into a mausoleum or expansive tomb. From it not five emerged, but twelve of the black, towering masses of Hollows known as Gillian, emerged.

One looked like all of them do: a white mask with pockmark eye holes and glowing, red orbs. The mask itself with a long, vented, pointed nose, with rows of teeth that were fused together as part of the mask and didn’t appear to open at all.

The other, something altogether different: fanged teeth, a clear jaw, no nose, and eye sockets with typical depth like any other Hollow. Those fanged teeth parted, and arcs of violet lightning cracked between them, then down the all-black body of the Gillian.

Behind those two, the rest of the Gillian walked around the gateway in the air—it didn’t close, didn’t vanish and go away like the one to the north had—and stepped through the exterior Academy walls. They destroyed them underfoot and, just as the other Hollows did, began to open fire with red, green, and even pink Cero that lit up the trees and brush with fire and smoke.

But past the Gillian appeared another figure. It had not been there one moment but appeared next with a rush of what sounded like rapidly crackling static. All three of the Shinigami saw it clearly: an all-white, quadrupedal body. One arm a large pincer claw with something that seemed to move around, organic and flexible. The other, more of a bony hook. Behind it, a long, regimented, insectoid tail.

It's mask, which appeared to have mandibles instead of teeth, had yellow eyes behind it. It stood at the same stature as a common Hollow, much larger than a man but not a towering monstrosity like a Huge Hollow or Gillian.

Yet, all the same: neither Hazuki, Imato, nor Ichiro felt any presence from it as it walked back into the portal before them.

They did, however, hear it: its voice like rusty iron nails as they scraped on bone.

“Eat them.”

 

[Imato Inoue]

The great black maw opened and startled Imato. He stared up at the towering Gillian. He had no idea what power had created such an entity; finally, his ability to suspend judgement on the facts of the world around him collapsed. These were strange beasts with power beyond what could ever be expected of a Hollow, and they were trying to destroy Everything. They were not of the real and true world. Neither was the quadruped that spoke so cruelly it made Imato grimace and nearly cover his ears, clearly and with words instructing the other beasts. Monsters from a dream.

Two Gillian landed, less of a dream. No time for a breath. If he could draw their fire, that might allow Ichiro and Hazuki to move in closer. He had seen evidence of Hazuki’s competence in hand-to-hand combat minutes ago. He had only heard tell of the Lieutenant’s facility with his fists. But he had spent enough time with the man to know that, at the very least, the person who was standing before them now would not take a single step backwards.

That was not, and had never been, Imato’s manner of finding his way in the world. He knew he had to defend himself, and that his service in the Gotei required a specific level of skill in combat. He had pored over the ancient texts of Kidou as a way to trick himself into competence.

So there was nothing natural in his approach to violence. As he saw the Gillian descend from their dark maw, he felt no true change in his heart. Imato knew that this was probably one of the most dangerous things that had ever happened to him. He felt his hands run cold with instinctual mortal terror. But no deep-seated battle rage welled up within him. Nothing new rose to meet the moment. He had no time to consider that feeling of emptiness, though it was not a new feeling.

“Get close.” Imato yelled over the din as the first volley of Cero traveled toward their targets. He let himself fall back before blasting backwards with a booming, flashing step and leaving his companions in the maelstrom.

“Ye lord mask of blood and flesh,” he chanted with blank urgency as if reading a manual and any of the intonations in his voice simply burned into the body by rote repetition. A great red orb began to coalesce between his wildly gesticulating hands and darkened Imato’s face before he spoke the holy name Shakkaho and the mass discharged at the Hollow with the less distinctive mask and began to travel as a great snake whirling in an ever tightening spiral before meeting its target. A great concussive blast easily rivaling that of the Cero discharged at them rang out and a grey plume of smoke rose over the face of the beast.

Imato had not seen the subtle change in the skin of the Gillian but he saw it now as the smoke cleared and the Gillian looked barely touched still smiling. Its skin shone with an effervescent gray-clear sheen like the stone of walking paths on a hot summer day. It made some noise Imato had never heard a Hollow make before that was something whining but still deep and swirling within its gut. The bolt of energy it charged in its throat hummed in a different sort of register.

And it reached its apex quicker. By the time Imato had tensed his legs to move the great blast of the Cero was already tunneling towards him. He narrowly missed the first rocket and caught himself sliding to the side before righting himself to see that the great Gillian was staring right at him.

For a slim moment, he felt himself again, outside of the tyranny of the moment. He stood there, gasping, eying down the great beast. It was waiting for him to move, to twitch every so slightly. It was taunting him, really.

But his form appeared still when the Gillian attacked, launching its beam yards away from where he stood. The false image disappeared a second before the beam connected with Imato, just enough time for him to think smart.

He was propelled backwards at an accelerating rate by four more successive volleys all dead on target. Imato’s flight was only interrupted by a great pole smashing into his neck before he slammed his back into the wall of a great administrative building, leaving a great crack through its cornice before falling like a stone onto the road, landing chest first and leaving his neck craned upwards, legs splayed at violent angles with his arms shot right out.

Half of his body was charred. He was barely conscious of the matter though as his mind was mainly concerned by the shape of the pain emanating from his lungs which had been burned from the inside, the pain sort of resembling a great red flowing cape which reminded him of Amaya’s cloak flowing on a spring day perhaps near this very gate, the cloak which had been red but for some reason the sky now in this long distant memory was also red and the grass was red and she felt red and her smell was red orange and the air was red as well.

"Glnkgfbglgblrg," asked Imato to his companions and the great beasts before them, as a great goblet of blood flowed out of his mouth and he suddenly crumpled.

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

Hazuki’s sword was in her hand in less than an instant, a split-second movement that—with her left arm splinted and unable to properly grip the saya—telegraphed sheer violence and a will to do harm as it sliced cleanly through the scabbard as if it were paper. Its two halves fell neatly to the ground and on some vague level Hazuki registered and neatly filed away the scorpioid Hollow’s departure under the torrent of rage boiling up at this latest indignity. Not enough that Seireitei had been beset by these animals and the Academy reduced to rubble, but now there were Menos here, like a bad joke that had long overstayed its welcome. Whatever part of her that should have been in awe at seeing the towering hulks for the very first time outside of a book was almost wholly drowned out by the desire to make sure they knew their place.

The sky lit up like fireworks, haphazard Cero arcing clear across overhead, and the cacophonous sounds of panic followed immediately. Her sword’s feelings, it seemed, mirrored her own, and Hazuki could sense the sullen, voiceless anger radiate from it like heat from smoldering coals. The Menos closest to the trio seemed to answer in kind, a pulse of spiritual pressure rolling over the three of them like a wave as the same awkward negative pressure in the pit of her stomach informed her of what was to come. Sure enough, the Cero carved through the air almost directly above her; aimed, she realized, at Imato, who had deftly maneuvered to a safer distance to return fire. No matter how it went for her companion, he had provided her with an opportunity, and it was an opportunity she relished in taking.

In a heartbeat, she was off the ground, the creak in her ribs wholly ignored as she shot straight up, caught a foothold on thin air then launched herself straight at the Gillian’s mask. She sailed gracefully through the air, just a dark speck slowly rotating against the backdrop of a roiling sky. A sharp glint as the edge of her sword caught the sunlight, a split-second tenseness of limbs, then she was past. Silence, but for the rustle of her uniform and the distant screams, then all at once a grinding screech that ruptured the air around her as the satisfaction of a perfect cut settled in, a gash opening up in the Gillian’s mask like a chunk torn from ceramic. Her satisfied grin contorted into a snarl, and as she readied her follow-up strike, she took quick stock of her surroundings.

It was with some satisfaction she noted that the Sixth’s lieutenant had already engaged the other Gillian, a more imposing creature that differed from the almost textbook example she had just cut into, and she scanned in the direction of the Cero for her other companion. A second passed. Two. Then she saw him—or what was left of him, and that single moment of hesitation as she tried to process the sight of the scorched flesh and mangled limbs was all it took.

The Gillian’s neck twisted, the long sharp protrusion of its nose coming to bear like a cannon rotating at unnatural speeds, and Hazuki simply hung mid-air as it let loose another beam of dark energy at what might as well have been point-blank range. It enveloped her completely, the haphazard bits of wood and cloth wrapped around her arm evaporating instantly, and her breath caught in her throat at the sudden and overwhelming totality of the pain and noise. It was as if she had been hurled into the center of an explosion that rushed past her in a stream of agony, agony, and more agony. At some indeterminate point it had ended, she was sure of it, but the deafening roar in her ears and the debilitating pain remained, her uniform tattered and smoking, her skin an angry red. She didn’t know what to do, where to go, what to think—all she knew was pain. And pain. And... Something else, something she couldn’t quite place. Was that...

Fear?

Despite the damage she had suffered she could still discern something deeper still, a shortness of breath that wasn’t physical, a tightness in her chest, an unsteadiness in her otherwise iron grip as she clutched her sword in a sweaty palm. Would Hazuki suffer the same fate as Imato? A crumpled tangle of burned limbs off on the wayside?

A disappointment?

Doubt opened its maw like a chasm beneath her and threatened to swallow her whole, dangling her above that pit of despair like a powerless marionette with its strings being cut one by one.

Had she simply not measured up to the task?

As if through a haze, she could feel a second Cero charging, and she sluggishly tried remembering what that meant. More pain, surely, and along with it an instinct to turn tail and flee. Yes, flee, run back to mother and father, they’ll fix it for you. You had your fun on your own but you weren’t ready, not yet, not ever. Just an overprivileged daughter with a superiority complex, that’s all.

Something rippled. Deep down, in the depths of her soul, a gently rising tide.

Go back home to where it’s warm and safe and nobody expects anything of you. You’ll never have any stories of your own to tell, but you can always just retreat to the legacies of your parents.

The tide was coming in faster now, and with it a sense of increasing clarity. What—just die, Hazuki Tsukimiya, die and be eaten—

It surged, drowning the doubts under a serenity she had never experienced before, a clarity of mind that pierced through all her senses and focused everything into a singular purpose:

Persevere.

The most direct path was through, and Hazuki acted on that in the most literal sense. Sword out, she put all her weight behind it and met the oncoming Cero head-on. She faltered for only a moment, then surged through with a murderous look in her eyes that seemed to pay her charring uniform and blistering skin no mind whatsoever. A bright pink wash of spiritual energy billowed out in her wake as she pierced the Gillian’s mask with a sickening crunch and punched right through to the other side of its head, the tip of her blade slicing almost effortlessly through the black shroud of the Menos Grande. She emerged, at once battered, burnt, bruised, broken and bloody, but despite it all, a beatific smile plastered across her features.

The Hollow, imploding on itself as the multitude of souls were freed from the sins of their afterlives.

Victory.

The rest, she left in Lieutenant Watanabe’s capable fists.

 

[Ichiro Watanabe]

There was no sense of gradual hackles raising, like becoming slowly aware you're being watched. The Academy was simply empty and then it was full in the next instant. A flood of killing intent washed over Ichiro was he knelt, one hand spread on the school's dusty floor, contemplating breaking its already fractured bones. He'd been here as a youth, or what the Soul Society considered one, anyway, and walking its halls made distant memories flit through his head: he thought now of a teacher who'd remarked in a rare moment of solemnity that the most important thing she taught was the ability to tell when danger's breathing down your neck. That most people never notice before the guillotine falls.

Ichiro spun, eyes flashing, and saw what he assumed was the final vision of the Academy's unfortunate students. From a tall black rent in the air poured a host of Hollows, moving like dumb but destructive beasts to feast on the ambient energy of the Seireitei and of course, the souls of its inhabitants. Gillian after Gillian bent its head to exit the portal and then extended fairly into the sky: one turned towards what was briefly still the school gymnasium and lit it with a swipe of a Cero that made the stucco seethe then burst. Ichiro didn't watch the destruction: he only had eyes for the strange monster that had flitted into view, first gone and then not, to so casually dispatch the Hollows after them. Eat them, it commanded, like it was offering donuts at a work party. Its voice was painful to hear.

Ichiro snarled and launched himself forward. His shoulder caught the edge of a school window as he hurled himself through it, but he hardly slowed and so did the chunks of stucco he scattered with him. It all made sense! The mystery of this massacre was unfurling before his eyes, and the perpetrator was right in front of him. He reached out, straining until his body was stretched in an almost-perfect line, but before his fingertips could reach the strange, scorpion-like creature the thing was swallowed by the patchy darkness of the portal. Ichiro was brought up short. He was mad, but not mad enough to follow the creature through.

His fervent charge had brought the attention of one of the Gillians: the other seemed more interested in his fellows. He scarcely gave Imato a thought, or Hazuki, but he did hope they'd manage to take the thing on their own. He only had two hands.

Ichiro considered the monster towering over him, much as it inspected him. What the Gillian thought he couldn't say, but in Ichiro's own mind he noted the differences in this creature's appearance. It was tall like its fellows, and featureless save for the black-cloaked body and skeletal mask, but it lacked the long nose of a Gillian. As it clacked its jagged teeth together loud enough to jar the ears of anyone nearby, purple electricity sputtered and spat along its body. A deep glow behind those empty eyes stared down at Ichiro. He threw himself suddenly to the side.

The patch of grass Ichiro had been on instants before was ground into meal by the gnashing teeth of the Hollow. Its teeth clacked and ground--small stones in the soil were smashed into powder. It pulled its head back to let the rubble slide down its gullet--then realized it had been cheated of a meal. It swung its head left and right then fixed with a hateful stare the man breathing hard under an oak tree (one of few still standing) in the courtyard. It had taken everything he'd had to dodge the giant jaws. He steadied himself and winced as a new trickle of blood escaped the binding he'd wrapped around his left leg. Where this thing had failed, another Hollow had earlier succeeded. He only needed to be slow once.

Ichiro flicked his eyes to the side just in time to see Imato disappear like a figure before a flashbulb. The Cero that had taken him left nothing at all in his stead. Ichiro clucked his tongue. Perhaps he'd have to deal with both.

A strange grinding noise took even that sliver of attention away. Ichiro realized the thing was laughing: it had its head tilted back, its teeth gnashing. A guttural growl escaped its infinite mouth and then:

"I have never seen a Bankai before. Can you show me one?"

Ichiro blinked. A Shinigami of the Twelfth might have died to be in his shoes right then. A talking Gillian? It knew about Bankai? Careful, they might have cautioned him. It's goading you into a trap. It wants you to use your Bankai. Those researchers would have had a field day with this kind of interview, and probably dragged it out as long as they could.

Ichiro didn't have time for that. There was nothing this creature could say to him that would countermand what he implicitly knew: that thing, that scorpion Hollow, was the reason for all this. Unluckily for the Gillian, next to the scorpion it was the next best thing.

Ichiro let himself get really, really, really mad.

There was a sharp report in the air, like a high-powered rifle cracked loud and dangerous. For a split second neither he nor the Hollow seemed to move... then their appearances shimmered and disappeared to emerge from thin air only feet to the side of where the Gillian's face had been hovering. In a sudden blind haste it had been the Gillian's turn to evade a strike, but its attempt had been less successful. It swayed back now from the place in the air where Ichiro stood and it swung, punch-drunk and woozy. A hole the size of a Shinigami's fist was missing from its cheek: bits of its Hollow mask cracked and fell to the ground, then dissolved into the torn sod like soap suds. It brought its hateful face back to stare at Ichiro.

Imato and Hazuki were both too busy with their own struggle to see the Lieutenant's face just then. Whatever expression he wore, it must have made the Gillian decide to give up taunting him. Ichiro, for his part, held up his right arm to inspect the damage he'd sustained himself. Moving this fast, hitting this hard--it didn't leave him unscathed. The whole of his right arm was pink like it had been burnt, and his knuckles were blackened. His Shihakusho was in tatters up to his shoulder, and exposed the wiry muscle he had tirelessly built over centuries.

The Hollow arched its head back and howled, a toneless shivering cry. Then it surged forward, mouth wide, hoping to swallow whole this insolent prey. Perhaps to its surprise, it got the Lieutenant without issue. Those teeth were larger up close--each one was the size of Ichiro's head, and then some--but something about his flesh was too hard to bite down on entirely. It had to worry him instead, like a dog with a toy, hoping the sawing of its teeth would tear him apart. That back-and-forth motion became a savage jerk to one side as Ichiro's elbow connected with the hollow nose piece of the Gillian's mask. It made a sound like porcelain shattering.

Ichiro tore free from the slackened, toothy grip, and a single fang went with him. His feet dug furrows in the ruined courtyard soil. When he came to a halt he seemed a battered, harried thing: his once-pristine Shinigami garb was torn and ripped in a dozen places, and if you squinted then the holes over his torso could spell out a giant "C" in the shape of the Gillian's jaw. The shape was mirrored on his back. Blood seeped slowly down to join the rivulet on his leg. His right arm hung oddly at his side, like it was dislocated at the shoulder or had broken long ago and set wrong. Now its elbow was blackened too.

He grinned fiercely at the thing.

The Gillian swayed its head upright and howled. Its mask was coming off in pieces actively now: one whole cheek and most of the nose bone were gone, leaving a crescent moon shape for the mask. The teeth clattered and gnashed like marble slabs. The time for play was over: Bankai or no, it had to eat this man. It knew this with the clarity of fear a beast is awarded. Those stronger than you must be avoided, and if they can't be avoided they must be killed immediately and without mercy.

The huge jaws opened. Behind those pearly whites, in the black nothingness of the Hollow's mouth, a violet orb began to form. Crackling energy licked at the back of the Hollow's teeth and filled the air with the stench of ozone. This would be a Cero the likes the Soul Society had never seen--

It made a strangled sound when the rigid claws of Ichiro's hand slammed into and through that ball of energy.

The hollow, 30 feet tall and weighty, made a strangled choking noise as the Shinigami found something solid in the inky blackness, something tangible and integral, and tore it out like a root from wet soil. That essence turned to nothingness in his hands and the Hollow deflated like a balloon: souls scattered from its big black cloak like dandelion seeds. With an arm burnt purple and red all the way to the shoulder, Ichiro watched them go. He controlled his breathing. One exhale, and one step back towards earth. One inhale, and one more step. By the time he'd reached the ground, his vision was clear. By the time he'd reached the ground, the field was empty.

He didn't know if he would have stopped, otherwise.