Notes: For falsechaos's request "defending Karakura Town after Aizen went for a walk to Hell and took the fighting with him, but not before leaving a few surprises behind". Title from the September 14, 2005 prompt for the lj community 31_days.
The sky unzips raggedly and monsters clamber out of the gaping holes, clawing and stumbling over one another in their eagerness. Ganju doesn't fight in the air, that's a shinigami trick, but the first wave comes down to him soon enough. Their eyes glow and they give a chorus of cries that scrape the air, screaming their hunger out. He signals to Hanatarou, but there's no need. They both know what happens if the hollows break past the city limits, a nearly impossible chase through the trees and mountains of Rukongai. One of them, if they miss even one it could wipe out an entire district before reinforcements arrive.
He's got a half-dozen matches between his teeth and enough gunpowder to blow Karakura half to Hell, and wouldn't that make a nice present for Aizen, but pulling off the explosions will be tricky with the buildings all around. Not that he'd mind a little destruction ordinarily, but an awful lot of shinigami are skittering underfoot and most of them are shuttling humans to safety. They're Hanatarou's friends, he's reminded by the flick of familiar reiatsu that brushes past him back and forth. And he can't risk burying them in the rubble, so he sticks to the smaller, controlled bursts. Not nearly as powerful, but he's being cautious.
There are too many shinigami around to pick Hanatarou out visually. A small group is huddled around Ichimaru and another shinigami Ganju doesn't recognize, but she gets up stiffly and he can see that she's been crying. He can also see that she's got the good sense to make herself useful, her lips sounding her release command too quiet to hear. But the way her hair and sash flip around in the wind and the fierce twisting of her hilt as she dispatches her first hollow isn't quiet at all, and if Ganju were the poetic sort he might say that there is crying in this too. But he isn't, and her eyes are dry, and he's got his own fight to worry about. So he stops ogling and makes the next hollow disappear in a crackle of sharp color.
Almost all cleared out now, he thinks, sinking a hollow into the ground with Seppa and cracking its head cleanly. The resident shinigami, a man with seemingly more hair than sense, grunts dramatically while impaling several hollows on spikes that shoot from the ground. Now that the humans are taken care of, he can see the little healers beginning to draw their swords. He looks on approvingly as they show their steel, and even the ones whose zanpakutou aren't any good in a fight have a few nasty kidou up their sleeves. Boom-bangs that could make his sister proud.
Snaps of bone and unearthly howls punctuate his thoughts, and she is at the center of the swirling dust. A child really, with skinned knees, knuckles bloody and bruised. But the hollows are coming off worse and he could use the help, so he leaves her be. It's her town anyway, a human town. Let a human fight for it if she wants to and can. If she can't, well, death is a short commute. Hanatarou waves his hands frantically, gesturing for the girl to evacuate with the rest but damn if Ganju doesn't know that look just as well as he knows she won't stop fighting.
An unlikely bunch on the battlefield: the beautiful shinigami who dissolves her blade into the air to strike and the feisty human who vaults over one hollow to bring a kick down on another. Hanatarou, who ushers everyone along, brave and terrified all at once. And Ganju himself, who isn't the least bit disappointed that he's left out of the "big fight" because what could be bigger than this—than people protecting their home? Aizen can go to Hell for all he cares, let somebody else chase him.