A Hollow Existence

Of course I don't own Bleach. Bleach is owned and was created by Tite Kubo. Rock on Tite!!!

This is just some Original Character story I'm toying with. Nel will be showing in the second portion! There is never enough Nel :D

(Thunder Claps) Tak groaned as he rolled on to his side to find a more comfortable position in his bed, if that was at all possible. He had been another long day of training with his sensei and his muscles decided that the middle of the night was the most convenient time to start screaming out their agony from the countless hours of training he had endured. "Used to be a hell of a lot easier than this", he said to himself, quietly amused by the fact that his reward for his new intensified training routine, was more pain. He stared toward the ceiling in the darkness as he listened to the quiet whisper of the rain began. He stared blankly, realizing that today was the day that signified that it had been eleven years since he first began his martial arts training. His eyes slowly drifted to halfway closed.

He often wondered what his father looked like before he would drift off to sleep. Since he was seven years old, the only thing close to a father that he had was his sensei. It was he who had helped him grow strong, he who listened to him, and he who taught him almost everything he now knew. "It is all too common for children, or anyone, to lose a loved one these days," Tak thought to himself. "But why did it have to be us? We did nothing wrong. My father was not a soldier, he had no enemies...At least that's what I have been told since I could remember." Without fully noticing it, sleep consumed him.

"Tak?", squeaked the mouse like voice of his little sister Jurell. Tak sat up quickly in surprise, being that Jurell was the soundest sleeper in the house, maybe even the entire village. "What's wrong El?" Tak asked sleepily, running his calloused hand through his short brown hair and scratching his head.

"I-It's..." Jurell stammered as her blank gaze drifted toward the floor. "It's what?" Tak asked with a growing feeling of unease, then he noticed a tear slide down her cheek and onto the floor.

"It's mommy." she breathed, tears now pouring down her face. Ignoring the searing pain pulsing from every joint in his body, Tak leapt out of bed, landing with a cats grace, snatched up his five year old little sister and dashed down the short corridor to his mothers room. He slid the door open so quickly there was a loud CRACK, practically knocking it off its track. Their mother was kneeling in her bed, facing away from them.

Feeling something was very wrong, Tak tried to suppress the dreadful sinking feeling in his stomach and slowly moved Jurell behind him, and started toward the bed. "I'm fine Tak," her voice said calmly, still facing away from them both. "Just fine." Though their mothers voice had its usual soothing tone to it, still something was not right. "Go back to bed. I'm fine." She said coolly, still facing away from them both. "Where is Jin?" Tak asked noticing that Jurell's father was nowhere to be seen.

"Go back to bed you two." She said with a strangely angelic voice. As Tak took a step closer and reached out his arm toward her shoulder, an ink drop fell onto his arm. He froze. A dark drop. His eyes grew wide. Subconsciously he knew what it was, but refusing to give way to truth, thought it may be rain, even though they patched their roof just the other day. His arm hovering above his mothers shoulder , he looked back at Jurell who was standing at the doorway. She was trembling, staring up at the ceiling a look of unprocessed shock on her face.

Tak took a deep breath and snapped his head quickly up toward the ceiling, horrified to see Jin pinned to the ceiling his neck crushed. Shocked, Tak quickly tried to make sense of the situation, there was nothing holding him up there, blood dripping from his mouth, and...Then he noticed that his neck was not crushed, but rather being crushed, as if an invisible boa constrictor was slowly squeezing the life out of him. Jin's eyes were bulging, both with excruciating pain and sheer terror, then a loud crunch filled their ears, exclaiming the demise of Jurells' father. Jin's fingers went limp as his eyes glazed over. Jin's body dropped from the ceiling. Tak reflexively rolled out of the way as Jin's body hit the ground with a sickening thud.

Tak tried to block the confusion out of his head and struggled to focus, though in vain. He ran to Jurell and picked her up. She said nothing. She didn't even make a sound. "Mom!" Tak screamed from the doorway. As he shifted his weight about to sprint across the room and Jin's corpse to grab his mother and get the three of them out of the house, "I'm fine. Go to bed you two." She said again, eerily calm. Suddenly, Jurell's grip tightened on what skin she could hold onto on her muscular brother. Tak looked down at her only to see blood oozing from a gaping hole on her stomach. His jaw dropped in shock. He then noticed there was a horrible searing pain in the right side of his chest. Horrible, cold, excruciating pain. He couldn't scream, he couldn't move, and even if he could, he would not drop Jurell.

The pain quickly intensified, becoming debilitating. Tak couldn't comprehend what was happening, it was as if he were impaled by something. Then he noticed the hole from Jurell's stomach was suddenly filled by a large white, what looked like pole. The impaling white object had been plunged straight through Jurell's back, out her stomach, and into Tak's chest. Growing dizzy and disorientated, Tak struggled to look up toward where his mother was sitting. She just knelt there, calm as ever. "I told you to go to bed you two." Her voice said gravely. "It might have been a little less, (her head snapped backward with a deafening crack staring toward them with empty eye sockets) traumatic!" the now sub humanly deep voice exclaimed. Their mothers body then burst to smithereens. Tak tried to shield his eyes. He opened them to witness, not his mother, or even some crazed man who had the sudden urge to go on a late night killing spree, but a giant white monster.

Whatever this thing was, it still had him and his younger sister pinned to the wall with what he could now see as one of many of the creatures tentacles , each having a sharpened spine at each tip. The creatures large skull opened its jaw and began laughing maniacally. It pulled the spine out of Jurell and Tak. As Tak slumped to the floor, Jurell still in his arms, he stared at her. She stared back, but he knew she was not staring at him.. As the creature continued laughing, Jurell's grip weakened. Tak said nothing, he just let his tears do all the talking. Jurell's hand completely lost its grip. Her eyes, still possessing a look of terror, looked as if they were crafted of glass. She was gone.

The laughing stopped. The creature tried to wrap a tentacle around Tak's throat. Summoning all the strength he had left me rolled out of the way and stumbled down the hallway. Still carrying Jurell he threw open the front door, but was seized by another one of the monsters tentacles. "It reached around the outside of the house!?" He wheezed in shock. The monster tightened its grip on Tak, causing his arms to weaken and drop Jurell's body. The monster began squeezing him harder and harder, it's maniacal laughter starting again. He was suffocating. Tak was starting to lose consciousness. His eyes began to roll back in his head as the laughs became echoed and far off. He grew cold, his eyes closed, and his breathing stopped.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes. He was out of the monsters grip! He saw Jurell's body on the ground and quickly went to pick it up to try and escape again. But he could not grab her. His hands would pass right through her little body. Looking down at her even more confused than he already was, he noticed a large chain coming off of his chest.

Gripping the chain in both his hands, he noticed that it led upwards. He then grimly realized that the monster, still had him. His body was in the clutches of that monster, yet this chain was connecting him still? Trying to make some sort of sense of what might be happening, Tak quickly realized that that chain was holding him to his body somehow. The monster stopped its laughing once more. It wrapped another tentacle around him, leaving the center of his chest where the chain was connected to him, exposed. He started struggling trying to get free of the monsters grip. Then he felt an excruciating pain coming from the now taught chain connected into his chest. The monster was pulling his body away from him. "It's...trying..*ack*..to break...*gasp*..this chain?" Tak sputtered in between screams of the worst pain he could have only imagined, until now.

"Relax" Said the monster in a falsely sincere voice. "It will all be over....soon." And with that the monster ripped the chain from Tak's chest. Tak let out a howl of agony and darkness seeped out of the hole and consumed himself. He felt as if he were sliding down through the darkness. Unable to see, but definitely still able to feel. He was falling now, panicking he put out his arms to try and stop himself from spinning. He caught glimpses of the monster. He could also see a red sky now. Then with a violent crash, he hit the ground. Dazed, he opened his eyes. He was face down in black sand. When Tak looked up he saw endless black desert and heard loud strange roaring in the distance. He laid there, not out of will, but paralyzed from confusion of what just happened. Was he alive? Was he in Hell? Where was his family?

Tak felt as though he were going to vomit. He placed his hands into the black sand to lift himself. Sweat collecting on his head and body trembling he began retching. He vomited. He cried. His nose ran... and kept running, and crying, and vomiting....White!? That all too familiar feeling of panic returned when he quickly noticed the pasty plaque like substance he was continuously purging was violently oozing from his eyes and nose as well! He tried screaming but only felt this substance leaving his body, and could only watch as it floated through the air and rushed back at him, consuming his body. "What's happening!?", "What is this!?", was all that he could think as his heart raced with terror in its purest of forms.

A vision of his family sitting down to dinner the night before flashed quickly before his eyes. But just as quickly as it came, it had gone. As his now white arms became gargantuan, his white legs transformed to what looked like the hind quarter of some kind of bull-like creature, and his head (engulfed in the white plaque like substance) took the shape of a skull with giant sharp fangs and two horns protruding straight out from his forehead, he could see nothing. He heard nothing. He felt, nothing. Then the newly born hollow that was Tak reared back and let out a massive roar, informing this new realm that he had arrived. This was not Tak. Tak, was no more.