Chapter One: Stranger
You never know who might show up on your doorstep
Or just how and why they came to be there
Many of the arrancars under Aizen's command wondered about why their lord and master had chosen to erect his immense fortress where he had. There were a small number who were old enough to remember a time before Las Noches. There were an even smaller few who recalled the Tower Of Bells, the Red-Gated Palace, and the Temple Of Skulls, which had stood on the ground Las Noches now covered, in moderately overlapping spans of time. No arrancar remembered anything before that time, not even the Espada or the mysterious leader of the Exequias. Not since Aaronerio Aruereri died, in any case.
Therefore, nobody knew that Aizen had erected his colossal fastness where he had not because of the three palaces of long-dead vasto lordes who had reigned before his advent, but because of the system of catacombs and tunnels and underground chambers that predated even those ruins. Even Aizen did not know their purpose, their builders, or how deep they went. In the four hundred years since he had built Las Noches and consolidated his kingdom in Hueco Mundo, he had mounted many expeditions into the underways, mapping and recording and exploring the blank corridors and empty rooms. Whoever had occupied them before he found them had cleaned up after themselves very well. Still, there were mysteries and relics enough to warrant his continued attention. It was from one catacomb network that he had taken a tablet taller than two men from which he had learned of methods to shape the form a hollow's powers would take when its mask was removed through acupuncture and delicate surgery. He had found several scrolls (written on parchment of human skin) in an otherwise empty library, that, though damaged, told him much about the art of sensory torture for humans and hollows, and of the lines along which minds broke. Gin had been particularly delighted with those, and Aizen had caught his lieutenant sneaking looks at his unfinished translations several times.
On this day, two weeks after the failed attempt to retrieve Inoue Orihime by her nakama and the four taichō-fukutaichō teams from the Soul Society, Aizen decided to mount an expedition into a network that was until now unexplored, ironically lying under the palace that held his throne room.
He descended through an octagonal hatch of black metal, which Aizen knew from tests conducted in other places to be comprised of a mixture of air and earth essences, with miniscule traces of water. Six numeros accompanied him, carrying lanterns. Four savant arrancars carried the tools and instruments with which data would be collected. All carried their swords.
The shaft descended without stairs or a ladder for nearly fifty meters, before ending in the middle of a five-way intersection. Aizen selected a direction at random and strode off, the two beams of the numeros in front of him lighting his way. They walked for quite some time, taking several turns and descending three long, shallow staircases before coming to a halt. A door of the same black metal blocked their way, taller than three men and as wide as two standing with their arms spread and fingertips barely touching. The party looked at it for a time. It was utterly featureless, with only a thin seam to mark where it opened.
Suddenly, Aizen became aware of a faint spiritual pressure from behind the door, growing stronger and closer with every second. His hand went to his sword, as did those of the four numeros who were not holding the lanterns, but none of them drew.
The energy crescendoed, and there was a moment of quiet. Then an ear-splitting boom slammed into the door from the inside. It trembled in its frame, ringing like a gong. The tunnel shook alarmingly. Aizen almost stumbled. He waited several minutes for the ringing in his ears to subside, then motioned to the numeros. They moved forwards and grabbed fistfuls of the metal, clawing handholds in the featureless black. With a unified effort, they tugged the doors open. Aizen picked up one of the lanterns and moved into the chamber. He pointed the narrow beam of light around the chamber. It was a squat cylinder, roughly four times as wide as it was tall. In the center of the room was a perfectly circular hole, absolutely black. Nothing was written, carved, scratched, or inlaid on the featureless white walls or floor. There was no sign of what had made the noise.
"Up here, dude," came a voice from the darkness. Aizen abruptly twitched the lamp to the ceiling, drawing Kyoukasuigetsu with a hiss of metal. Five figures were cast into sharp relief, crouched on the ceiling in blatant defiance of gravity, in the center of a large blast mark. They shielded their eyes from the light, blinking. The one who had spoken spoke again. "Ow. Yeah, hi. We come in like, peace. Totally in peace. So you could, like, put your sword away and we would like, not seize the opportunity to eat your heart out. Or something."
Aizen did not sheath his sword. "Who are you and where did you come from?"
"That," the man said, falling from the ceiling and flipping, stopping in midair over the pit, "Is information for another place. One with refreshments and soft places to sit." He walked past Aizen. "So hurry up and show me where one is if you want to know so badly."
The arrancars who had set up three couches (two facing each other, occupied by Aizen an the stranger, the third off to one side) and a low table on the white sands scurried away. Aizen steepled his fingers and began to mutter. A ring of fire traced its way around the couches. He continued to incant, and a translucent black dome formed just inside the ring. The crackling of the flame was blocked out.
"We may speak privately now," the renegade captain said.
The man bowed his head. "Looks so." He took the cup of tea that had been left for him and raised it. "To the fall of the King."
Aizen raised his own cup a fraction, then took a sip. "You also seek that one's downfall."
"Damn spanky." The man took a sip. "I heard about what you had goin' on and decided to hop over, thinkin' maybe I could be of some assistance. Of course my dudes do as I do, so you get them too, gratis." He looked at Aizen. "If you don't like what you're hearing, at least lemme tell you a little about what I got to offer you. I came a long way."
Aizen met his gaze for a moment, his face a mask. "Alright. First off, what's your name?"
Across Las Noches, the Espada stopped whatever they were doing as the tattoos in their flesh sent a wave of mingled pleasure and pain across their bodies. Aizen's voice rang in their skulls.
Join me at my tower, my Espada, and bring your fraccion. There is someone I would like you to meet.
The six Espada who had survived the attempted rescue of Inoue Orihime by her nakama and the four taichō-fukutaichō pairs stood before the black double doors, which towered over even Nnoitra by almost twice his height. Their fraccion stood a respectful distance behind them. Not one of those present moved to open the doors.
After a few moments, they opened inwards. Impenetrable blackness stood on the other side. With only a moment's hesitation, the arrancars filed in. The gates closed behind them silently, leaving them in darkness. Suddenly, there was light all around them. They stood on a sea-green plain, stretching away into eternity in all directions. The sky overhead was white and shining. Aizen's voice sounded, like a lover's whisper in the ears of each of them, but he was nowhere to be seen.
"I was not the first to betray the Soul Society," he said. "By countenancing treachery against the duly appointed representatives of Heaven, I joined a select subculture whose members ranged the gamut of the human condition."
"From the weak," came the voice of Kariya Jin, walking in a circle around the group then vanishing in a spray of blood.
"To the merely contemptible," finished Baishin from behind them. As they watched, his skin turned to metal and he shattered into dust that was soon swept away by a wind nobody else felt.
"The easily forgotten," came a chorus as the Dark Ones appeared, encircling the group, then dissolving to make way for the distinctive silhouettes of Urahara Kisuke and Kurosaki Isshin.
"To ghosts that can't be laid to rest soon enough," they said, before sinking into the ground.
Eight hollows in the shreds of shinigami robes appeared from the air. They circled the group, radiating bloodlust. One by one, their masks broke, revealing the eight vizards. Hirako Shinji spoke. "Those who fell from grace."
"And those who threw themselves from it," rasped a voice like lightning and broken glass from everywhere and nowhere.
The light in the sky overhead suddenly condensed into a single blazing star that fell towards the ground. The cacaphony of hundreds of voices raised in insane laughter surrounded the arrancars. The star touched ground on the horizon, and there was a bright flash. A wave of red-orange fire swept towards the arrancars, wiping the vizards away. It blew over and past the arrancars, the heat scalding but causing no damage, the wind whipping their clothes back. Grit blew into their eyes, and a roaring filled their ears. Quickly, the storm subsided and they looked out over a blasted plain of fused black glass that stretched to every horizon. The sky was choked with black clouds of dust.
Aizen's voice sounded again. "Let me introduce to you one such. He has come a long way to offer us his assistance, and his resume should speak for itself."
There was a jangling of bells from behind the arrancars. They turned again. By now some of them were positively dizzy from the constant turning around.
A man stood there. He was a little under six feet, even with the thick-soled boots he wore. He had an elegant, angular face. Mud-brown hair was pulled tightly back into a ponytail at the top of his neck, and a neat hexagon of hair framed his mouth. A crocodile-skin eyepatch covered his right eye. He wore a white jacket with a tricorn hood that resembled a knee-length cross between a safari shirt and a lab coat. Bells and jangling bits of metal hung from the zippers of the many pockets. The elbow-length sleeves ended in a ring of tassels, and the hem was the same. He wore it open, revealing a black t-shirt buried under a panoply of necklaces, amulets, talismans, and miscellaneous junk strung from his neck. A rosary with a brass eight-pointed star in place of a cross hung side by side with a choker of human fingerbones. A necklace strung with jade coins was tangled with a string of bird skulls with runes carved into the foreheads. A black-and-white-checkered sash held a zanpakutō with red handle wrappings and scabbard, and a tsuba shaped into an eight-pointed sunburst. A utility belt was slung over it. He wore white pants that had probably begun life as a close facsimile of U.S. Army ACUs, but had had chains and even more pockets added, tucked into black boots midway up the shin. His hands were hidden in worn gloves of brown leather. Two identical bracelets encircled each wrists, each silver bead a tiny skull. His right forearm was covered in a miniaturized representation of the Sefirot, which turned into the stalk of some flower just below the elbow. Line after line of text in many languages, in eye-wateringly small size and a veritable rainbow of colors, filled every free centimeter of skin, threading through and around the kabbalistic design. A tangle of interlocking, wicked-looking runes in obsidian black led up the inside of his arm from under the glove. An identical stream of sigils graced his left arm.
He smiled, revealing a mouthful of electrum fangs. "Yamamoto Kesuke at your service, lords and ladies." He bowed courteously. "My resume is feeling a little hoarse at the moment, so I'll speak for it." He cleared his throat. "Former grandmaster of the Seireitei's Kidō Corps. Sixth future captain to graduate from the Shinigami Academy. Tried for three counts of premeditated murder, dispersal of Gotei 13 secrets, crimes against Heaven, and high treason. Convicted on all counts. Sentenced to execution on Sōkyoku hill." Still smiling, he walked forwards. The arrancars parted before him as he walked through the cluster of white-garbed forms. Back turned, he continued. "Former right hand of the Harlot Flame. Master of arts to foul to detail here and too numerous to list at this time. I can also knit." He turned around, and the sharper-eyed noticed a thin curl of smoke leaking from his lips. "I hope we have lots of fun together."
The crushing heat and wasteland disappeared, to be replaced by the dimly lit interior of the Espada's meeting chamber. Aizen swept towards the crowd, flanked by Gin and Tōsen as always.
"Nice work with the whole illusion thing, dude," Kesuke said absently.
"I've done better. You delivered that speech well," Aizen replied.
"I've done better as well. I'm not good with groups, y'know? One-on-one kinda guy, me." Kesuke bowed courteously. "Perhaps I may introduce my retinue at this point?"
"That is acceptable," Aizen said.
"Well then." Kesuke reached to his side and sunk a hand into the air beside him. He grabbed a fistful of space and twisted. The scenery tore like a painted backdrop, revealing a space exactly the same but for the four figures that occupied it. "I'll make this quick, since I don't' want to lose your interest," the ponytailed shinigami said. "In order from left to right; Rie, Blank, Setsuna, and Hirako Megumi. Bow for the crowds, dudes."
Rie was a delicate-featured girl of indeterminable age, no more than five feet tall. She had wax-smooth, chalk-white skin, no hair whatsoever (not even eyebrows), green eyes heavily lined with black mascara, and a curl of white mask under her right eye, like a stylized teardrop. She wore a voluminous white robe, and wore a Fourth Division bag (or a close facsimile thereof) on her back.
Blank was as tall as Rie was short. He approached seven feet, all of it wiry muscle. His strong, angularly handsome features bore a curious blankness, as if he did not know how to move his face. He had a spiky shoulder-length mane of snow-white hair and eyes so pale a grey they might as well have been white as well. An oblong mask remnant with three rounded spikes on it covered his right eyebrow. He wore the uniform of Aizen's arrancars, unmodified. A zanpakutō, white-wrapped and white-sheathed, hung at his left hip.
Setsuna was of average height. She wore a white version of the shōzoku of the Seireitei's Punishment Squad. Her face was hidden by a white wrap, but for her eyes, which were unremarkable. A black ponytail stuck out from high on the back of her head and fell to just below her shoulder blades. Her fingernails were short claws of black iron.
Megumi was almost as tall as Blank. Her skin was as pale and translucent as fine china, and her features and shape were a cut above. A sword nearly five feet long (not including the hilt, which added another foot) hung on her back. She wore a color-inverted version of the shinigami uniform, with the sleeves ripped off to reveal arms covered in scars old and new, track marks, and burns. Her eyes were an unnatural shade of yellow, like pus or urine. She wore a slightly disturbing expression that was part smile and part snarl.
"I expect all of you to treat Yamamoto-san with respect and defer to him as you would Ichimaru-san or Tōsen-san," Aizen said sternly. "That will be all."
The Espada and their fraccion hesitated, then waked out of the chamber. The door swung shut behind them.