Wow! I have come back from the dead and have something that I plan on finishing. Will I succeed in this venture? Who knows? Well on to the important business, I do not own Bleach or any related characters, if I did Ulquiorra would not be dead, Yumichika would be more down to earth/less vain (kinda like he will be later) and Gin would betray Aizen but that is for a different time. (This is the disclaimer by the way.)
The True Meaning of Beauty
Yumichika wondered why it had to be here, a mission in the middle of the rainforest was the last thing someone of his vain tastes would want. He focused mainly on how the humidity was affecting his hair as he followed the trail of reiatsu left by his target, an Arrancar that he had been chasing for a few hours. He wondered to himself why an Arrancar would be in a place so completely devoid of any souls. The entire chase was starting to piss him off, he knew from the mission debrief that the target was powerful, so it seemed strange that it was running away. Even after Aizen's defeat the remaining Arrancar would attack a Shinigami as soon as the opportunity presented itself and this mission was basically one big opportunity. Yumichika had been sent alone, in part due to the fact that the Arrancar was not Espada level but also Captain Zaraki determined that Yumichika was the only seated officer "available" at the time. Yumichika asked if Ikkaku could go with him but the captain refused. Apparently Ikkaku's nap was much more important than eliminating the remaining Arrancar.
"I'll send 'im after you when he wakes up, now quit yer bitchin'." was the reply Captain Zaraki made towards Yumichika's complaints.
"Ikkaku," Yumichika bitterly thought to himself, "you better HURRY THE HELL UP!! WHO TAKES A THREE HOUR NAP?" He mentally chastised himself over losing his temper in such a way, even if it was only in his thoughts it was still ugly to yell at a friend. Yet this mission could have been done in an hour or less if he wasn't the only one searching. As he pondered these thoughts he came into a clearing. In the middle of the clearing, about twenty yards away there was a large rock and sitting on the rock was a young women wearing a simple white dress with black accents. Adorning her long black hair was what appeared to be a jagged broken bone. These things along with the reiatsu told Yumichika that he found his target. She looked over at him and gracefully stood up, picking up a katana in a green scabbard.
"Ayasegawa Yumichika, I've been expecting you." she deadpanned. The fact that she just addressed him by name disturbed him, he had been alone the whole time so there was no way she could have overheard it. He reached for his own Zanpakuto as wondered how it was possible that she knew his name.
"Did I do some research? No I did not." she said with a small smirk. Yumickika's eyes widened in surprise as he gripped the hilt of his Zanpakuto, the Arrancar knowing his name had been unsettling enough but the fact that she accurately guessed his thoughts was enough to make him wonder if she was really alone.
"Please be at ease, I do not intend to attack you yet. I have something to tell you first, although I'll let you ask your questions first." the Arrancar stated. For some reason unknown to him this statement made him actually feel at ease, only a little.
"How did you know my name?" he asked his unusual foe. There were several alarms going off in his head that told him to just kill her now, avoid this talk and finish his mission.
"Ever since I was a human I had the ability to perceive the outcome of events, known to some as the future, and others as fate. Through the perfection of this skill I have been able to learn personal information about others. For example you, I know that you are the fifth seat of the Eleventh Division in the Gotei 13, although your strength is at minimum that of a third seat, which is the rank that you wanted. This rank was instead given to your best friend Madrame Ikkaku, but instead of taking the rank of fourth seat which would be more suited to your strength, you chose the fifth seat. The reason you turned down the higher rank is that you think the number four is ugly, three is beautiful and five resembles three so it is more beautiful than four." He stared at her blankly as the shock started to slowly seep back into his gaze.
"What else do you know about me?"
"I will not answer that question the way you want me to. As you know, I can see the future, and this is an ability that I retained for my entire existence, even when I became a hollow. I saw many great and terrible things, but out of all these visions two stuck with me the most. One was what I was to become, the other was something I saw completely by accident, your downfall." Yumichika was completely stupefied at this point, there was no way that this could be real this had to be total bullshit. Why would a hollow be at all interested in him?
"To be completely honest I didn't like you at all from what I saw from my visions. I saw that you were a terribly vain person and that would be your downfall if left unchecked. So I manipulated the course of events so that our fight would be the deciding factor." she said to him.
"How will this fight change anything?" he demanded. With each word she uttered he became increasingly convinced that this must be some kind of psychological tactic. She was doing this in order to relax his guard or to frighten him so that he would be easier to kill. He was pretty sure that she was going to try and kill him as an answer to his question.
"Either you will emerge from this encounter the victor and your life will be changed forever, or you will lose and perish." she calmly replied, making no move to attack him.
"I hope that you know, I don't believe in fortune tellers. Your vague answer just shows me that this is some kind of trick. I'll admit that you have good information but the problem is that everything you mentioned is common knowledge. So that means that it could be obtained from anyone. This was a very well constructed trick but I will not allow myself to be shaken by what you say, I'll only bite this last time. What made you give a damn about my downfall?" he asked, by now extremely confident that this was some elaborate trick. Whoever was the mastermind of the trick must have thought that he was an idiot.
"Your death the way it was before was crueler than any death by my hand. You would have lost all of your friends and your mind before you met your fate. I suppose that I decided to intervene because you are a good person buried beneath the surface. Not that you would know anything about that, as you see only the surface." the Arrancar stopped for a second looking down at her feet, "Cuuhlhourne was right about you, you have no concept of inner beauty." That remark made Yumichika forget all that was said before, now he was pissed and ready for a fight. He drew his Zanpakuto, he knew that a fight always followed an exchange of insults. He wasn't entirely sure how this Arrancar would react to him retaliating with an insult, but he could not stay quiet. After all this insult brought his aesthetics into question AND said that Charlotte Cuuhlhorne was right about beauty.
"Your mask shard is the most pathetically ugly thing that I have ever seen," he paused to look up at his opponent who stared at him scathingly, "also your outfit is completely ghastly. If I were you I would go and hide. It's a shame really sense you actually have a pretty face." despite how pissed off he was he had to admit that much. The Arrancar used her sodino to get to Yumichika, which allowed him an instant to look at her the mask shard that he called ugly was formed not by a broken bit of bone, but was actually a lower jaw with the pointed teeth facing toward the front of her head. That combined with the speed and the look on her face caused Yumichika to feel an emotion that he had not felt in a long time, fear.
"I would expect such a shallow insult from you, I don't care what you think of my looks. I just want to crush you for being so stupidly shallow. I've said what I wanted to say so I hope you're ready." she said as she picked him up by the neck and threw him into a nearby tree. He recovered his senses in time to block her effort to impale him with her hand. At that moment he felt a familiar reiatsu. Ikkaku had finally joined him. Sadly Ikkaku was let into the real world in the same place that Yumichika had been so he was no where near the action.
"It seems that you have reinforcements that will never do." she raised her hand above her head, "Negacion." With that the clearing and a large amount of the surrounding area was covered in a golden colored dome barrier.
"You're taking us to Hueco Mundo?" Yumichika asked mentally berating himself for letting her live this long.
"No, I have merely separated this area into a different dimension. While you can sense your friend, he will not be able to sense you or reach you."
"If you were afraid that he would interfere then your fears are ungrounded. It is considered disrespectful to get involved in someone else's fight. Why did you do this?"
"I have my own reasons." she said smiling as she drew her own Zanpakuto. Immediately she lunged at him and this time he was barely able to block the blow, the combination of her speed and strength surprised him. Yumichika smiled in a manic way, he could tell that this was going to be a great fight. She used her sodino to get behind him for another attack and he turned around to block, but she stopped her blow short and instead slashed him in the stomach. Blood burst forth from the wound he lightly touched the wound causing pain to shoot up from the point of contact up to his brain. He wondered when he last felt this kind of pain. "Damn it! Bloom, Fuji Kujaku!" he exclaimed, releasing his false shikai, he could feel his Zanpakuto complaining.
"Sooner or later I won't do this for you!" it said. Yumichika could understand how it felt, but he belonged to the eleventh division where his true power was shunned. He hated the resentment he caused his Zanpakuto to feel, but more than that he hated the idea of being kicked out of the eleventh. The battle between Yumichika and the Arrancar continued and he seemed to be gaining an advantage as soon as he released his "shikai". He managed to pay the Arrancar back for the wound that she gave him, but to his surprise they almost instantly healed. He let his guard down for a moment as he realized that she had high speed regeneration. She struck, slashing from his right shoulder down to the lower left part of his chest ending just above the horizontal slash on his stomach. He knew that if he got any more wounds like that he would be finished. He blindly attacked in retaliation and managed to stab his foe. The Arrancar jumped back, managing to avoid severe internal damage. His smile returned, the Arrancar was obviously a strong fighter but she had been shaken by the attack. She stared, her emerald eyes wide in shock at Yumichika who absentmindedly touched the new wound across his chest. She held her Zanpakuto up, he had forced her hand. She had no choice but to use her full power, to get one of the outcomes she wanted. Granted he was her enemy and she wanted him dead, but failing at that she wanted him to become a better person, which would not happen if she was vanquished by half of his power.
She inhaled and said, "Seduce, Esmeralda."
Please forgive any out of character-ness, particularly in the future, after all Yumi's life will be changed forever. Also forgive any God-modding ness, I will keep it to a minimum. And by saying that I really mean "avoid like the plague".This is my first Bleach Fic. If you review, please don't leave flames. Constructive criticism is better for self-esteem which helps stories get finished.