Author's Note: A story of Hisana and Byakuya. For previous stories in this sequence, please see my profile and click on the links.
Having been saved from a fire in Rukongai, Hisana has come to live with Byakuya. Now that he has gone missing while on duty in the human world though, Ukitake asks Hisana to accompany him and his men in their search. (And no, although she is dressed in a shihakusho she is not a shinigami)…..
The human world had changed. The city sprawled in every direction as far as the eye could see and there were lights, so many lights.
She had fallen. The others had stepped out of the senkaimon gate onto the air and she had assumed that that was simply how it worked in this world, but she had fallen and the man closest to her had snatched her around the waist. She had been ready to complain right up until she had seen the city and now she was hanging limp in his arms.
The city had moved on. Without her. She had not been a necessary part of it.
"I thought the world was ending the day I died," she murmured.
"Huh?" asked the man who held her, adjusting his grip.
"This is Tokyo, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"I died here in 1940," she said, and he stared at her as if she was mad. Perhaps it seemed that way to him. Shinigami couldn't remember their lives after all and, so far as she knew, took no interest in human history. She had thought she might feel some sense of nostalgia, but there was little here to hang any such sentiment on. The landscape had taken on a gauzy quality, now that she was seeing it as one of the dead, and there was a soft hiss of white noise that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
"Hollows," said Captain Ukitake, pointing towards the city. His form blurred and disappeared. Then there was a rush of air around her and she was suddenly moving so fast that she threw up her hands to protect her face. The next thing she knew, her toes touched solid ground and the shinigami who held her shook her gently:
"Can you stand?" he asked. She tried and found she could. Since everyone else had been able to walk on air and move faster than her eyes could follow, she didn't feel quite so certain of anything any more. All around her, the shinigami had ranged out and were staring up into the sky. Hisana followed their gaze and her courage wavered. A half dozen bony white shapes hovered above them. They looked like birds of prey save that there were neither feathers nor flesh on their bodies and their bones looked bloated and heavy. Their heads were long, pterodactyl-like, and, in their eye sockets, cold yellow flames burned.
As she watched, one swooped down. It didn't come for them, but landed a short distance away on a heap of detritus. It stabbed its beak down into the rubbish and began to eat with the grabbing motions and gusto of a hungry nestling. When it raised its head again, its beak was red with blood.
One of the shinigami ran forward and sprang at the bird, dispatching it with a single blow that cleaved straight through its skull and down through the skeletal body. It vanished in an explosion of brilliant blue light that left the shinigami standing poised atop a heap of human rubbish. He was staring down at something she couldn't see.
"Captain!" he called.
Ukitake's outline blurred again. The other shinigami too. The man who seemed to have taken responsibility for Hisana slipped his arm around her waist again and, before she could object or refuse, there was that nauseating sensation of movement again and she was standing atop the rubbish heap wth the others. She immediately wished that he hadn't brought her here.
In the midst of the piles of waste, there lay a man's body. Well, not a man. From his black shihakusho, it was clear that he had once been a shinigami, but little now remained either of his physical body or of the uniform he had been wearing. His chest had been ripped open and a substantial attempt had been made to tear his limbs from his body. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in such a way that it looked as if he had been screaming when he died.
One of the shinigami, who clearly had more stomach than Hisana, picked his way down to the corpse and, covering his mouth with one hand, checked the man's collar with the other:
"Yeah. Sixth Division," he called up.
"That bird didn't do this," said the man who had dispatched the skeletal vulture. He glanced up at the other birds still hovering in the sky above them: "They're too weak to be ordinary hollows. I'd be surprised if they were even sentient."
"They're probably subsidiaries to whatever it was that attacked Sixth," said Ukitake: "They're scavengers. Alright, I want you to spread out. Look for survivors, and, if we can take the bodies back then we'll do so." The shinigami began to move off: "And don't let any of those things land," he called: "If they do then you'll know where to look for the next body." He stepped over to Hisana's side: "Do you need to return now, Hisana-san?"
She shook her head. No. She had seen worse on the streets. Though it never made it any less shocking, there was no question of her turning back.
She looked around. There were no buildings here. She had thought at first that she was staring at the ravages of war, but it occurred to her now that what she was seeing were simply piles of unwanted nicknacks, papers and rotten food. This was a rubbish dump, not a war zone. It seemed to be a terribly mundane place for a battle.
One of the savenger hollows swept down and was immediately intercepted by a member of Ukitake's squad. The blade cut through its very centre and it exploded into streamers of blue light. The shinigami landed and resheathed his sword:
"Here!" he called.