There are 94 blue lights placed strategically over the campus of Ithaca College. Each light is a beacon drawing attention to an emergency telephone, which can put a caller through to the Office of Public Safety with the touch of a button. Ithaca College, and every institute of higher learning in the United States for that matter, has reasons for these lights. Every 21 hours someone is raped on a college campus. These blue lights serve as safety lines for would-be victims and as deterrents for would-be aggressors. But despite the protection these lights might offer from the denizens of our world, there are entities for which a light won't be nearly enough of a discouragement. They are not of our world, and they do not belong here. The only thing that stands between them and the innocents of this world are the shinigami, the Death Gods.
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It was late, maybe a little after midnight. James had just finished the last bit of homework for macroeconomics the next day when he heard it. It made his blood run cold and his hair stand on end. The din of a re-broadcast of the Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav was pierced by a single blood-curdling shriek. James looked at his roommate, Andrew Telfort, to see if Andrew had heard it. He hadn't. He wasn't even awake. Andrew had a tendency to fall asleep with the television on, but James found it hard to fault him. Andrew was a freshman as well, but he was also a football player. That meant hours of exhausting work just to hold down the fifth spot out of seven, which seemed ridiculous to James, although he thought understood why someone would do it.
James slipped silently off his bed and onto the ground. It's probably just some girl fooling around, he thought to himself, but as much as his logic attempted to hold him back, his heart told him he was obligated to investigate. He quickly pulled on a pair socks and slipped into a shirt and a pair of old Nike sneakers. He grabbed the hoodie he had gotten as part of his high school soccer team senior year and his keys and stole quietly out the door, turning the knob before closing it so it wouldn't click shut and wake Andrew.
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A.J. Rousseau was always a light sleeper. Her eyes flashed open and immediately registered the ceiling of her dorm room even as her hand snaked over her head toward her cell phone. She picked it up before the third ring and without bothering to check the caller she flipped the device open and queried as to who was calling.
"Who is it?" she asked wearily, wishing she could have had a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep.
"This is Randall. Wake Iris and get down to O lot, now. Call Roseanna on your way over here and tell her to bring Erin," the other voice commanded, before the man named Randall cut the connection.
"Shit!" A.J. bounced off her strawberry-themed sheets and onto the small carpet she and her roommate, the aforementioned Iris, shared.
"Iris, wake up!" A.J. called to the sleeping form of her roommate. A.J. hopped into a pair of shoes and threw a sandal at the still prone Iris, hitting her in the shoulder. Iris rolled over and sat up to face A.J. as she was reaching for a jacket.
"What's the big fuss," she managed between yawns, "at twelve o'clock in the morning?" snatching a glance at the clock. Obviously midnight is no stretch for the typical college student, but these were anything but typical.
"Randall called. We need to be in front of Park, now."
Iris bolted out from under the covers and grabbed a blanket and her keys.
"I got keys, are you good?" she asked, looking at A.J. as she pulled her sweater over her head.
"I'm fine, but don't you need shoes?"
"Fuck shoes, let's go."
Grabbing her keys and cell phone first, A.J. then vaulted over her bed on the way out the door. Iris leaped over to her roommate's bed and then hit the ground running behind her fire-haired friend. The door slammed shut rather noisily behind them, but neither of them were really concerned about that at that moment.
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As he bounded down the stairs from the second floor of the dorm to the basement where the side exit was, James couldn't help but feel he was part of an endangered species: someone who still believed in basic elements of chivalry. Gah, he thought, here I am out at this ungodly hour to go see if someone is okay and if I do find anyone they'll probably be more annoyed than appreciative I show up. Top it off with class at 8:30 tomorrow and the fact that I'll probably wake Andrew on the way back in… why do I do this to myself?
Putting his self-reflection in the back of his mind, James pushed open the door to the cool night air and was greeted by the dim luminescence of Ithaca's night, at least the on-campus version. There was hardly anywhere that was legitimately dark. The lights, either blue or orange, seemed to reach almost everywhere. One of the overhead streetlights flickered ominously as James stopped for a second to make sure he had his keys before letting the exit door gravitate slowly shut.
Just as the door slid back into place and made him aware of that fact with a distinct click, he heard it again. That scream. The air suddenly seemed very warm as goose bumps prickled down his spine and coated him in the little mounds. His sense of urgency now heightening, James took off at a jog around the north side of Landon Hall. He crossed the branching walkways behind the dorm and headed down toward the parking lot in front of the communications school, Park.
Unnaturally aware of the casual swishing of his jeans' pant legs running against themselves, James ran down a small hill and skidded to a halt looking down the walkway in front of the school. He could hear the blood in his head echo thunderously as all normal sounds one might associate with college nightlife vanished in the deafening wake of his throbbing heart. No wildlife. No cars. No students out for a late night stroll; just the beating of his heart… and that desperate cry.
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I sprinted down the slope that led to the O parking lot. I may not be the fastest person, but the distance was short and I covered it easily. As I pivoted and ground to a stop the back of my mind seemed keenly aware I had probably just taken a half-centimeter of rubber off my shoes. My head was pounding and it was hard to concentrate. I blinked a couple of times to try to focus myself when I saw her.
She appeared to be pinned up against one of the large light posts that illuminate the parking lot, but nothing seemed to be holding her there. I couldn't tell what she looked like. She seemed almost… out of focus? I strained my eyes but still couldn't make out her features. There was some kind of bizarre heat haze distorting the air in front of the light post.
"Hey!" Are you alright?" I called, immediately cringing that I could say something like that when something was obviously very wrong. She appeared to be struggling for air, writhing against some unseen force that held her nearly twice her height above the ground.
I kicked into an urgent jog to close the distance between us. When I was about 15 feet from the pole I stumbled over something– a used can of Edge Eclipse shaving gel– sending it flying into the heat haze where, to my surprise, it bounced off of the air and rebounded back at me.
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A.J. booked through the central parking lot, U lot, and down past west side of Park. She reached the bottom of the stairs leading to the parking lot and turned to her right. What she saw terrified her. She had never seen a Hollow before. Everyone that had been told to gather tonight was selected because they could see ghosts and spirits, but this was not what she signed up for.
The Hollow was vaguely humanoid in one sense, but some part of her brain told her it looked like a giant starfish. Standing erect of two of its massive legs, the Hollow held a girl up against one of the light posts. There was also a boy there, running toward the Hollow. Can either of them see it? she thought to herself. The boy was running toward the Hollow when it looked like he kicked something at it. Whatever it was it was small, a little bit bigger than a golf ball, and it ricocheted off on of the Hollow's tree-trunk legs and hit the ground at the boy's feet, before rolling past him. His eyes followed the projectile as it tumbled to a stop at the foot of a young cherry blossom, one of many planted throughout the college.
Idiot, don't take your eyes off it! she wanted to yell, but her voice got caught in her throat.
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Darius Randall Quinn sprinted through parking lot U and reached the stairs on the west side of Park to find his charges rooted to the ground in the foreground, with the Hollow menacing the backdrop. Of course it wasn't the first time he had seen a Hollow. Randall was at the head of a new training program at Ithaca College. Soul Society knew that Ithaca and the surrounding area was a hotspot for spiritual activity and it was considered a good testing ground for the reitsu-exposure experiment. It was not universally accepted, but it was theorized that spirit energy acted like radiation in some sense, and people with latent talents and high-sensitivity to the spiritual worlds could have their abilities 'awakened' by exposure to high levels of spirit energy in crucial situations. The latest preliminary research indicated increased levels of norepinephrin were somehow relevant, and so fight-or-flight situations were crucial; simple routine exposure was not enough.
Quinn walked past his stunned pupils. He knew he needed to act soon, but while his job as a Death God demanded that he eliminate Hollows, protecting Pluses was simply important, not necessarily top priority. Once he had positioned himself in between them and the Hollow, even though it was a good hundred feet away, he addressed them. "Chances are this is your first time seeing a Hollow. It's some scary shit, maybe some freaky shit, but you agreed to do this, so listen up! I'm going to engage the Hollow. Form a circle around it. Remove the bystanders if you can, but stay relatively close. We don't know how many opportunities like this we'll have or how many it might require to see some change, so don't fuck up." He turned backed toward the Hollow before issuing his last instruction: "Isaac," he called to one of the other potentials he was caretaker for, "catch me."
"What–" Isaac started before Quinn's body fell backward into his arms, now limp from the absence of its soul. Quinn the Death God now stood before them, his pale skin marking a stark contrast with his obsidian robes. Hanging loosely from his hip was a standard katana.
"Let's go," he ordered in a voice that exuded authority, before sprinting toward the middle of the parking lot.
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James watched the Edge container roll to the base of a small tree behind him before refocusing his gaze and what he had assumed was some sort atmospheric distortion. He started to close the remaining distance between himself and the haze, extending his hand toward it when a shout from his left stopped him.
"What the hell are you doing!?" screamed an onrushing man dressed in all black. His face was cloaked in shadow and his hand went to something at his belt. "Get away from it!"
Get away from what? James thought. What the hell is this guy talking about?
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Quinn moved as quickly as he could across the vacant lot, calling out to the boy there. "What the hell are you doing!?" He reached for his katana as he went, yelling to warn the seemingly clueless bystander. "Get away from it!" He knew it was probably a lost cause; Death Gods were like Hollows, invisible to the unaware.
When the distance between them was about 10 yards the boy turned, perhaps to acknowledge him or more likely due to the rest of the gang following behind him, casting him a quizzical glance and shrugging his shoulders, pointing to the girl on the post. His confused expression shifted to one of pained surprise when the Hollow finally appeared to take notice of his encroachment and unleashed a ferocious backhand swat with a free hand. The heavy-handed sweep caught the young man in the chest and catapulted him backward. He hurtled violently through to air before landing on and smashing the cherry blossom where the can of shaving gel had eventually stopped.
Randall saw A.J sidle her way around to the opposite side of Hollow before Isaac came up next to him to complete the circle of his pupils.
"You're body is hidden behind the Chevy Cobalt LS with the Jersey plates," Isaac informed his teacher.
"Alright. Let's begin." Randall cracked his knuckles and his neck as the Hollow surveyed its new opponent, its interest in its quarry momentarily lost.
"Shinigami?" it asked hesitantly, as if having just a hint of intelligence, but nonetheless trying to ascertain the nature of its new foe.
Quinn gave it no answer, circling slowly to get onto the hard sidewalk and position himself between the two pluses, his hand on his zanpakutō. He didn't know whether the Hollow was feigning ignorance or really was not certain he was a Death God. The Hollow's mask was located in the center of its mass, with the hole from its absent chain of fate resting squarely above the mask on the fifth appendage. Its eyes narrowed as it examined Quinn. Deeming him no immediate threat, the Hollow adjusted its position to view the rest of the circle, and that's when Quinn struck.
He drew his weapon and jumped in the same instant, calling upon his spirit energy to increase his speed and strength. He jumped and vaulted himself parallel to ground, landing feet first on the Hollow's mask, his knees bending compensate for the impact. Before the Hollow could reach he scythed down with his weapon and severed the tentacle holding the girl. As the objectionable appendage de-materialized he jumped off the Hollow and caught the girl, before rebounding off the light post and sending himself and the now unconscious girl over toward Isaac.
Quinn dumped her off unceremoniously in Isaac's arms as the Hollow howled in frustration behind him.
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James Meredith regained consciousness just enough the be aware of the searing pain coursing throughout his body and just in enough time to see Quinn handoff the girl to Isaac. What the fuck is going on? Who are all these people? And what in God's name hit me? James craned his neck to see over his rumpled hoodie and saw a kaleidoscope of purples and pinks in the heat haze, intermixed with flashes of white. He saw the man in black turn around to face the distortion, his bloodied sword held before him at the ready. Wait, bloodied? And why I am seeing these colors? Am I concussed? I don't think I've ever had a concussion before. How lame must I sound right now?
James watched the man roll to his right, toward James, as the vivid distortion flashed downward and concrete exploded where the man had been just moments earlier. Chips of the concrete pelted James' face, and he rolled over to present his back to the occurrence, unknowingly sweeping the Eclipse can into the pocket of his hoodie in the process.
One of the girls from the group sidled her way over to him, her eyes never leaving the Hollow. "Are you alright?" she asked when she arrived at the splintered sapling, reaching out to him with one hand while brushing a strand of wavy dark hair out of her face. Their eyes made contact for a fleeting moment before another spray of cement chips forced them to grab a hold of one another for even a meager amount of cover.
When the dust and debris settled they let go of one another, looking for the fighter to see if he was alright. The street light above cast two shadows, one normal, the other bloated and abnormally large. The girl tending to James breathed a small sigh of relief. James refocused on the shadows, trying to hold on to his slipping reality when the man disappeared. James eyes widened in shock as the man reappeared on the creature's back, his katana penetrating downward into the Hollow's core and piercing its ghoulish visage from the backside. Small cracks formed around the perforation in the mask where the blade had gone through, rapidly spreading and becoming larger. James' consciousness abandoned him to an abyss of darkness just before the mask shattered entirely, purging the sins of the Hollow and releasing its soul to the afterlife.
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THIS IS NOT A CONTINUATION OF THE STORY! IF YOU WANT THE SECOND CHAPTER, DONT READ THIS! JUST MOVE ON. With that out of the way, I realized people weren't reading beyond the first chapter and I needed to change the structure if I wanted more people to give it a try, so I moved the forward here. Now, for what originally came first:
First, allow me to preface this by saying that I do not own the rights to any of the characters, ideas, settings, etc. from Bleach. Those rights belong to Tite Kubo, Shueisha, or whoever is appropriate. If anyone can tell me exactly who has the rights to Bleach so I could verify this, I would appreciate it.
Second, it is my hope that you won't have to be obsessed with Bleach to understand, appreciate, or like this fan-fiction. The more Bleach you watch the more you are likely to understand, but it is my aspiration that you will only have to watch the first 10 or so episodes to really understand most of what occurs in the story. I may or may not try t explain specific elements as I go so non-Bleach fans can appreciate this story as well (similar to how J.K Rowling tries to explain the more basic elements of the Harry Potter series in each book so that the series could technically be picked up in the middle and understood). On the flip side, while this story borrows the ideas and concepts established in the Bleach anime and manga, this is an entirely original piece of writing in terms of characters (as of now). That means that if you want to read about Kurosaki Ichigo and company, you are in the wrong place.
Third, I am a student at Ithaca College and I love it here. Don't assume that what is opined by my characters is necessarily an accurate reflection of my personal beliefs.
Fourth, I had initially planned to run this by a few beta-readers, but since I'm writing this mostly for myself at this point, I decided to leave it unfiltered, bar one beta. That person did not like the shifts in perspective (first- to third-person and vice versa). As a result of my decision, I accept the fact that there may be some spelling or grammar errors, plot discontinuities, and other mistakes. If you see any of the aforementioned slip-ups, have any comment or suggestion, or if you agree with my beta, please tell me. I may have chosen not to employ (m)any beta-readers but that does not mean that I don't appreciate feedback.
Onward to victory! Or chapter two...