A Masked Revolution

A Moving Projection

"Ino-… Orihime. This message is for you and everyone else, but… Please tell Rukia… I am sorry."

Rukia awoke with an extreme amount of pain flowing through her body, she wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, and she wanted to give any kind of physical sign of her pain. Her body didn't have the strength; all she could do was open her eyes, breath and think, and those were a chore to accomplish. Where was she? She'd have to judge by the ceiling of the room, which meant she was inside, at best guess a tope/beige colour which meant she was in the Urahara Shoten. Why was she there? Why wasn't she dead or in Huenco Muendo?

"ICHIGO!" she somehow yelled, bathing her head in a new wave of pain, but something next to her moved in response to her efforts.

"Kuchki-san! You're awake, thank goodness!" squeaked the tearful voice of Inoue Orihime, whom Rukia couldn't see due to the inability to even roll her head to the side. She then saw two of Orihime's zanpaktōu like beings meet above her waste then split and take place at her head and feet, and she then heard the words "I reject" and the orange field surrounded her.

After a few minutes she began to feel a world of difference, she decided it was the time to start asking, "Where is everyone, Inoue?" The red haired girl's eyes flickered from their concentration as she continued healing an unknowing Rukia.

"I think it is best…" she started, "if you wait until you've healed before you begin to worry Kuchki-san." 'Worry!?' A jolt of fear paralyzed what was remaining of Rukia's movement, what had happened after she had collapsed?

With an iron will she moved her head to look at Orihime, what she saw was not reassuring. The energy usually used for the release happiness was now holding back tears and too many bad feelings. Rukia closed her eyes dreading the near future.

The image was like an old blurry and damaged movie projection image, it showed an eye. It was black where it should have been white, the iris was golden and it could be seen behind the right (to the user) eye hole of a mask. What could be seen of the mask was white.

'What is this?' Rukia thought. 'A hollow? Wait, the eye is behind the mask, and it's part of a human face.' This reminded Rukia of what she had seen of Shinji Hirako during his battle with Grimmjow. The image began to zoom out; little by little it began to show more of the masked face. The wearer's right side of the mask was completely white with the empty eye socket, where the image had originally shown, which allowed the wearer's right eye to be seen. However, the left side was different; red lines decorated it in a war paint like fashion this was displayed on all of the left side, except for the mouth section which consisted of a top and bottom row of long interlocking pin point teeth from left to right. What was most disturbing was the left eye, it was a gold iris surrounded by black but it was part of the mask itself and contained no pupil. 'Just like a regular hollow mask,' she thought.

"Rukia" came a voice from behind the mask, the jaw didn't move.

"No…" was all she could think. It was him behind the voice, it wasn't his but he was using it, it was the voice of a monster. The image jumped; now she could see the masked creature's entire body.

She couldn't accept, wouldn't accept it. It's whole body was white and muscular except for a few single lines of red which flowed across its body, she could see a huge tail protrude from it's back moving in snake like motion; the end of which appeared as if it had been dipped in blood. Its fingers were claws and it had three white claws on it's talon like feet, similar to that of a lizard, but… It was his height; it was wearing torn remains of his bankai robes, there was no hole in its chest, and it was clutching Tensa Zangetsu in one of its hands. Yet that wasn't what disturbed her the most: the creature had a long stretch of hair coming behind the top of the mask…it was orange.

That image lasted for only half a second, but that had been enough for it to be implanted in the lone viewer's memory for rest of her existence, before it skipped back to original image of the creature's right eye. Then the mask began to form over the eye, trying to replace with one identical to the left.

"Rukia…" the voice repeated, "it was fun…being with y-" It was cut short when the eye was completely covered by the mask. Then it gave a shrill laugh with a tone that tore through Rukia's heart. He was no longer behind it; the voice's true owner was now in control. The image then skipped to a landscape image with the creature in the centre, with the grey desert of Huenco Muendo behind, its face still visible to Rukia.

"Be quiet," it said in a gleeful and mocking whisper, the mask's mouth now moved with the voice, a sickeningly wide grin formed on the jaw behind the mask, "MY TIME AS KING IS NOW!" it yelled; filling Rukia's mind, and then it laughed that cold and bloodcurdling laugh toward the sky.

Then the image vanished.

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A/N: First attempt at current time, apologies if crud. I hope nothing was OOC, but it's hard to avoid with Ogihci. There is more to this already but it contains way too much OOC for me to post. If it's crud feel free to complain.