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Title: The Summoning

Rating: T

Summary: An alternate version of events in Orihime's life during the timeskip. When a mysterious summons arrives for her in the middle of the night, will she obey it? And where will it lead her to? AiHime, set one year after chapter 423.

A/N: I decided to create a single place to hold various AiHime one-shots. This first piece came bursting out of the darkness and wouldn't let go of my brain. I wrote it in 2011. AiHime, set in the world of the living during the timeskip. May not conform to post-timeskip canon.

Warnings: None.

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.

Posting Date: 8/11/11

XxXxXxX

The summons came in the middle of the night.

The vibration at the base of her skull, the tingling of familiar, powerful reiatsu…

Orihime's eyes flew open in the darkness of her apartment. Since the defeat of the Arrancar army over a year ago and Ichigo's loss of shinigami powers, everything had been relatively quiet in the world of the living. Few hollows had troubled Karakura Town in the past year.

Ichigo had become sullen and uncommunicative, often refusing to speak to his nakama. He rarely spoke to his father these days, either. Orihime's few attempts to reach out to him had been rebuffed.

The shinigami had been avoiding Karakura Town as well. Orihime hadn't heard from Rukia, Renji, Rangiku, or anyone during the past year. It had bothered her at first, but then she had decided to move on with her life. If they wanted to come back, they would.

But now… what did this strange call mean? She sensed a reiatsu she thought she would never sense again. Should she get up and follow the unspoken summons? The message was quite clear. Or should she fight it?

She hesitated only a minute. Then, her heart pounding, she rose and swiftly threw on a blouse and skirt, wrapped herself in her coat.

Then she went out to the living room and, following the strange inner instructions, performed a series of gestures with her hands and opened her senses.

A garganta activated in her living room. The golden tear in space blossomed before her. She took a step forward, then another… Passing through the dimensional rift had become commonplace for her, but she could still feel the twisting of time and space as her physical body passed through the gate, the odd feeling of lightness in the pit of her stomach.

Then she was through. She was standing on a silent beach at sunset. Or was it sunset? The huge, red, swollen sun hung at the horizon before her, so dim she could stare straight at it, pitted with deep red craters and oddly-shaped black marks. It seemed to pulse, slowly, as she watched. The rest of the sky was an unrelieved black without a feature – no clouds, no moon, no stars.

In front of her, over the sands tinted a dull red, stretched a boardwalk, curving slowly off to her right until it went behind a cliff. To her left was an absolutely still body of water, black as night. She could not tell if it was a lake or an ocean, but she could not see the further shore.

She began walking. The air was sour and dry; there was no wind, but it was cold, so cold she wrapped the coat more tightly around herself and shoved her hands into the pockets.

She wondered whether she was in a real place, transported to a far planet by some powerful magic, or if it was all an illusion. She placed one foot ahead of the other mechanically.

She wondered, "Why am I doing this?"

She had a normal, peaceful life as a high school student in Karakura Town. She could have chosen to ignore the summons. The messagehad said she was free to choose. She could have simply ignored it.

Why had her heart had pounded with excitement and not just dread when she felt the summons?

The boardwalk began to curve and she followed its path. Her feet made almost no sound on the oddly yielding surface beneath her. Slowly, she raised her eyes to the building that had come into view as she passed beyond the cliff edge.

It was a castle, built of an odd silvery stone, tinged red by the bloody light of the sun. She moved forward. The portcullis was open, and she passed through.

Inside, all was deathly silent. She was in a high-ceilinged hall, and the call was clear. She began walking over the thickly woven rugs straight head, down the hall. Her footsteps were muffled by the heavy carpet, and there was no other sound. The building smelled old, as though it had been standing for centuries, but the scent was not unpleasant. The heavy stone walls were hung with huge and intricate tapestries depicting mythical creatures and legends that seemed almost familiar. At the far end of the hall, a wide and elegant stone staircase curved to the left. Elaborate gargoyles adorned the stone bannisters and topped the newel posts.

She began to ascend the stairs. At the top, she turned left again, walking down a narrower hall, now with many identical oaken doors opening to either side. Brocaded wallpaper covered the walls, and wall sconces lit the hall dimly every few meters. A faint scent of jasmine permeated the air, although there were no windows.

At the very end of the hall was a set of double doors. She knew that the one who had summoned her was behind those doors. She continued walking forward as though in a dream. Her hand touched the carved brass doorknob; then she turned it and pushed the door open.

The room beyond was lit only by a crackling fire in a huge stone fireplace; the air was warm and redolent of sandalwood. Seated in a high-backed armchair sat a man in black robes and brown hair swept back from his face except for one curl. He was reading a book, but when she entered he raised his head and gazed straight at her. His dark eyes seemed to bore right through her.

She approached and stood before him, unspeaking, as the force of the summons gradually died away. His eyes traveled over her face and body, and a faint, satisfied smile curved his lips.

"Welcome, Orihime." She could not help but shudder at the sound of his deep, resonant voice. He was thinner than when she had last seen him in Las Noches; black suited him and made him appear more elegant but also paler. It threw his fine features into high relief and emphasized the beauty of his immense, dark, liquid eyes.

"Aizen-sama," she whispered.

He rested his chin in his hand and smiled warmly at her. "You must be wondering why I called you here," he said, an open, kindly expression suffusing his features.

"Is this real, or is it a dream?" she asked. "I thought you were in Soul Society's prison."

His smile darkened. "It is as real as you wish it to be, Orihime. And as for Soul Society…" He made a dismissive gesture. "Let us just say that there has never been a prison built that can hold me."

She took a deep breath. "So why did you call me?" she asked.

"Have you forgotten that I told you I would need your powers?" He placed the book on an end table without looking at it and leaned forward to fix her with his dark eyes. "You have the abilities of a god, Orihime. I find it distressing that you have been allowing your powers to atrophy, that you have been pretending to be nothing more than an ordinary high school student." His eyes narrowed. "Merely because Kurosaki has lost his powers is no reason to ignore your own."

"I—" she began, and then faltered. Gathering her strength, she began again. "I have been practicing. I've been developing new skills. I've been preparing to fight, should I need to defend Kurosaki-kun or my other friends." She stopped. "I didn't think we'd need to face you again."

He smiled again. "I am not the enemy, Orihime. You should have realized this by now."

Anger flared in her middle. "What do you mean?" she cried. "You told me you were going to destroy Karakura Town. You said you would kill one hundred thousand souls in my hometown simply to create the King's Key, just to further your own ambitions."

"Come, Orihime, I wouldn't have expected you to fall for that rather transparent deception." He shifted in the chair. "It was all a ruse. It was a trick to get Yamamoto to build the replica of your town and shift the real Karakura Town to Soul Society."

"But why?"

Aizen leaned back in the chair and lidded his eyes. "I shouldn't need to mention the obvious tactic of distracting the enemy with meaningless busywork." His voice became serious. "The primary reason is that there is a vast and ancient power in Karakura Town. There is a reason your hometown has such a high concentration of spiritual power and souls with the ability to sense spirit pressure. There is a reason Urahara Kisuke made his base there, why Kurosaki Isshin chose to exile himself there with his renegade wife, why the Hougyoku was created there." His tone lightened, his face showing faint amusement as she stared at him, puzzled and confused. "Why all of you developed extraordinary powers, and why the last of the Quincy chose to locate there as well." He paused and studied her face. "You see, the city itself is a source of unimaginable power. Karakura Town, you see, has a soul."

She stared at him and the silence stretched between them for a moment. Finally she found her voice. "What do you mean?" she whispered.

"Orihime, you must surely have felt it." He placed both hands on the armrests of his chair and his voice took on the tenor of a professor lecturing. "You know all objects have souls, and certain souls are more powerful than others. Similarly, features of the earth, whether natural or constructed, such as cities, mountains, or bodies of water, possess souls. Karakura Town has always had an unusually powerful confluence of energies, and thus a highly powerful soul. You are an intelligent woman; you must have noticed how unusual your hometown is. Perhaps you might now guess why would I want Karakura Town moved to Soul Society? Can you imagine why I would arrange for that at the same time I arranged for Ichimaru Gin, Urahara Kisuke, and Kurosaki Ichigo, three of the most powerful shinigami ever born, to attempt to kill me?" He smiled again.

"I still don't understand," she said, shaking her head.

"Ah, you see," he continued, "to create the King's Key, it was never necessary to kill one hundred thousand humans. But by leading Soul Society to believe that was my goal, I maneuvered them into attacking me. By having powerful shinigami attack me, the Hougyoku was finally fully awakened and able to transition to a higher state of existence, making me immortal and able to handle the transcendental levels of power that I will need to achieve my goals." His smile showed the tips of his white teeth.

"You see, the soul of Karakura Town itself has the power of one hundred thousand human souls. By moving the city itself, along with its soul and source of power, to Soul Society, with its high concentration of spirit particles, a vortex of vast and overwhelming power was generated. And, as it happens," he paused again and she saw his smirk widen, "I had discovered, many years ago, a book of ancient lore which even Yamamoto was unfamiliar with, that revealed to me that if such a city-soul were brought to Soul Society, that the apex of the vortex of power would lie at a point quite close to the bottom of Soul Society's ancient prison, Avici."

He eyed her from under half-closed lids, triumph in his quiet voice. She stood mute, her mind whirling, trying to make sense of all the new information.

"I have been working toward this goal for a hundred years. At the end, I needed proximity to the vortex and a quiet place to work. That was all. Thus, I allowed myself to be sentenced and 'imprisoned.'" One corner of his mouth curled upward. "Once in my cell, I was able to create the King's Key and use it to transport myself wherever I wished. You see, the Key has more abilities than merely being able to enter the Royal Realm. It is actually a key between dimensions and can open portals between an infinite number of universes." He made a languid gesture with one hand. "With it in my possession, I can travel between worlds at my leisure, raise armies wherever I go, and send them to attack anywhere I wish." His eyes darkened. "Why do you think there has been no response from Soul Society to your calls? They are quite occupied battling a new and fearsome army."

Orihime drew back, her fear for her shinigami friends taking her by the throat. "So you're still trying to overthrow the Spirit King? Why are you doing this?" she cried.

"Why, Orihime?" He gazed at her, his expression unreadable. "Have you not noticed that the world is not the way it should be? Your own world is filled with suffering, poverty, hatred, and warfare. Soul Society is corrupt and unjust. The Hollows suffer from the moment they come into existence." His eyes sharpened and she could see something burning in their depths. "The worlds are the way they are because the so-called Spirit King is an empty shell devoid of compassion or heart. A thing without a soul. And the worlds, our worlds, reflect the nature of the being that holds then together."

Orihime's chest heaved as her mind spun, trying to take all this in. Was Aizen telling the truth? And if so, why was he telling her all this? Why had he summoned her?

"And where do I fit in?"

"You, Orihime?" His smile was dark again. "Every key needs a keyhole, you know. The power of the Hougyoku and the King's Key are not enough to overthrow the Spirit King. And even if they were, upon removing the lynchpin that holds our worlds together, those worlds would all collapse. I have never had the desire to destroy our worlds. You need not worry for your friends. I have rarely killed shinigami, preferring to merely incapacitate them. I only wish to restructure Soul Society and the rest of our corrupt and unjust worlds. I would create a new lynchpin to hold the new worlds in place.

"And to create that lynchpin… I need your abilities, Orihime."

"And why do you think I would ever help you?" She was angry now.

He smiled again, and reached out to take her hand in his, stroking it. For some reason, she could not pull away. His fingers were warm and sent tingles up her arm and through her body. She looked into his eyes, unable to look away. "Because I want to make you Queen of the three worlds, Orihime," he whispered. "Two souls must join in a physical union to create the new lynchpin. I want you to help me make the worlds the way they should be."

~END~