Chapter 2: Nel
Nel died when she was 16. The village she lived in was plagued by bandits. They gave the villagers an offer: hand over the most beautiful girl you have, and we leave you alone.
Nel didn't want to go, but she loved everybody around her. Several of her friends had been killed by the bandits, and she didn't want anybody else to die. So she let the bandits take her. They did unspeakable things to her, and then they killed her.
The Shinigami came too late to prevent her from seeing the uselessness of the sacrifice. She saw her remaining friends, her parents, her brothers and sisters all die. And then she knew that her sacrifice was useless.
She was angry. Why was it so unfair? She had died in vain.
As her soul chain tore itself apart, she knew she would spend the rest of her life finding out why it was all so wrong.
When she arrived in Hueco Muendo she saw all the hollows and all the hate and despair, and she knew why it had been so useless. The life of one little girl would never be able to stop the tiniest fraction of evil that resided in the world.
When she saw her fellow hollows devour human souls, she was horrified. They had all been human before they had died. Her sacrifice had been useless, but it was more honorable, more right, than cannibalism.
And then there were the Shinigami, the pompous fools, who would slaughter her kind for their crime of existence. They saw the hollow as monsters, but most of them were innocent. Most of them had spent their entire lives in Hueco Muendo and had never even touched a single human soul in their miserable existence.
So she quenched her desire for an easy meal. She sacrificed her own safety for what she thought was right. She would never kill humans, and she later expanded her policy to any being that was weaker than her. She would defend herself, but she would not slaughter, she would not murder. She would protect her brethren from the Shinigami, and she would kill the Shinigami for daring to intrude in Hueco Muendo, for committing the crime of murder.
It paid off in the end. She quickly became a Gillian, then an Adjuchas, then a Vasto Lordo. Now, her sacrifices mattered because she was strong. She did not walk down the path the led to more power in order to defend the hollows that deserved it. The Shinigami never killed a hollow that was under her protection. Then she met Aizen.
In him, she saw a noble man. He would sacrifice his friends, his allies, the trust that they had in him, his own morals, to make things they way they should be.
Aizen would make it all right. He would erase the despair and the hatred that pervaded Hueco Muendo. He would bring the cruel Shinigami to justice.
When Nel became an Arrancar and joined Aizen's army, she knew that they would do unspeakable things. She knew that she was abandoning all the hollows that relied on her, but it was for the common good.
Nel joined Aizen because she was tired of sacrificing bits of herself for others.
Only when it was too late did she realize how selfish she had been.
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