Chapter Two: Ardiente Ojo

A light in the darkness often reveals nothing but

The beast poised to tear out your heart

The white sands shivered as Barragan blazed over them, one of his fraccion staying as close behind as his speed allowed and as the old Espada's spiritual pressure made comfortable. (That is to say, about one hundred meters.)

The grizzled vasto lorde drew to a sudden halt as he drew near his destination. He descended towards the ground, an invisible staircase of reishi supporting him. His feet touched sand. After a second, his fraccion caught up with him. Balthazar climbed up the three-stepped staircase and set foot on the white stone tiles of the plaza that stood up a good two feet from the sands that surrounded it. Before the two arrancars stood a mass of buildings, starting at one or two stories and steadily rising as one went inwards, to the cluster of high towers at the center. With a grunt, Barragan walked off down a road between two of the buildings. The streets were narrow, and the buildings blocked out all but a thin slice of sky. Paradoxically, this seemed to make the blue overhead seem bigger and further away. They walked in as near a straight line as the twisting, zigzagged alleys permitted. Eventually, having gone no more than a half-mile, they reached a wall. By now the buildings were tall enough that the wall, although it was as tall as five men, was invisible from the edge of the settlement. Thus, it caught them by surprise, though only the fraccion showed it. Barragan merely looked to one side, then the other, confirming that the wall stretched out of sight in both directions, curving away, always equidistant from the buildings that surrounded it. The grizzled old arrancar strode up to the wall and pounded on it three times. The impacts boomed, and there were three fist-shaped dents in the wall when Barragan was finished. He stepped back. Before their eyes, the section of the wall separated from its fellows on invisible seams with a grating, and rose up into the air. Barragan strode through the gap it created, and his fraccion followed close at heel. The wall slid back down behind them. There was a grate of stone on stone, but only a small thud when the section touched ground, for it did so gently.

Barragan and his man looked at the sigh before them. The towers in the center of the settlement were at least twice as tall as they had appeared from the edge. This was made clear to them by virtue of the fact that they occupied a great hemispherical crater, buried under yet more buildings. They stood on a thin lip of flat ground before the slope began proper. Staircases encircled the pit at regular intervals. One stood directly in front of them.

With a rumble of irritation in the back of his throat, Barragan stormed down it and made for the towers in the center. After passing tier after tier of featureless, doorless buildings, they reached the bottom of the crater. A flat plaza surrounded the great towers in the center. Balthazar made unerringly for the tallest. The sky was even further away than before, now, and the overall effect made those who walked the false city's streets feel very small indeed.

The tower was hexagonal in shape, and it stretched up to a neck-cracking height. The door was of normal size, and of battered, oft-dented steel. It sat flush with the wall. Its original paint had long been buried under layer after layer of intricate, wildly colored graffiti. The words and images ended sharply with the door, as if sliced cleanly through with a power saw, not spilling over onto the white walls at all. This seemed to indicate that it had been taken from another building, or that the graffiti was not graffiti but modern art.

Barragan stabbed at the black doorbell button to one side. After a few seconds, a view-slot opened in the door. A pair of yellow eyes stared out.

"Whassa password?" said a smug, cawing voice.

"Open the fucking door," Barragan snapped.

The slot slid closed, and the clacking of locks was heard. After a few seconds, the door slid open. "Please, enter," said Megumi, the tall vizard woman who had arrived with Kesuke, voice dripping with contempt. She slid to one side. Barragan walked past her. As his fraccion attempted to do the same, she reached out and planted her black-nailed hand on his chest. She pushed him backwards a few inches. "Hold up, chunky," she said. "This is as far as you go."

"He comes," Barragan said gruffly. His aura swirled ominously. Megumi paled (even more so than she was already) and removed her hand. The two arrancars walked down the narrow hallway. The vizard watched them go, seething.

Barragan reached a four-way intersection and paused. He looked from one side to the other. There was a creak behind him. He turned his head. One of the blank black doors had opened. Rie, the small bald arrancar, stuck her head out. "This way, sir," she said. "Kesuke-sama is waiting for you."

Without a word, Barragan and his fraccion followed her. She closed the door behind them. They stood in a large, dimly lit circular shaft. Black metal doors with numbers on them in fluorescent paint sat flush with the walls in some inscrutable pattern, vanishing up towards the top of the tower. Rie began to climb, reishi forming an invisible staircase beneath her sandaled feet. Barragan and his fraccion followed her. After ascending many floors, they reached their destination. Rie opened the door with a bow, and stood back. The two arrancars walked through. Rie followed, closing it after herself.

They stood in a large chamber. The wall facing them was a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the crater-city. The floor was covered in blood-red shag carpet, and dotted with circles and sweeping fractal designs of couches and cushions and chairs. Small shrines were dotted randomly throughout the room. Coils of incense smoke rose from all of them, filling the room with a faint, abrasive scent, like gunsmoke. Music emanated from somewhere.

Barragan walked without hesitation to the source of the music (the song playing at the moment was Little Busters by the Pillows ). Kesuke sat in a La-Z-Boy, quietly singing along to the stereo, his back to the approaching Espada. Barragan walked into his field of view and sat on a beanbag cushion across from Kesuke.

The ponytailed shinigami pressed a button on the remote and the music fell silent. "Long time no see, Barragan," he said. "I like the new look. Very arrancar. Almost civilized, dare I say."

"What's this crap, Kesuke?" Barragan said.

"I'm sure I haven't the faintest idea of what you speak."

"Let me see if I recall what you said correctly from way back when." Barragan cleared his throat, and said sarcastically. "'I serve no master but the Harlot Flame. All things of this world are as cobwebs and daydreams to her, and her will is my only reality. Your petty crusade means as much to me as it means to her; virtually nothing.'" He leaned forwards, lips pulled back in a snarl. "How's my memory?"

"Flawless, flawless. I would expect no less. As I recall, you swore you would never be ruled by another, and oft repeated that oath before witnesses many and diverse. Dare I inquire why now you bear the rank of Segundo Espada, rather than King of Red Gates?" Kesuke said mildly, steepling his gloved fingers.

Barragan growled with rage. His hand fell to his sword-hilt, and his aura swirled menacingly, shaking the windows. "Watch your words, hellspawn."

The one-eyed man raised his hands placatingly. "I meant no offense. My purpose here is my own. From your response, I gather that whatever the result of my actions, it will neither overmuch edify you nor cause you ill. Be at ease if your concern is on your lord's behalf; I mean him no harm. My oath was sworn in good faith. Aizen Sōsuke has my sworn aid in his quest to seat himself on Heaven's throne."

"You expect even a second of my trust?" Barragan asked. "Go fuck yourself. I'm not senile yet."

"You wound me, Barragan," Kesuke said. "I grant you entrance into my sanctum sanctorium and you impugn my honor? The powers that be frown on your breach of courtesy."

"Damn the powers! You have no honor, Yamamoto," Barragan proclaimed scornfully.

"Watch yourself, Barragan. Be sure that your accusations do not overstep the boundaries of truth. I have honor when it suits me to be honorable," Kesuke said, voice icy. "It suits me now."

"You say so, but where's the proof?" Barragan said.

"In my deeds, good Barragan. In my deeds," Kesuke answered with an electrum smile. "Actions speak louder than words, it is said."

"Deeds lie as readily as words," the scar-faced Espada snapped. "Your tongue is quicksilver, and your words as poisonous as what shapes them. I've heard enough." He rose from his cushion and stormed from the room.

Kesuke took a sip from the mug of oxblood on the table beside his chair. "Well. That's about what I figured would happen," he announced to the world in general.

"Is that a good thing or bad thing?" Rie asked, walking up beside him.

Kesuke smiled. "The Hundred-Eyed Shouter of Blasphemies holds it a sin dear to his heart to speak a secret aloud. And though he's not here, it would do me ill to fall out of practice in the social niceties of my adopted home, lest I make some blunder when I return. So the answer to your question will remain, for now, my secret."

Rie pouted. "That is such a cop-out."

"Evil genius prerogative, my sweet gothberry," the one-eyed man said with a grin.

--

Gin swept his fingers over the intricate designs hanging in midair. The dataspace answered his probing, and the projected screens of surveillance video and thousands of different voices from the listening devices webbed throughout Las Noches danced about him, jumping from feed to feed. He let the sounds and sights wash over him, chaotic and largely meaningless.

Suddenly, his reverie was broken by the door slamming open. Light flooded into the room, making the holograms fade into half-visibility. The door slammed shut again, and Gin's eyes struggled to readjust. He heard boots tramping across the black floor towards him. His vision cleared enough that he could see Kesuke standing before him, holding something in his hand.

"Ichimaru-san, please explain something to me," he said. He held up the object in his hand. It was a small hexagon of black material. He released it in midair. Lines of blue light caught it in a cage. Tiny circuits began to fluoresce on its surface, and the screens Gin had been watching floated away from the tiny card. A new circular portal formed. There was a burst of static, then an image formed. It was a still frame from Aizen's throne room. It was when the girl Inoue had restored Grimmjow's arm. The late Espada's arm was half-reformed within its cocoon of golden light. Kesuke made a twisting motion. The video began to play. As Gin watched, the blue-haired adjuchas' arm fully reformed. There was a short interlude of conversation (the audio feed had been left out) then the girl restored his number tattoo. Kesuke made a brushing-aside gesture, and a second video replaced the first. It was the human girl again. This time, she restored the two arrancars, Loli and Menoli, after Grimmjow had killed them. Kesuke closed his fist, and the screen vanished. The eyepatch-wearing shinigami turned to the silver-haired traitorous captain.

"Who the fuck is this?" he spat.

Gin looked at him evenly. "I'm going to assume you have a good reason for barging into my private rooms and shouting at me, Yamamoto."

A wave of spiritual energy drove him back several feet. Flame-colored energy danced around Kesuke, and the chamber shook. Static enveloped the displays, and the sound was distorted into a shrieking cacophony. "Because I want to know, quite badly, who is this girl?" hissed Kesuke.

Ichimaru licked his suddenly dry lips. The air in the chamber had grown uncomfortably hot. "She's nobody. A curiosity."

"Does this curiosity have a name? A backstory? Speak plainly and be quick about it, torturer, or my hands may not stay at my sides," Kesuke said warningly. His aura subsided slightly. Gin swallowed and sucked in a deep breath.

"Inoue Orihime. She was one of the ryoka who stormed the Seireitei to stop Kuchiki Rukia's execution. They're friends."

"Kuchiki Rukia?" Kesuke said.

"She was the girl Urahara stored the Hogyōku in."

"Right." Kesuke's aura subsided back to normal levels. Normal for him, of course. Like Aizen, his baseline power level made standing within one hundred meters of him the psychic equivalent of standing in a crowded nightclub with loud music and no air-conditioning. He leaned in and spoke to Gin in a softer voice. "Any, uh, dirt on where she learned how to do that glowy thing?"

"Grantz was supposed to start testing her, but he died the attack," Gin said. Grantz had, infact, died during the attack. However, Orihime had revived him at Aizen's command. His sanity, however, had proved irreparable, so Aizen had had him fed to the gillians. Gin did not feel like explaining this.

"Attack?"

"Her friends tried to rescue her. Soul Society sent four captains and their lieutenants to help. They killed three Espada before they retreated."

"Please tell me they didn't take her with them," Kesuke said, with what appeared to be genuine agitation.

"She's still here," Gin said. "Why're ya so worked up about this?"

"Why am I – Are you fucking stupid? That girl can bring back the dead! By all rights, such a thing should be impossible! And yet there it is," he said. "There it is," he continued, almost whispering. He turned away from Gin and looked into the gloom for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was composed. "Thank you for your time. I apologize for my discourtesy. If it is not too much of an imposition, may I inquire where she is quartered?"

"Ya'd hafta ask Aizen-sama," Gin said, the honorific turning sour in his mouth. It galled him to be forced to admit his own inferiority with nearly every sentence, but Aizen was always watching, always listening. The fact that there was a surveillance network for Gin to use proved it. "He hasn't told me."

Kesuke hummed a low note. "Thank you, Ichimaru-san. Again, I apologize for my unforgivable rudeness." He plucked the hexagonal datacard from midair and left the room. As soon as he had exited the building and was out in the clear air again, Megumi walked up to join him from her post outside the door.

"We'll have to do it the hard way," Kesuke informed her.

"Rie's already started," the tall woman informed him. "She said to tell you that your idiocy can't constrain her natural genius all the time."

"I hope she cleans up after herself," Kesuke said darkly. He mentally shivered with disgust at the thought of digital footprints all over Las Noches' infosphere, telling anyone with eyes to look what they had been after and who they were. If there was one thing he abhorred, it was a poorly executed plan.

"Shit, boss, she's better at it than you are. Shut the hell up, would you?" Megumi snapped.

The one-eyed shinigami replied with a noncommittal grunt. "Let's go." His feet left the sands as he was lifted, like some chess piece on a giant board. With a swish, he vanished. Megumi spat an oath and darted after him.

--

Rie looked at Kesuke. "There's absolutely nothing. Either there's no surveillance data or it's on a separate network. I was able to find a requisition order for food from one of the kitchens, and a hint, not even a solid bit of data, that the location of her room is kept hardcopy somewhere. That's it. I can give you a five-mile area where she might be, just judging on how far they're probably willing to walk."

"What are the coordinates relative to where we are?" Kesuke asked his retainer. She recited a string of numbers. Kesuke nodded. "I'll be on the roof."

"Are you gonna take off the patch?" Megumi asked.

"That's for me to know and you to find out."

"So fucking a yes," she grumbled. "I just ate, dammit."

"Be careful, Kesuke-sama," Rie said, looking at him with concern.

The one-eyed shinigami patted her head. "Seriously, gothberry. Nobody here can take me, you know that."

"Not alone," she replied darkly. "Turning on your flashlight in the goblin's cave isn't such a great idea."

"I'll be fine," he told her dismissively. "See you soon."

The two women shivered.

Kesuke walked though his tower to one of the shafts that rose from floor to the penthouse. He stepped into it and floated upwards until there were no more floors to climb. He walked through the topmost door and made his way through the empty room to the staircase that led to the ceiling. Climbing it, he frowned as his hair was tugged by a sudden wind. With a sigh, he ran his fingers through it, and walked out to the center of the roof. He shrugged off his jacket, and stood in a t-shirt and cargo pants in the cool wind. He began to mutter in a harsh glossolalia, the words cutting at the air. Moving with an addict's haste, he untied the cord that held his eyepatch shut at the back of his head. The crocodile skin fell away. He caught it with one hand and tucked it in a pocket. There was a terrible pause, like the infinite second between when one sees the gun fire and registers the pain.

And then the universe whimpered in terror.

A fountain of light erupted from his empty right eye socket. The radiance was harsh and alien, radiating in colors and wavelengths that the laws of physics did not permit for. With steel-trap speed, runes and sigils and delicate traceries of light flowed from the socket, taking up stations about his head, like some blazing armillary sphere. The baleful halo was at once intricate clockwork, seething energy, and strings of words in some alien language. The whole assembly seethed with malice and terrible destructive energy.

Kesuke smiled, and lightning jumped between his teeth.

Below him, in the tower, his followers felt it first. Rie felt it like the warmth of the sun and a lover's rough caresses. Megumi felt it like blades of fire cracking open her skull and laying her soul bare on some cosmic operating table. Blank felt the light only a little, for he was as much a ghost to it as it was to him. Setsuna spasmed and shivered, the blazing eye illuminating parts of her mind that burned like vampires caught in the sunlight. The abomination on her back shied away from it, and she felt its weight and the burn of the malicious false sun all the stronger.

The effect spread outwards through Las Noches, decreasing to an extent with distance. For ten miles around the crater city in every direction, every living soul froze and felt some great hand squeeze at their heart, as if they were locked in the gaze of some great predator. Every soul in the immense city-fortress felt the distinct and unmistakable sensation of being watched, at the very least, except for those few arrancars stationed as guards in the ring of structures tens of miles out from the main fortress itself. The closer one was to the man atop the tower, the worse the effects were. Kesuke, had, however, chosen his quarters for their remoteness from other buildings, and so there were relatively few arrancars within the critical zone. Most simply felt sourceless fear and the sensation of being watched.

Meanwhile, Kesuke was looking around. The halo's light showed the world his other eye saw for the flimsy layer of cosmetics atop reality that it was. His mind soared through the great dark spaces of Hueco Mundo, and all things were apparent to him. In that terrible instant, he saw many things.

One stretch of the three-mile-thick wall of Las Noches, threaded through with veins of void, the tiny rooms and suites that pocked the wall, caught his eye. His superhuman gaze narrowed on that point.

"''Ello, poppet,'" he said with a chuckle. He watched for a moment longer. Then, turning away, he retied the eyepatch while muttering further in the same alien tongue and left the roof.

--

Across Las Noches, Orihime woke up, sweating, her heart hammering in her chest. Her hairpins hummed where they were tucked into her sash, a sure sign if there ever was one that the Rikka were as upset as she was. She looked at the wall, which suddenly seemed very insubstantial indeed.

"Who's there?" she whispered. There was no response.

After several minutes, she let go of her covers where she had gripped at them and sank back to horizontal, shivering. She looked at her hands. Even through the sheets, her nails had drawn blood from her palms.

--

A FEW WORDS FROM THE AUTHOR

'Allo public. Thank you muchly for reading this far. Can you believe it took me over six months to get these two chapters written? I'll never make a professional writer at this rate.

By the way, I apologize for creating OCs. The world has enough of them, yes. However, please bear with me as I try to make them deep and interesting enough that you don't want to mutilate my corpse for foisting them on you & the world at large.

Anyway, totally not the point. I'm not here to talk about me. Not directly, anyway. I am here to tell you how to get some extra oomph out of this story. For your consideration, I present the eight-song playlists I have formulated for each character to help me think while I write. These songs should be listened to in the order they are listed. There will be at least two at the end of every chapter. First off are the two that were easiest for me, for the characters dearest to my heart; Kesuke and Orihime.

Kesuke

When You're Evil – Voltaire

Kids With Guns – Gorillaz

Comfort Eagle – Cake

Superstitious - Stevie Wonder

Supernaut - 1000 Homo DJs

Never Gonna Stop – Rob Zombie

Revelations - Audioslave

Saffron's Curse – Cradle Of Filth

Orihime

Starts With One - Shiny Toy Guns

T'en Va Pas - Elsa

El Mañana – Gorillaz

Juste Toi Et Moi - Indochine

la la la - Bleach Beat Collection 10 (Kuchiki Rukia & Inoue Orihime)

You Are The Moon - The Hush Sound

Strangelove - Depeche Mode

Invincible - Muse