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Chapter #1: "To the Living Dead"
Location: Formerly the 48th District West
Date: Lost Date
Time: Evening
POV: third, limited, former 2nd Lieutenant Sarizawa Kaito, age 237, appearance 33
Kaito wandered. He had seen far too few people in the spaces between former settlements. Squatters; cannibals; bandits; Soul Reapers - all had been shells of their former selves, delving deeper and deeper into insanity; psychological conclusions defending the psyche; running far, far away from the dangers of the lands, which had become las Tierras de Caza de las Huecos (the Hunting Grounds of the Hollows).
To the West he had gone, further and farther away from the husk that remained of the Court of Pure Souls; retreating from his failure to protect who he cared about; and furthermore from his utter defeat at the hands of a monster of a monster. He wasn't defeated by his own hubris, but by his own inner desires; his own hollow.
His own Hollow, the false representation of a final love; the fake mermaid that pulls sailors away from their great ships and drowns them. The one who took his true Zanpakutō from him; the one that was his heart; the one that was his end; the one that was his singer; the one that was his Māmeido (Mermaid).
He had become embittered to her and she had in turn refused him control over her powers, holding away the ability that would eventually allow him to avenge his friends and the loss of Māmeido to the Dragon Staff that he been forced to wield in his berserk state. He sealed them away with Urahara's Kidō at the highest his memory recalled, so that they never act without his express permission.
Tiburon (Shark), the blade of his late wife, had found him. Kaito took him with immediately, offering asylum in his own inner world to keep the last piece of her with him as best as he could; even if he buried the body; even if he made his peace. Her ring still rest on the now incorrect finger; the left ring finger. He wouldn't switch it until Ulquiorra was killed; by him; by friend; by foe; by himself, he didn't care - so long as Ulquiorra died.
He walked aimlessly, finding nothing of interest for years, until he had finally found something worth noting. A faint spiritual trail, and with nothing left to do, he followed it; like a lost dog.
Tiburon faded into view beside him, and like the Zanpakutō spirit he was, he did not walk but swam in the air, bringing a likeness of Māmeido that made Kaito's chest ache. She would often swim in his inner world - mostly because it was flooded - and in the material world where she would float beside him, slowly and purposefully kicking her feet to move. Tiburon almost mimicked her perfectly, subtracting the impeccable image due to his understanding of the situation, thus lowering the pain as well as he could for his new wielder.
Tiburon, who had been there with intention from the start, opened his mouth to speak. "You follow an unknown predator."
It was said with confidence as well as terror of the unknown, Kaito realized, but he commented on it not. Instead, he turned his head up to him. "What would you rather do? Risk the chance it is the tercero and kill him with your power and mine, or lose him now?"
His voice was sarcastic, but it dripped with venom as he tripped over the title of his most despised adversary; his murderer; his widowmaker. Sarizawa Tia Halibel had been one of his many lifelines that had kept him optimistic of the worlds, and realistic when both the situation and her womanly intuitions called for it - Ulquiorra Cifer had taken that from him.
"It could also not be him," Tiburon replied smoothly, floating in front of him and to his other side. "Would you risk it being someone more powerful than the tercero and dying to them prior to your chances of a redemption?" He gestured toward the ring that still incorrectly lay on his left hand.
Kaito narrowed his eyes minutely, but held his tongue for the sake of his late wife's Zanpakutō. The living blade was half of her soul, and therefore that made her a still living being, despite its lifeline being another soul altogether. "A part of her," he argued within, "that is literally the last remaining half of me that I trust after the destruction of Māmeido to the Dragon Staff." So he swallowed his pride and replied with no ill will spilt that he was aware of.
"If it is not Cifer, then we will simply leave," Kaito decided, and being the host body to not only his original Zanpakutō, a foreign entity, the personification of his darkest desires, and half of his other half; as a host body to multiple partial souls; as the captain of his ship, he had the final say. Tiburon, for what it was worth, did not refute him, and returned to the inner world that had granted him asylum before he degraded with whatever remained of his initial wielder.
As Tiburon left him to his vices, Kaito had noticed that the strength of the spiritual energy had increased, and he could feel a faint tingling sensation on the edge of his skin, indicating that the pressure was strengthening; that he was approaching the curious destination; that he was nearer.
The forest gravel crunched beneath his feet unevenly, the path no longer maintained and under the mercy of the growing foliage, nature once making its effort on its home from long ago. The forest was also silent, lacking the sounds of birds, insects, and quadrupedal animals altogether, leaving behind an eerie trudge through the woods, his feet upon the path the only sound he could hear; the only thing rhythmic.
He finally approached the end of the forest to find himself standing on a cliff devoid of grass; of leaved trees; of life. Before him was a deep crater with a fog that rested over it like a blanket of death, too thick to pierce through with his sight.
The area was thick with Spiritual Energy, it hung in the air like a viscous haze, and it felt like powder sliding down his throat; like his lungs became heavy with air; like his abdomen was weak from a stomach ailment; like his legs wobbling under the pressure.
The valley before him was full of fog and decay, the atmosphere full of the bright white occluding his vision; the smell weighing him to his knees as he tread through the blood ridden territory, bereft of skin; of muscle; of bones. He moved further into the damning mist.
Within the mist was a burden of weight upon his shoulders, the visible spiritual energy falling upon him like rainfall; blaring in his ears like loud thunder. Tiburon, who had been talkative up to this point, had yet to comment on the matter, just as curious as he was; just as alert as he was. When he had begun to reach the origin of the spiritual energy, a figure appeared in the distance unlike a silhouette; just the opposite.
The fog began to lift as he approached, revealing a bright green portal, sickly in color and even causing Kaito himself to feel queasy in his belly, which churned at the hue since it so closely resembled Ulquiorra's overall appearance; dark and green.
Despite this, he felt drawn to the opening, finding himself walking forwards into it, even if blood spilled out into his world; even if the thing blazed green flames at its edges, and the dark interior promised chaos; promised havoc; promised madness.
He approached.
It swallowed him up, and the atmosphere completely changed.
End Chapter 1
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