Bleach isn't mine, because it if was then chapter 336 wouldn't have turned out like it did!
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The crunch of metal was deafening, swallowing the shriek in the limo as the vehicle leaped deftly to the right, toppling from its narrow escape to skid to a grinding halt snug against a building across the street. The storefront's glass shattered under the pressure of the car.
"Holy shit," exclaimed from the otherwise healthy vehicle. A door was kicked open, and Toushiro stumbled from the wreck bleeding from a cut on his cheek. Wide, excited eyes surveyed the mangled trash heap of the car they almost hit and the number of people in shock on the sidewalks, with faces pressed against glass, with cell phones pressed against ears. "Call an ambulance!" he shouted at everyone as he rushed towards the other car lying by itself. It hadn't hit anything except a streetlight and a sign. "Somebody call an ambulance!" he demanded, wondering whether to yank the door and see if anyone was inside.
"I've got a phone!" someone shouted, and the woman scrambled blindly though her purse.
Toushiro abandoned the car; he couldn't see a body or blood. He rushed to the driver's side of his limo, finding the man shaken, but alright. The boy helped him to the curb away from the crash to sit. Immediately, sensible people who gathered themselves began offering help. Two more dialed for the cops. A restaurant owner from the far corner ran in his apron with water, handing a glass to the driver and Toushiro.
"Are you alright, son?" he asked, squatting as much as his belly would let him. "Is someone on the phone with the hospital!"
"They're on their way!" someone answered from beside the limo. "Hey, hey! Wait, there's someone in here!"
Toushiro sucked a deep breath. "Matsumoto!"
Flashing lights announced the police arrival, soon followed by the scream of a fire engine. In the distance, after the firemen swarmed the car, the whine of the ambulance sounded.
"It's alright!" the civilian called to Toushiro before the cops ushered him away, tossing the kid a thumbs-up. "She's alright. Just a bit dizzy."
Toushiro sighed with relief, and focused better on what the cop was asking, but watched as some firemen helped Rangiku to her feet. Her dress was torn a bit and hanging a bit lower down her chest, but it didn't seem to bother her. She was scowling actually, and favoring her left leg a bit.
It all became blurry when the ambulance showed, tossing all three of them into stretchers one-by-one until their simple diagnosis cleared them from a trip to the hospital. Yet. They hovered as the cops questioned the victims and some bystanders, took statements, and kept the general public and already on-hand media at bay. The car was pronounced empty, and trucks were called to have it removed since traffic going all four directions was at a standstill. Rangiku got away from it all with a bitch of a cramp in her leg, Toushiro had a couple cuts from the window his head hit—he was going to the hospital without question, but he was fine enough to give his end of the event—and the driver also had a one-way ticket to sickbed with his name on it. One of the ambulances loaded him in, geared up its siren, and chugged off through the congested traffic the moment a couple cop cars took point and rear for escort. Toushiro was likewise ushered back into a bed, but he refused the straps and oxygen tank, saying he bumped his head, that he wasn't about to pass out and certainly not about to die when a faceless scream rose form the crowd.
He turned in time to hear Matsumoto gag ferociously, heaving her dinner into the street as the people pushed against the yellow tape and restraining police to get away from the crux of the refreshed chaos.
Across the way, atop a building, Toushiro squinted to see through the darkness shadowing the roof where the downed sign and streetlight would have normally illuminated. All he saw as the fearful crowd mulled and chattered, radios crackled to life as cops quickly exchanged with dispatchers, was the flash of a very pale, hook-fingers hand reach into the light before it disappeared again.
With the medics' attention elsewhere, Toushiro slid from the gurney and ran to Rangiku's side. The skin of her shoulder burned like fever and trembled terribly. The hand holding her stooped form up shook like a tremendous weight pressed her down, like she could hardly hold herself up. "Matsumoto? Matsumoto, are you alright?"
Toushiro coughed, choking like he'd breathed in a powder, and the back of his tongue tingled with an odd sugary, salty mixture.
"Tell me you taste that," Rangiku said roughly, swallowing the flavor of sugar that overpowered the real taste of bile burning her hoarse throat.
"I taste something," he said, bewildered, the shock of the crash that he'd shaken off returning as the fear from the surrounding people grew, overtaking the boy's calmness.
"Good. Lesson number one, kid: sugar equal Were, salt equal vampire. Now get their attention," she pointed shakily at the police, many holding their firearms. "And tell them they're going to need more than twenty-twos. Quick. I don't know what they're waiting for."
Everything seemed so damn familiar to her. The car crash mostly, of all things. She's face these kinds of Weres before, had a few attacks happen in the past, but never, never had she ever been in a car accident. And lived… She shook her head, focusing on the worried face of her much too young boss. Only after she lied enough, told him she was fine, did he finally move.
Scrambling to his feet, Toushiro ran to address the oldest cop there, correctly picking the man in charge. From the looks of it, he wasn't about to listen to a kid. Damn it. Rangiku wrestled weak muscles to stand and began making as straight and unlimping a line for the cop as she could when a sickening thud smacked against the ground. More screams rose, and nothing could hold the crowd's surge as a slobbering, white-eyed zombie peeled itself from the sidewalk, straightening its limbs before wildly searching the scrambling feet. A shot between the eyes stilled it. The people close enough began to settle down yet headed away from the danger zone.
"We've got it," a cop was saying into his radio.
The eerie moment of silence, broken only by the murmur of the radio, broke into nail-biting shrieks of the living dead. Zombies tumbled from the roofs, colliding into people, piling into a grey, hissing heap. Like ants, everyone scattered.
With the sickening tearing at her gut, Rangiku fumbled at her waist for the hidden weapon. A sea of bodies suddenly separated her from Toushiro. "Captain? Captain! Toushiro!"
Guns readied, no body could fire. Orders went unheeded, cops began shoving to try and reach any zombie they could before the stupid creatures finally got a hold of the fact that meals were running in frantic circles around them.
Rangiku finally unsnapped her camouflaged weapon, bringing to bear a long, narrow-barreled gun, arrow shaped around the handle to fit her hand, and an extended point at the top half of the barrel to double as something like a knife or sword. It shed the camo of her dress only to shimmer and disappear again, immediately taking the form of what was behind it. To anyone else, it appeared she was waving a half fist at the zombie crawling towards her, mentally knocking both its arm from its body. The zombie collapsed, struggling toward her with feral indifference to the pain and thick, black blood oozing from the severed appendage. It was finished quickly, and lay still.
"Toushiro!" she tried again, and was clipped from behind by a stumbling man shielding his face from the creature on his back, cursing as her weapon slide from her lax grip. She couldn't see a ripple of asphalt through all the feet, so called, "Haineko!" Two feet away, lying across a drainage vent, the gun appeared. Someone bent to pick it up, wild with fear, but yelped as the sword-gun hissed up their arm, leaving four thin, deep marks up to their elbow.
"Matsumoto!" she heard, turning with weapon in hand and spotted him atop the ambulance, fending himself from a large male zombie. She could see a bite mark on his shoulder, bleeding, but the snarl twisting his lips told her that he was more than ok. A quick shot and the creature fell the same moment Rangiku dropped to her knees, nearly blacking out from the sweet filling her senses and mind.
The screams of what people were left at the intersection increased as a large dog-like animal stalked from the adjacent rooftops, clinging to the brick wall with large claws, watching with narrow, yellow eyes the destruction. After him, a second emerged, black, distinctly feline. His broad, male human-like chest rippled as he strode on two legs, white whiskers decorating the sharp face and bright blue eyes. Its lips curled in something of a smile, glancing at Rangiku barely conscious at his huge paws.
The canine leapt forward, shoving his nose against her back, sniffing. Its tongue lolled grinningly from the long snout. The feline growled.
"Holy fucking hell!" Answering gunshots called the canine's attention as a bullet squarely hit his shoulder. With a savage howl, and a gleeful gleam in his eyes, he charged the remaining cops, crushing a squad car underneath large, heavy paws.
From under the ambulance now, Toushiro quietly discerned his means of escape, scanning for anymore Weres, not finding Matsumoto anywhere in the rubble and dead bodies his young mind refused to see. The gunshot eventually all silenced, the dog returned, grinning broadly and licking his dirty chops. That sweetness returned, Toushiro realized, but like he'd eaten a small piece of sugar candy. The boy hardly realized, though, he was close to hyperventilating and shaking head to toe, but he would not leave, not until he knew his subordinate had gotten away too.
Zombies, injured and fairly unharmed, slowly made their way towards the feline and whatever he was guarding mulishly. At his spitting roar they skittered away, hissing, stumbling over their own arms and legs and whatever happen to be in their way.
Both Weres sharply turn their heads in Toushiro's direction, and for a terrifying moment he wondered if they'd sniffed him out. He hardly knew anything about the creatures themselves, didn't know strengths or weaknesses, banes, nothing. Besides the obvious animal differences, he couldn't classify either of them properly.
When they looked away, the canine actually stretching out like he was about to take a nap, Toushiro breathed with relief, flooded with anger at his inabilities. Too young or not, he was gaining access to the company's library and every file he could presently understand. Like Matsumoto had said, she didn't want an unknowledgeable boss when the time came. Well, the time came, and he was far from prepared, far from knowledgeable, and thinking, like everyone else, that his young age gave him plenty of years to learn what he needed to know.
Bull. All of it. He was so pissed. No physical weapon, no smarts.
Somebody, no, everybody was going to hear about this.
What if it had been anyone else with him? What if it had been Momo?
His fists curled. This was not going to happen again.
The feline lazily cocked his head to the roof, and then leapt away, the lanky canine on his heels. The zombies stood still a moment longer before zeroing in on the victim Toushiro couldn't see, for whomever was lying behind a crumpled, twitching zombie. As they fell atop the person and no screams came forth, he ignored it as someone already gone. But people were prostrate everywhere and the zombies only wanted a certain one?
He thought, recalling how each attack on any given individual ended as soon as the person stopping moving. Apparently, the fun ended then, or zombies only stalked moving prey, explaining why they completely ignored his very much alive self hiding only under a vehicle. Meaning whomever was alive…
Alive. Alive! They were alive! His mind screamed, but his body wouldn't move. A weapon; he needed a weapon.
Spying a long piece of glass from the store window, Toushiro snatched it up without thought, squirming from his hiding place with a wild snarl. Pumped to the trembling point with adrenaline, when he swung at the first zombie he missed, snagging on the creature's tangled chalk-white hair. It ignored him; he missed the three edging woundedly towards him from behind.
Move. Move. Move. He thought he chanted to himself until his own voice caused him to jump and finally notice the hand wrapped firmly around his ankle.
Toushiro made to hack at the appendage, focusing so closely on the milky eyes of the zombie that he blinked once, twice, and the face was gone. No trace, but the hand that had grabbed him left bright red skin, bleeding, that already had begun to purple into a bruise. From his new position on the ground, Toushiro stared up into a black neck, thick lines running up into a furred face, blue eye, and the zombie chomped between massive jaws that could easily take his head in a single bite. Over the feline's shoulder slinked the canine, yellow eyes bright against the dark brown fur. His breath stank of death, the blood of those he'd snapped dried into the fur around his viciously smiling mouth. A nose shoved into Toushiro's chest, hard, knocking the breath from his lungs, and the canine sniffed deeply, sucking Toushiro's clothes and skin. He snorted all over the boy, disgusted, but devilishly playful as well.
The feline spit the zombie out, lapping his tongue to rid the taste, but likewise quickly destroyed every zombie left thriving. While his companion was busy, the canine took Toushiro's filthy, tattered suit coat between his teeth, and lifted. Toushiro's hand tightened further around his shard and lurched upward, stabbing anywhere he could reach. With a yowl, right in Toushiro's ear, he flung the kid sharply, pawing at his face to dislodge the offending glass from his eye.
Toushiro felt himself smack a hard, fur-covered chest and the angry rumble erupting from deep therein. Dark paws of his unlikely savor none to kindly dropped Toushiro to swipe stark white, deadly sharp claws across the already wounded shoulder of the canine.
Disoriented, Toushiro barely heard the smooth, deep, outrageously calm voice cut through the snarls and yowls of the brawling Weres. "That was hardly nice, Nnoitra. I do recall asking you leave him alive."
A snort, another growl, but it otherwise fell into a creepy silence filled only with the heavy breathing of the two werecreatures.
"Wake, up, Toushiro," the voice he recognized, and hated, called. "Another ambulance is on the way."
Through the blood from his deeply sliced fingers that he unknowingly wiped across his face, Toushiro glared, spitting venomously, "Aizen!"
"My," Aizen smiled, kneeling over Toushiro as the Weres paced, noses to the wind, ears pricked and searching. "I believe you'll do fine."
"You! You did this!"
"Those are heavy words, Toushiro. But, to make sure you understand, I was attending the party you had just left. What an accident. I wonder if it had anything to do with the coven leader who was killed. Revenge, perhaps, on your subordinate."
"What… Subordi—Matsumoto! Where's Matsumoto?"
Aizen's smile returned, and he stood so he peered down into Toushiro's livid, glazed eyes. He flicked his wrist towards the Weres, and the feline stepped forward, lifting the person whom Toushiro had tried to save. The boy paled when long, strawberry blonde hair rose into view, dusting messily over her pale face.
"As I said," Aizen reiterated, "It's not your time, Toushiro. I'm terribly sorry you had to witness all this at such a young age." Toushiro tore his gaze from where the feline disappeared onto the inkiness of shadows on the roofs and gazed, half terrorized, half murderous, into Aizen's chillingly serene eyes. "But never forget it."
He was gone before the rush began anew: cops, ambulances, investigators, and paranormal personnel. The whole shebang. Toushiro missed the second half of his own angry babbling as darkness heavier than night consumed his exhausted mind and body.
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Gin ghosted down the unusually quiet halls of Las Noches, breathing the charge in the air, slightly concerned for it, but also thinking it might be cause for a bit more interesting developments that would hopefully last for a little while at least. Seeing as today was so horribly close to the other sporadic dates of her death.
Which, accordingly, was not right.
His smirk slipped when the shifted form of Nnoitra lumbered across the junction of the hall, headed in the opposite direction. Gin whistled lightly in mock wonder. Nniotra curled his lip, baring fangs as long as Gin's forearm, showing off his freshly missing eye.
"Yer gittin' blood on th' carpet," Gin noted.
The Were huffed mightily, growling until out of earshot.
Well, something fun happened while he was gone. Gin felt a bit left out.
He passed an unhappy Grimmjow next sitting with elbows resting on his knees in the large common room. No one else was about. The werepanther was scowling at nothing, not a particularly atypical thing, but his hands were gripped together until his knuckles turned white.
Gin made a disappointed noise. "So somethin' did happen."
"Fuck off and go see that damned woman of yours."
Gin disappeared rather quickly, frowning close enough to an actual scowl.
He approached Aizen's office, but heard the chatter and merrymaking of a party behind the doors, and moved on, taking to another two stories up into the same room with the same torn drapes, same couch, table, chair. With the same woman he enjoyed carrying up here to mess with her memories lying on that couch.
Aizen glanced up from behind his interlaced fingers. "There you are."
"I gathered somethin' went down," Gin grinned sharply. "Jus' di'n't really know what. What sorta trouble ya got into now?"
The older vampire smirked. "Nothing I've done, rather, something unfortunate at the corner."
"Saw all th' lights an' people runnin' 'round."
"An accident," he motioned to Rangiku. "But I think she's still alive."
Tensely, Gin asked, "Why don' ya take her ta th' hospital?"
Aizen shrugged lightly, and rose, moving to the door. "I assumed you've gotten a little tired of the games, is all. If you want, take her yourself. I have no objections to that."
"Thought ya di'n't want Thirteen after ya."
"Leeway," Aizen said, his back to the grinning vampire as Gin likewise kept his back to Aizen. "It's your decision."
The door clicked shut.
Gin's red eyes gazed down at her. He flicked a strand of hair away from her eyes, and knelt down, folding his long arms and resting his chin on them, placing his face extremely close to hers. He imagined her eyes were open and glaring, laughing. He imagined each time when he was granted her presence and how soon it was always ripped from him. On his part, he knew what he would choose. On her part…well, she'd always been somewhat unpredictable, at first. It was a question he'd never really get to ask her if he chose to let the nature imposed on her take its course.
She'd say, someway or another, even while perplexed by him, he could spot it in her eyes, that she'd never seen him before, never met him before.
Well, she'll never get that chance again.
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Well…who else had issues with 336? Cause I know I do.
Last chapter, folks. Epilogue is coming up next. Then I'd like to go back and edit all the chapters, tighten them up a bit. Not that people actually go back and reread anything…do people go back and reread? Anyway…yeah…hopefully the next chapter ends in a good way. This week is looking a bit dreary so far.
As always, feedback is welcome.