Heyyyy guys! Sorry that I keep having to delay posting; I've just been really busy recently with schoolwork and other activities. I might have to change my update schedule to once every three weeks (annoying, I know), but if I do that then the chapters will definitely be longer. Readers, what do you think would be better? Let me know through PM or down in the reviews! Any support is good support, once again, so I appreciate your comments:) I'm done rambling at this point, so let's get into responses!
Alliy – Maybe… or maybe not? Guess you'll have to wait and see!
Metallica – I just want to say that I love reading your reviews, they always make me smile! Appreciate the support, fam:) As I wrote in a previous response, I've always been confused about the lack of guilt coming from Ichigo and Orihime. They both seem plenty upset during the death, but that just evaporates? I live on this Earth to keep my audience guessing, so watch out for more confusion as the story progresses! Also, I promise that Ulquiorra will come back! You can 999% quote me on that, because it is a definite thing that will definitely occur.
boldLy – Thank youuuuuuu!
Chapter Six
Las Noches, Hueco Mundo, approximately five am
Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck yawned exaggeratedly. She hated being on the morning shift, but ever since the loss of the Pesquisa, Harribel had made it mandatory for every Arrancar in the top tier to participate. Nel wanted to keep her place as Harribel's second-in-command, of course, so she had to wake up bright and early every morning for patrol.
Not everything about it was terrible, though. In fact, since she had started rising earlier, she had noticed improvements in her performance. Her speed and reiatsu had increased, and so had her ability to maintain her released form for longer stretches of time. It was a slow process, but she was definitely returning to her former glory as an Espada.
The other positive of being on the morning shift so frequently was that she got to spend time with Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, much to his chagrin. While they hadn't known each other when she was the Tercero, in recent months they had forged a friendship based on mutual hatred and annoyance. It was hilarious to bug the crap out of him, because he couldn't retaliate in the way he clearly wanted to. If he tried to fight her, he would just lose and embarrass himself, so he was stuck with yelling at her like a petulant child.
Still, though… it would probably be funnier to witness Grimmjow's immaturity a little later in the day. Five in the morning was brutal, even for a seasoned warrior like Nel. She yawned again at the thought, and stretched widely, making sure to 'accidentally' whack her walking companion's arm.
Grimmjow snarled at her. "Really, bitch? Isn't hitting me like a baby a little below your pay grade? Or are you still stuck as a five year old?"
Nel grinned, teasing back, "I don't know, Grimmjow… I might be, but doesn't that mean that you lost to a kindergartener?"
Grimmjow shuddered internally at the memory of their most recent fight, and retorted testily, "I'll win next time, dumbass, I was just sick. Anyway, something more interesting happened yesterday. Did you see the Shinigami Captain talking to Sharkface? Do you know why she was here?"
Nel stopped in her tracks, and turned to face him. "Sharkface is not the proper way to refer to your superior, Grimmjow. But if you wanted to ask again more respectfully, I suppose I could answer your question."
Grimmjow rolled his eyes, and said drolly, "Sorry, ma'am. Won't happen again. Lemme rephrase: why was a Shinigami whore talking to Harribel-sama?"
Nel rolled her eyes and waggled her finger chastisingly. "That's only a little bit better. They were meeting about the fluctuations, obviously. Harribel-sama asked Menoly to extend the invitation to Soul Society. She's not as good at Sonido or opening accurate Garganta as the rest of us, but Harribel-sama couldn't spare anyone more valuable."
Grimmjow puffed up his chest, and laughed. "Ha! Guess there are some benefits to being third-in-command in this shithole! D'you think that asshole Kurosaki is gonna come and try to fix it? 'Cause if he does, I'm gonna pound his ugly mug into the ground. Little fucker has had it coming for a while now, if you ask me."
Nel was about to respond when she noticed a familiar figure standing behind them, silent as ever. "H-Harribel-sama!" she stammered, flushing hotly. "I didn't see you there!"
Grimmjow jumped straight up and swiveled around to face his commander. "Good morning, Harribel-sama," he greeted through clenched teeth.
Harribel remained impassive, although her eyebrows twitched slightly in what could perhaps be construed as amusement. "I hope you have no plans to attack any emissary from Soul Society, Grimmjow. It would certainly upset the treaty."
Grimmjow stared intently at the ground, and said, "Nope, nothing like that. Sorry, Harribel-sama, I'll keep my mouth shut next time."
Harribel's eyes darted between the two of them, and she sighed heavily. "As long as you're not serious about any of your lofty threats, I have no qualms with your banter. As you were." At that, she disappeared, leaving nothing but footprints on the soft sand in her wake.
"Jesus," said Grimmjow, after a moment's pause. "She definitely wasn't this scary under Aizen."
Nel gulped. "Agreed."
Orihime Inoue's apartment, approximately seven forty am
Orihime awoke to the incessant beeping of her alarm clock on her bedside table, ringing shrilly in her ear. Disentangling herself from her duvet, she pressed snooze, and rubbed her sleepy eyes.
Although she had been sleeping badly for several months, the previous night had been particularly difficult. After visiting the Hirabayashis', she was both emotionally and physically drained. From attempting to console the tearful Mitsuko Hirabayashi with memories of her own experience to cleaning the house in preparation for the funeral with Tatsuki, Orihime was extremely worn out by the time she arrived at her empty apartment. She had struggled to complete her homework, problems swimming together so they were barely intelligible. When she finally finished and slipped into bed, it was already upwards of twelve thirty. Instead of drifting to sleep soon after, Orihime lay in bed for hours, eyes squeezed shut as she willed herself to relax. As much as she tried, though, her mind would not stop racing. Images of Aiko Hirabayashi's dead body and Ulquiorra's dull eyes blurred together, a horrible mix of her worst nightmares that haunted her until the wee hours of the morning. She had finally fallen asleep at five-thirty, when gentle sunlight first began to filter through her curtains and her turbulent thoughts were put at ease.
Now, at seven forty, she was miserable. Two hours of sleep wasn't enough for Orihime to get by on, but she had no other choice but to attend her classes. She'd already missed several months of school while in captivity – it was either go every day and make up her lost work or repeat the year entirely, which she wanted to avoid at all costs.
Groaning, she sat up and pushed her blanket aside, stumbling to her feet. She groggily put on her uniform and brushed her hair, picking up her schoolbag from the couch as she left the house.
Tatsuki, as usual, was waiting for her outside of her apartment. "You're late," she said accusingly. She eyed Orihime up and down, and added, "And your shoes are on the wrong feet."
Orihime looked down, and saw that her shoes were, indeed, not put on correctly. Blushing, she fixed her error, and laughed sheepishly. "Hahahaha, I guess you're right. You know me, clumsy as always, hahahaha…"
Tatsuki gave her a strange look, but didn't comment on Orihime's suspicious behavior. "Let's get going," she said instead, starting to walk down the hall.
Orihime sighed to herself in relief and hurried after her friend. When she tried to run, however, her legs buckled in protest. Although she hadn't noticed before, she now realized that they were taut and sore, as did her arms. That's odd, she thought, slowing her pace so as not to overexert herself. I haven't exercised recently…
Tatsuki turned when she reached the doors to the staircase and saw Orihime lagging behind, struggling under the weight of her small schoolbag. "Do you need help?" she called, jogging towards where her best friend was walking.
"No, it's fine, really," said Orihime bashfully, trying to fix her posture so she looked less like she was hobbling.
Tatsuki rolled her eyes, and grabbed her friend's arm, draping it over her muscular shoulders. Looking at Orihime, she laughed, and said, "We really have to stop getting mixed up in things before school or the teacher really will kill us."
Orihime giggled, and replied, "Not before she kills Kurosaki-kun and Kuchiki-san. They're doomed."
Shinigami Research and Development Institute, Seireitei, Soul Society, approximately ten am
Mayuri Kurotsuchi was quite certain he had just made the largest scientific breakthrough in Shinigami history since the creation of the Hogyoku, which was no easy feat. To be fair, though, it was not entirely of his own making; in fact, his actions had hardly influenced the trajectory of this particular experiment at all. He counted himself lucky that he had even found the specimen in the first place. It was only by chance that he had discovered its partially formed torso while examining the hole in Las Noches' roof to measure the shift in atmospheric pressure. He had first discarded it as just another Hollow's corpse, but upon closer inspection, its reiatsu was much too high for that to be possible. It had to be an Arrancar, then. Even so, he wasn't really interested in excavating the Arrancar until he observed its skin move to cover part of an exposed vein.
The growth had been tiny, less than a single centimeter of skin cells restored, but it suggested something that Mayuri hadn't thought possible. The miserable creature was definitely dead, headless and limbless, but it was somehow growing. From what he knew about Arrancar biology (and he knew a lot), regeneration only functioned if the internal organs were intact, or else the creature would remain dead. Clearly, this Arrancar's internal organs were not present. So how was its flesh growing? Was it truly the case that its regenerative capacity had increased beyond that of its peers? Not one to let such a question remain unanswered, Mayuri returned to Soul Society with the torso, wrapped away securely by Nemu, and positioned it in a vacant lab to chart its progress.
After all that business about sorting out the treaty with Hueco Mundo and stationing the Garganta in a readily accessible location for transport, however, weeks had gone by without anyone checking on his experiment. He and Nemu were the only ones who knew of its existence, of course; no one else could be trusted to not interfere. While leaving it alone was a terrible violation of procedure, this test subject was too important and too fragile to reveal to any of his coworkers. They simply wouldn't understand how critical it would be for the scientific world to discover how the physiology of an artificially created creature would react to different stimuli, and to understand how was gradually repairing itself.
When everything had settled down and Mayuri returned to the lab with Nemu in tow, he witnessed something incredible. The creature, whose skin had been restoring itself in tiny increments when he saw it last, was almost fully regenerated, from its clawed feet to its twisted horns. Even more impressive, it had clearly moved from its position when he had seen it last. The glass door was marred by claw markings, and the various wires once sewn into his torso were long since disconnected. Mayuri began to perform tests immediately and did so over the following few days, reconnecting the Arrancar to wires in order to test its awareness. Predictably, it demonstrated responses to the electric shocks and other similar tests, recorded fastidiously by Nemu in the experiment's journal. Unfortunately, it was clearly unconscious, and would not respond to verbal or intellectual stimuli in spite of its active and steady brain waves. Intelligent or not, though, the Arrancar's development was monumental. Even without the majority of its internal organs, it possessed the ability to completely regenerate its physical body, an undocumented phenomenon.
Mayuri was, of course, aware of the dangers that came with continuing to experiment on the Arrancar. He was perfectly aware of who it had once been, and realized that when the breadth of his experimentation was discovered by the rest of Seireitei, he would be met with considerable and ardor from his colleagues. It didn't matter, though, because more than a member of the Gotei 13, more than the Captain of the 12th Division, more than even a Shinigami, Mayuri was a scientist.
Karakura High, approximately three pm
Orihime was not having a good day. Her body throbbed painfully for no apparent reason, and her head pounded like it had been split open with an axe. To make matters worse, she had been nodding off during class from a combination of lack of sleep and general lethargy. Her teachers were thankfully being lenient with her, but she could tell they were annoyed by her lack of focus.
She felt terrible about her attitude, too. It was so stupid that she could barely function when confronted with even the slightest bit of pain; it really was no wonder that everyone thought she was pathetically weak. Without the Shun Shun Rikka, she couldn't even manage a tiny ailment, let alone a serious wound acquired in battle. Sighing, she fingered the hairpins, thumbs brushing over their cold surface nostalgically. She couldn't believe that it was only four years ago that Sora had given them to her. Since then, so much had happened, starting with his transformation into a Hollow…
At the word Hollow, Orihime buried her face in her hands, elbows resting heavily on her desk. She couldn't be selfish and mope about her past when her classmates were being brutally murdered right under her and her friends' noses.
That settles it, we've got to talk to Urahara-san about it together, she thought to herself determinedly. I feel bad bothering him twice in the same week, but I suppose this time everyone is involved so it won't be too much for him to bear.
Looking up at the clock, Orihime frowned. Usually she had a free period during this time of the day, but today she had to stay at school to attend the mandatory health classes along with the rest of her grade. Although she understood the importance of teaching students basic first aid, it seemed silly when such gruesome crimes were being committed around them and they were left defenseless. A normal school certainly couldn't teach its students how to defend themselves against Hollows, but Orihime wished that the faculty would at least acknowledge the dangerous nature of the situation instead of just telling the students to just go home earlier.
When the bell finally rang, Orihime had almost fallen asleep to the dulcet tones of her teacher's droning, still tired from the lack of sleep she had gotten the previous night.
Alright, she thought, gathering her stuff and leaving the classroom. I'm gonna find the others, and we're going to do what we should've done from the start.
