Hell Butterfly
Ichioku Gyokusai
~25~
o)0(o
"WHY ARE YOU DEAD?" bellowed Ichigo, whacking his head on the underneath of the table as he tried to scramble up and fix his father with a wild-eyed stare.
"How come I didn't remember ANYTHING about you until now?" roared Hitsugaya, gesturing madly at his former captain.
"What was Kon doing in your food?" asked Inoue, completely missing the more obvious problem.
"Why are you all shouting?" wailed Yuzu, unnerved.
Ichigo was still reeling. "Our father is a shinigami!" he spat.
"But, don't they live in false bodies?"
"Yes," replied everyone else in the room.
"But where do babies come from if you have a false body?" asked his sister, a horrifying twist on the classic dreaded question. "Are we zombies or robots or something?"
Ichigo suffered a brief aneurysm of the brain. To protect his sanity he quickly backtracked to Inoue's question.
"Yeah, Kon, why were you in our food? Trying to run off in our bodies without permission?" guessed Ichigo suspiciously. The Not-Isshin looked pathetic and unloved. This was quickly replaced with an expression of zeal. In this respect his behaviour was nigh on indistinguishable from the real Isshin, meaning that the words of revelation that followed came almost from the horse's mouth.
"THE GREAT KON-SAMA was trying to uncover your father's LIES! I've known he was a shinigami for months! I've seen him kill an arrancar! He's in cahoots with URAHARA! IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!"
Isshin quailed before the five dark stares aimed at him. "I can explain!" he whimpered.
"Not well enough," swore Ichigo, already rolling up his sleeves and preparing himself to dole out a beating.
"Kurosaki-taicho," muttered Hitsugaya; "I don't know what you did to my memories, but I'm not sure I'm pleased they've been restored."
The doctor hid his face in his hands. "It's not all my faaault!" he howled, hurling himself back against the wall. "In fact it's not my fault at all!"
"So you weren't involved with Urahara when he got kicked out of Soul Society then?" asked his son. The man shook his head, water pouring down his cheeks at the thought that his children would now hate him even more. It elicited little sympathy.
"If you're a shinigami then why didn't you save Karin-chan from the…f-from the m-m-monster?" Yuzu had started trembling, eyes swimming with unshed tears she had sworn to hold back just like her twin used to. Her brother flinched.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't make you even more dead than you are already," he growled. "How long have you been sitting around pretending Hollows don't exist and lying that you can't see ghosts, whilst all around you our family's been dropping like flies? You're a captain! You could have prevented all of this!"
"No!" shouted back their father, the accusation cutting far too deep. "No I could not!" He balked at revealing the truth after so long, just for a moment, then continued at a slightly calmer tone. "And you have no idea of the circumstances."
And without missing a beat, he turned and ripped the poster of his wife off the wall. Perhaps the visitors missed the significance of this, yet his children were all but screaming sacrilege!
Isshin presented them the other side. It bore another picture of Masaki, identically surrounded by CGI glitter and flowers and glaring titles, her auburn hair flowing in a breeze, her wide smile just the way her children dimly remembered it.
The black shihakusho was new.
"What did you tell the Cult to make them leave you alone?" asked Orihime shakily.
"Uh, yeah," bleated Ichigo, his world view effectively flipped inside out.
"…That my mother was a shinigami."
o)0(o
Orange flames surged up and lapped at clouds fleeing across the bright blue sky. Entire walls went spinning away into the distance; clay tiles fell in shattering rain.
In the depth of the remaining crater, foundations crumbled, and the last basement wall keeled over on top of the former building's only inhabitant.
Urahara-taicho put down his binoculars, sighed, and looked at Unohana mournfully. "Could you send your people in please?" he asked, sheepish.
She pursed her lips. "That's the third time this month."
"We'll get the calibration right eventually?"
"We're still in the first week of this month."
"…I know that…"
o)0(o
Isshin approached the area cautiously, laid his first aid kit to one side once he was sure nothing else was going to explode, and began hauling bricks. It was his task today to recover and identify the poor soul crushed underneath the wreckage. After much straining of muscles and shifting of debris, he reached his target.
A fallen angel, the tragic early demise of what could only be the most enchanting flower in all creation…
He fell to his knees and wept for the delicate blossom he had never met…
"Look, I know Fourth Squad is pathetic, but surely I have more reason to be crying than you?" The words were said in a voice like gentle songbirds serenading the new dawn. He looked down at his ex-patient with blurry eyes.
"Y-you're alive?"
"Don't worry," coughed the woman, stretching her back out among the rubble. "I have so much reiatsu you could bounce anvils off my head."
"So that massive wound on your temple was caused by…?"
"An anvil bouncing off my head. Taicho uses it to make new tools for his experiments." She smiled, and it was as if a second sun had risen. He grinned back like an idiot.
"Would you go out with me?"
Not 'like' an idiot, she corrected herself. He is an idiot. "Could you just…do your job, please?"
"Anything for you, my love!"
o)0(o
"Hold up," said Ichigo, looking worried; "did you just say you were in Fourth?"
"Fifth Seat, yes!" cheered the doctor.
Ichigo introduced his forehead to the dining table. "My soul-cred is ruined…"
"NONSENSE! Fourth Squad is SUPER COOL-"
"You can't pull that one on us. We've met Hanatarou."
"…Drat. Anyway, that was the start of our love story…"
o)0(o
"MASAKI-CHAAAN!"
"Hide me," whimpered Masaki to her friend. Yoruichi grinned wickedly. "I think he's funny."
"Traitor."
Isshin had kicked up a cloud of dust in his haste to reach them. "Masaki-chaaan! I've chosen our house for when we're married with a million cute little babies!"
Masaki wound her arm up and let loose.
"FALCOOOON PAWWWWWWNCH!"
Isshin twinkled in the sky briefly, and disappeared.
Yoruichi played with a strand of her purple hair. "I thought your shikai was called Gyokusai," noted the taicho's partner in crime.
"It is," nodded Masaki, shaking her stinging hand. "That was actually a secret karate technique."
"Ah, so…"
o)0(o
Isshin was approaching.
She slammed the door shut. He ran straight through it - into her fist. Poleaxed, he dropped to the floor like a lead pipe.
Later she asked Urahara a pertinent question.
"Can we replace our doors with something tougher than paper, please?"
"We can't afford to," trilled her captain merrily. "Too many explosions!"
o)0(o
Isshin was seated in the lotus position, katana laid across his lap. He was performing Jinzen, attempting to communicate with the spirit of his zanpakuto blade in order to gain greater powers and make Masaki notice him. He had also been training extensively in the other three combat forms, Kido, Hado and Shunpo, as well.
Matsumoto popped up beside him.
"Wanna go clubbing with me in Karakura? Gin snuck me a captain's permit for the senkai gate...?" She waved the scrap of paper temptingly before his eyes.
His resolution buckled.
"Please," he sniffled.
o)0(o
"If you can't be interesting could you at least be unique?" huffed Masaki as Isshin fell out of her barrack locker for the third time that week.
"You're asking him to be uniquely irritating?" interjected Gin, who had arrived to collect a new-fangled 'Soul Phone' from her.
"Kinda."
Kurosaki grinned ecstatically. "HEY! I CAN DO THAT! YAAAAAY!"
o)0(o
"Urahara, I QUIT!"
"Masaki -chan! We had a deal!"
"That's as may be, but every time a building collapses on me or you try to synthesise a new elemental particle or, or, whatever! ... I end up in hospital. And every time I end up in hospital... HE'S THERE!"
"I feel your pain Masaki-chan... But I think we're nearly there now!"
"That's what you said, how many years ago now?"
o)0(o
"Matsumoto, do you think if you went out with me, it would make Masaki-chan jealous?"
"Nope." She replied instantly and easily.
"Pleeeease?"
"Oh alright then. Sake's on you."
After the horrific events of that one night, they could not face each other for at least a month.
o)0(o
Hollows were invading Soul Society, and judging by the frantic urgency of the alarms beaten out on wooden slats around Seireitei, the breach was serious.
Guards and shinigamis were racing to the hot spot from all over the city, and Isshin made sure to slip into the path of his favourite victim. Once she spotted him she shook her head in disgust, long wavy hair bouncing around her shoulders. But a pause later, she seemed to have come up with an idea.
When they reached the scene of the invasion Masaki accelerated into shunpo and launched herself into the air, skipping over the heads of the mass of assembling fighters. "YOU CAN ALL HEAD BACK!" she bellowed. "TECH SQUAD'S GOING TO DEAL WITH THIS! RETREAT IMMEDIATELY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE CAUGHT IN THE BLAST ZONE. And if you do want to be, go get your head checked," she muttered to herself, spotting Isshin wavering between safety and stalking in the throng.
Once the crowd began to dissipate, she hopped to the ground behind him and caught the back of his shihakusho as he finally decided to leave.
"Not you."
"AH! You want some help with the bomb darling?" He blinked. "I know you must be finally realising your deep and intense feelings for me, Masaki-chan-darling, but I'm not the best person for techie help. Medic, remember?"
"It's not that, I just want to show you something. It may change the way you see me."
"YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERIMENT, ARE YOU?"
"No!" laughed the woman despite herself. "I'm all natural, fortuitous windfall. But you'll see what the whole issue with Twelfth blowing itself up half the time is."
The black mass of Gillians in the distance was swelling in numbers, and vicious red Ceros seared the air as they began to build up to a hunting frenzy. "Take this," said Masaki off-handedly, tossing a small red tag at her stalker. "And don't lose it."
He examined the tiny charm. It was made of scarlet leather, with a black kanji inked onto the square of white silk stuck to one side.
"I'll take care of the Gillians, so just stay back here and watch."
This took a moment to sink in, and once he looked up she had already charged into the distance.
"Hey...HEY! Masaki-chan, you can't take on all of those ALONE?"
o)0(o
Once she was in range, Masaki leapt up into the overcast sky for a better vantage point. A strong gust of wind battered her, the atmosphere disturbed by all the superheated lasers the Grande Menos were firing.
"GYOKUSAI!" yelled the death god, unsheathing her zanpakuto. It tripled in size, its ridiculous length explaining why she preferred to fight in the sky and also foreshadowing her abysmal reiatsu control. She'd tried making her sword smaller and less ungainly, but it simply didn't work.
Diamond dust began to settle out of the air around, as the seething reiatsu churning out of her slender form crystallised in an attempt to condense itself. It looked like a sandstorm of powdered quartz. The zanpakuto's form mirrored its name: 'shattered jewel'.
There was no technique or special ability to her attack, simply a release of limiters.
She went berserk.
The entire front flank of Gillians tumbled like wheat before a scythe as she ploughed into them, decimating their ranks. They howled strange and mournful sounds as they were cut down, and those she didn't reach with her blade were burned by the hailstones of solidified reiatsu churning through the air like leaves in a gale. Every Cero that came near her was deflected by the greater concentration of spiritual energy she possessed.
Such an onslaught could not last long.
The herd of Gillian lacked an Adjuchas for a leader, thus they conspired to create one.
The strange soldiers began to rip chunks out of each other in their panic, piling up in heaps and merging together in a sea of pitch black and chalk white. The level of their conjoined reiatsu spiked dangerously.
"Typical..." sighed Masaki. "I made it worse."
Before she could disintegrate the Gillians in their moment of shared weakness, their evolution truly took hold and a vast Caja Negacion surrounded the writhing mountain of Hollows, unsurpassable. There was nothing she could do but wait for the new-born Adjuchas to emerge.
As the wait dragged on she pulled her soul phone from a pocket within her shihakusho and began filming the metamorphosis. At least Kisuke would be interested in studying it, right?
The air echoed with the sound of shattering glass, as the yellow cage of light crumbled and fell apart. The Adjucha surged forwards, wasting no time in adjusting to its regenerated mind and sense of self, lost to the former drones it had agglomerated itself from. It was enormous, as high as a tower.
A massive hand swatted Masaki out of the air whilst she was belatedly tucking her phone away. She crashed into the ground several metres away, carving a deep gouge into the loose earth. With a loud thunderclap of sonido, the grande menos was already beside her, the second hand now sweeping down to cuff her back into the sky. But this time she had no control, tumbling in free-fall, a ragdoll skydiving.
She created a new crater when she thumped into the dust next to Isshin.
"Masaki, you can't-!" he said urgently, trying to run to her aid the same as he did every time she turned up covered in wounds, but this time he rebounded of the barrier that had sprung up around him. "What is this?"
"That's gonna keep you alive," breezed Masaki, reaching out from her conveniently pre-dug grave to rap the shield of blue reiatsu with the back of her hand. "Now watch," said the woman gravely, as the ravenous adjucha screamed the air full of bloody red murder. She held her over-long blade over her head, breathed in calm, breathed out fear, and gave a quiet, focused command.
"Bankai."
o)0(o
Isshin barely knew how to describe the gut-wrenching flood of distilled power that poured out of her then. Her body began to judder, dividing, splitting off into many parts all of equally ferocious strength. They weren't quite clones, some taller, some shorter, as far as he could tell they were older and younger too.
Masaki had been hiding an army all this time?
For one disconcerting moment they all moved in unison, gracefully lowering their identical blades and moving into battle-ready stances. And without cue all proceeded to unleash fury upon the adjuchas that was already dropping a storm of Balas upon them.
He couldn't keep track. Each moved differently, each displayed a different style of fighting, a different level of training, different strategies. But as the terrifying Grande Menos was hacked and slashed into submission, defeated by the weight of numbers and reiatsu, Isshin was reminded only of a shoal of starving piranhas.
It was little time before the leviathan had been reduced to a motionless, chewed-up, black-bleeding corpse. The horde of Masaki's bankai spread out across the desert bordering Soul Society and obliterated any Gillian or minor Hollows that remained.
A small figure peered through the dark slit that ruptured the cerulean sky and led into the depths of Hueco Mundo. It frowned at the decimation of its 'fellows' and pulled the inter-dimensional seam shut with a small, human-shaped hand, shaking its brown-haired head in dissatisfaction.
o)0(o
"This is why you should really think of me as a terminal patient," explained Masaki later, hobbling back to him with a hundred small wounds. Barely a single Hollow had managed to scratch her. They were all side effects of her bankai. "What you just saw is called Ichioku Gyokusai. 'One Hundred Million Broken Jewels.' It allows me to expel all my power at once in a mass suicide attack."
As glittering reiryoku drifted down around them, she tapped the dome of blue energy and dispelled it.
"I'm only growing more and more powerful. It's why Kisuke can never get the calibration right: my spirit shifts too much. In the end it'll be self-destructive so to be brutally honest you're just wasting your time, Kurosaki."
"What's so terrible about having a bankai that turns you into a one-woman-army?" laughed Isshin, still in awe of her. "That's something to be proud of!"
Her smile was fragile. "Those people weren't created by my zanpakuto's spirit, Kurosaki, they came from me." Her voice was insistent, because he didn't understand. "Those were other mes. Taicho thinks they're my past lives. Don't you get it, you idiot, that they're not meant to be here? Not meant to be now, when it's my turn to live?" She was beginning to feel faint; he diagnosed it from her washed-out complexion and shivering eyes, unable to focus.
He sat her down among the shards of pale green reiryoku, that was slowly fading yet seared his fingers whenever he touched it.
"You'd better give me a hand with this medical kido then," said the healer gruffly.
She blinked. "Kido?"
"Of course! Considering how often you blow yourself up, you must be a dab hand at putting yourself back together by now!"
She leaned away.
"I don't do kido."
"Hoh?"
"For me kido is like trying to take a thimble of water from the Niagara Falls! The water pressure alone would rip your hand right off if you even attempted it!"
An evil expression crawled over Isshin's face and lurked there, gloating.
"Aha. So you DO need me after all."
She had thought her plan to get rid of him was fool-proof.
Cue the fool.
o)0(o
Shinigami Cup: Golden
o)0(o
Ichigo: Wait, so, you had a one night stand with Matsumoto?
Isshin: That's really none of your business, son.
Ichigo: IS THAT WHY I'M THE ONLY GINGER CHILD?
Isshin: *chokes* Would you stop leaping to conclusions!
o)0(o
Happy New Year, guys!
Alliriyan~*